CHAPTER II.

For some years after the conquest, the form of government was purely military. It was, indeed, only in 1774, that two Acts were passed by the British government, one with the view of providing a revenue for the civil government of the Province of Quebec, as the whole of Canada was then termed, the other, called "The Quebec Act," defining the boundaries of the Province, setting aside all the provisions of the Royal proclamation, of 1763, and appointing a governing Council of not more than twenty-three, nor less than seventeen persons. And whatever may have been the motive for this almost unlooked for liberality on the part of the mother country, it is not a little singular that only a year later, England's great difficulty with her old colonies occurred. The Parliament of Great Britain had imposed, without even consulting the colonists, a tax for the defence and protection of the colonies, on clayed sugar, indigo, coffee, &c., and the colonists resisted. The American colonies contended that taxation and representation were inseparable, and that having no voice in the administration of affairs, they were free from any taxation, but that which was self-imposed, for local purposes. So far, however, from paying any heed to the remonstrances of the colonists, the Imperial Parliament became more exacting and tyrannical. Not only were the necessaries of life taxed in America, for the benefit of the red-tapists and other place-holders of the Imperial government, but a stamp Act was passed through the Imperial Parliament, ordaining that instruments of writing--bonds, deeds, and notes--executed in the colonies, should be null and void, unless executed upon paper stamped by the London Stamp Office. It was then that a coffin, inscribed with the word "_Liberty_" was carried to the grave, in Portsmouth, Massachusetts, and buried with military honours! Had the views of Governor Pownall, of Massachusetts, with regard to the representation of the colonies in the British Parliament, been adopted, no umbrage could have been taken at the imposition of taxes, because the colonies would have been open to civil and military preferment in the state equally with the residents of the United Kingdom. It was, and is, an unfortunate mistake to look upon colonists with contempt. Colonists, more even than the inhabitants of old countries, inhale a spirit of independence. Often, lords of all they survey, they call no man lord. They are the pioneers of their own fortunes. They make glad the wilderness. They produce more than they themselves require. But Great Britain was, at the time of which we speak, perfectly infatuated. On the 4th of Sept. of the very year in which the Quebec Act was granted, 1774, a Continental Congress was held, of which Peter Randolph, of Virginia, was President, to sympathize with the people of Boston, on account of their disabilities, by reason of the tea riot.[5] But such Congresses produced no effect in England. On the contrary, Massachusetts was more rigorously punished, and was prevented from fishing on the Banks of Newfoundland. Is it wonderful that the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker's Hill followed? Is it wonderful that those who had assisted Wolfe in taking Canada from the French, should have afterwards attempted to conquer Canada for themselves? Is it wonderful that, on the 3rd of November, 1775, one of Washington's Brigadier Generals, Montgomery, should have received the surrender of 500 regular British troops, at St. John's, Canada East; the surrender of one hundred Canadians, of thirty-nine pieces of cannon, of seven mortars, and of five hundred stand of arms? Is it wonderful that Montreal, then so thinly inhabited and indifferently garrisoned, should have capitulated, or that Quebec should have been invested by Arnold, who sailed down the Chaudiere on rafts, and by Montgomery, to whom Montreal had capitulated? It is only wonderful that Quebec was successfully defended, and that General Montgomery perished under her walls. Canada, notwithstanding the temporary annexation of Montreal, was true to Great Britain, feeling that whatever might have been the injustice of Britain to the old Colonies, Canada had nothing then of which to complain. Indeed, the attack upon the newly ceded province of Canada, was amongst the earliest demonstrations of a disposition on the part of the old Colonies to resort to violence. "The Quebec Act" was in itself a cause of offence to them. On the 21st of October, 1774, the following language was made use of by the Congress, in reference to that Act, in an Address to the people of Great Britain:--"Nor can we suppress our astonishment, that a British Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country, a religion that has deluged your Island in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the world." And "That we think the Legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the Constitution to establish a religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets." The attack was of a two-fold nature. Both the sword and the pen were brought into requisition. It was supposed by the discontented old colonists, that the boundary of the lakes and rivers which emptied themselves into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and had formed the natural barrier between two nations, until the peace of Paris, in 1763, when Canada passed from the dominion of France to that of the British Crown, formed no boundary to British rule, as the sway of the Anglo-Saxon race was now fully established over the whole of the northern part of the continent; and it was further supposed, that it was, therefore, proper to detract, if possible, from the power of Great Britain, to harm the revolutionary colonists on the great watery highway of the lakes and rivers, or to prevent such a united force of Colonial and Provincial inhabitants as might counterbalance, in a great measure, the pertinacious loyalists who were to discountenance American appeals for justice,--the warfare, before the declaration of American Independence, being "neither against the throne nor the laws of England, but against a reckless and oppressive ministry."[6] Efforts were, for such reasons, made to obtain possession of the keys of the Lakes and of the St. Lawrence at Quebec and Montreal. The old colonists were to make a war of political propagandism on Canada and they resolved upon the employment of both force and persuasion. Generals Montgomery, Arnold, and Allen invaded Canada, and, to a certain point, with complete success. After the successes of the two latter officers at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, Arnold pushed on towards Quebec, through the wilderness, and had ascended the heights of Abraham before Montgomery, who had proceeded towards Quebec from Montreal, had arrived. Under these circumstances, Arnold retired about twenty miles above Quebec, to wait for Montgomery. Meanwhile, the Governor of Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, had escaped, through Montgomery's army, in the dead of night, in an open boat, rowed with muffled oars, and guided by Captain Bouchette, of the Royal Navy, and was now safely lodged in the chief fortress of America. On the 1st of December, Montgomery effected a junction with Arnold, and the siege of Quebec was commenced, although the besiegers were most indifferently provided with camp equipage, and were poorly clad. Their cannon, too, was of so small a description, as to be almost useless. The design evidently was to carry the town, which was not then nearly as strongly fortified as now, and was only garrisoned by a few troops, militia, and seamen, by assault, in the full persuasion that the Canadians would be only most happy to be identified with the American struggle for liberty, or by being neutral, would show to the ministry of England the formidable animosity of a united continent, by which the ends of the old colonists would be gained, and the war nipped in its ripening bud.[7] This, Generals Montgomery and Arnold were unable to do. The attempt was made on the 31st December, but signally failed. Arnold proceeded with one division towards Sault-au-Matelot Street, by way of St. Roch's, and succeeded in establishing himself in some houses at the eastern extremity of that street, but being attacked in the rear, by a part of the garrison, directed by General Carleton to make a sortie from Palace Gate, only a remnant of the assailants, with considerable difficulty, managed to get back to camp. Montgomery approached by the road under the Cape, called Près-de-Ville, with another division, but was stoutly resisted, and fell mortally wounded. After the attack, Montgomery's body was found embedded in the snow, together with the bodies of his two Aides-de-Camp, Captain McPherson and Captain Cheeseman. Arnold now retired about three miles from Quebec, where he encamped during the winter.

[5] People are sometimes in the habit of making light of a tempest in a tea pot. This tea tempest was no laughing matter.

[6] See the Journal of Charles Carroll, of Carollton, published by the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore--page 6.

[7] U.S. Catholic Magazine, vol. 4, p. 251, and Brent's Biography of Archbishop Carroll, p. 69.

On the 15th of February, 1776, the American Congress appointed Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll, of Carrollton--the last mentioned gentleman being requested to prevail upon his brother, the Revd. John Carroll, a Jesuit of distinguished theological attainments, and celebrated for his amiable manners and polished address, to accompany them--to proceed to Canada with the view of representing to the Canadians that the Americans south of the St. Lawrence, "had no apprehension that the French would take any part with Great Britain; but that it was their interest, and, the Americans had reason to believe, their inclination, to cultivate a friendly intercourse with the colonies." They were to have religious freedom, and have the power of self-government, while a free press was to be established, to reform all abuses.[8] The Committee, or, more properly speaking, the Commission, were, however, far from being successful in their attempt to negotiate Canada into revolt. The clergy of Canada could not be persuaded that, as Roman Catholics, they would be better treated by the Revolutionary colonists than they had been under the British government, after the expression of such sentiments as those addressed to the people of Great Britain, on the 21st of October, 1774. The Americans, uncouth in manners, were, in truth, most intolerant of papacy. In the "Cradle of American Liberty," a dancing school was not permitted. While in Boston a fencing school was allowed, there were no musicians permitted to exist, and the anti-papal character of the people was even more evident from the fact, that the first thing printed in New England was the Freeman's Oath! the second an almanac; and the third an edition of the psalms.

[8] It is not a little odd, that Franklin should have been a member of this Committee, seeing that he was the very man who urged upon the British Minister, in 1759, the expediency of reducing Canada, as the most serious blow which could be inflicted on French power in America.

On the day after the Reverend Mr. Carroll had failed in his part of the mission, joined Dr. Franklin, and returned to the South, Chase and Carroll of Carrollton had been busy with the military part of their embassy. At a council of war held in Montreal, it was resolved to fortify Jacques Cartier--the Richelieu Rapids, between Quebec and Three Rivers--and to build six gondolas at Chambly, of a proper size to carry heavy cannon, and to be under the direction of Arnold. But disasters thickened around the insurgents. The small pox had broken out among the troops, and was making deep inroads upon their scanty numbers. To crown the whole, the worst news was received from the besiegers at Quebec, for out of 1,900 men, there were not more than 1,000 fit for duty, all the rest being invalids, chiefly afflicted with the small-pox. On the 5th of May, 1776, a council of war was held at Quebec, and it was resolved to remove the invalids, artillery, batteaux, and stores higher up the river; but, on the evening of that day, intelligence was received in the American camp, that fifteen ships were within forty leagues of Quebec, hastening up the river; and early next morning, five of them hove in sight. General Thomas immediately gave orders to embark the sick and the artillery in the batteaux, whilst the enemy began to land their troops. About noon, a body of the British, a thousand strong, formed into two divisions, in columns of six deep, and supported with a train of six pieces of cannon, attacked the American sentinels and main guard. The Americans stood for a moment on the plains, with about 250 men and _one_ field piece only, when the order for retreat was given, and the encampment was precipitately deserted. In the confusion, all the cannon of the besiegers fell into the hands of the British, and about 200 invalids were made prisoners. Following the course of the river, the broken army of the Americans fled towards Montreal, and halting for a while at Deschambault, finally retreated along the St. Lawrence, until they made a stand at Sorel, with the view to an "orderly retreat out of Canada."[9] By the 18th of June, the British General, Burgoyne, was close behind Arnold, who now, with the whole of the American army, had quitted Canadian soil, and was proceeding somewhat rapidly up the Richelieu, into Lake Champlain.

[9] Carroll's visit to Canada, p. 27.

In the very year that Arnold retired from Quebec, on the 4th of July, 1776, the thirteen now confederated colonies, on the report of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Phillip Livingston, dissolved their allegiance to the British Crown, declaring themselves to be free and independent. The lions, sceptres, crowns, and other paraphernalia of royalty were now rudely trampled on, in both Boston and Virginia. Massachusetts, and, shortly afterwards, New York, were, indeed, in the possession of rebels, commanded by Washington. It was then that, in 1777, the execution of a plan of attacking the New Englanders, by way of Canada, was entrusted to General Burgoyne, who, with some thousands of troops, a powerful train of artillery, and several tribes of Indians, proceeded down Lake Champlain, to cut off the northern from the southern colonies of the rebellious confederation. Burgoyne chased the American General St. Clair out of Ticonderoga; hunted Schuyler to Saratoga; destroyed the American flotilla on Lake Champlain; demolished bridges, and reduced forts. He, nevertheless, met with a severe check at Bennington, Vermont. Being at Fort Edward, he sent Colonel Baum, with a detachment of the army to seize a magazine of stores at Bennington. When within a few miles of that place, however, Baum learned that the Americans were strongly entrenched. He, therefore, halted, and sent to Burgoyne for a reinforcement. But the American General Stark, who had a large body of Vermont Militia under his command, in addition to his ordinary New Hampshire corps, now determined to be the assailant. With only 500 regulars and 100 Indians, Colonel Baum did not consider it prudent to fight a body vastly superior in numbers, and he retreated. Assistance reached him at this critical moment, which seemed to make a battle, if not expedient, a point of honour. Unfortunately the sense of honour prevailed, Baum gave battle, and was himself slain and his men defeated, the British loss being 700 in killed and wounded, while that of the Americans was only about 100. It was a pity that Baum had not the moral courage to retire, even when reinforced, for his defeat much embarrassed Burgoyne, and made an attempt at a general retreat even necessary, as the courage of the enemy had so increased by the moral effect of a victory, that Burgoyne was in danger of being surrounded by the hordes of State Militiamen who, on all sides of him, were taking the field. Burgoyne was, nevertheless, still on the advance, with the main body of his army, and was approaching Saratoga, when he heard of the defeat of Baum. Unwilling to retreat, and yet unable to advance, he hesitated, but ultimately decided upon returning. That, however, was now impossible. He had hardly turned his face towards the place from whence he came, than he fell in with General Gates, losing about 600 men; and he had hardly realized his loss, when he learned that Fort Edward, which stood between him and Canada, was in the possession of the enemy. No avenue of escape appeared open, and this fine army from Canada, consisting of five thousand seven hundred effective men, with General Burgoyne at their head, laid down their arms to the American General Gates, at Saratoga. Even according to the testimony of Lady Harriet Ackland, Burgoyne, though sufficiently brave for anything, was quite incompetent for command. He had neither resources nor strategy. He knew neither what to do nor what he was doing. He neither knew when to advance nor when to retreat. It was all haphazard with him. Through his very stupidity an army was positively sacrificed. Lord Cornwallis, afterwards, easily defeated Gates. And in the campaign of 1780, Washington was himself in straits. His commissariat was wretchedly bad. For days the medical department of his army had neither sugar, coffee, tea, chocolate, wine, nor spirituous liquors of any kind; and the army had not seen the shadow of money for five months. A junction cleverly effected between the two British armies might have changed, or rather checked the destinies of the Confederated Colonies. But, by the awkwardness, carelessness, and want of prudence of Burgoyne, in the first place, Cornwallis got also hemmed in, being intercepted on one side by the French fleet, and on the other by the army commanded by Washington, and he capitulated after his defeat at Yorktown, in September, 1781. Had a line of communication northward been maintained for the British army, even seven thousand men might have escaped the blockade of the sixteen thousand militia, under Washington, to whom the conqueror of Charleston was compelled, by the fortune of war, to present his sword. The stupidity of the British Generals, combined with the previous stupidity of the Imperial administrations, led to the evacuation of those colonies by Great Britain, to which she was in a great measure indebted for the acquisition of Port Royal and Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, and for Niagara, Frontenac, Montreal, and Quebec in Canada. The prediction of Montcalm had come to pass. The United States were independent. But, however much the war in America, between Great Britain and her own old colonies, had temporarily interfered with, it had paved the way for a more extended, commerce in Canada. There were men in New England who would not, on any account, be rebels. Many of these, with their families, sought an asylum in Canada, and the advancement of the Far West, on the British side of the lines, is, in no small degree, to be attributed to the integrity and energy of those highly honourable men. Canada was then entirely, or almost entirely, under military rule. It could not well be otherwise. The necessities of the times required unity of action. There was no room for party squabbling, nor were there numbers sufficient to squabble. The province, the population of which did not extend beyond Detroit, a mere Indian trading post, and beyond which it was expected civilisation could not be extended for ages, was divided into two sections, the western and the eastern. Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, had divided all west of the monument of St. Regis into four districts, after the manner of ancient Gaul, which he termed Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Nassau, and Hesse; and the Seminary of Quebec had cut up the eastern section into parishes, distinguished by cross roads. In the lower section of the province, the _bonnets rouges_ and _bonnets bleus_ were on the increase, but the increase was like that of the frogs: it was multiplying in the same puddle, with the same unchanging and unchangeable habits. The peaweeting, the whistling, the purring, and the whizzing, were only the louder, as the inhabitants became more numerous. There was no idea of change of any kind. Language, manners, and knowledge were the same as they ever had been: only the pomp of the church had succeeded to the pomp and circumstance of war. There was no more industry, no more energy, no more scientific cravings, and no earnest pursuit of wealth. All was contentment. Even by the authorities, no desire to awaken the Franco-Canadian from his slumber, was entertained. On the contrary, the restless United Empire loyalists were to be separated from them. The isolation of Lower Canada from the rest of the world was to be as complete as possible.

Not very long after the declaration of American Independence, Canada was divided, by Act of the Imperial Parliament, into two distinct provinces, called Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Mr. Adam Lymburner, a merchant of Quebec, not being particularly anxious for isolation, appeared at the bar of the House of Commons on behalf of himself and others. He was against the separation. The united province was not even in a condition to maintain a good system of government. Oppressed by the tyranny of officials, industry and improvement had been neglected, and a state of languor and depression prevailed. The public buildings were even falling into a state of ruin and decay. There was not a Court House in the province, nor a sufficient prison nor house of correction. Nor was there a school house between Tadousac and Niagara. The country upon the Great Lakes was a wilderness. Lymburner did not, however, prevail. The British government desired to put the United Empire loyalists upon the same footing with regard to constitutional government as they had previously enjoyed before the independence of the United States in that country, a condition about which a certain class of merchants in Quebec have always been indifferent. Lord Dorchester was appointed Governor-in-Chief in Canada, and administrator in Lower Canada, while General Simcoe was named Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. General Simcoe selected for his capital Niagara,[10] and resided there at Navy Hall. On the site of Toronto, in 1793, there was a solitary wigwam. That tongue of land called the peninsula, which is the protection wall of the harbour, was the resort only of wildfowl. The margin of the lake was lined with nothing else but dense and trackless forests. Two families of Massassagas had squatted somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present St. Lawrence Hall when General Simcoe removed to little York with his canvass palace, and drew around him the incipient features of a Court. The progress in material improvement in this country may be guessed at from the then condition and the present state and appearance of Toronto. The revenue of the country between 1775, and 1778, was not over £10,000. The salary of the Governor-in-Chief was only £2,500.

[10] Then called Newark.

During the American War, the Canadians, though they exhibited no signs of disaffection to Great Britain, did not ardently lend a helping hand against the enemy. Being appealed to by Middleton, the President of the Provisional Congress of Rebel States,--who told them that their Judges and Legislative Council were dependent on the Governor, and their Governor himself on the servant of the Crown in Great Britain; that the executive, legislative, and judging powers were all moved by nods from the Court of St. James; and that the Confederated States would receive their ancient and brave enemies on terms of equality--the Canadians stood firm in their new allegiance. It is more than probable, indeed, that the bombastic state paper never reached the ears of those for whom it was intended. There was no press in Canada at that period, and only one newspaper, the "Quebec Gazette," established by one Gilmore, in 1764. Unable, as the majority of the French were, to read their own language, it was not to be expected that they could read English. Still less is it to be supposed that His Excellency Lord Dorchester circulated it in French. Lord Dorchester was exceedingly prudent in his administration of affairs, and,--unlike Governor Murray, who, by the way, was succeeded in the administration of the Government by Paulus Æmilius Irving, Esquire, with Brigadier General Carleton for Lieutenant Governor, obtained the affection of one race and the resentment of the other,--conciliated both races. His lordship, in one of his speeches "from the throne," tells us that he "eschewed political hypocrisy, which renders people the instruments of their own misery and destruction." There was, in truth, no Parliament, in the proper sense of the term, then. Such artifices as are now necessary for good legislation, had not therefore to be resorted to.

On the political separation of the two sections of Canada, it was agreed that Lower Canada should be permitted to levy the duties on imports. Of all imports, Lower Canada was to receive seven-eighths, and Upper Canada one eighth, and the revenue for the year following the separation was £24,000, including £1,205, the proportion of the duties belonging to Upper Canada. In those days, a week was consumed in the transport of the mail from Burlington in Vermont, via Montreal, to Quebec; but yet there must have been wonderful progress from Governor Murray's time,--during which a Mr. Walker, of Montreal, having caused the military much displeasure, by the imprisonment of a captain for some offence, was assailed by a number of assassins of respectability, with blackened faces, who entered his house at night, cut off his right ear, slashed him across the forehead with a sword, and attempted and would have succeeded in cutting his throat, but for his most manly and determined resistance--for on surrendering the government of Lower Canada into the hands of General Prescott, previously to going home to England, in the frigate "Active," in which he was afterwards wrecked on Anticosti, he was lauded in a most obsequious address, by the inhabitants both of Quebec and Montreal, the latter place then numbering a little more than 7,000 inhabitants, for his "auspicious administration of affairs, the happiness and prosperity of the province having increased in a degree almost unequalled." General Prescott, not long after Lord Dorchester's return home, in a frigate from Halifax, after the wreck of the "Active," was raised to the Governor Generalship. During the three years of this Governor's rule, nothing, politically or otherwise, important occurred in Canada. Great Britain was successfully engaged in war with both France and Spain, and in the former country a revolution had occurred which preceded one of the most terrible periods on the page of history. In Quebec, a madman named McLane, a native of Rhode Island, fancying himself to be a French General, conceived the project of upsetting British authority in Canada. He intended, with the co-operation of the French Canadians, to make a rush upon the garrison of Quebec. His imaginary followers were to be armed with spears, and he dreamed of distributing laudanum to the troops. Unfortunately for himself, he made known his plans to all and sundry, and was rewarded for his indiscretion by being hanged on Gallows Hill, as an example to other fools.

