superiority, in all that constitutes true prosperity, of these old colonies of Great Britain, now independent of her control, over her newer colonies still subject to it, is a matter to be regarded by her with other feelings than those of mere mortification. If it tell of a fatal error in her past policy towards her old colonies, which forced them to erect themselves into another nation, and of later mistakes in her treatment of the colonies which are still politically her own,it tells also of the energy of her early colonization on this continent, of the triumphs of her own people and their offspring. It is evidently in this light that Lord Durham is disposed to view the rapid advancement of this country. He sympathizes with that large and happily fast-increasing portion of the British people, which is rather proud of our success as their own, than hurt at the recollection, that it is not in name theirs; which would make this recollection serve as a lesson for the future to their statesmen, how they deal with colonies, and not as a goad to the baser passions of their countrymen, to keep alive a feeling of hostility which ought never to have been excited.

That a document of this kind should not have obtained general circulation in this country, we think is much to be regretted. We regret it, because of the amount of valuable information on British American affairs, which its cheap republication would have diffused extensively among our people; and much more, because of the favorable influence which its liberal and enlightened character must have exerted on the public feelings and sympathies, not merely as they regard Canada and its concerns, but also in the far more important matter of their general tone as regards the British people and their affairs. We, too, have among us a class, who imitate the English defamers of the United States, in the temper of their habitual remarks on the mother country. It is not to be wondered at, if a feeling favorable to such retaliatory warfare should prevail to a considerable extent among our people. We could well wish, for the sake of the influence it must have had in checking this disposition, that in this case, the ipsissima verba of one of the first of the English liberal statesmen of the day should have been made generally

known among us. The silly tittle-tattle of every locomotive story-teller, to Marryat downwards, is hawked over our country with eager haste, as English opinion. It is time the

other side were heard, and the better judgment of the thinking portion of either people, a little more faithfully communicated to the other. Perhaps it is too late now for Lord Durham's Report to be made a very efficient means of accomplishing this end. The next that may offer, we may hope, will be put to better use.

But we must turn from the Report to the consideration of its subject, the political state and prospects of British America. As Lower Canada has been the scene of the most critical portion of the recent struggles, and as its condition in general is on all accounts the most interesting, we shall give it the largest share of our attention. The state of things in Upper Canada comes next in interest and importance. The four other provinces have much less in their condition to call for extended remark; though it will be necessary to speak of them, in order to give any thing like a just idea of the whole subject. The great question at issue in the neighbouring provinces is no longer Canadian, but British American, perhaps we might better say British and American, and include the United States among the parties directly interested in it. The marked peculiarities, social and political, of the Canadas, make it far more difficult of solution than it otherwise would have been; but this is all. They by no means isolate the Canadas, or separate the problem of their future government from that of the other colonies. One cannot in truth imagine a state of things established in either or both of them, that should not of necessity affect, for good or evil, and that in no slight degree, the States, as well as the colonies, which border on them.

Our readers are, of course, sufficiently familiar with the general extent and form of the British possessions in North America, as they appear on the map; the two large Canadian provinces extending along the northern frontier of the United States, and bounded in the rear by the extensive but unsettled tract of the Hudson's Bay Territory; the smaller provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, to the east of Maine; and the insular provinces of Prince Edward's Island and Newfoundland, the former of trifling extent, and separated only by a narrow channel from the mainland of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the latter very much larger, and considerably more remote. Of the Hudson's Bay Territory it will be unnecessary here to speak further, as it

can scarcely be said to have a political existence; its few white inhabitants being all traders with the Indians, and dependents of the Hudson's Bay Company. The population of the Canadas bears no proportion to their whole extent; it is scattered, indeed, over a comparatively small part of it. The settled portion of Upper Canada nowhere reaches to any great distance from the St. Lawrence and the great Lakes, which form the boundary of the Province, and in some places the strip is very narrow. In Lower Canada,

too, the settled country, north of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence, is mostly very narrow, never above a few leagues in width, and often hardly admitting of measurement by miles; to the south of the St. Lawrence, the inhabited tract is larger in proportion to the total area, but it still falls far short of it, and, in fact, below Quebec, becomes a mere belt of land along the south shore, diminishing in width as it stretches to the northeast, and ceasing for some distance before we come to the scanty settlements along the Gulf of the St. Lawrence and Bay of Chaleurs, which contain the population of the District of Gaspé. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward's Island, are far from being thickly settled, their aggregate population, according to the highest estimate, falling far short of that of the State of Maine. The settled district of Newfoundland is but a small part of the island, extending only along the eastern and southeastern coasts, and that not continuously.

