Part 21

shots were exchanged, the Colonel’s bullet lodged in his adversary’s cheek, the latter’s weapon was discharged in the air; and some dozen other challenges ensued. There was also the duello by correspondence, when sharp things were penned. Prince shook off his quondam friends, and one of them smartly replied, “You are at perfect liberty to cast off your quondam friends, as it may save them the unpleasant trouble of doing the same by you.”

The huzzas of the triumphant after all this may be easily imagined. His former townsmen in England set about getting up a testimonial; he was dined in Toronto, and made his usual triumphal progress home. The 85th were ready to draw him to the Park Farm, substituting themselves for his horses, and immediate preparation was made to dine and wine him in Sandwich. A carriage with the Dinner Committee was despatched to the Park Farm, preceded by another carriage containing a band of music, all under escort of the brave and loyal 2nd Essex Cavalry. The “flag of our country” and the green and gold colours of the Windsor volunteers floated over them; and on their return with the guest the carriage was brought up by a peremptory “Halt!” the cheering 85th set the horses free, and in the midst of the shouting populace, and to the inspiriting sounds of “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” took him to the officers’ quarters. Here “God Save the Queen” was struck up; and from the officers’ quarters the way was led to the dinner, set in an arbour of oak boughs.

Then--the Queen, God bless her, nine times nine; the Queen Dowager, Lord Hill of the army, and Lord Minto of the navy, all lesser fry who had to be content with three times three. The President called upon a hundred guests “to fill to the very brim--_which was done accordingly_;” John Prince, may long life and prosperity attend him--nineteen times nine, and one cheer more.

So far so good; from Halifax to Amherstburg every newspaper exploited him, every mail recorded fresh triumphs; he had only to show himself to be cheered to the echo. But he had yet to pass through the hands of Lord Brougham.

The ex-Chancellor was ready to fight any number of duels, rhetorical or conversational, of black-letter law or black-mouthed insinuation, upon any conceivable occasion. He now pounced upon the word outlaw and twisted it through all the maze of meaning. The “mealy-mouthed” Sir George Arthur’s opinion and the exculpation by court-martial availed not; nothing but insanity could excuse Colonel Prince. In his opinion he, Prince, was guilty of murder; he had made assurance doubly sure by anticipation of legal proceedings and results. That there was great support given Colonel Prince throughout Canada, advanced as a mitigating circumstance by Lord Ellenborough, seemed but to justify the ex-Chancellor in his sweeping condemnation. The Duke of Wellington drew attention to the fact that it was not Colonel Prince’s commission that was involved, or even his life alone, but the conduct of the Upper Canadian government; that if all alleged were true, another gallant friend of his, Sir John Colbome, whose duty it was to have brought Colonel Prince at once to court-martial and punish him, would have been remiss, and (evidently) warming to his subject, his Grace predicted that a system of retaliation would be followed, that if Her Majesty had not the power to protect her Canadian subjects the colony ought to be abandoned. “Is there a single spot,” he asks, “except that on which a soldier stands, in which Her Majesty’s authority is enforced?”

Brougham’s reputation when travelling was that at Inverness he was Conservative, but, changing his opinions as often as his horses, he was downright revolutionary by the time he reached Dundee; there at the full, at Edinburgh he waned. By the time the Duke of Wellington had finished Brougham’s sympathies were modified, and he ends with an opinion that if the Government of the United States had not power to repress such warfare they could hardly be called a civilized nation.

Upheld by the Duke, with the approval of the Imperial Parliament, rewarded by a commission in the 71st for his son--a gift straight from the hand of the great man himself--Colonel Prince held his head high for the rest of his life, took good care to keep out of Detroit, fought his remaining enemies to the last, and might well have said, “Honour and policy, like unsevered friends, i’ the war do grow together.” Always manly, he was ready to meet his former vilifiers half-way in a reconciliation in which Sir Allen MacNab, the Rector of Sandwich, Major Lachlan and John Hillyard Cameron undertook the rôle of mediators. All reflections contained in the skit upon the colonel’s valour were withdrawn, and on his side he expressed, in writing, his regret for his many hasty expressions. It was, in fact, a true amnesty, in which each party had to pay its own costs, for more than one bit of litigation had begun.

Well might a temperate New York newspaper say, “With all our hearts we wish those who feel themselves oppressed in Canada might have the liberty they seek, if they could get it without resorting to measures endangering the peace of the whole Anglo-Saxon race.”

