It is also related that certain officers of the regiments were in the habit of putting each of their children, however young, upon the strength of the regiment, with the view of securing him land, and hence arose an expression the “Major won’t take his pap,” and “half pay officers never die,” as the officer placed on half pay when a year old, would long enjoy it. But it will be often found that this mode was adopted by those in authority, as the most convenient to confer favors upon the chief officers, although a very ridiculous one.
For many a year no strict rules for discrimination, were observed in the granting of lands in Canada, and the petitions which literally crowded upon the government, were, in the main, promptly complied with. The time came, however, when more care had to be observed, for not a few of those who had actually rebelled, or had sympathized with the rebels, finding less advantages from republicanism than had been promised, and with chagrin, learning that those, whose homesteads and lands they had assisted to confiscate, had wrought out new homes upon land, conferred by a government more liberal, and of a nobler mind than the _parvenu_ government, which had erected a new flag upon American soil, looked now with longing, covetous eyes toward the northern country, which those they had persecuted, had converted from a wilderness to comfortable homes. The trials of the first settlement had been overcome. The occasional visit of a Canadian pioneer to his old home in the States, where he told the pleasing tale of success, notwithstanding their cruelty, caused some to envy their hard earned comforts, and even led some who had been the worst of rebels, to set out for Canada with a view of asserting their loyalty and, thereby of procuring lands. Not a few of such unworthy ones succeeded for a time in procuring lands. It therefore became necessary, on the part of the government, to exact the most searching examination of parties petitioning for land. No reference is here made to those who came into the province in response to the invitation proclaimed by Governor Simcoe; but to those who entered under false colors, prior to the time of Upper Canada being set apart from Lower Canada.