RURAL DEPLETION 33 



death-song of C^Tidyllaii he sang the dirge of a passing 

 people. 



In one respect — that of race — we wish to draw a 

 parallel between this movement and that now going on 

 in Canada. The Saxon conquest was sheer disposses- 

 sion. The historian Green tells ns that " not a Briton 

 remained as subject or slave on English ground." There 

 was no massacre. But " field by field, forest by forest, 

 the land was won. As each bit of ground was torn 

 away by the stranger, the Briton sullenly withdrew, 

 only to turn and fight doggedly for the next." Else- 

 where, in Spain and Gaul, though these lands were also 

 conquered by Germanic peoples, there was no dispos- 

 session. Religion, social life, administrative order, re- 

 mained Roman. But in Britain the laws, the manners 

 and the faith which the Roman people had left behind 

 vanished before the Saxon. Just such a race movement 

 is going on in Canada in our time. Robert Sellar, in 

 his valuable monograph, " The Tragedy of Quebec," 

 tells us that when he first went to Huntingdon, the 

 county, save for one municipality, was as solidly Eng- 

 lish-speaking in population as any county in Ontario, 

 but that he has witnessed the decline of the original peo- 

 ple to the point of being in a minority. The same change, 

 only in a more marked degree, has taken place in all the 

 counties east of the Richelieu. !Missisquoi, founded by 

 U. E. Loyalists, has ceased to be English-speaking. 

 Drummond, Wolfe. Shefford, may ])e said to be French- 

 speaking. The transformation has been going on with 

 startling rapidity during the past fifteen years. In 1891 

 there were eleven English-speaking counties in tlio Pro- 

 vince of Quebec. Now English-speaking people are in a 

 minority in every one. The writer is on familiar ground 

 3 



