Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

paid; when the clergyman comes in the morning to implore a blessing on their deliberations, he takes the lieutenant-governor's chair at the head of the senate, and the speaker's desk in the assembly; the attendance of members is good, their deportment very orderly the closeness of their attention to business almost incredible they have a morning session at ten-then an after-dinner session-then an evening session at seven. The minutes of both houses took up little short of half an hour in reading one day. The bills or acts are fairly written upon good paper-no parchment is used. There are no knocks, and black rods, and bows, and scrapes, and interruptions to business on account of messages from the senate or governor; all is done quietly; and bills and resolutions pass silently from the officers of one house to those of another, or to the governor, as matters of course. The lieutenant-governor, in the senate, and the speaker and chairman of committees of the whole assembly, are provided with mallets or little hammers, which they use when there is any noise, saying, "The house will please to be in order," or words to that effect-order is instantly restored. Baron Humboldt relates, that during his travels in South America he met with a labourer named Lagano, who had suckled his own child for upwards of five months. Mr. Mackenzie was reminded of this passage once in Upper Canada by an Indian woman who suckled a tame deer. But Mr. Mackenzie has a great taste for droll sights, and was frequently gratified in his eccentric curiosity. He remembers the winter of 1825 with very pleasing associations, arising from three very remarkable spectacles: the first was a couple of calves, in harness, drawing a sleigh, and guided by an Indian boy in the Indian woods. The second, a boy harnessing two docile sheep to a wood sleigh, in Haldimand. The third, a goat in harness, drawing a sleigh, in which were three children, near Kingston.

Mr. Mackenzie has a long and important chapter on the laws of entail and primogeniture, well deserving the attention of those who emigrate to the Western continent. This is followed by a full description of the rise, progress, and present state of the Rideau canal. With respect to the number of school districts and pupils, those are now considerably increased in the state of York, in Canada, and Rochester, which in this district is the seat, at present, of an interesting experiment, to ascertain the effects of trying to combine mechanical labour with instruction in the sciences which appertain to a liberal education. The institution was founded in the spring of 1831; it numbered sixty-one pupils in January last, and is in a prosperous state. The pupils rise at four each morning, work three hours and study ten. Mechanical labour is found to alternate better with study than farming work. One-third of the students at the academy at Rochester earned as much, nearly, by joiner work, coopering, and painting, as paid all the charges against them for board and education. An account is kept sepa

rately with each scholar; and the hope of reward sweetens labour.

On the important subject of emigration, Mr. Mackenzie expatiates at considerable length; and as from his experience in Canada, and particularly as he appears to be a writer of probity and good faith, we think it may not be amiss to present our readers with some of the homely advice furnished to emigrants by this gentleman: "Be diligent-persevere-neither eat, drink, nor wear anything that is not of the produce of your own farm-if you can avoid doing so-until your lands are paid for, and a freehold title recorded and in your pocket. Rather miss a good bargain than grasp at too much with the risk of getting in debt. If your clothes be plain and clean, never care although they be coarse. You will be valued by your conduct, and not by your clothes. As to food, your own mutton and beef, and pork and veal, and butter and cheese, and potatoes and corn, and poultry, &c. raised at home, will render you as independent as King William IV. Drink good water, or plain family beer, (there is no malt-tax or exciseman to interfere with you,) and look forward to the time when the orchard you have planted and enclosed will bear fruit abundantly, and enable you to refresh yourself and comfort a friend with an occasional tankard of racy home-made cyder. As to tea, coffee, smoking or chewing tobacco, snuffing, and the vile practice of drinking spirits, be not tempted by the extraordinary lowness of price in America; "touch not, taste not, handle not.' Remember our European landlords.

