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6

POLICY OF CONCEDING CLERICAL RANK.

Catholic in the colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and therefore more entitled to consideration at the fountain of honour. If there be any way in which it could be done, therefore, the head of these several bodies -their moderator or president for the time beingshould be equally honoured with the more permanent heads of the Episcopalian sects;—that is, if the distinctive title is to be retained at all, and the precedence of high clerical office retained.

It may be said that the Presbyterian, Baptist, and other bodies, are opposed upon principle to the connection of honorary precedence with clerical office, and have therefore never asked such distinctions for the head of their several denominations. This is probably true; but my intercourse with the inhabitants of these colonies has satisfied me that much lurking ill-will against the mother country has arisen from the kind of half-establishment originally granted to the English Church; and that this ill-will, instead of being lessened, has been deepened in intensity by the selection of the Roman Catholic body for a similar distinction. Why should the mother country procure ill-will-manufacture it, I may say, for herselfby intermeddling in the religious disputes of the different denominations in the colonies? Either we ought to leave these entirely to the control of the local legislature, as all other internal political and social matters now are left, or the offer, at least, of similar honours should be made to the head of each religious body possessing a certain numerical force, and consequent political weight, in the province. This offer, whether accepted or not, would at least remove the complaint of invidious distinctions from the shoulders of the Home Government, and would confine the discussion in future to the general question of precedence or no precedence to the holders of high clerical office. Should any unfortunate circumstances bring about a separation from the mother country,

COLOURED PEOPLE IN HALIFAX.

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such distinctions in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would certainly not be permitted to exist for another hour.

On the field upon M'Nab's Island, where the people were assembled, were music and dancing parties in different places; swings and refreshment stalls, whites of all grades, and darkies of different shades; but I saw neither intoxication nor disorder, nor rudeness, nor incivility anywhere. A little of the liveliness of the early French settlers probably clings to the modern Nova Scotian; but though there were many both Irish-born and of Irish descent among the crowd, there was no shade of a disposition to an Irish row.

Many coloured people, some apparently full-blood negroes, were to be seen in the streets of Halifax acting as porters, and in other humble employments. A few of these looked miserable enough.

As far back as the close of the American war, numbers of coloured people came here, either with their loyalist masters, or alone, and at the expense of Government. These early settlers have multiplied and become to a certain extent acclimatised, and many of them are industrious owners of small farms. Generally, however, the negroes are spoken of as indolent, as hanging about the towns, and as suffering much from the severity of the winter.

People of colour enjoy, I believe, in all the British colonies of North America, the same political privileges as are possessed by other classes of her Majesty's subjects. I went into the jury court, where the author of Sam Slick was the presiding judge, and I was both surprised and pleased to see a perfectly black man sitting there in the box as a juror.

Among the other novelties to a stranger in Halifax is an encampment of the Micmac Indians, whose wigwams I found pitched upon some high ground above the town of Dartmouth, on the opposite side of the bay. These Indians have a broad Asiatic face; and are more intelli

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gent, but less patient of restraint than the negroes. Little real success has attended the many attempts which have been made to educate and localise them. They have become faithful Roman Catholics, are obedient to their priests, regular at confession, and very honest; but they do not settle steadily to the monotonous labours of agriculture, or to the confinement either of domestic service, or of regular handicraft or mechanical trades.

In the first wigwam I entered, I found half-a-dozen men playing at cards; and, in the next, as many women and children making baskets. Their English is broken, and to each other they converse in their native tongue. They are diminishing in numbers, many having been carried off some time ago by a fever, which raged specially among themselves; but there are said still to remain five thousand of them in Nova Scotia.

In the harbour of Halifax, I saw few large ships; there were, however, many small vessels employed either in the fisheries or in the coasting trade to the States and the Canadas. There are four circumstances which seem to concur in promising a great future extension to this maritime portion of Nova Scotian industry. In the first place, the sea and bays, and inlets along the whole Atlantic border, swarm with fish of many kinds, which are the natural inheritance of the Nova Scotian fishermen. Second, this coast is everywhere indented with creeks and harbours, from which the native boats can at all times issue, and to which they can flee for shelter. Thirdly, there exists in the native forests-and over three millions of acres in this province probably always will exist-an inexhaustible supply of excellent timber for the shipbuilder. And, lastly, from the influence of the Gulf stream most probably, the harbours of Nova Scotia are, in ordinary seasons, open and unfrozen during the entire winter; while, north of Cape Canseau, the harbours and rivers of Prince Edward's Island and of the Canadas are

FISHERIES OF NOVA SCOTIA.

closed up by ice. This latter circumstance, if a railway should be made from Halifax to the St Lawrence, ought to place the West India trade of a large portion of the Canadas and of New Brunswick in the hands of the Nova Scotia merchants while all the circumstances taken together will doubtless, in the end, make them the chief purveyors of fish both to Europe and America. At present, they complain of the bounties given by their several Governments to the French and United States fishermen. But bounties are in all countries only a temporary expedient: one part of a people gets tired at last, of paying another part to do what is not otherwise profitable ; bounties are therefore abolished, and employment in consequence languishes. The fisheries of Nova Scotia are the surer to last that they are permitted or encouraged to spring up naturally, without artificial stimulus, and in the face of an ardent competition.

Of the coast fisheries, the most important to the trade of Halifax is that of mackerel. This fish abounds along the whole shores, but the best takes are usually made in the Gulf of St Lawrence, off the shores of Cape Breton and Prince Edward's Island, and especially at Canseau, where the quantity of fish has been "so great at times as actually to obstruct navigation."* The excitement caused by the arrival of a shoal of mackerel, is thus described by Judge Haliburton, in The Old Judge:

"Well, when our friends the mackarel strike in towards the shore, and travel round the province to the northward, the whole coasting population is on the stir too. Perhaps there never was seen, under the blessed light of the sun, anything like the everlasting number of mackarel in one shoal on our sea-coast. Millions is too little a word for it; acres of them is too small a tarm to give a right notion; miles of them, perhaps, is more like the thing;

* Gesner's Industrial Resources, p. 124.

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SHOALS AND EXPORTS OF MACKEREL.

and, when they rise to the surface, it's a solid body of fish you sail through. It's a beautiful sight to see them come tumbling into a harbour, head over tail, and tail over head, jumping and thumping, sputtering and fluttering, lashing and thrashing, with a gurgling kind of sound, as much as to say, ' Here we are, my hearties! How are you off for salt? Is your barrels all ready?—because we are. So bear a hand and out with your nets, as we are off to the next harbour to-morrow, and don't wait for such lazy fellows as you be.'"*

A ready market for this fish is found in the United States; and the absolute as well as comparative value of the trade to Nova Scotia, may be judged of from the following return of the quantities of pickled fish of the most plentiful kinds, exported from Halifax in 1847:

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From Cape Breton and Newfoundland the largest export consists of cod-fish.

The day after my arrival at Halifax, I drove round the peninsula on which the city stands, and up the northwest arm-an inlet or creek, by which the peninsula is formed, and which runs inland from the bay a few miles behind Halifax.

To one who wishes to form a general idea of the agricultural character and capabilities, as well as of the geological structure and botanical relations of the Atlantic border of the province, this drive is very instructive. On a clear sunny day the views are beautiful, and the ride most exhilarating. The old slate rocks are interspersed with masses of granite-probably, in many cases,

* The Old Judge, by Sam Slick, vol. ii. p. 96.

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