CHAPTER IX.
Canadian view of the American Struggle—English Officers in the States—My own position in the States and in Canada—The Ursulines in Quebec—General Montcalm—French Canadians—Imperial Honours—Celts and Saxons—Salmon Fishing—Early Government of Canada—Past and Future.
Canadian view of the American Struggle—English Officers in the States—My own position in the States and in Canada—The Ursulines in Quebec—General Montcalm—French Canadians—Imperial Honours—Celts and Saxons—Salmon Fishing—Early Government of Canada—Past and Future.
Whilst I was in Quebec the American papers ceased not to record great Union successes, impending expeditions, and, as is their wont, to throw out hints of some inscrutable woe conceived by the head of Stanton, and to be wrought by the arm of McClellan on the South. “Jeff. Davis going to Texas or Mexico—The neck of the rebellion broken—Our young Napoleon preparing for the last grand campaign.” Many of our officers were very anxious to visit the Federal armies, but the tone of the Northern press was so exceedingly virulent and insulting toward Englishmen, that the authorities, mistaking their license for the real opinion of Americans, discouraged applications for leave as much as possible. This was to be regretted; the more so that those officers who went from Canada to the States were not provided with any official letters, and were, indeed, in some instances, misguided so far as to conceal their military character. It could not but have been most useful to our officers to have been enabled to take fair measure of the system and capability of an American army, North or South; to have formed an estimate of their generals and of the value of theirseveral arms—cavalry, artillery, and infantry, each of which presented conspicuous examples of what to avoid, more especially the first, whilst the second had peculiar features worthy of study, and the third was a very wonderful illustration of the volunteer principle.
When I represented the importance of sending officers to the armies for the special purpose of examining and reporting on their condition, I was met by the reply that it would be a violation of neutrality to dispatch commissioners to the Federal army, unless similar officers were sent to the Confederate headquarters; and that it would not be possible to adopt the latter step, as the Washington Government would not grant them leave to go through the lines, and would resent the proposal. When some officers were at last dispatched with an official sanction to the army at Yorktown, they made their appearance in a forlorn, destitute, and helpless condition, which made their companions in arms blush for them.
For myself, I had every reason to believe that no objection would be made to my accompanying the army under General McClellan. Several senators who had given me their good wishes, were most desirous that I should be able to set off an account of a victory against the narrative of the retreat from Bull Bun. Although I had been recovering a little from the effects of the ludicrous and malignant falsehoods circulated against me up to the Trent affair, I wastrès mal vuin some quarters in Washington, and of course I was included in the general outburst against all British subjects with which the surrender of Mason and Slidell was accompanied.
In Canada I had recovered health and spirits; nay, more—some small shreds of popularity in the States. The secretaries of literary institutions renewed their requests for lectures, the autograph hunters sought the post-office once more with their flattering though ill-spelt missives; but there was no inducement to return to the States till the army of McClellan was actually about to take the field. The exploits of the army of the West had, indeed, attracted my eyes in that direction. The capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson promised well for its future career, but if I travelled so far out of my way I should have lost my chance of seeing the most brilliant and important campaign. The chief interest was certainly concentrated on the Potomac, and in the operations against Richmond. The West was far away, and it would have been a chance against my letters reaching home so as to anticipate the exaggerated illusions of the New York journals. And so I quietly waited and watched till the news from the States became so triumphant and decided that it behoved me to return, lest some important movement should take place on the Potomac. As I could not be with more than one army, I then resolved to follow the fortunes of McClellan’s great host, which indeed was regarded by Americans themselves with the greatest anxiety. And so, after a few days, I set about leaving cards and paying farewell visits to those who had so kindly entreated me in the City of the Strait.
The learned institutions, the libraries, the machinery of education, the various literary and scientific associations, and the admirable seminaries of Quebec, are most creditable to the community; they would placethat city on a level with some of the most learned of European cities of far greater antiquity; and the public spirit and intelligence of its citizens have been fully evinced in the aid and support they have rendered to institutions designed for the spread of knowledge.
The public buildings have also the stamp of respectable antiquity upon them; none of them possess any considerable architectural merits, but several are exceedingly interesting. Constant fires have proved nearly ruinous to the buildings erected by the original settlers; and those which have been subsequently built are not remarkable for beauty—indeed, I may say that the Laval University is one of the plainest buildings it has ever been my lot to behold.
