This year marks the 150th anniversary of Canada, so every Sunday we will look back at editorials from our predecessor newspaper, The Daily British 91原创 and Victoria Chronicle, in 1867.
British Columbia was not part of Confederation that year, but the 91原创 spoke of many other issues of high importance to local readers 鈥� in this case, the local
economy.
Era of prosperity awaits
Four years ago, how bright and cheerful the hopes and prospects of all! How contented each with his lot! How buoyant with hope each immigrant who with golden visions sought this Utopian land of promise!
And now what is their condition? Where the once thrifty homes radiant with the sunshine of gladness and contentment? Where our rapidly increasing population? Where our commerce, property interests, and other elements of wealth and prosperity?
Let the Bankruptcy Court, the Assessor and the Mail Steamer supply the answer. It is disheartening to a degree to witness the departure of the many familiar faces that have crowded the downward steamers for months past; to bid adieu to those whom we regarded as identified with the country, all leaving for other parts 鈥� mark! Not by choice, but by the stern decrees of necessity, unable longer to find a living here. And yet do we, who remain, feel more sorrowful than they who depart?
No! In ninety-nine cases out of every hundred people take their leave of us with heavy hearts, deploring that their destinies can no longer be cast with ours.
The elements of success in the country are unbounded. Withal the general collapse in other branches of wealth, the agricultural interest has made considerable headway, and it needs no powers of clairvoyancy to foresee that with the exercise of a sound and discriminate governmental policy, a policy that will honestly study the interests of the many and seek only the general good 鈥� that will boldly and fearlessly adapt itself to the exigencies of the country by disencumbering the people of outrageous and ruinous taxes, and initiating a system of economy in the public expenditure in keeping with the capacities and wishes of those who have to bear the burden, this Colony will ere long recover from its present languor, and a more enduring era of prosperity awaits those who survive the present crisis.
The Daily British 91原创 and Victoria Chronicle, Jan. 16, 1867
