they who are to profit by it would willingly have renounced it,
whatever it may be, on condition of being relieved from the evils by
which it has been attended. Of the gross number of immigrants who have
reached the province, many are already mouldering in their graves.
Among the survivors there are widows and orphans, and aged and
diseased persons, who will probably be for an indefinite period a
burden on Government or private charity. A large proportion of the
healthy and prosperous, who have availed themselves of the cheap route
of the St. Lawrence, will, I fears find their way to the Western
States, where land is procurable on more advantageous terms than in
Canada. To refer, therefore, to the 82,000 immigrants who have passed
into the States through New York, and been absorbed there without cost
to the mother-country, and to contrast this circumstance with the
heavy expense which has attended the admission of a smaller number
into Canada, is hardly just. In the first place, of the 82,000 who
went to New York, a much smaller proportion were sickly or destitute;
and, besides, by the laws of the state, ship-owners importing
immigrants are required to enter into bonds, which are forfeited when
any of the latter become chargeable on the public. These, and other
precautions yet more stringent, were enforced so soon as the character
of this year's immigration was ascertained, and they had the effect of
turning towards this quarter the tide of suffering which was setting
in that direction. Even now, immigrants attempting to cross the
frontier from Canada are sent back, if they are either sickly or
paupers. On the whole, I fear that a comparison between the condition
of this province and that of the states of the neighbouring republic,
as affected by this year's immigration, would be by no means
satisfactory or provocative of dutiful and affectionate feelings
towards the mother-country on the part of the colonists. It is a case
in which, on every account, I think the Imperial Government is bound