PACIFICATION OF CANADA.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
SLR—The interests of the British settlers in the Camino excite a just consider- ation at this moment ; and your contemporary the Examiner goes so far as to say that those interests alone embarrass the question of our voluntary separa- tion from those troublesome and expensive dependencies. Possibly n way to remove the embarrassment is not hard to be found ; and, being one of the pro- bable sufferers on the other side of the water, I have busied myself about a remedy, which I now submit to your cautious judgment.
We are on the eve of an expenditure of at least twenty millions sterling to
protect British interests in North America,—if the cost of the Caffre war of 1805, with 1,000 &clocks, be a guide. That Colonial Office war cost 800,0001. The coming Colonial Office campaigns, with 10,000 men in a dearer country, is not therefore put too high at the sum I mention. Now, as the question is, how best to indemnify the British Canadians, that, I submit, may be arranged thus. Instead of spending all our millions in gun- powder, and in killing the discontented majority in Canada, give half of it to the contented minority. This saved the West Indies in 1834. It certainly would have pacified, and half civilized, Caffreland. And if a word must be said on the point of" honour," the,ouly possible way of guarding that is, to be just : a beginning of which will he to punish the " statesmen " of the Colonial Office, as they deserve, for bringing Old England into these troubles. AN ANGLO-CANADIAN.
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