The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion - John Charles Dent (best historical biographies .TXT) 📗

acknowledged that if he has achieved any distinction, it is mainly due to the love of knowledge with which he was inspired by the eloquence and example of Dr. Rolph." Such was the late Dr. Ryerson's own testimony, as published in the _Journal of Education_, upon Dr. Rolph's death in 1870.
[183] The phrase is Mackenzie's own. See his remarks preceding the extracts in the _Advocate_ of May 22nd.
[184] By Dr. Morrison in the Toronto City Council. See the report of the proceedings of that body at the meeting held on Monday, June 9th, 1834. On the subject generally, see the pamphlet published in Toronto in 1834 entitled _The Celebrated Letter of Joseph Hume_, etc.
[185] In a letter dated 14th July, 1834, and published in the _Advocate_ of September 25th. Mr. Hume there states his meaning to have been "that the misrule of the Government in Canada, and the monopolizing selfish domination of such men as had lately (though but a small faction of the people) resisted all improvement and reform, would lose the countenance of the authorities in Downing Street, and leave the people in freedom to manage their own affairs."
[186] The following extract is from a cleverly-written letter signed "O. P. Q.," which appeared in the _Courier_ of June 5th, 1834. It spoke the sentiments of nearly all the newspapers in the country, of whatsoever shade of politics: "But for that letter the people of this Province might long remain in ignorance of the real motives by which your conduct has been actuated. They might long regard you as a persecuted patriot.... But your imprudence or your vanity has been the means of completely unmasking and placing you before the people of this country in all the naked deformity of an acknowledged traitor. Henceforth you must be content to be regarded as the secret abettor of a heartless conspiracy.... Do not think, Sir, that these are the sentiments of a violent political opponent who approves of the measures adopted towards you by the House of Assembly.... These views, Sir, are the views of a man who has ever denounced the course your adversaries have pursued towards you as unwise, unjust and unconstitutional. They are the sentiments of a man who, if he had the power to punish the persons who first rose you from poverty, ignominy and ruin, to comparative affluence and popular notoriety, would have sent the destroyers of your press to less favoured regions. They are the sentiments of one who had up to the publication of the letter ... regarded you as a man attached to the institutions of your country.... It is an old adage, 'Give him rope enough,' etc. You have a moderate quantity, and if the avowal of such sentiments as you have lately promulgated do not afford you a few yards more, you may regard yourself as infinitely more fortunate than many better and bolder men."
[187] "To the many poor settlers who came from Europe, and obtained grants of lands from the government, he was a friend and adviser, and in cases of necessity their wants were supplied from his purse or his granaries. Many is the time, said some of our fellow-prisoners, that we have seen him, after the toils of the day were over, leave his home to carry provisions for miles through the pathless forest, to the shanty of some poor and destitute settler, who with wife and family were rendered by want and sickness utterly destitute. Those acquainted with the history of new settlements need not be told how often those who have been accustomed to better days are obliged to embark in a new career of life, the duties of which they are totally ignorant and wholly unfitted for, nor how often sickness is engendered by their great bodily exertions, by neglect and deprivation. In a country like that in which Mr. Lount was settled, the inhabitants resided far apart, and consisted generally of old, worn, and superannuated British officers, who, at the close of the war, pitched their tents, for the last time, in the wilderness. The sums which they obtained from the sale of their half-pay, almost expended in the transportation of their little families, before arriving on the lands assigned them by government--unfitted, from their former pursuits, to bear the drudgery their new course of life required, it was frequently the case, that before they could raise anything from their lands, they became perfectly destitute of the necessaries of subsistence. Too proud to seek assistance, they would starve rather than communicate their situation; but in Lount, their generous neighbour, they found one quick to discover and prompt in affording relief, and he would minister to their wants with such delicacy that the most sensitive would experience a pleasure rather than the pang of wounded pride."--Theller's _Canada in 1837-38_, vol. i., pp. 233, 234. I transfer these remarks, not because I have any respect for Theller's personal testimony on any subject, but because in the present instance his language clearly expresses the general sentiment of the period with regard to Samuel Lount, and is confirmed by the remembrance of many persons still living in and near Holland Landing.
[188] 3 Wm. IV., c. 15, passed 13th February, 1833.
[189] In the preceding February Dr. Baldwin had thus written in reply to a notification to attend as a delegate at the District Convention: "This honour I beg leave to decline, and for this reason: that having heretofore served the country to the utmost of my humble abilities as their representative in Parliament, with the sincerest integrity of purpose in maintenance of popular rights, unspotted, I trust, by one single vote of a contrary tendency, I, together with many others of the staunchest friends of those rights, experienced such extreme fickleness of popular opinion that this conclusion has long been formed in my mind: that the great body of the people of this Province (without doubt there are many honourable exceptions), in no wise ignorant of their rights or the great value of them, are nevertheless shamefully indifferent into whose hands they commit their preservation and due exercise. Experience alone must teach the people. This experience is coming to them by painful lessons.... Under these circumstances I beg you will make my apology," etc. The letter appears in the _Advocate_ of March 13th, 1834, following one to a similar purport from Dr. Rolph.
