FROM 1820 TO 1867

It will be recalled that on the coming of the United Empire Loyalists to Canada, the form of government was changed by the Constitutional Act of 1791, dividing the country into Upper and Lower Canada, the government of each province to consist of a governor, the legislative council, and the assembly. Unfortunately, self-government for the colonies was not yet a recognized principle of English rule. While the assemblies of the two provinces were elected by the people, the power of the assemblies was practically a blank, for the governor and council were the real rulers, and they were appointed by the Crown, which meant Downing Street, which meant in turn that the two Cañadas were regarded as the happy hunting ground for incompetent office seekers of the great English parties. From the governor general to the most insignificant postal clerk, all were appointed from Downing Street. Influence, not merit, counted, which perhaps explains why one can count on the fingers of one hand the number of governors and lieutenants from 1791 to 1841 who were worthy of their trust and did not disgrace their position by blunders that were simply notorious. Prevost’s disgraceful retreat from Lake Champlain in the War of 1812 is a typical example of the mischief a political jobber can work when placed in position of trust; but the life-and-death struggle of the war prevented the people turning their attention to questions of misgovernment, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Act of 1791 reduced Canadian affairs to the chaos of a second Ireland and retarded the progress of the country for a century.

It has become customary for English writers to slur over the disorders of 1837 as the results of the ignorant rabble following the bad advice of the hot-heads, MacKenzie and Papineau; but it is worth remembering that everything the rabble fought for, and hanged for, has since been incorporated in Canada’s constitution as the very woof and warp of responsible government.

Let us see how the system worked out in detail.

After the War of 1812 Prevost dies before court-martial can pronounce on his misconduct at Plattsburg, and Sir Gorden Drummond, the hero of Fort Erie’s siege, is sworn in.

Canada is governed from Downing Street, and it is my Lord Bathurst’s brilliant idea that forever after the war there shall be a belt of twenty miles left waste forest and prairie between Canada and the United States, presumably to prevent democracy rolling across the northern boundary. Fortunately the rough horse sense of the frontiersman is wiser than the wisdom of the British statesman, and settlement continues along the boundary in spite of Bathurst’s brilliant idea.

Those who fought in the War of 1812 are to be rewarded by grants of land, rewarded, of course, by the Crown, which means the Governor; but the Governor must listen to the advice of his councilors, who are appointed for life; and to the heroes of 1812 the councilors grant fifty acres apiece, while to themselves the said councilors vote grants of land running from twenty thousand to eighty thousand acres apiece.

After the war it is agreed that neither Canada nor the United States shall keep war vessels on the lakes, except such cruisers as shall be necessary to maintain order among the fisheries; but the credit for this wise arrangement does not belong to the councils at Toronto or Quebec, for the suggestions came from Washington.

As the legislative councilors are appointed for life, they control enormous patronage, recommending all appointments to government positions and meeting any applicants for office, who are outside the “family” ring, with the curt refusal that has become famous for its insolence, “no one but a gentleman.”

Judges are appointed by favor. So are local magistrates. So are collectors at the different ports of entry. Smaller cities like Kingston are year after year refused incorporation, because incorporation would confer self-government, and that would oust members of the “family compact” who held positions in these places.

Officeholders are responsible to the Crown only, not to the people. Therefore when Receiver General Caldwell of Quebec does away with 96,000 pounds, or two years’ revenue of Lower Canada, he accounts for the defalcation to his friends with the explanation of unlucky investments, and goes scot free.

Quebec is a French province, but appointments are made in England; so that out of 71,000 pounds paid to its civil servants 58,000 pounds go to the English officeholders, 13,000 pounds to French; out of 36,000 pounds paid to judges only 8,000 pounds go to the French.

And in Upper Canada, Ontario, it was even worse. In Quebec there was always the division of French against English, and Catholic against Protestant; but in Upper Canada “the family compact” of councilors against commoners was a solid and unbroken ring. When the assembly raises objections to some items of expense sent down by the council, writes Lieutenant Governor Simcoe in high dudgeon, “I will send the rascals,” meaning the commoners, “packing about their business,” and he prorogues the House.

Not all the governors and their lieutenants are as foolishly blind to the faults of the system as Simcoe of Ontario. Sir John Sherbrooke of Quebec, who succeeds Drummond in Lower Canada, knows very well he is surrounded by a pack of thieves; but they are his councilors, appointed for life, and there he is, bound to abide by their advice. Nevertheless, he kicks over traces vigorously now and then, like the old war horse that he is. The commissary general comes to him with word that 600 pounds is missing from the military chest, and he needs a warrant for search.

“Search, indeed!” roars Sir John. “There’s not the slightest need! Whenever there is a robbery in your department, it is among yourselves! Go and find it!”

