How could a peaceable, freethinking man live
neighbor
to the
Forty-ninth Regiment?
Forty-ninth Regiment?
Thoreau - Excursions and Poems
It is said that the metallic roofs of
Montreal and Quebec keep sound and bright for forty years in some
cases. But if the rust was not on the tinned roofs and spires, it was
on the inhabitants and their institutions. Yet the work of burnishing
goes briskly forward. I imagined that the government vessels at the
wharves were laden with rottenstone and oxalic acid,--that is what the
first ship from England in the spring comes freighted with,--and the
hands of the Colonial legislature are cased in wash-leather. The
principal exports must be _gun_ny bags, verdigris, and iron rust.
Those who first built this fort, coming from Old France with the
memory and tradition of feudal days and customs weighing on them, were
unquestionably behind their age; and those who now inhabit and repair
it are behind their ancestors or predecessors. Those old chevaliers
thought that they could transplant the feudal system to America. It
has been set out, but it has not thriven. Notwithstanding that Canada
was settled first, and, unlike New England, for a long series of years
enjoyed the fostering care of the mother country; notwithstanding
that, as Charlevoix tells us, it had more of the ancient _noblesse_
among its early settlers than any other of the French colonies, and
perhaps than all the others together, there are in both the Canadas
but 600,000 of French descent to-day,--about half so many as the
population of Massachusetts. The whole population of both Canadas is
but about 1,700,000 Canadians, English, Irish, Scotch, Indians, and
all, put together! Samuel Laing, in his essay on the Northmen, to
whom especially, rather than the Saxons, he refers the energy and
indeed the excellence of the English character, observes that, when
they occupied Scandinavia, "each man possessed his lot of land without
reference to, or acknowledgment of, any other man, without any local
chief to whom his military service or other quit-rent for his land was
due,--without tenure from, or duty or obligation to, any superior,
real or fictitious, except the general sovereign. The individual
settler held his land, as his descendants in Norway still express it,
by the same right as the King held his crown, by udal right, or
adel,--that is, noble right. " The French have occupied Canada, not
_udally_, or by noble right, but _feudally_, or by ignoble right. They
are a nation of peasants.
It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the
aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada
as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists
in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay
here.
How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the
Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad
citizen, probably a rebel, there,--certainly if he were already a
rebel at home. I suspect that a poor man who is not servile is a much
rarer phenomenon there and in England than in the Northern United
States. An Englishman, methinks,--not to speak of other European
nations,--habitually regards himself merely as a constituent part of
the English nation; he is a member of the royal regiment of
Englishmen, and is proud of his company, as he has reason to be proud
of it. But an American--one who has made a tolerable use of his
opportunities--cares, comparatively, little about such things, and is
advantageously nearer to the primitive and the ultimate condition of
man in these respects. It is a government, that English one,--like
most other European ones,--that cannot afford to be forgotten, as you
would naturally forget it; under which one cannot be wholesomely
neglected, and grow up a man and not an Englishman merely,--cannot be
a poet even without danger of being made poet-laureate! Give me a
country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a
government that does not understand you to let you alone. One would
say that a true Englishman could speculate only within bounds. (It is
true the Americans have proved that they, in more than one sense, can
_speculate_ without bounds. ) He has to pay his respects to so many
things, that, before he knows it, he _may_ have paid away all he is
worth. What makes the United States government, on the whole, more
tolerable--I mean for us lucky white men--is the fact that there is so
much less of government with us. Here it is only once in a month or a
year that a man _needs_ remember that institution; and those who go to
Congress can play the game of the Kilkenny cats there without fatal
consequences to those who stay at home, their term is so short; but in
Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself
before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the
master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the
Champ de Mars and exhibits itself and toots. Everywhere there appeared
an attempt to make and to preserve trivial and otherwise transient
distinctions. In the streets of Montreal and Quebec you met not only
with soldiers in red, and shuffling priests in unmistakable black and
white, with Sisters of Charity gone into mourning for their deceased
relative,--not to mention the nuns of various orders depending on the
fashion of a tear, of whom you heard,--but youths belonging to some
seminary or other, wearing coats edged with white, who looked as if
their expanding hearts were already repressed with a piece of tape.
