Part 4

Nor was other travel in a very advanced state. The palm of beauty was then, as now, accorded the St. Lawrence, but one traveller from abroad wrote, “’Tis a sad waste of life to ascend the St. Lawrence in a bateau.” By 1818 “a first-class steamer” made its exhausted way from Quebec to Montreal; aided by a strong wind it covered seven leagues in nine hours. This exhilarating motion caused the historian Christie, one of the pleased passengers, to open his window and hail his friends, “We are going famously!” By the third day’s voyage they were at the foot of the current below Montreal, and with the united aid of forty-two oxen they reached the haven for which they were bound.

With news so transmitted and the bulk of the population unable to read or write, and with only the comparatively wealthy and the adventurous able or willing to travel, it is not surprising that “the focus of sedition, that asylum for all the demagogic turbulence of the province,” the Assembly rooms at Quebec, had not succeeded in disseminating their beliefs and hopes among the most rural of the population. One thing which made remote villages loath to be disturbed was that they had more than once seen noisy demagogues and blatant liberators side with the alien powers when opportunity for self-aggrandizement came. Also, in many cases their isolated lot precluded feeling governmental pressure. But in the county of Two Mountains, at St. Denis, St. Charles, and also at Berthier, they were alert enough, and the most stirring pages in the coming revolt were to be written in blood in these localities. There secret associations flourished; open resistance only waited opportunity. There the Sons of Liberty drilled and wrote themselves into fervour, with pikes made by local blacksmiths and manifestoes founded on French and Irish models for outward tokens of the inward faith: “The diabolical policy of England towards her Canadian subjects, like to her policy towards Ireland, forever staining her bloody escutcheon.” The history of “my own, my native land,” inspires all words written from this point of view; one patriot, “plethoric with rhethoric,” had many fine lines, such as “the torch, the sword, and the savage,” and pages devoted to the “tyrannical government of palace pets.”

Away back in 1807 many militia officers of fluctuating loyalty had been dismissed, and the precedent established by Governor Craig was continued. Papineau was one of these officers; he had made an insolent reply--“The pretension of the Governor to interrogate me respecting my conduct at St. Laurent is an impertinence which I repel with contempt and silence”--to the Governor’s secretary, and had to suffer for it. The political compact called the Confederation of the Six Counties was governed by some of those so dismissed, and they all grew still more enthusiastic from the sight of such banner legends as “Papineau and the Elective System,” “Our Friends of Upper Canada,” “Independence.” The Legislative Council was pictorially represented by a skull and cross bones, and the declaration of the rights of man was voiced.

In addition to present troubles there was a perpetual harking back at these meetings to old scores, impelling “the people to wrestle with the serried hordes of their oppressors in the bloody struggles which must intervene” before “the injured, oppressed, and enslaved Canadian” could escape from “the diabolical policy of England.” There was a liberty pole, and Papineau, burning, energetic, flowery of speech, promised all things as crown to laudable effort “in the sacred cause of freedom.” It was a Canada “regenerated, disenthralled, and blessed with a liberal government” which the prophetic speech of Papineau had foreshadowed; and the “lives, fortunes, and sacred honour” of his hearers were there and then pledged with his own to aid in that regeneration. That “Frenchified Englishman,” Dr. Wolfred Nelson, also spoke; and Girod,--a Swiss, who taught agriculture in a Quebec school for boys, got up by that true patriot Perrault,--destined shortly for a tragic fate, was there. At this meeting Papineau thought he had set a ball rolling which would not easily be stopped. Already it was careering in an unpleasantly rapid manner. He deprecated the use of arms, and advised as punishment to England that nothing should be bought from her. This reprisal on the nation of shopkeepers Nelson thought a peddling policy; that the time was come for armed action, not pocket inaction. Papineau’s opinion was disappointing to the fiery wing of the Confederation. Again did Bishop Lartigue warn generally against evil counsels, reminding his flock that a cardinal rule of the Church was obedience to the powers that be; and every one of his clergy echoed him.

“Il n’y a que le premier pas qui coûte” was once oddly applied by a lady who heard a canon of the Church say that St. Piat, after his head was cut off, walked two leagues with it in his hand. She could not gainsay such an authority, so said, “I can quite believe it. On such occasions the first step is the only difficulty.”

Alas, many at these meetings were to exhibit the price of a first step; heads were to come off and necks to be broken, and every step in that blood-stained via doloroso which led to the Union, to the righting of Englishmen’s and Frenchmen’s wrongs, to establishing Canadian rights to be French or British, was to cost bitterly,--cost how bitterly only one can know who reads the story in its human aspect, not politically alone. It is a strange thing that privileges so purely British as those asked for, the abolition of the death sentence except in case of murder, “that chimera called Responsible Government,” the unquestioned use of a national language in public affairs, freedom of the press, should have been asked for by Frenchmen, denied by Englishmen, and fought for to the death by many of each nationality.