Curious it is how good men reared in the old school, where the masses exist for the benefit of the classes and the governed are to be allowed to exist only by favor of those who govern curious how good men fail to read the sign of the times. Colonel Tom Talbot’s settlement in West Ontario has, by 1832, increased to 50,000 people, and the mad harum-scarum of court days is becoming an old man. Talbot has been a legislative councilor for life, but it is not on record that he ever attended the council in Toronto. Still he views with high disfavor this universal discontent with “being governed.” The secret meetings held to agitate for responsible government, Tom Talbot regards as “a pestilence” leading on to the worst disease from which humanity can suffer, namely, democracy. The old bear stirs uneasily in his lair, as reports come in of louder and louder demands that the colony shall be permitted to govern itself. What would become of kings and colonels and land grants by special favor, if colonies governed themselves? Colonel Tom Talbot doffs his homespun and his coon cap, and he dons the satin ruffles of twenty-five years ago, and he mounts his steed and he rides pompously forth to the market place of St. Thomas Town on St. George’s Day of 1832. Bands play; flags wave; the country people from twenty miles round come riding to town. Banners inscribed with “Loyalty to the Constitution” are carried at the head of parades. The venerable old colonel is greeted with burst after burst of shouting as he comes prancing on horseback up the hill. The band plays “the British Grenadiers.” The Highland bagpipes skurl a welcome. Then the old man mounts the rostrum and delivers a speech that ought to be famous as an exposition of good old Tory doctrine:

Some black sheep have slipped into my flock, and very black they are, and what is worse, they have got the rot, a distemper not known in this settlement till some I shall call for short “rebels” began their work of darkness under cover of organizing Blanked Cold Water Drinking Societies, where they meet at night to communicate their poisonous schemes and circulate the infection and delude the unwary! Then they assumed a more daring aspect under mask of a grievance petition, which, when it was placed before me, I would not take the trouble to read, being aware it was trash founded on falsehood, fabricated to create discontent.

At the end of a half hour’s tirade, of which these lines are a sample, the good old Tory raised his hands, and in the words of the Church’s benediction blessed his people and prayed Heaven to keep their minds untainted by sedition.

Looking back less than a century, it is almost impossible to believe that the colonel’s speech it cannot be called reasoning was applauded to the echo and regarded as a masterly justification of people “being governed” rather than governing themselves.

Perhaps, after all, it was not so much the Constitution of Canada that caused the conflict as the clash between the old-time feudalism and the spirit of modern, aggressive democracy. The United States fought this question out in 1776. Canada wrestled, it cannot be called a fight, the same question out in 1837.

It is necessary to give one or two cases of individual persecution to understand how the disorders flamed to open rebellion.

One Matthews, an officer of the 1812 War, living on a pension, had incurred the distrust of the governing ring by expressing sympathy with the agitators. Now to be an agitator was bad enough in the eyes of “the family compact,” but for one of their own social circle to sympathize with the outsiders was, to the snobocracy clique of the little city of ten thousand at Toronto, almost an unpardonable sin. Such sins were punished by social ostracism, by the grand dames of Toronto not inviting the officer’s wife to social functions, by the families of the upper clique literally freezing the sinner’s children out of the foremost circles of social life. Many a Canadian family is proud to trace lineage back to some old lady of this tempestuous period, whose only claim to recognition is that she waged petty persecution against the heroes of Canadian progress. Now the annals of the times do not record that this special sinner’s wife and children so suffered. At all events Matthews’ spirits were not cast down by social snobbery. He continued to sympathize with the agitators. The “family compact” bided their time, and their time came a few months later, when a company of American actors came to Toronto. A band concert had been given. When the British national air struck up, all hats were off. Then some one called for “Yankee Doodle,” and in compliment to the visitors, when the American air struck up, Matthews shouted out for “hats off.” For this sin the legislative council ordered the lieutenant governor to cut off Matthews’ pension, and, to the everlasting shame of Sir Peregrine Maitland, the advice was taken, though Matthews had twenty-seven years of service to his credit. Matthews appealed to England, and his pension was restored, so that in this case “the family compact” for political reasons was pretending to be more British than Great Britain. It was not to be the last occasion on which “the loyalty cry” was to be used as a political dodge.

The persecution of Robert Gourlay was yet more outrageous.

He had come to Canada soon after the War of 1812, and in the course of collecting statistics for a book on the colony was quick to realize how Canada’s progress was being literally gagged by the policy of the ruling clique. Gourlay attacked the local magistrates in the press. He pointed out that the land grants were notorious. He advocated bombarding the evils from two sides at once, by appealing to the home government and by holding local conventions of protest. The pass to which things had come may be realized by the attitude of the council. It held that the colony must hold no communications with the imperial government except through the Governor General; in other words, individual appeals not passing through the hands of the legislative council were to be regarded as illegal. It is sad to have to acknowledge that such a palpably dishonest measure was ever countenanced by people in their right minds. But “the family compact” went a step farther. It passed an order forbidding meetings to discuss public grievances. This part of Canada’s story reads more like Russia than America, and shows to what length men will go when special privileges rather than equal rights prevail in a country. Gourlay met these infamous measures by penning some witty doggerel, headed “Gagged, gagged, by Jingo!” The editor in whose paper Gourlay’s writings had appeared, was arrested, and the offending sheet was compelled to suspend. Gourlay himself is arrested for sedition and libel at least four times, but each time the jury acquits him. At any cost the governing clique must get rid of this scribbling fellow, whose pen voices the rising discontent. An alien act, passed before the War of 1812, compelling the deportation of seditious persons, is revived. Under the terms of the act Gourlay is arrested, tried, and sentenced to be exiled, but Gourlay declares he is not an alien. He is a British subject, and he refuses to leave the country. He is thrown in jail at Niagara, and for a year and a half left in a moldy, close cell. One dislikes to write that this outrage on British justice was perpetrated under Chief Justice Powell, whose failure to obtain decisions from the jury in the Red River trials brought down such harsh criticism on the bench. At the end of twenty months Gourlay is again hauled before the jury and sentenced to deportation on pain of death if he refuses. He was calmly asked if he had anything to say, if there were any reason why sentence should not be pronounced.

