“The total immigration to the American Colonies before the revolution was one hundred thousand, out of which grew the three million people constituting the population at that time,” Mr. Bang replied, looking severely at his aunt, “and then the British Government swept the streets of their large cities to find these people wives.”
I noticed that as Mr. Bang said this, he brushed together a number of crumbs on the table cloth in a significant manner.
“Jack! what a thing to say, and before the child!” Mumsie protested. “The Child,” indeed!
“If she doesn’t hear worse among the Liens and Mounts than anything she does from me, she will be lucky,” retorted the amiable one: “besides” he continued, “the version taught in our schools of the causes that led to the American Revolution is the only version that could justify the world’s greatest robbery, perpetuated by the most virulent set of utter, damned scoundrels the world has ever known.” He looked like a turkey-cock in his trumpetting indignation.
“Don’t start another revolution,” cried Mumsie, shocked.
It quieted Mr. Bang. He continued in more moderate tones.
“No doubt these women were included in the one hundred thousand. If you read Mary Johnson’s book, To Have and to Hold, you will see there written that one shipload of wives was warranted honest, but this I fancy we may put down to the bias and prejudice of the author.”
“Why?” I asked.
“For the simple reason that to-day the serving women[[2]] of England are reluctant to come to Canada to receive double the pay they receive at home. When you consider that a hundred years ago, a passage across the Atlantic was looked upon with horror and undertaken in terror, and that in the seventeenth century the danger of being tomahawked by the Indians in the colonies was very real, you will understand that honest maids did not then so seek to espouse honest convicts.”
“In old colonial days,” said Uncle, “crossing the Atlantic in sailing ships was a fearful ordeal. Our family legends are full of stories of its terrors.”