To This Uninviting Home He Conveyed A Beautiful
Young Wife, And A Small And Increasing Family.
The result may be
easily anticipated.
The want of society - a dreadful want to a man of
his previous habits - the absence of all the comforts and decencies
of life, produced inaction, apathy, and at last, despondency, which
was only alleviated by a constant and immoderate use of ardent
spirits. As long as Captain N - - retained his half-pay, he contrived
to exist. In an evil hour he parted with this, and quickly trod the
downhill path to ruin.
And here I would remark that it is always a rash and hazardous step
for any officer to part with his half-pay; although it is almost
every day done, and generally followed by the same disastrous
results. A certain income, however small, in a country where money
is so hard to be procured, and where labour cannot be obtained but
at a very high pecuniary remuneration, is invaluable to a gentleman
unaccustomed to agricultural employment; who, without this reserve
to pay his people, during the brief but expensive seasons of
seed-time and harvest, must either work himself or starve. I have
known no instance in which such sale has been attended with ultimate
advantage; but, alas! too many in which it has terminated in the
most distressing destitution. These government grants of land, to
half-pay officers, have induced numbers of this class to emigrate
to the backwoods of Canada, who are totally unfit for pioneers;
but, tempted by the offer of finding themselves landholders of what,
on paper, appear to them fine estates, they resign a certainty, to
waste their energies, and die half-starved and broken-hearted in
the depths of the pitiless wild.
If a gentleman so situated would give up all idea of settling on
his grant, but hire a good farm in a favourable situation - that is,
not too far from a market - and with his half-pay hire efficient
labourers, of which plenty are now to be had, to cultivate the land,
with common prudence and economy, he would soon obtain a comfortable
subsistence for his family. And if the males were brought up to
share the burthen and heat of the day, the expense of hired labour,
as it yearly diminished, would add to the general means and
well-being of the whole, until the hired farm became the real
property of the industrious tenants. But the love of show, the vain
boast of appearing richer and better-dressed than our neighbours,
too often involves the emigrant's family in debt, from which they
are seldom able to extricate themselves without sacrificing the
means which would have secured their independence.
This, although a long digression, will not, I hope, be without its
use; and if this book is regarded not as a work of amusement but one
of practical experience, written for the benefit of others, it will
not fail to convey some useful hints to those who have contemplated
emigration to Canada:
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