“Anything . . . to . . . say? Any reason . . . why . . . sentence . . . should not be pronounced?” From 1818 to 1820 Gourlay had been having things “to say,” had been giving good and sufficient reasons why sentence should not be pronounced! The question is repeated: “Robert Gourlay stand up! Have you anything to say?” The court waits, Chief Justice Powell, bewigged and wearing his grandest manner, all unconscious that the scene is to go down to history with blot of ignominy against his name, not Gourlay’s.

Gourlay’s face twitches, and he breaks into shrieks of maniacal laughter. The petty persécutions of a provincial tyranny have driven a man, who is true patriot, out of his mind. As Gourlay drops out of Canada’s story here, it may be added that the English government later pronounced the whole trial an outrage, and Gourlay was invited back to Canada.

If at this stage a man had come to Canada as governor, big enough and just enough to realize that colonies had some rights, there might have been remedy; for the imperial government, eager to right the wrong, was misled by the legislative councilors, and all at sea as to the source of the trouble. While men were being actually driven out of Canada by the governing ring on the charge of disloyalty, the colonial minister of England was sending secret dispatches to the Governor General, instructing him plainly that if independence was what Canada wanted, then the mother country, rather than risk a second war with the United States, or press conclusions with the Cañadas themselves, would willingly cede independence. It is as well to be emphatic and clear on this point. It was not the tyranny of England that caused the troubles of 1837. It was the dishonesty of the ruling rings at Quebec and Toronto, and this dishonesty was possible because of the Constitutional Act of 1791.

Unfortunately, just when imperial statesmen of the modern school were needed, governors of the old school were appointed to Canada. After Sir John Sherbrooke came the Duke of Richmond to Quebec, and his son-in-law, Sir Peregrine Maitland, as lieutenant governor to Ontario. Men of more courtly manners never graced the vice-regal chairs of Quebec and Toronto. Richmond, who was some fifty years of age, had won notoriety in his early days by a duel with a prince of the blood royal, honor on both sides being satisfied by Richmond shooting away a curl from the royal brow; but presto, an Irish barrister takes up the quarrel by challenging Richmond to a second duel for having dared to fight a prince; and here Richmond satisfies claims of honor by a well-directed ball aimed to wound, not kill. Long years after, when the duke became viceroy of Ireland, the Irishman appeared at one of Richmond’s state balls.

“Hah,” laughed the barrister, “the last time we met, your Grace gave me a ball.”

“Best give you a brace of ’em now,” retorted the witty Richmond; and he sent his quondam foe invitation to two more balls.

Richmond it was who gave the famous ball before the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The story of his daughter’s love match with Sir Peregrine Maitland is of a piece with the rest of the romance in Richmond’s life. Richmond and Maitland had been friends in the army, but when the duke began to observe that his daughter, Lady Sarah, and the younger man were falling in love, he thought to discourage the union with a poor man by omitting Maitland’s name from invitation lists. When Lady Sarah came downstairs to a ball she surmised that Maitland had not been invited, and, withdrawing from the assembled guests, drove to her lover’s apartments. She married Maitland without her father’s consent, but a reconciliation had been patched up. Father and son-in-law now came to Canada as governor and lieutenant governor.

The military and social life of both unfitted them to appreciate the conditions in Canada. Socially both were the lions of the hour. As a man and gentleman Richmond was simply adored, and Quebec’s love of all the pomp of monarchy was glutted to the full. No more distinguished governor ever played host in the old Chateau St. Louis; but as rulers, as pacifiers, as guides of the ship of state, Richmond and Maitland were dismal failures. To them Canada’s demand for responsible government seemed the rallying cry of an impending republic. “We must overcome democracy or it will overcome us,” pronounced Richmond. He failed to see that resistance to the demand for self-government would bring about the same results in Canada as resistance had brought about in the United States, and he could not guess for the thing was new in the world’s history that the grant of self-government would but bind the colony the closer to the mother land.

It is sad to write of two such high-minded, well-intentioned rulers, that the worst acts of misgovernment in Canada took place in their regime.

Richmond’s death was as unusual as his life. Two accounts are given of the cause. One states that he permitted a pet dog to touch a cut in his face. The other account has it that he was bitten by a tame fox at a fair in Sorel, and the date of Richmond’s death, late in August of 1819, exactly two months from the time he was bitten at Sorel, which is the length of time that hydrophobia takes to develop in a grown person, would seem to substantiate the latter story. He was traveling on horseback from Perth to Richmond, on the Ottawa, and had complained of feeling poorly. A small stream had to be crossed. The sight of the stream brought the strange water delirium to Richmond, when he begged his attendants to take him quickly to Montreal. It need scarcely be explained here that hydrophobia is not caused by lack of water, but by contagious transmission. The feeling passed, as the first terrors of the disease are usually spasmodic, and the Governor was proceeding through the woods with his attendants, when he suddenly broke away deliriously, leading them a wild race to a farm shed. There he died during the night, crying out as the lucid intervals broke the delirium of his agonies: “For shame! for shame Lenox! Richmond, be a man! Can you not bear it?”

