mm

M

yALe univeRSity LiBRARy
the gARVAn coLLection
Of
BOOKS on iReLAnd
estABLished in ip^i By
f RAncis p. gARVAn^ yAle 1897
in honoR of his pARents
pAtRiCK gARVAn
mARy CARROLL gARVAn

THREE YEARS'
RESIDENCE IN CANADA,
I'aoM
1837 to 1839.

THEEE YEARS'
EESIDENCE IN CANADA,

1837 to 1839.

WITH NOTES OF A WINTER VOYAGE TO NEW YORK, AND
JOURNEY THENCE TO THE BRITISH POSSESSIONS :
TO WHICH IS ADDED,
A REVIBVy OF THE CONDITION
OF THE
CANADIAN PEOPLE.
BV
T. R. PRESTON,
X.ATE OF THE GOVERNMENT SERVICE AT TORONTO.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Pu6ItB?er in ©r&itiars to i^cr iWaiestg.
1840.

Printed by J. L. Cox and Sons, 75, Great Queen Street,
Lincoln's-Tnn Fields.

PREFACE.

The powerful interest respecting the affairs
of Canada, that has been lately re-awakened in
the mind of the intelligent portion of the com
munity, as much by the revival of animated
parliamentary discussions in relation thereto, as
by the character of the dispute now pending
between England and the United States, has
induced me to give publicity to the following
pages, as a trifling contribution to the very
scanty stock of accessible materials serving to
elucidate the general subject-matter of the two
fold case at issue.
Impressed with the conviction, that the results
of long personal experience and observation in

vi PREFACE,
the Canadian provinces, must prove a not un
welcome offering to the British public at the
present moment, let them originate in what
source they may, I have not hesitated to incur
the risks and perils of authorship; while, in
deed, I cannot but consider, that, in many re
spects, I have only acquitted myself of a public
duty, in placing on record much of that which
will be found narrated in these pages.
It should seem obvious that the more varied
and multiplied works upon Canada become, the
more forcibly and steadily will the public mind
continue to be directed to a consideration of the
state, with a view to the promotion of the
welfare of that country, which presents a vast
field for inquiry, even now but partially ex
plored, to all who may be disposed to aid in
bringing it under progressive cultivation.
Disastrous as in themselves have proved the
events which have marked the history of Canada
during the last few years, they have had at least
the good effect of diverting public attention

PREFACE. vii
towards a too-long neglected channel ; and it is
to be hoped, that the feeling now manifested
by the British people in relation generally to
the subject of Canadian affairs, may prove the
more lasting from having been so tardily
aroused. The period which the following reminiscences
embrace, extends over the interesting interval
from the beginning of 1837 to the end of 1839 ;
and in the course of that interval, I possessed
many favourable opportunities of investigating —
with what success it remains for others to deter
mine — the various subjects upon which I have
ventured to deliver an opinion.
The chief circumstances incident to the pro
ceedings of the Canadian insurgents and their
American confederates, I have endeavoured to
bring before the reader in a succinct shape. In
tracing my impressions of the various objects
that I have imperfectly passed in review, I have
also sought to pursue a strictly impartial course ;
to praise or censure according as justice seemed

viii PREFACE.
to dictate ; to place in prominent relief the most
interesting facts ; and, finally, to blend the ma
terial substance with such incidental matter,
whether as regards personal adventure, descrip
tive relation, or mere anecdote, as should serve
to relieve the more serious portions of the work,
at the same time that it should contribute to
the amusement of the reader. In the general
arrangement of the miscellany thus projected,
it has been more my object to connect events
and subjects having aflinity with each other,
than to adhere to a strictly chronological order
of narration in respect of them.
Desirous to depend exclusively upon my own
means of information, and upon my own experi
ence, I have purposely abstained, since my re
turn to England, frora consulting any recent
publications whatsoever that have reference to
Canada; nor have I sought to ascertain how
far my sentiments might chance to correspond
with, or differ from, those entertained by other
writers who have treated upon the subject.

PREFACE. ix
Unbiassed by party feeling, or by party views,
I have been actuated by the desire alone to ex
hibit to the best of my ability, and according to
my conscientious belief, the wants of Canada in
their real light, and whilst tracing admitted evils
to their primitive sources, to point out what
have seemed to me the legitimate remedies for
their radical cure ; endeavouring, moreover, to
bear out by some practical illustration, the re-
spective arguments adduced.
As regards, generally, the political opinions,
to which, whether relating to Canada or to the
United States, I have given utterance, it is
proper to state that, erroneous or correct, they
are the result entirely of my past local expe
rience ; in affirmation of which I may add that
they substantially correspond with the sentiments
recorded in a series of articles that I contributed,
under a feigned signature, to one of the Canadian
Journals, about eighteen months ago.
The desire to give early publicity to this
work, — while serving to preclude the degree of

X PREFACE.
revision that I could have wished, as regards its
style and composition, — has also compelled me
to omit the discussion in it of some further
points of interest than those actually brought
under consideration ; but should circumstances
favour the design, I may possibly resume at a
future opportunity, the task I have thus far
performed.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

CHAPTER I. Page
Memorable Trans-Atlantic voyage. — Incidents and
perils thereof. — Americairi Pilot-boat. — Ameri
can Landlord . . . . . . . . . . 1

CHAPTER II.
Journey from New York to Canada. — Winter
Travelling. — Adventures by the way. — American
Coachmanship. — ^Aspect of Lower Canada . . 29
CHAPTER III.
Comparison of Montreal and Quebec. — Quebec
Cathedral. — General Description of Lower Ca
nada. — State of Society. — French Canadians. —
Town and Rural Population. — Insurrections of
1837 and 1838.— Influence of the Priesthood-
Amusing Anecdote of a Parish Pastor. — Political
Reflections . . . . . . . . . . 52
CHAPTER IV.
Kingston. — Mackenzie's Outbreak. — Repeated
false Alarms. — Series of Invasions. — Affair of
Hickory Island. — Consternation of the Kings-
tonians thereat. — Conversation with an old In
dian Warrior. — Destruction ofthe Bntish steam-

xii CONTENTS.

Page

boat Sir Robert Peel. — Further Irruptions into
the Province. — Mission of the Earl of Durham.
— American Conspiracy against Canada. — Hun
ters' Association. — Invasions at Prescott and
Windsor. — Result thereof. — Final Disposal of
the Prisoners. — Remarkable Events of 1839 .. 125
CHAPTER V.
General Review of the Conduct of the American
Authorities throughout the proceedings herein
before narrated. — Development of the Designs
of the Republic on British North America. —
Insidious Policy practised. — Identification of the
Maine and Canada Questions, viewed in con
junction. — Revelations regarding Implied In
trigues of Russia, in fomenting disturbances in
Canada  198
CHAPTER VI.
The Englishman's Political Reverie from the
summit of Cape Diamond. — Original Errors
committed by British Statesmen in regard to
Canada. — Restitution of Canadian Civil Law. —
Impolitic Division of the Province of Quebec
into Upper and Lower Canada. — Perversion of
Elective System in the latter. — Character of
Feudal Tenure. — Legislative Union of the Pro
vinces. — Conclusions relative thereto . . . . 245

THREE YEARS'
RESIDENCE IN CANADA,
(1837—39.)

CHAPTER I.
Memorable Trans-Atlantic voyage. — Incidents and perils
thereof. — American Pilot-boat. — American Landlord.
In the winter of 1836, circumstances having
required that I should proceed to Canada, I
engaged my passage on board a London and
New York . li-ner, and sailed from Portsmouth
towards the end of the uninviting month of
November. Had the occurrences which marked my voyage
across the broad bosom of the Atlantic been of
the usual ordinary character, I should abstain
from even an allusion to them ; but, peculiar as
VOL. I. B

2 PERILOUS VOYAGE.
they were, I cannot resist the opportunity of
narrating them ; and their indelible impression
on my memory ensures their being rendered
with at least fidelity.
The ship in which I embarked seemed to have
been singled out by the elements, from the very
hour of her departure, as a special object of
assault : peradventure, in derision of the war
like appellation which graced her bows, or be
cause she appeared an antagonist worthy of their
strife. If the latter were the cause of joining
issue, correct judgment on the part of the ele
ments must certainly be recorded, for never did
assailed vessel sustain her ordeal better; though
many were the occasions during the progress of
the voyage, when even her experienced captain,
revealed by his demeanour, to a watchful eye,
his secret apprehension that the unequal contest
diust eventually prove fatal both to her and her
living cargo, numbering altogether about one
hundred persons, of whom rather less than a
fifth part were cabin passengers.
After the prelude of much rough skirmishing,
during which Nature failed not to exact her usual

TEMPEST. 3
tribute from most on board, the full weight of
battle fell suddenly upon us on the 29th of
November, when we were caught, while in the
Channel, by the frightful hurricane of that
night, which, sweeping the Atlantic from west to
east, caused, as we subsequently ascertained, the
wildest devastation, both on sea and shore, in
either hemisphere.
This storm, striking the ship when least ex
pected, all but drove her beneath the water;
she recovered, however, from the shock, but still
trembling beneath it, could keep no course, and
for a considerable time was perfectly unmanage
able. No longer could she boast of " walking
the waters like a thing of life;" and ifit were her
demeanour that had " dared the elements to
¦ strife," most bitter cause had we to repent her
temerity. The tempest, which raged in its utmost fury
throughout the night, somewhat abated towards
morning. When daylight dawned, we found
ourselves in the dangerous vicinity of the Scilly
Rocks, borne on a raging sea, while, staggering
towards us, was seen a dismasted vessel. It was
b2

4 TEMPEST.
thus evident, that our danger in the darkness
had been of a triple character, though we had
happily been unconscious of the presence of two
of its component elements.
As it was — rolling without a stitch of canvas
set, in the deep trough of the sea — we had the
utmost difliculty in avoiding the approaching
vessel, which, at one time, was separated from
us only by a single swell ; and had this taken
her as all supposed it would do, it must liave
hurled her right athwart us amidships.
Dismasted and helpless, however, as she was,
she managed to pass round our stern, and the
anticipated crash, involving the destruction of
both ships, was thereby happily avoided.
The sea, at this time, presented a sublime,
though an appalling spectacle, and, shrouded in '
the morning mist which the sun had not yet
penetrated, bore the appearance of a wall of
dark-iron grey, up the almost perpendicular
side of which we were slowly creeping ; until
having gained the streak of white foam which
fringed the summit, the delusion ceased, and we
plunged again headlong into a similar abyss to

ACCIDENT TO 'JHE CAPTAIN. 5
that from which we had just emerged. But
scenes like this defy an adequate description from
even the most skilful hand ; they must be wit
nessed, and, once beheld, can never be for
gotten. To add to our misfortunes, during the event
ful night through which we had so wonderfully
struggled, our captain had been incapacitated
from further duty, and now lay prostrate in his
berth from the effects of a severe injury of the
spine, occasioned by a heavy fall on deck. The
ship was, however, skilfully handled by the chief
mate, who, though coarse and brutal in his
conduct towards the seamen, was a first-rate
sailor. On the day previous, the ship's barome
ter accidentally got broken ; and, as sailors, are
always superstitious, this was looked upon as a
bad omen for the voyage.
The horrors of our situation during the liours
of darkness, had been necessarily much increased
by our ignorance of our precise position ; for,
although we knew we were in the " whereabout"
of the chops of the Channel, when the tempest
met us, the compass alone did not enable us to

6 TEMPEST.
ascertain the exact point towards which we had
since been driven.
The fierce howling of the wind, coming, as
it did, not in gusts, but in one dense body, as
though compressed into solidity, before it burst
upon us; the breaking of the giant waves against
the quivering stern posts of the ship ; the rush
of water through the companion and the hatch
way, or, as it rolled to and fro, knee-deep upon
the deck, staving in the bulwarks ; the horrid
creaking of the masts, as though in very agony ;
the sound ofthe captain's and the mate's voices,
which, deadened by the blast, came wafted to
our ears like whispers of the unblest; the
dreadful pitch and rolling of the ship; the
spectacle of the uncontrollable fear of some ; the
silent agony of others, and the despair depicted
upon every countenance ; formed a combination
of terrors well-calculated to unstring the stout
est heart, and to fill the sternest mind with deso
lation. The utter nothingness of man, and the awful
power of his Creator were here, side by side,
apparent. Internal prayer was the only refuge;

PROTRACTED VOYAGE. 7
for the feelings (I speak by my own) were too
high-wrought to find vent in words, and were
alone appreciable by a mutual glance of the eye
or pressure of the hand, as, like culprits sum
moned to a fearful doom, we stood congregated
in the humid, dimly-lighted cabin !
The reader may gather some faint idea of the
imminence of our peril, from the observation
made to us by the captain when we could talk
over the occurrence, that during the long period
of thirty years that he had been a sailor, the
storm we had weathered had no parallel in the
annals of his experience, and that nothing short
of his own evidence would have convinced him
that a-n-y ship could have outlived it.
After escaping from the mighty danger I have
so imperfectly described, we experienced the re
currence of a series of gales, minor only in the
comparison, which protracted our stay in the
Channel or its vicinity to full three weeks ; drove
us to every point of the compass, and, in alter
nate succession, to the coasts of England, Ire
land, and France, exposed to the constant chance
of shipwreck upon one or other of them.

8 SHORTNESS OF PROVISIONS.
Incredible as it may appear to some, the ves
sel rode through these severe ordeals without the
loss of any thing beyond a sail or two being blown
from the yards before they could be furled. The
masts, which had threatened several times to go
by the board, remained standing, and not a
spar was injured. Surprise will, however, cease
when it is considered that the vessel and her
equipments were entirely new, and raade of the
very best raaterials; besides, the real danger
after all consisted, next to foundering, less in
being dismasted than driven on a lee-shore, or on
the Scilly Rocks.
Becoming now seriously apprehensive, and
more particularly so from certain incipient
symptoms which already began to raanifest thera
selves, that our stock of provisions would fall
short before the expiration of the voyage, we
entreated the captain (who had in sorae raeasure
recovered from his injury) to put back, and pro
cure a fresh supply ; but this he declined to do,
though promising (no doubt to quiet us) to touch
at the Azores for that purpo.se. He, however,
either could not, or would not make those islands,

SHORTNESS OF PROVISIONS. 9
and adverse winds continuing to prevail, it seemed
as though we might possibly have to suffer some
thing worse than shipwreck, and the fishes raight
not be the only parties disappointed of their pro-
raised food. Such a contingency as dying of
starvation on board a New York packet-ship,
was, like the crime of parricide at Athens in the
palmy days of Solon, a thing unheard of, and
most certainly not surmised by any one of us
when we paid the sura of thirty-five guineas for
our board and lodging, whilst in a state of tran
situ between the two hemispheres !
The fact of the matter was, that, from sorae
cause unexplained, the ship had been very inade
quately victualled for a voyage even of the ave
rage duration ; hence it resulted, that before the
expiration of a month from the day of sailing, we
were gradually put, ex necessitate, upon short
allowance ; being, furthermore, curtailed of one
meal altogether.
But if the condition of the cabin denizens
proved such, how infinitely more deplorable was
that of the steerage passengers ! Many of these
b3

10 DISTRESS IN THE STEERAGE.
poor people (in so far emulating the captain, or
his steward) had laid in a stock of provisions
scarcely suflicient for a month's consuraption,
and were now, consequently, in a very distressed
state; while others, raiscalculating the chances
of the voyage, had been at first too lavish of
their edible store, and were constrained not only
to economize the scanty remnant thereof, but to
share it with their destitute companions, from
whom, in some instances, they exacted a pecuniary
consideration in return. Potatoes, having held
out the longest, were at a premium that would
have made an Irishman's heart ache, to say
nothing of the scarcity.
But this arrangement also had its term ; the
common stock itself was soon exhausted, and dur
ing the last fortnight of the voyage, the steerage
passengers might literally be said to have been
without the means of sustenance. The ship's stock
of water too was beginning to run very low.
In this state of things, these poor people,
driven to their last resource, sent a deputation
to the captain, the members of which, with

DEPUTATION. H
haggard countenances and tears standing in their
eyes, earnestly besought him to grant them a
portion of the large supplies which they erro
neously supposed to be set apart for the cabin
passengers. He explained to thera, that the impoverished
state of the cabin larder effectually precluded
a corapliance with their request, but added (and
this was a fact which transpired, by the way, for
the first time), that tliere was a small quantity
of corn on board, forming part of the cargo, to
which they might have recourse, provided they
could raise the wherewithal to indemnify him
for the subtraction of what their necessities
might require.
All, though equally willing, were not alike
able to comply with this condition, which ought
not, perhaps, under all the circumstances to
have been exacted. The cabin passengers were
then appealed to, and willingly came forward
with their subscriptions, repeating them as occa
sion needed, to supply the deficiency.
They had shortly to partake of tbe same fare
themselves, but did not of course pay for it.

12 YANKEE COW.
The corn underwent a sort of rough grinding
and winnowing, by a variety of ingenious con
trivances, and was then converted into various
coarse preparations.
I must not omit to raention that, in the height
of these privations, we were about to raake a
raost ungrateful return (though this need not
surprise, since raan is ever selfish) to our poor
cow for the railk wherewith she had till now
plentifully supplied us, by slaying her for the
sake of her flesh. But she was a Yankee cow, and,
with true Yankee sagacity, fell, or shammed
sick, at this critical juncture of her fate, thereby
saving her life and our reputation !
The terrific weather we at first encountered
had finally determined the captain to steer a
southern, in preference to a northern passage,
though, as it afterwards appeared, we should, in
aU probabihty, have been gainers had he adhered
to his original intention.
Be this as it may, southward we went, but,
what with light head-winds, tedious calms, and
contrary gales, in alternate succession, we were
kept hovering on the edge of the gulf-stream.

AGROUND. , 13
without the power to cross it, for the space of- a
whole fortnight. At length, one Sunday morn
ing, a favourable breeze springing up, carried us
before it at a dashing, rate to the opposite side in
the course of a few hours, somewhere about the
latitude of Norfolk on the coast of Virginia.
Here, as we met for a day or two after with
mild pleasant weather, and, falling in with some
coasting craft, obtained from them a small sup
ply of provisions, we began to indulge a hope
that our troubles were at an end ; but the result
proved the truth of theoldmaxim that "I'Homme
propose, et Dieu dispose;" for on the evening
of the second day, owing to the influence of an
in-shore current, so slight that it had been dis
regarded, and to carelessness in sounding, we
suddenly struck, and found ourselves flounder
ing on the point of a shoal which stretched far
into the bosom of the sea.
Here, then, was a new scene of trouble and
anxiety, which we certainly had no right to anti
cipate. We had struck very lightly it is true,
being at the time in comparatively still water.

