advantageous terms than in Canada.  To refer, therefore, to the 82,000 immigrants who have passed into the States through New York, and been absorbed there without cost to the mother-country, and to contrast this circumstance with the heavy expense which has attended the admission of a smaller number into Canada, is hardly just.  In the first place, of the 82,000 who went to New York, a much smaller proportion were sickly or destitute; and, besides, by the laws of the state, ship-owners importing immigrants are required to enter into bonds, which are forfeited when any of the latter become chargeable on the public.  These, and other precautions yet more stringent, were enforced so soon as the character of this year’s immigration was ascertained, and they had the effect of turning towards this quarter the tide of suffering which was setting in that direction.  Even now, immigrants attempting to cross the frontier from Canada are sent back, if they are either sickly or paupers.  On the whole, I fear that a comparison between the condition of this province and that of the states of the neighbouring republic, as affected by this year’s immigration, would be by no means satisfactory or provocative of dutiful and affectionate feelings towards the mother-country on the part of the colonists.  It is a case in which, on every account, I think the Imperial Government is bound to act liberally.

[Sidenote:  Lord Palmerston’s tenants.]

Month after month, the tide of misery flowed on, each wave sweeping deeper into the heart of the province, and carrying off fresh victims of their own benevolence.  Unfortunately, just as navigation closed for the season, a vessel arrived full of emigrants from Lord Palmerston’s Irish estates.  They appear to have been rather a favourable specimen of their class; but they came late, and they came from one of Her Majesty’s Ministers, and their coming was taken as a sign that England and England’s rulers, in their selfish desire to be rid of their starving and helpless poor, cared nothing for the calamities they were inflicting on the colony.  Writing on November 12, Lord Elgin says:—­

Fever cases among leading persons in the community here still continue to excite much comment and alarm.  This day the Mayor of Montreal died,—­a very estimable man, who did much for the immigrants, and to whose firmness and philanthropy we chiefly owe it, that the immigrant sheds here were not tossed into the river by the people of the town during the summer.  He has fallen a victim to his zeal on behalf of the poor plague-stricken strangers, having died of ship-fever caught at the sheds.  Colonel Calvert is lying dangerously ill at Quebec, his life despaired of.

Meanwhile, great indignation is aroused by the arrival of vessels from Ireland, with additional cargoes of immigrants, some in a very sickly state, after our Quarantine Station is shut up for the season.  Unfortunately the last arrived brings out Lord Palmerston’s tenants.  I send the commentaries on this contained in this day’s newspapers.[6]

[Sidenote:  The flood subsides.]