274 CANADIAN NOMS-DE-PLUME IDENTIFIED. 



any such, party alliances, I never was of them. Mine lias not been a 

 life of small politics. Mncli of my literaiy life has been spent, and 

 my brain worn to even incapacity for literary labour, in rescuing the 

 science of Political Economy from the soulless materialism which had 

 made it, in mouths of Whigs and Radicals, odious to the People. It 

 has been my self-imposed task to humanize and Christianize Political 

 Economy. I assert man to be the primary element in national 

 wealth." 



The Whistler, Mr. Somerville, still, I believe, resides in Canada, 

 and occasionally addresses a communication to Canadian journals. 

 It was his intention, at one time, to identify himself with a periodical 

 on Canadian Agriculture. In the preface to " The Diligent Life," 

 he thus speaks of himself : "Having been bred in the toils and joys 

 of agricultural and rural life, its associations have for me a charm 

 beyond all other objects of literature." 



By right of subsequent intimate association with our cou.ntry, we 

 may fairly claim as a Canadian writer, Libertas, the author of a book 

 entitled, " The Fame and Glory of England Vindicated," which 

 appeared at New York in 1842, with that ndm-de-pluvie on its title- 

 page. It was a review and a refutation in detail of the work of a 

 United States writer named Lister, who, after a visit to England of a 

 few weeks, in 1840, undertook to pronounce judgment on what he saw 

 and heard there, and to give the pre-eminence in most things to the 

 United States. The book was entitled, " The Glory and Shame of 

 England." Libertas exposes the mode in which Lister's book was 

 manufactured, and the numerous misstatements and unwarrantable 

 inferences it contained respecting England and her institutions ; and 

 in the course of the discussion he is led to give his views — which are 

 enlightened and broad — on the English Corn Laws, the Poor Laws, 

 British and American Tariffs, Taxation, Education, Church and 

 State, Slavery, and other interesting questions ; and " in reversing," 

 Libertas says, " the low position in which Lister has placed Britain 

 and her institutions, and the high elevation h.e has assigned to the 

 United States, we conceive that we have done no more than justice 

 requires, and which, we feel assured, impartial history will award to 

 the two countries, when the transactions of the present generation 

 shall be placed on record. * * * 'Yhe author will think his 

 time well bestowed," Libertas continues, "if he shall succeed in 



