Search just our sites by using our customised site search engine



Click here to get a Printer Friendly PageSmiley

Click here to learn more about MyHeritage and get free genealogy resources

The Scot in British North America
Chapter IV From 1815 to 1841 Part B


In December, 1827, Mr. Mackenzie appealed to the electors of York (County) as a candidate for election to the Assembly. Mr. James E. Small, who had been one of this counsel in the action against the rioters, was his opponent. He had not been a member of the family compact; but rested his claims notwithstanding upon his family influence, and remonstrated with Mr. Mackenzie upon the folly of contesting an election with him. However, the latter was returned. He was elected in 1828, but the House did not meet until January, 1829, when that legislative career began which culminated in the Rebellion. Mackenzie’s opponents knew well that he would prove a thorn in their sides, and soon discovered that they had made no mistake. He insisted upon asking questions, and sifting everything thoroughly. At the same time he was exceedingly useful in practical committee work. His report on the Post Office department, especially as regards the defective and costly mail service, paved the way for extensive postal reforms. [Mr. Lindsey (p. 157) gives some valuable information regarding the enormous postal charges of the time, and the wretched agencies employed in carrying the mails.] In other important departments he was not less useful; but the party in power, without denying the practical business talent and energy of the man, were shocked by the persistency with which he pried into abuses, and disturbed the ease and serenity of office-holders. The position of the Reform majority in the Assembly, moreover, was sufficiently galling. They could pass such measures as were agreeable to them; but there the power of the House was at an end. Finding their opponents in possession, the Government hastened to deprive them of the only machinery by which they could compel acquiescence in their policy. In constitutionally governed countries the great safeguard of popular freedom lies in the power of the purse; but, in Upper Canada, the Executive was entirely independent of the Assembly. So far from being in dread of so extreme a step as the stoppage of the supplies, it was announced by the Lieutenant-Governor that they need not trouble themselves upon the subject. The territorial and casual revenues, together with a permanent grant of £2,500, made some years previously, were in the hands of the Government, so that, whether "a supply were granted to His Majesty," or not, was a matter of indifference. The Legislative Council could be trusted to veto all Bills distasteful to the party in power, and the lower House was therefore entirely helpless. The only protection afforded by the Constitution to the popular branch against a combination between the Executive and the upper House, had been taken away; and, as "responsible government" was not yet established, votes of non-confidence were met with supreme contempt—ignored, in fact, altogether.

It was against this unconstitutional procedure that Mr. Mackenzie and his fellow Reformers struggled with desperate energy. During this Session the member for York presented his "budget of grievances," formulated in thirty-one resolutions. So far was he from receiving the support of a majority; so far, as Mr. Lindsey points out, were even Reformers from noting the signs of the times, that the resolutions were not even pressed to a division. [Life and Times, p. 157. Three of the Executive Council, out of six, were Scots, John Strachan, William Campbell, and James B. Macaulay. Ibid. p. 158, n.] During the only two sessions of this Parliament, Mr. Mackenzie displayed unusual ability in all questions touching finance, revenue, banking and currency, and interested himself in such practical matters as prison reform.

The death of George IV. rendered a general election necessary. The House, which had requested Sir John Colborne to dismiss his advisers, would probably have been dissolved at any rate. The Colonial Secretary had already urged upon the Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada "the necessity of cultivating a spirit of conciliation towards the House of Assembly," and the Executive of the Upper Province read the hand-writing upon the wall. All that was left them seemed to be to secure, by hook or crook, a House favourable to their continuance in power; and they succeeded. Mr. Mackenzie secured his seat for York, but Dr. Baldwin and other prominent Reformers were left out in the cold. The House met in January, 1831, and Mr. (afterwards Chief- Justice) Archibald McLean was elected Speaker by a vote of twenty-six to fourteen A sort of compromise was effected in the matter of supply. The sum of £6,500 sterling was granted in perpetuity to pay the salaries of the Lieutenant-Governor, the Judges, the law officers, and five Executive Councillors, whilst the rest, amounting to £11,000, was surrendered to the House to deal with as it pleased.

Mr. Mackenzie, nothing daunted by the odds against him, moved for a committee of inquiry into the state of the representation. He pointed out that the members for York and Lanark represented a larger population than fifteen other members, and that the House swarmed with office-holders. [McMullen says: "It (the state of the representation) could not well be worse. When he rose to address the House, a Collector of Customs sat at his elbow, the Speaker held the office of Clerk of the Peace at Cornwall, six postmasters occupied seats in the Assembly, which also embraced a sheriff, inspectors of tavern and distillery licenses, county registrars and a revenue commissioner." (p. 376.) "A majority of the whole House represented less than a third of the population." Lindsey, p. 191.] Singularly enough, the Assembly, whose composition he had so trenchantly attacked, not only granted the Committee by twenty-eight to eleven, but permitted him to nominate them. If this concession were made in the hope that Mr. Mackenzie wou1d rest satisfied, that hope was vain. Emboldened by this measure of success, he at once opened fire upon the majority. Salaries, fees, pensions, perquisites and everything that he could hinge a complaint upon, were paraded to be assailed in order.

The ruling party could endure it no longer, and the resolution was taken to get rid of him at all hazards. Mr. Mackenzie had printed, at his own expense, some extra copies of the Journals, and distributed them to outsiders. The appendix had not been sent out with these copies; had it been otherwise, Mr. McNab said he should not have been so ready to make it a question of privilege. As it was, a resolution was submitted, declaring that the printing and distribution of these copies of the Journals, was a breach of the privileges of the House. This, however, the majority was not prepared to assert; and the motion was lost by twenty to fifteen, and so the matter ended for the time. During the recess, Mr. Mackenzie aroused the people of Upper Canada, and secured twenty-five thousand signatures to a petition to the King in favour of "responsible government" and representative reform. This he afterwards carried to England. [Lindsey, i. 202-4.] On the 17th of November, 1831, the House re-assembled, and on the 6th of the following month, an article in the Advocate, which merely complained of the way Reform petitions were treated by the House, was voted a "gross, scandalous and malicious libel" on a division of twenty-seven to fifteen. Three days after he was expelled from the House. [The final vote stood – Yeas, 24; Nays, 15.]

The expulsion was a grievous error, even as a matter of policy; since, instead of extinguishing the man, it made a popular hero of him. He was at once returned again for York, amid the wildest popular enthusiasm, by a vote of one hundred and nineteen, against one for Mr. Street, who, an hour-and-a-half after the poll opened, abandoned the contest. Mr. Mackenzie was escorted back to York by a triumphal procession, and appeared to take his seat in January, 1832. The first attempt at re-expulsion failed, because the Attorney-General (Hagerman) saw clearly, probably with the case of John Wilkes in mind, that it would be dangerous to carry the motion without alleging some new ground for expulsion. An amendment was therefore carried by twenty-four to twenty to proceed to the orders of the day. But three days after, the Attorney-General made an article in the Advocate of the sixth a pretext for new action, and therefore moved his expulsion, which was carried by twenty-seven to nineteen. It may be added that the motion not merely unseated but disqualified Mr. Mackenzie which was a step utterly indefensible on constitutional grounds. At the next election, he had two opponents, Mr. Small, who professed to disapprove of the Assembly’s action, but urged that it would be useless to vote for a candidate who had been declared ineligible; and Mr. Washburn, who approved of the expulsion. The latter retired on the second day, having received only twenty votes; and at the close of the poll the vote stood Mackenzie 628, Small 96. The House had been prorogued however, before the election. At Hamilton, Mr. Mackenzie was the victim of a brutal assault, and a York mob broke up a Reform meeting, proceeded in a body to cheer the Governor, and on their return broke the windows of the Advocate office and threatened the life of its proprietor. On this occasion Mr. Mackenzie was compelled to seek safety in the country for several weeks.

In April, 1832, he went to England to present petitions at the foot of the Throne. While there he seems to have thoroughly gained the ear of Lord Grey and of the Whig Ministry and party generally. He procured the dismissal of both the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General, the Imperial veto on the Upper Canada Bank Bill, and also caused a dispatch from the Colonial Secretary which caused a flutter in the dove-cote of the family compact. Nor was that all. The Colonial Secretary had repeatedly expressed very decided objections to the course the Government had pursued towards Mr. Mackenzie. Mr. Joseph Hume was the first to bring the matter under Lord Goderich’s notice. Yet notwithstanding his remonstrances, Mr. Mackenzie had once more been expelled during his absence in England. Upon the dismissal, Mr. Jameson received the Attorney-Generalship; he was the husband of a noted writer of considerable literary merit, and was elevated to the Vice-Chancellorship in 1841. Dr. Rolph had been pressed for the other law office; but he was so obnoxious to the dominant party that no appointment was made. Messrs. Boulton and Hagerman went to England and obtained from the new Colonial Secretary, Mr. Stanley (the late Lord Derby), the one a Chief-Justiceship in Newfoundland, and the other restoration to his office of Solicitor-General.

Mr. Mackenzie’s absence might have operated against him; but his friends again brought forward his name. This time, in spite of the resolution disqualifying him, he was re-elected by acclamation. On his return the Clerk refused to administer the oath, but the matter was of course discussed in the House. There was something exceedingly illogical in the course of the majority. It was acknowledged that Mr. Mackenzie laboured under no legal disability, and yet they asserted the right to create one by simple resolution; they admitted also the right of the electors of the County of York to return him and yet claimed the privilege of excluding the member they had chosen. In this instance the old resolution affirming ineligibility was once more adopted by a vote of eighteen to fifteen; but the motion for a new writ was only passed by a majority of one. In December, 1833, Mr. Mackenzie was again elected without opposition. When he presented himself at the bar on this occasion he was accompanied by a large body of electors who insisted on seeing that their representative was put in possession of his rights. There was a fracas in consequence, arising from the circumstance that the Sergeant-at-Arms insisted upon it that Mackenzie was a stranger, and bound to retire when the order was given to clear the galleries. The officer tried to eject him by force; but a stout Highlander aimed a blow at the Sergeant. It was finally decided that Mackenzie was a stranger, since he had not taken the oaths, and the process of expulsion was again gone through with, the prominent movers on the side of the majority being Messrs. McNab, Morris and Donald Fraser, all Scots. The vote stood twenty-two to eighteen.

