There Is A Quiet, Lethargic,
Old-World Air About The Country, Contrasting Strangely With The Bustling,
Hurrying, Restless Progress Of Upper Canada.
Though the condition of the
habitans is extremely unprofitable to themselves, it affords a short
rest to the thinking and observing faculties of the stranger, overstrained
as they are with taking in and contemplating the railroad progress of
things in the New World.
While we admire and wonder at the vast material progress of Western Canada
and the North-western States of the Union, considerations fraught with
alarm will force themselves upon us. We think that great progress is being
made in England, but, without having travelled in America, it is scarcely
possible to believe what the Anglo-Saxon race is performing upon a new
soil. In America we do not meet with factory operatives, seamstresses, or
clerks overworked and underpaid, toiling their lives away in order to keep
body and soul together; but we have people of all classes who could obtain
competence and often affluence by moderate exertions, working harder than
slaves - sacrificing home enjoyments, pleasure, and health itself to the
one desire of the acquisition of wealth. Daring speculations fail; the
struggle in unnatural competition with men of large capital, or
dishonourable dealings, wears out at last the overtasked frame - life is
spent in a whirl - death summons them, and finds them unprepared. Everybody
who has any settled business is overworked. Voices of men crying for
relaxation are heard from every quarter, yet none dare to pause in this
race which they so madly run, in which happiness and mental and bodily
health are among the least of their considerations.
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