“Come, Mighty Must! Inevitable Shall! In Thee I trust; Time weaves my coronal.”

Huron’s Age Heroic.

“Huron, distinguished by its lake, Where Manitoulin’s spirits wake,”

before ’37 had but one central point, which, to use a Paddyism, was on the very confines of the still primeval forest. The mysterious wilderness had a few spots between Goderich and the other limit of the Canada Company, Guelph, in which woodmen, thinking solely of the grain and roots to be grown in the cleared spaces, were unconsciously ameliorating the climate of their continent by the patches of sunlight their axes were letting in through the green gothic above.

At the one end Galt, “churning an inarticulate melody,” with shoulders straight and upright, caught his foot in a tree root. Pryor, his right-hand man, said, “Look after your feet, man, and keep your head out of the stars.” In a moment Pryor hit his head against a branch. “Man, keep your eyes frae your feet,” rejoined Galt, “or else you’ll damage all the brains you’ve got.”

They jested; but they made the way of the pioneer. And the pioneer is the Canadian man of destiny. He is in a thousand valleys and on a thousand hillsides, sometimes cold and hungry, but he swims on the crest of the wave, and sees the beginning of a new thing. The spirit of adventure which bore Columbus, Cabot, Cartier, and Champlain into untrodden paths, sustains him and makes him brother to them, even if his scope is but the patch cleared by his own axe.

The British distinction between Whig and Tory, like the London fog, was supposed not to cross the ocean with these pioneers. But in the wilderness of Huron they throve by ’37 with a vigour derived from transplanting. After the Gourlay affair men learned to put bridles on their tongues; but if, as in Governor Maitland’s opinion, all Reformers were deluded, unprincipled and designing, there were men in Dumfries, Guelph, and from the Wilmot Line westward, who could differ from that opinion and yet sing,

“Far from our Fatherland, Nobly we’ll fall or stand, For England’s Queen. In town and forest free, Britons unconquered, we Sing with true loyalty, God save the Queen.”

Dumfries and all about Galt was largely settled by shepherds from the neighbourhood of the Ettrick Shepherd, Galashiels, Abbotsford, and thereabouts. If any of the good Tory sentiments recorded at Ambrose’s are to be believed, the Ettrick Shepherd would have been dismayed had he known what manner of opinion some of his fellow-shepherds held in Canada. Walter Cowan, bailiff to Sir Walter, told his master he wanted to emigrate. “Well, Walter, if you think it best to go,” said his genial employer, “I’ll assist you; but if you ever need to give it up, let me know, and I’ll help bring you back to Scotland.”

But did any ever wish to return? “I have never been home again,” says one, “although I have often wished to see the place, and I don’t think my sons or other Canadians appreciate it half enough; but I never heard of any emigrant wanting to go back to _live_. If you have thriven here, you are too high to have aught to do with them you left; and those above you, no matter how you have thriven, are too high to have aught to do with you.”

“I was born at Yarrow,” continues a mellow old Radical, bedridden, but bright as the proverbial shilling, “and I was naught but a poor shepherd lad; now, at ninety-three, I am one of the most fortunate men alive. I am sinking down to the grave, bedridden, but I have all my faculties, and I do not use spectacles by day or night. I came out in ’34, and that journey across the Atlantic was my wedding jaunt, for I was married on my way to the ship, sixty-three years ago the 26th of May it was; and there at the foot of my bed they have put the picture of my good lady, where I can see it all day long. In ’35 I felt I must have books, so I said, ‘Is there anyone in this place will help me get some together?’ Then three men, all cobblers, came forward, and among us we started what is now the Mechanics’ Institute--three cobblers and a former shepherd lad; and that was the first public work I put my hand to here. When I was naught but a callant at home I mind how my heart nearly broke because there were no shillings to buy the books I longed for, and when Mr. Chambers brought out that journal for the people and we could buy it for three baubees, I thocht he was the noblest man that ever lived. On the way out there was a lady who listened to our talk, and I said I should never be content without a volume of Pollok, on which I had set all my desires. So when we came through Rochester she bought the book for a shilling, and made me a present of what I had so long wanted; and I thought this must be a fine country where books could be got for a shilling!”