On all sides it is admitted that the nuns of the Ursuline Convent have conferred the greatest benefit upon the city by their unceasing devotion to the task of education. Many people of respectability—Protestants as well as Catholics—send their children to be educated by these excellent women, representing the system inaugurated more than 200 years ago by Madeleine de Chauvigny, who, moved by grief for the loss of her husband to devote herself to Heaven, and to the spread of the Christian faith, sailed forth from France, and, landing at Quebec, established schools for the Indian girls to learn the faith of the white race, which was destined to destroy their own.
The Ursuline Convent is a massive building, ugly as most convents of modern date are, standing amidst the houses of the city. The day I visited it there were no means of seeing the schools, and I was obliged to be content with a sight of the chapel instead. On ringing the bell by the side of a massive iron-bound door, Iwas admitted to the front of agrille, through which I conveyed my wishes to the unseen lady who demanded the purport of my visit; and, after a short delay, the clergyman attached to the service of the church was ready, and an old Swiss or porteress conducted me to the entrance of the chapel, which is of large size, of no pretensions to architectural beauty, and of little interest to me for anything but the fact that within its walls lie the bones of Montcalm.
The Ursulines, however, are of opinion that they have got a collection of paintings of merit, and I was called upon to admire some extraordinary specimens of art very nearly approaching the class denominated daubs, which were not recommended even by antiquity. Although the priest bore a pure Irish patronymic, he had never been in the British isles, having been educated in France, where he was born, whence he came out to Canada in the course of his ministry. He was an agreeable, intelligent, gentlemanly man, but he had evidently no faith in the pictures, and probably not much greater in some other remarkable decorations exhibited within the holy walls. The altar-piece and two or three subjects belonging probably to the old convent, rescued the collection from entire condemnation.
On the wall of the chapel, on the left-hand side from the entrance, there is a marble slab, on which are engraved the following words: “Honneur à Montcalm! Le destin en lui dérobant la victoire l’a récompensé par une mort glorieuse!” The graceful words are due to Lord Aylmer. Montcalm received his death-wound from a ball fired by the only piece of artillery which we could get up the heights; but like his great rivaland conqueror he was wounded in the fight by a musket-shot at a comparatively early stage of the battle. Like Wolfe, too, Montcalm loved literature: “également propre aux batailles et aux académies, son désir était d’unir aux lauriers de Mars les palmes de Minerve.”
The following is a translation of the inscription and epitaph written by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres of Paris in 1761, and inscribed on a monument which that body had designed to erect in Quebec, but which never reached that city, the vessel on which it had been embarked having been lost at sea:
“Here LiethIn either hemisphere to live for ever,LEWIS JOSEPH DE MONTCALM GOZON,Marquis of St. Véran, Baron of Gabriac,Commander of the Order of St. Lewis,Lieutenant-General of the French army;not less an excellent citizen than soldier,who knew no desire but that ofTRUE GLORY;Happy in a natural genius, improved by literature;Having gone through the several steps of military honourswith an uninterrupted lustre;skilled in all the arts of war,the juncture of the times and the crisis of danger;In Italy, in Bohemia, in Germany,an indefatigable general:He so discharged his important trusts,that he seemed always equal to still greater.At length, grown bright with perils,sent to secure the province of Canada,with a handful of men,he more than once repulsed the enemy’s forces,and made himself master of their forts,replete with troops and ammunition.Inured to cold, hunger, watching and labours,unmindful of himself,he had no sensation but for his soldiers:An enemy with the fiercest impetuosity;a victor with the tenderest humanity;adverse fortune he compensated with valour;the want of strength with skill and activity;and, with his counsel and support,for four years protracted the impendingfate of the colony.Having, with various artifices,long baffled a great army,headed by an expert and intrepid commander,and a fleet furnished with all warlike stores,compelled at length to an engagement,he fell—in the first rank—in the first onset,warm with those hopes of religionwhich he had always cherished;to the inexpressible loss of his own army,and not without the regret of the enemy’s,XIV September, A.D. MDCCLIX.Of his age, XLVIII.His weeping countrymendeposited the remains of their excellent General in a gravewhich a fallen bomb in bursting had excavated for him,recommending them to the generous faith of their enemies.”
