When Upper Canada Became Dominant Partner 33 



iound the population of Ireland decreased from 8,175,124 to 

 6,515,794, or 20 per cent; while the efflux from Germany to 

 the United States, already just a million by 1850, brought a 

 sturdy freedom-loving people during the next decade, who gave 

 intelligent energy and labour to the virgin soils of the prairie 

 and soldiers to the coming fight, and who perhaps saved the 

 Union. With all this inrush of people to Upper Canada, making 

 a total of 1,396,091 by 1861, a population of only 103,894 was 

 found in 1861 in her five cities, or 7 per cent of the total, then 

 thought adequate for all her centralised commercial needs, 

 while the products of the farm alone amounted to $69,129,315." 

 These astounding figures so far exceeded anything conceived 

 by the professor that, had they not been blue-book statistics, 

 for which he had a professional, even reverential respect, he 

 could not have given them credence. The influx' had exceeded 

 the almost fixed average of immigration for five previous decades 

 of 33 per cent to the United States by over 66 per cent. Surely 

 nothing ever did more clearly demonstrate the possibilities of 

 the natural wealth of the peninsula, girt with its fresh water 

 seas, bearing its wealth of primeval forest, fanned in autumn 

 by the winnowing winds and fed from virgin soils sleeping during 

 untold ages under the deep calm of the still winter whiteness, 

 only to yield up to the vernal sunshine that rich Earth, which 

 but required the touch of the ploughman's share to make it 

 bourgeon forth with the wealth of grass and grain demanded by 

 the needs of the toiling masses of English towns. He thus began 

 to realise the full meaning of that immanent Providence which, 

 teaching men the brotherhood of man and making them learn 

 the arts of Peace, had brought the resources of Science to bear 

 on the problem and in the invention of the steam engine, pro- 

 pelling vessels across the hitherto measureless oceans, and bearing 

 the fruits of the earth to the sea-board over thousands of miles 

 by railways, was supplying a means by which the congested 

 millions of old-world cities could escape their thraldom, and, 

 finding use for their energies, were now to cause to disappear 

 those ever-feared demons of famine, whose gaunt forms from 

 time to time had, during all the past centuries, stalked across 

 the darkened landscapes of the countries of the world. 



