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SALARIES AND PUBLIC OFFICES.

181

deference and respect - enjoying neither the social position nor the consideration which the name implies at home, and yet for these names opposing parties struggling as bitterly, or more bitterly, than with us.

The consequence of this disproportion between places and people has been, that the salaries of office-at first large, when the offices were filled with educated men brought up at home with English ideas—have from time to time been reduced, till now a Provincial Secretary and an Attorney-General, with £550 sterling a-year, and a Solicitor-General with £200, represent the kind of position to which the highest talent employed in the public service can now attain ; and the tendency is to still farther reductions. It illustrates very strikingly the simplicity of the provincial farmers, living remote from towns and rarely seeing money, that one of the shrewdest and now most influential of their body, in his place in the House of Assembly, once declared, " that, with the utmost stretch of his imagination, he could not comprehend bow any man could possibly spend more than £300 a-year!

It has often been remarked with how little talent the world is governed, and history has certainly shown that the cleverest men do not always make the best rulers; and, in republics, they are often the most dangerous men to rule. If, therefore, small emoluments will secure that moderate amount of talent which will keep the public wheels most regularly moving, the greater the economy introduced, the better for the people. I speak at present only of the impression which such a state of things produced upon my own mind. A great official designation did not carry with it the same meaning to the mind of a provincial as it had been accustomed to do to my own; and the actual position of official men in the provinces would probably to him appear no way anomalous.

The ultra-liberal and democratic tone of feeling and

172

IDLE MEN ON THE SCOTTISH BORDERS.

now costs only 4s. to bring it from Fredericton, a distance of twenty-five miles, then cost them 19s. As they expressed it to me, “A man must work as hard here as at home, and longer hours. He must build his own house, make his own family's shoes, and do many other things. A useless man need not come here.” Yet, they added, if a piece of good land was to be got handy, many of their friends were ready to come from home to join them.

In the middle of last summer, I made a short visit to the beautifully farmed country which lies between Cornhill and Yetholm, at the foot of the Cheviots, on either side of the Scottish Border, and near the paternal home of these Harvey settlers. It is a pretty country, at such a season of the year, for the lovers either of the picturesque or of fine farming, to visit. In the small village of Yetholm I found, by the report of the parish minister, that there were no less than thirty able-bodied men, accustomed to work on the adjoining farms, who were then unable to procure a single day's labour. Alarmed by the fall in the prices of grain-foolishly so, I think, on the part of farmers in such a half-pastoral district as that—the holders of the land had ceased to employ a single labourer they could dispense with.

How the country suffers from this, besides the individual privation and misery it occasions ! Every one of these patient intelligent men who emigrates is a loss to his country; and yet, I thought, how much more happy and permanently comfortable would those now idle men be, were they situated with their families on little farms of their own, like their old neighbours now settled at Harvey. Had I known of a bit of good land “handy” to that settlement, I could have felt in my heart to urge them to make up a party among themselves with the view of going there, and to offer to aid them in their views. Every one

MR GRIEVES 'FROM WHITTINGHAM.

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such man would be an invaluable gain to the province of New Brunswick.

The settlement has its school and a permanent schoolmaster-an intelligent man, with whom I had some conversation-not overpaid, nor above the necessity of mending his own clothes, and making shoes for his family. It has regular visits, also, from a Presbyterian clergyman, and was about to build a church with the view of securing his resident services. 'It has now also its own corn-mill; and all this where, only twelve years before, was an unexplored wilderness. How much a small knot of industrious men, without capital, and without the aid of a rushing immigration, such as pours into the North-western States, may, even in unfavourable circumstances, in a short period effect !

I conversed with two of the settlers as to their own history and progress.

Mr Grieves was a shepherd at Whittingham, on the Border. He landed at Fredericton, in 1837, with a family of ten, and with only 7s. 6d. in his pocket. He did not come out immediately to Harvey along with the other settlers, but having received his grant of land, he hired himself as a farm-servant to Colonel Shore at Fredericton, at £30 a-year; and such of his children as could do anything he hired out also. Supporting the rest of his family out of his earnings, he saved what he could; and whenever he had a pound or two to spare, he got an acre or two of his land cleared. In this way he did good to the other settlers, by bringing some money among them and giving a little employment. At last, four years ago—that was, after seven years' service-he came out, and settled on his land himself, building a good house for his family right awaythat is, without the previous erection of a log-house, as is usually the case; and a very good house he appeared to have. He now owns seven hundred acres of land

174

HIS PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY.

good a hind.

in different lots, and has clearings of twenty acres on each of three or four of these farm-lots, intended for his several sons, who appear to be as industrious as himself.

When I asked him how it was that he appeared to have got on better than the rest of those around him, he said, “ he and his family had saved it off their backs and their belly.” But he added—and it really moved me to find here lingering some heart and gratefulness still for kindness conferred, among so many who are filled only with grumbling and discontent/" Few have had so good a chance as I had, sir, or have met with so kind a master.” I afterwards had the pleasure of meeting that master at Fredericton, and found him as grateful for the warm attachment and zealous service of so

I can well fancy a canny Northumbrian shepherd, with his thriftily brought up, obedient, and respectful children, gaining friends in New Brunswick, and thriving as Grieves has done.

66 Had I

my

life to begin again,” he said, “ I would come out here; for though I might not have more comfort myself, there is the satisfaction of providing well for my family.”

Mr Pašs was a different character. He was an Englishman from a more southern district, and had been the manager of a chemical work in some of the midland counties. He had saved £150, brought up his only son as a carpenter, and then came out six years ago, and settled at the northern end of Harvey. He had done well, he said, but through hard work; and all who have done well

say
the same.

He considered himself better than at home, and that no climate could exceed that of his new country. It is especially the place for the labouring man, for he cannot worser himself; and, if he is industrious, is always getting better. This, in reality, is the great charm of these new regions, that the poor man, from the moment he places his foot in the country, if he be industrious, is constantly ascending the ladder, and is

LISTLESSNESS OF SETTLERS' SONS.

175

cheered by increasing prosperity. But after he and his sons have attained to competence, and the stimulus to great exertion ceases, the progress is not so rapid, and a man cannot himself, or through his sons, progress indefinitely in wealth and station, as at home. At least it is not done, and a kind of listlessness creeps over the second or third generation—the provincial-born—which has given rise to the no doubt well-founded remark to which I have already adverted, that the new immigrants are more energetic and industrious than the native

provincials. Why is it so ? One reason assigned here, as in other places of which I have spoken, is that, so long as you till your own land, or work at it along with the two or three men you employ, the cultivation in the Provinces, as in the States, is profitable; but that, on a larger scale, farming is not profitable. This is a very general belief in north-eastern America, and, if true, satisfactorily enough accounts for the greater industry and energy of the poorest, and the slackened exertions of the better off. But is the unprofitableness of more extensive farming a necessary or unavoidable thing? This question is a very important one, both to the colony and to intending emigrants. I shall discuss it in the succeeding chapter.

Leaving the Harvey Settlement, on my way to Fredericton, three or four miles of wilderness brought me to the Acton Settlement, which is six years old, and consists of twenty families of Irish. The front lots are occupied by Cork men, Roman Catholics; the rear lots by Protestants. James Moodie, one of the latter, described them as thriving and contented. He owned three hundred acres. He wished to have farms for each of his three sons, and as soon as they saved £15 among them, he bought another one hundred-acre lot.

On a ridge to the right is the Cork Settlement, six miles from that of Harvey. It consists entirely of Cork

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