14 AGROUND.
and having very little wind, but we were not
the less firmly fixed ; and our utraost efforts to
get off, by the usual expedient of backing sails,
proved wholly unavailing, the only effect pro
duced thereby being the heaving of the ship
• in a way to add very greatly to our apprehensions
and discomfort.
The captain, though he said but little, was
deeply mortified. To allay the general disquie
tude evinced, he affected to believe that we were
in deeper water than we really were; but one of
our companions, a nautical man, having judged
for himself, by a cast of the lead, privately told
us that we had barely four fathoms !
By one of those miracles which seemed to
have attended us throughout, it proved, upon
investigation, to have been low-water when we
struck, so that a chance remained of our getting
off when the tide should rise.
Cheered by this reflection, we^ hoisted and
fired signals of distress ; and these, being seen
or heard by one of the coasting schooners already
raentioned, she bore up to us, affording such

AGAIN AFLOAT. ]5
assistance as was in her power. She furnished us
with a small kedge-anchor, which, being carried
out with a rope attached to it, we were enabled,
by working the latter manfully at the capstan, in
relief gangs, to aid very materially the efforts
of the rising tide, and had the unspeakable satis
faction, at the expiration of several hours' hard
labour, to get the vessel off.
During these proceedings, the scene, both
above and below deck, was raost distressinff,
though not without touches of the ludicrous.
Men halloing and swearing ; women and chil
dren crying and lamenting; some arraying
themselves in their best garments, in the hope
of escaping to the shore in the friendly schooner ;
others selecting the effects they were most
anxious to preserve; the deck strewed with
scattered cordage, interspersed with boxes, bed
ding, and various other articles ; the sails flap
ping against the masts ; formed a combination
of circumstances calculated to fill the mind with
strange emotions, " coupled with ever varying
speculations as to the result.
" S'il y a de la poesie dans un naufrage,"

16 SANDY HOOK.
quaintly observes some French writer, " ce n'est
pas celui qui se noie qui aura le loisir d'en pro-
fiter ;" and the truth of the remark carae across
me with peculiar force on this occasion, antici
pating as I did its speedy illustration.
Once more, then, we found ourselves afloat,
and time it was we were so, for, shortly after
our release, a furious gale, accompanied by a
snow storm, sprang up from the north-east, the
effects of which must have inevitably proved
fatal to us, had we been compelled to await
them in our former position.
The night proved dark and boisterous, in
flicting on us an intensity of suffering, both
raental and bodily ; and when raorning dawned,
it was found that we had overshot Sandy Hook,
and were running at a slant towards the point
of land at the extremity of Long Island Sound.
The captain, therefore, tacked and stood in for
the Hook ; but, no pilot making his appearance,
he was compelled to proceed at his own risk, as
the vehemence of the gale, hourly increasing,
admitted on our part of no delay. The morning
was, however, so hazy that the captain became

ROCKAWAY SHORE. 17
bewildered, and so confounded his land-marks
as to raistake them altogether. Hence, while
proceeding in full career, as we thought, in a
right direction, the awful sound of breakers
a-head came suddenly upon our startled ears,
and presently the dira outline of the fearful
Rockaway shore, on which (as we had already
learned from a newspaper obtained on board the
schooner) the unfortunate ship Mexico had re
cently been cast away, appeared frowning darkly
at us through the mist in which it was enve
loped. , A moment's hesitation on the part of
the captain, and all had been lost ; this was, in
deed, the crisis of our fate, and well we knew
it as, rushing to the deck, we gazed alter
nately at each other and the appalling scene be
fore us.
The captain nobly redeemed his nearly fatal,
however involuntary, error. For the first time
during the voyage, he was now seen in a state
of intense excitement. Himself, springing to the
wheel, " 'Bout ship, my lads," he shouted; "haul
away for your lives ! if she misses stays, we are

18 PERILOUS SITUATION.
lost." But the gallant ship, though she had
often before missed stays, did not do so now !
As if sensible of her danger, she answered
promptly to the helm, bounded, like a deer
doubling on its course, on the opposite tack, and
we were saved ! At this wholly unlooked-for
deliverance, our long pent-up emotions found
vent in three thrilling cheers, and, uncovering
our heads, we retumed to the great Giver of all
good the silent tribute of our thanks, which, I
doubt not, were heartfelt on the part of all, for
the infinite mercy he had shewn us. A brig,
evidently as rauch bewildered as ourselves, had
been following in our wake, profiting by our
leadership; but on seeing us suddenly tack,
becarae alarmed, tacked also, and thus avoided
the fate to which we were alike blindly rushing.
We now rapidly neared the light-house, and
here, though with great difliculty, from stress of
weather, took in a pilot, who ought long since
to have made his appearance. The ship, how
ever, could proceed no further, as the gale, which
had gradually been veering to the westward.

DISTRESS OF PASSENGERS. 19
blew by this time directly down the bay, and it
was therefore resolved to cast anchor, until a
steam-boat should arrive to tow her up.
This happened on the 23d of January 1837,
being the sixty-third day of the voyage. Both
the passengers and crew exhibited a very dif
ferent appearance at the beginning and at the
end of it, as may very readily be imagined.
Araong the steerage-passengers, in particular,
bodily privation and mental anxiety had effec
tually done their work, and when I last saw
them emerge from their unhealthy domicile,
they seemed but the shadows of their former
selves, being pale, haggard, and attenuated to
the last degree.
From harsh treatment, by the first mate, hard
service, and short allowances, the crew had shewn
frequent symptoms of dissatisfaction, and on one
critical occasion, as regarded weather, fairly mu
tinied, being with very great difficulty induced
to resume their duty.
During this long and memorable voyage, it is
scarcely to be supposed, particularly as we
steered a southern course, that we were without

20 NAUTICAL " GAZETTE."
snatches of fine, agreeable weather. On such
occasions we had recourse to various expedients
to relieve the tediura of our position, and keep
alive our spirits; but none proved so effectual
a raeans to the end proposed, as the appearance
of a diurnal paper that was started, compla
cently termed a " Gazette," and to which all
more or less contributed. It lived about a week;
and, by way of curiosity, as a specimen of editor
ship afloat, under bilious influences, I subjoin
some doggrel (whereof I procured a copy), form
ing the concluding part of the editorial address.
Ecce signum.
Amid the din of elemental strife.
Despite the ennui of a ship-board life,
The muse asserts her beneficial sway
To cheer the wand'rer o'er this trackless way.
• » # » •
Though prudence wills the hoarding of our store.
To keep, at last, the lean wolf from the door ;
What! though provisions (not we) run a-ground.
If mental fare among us doth abound !
'So long as there be wherewithal to dine.
At hardest fare 'twere folly to repine.
And who, when others' only food is air,
Would not forego some portion of his share ?

EDITORIAL ADDRESS. 21
Besides, why fear an unappeasing meal —
Is there not left some tender, choice* bull-veal?
To eke out which, will not our host provide
The corn in cargo, till that source be dried ?
Let all, then, zealously their wits combine.
And yield due homage to the sacred Nine.
Let each contribute to the common weal,
Arouse his thoughts and write as he may feel.
For whilst fair Gazelles on our efforts sraile,
It us behoves their lone hours to beguile.
* * * » #
May winds, propitious to our wishes, urge
Our gallant vessel through the foaming surge;
And no fresh mishaps further tend to baulk
Our hopes of landing in far-famed New York I
Naturally feeling anxious to quit the ship
the moment I was able, I gladly accepted, in
conjunction with several of my companions, the
offer made to us by the pilot, to convey us to
New York on board his schooner, he himself,
however, of course remaining with the packet.
But so far from gaining by our impatience, we
had well nigh paid dear for it ; and it was quite
evident, that our old element was unwilling to
* In a facetious assimilation of the inmates ofthe cabin
de-ns, as they were termed, to the animals of a wandering
menagerie, one gentleman, from his peculiar appearance,
had been designated the " bull-calf." The appellation
g-iven to the ladies was that ofthe " Gazelles."

22 PILOT BOAT.
part with us on the easy terms we had pro
posed. By incessant tacking, and keeping close in
shore, we contrived to make some little pro
gress; but a sea at length struck our fragile
craft, which made her quiver to her very cen
tre, half filled her with water, blew her every
sail to ribands, and hurled the helmsman from
his post. Her flush-deck, carrying it off quickly,
alone saved her frora sinking beneath the weight
of water with which she was oppressed. We
were at this tirae about ten miles below the
city. " Gentleraen," said the skipper, looking down
into the confined space where we were huddled
like so many half-drowned rats, " I guess this
won't answer ; I can't attempt to proceed fur
ther, and must lie to ; but if, instead of remain
ing on board for an uncertain period, you like to
try the chance of getting ashore in the yawl, I
will have it launched."
Bad as was the alternative, we unanimously
assented to the proposal, and the first boat
load departed through a raging surf, for the

GETTING ASHORE. 23
only practicable place of landing, which was a
wooden jetty, projecting some distance into the
bay ; the shore itself being too ice-bound to ad
mit of a boat approaching it.
The rest followed in parties of two and three,
scrambling with difficulty along the narrow
jettv, the surface of which was covered with a
coat of ice, and over this the waves were inces
santly breaking ; but we all ultimately gained
the land in safety.
Buffetted by a pitiless hail-storm, and wad
ing through the deep snow which lay upon the
ground, we made for, and successively reached,
a house of entertainment about half-a^mile dis
tant. The vanguard had already secured sorae
rough means of conveyance to New York, whi
ther the whole party forthwith proceeded, with
the exception of one individual, an intelligent
respectable American gentleman, and myself,
both of us preferring to remain for the present
where we were.
Inquiring for the landlord, we were ushered
into the presence of a middle-aged, beetle-browed
man, who was pacing up and down the room in

24 MERCANTILE INQUIRY.
which we found him, and who, immediately on
hearing we were from the packet-ship below,
without in the least heeding our request to be
provided with accommodation, abruptly accosted
me with the unlooked-for question —
" Pray now, what's the price of cotton .?"
" Cotton ! " I replied, somewhat annoyed at
the man's utter disregard of our pitiable condi
tion, but amused withal at the strangeness of the
association; — "all, my friend, that I know about
cotton is, that I have not a dry thread of it upon
me, and if you will have the goodness to sell
me a pair of stockings of that, or any other tex
ture, I shall be very rauch obliged to you." —
My interlocutor regarded rae with a look of un
feigned astonishraent at the profoundity of my
ignorance, and the presuraption of ray request ;
resuraed his forraer promenade, and left us, with
the utmost nonchalance, to shift for ourselves.
" Pleasant landlord," whispered I to my com
panion. " Very," replied he.
" I hope," I said, " he does not present a fair
specimen ofthe Bonifaces ofyour country.? "

NEGOCIATION FOR A BED. 25
"By no means," was the rejoinder; "you will
find thera very different at New York: but leave
rae to deal with hira; we must humour him, or
shall "get nothing."
By a brief recital of our misfortunes, ray com
panion so far thawed our host's inhuraanity, as
to induce hira to have set before us a corafort
able substantial meal, to which, having first
dried our saturated garments, it raay readily be
imagined that we did ample justice, after our
long abstinence from any thing like wholesome
food. The next point was to get to rest, but here
another contest arose; the landlord, to save him
self trouble, though fully intending to charge
us the highest prices, signifying his intention to
quarter us not only in the same dormitory, but
also in the same bed, a practice by no means un
common in the States.
This we both stoutly resisted, declaring our
intention to adopt in preference, the alternative
of passing the night by the stove; so that, find
ing us inflexible, he at length agreed, though
with a very ill grace, to accommodate us with
VOL. I. c

26 CONTRAST OF SITUATIONS.
separate rooms. It was not, however, to his
after sense of propriety that we were indebted
for this assent, but to his American pride, my
companion having hazarded the observation that
I was a stranger, unaccustomed to the usages of
the country.
They alone who have been in situations such
as I have described, can appreciate the feeling
of exquisite delight which is experienced on
again reposing in a bed on shore ; but, for my
own part, I would not willingly incur the long
privation for the sake of contrasting it with the
after enjoyment.
Throughout the night in question and the
whole of the day following, which chanced to be
Sunday, the storm raged with unabated fury,
causing my companion and myself to feel the
most intense anxiety for the fate of the ship and
those we had left on board her : nor was that
anxiety relieved until late on the succeeding
Monday, when, on reaching New York, we
found her in port, where she had but just ar
rived in tow of a steamer.
We then learned that, in fulfilment of our

STEAM-SHIP. 27
apprehensions, the ship had been in the most
imminent peril, having dragged her anchors
nearly three miles, and narrowly escaped being
driven out to sea, with only one meal's provi
sion on board, which had been supplied by the
schooner before we left. Her owners and the
New York public had given her up for lost, the
more particularly as one or two packet ships,
which had left England full a month after her,
had reached their destination some days before
she made her appearance.
Hail, glorious steam ! The beneficial change
which thou hast already wrought in trans-At
lantic navigation entitles thee to universal reve
rence. Would that, in ray voyage out I had
met, as I chanced to do a few months since
when homeward-bound, one of the Leviathans
which thou now propellest across that wide waste
of waters ! I would have betaken rae to thy
erabrace, and done thee ever after homage for
thy timely presence ; but thou wert then un
known to wanderers o'er the Atlantic's space,
henceforth thine own domain !
On the occasion of the raeeting to which I
c2

28 STEAM-SHIP.
have alluded, it was beautiful to see the majestic
steam-ship overhaul us at pleasure, in a light
wind, and the nicety of her movements as she
gradually narrowed the distance between us.
The whole scene was singularly irapressive.
The day was fine, the water not too rough ; a
brig which -we had overhauled was sailing along
side in company, when presently up came the
snorting steam-ship, which, in glorious indepen
dence both of wind and tide, ran close to either
vessel inrapid succession, and, having briefly inter
changed coraraunications with each, finally shot
across our bows, and, at the expiration of an
hour, was lost to sight ; the long streak of her
smoke on the verge of the horizon, now seen as
rauch a-head of us as an hour before it had ap
peared astern, alone revealing that in the raiddle
of the Atlantic science reigned triumphant.
With reference to what precedes this episode,
should any of my old fellow-passengers chance
to see my feeble attempt to portray our adven
tures, they will recognize the picture as a faithful
one, however they may deem it in other respects
susceptible of improvement.

29

CHAPTER II.
Journey from NewYork to Canada. — Winter Travelling.
— Adventures by the way. — American Coachmanship.
— Aspect of Lower Canada.
Afteb, remaining in New York a suflicient
time to recruit and transact some necessary
business, I started, about the raiddle of February,
on my way to Montreal, in company with an
English party bound for the same destination,
two of which consisted of a young newly-raarried
couple. And here, let rae premise that winter travel
ling, in North America is no pastime, as your
bones will surely testify after you have journeyed
some fifty miles ; nor is it without its share of
perils. It took us on this occasion, full ten days to
reach Montreal, though the distance from New
York thence is soraething under four hundred
miles. The joumey to Poughkeepsie, or " Kipsy,"

30 YANKEE ENTERPRISE.
as the Americans call it, by way of elision, a
small neat town, situated mid-way between New
York and Albany, was perforraed on wheels,
and we sleighed thence up the frozen Hudson to
the latter city, against a piercing north-wester,
which both driver and horses had the utmost
difficulty in stemming. So regular a road had
been formed along the ice, that at various places
we found, much to our satisfaction, a hut erected,
the interior thereof being well heated by means
of a stove, and exhibiting an array of bottles,
containing wherewithal to warm also the stomach
of the traveller. This was a striking illustration
of Yankee enterprise that could not fail to rivet
one's attention.
From New York to Poughkeepsie a conside
rable portion of the road winds over the Fish-kill
Mountains, forming a series of alternate ascents
and declivities, and frequently overhanging pre
cipices, the space between the edges of which
and the wheels of the vehicle is sometimes barely
a foot wide. Such roads, though bad enough
at all times, are rendered next to impassable
during the winter months, by floods and other

RECKLESS DRIVING. 31
casualties, while the evil is increased by an utter
disregard to the iraproveraent of their condition,
owing to the Hudson serving as the great northern
highway for travelling during three-fourths of the
year. Down such declivities as I have mentioned
rather than described, the horses of our con
veyance would be propelled at the top of their
speed, with the usual reckless daring of Yankee
drivers, as though to compensate for the delay
of the previous wearisome ascent ; but in many
cases because, paradoxical as it may seem, a
slow descent would have been far less safe. It
was surprising to see the skill with which the
animals were guided, when the least diverging,
either of them or the vehicle, to the right or
left of the crumbling narrow road-way, would
have hurled us to destruction. Being seated on
the box, which station I selected to obtain an
unobstructed view of the raagnificent wintry
scene exhibited around rae, now catching
glimpses of the partially ice-bound Hudson,
now losing all traces of its track, I had araple
opportunities of judging for rayself of the pro-

32 SMART JEHU.
ceedings of those to whora our safety was en
trusted. One of these knights of the whip, a sraart,
dashing person, who proved to be the owner of
the team of fine white horses he was driving,
exhibited such consummate coachmanship, at a
very dangerous and intricate pass, that I could
not help complimenting him on his dexterity,
assuring him of my conscientious belief that no
coachman in my country would dare attempt a
feat similar to that he had achieved.
This effectually wound me into his good
graces ; but I had some reason to repent my
candour, since, whenever afterwards he had
the opportunity of proving hiraself, as he con
jectured, worthy of ray coraraendation, he would
give each of his horses a knowing touch, grasp
his reins with a steadier hand, compress his lips,
plant himself firmly in his seat, and hurry on his
former wUd career ; eyeing me askance, with a
smile of humour upon his countenance, at the
conclusion of every such performance, as much
as to say, " There, stranger, what do you think
of that .?"