Public affairs are meanwhile passing from bad to worse. William Lyon MacKenzie has become leader of the agitators in his newspaper, The Advocate, of Toronto. A band of young vandals, sons of the ruling clique, wreck his newspaper office and throw the type into Toronto Bay, but MacKenzie recovers $3000 damages and goes on agitating. Four times he is publicly expelled from the House, and four times he is returned by the electors. What are they asking, these agitators, branded as rebels, expelled from the assembly, in some cases cast in prison by the councilors, in others threatened with death?

Control of public revenues.
Reform in the land system.
Municipal rights for towns and cities.
The exclusion of judges from Parliament.
That the council be directly responsible to the people
rather than the Crown.

Since 1818 the reformers have been agitating to have wrongs righted, and for nineteen years the clique has prevented official inquiry, gagged the press, bludgeoned conventions out of existence, and thrown leaders of opposition in prison.

MacKenzie now makes the mistake of publishing in his papers a letter from the English radical Hume, advocating the freedom of Canada “from the baneful domination of the mother country.” At once, with a jingo whoop, the loyalty cry is emitted by “the family compact.” Is not this what they have been telling the Governor from the first, these reformers are republicans in disguise? By trickery and manipulation they swing the next election so that MacKenzie is defeated. From that moment MacKenzie’s tone changed. It may be that, losing all hope of reform, he became a republican. If this were treason, then the English ministers, who were advocating the same remedy, were guilty of the same treason. With MacKenzie, secretly and openly, are a host of sympathizers, Dr. Rolph, Tom Talbot’s old friend, come up from the London district to practice medicine in Toronto, and Van Egmond, who has helped to settle the Huron Tract of the Canada Company, founded by John Galt, the novelist, and some four thousand others whose names MacKenzie has on a list in his carpet bag.

All the autumn of 1837 Fitzgibbons, now commander of the troops in Toronto, hears vague rumors of farmers secretly drilling, of workmen extemporizing swords out of scythes, of old soldiers furbishing up their arms of the 1812 War. What does it mean? Sir Francis Bond Head, the new governor of Ontario, refuses to believe his own ears. Neither does the family compact realize that there is any danger to their long tenure of power. They affect to sneer at these poor patriots of the plow, little dreaming that the rights which these poor patriots of the scythe swords are burning to defend, will, by and by, be the pride of England’s colonial system. The story of plot and counter plot cannot be told in detail here; it is too long. But on the night of Monday, December 4, Toronto wakes up to a wild ringing of college bells. The rebel patriots have collected at Montgomery’s Tavern outside Toronto, and are advancing on the city.

Poor MacKenzie’s plans have gone all awry. Four thousand patriots had pledged themselves to assemble at the tavern on December 7, but Dr. Rolph, or some other friend in the city, sends word that the date has been discovered. The only hope of seizing the city is for them to come sooner; and MacKenzie arrives at the tavern on December 3, with only a few hundred followers, who have neither food nor firearms; and I doubt much if they had even definite plans; of such there are no records. Before Van Egmond comes from Seaforth, doubt and dissension and distrust of success depress the insurgents; and it does n’t help their spirits any to have four Toronto scouts break through their lines in the dark and back again with word of their weakness, though they plant a fatal bullet neatly in the back of one poor loyalist. If they had advanced promptly on the 4th, as planned, they might have given Sir Francis Bond Head and Fitzgibbons a stiff tussle for possession of the city, for Toronto’s defenders at this time numbered scarcely three hundred; but during the days MacKenzie’s followers delayed north of Yonge Street, Allan McNab came up from Hamilton with more troops. By Wednesday, the 6th, there were twelve hundred loyalist troops in Toronto; and noon of the 7th, out marches the loyalist army by way of Yonge Street, bands playing, flags flying, horses prancing under Fitzgibbons and McNab. It was a warm, sunny day. From the windows of Yonge Street women waved handkerchiefs and cheered. At street corners the rabble shouted itself hoarse, just as it would have cheered MacKenzie had he come down Yonge Street victorious.

MacKenzie’s sentries had warned the insurgents of the loyalists’ coming. MacKenzie was for immediate advance. Van Egmond thought it stark madness for five hundred poorly armed men to meet twelve hundred troopers in pitched battle; but it was too late now for stark madness to retreat. The loyalist bands could be heard from Rosedale; the loyalists’ bayonets could be seen glittering in the sun. MacKenzie posted his men a short distance south of the tavern in some woods; one hundred and fifty on one side of the road west of Yonge Street, one hundred on the other side. The rest of the insurgents, being without arms, did not leave the rendezvous. In the confusion and haste the tragic mistake was made of leaving MacKenzie’s carpet bag with the list of patriots at the tavern. This gave the loyalists a complete roster of the agitators’ names.

Fifteen minutes later it was all over with MacKenzie. The big guns of the Toronto troops shelled the woods, killing one patriot rebel and wounding eleven, four fatally. In answer, only a clattering spatter of shots came from the rebel side. The patriots were in headlong flight with the mounted men of Toronto in pursuit.

