BRITISH IMMIGRATION TO BRITISH NORTH AMERICA 1815-1860
H.J.M. Johnston
The period from 1815 to 1860 was one most significant in Canadian immigration history. The most dramatic movement was to the eastern colonies, although there were some attempts at settlement in the vast expanse west of the Great Lakes. Lord Selkirk was responsible for the establishment of two or three hundred Scottish immigrants at Red River between 1811 and 1815; a few hundred British immigrants reached Vancouver Island by way of Cape Horn in the early 1850's; and there were some British subjects among the miners who took part in the Kootenay gold rush of 1858. Otherwise there was practically no British immigration to the West. Consequently, the story presented here illustrates the experience of early nineteenth century immigrants to the East from the moment they left their homes in the old country until they reached their destination in the new.
The years after 1815 saw the real beginnings of British immigration to the Canadas. Previously the colonial authorities had been largely unsuccessful in their efforts to attract immigrants from Great Britain. In the eighteenth century the British Government, like other European governments, had been jealous of its population and restrictive in its emigration policies. Even if the government had been more liberal, the people of England and of most of Scotland and Ireland were barely aware of the possibilities of emigration or even of the existence of the colonies in North America. If there had been an incipient interest it was submerged during the quarter-century dominated by war with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. In this period Canada owed its growth to the natural increase of the French Canadian population and to the arrival of Loyalist and post-Loyalist settlers from the United States. Except for an influx from the Scottish Highlands to Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island, British immigration to the Canadas and the Maritime colonies was negligible.
Yet pressures had been building in Britain, and Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815 introduced an age of mass emigration. Rising poor rates, unemployment, and working class unrest were the alarming symptoms of a rapidly rising population and an economy distorted by the industrial revolution. The government abruptly changed its attitude and began to encourage emigration. The possibilities of settlement in the colonies were widely publicized by pamphleteers, by the press, and increasingly by immigrants to the colonies who wrote home to friends and relatives. The figures present the story starkly. Before 1815, British emigration to British North American and the United States did not exceed 10,000 or 15,000 in the highest year. After 1815, annual emigration averaged as follows:
1815-1829 20,000
1830-1839 67,000
1840-1849 150,000
1850-1859 240,000
The Irish potato famine of 1846 introduced the most desperate and dramatic ten years in the history of nineteenth century emigration. From 130,000 in 1846, the flood of emigrants rose to 258,000 in 1847, and 368,000 in 1852. The population of Ireland fell by 1.6 million between 1841 and 1851 and emigration was a major cause. Of course, British North America received only a share of the total emigration from Great Britain and Ireland, but that share was significant and remained so until the 1850's.
It is impossible to give precise figures to describe the impact of immigration to the Canadas and the Maritime colonies in the early nineteenth century, but one can make a rough estimate. In 1815 these colonies altogether had a population of scarcely 600,000. During the next forty-five years 1,100,000 emigrants sailed for British North America and by 1860 there were 3,500,000 people living here. Some of the emigrants did not survive the crossing and, of those who did, many proceeded directly to the United States after disembarking. Others settled in the colonies for a few years and then were attracted across the border by higher wages or cheaper land. The exact number that stayed cannot be determined.
The prospect of large-scale immigration did not appear an unmixed blessing to all British North Americans. Immigration could mean the importation of poverty as well as population. In the 1820's the Canadas possessed little capital or trade and produced barely enough wheat to feed their existing population. While the authorities in Upper Canada might argue that immigration was needed to open up the country and to stimulate the economy, the authorities in Lower Canada were much more concerned about the arrival of great numbers of destitute immigrants for whom there was no employment and who might become a burden on the inhabitants of Quebec and Montreal. The effect of immigration on the political complexion of the colonies was always a matter of concern. For that reason some effort was made to keep American settlers from migrating to the Canadas after 1815. When the Chief justice of Upper Canada was consulted about a proposal to introduce Irish Catholic immigrants to the colony in the 1820's, he was at first hesitant. But he decided that he would rather have the 'ignorant poor and priest-ridden' than those 'who think for themselves in matters of Government and religion, and too often think wrong'.
