22 THE EMIGRATION QUESTION. 



able, and their sufferings for the first year or two must be 

 extreme. 



There is room in Canada for any number of good farm- 

 labourers, and for their sons and daughters; and after 

 serving their apprenticeship and learning the ways of 

 the country, there is plenty of vacant land for them to 

 settle on ; but for new-comers to cluster together on one 

 of the back townships is the very worst possible course for 

 themselves, as it is for Canada also; for, if it comes to 

 pass that new settlers undergo a tithe of the hardships I 

 have indicated, their letters home will frighten many a 

 good man much wanted by Canada. The capitalist and 

 employer of labour, though a bete noir to the working 

 man, is nevertheless as necessary an institution in the new 

 as in the old country. 



As regards the colony itself, it is a recpgnized fact that 

 when the stream of immigration to its shores is spon- 

 taneous the overflow of the population of the parent 

 land it is the strongest, most pushing, most enterprising, 

 and most energetic men who leave the hive to carve out 

 for themselves fortunes in the new country. The working 

 man who has the pluck to emigrate to a new country, and 

 who by hard work and thrift has been able to save out of 

 his scanty wage even the small sum required to take him- 

 self and family across the Atlantic, is, under Providence, 

 sure to succeed in a country like Canada, and is as surely 

 a valuable acquisition to the land of his adoption. Canada 

 has never forced immigration, and has consequently only 

 attracted the most adventurous, pushing, and energetic 

 people to her shores. It may be said that she has got the 

 very pick of the working population of England, Ireland, 