Had his counsel been taken by de Vaudreuil, we never could bare occupied Point Levi, and in all probability the expedition to Quebec would have failed.
There is something exceedingly touching in the death of the two generals in the same battle. My guide, however, was more interested in calling my attention to the ornaments of the altar, and to a skull, which he assured me was that of Montcalm.
“Through each lack-lustre eyeless hole,The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,And passion’s host that never brook’d control,”
“Through each lack-lustre eyeless hole,The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,And passion’s host that never brook’d control,”
“Through each lack-lustre eyeless hole,
The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,
And passion’s host that never brook’d control,”
was seen filled with dust, and the priest held in his hand, like a cricket-ball, the home of the subtle intellectof the man who raised to such a height the power of France in the western world. When the old Indian chief told Montcalm—“Tu es petit! mais je vois dans tes yeux la hauteur du chêne et la vivacité des yeux des aigles,” how little the politic, gallant Frenchman ever thought his skull would be kept in a box in a priest’s cupboard, and shown as a curiosity to strangers from that barbarous Britain.
I cannot say that the priest succeeded in pointing out anything as interesting among the pictures as even the skull of the Marquis de Montcalm.
So far as I can ascertain, no Canadian painter has yet been inspired by the faith and devotion which wrought such miracles and wonders in mediæval Europe, to concentrate his talents on church pictures.
There is not much good fellowship between the French Roman Catholics and their Irish co-religionists; and I was told that few of the latter ever entered the chapel of the Ursulines, though they constitute an appreciable proportion of the population. The Canadians, indeed, retain a good deal of the old French sentiment, and regard the Irish very much as their ancestors, under St. Ruth, looked on the poor vassals of the Irish Jacobins. The Irish are, however, more energetic and restless, and do not lose by comparison with the unenterprising inhabitants.
The feelings and faith of the French Canadian tend to keep up all that is French in his nature. Small wonder that it should be so. But it may be doubted whether he has much sympathy with the Empire, though he is proud of the glory and renown attained by the parent stock under the “Great Gaul” who founded it.
In visiting the beautiful and well-ordered Library of the Houses of Parliament, the state of which does honour to the excellent curator, I observed several very handsome volumes of the most costly works marked with the French imperial cipher. They had, it appeared, been presented to the Canadian Parliament by the Emperor Louis Napoleon, and they were pointed out to me with much pride and pleasure; but I looked in vain for any such outward and visible sign of favour and policy on the part of the reigning House in England. The conduct of France towards Canada in former times, if not always just to the settlers, was indeed exceedingly liberal to the landed interest; on one occasion some sixteen country gentlemen were raised to the French peerage. The most a Canadian can hope for now is a barren baronetcy or the honours of the Bath. By conferring on our colonies, dependencies, and provinces very liberal democratic forms of government institutions, and at the same time refusing to give the counterpoise which an extension of the aristocratic system to them would bestow, we hasten the coming of the day when separation becomes inevitable. When separation takes place, the difference of institutions begets opposition of views and of policy, distrust, and, finally, collision.
One of my New York acquaintances, who professed to be somewhat of a philosopher, said, one day, he was quite sure the colonies never would have revolted, no matter how high tea was taxed, if the king had made a few of the leading Americans peers of the realm. The dream of an Imperial Senate with representatives from all the portions of the wide-spread territories of Great Britain may excite the imagination, but it isnot likely to be ever realised. The honours which have been conferred on such men as Sir Etienne Taché and Sir Narcisse Belleau, are highly prized, and a more liberal bestowal of the cheap defence of nations would do much to gratify the reasonable ambition of the Canadians.
That there should be some—and not a little—jealousy of foreign interference and usurpation of places, profits, and honours, by the English families, is not unnatural. I am not persuaded that it was right to hand over the whole direction of the volunteer and militia organisation to British officers, who are by the many often identified with the last noisy ensign who has been playing pranks in the Rue de Montagne. The remembrances of the old rebellion have not altogether died out, but it appeared to me that the Canadians are a mild, tractable race, fond of justice, a little too fond of law, and quite content to live under any rule which secured them equal rights, and gave them facility for moderate litigation and religious exercises.