ACCIDENT. 33
I did not care to tell him what I thought ;
but if truth must be revealed, he was fast bring
ing me to the conclusion, that I had escaped
from Scylla only to fall into Charybdis ; and
was inducing rae to draw involuntary coraparisons
between the wide sea-room of the Atlantic Ocean,
(bad as I thought the situation at the tirae) and
the narrow space of my present " whereabout,"
very much to the disparagement of the latter.
We resumed sleighing from Albany, but, the
roads not being at all times adapted to it, we
proceeded very slowly, suffering much frora cold,
and the violent jerking induced by the inequali
ties of the track.
At day-break one bleak raorning, the vehicle
suddenly stopped in the raidst of a wild desolate-
looking country, and the driver, opening the
door, " guessed" that some one must corae to his
assistance, as one of his horses had dropped upon
the road, and he could neither raise nor disen
tangle hira.
I imraediately volunteered my services, and,
on alighting, found the poor animal in its last
agonies, evidently the effect of being over-driven :
c 3

34 DEAD HORSE.
a result at which but little surprise need be felt,
considering that he had completed a stage of
about twenty-four miles. The driver, however,
thought differently ; railed at the defunct, as a
a lazy " crittur^'' and declared, that there was
never any work to be got out of him.
I reminded him that, however this might have
been, his working days were now clearly over,
and that judging by appearances, the remain
ing trio were not very far distant from the same
goal; thus effectually refuting the iraputation
cast upon their fallen companion.
To this there was no answer, and his sophism
was apparent to himself. The dead horse being,
after some difficulty, disentangled, was left upon
the road, and the other jaded creatures had yet
to drag us nearly four railes before they could
be relieved ; but there was no help for it, and
they were goaded forward. Getting into conver
sation with the driver (by whose side I had
seated rayself, in anticipation of a further de
mand for my services, but which did not, happily,
occur), I represented to him the inhumanity of
driving horses with such a heavy draught so

SLEIGH CAPSIZED. 35
long a distance, and suggested, that it would be
greater economy in the end to work them less
at a stretch, as their lives would be prolonged : I
was well aware, that any argument involving a
question of gain, was the best to use with an
American. He pondered sorae time, and at length quaintly
demanded, " Who's fault's that, mister ; the
owner's or the driver's .?"
" Oh ! the owner's, of course," I rejoined.
" Well, stranger," he said, " I guess you're
right; we do drive 'em tarnation inhu-man,
that's a fact."
On the evening of the fifth day we reached
the neat, quiet town of Burlington, the capital of
the state of Vermont, and situated at the head
of Lake Champlain, then completely frozen
over. Here we halted for the night; starting at
d^y-break the next morning, in the course of
which we met with two adventures, which are
well worthy of relation.
The snow had fallen heavily during the night,
so that our driver, who proved besides to be a
novice, after proceeding a few miles, became

36 HEROINES.
bewildered, wandered from the main road, and
finally upset the vehicle, heavily laden with
passengers and luggage, down the side of a
steep declivity, where it lay flat upon its side ;
but the dead-weight had the good effect of bring
ing the horses to a stand still.
We escaped with a few severe bruises, with the
exception of an American lady, who, being on
the leeward side, had her face severely cut,
though what concerned her most was the destruc
tion of a new bonnet of some gay colour, which,
for greater security forsooth, she had been car
rying on her lap. She cried and lamented bit
terly ; not so our little countrywoman, who be
haved like a heroine ; and when her first natural
alarm for her own and her husband's safety bad
subsided, laughed heartily at our misadventure.
Being uppermost, I had the advantage of the
party, and having crept through the open space
above me, I perched myself astride it, and pro
ceeded to assist my companions. The first \ fished
up was the English lady, who emerged from her
prison-house shoeless, so that, before I could aid
the rest, T had to devise the raeans of disposing

SLEIGH RIGHTED. 37
^ of her. To this end, disentangling a couple of
buffalo hides, and, spreading one of them on the
snow, I placed her upon it, and enveloped her in
the other. Thus squatted, she resembled (with
the exception of her visage) an Esquimaux, or the
expiring Don Quixote, when he is represented by
Quevedo, as placed in a sitting posture between
two bucklers, with his head only peering forth,
like that of a tortoise from betwixt its shells.
By disencumbering it of the luggage, the
sleigh was once more righted, after an hour's
labour; but before resuming our journey, the
perpetrator of the mischief, who had stood aloof
duringour proceedings, came forward, and stating
with much coolness that he was not accustomed
to driving (an unnecessary acknowledgment, by
the way), requested that sorae one among us
would take the reins for him. Whereupon, a
volunteer came forward, and drove us very well
the remainder of the stage.
The second disaster we experienced, occurred
a few hours afterwards, and had well nigh been
attended with serious consequences to the ladies
of the party and myself. The American drivers

38 RUNAWAY HORSES.
have a very reprehensible habit of leaving their
horses' heads unleashed when they stop to bait
or change teams, and in the States there are no
such persons as ostlers to stand sentry overthem.
On one of the latter occasions, we had all alighted
with the exception of the two ladies, and were
awaiting in the porch the exit of the driver from
the house. The horses, which had just been
put to and were very fresh (by no means a corol
lary in the States), finding theraselves at liberty,
became impatient, and presently bolted with the
vehicle. Alarraed for the safety of the two
feraales, and yielding to a natural impulse, I
sprang forward, and by a great effort reached
the near wheeler (if I raay so designate a sleigh-
horse), whose check-rein I seized just as the
four aniraals were breaking into a gallop. Him,
I speedily mastered, but, as ill-luck would have
it, the driving-reins had been cast on the opposite
side, and I found it impossible to gain either
them or the near leader's head ; so that after
running till I was fairly spent, I was reluctantly
compelled to cast rayself off, and, seizing a
favourable raoraent, threw rayself into the deep

FEMALE COURAGE. 39
snow beyond the track, in order to avoid a salu
tation from the sharp runners of the vehicle,
leaving the horses to continue their rapid flight,
increased too as it had been by my abortive
attempts to check them.
The behaviour of my countrywoman on this,
as on the former occasion, was most praiseworthy,
and the courage she displayed rendered still
more conspicuous the want of it in the fair
American. So long as there reraained a chance of ray suc
ceeding in my efforts, she retained her seat with
the greatest coolness and self-possession, and I
heard her encouraging her companion to do the
same ; but when, on finding that the case was
hopeless, I exhorted her to spring into the deep
snow, she at once boldly acted on my suggestion,
and was speedily followed by the American, im
pelled by the example set her and the increased
terror which came upon her at finding herself
alone in such a situation. Both, fortunately,
escaped without material injury, as did also the
sleigh and horses, which were stopped, after a
run of two miles, by some labourers who chanced

40 INDIFFERENCE TO DANGER.
to be working on the road; and our effects were
restored to us in safety.
When I got back to the inn, the driver, in
stead of thanking rae for my exertions (fruitless
though they had been) to repair the effects of
his carelessness, contented himself with remark
ing : " I guess, mister, if you'd been more
smart, you'd ha' jumped a top o' that ere ani
raal " (the horses were only at the top of their
speed, and I, heavily clad, floundering in the
deep snow). " I guess," I replied, " you had
better have tried that experiment yourself, since
you think it so easy." In fact, it is to be doubted
if even Ducrow himself could have performed
such a feat of agility.
But upsets and runaways are too comraon in
the States, to be associated in the minds of the
people with ideas of danger, and the accidents
arising frora them are treated with much
levity. The Canadians are not rauch better; and I
reraeraber being told of a case of negligence
which once occurred soraewhere on the road be
tween Montreal and Kingston, whereby the lives

STEAM-BOATS. 41
of nine or ten stage passengers were all but sacri
ficed. The horses had been left, as usual, un
leashed at some halting place, had started off,
run a considerable distance, and the passengers,
unaware of their danger (the leathern curtains
of the sleigh being closely drawn to keep out
the cold) , were only awakened to a sense of it, by
suddenly hearing the crashing of ice, and finding
themselves floundering in deep water. They
escaped with the utmost difficulty, and the
horses, I believe, were drowned.
I mention these occurrences less from any in
terest now attaching to them, than that they
may serve to put upon their guard those of ray
fellow-countrymen who may have occasion to
travel through the northern parts of the North
Araerican Continent in the winter season. When
the navigation is open the case is different, and
there are no greater dangers to be encountered
than elsewhere.
The Canadian steara-boats are, however, much
more pleasant and coramodious than those of
the States; the latter, besides, being generally
crowded to excess, and though presenting a very

42 FAINTING LADY.
animated scene, nevertheless, a scrambling one
by no means pleasant.
I raust narrate a little incident which I once
chanced to witness on board an American steam
boat. We were just sitting down to a repast when
a lady, exhausted by the combined effects of
the jostling and scrambling incident to the occa
sion, and the heat of the weather, uttered a loud
screara, and forthwith fainted away. All was
again confusion, in the raidst of which up step
ped a young interesting-looking Araerican fe
male to direct operations, claiming a right to do
so, on the ground that she herself very often
fainted, and knew the proper remedies. Atten
tion being diverted to her by this public an
nouncement, she seemed about to enter on a
learned disquisition respecting the philosophy
of syncope, accompanied by illustrations in her
own person, when her design was frustrated by
some one suggesting that the patient had better
be carried up stairs into the fresh air, a simple
and effectual remedy which the fair lectures^
seemed to have entirely overlooked. It is so
unusual for American ladies to put themselves

NATIONAL PROPENSITY. 43
thus prominently forward, that one could not
help being struck with the love of display con
spicuously raanifested on this occasion. The
lady in question had already been holding forth
on deck, with rauch apparent eloquence, on vari
ous erudite subjects, and clearly belonged to the
sisterhood of blues.
But to conclude ray journey. At one part of
it, we had taken up, as a transient passenger,
a young Araerican woman of the middling class,
who after she had sat some time in silence, eyeing
our party with much apparent curiosity, sud
denly accosted one of them with the observa
tion —
"I guess, stranger, that's a very nice shawl
you've got," (raeaning a large raerino travelling
shawl which he wore.)
"I am glad you like it, Miss," was the an
swer ; "your judgment proves my taste."
" Would you let me look at it ? "
"Certainly." Whereupon, the party disen
tangling it from his neck, placed it in the fair
one's bands.
Having spread it, and satisfied her curiosity

44 MAIL-BAG.
as to its quality and texture, she observed, that
it was very much like one belonging to her
mother !
The owner of course expressed himself as
much honoured by the coincidence.
" You wouldn't like to part with it now, would
ye ? " was the next inquiry.
" I guess not ; I am going to Canada, and
should feel the want of it."
" Well, now, what are you going to that cold
place for ? you'd better stay in our fine coun
try, that's a fact."
The gentleman availed himself of this op
portune turn in the conversation to divert the
attack upon his shawl, which might otherwise
have ended in the usual proposal to barter, so
pleasantly illustrated by Captain Marryatt.
It is startling to one accustomed to the sort of
religious reverence with which the mail-bag is
regarded throughout England, to witness the
utter disrespect with which it is treated in Ame
rica, being there a sort of foot-ball both for pas
sengers and drivers, and never allowed to inter
fere with their convenience.

MAIL-BAG. 45
If there be a mail-bag to deliver of which the
place of consignment chance to lie a little out of
the line of route, the driver will content himself,
in nine cases out of ten, with depositing it by
the way-side, and, winding his horn to signify his
having done so, proceed on his journey, without
troubling himself any further about the matter.
I have rayself seen this; while, on one occa
sion, I remeraber, the driver, suddenly discover
ing that one of his mail-bags was missing,
" guessed" that the " tarnation bag" must have
been dropped on the way, and "calculated" he
must have the trouble of going back to look for
it. For a wonder he did so, and sure enough,
after retracing our steps about a raile, there lay
the cause of his retrogradation.
Generally speaking, I think that there exists
in the States less desire to pilfer than in most
other countries; partly, no doubt, because there
is less general want on the part of the comrau-
nitj', and, consequently, less teraptation to be dis
honesty and partly because there prevails amongst
them a greater degree of pride and self-respect.
A strikinff illustration of this remark came

46 TRAIT OF HONESTY.
within my own experience. I had dropped, un
consciously, in a vehicle, in the process of alight
ing frora it, ray pocket-book containing a con
siderable sum of money. Whilst the passengers
were seated at dinner, the driver appeared with
the pocket-book in his hand, and inquired if any
one of us owned it. My right to it was soon
established, and the finder, of course, rewarded
for his conduct, though I had great difficulty in
inducing him to accept anything. Had he chosen,
as he might readily have done without the fear
of detection, to appropriate the money to his
own use, ray embarrassment would have been
great in the extreme; for, until I could have
obtained a remittance from my friends, I should
have been left wholly without the means to pro
secute my journey.
Traits of this character deserve to be recorded
whensoever they present themselves, since, un
fortunately, they are of very rare occurrence.
About the eighth day of our joumey, we
entered Lower Canada, reaching the village of
St. John's at midnight, all but frozen.
After leaving Albany, the traveller is gradually

CANADIAN COSTUME. 47
made sensible of his approach to the regions of
the north, by the increasing chilliness of the
atmosphere around him, as it becomes more rari-
fied; and is right glad to aid his natural caloric
by adding to his already warm clothing.
We had long passed the imaginary boundary-
line, ostensibly separating the two countries,
before we ascertained that we were on Canadian
soil, being first enlightened to the fact by the
novel sound of the French language, and a dif
ference of appearance in our driver, who was now
clad in the not unpicturesque Canadian costume,
consisting of a grey great-coat, with a sharp-
pointed hood thrown over the head, trousers of
the same material, a crimson sash round the
waist, stocking-boots with red turn-over tops,
and, finally, a pair of fur gloves.
This is the general dress of the male peasantry,
or habitans as they are termed, though theiir
appearance is in general much less gay than that
of the class of persons of whom our Jehu was
a specimen. The cloth whereof their outer garments are
made, is for the most part home-spun, and is.

48 FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
in such cases, held in high estimation by the
wearers. The garb of the female peasantry has nothing
characteristic about it, with the exception of the
fur bonnet, but exhibits the same tastelessness
as the attire of corresponding classes in England.
The permanent impressions, of whatsoever ten
dency, which are left upon the mind on our first
visiting a foreign land, are not unfrequently in
fluenced, though, perhaps insensibly to ourselves,
by the time and circumstances under which
that visit may be made. For these reasons, I
would counsel, on the strength of my own ex
perience, all those who, unacquainted with
Canada, may design to visit it, not to do so in
the winter season if they can possibly avoid it.
A snow-storm in the wilds of Canada, can
alone find a parallel for the intensity of its deso
lation in a winter hurricane on the Atlantic, or
a whirlwind, with its accompanying sand-drift,
on the great desert of Zahara, and equally with
them is it to be dreaded.
We were weather-bound at St. John's during
the next twenty-four hours, a heavy fall of snow

SNOW DRIFT. 49
having succeeded the fine clear weather which
had preceded our arrival. Our impatience to
get forward induced us to make several at
terapts to penetrate to Laprairie, distant sorae
twenty railes, but they proved unavailing ; and
we were fain to retrace our steps, after being
twice or thrice dug out from a deep drift, in
which sleigh, passengers, and horses were nearly
buried. On the ensuing day, a road having been
forraed, we again started, and were this time
raore fortunate; reaching without accident,
though tardily, the banks of the St. Lawrence,
which now lay before us in all the desolation of
its wintry grandeur.
Viewed frora Laprairie, you have some dif
ficulty in conceiving that water rolls beneath
the noble river's white expanse, and still less
that water ever held, or could hold, the place of
that snow-covered domain. In this respect, you
raight indeed alraost be pardoned for indulging
in the scepticism of the Turk or the Hindoo (I
forget of which the story is told), who had equal
difficulty in understanding that ice could be
VOL. I. D

50 VIEW OF MONTREAL.
formed out of water, even though the fact was
illustrated to him by artificial means.
The width of the angle which intervenes be
tween Laprairie and Montreal, is between seven
and eight miles. Seen in the distance, with the
sun shining brightly on its tin roofs, Montreal
has a pleasing appearance, and at the season of
which I now speak, it fairly bore to me the
semblance of an Oasis in the desert.
To one unaccustomed to the performance, it
is a somewhat nervous operation to cross in a
vehicle on the ice, so wide an expanse as the
St. Lawrence ; particularly when, attaining mid
way, you regard the space, whether before or
behind you, which separates you from the land,
and hear the ringing, if not cracking, beneath
the horses' feet, of the frozen surface you are
traversing, long-reverberated, too, as is the hol
low sound in the distance.
On the occasion of which I speak, our cross
ing was rendered more than usually tedious and
painful by the combined influence of bad horses,
and the inequalities of the track, which, from
the lateness of the season, had been worn down

THE ST. LAWRENCE. 51
into a complete series of undulations, forming
what the French Canadians term cahots, and
causing our vehicle to rebound from one alter
nate convex point to the other, with an effect
upon us somewhat resembling that produced by
the passage of a vessel through a rough short
sea. The sleigh, with its entire cargo, must have
contained a burden of not much less than a ton
in weight, and was drawn by a trio of horses,
driven tandem-fashion, the leader of which
would frequently turn short round, causing a
general entanglement, and look us ruefully in
the face, as though in tacit reproach of our ob
stinacy in urging him forward on a road-way so
precarious. Nevertheless, we reached the northern bank
in safety, despite of even the driver's expecta
tion, and were at length, to my extreme satis
faction, corafortably housed in Montreal.

d2

52

CHAPTER III.
Comparison of Montreal and Quebec. — Quebec Cathe
dral. — General Description of Lower Canada. — State
of Society. — French Canadians, — Town and Rural
Population. — Insurrections of 1837 and 1838. — In
fluence of the Priesthood. — Amusing Anecdote of a
Parish Pastor. — Political Reflections.
Montreal and Quebec have been too often
and too well described to require further illus
tration; nevertheless, a passing observation in
regard to them may not here be out of place.
The more ancient parts of either city much
resemble raany of the old provincial towns of
France ; the raodern parts, on the contrary,
partaking more of an English style and charac
ter, in the greater width and cleanliness of the
streets, and better construction as well as more
comfortable aspect of the houses.
The majority of the streets, however, as well
of Montreal as of Quebec, are dark, gloomy,
and narrow ; rauch of their sombre effect arising

TIN ROOFS— FIRES. 53
frora the dark-grey stone whereof the houses
and edifices are built. The glittering tin roofs
by which these are surmounted, afford some little
relief to the general monotony ; but the effect
which they produce upon the eye when the sun is
shining brightly on them, is very distressing, and
when thereto is added the reflexion of the solar
rays frora the snow, the sight has to undergo a
trying ordeal.
A very scenic effect is produced by the agency
of these tin roofs, if a fire (as is frequently the case)
chance to take place at night in the winter season.
Their glitter, in corabination with the lurid
glare of the flames, relieved by the surrounding
snow, and a clear blue moon-lit sky, completes
a tableau perfectly unique, such as it is well
worth your while, how cold soever may be the
temperature, to start frora your bed to witness.
But, in Montreal, there are two special prac
tices, which serve to disturb you in your bed
without offering you any induceraent to quit it,
and break your rest for nothing-
The first is the incessant claraour of a bell,
swinging in an old isolated turret, near the Ca-

54 CHARIVARI.
tholic cathedral, the n-ugce canorce, of which,
while serving to summon the faithful to their
devotions, inflict a purgatorial punishraent on
all other hearers.
The second practice is incident to the occa
sion of a widow or widower being rash enough
to re-enter the state of matrimony. When the
fact becomes known, the young men of the town,
disguising theraselves in masks and the most
grotesque attire, proceed on horseback, in large
parties, to the dwelling of the happy couple,
which they encompass, and forthwith greet its
inmates and the whole neighbourhood with the
most hideous noises produced by the agency of
all sorts of instruments of discord.
This superior sort of marrow-bones-and-clea-
ver performance is termed a charivari, and
takes place at all hours of the night. It has for
its object the levying of a pecuniary tax on the
victims it selects, to be applied to some cha
ritable purpose. If the parties come forward
voluntarily and liberally they are exempt from
further annoyance, but otherwise they are sub
jected to an indefinite repetition of the serenade.

