and to remain subject to the influences, religious and social, under which they had lived previously to emigration.  It was proposed, if I rightly remember, according to one of those schemes, that large numbers of Irish with their priests and home associations should be established by Government in some unoccupied part of Canada.  I believe that such schemes, however benevolent their design, rest on a complete misconception of what is for the interest both of the Colony and of the emigrants.  It is almost invariably found that emigrants who thus isolate themselves, whatever their origin or antecedents, lag behind their neighbours; and I am inclined to think that, as a general rule, in the case of communities whose social and political organisation is as far advanced as that of the North American Colonies, it is for the interest of all parties that new comers, instead of dwelling apart and bound together by the affinities whether of sect or party, which united them in the country which they have left, should be dispersed as widely as possible among the population already established in that to which they transfer themselves.

It may not be altogether irrelevant to mention, as bearing on this subject, that the painful circumstances which attended the emigration of 1847 created for a time in this Province a certain prejudice against emigration generally.  The poll tax on emigrants was increased, and the opinion widely disseminated that, however desirable the introduction of capitalists might be, an emigration of persons of the poorer classes was likely to prove a burden rather than a benefit.  Commercial depression, and apprehensions as to the probable effect of the Free-trade policy of Great Britain on the prosperity of the Colonies, had an influence in the same direction.  To counteract these tendencies which were calculated, as I thought, to be injurious in the long run both to the Mother-country and the Province, public attention was especially directed, in the Speech delivered from the Throne in 1849, to emigration by way of the St. Lawrence, as a branch of trade which it was most desirable to cultivate (irrespective altogether of its bearing on the settlement of the country) in consequence of the great excess of exports over imports by that route, and the consequent enhancement of freights outwards.  These views obtained very general assent, and the measures which have been adopted since that period to render this route attractive to emigrants destined for the West (the effect of which is beginning now to be visible in the yearly increasing amount of emigration by way of Quebec from the continent of Europe), are calculated not only to promote the trade of the Province, but also to make settlers of a superior class acquainted with its advantages.[3]

[Sidenote:  Ottawa Valley.]