Mr. Mackenzie then addressed the Lieutenant-Governor and requested permission to take the oath before him, in accordance with a provision in the Constitutional Act. The Attorney-General, on being consulted, replied that the oath must be administered, and that no one commissioned for that purpose could refuse it, "since his office was ministerial and not judicial." [Lindsey, p. 297.] The oath was taken, but that had, of course, no effect upon the House. Mr. Mackenzie then walked into the Chamber and took his seat. The Assembly was in committee, Mr. Donald A. Macdonald occupying the chair. This time (the fifth) he was forcibly expelled; but a motion to issue a new writ was lost. As to the illegal and unconstitutional character of these proceedings there can be no doubt; and even the active movers afterwards acknowledged their mistake. ["The whole of the proceedings relating to these expulsions were expunged from the Journals of the Assembly, being declared to be subversive of the rights of the whole body of election of Upper Canada. This was done in the first session of the next Provincial Parliament on the 16th of July, 1835." Mr. McNab frankly confessed that he had been in error, and voted to expunge his own resolutions. Lindsey, p. 310.]

In March, 1834, the town of York was transformed into the city of Toronto, and Mr. Mackenzie elected first Mayor by the Council. He was also the first Mayor in Upper Canada. To him the city owes its arms, with the three I’s as its motto: "Industry, Intelligence, Integrity." In this position he displayed characteristic energy. The work of organization was not by any means light, and sagacity and skill were required in arranging the civic finances. During his term Mr. Mackenzie laboured hard for the good of the city and retired amidst the general applause of the people. As Mayor he presided at the police court, and whilst acting in this capacity kept the city stocks fairly employed in the ease of incorrigible offenders. Meanwhile the county of York had been divided into four ridings, and Mr. Mackenzie was returned for the second by a vote of nearly two to one. At the general election the Reform party once more secured a majority, and Mr. Bidwell again became Speaker. The Assembly, instead of re-echoing the Speech from the Throne gave his Excellency in its Address, a tolerably free expression of opinion on the acts of the Government. It was during this session that a select committee obtained by Mr. Mackenzie made the celebrated Seventh Report on Grievances. In this document everything relating to public affairs from the questions of "Responsible Government" and the Clergy Reserves, down to the smallest details touching fees and pensions, was enumerated. In fact it was the Reform manifesto on the eve of an armed insurrection.

In his instructions to the new Governor, Sir Francis Bond Head (December, 1835), Lord Glenelg in effect replied to the Grievance Report. Into the details it is not necessary to enter here; it may suffice to remark that the Colonial Secretary deprecated the threat to stop the supplies, and trusted that "it would not be made good unless in a case of extreme emergency." In the body of the document appear some grounds urged in extenuation of the Government, and a mild promise that some of the matters complained of would be remedied. The clamour for executive responsibility he avoided rather than met.

The appointment of so inexperienced a man as Sir Francis Head, was one of those freaks which seem almost inexplicable. Probably, as Mr. McMullen suggests, he was sent as a supposed Liberal, to reconcile the Upper Canadian malcontents. [History, p. 431.] He himself professed to take his cue from the Grievance Report; how far he did so will appear in the sequel. At all events he was totally unfit for the position, as he himself admitted afterwards. [He admitted that he "was really greatly ignorant of anything that in any way related to the government of our colonies." Lindsey, p. 355, n.] He had been a major in the army, and was, at the time of his appointment, Assistant Poor Law Commissioner for the County of Kent. Such was the ruler despatched to Toronto at a perilous crisis. Parliament met soon after the new Governor’s arrival, and the Address from the Assembly rather sharply criticized the Speech from the Throne. Still Sir Francis began well. His nomination of Messrs. Dunn, Baldwin and Rolph, the last two prominent Reformers, to the Executive Council, was hailed with a satisfaction too lively to be permanent. In less than a fortnight the whole Council resigned. Ministers complained that they were held responsible to the people for measures of which they disapproved; whilst the Governor contended that he alone was responsible. ["The Lieutenant-Governor maintains," said he, "that responsibility to the people, who are already represented in the House of Assembly, is unconstitutional; that it is the duty of the Council to serve him, not them." For this he was rebuked by the Colonial Secretary. Lindsey, p. 363.] A new Council of four was immediately constituted; but the House at once expressed "their entire want of confidence" in its members, and expressed regret at His Excellency’s course. The Governor was at once upon his high horse, and believing it his mission to battle with the "low-bred antagonist, democracy," resolved to withstand persistently "the fatal policy of concession." He appealed to the people by proclamation, replied to addresses, and virtually "stumped" the Province as the avowed antagonist of Mr. Mackenzie. There can be little doubt that the intelligent members of the party whose cause Sir Francis had called his own, disapproved of his headlong course; but they were bound to support him at all hazards. He denounced Mr. Baldwin, in a dispatch to Lord Glenelg, as an agent of the revolutionary party; affected to believe that an invasion was imminent; and altogether lost his head. Yet there was a method in his madness, and so ingeniously did he conduct the campaign that, at the general election, an Assembly was secured after his own heart. Mackenzie and other Reform leaders lost their seats. To him the blow was a severe one, and its immediate result was a dangerous illness.

In July, 1836, he issued the first number of a paper called The Constitution. The period of despair had set in, and the baffled editor at once struck a new vein. It was clear that with a Governor who could boldly issue an election manifesto, in which he advised the people not to quarrel with their "bread and butter," [Hence the new House of 1836 received the name of "The Bread and Butter Parliament."] and proclaimed that his character and the public interest were "embarked in one and the same boat;" and with a system of election obtaining, under which votes were manufactured unblushingly, and known Reformers disfranchised by partizan returning officers on the most frivolous pretences, there was little hope of success by constitutional means. Still, the Opposition made an appeal to the Colonial Office. Lord Glenelg suspected that the Governor had acted most imprudently, yet he could not understand how he had succeeded so well at the polls. So he resolved, for the present, to keep him at his post. The Assembly soon found that the Reform agitation was seriously affecting its popularity, and yet there was some danger that the period of its existence would be suddenly cut short by the death of King William IV. A Bill was passed, therefore, to prevent a dissolution in the event of a demise of the Crown. The session terminated on the 4th of March, 1837, without any premonition of approaching trouble being evidenced in the Governor’s Speech. Mr. Mackenzie certainly did not, at that time, contemplate extreme measures, for in the same month he went to New York, purchased several thousand volumes of books, and new "plant" for his printing office. [Lindsey, i. 401.]

It is clear that no insurrectionary movement would have been attempted in Upper Canada; had not Papineau, Nelson, and their coadjutors in the Lower Province taken the initiative. The leaders there boldly advocated colonial independance, made an appeal to arms, and solicited assistance from the United States. Mr. Mackenzie and his friends were soon drawn into the vortex. Their rage and chagrin at the unconstitutional conduct of Sir Francis Head, at the sinister means by which the late elections had been carried, and at the apparent hopelessness of attempting a reform by constitutional agencies drove them to desperation. The attempt at rebellion was as weak as it was wicked; yet at the time it probably appeared to be otherwise to Mr. Mackenzie. He contemplated a revolution with that sanguine impulsiveness which always characterized him. And, after all, the burden of responsibility for that futile outbreak must rest upon the shoulders of the Lieutenant-Governor. ["In short," says Mr. McMullen, "he (Sir Francis) sowed the wind, by exciting the passions of the masses, and reaped the whirlwind in the petty rebellion, of which he must forever stand convicted as the chief presenter. Had he taken time to acquire a just knowledge of the condition of the country – had he acted with calm and impartial wisdom, presuming that knowledge to have been acquired. Upper Canada would not have known the stigma of even partial rebellion." History, p. 439.] His extravagant language, his arbitrary acts, his undisguised interference with the freedom of election, his sublime self-confidence, taken together, stamp him as at once the rashest, most violent, and yet the feeblest and most incompetent representative the Crown ever had in British North America. To the last moment so little prescience did he possess, that he ridiculed the idea of an armed insurrection. In order to show at once his confidence and his ignorance, when tidings of impending troubles reached him, he despatched every regular soldier to the Lower Province. [Yet when he discovered that he had failed to discern the signs of the times, and that rebellion, had actually commenced, he placed his family and all his effects on board a steamer, which was moored out in the harbour, at a safe distance from shore.] He had evidently not given sufficient weight to the contagiousness of example; so the insurrection awoke him from his optimist dream abruptly to find him with his lamp gone out, and without oil with which to kindle it anew. At this time he was at daggers drawn with the Colonial Office, whose mandates and remonstrances he treated with a contempt by no means silent.

In August, 1837, a manifesto appeared in the Constitution, amounting, as Mr. Lindsey observes, to a declaration of independence. [The document may be seen entire in Life and Times, vol. ii., Appendix D., p. 334.] It is a curious fact that Dr. Morrison and Dr. Rolph, both members of the House, demurred to attaching their names to this document on account of their public position. To this Mr. James Lesslie, afterwards proprietor of the Examiner, a Scot, demurred, and ultimately Dr. Morrison’s name appeared as chairman of the committee. Then commenced a popular agitation of rather a boisterous and inflammatory character. Often the meetings were disturbed by the opposite party, and scenes of riot and confusion resulted. Meanwhile Mr. Mackenzie added fuel to the flame by incendiary articles, and attempted a coup by instigating the farmers to make a run on the Bank of Upper Canada, the main-stay of the Government. [This was adroited titled over by paying all comers in silver which was counted out; while the friends of the bank mingled with the crowd and also demanded specie, which was sent back in wheelbarrows at night.] The attempt, however, failed, although two other banks found it necessary to close their doors and Sir Francis Head was compelled to call the Legislature to pass a measure of relief. Of course so soon as the rebellion broke out, specie payments were suspended altogether.

All this time a secret movement in the direction of armed resistance was in progress. Early in November, fifteen hundred had subscribed their names as volunteers, and there were weekly drills. After considerable vacillation, on the 18th November, a plan of attack was decided upon. After the withdrawal of the troops, no less than four thousand stand of arms were left unprotected. The Governor, who might have known everything, was living in a fool’s paradise. It was therefore proposed to take Toronto by surprise, seize Sir Francis Head, and take possession of the arms. The rendezvous was fixed at Montgomery’s tavern on Yonge Street, about four miles north of the city, at a little hamlet now known as Eglinton. It was expected that at least four thousand men would be present at the appointed time, and, with prompt action, the capture of the city might easily have been accomplished in an hour. But the plans of the rebels were disarranged by a divided headship. The attack had been appointed for the 7th, but Dr. Rolph appears to have changed the date to the 4th. The consequence was that there was nothing for it but to make the best of a bad job. In addition to this, the plans of the conspirators had leaked out, so that a surprise was no longer possible.

