These Grants, Though
Well Meant, And With Respect To The U.E. Loyalists, Perhaps,
Unavoidable, Have Been Most Injurious To The Country.
The great error in this matter, and which could have been avoided,
was the opening of too great an extent of land AT ONCE for
settlement.
A contrary system, steadily pursued, would have produced
a concentrated population; and the resources of such a population
would have enabled the colonists, by uniting their labour and
capital, to make the means of communication, in some degree, keep
pace with the settlement of the lands; and Upper Canada would now
have been as well provided with canals and railroads as the United
States. The same abuses, no doubt, existed formerly to as great an
extent in that country, but, being longer settled, it has outgrown
the evil. Enough has been said on this subject to show some of the
causes which have retarded improvements in Canada.
Another chief cause of the long and helpless torpor in which the
country lay, was the absence of municipal governments in the various
rural localities. It indeed seems strange, that such a simple matter
as providing the means of making roads and bridges by local
assessment could not have been conceded to the people, who, if we
suppose them to be gifted with common sense, are much more capable
of understanding and managing their own parish business, than any
government, however well disposed to promote their interests.
Formerly the government of Upper Canada was deluged with petitions
for grants of money from Parliament to be expended in improvements
in this or that locality, of the reasonableness of which claims the
majority of the legislators were, of course, profoundly ignorant.
These money grants became subjects of a species of jobbing, or
manoeuvering, among the members of the House of Assembly; and he
was considered the best member who could get the most money for
his county.
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