All time from the Conquest to the Rebellion seems to belong to the latter event. For the causes of it reach back by perspective into Misrule, making a vanishing point in Mistake.

More Baneful Domination.

“_Away with those hateful distinctions of English and Canadian._”

--EDWARD DUKE OF KENT.

Treason always labours under disadvantage when it makes preliminary arrangements; and it is often obliged to found combinations on defective data, not reckoning upon disturbing forces and the sudden appearance of the unforeseen. But if so in ordinary cases, what must it have been when, in Upper Canada, sympathy with the French and dissatisfaction with existing Upper Canadian institutions ended in a determination to combine forces and make a common cause.

Each province had its distinct enemies; but distance was one common to both. They were divided from the metropolis and arsenal of the Empire by ocean, storm, and wooden ships; and tracts of native roadless wilderness, long stretches of roads of mud and corduroy, and the intercepting reserve, helped to keep man from man. A huge place; and the badness of its affairs was in proportion to its size. With no hint of the future iron belt from Atlantic to Pacific, all travel was by stage, a painful mode, and costing some $24.00 from Montreal to Toronto; or if by water, in long flat-bottomed bateaux rowed by four men, Durham boat, barge, or the new ventures, steamboats, where as yet passenger quarters were in the hold.

The element of Upper Canada was crude, and the homesick letters of the new-come emigrants sighed over the rude surroundings. But perhaps the rudest thing which the settlers of ’37 found was the apology for a form of government then offered to them. An idea had prevailed in the home countries that Canada was the best of the colonies. But this idea was dispelled by Mackenzie; those of his earlier writings which reached Britain rendered such a sorry account of Canadian happiness that people who had confidence in his book thought twice before they risked fortune in what evidently had become his country through necessity.

Some time previous to the publication of his book (“Sketches of Canada and the United States”), he had been good enough to write Lord Dalhousie, “So far, your Lordship’s administration is just and reasonable.” To him Canadian affairs were like a falling barometer, soon to end in storm, and there was every ground for the statement of a United States editor that Mackenzie constituted himself the patron or the censor of the race.

“Oh, England is a pleasant place for them that’s rich and high, But England is a cruel place for such poor folk as I.”

There was no iron hand in a silken glove about the oligarchy; the hand was always in evidence to Mackenzie and his kind, and Canada was not a whit better than Kingsley’s apostrophized land.

It is easy at this time of day to cast reflections upon the ruling class of that period, a class chiefly composed of sons of officers in the army and navy, for the most part gentlemen in the conventional sense of the term--a crime laid to their charge by some who could not forgive it. They naturally came to centre in themselves all offices of honour and emolument; and the governors, all gentle if some foolish, looked to them for counsel and support, before time was allowed for reflection, the governors so cleverly governed that they knew it not. Gifts of the Crown naturally followed, and the great Pact grew richer, alongside of that older Compact of the sister province. It is a case for “put yourself in his place.” The burden and heat of the day had fallen on these men; they but followed the instinct to reap where one has strawed, and carried out to the letter the axiom that unlimited power is more than mortal is framed to bear.

“The tyrannical government of palace pets” furnishes pages of misgovernment. It took a clear head, a steady will and a true heart to cling to British connection and the Union Jack, when desperation made some determined to be rid of the Toronto rule, which was to them odious, unjust, intolerable. And yet, when we review that epoch of dissolution and transformation, the errors and shortcomings of either party, the two sides of the dispute stand out so clearly that we wonder anyone could then think he was altogether right. “Flayed with whips and scorped with scorpions,” one side said, “there is no alternative but a tame, unmanly submission or a bold and vigorous assertion of our rights as freemen;” while the other, by the mouth of its governor, likened Canada, standing in “the flourishing continent of North America,” to a “girdled tree with drooping branches.” Certainly, the simile was good; and with all justice to the side of Tory or Reformer, Royalist, Rebel, Loyalist _and_ Loyalist, a retrospective glance discloses a knife on either side busy at the process of girdling. “What is the best government on earth?” asks a school-book in use in Duncombe’s District and printed in Boston for Canadian schools; “A Republican Government like the United States,” is the unqualified next line. “What is the worst government on earth?”--“A Monarchical Government like that of England and Canada.” “Can the King of England order any man’s head cut off and confiscate his property?”--“Yes.” “Will you, if the occasion arrives, rise up and rebel against such a government as yours, and join the States?”--“Yes, with all my power and influence.” The Yankee school-master, a chief agent of this propaganda, was one of the first prisoners.

