home. The Frenchman, Scotchman, Irishman, and Englishman, now that they
had achieved a marked success in their pioneer work, determined that
their children should not be behind those of New England, and set to
work to build up a system of education far more comprehensive and
liberal than that enjoyed by the masses in Great Britain. On all sides
at last there were many evidences of the progress of culture, stimulated
by the more generally diffused prosperity. It was only necessary to
enter into the homes of the people, not in the cities and important
centres of industry and education, but in the rural districts, to see
the effects of the industrial and mental development within the period
that elapsed from the Union of 1840 to the Confederation of 1867. Where
a humble log cabin once rose among the black pine stumps, a comfortable
and in many cases expensive mansion, of wood or more durable material,
had become the home of the Canadian farmer, who, probably, in his early
life, had been but a poor peasant in the mother country. He himself,
whose life had been one of unremitting toil and endeavour, showed no
culture, but his children reaped the full benefits of the splendid
opportunities of acquiring knowledge afforded by the country which owed
its prosperity to their father and men like him. The homes of such men,
in the most favoured districts, were no longer the abodes of rude
industry, but illustrative, in not a few cases, of that comfort and
refinement which must be the natural sequence of the general
distribution of wealth, the improvement of internal intercourse, and the
growth of education.

When France no longer owned a foot of land in British North America,
except two or three barren islets on the coast of Newfoundland, the
total population of the provinces known now as Canada was not above
seventy thousand souls, nearly all French. From that time to 1840, the
population of the different provinces made but a slow increase, owing to