Van Egmond, a retired soldier from the army of Napoleon I., had been appointed "generalissimo of the insurgent forces," and, under his direction, the movement began. Mackenzie, with five followers, were out to reconnoitre when they met Alderman Powell and Archibald Macdonnell, who were acting as a mounted patrol. The rebel leader informed them of the insurrection, and also of the fact that they must consider themselves prisoners. Leaving them in the hands of two of his party to be conducted to the hotel, Mackenzie proceeded. Powell at once shot his captor dead and escaped to the city, in order to arouse the Governor and the citizens. When the leader returned to the hotel he found that Colonel Moodie, [Colonel Moodie was a native of Fifeshire, and had seen service throughout the Peninsular War. According to Mr. Lindsey, the man who shot him was an Irishman named Ryan, who, after enduring terrible suffering from cold and hunger on the shores of Lake Huron, managed to escape to the United States.] who was hastening to reach the city to place his services at the disposal of the Government, had persisted in forcing his way through the rebels, and had been shot down. Further delays occurred, and finally, for the purpose of giving the volunteers, who were expected, time to arrive, a flag of truce was sent out to the rebels, nominally to ascertain what they wanted. The time was auspicious, for the death of Anderson, Powell’s victim, had cast a damper upon the rebels, and they were entirely dispirited. The Governor sent with the flag of truce Dr. Rolph and Mr. Robert Baldwin, two men who, he naturally thought, would exert considerable influence over the insurgents. In reply to the main query propounded, Mackenzie replied that they wanted independence. [It is not necessary to enter into the much disputed question whether Dr. Rolph, on this or a subsequent occasion, advised the rebel leader to come at once into the city. All the parties concerned are long since dead, and therefore no useful purpose can be served by reopening the controversy.] A second flag of truce met the insurrectionary party on their way to the city, and delivered their message, which was simply a refusal of the rebel demands. Further advance was delayed until six o’clock, when the forward movement was resumed. About half a mile from the city they received the fire of a picket of loyalists lying in ambush behind a fence. The assailants did not wait even to see the effect of their fire, and a panic seized the rebels. The majority of them, in spite of the vigorous efforts of Mackenzie and Lount, returned to their homes. Two hundred more arrived during the night; but the force now numbered only four hundred and fifty, and the golden opportunity had been lost. Dr. Rolph at once fled to the States to avoid arrest, as the loyal volunteers were pouring into the city.

Early on Thursday, when an attack was expected from the Government force, Van Egmond arrived, and, after detaching a small force to seize the Montreal mail and burn the Don Bridge, settled upon a plan. In the hope that, at night, large reinforcements would come in, it was resolved to stand upon the defensive for the present. The parties met near Montgomery’s. The main body of the loyalists was commanded by Sir Allan McNab; Colonel Jarvis had the right and Colonel Chisholm and Judge McLean the left. The conflict was sharp and decisive; and the rebels, although they fought gallantly, were put to flight, after losing thirty-six killed and fourteen wounded. The other side had only three wounded. So ended the Battle of Gallow’s Hill. Mackenzie fled, and a reward of £1,000 was at once offered for his capture. The account of his escape to the United States is romantic enough. [See Lindsey, vol. ii. pp. 102-122, where the narrative is given from Mr. Mackenzie’s own pen.] The fidelity with which even political opponents who had given their hospitality to a hunted fugitive, and the ingenuity exhibited in baffling the search, as he passed through a country swarming with armed men in quest of him and of the reward, make up an interesting episode. [In what is now the County of Wentworth, the High Sheriff Macdonell, with a posse, searched the home from top to bottom, as well as the out-buildings, "and I the while," writes Mackenzie, "quietly looking on. When I lived in William Street, some years ago, he called on me, and we had a hearty laugh over his ineffectual exertions to catch a rebel in 1837."] After wandering for several weeks, with some hair-breadth escapes almost miraculous, as he himself remarks, he found himself at Buffalo. Here Mackenzie entered upon a movement which was in no sense justifiable. In Canada, believing that constitutional agitation was of no avail, he had engaged in an abortive insurrection, for which, perhaps, some defence might be offered. But when he initiated, in the United States, a plan of invasion, there is no apology to urge, save the natural exasperation and pertinacity of the man. Dr. Rolph, Mackenzie, and others formed themselves into an executive committee, held public meetings, and freely offered land and other loot to any one who would join them in the attack upon the Province. Van Rensselaer, a son of an General, was made commander-in-chief, "a worthless scamp," as McMullen terms him.

The residuum of Buffalo freely enlisted in the service of the patriots, and Navy Island, in the Niagara river, about two miles above the Falls, was at once seized by the party. A Provisional Government of Upper Canada, easily improvised, followed the example of most bodies of the sort in the issue of paper promises to pay. [An engraving of one of these notes is given in Lindsey, vol. ii. p. 48.] Having established themselves there, it was soon found that little or no support was forthcoming from the Province. The exiles were the only Canadians who cared to embark in the enterprise which was to free their country. The rebels had some twenty-four pieces of artillery, of what calibre does not appear, and Van Rensselaer kept them pounding away upon the farm houses with little or no effect. About six hundred men were upon the island; but no attempt was made to cross to the mainland. Cols. Cameron and McNab arrived on the scene, and commenced a desultory fire, but only one man on the island was killed.

Then followed the episode of the Caroline, a steamer employed by the rebels to convey men and stores to the island. On the 28th of December, 1837, she was moored to the wharf at Fort Schlosser, when Col. (Sir A.) McNab and Lieut. Drew, R. N., with a party which had gone over in boats, seized and fired the vessel, and sent her adrift down the rapids. [Many fancy pictures have been drawn of the Caroline passing all aflame over the Falls; but it would appear that she went to pieces, and was lost to sight long before the abyss was reached. The smoke-pipe, it is said, was distinctly visible at the bottom a few years ago.] The destruction of the vessel in American waters, naturally caused excitement in the United States, and some angry diplomatic words passed in consequence. That it was a breach of neutrality there can be no doubt; and, in 1842, Lord Ashburton expressed the regret of Her Majesty’s Government at its commission. Early in January, 1838, finding the island untenable, in the face of the constant artillery fire poured upon it from the Chippewa shore, the rebels withdrew to the mainland. Other attempts were made from the States, one by a Scot, named Sutherland, on Amherstburg, [Amongst those who were lost to the public service by the assaults of these foreign marauders, there was no more promising officer than Col. John Maitland, C.B., a son of the Earl of Lauderdale. Had he lived he would unquestionably have risen to eminence. During the rebellion he commanded the 32nd regiment, and utterly defeated the brigands at Point Pelee Island, in March, 1838. During the march, and from exposure on the island, however, he caught a cold which carried him prematurely to his grave. He had previously served in Spain and Portugal, and was deeply beloved by his men.] and others from lake ports, all of which failed, and the rebellion was at an end.

Meanwhile Sir George Arthur was appointed to succeed Sir Francis Head, and the trials of the many prisoners arrested were proceeded with. [A list of these men, with the result in each case, will be found in Lindsey, vol. ii., p. 373, Appendix I. The proportion of Scotsmen is smaller than might have been anticipated.] It is not necessary to go into details here. Lount and Matthews were executed, and a large number of their adherents punished by imprisonment and transportation. Mackenzie’s troubles were not yet over, indeed they were only beginning. When Van Buren became President, he was arrested at Rochester for a breach of the neutrality laws, and sentenced to thirteen months’ imprisonment in the County jail. His property in Upper Canada had, of course, been confiscated, and now he himself, a ruined man, was kept in close confinement in a foreign land, penniless and an exile. During the term of his incarceration, his mother, who had attained the age of ninety years, breathed her last, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in securing, "by stratagem," an opportunity of seeing her before she died. In October, 1839, he was shot at through the bars of the cell, by some one whose identity was never established. [All that was known seems to be that "a tall, stout man, with a dog, dressed like a sportsman, had been seen beyond the mill race." – Lindsey, vol. ii., p. 287.] On the 10th of May, 1840, he was released from prison, and once more came face to face with the world. It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the life of Mr. Mackenzie while in exile. His sufferings were certainly trying, and, for some time, he could hardly find bread for his wife and children. Early in 1849, an Act of general amnesty was passed, and the ex-rebel could once more return to Canada. [It was at this time that he wrote to Earl Grey, entirely abjuring republicanism, and frankly confessing that had he succeeded in 1837, "that success would have deeply injured the people of Canada." Lindsey, ii., 291.] Six years before, a comprehensive amnesty had been proclaimed; but although Papineau and Rolph were included, Mackenzie was still left an outlaw. In March he visited Montreal, where an untoward encounter took place between him and Col. Prince, in the Parliamentary library. The bluff old Colonel was somewhat irascible, and afterwards regretted that he had acted on the impulse of the moment. [The late Mr. Sandfield Macdonald subsequently took him up to the Library, for which act of courtesy he was called to account by his Glengarry constituents. His reply, which fully satisfied the objectors, took the form of a question, "Do you think I would see an Englishman kick a Scotchman, and not interfere?"] Mackenzie then repaired to Toronto, where a mob burned him and Messrs. Baldwin and Lafontaine in effigy, and broke the windows of a relative with whom he was staying. In May, 1850, he finally settled with his family, and took up his permanent residence at Toronto. In April, 1851, he was elected for Haldimand, defeating the late Senator Brown, who was the Government candidate, and Mr. McKinnon, a Conservative. He sat in the House for seven years, resigning in 1858. In that year he supported the Hon. G. W. Allan as a candidate for the Legislative Council, notwithstanding his Conservative views. During the later years of his life he published, somewhat fitfully, a weekly newspaper, called Mackenzie’s Message. To the last he was a busy, earnest worker, as he had always been. His political admirers presented the family with a homestead; but Mackenzie died, as he had lived, a poor man. Throughout his second political career, he was an ultra-Reformer, one might almost say an irreconcilab1e. Although he had seen enough of republicanism to dislike it, he remained a Radical to the last. Had he been so disposed, he might have taken office in the short-lived Brown-Dorion administration; but he loved the freedom of his independent position, and would have proved restive in official harness. Whatever his faults of judgment and temper may have been, he was beyond question an honest, warm-hearted and generous man. That he should be a free lance in politics was to be expected from his antecedents and his temperament; but there was always a bonhomie about him, which made even those he opposed most strenuously his warmest personal friends. [The writer remembers hearing him, in the course of an obstructive debate, when he indulged in badinage at the expense of Sir George Cartier. Mackenzie reminded the Attorney-General East that they had both been rebels in 1837, but that the Government had shown its estimate of their comparative worth by setting a price upon his head of 1,000 pounds, whilst Mr. Cartier’s was only valued at 300 pounds. In reading the proclamation he amused the house by beginning "Victoria Rex."] The later years of his life fall without the period under consideration. During these years he suffered severely from pecuniary difficulties, and his buoyant spirits and the almost youthful sprightliness and activity of his nature gave way. When taken ill, he refused food and stimulants, and paid no attention to medical advice, and on the 28th of August, 1861, his troublous life came to a close. In looking back upon a career so unfruitful on the surface, and so unprofitable to him, the natural verdict will be that it was a failure. Still when it is considered that he was the pioneer of reform, the first who formulated distinctly the principle of responsible government, among the first to advocate a confederation of the Provinces, and, above all others, the man who infused political vitality into the electorate, we cannot say that he lived in vain. Like other harbingers of a freer time, he suffered that the community might enjoy the fruits of his labour, the recompense for his misfortunes. When responsible government was at length established, he was chafing as an exile in a foreign land. When he again re-entered politics, the battle had been won, and others had reaped the reward. With all his faults, and he had many, no man has figured upon the political stage in Canada whose memory should be held in warmer esteem than William Lyon Mackenzie.