QUEBEC AND MONTREAL. 55
at the will of their tormentors, who eventually
succeed, in nine cases out of ten, in exacting the
required tribute. Serious rows have sometiraes
resulted from these nocturnal celebrations, and
the interposition of the authorities has occa
sionally been necessary.
The practice, I believe, is a corruption of an
old French local custom, on the occasion of
second marriages, when (as I have understood)
the bride and bridegroom were compelled to
keep open house for a certain number of days,
and to feast, ad libitum, all coraers of their own
sphere of life.
The signs of progression and of stationary
habits are no where raore strikingly conspicuous
than at Quebec and Montreal ; and no where,
perhaps, are domestic contrasts of almost every
kind exhibited in more varied shapes.
Side by side are seen the modern commercial
store and the ancient secluded convent. Here
appears the harbour enlivened by an array of Bri
tish shipping ; there, the lingering remnants of
primitive inactive life. Jostling each other on the
narrow causeway, or grouped in the wider square

56 DOMESTIC CONTRASTS.
or market-place are the red-coated soldier of
England and the cowled priest of France ; the
antiquated habitant of the country in his home
spun suit of grey, and the spruce denizen of the
town attired in the latest European fashion ; the
swarthy Aborigine of the soil, enveloped in his
blanket, with his squaw carrying her papoose at
her back (the little creature not always exhibit
ing in lineament a purity of race), and the British
artisan or labourer in his peculiar garb ; while,
to crown the whole, the alternate sound of two
conflicting languages, breaking on your ear at
every step you take, leaves you momentarily
undecided as to whether you be not in sorae pro
vincial town of France or England; the first
impression, moreover, being strengthened by the
general appearance of the streets and houses ; and
the last, by the British designation of many of
the thoroughfares and the preponderance of Bri
tish names along their line of frontage.
Upon the whole, and notwithstanding the
greater severity of climate, I should give the
preference to Quebec, over Montreal, as a place
of fixed residence ; though, in a positive sense.

• TONE OF SOCIETY. 57
neither city holds out any allurements to a person
who has been accustomed to a metropolitan life
in Europe ; and as to means of intellectual en
joyment, there are few or none.
The general tone of society is decidedly
higher at Quebec than at Montreal: a fact
which raay probably be accounted for, by the
forraer having been so long the seat of govern
raent, and the great railitary station ; as also,
perhaps, in sorae measure, by the circumstance
that a more remote position has caused the habits
and raanners of the people to be less imbued
with the characteristic roughness of the neigh
bouring Republicans.
This taint becomes, indeed, raore sensibly ap
parent in proportion as you advance up the
country from Montreal ; and by the time you
reach Upper Canada, you may not, in respect
of language and behaviour, unaptly fancy your
self as being within the confines of the States.
Let any one, for instance, who has had the mis
fortune to sojourn for a day at Cornwall, or
at Prescott, say if I be not borne out in this con
clusion ; while in various parts of the country
d3

58 QUEBEC CATHEDRAL. *
you hear just as much " guessing," " calcu
lating," and " bowing," (the execrable interro
gation for what) and encounter just as much ex
pectoration, and other repulsive habits, as you
can possibly raeet with in the New England
States theraselves.
Next to the Cape and Citadel, the object at
Quebec which raost fixed my attention was the
Catholic Cathedral on the market-place, or
rather I should say the interior of it ; the com
pactness and style of which I thought infinitely
superior to its more aspiring rival at Montreal.
The gilded roof and ornaments within the
Quebec Cathedral, combined with the general
antique appearance which pervades the whole
interior, imparted to the scene when I visited it,
towards the close of a fine autumnal day, an
effect which an artist would have been delighted
to reproduce on canvas. There was about the
place a refinement, an unpretending sanctity, a
subdued tone of piety, forming a combination,
though wholly undefinable, yet appealing at
once to the feelings and inducing involuntary rae
ditation. On the occasion raentioned, propriety

. NATURAL SCENERY. 59
was not outraged by extortionate deraands for
the privilege of seeing what every one possesses
an inherent right to see, the enforcement of which
tribute at the shrine of mamraon forras, in
exclusive England, a feature of such hideous
prorainence; but ingress to the Cathedral was
quite as free and unirapeded as at any of the
sacred edifices of continental Europe.
For some miles below Quebec the country is
extremely picturesque, but further on, it be
comes, though majestically grand, rude, wild,
and barren ; exhibiting a series of bold precipi
tous rocks, rapid torrents, and uncultivated
plains ; and offering, in fact, few or no attractions
to the settler, or even to the tourist. The beau
tiful Falls of Montmorenci, about nine miles
below the city, are a constant object of attrac
tion to the inhabitants of Quebec ; pic-nic par
ties in the summer, and sleighing parties in
the winter, being frequently forraed to visit
them. Between Quebec and Montreal, the scenery
itself along both lines of parallel, exhibits no
thing of a particular character, the country being
alraost one continuous flat, the general mono-

60 CANADIAN VILLAGES.
tony whereof is relieved only at wide intervals
on the south shore, by the outlines of a few
widely scattered mountains seen dimly in the
distance. Nevertheless, the almost unbroken
line of villages fringing either side of the St.
Lawrence, alraost down to the water's edge, is
not without its charm, and lends a grace to the
noble streaim, fully equal in its kind to that im
parted to the Rhine by its castellated towers ;
to the Thames by the sweet domesticity of its
scenery and villas ; or to the Hudson by its raa
jestic highlands — its gorgeous array of wooded
banks and variegated foliage.
To a stranger unacquainted with the sta
tionary, unimproving habits of the French Ca
nadian peasantry, the appearance of these neat
looking villages would indicate a rauch raore
advanced stage of progress than in reality exists;
while the fact is that, for the raost part, they are
but the screen to a coraparatively empty space
beyond, extending as they do only a very little
way inland. This is especially the case on both
shores upwards, as far as the confluence on the
southern side, of the waters of the Richelieu
with those of the St. Lawrence; when the two

RICHELIEU DISTRICT. 61
streams, diverging from each other, in the same
manner that water is seen to separate when
striking on a point, leave between thera a
gradually increasing triangular space of very
considerable dimensions at the base, which is
probably the best cultivated part of Lower
Canada, and forras indeed its granary. Alraost
every village, or settlement, within this district
bears a saintly appellation ; but the patrons or
patronesses seemingly exercise, in one sense, but
little salutary influence over the minds of their
devotees, who are as notoriously fertile of dis
affection as is of grain (despite of a barbarous
raode of husbandry) the soil they cultivate.
North of Montreal, and extending to the lake
of the two raountains, the country is tolerably
well cultivated, as it is also from Montreal up
wards to the borders of Upper Canada; and
the scenery, when divested of its wintry dress
(which qualification must be considered as of
general application to any descriptions I raay
attempt), is in some parts very striking and pic
turesque, though quite dissimilar in character to
the European style.

62 MODES OF HUSBANDRY.
Scattered throughout the settled districts, are
farmers of British origin, who have gradually
introduced the raost iraproved methods of culti
vating their lands, which may at once be readily
distinguished from those of their French Cana
dian brethren by their very superior degree of
fertility and general condition. In sorae few
cases, the French Canadians have followed the
good example set them, but they are too much
the slaves of prejudice and habit to persevere
in such imitations. Forraerly, I am told, the
French Canadian farmers were in the habit of
throwing the dung yielded by their cattle into
the river, instead of using it as manure, and raany
of them continue the practice to the present
day. The country surrounding Montreal, and ex
tending far beyond the confines of the island,
when seen on a fine day from the summit of
the high mountain just behind the city, and
from which the latter takes its name, presents
a tableau which would be unsurpassed, both
in loveliness and grandeur, were it only diver.
sified by hill and mountain, of both of which

VIEW FROM MONTREAL. 63
it is wholly devoid. Here, you see the noble
St. Lawrence, winding majestically amidst
its numerous, deep-wooded islands; there, its
worthy tributary, the Ottawa, half-encircling
in its embrace the fair island, on whose highest
point you stand; beneath you, the populous city
with its tin roofs glittering in the sun ; before,
behind, and around you, as far as the eye can
reach, fields teeming with verdure and vegetable
life, the whole agreeably interspersed with rural
villages and hamlets.
Yet how sadly has this smiling picture of
peace and plenty been marred on two occasions
by the headstrong folly and perversion of those
who were insensible to the manifold blessings
they were in effect enjoying ! Free from taxa
tion; unrestricted in their religious worship ; de
void of those cares and anxieties which weigh
down the European peasant ; and reaping, in
fine, the full fruit oftheir industry; to the full
extent the antiquated laws of their blind idol
atry will permit.
I know of no condition of life, where mere ani
mal comfort constitutes the desideratum, more en-

64 STATE OF SOCIETY.
viable than that uniformly enjoyed by the French
Canadian peasantry until they mistook their posi
tion and gave the rein to the latent passions which
had been insidiously awakened in them ; and a
close observer of their condition would at once
liave been struck with the conviction, that if they
lacked any portion of happiness or prosperity, the
cause lay entirely in their own want of energy,
and not in any oppression practised towards
them by their rulers.
Arriving in Canada with only the average
stock of knowledge in regard to the country and
its inhabitants, which the generality of English
men possess, I had much to learn before I could
attempt to form judgments upon points that in
vited my attention. I was aware that dissensions
of sorae standing among its inhabitants had had
the effect of arresting its prosperity, by impe
ding the development of its natural resources ;
but I had yet to discover the precise nature of
those dissensions; their proximate or reraote
causes, and the incentives or secondary causes
which contributed to perpetuate their existence.
The result of my inquiry, undertaken from

CAUSES OF DISSENSION. 65
a spirit of curiosity and a habit of investigation,
rather than frora any specially defined object at the
time, was to trace, at a very early period, the dis
cord which I witnessed to a single source ; that
source being no other than, what a far abler pen
than mine has emphatically described it, the
collision of two distinctive races of people.
This discovery filled me with the greater re
gret, because on a prima facie view, it seemed
to preclude the expectation that the evil, after so
long a growth, could be remedied otherwise than
by measures of coercion, which, however justi
fiable they might be, would not the less tear
the outward serablance of oppression. I soon
further ascertained, that the line of deraarcation
which separated the British and French portions
of the population, w,as not raerely political in its
character, but that it involved as complete a
severment of all social relations between the two
parties as could possibly be defined.
I was grieved at the last consideration on ray
own account ; for having passed some years of
ray life in France, and imbibed a sort of predi
lection for good French society, I had antici-

66 TOWN POPULATION.
pated much pleasure from again mixing in it,
even at second-hand ; conceiving, as I did, and
not unnaturally, that the better classes of the
French Canadians, however they might lack the
polish and refinement of European members of
their race, would be at least free from many of
their prevailing vices, and would exhibit, as a
consequence of a more primitive condition, some
of the better qualities which characterized the
French of the olden tirae.
I found, however, that the French Canadian
inhabitants of the towns, taken as a body, were
very far frora answering to ray beau ideal. It
was not difficult to see that the minds of far too
many of them, the rising male generation in par
ticular, were impregnated with the most vicious
principles, unredeemed by such virtues as could
alone counteract their effects, nor to perceive
that these were daily acquiring strength.
Though the cause at first appeared ambiguous,
this circumstance was in a great measure satis
factorily explained to my mind, when I learned
that the majority of the young men, designed by
their parents for professions, were sent to France

VICIOUS EDUCATION. 67
to coraplete their education ; and that the study
of English, as compared with French literature,
occupied but a very slender portion either of
*heir time or their attention. I should be sorry
to be understood as reflecting, by implication,
in the foregoing remarks, on the seminary at
Montreal, since I believe that institution to be,
though susceptible of much beneficial remodel
ling, a very commendable one ; and I have wit
nessed examinations within its walls which would
have done credit to raany European establish
ments of a higher standing.
Had proper measures been taken at the con
quest of the colony, to insiire in it the supre
macy of the English language — a measure which
wopld have been rendered justifiable, by the fact
of the French inhabitants becoming thenceforth
British subjects — the result, we raay be well
assured, would have been widely different.
The influence of language upon mind — of
mind upon habit — of habit upon conduct — needs
no illustration. A variety of harmless raeans
might have been devised for disseminating the
use of the English tongue among the great body

68 ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
of the people, so as to cause it imperceptibly,
but surely, to supersede in time the prevailing
idiom. But what do we see at the expiration of
eighty years' occupancy of the country ? A par
tial knowledge of the English language, confined
almost exclusively to the French Canadians of
the towns, and the great raass of the habitans
unable, in nine cases out of ten, to understand
you if you address thera in it !
The employment of the English language in
all judicial, legislative, and executive proceed
ings, and in all public records; the establishment
of schools, eleraentary and normal, wherein it
should be taught to the rising generation ; the
gratuitous distribution of English eleraentary
books; the frequent introduction of British
Catholics among the priesthood ; and, in fine,
the institution of premiums for proficiency,
would have formed, conjointly, a combination of
means highly conducive to the attainment of the
end in question.
Who that is alike conversant with the two
idioms, will venture to gainsay the assertion, that
since the period of the first French Revolution,

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE. 69
the literature of England, defective though in
many respects it be, is immeasurably superior to
the contemporaneous literature of France, not
only in its degree, variety, and general merits,
but, above all, in point of moral tone, correct
sentiment, and genuineness of feeling .''
Let us suppose then, as the result of the course
of proceeding herein-before suggested, the French
Canadian population to have been imbued during
*
the last fifty years with such a literature as that
just mentioned, in lieu of the one, its very
opposite, they have in effect cherished: is it ha
zarding too rauch to say, that we should have
found thera in regard to moral culture, and hence
in regard to a sense of moral duty, as affecting
attachment to British institutions, a very diffe
rent race of people? or that the substitution of
the one course of study for the other, would
have given insensibly to the general current of
their thoughts an entirely new direction? In
stead of seeing, as now, the mass of the French
Canadian youth perusing with avidity the level
ling doctrines, the false sentiraent, the revolting
depravity, the gross obscenity, which collectively

70 NEGLECT OF EDUCATION.
Stain the pages of so much of the French litera
ture of the age, we should have found them pos
sessed of a taste for the more moral productions
ofthe English school, and cultivating that taste
with a similar degree of assiduity to that they
now display in a less ennobling pursuit.
In this laraentable state of things, in a colony
norainally British, but virtually the converse, we
have another glaring instance of the general cul
pable neglect of England, in aU that relates to
the momentous question of popular education;
a neglect which dims the lustre of her otherwise
untarnished grandeur, and renders her alraost
a by-word among nations.
Were it not that neglect in this respect consti
tutes too general a feature in her conduct, we
might not unnaturally conclude that the exhibi
tion of it in Canada formed part and parcel
of the short-sighted policy with which she haS
throughout acted towards that country; as
though, in 'very truth, British statesmen, recoil
ing at the prospect of a remote democracy, should
Canada contain an united people of British
growth and origin, revelled in the hope of being

FALSE POLICY. 7 1
able to rear and to perpetuate, by the unnatural
means employed, an effectual barrier to its pro
gress !
The success of any well-digested scheme to
Anglicise fundamentally the character of the
French Canadians, had the atterapt been made
at an early period, when the raaterials to work
-upon were comparatively of a pliant nature,
cannot now, with propriety, be doubted; how
far, in the present desperate state of the case,
any tardy endeavour to rectify the flagrant error
that has been committed, and to regain lost
vantage-ground, can prove effectual, is quite
another question ; but the atterapt, at any rate,
is still well worth raaking.
In all tiraes and ages it has been the j udicious
policy of nations that have acquired fresh terri
tory by conquest, to assirailate as rauch as pos
sible to their own condition, the people whom
they subjugated. By England alone, in the case
of Lower Canada, has this wise precaution, of
adopting, by degrees, a transferred race to their
altered circumstances, been lost sight of; and
the consequences are now beginning to be felt.

72 AMBIGUOUS TENURE.
Frora the effects, either of the folly or the
recklessness of British statesraen during a long
series of years, the present tenure of Lower
Canada adraits of coraparison with nothing else
than the arraed possession by England in forraer
days, of one of her old. hereditary provinces in
France ; a tenure which exposed her sons to
indiscriminate slaughter and expulsion, whenso
ever the subjugated native should have the oppor
tunity of rising against them, taught as he had
sedulously been, from his earliest years, to regard
them not as fellow^subjects, but as the rank usur
pers of his birthrightj and his oppressors.
There was only this difference between the
respective cases, that in France, neither from
local circumstances nor by moral raeans, could
any perraanent araalgaraation of the two races
possibly be effected ; whereas, in Lower Canada,
there was no such impediraent to contend with,
until England voluntarily placed herself in a
false position, when she raight have shaped at
will the key-stone of a long-enduring arch of
safety. As regards the French Canadian rural popu-

RURAL POPULATION. 73
lation generally, I would say, as the result of
close personal observation of their character,
that, apart from the working of the inherited
feeling of national animosity to the British race,
which rankles raore or less deeply in the breasts
of all, in comraon with their brethren of the
towns, and which is hidden or betrayed, but
never slurabers, just in proportion as it is acted
upon by casual events, they are, in the main, an
orderly, quiet, inoffensive set of people, who
would not of themselves resort to violence, unless
under circumstances of very extrerae provoca
tion ; nor rush into mischief without very strong
appeals being made to their latent prejudices
and passions.
Though lamenting the degrading bigotry and
superstition, inseparable from their state of igno
rance, I have not been the less gratified at ob
serving, in connection therewith, the extreme
propriety of conduct and demeanour which
characterizes them when congregated in their
places of religious worship. I have, however,
occasionally been much amused by the oddities
of some of their rural pastors when holding forth
VOL. I. E

74 RURAL PASTOR.
to them, in the vernacular, from the pulpit; and
who, in their farailiarity of style and diction,
could not have been surpassed by any corres
ponding propounders of Catholicity to rural ears
in even good old Ireland.
I remember, on one very hot Sunday after
noon, strolling into a village church, when the
predicateur, a little short punchy raan, whose
rubicund countenance, just peering from above
the pulpit, exhibited every symptom of an in
herent aversion to Lent, was holding forth with
great vehemence and gesticulation, the perspi
ration running the while copiously down his
cheeks. Having concluded a long peroration, he was
beginning a new sentence, commencing, " Jesu
Chree,'"' (Jesus Christ), " mes enfans, vous
savex;"" when observing the church-door to be
open, which, besides admitting air, also admitted
the noise of some urchins from without, he sud
denly vociferated, "Fermex cette porte la, que — "
From his manner I really apprehended he was
going to add "diable,"" but he left the sentence
unfinished, and resumed his discourse with " Vous

DROLL SCENE. 75
savex, mes enfans, que Jesus Christ a voulu —
avoulu,je vous dis." He had now, however,
either from the interruption or the heat, or from
the corabination of both causes, quite lost the
thread of his discourse, and could evidently pro
ceed no further; whereupon, far from being-
abashed, he took out his snuff-box, still pro
nouncing, with a pause between almost every
letter, the words " Jesu Chree; " helped himself
to a lengthened pinch; deliberately raised his
small black tonsor; wiped his reverend face and
forehead, and exclairaed with the utmost simpli-
cityof manner, looking very complacently around
him, " // fait bien chaud, mes enfans.'"'' The
whole scene was inexpressibly ludicrous. The
perfect ease and nonchalance of the preacher;
his strange appearance ; the mixture of the holy
with the profane ; the singular conclusion; but,
above all, the reiteration of the Saviour's name in
association with the snuff-box, so played in com
bination upon ray risible propensities, that I was
compelled, in the excess of my heresy, abruptly
to quit the church, convulsed with inward laugh
ter; though, to their credit, and to my shame, be
e2

76 SENTIMENTS OF HABITANS.
it said, not a smile moved the muscles of the fea
tures of a single meraber ofthe Catholic auditory.
Besides indulging in the practice of seeing
them at their devotions, I have mixed familiarly
with them in their domiciles, and, being able to
converse with them in their ovra language, was
soon upon the best possible footing with thera.
I am satisfied, from the experience both of others
and myself, that had my countrymen in general,
in former times, been more unbending in their
demeanour towards them, and made them feel
less sensitively their inferiority of condition, their
asperities at the present day would have been
at least softened towards us, though, certainly,
nothing short of their complete amalgamation
with the British race could have removed their
inherent antipathies. In proof of the deep-seated
nature of those antipathies, I only need record the
frequent candid avowal of those who entertain
them : "nous vous aimerions, peut-Hre, a la dis
tance, vous autres ; mais nous ne vous aimons
point depress As they had been left the free use
of their own idiom, it was always a point of feel
ing with me (apart from the necessity of doing so.