The next Governor of Lower Canada was Robert S. Milnes, Esquire. Under his sway, something akin to public opinion sprang up. So soon as the last of the Jesuits had been gathered to his fathers, it was the purpose of the Imperial government to seize upon the estates of "The Order." Mr. Young, one of the Executive Council, had, however, no sooner informed the House of Assembly that His Excellency had given orders to take possession of these estates as the property of George the Third, than the House went into Committee and expressed a desire to investigate the pretensions or claims which the province might have on the college of Quebec. The Governor was quite willing to suffer the Assembly to have copies of all documents, deeds, and titles having reference to the estates, if insisted upon, but considered it scarcely consistent with the respect which the Commons of Canada had ever manifested towards their sovereign, to press the matter, as the Privy Council had issued an order to take the whole property into the hands of the Crown. The House considered His Excellency's reply, and postponed the inquiry into the rights and pretensions alluded to. The next thing which this slightly independently disposed Assembly undertook, was the expulsion of one of its members, a Mr. Bouc, who had been convicted of a conspiracy to defraud a person named Drouin, with whom he had had some commercial transactions, of a considerable sum of money. He was heard by Counsel at the Bar of the House, but was believed to have been justly convicted, and was expelled. Again and again he was re-elected, and as often was he expelled, and at last he was, by special Act of Parliament, disqualified. Whether or not he was the object of unjust persecution by the government, the moral effect upon the country of the expulsion and disqualification of a person in the position of Mr. Bouc, cannot be doubted. The number of bills passed during a parliamentary session in those days, was not considerable. Five, six, or eight appear to have been the average. The income of the province was about £20,000, and the expenditure about £39,000. Under such circumstances, corruption was nearly impossible.

In the next session of parliament an attempt was made to establish free schools, and the Royal Institution, for the advancement of learning was founded. Nor was this all, an Act was passed for the demolition of the walls that encircled Montreal, on the plea that such demolition was necessary to the salubrity, convenience and embellishment of the city. They were thrown down, and in seventeen years after it was impossible to have shown where they stood. The parliament did more. At the dictation of the Governor, it assigned three townships for the benefit of the officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates, who had served during the blockade of Quebec, in 1775-6. Field officers were to be entitled to 1,000 acres; captains to 700 acres, lieutenants and ensigns to 500 acres, and non-commissioned officers and privates to 400 acres each. Still another bill, of no mean importance, was carried through the three branches of the Legislature, the second branch being positively a House of Lords, composed, as it was, of Lord Chief Justices and Lord Bishops,--the mind, capacity, and education of the country. No picture of the legislature of this time can be made. There were no reporters nor any publication of debates. Newspapers were in their infancy. Radicalism had not got hold of its fulcrum, and the lever of public opinion was, consequently useless. Nay, in anticipation, as it were, of the unruliness that afterwards exhibited itself, the Governor, now Sir Robert Milnes, recommended the culture of hemp in the province, and the Assembly voted £1,200 for the experiment. An Agricultural Bureau, of which the Governor was himself the President, was established, but the cultivation of hemp was not more agreeable to the farmer of Lower Canada then than it is now. The experiment did not succeed. Jean Baptiste would raise wheat, which he knew would pay, and would not raise hemp, which might or might not pay. He was a practical, not a theoretical farmer. Like the "regular" physicians of every period, and in every country, he practised _secundum artem_, and eschewed dangerous theories and unprofitable innovations.

About this period, 1802, land jobbing began. Vast grants of territory were made to favourites and speculators, only to lie waste, unless improved by the squatter. To obtain a princely inheritance, it was only necessary to have a princely acquaintance with the government, and, in some cases, the Governor's servants. Land was not put up to public competition, but handsomely bestowed upon the needy and penniless Court attendant. A Governor's Secretary, a Judge's nephew, or some Clerk of Records was entitled to at least a thousand acres; the Governor's cook to 700 arpents. There was no stint, and no income or land tax.

In 1803, Parliament "better regulated" the militia; the revenue had increased to £31,000; the expenditure had increased to £37,000, and the two Governors' salaries to £6,000; war re-broke out with France; the feeling of loyalty throughout the province was enthusiastic; and offers to raise volunteer corps were freely made.

During the next Session of Parliament, measures of some importance occupied the attention of the Legislature. A bill was passed, making provision for the relief of the insane and for the support of foundlings. In all thirteen bills were passed, and the revenue had increased one thousand pounds. It was the last session of the third Parliament. In July the election of members for the fourth Parliament took place. They were conducted, on the whole, quietly, but were, nevertheless, vigorously contested. Strong party feeling did not then run high, and there were no prejudices against persons of respectable standing in society, whatever might be their origin. Quebec had four representatives, two of whom were of French extraction and two, apparently of Scottish descent. Montreal was similarly represented. If there were as representatives of Quebec a Grant and a Panet, a Young and a De Salaberry, Montreal was represented by a Richardson and a Mondelet, a McGill and a Chaboillez. The Parliament was convened for the despatch of business on the 9th, and having disposed of some contested elections proceeded energetically to work. The idea of a Canal to overcome the difficulties of the Lachine Rapids or Sault St. Louis suggested itself; and the consideration of the expediency of its construction engaged the attention of the House. The construction of a canal was not considered within the means of the province, and a sum of only £1,000 pounds was voted for the removal of impediments in the rapids. A Seigniorial Tenure Bill, not dissimilar in character to that which so very recently has become law, was introduced, but fell through. The Gaols Act, imposing a duty of two and a half per cent on imports, for the erection of common gaols at Quebec and Montreal, was adopted. The trade was dissatisfied, and, as has been too frequently the case, when the merchants of this province have been dissatisfied with the Acts of a Legislature, of whose acts, unless in so far as their own business interests have been concerned, they have been altogether indifferent, the trade petitioned the Imperial authorities against the Act, representing with all the force of which they were capable, the serious injury inflicted by it upon bohea, souchong, hyson, spirits, wane, and molasses. The gaols were, however, built, without direct taxation having been resorted to. Another act of very considerable importance became law: that for the better regulation of pilots and shipping, and for the improvement of the navigation of the River St. Lawrence between Montreal and the sea. By this Act the Trinity Houses were established, the abolition of which has lately engaged the serious attention of the Hon. William Hamilton Merritt. The fourth Parliament, like its predecessors, possessed within itself, some men of enterprize, energy, and independence. However willing it might have been to treat the Governor with respectful consideration, there was no disposition in it to become a mere tool in the hands of those who took upon themselves to guide His Excellency. They conceived that they had the power of appropriating the revenue, of voting the supplies, and of paying their own officers such salaries as they pleased. The French Translator to the Assembly having applied for an increase of salary, it occurred to the Assembly that the translator, Mr. P. E. Desbarats, was a very efficient officer and worthy man, and that it was within their province to pay him such a sum as they estimated his services to be worth. But they did not arbitrarily do that which it seemed to them they might have done. With extreme courtesy, they addressed the Governor, begging that His Excellency would make such addition to the salary of this officer as to His Excellency might seem fit. So far, however, from complying with a very reasonable request, Sir Robert regretted the absence of some observances, the nature of which was never ascertained, and felt compelled to resist a precedent which might lead to injurious consequences. The Assembly were staggered. With very considerable reason they were offended at the Executive, who pretended to the right of money grants in the Assembly. The House went into committee, by a majority of one, and were about to consider His Excellency's considerate message, when the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod appearing at the Bar, commanded the attendance of the Commons at the Bar of the Upper House, where His Excellency, somewhat bombastically prorogued the Parliament. About to return to England, he was perfectly indifferent to the censure of the Commons of Canada. He cared nothing for the effect of a _coup d'etat_. He never dreamed of the possibility of a misunderstanding between a Governor and his Legislature. It was the first of the kind that he had known, and it was a duty which he owed to his sovereign to nip it in the bud. Sir Robert, Mr. Christie says, was not a popular Governor. Had that been his only misfortune, it would have been well. He was, evidently, something worse, in being only that which might emphatically be expressed in a single word. A few grains of common sense in one or two Governors of colonies would have saved England some millions of pounds. Sir Robert Shore Milnes having ruled, or having been ruled, for a period of six years, set sail for England, on the 5th of August, in H.M.S. Uranie, leaving Mr. Dunn, the Senior Executive Councillor of Canada, to administer the government.

Lower Canada, however politically insignificant, with only some £47,000 of revenue, was yet gradually rising into something like commercial importance. In the course of 1805, one hundred and forty-six merchant vessels had been loaded at Quebec, and another newspaper, the _Quebec Mercury_, still existing, and published in the English language, was established by Mr. Thomas Cary. Montreal, only second in commercial importance to Quebec, had also its newspapers, and already began to exhibit that energy for which it is now preeminently conspicuous. Toronto, the present "Queen City of the West," was yet only surrounded by the primeval forest, and thirty years later could boast of but four thousand inhabitants, although, in 1822, "Muddy Little York" was not a little proud of its "Upper Canada Gazette," and Niagara of its "Spectator." Kingston had only twenty wooden houses, while Detroit was the residence of but a dozen French families. Upper Canada, indeed, contained scarcely a cultivated farm, or even a white inhabitant, sixty or seventy years ago.

Allusion has already been made to the division of Canada into two provinces. A more particular allusion to that circumstance will not be out of place. Already, General Simcoe, the Hon. Peter Russell, and Lieut. General Hunter have ruled over the Upper, and not the least interesting of the two provinces. The object of the separation may have been to keep the Lower Province French as long as possible, to prevent the consummation devoutly anticipated by Montcalm, and the Duc de Choiseul, and to raise up a conservative English colony in the Far West, to counteract the growing power of the now United States. By the Union, constitutions very distantly related to the British constitution were conferred upon the two provinces. The 31st Act of George the Third constituted a Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly for each province. The Council was to be composed of at least seven members, appointed by writ of summons, issued pursuant to a mandamus under the sign manual of the Sovereign. The tenure of appointment was for life, to be forfeited for treason or vacated by swearing allegiance to a foreign power, or by two years continual absence from the province without the Governor's permission, or four years of such absence without permission of the Sovereign. The King could grant hereditary titles of honor, rank or dignity. The Speaker of the Council was to be appointed by the Sovereign or his representative. The Assembly was to be elected by persons over twenty one years of age, subjects of the British Crown, by birth or naturalization, possessing property of the yearly value of forty shillings sterling, over and above all rents and charges, or paying rent at the rate of ten pounds sterling per annum. Here were, undoubtedly, three legislative branches; but as the Legislative Assembly could, at the most, only be composed of thirty members, many of whom would be half pay officers, the Crown, through its representative, had a direct and overwhelming preponderance. Yet, however unsuited such a Parliament would be for the present time, however uncongenial it might have been to the feelings of a Cobbett or Hunt-man, escaped from Spa Felds ten or twenty years afterwards, it undoubtedly well represented the conservative, semi-despotic feelings of the military settler, or United Empire loyalist, a kind of privileged being, whose very descendants were entitled to a free grant of two hundred acres of land. When the Separation Act was before the British Parliament, the public mind in England was to some not altogether inconsiderable extent contaminated by the spurious liberty-feeling of the French Revolution, and by the consequences of the American strike for independence. "The Rights of Man," as enunciated by Paine, had infected many among the lower orders in society, and not a few among the higher orders. Edmund Burke, Mr. Chancellor Pitt, and Charles Fox, were members of the British Parliament. By the Act, a provision for a Protestant Clergy, in both divisions of the province, was made, in addition to an allotment of lands already granted. The tenures in Lower Canada, which had been the subject of dispute, were to be settled by the local legislature. In Upper Canada the tenures were to be in free and common soccage. No taxes were to be imposed by the Imperial Parliament, unless such as were necessary for the regulation of trade and commerce, to be levied and to be disposed of by the legislature of each division of the former Province of Quebec. On the 9th of April, 1791, the Separation Bill was somewhat unexpectedly offered for the acceptance of the House of Commons. Mr. Fox declared that he had not had time to read it, and felt unwilling to express an opinion upon its merits. On a motion by Mr. Hussey, "that the Bill be recommitted," Mr. Fox, however, remarked, that many clauses were unexceptionable. The number of representatives, in his opinion, were not sufficient. An assembly to consist of 16 or 30 members seemed to him to give a free constitution in appearance, while, in fact, such a constitution was withheld. The goodness of a bill, making the duration of Parliaments seven years, unless dissolved previously by the Governor, might be considered doubtful. In Great Britain, general elections were attended with inconveniences, but in Canada, where, for many years, elections were not likely to be attended with the consequences which ministers dreaded, he could not conceive why they should make such assemblies, not annual or triennial, but septennial. In a new country the representatives of the people would, for the most part, be persons engaged in trade, who might be unable to attend Parliament for seven consecutive years. The qualifications necessary for electors in towns and counties were much too high. It seemed to him that ministers intended to prevent the introduction of popular government into Canada. While the number of the members of the Assembly were limited, the numbers of the Council, although they could not be less than seven members, were unlimited. He saw nothing so good in hereditary powers or honours as to justify their introduction into a country where they were unknown. They tended rather to make a good constitution worse, than better. If a Council were wholly hereditary, it could only be the tool of the King and the Governor, as the Governor himself would only be the tool of the King. The accumulation of power, confirmed by wealth, would be a perpetual source of oppression and neglect to the mass of mankind. He did not understand the provision made by the Bill for the Protestant clergy. By Protestant clergy, he understood not only the clergy of the Church of England, but all descriptions of Protestants. He totally disapproved of the clause which enacted that, "whenever the King shall make grants of lands, one seventh part of those lands shall be appropriated to the Protestant Clergy." In all grants of lands made to Catholics, and a majority of the inhabitants of Canada were of that persuasion, one seventh part of those grants was to be appropriated to the Protestant clergy, although they might not have any congregation to instruct, nor any cure of souls. If the Protestant clergy of Canada were all of the Church of England, he would not be reconciled to the measure, but the greatest part of the Protestant clergy in Canada were Protestant dissenters, and to them one seventh part of all the lands in the province was to be granted. A provision of that kind, in his opinion, would rather tend to corrupt than to benefit the Protestant clergy of Canada. The Bill, while it stated that one seventh of the land of Canada should be reserved for the maintenance of a Protestant clergy, did not state how the land so set aside should be applied. With regard to the Bill, as it related to the regulation of Appeals, he was not satisfied. Suitors were, in the first instance, to carry their complaints before the Courts of Common Law in Canada, to appeal, if dissatisfied, to the Governor and Council, to appeal from their decision to the King in Council, and to appeal from His Majesty's decision to the House of Lords. If the Lords were a better Court of Appeal than the King, the Lords ought to be at once appealed to. By such a plan of appealing, lawsuits would be rendered exceedingly expensive, and exceedingly vexatious. He did not like the division of the Province. It seemed to him inexpedient to distinguish between the English and French inhabitants of the province. It was desirable that they should unite and coalesce, and that such distinctions of the people should be extinguished for ever, so that the English laws might soon universally prevail throughout Canada, not from force but from choice, and a conviction of their superiority. The inhabitants of Lower Canada had not the laws of France. The commercial code of laws of the French nation had never been given to them. They stood upon the exceedingly inconvenient "_Coutume de Paris_." Canada, unlike the West Indies, was a growing country. It did not consist of only a few white inhabitants and a large number of slaves. It was a country increasing in population, likely still more to increase, and capable of enjoying as much political freedom, in its utmost extent, as any other country on the face of the globe. It was situated near a country ready to receive, with open arms, into a participation of her democratic privileges, every person belonging to Great Britain. It was material that a colony, capable of freedom, and capable of a great increase of people, should have nothing to look to among their neighbours to excite their envy. Canada should be preserved to Great Britain by the choice of her inhabitants, and there was nothing else to look to. The Legislative Councils ought to be totally free, and repeatedly chosen, in a manner as much independent of the Governor as the nature of a colony would admit. He was perfectly desirous of establishing a permanent provision for the clergy, but could not think of making for them a provision so considerable as was unknown in any country of Europe, where the species of religion to be provided for prevailed.

It is impossible to do other than admire the farsightedness of that great statesman, Charles Fox, with his blue coat and yellow waistcoat, in this manly, sensible, and telling address. Time has nearly brought round the state of things that he desired to see, and if disembodied spirits can take an interest in things earthly, it will be no small addition to his present state of bliss to discover almost the realization of suggestions made sixty years ago, before the Browns of this period were conceived, and while the Rolphs were puling infants.

Mr. Chancellor Pitt did not join issue with Mr. Fox, but did not consider it expedient to flash legislative freedom upon a people. He thought that if the Assembly were not rightly consolidated by the Bill, little harm was done, because there was nothing to hinder the Parliament of Great Britain from correcting any point which might hereafter appear to want correction. He did not like the elective principle of democratic governments, and with respect to the land appropriated to the clergy, like every thing else provided by the bill, it was subject to revision. Where land had been given in commutation of tithes, the proportion of one seventh had grown into an established custom. The Bill was re-committed. Next day the clauses of the Bill being put, paragraph by paragraph, Mr. Burke eloquently defended its provisions, ridiculed the "Rights of Man," and almost extinguished the light of the new lantern, which exhibited in the academies of Paris and the club-rooms of London, the constitutions of America and France as so much superior to that of Great Britain. The distinguished orator was certainly more declamatory than argumentative, and he was repeatedly called to order. It was alleged that Mr. Burke had no right to abuse the governments of France and America, as the "Quebec Bill" only was before the House. Nay, there was something like a scene. Mr. Burke complained of having been deserted by those, with whom he formerly acted, in his old age, and Mr. Fox, with tears in his eyes and strong emotion, declared that he would esteem and venerate Burke to the end of time. The same cries of "order," "order," "chair," "chair," "go on," "go on," that are heard in our most tumultuous debates, in the Assembly, were frequent in the course of the debate, and Mr. Burke was unable, on account of the tumult, to proceed with his account of "the horrible and nefarious consequences flowing from the French idea of the rights of man." The debating continued for a number of days, and the Bill was read a third time on the 18th of May. When the report of the Bill in Committee was brought up, on the 16th of May, the House divided upon an amendment by Mr. Fox, to leave out the clause of hereditary nobility, which amendment was lost by an adverse majority of forty-nine. It was then moved, in amendment to the Bill, by Mr. Chancellor Pitt, that the number of representatives in the Assemblies should be fifty instead of thirty, but that motion was also lost by an adverse majority of fifty-one.

The government of Upper Canada was assumed by General Simcoe, on the 8th of July, 1792. He carried out with him to Upper Canada the Act constituting it into a province, and on the 18th of September he was enabled to meet his Parliament. The capital of the Province was at Newark, now Niagara. The seat of Government, according to the Duke de la Rochefoucault Liancourt, who visited it in 1795, consisted of about a hundred houses, "mostly very fine structures." Governor Simcoe apparently did not occupy one of them, but a "miserable wooden house,"--formerly occupied by the Commissaries, who resided there on account of the navigation of the lake,--his guard consisting of four soldiers, who every morning came from the fort, to which they returned in the evening. It is difficult even to guess at the appearance of the Parliament building. Assuredly it did not require to be of great size. When the time arrived for opening the Session, only two, instead of seven members of the Legislative Council were present. No Chief Justice appeared to fill the office of Speaker of the Council. Instead of sixteen members of the Legislative Assembly, five only attended. What was still more embarrassing, no more could be collected. The House was, nevertheless, opened. A guard of honour, consisting of fifty soldiers from the fort, were in attendance. Dressed in silk, Governor Simcoe entered the hall, with his hat on his head, attended by his Adjutant and two Secretaries. The two members of the Council gave notice of his presence in the Upper House to the Legislative Assembly, and the five members of the latter having appeared at the Bar of the two Lords, His Excellency read his speech from the throne. He informed the honorable gentlemen of the Legislative Council and the gentlemen of the House of Assembly, that he had summoned them together under the authority of an Act of Parliament of Great Britain, which had established the British constitution, and all that secured and maintained it to Upper Canada; that the wisdom and beneficence of the sovereign had been eminently proved by many provisions in the memorable Act of Separation, which would extend to the remotest posterity the invaluable blessings of that constitution; that great and momentous trusts and duties had been committed to the representatives of the province, infinitely beyond whatever had distinguished any other British Colony; that they were called upon to exercise, with due deliberation and foresight, various offices of civil administration, with a view of laying the foundation of that union of industry and wealth, of commerce and power, which may last through all succeeding ages; that the natural advantages of the new province were inferior to none on this side of the Atlantic; that the British government had paved the way for its speedy colonization; and that a numerous and agricultural people would speedily take possession of the soil and climate. To this speech the replies of the Council and Assembly were but an echo. The seven gentlemen legislators proceeded actively to business. An Act was passed to repeal the Quebec Act, and to introduce the English law as the rule of decision in all matters of controversy relative to property and civil right; an Act to establish trials by jury; an Act to abolish the summary proceedings of the Court of Common Pleas in actions under ten pounds sterling; an Act to prevent accidents by fire; an Act for the more easy recovery of small debts; an Act to regulate the tolls to be taken in mills (not more than a twelfth for grinding and bolting); and an Act for building a Gaol and Court House in every district within the province, and for altering the names of the said districts, the district of Lunenburg to be called the Eastern District; that of Mecklenburg, the Midland District; that of Nassau, the Home District; and that of Hesse, the Western District.

