"The first time that I had occasion to express myself thus strongly on the subject, in an official way, was less than two years after my arrival in the District, while holding the office of sheriff,--when, in corresponding with Mr. Secretary Joseph, during the troubles in January, 1838, I, in a postscript to a letter in which I expressed unwillingness to call in aid from other quarters, while our own population were allowed to remain inactive, was led to add the following remarkable words: 'My vote has been equally decided against employing the colored people, except on a similar emergency;--in fact, though a cordial friend to the emancipation of the poor African, I regard the rapidly increasing population rising round us, as destined to be a bitter curse to the District; and do not think our employing them as our _defenders_ at all likely to retard the progress of such an event;'--an opinion which all my subsequent observation and experience, whether as a private individual, as Sheriff of the District, as a local Magistrate, as Chairman of the Quarter Sessions, or as an anxious friend to pure British immigration, have only the more strongly confirmed."
After these preliminary remarks, the Records of Major Lachlan, proceed to the details of the various points upon which he was required by Government to report. Much of this, though the whole is interesting, must be omitted in our extracts. In speaking of the several townships to which the colored immigration was directed, he says of Amherstburgh:
"That place may now be regarded as the Western rendezvous of the colored race,--being the point to which all the idle and worthless, as well as the well disposed, first direct their steps, before dispersing over other parts of the District,--a distinction of which it unfortunately bears too evident marks in the great number of petty crimes committed by or brought home to these people,--to the great trouble of the investigating local magistrates, and the still greater annoyance of the inhabitants generally,--arising from the constant nightly depredations committed on their orchards, barns, granaries, sheep-folds, fowl-yards, and even cellars." . . . . "In Gosfield, I am given to understand their general character is rather above par; . . . . while in the next adjoining township of Mersea, so much are they disliked by the inhabitants, that they are, in a manner, proscribed by general consent--a colored man being there scarcely suffered to travel along the highroads unmolested.