To resume the thread of the narrative in chronological order. It has been stated that the Navy island fiasco was not the last attempt at insurrection; but the isolated efforts which followed usually took the form of invasion. The Hunters’ Lodges along the American frontier busied themselves with expeditions which were simply piratical. Into the details of these futile raids it is unnecessary to enter; it will suffice to mention simply the assaults upon Prescott and Sandwich from Ogdensburg and Detroit respectively. [The former affair was known as the battle of the Windmill, from the fact that the invaders had taken possession of a mill; and the latter was chiefly remarkable for the summary justice executed upon the raiders by Col. Prince. "I ordered them to be shot," he wrote, "and they were shot accordingly."] Meanwhile, Sir Francis Head had been recalled, and Sir George Arthur reigned in his stead. He was in every sense a better ruler than his predecessor, but only held office for a brief time, and gave place to Mr. C. Poulett Thompson (Lord Sydenham) at the Union. The appointment of Lord Durham as High Commissioner marks a turning-point in the constitutional struggle. After a tour through the Provinces, the noble Earl drafted his famous Report, bearing date January 31st, 1839, returned home without leave, disappointed at the want of support he had received from the Colonial office, and, died in 1840. [The edition of the Report before us, containing 142 closely printed pages, was printed at Toronto, by Robert Stanton, in 1839. The Upper Canadian portion will be found in pp. 64-82.] The concluding pages of his Report contain the recommendations made by the Earl for the future government of the Canadas. The High Commissioner preferred a Legislative Union of all the B. N. A. Provinces; but as a preliminary step suggested the union of Upper and Lower Canada. Although, however, the Earl’s scheme seemed promising, the reasons by which he enforced its propriety were not cogent or far-seeing. His notion apparently was that the French element would be swamped by the measure, and "that the surplus revenue of Lower Canada would supply the deficiency, on that part, of the Upper Province." [Page 132.] On the other hand, Lord Durham exhibited a catholic liberality of view in treating of constitutional questions generally, which must have alarmed both the rulers here and the Conservative Whigs at Home. He proposed a radical change in the constitution of the Upper House; that all the revenues, except those derived from the Crown lands, "should at once be given up to the united Legislature;" that the independence of the judges should be secured; that the Clergy Reserves should be disposed of; and finally, that "the responsibility to the Legislature of all officers, except the Governor and his secretary, should be secured by every means known to the British Constitution." The Governor should be instructed "that he must carry on the government by heads of departments in whom the united Legislature shall repose confidence; and that he must look for no support in any contest with the Legislature, except on points involving strictly Imperial interests." [Report, pp. 138-9.] Now, had these concessions been only made three years before, there would have been no rebellion; and it may safely be affirmed likewise that, but for the Rebellion, responsible government would not even now have been granted. At the same time that, of itself, is no justification for the abortive uprising in 1837; since it had never had a prospect of success, and came at last to be merely an outlet for the unruly passions of marauders from the other side. All one can safely affirm is that good was evolved from evil.

The Home Government did not accept Lord Durham’s scheme in its entirety. Even pronounced Liberals, like Lord John Russell, rejected the notion of responsible government, as untenable and chimerical. Still, though in a hazy form, the system was acknowledged, yet not with the peremptoriness desired by the High Commissioner. The Provinces severed in 1791 were re-united by the Act of 1840, and Lord Sydenham became the first Governor-General. It is not difficult to lay one’s finger now upon the weak spots in the Act of Union. The great object which Lord Durham and the Home Government proposed to themselves was the swamping of the French population, by giving both Provinces an equality in the representation, notwithstanding the obvious injustice to Lower Canada involved in that arrangement. The French protested against the measure in vain; but there was a nemesis at the heels of the promoters of it; which, while it did not overtake them, fell upon the state in after years. The sins of the fathers were visited upon the children, as will be seen hereafter.

It now becomes necessary to turn to the affairs of Lower Canada from the conclusion of the war until the Union of 1841. No sooner had the international conflict come to an end, than discontent once more manifested itself in the Province. The great bone of contention here was the supplies. It mattered very little whether the Legislature voted them or not. The Government collected the money, and used it freely with the consent of the House, if possible; if not, without it. The French population cared very little at that time for abstract theories of government; but they saw clearly the importance of securing the power of the purse. Sir Gordon Drummond had, for a short time, held the post of Administrator of the Government; but in 1816 he was superseded by a regular Lieutenant-Governor in the person of Sir John Cope Sherbrooke. [It has not been thought necessary to refer to the agitation caused by Judge Sewell; because, although it involved the Assembly’s right of impeachment, the discussion is only an epistle in the general course of affairs.] This officer appears to have been sincerely desirous of conciliating the French population, and succeeded fairly well in his object. At that time the Provincial revenues were in a most unsatisfactory state. There were three sources of income, the Crown duties, levied under Imperial statute, the "casual and territorial revenues" arising from the landed property of the Crown, and the provincial duties, paid under local laws, either within legislative control or made permanent by Imperial statute. Evidently under such a system, the control of the people’s representatives over the revenue was practically no control at all. It was, therefore, about this point that the battle raged as will appear in the sequel.

Meanwhile we may call attention to two distinguished men who occupied conspicuous positions in public estimation at this time. Mr. James (afterwards Sir J.) Stuart was the son of the Rev. Dr. Stuart, who has been called the founder of the English Church in Upper Canada. The future rector’s father was a strict Presbyterian, and had settled in Pennsylvania. After some scruples Mr. Andrew Stuart consented to his son’s ardent desire to enter the Episcopal ministry, and he was ordained in 1770. James Stuart was born in the Province of New York in 1780. After studying at Windsor College, N. S., he entered the law office of Mr. Reid, and studied law for four years. He subsequently completed his term with Jonathan Sewell, afterwards Chief Justice, and was called to the bar in 1801. In 1805 he became Solicitor General of the Province, and, in 1808 was returned for two constituencies, but elected to sit for the county of Montreal. Mr. Stuart was a champion of the English party. He used all his eloquence against Chief Justice Sewell, and yet at the last was abandoned by his party. ["Never was a cause more powerfully advocated nor a more brilliant display of oratory and talents exhibited, than by Mr. Stuart on this occasion, who must have felt that he was contending against the current, and that there was pre-concerted and foregone conclusion on the subject which it was in vain to struggle against." Christie, Vol. ii., p. 289.] Finding himself, on a division of twenty-two to ten, in the minority, he retired for five years from political life. In 1822, he was sent to England to urge the re-union of the Provinces, and while there was offered the post of Attorney-General which he accepted. In 1827 he became an Executive Councillor, but was suspended in 1831 by Lord Aylmer for the part he had taken in the political conflicts of the time. He subsequently received from Mr. Stanley (the late Earl of Derby) an acknowledgment of the injustice done him, accompanied by an offer of the Chief-Justiceship of Newfoundland. This he declined, and resumed his practice. In 1838, the Earl of Durham made him Chief-Justice of Lower Canada in the place of Sewell, retired. ["Public opinion," asserts his Lordship, "with no universal a consent, points to him as the ablest lawyer in the Province, that there cannot be a doubt that it would be injustice and folly to place any other person in the highest judicial office in the Province." Morgan, p. 325. Bibliotheca Canadensis, p. 363.] His services to the Government, however, were not yet concluded. Under Sir John Colborne, he was chairman of the Special Council of Lower Canada, and rendered essential service to the Governor by drafting the Union Act between the Provinces. In 1840, he was created a baronet, choosing as his motto what has been called an epitome of his character— "Justitiae et propositi tenax." Sir James died in 1853, universally respected. He was a man of singular ability, rare eloquence, and extended usefulness, and, after all his political reverses, was spared to see the scheme he had devised carried, under his own guidance, into practical effect.

His brother Andrew, who was also one of the minority of ten in 1817, may be briefly noticed in connection with him. He was one of the pupils of Dr. Strachan at Cornwall, and subsequently, like Sir James, was admitted to the bar. In 1810, he was engaged for the defence in the political prosecution of Judge Bedard, and on this occasion approved himself almost the equal of his brother in eloquence. In 1815 he entered the Assembly, and sat there until the constitution was suspended in 1838. During that year he became Solicitor General. In that year also, as Chairman of the Constitutional Association he went to England to press the question of union. Throughout he was a staunch Liberal, yet well esteemed by all parties, and made his mark also as a journalist and litterateur.

The other distinguished man of Lower Canada referred to above, is the Hon. John Neilson, a Scot by birth. Born at Dornald, in Kircudbright in 1776, and educated at the parish school, he was sent out to Canada at the age of fourteen to seek his fortune. His elder brother Samuel, had at that time become proprietor of the Quebec Gazette, on the death of his uncle, Mr. Brown. Samuel died in 1793, but so soon as John Neilson came of age, he undertook the editorship, and gave a stimulus to Canadian journalism, by his energy, it had never known before. He at once enlarged the journal and published it twice a week. His editorials were moderate in tone, yet their power was at once felt throughout the Province. It was not till 1818, that he found his way into the Assembly, as member of Quebec. In all discussions concerning the control of the revenue, he took an active part upon the Liberal side. Mr Neilson was not a violent partisan; but still the firmness and vigour with which he sustained any cause he fe1t impelled to espouse, made him formidable. As the Quebec Gazette was the vehicle of governmental notices, the proprietor, in order to be unshackled as a member of the Assembly, made over the journal to his son, who became King’s Printer. In the following year, however, owing probably to the father’s political course, the license was revoked, and the Gazette entered upon an independent career. In 1822, a measure had been introduced into the Imperial Commons, to arrange disputed matters of finance between the Provinces. Lower Canada took alarm, and Messrs. Neilson and Papineau were sent to England where they succeeded in inducing the Government to abandon the measure.