INDIFFERENCE TO FRANCE. 77
from their general ignorance of English), to ad
dress thera in it, even as I would the poor de
graded Indian, if I knew his tongue; and I have
uniforraly remarked, that it raade all the differ
ence in their reception of you, whether you ad
dressed thera, howsoever courteously in English or
familiarly in French. In ray conversations with
the peasantry of whom I speak, I was at first sur
prised at the want of interest they evinced in re
gard to the land of their ancestors ; but their
indifference may be accounted for by the long
period which has elapsed since the severment of
their political connection with that country.
As the qualification of much that I have said
of their social condition generally, it is right to
observe, that many shades of difference exist be
twixt the various local communities, and that
the leaven of present and future discord has
been gradually instilling itself into the system
of the primeval state of harmony, heretofore pe
culiarly their own, by the dissemination amongst
thera of new tenets and fallacious doctrines by
young raedical practitioners, notaries, and law
yers, who settle in their villages and hamlets,
after completing, as I have already stated, their

78 SHADES OF DIFFERENCE.
studies in France ; or, as is also very frequently
the case, in the United States.
Allowance being made for some exceptions,
the worst portion of the French Canadian pea-
.santry is decidedly to be found along the south
shore of the St. Lawrence, from Beauharnois
downwards to Sorel, and between such length
of shore and the south-east borders of the United
States. Next in degi-ee come those inhabiting
the country within a deep semi-circle, encom
passing three sides of Montreal. Lastly, be
tween Montreal and Quebec, and below the
latter city, are probably to be found the least
contaminated of the French Canadian peasan
try, an impression which is confirraed by the
manner in which they conducted themselves
throughout the respective insurrections; though,
on the other hand, it could not be doubted, if
appearances might be taken as an index, that
had success on either occasion dawned upon
the efforts of their brethren in arms, they would
have thrown off the raask, and risen alraost en
masse. With respect to the British part of the po
pulation of Lower Canada, it is of a very raixed

BRITISH POPULATION. 79
character, the prominent portion of it, however,
being composed of persons who are engaged in
commercial or trading pursuits ; the agricul
turists of British race are comparatively few,
and are thinly scattered throughout the settled
districts ; hence their eootreme danger in times
of popular commotion arising out of national
dissensions. The Eastern Townships, as they
are termed, contain a population essentially
British, though interspersed with some Ame
rican settlers, who have been attracted thither
by the superior fertility of the soil, and the im
proved mode of culture generally practised.
Much of the beef consumed in Montreal is sup
plied from these Townships, and the adjacent
State of Vermont, and it is of a far superior
quality to that brought to market by the French
Canadian farraers, who, in general, give them
selves very little trouble about grazing, or im
proving their breed of cattle. Corn is the
staple, to the raising of which they devote the
greatest share of their attention, and Jean Bap-
tiste* is always well-content when (first amply
* The sobriquet given to the French Canadians.

80 JEAN BAPTISTE.
supplying his domestic wants) he can exchange
it for Fargent sonnant, as he terms silver
coin, large quantities of which (as paper money
is his aversion), are annually substracted by
him from circulation, to be hoarded as a heir
loom, in old stockings, night-caps, or such-like
purses, within the privacy of his dwelling.
The British population, with a few individual
exceptions, necessarily pull together, because of
their intuitive sense of a comraon danger, from
their being environed by a foreign race, whose
hostility to them is felt to be in grain, and
who, on their part, are influenced by a some
what similar feeling, though certainly without
an equal cause of apprehension. But for these
fears, inducing as they do a mutual repulsion of
the respective bodies, and closely cementing in
theraselves the component eleraents of each, it
is perhaps questionable whether the British po
pulation would not be divided into the sarae
rainute particles of party-difference that cha
racterize their more wrangling brethren in the
Upper Province. In their religious sectarian
ism, they are already pretty much alike, and

MONETARY CRISIS, • 81
are equally prone to polemic strife on points of
religious difference.
The first event worthy of notice that hap
pened in Lower Canada after my arrival, was
the suspension of specie payments by the banks,
at the request of the community, in conse
quence of a similar general suspension through
out the United States, induced by th6 great
coramercial crisis which had taken place there.
This measure, which circumstances rendered un
avoidable, and which the necessity fully justi
fied, being timely resorted to, proved, in a
pecuniary sense, the salvation of the province,
inasmuch as it enabled the banks to support the
comraercial coraraunity at a moment when they
peculiarly stood in need of such assistance.
As I propose, however, to devote specially a
few pages to the subject of banking in Canada,
I shall reserve any further remarks upon it for
a future chapter.
Throughout the summer and auturan of this
eventful year, the public raind had been kept
in an almost constant state of agitation and
alarra, by the proceedings of the leaders of the
e3

82 INCIPIENT SEDITION.
French Canadian party in various parts of the
country, and an apprehension of imrainent but
indefinable danger, was beginning to be univer
saUy entertained. Impunity begetting confi
dence, meetings of the most treasonable cha
racter, which had been at first held secretly at
midnight, were now held unconcealedly in open
day. Public drills, in large bodies, next suc
ceeded ; and these were followed by weekly re
views, which generally took place on the mom
ing of the Sabbath, after the hour of mass.
Throughout Lower Canada the Sabbath is
indeed the grand day, even in peaceful tiraes,
with the French Canadians for the transaction of
business of a public nature ; and strange exhi
bitions take place at the church-door, where, as
the congregations issue frora the edifice, they are
addressed by individuals charged with the duty
of expounding to thera the merits of sheriffs'
sales, and public announcements of every kind.
The agitators of the period availed themselves
ofthis ancient usage to address their willing audi
tories on the palatable topics of virulent abuse of
the British government and people; praise of

DRILL SCENES. 83
the, patriotism and disinterestedness of the im
mortal Papineau ; plans for the advancement in
all earthly prosperity of the incipient " Grande
Nation Canadienne^ whereof the attentive
listeners were represented as choice specimens ;
fierce denunciations against red-coats, accom
panied with insinuations of their wearers find
ing ere long free quarters without rations in the
St. Lawrence ; the whole string of invectives
being wound up with three cheers in favour of
that very public, yet practically unknown per
sonage — Dame Liberty.
Curiosity induced me frequently to visit the
scenes as well of this peculiar oratory as of the
drills, because at both strong points of national
character were constantly elicited. Though the
whole matter was becoming somewhat too serious
to be made a source of amusement, I am bound
to confess, that much of what I witnessed was of
that ludicrous character to make me almost for
get, at the moment, the danger which lurked be
neath it.
Some of the drill scenes, in particular, the
marshalling and arraying of the recruits, and

84 PROGRESS OF SEDITION.
the raanoeuvres practised, were mighty rich ; but
it was not the less evident that the performers
were becoming at each rehearsal more proficient
in their new vocation, and might soon be con
verted into formidable opponents.
. All these proceedings, it was obvious, must
end in something raore than child's play ; and a
doubt naturally suggested itself to the rainds of
many, considering the great numerical dispro
portion between the two respective races, and
the raere handful of troops then in the country,
whether the approaching torrent could be
steraraed. The British inhabitants, however, far from
giving way to despondency, began to see that
their main reliance must be upon themselves, if
they would avoid the dreadful calamity which
their being found unprepared, would entail upon
them and their families.
For a long time, fruitless applications were
made to Lord Gosford, or, as the French Ca
nadians termed him, " Milord Goose-fort," to
sanction the formation of the loyal inhabitants
into corps; nor was it until the eleventh' hour

PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES. 85
that his lordship could be brought to under
stand the real nature of the danger, or to free
entirely Sir John Colborne* from the shackles
in which his relative subordination placed him.
When carte blanche was at length given to Sir
John to act as circurastances might require, he
immediately adopted the most vigorous mea
sures, and the alacrity with which those mea
sures were seconded by the gallant race of men
interested in their promotion, proved how well
they were aware of the difference between the
ostensible and the real objects of the hostile
party. As a measure of precaution, the different banks
of Montreal sent down about this time their
specie to Quebec, for safe-keeping in the citadel.
In the raidst of all this incertitude and con
sternation, not the least expectation either of
American interference in behalf of the insurgents,
or of a simultaneous rising in Upper Canada,
appeared to obtain. If any looked to these con
tingencies, they wisely preserved silence ; for the
promulgation of any fears of this kind — particu-
* Now Lord Seaton.

86 CONDUCT OF PRIESTHOOD,
larly on the latter point, as the people confi
dently looked for aid from the sister province —
would, probably, have been attended, from the
greater degree of depression it would not have
failed to create, with the most fatal conse
quences. One palpable sign of the times, not to be rais
taken, during the progress of the insurrection,
was the waning influence of the Catholic priest
hood over the rainds of their hitherto docile
flocks. Not only did the insurgents treat with
contumely the remonstrances of the pastors to
whose injunctions they had before been blindly
subservient, but intimated to them, in many
cases, that their interference might be attended
with peril to theraselves. This, however, so far
from acting deterringly on the clergy, stimulated
them to renewed exertion ; for they knew and
felt their interest as a body to be identified with
the maintenance • of British authority, which
alone secured them in their possessions ; while,
on the other hand, they were no less sensible
that were the chain of their raoral influence once
broken, the success of their countryraen must

THEIR POSITION. 87
entail upon thera the sarae ruin and devastation
that overwhelmed the clergy in France during
the first revolution there. Just in proportion
therefore, as they became sensible of the real
nature of their position, so did they direct their
efforts to check the progress of the insurrection ;
and upon the whole they succeeded marvellously,
considering the powerful re-action with which
they had to contend.
There were, nevertheless, many cases of defec
tion in their own ranks, as was strikingly exem
plified in the respective instances of the parish
priests, who were found corabating on the side of
the insurgents at St. Charles and St. Eustache;
but, taken as a body, the French Canadian
Catholic clergy remained ostensibly faithful
to their allegiance ; and, under such circum
stances, it is scarcely worth while to inquire how
far their national sympathies might have been
enlisted on the other side, had not their personal
interests been at stake.
It would be, at best, a doubtful advantage to
the French Canadians to emancipate themselves
by forcible means from their present religious

88 APPROACH OF DANGER.
thraldom, without being first prepared for the
rational enjoyment of such freedom, by an en
lightened course of education.
An incidental occurrence, which took place on
the 6th of November, brought preraaturely to a
crisis the disease I have been describing, and
precipitated the designs of the French Canadian
party, who had intended to defer their execution
until the navigation of the St. Lawrence should
be fairly closed.
The day in question had been fixed upon by
the rival parties each to assemble, and afterwards
to walk in procession through the streets; of course
with the object of a rautual exhibition of nume
rical strength.
Justlv apprehending that the peace of the
city would be endangered by such a proceeding,
the local magistracy issued a proclamation, warn
ing the inhabitants generally to remain at home,
and exacted privately from the leaders of either
party a promise that they would exercise their
influence to prevent the proposed assemblage.
This promise, the British, on their part, faith
fully adhered to, and their efforts were successful;

HOSTILE ATTITUDES. 89
but the French Canadians either violated theirs,
or were ill-obeyed ; since, in the course of the
afternoon, a body of about two hundred of their
partizans, raostly carrying sticks, converged,
frora various quarters of the town, towards a
tavern, situated between St. Paul's and Saint
James's Streets, which run parallel, and having
in its rear a large stable- yard with gates opening
on the latter thoroughfare, the best and widest
in Montreal.
In this yard they congregated, and, according
to the reports of strangers who got araongst them,
harangues, surpassing all former treasonable
displays, were uttered, and a resort to violence,
though not on that occasion, more strongly than
ever recommended.
Whilst this was going on, some members of
the British party, incensed at the violation of
the pledge given in the morning, planted them
selves in front and rear of the meeting-place,
and parading the Union-jack, with jeers and
shouts, defied the would-be Romans to issue
forth. This, the latter abstained for a long time
from doing, as the number of their besiegers

90 STREET ROW.
(though not exceeding at the utmost fifty men
and boys,) had been so magnified, that they
were filled with a very terror; and, according
to all accouftts, so far were they from manifest
ing anything like warlike ardour, that their only
anxiety was to get safe home.
The house in which I resided nearly faced
the entrance to the stable-yard, so that I could
witness in safety all that was passing ; hence,
being struck with the extreme folly of our people,
who were by no means justified in interfering,
and who, even otherwise, were too feeble to
resist should they be assailed, I reraarked to a
friend who was standing at the window with me,
that they would surely have cause to repent their
temerity. I had scarcely uttered the words, when a loud
shout was raised, and presently, uttering hide
ous yells, out-rushed the besieged, who had now
learned how few were their challengers, into the
open space before me, which they cleared in a
twinkling, striking right and left with their
sticks. By this time, my friend and I had gone down

CONFLICT. 91
to secure the street-door, but before doing so,
we half-opened it, whereupon admittance was
implored by several of the fugitives, and of
course granted to them, one of the individuals
so sheltered just escaping a blow aimed at him
with a heavy bludgeon, by one of his pursuers.
On resuming my station at the window, I
found that the assailants had made a halt, and
were conferring as to their further proceedings,
sentries being placed at the corners of the cross
streets, branching right and left, and hurling
down them an incessant shower of stones.
Never did I gaze on such an infuriated band
of ruffians, and, raaking allowance for the diffe
rence of attire, their whole appearance and de
meanour might not unaptly realize our concep
tion of what must have been in reality the scenic-
represented followers of Masaniello. Never
theless, it was quite evident that, although elate
with their petty triuraph, they were very uneasy
at the position in which they had placed them
selves, and I ara quite satisfied from the blended
expression of their countenances, betraying as
they did both fierceness and anxiety, that they

92 INSURGENT LEADER.
found it necessary to lash themselves into a state
of furious excitement, in order to subdue their
fears, and would have been right glad to escape
without doing further battle.
That they had anticipated the possibility of
having at least to act upon the defensive, was
apparent in the first instance, from the majority
of them being armed with sticks, and had any
doubt remained on this point, it would now have
been reraoved, as weapons of a more deadly cha
racter began to display themselves, and I
observed, in particular, one ferocious-looking
fellow to draw from a side-pocket a most formid
able two-edged knife, full twelve or fifteen inches
long. Their chief leader was a very fine young man,
naraed Desrivieres, a clerk in the Banque du
Peuple, who deported himself in a manner that
would have graced a nobler cause, and whose
example certainly went far to inspire his cora
rades with a temporary confidence. From their
excited state, it required the utraost efforts, both
of hiraself and others, to marshal them in any
thing like order.

RENEWED CONFLICT. 93
After much wavering and indecision as to
whether they should keep together or scatter,
they at length decided on the forraer course, and,
screwing their courage once more to the sticking
place, raised another shout, and rushed tumul
tuously up the street towards the Place d'Armes,
clearing all before them, and burling destruc
tive missiles at the windows of obnoxious indi
viduals. On reaching the Place, they were encountered
by a reinforcement of the British party, which,
on the first defeat, had been summoned to the
rescue, and a general m^lie ensued, during
which much severe punishment was inflicted on
both sides, though happily no lives were lost.
Both parties claimed the victory on this occasion,
and perhaps with equal justice: the French
Canadians succeeding in getting home in small
parties down the numerous cross streets, not
withstanding the attempt to intercept them ; and
the British reraaining in possession of the scene
of conflict, which it was evidently not the object
of their opponents to retain.
The self-styled " Doric Club," an unautho-

94 GOOD OUT OF EVIL.
rized association, whose acts were sometimes
intemperate, claimed to itself the whole merit
attaching to this ambiguous, and at best ignoble,
triumph, with no greater justice, that I could
ever learn, than that a few of its members
chanced to be present.
I must not be understood as seeking, in these
remarks, to extenuate in any way the conduct
of the French Canadian party. On the contrary,
I consider it to have been highly culpable ;
though that of their opponents was, in the flrst
instance, assuredly no less so.
From never having seen a faithful version of
this affair, I have been induced to be thus par
ticular in my account of it ; and as I was a
passive spectator of the whole of the proceedings,
from first to last (having followed the rush
which took place up the street), I trust that
my statement may be at least considered an im
partial one.
Viewed in the light, that out of evil frequently
comes good, the occurrence in question cannot
certainly be regretted, inasmuch as it hastened,
by effect, the advent of an impending mischief

PRINTING PRESS DESTROYED. 95
whilst there existed greater means of counteract
ing it. ,
After the dispersion of the insurgents to their
horaes, some corapanies of the Royals, which had
been called out in anticipation of further distur
bances, were distributed in various parts of the
town, and reraained picquetted throughout the
night ; but their more active services were hap
pily not needed. Prior to their appearance, the
British party, elate with the result of the past
contest, had proceeded to the printing-office of
the " Vindicator" newspaper, a most seditious
journal, edited by the notorious Dr. O'CaUaghan,
where they destroyed the whole of the type and
printing apparatus; the building itself narrowly
escaping demohtion.
The troops, however, prevented the corarais
sion of further mischief of this nature, and saved
M. Papineau's house from destruction, towards
which the British were hurrying, when they met
the soldiers advancing in double-quick time.
They immediately greeted them with enthu
siastic cheers, and accompanied thera quietly in
their perambulations through the town.

