saw them with a broken tobacco-pipe stuck
in the ribbon of their straw hats. These were men who had paraded in
their day the shady side of Pall Mall. They found a pipe a solace, and
cigars were not to be had for love or money. "Why do you not put your
pipe at least out of sight?" said I.

"It is the Seymour Arms' crest," responded my good-natured gentlemen
farmers, "and we wear it accordingly."

Smoking all day, from the hour of rising, is, I actually believe, more
injurious to the nerves than hard drinking. It paralyzes exertion. I
never saw an Irish labourer, with his hod and his pipe, mounting a
ladder, but I was sure to discover that he was an idler. I never had a
groom that smoked much who took proper care of my horses; and I never
knew a gentleman seriously addicted to smoking, who cared much for any
thing beyond self. A Father Matthew pledge against the excessive use
of tobacco would be of much more benefit among the labouring Irish
than King James his Counterblast proved among the English.

The emigrant of education will naturally inquire, if, in case of war,
he will be under the necessity of leaving his farm for the defence of
the country.

The militia laws are now undergoing revision, in order to create an
efficient force.

The militia of Western Canada are well composed, and have become a
most formidable body of 80,000 men,[1] and are not to be classed with
rude and undisciplined masses. In 1837, they rushed to the defence of
their soil; and, so eager were they to attain a knowledge of the
duties of a soldier, that, in the course of four months, many
divisions were able to go through field-days with the regulars; and
the embodied regiments, being clothed in scarlet, were always supposed
by American visitors to be of the line.

There is a military spirit in this people, which only requires
development and a good system of officer and sub-officer to make it
shine. Any attempt to create partizan officers must be repressed, and
merit and stake in the country alone attended to.

The population of the British provinces cannot now be less than nearly
two millions; and it only requires judgment to bring forward the
Canadian French to insure their acting against an enemy daring to
invade the country, as they so nobly did in 1812. I subjoin the latest
correct census, 1844, of the Franco-Canadian race, as it will now be
interesting in a high degree to the reader in Europe.

[Footnote 1: Eastern and Western Ca