While I was in Quebec some foolish young men stormed a house under a misapprehension as to its character. The same thing might have happened in Great Britain; it would have excited no feeling—the perpetrators might have compounded for their folly, or have suffered the penalty. Here the matter was hushed up, and some of the Canadians were vexed and angry. Provincials must necessarily be jealous of the smallest appearance of disrespect or show of distinctive justice between the two races.
There are very few persons in England acquainted with the many ancient and glorious memories which endear Quebec to the French Canadians. JacquesCartier is to them a greater discoverer and navigator than Captain Cook is to us, and a long list of names thoroughly French illustrate the early history of the city. De Frontenac, Le Chevalier de Levi, Dambourges and others are not known to those who are well acquainted with Wolfe and Montcalm.
Quebec, though doubtless the oldest city existing on the continent, is in a very different condition from that in which it was for many a year after it was founded by Champlain, more than two centuries and a half ago. It is quite delightful, after a sojourn in the United States, to ramble through the tortuous streets, lined by tall narrow-windowed houses with irregular gables, even though an air of something like decay has settled upon the place. There is no trace in Quebec of the feverish activity of American cities—no great hotels nor eager multitudes thronging the pavements; but in summer the quays present a most animated appearance, for the noble waters of the St. Lawrence are then laden with stately ships, and traffic is carried on extensively in the exchange of the exhaustless forest-produce of the back country for the manufactures of Europe.
The Indian squaws and their people have well-nigh vanished from the scene, and it would almost seem as though they were unfit to learn the doctrines of Christianity—it is certain they had not qualities to permit of their flourishing in the midst of Christians. Other coloured races brought in contact with the white man have saved themselves from extermination by service; but the individual Indian is feudatory to no man—he says “Ich Dien” to no created being. The result is, that, slowly and surely, he is driven further and further out into the waste, or is caught up in the waters ofcivilisation, and held, like the fly in amber, as a curious instance of the incompatibility of one substance with the surrounding particles of another. He will never again play a part in any contest which may take place between the British and Americans; notwithstanding the efforts made by the Confederates to use the Southern Indians in the present war, no adequate results have been obtained for the trouble.
In the War of Independence the Indians served on both sides, but the odium of employing them in the first instance against the colonists must undoubtedly rest on the British ministry of the day.
Although the distance from Montreal to Quebec, taking the course of the river, is but 180 miles, there is considerable difference in climate. The scenery around the capital of the Lower Province, and the present seat of Government, is more elevated and picturesque; but the quality of the soil is not so favourable to agriculture. The habitant is a very different being from the Scotch or English farmer; he regards with aversion agricultural implements of the new school, and woos the earth to yield its fruits with the most simple appliances; he is stubborn in his attachment to antique customs, and if he has most of the virtues, he assuredly has some of the faults of a purely rural agricultural population.
The events of the rebellion induced us, perhaps, to underrate the military capacity of the French Canadians, but they may point with pride to the deeds of their ancestors in defence of their soil against American invasion, and they would, no doubt, maintain in the field the reputation of the race from which they spring. The great defect of the native is, perhaps,his want of enterprise. He rarely emigrates to new scenes of labour, and even the inhabitant of the town shrinks from an encounter with the active American or Anglo-Saxon. Thus it is, at the present moment, that nearly all the agricultural and industrial enterprises of Lower Canada have originated with or been developed by persons of a different stock. Want of capital is the great evil which afflicts the inhabitants of both Canadas, and even the oil-wells and gold mines have, to a large extent, fallen into the hands of the solid men of Boston, and of the hard men of New England; but the Canadians would behave in the face of an enemy with the spirit, courage, and conduct which they have exhibited on their own limited battle-fields.
It would be of little value, within the limits of this volume, to attempt a recapitulation of the principal events of Canadian history, either in connection with its early founders or with the English government; but surely the materials are not wanting for an interesting record of the struggles of the enterprising Europeans who contended so fiercely with barbarous races and an inclement clime to found what already promises to be a great nation. The savage has died out, or he has been civilised into a degraded creature for whom no place seems left at the great table of nature, and the civilised man his successor has learned to control and mollify the influences of climate, and to extort from the soil fruits in abundance. But Canada is by no means as cold as it has been painted, or rather, it would be more proper to say, the cold there is not so intolerable as we think. It would astonish many people in this country to learn that the Northern States of America suffer more from cold than does the vast frontier regionof Canada which borders on the Lakes. In Iowa, for instance, the cold is more intense than at Montreal. Grapes and peaches ripen on the Canadian shores of the great lakes; plums,melons, tomatoes, and apples thrive and grow to perfection in the provinces. As cultivation advances the rigour of winter is appreciably diminished, although the farmers, with that customary want of submission to the will of Providence which characterises all people who live in dependence on the seasons, complain that the frost is not as severe as it was in the good old times, and that they are deprived of the advantages of long-enduring snow and rigid winters.