[ocr errors]

"It is of no use for silk or cotton weavers, mill-spinners, clothiers, cutlers, watchmakers, calico-printers, and other mechanics who, like them, manufacture wares easily and cheaply imported from Europe, to emigrate to Upper Canada for the purpose of pursuing their respective occupations. They would be met at every corner by the productions of the half-starved workmen of these kingdoms, offered at the lowest rates. Taylors, Tory-parsons, physicians, lawyers, surgeons, shopmen, and clerks, are not at present in great request in Upper Canada; but waggon-makers, merchants, (shopkeepers,) bricklayers, carpenters, stone-masons, cabinet-makers, blacksmiths, and joiners, might probably better their circumstances by crossing the ocean. Common-school teachers, shoemakers, saddlers, coopers, brewers, and bakers, may do well enough, but I think that their chance is not so good as that of the preceding classes. Each man, on resolving to emigrate, should have previously sat down and counted the cost, and seriously asked himself the question, What am I to do when I get to America? He has the whole of that wide continent in which to make a choice, and may readily amend a first choice if he find that it would be to his advantage."

Mr. Mackenzie, towards the close of this volume, presents us, quite unexpectedly, with an account of an attempt to murder him

in America. The cause of the wicked attempt was connected with political differences, and as Mr. M. finally escaped, it is not necessary to go into any further particulars.

The author complains of the great inconvenience which is felt in Canada, by the undefined relation in which the officers of British regiments stand to the local law. For example, a brother of the Bishop of Exeter, Captain Philpotts of the royal engineers, stationed in Upper Canada, went out once with a party of soldiers, and in an illegal manner upset the blacksmith's shop at the Falls of Niagara, overthrew fences, laid open the growing corn and cabbages to destruction, and committed other ravages. A petition of complaint was sent up to the House of Assembly, and a committee of inquiry was appointed. Sir Peregrine Maitland, who was charged with giving orders for this demolition as commander of the forces, gave orders to the officers who were summoned, not to obey the process. The officers barricadoed themselves up in a house, but were finally apprehended, and brought before the Assembly. Upon this, Sir Peregrine prorogued the Assembly. This, however, is only a specimen of the indifference with which important matters are looked into in Canada. What, for instance, shall we say of the discovery, not long since, in the accounts of the Jesuits' estates, which were under examination by the House of Assembly, that a Church of England parson, named Sewell, was in the habit of drawing an annual income of considerable amount in the pretended capacity of "Chaplain to the Jesuits!" The villainy here is not only that the Jesuits most assuredly never looked for a Protestant chaplain, but that in point of fact, there has been no Jesuit in Canada whatever for many years back. Independently of these subjects of complaints, Mr. Mackenzie describes another teazing visitation permanently affecting the comforts of the population, namely, the petty courts and law fees. The people are perpetually in hot water with each other, in consequence of the facility with which litigation can be applead to, to settle the most common transactions of life.

We must now part with this very pleasant companion, who has collected together a very amusing, and in some instances, very instructive series of facts, miscellaneous in their nature, and singularly free from any of that stiffness which belongs to orderly arrangement. Though Mr. Mackenzie is evidently of a sanguine temperament, and deserves that his sentiments should be subjected to the scales, still this is only the fault which is almost inseparable from that ardour and determination of character, without which benevolent intentions will do very little in this world.

VOL. II. (1833) No. III.

2 F

ART. XV.-Sunday in London, illustrated in Fourteen Cuts. By GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 8vo. London: Wilson. 1833.

THIS is a very ludicrous affair altogether, but there is good sense in the text, as well as clever art in the illustrations. The subject is happily selected, and though treated with sufficient humour, is fully capable of being made ten times more capable of exciting a sense of the ridicule than we find it in this instance.

