The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-06 00:00:00

The British American Provinces•

(From the Times Special Correspondent).
ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK, SEPT. 1.5.
The Province of New Brunswick is as large as
Ireland, and more highly favoured by nature in soil

and climate. It contains an area of 17,000,000 of
acres, 12,000,000 of which are fit for agriculture.

but of which little more than 1,500,000 have been

brought under the plough. The remainder is
covered with the aboriginal forest, through which
the wolves ani bears prowl, unmolested save by an
occasional sportsman or officer of the British garri-
son from St. John or Fredericton, or by the back-
woodsman, when, driven by hunger, they approach

too near the farms. Under the axe of the lumberman

and by the operation of the accidental or wilful fires
in the wilderness, to which all the densely wooded

regions of the American Continent are exposed, the
area of cleared land is annually extended, though
at a ratio much less rapid than in any other part
of the Atlantic section of British America, the ter-

ritory of the Hudson's Bay Company excepted.
The population as yet scarcely numbers 280,000, or
little more, than half that of the_ borough of Mary-
lebone, or the city isf Glasgow, though larger than
that of the whole of British ..kmerica, the Canadas
included, when Great Britain first recognised the
independence of the United States. Its resources
and capabilities of mine, forest, fishery, and land are
such that nothing is wanted but men to develope them,
and to raise the colony to arank among the nations of
the earth superior to that occupied by Denmark,
Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal, or Greece.
Unfortunately the great stream of emigration does
not flow upon its shores. The German and Irish
swarms that annually quit their native Europe to
seek new homes and more propitious fortune in the
Western world know little or nothing of New
Brunswick. As the rivers run to the sea that is

full enough Without their tribute, so the tide of emi-
gration pours into the United States, and all efforts
of the outlying portions of British America to divert
a portion of the current are but scantily rewarded.
New Brunswick has, it is true, received a share of
the Irish, though not of the Teutonic immigration,
sufficient to aid in the rough work of a new country,
sufficient, also, to add a disturbing element to its
politics, and to foster that sentiment of hostility to
the British Government which always seems to ani-
mate a majority of the Irish Roman Catholics in
America, but not sufficient to leaven to any great
extent the Anglo-Saxon character of the mass of
the people, or impair their love for their old home
or their loyalty to the Sovereign. The descendants
of the first French colonists of " Acadie," as this

and the contiguous territories of Maine and Nova
Scotia were originally called, are numerous in the
county of Restigouche and all that portion of the
colony which borders on Canada and the western
shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Elsewhere
Scotchmen and the descendants of Scotchmen seem
to form a majority of the population. The English
and United Empire Loyalists are next in importance,
and after them the Irish—while but few Americans,
Norwegians, and Germans, are found to impress
that cosmopolitan character upon the people which
arrests the attention of the traveller in New York
and the central and western States of the Union.

Among this little but busy and enterprising com-
he
otherquestion
Maritime Confederation
Provinces,
w i with
originatingC ana
in
rtthiy tcean necessities and
mAa numdnei
interests, but warmly ap-
proved by the British Government, excites animated,
if n
discussion. Whatever may be the
present a
Canada, none exists in New
apathy
Brunswick. Oil the contrary, the subject is the all-
engrossing topic of conversation, in which every
man epeaking the English language feels himself
interested, and on which he thinks himself compe-
tent to form an opinion and to pass a judgment.
Here all men are politicians, the backwoodsman not
excepted, and treat public questions with an amount
of ex cathedra authority which in the British Isles
is only exhibited in town councils and parish vestries,
or perhaps in the meetings of the tailors of Tooley-
street. Divided into the three sections of the French,
the Anglo-Saxon, and the Irish, it may be said that
the first are ignorant or indifferent, the second fa-
vourable to the principle, though not perhaps to all
the details, and the third almost entirely hostile.
In 1864 the Ministry of Mr. Tilley, which had held
office for ten years and conducted public affairs with
much ability and success, somewhat prematurely ap-
pealed to the country on the question of Confede-
ration, which had not been sufficiently debated or
understood at the time, and were defeated, osten-
sibly on anti-Confederation principles, but mainly
on personal grounds, in which a miserable question
of the value of the Governor's salary in the currency
of New Brunswick was largely intermingled. The
majority by which Mr. Tilley was defeated, and Mr.
Albert J. Smith, the present Premier, raised to
power, was not very formidable ; the numbers being
—for Confederation,ls,492 ; and against it, 15,947,
a difference of only 455 votes. The city and county
of St. John, the most populous part of the Province,
and most thickly inhabited by the Irish, gave 3,156
for Confederation, and 3,728 against—or a majo-