It was over with MacKenzie, but, as the sequence of events will show, it was not all over with the cause. A book of soldiers’ yarns might be told of hairbreadth escapes, the aftermath of the rebellion. Knowing his side was doomed to defeat, Dr. Rolph tried to escape from Toronto. He was stopped by a loyalist sentry, but explained he was leaving the city to visit a patient. Farther on he had been arrested by a loyalist picket, when luckily a young doctor who had attended Rolph’s medical lectures, all unconscious of MacKenzie’s plot, vouched for his loyalty. Riding like a madman all that night, Rolph reached Niagara and escaped to the American frontier. A reward of 1000 pounds had been offered for MacKenzie dead or alive. He had waited only till his followers fled, when he mounted his big bay horse and galloped for the woods, pursued by Fitzgibbons’ men. The big bay carried him safely to the country, where he wandered openly for four days. It speaks volumes for the stanch fidelity of the country people to the cause which MacKenzie represented, that during these wanderings he was unbetrayed, spite of the 1000 pounds reward. Finally he too succeeded in crossing Niagara. Van Egmond was captured north of Yonge Street, but died from disease contracted in his prison cell before he could be tried. Lount, another of the leaders, had succeeded in reaching Long Point, Lake Erie. With a fellow patriot, a French voyageur, and a boy, he started to cross Lake Erie in an open boat. It was wintry, stormy weather. For two days and two nights the boat tossed, a plaything of the waves, the drenching spray freezing as it fell, till the craft was almost ice-logged. For food they had brought only a small piece of meat, and this had frozen so hard that their numbed hands could not break it. Weakening at each oar stroke, they at last saw the south shore of Lake Erie rise on the sky line; but before the close-muffled refugees had dared to hope for safety on the American side, a strong south wind had sprung up that drove the boat back across the lake towards Grand River. To remain exposed longer meant certain death. They landed, were mistaken for smugglers, and thrown into jail, where Lount was at once recognized.

In West Ontario one Dr. Duncombe had acted as MacKenzie’s lieutenant. Allan McNab had come west with six hundred men to suppress the rebellion. Realizing the hopelessness of further resistance, Duncombe had tried to save his men by ordering them to disperse to their homes. He himself, with his white horse, took to the woods, where he lay in hiding all day and it was a Canadian December and foraged at night for berries and roots. Judge Ermatinger gives the graphic story of Duncombe’s escape. Starvation drove him to the house of a friend. The friend was out, and when the wife asked who he was, Duncombe laid his revolver on the table and made answer, “I am Duncombe; and I must have food.” Here he lay disguised so completely with nightcap, nightdress, and all, as the visiting grandmother of the family, that loyalists who saw his white horse and came in to search the house, looked squarely at the recumbent figure beneath the bedclothes and did not recognize him. Duncombe at last reached his sister’s home near London.

“Don’t you know me?” he asked, standing in the open door, waiting for her recognition. In the few weeks of exposure and pursuit his hair had turned snow-white.

His friends suggested that he cross to the American frontier dressed as a woman, and the disguise was so perfect, curls of his sister’s hair bobbing from beneath his bonnet, that two loyalist soldiers gallantly escorted the lady’s sleigh across unsafe places in the ice. Duncombe waited till he was well on the American side, and his escorts on the way back to Sarnia. Then he emitted a yell over the back of the cutter, “Go tell your officers you have just helped Dr. Duncombe across!”

Having lost the fight for a cause which events have since justified, it is not surprising that the patriots on the American frontier now lost their heads. They formed organizations from Detroit to Vermont for the invasion of Canada and the establishment of a republic. These bands were known as “Hunter’s Lodges.” Rolph and Duncombe repudiated connection with them, but MacKenzie was head and heart for armed invasion from Buffalo. Space forbids the story of these raids. They would fill a book with such thrilling tales as make up the border wars of Scotland.

The tumultuous year of 1837 closed with the burning of the Caroline. MacKenzie had taken up quarters on Navy Island in Niagara River. The Caroline, an American ship, was being employed to convey guns and provisions to the insurgents’ camp. On the Canadian side of the river camped Allan McNab with twenty-five hundred loyalist troops. Looking across the river with field glasses, McNab sees the boat landing field guns on Navy Island for MacKenzie.

“I say,” exclaims the future Sir Allan, “this won’t do! Can’t you cut that vessel out, Drew?” addressing a young officer.

“Nothing easier,” answers Drew.

“Do it, then,” orders McNab.

In spite of the fact “nothing was easier,” Drew’s men came near disaster on their midnight escapade. The river below Navy Island was three miles wide, and only a mile and a half from the rapids above the Falls, with a current like a mill race. Secretly seven boats, with four men in each, set out at half past eleven, a few friends on the river bank wishing Drew Godspeed. Out from shore Drew draws his boats together, and tells the men the perilous task they have to do: if any one wishes to go back let him do so now. Not a man speaks. Halfway across, firing from the island drives two of the boats back. The rest get under shadow from the bright moonlight and go on. The roar of the Falls now became deafening, and some of the rowers called out they were being drawn down the center of the river astern. Drew fastens his eyes on a light against the American shore to judge of their progress. For a moment, though the men were rowing with all their might, the light ashore and the boats in mid-river seemed to remain absolutely still. Finally the boats gained an oar’s length. Then a mighty pull, and all forge ahead. A strip of land hides approach to the Caroline. The Canadian boatmen lie in hiding till the moon goes down, then glide in on the Caroline, when Drew mounts the decks. Three unarmed men are found on the shore side. Drew orders them to land. One fires point-blank; Drew slashes him down with a single saber cut. The rest of the crew are roused from sleep and sent ashore. The Caroline is set on fire in four places. She is moored to the shore ice; axes chop her free. She is adrift; Drew the last to jump from her flaming decks to his place in the small boats. The flames are seen from the Canadian side, and huge bonfires light up the Canadian shore; by their gleam Drew steers back for McNab’s army, and is welcomed with cheers that split the welkin. Slowly the flaming vessel drifted down the channel to the Falls. Suddenly the lights went out; the Caroline had either sunk on a reef or gone over the Falls. One man had been killed on the decks. As the vessel was American, and had been raided in American ports, the episode raised an international dispute that might in another mood have caused war.