For the purpose of scientific classification, the author divides the Sunday into three several eras. The first commences at twelve o'clock on Saturday night, and where does the toll of the clock, which announces the birth of the Sunday, where does it discover, like a drawn up curtain in a theatre, the myriads of the higher orders? They are to be found in the King's Theatre, packed tier upon tier, either absorbed in vapid conversation, or joining in the buzz of applause, which, upon the Sabbath morn, is yielded to some exquisite whirling of a danseuse, who ultimately spins round upon her tiptoe. Legions of link-boys, and hackney coachmen, and pads, and watermen, with oyster-women interspersed with footmen, are outside, paying quite as much devotion to the coming day as their betters in the inside. If we look at the occupations of the middle classes at the same hour, shall we not see them nimicing their superiors on a smaller scale, and breathing in the theatres the pestilential air of those receptacles of vice. Now the lower orders, at the very hour when the higher and the middle are thus engaged, are undergoing a peculiar ordeal, which, in a remarkable manner, is destined to adapt them for the proper observance of the Sabbath. Your master manufacturer, according to our authority, is too great a man to attend to the morals and comfort of the lower orders in his employ; all he wants from them is their labour; and having made his bargain with them as to the price of that labour, he deputes a foreman to see that they do their stipulated labour, and to pay them their wages. The foreman being "a shrewd and clever tradesman," like his master, sees no reason why he also should not turn the lower orders to some account; and as the master leaves him no chance of getting any thing out of their labour, he contrives to screw something out of their relaxation; and this is the way he goes about it: he contracts with a neighbouring publican to supply them daily, and every day, with beer, gin, tabacco, &c., he undertaking to pay the score upon condition of receiving a per centage thereon. By this contrivance the men can "drink and drive care away" all the week; and by so doing oblige the foreman-which is much; and the foreman, when Saturday night comes, in order that they may oblige him the more, keeps the account open, and the spiggot running until the first or

66

second hour of Sunday morning. And this admirable contrivance for the accumulation of capital" (on a small scale) is called "the Pay-table."

Now, to be serious for a moment, this scene is not of rare occurrence; it is a faithful picture of what pretty constantly takes place, and though the immediate evil consequences of the practice have been now stated, still there are ulterior results, which deserve quite as great a share of attention. The drinking at the public-house on the Saturday night is most commonly persevered in until the mechanic becomes intoxicated; and he is almost always sure, under these circumstances, to find a berth in a watch-house. His wife, meantime, becomes alarmed, and is directed to the place of custody, and having her marketing to make, she must wait until the morning. It has been shown to a late Committee of the House of Commons, that the people who crowd about the stalls and shops on Sunday mornings are chiefly improvident persons, who, by anticipating the morning on the evening before, would purchase their necessaries at a considerable saving; and it appears to be a just conclusion with respect to this whole practice, that if every vendor's shop, now habitually open for those unthinking Sunday customers, were to be rigidly closed during the Sabbath, that the families who at present subsist on commodities bought on the Sunday morning, would be more cheaply, and far more safely supplied if these commodities be purchased on the Saturday. So then, the statement on which the author of this little production puts forth, is by no means an exaggeration, but that it is perfectly true, that the first hour of Sunday morning sees the higher orders emerging from the opera uproar, and the middle orders from the revelry of the devilry, sees the lower orders reeling home from the pay-table, followed by grumbling wives and pining children; the children are cuffed, supperless, to sleep; and if the wives grumble more than is agreeable, why the husbands are lugged off to the station-house for making them cry "murder!" And it follows that all the three orders are excellently well fitted for a "proper observance of the remainder of the Sabbath."

The sort of worship which the lower orders are next fitted for, is very properly pointed out as bearing a resemblance to that of Juggernaut, for the portals of the gin shops are thrown wide apart, and the puncheons are assailed with an assurance that in a few hours they will be exhausted. We do not know that the peculiarity is common to all countries, but in London there is a very striking degree of fastidiousness in the lower orders as to where they shall drink their gin. The imagination of this people, their most delicate susceptibilities, have been consulted for the purpose of attracting them to a particular warehouse to drink the agreeable potion. The bars of the gin shops (which may be understood by the uninitiated when we tell them that these bars are a form of rude altar, before which the libations are poured in),—these bars, we repeat,

« ElőzőTovább »