Parliament was about a month in session, when it was prorogued by His Excellency. On the 15th of October he gave the assent of the Crown to the Bills passed, and in the prorogation speech, made on the same day, he intimated his intention of taking such measures as he deemed prudent to reserve to the Crown, for the public benefit, a seventh of all lands granted or to be granted; and he begged the popular representatives to explain to their constituents, that the province was singularly blest with a constitution the very image and transcript of the British Constitution! There being only thirty thousand inhabitants in the whole province, small as the Parliament was, the people, if not fairly, were at least sufficiently represented. It is somewhat doubtful, nevertheless, that a constitution which gave only a quasi-sovereign to Upper Canada, neither directly, nor, as the Governors of Canada now are, indirectly responsible to the people, could have been the very image and transcript of the British Constitution. There was a misty resemblance to that celebrated and unwritten form of government, in the erection of three estates--King, Lords, and Commons--and no more. But, as it is sometimes expedient to be thankful for small favors, it may have appeared to Governor Simcoe that the new constitution of the colony was superior to that of England before _magna charta_. Undoubtedly the Governor was an honest man, a good soldier, a prudent ruler, liberally educated, and of considerable mental capacity. He appears to have been a member of the Imperial Parliament at the time of the passage of the Separation Act, for when the report of the Bill was brought up in the Commons, on the 16th of May, 1791, it appears by the debate, that a Colonel Simcoe spoke in favor of the adoption of the report, pronounced a panegyric on the British Constitution, and wished it to be adopted in the present instance, as far as circumstances would admit. Aware of the advantages which such a colony as Upper Canada, if it attained perfection, might bring to the mother country, he accepted the government of a mere wilderness, to adopt means adequate for that purpose. Independent in means, high in rank, possessed of large and beautiful estates in England, Governor Simcoe, in the opinion of the Duke de la Rochefoucault Liancourt, could have had no motive of personal aggrandizement in view when he accepted the government of Upper Canada. The General, however, loathed the Americans of the United States. He had been with Burgoyne. He had tasted of that officer's humiliation. It was impossible for General Simcoe to speak of the "rebels" calmly. A zealous promoter of the American war, as well as participator in it, the calamitous issue of that unfortunate and most deplorable struggle increased the intensity of his bitterness. Although he did not hope for a renewal of the strife, he trusted that if it were renewed, he might have the opportunity of laying the country in waste, and of exterminating the canting, hypocritical, puritanical, independents. He soon perceived the folly of the Seat of Government being situated on the very frontier, the more especially as Detroit was to be surrendered to the very people whom he most detested. York, from its security, situation and extent, seemed, at first glance, to be the most desirable place. Determined, however, to do nothing rashly, General Simcoe weighed the matter well in his mind. It seemed to him that a town might be founded on the Thames, a river previously called De La Trenche, which rises in the high lands, between Lakes Ontario, Huron, and Erie, and flows into Lake St. Clair, which would be most suitable, and in process of time, most central. He even selected the site of a town upon the river, which he had named the Thames, and called the site London. Indeed it is somewhat astonishing that this excellent Anglo-tory, as the Americans, south of 45°, doubtless, esteemed him, did not call Sandwich, Dover; Detroit, Calais; and the then Western and Home Districts of the western section of the Province, which is almost an Island, England. The garden of Upper Canada, almost surrounded by water, Governor Simcoe did intend, that as England is mistress of the seas, so her offshoot, Canada, should be Queen of the Lakes. Whatever might have been, or may yet be the natural advantages of London, Canada West, for a seat of government, the Governor General of British North America, Lord Dorchester, not then on the best possible terms with General Simcoe, would not hear of it, and he, notwithstanding the boast of the Lieutenant Governor that Upper Canada had obtained the exact image and transcript of the British Constitution, exercised a powerful influence in the state. Lord Dorchester insisted that Kingston should be the capital of the Upper Province. He was determined, moreover, that if he could not prevail on the Imperial Government to convert Kingston into the provincial capital, that the seat of government should not be at the London of General Simcoe. He was not favorable to York. A muddy, marshy, unhealthy spot, it was unfitted for a city. Lord Dorchester, peevish from age, was, to some extent, under the influence of the Kingston merchants, and was inclined, by a feeling of gratitude, to grant the wishes of Commodore Bouchette, who resided at Kingston, with his family, and to whom Lord Dorchester was indebted for safe conduct through the American camp, after Montreal had fallen into the hands of Montgomery. Kingston, as a town, was then inferior even to Newark, but the back country was in a more advanced state, as far as cultivation was concerned. The number of houses in the two towns was nearly equal, but the houses in Kingston were neither as large nor so good as those of Newark. Many of the houses in Kingston were merely log-houses, and those which consisted of joiners work were badly constructed and painted. There was no Town Hall, no Court House, and no Prison. The trade consisted chiefly in furs, brought down the Lake, and in provisions brought from Europe. There were only three merchant ships, that made eleven voyages in the year. In the district, three or four thousand bushels of corn were raised, and the surplus of that required for the feeding of the troops and inhabitants was exported to England, the price of flour being six dollars per barrel. In 1791, a thousand barrels of salt pork were sent from Kingston to Quebec, at a price of eighteen dollars a barrel. In selecting a site for the seat of government, then, as now, local interests were brought into play, but General Simcoe ultimately succeeded in obtaining the permission of the Imperial authorities to fix it at York.

The revenue of Upper Canada, in 1793, was only £900, and the pay of the members of Assembly was $2 a day. There was a Chief Justice and two Puisne Judges, the members of the Executive Council, five in number, being a Court of Appeal; and the Governor, with an assistant, formed a Court of Chancery. Murders were of more frequent occurrence than other crimes, and were rarely punished. There were Quakers, Baptists, Tunkers, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics without places of worship. The ministers of the Episcopal Church in connection with the Church of England, were the only clergymen paid by government.

Governor Simcoe's schemes for the improvement of the country and the development of its resources, are worthy of notice, as being "extremely wise and well arranged." The central point of the settlements he designed to be between the Detroit River and the plantations previously established in Lower Canada, within a square formed by Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Detroit River, and Lake Huron. He conceived that Upper Canada was not only capable of satisfying all the wants of its inhabitants, but also of becoming a granary for England. He did not doubt but that the activity of Upper Canada, in agricultural pursuits, would operate as a powerful example in regard to Lower Canada, and arouse it from its then supineness and indolence. He conceived that the vast quantities of sturgeons in Lake Ontario would afford a successful competition with Russia in the manufacture of isinglass or fish-glue. The corn trade was, in his opinion, preferable to the fur trade, which threw the whole trade of a large tract of territory into the hands of a few. He detested military government without the walls of the forts. To the Lieutenants of each county he deputed the right of nominating the magistracy and officers of militia. A justice of the peace could assign, in the King's name, two hundred acres of land to every settler, with whose principles and conduct he was acquainted. The Surveyor of the District was to point out to the settler the land allotted to him by the magistrate. He did not care to enlarge his territory at the expense of the Indians. It appeared to him that a communication between Lakes Huron and Ontario might be opened, by means of the St. Joseph's river, which would relieve the fur traders of the Far West from the navigation of the Detroit River, of Lake Erie, of the Niagara River, and of a great part of Lake Ontario, and would disappoint the United States in their hope of receiving, in future, any articles across the Lakes, situated above Lake Huron. He was further of opinion, that a direct communication, the idea now entertained by the Honble. John Young, of Montreal, might be established between Lake Huron and the River St. Lawrence. Unfortunately for the Province, Governor Simcoe did not remain long enough in it to put his admirably conceived projects into execution. These schemes when conceived, could not be very easily brought under public notice. There was in all Upper Canada only one newspaper, and that very far from being an organ of public opinion. The Newark Spectator, or Mercury, or Chronicle, or whatever else it may have been, was but a loose observer of men and manners, printed weekly. Had it not been supported by the government, not a fourth part of the expenses of the proprietor would have been refunded to him by the sale of his newspaper. It was a short abstract of the newspapers of New York and Albany, "accommodated" to the anti-American principles of the Governor, with an epitome of the _Quebec Gazette_. It was the medium through which the Acts of the Legislature, and the Governor's notices and orders were communicated to the people. It was _par excellence_ the government organ.

The Second Session of the First Provincial Parliament of Upper Canada was held at Niagara, on the 31st of May, 1793. There is no copy of the speech from the throne to be found, unless it may have been in the Newark _Spectator_, which is not within reach. Its contents may be gleaned from the nature of the Bills passed during the Session, and assented to by the Lieutenant Governor. An Act was passed for the better regulation of the militia; the nomination and appointment of parish and town officers were provided for; the payment of wages to the members of the House of Assembly, at a rate not exceeding ten shillings per diem, was authorized and provided for; the laying out, amending, and keeping in repair the public high roads was regulated, the roads not to be less than thirty nor more than sixty feet wide; marriages solemnized by justices of the peace, before the separation, were to be valid, and in future justices of the peace were empowered to marry persons not living within eighteen miles of a parson of the Church of England, the form of the Church of England to be followed; the times and places of holding Courts of Quarter Sessions were fixed; the further introduction of slaves was prevented, and the term of contracts for servitude limited; a Court of Probate was established in the Province, and a Surrogate Court in every district; Commissioners were appointed to meet Commissioners from the Lower Province, to regulate the duties on commodities, passing from one Province to the other; a fund for paying the salaries of the officers of the Legislative Council, and for defraying the contingent expenses thereof, by a duty of four pence a gallon on Madeira, and two pence on all other wines imported into the Province was established; the destruction of wolves and bears was encouraged by a reward of twenty shillings for a wolf's head, and of ten shillings for a bear's head; returning officers were appointed for the several counties; and a further fund for the payment of the House of Assembly and its officers was created, by an "additional" duty of twenty shillings to be levied on all licenses for the retail of wines or spirituous liquors. In the third Session of the Parliament, convened on the 2nd June, 1794, an Act was passed for the regulation of juries; a Superior Court of Civil and Criminal Jurisdiction was established, and a Court of Appeal regulated; a Court was established for the cognizance of small causes in every district; the Lieutenant Governor was empowered to license practitioners in the law; fines and forfeitures reserved to His Majesty for the use of the Province were to be accounted for; the Assessment Act for the payment of wages to the Assembly was amended; the militia was further regulated; horned cattle, horses, sheep, and swine were not to run at large; the Gaols and Court Houses Act was amended; a duty of one shilling and three pence per gallon was laid upon stills, and the manner of licensing public houses was regulated.

The Fourth Session of the First Parliament of Upper Canada having met for the despatch of business, on the 6th July, 1795, the practice of physic and surgery was regulated; an Act was passed to ascertain the eligibility of persons to be returned to the House of Assembly; the agreement between Upper Canada and Lower Canada, by which the latter were to collect all the duties on goods, wares and merchandize arriving at Quebec, giving the former one eighth of their nett produce, was ratified, approved, and confirmed; the Superior Court Act of the previous Session was amended and explained; and Registry Offices were established for the enregistering of deeds, lands and tenements. There were no private Bills. The measures for Parliamentary consideration were all of a public nature, and the legislation was eminently judicious and peremptory. Mr. Attorney General White was the great man in the Commons, and Mr. Speaker Chief Justice Powell in the Lords. The first Parliament died a natural death, and the members of it went quietly to their respective places of abode.

The second Parliament met at Newark, after a general election not productive of any very great degree of excitement, on the 16th of May, 1796, opened by the Governor in person, with the usual formalities. Certain coins were better regulated; the juries Act was amended; the Quarter Sessions Act was amended; the public houses Act was amended; the wolves and bears destruction Act was partially repealed, by the rewards for killing bears being withdrawn; the Lieutenant Governor was authorized to appoint Commissioners to meet others from the Lower Province, about duties and drawbacks on goods passing from one Province to the other; and the assessment Act was amended.

This Session of the second Parliament was hardly concluded, when Governor Simcoe was required to relinquish his Government and proceed to St. Domingo, in a similar capacity, the government of Upper Canada, until the arrival of a regularly appointed successor, devolving upon the Hon. P. Russell, President of the Council. Mr. Russell convened the second Session of the Provincial Parliament, at the new capital of York, selected by his predecessor, and in which a gubernatorial residence of canvass had been erected. The first Act passed during his very quiet reign of only three years, was one for the better security of the Province against the King's enemies. It provided that no person professing to owe allegiance to any country at war against the King, should be permitted to enter, remain, reside, or dwell in the province. The second Act was one to enable the inhabitants of the township of York to assemble for the purpose of choosing and nominating parish and township officers; an Act for securing the titles to lands; an Act for the regulation of ferries; an Act to incorporate the legal profession; the word "clergyman" in land grants to signify clergy; felons from other Provinces to be apprehended, and the trade between the United States and the Province to be temporarily provided for, by the suspension of an Act repugnant to the free intercourse with the United States, established by treaty of 1794. Several amendments to Acts and other Acts were passed, when the Session was prorogued in due form.

On the 5th of June, 1798, the third Session of the second Provincial Parliament met, and seven Acts received the gubernatorial assent. Among other things, the boundary lines of the different townships were to be determined, the ministers of the Church of Scotland, Lutherans or Calvinists, were authorized to celebrate marriage; and the method of performing statute labor on the roads was altered.

The fourth and last Session of this second Parliament of Upper Canada met at York, on the 12th June, 1799, and six Acts were assented to, among which was one providing for the education and support of orphan children; and another enabling persons holding the office of Registrar to be elected members of the House of Assembly, a member of which body accepting the office to vacate his seat, with the privilege, however, of being re-elected.

On the 17th August, 1799, General Hunter appeared and assumed the Lieutenant Governorship to which he had been appointed by the King. He was not, however, simply Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada; but also the Lieutenant, General commanding-in-chief, in both of the Canadas. He took possession of the Government of Upper Canada about a fortnight after the general government of British North America had been entrusted to His Excellency Robert Shore Milnes, Esquire. The Lieutenant General was well advanced in years. He had seen fifty-three summers, and it was not to be expected that his previous education and habits would give way to the new ideas of younger men in a new country. General Hunter was, nevertheless, connected with a highly talented family, his brother being the celebrated Dr. Hunter of London, and his talents for government were possibly better than the bills passed during his reign would indicate. There was, indeed, little, if any, advance in legislation. The Acts of former Sessions, relative to duties, the administration of justice, and to the militia, were patched and repatched, made more stringent, less liberal, and more complicated. In the first Session of the third Parliament, which met at York, on the 2nd June, 1800, six Acts of revival, regulation, or amendment were assented to, one of which, making a temporary provision for the regulation of trade between Upper Canada and the United States, established ports of entry. The second Session of the third Parliament was held on the 28th of May, 1801, at the now established capital. The Parliament, as usual, was recommended to look after the King's enemies, the militia, the Quarter Sessions, the Customs Duties, the Roads, and the payment of the Assembly and its officers. There was no change in the matters legislated upon, worthy of note, with the exception that Cornwall, Johnstown, Newcastle, York, Niagara, Queenston, Fort Erie Passage, Turkey Point, Amherstburgh, and Sandwich were declared to be Ports of Entry, collectors being appointed by the Governor to receive a salary of £50 per cent on duties, till the same amounted to £100, above which sum there was to be no advance, and having the privilege of appointing their own deputies; the Governor was authorized to appoint Flour and Ashes Inspectors, who were to receive three pence for every barrel of flour they inspected, and one shilling for every cask of pot and pearl ashes; and an Act was passed preventing the sale of spirituous or intoxicating drinks to the Moravian Indians, on the River Thames. The third Session of the third Parliament met on the 25th of May, 1802, when five Acts only were passed. Titles of lands were to be better ascertained and secured; the administration of justice in the Newcastle District was provided for; the rates which the Receiver General should take and retain for his own use out of the monies passing through his hands, subject to the disposition of the Province, was to be declared and ascertained; one or more ports of entry were established, and one or more collectors of Customs appointed; and an Act for applying £750 to encourage the growth of hemp, and £84 0s. 8d. for stationery for the Clerks of Parliament was adopted. On the 24th of January, 1803, the Parliament being again assembled for the despatch of business, an Act was passed, allowing time for the sale of lands and tenements by the Sheriff; a fund was established for the erection and repair of light-houses; the rights of certain grantees of the waste lands of the Crown were declared; married women were enabled to convey and alienate their real estate; attornies were enabled to take two clerks and "no more," the Attorney and Solicitor General excepted, as they could take three each, and "no more;" the swine and horned cattle restraint Act was extended; members of Parliament, having a warrant from the Speaker of attendance, were, for their own convenience, enabled to demand from justices of the peace, ten shillings a day, to be levied by assessment. After this, Parliament was prorogued, unless it be that a second fourth Session of the Parliament was held, which is not very probable, although Mr. Gourlay, in his account of Canada, gives two fourth Sessions to the third Parliament, and afterwards complains that the business of the first Session of the sixth Provincial Parliament was nowhere to be found.

Parliament next assembled on the 1st of February, 1804. Sedition was provided against; persons who should seduce soldiers into desertion were to be exemplarily punished; fees, costs, and charges were to be regulated by the Court of Kings Bench; the swine Act was amended, so that sheep might run at large, and rams only be restrained between the 1st December and 20th December; £300 was appropriated to the printing of all the Acts of the Province, and £80 a year was allowed for the annual printing of the laws, which were to be distributed among members of Parliament, judges, and militia officers; £100 was granted for the building of bridges and repairing old roads and laying out new ones; the Customs Act was explained; £175 was granted for the purchase of the Statute Laws of England; £400 per annum was granted to be applied in the erection of Parliament Buildings; £303 11s. 10-1/2d. was voted for the clerks and officers of the Parliament, including stationary, and to the government commissioners appointed to adopt means to encourage the growth of hemp a sum of £1,000 was granted. The Session of the fourth Parliament, next bent on the despatch of business, came together on the 1st February, 1805. It altered the time of issuing tavern and still licenses; afforded relief to heirs or devizees of the nominees of the Crown, entitled to claim lands in cases where no patent had issued for such lands; regulated the trial of contested elections; continued the Duty-Commissioners Act for four years; altered certain parts of the Newcastle-District administration of justice Bill; made provision for the further appointment of parish and town officers; relieved insolvent debtors, by an Act which enabled a debtor in prison to receive five shillings weekly from his creditor during his detention, if the prisoner were not worth five pounds, worthlessness being, in this instance, to a man's advantage; the curing, packing and inspection of pork was regulated by the appointment of inspectors, whose fees were to be one shilling and six pence per barrel, exclusive of cooperage, with six pence a mile to the Inspector, for every mile he had to travel; £45 9s. 8d., advanced by His Majesty, through the Lieutenant Governor, for the purchase of hemp seed, and £229 8s. 6d., advanced for contingencies, clerks of Parliament and so forth, were to be made good out of a certain sum applied to that purpose; and for the further encouragement of the growth and cultivation of hemp, and for the exportation thereof, it was by law determined that £50 per ton should be paid for hemp.

Lieutenant General Hunter died at Quebec on the 21st August of the same year, (1805) at the age of 59, and was buried in the English Cathedral at Quebec, where a monument in marble has been erected to his memory, by his brother, the physician. It is recorded on his tombstone, that General Hunter's life was spent in the service of his King and country, and that of the various stations, both civil and military, which he filled, he discharged the duties with spotless integrity, unwearied zeal, and successful abilities.

The Honorable Alexander Grant, as President of the Council, succeeded General Hunter in the administration of affairs. Mr. Grant reigned only one year, when he was succeeded by His Excellency Sir Francis Gore. During Mr. Grant's short rule, £50 a year each, was provided for eight years, to six Sheriffs; an Act was passed to regulate the practice of physic and surgery; £490 was appointed for the purchase of instruments to illustrate the principles of natural philosophy, to be deposited in the hands of a person employed in the education of youth; £1,600 was granted for public roads and bridges; the Acts for the appointment of Parish officers, for the collection of assessments, and for the payment of the wages of the House of Assembly were altered and amended; the Custom Duties' Act was continued; and £498 8s. 5d. was made good to the Commissioners treating with Lower Canada, and to the Clerks of Parliament.