This very partial distribution of inhabited territory must be borne in mind, or the small amount of its gross population will be likely to excite surprise. The Canadas are generally supposed, at the present time, to contain a population of about a million; Upper Canada claiming, of this number, about 400,000, and Lower Canada 600,000. The three Lower Provinces have a population of about 350,000; 140,000 (a number probably beyond the truth) being claimed for New Brunswick; 170,000 for Nova Scotia; and 40,000 being about the allowance for Prince Edward's Island. New

*Lord Durham's report speaks of 365,000, as the highest estimate for the population of these three colonies at the present time. It is no doubt too high. In 1830 Maine had a population of 399,955, by census; and taking her increase in former years as a guide, it must now considerably exceed 500,000. The superficial extent of Maine is much less than that of the three Provinces, and the time, during which its settlement has been in active progress, does not a great deal exceed the time theirs has occupied

foundland has a population of perhaps rather over 80,000. The six colonies together, therefore, have not quite a million and a half of inhabitants, which is not far from the present population of the three States of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, and rather less than one tenth of that of the Union.

It must not be inferred, however, from this statement, that the population of the British provinces has been any thing like stationary, or that its increase has been slow, even as compared with that of the United States, since their independence. At the close of the revolutionary war, what is now Upper Canada was a wilderness, and not yet set off from the Province of Quebec; New Brunswick formed part of Nova Scotia; and Prince Edward's Island was almost without inhabitants. In 1784, the population of the Canadas was officially returned at about 112,000 souls; and about the same period that of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward's Island (was estimated, inclusive of some 20,000 loyalist settlers from the States), at little more than 32,000. These numbers may not be quite large enough, but they are probably not very far from the truth. Exclusive of Newfoundland, therefore, of the early population of which it is hard to find any tolerably accurate accounts, the population of British America has increased nearly, if not quite, nine fold in fifty-five years. During the forty years between 1790 and 1830, the population of New England did not quite double itself; while that of New York increased very nearly six fold, a rate of increase, therefore, a trifle less rapid than that of British America. The new Western States have grown much more rapidly. The population of Ohio, for example, in 1830, was more than twenty times as great as in 1800,- a period of only thirty years. But it is not with these, that the comparison can be fairly made; as the British colonies are only in part new settlements, and in this respect are much more nearly in the condition of the State of New York, than of any of the more western States. Upper Canada, which of itself is in a position analogous to that of the Northwestern States, has not grown in wealth and population any thing like as rapidly as they have done; but, as a whole, the provinces have made great progress; so great, indeed, as to suffer only in comparison with that of the new districts of this country, taken separately from the old. In the last fifty years, the

population of the whole Union has probably increased rather more than fourfold; but the proportional extent of its territory, which has been long settled, is much greater than in the possessions of the British Crown, so that the analogy does not hold between them.

We are apt, on this side of the Atlantic, to complain, “not without cause," of the indistinct and often erroneous notions, entertained of us and our doings, on the other side. The good people of the neighbouring provinces have, perhaps, almost as good reason for complaint, in the views which pass current among us of their affairs and feelings. In one respect the cases are considerably unlike, inasmuch as our opinions of our neighbours are founded altogether upon their own representations of themselves; but otherwise the resemblance, so far as mere vagueness of statement and grossness of mistake are concerned, is strong enough. In general, our citizens have taken up with one or other of two conflicting accounts of the actual state of things; the one, the workmanship of the most violent of the refugees and their partisans, the other, the chosen counter-statement of the most violent of their antagonists. The former describes the colonial policy of the mother country as a model of all that is hateful, oppressive, and corrupt, and the people as suffering under its tyranny to an extent no longer bearable. The latter, in so many words, denies the existence of abuse or grievance in the colonial system, and all but denies even the existence of discontent in the minds of any considerable portions of the community, said by the malecontents to be thus grievously oppressed. The one pictures agriculture and commerce at a stand, property of all kinds daily losing value, a population daily lessening, in a word, every interest prostrated; and all this, not the accidental, temporary consequence of civil strife, but its cause, the abiding result (long ago felt in its less terrible beginnings, and foreseen in all its whole progress from bad to worse), the result of a long course of misgovernment, and of this only. The other, if it cannot, at the present moment, show a country in the actual enjoyment of prosperity of any kind, at least throws these darker parts of the view as far as possible into shade; exhibits them as a mere effect of political agitation; and, in fact, charges the disaffected party with having themselves created all the evils they now declaim against and magnify, for their own purposes.