of all the
more profitable kinds of industry their inert and careless competitors
of the French race; but in respect of the greater part (almost the
whole) of the commerce and manufactures of the country, the English
cannot be said to have encroached on the French; for, in fact, they
created employments and profits which had not previously existed. A few
of the ancient race smarted under the loss occasioned by the success of
English competition; but all felt yet more acutely the gradual increase
of a class of strangers in whose hands the wealth of the country
appeared to centre, and whose expenditure and influence eclipsed those
of the class which had previously occupied the first position in the
country. Nor was the intrusion of the English limited to commercial
enterprises. By degrees, large portions of land were occupied by them;
nor did they confine themselves to the unsettled and distant country of
the townships. The wealthy capitalist invested his money in the
purchase of seignorial properties; and it is estimated, that at the
present moment full half of the more valuable seignories are actually
owned by English proprietors. The seignorial tenure is one so little
adapted to our notions of proprietary rights, that the new seigneur,
without any consciousness or intention to injustice, in many instances
exercised his rights in a manner which would appear perfectly fair in
this country, but which the Canadian settler reasonably regarded as
oppressive. The English purchaser found an equally unexpected and just
cause of complaint in that uncertainty of the laws, which rendered his
possession of property precarious, and in those incidents of the tenure
which rendered its alienation or improvement difficult. But an
irritation, greater than that occasioned by the transfer of the large
properties, was caused by the competition of the English with the French
farmer. The English farmer carried with him the experience and habits
of the most improved agriculture in the world. He settled himself in
the townships bordering on the seignories, and brought a fresh soil and
improved cultivation to compete with the worn-out and slovenly farm of
the _habitant_. He often took the very farm which the Canadian settler
had abandoned, and, by superior management, made that a source of profit
which had only impoverished his predecessor. The ascendancy which an
unjust favouritism had contributed to give to the English race in the
g