Of the three principal immigrant groups, the Irish were most numerous and the Scots the least. But whether the movement was Irish, Scottish, or English, it sprang from rural areas where poverty and unemployment were the by-products of over-population and agricultural reform. In Ireland, two-thirds of the population were directly engaged in agriculture. A majority of families held plots of less than one acre. The land had been subdivided as far as possible and rural Ireland's subsistence economy could not support more people. This was appreciated all too well by the great landlords who were anxious to clear their estates of small tenants who did not pay rent. In Scotland, a similar process was under way. Improved transport had made it possible for Scottish beef and lamb to supply England's growing industrial centres, and Highland landlords turned out their tenant farmers to replace them with sheep and cattle. The unwanted population found its way to the towns and cities of the Lowlands or else emigrated overseas. Rural England was also undergoing a complex readjustment as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. Textile factories gradually supplanted the rural cottager at his loom or spinning wheel, while enclosures of common land denied him a place to run his pigs and sheep. Improved farming methods with higher capital costs as well as higher yields led to a general raising of rents, while a misguided poor-law system kept wages artificially low. These changes impoverished small farmers and made beggars of agricultural labourers.
Unemployment and poverty were always present among the rural populations of Southern England, Ireland, and Scotland. But it was in years of exceptional distress that the great emigrations got underway. People first began to leave in significant numbers following a collapse in the price of wheat in the years 1817-1821. Farmers could not pay their rents and labourers could not find work. Some became violent and vented their anger by burning barns and threshing machines. Others emigrated. When the market for wheat improved after 1822, the numbers emigrating fell. The early 1830's, again, were a period of agricultural depression and intense unrest. Finally, the great exodus of the late 1840's and early 1850's followed a total collapse of the potato crop not only in 1846 but also in 1847.
Generally, the poorest and least resourceful people could not afford to emigrate. The transatlantic fare was beyond them. If they came from an English parish they migrated to the large industrial centres. If they were Irish, they went to England. Only if they had relatives in North America who could send them their passage money - and this was common - or if they had assistance from the government or a benefactor, could they go to North America. The British North American colonies and the United States, unlike Australia, did not help immigrants with their passages. The British government did assist poor emigrants and demobilized soldiers on a few occasions in the period before 1830. Some English and Irish parishes, some landlords, and certain charitable organizations gave free passage and landing money. However, assisted emigrants were only a small minority of those who came to British North America.
Until 1830 the largest stream of emigrants was made up of Protestant Irish from Ulster - small farmers forced out by high rents and taxes and the competition of large-scale farming. During the 1820's, however, labourers and holders of very small parcels of land began to emigrate from all parts of Ireland. After 1830, the Catholic Irish from the south and south west numbered first among British emigrants. In 1832, for example, the port of Quebec received 5,500 emigrants from Scotland, 17,841 from England and 28,204 from Ireland. But these figures do not tell the full story. A great many Irishmen left from English ports after having tried their luck in England. In the 1850's Liverpool, rather than Belfast or Dublin, was the principal emigrant port for the Irish.
The fare to British North America varied with the route and the accommodation. For ú30 an emigrant could have a cabin with perhaps two bunks, a sofa, and a window on a sailing packet from Liverpool to New York. Since this was more money than many people saw in a year, it was probably out of the question. In that case an emigrant went steerage, packed into the space between decks, where two or four people slept in each bunk. In 1834, steerage from Liverpool to New York cost ú5.10.0. From an Irish port to New York, it cost ú4.10.0. Ships sailing to American ports were governed by American passenger regulations which were more stringent than British regulations. Consequently, American shipowners charged higher rates. If an emigrant could not afford the passage to New York, he sailed to British North America. In 1834, the steerage rate from Liverpool to Quebec was ú4.10.0., but from Cork and Limerick it was only ú2.10.0., and from Dublin, Belfast, and Londonderry, ú1.10.0. A large proportion of the vessels sailing from Ireland were timber ships, carrying squared timbers eastbound and a human cargo westbound. There was yet a cheaper way to make the crossing. For ten shillings an Irish emigrant could obtain passage on a fishing vessel to Newfoundland which many did, although no official record of their number exists.
A great variety of vessels were engaged in the emigrant trade. Those running between British North America and Ireland tended to be small - between 150 and 500 tons - and frequently carried far more passengers than the regulations allowed. The 334 ton Ulster, for example, landed 505 immigrants at Quebec on July 5, 1931, although the law permitted only 250. Even within the law, it was possible to crowd emigrants into an unimaginably small space in the windowless area between decks. Such crowding went unchecked as there was no campaign in Britain during the first four decades of the nineteenth century to improve conditions. The shipping interests were too strong for that; - in fact, the regulations became even more lenient. The Passenger Act of 1803 allowed British ships one passenger for every two tons; the Act of 1817, two passengers for every three tons; and the Act of 1828, three passengers for every four tons. What was remarkable was that so many thousands of emigrants made the crossing safely and then wrote home encouraging their friends to follow.
