North America-1 [49]
She could only grieve, and wish that things might come right and smooth for both parties. But the argument, though so easy, is never effectual. It seems to me foolish in an American to quarrel with England for sending soldiers to Canada; but I cannot say that I thought it was well done to send them at the beginning of the war. The English government did not, I presume, take this step with reference to any possible invasion of Canada by the government of the States. We are fortifying Portsmouth, and Portland, and Plymouth, because we would fain be safe against the French army acting under a French Emperor. But we sent 2000 troops to Canada, if I understand the matter rightly, to guard our provinces against the filibustering energies of a mass of unemployed American soldiers, when those soldiers should come to be disbanded. When this war shall be over-- a war during which not much, if any, under a million of American citizens will have been under arms--it will not be easy for all who survive to return to their old homes and old occupations. Nor does a disbanded soldier always make a good husbandman, notwithstanding the great examples of Cincinnatus and Bird-o'-freedom Sawin. It may be that a considerable amount of filibustering energy will be afloat, and that the then government of those who neighbor us in Canada will have other matters in hand more important to them than the controlling of these unruly spirits. That, as I take it, was the evil against which we of Great Britain and of Canada desired to guard ourselves. But I doubt whether 2000 or 10,000 British soldiers would be any effective guard against such inroads, and I doubt more strongly whether any such external guarding will be necessary. If the Canadians were prepared to fraternize with filibusters from the States, neither three nor ten thousand soldiers would avail against such a feeling over a frontier stretching from the State of Maine to the shores of Lake Huron and Lake Erie. If such a feeling did exist--if the Canadians wished the change--in God's name let them go. It is for their sakes, and not for our own, that we would have them bound to us. But the Canadians are averse to such a change with a degree of feeling that amounts to national intensity. Their sympathies are with the Southern States, not because they care for cotton, not because they are anti-abolitionists, not because they admire the hearty pluck of those who are endeavoring to work out for themselves a new revolution. They sympathize with the South from strong dislike to the aggression, the braggadocio, and the insolence they have felt upon their own borders. They dislike Mr. Seward's weak and vulgar joke with the Duke of Newcastle. They dislike Mr. Everett's flattering hints to his countrymen as to the one nation that is to occupy the whole continent. They dislike the Monroe doctrine. They wonder at the meekness with which England has endured the vauntings of the Northern States, and are endued with no such meekness of their own. They would, I believe, be well prepared to meet and give an account of any filibusters who might visit them; and I am not sure that it is wisely done on our part to show any intention of taking the work out of their hands. But I am led to this opinion in no degree by a feeling that Great Britain ought to grudge the cost of the soldiers. If Canada will be safer with them, in Heaven's name let her have them. It has been argued in many places, not only with regard to Canada, but as to all our self-governed colonies, that military service should not be given at British expense and with British men to any colony which has its own representative government and which levies its own taxes. "While Great Britain absolutely held the reins of government, and did as it pleased with the affairs of its dependencies," such politicians say, "it was just and right that she should pay the bill. As long as her government of a colony was paternal, so long was it right that the mother country should put herself in the place of a father, and enjoy a father's undoubted