In 1828, in company with Messrs. Viger and Cuvillier, he once more went to England on a mission of a different sort. By this time the antagonism between the Provincial Government and the Assembly had become so marked as to call for some speedy remedy. The three delegates were therefore despatched to London, bearing a petition of grievance signed by 80,000 inhabitants. A committee of enquiry was appointed by the Commons, before which the delegates stated the case of those for whom they appeared. Mr. Neilson always repudiated any desire for fundamental changes in the constitution, and in this respect differed widely from the French Canadian Radical school then springing up. He was quite satisfied that the Home Government, if properly approached, would do justice to the colonists. The committee’s report recommended greater liberality in the Provincial Government, and the delegates returned contented with the results of their work. In 1830, Mr. Neilson received the thanks of the Assembly, and was, in addition, the recipient of a silver vase, valued at one hundred and fifty guineas from his Quebec fellow-citizens, for his able exertions for the Province, during the two missions to England.

It was not long before symptoms of disagreement between Mr. Neilson and his French Canadian allies became apparent. There was already a wide divergence of opinion regarding several public questions of importance, and, in 1834, he was deprived, of the representation of Quebec county after sitting for it during a period of fifteen years. In the same year Mr. Neilson strongly opposed the celebrated ninety-two resolutions, because he had always set his face against organic changes in the constitution. He became a member of the Constitutional Association, and once more proceeded to England as a delegate to resist the proposed innovations. Nothing practical, however, came of this mission. During 1837 and 1838, Mr. Neilson remained staunch in his loyalty, and although feeling the warmest sympathy with his French fellow-citizens, he never, for a moment, sanctioned the armed insurrection. He opposed the Union Act because he thought it unjust to the bulk of the French Canadian population.

In 1841 he was once more returned for his old constituency, still clinging to the ancient landmarks, and opposing "responsible government" as a revolutionary change on the old system of colonial government. He was invited, in 1843, to accept the post of Speaker of the Legislative Council; but he had resolved early in his career, not to take any office of emolument under government, and firmly declined. In 1844, however, he became a member of that body. A chill, caught at the Quebec reception of Lord Elgin in 1847, brought on the illness from which he died. Up to the last, however, he was active in the discharge of his editorial duties—his son had died before him. In the Gazette of the 31st of January, 1848, appeared two articles from his pen of more than usual earnestness and power. They formed his valedictory, for on the morrow he died in his seventy-second year. In whatever respect the character of John Neilson may be viewed, there appears to be substantial cause for eulogy, and but little reason for blame. His spotless, and unwavering integrity, more than any other quality of head or heart, won for him the sincere respect of all his contemporaries. He was not only a good man, but also a patriot, willing to spend and he spent in the cause of Canada, active, eloquent, able and persistent in all that he set his hand to do. Although he declined to be moved by a hair’s-breadth from his convictions, at the bidding of the French Canadian leaders, he loved the race, whose history, customs and institutions fascinated him. In the family, as in public life, he was the same unswerving devotee to duty; only there his affections had full scope, and he loved as he was be1oved. It seems a fair subject for regret that a man who possessed so great power, capacity and vigour should, after all, leave so little behind him. His best thoughts lie entombed in thirty neglected volumes of the Quebec Gazette. But his name is not forgotten in the Province of Quebec; and to this day the type of an ideally honest, active and independent public man would be recognised there in a moment as the portraiture of John Neilson.

It may be as well here to sketch briefly the career of several Scots who filled the office of Crown representatives during the period under consideration. George Ramsay, Earl of Dalhousie, a Scottish peer, was born in 1770. He embraced the profession of arms, entering the 3rd Dragoon Guards as a cornet. Having raised a company, he was made captain, and subsequently held a corresponding position in the Royals. At Martinique he was severely wounded. From that time his life was passed for many years in active service—in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, in the expedition to the Helder, at Belleisle, at Minorca, and in Egypt under his fellow-countryman, Sir Ralph Abercrombie. In 1805 he attained the rank of Major-General. After a respite from active duty, during which he married and devoted himself to the care of his estates, Lord Dalhousie once more went abroad. He was at the Scheldt, at Flushing, and in the Peninsula under Wellington, who specially mentioned his services at the battles of Vittoria and the Pyrenees; for his valour, especially in the crowning exploit at Waterloo, he received the thanks of Parliament.

In July, 1815, he was created a peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Ramsay, the title under which his successor votes in the Lords at this day. In 1816, he was sent out as General-commanding in Nova Scotia, and upon the sudden death of the Duke of Richmond, from hydrophobia, became Governor-General of British North America. This office he filled, with an interval of fifteen months, during the years 1820 to 1828. [Garneau, as usual, charged the Governor-General with trying to sow seeds of civil war and ecclesiastical dissension amongst the Lower Canadians, (See Book xv., chap. ii.) but all his statements where his compatriots are concerned, must be taken cum grano salis.] During his administration the dead-lock between the two Houses continued, and the Assembly proved more and more unmanageable. The attempt at a Union of the Provinces exasperated the French population, and interminable disputes between the Executive and the Assembly about the civil list and the Crown lands, kept the Province in a fever of agitation. It was in vain that Papineau was called to a seat in the Council; the battle went on as before. Naturally enough the Governor depended for support upon the British population; but the recognition of popular rights was not exactly what they wanted. It would be uninteresting to enter into details here, because apart from the vexed questions having been fully discussed in published histories, [See Garneau, Christie and McMullen in their accounts of this troubled period.] they are not pertinent to the object of this work. Earl Dalhousie was a Conservative, though not inaccessible to arguments for change and progress; but he found himself in a strange atmosphere at Quebec, and if he did not succeed in conciliating opposition, he at all events endeavoured to do so. It is altogether improbable that anything that he could have done, or advised, would have satisfied the dominant party in Lower Canada; and that he should have failed was his misfortune rather than his fault. After leaving Canada in September, 1828, he became commander-in-Chief of the forces in India, but returned after a short time in broken health. He died in the sixty eighth year of his age at his seat, Dalhousie Castle, on the 21st of March, 1838, "after a noble, an honourable and useful career." [Morgan, p. 250. It is worthy of note that it was under Lord Dalhousie’s auspices that the first memorial to Wolfe and Champlain was erected on the plains of Abraham. He was no enemy to the French race, although he did not like French Canadian claims to a domineering supremacy.]

Sir James Kempt, who succeeded Lord Dalhousie was born at Edinburgh in 1765. He also became a soldier and saw service during the long war. He was engaged at the Helder in Egypt under Abercrombie, at Naples, and in Calabria. In 1811, he became a Major-General in Spain and Portugal; took a prominent part at the siege of Badajos, where he was severely wounded, commanded a brigade at Vittoria, and at the attack on Vera, at Nivelle, Orthes, and Toulouse. His military career, after a campaign in Flanders, culminated at Waterloo, where he was again wounded severely. In 1820, he succeeded Lord Dalhousie in Nova Scotia, and in 1828 in the government of Canada, where he remained only two years. The Imperial Government had resolved upon policy of conciliation, and Sir James Kempt was deputed to carry it out. [McMullen, p. 336. Garneau on the other hand says, "Sir James Kempt had received very exact directions how to act. He was to play a one-sided part under the guise of the most perfect impartiality. . .He performed the task with great address, and disappeared from the scene in the nick of time when vague professions would no longer serve his masters."] Christie gives a very fair account of the real difficulties in the new Governor’s way. He was known to be the friend of Mr. Huskisson, one of the most liberal minded of English politicians; but Kempt "from his previous acquaintance with Lower Canada, the impracticable pretensions set up by the dominant party, must have felt, before entering upon his work, the utter hopelessness of the enterprise." [History of Lower Canada, iii., p. 216.] What could be done to conciliate the agitators he did, apparently going so far as to avoid studiously the leaders of the British minority; but all to no purpose. He even endeavoured to silence the press which had supported Lord Dalhousie’s Administration. [Garneau, Book xvii., chap. I; Christie, vol. iii., p. 217.] Nor was this all. A vicious practice had early established itself, under which members of the Legislature were entrusted, not merely with local patronage; but with sums from the treasury, to be used for the benefit of their constituencies. In plain English, the means were afforded to partizans of "nursing" their constituencies, and securing re-election by infusing into the electorate a lively sense of gratitude for favours received. Sir James Kempt resolved to call these public benefactors to account. Meanwhile the Assembly carried matters with a high hand. In 1829, complaints flowed in against the judges; to the Supply Bill was tacked on an assertion of the right of the House to deal with all the Crown revenues; and Robert Christie, the historian of the Province, was expelled from the Assembly for procuring the dismissal of certain magistrates who belonged to the "patriot" party. [McMullen, p. 385.] Mr. Christie, like Mackenzie, was re-expelled a number of times when reelected, although even a decent regard for constitutional law was not preserved in Lower Canada. [Robert Christie, though a native of Nova Scotia, was of Scottish parentage. Born at Windsor in 1788, and was educated there; originally intended for mercantile life, he studied for the Bar, and subsequently entered the Assembly as member for Gaspe. He was an ardent Conservative, and during the prolonged contest in the Legislature, was strenuously opposed to the "patriots." After his expulsion in 1829, he did not again sit until the Union in 1841. From that period until 1854, when he was defeated in his old constituency, he continued to represent it – a well-known figure in the House. He was a voluminous writer, his earlier work being a history of Sir James Craig’s Administration, published in 1818, and his latest "A History of the late Province of Lower Canada," the sixth and concluding volume of which appeared in 1855. He died at Quebec in the autumn of 1856, aged sixty-eight years. Morgan: Bibliotheca Canadensis, p. 75.] There were other vexed questions of the time which need not engage our attention. The salient event of 1829 was the adoption of a memorial to the Home Government, embodying certain resolutions of the Assembly in favour of reform. So far as Sir James Kempt was concerned, there can be no question that he not only adopted the policy of conciliation from choice, but persevered in it from the sincerest motives. He felt, however, that he could effect little with an Assembly resolute in its determination not to be satisfied. He had estranged the British population without being able to attach the majority to himself. All his efforts for pacification were met by renewed onslaughts from the irreconcilables, and muttered discontent from the oligarchical faction. He had done his best, and failed from no fault of his own. He threw up the ungrateful and unpromising task in 1830, and was succeeded by Lord Aylmer. On his return to England, Sir James was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance, and sworn in a Privy Councillor. His last military promotion bore date 7th of August, 1846, and he died in London in December, 1855, at the mature age of ninety years. So far as Canada is concerned, Sir James Kempt’s acts speak for themselves. He had reinstated magistrates and militia officers who had been dismissed for party reasons; he endeavoured to secure for his Executive Council a broader basis by introducing members who possessed the confidence of the majority, and urged the judges, who were members of that body, to retire from the Legislative Council. There can be little doubt that when he retired, it was with the general regret of the majority of those over whom he had ruled. The time was out of joint, and notwithstanding all the Governor’s tact and conciliatory temper, his efforts were in vain. The fault, however, was not his; and if he failed it was not because he did not deserve success. As Christie says, he plainly saw that success was impossible "from the ultra expectations of the party he courted." [There was, it is true, the appearance of harmony, the best of accord and reciprocal confidence between the administrator and the Assembly, but it was on both sides, rather that of courtesy, not to call it hypocrisy, than of cordiality. Distrust lay at the bottom, neither of them, as there is reason to believe, having faith in the professions or sincerity of the other, not that there was any want of candour or frankness in the administrator, for both were characteristic of him, but that he had to perform a part in a drama he must have disliked, feeling that neither success nor gratitude would attend his labours." Christie, vol. iii. p. 287-8. Of course the historian’s position as a British Conservative must be taken into account here.]