What glorious visions of shooting now and of fishing in spring had opened before me, if the Federal army would only stay quiet! Not, indeed, that there is much sport for the rifle or fowling-piece now left in this part of Canada in winter, except moose, for which I did not care much, but that such strange scenes could be visited and described. In open weather there is a little shooting of quails, partridges, and ground game; before winter sets in there is plenty of wild ducks, but it is in fishing that the province is most tempting. The Godbout, uncertain as it is, would tempt any fisherman to a pilgrimage—a river in which one man, Captain Strachan, played and landed forty-two salmon and grilse in two half-days. But then the black-flies and musquitoes! Well, of this more hereafter. Though little that more must be, as long as there is such a guide-book as that of Dr. Adamson—the charming, amiable, and accomplished gentleman, in whom I was rejoiced to recognise the type ofle vrai gentilhomme irlandais; who knows every thing that ever was doneor thought by Canadian salmon, and is ever willing to impart his knowledge.
To a young officer fresh from a Mediterranean or home station—unless he were at Aldershot or the Curragh, perhaps—Quebec must appear rather dull. He has none of the excellent sporting for great and small game which India affords. Society presents itself under a new aspect. A people speaking a different language are not his servants, nor his kith and kin, and yet he must protect and fight for them. He has no sympathy with a nationality which is prouder of Montcalm than of Wolfe, and which claims, nevertheless, the lions and the harp as “notre drapeau.” So if he be unwise and unreasonable, he takes dislikes and ascribes every inconvenience he endures, not to the policy of the mother-country he serves, but to the people of the province.
I was present one evening at a ball given by one of the ministers, a French Canadian, at which there was a large assemblage of all the best people in the city, and I was struck by the absence of young officers, although many of higher rank were present. A lady, to whom I mentioned the circumstance, said, “Oh! they rarely come among us, so we have left off asking them. If they do come, they stand with their backs against the wall criticising our style and our dresses, and never offer to dance till supper is over, when they vanish.” This is by no means universally applicable to all societies or regiments, but it is no doubt the truth in some instances.
One must regret that the English language was not introduced into the law courts and legislature. Experience proves that there are no instruments so powerful in sustainingthe existence of a nationality, as the tongue and pen. The Canadians of to-day affect to be French, more because they speak a French at which Paris laughs, than from any real sympathy founded on mutual interests or present history between France and Canada. I was assured by one earnest Canadian, that France had never forgiven the Bourbons for the fault of Louis XV., in ceding Canada to Great Britain. He had more reason probably for asserting that, but for the establishment of our supremacy in 1765, the rebellion of the thirteen colonies of North America would not have occurred when it did. But the conquest by Wolfe, confirmed by treaty, put an end to most cruel and barbarous massacres, outrages, and petty border wars, between the French and English settlers and their auxiliary tribes of Indians, and if it had been attended or followed by any wise and liberal acts of government, must have produced very great results on the tone and temper of the Canadian mind.
It would have been wonderful indeed, if, a century ago, when our statute book was written in blood, when our fellow-subjects at home were under the ban of religious disability, and beaten to the earth beneath the weight of penal enactments, any traces of wisdom had been exhibited in the management of a distant dependency. Keeping alive the feelings of a distinct nationality by the powerful machinery of different national laws and customs, the conquerors ruled the province by military law for more than ten long years; but the tempest which agitated the American colonies was already felt in the air. The ministry, anxious only to drain money from their distant dependencies, were engaged in devising taxes, whilst the colonists preparedto vindicate, by force of arms, their great principle, that representation was the basis of taxation. The two Acts of 1774 were passed to enable the government to raise revenues for the maintenance of the local government, and for the appointment of a council of government, nominated by the Crown. By the capitulation of Quebec, the free exercise of their religion was accorded to the Canadians. By the Act of 1774, the Roman Catholic Church was recognised as established, and the “Coutume de Paris” accepted as the foundation of civil and equity administration.
