ENTERED, according to the Act of the Provincial Parliament, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, by JOHN LOVELL, In the Office of the Registrar of the Province of Canada; and entered at Stationers' Hall. JOHN LOVELL, MONTREAL THE business of the historian of the earlier ages of the world was to record changes in forms of government, to give accounts of long and bloody wars, and to narrate the rise or fall of dynasties and empires. From the days of Herodotus, to the middle of the last century, the world made little progress. It is true, that great empires rose one after another upon the ruins of their predecessors; but so far from there being any thing like real progress, the reverse seems to have been the case. It has remained for the present age to witness a rapid succession of important inventions and improvements, by means of which the power of man over nature has been incalculably increased, and resulting in an unparalleled progress of the human race. But great as has been the movement in the world at large, it is on the North American continent that this has been most remarkable. The rise of the United States. from a few feeble colonies to a high rank among nations, has never ceased to attract the attention of the world; and their career has been indeed so wonderful, that the quiet but equally rapid growth and development of the British North American provinces has received comparatively little notice. It will be seen from the following pages that they have at least kept pace with their powerful southern neighbors, and that, though laboring under some disadvantages, they have in eighty years increased tenfold, not only in population but in wealth; they have attained to a point of power that more than equals that of the united colonies when they separated from the mother country. They have, by means of canals, made their great rivers and remote inland seas accessible to the shipping of Europe; they have constructed a system of railroads far surpassing those of some of the European powers; they have established an educational system which is behind none in the old or the new world; they have developed vast agricultural and inexhaustible mineral resources; they have done enough, in short, to indicate a magnificent future-enough to point to a progress which shall place the provinces, within the days of many now living, on a level with Great Britain herself, in population, in wealth, and in power. If in the next eighty years the provinces should prosper as they have in the eighty years that are past, which there seems no reason to doubt, a nation of forty millions will have arisen in the North. To exhibit this progress is the object of the present volume. It will be seen, from the well-known names of the gentlemen who have contributed to its pages, that a high order of talent has been secured to carry out the design of the work. BY HENRY YOULE HIND, M. A., F. R. G. S., Professor of Chemistry and Geology in Trinity College, Toronto; Author of Narrative of the Canadian Exploring Expedition in North-west British America; Explorations in Labrador, and in the Country of the Montagnais and Nasquapee |
