Cobbett, William (1829) The Emigrant’s Guide in Ten Letters, Addressed to The Tax—Payers of England. Mills, Jowett and Mills, London. [UPE|, Robertson Library: PEI. E. 165. C 63]

William Cobbett lb. 7 763, d. 1835) was an Englishman — which is at first sight surprising, given the particular bias against the ’English’ North American colonies that comes out in his pamphlet. Apart from six years as a young soldier in New Brunswick (from 7785), and two periods in the United States I 7 792- 7800; 7877-1819), he spent all of his life in England where as editor of Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, he was a prominent anti-establishment polemic/st, often in conflict with the libel laws. The open aim of his 'Emigrant’s Guide’ is to direct English emigrants away from the British North American colonies and towards the United States. His book is an example (if a more extreme one) of a number of publications current at the time, taking sides in a war of words on this topic. (Anon. (78 78} and [Hill] I 78 79) are examples relevant to Prince Edward island, coming from the other side — if not quite so full of invective as Cobbett.) Cobbett’s bias — and it must be said, his mis-representation — extends to his description of the landscape and forests of the British colonies, and in this regard Prince Edward Island is lumped in with all the others. The vast borea/ coniferous forest — which indeed covered much of British North America — is brought down to neatly coincide (apart from the exceptions he begrudging/y notes) with the border with the United States. Perhaps he had not read — in the numerous pamphlets and books published by 7829 — of Prince Edward Island’s hardwood forests and good farming land, but given that he knew personally the productivity of the fertile Saint John River Valley, and yet still lambasted New Brunswick, any knowledge of the island would have made no difference — his aim was not truth but polemics. The second description of the island (often quoted) comes from a lengthy diatribe by Cobbett that was printed in the Prince Edward Island Register in 7830, but the original source among Cobbett’s writings has not been identified.

REFERENCES:

Brown, W. (1987) Cobbett, William. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Vl: 155—56.

Anon. (1818) Some Account of Prince Edward’s Island, and its Advantages as a Settlement for Emigrants. The New Monthly Magazine, 1 September 1818, pp. 114-17. London.

[Hi||, John?] (1819) information to Emigrants: Some Account of the Island of Prince Edward, with Practical Advice to those Intending to Emigrate by a Late Resident of that Colony. J. M. Richardson, London. 31 pp.

Letter Ill.

On the Parts of the United States to go to, Preceded by reasons for going to no other country, and especially not to an English Colony.

36. The English colonies in NORTH AMERICA consist of LOWER and UPPER CANADA, NEW BRUNSWICK, NOVA SCOTIA, NEWFOUNDLAND, and PRINCE EDWARD'S ISLAND. These form an immense extent of country; but with the exception of a small part of CANADA, and here and there a little strip of land in NEW Rocks and BRUNSWICK, which have been preoccupied, the whole is wretchedly poor: heaps of fir trees. rocks covered chiefly with fir trees. These countries are the offal of North America; they are the head, the shins, the shanks and hoofs of that part of the world; while the UNITED STATES are the sir—loins, the well-covered and well-lined ribs, and the suet.1

lpp. 39-41]

The fol/o wing description of Prince Edward Island by Cobbett is from an unidentified original source:

From Glasgow the sensible Scots are pouring out amain. Those that are poor, and Swamps. cannot pay their passage, or can rake together only a trifle, are going to a rascally

heap of sand, rock and swamp, called Prince Edward Island, in the horrible Gulf of St.

Lawrence that lump of worthlessness bears nothing but potatoes .

[Prince Edward Island Register, 27 July 1830, p. 3]

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