Because the fare was lower, many immigrants to the United States came by way of British North America. More people arrived in British North America than actually stayed. In 1826, it was estimated that of 10,000 landing at Quebec and Montreal each year, not more than 500 settled in Lower Canada and not more than 1,500 in Upper Canada. The remaining 8,000 went on to the United States. The figures for the later decades do not tell quite the same story. As the Canadian inland transportation system improved, and as government agents made a determined effort to direct emigrants, far more chose to settle in the Canadas. In 1831 the emigration agent at Quebec reported that only twelve percent of the arrivals had proceeded to the United States. Ten years later the same proportion still existed. At the same time, a number of immigrants to Canada came by way of New York and Oswego. Thus an exchange of kinds took place. While poor immigrants to the United States passed through British North American ports, middle class immigrants to Canada went through the United States.
The main stream of immigration ran to the interior of the continent, and Quebec and Montreal were by far the most important immigrant ports in the North American colonies. In 1832, for example, 51,700 immigrants arrived at Quebec, while only 14,500 landed at Halifax or other ports in the Maritimes. In 1847,89,500 arrived at Quebec and only 20,100 elsewhere in British North America. Care of immigrants who arrived diseased or without money was an immense problem for Quebec and Montreal. These towns could make but the barest provisions for the housing, feeding, and hospitalization of immigrants in need. To cover some of the expense, the colonial government collected a head tax from all immigrants. Still, Quebec was not able to cope with the thousands of poor and fever-ridden Irish who arrived in 1847. At the peak in August, as many as 2,000 typhoid and dysentery cases were treated daily. There was not room in the hospitals, and many were housed in sheds and tents. In 1848 the Canadian government doubled the head tax from five to ten shillings. Subsequently, emigration shifted overwhelmingly in the direction of the United States.
Most immigrants went on from Quebec to Upper Canada, the western colony with the greatest area of fertile land for settlement. Between 1806 and 1861, the population of Lower Canada more than quadrupled, Nova Scotia quintupled, and New Brunswick multiplied seven times. But, in the same period, the population of Upper Canada grew by twenty times. In 1806, Nova Scotia and Upper Canada had been roughly the same in population: one colony with 65,000 people and the other with 70,000. Fifty-five years later the equivalence was gone: although there were over 330,800 people in Nova Scotia, there were 1,396,000 in the Canadian colony. Upper Canada had become very much the home of immigrants and their children. In the 1860's, one out of three English-speaking Canadians had been born outside this country. In the Maritimes, on the other hand, only one out of eight was not native-born.
Until 1850, immigration was closely tied to settlement; the colonies had little room for immigrants who lacked the resources or the inclination to work on the land. There was some demand for labour in the logging camps of the Ottawa Valley and in New Brunswick. A few immigrants found employment in the construction of the Welland, Rideau, and Lachine canals. The shipbuilding industry offered limited opportunities and there was occasional work in clearing roadways and digging drainage ditches. Otherwise there was little opportunity to earn wages except, perhaps, in domestic service. For many immigrants the alternatives were settlement, unemployment, or immigration to the United States.
By 1850, however, most of the desirable land in the Canadas and the Maritimes had been claimed, if not cleared. In the following decade the colonies were engaged in great railway building projects which opened up the labour market and gave a dramatic stimulus to the economy. The pattern of immigration and settlement no longer predominated. The Irish immigrants of the 1850's were absorbed as labourers - finding employment on the railways and gravitating towards the developing cities of British North America.
If there was a typical immigrant to British North America in the half-century before Confederation, he was a farmer or agricultural labourer; he was Irish; he emigrated between 1846 and 1854; and he came to Upper Canada where he tried, perhaps only briefly, to settle on the land or to find agricultural employment. Such an immigrant did not make a noticeable mark as an individual. By virtue of religion, education, and social status he and his children were almost invariably excluded from positions of leadership in politics, business or the professions. But he provided the numbers and the labour that transformed the Canadian landscape from bush farms and mind roads to open countryside, railways, and industrial towns. Most of the pictures in this selection illustrate his experience. All of them were drawn or painted by his contemporaries.
