the americans should not have tried to take canada. canada was, as henry clay once said, a persimmon a trifle too high for the american pole, and it is the belief of the historian, whose tears have often wet the pages of this record, that in the future canada will be what america is now, a free country with a national debt of her own, a flag of her own, an executive of her own, and a regular annual crisis of her own, like other nations.