Lount and Matthews pay for the rebellion on the gallows, upon which the imperial government expressed regret that the Toronto Executive “found such severity necessary.” Later, when “the Hunters’ Lodges” raid Prescott, and Van Shoultz, the Polish leader, with nine others, is executed at Kingston, a great revulsion of feeling takes place against the family compact. The execution of the patriots did more for their cause than all their efforts of twenty years. The Canadian people had supported the agitators up to the point of armed rebellion. That gave British blood pause, for the Britisher reveres the law next to God; but when the governing ring began to glut its vengeance under cloak of loyalty that was another matter. After the execution of Lount and Matthews the family compact could scarcely count a friend outside its own circle in Upper Canada. It is worth remembering that the young lawyer who defended Van Shoultz in the trial at Kingston was a John A. Macdonald, who later took foremost part in framing a new constitution for Canada.

Affairs had gone faster in Quebec. There the rebellion almost became war. Papineau was leader of the agitators, Papineau, fiery, impetuous, eloquent, followed by the bold boys in the bonnets blue, marching the streets of Montreal singing revolutionary songs and planting liberty trees. In Lower Canada, too, things have come to the pass where the agitators advocate armed resistance. From the first, in Quebec, the struggle has waged round two questions, the exclusion of the French from the council, and the right of the colony to spend its own revenues; but boil down the ninety-two resolutions of 1834, and the demands of the agitators in Lower Canada are the same as in Upper Canada, for complete self-government. A dozen clashes of authority lead up to the final outbreak. For instance, the House elects Papineau, the agitator, speaker. The Governor General refuses to recognize him, and Parliament is dissolved.

Failing to obtain redress by constitutional methods, the agitators now advocate the right of a colony to abolish government unsuited to it. The constitutional party takes alarm and organizes volunteers. Papineau’s party, early in 1837, begin violently advocating that all French magistrates resign their commissions from the English government. On Richelieu River and up in Two Mountains, north of Montreal, are the strongholds of the agitators, where men have been drilling, and the boys in the bonnets blue rioting through the villages to the great scandal of parish priests.

There are riots in Montreal early in November of 1837, and “the Sons of Liberty” are chased through the town. Then in the third week of November a troop of Montreal cavalry is sent to St. John’s to arrest three agitators, who have been threatening a magistrate for refusing to resign his commission. The agitators are arrested and handcuffed, and at three in the morning the troops are moving along across country towards Longueuil with the prisoners in a wagon, when suddenly three hundred armed men rise on either side of the road to the fore. Shots are exchanged. In the confusion the prisoners jump from the wagon. This is not resistance to authority. It is open rebellion. Papineau intrusts the management of affairs in St. Eustache, north of Montreal, to Girod, a Swiss, and to Dr. Chenier, a local patriot. Papineau himself and Dr. Nelson and O’Callaghan are down on the Richelieu at St. Denis.

Take the Richelieu region first. Colonel Gore is to strike up the river southward to St. Denis. Colonel Wetherell is to cross country from Montreal and strike down the river north to St. Charles, thus hemming in the insurgents between Gore on the north and himself on the south. There are eight hundred rebels at St. Denis, one hundred and fifty armed, and twelve hundred at St. Charles. Papineau and O’Callaghan for safety’s sake slip across the line to Swanton in Vermont. One could wish that, having led their faithful followers up to the sticking point of stark madness, the agitators had remained shoulder to shoulder with the brave fellows on the field.

Colonel Gore came from Montreal by boat to the mouth of the Richelieu. At seven-thirty on the night of November 22 two hundred and fifty troopers landed to march up the Richelieu road to St. Denis. Rain turning to sleet was falling in a deluge. The roads were swimming knee-deep in slush. Bridges had been cut, and in the darkness the loyalists had to diverge to fording places, which lengthened out the march twenty-four miles. At St. Denis was Dr. Nelson with the agitators in a three-story stone house, windows bristling with muskets. By dawn Papineau and O’Callaghan had fled, and at nine o’clock came Colonel Gore’s loyalist troopers, exhausted from the march, soaked to the skin, their water-sagged clothes freezing in the cold wind. The loyalists went into the fight unfed, and with a whoop; but it is not surprising that the peppering of bullets from the windows drove the troopers back, and Gore’s bugles sounded retreat. Unaware of Gore’s defeat, one Lieutenant Weir has been sent across country with dispatches. He is captured and bound, and, in a futile attempt to escape, shot and stabbed to death.