The Family Compact believed the chief beauty of government to be simplicity, the foremost tenet loyalty to one another. But men outside the Pact, every whit as much gentlemen and each in turn bearing his part of that heat and burden, awoke to a sense of individualism, each to realize that he was a unit in the commonweal.

The forerunner of the new dispensation was Robert Gourlay. And what and if his sorrows had so overwhelmed his wits, he yet was the founder of public opinion in Upper Canada; nor is it less true that the first outcome of his martyrdom was that life was made harder for those who dared to follow where he had failed.

“Whaur ye gaun, Sawndie?” “E’en to the club just to conthradick a bit;” and Mackenzie, right as he was in many points, leaves us in no doubt as to his descent and his ability to “conthradick” for pure love of so doing. Also his club covered a wide area, and his influence over a tract as wide as his ability to contradict was phenomenal.

Passing the line between the Canadas, Glengarry showed the change from French to British ways. Not only were the features and tongues of the inhabitants different, but there was an entire absence of that thrifty, snug cottage comfort which distinguished the half-brother below. With outsides unfinished, no taut lines about them, both houses and original huts proclaimed a people undaunted by obstacles and surmounting them by indifference to detail. Here all were loyal. Stories of the famous Glengarry Fencibles of 1812 took up the leisure hours, and the spirit of the Loyalist fighting bishop was paramount. That prelate would not tell his people _how_ to vote, but he talked of “these radicals who aim at the destruction of our Holy Religion;” and this word to those already wise was sufficient.

Next came Prescott, once La Galette, well built on a rocky prominence, the site of a former entrenchment, a place mentioned in old French diaries from the time of La Salle, the white of its tall, massive tower, roofed with a tin dome and built out on a rounding point covered with evergreen, making an abrupt feature in the river bank. Enormous sails flapping in the breeze proclaimed its functions, and a fort in process of erection, not having a moiety of its aggressive strength of appearance, lay near it. Here the people were of two minds, many ready to be sympathisers in a movement though lacking the force to be leaders; prominent men, some of them, and wishing for a lead, while others, living in the remote shadow of the dominant party, were so securely attached to crown and flag that they were ready to defend that party for the sake of the flag whose exclusive property it seemed to be.

Farther on, as the river broadened towards the chain of lakes, came Kingston, its “agreeable, genteel society accommodated in houses of stone and wood,” also much divided by party. In the harbour ships of war stood close to the shore, where blockhouse and fort commanded the entrance. Fort Henry, begun in ’32, had by February, ’36, cost England more than £50,000; its area did not exceed an acre, the walls, massive outworks and aspect evidently conveniently designed for the success of the enemy. A few more years were required for its completion and to level the glacis; but although unfinished it was to be the theatre of a tragedy. In its finished state it has been described as a colossal monument to military stupidity. From the top of the inner fort lie in view the famous “cow pasture,” Dead Man’s Bay where some fourteen men were drowned during construction of the fort on Cedar Island, and Shoal Tower, all points of arrest to the eye in that ever-beautiful scene. Several old war-ships left from 1812 were in 1831 kept at the dockyards, shingled over and protected, some fated later to be sunk as useless, one to be burnt to the water’s edge. Hard by there was a dockyard, furnished with every article of naval stores required for the equipment of ships of war. Two seventy-fours, a frigate, a sloop of war and eleven gunboats reposed under cover on stocks. They were not planked, but men employed for the purpose replaced decaying bits of timber, and it was estimated that in little more than a month they could be got ready for sea. Immense sums had been expended during that war upon unnecessary things, unaccountable ignorance having sent the woodwork of the frigate _Psyche_ to a country where it could have been provided on the spot at one-hundredth of the expense and in one-tenth of the time necessary to convey it there. Even wedges had been sent, and the Admiralty, full of salt-water notions, was paternal enough to include a full supply of water casks for use on Lake Ontario, where a bucket overboard could draw up water undreamed of by Jack tars, from a reservoir through which flowed nearly half the fresh water supply of the globe. Clearly, details of geography were not included in the lists for those bright youths who were preparing for the Admiralty, and nowhere in Canada was the foolish touch of a prodigal-handed parent seen to more advantage than in Kingston.

Across the lake at Sackett’s Harbour was a ship of 102 guns, apparently put together in a substantial manner in forty days from the day the first tree used in her construction was cut down. Peace declared, she was never launched; and, agreeably to the terms of the treaty, which called for the abolition of an armed force on the lakes, six or seven more American vessels were sunk in the harbour and, in the parlance of their owners, were “progressing to dissolution.” Green timber might have proved as good a vehicle for the squandering of money as imported wedges and water-casks.