Is it not strange that Great Britain should have accorded such concessions to Roman Catholics and colonists, when the penal system was most rigorously enforced in Ireland? But is it not stranger still, that the people of the American colonies, who were about to set themselves up as the children and the champions of freedom of faith and conscience, should have taken bitter umbrage at those very concessions! The Americans of the North bore an exceeding animosity to the French Canadians. They remonstrated in fierce, intolerant, and injurious language with the people of Great Britain, for the cession of these privileges to the Canadians, and the Continental Congress did not hesitate to say that they thought “Parliament was not authorised by the constitution to establish a religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets.”
In a strain of sublime impudence, considering the work they were ready for, the same Congress also expressed their astonishment that Parliament should have consented to permit in Canada, “a religion that has deluged your island with blood, and dispersedimpiety,bigotry, persecution, murder, andrebellionthrough the world.”
It may be worth while to notice the fact that the first notion of united action on the part of the British North American colonies may have been developed by the British government, and that the idea of independence was suggested by the very recommendations to self-defence which came from the mother country. The Convention of Delegates at Albany in 1754, which met in consequence of the advice tendered by the Home Government, adopted a federal system, which contained, in effect, the germ of the United States. Though this and similar propositions were not entertained, the growth of such an idea must have been rapid indeed. In the British Colonial system there was the breath of life—a little fanning, and the whole body was alive and active. In the Canadian system there was only the animating spirit of dependency on France, and on a system in France, which was perishing before the sneers of the new philosophy.
The French Canadians of the present day, in accusing the British government of a hundred years ago of want of liberality and foresight in the administration of their newly acquired territory, are wilfully blind to the sort of government which they received from the Bourbons. The dominion of a foreign race, however, is always galling, be it covered ever so thickly with velvet, and all its acts are regarded with suspicion and dislike. The concessions and liberality of the British government which drew forth such indignant protests from the bigoted New Englanders, was ascribed to fears of Canadian revolt, or to a selfish desire to conciliate the good-will of subjects who might becomeformidable enemies. If England lost the American colonies because she refused to accept a principle which, however sound and just, was certainly new and not accepted as of universal application, she needed not to apprehend the recurrence of a separation, forcible or peaceable, of Canada on any such grounds. It is impossible for a country to be held by a more slender cord; and in all but the actual exercise of the sovereign style, title, and attributes, Canada is free and independent. If the sentiment or the nationality of the Lower Canadians ever induces them to seek the protection or rule of any European State, they will no doubt at once come into collision with Upper Canada and the United States, and we can but pity their infatuation. If Upper Canada thinks to better herself by separation, and union with the Western States, Great Britain assuredly will never hold her by force. It would be useless to discuss the rights and obligations of a sovereignty and its nominal dependency in relation to mutual succour in time of war; but it seems only fair that the great permanent works necessary for strategical purposes, and aspoints d’appuifor the forces of the protecting military power, should be made and repaired and garrisoned at the imperial expense, whilst on the mass of the population must be placed the task of rising to defend their country from invasion, assisted by such imperial troops as can be spared from the occupation of the fixed points of defence. The Canadians must not content themselves with the empty assertion that if their country should be invaded Great Britain alone is attacked. Let them emulate the Old England colonies, and the conduct of their ancestors in 1812. The United States bearthem no good-will; and as the only power from which Canada has anything to fear, the Americans would be just as likely to make war against the Province as against the Empire, and trust to their own impregnability, except at sea, as a guarantee against any dangerous consequences.
The future is beyond our ken. There are prophets who long ago predicted the amalgamation of the Upper Province with the West, and who now find greater hope for the realisation of their soothsayings in the approaching dissolution of the Federal States. Others there are who see at no distant time the re-establishment of a French dependency on the northern portion of the Anglo-Saxon States, already hemmed in on the slave border by the shadowy outlines of an empire under French protection. When we see what has taken place on that continent within the last hundred years, it is not to be said that combinations and occurrences much more wonderful will not come to pass before the present century closes. The policy of a State, as the duty of an individual, is to do what is right and leave the future to work out its destiny.