In 1830, Lord Aylmer, of Balrath, succeeded Sir James Kempt, and pursued the same policy of conciliation in vain. At the beginning of the Session the Governor announced that the Imperial Government intended to surrender the control of Crown revenues to the amount of £38,000, on the condition that a civil list of £19,000 should be guaranteed; the casual and territorial revenues, however, were still reserved. At this time they were estimated at a little over £11,000. The Assembly, however, was not to be conciliated; they would have all or nothing. There were now ten members of the Executive Council French Canadians; the Legislative Council [Amongst the members of the Upper House at this time we find the name of Bishop Stuart, the fifth son of the Earl of Galloway, born in Wigtonshire, Scotland, who was Speaker, Roderick Mackenzie, C.W. Grant, James Kerr, Matthew Bell, John Forsyth, and John Stewart; Christie, iii., 303.] had been remodelled; the Jesuits’ estates were surrendered for educational purposes; and an improved system of Crown lands management was inaugurated. But all to no purpose. The Assembly would be content with nothing short of absolute submission on the part of the Imperial Government. Its object evidently was to obtain control, not only over the Executive Council, but over the Judges and the Governor himself. A demand was put forth that the Legislative Council should be elective. In short, nothing would satisfy the majority but the wildest form of democratic rule. The civil list was placed on a very moderate footing; yet the House refused to grant it. In 1833, the Supply Bill was £7,000 short of the necessary amount. Riots occurred in the streets of Montreal, and all the symptoms of a popular outbreak appeared. In 1834, the celebrated "ninety-two resolutions" were passed by a committee and sent in the form of a petition to England. [Mr. McMullen attributes their authorship to Papineau; but it is generally understood that Mr. Morin drafted them.] At the close of the session this year, Lord Aylmer complained of the parsimony of the House, and stated that the judges and other Crown officers had suffered severely from the course it had chosen to adopt. No Supply Bill had been passed for two sessions, and the Governor had been compelled to make advances from the military chest.

The Assembly at once showed its disposition by voting that Lord Aylmer’s censures should be expunged from the journals of the House. On his part, the Governor refused to pay the expenses of the House, and as the majority had for the first time voted payment to themselves, the breach was widened. Lord Glenelg, Colonial Secretary, offered to surrender all the revenues if the Assembly would vote a civil list for at least ten years. He stated that the Home Government would not interfere in the local affairs of the Province, yet, at the same time, declared that it would not consent to make the Legislative Council elective. The Assembly continued its opposition, and affairs were brought to a dead-lock.

A commission of inquiry was sent out, and, on its report, Lord John Russell founded ten resolutions in 1837. The Assembly had voted no supplies since 1832, and it was proposed that the Governor-General should be authorized, without the sanction of the Assembly, to take £142,000 out of the moneys in the hands of the Receiver-General to meet the arrears of the civil list. Against this proposal Lord Brougham, in the Lords, and Mr. Roebuck, the Lower Canadian agent, in the Commons, vehemently protested. They assured Parliament that the effect would be a rebellion and perhaps war with the United States. Lord J. Russell declared that he had no fear for the future; that he did not propose any sequestration of Provincial funds for Imperial purposes, but simply as a matter of justice to the servants of the Crown in the Province; and that, as a matter of fact, the French Canadians had no grievances. He had always objected to responsible government in the colonies, because the executive there occupied a different position altogether from that of a Cabinet in England. In his view the Governor of Lower Canada did not occupy the same position as a monarch of Great Britain. He was responsible to the Crown, and received instructions for his guidance it was imperative upon him to obey, whatever view the Colonial Assembly might take of them. The weakness of this protest against what the Colonial Secretary termed "double responsibility," is more evident to us than it was in 1837. We know that under the system now prevailing, the substance, and not the forms merely, of the British constitution may be secured without any conflict of responsibilities. The Governor, with us, occupies the position of the monarch at home; and there never was any promise of tranquillity in Canada until this crucial principle was definitively acknowledged. That the Assembly was altogether too exigent and unreasonable, is quite certain. They, and not the Colonial office, precipitated the rebellion; the one party was wrong in practice, the other faulty in theory.

Lord Gosford, one of the Commission, became Governor in 1837, taking up the reins which had dropped from the hands of Lord Aylmer at the moment when the steeds were getting beyond control. In obedience to his instructions, the new Governor once more attempted conciliation; but with the usual result. Papineau inveighed against the Governor and the mother-country from the Speaker’s chair. There can be little doubt that dreams of future power as head of a French Canadian nation, free, independent and democratic, had intoxicated his brain. The majority of the Assembly were as clay in the hands of the potter; and it soon appeared that his goal was not the redress of grievances by constitutional means, but rebellion. On the 18th of August, 1837, the Lower Canada Assembly met for the last time. There was nothing for it to do but vapour and threaten. Many of the members appeared in home-spun, and declared their intention not again to use cloth of English manufacture. A dream of a North-west Republic of Lower Canada, about the idlest one can imagine, passed over the fevered brains of the recalcitrants; military drill was commenced, and the law become for the time a dead letter. No jury dared convict any man prosecuted by the Government, and a reign of terror of the wildest type began. The moment this republican spectre appeared, the Roman Catholic Church entered a protest. Bishop Lartigue called upon all faithful children of the Church to withstand the revolutionary spirit, and he largely succeeded. To his timely interference it was due that the Rebellion, after all, achieved so little success. But Papineau and the other leaders had gone too far to draw back, and at once sank in the vortex of insurrection.

It had been for some time apparent to the Governor and the Colonial Office that the "patriots" were not to be satisfied by concessions. Their leader was evidently bent upon armed revolts, and he precipitated it by every means in his power. [Mr. McMullen thus limns this obstreperous patriot: "It is evident that Louis Joseph Papineau, the great master spirit, had never counted the cost. He had neither a good cause, good counsel, nor money to reward his friends. He was a brilliant orator, but no statesman; a clever partisan leader, but a miserable general officer; a tyrant in the forum, a coward in the field. He excited a storm which he neither knew how to allay nor how to direct." History, p. 414.] He had as effective aids Dr. Wolfred Nelson, and his brother Robert, the former of whom has been described as "a Frenchified Englishman." Insurrectionary meetings were held, and secret drill was indulged in. On the 28th of October, a demonstration took place at St. Charles on the Richelieu, called "the Meeting of the four Counties;" violent harangues were delivered, and the resolutions were declared carried by a volley of musketry. Early in November, a conflict occurred at Montreal, where the British Doric Club dispersed, by force, a gathering of the "Sons of Liberty." This precipitated the outbreak, and on the 22nd the forces were face to face with the rebels under Dr. Nelson at St. Denis. The latter were strongly posted in a stone house, and as the loyalists had only one small gun, nothing could be done but retreat. [It was at this time that Lieutenant Weir, a promising young Scottish officer, was wantonly murdered while carrying dispatches.] Meanwhile, Col. Wetherall was on the way to St. Charles, where "General" Brown had a thousand habitans under his command. Their leader fled at the first shot; but the French Canadians made a determined resistance, no less than fifty-six being left dead on the field. The result was a complete defeat of the rebels, and Papineau, consulting his own safety, fled to the United States. Nelson retired from St. Denis, and attempted to escape, but was captured and lodged in Kingston jail.

In 1838, the insurrection broke out again, and the affair of St. Eustache occurred. Finally six hundred habitans re-crossed the border under Robert Nelson, who signed himself "President of the Provisional Government." This force was concentrated at Napierville, in the county of Laprairie and against it advanced General Sir James Macdonell. Nelson expected aid from the United States, and therefore retreated towards the frontier. He made a final stand in a church, but was immediately dislodged, and fled across the lines, leaving fifty killed and an equal number wounded behind him. Thus ended the Lower Canadian rebellion. The Constitution had meanwhile been suspended, and the Province was governed by a Special Council. On the 27th of May, Lord Durham had arrived at Quebec, and it was upon his departure the final spurt mentioned above under Nelson was made in Laprairie. It should have been mentioned that the rebel post at Beauharnois was taken by one thousand Glengarry militia under Cols. Macdonell and Fraser, with a detachment of the 71st Highlanders. After the suppression of these outbreaks, Lower Canadian history remains a blank until the Union.