The Governments, of both Upper and Lower Canada, were administered by residents of the country at the same period of time. While Mr. Grant, the administrator of Upper Canada, had convened the parliament of the province on the 4th of February, 1806, Mr. Dunn had convoked the parliament of Lower Canada for the 22nd of the same month in the same year. On opening the parliament of Lower Canada Mr. Dunn tellingly alluded to the important victory of Lord Nelson at Trafalgar and to the subsequent action off Ferrol, recommending the renewal of the acts deemed expedient during the previous war for the preservation of His Majesty's government and for the internal tranquillity of the province. By the address, in reply, he was assured that these acts would be renewed. Shortly after the assembly had met it occurred to them that their peculiar privileges, as an offshoot of the Commons of England, had been assailed. The proceedings of a dinner party given to the representatives of Montreal in that city had been printed and circulated in the Montreal _Gazette_ of the 1st April, 1805. The dinner was given in Dillon's tavern, and the party were particularly merry with the abundant supply of wines. Mr. Isaac Todd, merchant, presided. After the customary toasts on all such occasions had been given, the president proposed:--"The honorable members of the Legislative Council, who were friendly to constitutional taxation as proposed by our worthy members in the House of Assembly;"--"Our representatives in parliament, who proposed a constitutional and proper mode of taxation, for building gaols, and who opposed a tax on commerce for that purpose, as contrary to the sound practice of the parent state;"--"May our representatives be actuated by a patriotic spirit, for the good of the province, as dependent on the British empire, and be divested of local prejudices;"--"Prosperity to the agriculture and commerce of Canada, and may they aid each other, as their true interest dictates, by sharing a due proportion of advantages and burthens;"--"The city and county of Montreal and the grand juries of the district, who recommended local assessments for local purposes;"--"May the city of Montreal be enabled to support a newspaper, though deprived of its natural and useful advantages, apparently, for the benefit of an individual." It is difficult to perceive where any breach of privilege was involved, but the assembly looked upon these aspirations and upon the compliments to the Montreal representatives as a false and scandalous and malicious libel, highly and unjustly reflecting upon His Majesty's representative and on both Houses of the Provincial Parliament, and tending to lessen the affections of His Majesty's subjects towards the government of the province. A committee of inquiry was appointed, and reported that the libellers were the printer of the _Gazette_, Edward Edwards, and the president of the dinner party, Isaac Todd. Nay, the libel was reported to be a "high" breach of the privileges of the Assembly and Messrs. Todd and Edwards were ordered to be taken into custody. But the Serjeant-at-Arms, or his deputy, could not lay his hands upon these gentlemen and the matter was no more thought of until the editor of the Quebec _Mercury_ ridiculed the whole proceedings, when it was ordered that Mr. Cary should be arrested. Mr. Cary was afraid that such unpleasant investigations might give rise to other unpleasant investigations with regard to the powers of the House. He intimated that in France it was customary to tie up the tongue and lock up the press, and for so doing he was compelled either to submit to be himself locked up or apologize. On being arrested he apologized at the Bar of the House and was released. The time of the House was frittered away by empty discussions and wordy addresses upon the gaol tax, previously mentioned, which the king did not disallow as required by the mercantile community. Indeed the administrator of the government in his prorogation speech remonstrated with the Assembly for the non-completion of the necessary business. The civil expenditure of the year came to £35,469 sterling, including £2,000 to General Prescott, who was then in England, and £3,406 to Sir Robert Shore Milnes, with the addition of £2,604 currency, for salaries to the officers of the Legislature, the expenditure exceeding the revenue by £869.

General Prescott, the Governor General, absent in England, was yet in the receipt of £2,000 a year, and the year before he had £4,000; Sir Robert Milnes, the Lieutenant Governor, also absent, had received the salary above mentioned, while Mr. Dunn received £750, as a judge of the King's Bench, £100 for his services as administrator of the government, a pension of £500 sterling a year, on relinquishing the administration, and an additional allowance of £1,500 a year while he had administered the government. Beyond question their "Excellencies" and "His Honor," were amply remunerated. The Governor General and his Lieutenant were absent on business. Indeed, while the Legislative Assembly, in defence of imaginary privileges, were cutting such fantastic capers before high heaven, the confidential secretary of Lord Dorchester and of his successors so far, the Honorable Herman Witsius Ryland,--who, having been Acting Paymaster General to His Majesty's Forces captured by the Americans, went to England, when His Lordship, then General Sir Guy Carleton, evacuated New York, and returned with him to Canada, when that officer was appointed Governor-in-Chief in 1793, full of the sympathies, antipathies, prepossessions, and prejudices of the English conservative of that day,--had devised a scheme, which, had it been carried out, would have rendered their privileges not very valuable. He only designed to "anglify" the French-Canadians by compulsion. Before the separation of the province into Upper Canada and Lower Canada it was a matter of consideration whether all the Roman Catholic churches in the Province could not be converted into Reformed Anglo-Episcopal churches. The contemplated plan of doing so was to take from the "Vicaire du Saint Siége Apostolique" the power of nominating and appointing the parish priests; the appointment of subsequent bishops was to be given to the king; and the Popish Bishop then living, was to be succeeded by a Protestant Bishop, who would find an easy method of turning Cardinal Richelieu's church extension schemes to excellent account in a new mode of ordaining new "catholic" priests, who might be disposed to abandon, at least, some of the doctrines of Rome and embrace, at least, some of those of the Protestant religion. The religious principle involved in this interesting scheme would have done credit to the eighth Henry. It would have had the effect of erecting on a Popish foundation, of building up on the sainted Rock, a church militant as a more powerful safeguard to English influence and power in Canada than the citadel of Quebec has been. Together with the creation of a Provincial Baronetage, in the persons of the members of the Upper House, the honor being descendible to their eldest sons in lineal succession, and the raising of the most considerable of these eldest sons at a future period to a higher degree of honor, as the province increased in wealth, together with the recognition of Mr. DeBoucherville's old noblesse, it would have most certainly much sooner produced that state of things which Sir Francis Bond Head and the "family compact" so ably brought to a crisis. The secretary of all the governors Lower Canada had yet had, corresponded, most confidentially, with his home masters, somewhat, perhaps, to the prejudice of his honor the administrator. As general Simcoe loathed the nasal twang, attenuated appearance, and the vulgar republicanism of a downeast American, so Mr. Witsius Ryland abominated Romanism. Speaking of the Roman Catholic clergy of Canada, he says:--"I call them Popish to distinguish them from the clergy of the Established Church and to express my contempt and detestation of a religion, which sinks and debases the human mind, and which is a curse to every country where it prevails." Nay, he laid it down, as a principle, to undermine the authority and influence of the Roman Catholic Priests. It was or should be the highest object of a governor to crush every papist scoundrel. Following the line of conduct which had so widely established the authority of the Popes of Rome, it was the duty of governors to avail themselves of every possible advantage, and never to give up an inch but with the certainty of gaining an ell. He lamented that the seminary and perhaps some other estates had not been taken possession of by the crown, incorporated, and trustees appointed, out of which incorporated estates a handsome salary might have been paid to the King's Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent of the Romish Church! but the proceeds of which should principally have been applied to the purposes of public education. And he was deeply mortified that "a company of French rascals" had momentarily deprived the country of any hope of such a destiny of these estates. The private and confidential remarks of the secretary were not altogether without effect. His Grace of Portland, then His Majesty's Secretary for the Colonies, peremptorily ordered Governor Milnes to resume and exercise that part of the king's instructions requiring that no person whatever was to have holy orders conferred upon him, or to have cure of souls, without license, first had and obtained from the Governor, and Lord Hobart, the Duke's successor in the Colonial Department, intimated to Sir Robert Milnes that it was highly proper that he should signify to the Catholic Bishop the impropriety of his assuming any new titles or exercising any additional powers to those which he had as the Vicar of the Holy Apostolic See. The French Priests were also to be reminded that their residence in Canada was merely on sufferance, and that it was necessary for them to behave circumspectly, else even that indulgence would be withdrawn. Greatly alarmed at these proceedings the Bishop of Rome respectfully remonstrated. He humbly reminded His Most Excellent Majesty, the King, that nineteen-twentieths of the population were of the Roman Catholic religion; that the humble remonstrant was himself the fourteenth bishop who had managed the church since Canada had happily passed into the hands of the Crown of Great Britain; that the extension of the province was prodigious, requiring more than ever that the superintending bishop should retain all the rights and dignities which His Majesty had found it convenient to suffer the bishops to have at the conquest; and that in the Courts of Justice there should be no room to doubt their powers. It was indeed no wonder that the superintendent of the Church of Rome was alarmed at the aspect of affairs. The Attorney-General Sewell reported with regard to the nomination of Laurent Bertrand to be curé of Saint Léon-le-Grand, by the titular Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec, in the case of one Lavergne, who having refused to furnish the _pain béni_, was prosecuted in the Court of King's Bench, that it was a usurpation in the bishop to erect parishes and appoint curés. He went farther and said that there was no such person as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec. The title, rights, and powers of that office had been destroyed by the conquest. Nay, there could not, legally, be any such character, as, if he existed, the King's supremacy would be interfered with, contrary to the Statutes of Henry the Eighth and of Elizabeth. Not only was there a quiet but arbitrary denial of the right of the Roman Catholic Bishop to manage the affairs of his diocese, the possibility of negotiating the Reverend Coadjutor Plessis out of his influence was entertained. Mr. Attorney-General ultimately waited upon that ecclesiastic to explain his own private sentiments to him. The bishop was studiously guarded and significantly polite. The Attorney-General thought that a good understanding ought to exist between the government and the ministers of religion. Mr. Plessis was quite of that opinion. Mr. Attorney-General thought the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion having been permitted the government ought to avow its officers, but not at the expense of the Established Church. Mr. Coadjutor Plessis said that position might be correct. Mr. Attorney-General thought that the government could not allow to Mr. Plessis that which it denied to the Church of England. Mr. Plessis saw that the government thought that the bishop should act under the King's commission, and could see no objection to it. The Attorney-General was strongly of opinion that the right of appointing to curés, which no bishop of the Church of England had, must be abandoned. Mr. Plessis thought that even Buonaparte and the Pope had effected a compromise on that matter. Mr. Attorney-General had no faith in Buonaparte and was but an indifferent Catholic, but the Crown only could select from a Bishop's own Priesthood, and a Bishop, once acknowledged, would be the head of a department. That said Mr. Plessis would be a departure from the Romish doctrine of church discipline. To some extent it would, but your clergy would be officers of the Crown, and you would obtain the means of living in splendour, said the Attorney-General. Splendour, said Mr. Plessis, is not suitable to the condition of a bishop; ecclesiastical rank and a sufficient maintenance is all he needs. The Attorney-General meant that a bishop should have the income of a gentleman. Mr. Plessis meant the same thing, but it was a delicate matter to pension a bishop, for relinquishing his right of nominating to the cures, as the public would not hesitate to say he had sold his church. Never mind, said the Attorney-General, if the matter is viewed aright, you have none to relinquish. I do not know, replied Mr. Plessis. Whatever is to be done must now be done, intimated the Attorney-General. You speak truly, was the modest reply, something must be done, and though we may differ in detail, I hope we shall not in the outline.

Not very long after this conversation Bishop Denaud died. Now was the time for Mr. Witsius Ryland to act or never. He did act most energetically. He ear-wigged Mr. President Dunn, concerning his proper line of conduct on the occasion. He attempted to dissuade Mr. Dunn from a formal acknowledgement of Mr. Plessis, as Superintendent of the Romish Church, till His Majesty's pleasure should be declared. He thought an order should be immediately issued from home, prohibiting the assumption, by a Roman Catholic prelate, of the title of Bishop of Quebec. It occurred to him that a French emigrant bishop, if one could be found, would be more easily managed than Mr. Plessis. But Mr. Plessis was too much for Mr. Ryland, and found favor in the President's sight. Mr. Dunn would not listen to the representations of his secretary, and the wrath of his secretary was kindled. He wrote to Sir Robert Milnes on the subject, and to "My dear Lord," the Right Reverend Jacob Mountain, D.D. Not only was Mr. Dunn determined upon formally recognizing the new Roman Catholic Bishop but he was determined to suffer the Reverend Mr. Panet to take the oath as Coadjutor, without either waiting for His Majesty's pleasure, or for any other sanction whatever. It was most distressing, but "where was the layman, free from vanity, who, at seventy-three years of age, would let slip an opportunity of making a bishop?" It was dreadful. His contempt and indignation rose to a height that nearly choked him. As an apology for the recognition of Mr. Panet, it was all very well to say that his brother was a mighty good sort of a man. A mighty good sort of a man! How devoted were such mighty good sort of men, those very loyal subjects, to His Majesty! From the Speaker himself, down to the "fellow" who held a lucrative office in the Court of King's Bench, and who had sent his son to join the banditties of Mr. Buonaparte, who was not, to suit his purpose, brimfull of loyalty! Things were wretchedly managed, but the wisest thing to be done under present circumstances was nothing.

The Home Government anxious to build up in some manner a Protestant Church establishment had appointed the Right Reverend Jacob Mountain, Doctor in Divinity, to the Diocese of Quebec. At the expense of the Imperial Government, a Cathedral was built in Quebec, which was consecrated in 1804, on the ruins of the Recollet Church of the Jesuits. To this day it is possibly the most symmetrical in appearance of any church of the Church of England in Canada. Exteriorly, it is 135 feet in length and 73 in breadth, while the height of the spire above the ground is 152 feet, the height from the floor to the centre arch, within, being 41 feet. The communion plate, together with the altar cloth, hangings of the desk and pulpit of crimson velvet and cloth of gold, and the books for divine service, was a private present from George the Third. There was then also a Rector of Quebec, having a salary, from the British Government, of £200 a year, such a sum as, Bishop Mountain reported to His Excellency the Governor, no gentleman could possibly live upon! a Rector of Montreal with the same salary, and £80 additional per annum made up by subscription from the parish; a Rector of Three Rivers with a like salary of £200 from home; a Rector of William Henry receiving £100 from home and £50 from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; an evening lecturer at Quebec, receiving £100 from the Imperial Treasury; the incumbent of Missisquoi Bay, obtaining £100 from government, £50 from the Propagation Society, and £30 from the inhabitants; and two vacancies in the "new settlements," requiring £150 to be paid to each. The building of a stone church in Montreal was commenced, but the structure which promised to be "one of the handsomest specimens of modern architecture in the province," was not finished, for want of funds, ten years afterwards. In Upper Canada, so late as 1795, no church had been built. Even in Newark, it is quaintly added by the Duke de la Rochefoucault Liancourt, in the same halls where the Legislative and Executive Councils held their sittings, jugglers would have been permitted to display their tricks, if any should have ever strayed to a country so remote. His Grace, quite correct with regard to Newark, was at fault in speaking of the whole province. At Stamford there was a Presbyterian Church, built in 1791, and another church built for the use of all persuasions, a kind of free and common soccage church, in 1795, which was destroyed in the subsequent war. It was in this year that one of the most remarkable men, and one of the most able and indefatigable of the colonial clergy, was strolling about Marischal College, in Aberdeen, studying philosophy. He was a very plain-looking Scotch lad and very cannie. Altogether wanting in that oratorical brilliancy so necessary for an efficient preacher of the great truths of Christianity, Mr. John Strachan had diligently acquired a dry knowledge of the humanities, to fit himself for a teacher of youth. He was, in a limited sense, a classical scholar. Greek and Latin, Hebrew and the Mathematics, were at his fingers' ends. Not long after leaving college, he obtained the place of a preceptor to the children of a farmer in Angus-shire. The situation of schoolmaster of Dunino, a parish situated foury miles south of St. Andrews, in Fifeshire, and six miles north of Anstruther, the school taught by Tennant, the orientalist, professor of Hebrew and other oriental languages in St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, and the author of the Poem of Anster Fair, became vacant, when Mr. John Strachan made application for the fat berth, the salary being nearly £30 a year, and obtained it. Mr. Strachan taught quietly at Dunino, attending St. Andrews College, in the winter, until he received the offer of £50 a year, as tutor to the family of a gentleman living in Upper Canada. He accepted it, left Dunino, and went to the wilderness. Mr. Strachan taught as a private tutor for some time and subsequently established a school for himself, when he married a widow possessed of cash and respectably connected. The Church of Scotland, in Canada, was then at a very low ebb. Even in Quebec, although there had been a regularly ordained clergyman of the church officiating since 1759, there was only, from 1767 to 1807, an apartment assigned to the Scotch Church for the purpose of divine worship, by the King's representative, in the Jesuits' College. Nay, in 1807, the Scotch Church was entirely sent adrift by Colonel Brock, to be afterwards permitted to meet in a room in the Court House. Until 1810 there was no Scotch Church in Quebec. What inducement was there for a progressive Scotchman to remain in connection with such a church? Mr. Strachan clearly perceived that the road to worldly preferment ran through the Church of England, and, having a wife, and the expectation of a family, he recognised the expediency of obtaining orders as a descendant of the apostles. It was not long before he obtained permission to officiate as a minister of the Church of England, and he abandoned the birch for the surplice. Mr. Strachan justified every expectation that may have been formed of him. He became a most zealous churchman, and a very short time elapsed until the Scotch schoolmaster was the Hon. and Revd. Dr. Strachan, Rector of York, now Bishop of Toronto, and he may go to the grave satisfied that he has done more to build up the Church of England in Canada, by his zeal, devotion, diplomatic talent, and business energy, than all the other bishops and priests of that church put together.

Some idea will now have been formed of the state of the Church of England "establishment," in Canada, about a time, when it was intended to amalgamate with it the fabrics of Rome. Bishop Mountain had a seat it in the Legislative Councils of both provinces. He only was the embodiment of Church and State.

Mr. Secretary Ryland, anxiously active against the Church of Rome, was very favorably disposed towards the Church of England. His creed with regard to the "Protestant Church Establishment," in the provinces, was for it to have as much splendour and as little power as possible. His chief desire was to make episcopalianism fashionable. He would have given to the Bishopric of Quebec a Dean, a Chapter, and all the other ecclesiastical dignitaries necessary for show, and he would have endowed the See with sufficient lands to support the establishment in the most liberal manner. But not a grain of civil power beyond their churches and churchyards was he inclined to give to the clergy. He even thought that in regard to the particular case at Montreal, and in any other case where a church should be, or was about to be built by private contribution, the bishop would exhibit infinite discretion, if he did not do more than wish to advise and to consecrate. The same rights, privileges, prerogatives and authority as bishops enjoy under the common Law of England could not safely be given to colonial bishops, nor could it be possible to obtain them. A more worldly view of church extension could not well be conceived, but the suggestion was not by any means an imprudent one. Bishops, being but men, are too apt to abuse power, and it is surely well that too much of it should not be granted to experiment upon.

While all this was quietly going on, _sub rosa_, in Lower Canada, the Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, were quietly taking hold of the public mind in Upper Canada. Although the meeting houses were only few and far between, and churches and chapels were extremely rare, the most illiterate of the sects were itinerating, hither and thither, with wonderful success.

About this time there was also a disposition to diffuse education. His Majesty, the King, gave directions to establish a competent number of free schools in the different parishes, to be under the control of the Executive, but the project was strenuously opposed by the Roman Catholic clergy, and only grammar schools in Montreal and Quebec were provided for, which have languished and died. It was feared by Bishop Mountain that the want of colleges and good public schools would render it necessary for parents to send their children to the United States, to imbibe, with their letters and philosophy, republican principles. It was at his suggestion also that the idea of free schools was entertained. The Canadians were deplorably ignorant, and their children, it was designed, should be free from that reproach. It is only now, however, that they are emerging from the most debasing state of mental darkness, into something like enlightenment. Example has done that which force would have failed to accomplish.

As illustrative of the saying "there is nothing new under the sun," it is worthy of remark here that upon the arrival of the intelligence in Canada, respecting the breaking out of the war with France, in 1798, some of the leading members of the House of Assembly, which was then sitting, proposed to levy the sum of £20,000 sterling, by a tax on goods, wares, and merchandize, to be applied, as a voluntary gift to His Majesty, from the province, to enable the King the more effectually to prosecute the war. This was proposed by Mr. Attorney-General, Mr. Young, and Mr. Grant, and as far as the House was concerned, the measure was found practicable. But General Prescott, the Governor, having been informed of the matter, did not think it expedient to encourage a scheme which Lord Elgin would have jumped at.

In 1805, the whole revenue of the province was only £37,000, yet, it appears that Sir Robert Milnes, the Governor, did not think that he could sufficiently entertain to gain a due consideration from the principal persons in the province, on £4,000 a year. He sent a whining letter to Lord Hobart on the subject, begging for an increase of salary. £5,000 was not a sufficient sum to keep up the hospitality of Government House. It would hardly support the summer residence at Spencer Wood. He had said nothing about so delicate a matter, while the war lasted, though he had expended £1,000 a year out of his own private income. And he would rather resign than sacrifice the comforts and waste the means of his family.