96 TROPHIES.
In the course of the evening, the houses of
several suspicious characters were searched, and
in one of thera was found a seven-barrelled gun,
together with a flag inscribed with a treasonable
device, both of which " signs of the tiraes,"
were of course carried off as trophies.
The news of this day's proceedings spread
like lightning through the country, and the
emeute, being magnified by report into a raighty
battle wherein the French Canadians carae off
victors, was received with acclara ation by the
credulous deluded peasantry, who forthwith pro
ceeded to acts of open violence against the scat
tered British population dwelling on the south
side of the St. Lawrence, and in the country to
the rear of Montreal.
On the other hand, constant arrests were
made by the authorities, both in Montreal and
elsewhere, though in some places it was per
fectly useless to attempt enforcing warrants that
were issued.
A few days after the riot in Montreal, a small
party of volunteer cavalry, whilst escorting from
St. John's a noted rebel who had been captured

DARING RESCUE. 97
there, was daringly attacked within a short dis
tance of Vaudreuil, on the St. Lawrence, by a
considerable body of armed insurgents, who
were lying in ambush in a wood, bordering
the road. The horsemen, being far outnum
bered, were corapelled to abandon their pri
soner and retreat ; raaking, indeed, their escape
with difficulty over the open country, there
closely intersected with barbarous fences.
On learning this occurrence, and that the
whole district of the Richelieu was in a state of
open insurrection. Sir John Colborne deterrained
to strike a decisive blow, by transporting the
bulk of the small military force at his disposal
into the very heart of the rebellious country,
before the contagion should spread to other
quarters ; and he trusted to the great moral
effect to be anticipated from a signal victory, as
a powerful after-auxiliary to his means of pre
serving order.
Hence, he concerted • the plan of operations
which terminated in the respective actions of St-
Denis and St. Charles, although intended to
centre in a combined attack upon the latter place.
VOL. I. F

98 MILITARY OPERATIONS.
Owing as rauch to gross raismanagement as
to the inclemency of the weather and the bad
state of the roads, the detachraent under Colonel
Gore, which, proceeding upwards from Sorel,
was to have effected a junction with the detach
ment under Colonel Wetherall, coming from
Chambly, was, as it is well-known, miserably
repulsed with severe loss, and corapelled to re
treat, leaving Colonel Wetherall to do the best
he could, single-handed. How well the latter
succeeded in the object of his enterprise, as also
in extricating his gallant followers frora the
perilous situation in which they found theraselves
placed, from the failure of the proposed junction,
is hkewise too much a raatter of history to re
quire that I should enlarge upon it here.
The circumstances which marked the return
of the two detachments to Montreal, where they
arrived within a few days' interval of each other,
exhibited a very striking contrast; and never,
perhaps, was defeat or victory more forcibly per
sonified than in these respective cases.
The detachment from St. Denis landed almost
stealthily at night; its men torn, maimed, suffer-

DEFEAT AND VICTORY. 99
ing, and dejected, dragging their weary, be
numbed limbs to the solitude of their barrack,
and seeking to avoid the gaze of even the few
spectators who had assembled on the wharf to
greet them. The detachraent frora St. Charles,
on the contrary, landed in the full blaze of day,
amid all the pomp and raajesty of triuraph;
marching through the town with colours flying,
preceded by its band, and accompanied by a
Jong string of prisoners that had been taken.
Yet were the officers and men of either corps
all equally brave and gallant soldiers. Their re
pulse and their success respectively, were raainly
the result of the imprudence and the foresight
of their two commanders; and no better troops
ever went into action than those who stormed
and carried the Stockade at St. Charles, or those
who dauntlessly, but fruitlessly, assaulted the
stone walls of St. Denis, when worn with the
toil of a long night-march, through terrific wea
ther, half-frozen, and in a state of inanition.
The lights and shades of the two events them
selves, being of this nature, it raay readily be
conceived that the moral effect which they in
r2

100 CONTRASTS OF DEMEANOUR.
turn produced on the minds of the mutually
hostile portions of the community, were quite in
character and keeping.
On the first occasion, for exaraple, dismay was
depicted on the countenances of the British in
habitants — silent joy and incipient triumph on
those of the French Canadians. On the second,
these syraptoras were reversed, the parties chang
ing places ; while the French Canadians who had
not the sarae control as the British over their
eraotions or their passions, raight now be seen, in
groups or singly, scowling hatred and defiance,
shedding tears and wringing their hands, as
though in bitter anguish, or muttering impreca
tions as they went. The women, in particular,
I observed to be deeply affiicted, in consequencej
as I presumed, of their having heard of the loss
of sorae relative or friend in the action, since
many French Canadians of Montreal were known
to have crossed the St. Lawrence for the purpose
of joining the insurgents on the southern side.
During the absence of the troops from Mon
treal, on the desperate service in which they had
been engaged, every possible precaution for in-

MEASURES OF DEFENCE. 101
suring the safety of the city had been taken.
Volunteers performed the whole garrison duty,
maintained an efficient night watch in every
direction, both stationary and by means of
sraall parties of arraed horsemen, who patrolled
the streets at regular intervals. At all the chief
outlets, strong barricades were raised and heavy
ordnance mounted, so as to command the road
leading to the open country, and pieces of light
artillery were kept in readiness, to be served at
any point required at a moment's notice.
In the interregnum between the affairs of
St. Denis and St. Charles, a sort of lull pre
vailed, betokening, in effect, how great was the
hidden danger ; for it was well-known that the
French Canadians in Montreal, in conjunction
with their friends in the vicinity of St. Eustache,
were only awaiting favourable tidings for their
cause from St, Charles, and which to the very
latest moment they confidently expected, to
assault the British inhabitants of the city: a
contingency for which every man among the
latter felt it necessary to prepare himself, and

102 HOPES AND FEARS.
which, he was fully sensible, must involve the
extermination of the one party or the other.
For several days succeeding the disastrous
business at St. Denis, the supremacy of the in
surgents was so far insured as effectually to cut
off any intercourse between the authorities in
Montreal and Colonel Wetherall. Hence, the
anxiety of the British population for the fate
ofthe gallant band under his comraand, was, for
some days, painfully intense, and this tortured
state of feeling was augmented by the reports
constantly promulgated by the opposite party,
that the whole detachraent had been slain, cap
tured, or dispersed,
The impression was now beginning to be very
generally entertained, that, even if this small force
should escape annihilation by retreating on
Montreal, the whole of the south shores of the
St. Lawrence must be abandoned to the will
of the insurgents, and that the troops with
the British population must shut themselves up
in Quebec and Montreal until reinforcements
should arrive. Nor was this an irrational con-

BATTLE OF ST. CHARLES. 103
elusion, considering that a small force of less
than three hundred effective men was encom
passed on all sides by thousands of a hostile
peasantry, imbued with feelings somewhat simi
lar to those which animated the Spanish rural
population against the soldiery of Napoleon:
that is, feelings of the most deadly national ani
mosity, rendered, in this case, the more violent
from having been so long latent and subdued.
But discipline and valour signally overcame
the fearful odds that were opposed to them; and,
by coraraon assent, the invincibility of British
troops, which had been for a moment doubted,
was again fully established.
The decisive business at St. Charles imme
diately re-opened the communication with Mon
treal, and the arrival of the messenger who
brought the intelligence, was hailed by the Bri
tish population with feelings such as I should
vainly endeavour to describe, but which may
be readily iraagined when it is stated, that had
the result been different, Montreal would have
been attacked in force that very night.
The day happened to be Sunday, and at

104 NEWS OF VICTORY.
the moment when the steam-boat, having on
board the messenger, reached the wharf, the
different edifices of public worship were pouring
forth their congregations. The animated scene
which ensued, all parties being alike eager, I
have still vividly before me. A general rush
was made down the narrow streets which lead
from the Rue Notre Dame and the Place d'Armes
to the wharf, but long before the fact itself was
generally promulgated, loud and long-repeated
cheers from the British had announced to the
panic-stricken French Canadians the destruction
of their hopes and expectations.
As shewing the nature of the feeling which
prevailed among the better class of that party, I
will relate part of a conversation which I chanced
to overhear, on my way home from the wharf,
on the day in question, between an elderly lady
and gentleman, the former of whom was standing
at an open window, eagerly interrogating the
latter as to the nature of the news.
" Et les troupes sont done victorieuses?" said
the querist .
"Helas! oui," replied her companion.

CONVERSATION FRANCAISE. 105
" St. Charles pris, dites vous ?""
"Non seulement pris, a ce qu'on pretend, mais
brule — detruit, enfin ! "
" Que sont devenus nos gens ?"
"La plupart tuee ou prisonniere— le reste
epars et en fuite!"
"Dieude dieu!" exclaimed the old lady, wring
ing her hands ; "quelles horreurs que vous me
racontez la! que ferons-nous? que deviendrons-
nous ? "
"Faut esperer," replied her companion, shrug
ging his shoulders, and looking as resigned as he
could ; which expression, with its significant
enforcement, I readily interpreted to imply,
" better luck next time ! "
The splendid achievement of Colonel Wether
all had for the time so effectually broken the
spirits of the French Canadians throughout the
Richelieu district, that Colonel Gore, at the
head of a second detachment, was placed in a
condition to traverse it, not only without en
countering the least resistance, but receiving
every where the unqualified submission of the
habitans.
F 3

106 LIEUTENANT WEIR.
In the course of this expedition, the body of
the unfortunate Lieutenant Weir was discovered,
whose cruel murder, as my readers will remember,
formed a striking episode of the previous cam
paign. It was conveyed to Montreal for inter
ment, the ceremony of which was rendered most
imposing by the presence, as mourners, not only
of alraost all the troops in garrison, but of the
majority of the ward and volunteer corapanies,
all carrying their arms, and forming a grand
funeral procession of several thousand men,
amongst whom I enrolled myself, a humble unit ;
though the cold was so intense that I could with
difficulty hold my musket, and felt fairly terapted,
as did many others their's, to cast it away.
It was a truly affecting spectacle to see almost
the entire male British population, of every
rank and age, thus voluntarily turning out to
pay the last tribute of respect to the unfortunate
young officer then bome before them to his last
resting-place. The scene, too, was interesting
from its novelty and the peculiarity of the asso
ciations connected with it. The burial-place lay
in the Quebec suburb, extending towards the

MILITARY FUNERAL. 107
open country. Fancy, then, the appearance,
towards the twilight of a Canadian winter's day,
when all was hushed around you, save the soleran
railitary requiem, of a body of men four deep,
and several thousand in number, brought out in
strong dark relief against the pure white surface
they were traversing in solemn funeral proces
sion, with arms reversed ! Embody in your
raind a picture of this kind, and you will have
sorae faint outline of the appearance of the throng
which followed to the grave the remains of poor
Lieutenant Weir, whose savage murderer, though
long in custody, has not expiated his offence.
I have no doubt that the sight I have at
terapted to describe, produced upon such of the
French Canadians as witnessed it, — ^and there
were many present, — a very sensible effect ; since,
being themselves great respecters of religious ob
servances, they must have been deeply irapressed
with the solemnity of this ; while, on the other
hand, the formidable array of armed men must
have exercised on them a salutary influence not
easily to be shaken off.
The subsequent expedition of Sir John Col-

108 MACKENZIE'S OUTBREAK.
borne, against St. Eustache, which proved in all
respects successful, completed the subjugation
of the insurgents, so auspiciously begun by Col.
Wetherall, and effectually removed all present
ground of apprehension on the part of the loyal
population. For a short account of that expe-
tion, I cannot, perhaps, do better than refer my
readers to the first part of Captain Marryatt's
lately published " Diary in America," as em
bodying, in relation to it, the leading points of
interest. At this period, I chanced to be on my way to
the Upper Province, and, simultaneously with
"the news of the signal victory which had been
gained, I heard, not, I must own, without sur
prise, of a partial insurrection, which had well-
nigh proyed successful, having broken out in the
environs of Toronto, and that the situation of
the country rendered further travelling unsafe.
Inured, however, by this time, to perils similar
to those predicted, I was not to be deterred from
the prosecution ofmy journey; and, accordingly,
first procuring weapons of defence, I proceeded
onward, reaching Kingston without further

IMMERSION. 109
disaster than that of an immersion through the
ice at St. Ann's, after a successful attempt to res
cue my luggage, which had preceded me in essay
ing the temperature of the water.
Though all was saved, everything, even to
my papers, was completely saturated, and then
frozen on exposure to the air ; while I, also a
frozen mass, was constrained to return to the
little village I had lately quitted, where, on
seeking refuge in the inn which gave me wel
come, I of course became once more a drip
ping body pending the operations of thawing
before the fire and disrobing, which last I did
not unnecessarily delay. "Discomforts such as
these, however, are trifles light as air, viewed in
comparison with the greater mishaps one gene
raUy encounters in the progress of a Canadian
long winter journey ; particularly at the com
mencement, or at the close of the season, when
the roads are adapted neither for wheeling nor
sleighing, and the ice is as about as treacherous
as the smiles of a coquette.
But a more dangerous period still for travers
ing the St, Lawrence, is when the ice, fairly

1 10 PERILOUS NAVIGATION,
broken up, is floating down it, frequently in
large fields, and mostly in fragments very dan
gerous to the navigator.
On such occasions, the passage is performed
in canoes, worked with paddles, and at the bot
tom of which you are often constrained to pros
trate yourself in order to avoid capsizing, or
sometiraes to incur the risk of leaping from the
canoe upon a piece of floating ice, (to the con
sternation of a cluster of wild-ducks which you
thence dislodge), and trusting to the chance of
your after salvation.
Having once an urgent necessity to traverse
the stream at this particular period, I embarked
in one of the frail conveyances I have mentioned ;
but I had well nigh paid dearly for my temerity,
and received a lesson which, while it would deter
me from repeating the experiment, warrants me
in recommending no one to hazard it who sets
any value on his life.
As regards the second insurrection, that of
November 1838, which broke out in Lower Ca
nada, I need only observe that, varying locali
ties and dates, it resembled in its leading features

SECOND INSURRECTION. Ill
that which had preceded it ; excepting only that
the rising was on a soraewhat larger scale, the
plan of operations raore raatured, though equally
defective, and the means of aggression more for
midable, but productive on both sides of less
loss of life.
The insurgents, after comraitting many acts
of wanton cruelty and destruction on the per
sons and property of the isolated British inhabi
tants, during the brief interval they were enabled
to maintain theraselves in arras, were, at first,
repulsed at all points, by the gallant conduct of
the volunteers and regular troops ; being finally
dispersed at Stanstead, their head-quarters,
where they had assembled in considerable num
bers, by the mere approach of Sir John Col
borne at the head of his disposable force.
This second rising had been confidently pre
dicted, long before its actual occurrence, by all
who were impressed with the conviction that
deep-seated incurable national animosity, rather
than mere political grievance, was the sole origi
nating cause of the first outbreak. Of this num
ber I was always one, and I saw and heard

112 INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS.
enough on re- visiting Lower Canada for a short
space, in the course of the suraraer, to convince
me, that on the approach of winter, the scenes of
the former one would be fully re-enacted.
A few reflexions here naturally suggest them
selves as to the causes, proximate or remote, of
the lamentable state of things I have been en
deavouring to portray.
It has been the lot ofthe French Canadian
peasantry to be made the fulcrum of a lever
poised for their own ambitious but short-sighted
views by a few designing, unprincipled indivi
duals, possessing local influence, and supported
by the countenance given to their proceedings by
a set of men in England, to whose opinions an
undue importance was attached, but who either
did not understand the merits of the cause they
advocated, or wilfully distorted its every feature
for raere party purposes. The ready handle to
this lever has been alone, the latent national ani-
raosities of an otherwise inert mass of huraan
beings, whose anti-British prejudices and feelings,
unable to withstand the violent inflammatory ap
peals made to them, have been roused for the time

INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS. Il3
into a state of dangerous activity, and left with a
susceptibility whose keenness cannot be allayed
either by mildness or coercion, and which can
only be gradually obliterated by the physical
preponderance of a British population, in a ratio
sirailar to that of a moral character at present so
strongly marked between the two races.
The doctrine that power rests of right with the
majority is a rule which, however arbitrary in
its general application, yet admits of marked
exceptions; and in no case, perhaps, that the
records of history might furnish, has the neces
sity of acting on the exception rather than the
rule, been more strikingly exemplified than it has
in the case of Lower Canada.
It is only on an hypothesis which the modern
great human family repudiates, namely, the subjec
tion of the moral to the physical, that the preten
sions of the French Canadians to unqualified su
premacy in Lower Canada can be at all establish
ed. Their mere numerical superiority does not in
vest them, as they have been taught to believe,
with the supremacy they claira ; because, in
effect, it is unaccorapanied by a corresponding

114 INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS.
or even a proportionate degree of moral excel
lence, which could alone exalt the social condi
tion; and still less by accumulated wealth, so
indispensable an element of progressive improve
raent. The real question to be considered has always
appeared to me to rest on this simple issue : either
Great Britain is the rightful possessor of Lower
Canada or she is not. That she is so, cannot be
disputed so long as the tenure of conquest, con
firraed by treaty, continue to be recognized by
nations as a legal title of investiture. Hence, it
must be obvious, that so long as the British part
of the population be desirous to preserve the ex
isting connexion with England, or so long as, by
mutual assent, the maintenance of British supre
macy be requisite for the attainment of a com
mon end, namely, — the perpetuation of British
institutions, — ^whatsoever in the colony is, per
se, anti-British, is of necessity inimical to its in
terests ; because such causes act as direct irape
diraents to the proraotion of its prosperity, by
retarding the development of its resources.
Let rae not be understood by these remarks as

INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS. 1 16
arguing, by implication, the removal of obstacles
of this nature by coercive raeasures. The remedy
I would suggest is the gradual adaptation of a
hostile race of men to the altered state of things
around them ; the primary element of which
change must be (if not too late for the experi
ment to succeed) an extensive immigration.
If we come to the abstract question of the right
of occupancy, founded on priority of claim, we
shall find that the French Canadians themselves
are just as much usurpers as those whora they
are desirous to expel ; and that, on this ground
of argument, the territory must revert to the
aborigines, or poor despoiled Indians.
The insurrection that has twice broken out in
Lower Canada, and been twice timely sup
pressed, is too strongly marked with a distinc
tive character to admit of doubt, that it has its
origin in the gerra of national antipathy, which,
sown at the conquest, has acquired strength,
vigour, and intensity in its growth, just -in pro
portion as it has been acted on by outward in
fluences, and that (in the words of Lord Dur
ham) as regards the present generation, it ab-

116 INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS.
sorbs every better feeling, and is wholly irradica-
ble. If at all justifiable, the insurrection of the
French Canadians would have been as much so
at any given period within the last eighty years
as it is now, or would probably be eighty years
henceforward !
The question may perhaps be asked, why if
nationality, and not raere incidental dissatisfac
tion arising from political causes, were the main
spring of action of the French Canadians, they
never before attempted to achieve their inde^
pendence." The answer to such inquiry is a
ready one. Before their minds were so strongly
impregnated with the pernicious doctrines incul
cated by those whom of late years they have
recognized as their legitimate leaders, as to in
duce them to indulge their present day-dream,
that they possess the wherewithal to " set up for
themselves" as an independent people, they felt
that their alternatives lay between remaining
under the dominion of Great Britain, or be
coming incorporated with the United States;
and they have preferred the former as the lesser
evil, if for no better reason than that they were

INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS. 117
already accustomed to the one, and knew nothing
practically of the other. Hence, they reraained
passive, and this interested passiveness has been
mistaken for loyalty by those whose knowledge
of human nature should have taught them better
things. Again, the danger of their being dis
placed, as the aborigines had been by them, by
a succeeding race, if apparent to thera, was yet
not imminent ; or, it might be, that, estimating
the progress of others by their own, they conceiv
ed, having the start, that they should be always
able to maintain the preponderance in point of
numbers, which with them was, and still is, every
thing. Latterly, however, this fancied security
gave way to fear ; the hated Saxon population,
despite of every attempt to check it, was fast
treading on their heels, and must in tirae over
take them ; while this powerful incentive being
applied to the already kindled flame of their
ingrain feeling of hostility, served but to spread
the conflagration.
Their error has consisted in arrogating to
themselves a right which they do not possess,
founded on the abstract question of their distinc-

118 INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS.
tive race and origin, and in believing that nume
rical superiority was, of itself, more than an
equivalent for the want of moral strength.
To suppose that they could maintain them
selves as a people, independent either of Great
Britain or the United States, has been the
greatest of all their delusions, except the belief
that the American citizens would help thera in
the furtherance of their immediate objects from
disinterested motives. Their separation from
England would, in fact, only accelerate the period
when they should become merged in the great
Saxon family, and be, politically speaking, alto
gether lost sight of as a distinctive race of people ;
whereas, the continuance of their connexion with
England for a further series of .years would en
able them to adapt themselves and their posterity
to this their unalterable destiny. Prior to the
closing scene of their political existence, Yankee
syrapathy would have dealt strangely with their
privileges ; their possessions would have passed
into other hands, and they would have become
literally " hewers of wood, and drawers of water."
The bondage imposed by the Egyptian would
have been light to theirs.

INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS. 119
In the intensity of their desire to gratify the
feeling of hatred which animates them against
the British name and race, they strangely lose
sight of the evil consequences which their very
success would entail upon thera. That such
should, however, be the case, is scarcely sur
prising, considering the nature of the all-ab
sorbing feeling in which they allow themselves to
indulge; as also the truth, which experience
teaches, that communities, like individuals, are
but too apt to forego a prospective good for the
gratification of a present desire, involving a
mingled feeling of hatred and revenge.
Yet, for these desolating consequences as of
late exhibited in Lower Canada, is the British
nation itself far raore to blarae than are the
French Canadians.
They have been left a nationality, quite dis
tinctive from that imposed by their change of
condition, and this has been fostered, with a
degree of infatuation almost incredible, by the
very parties who now express surprise and com
plaint that it should have a tendency to produce
the effects we witness. Inconsistency carried to

120 INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS.
such a length amounts to positive cruelty, and
would justly recoil upon its promoters were it
not that the question at issue now involves the
interests of third parties, who are wholly guilt
less. Viewing the matter, as for reason's sake
we are bound to view it, in this light, we have,
strictly speaking, no right to accuse the French
Canadians of disloyalty, since we have neg
lected to plant in them the seed which should
produce the converse feeling. The French
Canadian argues thus: — " My allegiance," he
says, " being a forced one, I owe you no fealty,
and hold myself justified in seeking to throw off
your dorainion, whensoever I raay see an oppor
tunity of succeeding in my object. If you can
keep me down, I cannot of course help myself,
and must submit ; but be assured, that the least
laxity on your part will be the signal for my
rising against you." Hence it follows, that
resistance to British rule assumes in his eyes the
character of a virtue, and not a crime. We may
accuse them of ingratitude, but that is all: we
cannot rationally hope to see them what our
safety requires that they should be, unless we

INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS. 121
sedulously ingraft upon their nature the elements
of conversion: — we cannot otherwise do justice
either to them, or to ourselves.
Let, then, even at this eleventh hour, the task
be undertaken. Let it be considered that, apart
frora political objects, the exclusive clairas of the
French Canadians are powerfully counterbalanced
by the claims of the British portion of the popu
lation to be insured a permanent position on the
soil of their birth, or which they have adopted
as their country, on the strength of the belief they
have been allowed to entertain during three-
fourths of a century, that they planted thera
selves and their posterity, not in a foreign land,
of which they raight one day be dispossessed
by its natives, but on a part of the British terri
tory. Without the entire sacrifice of this part of
the population, forraing, as it does, nearly one-
third part of the whole in point of numbers, and
a vast raajority in point of raoral capacity and
wealth, the control of the affairs of Lower
Canada could not be conceded to the French
Canadians any more than it could be to the
VOL. I. G

122 INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS.
Native Indians, if these were to prefer a claim
similar in effect.
In a word, the integrity of the nation, no less
than the welfare and safety of the British inha
bitants, and of the French Canadians them
selves, imperatively requires that, without the
exercise of the least cruelty or oppression, the
latter should be kept under (speaking in a
political sense) until, by means of immigration,
all numerical disparity between the two races
shall have ceased, and, further resistance being
thence hopeless, a gradual amalgamation shall
be effected between them by the all-powerful
medium of education.
The object to be attained is not a temporary,
but a permanent one ; it is nothing less than the
perpetuation of the British race existing on that
section of the North American Continent, where
it is vitally essential, as I shall endeavour here
after to show, to the welfare of Great Britain
herself, to consolidate British institutions ; or,
rather, perhaps, the spirit which animates them,
and operates as a means of improving the con
dition of the whole human race.

INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS. 123
In comparison with such an object, the extinc
tion on British soil, of a state of things repre
senting the semi-barbarism which existed in the
provinces of France a century ago, cannot surely
be a cause of regret ; or the prejudices of a peo
ple bent on preserving an obsolete nationality,
repudiated by the spirit of the age, and by the
spread of enlightenment around them, be allowed,
in the estimation of any reflecting person, to
weigh as a feather against the argument of adap
tation hereinbefore advocated.
Independent of the other primary means sug
gested, naraely, immigration and education,
for operating this important change, the aboli
tion on equitable terras of the feudal tenure,
(of which, more hereafter,) and the train of in
congruities it involves, is a raost essential aux
iliary, and, even as an abstract raeasure, would be •
imperatively called for.
To conclude, the French Canadians having,
by their late recourse to violence, justly for
feited every title to a continuance of the exclu
sive privileges, which, whether by a false rea
soning, a false humanity, or a false policy, they
o2

124 INCIDENTAL REFLEXIONS.
have been heretofore considered to possess, have
themselves offered to the British Nation the
opportunity of doing with them that which
should have been done when they first became
British subjects — adapting their condition to
our own; and we may be assured that the last
and only chance of repairing the original error
has now presented itself.
I propose to offer a few concluding remarks on
this interesting and important subject, in a future
chapter, embodying sorae reflexions on the ques
tion of the Legislative Union, and other matters
therewith crainected.

125

CHAPTEH IV.
Kingston. — Mackenzie's Outbreak. — Repeated false
Alarms. — Series of Invasions. — Affair of Hickory
Island. — Consternation ofthe Kingstonians thereat. —
Conversation with an old Indian Warrior. — Destruc
tion of the British steam-boat Sir Robert Peel. — Fur
ther Irruptions into the Province. — Mission of the
Earl of Durham. — American Conspiracy against Ca
nada. — Hunters' Association. — Invasions at Prescott
and Windsor. — ^Result thereof. — Final Disposal of the
Prisoners. — Remarkable Events of 1839.
Kingston, the chief naval depot of Upper
Canada, is a pleasantly situated little town of
sorae four or five thousand inhabitants, and pos
sesses, in point of locality, raany natural advan
tages. The social attractions of the place itself
are pretty much upon a par with those of To
ronto, hereafter to be described ; but its habits
are essentially of the unprogressive order, and it
reposes soraewhat too complacently on its assumed
dignity to be otherwise than stationary.
Upon an erainence across the bay stands Fort
Henry, which coramands the approaches by the

126 KINGSTON.
river, and also the town itself, in every direction.
As a military station, Kingston is one of some
importance, and by further artificial means might
readily be converted into a very strong position,
being in a great measure the key to Lake On
tario. It is nearly equi-distant from Toronto
and Montreal, or about one hundred and eighty
miles from either. In its general appearance it
much resembles a large English village, but is
somewhat stragglingly built, though possesiing
in its fashionable parts some very substantial
houses. It is in the neighbourhood of Kingston that
the Provincial Penitentiary has been erected ; an
establishment which, generally pretty well stocked
with inmate3, is conducted on much the same
principle as the state prison at Auburn, in the
United States ; that is, the prisoners are allowed
to work in each other's company, but not to con
verse together.
Among the minor characteristics of Kingston,
I must not omit to mention the endless outndoor
squabbles of its pigs and dogs, both of which
domestic animals infest the streets in shoals; and

PIGS AND DOGS. 127
are as great a nuisance as dogs alone are said to
be at Constantinople. A ruthless war is waged
by the canine upon the swinish multitude, and,
as these have a peculiar way of acknowledging
such courtesies, the effect of the din of voices in
discordant eloquence, may readily be conceived.
In Toronto, the case is merely varied ; there,
dogs and cows, in lieu of dogs and pigs, are
seen in deadly contest ; the tortured cows being
driven about the streets in every direction by
their tormentors.
On reaching Kingston, about the middle of
December 1837, I found the inhabitants labour
ing, as might naturally have been expected, un>-
der the greatest degree of excitement and alarm
at the political events which had taken place ;
the usually quiet, sanctimonious little town ap
pearing, in effect, to be completely shaken out
of its propriety.
Men, arming hastily, were enrolling thera
selves in corps to raeet they knew not what: a
danger raenaced them which they could not
grapple, because of their inability to define it:
almost every one regarded his neighbour, or the

128 MACKENZIE'S OUTBREAK.
comrade at his side, with a feeling of distrust, as
though he were a rebel in disguise, and more
ready to turn his weapon against him, should
occasion offer, than to wield it in his defence.
The general zeal and alacrity displayed were
praiseworthy in the extrerae, but the false alarras
were endless, producing sometiraes . very ludi
crous effects upon the minds and actions of dif
ferent individuals.
It is,, and ever must be, a very questionable
matter, whether even the success which crowned
the • tardy effort to arrest Mackenzie's treason
able proceedings, justified the extrerae hazard, of
allowing them to terrainate in open insurrec
tion. The real peril incurred by this result, was the
exhibition to the American citizens of a state of
things which sound policy would have stu
diously laboured to withhold frora thera ; for, if
the portal admitting a pretext for their interfe
rence were once^ opened, there was no foretelling
how long it raight be kept ajar.
Looking, therefore, beyond mere local cir
cumstances, the experiraent of invoking a dan-

THOUGHTS THEREON. 129
ger by tolerating it, for the sake of proving that
it could be repelled, was soraewhat an unneces
sarily gratuitous one ; nor did there apparently
exist any greater cause in the then condition of
Upper Canada than there exists at the present
moraent, to warrant the conclusion that it needed
the very searching test of loyalty applied to it.
If, as appears to have been the case, a settled
conviction were felt by the Executive, that the
province was sound at heart, the reduction of
such conviction to a physical illustration, was
clearly a work of supererogation ; and, if a con
trary opinion were entertained, the issue should
have been equally avoided, for reasons too palpa
ble to require explanation.
The true course of action seeraed to lie in the
suppression of sedition or treason, wheresoever
tangible, before either should have tirae to ma
nifest itself in acts of open violence, which could
only be quelled at the price of popular com
motion for the time being, with the contingent
remainder of still more serious evils.
The elements of civil strife in Upper Canada,
as compared with those of the Lower Province,
g3

130 MACKENZIE'S OUTBREAK.
lay (and still lie) less at the core than at the
surface ; and not partaking of the national in
veteracy with which these were surcharged, were
not likely of themselves alone to lead to similar
results. Excrescences, heretofore apparent upon the
social system of the province, still disfigure it ;
but honesty of purpose would not seek to lop
them jvith the knife of insurrection, when their
removal, as is obvious, raight be effected by the
persevering eraployment of milder means.
For these reasons, and considering the com
paratively few who participated in it, it is diffi
cult to identify Mackenzie's outbreak with the
people's cause. Its object could not have been
what it professed to be, the redress of grievasnces,
or it must have proved more popular. It can
only, therefore, be regarded as part and parcel
of the one great political design since gradually
developed, and yet in progress of development,
for subverting British institutions on the North
Araerican continent, and whereof the secret rami
fications doubtless extend far beyond the confines
of Canada.

THOUGHTS THEREON. 131
As qualifying, however, in some degree, the
opinion thus recorded, that the outbreak of
December 1837 was essentially the offspring of
political machinations, rather than of irradicable
intestine venora, I must also express my convic
tion, founded on close personal observation on
the spot, that there existed and exists, on the
part of all moderate men, in the province, an
extreme sensitiveness in regard to many long-
controverted points of domestic policy, out of
which the semblance of insurrection, ostensibly
to effect their solution, may at any time be
created by designing incJividuals intent on the
promotion of their own objects. Hence, then,
the extreme danger of not at once foreclosing all
outstanding questions at issue: in regard to
which, I have no hesitation in declaring as my
conscientious belief that, if there be one string
of the whole instrument more susceptible than
another of being attuned to the note of mischief,
a partial, or an indefinitely deferred settleraent
of the clergy reserves' difficulty, will prove such.
Incidental references to this latter subject will
be found in other parts of the present work.

132 MACKENZIE'S OUTBREAK.
But, though seeking an opportunity to raise
the standard of rebellion, whereof the ready
handle should be the redress of grievances, it
admits of very serious question, whether the re
volutionary faction, headed by Mackenzie, could
have found one, had a preventive and precau
tionary, rather than a chastening, course of
policy been pursued by the government. At
all events, a very strong impression pervades
many well-informed rainds in Canada, that Mac
kenzie and his followers would not have hazarded
the hostilities they comraenced, desirous as they
were to create events which should invite co
operation from without, had not the defenceless
condition of Toronto, on which they had not
calculated, stimulated them to iramediate action.
It is admitted on all hands, that had Macken
zie displayed the same degree of courage in con
ducting, as he had shewn boldness in conceiving
the enterprise on which he entered, Toronto
must inevitably have fallen into his hands, and
the province, consequently, have submitted to
his dictation ; because all after-opposition would
have been over-awed by the hordes of Ameri-

THOUGHTS THEREON, 13S
cans who, in this case, would have assuredly
rushed to his support.
On this hypothesis, a false appearance would
have been given to the outbreak, baffling all
atterapts to define its real character ; since, in
addition to the whole body of the provincial raal-
contents themselves, numbers, howsoever adverse
to the new state of things, would have neverthe
less adhered to the triumphant party, under the
influence either of tiraidity or interest. In a
word, the whole destinies of Upper Canada would
have been reversed by the capture of Toronto ;
and, avowedly, it was the result of the merest
chance, and not of tact or foresight, on the piart
of the Executive, that a catastrophe was averted,
which need never have been risked.
After fortunately losing, by vacillation and
delay, the advantages which, unfortunately, they
might easily have acquired by vigour, the in
surgents became at once panic-stricken and dis
pirited ; scattering, like sheep, after a brief show
of resistance, on the approach of their antago
nists, or yielding themselves passively into their
hands.

134 HARD TIMES.
Yet it was by such men that the lasting mis
chief, before adverted to, might readily have
been committed !
I have been told by eye-witnesses that the
battle of Gallows' Hill, as the running fight on
Youge Street is termed, combined in an emi
nent degree the painful with the ludicrous, and
was replete with associations of the most anoma
lous description.
Pending these occurrences, extending over
some continuous days, Toronto is said to have
been subjected to the greatest privations for the
want of general provisions, the country people
being deterred from bringing their produce to
market, in their uncertainty as to whether it
were safe to do so. Tea appears to have been
the chief sustenance of the inhabitants in this
emergency ; and those families which were known
to have by thera small edible stores, were im
portuned by others, less fortunate, for a share of
them. An acquaintance of my own informed
me that, by dint of hard begging, he obtained
from one party a joint of meat, from another
a loaf of bread, and from a third some other

MACKENZIE'S OBJECTS. 135
article ; which several contributions to his ne
cessities he could not, after all, entirely mono
polize. Though foiled in his immediate object, Mac
kenzie effectually attained his ulterior one, by
inducing an aspect of affairs, which, while creat
ing a false sympathy on the part of the_ Ameri
can citizens at large, furnished a reckless portion
of them with a specious pretext for hastening
to the relief of an apparently oppressed people^
amongst whora an openly precarious and un
settled state of things was now induced.
The shock iraparted to the whole social fabric
in Upper Canada, by Mackenzie's outbreak, had
not subsided when the aid of the loyal inhabi
tants was invoked to repel the foreign invasions
it had engendered. How nobly they responded
to the call, and how well they performed their
duty, are too much matters of history to require
that I should do more than advert to them as
connecting links in my narrative.
It is difficult to conceive that the majority of
the people believed that the economical reforms
they needed and desired, were unattainable, save

136 NAVY ISLAND.
through the process of a change of political
institutions, when on two several occasions
they are seen voluntarily strangling the oppor
tunities incidently afforded them of remodel
ling their condition according to their alleged
wishes. »
The invasion of Navy Island by a body
of raen, chiefly Araerican citizens, arraed and
equiped in the United States, followed by the
cutting out and destruction of the Araerican
steara-boat " Caroline, " and the wanton attack
made on the little town of Amherstburg by the
notorious Theller, which ended in the capture of
hiraself and his vessel, forraed the next series of
exciting political occurrences that happened, and
that while producing the greatest irritation along
the two opposite lines of frontier, laid the founda
tion of the harassing system of border outrage
by Araericans, which has since been periodically
pursued. During the occupancy of the island by the
invaders, the usual monotony of Kingston was
somewhat enlivened by the passage through it
of such troops as could now be spared from

SERIES OF ATTACKS. 137
Lower Canada, to assist in the operations going
on at Chippewa, for the dislodgment of the
enemy from his position.
This consummation, however, when effected,
left but little respite or repose, since, towards
the end of February and beginning of March, a
series of invasions took place, on various parts of
the whole line of frontier, extending from Michi
gan to Vermont. These invasions intended,
but failing to be simultaneously operative on the
22d of February, in coraraeraoration of the
birth-day of Washington, who, had he been
alive, raust have blushed for such a raode of
celebration, coraraenced preraaturely at Potton
and other places on the frontiers of the eastern
townships in Lower Canada, and were continued
on the day in question, at Hickory Island, a
few railes below Kingston ; at Point Abirio,
near Fort Erie and the western locks of the
Welland canal, a few days afterwards; at Fight
ing, or Turkey Island, a narrow slip of land
between Sandwich and Amherstburg, on the 25th
of February; and at Point-au-Pele Island, in
Lake Erie, on the 2d of March.