After the arrival of Sir Francis, Judge Jones and Colonel FitzGibbon had their conversation about the bags of pikes and pike-handles and signs of their immediate use. Said the Judge, “You do not mean to say these people are going to rebel?” The Colonel was no Thomas; he firmly did believe. “Pooh-pooh,” said Jones, turning to Sir Francis, who wearied for his pillow. So Sir Francis, humane man, addressed by what he called “the industrious classes,” expressed himself in “plain and homely language,” with as much care as if intended for “either branches of the Legislature:” “The grievances of this Province _must_ be corrected; impartial justice _must_ be administered. The people have asked for it; their Sovereign has ordained it; I am here to execute his gracious commands.” Nor did these industrious classes, one time shepherd laddies and the like, feel more than the Governor himself allowed.

“I was a Scotch Radical, and would have helped Mackenzie all I could--until he drew the sword. That proved to me he was not constitutional, and I wouldna any such doings. I do know that if by my own puny arm, young and without influence as I was, I could have got rid of the Family Compact, I would have done it right willingly. A few days before the outbreak a neighbour told me of the great doings likely to be in Toronto, and I joked wi’ him. But he said, ‘Mind, man, it’s no joking matter, and it’s sure ye’ll see Mackenzie’s men through this way;’ and as I was a Scotch Radical he seemed to think it would be short whiles before I was in gaol. So I laughed, and said, ‘Well, if Mackenzie comes this way I’ll treat him well, for I have eight hogs hung in a row, and he shall have the best.’ I would have fed him and his people, for I would have rid the country of the Family Compact; but he didna mend matters to draw the sword.” Even such meritorious work must not be done in opposition to the Queen and country.

“I count only the hours that are serene,” is the motto on an old Venetian sun-dial. All the Canadian clocks must have stopped and the sun hasted not for a space of years in these exciting days when Canadians, but one remove in complexion from aborigines, allowed not toil, heat, sun, nor isolation to abate the vigour, ingenuity and resolution born of circumstances.

“William Lyon Mackenzie, hot-tempered and impulsive,” says another old Reformer, “had a keen eye for detection of a flaw in an argument; he lived by complaining, and had no thought beyond formulating and promoting grievances. So many years of such a tone of mind totally unfitted him for political life. When a practical question was put before him for a practical answer, the man was utterly at sea; his faculty of constructiveness was obliterated.”

Evidently, he who cannot live happily anywhere will live happily nowhere, and Mackenzie, “yellow and somewhat dwarfish,” bore out the supposed likeness to the _Yellow Dwarf_, a violent weekly journal published in London by an ultra Radical in 1819 and afterwards. Its editor, Wooler, set it up without copy, mind and composing-stick working together.

The _Colonial Advocate_ and Mackenzie’s pamphlets did their work in the country side. Lords Brougham, Melbourne and Glenelg were gibbeted in Toronto and afterwards burnt on the night of October 22nd, ’37, and the _Advocate_ informed them of it. It also kept up excitement about the “Kentish drillmaster,” corporals MacNab and Robinson, and the general system of rack rent; it stated that a pound loaf was at a shilling Halifax; that woe and wailing, pauperism and crime, were rife in a land never meant for the first three; that many in the new settlements seldom tasted a morsel of bread, and were glad to gnaw the bark off the trees. “But why are want and misery come among us? Ah, ye rebels to Christianity, ye detest the truth, ye shut your ears against that which is right. Your country is taxed, priest-ridden, sold to strangers and ruined ... Like the Iazzaroni of Italy, ye delight in cruelty and distress, and lamentation and woe.” He apostrophized the ruling Pact as false Canadians, Tories, pensioners, profligates, Orangemen, church-men, spies, informers, brokers, gamblers, parasites, knaves of every caste and description. It would be wonderful if each man’s grievance could not find an outlet with such a number and variety of scapegoats. “Never was a vagabond race more prosperous,” he writes, “never did successful villainy rejoice in brighter visions of the future. Ye may plunder, rob with impunity, your feet are on the people’s necks, they are transformed into tame, crouching slaves, ready to be trampled on. Erect your Juggernaut--the people are ready to be sacrificed under the wheel of the idol.” It is strange that he did not quote Culpepper: “They dip in our dish, they sit by our fire; we find them in the dye-fat, the wash-bowls and the powdering tub. They share with the cutler in his box; they have marked and sealed us from head to foot.”