Canada, now, continued steadily to advance, both politically and commercially. Neither her political advancement nor the extent of her commerce was great, but both were yearly becoming greater. During the summer of 1806, one hundred and ninety-one vessels, 33,474 tons of shipping, entered at Quebec. Coasters were in full and active employment, and shipbuilding was to some considerable extent carried on. The military of the garrison were still antiquated. The army made no perceptible progress, soldiers still plastered their hair, or if they had none, their heads, with a thick white mortar, which they laid on with a brush, afterwards raked, like a garden bed, with an iron comb; and then fastening on their heads a piece of wood, as large as the palm of the hand, and shaped like the bottom of an artichoke, they made a _cadogan_, which they filled with the same white mortar, and raked in the same manner, as the rest of the head dress.[11] The army wore cocked hats, knee breeches and gaiters. The _habitants_, or peasantry, had retrograded, and Volney found that, in general, they had no clear and precise ideas: that they received sensations without reflecting on them; and that they could not make any calculation that was ever so little complicated. If asked how far the distance from this place to that was; a French-Canadian peasant would reply:--"it is one or two pipes of tobacco off," or "you cannot reach it between sunrise and sunset." But the better classes, in close contact with the upper classes among the English, were rapidly improving, and began to entertain the idea that they had political rights. They even started a newspaper called "_Le Canadien_" and began most vigorously to abuse "les Anglais" and the government. The "_Canadien_" published entirely in French, first appeared in November 1806. Had it been less anti-British, possibly, it would have been less disagreeable; but the idea had strongly taken possession of its supporters that French-Canadians were looked upon, by the government and its satellites, as mere serfs, and they agitated accordingly. Not only that. They began to exhibit some sparks of independence. Their watchword became:--"_Nos institutions_, _notre langue_, _et nos lois_." They branded the British immigrants and the British population as "_étrangers et intrus_." Mr. Crapaud's temper was fairly up. There was cause. The worm will bite when trodden upon. Unless there had been substantial grievances, the _Canadien_ could not by any possibility have become so popular as to have given not only umbrage, but uneasiness to the government. Yet it did cause such uneasiness and was peremptorily checked. It was impossible then for a native-born Canadian, whether of English or French extraction, to look a home-appointed government official in the face. "_Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis._"

[11] See Duke de la Rochefoucault's Liancourt's travels through North America.

On the 21st January, 1807, Mr. President Dunn again met the Legislature of Lower Canada. That invaluable constitution enjoining on the ruler to meet his parliament once a year, rendered it imperative upon him to summon the Council and Assembly for the despatch of business. He recommended to the assembled wisdom before him the propriety of continuing several temporary acts then in force; congratulated them on the brilliant success of His Majesty's arms; alluded with pride to the conquest of the Cape of Good Hope; and touched upon the repeated victories obtained by Sir John Stuart in Calabria. The Assembly replied in terms most flattering to the President personally, promising to do as he required. On proceeding to business, the first subject which engaged the attention of the House was the propriety of defraying the expenses of members of the House residing at a distance from Quebec. The House was disposed to defray such expenses, but nevertheless, the further consideration of the matter was postponed by a majority of two. The expediency of having a Provincial Agent or Ambassador, resident in London, to look after the interests of the province at the metropolis of the empire was discussed, and it was resolved in the affirmative. The Alien Act was passed, and that for the better preservation of His Majesty's government continued for another year, together with several other acts, and on the 16th of April, the parliament was prorogued.

Serious apprehensions of a war between England and the United States now began to be entertained. American commercial interests were grievously affected by the war in Europe, and a kind of spurious activity, in the hostile preparations which would surely follow a declaration of war against England, on which country in peace the merchants of New York, Boston, and the other seaports of the United States principally depend, seemed to be the only incentive for such a war. But while the filibusters of "the greatest nation in creation," were looking for any cause of war, a good cause, in American eyes, arose. The American ships of war were mostly manned by British seamen. Men were greatly in demand for British war vessels, and it was conceived that the right to impress a British sailor anywhere on land or water belonged to His Majesty's naval officers. It having reached the ears of Admiral Berkeley, the Naval Commander in Chief, on the Halifax Station, that the American frigate "Chesapeake," was partly manned by British seamen, the Admiral, unthinkingly ordered Captain Humphreys, of the "Leopard," to recover them. The men on board of the "Chesapeake" were indeed known to be deserters from H.M.S. "Melampus." William Ware, Daniel Martin, John Strachan and John Little, British seamen, within a month after their desertion, had offered themselves as able seamen at Norfolk, in Virginia. Their services were accepted, and the "Chesapeake," on board of which they were sent, prepared for sea. Being made aware of the enlistment of these men, the British Consul at Norfolk, formally demanded their surrender by the Captain of the "Chesapeake." Their surrender was refused. Application for them was then made to the American Secretary of the navy. But he did not consider it expedient to give them up. Three of the men were natives of America, two had protection, and the other had merely lost his protection. The "Chesapeake" sailed on the 22nd of June, and on the same day was intercepted by the British frigate "Leopard," of 50 guns, off Cape Henry. Captain Humphreys, of the "Leopard," stepping on board of the "Chesapeake," demanded the muster of the crew of the American frigate. Captain Barron, in command of the American frigate, refused compliance. The British Commander returned and both vessels got ready for action, the American frigate only, it is said, anticipating hostilities. Then the Leopard fired upon the Chesapeake and, in thirty minutes, so disabled her that she struck, when Captain Humphreys boarded her and took, from among her crew, Ware, Martin, and Strachan, together with one John Wilson, a deserter from a British merchant ship. The United States now burned with indignation. Their outraged nationality could never brook such an insult. Every British armed vessel was ordered to leave the waters of the United States by the President. A special meeting of Congress was held. And the American Minister at the Court of St. James was ordered to demand satisfaction. He did do so. Mr. Canning, the British Minister, at once offered reparation, but he objected to any reference to the general question of impressments from neutral vessels being mixed up with an affair so unfortunate. Mr. Munroe was not authorized to treat these subjects separately, and further negotiation between the two ministers was suspended. Great Britain then sent a special minister to the United States, empowered to treat concerning the special injury complained of. Before he arrived most ample preparations were being made in the United States for war. Millions of dollars were appropriated towards the construction of 188 gun-boats, and the raising of horse, foot, and artillery. It was not until 1811 that this huge mistake was settled, when the British Minister communicated to the American Secretary of State that the attack on the Chesapeake was unauthorized by His Majesty's government; that Admiral Berkeley was recalled; that the men, taken from the Chesapeake, should be restored; and that suitable provision for the families of the six American seamen killed in the fight should be made. But, settled as this gross and deplorable mistake was to the perfect satisfaction of the President, the trading community of the United States were every day becoming more dissatisfied with the state of affairs in Europe and the consequent state of affairs at home. The situation of affairs, on this side of the Atlantic, was indeed gloomy and critical. France and England were fiercely at war, and were arraying against each other the most violent commercial edicts to the destruction of the commerce of neutral nations. There was the British blockade from the Elbe to Brest; Napoleon's Berlin decree; the British Order in Council prohibiting the coasting trade; the celebrated Milan decree; and the no less celebrated British Orders in Council, of November the 11th, 1807, together with the American Government's edicts respecting non-intercourse with Great Britain and France to set on edge the teeth of a people now little scrupulous as to what they did, provided money could be made, or power be obtained. Strife had introduced a disposition to intrigue; political cunning had become fashionable; and political duplicity had lost much of its deformity in the United States. The finger of derision was no longer pointed at meannesses; the love of honor, and manliness of conduct, was blunted; cunning began to take the place of wisdom; professions took the place of deeds, and duplicity stalked forth with the boldness of integrity. The American people wanted a quarrel that the whole boundless continent might be theirs. They had badgered France out of Louisiana, and they would badger England out of Canada and the West Indies. In New York and Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, it was customary to talk of walking into Canada and squat a conquest, as was afterwards carried into effect with regard to Texas. Mr. Dunn, the President of the Canadian government, looked upon the state of feeling in the adjoining republic with suspicion. He conceived it expedient to feel the public pulse in Canada. Like a skilful physician he approached the patient cautiously and good humouredly, to prevent flurry or agitation, and in putting his hand on the pulse of public opinion, he found it to be healthily strong and regular. He prescribed only a draft of one-fifth part of the whole militia of the province. The draft was taken immediately. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec, or rather the yet only Superintendent of the Romish Church in Quebec, Mr. Plessis, now rapidly rising into favor with the Colonial Court, promptly issued a _mandement_ to the faithful, concerning the war, and a "_Te Deum_" was sung in all of the churches under his control in Lower Canada. The Canadians turned out with great alacrity. His Honor the President and Commander-in-Chief expressed his satisfaction in general orders. Burn's artillery company volunteered. In ballotting, young bachelors procured the prize tickets of the married men. Some that were not drawn purchased tickets from some that were drawn, and there were not a few married people who refused to sell out, if all that is stated in a Quebec paper of that period can be credited. No doubt the glories of war were uppermost in men's minds. It is possible to make war popular and the braggart tone of the Americans had doubtless contributed considerably to its popularity with the Canadians.

Colonel Brock was then Commandant at Quebec. He was a man of much decision of character and of strong natural sense. With the President he made the most vigorous exertions to discipline the militia and to put the fortifications of Quebec into a good state of defence. Night and day men labored at the fortifications. Every addition that "science, judgment and prudence could suggest," was made.

The income this year was £36,417, and the civil expenditure £36,213.

In Upper Canada, Francis Gore, Esquire, it has been previously intimated, was Lieutenant-Governor. He first met Parliament on the 2nd of February, 1807. Twelve Acts were passed, the most remarkable of which were the Act to establish Public Schools in every district of the Province, £800 having been appropriated for that purpose, with the view of giving to each of the eight districts of the Province, a schoolmaster having a salary of £100 a year; the Act imposing licenses on Hawkers, Pedlars, and Petty Chapmen,--to the amount of three pounds for every pedlar, with twenty shillings additional for a hawker with a horse; eight pounds for every chapman sailing with a decked vessel and selling goods on board;--five pounds for the same description of traders sailing in an open boat; and eight pounds on transient merchants; and the Act for the Preservation of Salmon, which permitted that fish to be taken with a spear or hook, but prohibited the use of a net in the Newcastle and Home Districts.

When next the Parliament met, on the 20th January, 1808, the same fears that were felt in Lower Canada, being felt in Upper Canada, an Act was passed to raise and train the Militia; £1,600 was granted towards the construction of roads and bridges; £200 of yearly salary was granted to an Adjutant-General of Militia; £75 additional was given to the Clerks of the Assembly; £62 10s. per ton was to be the price of hemp purchased under an Act of Parliament for the encouragement of its growth in the Province; an Act for the more equal representation of the Commons was passed; and Collectors of Rates were to enter into bonds of £200 security.

On the 2nd February, 1809, the Parliament of Upper Canada was again convened. An Act was adopted for quartering and billeting the Militia and His Majesty's troops on certain occasions. Householders were to furnish them with house-room, fire, and utensils for cooking. Officers, in case of an invasion, having a warrant from a Justice of the Peace, could impress horses, carriages, and oxen, on regulated hire. Upper Canada was evidently preparing for an expected struggle, as well as Lower Canada. £1,045 was this session granted for the Clerks of Parliament and contingencies, including the erection of a Light House on Gibraltar Point; Menonists and Tunkers were permitted to affirm in Courts of Justice; £250 was appropriated for a bridge across the Grand River; and £1,600 was granted for bridges and highways. In the next session of the Fifth Parliament, which Governor Gore assembled at York, on the 1st of February, 1810, £2,000 were granted for the roads and bridges; the Common Gaols were declared to be Houses of Correction for some purposes; a duty of £40 a year was set upon a Billiard Table set up for hire or gain; £606 were applied to printing Journals, Clerks of Parliament, and building Light Houses. The Act establishing a Superior Court of Criminal and Civil jurisdiction, and regulating a Court of Appeals, was repealed; and £250 additional was granted for the erection of a bridge across the Grand River.

To return to Lower Canada, Lieutenant-General Sir James Henry Craig arrived at Quebec in the capacity of Governor General, on the 18th October, 1807, in the frigate Horatio, and relieved Mr. President Dunn of the government, on the 24th of October. Mr. Secretary Ryland was very busy at the time. He was flattering himself, he told the Bishop of Quebec, that the Secretary of State would have received from him a series of despatches which would "give that functionary a general and useful knowledge of the state of things in Lower Canada." There were some who had exerted themselves to defame and injure the President, with a view to their own private interests. He particularly alluded to that contemptible animal, Chief Justice Alcock; to his worthy friend and coadjutor, of whose treacherous, plausible, and selfish character, he had never entertained a doubt; and to that smoothfaced swindler, whom the Lieutenant-Governor had taken so affectionately by the hand, as the man, who, of all others, came nearest in point of knowledge, virtue, and ability, to the great Tom of Boston. He would add to these worthies a pudding-headed commanding officer (General Brock!) who, if the President had given in to all his idle "Camelian" projects, would have introduced utter confusion into the whole system, civil and military. He anxiously expected Sir James Craig, whose established fame assured him that a better choice could not have been made. And he thought it probable that if his dear, dear Lordship, should not have had an opportunity of honoring him with a recommendation to His Excellency of established fame, his services would be dispensed with, and then he could join his family in England. But should he remain as Secretary to General Craig, he had it in contemplation to lay before him a copy of his letter to Lord S., concerning ecclesiastical affairs, though it would not be prudent to do so until he had ascertained how far the General's sentiments accorded with his own. In a postscript to his letter to the dear Lord Bishop, Mr. Ryland goes into raptures. He had just received a message from Mr. Dunn, telling him that the Governor General had arrived. He dressed himself immediately and got on board the frigate with Mr. Dunn's answer to the General's despatch, before the ship cast anchor, and before any of the other functionaries knew even that the Governor General was at hand. He found the General ill in bed, but was so politely received, that the General begged that he would do him the favor to continue his secretary. He never was so pleased with any person at first sight. Although he saw him to every disadvantage, the General appeared to be a most amiable, a most intelligent, and a most decided character. He, (the General,) landed about one o'clock, but was so unwell that he begged to be left alone, and Mr. Ryland only saw him for an instant. But that curious beast, the Chief Justice, after intruding himself with unparalleled assurance, upon the General, before he landed, forced himself again upon him, at the Chateau, when every body but the President had withdrawn, and most impudently sat out the latter. He did so for the purpose of recommending as secretaries, his father-in-law, and a young man named _Brazenson_, or some such name, whom he had brought out with him from England, but his scheme entirely failed, and his folly would fall upon his own pate! Mr. Ryland had transacted business with the Governor every day since he had landed, and had even drawn up a codicil to his will, the poor, decided Governor, who had adopted Mr. Ryland, was so ill. Nay, Mr. Ryland, for the love of this one honorable and just man, could have almost forgotten that he was surrounded by scoundrels, and would bury in oblivion the mean jealousies of a contemptible self-sufficiency, and the false professions of smiling deceit. But should it please Almighty God to remove the incomparable man, and should there be a chance that the civil government of the province should be again disunited from the military command, he did hope that the dear, dear Lord, would favor him with his utmost interest towards enabling him to make the exchange which Mrs. Ryland would tell his dear Lordship, the Bishop, her husband had in contemplation.

Sir James Craig was an officer of good family. He was one of the Craigs of Dalnair and Costarton, in Scotland, but was born in Gibraltar, where his father had the appointment of Civil and Military Judge. He had seen much service in the camp and in the field. In 1770 he was appointed Aid-de-Camp to General Sir Robert Boyd, then Governor of Gibraltar, and obtained a Company in the 47th Regiment of the line. Having gone to America, with his regiment, in 1774, he was present at the battle of Bunker's Hill, where he was severely wounded. In 1776, he accompanied his regiment to Canada, commanding his company at the action at Trois Rivières, and he afterwards commanded the advanced guard in the expulsion of Arnold and his "rebels." He was wounded at Hubertown, in 1777, and was present at Ticonderoga in the same year. He was wounded again at Freeman's Farm, and was at Saratoga with Burgoyne, and after that disastrous affair was selected to carry home the despatches. On his arrival in England, he was promoted to a majority in the 82nd Regiment, which he accompanied to Nova Scotia, in 1778, to Penobscot, in 1779, and to North Carolina, in 1781, where he was engaged in a continued scene of active service. He was promoted to the rank of Major General, in 1794, and the following year was sent on the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, where, in the reduction and conquest of that most important settlement, with the co-operation of Admiral Sir G. K. Elphinstone and Major General Clarke, he attained to the highest pitch of military reputation. Nor were his merits less conspicuous, it is said, in the admirable plans of civil regulation, introduced by him in that hostile quarter, when invested with the chief authority, civil and military, till succeeded in that position by the Earl of Macartney, who was deputed by the King to invest General Craig with the Red Ribbon, as a mark of his sovereign's sense of his distinguished services. Sir James served, subsequently, in India and in the Mediterranean, where he contracted a dropsy, the result of an affection of the liver. This was the officer, of an agreeable but impressive presence, stout, and rather below the middle stature, manly and dignified in deportment, positive in his opinions, and decisive in his measures, though social, polite, and affable, who was sent out to govern Canada because a rupture with the United States was considered probable. Sir James on arrival at Quebec did not, however, consider hostilities imminent. Nor did he immediately organize the militia. But he lauded the Canadians for the heroic spirit which they had manifested. One of his first acts was to release from prison a number of persons convicted of insubordination, and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment in the gaol of Montreal. The militia of the parish of L'Assomption, in the district of Montreal, had formed a painful exception in the spirit which they exhibited on being called upon to enrol for service, to that which had been exhibited everywhere else. But the rioting had been immediately suppressed, and the rioters punished by the ordinary Courts at Montreal. In gaol the rioters manifested contrition, promised good behaviour for the future, and Sir James, overlooking the faults of the few in consideration of the general merit, set the prisoners free. On the 29th of January, 1808, he convened the Legislature. He regretted, in his opening speech, that there was little probability of a speedy cessation of hostilities, in Europe. He congratulated the "honorable gentlemen," and "gentlemen," on the capture of Copenhagen and the Danish fleet, defending the morality of the offensive measures against Denmark. He lamented the discussions that had taken place between His Majesty's government and that of America. He hoped that the differences would be so accommodated as to avert the calamities of war between two nations of the same blood. He intended that no means should be neglected to prepare for the worst. Though the militia had been selected, he did not think it necessary to call them together, no immediate circumstance seeming to require it. He had appointed commissioners for the erection of new gaols in Quebec and Montreal. And he expected perfect harmony and co-operation between the legislative bodies and himself, as the representative of the sovereign. All that Sir James wished to be done the Assembly promised to do.

In those days not only was the Chief Justice a member of the Upper House, but the Judges of the King's Bench were not ineligible for election to the Lower House, and some, or all of them, contrived to get seats there. It does not appear that the Chief Justice was in the Upper House a mere government tool, for Sir Robert Milnes most bitterly complained to the Duke of Portland, of the opposition to certain measures, which he had met with, from Chief Justice Osgoode, who, even in public, treated him contemptuously. But it is yet probable that some of the judges in the Assembly, were less the representatives of the people who had elected them, than the mouth-pieces of the government, to whom they were indebted for their appointments to the Bench, and on whose good pleasure, their continuance on the judgment seat, depended. Be that as it may, the Assembly were jealous of their presence in the House, and accordingly, this session of Parliament, a motion was introduced into the Assembly, declaring it to be expedient that the Judges of the Court of King's Bench, the Provincial Judges of the Districts of Three Rivers and Gaspé, and all Commissioned Judges of any Courts that might afterwards be established, should be incapable of being elected, or of sitting, or of voting in the House of Assembly. The motion was adopted, and a bill framed upon the resolution, passed the Assembly. Unfortunately, heedless of the pressure of public opinion, the Legislative Council threw out the bill! The Assembly were greatly incensed, and the idea of expelling the judges was entertained; but for a while relinquished.

