On the 25th of the same month of April, 1849, the Parliament Houses at Montreal were sacked and burnt by a disorderly mob, stirred up to riot by the unfortunate act of Lord Elgin, in giving the royal assent to a bill for compensating persons whose property had been destroyed or injured during the rebellion in Lower Canada in 1837-8. That the payment of those losses was a logical consequence of the general amnesty proclaimed earlier in the same year, and that men equally guilty in Upper Canada, such as Montgomery and others, were similarly compensated, is indisputable. But in Upper Canada there was no race hatred, such as Lord Durham, in the Report written for him by Messrs. C. Buller & E. G. Wakefield, describes as existing between the French and British of Lower Canada.[17] The rebels of Gallows Hill and the militia of Toronto were literally brothers and cousins; while the rival factions of Montreal were national enemies, with their passions aroused by long-standing mutual injuries and insults. Had Lord Elgin reserved the bill for imperial consideration, no mischief would probably have followed. What might have been considered magnanimous generosity if voluntarily accorded by the conquerors, became a stinging insult when claimed by conquered enemies and aliens. And so it was felt to be in Montreal and the Eastern Townships. But the opportunity of putting in force the new theory of ministerial responsibility to the Canadian commons, seems to have fascinated Lord Elgin's mind, and so he "threw a cast" which all but upset the loyalty of Lower Canada, and caused that of the Upper Province almost to hesitate for a brief instant.

In Toronto, sympathy with the resentment of the rioters was blended with a deep sense of the necessity for enforcing law and order. To the passionate movement in Montreal for annexation to the English race south of the line, no corresponding sentiment gained a hold in the Upper Province. And in the subsequent interchange of views between Montreal and Toronto, which resulted in the convention of the British American League at Kingston in the following July, it was sternly insisted by western men, that no breath of disloyalty to the Empire would be for a moment tolerated here. By the loss of her metropolitan honours which resulted, Montreal paid a heavy penalty for her mad act of lawlessness.

[Footnote 17: As originally introduced by the Lafontaine-Baldwin Ministry, the bill recognised no distinction between the claims of men actually in arms and innocent sufferers, nor was it until the last reading that a pledge not to compensate actual criminals was wrested from the Government.]