Wetherell comes down the river from Chambly with three hundred men. He finds St. Charles village protected by outworks of felled trees, and the houses are literally loopholed with muskets; but Wetherell has brought cannon along, and the cannon begin to sing on November 25. Then Wetherell’s men charge through the village with leveled bayonets. The poor habitants scatter like frightened sheep; they surrender; one hundred perish. It is estimated that on both sides three hundred are wounded, though some English writers give the list of wounded as low as forty. Messengers galloped with news of the patriots’ defeat at St. Charles to Dr. Nelson at St. Denis. The habitants fled to their homes. Nelson was left without a follower. He escaped to the woods, and for two weeks wandered in the forests of the boundary, exposed to cold and hunger, not daring to kindle a fire that would betray him, afraid to let himself sleep for fear of freezing to death. He was captured near the Vermont line and carried prisoner to Montreal.

And still worse fared the fortunes of war with the patriots north of Montreal. Their defense and defeat were almost pitiable in childish ignorance of what war might mean. Boys’ marbles had been gathered together for bullets. Scythes were carried as swords, and old flintlocks that had not seen service for twenty years were taken down from the chimney places. With their bonnets blue hanging down their backs, rusty firearms over their shoulders, and the village fiddler leading the march, one thousand “Sons of Liberty” had paraded the streets of St. Eustache, singing, rollicking, speechifying, unconscious as children playing war that they were dancing to ruin above a volcano. Chenier, the beloved country doctor, is their leader. Girod, the Swiss, has come up to show them how to drill. They take possession of a newly built convent. Then on Sunday, the 3d of December, comes word of the defeat down on the Richelieu. The moderate men plead with Chenier to stop now before it is too late; but Chenier will not listen. He knows the cause is right, and with the credulity or faith of a simple child hopes some mad miracle will win the day. Still he is much moved; tears stream down his face. Then on December 14 the church bells ring a crazy alarm. The troops are coming, two thousand of them from Montreal under Sir John Colborne, the governor. The insurgent army melts like frost before the sun. Less than one hundred men stand by poor Chenier. At eleven-thirty the troops sweep in at both ends of the village at once, Girod, the Swiss commander, suicides in panic flight. Cooped up in the church steeple with the flames mounting closer round them and the troopers whooping jubilantly outside, Chenier and his eighty followers call out: “We are done! We are sold! Let us jump!” Chenier jumps from the steeple, is hit by the flying bullets, and perishes as he falls. His men cower back in the flaming steeple till it falls with a crash into the burning ruins. Amid the ash heap are afterwards found the corpses of seventy-two patriots. The troopers take one hundred prisoners in the region, then set fire to all houses where loyalist flags are not waved from the windows.

Matters have now come to such an outrageous pass that the British government can no longer ignore the fact that the colony has been goaded to desperation by the misgovernment of the ruling clique. Lord Durham is appointed special commissioner with extraordinary powers to proceed to Canada and investigate the whole subject of colonial government. One may guess that the ruling clique were prepared to take possession of the new commissioner and prime him with facts favorable to their side; but Durham was not a man to be monopolized by any faction. When he arrived, in May of 1838, he quickly gave proof that he would follow his own counsels and choose his own councilors. His first official declaration was practically an act of amnesty to the rebels, eight only of the leading prisoners, among them Dr. Nelson, being punished by banishment to Bermuda, the rest being simply expelled from Canada.

This act was tantamount to a declaration that the rebels possessed some rights and had suffered real grievances, and the governing rings in both Toronto and Quebec took furious offense. Complaints against Durham poured into the English colonial office, complaints, oddly enough, that he had violated the spirit of the English Constitution by sentencing subjects of the Crown without trial. Though every one knew that in Canada’s turbulent condition trial by jury was impossible, Durham’s political foes in England took up the cry. In addition to political complaints were grudges against Durham for personal slight; and it must be confessed the haughty earl had ridden roughshod over all the petty prejudices and little dignities of the colonial magnates. The upshot was, Durham resigned in high dudgeon and sailed for England in November of 1838.

On his way home he dictated to his secretary, Charles Buller, the famous report which is to Canada what the Magna Charta is to England or the Declaration of Independence to the United States. Without going into detail, it may be said that it recommended complete self-government for the colonies. As disorders had again broken out in Canada, the English government hastened to embody the main recommendations of Durham’s report in the Union Act of 1840, which came into force a year later. By it Upper and Lower Canada were united on a basis of equal representation each, though Quebec’s population was six hundred thousand to Ontario’s five hundred thousand. The colonies were to have the entire management of their revenues and civil lists. The government was to consist of an Upper Chamber appointed by the Crown for life, a representative assembly, and the governor with a cabinet of advisers responsible to the assembly.

In all, more than seven hundred arrests had been made in Quebec Province. Of these all were released but some one hundred and thirty, and the state trials resulted in sentence of banishment against fifty, death to twelve. In modern days it is almost impossible to realize the degree of fanatical hatred generated by this half century of misgovernment. Declared one of the governing clique’s official newspapers in Montreal: “Peace must be maintained, even if we make the country a solitude. French Canadians must be swept from the face of the earth. . . . The empire must be respected, even at the cost of the entire French Canadian people.” With such sentiments openly uttered, one may surely say that the Constitutional Act of 1791 turned back the pendulum of Canada’s progress fifty years, and it certainly took fifty more years to eradicate the bitterness generated by the era of misgovernment.

With the Upper and Lower Cañadas united in a federation of two provinces, it was a foregone conclusion that all parts of British North America must sooner or later come into the fold. It would be hard to say from whom the idea of confederation of all the provinces first sprang. Purely as a theory the idea may be traced back as early as 1791. The truth is, Destiny, Providence, or whatever we like to call that great stream of concurrent events which carries men and nations out to the ocean highway of a larger life, forced British North America into the Confederation of 1867.