Mr. Ezekiel Hart appeared at the Bar of the House to take his seat for Three Rivers, Mr. Lee, the previous representative of that town, had died in the course of the previous session, and Mr. Hart had been elected to succeed him. Mr. Hart was a merchant of good standing. Of the most spotless private character, he stood in high esteem with his neighbours and fellow townsmen. But Mr. Hart was not faultless. He was, by birth, education, and religion, a Jew. When he prayed, he placed the ten commandments next his heart. In him, those devoted members of the Society of Jesus, found neither a sympathizer nor a persecutor. A Christian Legislative Assembly, like that of Canada, of which Sir James Craig afterwards privately expressed an opinion so ludicrously high, could not be contaminated with the presence of a Jew. By a vote of twenty-one to five, it was resolved:--"That Ezekiel Hart, Esquire, professing the Jewish religion, cannot take a seat, nor sit, nor vote in this House." Ezekiel departed. The word "_baruch_," was on his tongue, the signification of which, like that of the French word "_sacré_," may signify, according to the humour of the utterer, either an anathema or a blessing. The Assembly being, however, ignorant of the Hebrew tongue, Mr. Hart was not sent to gaol for breach of privilege, nor was he even required to apologize. These were the chief topics of debate, and much time was occupied with them. A sum was voted to repair the Castle of St. Louis then tottering to decay. The Militia and the Alien Acts were continued for another year. A bill for the trial of controverted elections was passed, and in all thirty-five bills were carried through, all of which His Excellency, the Governor, sanctioned, except that relative to gaols in Gaspé, which, though afterwards sanctioned, was reserved for the pleasure of the King to be expressed on it. On the 14th of April the Parliament was prorogued. The speech was somewhat lengthy, and on the whole, it was a good one. Sir James was induced to put a period to the session that he might be enabled to issue writs for a new House. The critical situation of affairs made him anxious for legislative assistance, under circumstances, that would not be liable to interruption from the expiration of the period, for which one of the branches was chosen. He was glad that so much attention had been paid to business. He was very much pleased to find that a sum of money had been granted for the repair of the Chateau. Events of great magnitude had taken place in Europe. Napoleon had succeeded in exciting Russia, Austria, and Prussia, to hostilities, against England, and the Ministers of those Courts had demanded their passports to retire from the Court of St. James. Napoleon had done more than that. The disturber of mankind had subverted the government of Portugal, but that magnanimous Prince, Don Pedro, had emigrated with his Court to the Brazils, rather than submit to the degrading chains of such a master. His Majesty, the King of Great Britain, had offered the Americans reparation, immediately and spontaneously, for the unauthorised attack upon the _Chesapeake_, but the American government taking advantage of the state of affairs in Europe, were endeavoring to complicate the difficulty, to the injury of that power which alone stood between it and an inevitable doom to the worst of tyranny. And in conclusion, he begged the representatives of the people to instruct their constituents, by the influence of their education and knowledge; to point out to them a sense of their duties in due subordination to the laws; to advise them to be faithfully attached to the Crown; to let them into the knowledge of their true situation; to conceal not the difficulties by which the empire was surrounded, but, at the same time, to point out the miseries Britain was combatting to avoid; and to assure them that while Britons were united among themselves, there was no dread of the result of the present struggle between liberty and despotism.

The war had had its effect upon the trade of the country. The revenue had fallen off nearly £1,000, being only £35,943, while the civil expenditure had increased to £47,231.

In May the general election took place. The contests were not marked by much bitterness. As before, in the larger towns, the two origins were equally represented. Even in the counties, several gentlemen of English extraction, were returned to the Assembly. Mr. James Stuart, the Solicitor General, now no friend to the Governor nor to his _sub rosa_ adviser, Mr. Ryland, was returned for the East Ward of Montreal. Mr. Stuart, a lawyer of excellent acquirements, of great independence of spirit, and of extraordinary mental capacity, instead of being raised to the Attorney-Generalship, on the elevation of Mr. Sewell to the Chief Justiceship, in the room of Mr. Chief Justice Alcock, who had died in August, had been superseded by Mr. Edward Bowen, a barrister of very limited acquirements, and, being then only a young man, professionally, very inexperienced. Nay, he was soon afterwards dismissed from the Solicitor-Generalship, by the Governor, to whom he had, in some mysterious way, given offence. The Honorable Mr. Panet, Speaker of the Assembly for the four previous parliaments, was nominated for the Upper Town of Quebec, and went to the hustings. He presided at an election meeting, at which there was something like plain-speaking, a particular kind of speaking most distasteful to the Acting Paymaster General of Burgoyne's army, an army with which even Sir James Craig had himself served. All the official class of the city, "including the resident military officers, and _dependents_ upon the Commissariat, Ordnance, and other departments in the garrison," entitled to vote, voted in favor of another French gentleman, more acceptable to the government. The _Quebec Mercury_ was strongly opposed to the Speaker, who, by his plainspeaking, had become offensive to Mr. Ryland, the _confidant_ of Sir James Craig. Mr. Panet lost his election for Quebec, but was returned to the Assembly for Huntingdon. The Governor and his Secretary were very much displeased, and the _Mercury_ was inspired to speak against the bilious spleen of the triumphant Panet, who was connected with that vile print, the _Canadien_. During the election for Quebec, a handbill had appeared, calling the government feeble. Those who issued that handbill, the _Mercury_ exultingly remarked, would have felt that they were not quite under the government of King Log. The _Canadien_ was, in abuse, the freest of any paper in the province. It was licentious. It no more consulted that which it was expedient for a free press to do, than did the House of Assembly consider that which was suitable to it, a few years past, on the article of privilege. Mr. Ex-Speaker Panet was connected with the _Canadien_. He was also a Colonel of Militia. It occurred to Mr. Ryland that the position of a militia officer was incompatible with the proprietorship of a newspaper. Accordingly, a few days after the return of Mr. Panet for Huntingdon, Mr. "H. W. R." the Private Secretary of the Governor General, was directed to inform Messrs. J. H. Panet, Lieutenant-Colonel, P. Bedard, Captain, J. T. Taschereau, Captain and Aid-Major, J. L. Borgia, Lieutenant, and F. Blanchet, Surgeon, proprietors of the _Canadien_, that the Governor-in-Chief considered it necessary for His Majesty's service to dismiss them from their situations as Colonel, Captain, Aid-Major, Lieutenant, and Surgeon, of the Militia. With regard to the Honorable Mr. Panet, in particular, His Excellency could place no confidence in the services of a person whom he had good reason for considering as one of the proprietors of a seditious and libellous publication, disseminated through the province, with great industry, to vilify His Majesty's government, to create a spirit of dissatisfaction and discontent among his subjects, and to breed disunion and animosity between two races. Had it been the purpose of the _Canadien_ and of its proprietors to breed discord between the two races of settled inhabitants, the censure of Sir James Craig would have been deserved. But that was not its purpose. It aimed only at equality of privileges, and complained of the sway of officials having no abiding interest in the country. It was a war between the imported official class and the native-born or naturalized classes which the _Canadien_ waged. Doubtless, it went, occasionally, too far. Doubtless, it forgot to make such distinctions between the officials and the traders or agriculturists of British origin. Doubtless, it did remember that the French Canadians had been captives at the conquest, and their souls revolted at the idea of being lorded over still, though no longer captives, but British subjects, anxious for the honour of their King, and ready to defend him from his enemies.

The new Parliament met on the 9th of April, 1809. The Assembly were directed to choose a Speaker. Out of doors and indoors, in the Governor's Castle, at the official desk, in the merchant's counting room, in the baker's shop, in the Council, and in the Assembly itself, the choice of a Speaker by the Assembly, was a matter of interest. It was whispered that Mr. Panet had incurred the Governor's displeasure, and that all the toadies would vote against him. It was blandly hinted that Mr. Panet having been dismissed from the Militia, the House, having, regard to its own dignity, could not call him to the Chair. It was said in conversation that Mr. Panet was an excellent and most impartial Speaker, and it was a pity that he had suffered himself to have been connected with the seditious and libellous _Canadien_. Only for Mr. Panet's unfortunate position, no more suitable person, for the highly honorable office of Speaker, could have been thought of. But he must not be Speaker under present circumstances. The Assembly thought otherwise and, acting independently and fearlessly, elected Mr. Panet as their Speaker. His Excellency the Governor did not much relish the choice. He did not, however, refuse to confirm Mr. Panet as Speaker of the Assembly. It was thought that he would be refused confirmation. But when he appeared at the Bar, with the House at his heels, and supported by the Mace, the Honorable the Speaker of the Legislative Council was only commanded to tell Mr. Panet, that having filled the Chair of Speaker, during four successive Parliaments, it was not on the score of insufficiency that he would admit an excuse on Mr. Panet's part, nor form objections on his own part. He had no reason to doubt the discretion and moderation of the present House of Assembly, and as he was, at all times, desirous of meeting their wishes, so he would be particularly unwilling not to do so, on an occasion, in which they were themselves principally interested. He, therefore, allowed and confirmed Mr. Panet to be Speaker. His Excellency, though somewhat ironical in his mode of confirmation, acted liberally and prudently. In His Excellency's speech from the throne, allusion was made to the unfavourable posture of affairs with America; to the revolution in Spain and to the generous assistance afforded that country by Great Britain; again to the emigration of the Royal Family of Portugal to Brazil; to Wellington's victory at Vimeira, by which Portugal had been rescued from the French; he cautioned the members of the Legislature against jealousies among themselves, or of the government, which could have no other object in view than the general welfare; and alluded to the non-intercourse and embargo policy of the United States, which, so far, had operated favourably for the Canadian trade, particularly in the article of lumber, which, owing to the exclusion of British shipping from the Baltic, had become a staple export. The House was not pleased at the hints about jealousies, nor very much pleased with His Excellency's remarks in confirming their Speaker. The reply was not quite an echo of the speech. It was more. It was a quiet remonstrance against governmental insinuation. On proceeding to business, the propriety of expelling the judges was again discussed. A motion to expel them was even made, but it was negatived. Some even who were averse to the judges having seats in the Assembly were not prepared to go the length of expelling them from the House. All that was wanted was that, in future, judges should be ineligible for seats in the Assembly. To this end, a committee was appointed to inquire into the inconvenience resulting from the elections of judges to the Assembly, with orders to report to the House. The committee inquired and reported, and of course, reported unfavourably to the judges. A bill to disqualify the judges was re-introduced and read a first time. Mr. Hart again appeared at the Bar to take his seat for Three Rivers. He had been re-elected. He was still a Jew, and showed no disposition to recant his error. Nor would the House recant their error. The resolution which had been adopted against Mr. Hart's taking his seat in the previous Parliament was repeated in this. The House of Assembly went still farther. A bill to disqualify all Jews from being eligible to seats in the Assembly, was introduced and read twice. Five weeks had elapsed and the public business had not begun. The Governor was very much annoyed. The refractory spirit of the House, as regarded the judges, was most distasteful to him. Suddenly, on the 15th of May, he went down to the Legislative Council, assented to five bills, and summoned the attendance of the Commons. "When I met you, said the now irate Sir James, at the commencement of the present session, I had no reason to doubt your moderation or your prudence, and I therefore willingly relied upon both. I expected from you a manly sacrifice of all personal animosities. I hoped for a zealous dispatch of your public duty. I looked for earnest endeavours to promote the general harmony. I looked for due and indispensable attention to the other branches of the Legislature. It was your constitutional duty. It was due to the critical juncture of the times. I have been disappointed in every hope on which I relied. You have wasted in frivolous debates, or by frivolous contests on matters of form, that time and those talents to which the public have an exclusive title. You have abused your functions. In five weeks, you have only passed five bills. You have been so intemperate in debate that moderation and forbearance is scarcely to be looked for without a new Assembly. Gentlemen, Parliament is dissolved. A new Parliament will be convened as soon as convenience will permit. My object in thus acting, _is to preserve the true principles of the free and happy constitution of the Province_." He turned with peculiar satisfaction from lecturing to the Assembly, to offer his acknowledgements to the gentlemen of the Legislative Council, for their unanimity, zeal, and unremitting attention to the public business, manifested in their proceedings. They were not to blame for the waste of time and for the little that had been done for the public good. The Assembly were surprised. It never entered the head of a single member that Sir James Craig, who, on first meeting a Canadian Parliament, had been so courteous, would have been so abruptly censorious. A prorogation was anticipated, when the Usher of the Black Rod commanded, by order of His Excellency, their presence at the Bar of the Upper House, but the possibility of a dissolution of Parliament never occurred to any one. The constitution, boasted so much of, was certainly a happy one. The representatives of the people were suddenly sent back to their constituents as unfitted for their business. And for some time, the country, tickled with the bluntness of the Governor, applauded the act. Had Sir James desired to be absolute, the country, before it had had time to consider, would have assisted His Excellency in a _coup d'état_. It was not until the _Canadien_ had taken the matter up energetically that any of the discarded legislative materials could obtain a hearing from their constituents. After the _Canadien_ had criticised the speech from the throne, and had commented on the Bill of Rights, in allusion to the Governor's measures, with respect to the Assembly, and as applicable to the existing circumstances of the Province--"_Nos institutions_, _notre langue_, _et nos lois_,"--public opinion gradually turned round in favor of the Assembly.

Sir James Craig's opinion of the Canadians had undergone a very considerable change for the worse. In a despatch to Lord Liverpool, some short time afterwards, on the state of affairs in Canada, which Mr. Ryland was sent to London with, Sir James speaks of Canada as _being a conquered country_, a fact _never to be put out of view_. He spoke of a colony usually estimated to contain a population of 300,000 souls. Of these, 20,000, or 25,000 only, might have been English or Americans, and the remainder were French. They were in language, religion, in manners, and in attachment, French. They were bound to the English (officials) by no tie, but that of a common government. They looked upon the government of the province with mistrust, jealousy, envy, and hatred. He was certain his opinion of them was well founded. There were very few French Canadians in the country who were not tainted with the sentiments he had imputed to them generally. Common intercourse hardly existed between the French and English. The lower class, to strengthen a word of contempt, added the word _Anglais_ to it. The upper classes, who formerly associated with the English upper classes, had entirely withdrawn themselves. The Canadians, generally, were ignorant, credulous, and superstitious. He did not perceive that they had any great vice except one. Drunkenness was the prevailing vice. When drunk they were brutal and quarrelsome. Like other people, suddenly freed from a state of extreme subjection, they were apt to be insolent to their superiors. They were totally unwarlike and averse to arms or military habits, though vain to an excess, and possessing a high opinion of their prowess. They had been so flattered and cajoled about their conduct, in the year 1775, that they really believed they stood as heroes, in history, whereas no people, with the exception of a very few individuals, behaved worse than they did on that occasion. Now came the teachings of Mr. Secretary Ryland, which that gentleman did not think it prudent to bore Sir James with until he had ascertained how far the incomparable man's sentiments accorded with his own. The Superintendent of the Church of Rome in Canada, had been designated Roman Catholic Bishop, by other Governors, which was both dangerous and wrong, in view of the Queen's supremacy. The Bishop did as he pleased, in the appointment of curés. His patronage was at least equal to that of the government. The Bishop was cautious not to perform any act that might be construed into an acknowledgement of His Majesty's rights. He would not obey a Proclamation of the King for a fast or thanksgiving, but issued a "_mandat_," of his own, to the same effect, but without the least allusion to His Majesty's authority. The arms of Great Britain were nowhere put up in the churches. With the curés no direct communication with the government existed. The church selected its ecclesiastics, the Governor knew not why, from the lower orders. The Bishop was the son of a blacksmith. The Coadjutor was brother to a demagogue, the Speaker of the Assembly, an "avocat." The curés saw in Buonaparte the restorer of the Catholic religion. The Legislative Council, an object of jealousy to the Lower House, was composed of everything that was respectable in the Province. There were about 300,000 French inhabitants to 25,000 English and American, yet there never had exceeded fourteen or fifteen English members in the House of Assembly, while then there were only ten, and it was desired to get rid of the judges! The interests of certainly not an unimportant colony, was in the hands of six petty shopkeepers, a blacksmith, a miller, and fifteen ignorant peasants, a doctor or apothecary, twelve Canadian "avocats" and notaries, and four people respectable so far as that they did not keep shops, together with the ten Englishmen, who composed the Legislative Assembly. Some of the _habitants_ could neither read nor write. Two members of a preceding Parliament had actually signed the roll by marks, and there were five more whose signatures were scarcely legible, and were such as to show that to be the extent of their writing. Debate was out of the question. A Canadian Parliament did not understand it. The _habitant_ M.P., openly avowed that the matter, whatever it was, had been explained to him. The "moutons" were crammed at meetings held nightly for the purpose. There was one singular instance, of a _habitant_, who, in every instance, voted against the prevailing party. But that was the solitary exception to a general rule. The Canadians voted _en masse_, as directed--not by the government. The government was entirely without influence. The Assembly was the most independent in the world, for the government could not obtain even that influence which might arise from personal intercourse. He could not be expected to associate with blacksmiths, millers, and shopkeepers. Even the _avocats_ and notaries he could nowhere meet, except during the actual sitting of Parliament, when he had a day in the week expressly appropriated to receiving a large portion of them at dinner. The leaders in the House were mostly a set of unprincipled _avocats_ and notaries, totally uninformed as to the principles of the British constitution, or parliamentary proceedings, which they, nevertheless, professed to take for their model. Without property to lose, these men had gradually advanced in audacity, in proportion as they had considered the power of France as more firmly established by the successes of Buonaparte in Europe. They were obviously paving the way for a change of dominion. Without one act by which to point out either injury or oppression, the people of the Province had been taught to look upon His Majesty's government with distrust, and they publicly declared, while avowing such distrust, that no officer of the Crown was to be elected into the House. The English in general and their own seigneurs were entirely proscribed. Except in the boroughs or cities these classes had no chance of election. A paper called the _Canadien_, had been published, and industriously circulated in the country, for three or four years, to degrade and vilify the officers of government, under the title of _gens en place_; and to bring the government itself into contempt, by alluding to the Governor as a _ministère_, open to their animadversions. Nothing calculated to mislead the people had been omitted in this vile print. The various circumstances that brought about the abdication of James the Second, had been pointed out, with allusions, as applicable to the government here. "_La nation Canadienne_," was their constant theme. Religious prejudices, jealousy, and extreme ignorance, forbade the expectation of any improvement in the Assembly. Questions before the Houses were always viewed as affecting or otherwise some temporal right of their clergy, or having some remote tendency to promote the establishment of the Protestant interest. How the Act for the establishment of Public Schools had passed had always been matter of surprise to him. There was much jealousy at the progress of the Eastern Townships, which were settled by American loyalists. The country was beginning to look up to the members of the Assembly as the governors of the country. Formerly the cry was--"_La Chambre_ to the devil!" He thought that the only remedy for the state of things which he had described was to deprive the province of its constitution, as the provincialists termed their charter. The people were unfitted for liberty. And here are the Governor's reasons for saying that a people were incapable of free institutions. "That spirit of independence, that total insubordination among them, that freedom of conversation, by which they communicate their ideas of government, as they imbibe them from their leaders, all which have increased wonderfully within these five or six years, owe their origin entirely to the House of Assembly and to the intrigues incident to elections. They were never thought of before." One really wonders that even a general officer could have ventured upon sending to England such trash, a country which had produced a Charles Fox, who took at the passing of the Separation Act so opposite a view of human nature. Doubtless, the _habitants_ are precisely, even at this day, as Sir James represented them to be. But it was superlative impudence in a man of plebeian extraction to say that he could not associate with members of Parliament, who followed the occupation of shopkeeping for a living. It surely was enough for Buonaparte to have stigmatized England as a nation of shopkeepers. Sir James might have left it alone, after having experienced the independent energies of a nation of wooden clock and wooden nutmeg makers. The "_gens en place_" had badly advised him, and he was too blind to see it. Sir James was an Indian Governor with a vengeance.

The fortifications of the City of Quebec had been much improved during the summer of 1808, and the foundations of the four martello towers, which now stand outside of the fortifications, on the land side, at the distance of nearly a mile, were laid.

After the dissolution of the Parliament, about the middle of June, the Governor set out on a tour through the Province. He was attended by a numerous suite, travelled in great state, and was well received wherever he halted. At Three Rivers, Montreal, St. Johns, and William Henry, addresses were presented to him. He was applauded and even thanked for having stretched the royal prerogative so far as to dissolve the House without any sufficient reason. What was gained by the fulsome adulation is not particularly apparent, unless it be that the _Canadien_ had an opportunity afforded it for not very flattering criticisms. The opportunity was not by any means lost. The _Canadien_ grinned at the _gens en place_, and even ventured to laugh at the royal prerogative himself. But the _gens en place_ were not to be laughed out of countenance by a vile print, which only could appeal to French passions and Romish prejudices. They only waited until His Excellency returned to Quebec, to renew their congratulations. The citizens of Quebec, on Sir James' return to the Chateau, waited upon him with an address. They approved of his judicious and firm administration. Sir James, perfectly elated, expressed, in a particular manner, his satisfaction. It was most gratifying to have received such an address from those whose "situations" afforded them the more immediate opportunity of judging of the motives by which he might be actuated on particular occasions.

In November of this year, the first steamer was seen on the St. Lawrence. At 8 o'clock on the 6th of that month, the steamboat _Accommodation_ arrived at Quebec, with ten passengers from Montreal. She made the passage (180 miles) in sixty-six hours, having been thirty hours at anchor. In twenty hours, after leaving Montreal, she arrived at Three Rivers. The passage money was only eight dollars for the downward trip and nine dollars for the trip upward. Neither wind nor tide could stop the _Accommodation_, and the _Accommodation_ was eighty-two feet long on deck. The accommodation afforded to passengers was not, however, very great. Twenty berths were all that cabin passengers could be accommodated with. Great crowds visited her saloons. The _Mercury_ told its readers that the steamboat received her impulse from an open, double-spoked perpendicular wheel, on either side, without any circular band or rim. To the end of each double-spoke, a square board was fixed, which entered the water, and by the rotatory motion, acted like a paddle. The wheels were put and kept in motion by steam, which operated in the vessel. And a mast was to be fixed in her for the purpose of using a sail, when the wind was favourable, which would occasionally accelerate her headway. After the _Accommodation_ had made several trips, Upper Canada began to "guess" about the expediency of having "Walks-in-the-Water." The _Accommodation_ was built by Mr. John Molson, of Montreal, an exceedingly enterprising man of business, and for a number of years, his enterprise secured to him a monopoly of the steam navigation of the lower St. Lawrence. He died an "honorable," only a few years ago.

