crossing the ocean to escape conditions in the Old Land that had become a burden to us, hoping, in the New Land before us, there would be brighter surroundings.  To preserve that New Land from the mistakes and evils that blast the Old was a duty.  To try and reproduce another Scotland such as they had left would be to reproduce what we were leaving it for.  What we ought to try is to create a new Great Britain in Canada, retaining all that is good and dropping all that is undesirable.  I want, he said, to see a land where every man is free to secure a portion of God’s footstool and to enjoy the fruits he reaps from it, without an aristocracy taking toll of what they did not earn, and a government levying taxes on labor to support soldiers or to subsidize privileged classes of any kind whatever their pretences.

How much more the speaker would have said I do not know, for Mr Snellgrove, who had come forward on his beginning to speak, here shouted ‘Treason!’ The master to prevent a scene, for a young shepherd moved to catch hold of the offender, gave out the 100th psalm, and we closed in peace.

The hold was so dark that Mr Kerr could not see to sew, so on fine days he worked on deck.  Sitting beside him he taught me how to hold a needle, for he said every man should be able to make small repairs.  He advised me to seize every opportunity to learn.  When a boy he could have learned to speak Gaelic and regretted he had let the chance go by.  Should he get work in Montreal, he would study French.  A man’s intellect grows by learning whatever accident throws in his way, and the man who, from foolish conceit, refuses to take advantage of his opportunities remains a dolt.  Read and observe, he said, and you will be able to say and do when your fellows are helpless.  He got cuttings of canvas from the bosun, shaped them into a blouse, and got me to sew them together.  The other boys laughed at me, and called me the wee tailor, but the blouse did me good service for many a day.  While so much with him, I asked Mr Kerr about his political trouble.  Though a Liberal he belonged to no club and was against using other than constitutional means to bring about reforms, and these reforms must come.  It could not continue that Great Britain was to be ruled by a parliament composed of aristocrats and their creatures, for the great mass of the people had no voice in it.  No Methodist, Baptist, or other dissenter was allowed a seat in parliament, and there were noblemen who controlled the election of more members than the city of Glasgow.  Manchester and Birmingham have no members.  Half of Scotland is owned by a dozen aristocrats.  Whenever you hear men shout disloyalty and claim to be the only true-blue supporters of their country, you may be sure they are selfishly trying to hold some privilege to which they have no right.  He told of many of his acquaintances who had been prosecuted for petitioning for the mending of political grievances, of a few who had been ruined by imprisonment and law costs, of the men who had been banished to Australia, and the three men who had been hanged.  Hundreds had fled, like himself, to escape prosecution.