In the first place, while the Union worked well in theory, it was exceedingly difficult in practice. Ontario and Quebec had equal representation. One was Protestant, the other Catholic; one French, the other English. Deadlocks, or, to use the slang of the street, even tugs of war, were inevitable and continual. All Ontario had to do to thwart Quebec, or Quebec had to do to thwart Ontario, was to stand together and keep the votes solid. Coalition ministries proved a failure.

In the second place, Ontario was practically dependent on the customs duties collected at Quebec ports of entry for a provincial revenue. The goods might be billed for Ontario; Quebec collected the tax.

Ontario was also dependent on Quebec for access to the sea. Which province was to pay for the system of canals being developed, and the deepening of the St. Lawrence?

Then the Oregon Treaty of 1846 had actually brought a cloud of war on the horizon. In case of war, there was the question of defense.

Then railways had become a very live question. Quebec wanted connection with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. How was the cost of a railroad to be apportioned? Red River was agitating for freedom from fur-trade monopoly. How were railways to be built to Red River?

Ontario’s population in twenty years jumped past the million mark. Was it fair that her million people should have only the same number of representatives as Quebec with her half million? Reformers of Ontario, voiced by George Brown of The Globe, called for “Rep. by Pop.,” representation by population.

Civil war was raging in the United States, threatening to tear the Union to tatters. Why? Because the balance of power had been left with the states governments, and not enough authority centralized in the federal government. The lesson was not lost on struggling Canada.

Then the Hudson’s Bay Company’s license of monopoly over the fur trade of the west was nearing expiration. Should the license be renewed for another twenty years, or should Canada take over Red River as a new province, which was the wish of the people both east and west? And if Canada did buy out the Hudson’s Bay Company’s vested rights, who was to pay down the cost?

Lastly, was John A. Macdonald, the young lawyer who had pleaded the defense of the patriot trials at Kingston in 1838, now a leading politician of the United Cañadas, weary of the hopeless deadlocks between Ontario and Quebec. With almost a sixth sense of divination in reading the signs of the times in the trend of events, John A. Macdonald saw that Canada’s one hope of becoming a national power lay in union, confederation. The same thing was seen by other leaders of the day, by all that grand old guard known as the Fathers of Confederation, sent from the different provinces to the conference at Quebec in October of 1864. There the outline of what is known as the British North America Act was drafted, in the main but an amplification of Durham’s scheme, made broad enough to receive all the provinces whenever they might decide to come into Confederation. The delegates then go back to be indorsed by their provinces. By some provinces the scheme is rejected. Newfoundland is not yet part of Canada, but by 1867 Confederation is an accomplished fact. By 1871 the new Dominion has bought out the rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the West and Manitoba joins the Eastern Provinces. By 1885 a railway links British Columbia with Nova Scotia. By 1905 the great hunting field of the Saskatchewan prairies has been divided into two new provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger than France.

Such is barest outline of Canada’s past. What of the future for this Empire of the North? That future is now in the making. It lies in the hands of the men and women who are living to-day. In the past Canada’s makers dreamed greatly, and they dared greatly, and they took no heed of impossibles, and they spent without stint of blood and happiness for high aim. When Canada lost ground in the progress of the nations, as in the corrupt days of Bigot’s rule during the French regime, or the equally corrupt days of the family compact after the Conquest, it was because the altar fires of her ideals were allowed to burn low.

It has been said that the past is but a rear light marking the back trail of the ship’s passage. Say rather it is the search light on the ship’s prow, pointing the way over the waters.

To-day Canada is in the very vanguard of the nations. Her wheat fields fill the granaries of the world; and to her ample borders come the peoples of earth’s ends, bringing tribute not of incense and frankincense as of old, but of manhood and strength, of push and lift, of fire and hope and enthusiasm and the daring that conquers all the difficulties of life; bringing too, all the outworn vices of an Old World, all the vicious instincts of the powers that prey in the Under World. Canada’s prosperity is literally overflowing from a cornucopia of super-abundant plenty. Will her constitution, wrested from political and civil strife; will her moral stamina, bred from the heroism of an heroic past, stand the strain, the tremendous strain of the new conditions? Will she assimilate the strange new peoples strange in thought and life and morals coming to her borders? Will she eradicate their vices like the strong body of a healthy constitution throwing off disease; or will she be poisoned by the toxins of vicious traits inherited from centuries of vicious living? Will she remake the men, regenerate the aliens, coming to her hearth fire; or will they drag her down to their degeneracy? Above all, will she stand the strain, the tremendous strain, of prosperity, and the corruption that is attendant on prosperity? Quién sabe? Let him answer who can; and the question is best answered by watching the criminal calendar. (Is the percentage of convictions as certain and relentless as under the old regime? What manner of crimes is growing up in the land?) And the question may be answered, too, by watching whether the press and platform and pulpit stand as everlastingly and relentlessly for sharp demarkation between right and wrong, for the sharp demarkation between truth, plain truth, and intentional mendacity, as under the regime of the old hard days. When political life grows corrupt, is it now cleansed, or condoned? Let each Canadian answer for himself. If the altar fires of Canada’s ideals again burn low, again she will lag in the progress of the world’s great builders.