and the necessity for taking it in one day no longer existed, though all enquiries had reference to the same hour. The de facto principle gives to each locality the transient residents who may be in it on the census day. The de jure principle gives to each the persons who make it their permanent domicile, contribute to its taxation, pay customs and excise duties in it, take back the fruits of their wanderings to it, vote in it. The de facto principle obtains in the census systems of northern Europe; the de jure principle among the Latin peoples of the Mediterranean basin. Where the Teuton, with his Common Law ideas rules, and whatever is most practical is best, the census de facto is in favour. Where the descendants of the Roman, and inheritors of the Roman Law are dominant, and whatever is logical and theoretically right is sought to be carried out, the census de jure is thought preferable. In Canada, the Minister who is responsible for the recent census is a lawyer of the Province of Quebec, learned in the Roman jurisprudence, which there mystifies the unwary litigant. The DeputyHead of his Department, who aided him, is a French Canadian, pur sang. It is not unlikely that the disappointment felt in Ontario and New Brunswick at the results arrived at, may lead to a greater dislike to the system than it deserves. But there is no reason why the enumeration should not be taken both of the de facto and the de jure populations, at the same time, and the one would be a useful check upon the other.

One of the evils of the length of time which is now allowed to elapse between the census-taking and the publication of results, is the difficulty of testing their accuracy when impugned. Some of the most active of our cities, towns and villages, surprised at the smallness of the figures given them, are repudiating them with indignation. If they had been announced a month after the census, as they might have been, at least approximately, by a simple change of method, steps

to prove or disprove them could have been at once taken. But now, a year has well-nigh lapsed, and the value of the comparison given by partial checks is lessened. Most of the checks, however, which have been applied have shewn the census figures to be an under statement, as indeed from the nature of the de jure principle applied by untrained men, they are pretty sure to be. To what extent, it is hard to say. As the system is foreign to the genius of the people of Ontario, while it is cognate to that of the people of Quebec, as moreover the care with which Ontario enumerators do their work is always less. than that bestowed by those of the sister Province, it is probable that Ontario suffers most: possibly to the extent of 7 or 8 per cent. Quebec, however, must also suffer. But it seems scarcely possible that any greater proportion than six or seven per cent. of the grand total can have been left uncounted, and it is certainly untrue that designed injustice has been done to any Province, the moral character of the officials concerned is too high; so that, if there has been any sectional inequality in the application of the de jure principle, it follows from casual circumstances, rather than from intention. stance one: Nova Scotia has had a registration system in operation for some years, more or less efficiently, and the gentleman who has had charge of it has been attached to the census staff. Hence, that Province has in all likelihood the most complete enumeration, and consequently gains. The other Provinces have not had this great advantage. It is, however, the smallness of the total rather than the relative proportion of the parts which is disappointing to the true patriot, and if five per cent. of the population of Quebec has been omitted, and eight of that of New Brunswick and Ontario, the additional three hundred thousand, which it is thought a correct enumeration would allot to us, would. make this total more respectable.

We will in

Correct or incorrect, however, the census figures give some useful indications of social.

movements to which we should be awake. First, we may observe that the population is fast crowding into cities and towns, and, while the establishment of railways is one great cause of this, it is also the mark of a transition period, during which manufacturing industries are becoming of importance. The cities of Ontario have increased from 103, 884 to 132,586.* Those of Quebec from 151,185 to 179,084t. Those of the Lower Provinces from 57,995 to 77,096‡. The towns show even a more remarkable increase-Brockville, in Ontario, and Levis, in Quebec, have risen to the rank of cities (placing at 10,000 the population which should confer this rank)—while Brantford, St. Catharines, Belleville, and several others are fast following suit. The city and town population may be set down at half a million, to which it has increased from four hundred thousand in 1861, an increase of 25 per cent. The rest of the population has only increased 11 per cent. In this connection we should consider that if the de jure system works injustice anywhere it is in the towns and cities. The travellers staying at hotels, the young lads at schools and boarding houses, the servants in families-all these are referred to their homes, which are chiefly in the country, while foreigners passing through the Dominion who are not enumerated at all, are almost altogether in cities and towns.

The next thing to be remarked is that the old settled counties are the most stationary. This was to be expected, but if the census figures in 1861 and 1871 are both correct, many of them are actually retrograding. We may with instructive results subdivide Ontario into the following heads:-Front, or old settled counties on the rivers and lower lakes; Central counties, or those early settled, though not on the great water-ways; and New counties, which group themselves into two parts, the counties on the upper lakes, and the back counties, or those in rear of the old settled districts, almost all northward from them. Following out this view, we have :—

2. Central or interior counties, midway between old and new ones :—

lands to the north and north-west, the actual policy of helping to build railroads into the interior is correct.

The same features obtain in Quebec. The list is long, but the point is so important that, at the risk of being tedious, we here also subdivide the counties as follows:-J. The group of counties on the South Shore between Quebec and Montreal and the oldsettled counties around the latter city. 2. The counties on the north shore of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence, all of which have back ranges. 3. The new English counties of the townships. 4. The counties on the south shore, east of Quebec, all of which. have new lands in the back concessions.

1. Old settled counties on the south shore, between Quebec and Montreal, and around Montreal :

In

Verchères

15,485

St. John's.

