224 
REVIEW OF PROFESSOR JOHNSTON’S TRAVELS. 
dences of present thrift. They may find, too, a few 
instances on the other side of the Atlantic. 
Our author is so inveterate an Englishman, that he 
frequently winds himself and his propositions up to¬ 
gether with such an impregnable mass of facts or sta¬ 
tistics, with the furry side towards England and the 
Provinces, and the burrs always towards the United 
States, that he cannot extricate himself; and certainly, 
where his ingenuity fails, we may deem it a hopeless 
task to attempt his relief. Thus, notwithstanding “ the 
greater purity of British blood in the Canadas, and the 
consequent greater amount of energy and intelligence, 
we are to look for in them,” he tells us that the Roch¬ 
ester millers go to Toronto and pay a higher price for 
Canadian wheat than can be afforded by these more 
intelligent and enterprising British subjects, who have 
flouring mills “ much superior to those of Rochester 
and Oswego, and can grind flour 15 per cent, cheaper.” 
On this they pay freight over the lake, and 20 per cent, 
import duty, then grind and send it to Liverpool by a 
route more expensive than by the St. Lawrence, and 
yet beat the Canadians in their own English market, 
with a clean 85 per cent, against them, by the author’s 
own admission, besides all the extras, amounting in the 
aggregate to 40 or 50 per cent. 
Of the same character as the foregoing, is another 
fact adduced. “ The ‘ stumpage ’ charged by the gov¬ 
ernment in New Brunswick for cutting the timber from 
a square mile of land, is 10 shillings, while in the state 
of Maine adjoining , it is 10 to 15 shillings per 1,000 
feet; and this amounts, where the timber is good, to 
£800 a square mile !” In this case, both the sagacity 
and enterprise of the Blue Noses are at fault, for the 
Yankees not only get the timber from the Provinces 
for a mere song, but they contrive to work it up as 
they did the wheat, and carry it in their own vessels, 
which are not half so good as the Provincial, nor 
sailed so cheaply, though done by English sailors, and 
away it goes to English ports ; and somehow or other, 
the Yankees contrive to pocket all the money, and this 
too, while, during all the time, the taxes against the 
Mainers “ are in the ratio of ten to one ” of those paid 
by the more highly favored Brunswickers. It occurs to 
us at this point, that on one side of the St. Croix are the 
unmixed descendants of the whigs of the revolution, 
and on the other, the tories, self-expatriated by that 
event from New England. The one believed there 
could be “ no church without a bishop, and no state with¬ 
out a king,” the other discarded both; yet, state and 
church have survived and already occupy both shores 
of our continent. 
There is another little incident mentioned by the au¬ 
thor we were not before aware of. “ The shipping in 
St. John, (New Brunswick,) is victualled with New- 
England beef. Droves of cattle from Massachusetts, 
make up the deficiency of supply.” We have often 
seen large droves of cattle and sheep taken from West¬ 
ern New York to Upper Canada, but we had no idea 
that so lean an agricultural region as New England, so 
extensively engaged in manufactures as she is, could 
yet supply the exclusively and more highly favored 
agricultural region of the Provinces with their beef, 
enjoying, too, as they do, the honor and advantage of 
living under the English flag. 
He occasionally tells a story of a discontented Canadi¬ 
an, who is well-to-do at home, leaving his “domestic 
hearth and with his family, roaming off to the States,” 
and after exhausting his money and patience, returning 
to enjoy the quiet he had abandoned. We have known 
a great many similar instances, with this only difference, 
that the emigrants did not return. These pleasant 
little recitations, look amazingly as if the writer were 
employed to paint an agreeable picture to catch the 
eye of the Europern emigrant, who is bending his 
thoughts on America. 
Such magnanimity as the following is decidedly re¬ 
freshing. “We would even be content to give up all 
ordinary points of dispute with our American cousins, 
as a nurse does to a noisy child, without any fear that 
his after-crowing would in any degree weaken her au¬ 
thority where matters of moment were concerned.” 
He quotes “Dr. Knox and other physiologists as as¬ 
serting that the Anglo-Saxon race will, and does de¬ 
generate in North America.” 
The recent growth of Glasgow and Birmingham are 
instanced as a full set off against the rapid increase of 
all the leading cities and towns of the Union. “ Our 
transatlantic cousins, proud and delighted with their in¬ 
crease, &c., make each other believe they stand alone 
not merely as a rapidly progressing, but as an inately 
energetic people. Ninety-nine out of every hundred 
of those who emigrate from the British Islands, know 
by personal observation, little or nothing of their na¬ 
tive country, beyond the locality in which they have 
been brought up, and generally nothing more than the 
outside appearance of that.” Some credit must be due 
to the institutions of a country that transfers such an 
ignorant population into enterprising and intelligent 
republicans, and suddenly make them such efficient 
upbuilders of the lofty pillars and constantly widening 
borders of this vast republic. “ Even writers of travels 
have not been exempt from the same failing. Yery 
few know their own country sufficiently well before 
they begin to compare it with others.” And so, for¬ 
sooth, they have innocently imagined this country was 
advancing somewhat. But we have come to our senses 
at last. One man has found out the right of this mat¬ 
ter, and we may henceforth give up our idle conceits 
and be content to be next to nobody, or borrow what 
little importance is conceded to us by the continual 
flood of the foregoing described immigrants. 
Such expressions as “ the smallest possible degree 
of additional modesty(!) would not sit amiss even upon 
the New-Yorkers themselves,” with the Italic and ex¬ 
clamation inclusive, do not look becoming when applied 
by a grave and respectable professor, to 3,000,000 of 
inhabitants, if the whole state is meant, and to over 
half a million if applied to our city alone. Nor is the 
remark justified even when he wishes to offset it by 
the vaunting editorial of a fellow countryman of his 