But although there was then this show of vessels in Kingston, a practical military man of ’37 records that the dockyard was a grazing ground, that the Royal Engineers’ department did naught but patch up barracks in much the same state as the ships, not a ship, boat, sail or oar was available, and that sad havoc had been made by the twenty-two years of profound peace and disuse in harness, waggons, carriages, limbers, wheels, drag-ropes and other munitions of war. The powder would not light, and moths had destroyed blankets and bedding. Artillery with no horses to the guns, and part of the 66th regiment, represented the military force at the half-finished fort.

At Kingston Her Majesty’s accession was proclaimed on a certain Monday in August of ’37 by Mr. Sheriff Bullock and the other authorities, but “the procession was meagre and pitiful in the extreme.” And this state of affairs was because of the dislike “manifested by many to petticoat government.”

Farther on, the peninsula of Prince Edward should have been the very paradise of loyalty if any inference were to be made from its nomenclature: Adolphusburg, Maryburg, Sophiasburg, a transatlantic inventory of major and minor royalties. But, although it had sent forth a Hagerman, the Bidwells were there too, all champions in the coming struggle for what each loyally believed to be the right. Every town and hamlet along that immense waterway had heard the call of Mackenzie from either lips or pen, and some dwellers in each had responded.

With York is reached the centre of grievance, the house of hate, where the principals in the coming struggle dwelt in a succession of patched-up peace, revolts, domineering unfairness, harsh punishments and secret reprisals, a panoramic play in which the first act was tyranny and the last revolution. Some of the by-play reads childishly enough. Mackenzie’s stationery shop in King Street contained window decorations of the most soul-harrowing kind, and all belonging to the era of belief in eternal punishment. The asperities of Mackenzie’s truly Presbyterian enjoyment had not yet been softened by a Farrar or a Macdonnell. The prints there displayed depicted Sir Francis Bond Head, Hagerman, Robinson, Draper and Judge Jones as squirming in all the torments of a realistic hell, relieved by sketches of a personal devil whose barbed tail was used as a transfixing hook for one or other of these Tories, the more conveniently to spit and cook him. The Canadian ejaculations of former times, “May an Iroquois broil me,” or “Tors mon âme au bout d’un piquet” (Twist my soul on the end of a fence rail), were forever routed. Like Pope and an interrogation point, Mackenzie was a little thing who would ask questions, any crookedness about him being the peculiar twists and turns made possible by nature to his rapier-like tongue. His paper heralded the day of Carlyle and Doré, anticipating the former’s “gloomy procession of the nations going to perdition, America the advance guard.” When he thus bearded these lions in their dens they promptly called--through the government organ--for the suppression of the first issue of this obnoxious paper; further, that the editor should be banished, and the entire edition confiscated. Vituperative, he had a command of uncomfortable words fitted to every circumstance, his ability to scent out abuses phenomenal. But he was not banished, nor his pen and pencil confiscated, nor yet did his influence stop at this point in the long journey from Glengarry to Windsor. And why should such a pen be confiscated? While the Family Compact were expelling Mackenzie, imprisoning Collins, and hunting to death any poor stray printer who dared put his want of admiration of them in type, no less great a person than their King was feign to be out of his wits because he was not only libelled but had no redress. He laments the existence of “such a curse ... as a licentious and uncontrolled press,” and of a state of things which renders the law with respect to libellers and agitators a dead letter. Poor King, happy Family Compact; Canada had no dead laws if the people who administered them wished them quick. “The Irish agitators, the reviews and, above all, the press, continue to annoy the King exceedingly;” but Earl Grey said the only way with newspaper attacks was the Irish way, “to keep never minding.” Also Lord Goderich writes to Sir John Colborne in ’32: “I must entirely decline, as perfectly irrelevant to any practical question, the inquiry whether at a comparatively remote period prosecutions against the editors of newspapers were improperly instituted or not.” It is needless to look beyond Mr. Mackenzie’s journal to be convinced that there is no latitude which the most ardent lover of free discussion ever claimed for such writers which is not enjoyed in Upper Canada. Had he looked beyond Mr. Mackenzie’s journal he would have found the Reformers called “juggling, illiterate boobies--a tippling band--mountebank riffraff--a saintly clan--Mackenzie a politico-religious juggler.” The Reform Parliament was “the league of knave and fool--a ribald conclave;” and Mr. Ryerson, when under a temporary cloud, was called “a man of profound hypocrisy and unblushing effrontery, who sits blinking on his perch like Satan when he perched on the tree of life in the shape of a cormorant, to meditate the ruin of our first parents in the Garden of Eden!”