~ Essays : 
apprehended as dangerous to the State. Let an act 
of Parliament then be made, enjoining the colony 
midwives to stifle in the birth every third or fourth 
child. By this means you may keep the colonies to 
their present size. And if they were under the hard 
alternative of submitting to one or the other of these 
schemes for checking their growth, I dare answer 
for them, they would prefer the latter. 
But all the debate about the propriety or impro- 
priety of keeping or restoring Canada is possibly too 
early. We have taken the capital indeed, but the 
country is yet far from being in our possession; and 
perhaps never will be; for, if our ministers are per- 
suaded by such counsellors as the Remarker, that 
the French there are “not the worst of neighbours,” 
and that, if we had conquered Canada, we ought, for 
our own sakes, to restore it, as a check to the growth 
of our colonies, I am then afraid we shall never take 
it. For there are many ways of avoiding the com- 
pletion of the conquest, that will be less exception- 
able and less odious than the giving it up. 
7. Canada easily peopled without draining Great Brit 
ain of any of its Inhabitants. 
The objection I have often heard, that, if we had 
Canada, we could not people it without draining 
Britain of its inhabitants, is founded on ignorance 
* “And Pharaoh said unto his people: Behold, the people of the 
children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come on, let us 
deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, 
when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies and 
fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. And the king 
spake to the Hebrew midwives,’ etc.—Exodus, ch. i. 
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