In the Maritime Provinces, the course of events was, in most respects similar, with the important exception that the struggle for responsible government was carried on without resorting to physical force. Both in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the same system prevailed. The "family compact" party ruled throughout the years succeeding the war, with undisputed authority, yet the progress of freer constitutional views was silent, though not less secure. In Nova Scotia, the earliest efforts of the people were put forth on behalf of material and educational improvement. The letters of "Agricola" in 1818, mainly intended to stimulate scientific agriculture, were written by John Young, a native of Falkirk, Scotland. He had come out to this country in 1815, with his wife and four sons, and settled in Nova Scotia. His letters at once made an impression upon the public mind, and he was toasted by the Governor-General at Halifax, before his identity as the author had been traced. [At a dinner at Halifax in 1818, the Earl of Dalhousie said that "he rose to propose the health of a gentleman, who though unknown to him, it was certain, from his writings, deserved the appellation of a scholar and a patriot, and whose exertions in the cause of the prosperity of the country, called forth the esteem of every friend to its welfare." After further remarks he gave the toast of "Agricola," and success to his labours.] Mr. Young filled several important offices in the public service, and died at Halifax in the autumn of 1837. During Lord Dalhousie’s term, the Presbyterian College, which bears his name, was founded for the benefit, chiefly, of Scottish Presbyterians. King’s College, at Windsor, had been founded upon the firmest Anglican basis, [Not only were tests required as in England, but one of the by-laws read as follows: - "No member of the University shall frequent the Romish mass, or the meeting-house of the Presbyterians, Baptists or Methodists, or the conventicles, or place of worship of any other dissenters from the Church of England, or where divine service shall not be performed according to the liturgy of the Church of England." It is to the credit of the Anglican Bishop (Inglis) that he strongly, though ineffectually, opposed this by-law. Campbell’s Nova Scotia, p. 236.] and all but members of the Church of England were rigorously excluded. In 1805, the Rev. Dr. Thomas McCulloch proposed the establishment of an institution for higher learning, open to students of all denominations. The result was the opening of Pictou academy in 1819, which ultimately became Dalhousie College and University. Dr. McCulloch appears to have been a man of singularly versatile learning; and it may be mentioned that one of his pupils was Dr. Dawson, Principal of McGill University, Montreal. During Lord Dalhousie’s term an attempt was made to unite the two universities, but it unfortunately fell through. [The negotiations were conducted on the part of Lord Dalhousie by S.G.W. Archibald, Speaker of the Assembly, and the Hon. Michael Wallace, Provincial Treasurer, The Hon. A. G. Archibald, who succeeded Mr. Howe as Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, was a son of the former.]

Lord Dalhousie’s administration was of an eminently practiced character. His chief aim was to develop the agricultural resources of the Province, and to stimulate road-making and other works for its material improvement. In 1820, Sir James Kempt became Lieutenant-Governor, and remained in that position until 1826. One of the first measures of the Imperial Government, during this period, was the annexation of Cape Breton to Nova Scotia. In 1827, a Roman Catholic member having been elected to the Assembly, by a unanimous vote, the House solicited the Crown to remove the obnoxious religious test. This was two years before Catholic Emancipation triumphed in England. The Lieutenant-Governor pursued the same policy as his predecessor in the prosecution of road-making. Complete surveys of the Province were made, and the timber trade received a powerful stimulus. It can hardly be said that politics, in the party sense, had any existence during the eight years of Sir James’ tenure of office. After a brief interregnum, during which the Hon. Mr. Wallace, a Scot, administered the Government, Sir Peregrine Maitland succeeded. He arrived in August, 1829, and in that year a conflict occurred between the Council and the Assembly on the subject of the brandy duties. In 1826, on a revision of the revenue laws, a duty of one shilling and four-pence had been imposed on brandy. By some mistake only one shilling was levied; the House, therefore in 1880, resolved that it should be raised to the intended rate. The Legislative Council demurred to this measure, and asked for a conference. A grave constitutional question was thus raised, touching which neither branch of the Legislature would give way. In the Assembly, Mr. John Young ("Agricola"), the Speaker, Mr. Archibald, and Mr. Beamish Murdock, the historian of the Province, vindicated the right of the Assembly to exclusive control over matters of supply. [During the debate, Mr. Young, in the course of a luminous speech, said: "It was not merely that four-pence per gallon to be imposed upon brandy and gin, for value in money weighted nothing in the balance compared with the constitutional right which the imposition of the duty involved." Campbell, p. 260. Chief Justice Young, it may be noted, was a son of "Agricola."] A dead-lock ensued, and the session came to a close. Next year the dispute was renewed, but it ended in triumph of the House.

It was clear that life had been infused in the body politic of Nova Scotia, and thenceforth we rise above the dead level of the more primitive time. In the autumn of 1832, Sir Peregrine Maitland left finally for England, just before the coming storm fell upon the Province. Another interregnum followed, during which the symptoms of uneasiness became more marked. Events in the Canadian Provinces were rapidly approaching a crisis, and the contagion spread, first to New Brunswick, and subsequently to Nova Scotia. In February, 1833, the Legislature was convoked by the President, and a dispatch read from the Colonial Secretary recommending an increase in the salaries of the judges. Mr. Stewart at once moved a resolution in favour of the increase, but tacked to it a prayer, that whilst the Assembly would concede what was asked, "when required to do so in the manner prescribed in by the British Constitution," his Majesty "would be pleased to make such an order respecting the casual and other revenues of the Province, now expended without the consent of the House, as would render the same subject to the disposal and control of the House." During the debate Mr. (afterwards Chief Justice) Sir William Young, delivered a moderate speech, recommending a conciliatory course. The debates had now become much livelier, and embraced a wider range of subjects. In 1834, Mr. Stewart attacked the Council, and proposed a reform in its constitution, but for the present nothing came of the motion.

At the beginning of July, 1834, Sir Colin Campbell arrived at Halifax and the administration of Thomas Jeffery, President, came to a close. Sir Colin was every inch a soldier and a Highland Scot to boot. Born in 1792, he entered the army as ensign in 1808, and within a few weeks, when yet too juvenile to carry the colours, was engaged with his regiment (the 9th foot) on the heights of Vimiera. He served during Sir John Moore’s campaign and was present at the closing scene, when his General fell at Corunna. He was with the Walcheren expedition, and then back to the Peninsula. At the storming of St. Sebastian, he led a forlorn hope, and was twice wounded, and fought subsequently at Vittoria and the passage of Bidessoa. In 1814 he took part in the American war, then in the West Indies, and in 1842 in China. It was in the second Sikh war, however, that his rare qualities as a general first attracted public attention. At the battle of Chillianwalla, he won by a somewhat rash manoeuvre, and at Goojerat he made a brilliant coup, capturing one hundred and fifty-eight guns. In 1851 he was sent against the hill tribes, and forced the Kohat Pass. With only a few horsemen and some guns he forced the submission of the combined tribes—numbering 8,000 men. And yet after forty-four years’ service he returned to England a simple colonel. But there was no jealousy in his nature, and he saw carpet warriors promoted over his head without uttering a complaint. He bided his time and, although his friends were more angry and impatient than he, it came at last with the outbreak of the Crimean War. Even then he was only appointed to the command of a brigade, not of a division, and remained a colonel until June, 1854. In the Crimea, Sir Colin commanded one half of the First Division under H. R. H. the Duke of Cambridge. The other brigade consisted of a battalion of Grenadier Guards, one of the Scots Fusilier Guards, and another of the Coldstreams. Sir Colin Campbell had under him the Highland Brigade comprising the 42nd, 79th and 93rd Highlanders. On the 20th of September, 1854, the battle of the Alma was fought. The advance across the river had been made by the First Division and they were "formed up" on the opposite bank, the Guards to the right, the Highland Brigade to the left. So steadily they marched up the steep, that Lord Raglan exclaimed to his staff: "Look how well the Guards and the Highlanders advance!" Sir Colin Campbell had made a brief speech to his men, concluding with the words: "Now, men, the army will watch us; make me proud of the Highland Brigade." That was before the battle; when the onset began, the General had only two words for the Black Watch which was in the advance— "Forward, 42nd." He himself rode with them. He then went forward to reconnoitre, and his horse was twice shot. "Smoothly, easily, swiftly," says Kinglake, "the Black Watch seemed to glide up the hill. A few minutes before, and their tartans ranged dark in the valley—now, their plumes wave on the crest." [The First Division formed up after crossing the Alma, and although they incurred considerable loss, they nevertheless advanced in most beautiful order – really as if on parade. I shall never forget the sight – one felt so proud of them." Letters from Headquarters.] How gallantly the battle was won may be learned from the historians. Lord Raglan met Sir Colin, who was on foot, having lost his horse, and warmly congratulated him on the valour displayed by the Highlanders. Campbell only made one request, that so long as he commanded the Brigade, he should be permitted to lead them into action wearing, like his men, the Highland bonnet. Throughout the battles in the Crimea and the weary siege of Sebastopol the Highlanders were "aye the foremost" under their bluff, warm-hearted commander. They had not yet done with war, however. Shortly after peace had been proclaimed, the three regiments of the old Highland Brigade were together in India to assist in quelling the Sepoy Rebellion, and Sir Colin Campbell was with them. In addition to the 42nd, 79th and 93rd, there was notably the 78th [Sir James Outram, after one of the many actions of this war, addressed this regiment as follows: "Your exemplary conduct, 78th, in every respect through this eventful year, I can truly say, and I do most emphatically declare, has never been surpassed by any troops of any nation, in any age, whether for indomitable valour in the field, or steady discipline in the camp, under an amount of fighting, hardship and privation such as British troops have seldom, if ever, heretofore been exposed."] and jointly they performed prodigies of valour. At the relief of Cawnpore and siege of Lucknow, Sir Colin Campbell was the conspicuous figure. He remained at his post until the last spark of rebellion had been stamped out. Created Lord Clyde in recognition of his inestimable services in the field, the old Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia survived until August the 14th, 1863, when he died shortly before completing his seventy-first year. [Since this brief sketch of Lord Clyde was written, Lieutenant-General Shadwell has published his biography. A reviewer in Blackwood (April, 1881) thus speaks of his last hours; "The writer of this notice was once witness of a touching scene in a village hospital after a great battle. A cavalry trumpeter, whose death was close at hand, sprang suddenly from his bed, seized his trumpet that lay beside him, blew, with thrilling notes, the ‘charge,’ and then fell back and died. The same spirit moved in Lord Clyde. When the bugle sounded in the barrack square, outside the quarters where he lay, he sprang up and exclaimed, ‘I am ready.’ Yes, he was ready: ready in life for the call of duty – ready to die as a soldier and a Christian should die. ‘Mind this, Eyre,’ he said, ‘I die in peace with all this world.’"]