Montreal and Quebec keep sound and bright for forty years in some
cases. But if the rust was not on the tinned roofs and spires, it was
on the inhabitants and their institutions. Yet the work of burnishing
goes briskly forward. I imagined that the government vessels at the
wharves were laden with rottenstone and oxalic acid,--that is what the
first ship from England in the spring comes freighted with,--and the
hands of the Colonial legislature are cased in wash-leather. The
principal exports must be _gun_ny bags, verdigris, and iron rust.
Those who first built this fort, coming from Old France with the
memory and tradition of feudal days and customs weighing on them, were
unquestionably behind their age; and those who now inhabit and repair
it are behind their ancestors or predecessors. Those old chevaliers
thought that they could transplant the feudal system to America. It
has been set out, but it has not thriven. Notwithstanding that Canada
was settled first, and, unlike New England, for a long series of years
enjoyed the fostering care of the mother country; notwithstanding
that, as Charlevoix tells us, it had more of the ancient _noblesse_
among its early settlers than any other of the French colonies, and
perhaps than all the others together, there are in both the Canadas
but 600,000 of French descent to-day,--about half so many as the
population of Massachusetts. The whole population of both Canadas is
but about 1,700,000 Canadians, English, Irish, Scotch, Indians, and
all, put together! Samuel Laing, in his essay on the Northmen, to
whom especially, rather than the Saxons, he refers the energy and
indeed the excellence of the English character, observes that, when
they occupied Scandinavia, "each man possessed his lot of land without
reference to, or acknowledgment of, any other man, without any local
chief to whom his military service or other quit-rent for his land was
due,--without tenure from, or duty or obligation to, any superior,
real or fictitious, except the general sovereign. The individual
settler held his land, as his descendants in Norway still express it,
by the same right as the King held his crown, by udal right, or
adel,--that is, noble right. " The French have occupied Canada, not
_udally_, or by noble right, but _feudally_, or by ignoble right. They
are a nation of peasants.
It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the
aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada
as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists
in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay
here.
How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the
Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad
citizen, probably a rebel, there,--certainly if he were already a
rebel at home. I suspect that a poor man who is not servile is a much
rarer phenomenon there and in England than in the Northern United
States. An Englishman, methinks,--not to speak of other European
nations,--habitually regards himself merely as a constituent part of
the English nation; he is a member of the royal regiment of
Englishmen, and is proud of his company, as he has reason to be proud
of it. But an American--one who has made a tolerable use of his
opportunities--cares, comparatively, little about such things, and is
advantageously nearer to the primitive and the ultimate condition of
man in these respects. It is a government, that English one,--like
most other European ones,--that cannot afford to be forgotten, as you
would naturally forget it; under which one cannot be wholesomely
neglected, and grow up a man and not an Englishman merely,--cannot be
a poet even without danger of being made poet-laureate! Give me a
country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a
government that does not understand you to let you alone. One would
say that a true Englishman could speculate only within bounds. (It is
true the Americans have proved that they, in more than one sense, can
_speculate_ without bounds. ) He has to pay his respects to so many
things, that, before he knows it, he _may_ have paid away all he is
worth. What makes the United States government, on the whole, more
tolerable--I mean for us lucky white men--is the fact that there is so
much less of government with us. Here it is only once in a month or a
year that a man _needs_ remember that institution; and those who go to
Congress can play the game of the Kilkenny cats there without fatal
consequences to those who stay at home, their term is so short; but in
Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself
before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the
master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the
Champ de Mars and exhibits itself and toots. Everywhere there appeared
an attempt to make and to preserve trivial and otherwise transient
distinctions. In the streets of Montreal and Quebec you met not only
with soldiers in red, and shuffling priests in unmistakable black and
white, with Sisters of Charity gone into mourning for their deceased
relative,--not to mention the nuns of various orders depending on the
fashion of a tear, of whom you heard,--but youths belonging to some
seminary or other, wearing coats edged with white, who looked as if
their expanding hearts were already repressed with a piece of tape.
