164 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



The subject naturally leads to the enquiry whether the North American 

 Provinces possess a streng-th and capacity suited for Union. 



Scotland, In 1707, at the Union, had a population of abouit 1,050,000. 



Ireland, in 1821— twenty-nine years after her Union— a population of not 

 seven millions— probably at the Union not more than four millions. 



The thirteen Provinces, previous to the Revolutionary War, afford, how- 

 ever, the best mart^erials for compaxison. 



In thinking of their strength and condition we are apt to be misled by 

 what they achieved in a strug-gle— for a time unassisted— with a powerful 

 nation— as well as by what they had before done in the wars with the French 

 and Indians. 



Franklin, in his examination in 1766 before the House of Commons, declared 

 that in the French war the Colonies had raised, clothed and paid 25,000 men, 

 and spent many millions— and that Pennsylvania alone disbursed £500,000. 



Yet he rated the number of men from sixteen to sixty years of age in 

 British North America at about 300,000, and estimated that the inhabitants 

 of all the Provinces at a medium doubled in twenty-five years. In Pennsyl- 

 vania the taxes annually realized, he said, about £25,000— and her imports 

 from Great Britain amounted to £500,000, and exports thither to £40,000. 



The whole population of the thirteen colonies at the beginning of the Révo- 

 lution did not exceed two and a half millions, and in 1770 it had not reached 

 four millions— a very small advance for the number of years. 



Bancroft describes them thus : — 



" Yet the thirteen Colonies in whom was involved the futurity of our race 

 were feeble settlements in the wilderness, scattered along the coast of a con- 

 tinent, little connected with each other, little heeded by their metropolis, 

 almost unknown to the world. They were bound together only as British 

 America, that part of the Western hemisphere which the English mind had 

 appropriated. Eng-land was the mother of its language, the home of its tra- 

 ditions, the source of its laws and the land on which its affections centred. 



And yet it was an offset from England rather than any integral part of 

 It ; an empire of itself, free from nobility and prelacy, not only Protestant, 

 but by a vast majority dissenting from the Church of England ; attracting 

 the commoners and plebean sects of the parent country and rendered cosmo- 

 politan by the recruits from the nations of the European continent. By the 

 benignity of the law, the natives of other lands wiere received as citizens ; 

 and political liberty as a birthright, was the talisman that harmoniously 

 blended all differences, and inspired a new public life, dearer than their native 

 tongue, their memories and their kindred. Dutch, French, Swede and Ger- 

 man renounced their nationality to claim the rights of Englishmen." 



The present population of the British North American Provinces greatly 

 exceeds that of the thirteen Colonies at the Revolution. Taking the result of 

 the last census in each Province, we have the following statement of popula- 

 tion : — 



Population of British North American Colonies, from Hunt's Magazine, 

 January, 1854, page 181 : — 



Year. Provinces. Populatloi. Si. Miles. 



1852— Upper Canada 953,239 147,832 



1852— Lower Canada 890,261 201,989 



1861— New Brunswick 193,800 27,70ii 



1851— Nova Scotia 276,117 18,746 



1851— P. E. Island 62,678 2,134 



2,376,095 



1852— Newfoundland 101,600 57,000 



1851— Hudson's Bay Ter 180,000 2,500,000 



1851— Liabrador 5,000 170,000 



2,662,695 3,125,401 