To return to Nova Scotia and 1834. Sir Colin Campbell arrived at Halifax, as already stated, at the beginning of July. The Province was in an exceedingly depressed condition. There had been two bad harvests, the currency was deranged by an unlimited issue of inconvertible paper, and goods and property generally were seriously depreciated in value. But that was not all. In August, the cholera made its appearance, and cut down its victims by the hundred. In November, the Assembly met, and the Governor read a Speech from the Throne, of rather unusual length. The Crown had offered a surrender of the casual and territorial revenues, provided the Assembly gave in exchange a permanent civil list. As, however, the House had not accepted the proposal, Sir Colin stated that he was instructed not to repeat it. The quit-rents, another ground of dispute, were to be surrendered, however, if the Assembly would grant the Crown two thousand pounds a year. This offer was accepted, with the promise that the annuity should be applied to the payment of the Lieutenant-Governor’s salary. Thus far the course of political events had been much the same as in Lower Canada, and the appearance of Mr. Joseph Howe in the Assembly of 1837 was the signal for another movement which made the resemblance closer. An agitation for responsible government arose, which was to bring forth fruit in years to come. Meanwhile Messrs. Young and Howe attacked the Council. Both in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, this body was singularly anomalous in its constitution. It not only possessed legislative, but also executive functions, and its deliberations were conducted with closed doors. In short, what purported to be a second Chamber, turned out in practice to be a sort of legislative Privy Council, responsible to no one, except the representative of the Crown. As an executive body, of course, there was reason for the exclusion of strangers; but in its other capacity there was no excuse for so antiquated a system. Mr. John Young attacked also the Septennial Act, and proposed that general elections should be held every four years. The Council threw out a Bill passed by the House to this effect, but it was forced through in the following year. In 1838, probably quickened by what had occurred in Canada, the Colonial Office, under Lord Glenelg, reluctantly consented to divide the Council in two, to be styled the Executive, and the Legislative Council respectively. Of course the appointments made by Sir Colin Campbell did not suit the majority in the House, and discontent continued. [At the close of the Session, the Governor said that it was impossible to give satisfaction to all. Some persons were, no doubt, dissatisfied that they were not named to the Council; but as he was responsible to Her Majesty for the selection he had made, he would firmly resist any attempt to encroach on the Royal prerogative, or to influence him in the fulfillment of his duties. Campbell, p. 325.] His Excellency spoke like a strict military disciplinarian, and through all his utterances the soldier type of rule peeps forth. Both parties appealed to England, and some concessions were, in consequence, made to the Assembly. In 1840, the Cunard Company put their first steamer afloat on the route between Liverpool and Halifax and Boston. Mr. Cunard, who was a Haligonian, put himself in communication with Mr. Robert Napier, the great ship-builder of the Clyde, and associated himself in partnership with Messrs. McIver and Burns, of Glasgow. The company was essentially Scottish in all but the name. To this period belonged Judge Haliburton (Sam Slick), whose ancestors had emigrated from Scotland in the reign of Queen Anne, and settled in the New England colonies; Charles R. Fairbanks, born at Halifax, and pupil of the Rev. Dr. Cochran, at Windsor academy; and Hugh Bell, who was not only a public man but a philanthropist.

During 1840 political agitation was at fever heat in Nova Scotia. It was a time of general agitation by public meeting and otherwise. Lord Durham’s report had given emphasis to the demand for responsible government. Lord John Russell had, notwithstanding his prejudices, partially conceded the principle in dispute. But the Nova Scotia Council ignored the instructions sent to Governor Sir John Harvey, of New Brunswick. In the end, though with great reluctance, the Assembly petitioned for the recall of the Lieutenant Governor. Sir Colin Campbell left the Province in the autumn of the year, personally respected by all parties, even those most at variance with him on public questions. ["The political opponents of Sir Colin Campbell and his administration cherished no vindictive feeling towards him. In their intercourse with him he had been always pleasant and courteous; but the old soldier belonged to an unbending school, and was utterly unfitted by habit and training for the position which he occupied. He deemed it a point of honour to defend the Executive Council, and well nigh sacrificed his honour in his infatuated resistance to the explicit instructions of the Colonial Office." Campbell, p. 345. Sir William Young, in an address delivered at the Centennial of the North British Society in 1868, in referring to past Presidents and patrons said: "Then comes the honoured name of Sir Colin Campbell, our Lieutenant Governor at the time when the new principles of government were first developed in the Province. I differed with him in politics, but he always honoured me with his personal confidence and friendship. He was a manly, true-hearted Scotchman, and the Society did itself honour by the steadiness and enthusiasm with which they sustained him." Annals of the North British Society of Halifax. By James S. Macdonald.] Viscount Falkland succeeded, and here the course of events in the Province may be left to be taken up again in a subsequent chapter.

In New Brunswick the course of events ran in much the same groove, with the important difference that the contest was over in this Province before it had well begun in Nova Scotia. Prior to the political period strictly so-called, the efforts of rulers were here also devoted entirely to the material improvement of the Province. The Government was in the hands of a caste, whilst the people were too earnestly engaged in subduing nature to pay much attention to public affairs. Amongst the Governors of New Brunswick we find a number of Scots, chiefly military men, Generals Hunter, Balfour, and Sir Howard Douglas; and the Hon. A. Black was President in the interval between the Doug1as and Campbell regimes, or from 1829 to 1832. In the latter year Sir Archibald Campbell became Governor of New Brunswick. Like his namesake Sir Colin, he was above all things a soldier, and an unyielding champion of prerogative. At that time no doubt there was something to be said on behalf of the military theory of government; but that writers who wielded the pen fourteen years afterwards should, when the entire system had been given up, still plead for it, seems strange to us. [See especially Gesner’s New Brunswick, p. 335. "Of late years there has been a constant effort of the popular branch to advance upon the rights and privileges of the Sovereign, and which in Canada was carried to an alarming extent. To maintain the prerogative of the Crown, which, by the Constitution, cannot take away the liberties of the people, and to secure to the subject his just rights, should be the aim of the Government; and there are perhaps no people in the world who have less cause to complain of their rulers than those of the British American Colonies." The refreshing simplicity of this authoritative verdict upon public affairs will be better appreciated when the reader notes that the work was published in 1846.] According the dictum of these political writers the rulers, not the ruled, were the best judges of what was good for them. Paternal government was much to their advantage, if only they had known their true interests. Unfortunately the people fancied that they did understand their own interests better than Colonial Secretaries or Governors, who backed, with all the power of the Crown, the small oligarchical faction which had turned the State into a political game-preserve. In the end the Imperial Government was constrained to admit that the people had been all along in the right, and that their own wisdom had proved to be egregious folly.

In 1832 the first step in the path of progress was made by the separation into two bodies of the Legislature and Executive Council. How they ever came to be united is a question not to be readily solved. The Executive was, by its nature, a secret body, the advising council of the Governor, and yet, as in Nova Scotia, possessed Legislative duties, and sat with closed doors. Two branches of the Legislature were thus practically one, and its heads had the entire power of government. The Assembly was utterly powerless, since the only check they possessed upon arbitrary rule was denied them; they could not effectively withhold the supplies until popular demands were complied with. The next ground of complaint was the management of the Crown Lands. No system could have been devised so likely to lead to abuses. The Chief Commissioner was an officer entirely independent of legislative control. He received a splendid salary, which fees and perquisites augmented, and lived in a style of ostentatious magnificence. In 1832, the Assembly called for an account of the revenue derived from this source, and was politely told to mind its own business. Delegates were sent to England to represent the state of affairs to the Colonial Office, and an arrangement, agreeable to the House, was made by Mr. Stanley (the late Lord Derby), at that time Secretary for the Colonies. Through some crooked manoeuvring by the back stairs, however, the reform was not carried out. The Land Company was a monopoly of the most objectionable type, and made matters worse. The Joseph Howe of New Brunswick then appeared in the person of Mr. Wilmot (afterwards Lieutenant Governor). In 1836, he moved for a return of the Crown Land funds, but only received a bald general statement from the Governor. Another deputation visited England with a petition in favour of a surrender of all the revenues to the Assembly. Lord Glenelg acceded this time, and the casual and territorial revenues were surrendered on condition that a permanent civil list were provided. Sir Archibald Campbell refused to sign the Civil List Bill, [The pretext for this extreme measure was, that the amount (14,500 pounds) was not sufficient to repay the needs of civil government, since some expenses, such as the salaries of the Circuit Court judges, had not been provided for. The truth was, the dominant party dreaded the power conferred upon the Assembly; and Sir Archibald Campbell apprehended that the House might launch out into lavish expenditure, so soon as the large sum of 171,000 pounds odd was handed over to them for distribution. As a matter of fact his fears proved to be well-grounded.] and resigned. His successor, Sir John Harvey, to whom reference has already been made, succeeded in restoring harmony in 1837, and the crisis was over. The Civil List Bill became law on the 17th of July amidst demonstrations of joy from the Reform party, and its chiefs found themselves now in the Executive Council. The year 1837, which brought the New Brunswick struggle to an end, witnessed, as we have seen, the commencement of another in Nova Scotia.

Public affairs in Prince Edward Island do not call for very minute attention. There the great bone of contention was the land system, of which a fuller account may be given hereafter. The breeze of discontent which affected the other North American colonies from Halifax to Sandwich, was long in making any impression upon the feudal system established in the island. In 1813, so secure were those in power, that Mr. Charles Douglas Smith, the Governor, reenacted, in a small way the unconstitutional rule of Charles I. In 1813, he prorogued Parliament in a brusque manner, and did without one very comfortably for four years. Three Assemblies were then successively called, all of which were found unmanageable, and therefore sent about their business. In fact, for a whole decade, there was no such thing as parliamentary government in Prince Edward Island. The Governor took upon himself all the functions of government, collecting the quit-rents, forcing sales, and plunging the entire colony into distress. Then followed riotous assemblages, at which open charges were made against Mr. Smith. A Mr. Stewart, who had protested against these arbitrary acts, only saved himself from arrest by flight. He reached England, and upon his representations and proof of the facts, Governor Smith was recalled. The succeeding Governors were of a different stamp; yet the popular spirit had been aroused, and nothing would satisfy it save the establishment of responsible government; but the time had not yet arrived for that concession. Still much was done in the way of reform. The Catholics were emancipated in 1830; in 1837, the Governor attempted to deal with the land question. The soil of the island was owned mainly by a few absentee landlords, who intended their property to remain in a state of nature, so that they might profit by the energy of those who tilled the land. The House had suggested a heavy tax upon wild lands, and the forfeiture to the Crown of all estates upon which arrears of the tax were due. But the Colonial Office, whose ears the land-owners had gained, would not listen to the proposal. In this state were public affairs in Prince Edward Island at the opening of the year 1841.


Previous Page | Return to Index Page | Next Page

This comment system requires you to be logged in through either a Disqus account or an account you already have with Google, Twitter, Facebook or Yahoo. In the event you don't have an account with any of these companies then you can create an account with Disqus. All comments are moderated so they won't display until the moderator has approved your comment.