Seward's Views in 1857.
--
Mr. Seward, the present
Secretary of State, made a tour through
Canada in 1857, and in a series of letters to the Albany
Journal of that year, we find the following paragraphs, detailing the result of his observations:
‘
Perhaps my meditations on the political destinies of the region around me may be unsubstantial, but I will, nevertheless, confess and avow them.
Hitherto, in common with most of my countrymen, as I suppose I have thought
Canada — or, to speak more properly, British America — a mere strip lying north of the
United States, easily detachable from the parent State, but incapable of sustaining itself, and therefore ultimately, nay, right soon, to be taken into the Federal Union, without materially changing or affecting its condition or development.
I have dropped the opinion, as a national conceit.
I see in
British North America, stretching as it does across the continent, from the shores of
Labrador and New foundland to the
Pacific, and occupying a considerable belt of the temperate zone, traversed equally with the
United States by the
Lakes, and enjoying the magnificent shores of the
St. Lawrence, with its thousands of islands in the
River and
Gulf a region grand enough for the seat of a great empire.
In its wheat fields in the
West, its broad ranges of the chase at the
North, its inexhaustible lumber lands, the most extensive now remaining on the globe — its invaluable fisheries, and its yet undisturbed mineral deposits, I see the element of wealth.
I find its inhabitants vigorous, hardy, energetic, perfected by the Protestant religion and British constitutional liberty.
I find them jealous of the
United States and of
Great Britain, as they ought to be; and, therefore, when I look at their extent and resources, I know they can neither be conquered by the former nor permanently held by the latter.
They will be independent, as they are already self-maintaining.
The policy of the
United States is to propitiate and secure the allegiance of
Canada while it is yet young and incurious of its future.
But, on the other hand, the policy which the
United States actually pursues, is the infatuated one of rejecting and spurning vigorous, perennial, and ever-growing
Canada, while seeking to establish feeble States out of decaying Spanish provinces on the coast and in the islands of the
Gulf of Mexico.
It is understood now to be the policy of some of
Mr. Seward's friends to establish negro colonies in ‘"the feeble States of decaying Spanish provinces on the coast and in the islands of the
Gulf of Mexico."’
’