14,853

12, 122 10,498

The increase in these four sub-divisions is respectively one, thirteen, forty-three, thirtyfive per cent. There seems to be a point at which population in the old counties stops, and it is probably reached when there are as many people farming the land as can profitably do so by their own labour, and without employing capital in under-draining, subsoil ploughing, or artificial manures. the present state of the continent, with new lands still within easy reach, it possibly pays the farmer better to send his sons away to seek them than to strive to increase his crops by applying science and capital to the old farm. That it does so has evidently become the prevailing belief. Nothing could be more useful to the country than to reason out this point, for if it is better to apply capital and labour to old farms than to new ones, the great surplus of Ontario had better be employed, at a low rate of interest, to help the proprietors to underdrain. their land, in the way that government funds are employed in Britain. If, on the contrary, it is better to open out the new

* Middlesex, though not actually on the lakes, belongs naturally to this group.

Laprairie.
Missisquoi.
Napierville..
Beauharnois.
Chateauguay..
Huntingdon .
Jacques Cartier..
Laval.....
Soulanges
Vaudreuil.
Two Mountains.

*Levis, town, is deducted from the county and Hochelaga is omitted because its increase from 16,474 to 25,640 is due to the overflow from Montreal.

27,757 38,597

Pontiac

Ottawa.

The old counties thus appear to have suffered a decrease of nearly seven per cent. ; the other groups have increased respectively eight, sixteen and seventeen per cent.

This result is far more surprising than the stationary condition of the old settled districts of Ontario. Among these French counties are some which were cultivated generations before Ontario was, and have been steadily increasing census after census, without the aid of immigration and simply by natural increase, at the rate of about two per cent. per annum, besides sending off swarms of young men to take up farms elsewhere. Why should they now first exhibit a decline? Why is the decline so uniform? We have heard that during the war, the French Canadians sent a numerous contingent to the armies of the North, but even if they furnished 40,000 men, as has been asserted-a number which must be grossly exaggerated40,000 could be all killed off and the loss be hardly felt from a population of such fecundity as that of Quebec, where every village, almost every house, looks like a rabbit warren, for young. A similar remark might be made about the French Canadian factory hands employed in the New England. States. Have the farming lands been too much subdivided?-and is a clearing out. process commencing naturally, like that which was carried out forcibly in the Scottish Highlands, where in order to get the best returns, the landlords made the cotters leave their small farms and seek new ones in another country? If it has—and if the limit of population has been reached, that can by the system of farming in vogue in Quebec and Ontario be well supported, it is quite clear whither the surplus population of both Provinces must flow. It will go northward only by degrees, though

when it does pass the Laurentian ridges, and get established on the clay soils north of them, it may fill up another tier of counties yet. It will not go southward. It will keep, if not on the same parallel of latitude, as near to it as possible; emigration movements always do. It will keep on the zone of similar vegetation. It may, for aught we know, have already largely swelled the population of Minnesota, Wisconsin and part of Michigan. Some of it may have been seduced to Illinois and Iowa, but the Canadian seldom stays there long. It will, if facilities are provided, rather remain under the old institutions, and we shall find that when a railway is constructed it will seek the North Western Territories-and probably get as far westward as it can on the Assiniboine and the south Saskatchewan to escape the extreme cold of the Red River country. Another consideration, if possible, more vital than the above, also forces itself upon the mind. Although much disputed, the weight of testimony leads to the belief that in the United States the purely American families tend steadily towards extinction. Numerous are the childless homes across the border, and numerous the families in which but one or two children are born or survive. It has been the hope of the writer that this infertility or this curious cropping up of the Malthusian laws under circumstances in which it was not foreseen they would apply, which was first observed in the Southern States, and is not so clearly traced into the Central and Northern, would not occur on this side of the St. Lawrence.

The example of the French in Quebec, multiplying throughout a couple of centuries, seemed to encourage such a hope. But must it be given up for the Anglo-Canadian? Must it be given up even as regards the population of the whole Dominion? Is our progress to be fundamentally dependent upon immigration? Without a steady influx from Europe or Asia, are we like the old temple and mound builders, our pre

decessors on this continent, doomed to ultimate extinction?

If the per centage omitted be greater than that estimated at the commencement of this article this census is an imposture; if less it is a revelation. If it be true that the population has only increased twelve per cent. during the past decade, or only one per cent. a year, many an aspiration for political independence must be checked, many a hopeful anticipation as to our national progress moderated. For, at this rate, instead of becoming in a few years a respectable rival to the United States, aiding by our friendly rivalry the cause of true freedom on this continent, we must remain a mere pigmy beside a giant, and it will be fifty instead of a dozen years before we can safely go out of leading strings. If it be true that we have but three and a half millions now, instead of over four, as we expected, and have become a comparatively stationary instead of a rapidly progressive country, the principal hope for the Dominion must be in the wild lands and new territories of the North West; and, until they become able to contribute to the cost of government, many a financial budget must be carefully pruned, and we must anxiously consider whether we have not been incurring debts and rushing into engagements at too rapid a rate for safety. So important is this, that it would appear desirable, if the 51st section* of the Union Act will admit of it, to

* The Union Act, sec. 51, reads as follows:"On the completion of the census in the year 1871, sentation of the four Provinces shall be re-adjusted and of each subsequent decennial census, the repreby such authority, in such manner, and from such time, as the Parliament of Canada from time to time prescribes, subject and according to the following rules :

"(1.) Quebec shall have the fixed number of 65

members.

Provinces such a number of members as will bear the same proportion to the number of its population (ascertained at such census) as the number 65 bear

"2. There shall be assigned to each of the other