[190] It was continued for some time after by another hand, under the name of _The Correspondent and Advocate_.


CHAPTER XIV.
SEE, THE CONQUERING HERO COMES!
[Sidenote: 1835.]
Parliament met on the 15th of January, 1835, when the Reform majority in the Assembly were able to once more elect Mr. Bidwell to the Speakership. The vote stood thirty-one to twenty-seven. Among the minority were five or six Conservative members who repudiated the name of Tory, and were opposed to the policy of the official party, to whom, as has been seen,[191] they merely yielded a qualified support as the less of two evils. Such being the state of affairs in the Assembly, the Compact party were of course precluded from making any further serious attempts to keep Mackenzie out of the House. The proceedings of previous sessions relative to the several expulsions were upon motion of Mackenzie himself expunged from the journals of the House. The baneful domination letter was made the subject of a long discussion, in the course of which Mackenzie received some exceedingly hard hits from Solicitor-General Hagerman; but as he had been manifestly in the wrong in giving publicity to that letter, and as he had been disciplined by members of his party to keep silence in the event of an attack on that score, he sat quietly through the Solicitor-General's onslaught.
The most important proceedings of the session, and the only ones of which it is necessary to take cognizance in these pages, were those relating to the Seventh Report of the Grievance Committee, to which frequent reference has already been made. On Friday, the 23rd of January, Mackenzie moved for and obtained the appointment of a Special Committee on Grievances, with power to send for persons, papers and records, and with authority to report to the House from time to time by bill, address or otherwise. Mackenzie himself acted as Chairman of the Committee, the other members of which, as finally struck, were Dr. Morrison, David Gibson and Charles Waters, one of the members for Prescott. The famous Seventh Report, which did more to arouse the Home Government on the subject of Upper Canadian affairs than all previous efforts in that direction, was completed and presented to the Assembly on Friday, the 10th of April. It was a truly formidable indictment. It recapitulated the various grievances under which the Province laboured, and which called loudly for remedy. These have been already set forth in former chapters of the present work, and need not here be enlarged upon. The prevailing tone of the Report was temperate and calm, and there is little or nothing in it to which serious exception can be taken, although, as may easily be discerned from internal evidence, the compilers felt strongly the importance of a vivid presentation of their case. The Report proper occupies only fifteen folio pages of the appendix to the official journals of the session; but the evidence taken by the Committee, and the various letters, papers and documents which go to make up the mass of valuable information submitted to the Assembly, extend to voluminous dimensions. In addition to the copies printed for insertion in the appendix to the journal, two thousand copies of the complete work were issued separately in octavo form for distribution. It thus obtained a considerable circulation throughout the Province; and a copy was also sent to each member of the British House of Commons. The first copy that left the binder's hands was forwarded to the Colonial Secretary. All the most pressing grievances were dealt with in greater or less detail, but special prominence was given to the necessity for a responsible Government--a Government responsible to public opinion, which must cease to exist when it ceases to command popular confidence. The wished-for settlement of this important question would necessarily comprehend and include the removal of many of the most glaring abuses to which the people of the Province had long been subject and the Reform party were keenly alive to the importance of obtaining the concession. More than a third of the Report proper was devoted to dealing with the question in its various aspects, and it was shown that the Provincial Executive were not only impervious to public opinion, but were also ready enough to disregard the views of the Home Government itself when those views failed to coincide with their own plans for self-aggrandizement. Some of the evidence taken was of the most compromising character, while the refusal of leading members of the Compact to answer certain questions propounded to them did not tend to place matters in a more favourable light. Archdeacon Strachan's response to many of the questions put to him amounted to a practical contempt of the Committee. "I do not answer that question."--"I have no answer to give."--"I refer you to the Constitutional Act."--"I cannot answer that question, owing to its assumptions, which I do not admit." Such are a few of his replies. The whole of his examination is worth reading, as exemplifying how far an intelligent man will sometimes permit bigotry and intolerance to gain possession of his soul. Indeed, the evidence of all the witnesses may be read with profit by those who wish to gain a full insight into the state of the Province at that time, and to fully appreciate the necessity which existed for a change in the mode of conducting public affairs.
The report, though presented to the Assembly as above intimated, does not appear to have been formally adopted during the session, but the