VI - CANADA

Summary

TO THE EDITOR OF THE “DAILY NEWS.”

Sir,—If any Canadians have been offended, as it appears some have been, by my first letter to you on the subject of Colonial Emancipation, it is the fault of The Times, not mine. I send to you, whose motto is open councils, a letter obviously intended as a contribution to English discussion, but which, when read entire, could not be thought disparaging to the Colonists. The Times, being apprehensive lest my remarks should do mischief at “Quebec and Montreal,” “draws the letter from its obscurity,” and calls the particular attention of the people of Quebec and Montreal to the passages which it thinks likely to offend them. I confess once more that I do not wish to flatter the Canadians. I have no wish to cajole them into a military expenditure beyond their means and against their interests. It would gratify no antipathies of mine.

My first thought, I allow, was justice to the English people, who maintain, by the sweat of their brow, that “noble fabric,” as The Times calls it, of reckless and useless expenditure, which the ambition of former days reared, and the blindness of these days upholds. A Quebec journal tells me that “my God is Mammon.” My neighbour tells me that my God is Mammon, because, when he is better off than I am, I do not wish to pay his rates.