Yankee deserters in Canada.
It is said that there are large numbers of Yankee deserters in Canada. Many of the furloughed ones repair at once to that British colony for a refuge. They do not stay to receive the congratulations of admiring friends, or the fond kisses of wives and children. Their patriotism, their love of home, and their thirst for glory all give place to the supreme consideration of personal safety. They have no use for the Banner of the Stars, except to light them to a haven for repose; nor for the far-famed American eagle, except to bear them on eagle's wings out of the reach of danger.How little could the Fathers of the American Revolution have anticipated that their Northern descendants would one day betake themselves to the faithful provinces of George the Third for a shelter from the military despotism of their own Republic! How little could the grave old loyalists of Canada, when, at the close of the Revolution, they sat gnashing their teeth in rage and disappointment, have looked for such a rich revenge! How little could even the philosophical and manifest-destiny statesmen of ten years ago have foreseen such an extinguishment of all their magnificent predictions. In their vainglorious boastings, Canada was a contemptible appendage of the British Crown, which the Yankees would absorb when it suited their convenience, and now Canada is absorbing the Yankees! The old song. "There's no place like home,"finds no response in their hearts. New there's no place like Canada. There the draft officers of Lincoln, and the military police of Grant, Meade & Co., cannot overtake them! There the glisten of Confederate bayonets is never seen, nor that appalling war whoop heard, which is more frightful than the falls of Niagara. There "the wicked cease from "troubling and the weary are at rest."
We congratulate her Britannic Majesty upon this new accession to her population. She has permitted the Canadian provinces to be for a long time a refuge for runaway negroes; why not for runaway Yankees?--It must do her soul good to see the descendants of those who once rebelled against Britain's authority now rushing to her apron strings for protection and solace. We also congratulate the Yankees. The climate is cold; but any climate that comes in contact with the ley sons of the Pilgrims and does not get the worst of it must be in the heart of the North Pole, and several hundred thousand miles below zero. The Canadians are sharp in their business transactions, but what will their keenest edge avail them against Yankee competition? Nothing is to be dreaded from Yankee arms, but their arts and their artifices, their bargain and chicanery are more subtle and powerful than the Sirocco of the desert. The multitude of Yankee deserters in Canada must live, and that imperative necessity will be filled even though somebody else must die. We invoke the Canadians to sharpen their wits, look up their silver, and never be tempted into a Yankee trade for chattels or anything. As the lamented Simon Suggs observed, "the meat has gin out, and somebody's bacon has got to suffer."