When Mackenzie made his appearance in Galt in ’33 a very partial local critic calls him _somewhat_ of a political firebrand; he certainly was full of what in Lower Canada just then was called “fusées de la rhétorique.” He spoke from the south window of the village inn, with the usual results. One

“Whose rhetoric could rouse the Olympian host, And scare into fits poor Demosthenes’ ghost,”

was no commonplace figure. Set on steel springs, the hands opening and shutting, the light-blue eyes sending keen and piercing glances through the ranks of “these people” before him, who were already in the best of training from the local agitator Mr. Bennett, the master of Liberty Cottage, “this fellow” spoke in a way direct and easy to understand. His writing was sometimes verbose, unequal and amateurish; but in speech “the superlative littleness of the man” was lightened by gleams of humour, facial expression and gesture which would not commit themselves to paper, nor did they hinder the deadly earnestness that carried conviction to any wavering mind. Now as he spoke a great clatter arose from an incoming crowd which bore a blackened, bedizened and hideous effigy of himself; the likeness was so good that the sight of it provoked a smile from the original. He paused in his speech and looked on in silent and grim amusement. Had he but known it, the lay figure held almost an allegory of the real. It was stuffed with gunpowder and other combustibles, and, as its original was destined to do, went off prematurely; it knocked down a man or two, but did no great harm. The figure wore a pair of very good boots, which someone in the crowd, not so well furnished, begrudged. The man worked his way through, seized the burnt brogues, and made off with them as fast as his legs could carry him.

It is marvellous the bandit was not arrested as a suspect; it took very small evidence to make a case. One Irish Loyalist, John McCrea, was sent a summons to join the company then forming in Guelph for the front; he considered his farm and home duties of more importance, and was at once reported as “disaffected.” Shortly afterwards he went to the general store kept by Captain Lamphrey, a retired English officer, and was asked, as was the usual custom, into the parlour for a glass of wine. To his surprise he there found three others, a bench of magistrates, who without further ado began to try him. Why had he not responded to the command to join the corps? Because he had private and important domestic concerns on hand. He asked for the name of his accuser and the specific accusation, but in reply was told he must give a bond for his good behaviour. This was surely the Star Chamber, Scroggs and Jeffreys, the secret-service principle of Mackenzie’s written and spoken diatribes, and Mr. McCrea’s justified Irish obstinacy rose as a wall against the combination. One of the trio offered to become the bondsman, but the accused contended its acceptance would be an admission of guilt. Mr. McCrea insisted upon knowing their authority; they could not furnish it, and there was an end of the matter.

Captain Lamphrey’s treats were full of unexpected results. One of the loyal, who carried despatches to Hamilton, went to him one early morning with signs of too many glasses already apparent and asked for more. The captain could not refuse, knew the despatch must go, and saw its safety was already endangered. He took H. M.’s special messenger to the cellar and drew a glass of vinegar. “Drink it, man; down with it! down with it!” which was done, and the lately demoralized special messenger was “as sober as a clock.”

It was a joke to the Wellington neighbourhood that one company should be headed by a Captain Poore and another by a Captain Rich. A brusque Yorkshireman, William Day, volunteered in Poore’s company. The roads were very bad, food was scarce, and as Day got hungry his loyalty waned. At last he demanded something to eat. This was flat rebellion; Poore called it insubordination, and said that instead of comforts Day should have night guard, and stand upon his feet until the small hours lengthened.

“So you won’t give me anything to eat?”

“No.”

“Then I know where I can get it, and that’s at Guelph. And I’d like to see the man that’d stand between me and that door.”

No one offered to do so, and he walked back twenty-six miles, “got his victuals,” and so ended his active military service.

Captain Poore had been endeavouring for two or three years to form a volunteer rifle company. There was little time, and less inclination, to play at soldiering; but by ’35, when agitation among the progressive begot anxiety in the less progressive, he succeeded in forming a company sixty strong, which drilled every Saturday in a corner of his own farm. Many of the settlers were not gushing in their loyalty to the powers that were, and, while not allying themselves with Mackenzie, “had the governing party been drowned in the depths of the sea not a solitary cry would have gone up for them.” Even the schoolboys were keen politicians, and regarded those who dwelt in the shadow of the Pact as very poor types of humanity. Those who were of the required age and ordered to meet for drill every two weeks at the cross-roads, but who had not sufficient courage of their convictions to refuse service, performed it in a half-hearted manner. The most regular attendants were the schoolboys. They snowballed the men and snowballed the captain, made game of the execution of the various military movements and of Mr. Hiscock. The latter was the drill-instructor, an old soldier, who dressed partly in military uniform and carried a cane. Pompously he walked back and forth, contemptuous of the roll-call. One little Englishman, when going through the required answers, was asked, “Married or single?” “Single, sir, but under promise,” was the reply.