During 1808, 334 vessels, or according to the Harbour Master's statement, 440 vessels, arrived at Quebec from sea, making up 66,373 tons of shipping, in addition to which, 2,902 tons of shipping were built at the port. The revenue was £40,608, and the civil expenditure £1,251 sterling. The salaries and contingencies of the Legislature amounted to £3,077. The salary of the Governor-in-Chief was £4,500 sterling, and that of the Lieutenant-Governor, who had been three years absent in England, £1,500. On the 28th of November, in this year, Sir Francis Nathaniel Burton, whose brother was Marquis of Cunningham, succeeded Sir Robert Shore Milnes, in the now sinecure office of Lieutenant-Governor, where he remained to enjoy the _otium sine dignitate_.

A continuance of the peace between His Majesty's government and that of the United States was, in the beginning of 1810, considered less probable than ever. After the death of Washington, which occurred on the 4th December, 1799, during the Presidency of Mr. Adams, political excitement ran high in the United States. At the expiration of Mr. Adams' term of office, there were, as candidates for the Chief Magistracy of the Union, and for the Vice-Presidency:--Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Burr, on the one side, and Mr. Adams and Mr. C. D. Pinckney, on the other. Mr. Adams, elected by the Federalist or Tory party, had given much offence to the Democratic party, by his law against sedition, designed to punish the abuse of speech and of the press. By this law a heavy fine was to be imposed, together with an imprisonment for a term of years, upon such as should combine or conspire together, to "oppose _any_ measure of the government." No one, on any pretence, under pain of similar punishment, was to write or print, utter or publish, any malicious writing against the government of the United States, or against either House of the Congress, or against the President. In a word, the liberty of discussion was annihilated. A more extraordinary law could not possibly have been put upon the Statute Books of a country, where every official, being elective by the people, his conduct, while in office was, in a common sense point of view, open to popular animadversion. As far as producing the effect contemplated was concerned, the law was altogether inefficacious. The people met and talked together against their President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Nay, Mr. Adams lost what he designed to secure, his re-election, by it. The Democrats were furiously opposed to him. While Messrs. Jefferson and Burr got each seventy-three votes, the opposition candidates for President and Vice-President, Messrs. Adams and Pinckney only got, for the former, sixty-five votes, and for the latter, sixty-four. Messrs. Burr and Jefferson having each an equal number of votes, it became the duty of the House of Representatives, voting by States, to decide between these pretenders to the chief power in the State. The constitution provided that the person having the greatest number of votes should be President, and that the person having the next highest number of votes should be Vice-President. For several days the ballot was taken. The Federalists or Tories supported Mr. Burr, and the Democrats Mr. Jefferson. At last the choice fell upon the latter, and Mr. Burr was elected to the Vice-Presidency. It is well to know these circumstances in connection with subsequent events. Mr. Jefferson annihilated the minority of the republic. He had as much contempt for them as Sir James Craig or Mr. Ryland could have had for the conquered Canadians. He swept them from every office of profit or emolument under the State. When remonstrated with, by the merchants of New Haven, respecting the removal of the Collector of Customs at that port, merely because he was a Federalist or tory, the President quietly replied, that time and accident would give the Tories their just share. Had he found a moderate participation of office in the hands of the Democratic party with whom he acted, his removals and substitutions would have been less sweeping. But their total exclusion called for a more prompt corrective. And he would correct the error. When the error was fully corrected then he would only ask himself concerning an applicant for office, these questions:--"Is he honest?" "Is he capable?" and "Is he faithful to the Constitution?" The Tories were almost inclined to burn the White House.

Ohio was admitted into the Union in 1802; in 1804, Colonel Burr, the Vice-President of the United States, killed General Hamilton in a duel; Mr. Jefferson was re-elected President in 1804, and Mr. George Clinton, of New York, instead of Burr, now deservedly unpopular with all but the filibustering classes, Vice-President; in 1805, Michigan became a territorial government of the United States; and in the autumn of 1805 the outcast President Burr was detected at the head of a project for revolutionizing the territory west of the Alleghanies, and of establishing an independent empire there, of which New Orleans was to be the capital, and himself the chief. To the accomplishment of this scheme, Burr brought into play all the skill and cunning of which he was possessed. And it was not a little. He had his design long in contemplation. He pretended to have purchased a large tract of territory, of which he conceded to his adherents considerable slices. He collected together, from all quarters where either he himself, or his agents, possessed influence, the ardent, the restless, and the desperate, persons ready for any enterprise analogous to their characters. He also seduced good and well-meaning citizens, by assurances that he possessed the confidence of the government, and was acting under its secret patronage. He had another project, in case of the failure of the first. He designed to make an attack upon Mexico and to establish an empire there. He failed. Before his standard was raised, the government was made aware of his designs, and he was brought to trial, at Richmond, on a charge of treason, committed within the district of Virginia. It was not proved, however, that he had been guilty of any overt act, within the State, and he was released. It was probably to find employment for that restless and desperate class of persons, with which the United States even then abounded, that the government of America sought cause of quarrel with Great Britain, as well as to produce that spurious activity among the industrial classes, which is ever the result of warlike preparations.

In 1809, Mr. James Madison was elected President of the United States. During Mr. Jefferson's administration, commercial intercourse with France and Great Britain had been interdicted. When, however, Mr. Madison was fairly established in the Presidency, he showed a disposition to renew intercourse, and was seconded in his endeavours by Mr. Erskine, then British Minister at Washington. Mr. Erskine non-officially intimated to the American Secretary of State, that if the President would issue a Proclamation for the renewal of intercourse with Great Britain, that it was probable the proposal would be readily accepted. It was done. But the British government refused to rescind the Orders in Council of January and November 1807, so far as the United States were concerned, which would have given the benefit of the coasting trade of France to the Americans, recalled Mr. Erskine for having exceeded his instructions, and sent Mr. Jackson to Washington in his stead. A correspondence was immediately after Mr. Jackson's arrival at the American seat of government, opened with Mr. Madison's Secretary of State, and was as suddenly closed. Mr. Jackson was, as a diplomatist, rather blunt. Repeatedly, he asserted that the American Executive could not but have known from the powers exhibited by Mr. Erskine, that in stipulating, as he had done, he had transcended those powers, and was, therefore, acting without the authority of his government. The American Executive deemed such an assertion equivalent to a declaration that the American government did know that Mr. Erskine had exceeded his instructions. Mr. Jackson denied that his language could be so interpreted. The American Executive at once replied that Mr. Jackson's tone and language could not but be looked upon as reflecting upon the honor and integrity of the American government, and the correspondence was closed. The British government, not considering Mr. Jackson's diplomatic efforts as particularly happy, recalled him. He escaped, however, more direct censure.

These events had just occurred, across the line '45, when Sir James Craig, now more anxious than ever, to obtain legislative assistance, under circumstances that would not be liable to interruption from the expiration of the period for which one of the branches was chosen, ordered the writs to be issued for a new general election. The elections took place in October, 1809, when, contrary to the expectation of His Excellency, most of the gentlemen who held seats in the parliament which, in the previous May, had been so unexpectedly dissolved, were again returned. There were some substitutions. But those only who halted between two opinions, in fearing the government, while representing the people, were supplanted by men who would echo the _vox (populi) et preterea nihil_, in the Chamber of Deputies. They were called together on the 29th of January, 1810. They were told to elect a Speaker, which they did, by selecting the former Speaker, Mr. Panet. They were told to appear at the Bar of the Upper House. And they did appear in the confusion usual on all similar occasions. The Governor, graciously confirmed their choice of a Speaker, and Mr. Panet having bowed his acknowledgments, His Excellency expressed his concern that, far from an amicable settlement of the existing differences, between the British and American governments, as was anticipated from the arrangement agreed upon by His Majesty's Minister at Washington, circumstances had occurred that seemed to have widened the breach, and to have removed that desirable event to a period scarcely to be foreseen by human sagacity; the extraordinary cavils made with a succeeding minister; the eager research to discover an insult which defied the detection of "all other penetration;" the consequent rejection of further communication with that minister, and indeed every step of intercourse, the particulars of which were known by authentic documents, evinced so little of a conciliatory disposition, and so much of a disinclination to meet the honorable advances made by His Majesty's government, while these had been further manifested in such terms, and by such conduct, that the continuance of peace seemed to depend less on the high sounded resentment of America, than on the moderation with which His Majesty might be disposed to view the treatment he had met with; he felt it to be unnecessary to urge preparation for any event that might arise from such a condition of things; he persuaded himself that in the great points of security and defence one mind would actuate all; he assured the country of the necessary support of regular troops should hostilities ensue, which with the "interior" force of the country would be found equal to any attack that could be made upon the province; the militia would not be unmindful of the courage which they had displayed in former days, (when, of course, they behaved worse, with the exception of a few individuals, than any people ever did![12]) the bravery of His Majesty's arms had never been called in question; he congratulated the legislature on the capture of Martinique, and triumphantly alluded to the battle of Talavera, which had torn from the French that character of invincibility which they had imagined themselves to have possessed in the eyes of the world. He recommended the renewal of those Acts which were designed to enable the Executive to discharge its duty against dangers, which could not be remedied by the course of common law; he drew attention to the numerous forgeries of foreign bank notes, and recommended a penal statute for their suppression; and he remarked that the question of the expediency of excluding the Judges of the King's Bench from the House of Representatives had been, during the two last sessions, much agitated, and that, although he would not have himself interdicted the judges from being selected by the people to represent them in the Assembly, had the question ever come before him, he had been ordered by His Majesty to give his assent to any proper bill, concurred in by the two Houses, for rendering the judges ineligible to a seat in the Assembly.

[12] Sir James' letter to Lord Liverpool.

The Assembly, very naturally, entertained the opinion that the Imperial government had not approved of the conduct of Sir James Craig in dissolving the previous Parliament. Indeed, even before taking the speech from the throne into consideration, the Assembly resolved that every attempt of the executive government and of the other branches of the legislature against the House of Assembly, whether in dictating or censuring its proceedings, or in approving the conduct of one part of its members, and disapproving that of others, was a violation of the statute by which the House was constituted; was a breach of the privileges of the House, which it could not forbear objecting to; and was a dangerous attack upon the rights and liberties of His Majesty's subjects in Canada. There were, not ten only, but thirteen members of British origin now in the House of Assembly, and the vote, for the adoption of the resolution, exhibited a wonderful degree of unanimity of opinion with regard to the right of freedom of opinion and the freedom of debate. There were twenty-four affirmative to eleven adverse votes, and, among those who voted with the minority, were some officials of French origin. In reply to the address from the throne, the House expressed its unalterable attachment to Great Britain, they were grateful and would be faithful to that sovereign and nation which respected their rights and liberties; it was unnecessary to urge them to prepare for any event that might arise, they would be prepared; and the militia, not unmindful of the courage which they had, in former days, displayed, would endeavour to emulate that bravery, natural to His Majesty's arms, which had never been called in question. Nay, the House was exuberant with loyalty. No sooner was the address in reply presented to the Governor than an address, congratulating the King on the happy event of having entered upon the fiftieth year of his reign, was unanimously adopted, and transmitted to the Governor for transmission to England. The expediency of relieving the Imperial government of the burthen of providing for the civil list of Canada was next discussed. It was considered that the sooner the payment of its own government officers devolved upon the province, the better it would be for all classes inhabiting it. Ultimately, the province would be required to defray the expenses of its own government, and the sooner it did so the less weighty would the civil list be. The minority were very much opposed to the proposed change. Some, who, twenty-seven years before, were most anxious to present £20,000 to the King, by a tax on goods, wares, and merchandise, to assist in enabling His Majesty to prosecute the war against France vigorously, now that the province was more than paying her expenses, could not see the necessity of saddling the country with a burthen which would make it, as they alleged, necessary to impose duties to the amount of fifty thousand pounds a year. At first, the very ignorant[13] country people, not knowing that which was going on, became alarmed at the startling information conveyed to them by the majority. They expressed their fears that their friends were betraying them. They were soon pacified. Their members informed them, or they were informed by the _Canadien_, that when the House of Assembly had the entire management of the civil list, they would not fail to reduce the sum necessary to keep up the hospitality of Government House, and only, _consequently_, consideration for the Governor-in-Chief; nor would they fail to retrench the several pensions, reduce the heavier salaries of the employees, cut off the sinecurists, and, in a variety of ways, lessen the public burthens. The habitants were no longer alarmed at the additional taxation of £50,000 a year, with which they were threatened. A series of resolutions passed the Assembly, intimating that the province was able to supply funds for the payment of the civil list. The province was able to pay all the civil expenses of its government. The House of Assembly ought "this session" to vote the sums necessary for defraying the expenses of the civil list. The House _will_ vote such necessary sums. And the King, Lords, and Commons of England, were to be informed that the Commons of Canada had taken upon itself the payment of the government of the province and that they were exceedingly grateful to England for the assistance hitherto afforded, and for the happy constitution, which had raised the province to a pitch of prosperity so high that it was now able and willing to support itself. Ten gentlemen of British extraction voted against these resolutions and only one Canadian. The address to the King, pursuant to the resolutions, was carried by a vote of thirteen to three. Many members appear to have been afraid of themselves or rather of the consequences to be apprehended from the offence which the adoption of such resolutions was calculated to give the Imperial advisers of the representative of the King in a colony. Nay, the Governor-in-Chief did not much relish the resolutions. He turned them over in his mind, again and again. There was something more than appeared upon the surface. He disrelished the idea of getting his meat poisoned by its passage through Canadian fingers. He was sure the King, his master, would pay him well, but, as for the Canadians, they might stop the supplies. The Assembly waited upon His Excellency with their addresses. They requested that His Excellency would be pleased to lay them before His Majesty's ministers for presentation. Sir James hesitated. The addresses were so peculiarly novel as to require a considerable degree of reflection. The constitutional usage of Parliament, recognised by the wisdom of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, forbade all steps on the part of the people towards grants of money which were not recommended by the Crown, and although by the same parliamentary usage all grants originated in the Lower House, they were ineffectual without the concurrence of the Upper House. There was no precedent of addresses to the House of Lords, or Commons, separately, by a single branch of the Colonial Legislature. He conceived the addresses to be unprecedented, imperfect in form, and founded upon a resolution of the House of Assembly, which, until sanctioned by the Legislative Council, must be ineffectual, except as a spontaneous offer on the part of the Commons of Canada. The resolutions were premature. He regretted that he could not take it upon himself to transmit these addresses to His Majesty's ministers. In his refusal he was impressed by a sense of duty. But, besides the sense of duty, His Majesty's ministers, unless commanded by His Majesty, were not the regular organs of communication with the House of Commons. Even were he to transmit those addresses, he could not pledge himself for their delivery, through that channel. He would have felt himself bound upon ordinary occasions to have declined any addresses similar to those then before him, under similar circumstances. He would on the present occasion transmit to the King his own testimony of the good disposition, gratitude, and generous intentions of his subjects. He thought it right that His Majesty, "by their own act," should be formally apprised of the ability and of the voluntary pledge and promise of the province to pay the civil expenditure of the province _when required_. He then engaged to transmit the King's address to His Majesty, with the understanding that no act of his should be considered as compromising the rights of His Majesty, of his Colonial Representative, or of the Legislative Council. He significantly hoped that the House of Assembly might not suppose that he had expressed himself in a way that might carry with it an appearance of checking the manifestation of sentiments under which the House had acted. A committee of seven members were, on the receipt of His Excellency's answer, appointed to search for the precedents and parliamentary usages alluded to by the Governor-in-Chief, with instructions to report speedily. And, that there might be no excuse, with regard to the improper introduction of a money matter, for a refusal to sanction any bill that the Assembly might think proper to pass, a resolution was adopted by the Assembly to the effect that the House had resolved to vote, in the then session, the sums necessary for paying all the civil expenses of the government of the province, and to beseech that His Excellency would be pleased to order the proper officer to lay before the House an estimate of the said civil expenses. The practice of these _avocats_, shopkeepers, apothecaries, doctors, and notaries, was tolerably sharp. The House went again to work upon the expediency of appointing a Colonial Agent in England, and introduced a bill with that object, which was read. A bill to render the judges ineligible to sit in the Assembly passed the Assembly; but the Council amended the bill, by postponing the period at which the ineligibility was to have effect, to the expiration of the parliament then in being, and sent it back to the Assembly for concurrence. Indignant at this amendment, the Assembly adopted a resolution to the effect that P. A. DeBonne, being one of the Judges of the King's Bench, could neither sit nor vote in the House, and his seat for Quebec was declared to be vacant. The vote was decisive. There were eighteen votes in favor of the resolution and only six against it, the six being all English names. McCord, Ross, Cuthbert, Gugy, and such like. If the practice of the _avocats_ was sharp, the practice of the Governor was yet sharper. Down came the Governor-in-Chief in two days after the search for precedents had begun in the Assembly, in not the best of humour, to the Legislative Council Chamber. On the 26th of February, the uncontrollable Assembly were summoned before the representative of royalty. He informed the two Houses that he had come to prorogue the legislature, having again determined to appeal to the people by an immediate dissolution. It had been rendered impossible for him to act otherwise. Without the participation of the other branches of the Legislature the Assembly had taken upon themselves to vote that a judge could not sit nor vote in their House. It was impossible for him to consider what had been done in any other light than as a direct violation of an Act of the Imperial Parliament. He considered that the House of Assembly had unconstitutionally disfranchised a large portion of His Majesty's subjects, and rendered ineligible, by an authority they did not possess, another, and not inconsiderable class of the community. By every tie of duty, he was bound to oppose such an assumption. In consequence of the expulsion of the member for Quebec, a vacancy in the representation of that county had been declared. It would be necessary to issue a writ for a new election, and that writ was to be signed by him. He would not render himself a partaker in the violation of an Act of the Imperial Parliament, and to avoid becoming so he had no other recourse but that which he was pursuing. He felt much satisfaction when the Parliament met, in having taken such steps as he thought most likely to facilitate a measure that seemed to be wished for, and that, in itself, met his concurrence; but as, in his opinion, the only ineligibility of a judge to sit in Parliament arose from the circumstance of his having to ask the electors for their votes, he could not conceive that there could be any well founded objection to his possession of a seat in the Assembly, when he was elected. He believed that the talents and superior knowledge of the judges, to say nothing of other considerations, made them highly useful. He lamented that a measure, which he considered would have been beneficial to the country, should not have taken effect. But he trusted that the people, in the disappointment of their expectations, would do him justice, and acquit him of being the cause that so little business had been done.

[13] Sir James' letter to Lord Liverpool, accompanied by the explanatory Mr. Ryland.

Such is human nature, that, on leaving the Council Room, Sir James Craig was loudly cheered. His manliness, combined with stupidity, and his real honesty of purpose, had its temporary effect upon those who admire pluck as much in a Governor as in a game cock. Not only was His Excellency cheered on leaving the Parliament buildings, addresses poured in upon him from all quarters. Quebec, Montreal, Terrebonne, Three Rivers, Sorel, Warwick, and Orleans, complimented Sir James. A more cunning man would have flattered himself that he had acted rightly. But there was to be a day of retribution. The late members of the late House of Assembly were not idle. Nor was the _Canadien_ silent. Every means that prudence could dictate, and malevolence suggest, were resorted to, with a view to the re-election of the dismissed representatives. The "friends" of the government suggested that there were plans of insurrection and rebellion. It was insinuated that the French Minister at Washington, had supplied the seditious in Canada with money. It was even broadly stated that the plenipotentiary's correspondence had been intercepted by the agents of the government. And that which was not said is more difficult of conjecture than that which was said.

The revenue was this year £70,356, and the expenditure £49,347 sterling; 635 vessels, consisting of 138,057 tons, had arrived from sea; and 26 vessels had been built and cleared at the port.

At this time there were five papers in Lower Canada. The _Quebec Gazette_, the _Quebec Mercury_, _Le Canadien_, the _Montreal Gazette_, and the _Courant_. The three former were published in Quebec, the other two in Montreal. The _Gazettes_ were organs of the government, the _Mercury_ and _Courant_ were "namby-pamby," and the _Canadien_ was as the voice of _le peuple_.

The elections were, in the month of March, again about to take place, and the government conceived the magnificent idea of carrying a printing office by assault. When everything was prepared, then was the time to act. Headed by a magistrate, a party of soldiers rushed up the stairs leading to the _Canadien_ printing office. The proprietor received them with a low bow, and much annoyance was felt that no opposition was offered. The premises were searched. Some manuscripts were found, and, "under the sanction of the Executive," the whole press, and the whole papers of every description, were forcibly seized, and conveyed as booty to the vaults of the Court House. In this action one prisoner was made. The printer was seized, and "after examination," was committed to prison. And, as if an insurrection were expected, the guards at the gates were strengthened, and patrols sent in every direction. The public looked amazed, as well it might. The _Mercury_ did not know whether most to admire the tyrannical spirit or the consummate vanity of the Canadians, and of No. 15, of the _Canadien_, which contended that the Canadians had rights. As a striking proof of Canadian tyranny, the _Canadien_ would not allow any but the members of the Assembly to be a judge of the expediency of expelling Judge DeBonne! and it was even said that of all those who signed the address to His Excellency, presented in the name of Quebec, not one was capable of understanding the nature of the question. In a _dependence_, such as Canada, was the government to be daily flouted, bearded, and treated with the utmost disrespect and contumely? "He" expected nothing less than that its patience would be exhausted, and _energetic measures_ resorted to, as the only efficient ones. From any part of a people conquered from wretchedness into every _indulgence_, and the _height of prosperity_, such treatment, as the government daily received was far different from that which ought to have been expected. But there were characters in the world on whom benefits have no other effect than to produce _insolence_ and _insult_. The stroke was struck, the _Mercury_ would say no more. The greatest misfortune that can ever happen to the press is for it to be in the possession of invisible and licentious hands. It said no more, because "the war was with the dead!"

Sir James was not very sure that he had acted either wisely or well. He thought it necessary to explain. Divers wicked and seditious writings had been printed. Divers wicked and seditious writings had been dispersed throughout the province. Divers writings were calculated to mislead divers of His Majesty's subjects. Divers wicked and traitorous persons had endeavoured to bring into contempt and had vilified the administration, and divers persons had invented wicked falsehoods, with the view of alienating the affections of His Majesty's subjects from the respect which was due to His Majesty's person. It was impossible for His Majesty's representative longer to disregard or suffer practices so directly tending to subvert His Majesty's government, and to destroy the happiness of His Majesty's subjects. He, therefore, announced, that with the advice and concurrence of the Executive Council, and due information having been given to three of His Majesty's Executive Councillors, warrants, as by law authorised, had been issued, under which, some of the authors, printers, and publishers of the aforesaid traitorous and seditious writings had been apprehended and secured. Deeply impressed with a desire to promote, in all respects, the welfare and happiness of the most benevolent of sovereigns, whose servant he had been for as long a period as the oldest inhabitant had been his subject, and whose highest displeasure he should incur if the acts of these designing men had produced any effect, he trusted that neither doubts nor jealousies had crept into the public mind. He would recall to the deluded, if there were any, the history of the whole period during which they had been under His Majesty's government. It was for them to recollect the progressive advances they had made in the wealth, happiness, and unbounded liberty which they then enjoyed. Where was the act of oppression--where was the instance of arbitrary imprisonment--or where was the violation of property of which they had to complain? Had there been an instance in which the uncontrolled enjoyment of their religion had been disturbed? While other countries and other colonies had been deluged in blood, during the prevalent war, had they not enjoyed the most perfect security and tranquillity? What, then, could be the means by which the traitorous would effect their wicked purposes? What arguments dare they use? For what reason was happiness to be laid aside and treason embraced? What persuasion could induce the loyal to abandon loyalty and become monsters of ingratitude? The traitorous had said that he desired to embody and make soldiers of twelve thousand of the people, and because the Assembly would not consent, that he had dissolved the Parliament? It was monstrously untrue, and it was particularly atrocious in being advanced by persons who might have been supposed to have spoken with certainty on the subject. It had been said that he wanted to tax the lands of the country people, that the House would only consent to tax wine, and that for such perverseness he had dissolved the Assembly. Inhabitants of St. Denis! the Governor General never had the most distant idea of taxing the people at all. The assertion was directly false. When the House offered to pay the civil list, he could not move without the King's instructions. But in despair of producing instances from what he had done, the traitorous had spoken of that which he intended to do. It was boldly said that Sir James Craig intended to oppress the Canadians. Base and daring fabricators of falsehood! on what part of his life did they found such assertions? What did the inhabitants of St. Denis know of him or of his intentions? Let Canadians inquire concerning him of the heads of their church. The heads of the church were men of knowledge, honor, and learning, who had had opportunities of knowing him, and they ought to be looked to for advice and information. The leaders of faction and the demagogues of a party associated not with him, and could not know him. Why should he be an oppressor? Was it to serve the King, the whole tenor of whose life had been honorable and virtuous? Was it for himself that he should practice oppression? For what should he be an oppressor? Ambition could not prompt him, with a life ebbing slowly to a close, under the pressure of a disease acquired in the service of his country. He only looked forward to pass the remaining period of his life in the comfort of retirement, among his friends. He remained in Canada simply in obedience to the commands of his King. What power could he desire? For what wealth would he be an oppressor? Those who knew him, knew that he had never regarded wealth, and then, he could not enjoy it. He cared not for the value of the country laid at his feet. He would prefer to power and wealth a single instance of having contributed to the happiness and prosperity of the people whom he had been sent to govern. He warned all to be on their guard against the artful suggestions of wicked and designing men. He begged that all would use their best endeavours to prevent the evil effects of incendiary and traitorous doings. And he strictly charged and commanded all magistrates, captains of militia, peace officers, and others, of His Majesty's good subjects to bring to punishment such as circulated false news, tending, in any manner, to inflame the public mind and to disturb the public peace and tranquillity.

Could anything have been more pitiable than such a proclamation? The existence of a conspiracy on the part of some disaffected persons to overthrow the King's government was made to appear with the view of covering a mistake. The proclamation was the apology for the illegal seizure of a press and types used in the publication of a newspaper, in which nothing seditious or treasonable had in reality been published. It was true that the _Canadien_ upheld the Assembly and criticised the conduct of the Executive, with great severity. It was true that the _Canadien_ complained of the tyranny of "_les Anglais_." It was true that the _Canadien_ strenuously supported the idea of the expenses of the civil list being defrayed by the province and not by the Imperial government. And it was true that it contended for "_nos institutions_, _notre langue_, _et nos lois_." It did nothing more. No hint was thrown out that Canada would be more prosperous under the American, than under the English dominion. It was not even insinuated that Canada should be wholly governed by Canadians. All that was claimed for French Canadians was a fair share in the official spoils of the land they lived in, freedom of speech, and liberty of conscience. Governor Craig asked the inhabitants of St. Denis or any of the other inhabitants of the province to remind him of any one act of oppression or of arbitrary imprisonment. And at that very moment the printer of the _Canadien_ was in prison. Nor was he there alone, there were Messrs. Bedard, Blanchet, and Taschereau, members of the recently dissolved House of Assembly, together with Messrs. Pierre Laforce, Pierre Papineau, of Chambly, and François Corbeille, of Isle Jésus, to keep him company, on charges of treasonable practices, concerning which there was not, and never had been, even the shadow of proof, on charges which the government did not attempt even to prove, and on charges which were withdrawn without the accused having ever been confronted with their accusers. Base and daring fabricators of falsehood! François Corbeille, an innocent man, the victim only of unjust suspicions, on the one hand, and of diabolical selfishness, on the other, died in consequence of the injury his health received in that prison where tyranny had placed him. But he could issue no proclamation. His voice was not loud enough in the tomb to reach the Court of St. James, surrounded as that Court was, by an impenetrable phalanx of Downing Street Red-tapists. Canada was only mis-governed because England was deceived, through the instrumentality of Governors, honorable enough as men, but so wanting in administrative capacity, as to be open to the vile flattery and base insinuations of those who were, or rather should have been at once the faithful servants of the Crown and of that people who upheld it, who were virtually taken possession of, on arrival, by the "_gens en place_," and held safely in custody, until their nominal power had ceased. And when power had passed away, then only did many of them perceive, as Sir James Craig is reported to have done, the deception, the ingratitude, and the almost inhumanity of man. There is some excuse to be offered for the extraordinary course of policy pursued by Sir James Craig; and an apology even can be made for the crooked policy of those voluntary advisers who had hedged him in. Great Britain was at war with France. The name of a Frenchman was unmusical in the ears of any Englishman of that period, and it sounded harshly in the ears of the British soldier. It was France that had prostituted liberty to lust. It was France that had dragged public opinion to the scaffold and the guillotine. It was France that held the axe uplifted over all that was good and holy. It was France that was making all Europe a charnel-house. It was General Buonaparte of France, who only sought to subdue England, the more easily to conquer the world. Many an English hearth had cursed his name. Many a widow had he made desolate, and many an orphan fatherless. The "conquered subjects" of King George spoke and thought in French. They held French traditions in veneration. There could only be a jealousy, a hatred, a contempt entertained of everything seeming to be French, in the heart of an Englishman. And these sentiments were doubtless reciprocated. But, still the French of Canada, were only, now, French by extraction. They had long lost that love of the land of their origin, which belongs to nativity. Few men in the province had been born in France. Few Canadians knew anything about the new regime, or took any interest in the "_Code Napoléon_." And few even cherished flattering recollections of Bourbon rule. The Canadians wanted English liberty, not French republicanism. The Canadians wanted to have for themselves so much liberty as a Scotchman might enjoy at John O'Groats, or an Englishman obtain at Land's-End. And for so desiring liberty they were misrepresented, because of English colonial prejudices, and because of official dislikes and selfishness. When the first Attorney-General of Canada, Mr. Mazzeres, afterwards Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer, in England, of whom Mr. Ryland was but a pious follower, proposed to convert the Canadians to Anglicism in religion, in manners, and in law, assuredly little opposition could have been made to the scheme. Then, the pursuance of Cardinal Richelieu's policy would, in after ages, have exemplified that the pen had been mightier than the sword. Then the whole population of the province could have been housed in one of the larger cities of the present time. But when the province had increased in numbers to 300,000, partially schooled in English legislation, the exercise of despotism was only as impolitic as it was obviously unjust. It was feared by the officers of the civil government of Canada, when this despotism was practised, that the legislature might have the power, which has since been conceded, of dispensing with the services of merely imperial officers, and of filling, with natives to the manor born, every office of profit or emolument in the province. It was feared if the exclusive power were granted to the Colonial Legislature of appropriating all the sums necessary for the civil expenditure of the province, that it would give the Legislature absolute control over the officers of the empire and of the colony, and annihilate, if not actually, potentially, the _imperium_ of Great Britain over her colony. A distinction was drawn between the privileges of a colonist and of the resident of the United Kingdom. While every municipality in the latter was permitted to pay and control its own officers, the voice of a colonist was to be unheard in the councils of the nation to which he was attached, and he was to have no control over the actions of those who were to make or administer the laws, under which he lived. He was patiently to submit to the overbearing assumptions of some plebeian Viceroy, accidentally raised to a quasi-level with the great potentates of the earth, and inclined to ride with his temporary and borrowed power, after that great impersonage of evil, which, it is alleged, the beggar always attempts to overtake when, having thrown off his rags and poverty, he has been mounted on horseback. It is admitted that at this time the province was controlled by a few rapacious, overbearing, and irresponsible officials, without stake or other connection with the country, than their offices,[14] having no sympathy with the mass of the inhabitants. It is admitted that these officials lorded it over the people, upon whose substance they existed, and that they were not confided in, but hated. It is admitted that their influence with the English inhabitants arose from the command of the treasury. And it is admitted that, though only the servants of the government, they acted as if they had been princes among the natives and inhabitants of the province, upon whom they affected to look down, estranging them from all direct intercourse, or intimacy, with the Governor, whose confidence, no less than the control of the treasury, it was their policy to monopolise. To the candidates for vice-regal favors, their smiles were fortune, and their frowns were fate. The Governor was a hostage in the keeping of the bureaucracy, and the people were but serfs.

[14] Christie's History of Lower Canada, vol. 1, page 347.

Nothing has been left on record to show that when Sir James Craig issued his absurd proclamation, treason was to have been feared, unless it be that the clergy were required to read the proclamation from the pulpits of the parish churches, that Chief Justice Sewell read it from the Bench, that the Grand Jury drew up an address to the Court and strongly animadverted upon the dangerous productions of the _Canadien_, and that the _Quebec Mercury_ expressed its abhorrence of sedition, and chronicled the fact that 671 _habitants_ had expressed their gratitude to the Governor, for his "truly paternal proclamation."

In the April term of the Court of King's Bench, the release of Mr. Bedard from gaol, was attempted, by an attempt to obtain a writ of _Habeas Corpus_. But the Bench was not sufficiently independent of the Crown. The writ was refused. The State prisoners were compelled to remain in prison, indulging the hope that whatever charges could be preferred against them would be reduced to writing, and a trial be obtained. It was hoping against hope. Some of the imprisoned fell sick, among whom was the printer of the _Canadien_, and all in the gaol of Quebec, with the exception of Mr. Bedard, were turned out of prison. Mr. Bedard refused to be set at liberty without having had the opportunity of vindicating his reputation by the verdict of a jury. Conscious of the integrity of his conduct, and of the legality of his expressed political opinions, he solicited trial, but the September session of the Criminal Term of the King's Bench was suffered to elapse without any attention having been paid to him. Three of the prisoners were imprisoned in the gaol of Montreal, and were not only subjected to the inconveniences and discomforts of a damp and unhealthy prison, but to the petty persecutions of a relentless gaoler. They were one after the other enlarged without trial, Mr. Corbeil only to die.

In the course of the summer the government had been occupied with the regulation and establishment of a system of police, in Montreal and Quebec, and, with that view, salaried chairmen were appointed to preside over the Courts of Quarter Sessions. The government also determined upon opening up a road to the Eastern Townships, which would afford a direct land communication between Quebec and Boston. Commencing at St. Giles, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, that road to the township of Shipton, which still bears the name of Governor Craig, was completed by a detachment of troops.

On the 10th of December, Parliament again met. The House of Assembly re-elected Mr. Panet to the Speakership, and the Governor approved of his election. In his speech from the throne, Governor Craig had never doubted the loyalty and zeal of the parliaments which had met since he had assumed the administration of affairs. He was confident that they were animated by the best intentions to promote the interests of the King's government and the welfare of the people. He looked for such a disposition in the tenor of their deliberations. He called their attention to the temporary Act for the better preservation of His Majesty's government, and for establishing regulations respecting aliens or certain subjects of His Majesty, who had resided in France. No change had taken place in the state of public affairs, that would warrant a departure from those precautions which made the Act necessary. He did not mean that it should be supposed that he meant to divide the interests of His Majesty's government from the interests of the public, for they were inseparable. But the preservation of His Majesty's government was the safety of the province, and its security was the only safeguard to the public tranquillity. He therefore recommended those considerations together with the Act making temporary provision for the regulation of trade between Canada and the United States to their first and immediate consideration. He entreated them to believe that he should have great satisfaction in cultivating that harmony and good understanding which must be so conducive to the prosperity and happiness of the colony, and that he should most readily and cheerfully concur, in every measure, which they might propose, tending to promote those important objects. And he further intimated that the rule of his conduct was to discharge his duty to his sovereign, by a constant attention to the welfare of his subjects, who were committed to his charge, and these objects he felt to be promoted by a strict adherence to the laws and principles of the constitution, and by maintaining in their just balance the rights and privileges of every branch of the legislature. Sir James Craig's attempts at maintaining a balance of power were the chief causes of all his blundering. He did not himself know the proper balance of power between himself and the governed. He could not possibly perceive when his balance-beam was out of its centre, and if he had seen a slight leaning to one side, and that side not his own, he could not have conceived that the scales of justice would have been very much affected. It never occurred to him that the displacement of it, only to the extent of one-sixteenth half of an inch, on the side of Government and Council, would weigh a quarter of a century against the Assembly, the people and progress. But so it was. The beam with which Sir James Craig would have and did weigh out justice, was one-sided, and, to make matters still worse, the Governor threw into the adverse scale a host of his own prejudices, and of the prejudices of his secret councillors. He would have been glad, had the House expelled Mr. Bedard, one of its members, on the plea that it was prejudicial to its dignity that a representative of the people should be kept in durance, while the House was in session, and still more discreditable that that member should be charged with treason. Hardly had he delivered his speech, and the Assembly returned to their chamber, when the Governor sent a message to the House intimating that Mr. Bedard, who had been returned to Parliament, as the representative of Surrey, was detained in the common gaol of Quebec, under the "Preservation Act," charged with treasonable practices. The House most politely thanked the Governor-in-Chief for the information. The House resolved that Mr. Bedard was in the common gaol of Quebec. The House resolved that Pierre Bedard was, on the 27th day of March, returned to Parliament, as one of the Knights Representative of Surrey. The House resolved that Pierre Bedard, was then one of the members of the Assembly, for the existing Parliament. The House resolved that the simple arrest of any one of His Majesty's subjects did not render him incapable of election to the Assembly. The House resolved that the Government Preserves Act, guaranteed to the said Pierre Bedard, Esquire, the right of sitting in the Assembly. And the House resolved to present a humble address to His Excellency, informing him that his message had been seriously considered, that several resolutions had been passed, which they conceived it to be their duty to submit to His Excellency, and that it was the wish of the House that Pierre Bedard, Esquire, Knight Representative for the County of Surrey, might take his seat in the House. The vote in favor of the resolutions was expressively large. There were twenty-five members present, and twenty voted for the resolutions. Messrs. Bourdages, Papineau, senior, Bellet, Papineau, junior, Debartch, Viger, Lee, and Bruneau, were named a committee to present an address to the Governor, founded on the resolutions, but they managed to escape that honor. When it was moved to resolve that an enquiry be made as to the causes which had prevented the messengers from presenting the address, as ordered by the House, Mr. Papineau, senior, moved that nothing more should be said about the address, and the motion was carried. Nor was anything more said about the unfortunate gentleman who was imprisoned, as the Governor himself afterwards stated, only as a measure of precaution, not of punishment, until the close of the session, when he was released. He was kept in Ham because he might have done mischief, on the principle that prevention is better than cure, and, when Mr. Bedard desired to know what was expected of him, the Governor sent for his brother, the curé, and authorized him to tell Mr. Bedard that he had been confined by government, "only looking to its security and the public tranquillity," and that when Mr. Bedard expressed a sense of that error, of which he was ignorant, he would be immediately enlarged. Mr. Bedard replied courteously, but declined admitting any error, which he had not made, or of confessing to any crime of which he was not guilty. The Governor had heard of the resolutions of the House, and expected the presentation of the address embodying them, when he received an application from the elder Papineau, one of the committee, requesting a private conference on the subject of the resolutions. That conference only drew from His Excellency the remark that:--"No consideration, Sir, shall induce me to consent to the liberation of Mr. Bedard, at the instance of the House of Assembly, either as a matter of right, or as a favor, nor will I now consent to his being enlarged on any terms during the sitting of the present session, and I will not hesitate to inform you of the motives by which I have been induced to come to this resolution. I know that the general language of the members, has encouraged the idea which universally prevails, that the House of Assembly will release Mr. Bedard; an idea so firmly established that there is not a doubt entertained upon it in the province. The time is therefore come, when I feel that the security as well as the dignity of the King's government, imperiously require that the people should be made to understand the true limits of the rights of the respective parts of the government, and that it is not that of the House of Assembly to rule the country." And Mr. Bedard, sensible of having done no wrong, remained in gaol until the Parliament was prorogued, as an example to the people that there was no public opinion worth heeding, in the province, and that the power of the Governor was something superior to that of the Assembly. The Assembly went to work after having made the fruitless attempt to liberate Mr. Bedard, and passed as many bills as were required. The "gaols" bill was temporarily continued: the repairs of the Castle of St. Lewis having cost £14,980, instead of £7,000, as contemplated, the additional outlay was voted; £50,000 were voted towards the erection of suitable parliament buildings. The Alien Act and that for the Preservation of the Government were continued, together with the Militia Act, to March 1813; the bill to disqualify judges from being elected to the Assembly passed both Houses, and to these the Governor assented, proroguing the Parliament afterwards with great pleasure. Communication with Europe had been difficult during the winter, on account of the impediments thrown in the way of American commerce. The Princess Charlotte had died, and the sovereign himself had become alarmingly indisposed. A new Act of non-intercourse had been passed in the American Congress. He had seen among the Acts passed, and to which he had just declared His Majesty's assent, with peculiar satisfaction, the Act disqualifying the judges from holding a seat in the House of Assembly. It was not only that he thought the measure right in itself, but that he considered the passing of an Act for the purpose, as a complete renunciation of the _erroneous principle_, the acting upon which put him under the necessity of dissolving the last parliament. The country was becoming luxuriantly rich, and he hoped that all would be harmony and tolerance. He would be a proud man who could say to his sovereign that he found the Canadians divided and left them united.

On the 19th of June, 1811, Lieut.-General Sir James Craig embarked for England, in H.M.S. _Amelia_. Previous to his departure he received addresses from Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers, Warwick, and Terrebonne, and when he was about to leave the Chateau St. Louis, the British population, who admired the old General more perhaps than they did the constitutional ruler, exhibited considerable feeling. The multitude took the place of His Excellency's carriage horses and popularly carried away, to the Queen's wharf, His Majesty's representative. Nay, the old soldier, who really had a heart, almost wept as he bade farewell to men, some of whom he had first met with in the battle field, and had since known for nearly half a century. Sir James too was