138 THIRTY-SECOND REGIMENT.
The whole of these nefarious enterprises were
successfully repelled; but, unfortunately, on
the last occasion, not without a lamentable
sacrifice on the part of the British, no less
than thirty, out of about one hundred men,
of the gallant 32d Regiraent, who charged
and defeated about five times their number,
being put hors de combat by a murderous fire
of riflery from their antagonists, who were shel
tered behind a breast- work, formed of accumu
lated snow and ice.
To the credit of the Upper Canadians be it
said, a liberal subscription was got up at To
ronto for the wounded soldiers who survived
this disaster, and the majority of whom were
maimed for life.
I shall not easily forget the dismay which pre
vailed amongst the Kingstonians, when news
arrived that a body of from four hundred to five
hundred marauders had encamped on Hickory
Island, nearly opposite Gananoque, and were to
march that night on Kingston, where they ex
pected to be joined hy a body of malcontents,
from the heart ofa partially disaffected township.

DEFENCE OF KINGSTON, 139
a few miles off ; and that, in the event of suc
cess crowning the undertaking, the town was to
be given up to plunder, and every enormity
committed. Plate, money, jewels, and other valuables,
together with the specie belonging to the local
bank, were hastily collected, and lodged,^ for
greater security, in the fort. A town-guard,
erabodying every man capable of bearing arms
(as far as the supply of the latter would adrait),
was hastily enrolled ; the little garrison of the
fort reinforced; the town barrack, wherein some
militia were quartered, doubly guarded; and,
in fine, every precaution taken that the shortness
of the time rendered practicable ; succour being
furthermore solicited from the environs.
As night approached, the general anxiety be
came very great, and anticipation was excited to
the uttermost by the propagation of surmises
and reports, regarding the progress of the enemy's
movements. Comparing small things with great, the scene
and preparation might possibly have borne some
analogy with what is represented to have taken

140 LENGTHENED VISAGES.
place at Bruxelles on the eve of the battle of
Waterloo, when the French were reported to be
within a few houi-s' march.
To know friends from enemies in the confusion
of a nocturnal conflict, the defenders of the town
were enjoined to bind round their caps, as a
badge of recognition, a strip of white linen.
Candour compels me to add, without the least
disparagement to ' the valour of any, that in
raany cases the adornraent appeared to be super
fluous ; since the paleness of the lengthened vi
sages beneath it would have fairly borne the palm
frora the whitest linen that was ever bleached.
I know not how far this remark might have
been exeraplified in ray own individuality, but
I had at least a sort of right to look woe-begone,
inasmuch as my only weapon of defence or of
fence was a half-rusty sabre, alike guiltless of
edge, point, or sheath (I believe it had a han
dle), which was all I had been able to secure in
the general scramble which took place for arms.
Perambulating the town in the course of the
evening, I fell in with a gentleraan of ray ac
quaintance, who, armed to the teeth, was huri-y-

EXPECTATION. 141
ing to his quarters to prepare, he said,/or action,
since positive inforraation had just been received
by the commandant, that the redoubted enemy
was actually on his march, and would reach
Kingston by eleven o'clock at latest.
This was sufficiently precise, even for a non-
alarmist, which I professed to be; so, leaving
the streets to their solitude, I returned to my
abode, there to await patiently the issue of events.
Eleven o'clock came — twelve — one — but still
no eneray made his appearance; whereupon,
becoming drowsy, I gaye up watching, and,
regardless of what might happen, lay down to
rest, though without disrobing, or parting with
ray trusty sword.
My readers will here naturally conclude that
ray repose was of short duration, and that I
have yet in store for them the description of a
stirring scene of strife. But no . such thing.
Unbroken were ray slurabers throughout the
night; and on awaking the next raorning it was
to learn, not that an attack had been made and
foiled, but that the enemy had effectually belied
the reports of the previous evening, by decamp-

142 MISCHIEF AVERTED.
ing from Hickory Island without even attempting
an invasion of the main-land, on ascertaining the
measures which had been taken to give him a
warm reception, as well at Gananoque as at
Kingston. That mischief was averted by the show of
preparation made, cannot reasonably be doubted;
but it is no less certain that the means of aggres
sion of the marauders had been greatly exagge
rated, though it was satisfactorily established
that they had confederates within the town,
which had, furthermore, recently been entered by
persons from the back country, under very sus
picious circurastances.
It is probable that the enemy calculated on
surprising and firing the town, with the view to
plunder it ; in which case, in the midst of the
confusion, he might have succeeded in carrying
off his booty. But he could have scarcely hoped
to maintain himself in his position without first
making himself master of Fort Henry, a task of
no slight difficulty. It was, indeed, said that
defection reigned araong its garrison, Consisting
chiefly of railitia; but this, appearing to rest

BRIGAND CHIEF. 143
rather on surmise than proof, obtained but little
credit. A few stragglers, together with some travellers
who had been detained by the marauders, when
on their way across the ice, were found upon the
island by a detachment sent from Gananoque to
explore it at break of day ; and a very arausing
account of the incidents attending their captivity,
was given by one of the travellers in question, a
gentleman of much intelligence and respectability.
It appeared from his stateraent, that the effec
tive force at the disposal of General Van Ran-
selaaer, who commanded the party, had been at
first tolerably respectable in point of numbers,
but that his men, over whom he had no control,
gradually dwindled off as the time for active
operations approached, leaving hira, at last, with
barely a hundred followers.
He observed that Van Ranselaaer's arras and
accoutrements were very rich, and that he played
the general to perfection. Both he and his com
panions were very civilly treated by their cap
tors, whose sole object in detaining them was to
prevent their giving inforraation.

144 INDIAN WARRIOR.
In the course of the day, a host of hardy
fellows poured into Kingston from the surround
ing country, offering their services as volunteers
to defend the place; but their aid being now
unnecessary, they returned to their homes after
being regaled by the townspeople.
Araong thera were sorae Indians, not, how
ever, such as ray readers- may imagine, with
tomahawk in hand, half-naked bedaubed bodies,
and painted /faces, but armed with rifles, com
fortably clad, and as orderly in their deraeanour
and appearance as any of their white comrades.
One grey-haired old warrior, with whora I
broached a conversation, shrewdly reraarked:
"Whiteman fall out — then send for poor Indian,
whom he call dog, to help him ! What for you
fight.'' Why you not agree and be friend?"
I could not but feel the keen reproach conveyed
in the first part of his speech, but explained to
him, with reference to the latter, that his old
enemies, the Long knives,* wished to get posses
sion of the country, and had therefore leagued
* The designation given by the Indians to the Ameri-

INDIAN WARRIOR. 145
with the disaffected in it to overturn the govern-
raent; and that, as in the event of their success,
the condition of his own people would be rauch
impaired, he had a more direct interest than he
seemed to imagine in coming forward in the way
he had.
He said he had not before thought of that,
but would consider ray " words," and it was
quite evident from his manner, that he now viewed
the matter in a new light. We parted the best
friends imaginable, but he could with difficulty
be induced to accept the piece of silver coin
which I proffered to him in testimony of ray
regard. The summary herein-before given of the nota
ble Hickory Island affair, will serve as a striking
speciraen of the very harassing life to which the
border Canadians have been subjected for a
lengthened period, and it is this consideration
which has raainly induced rae to place on record
the minute details of the occurrence.
Subsequently thereto, nothing further (except
ing the assumption of the government, by Sir
George Arthur, and the departure of Sir Francis
VOL. I. H

146 FLAGRANT OUTRAGE.
Head, on the 23d of March,) of a political na
ture transpired during the winter, and on the
opening of the navigation towards the raiddle of
April, the danger was no longer imminent, as
the facilities for crossing were diminished, though
threats of further aggression continued tobe held
out : nor were they uttered in vain.
On the night of the 30th of May, a body of
armed ruffians, from the American shore, forcibly
seized and burned to the water's edge, the British
steam-boat Sir Robert Peel, whilst that vessel
was taking in fuel at an island of the St. Law
rence, lying within the jurisdiction of the Re
public. Before consummating their outragej
they well pillaged both the boat and passengers,
subjecting the latter, among whom were several
highly respectable females, to the most cruel
treatment, by leaving them exposed to the keen
night air, with scarcely any covering or shelter,
on the barren island where they were turned
adrift. Fortunately for them, they were rescued
from their painful situation early the next morn
ing, by an American steamer, whose captainkindly
diverged from his course to carry them over to
Kingston.

CLAIMS FOR REDRESS. 147
For this wanton outrage, comraitted avowedly
in a spirit of revenge for the destruction of the
steara-boat Caroline, and forraing, assuredly,
part and parcel of a systematic crusade by Ame
rican citizens against the peace and liberties of
Canada, no redress, as far as I am aware, has
yet been afforded to the sufferers by the Ame
rican government, or demanded of it on their
behalf, by the Government of Great Britain,
notwithstanding their repeated urgent solicita
tions to the latter to such effect.
This just and reasonable deraand for repara
tion has hitherto been met by the British Go
vernraent with the evasion, that the aggressors
must first be sued in the courts of the United
States by the parties interested; and a deraand
made upon the United States' government, in the
event only of justice being by this means unob
tainable. The farce of the mode of procedure suggested
is so palpable, that the applicants will not adopt
it ; for well they know the impossibility of
insuring the identification of the marauders (all
of whom wore masks on the occasfcn) ; while
h2

148 INVASIONS.
they are no less sensible that, even were they
identified, no practical result could foUow, so
long as the sympathies of American judges, law
yers, and jurors, be enlisted, as notoriously they
are, with the popularwill, against the least repara
tion being made for losses sustained by the Cana
dians in presumingto resist its practical operation.
Towards the end of 1839, when I left Canada,
this matter remained unadjusted ; and there
seemed but little prospect of any efficient raea
sures being taken to ensure redress. The delay
bears heavily on the sufferers, whose united claims
are said to amount to upwards of d&17,000;
whereof about three-fourths would accrue to the
owners of the vessel and the remainder to the
passengers. This occurrence preceded, only by a few days,
a fresh invasion of the province, as well on the
Niagara as on the extreme Westem frontier op
posite to Detroit ; the former being known as
the affair of the Short Hills, from a ridge of sand
banks so called situate in the Niagara district.
At first, this invasion threatened to prove
formidable^ less, however, as usual, from the

EXECUTION. 149
number of the invaders than because of a tran
sient success which they obtained in capturing
a small body of provincial cavalry, which they
surprised in quarters, and compelled to surrender
by firing the building.
But, fortunately, before they had time to profit
by the panic they had created, so as to gather
round their standard any considerable number
of recruits — the only thing which can render
invasions of this sort truly formidable — they
were theraselves surprised and dispersed into
the surrounding swamps by a small detachment
of troops hastily collected. Several, among
whom was Moreau, or Morow, their leader, were
subsequently tracked and brought in by the
Indians of the neighbourhood, who needed but
little incitement to undertake the duty.
Morow was tried and executed shortly after
wards; the sheriff of ^e district being within an
ace of having personally to perform, if not ac
tuaUy performing, the loathsome duties of an exe
cutioner.* * I speak from memory alone as to the precise result ;
but at any rate, the utmost difficulty was experienced in
procuring a hangman.

150 SUMMARY OF CONVICTIONS.
The lives of the remaining culprits were
spared; the worst amongst them undergoing the
commuted punishment of transportation.
According to official statements, the aggregate
number of persons accused of participation in
the insurrection, or of treasonable offences, be
tween the Sth of December 1837 and the 1st of
November 1838, was 885; of whom 824 were
arrested, and 61 absconded.
The number of individuals convicted by the
tribunals amounted to 216, whose after position
was as under: —
Pardoned, on furnishing security for future
good behaviour  140
Confined in the Provincial Penitentiary .... 14
Banished from the provinces  18
Sentenced to transportation  27
Escaped from confinement  14
Executed*  ,  3
Total 216
Late in May, the Earl of Durhara arrived
at Quebec, to assume the arduous duties of the
mission he had undertaken ; and the occurrences
herein-before detailed were not, certainly, of a
* Lount, Mathews, Morow.

EARL OF DURHAM. 151
nature calculated to impress his Lordship with
the notion that his path would be a smooth one.
Early in July, he proceeded on a tour of in
spection to the Upper Province, where he was
received with every outward demonstration of
honour and respect by all classes of the com
munity, whose conjoint homage was influenced
by as many different motives as there were points
of party difference betwixt them; and thus, whilst
there was much seeraing unaniraity displayed,
there existed, in effect, but little real concord.
But one good end, at least, was answered; that
in speculations for the future, party differences
were for the raoraent laid aside, to be revived
with increased bitterness, or permanently allayed,
in proportion to the wisdom of the after mea
sures that should be adopted.
Passing over the brief interval of Lord Dur
ham's administration of the general government,
I corae to the period when the abrupt termina
tion of his Lordship's mission, resulting from
the factious proceedings which took place in the
British Parliament, respecting his ordinances,
occasioned a general consternation in the public

152 EARL OF DURHAM.
mind, serving as the reaction of the hopes and
expectations which had previously been riaised.
To this was speedily superadded a vague
and undefinable apprehension of impending dan
ger, springing from the promulgation of reports
that a raost extensive conspiracy for a fresh in
vasion of Canada had long been secretly matur
ing in the United States, and was now about to
exhibit itself in its effects.
I do not say, because T do not believe, that
the abrupt termination of the Earl of Durham's
administration was the cause, (beyond, perhaps,
somewhat precipitating them,) of the inelancholy
events which so soon followed it; but I can
state, from positive knowledge, that the general
depression which took place at this critical junc
ture, consequent on Lord Durham's virtual re
call, amounting, in fact, to a sort of stupor, and
hopelessness of further effort at resistance, was
produced as much, nay more, by the obvious
sacrifice of Canadian interests to raere party-
feeling in England, as by the conteraplation of
the threatened perils themselves.
An association of evils, part known, part sur-

GENERAL DESPONDENCY. 153
mised, weighed down the mind of the corarau
nity at large, and inspired it teraporarily with
a doubt of the efficiency of the raeans available
to raeet the crisis, or to repel aggression; while
the very character of the terror, which seemed to
have stricken all indiscriminately, added greatly
to its effect.
There was, besides, a general feeling of dis
satisfaction prevailing on the part of the pro
vincial militia, in consequence of the difficulty
they had experienced, during the previous trou
bles, in procuring an adjustment of their claims
upon the Governraent; mainly from the circum
stance of no deviation being allowed from rules
adapted only to an ordinary state of things, in
the conduct of the business of the public service,
when the peculiar emergence imperatively re
quired that special arrangements should be made
to meet it.
This dissatisfaction of the militia, which ex
hibited itself in a sort of sullen apathy, was pro
ductive at one time of much serious apprehension,
less, however, because it was believed that they
would shrink from the threatened danger when it
H 3

154 PARTIAL REACTION.
should positively face them, than that their appa
rent lukewarmness might cause them to be taken
unawares, and so entail upon the country the
most serious consequences, if the hostile hordes,
who threatened it frora without, could any where
make a stand for. a sufficient period to rally
round thera the provincial raalcontents.
But,; fortunately, between the utterance and
the execution of the threat of invasion, a suffix,
cient interval elapsed to admit of reflection ;
and when it was rightly understood that a gra
tuitous invasion of the province, resulting from
no insurrection in it, concealed an indiscriminate
crusade against life and property, despondency
gave way to indignation on the part of all, save
those who were incurably disaffected towards
British connexion, or who possessed nothing
whereof to be despoiled.
The test now applied was of a personal rather
than, as before, of a political kind, since, undei^
the plausible pretext of the regeneration of Ca
nada, it was apparent that an indiscriminate
plunder of Canadians was conteraplated ; and in
cases where the feeling of loyalty was doubtful.

HUNTERS' ASSOCIATION. 155
it needed a no less powerful incentive than self-
interest to rouse to action raen who were labour
ing under a sense of real or iraaginary griev
ances, as regarded points of local controversy,
and who might, therefore, have remained pas
sively indifferent, had they not been at length
fairly awakened to the real designs of their rapa
cious neighbours.
Though much mystification prevailed regard
ing the conspiracy against Canada, termed the
Hunters' Association, sufficient of it was known,
through the voluntary depositions of individuals,
and through the emissaries employed by the
Canadian government, to satisfy the most incre
dulous, that its ramifications were very tortuous
and extensive, that its resources were very great,
and that it enrolled araongst its raembers many
influential and official persons in the republic.
It was even asserted, that railitary officers high
in comraand in the United States' array, sta
tioned on the northern frontier, were soraething
more than friendly to the " patriot" cause, and,
while seeking to preserve appearances, were de
sirous to make their construction of their public

156 AMERICAN OFFICERS.
duty dovetail as rauch as possible with their
secret views. Of one, it was reported to have
been declared at a " Hunters' Meeting," held at
Lockport, that he was not to be feared by the
" patriots," who, if they had no greater enemy
than he, would get on well enough ; while, of
another, it was confidently stated, that he had
offered to take the coramand of the " patriot"
force, and raarch with it into Canada, provided
that he were first assured of the services of a
certain nuraber of raen, on whom he raight rely
at the fitting moment, and of a certain amount
in raoney. I was rayself assured, by more than
one individual of respectability, while travelling
in the summer of last year through the state of
New York, that no moral doubt existed in the
minds of the border community, that what is
above stated respecting the two officers in ques
tion, was substantially correct; my informants
theraselves fairly ridiculing the credulity of those
who raight think otherwise.
Affirmations were made on oath by various
parties, that the whole number of American
citizens enrolled in this unholy league amounted

EXTENSIVE CONSPIRACY. 157
to no less than 200,000, of whom from 25,000
to 40,000 effective men, including a corps of
600 Kentucky rifleraen, and a body of In
dians, had pledged themselves to march upon
the province, whensoever required. But, judg"
ing by results, allowance must be made for
error or exaggerations in this statement, since
in no case of actual invasion did the ascertained
number of individuals exceed 400 or 500 men ;
though, on the other hand, it must be considered
that these were sent forward as a sort of advanced
guard, to try what number bf Canadians would
be disposed to join thera when once landed in the
province, and that thousands were in readiness
on the opposite shore, to follow thera across the
river, should success attend their first efforts.
By the majority of those concerned in it, there
can be no doubt that this scheme of wholesale
invasion, was held to be infallible ; while large
sums having been actually embarked in it, as a
profitable investment, the result was watched
with intense anxiety, such only as Americans
intent on gain are capable of feeling.
From facts which afterwards transpired, so

158 VIEWS OF CONSPIRATORS.
sanguine would many seem to have been of a
favourable issue to the enterprise, that the father
of one man who had enlisted as a recruit, but
was afterwards prevented, by illness or some
other cause, from marching when required, ac
tuaUy took his place, rather than his son should
forego the advantages anticipated to accrue to
hira from the expedition. That much delusion
was practised on the credulous and inexperienced ;
that raany plunged tete baissee into the scheme
without the least reflection, or misled by a false
enthusiasm; and that the confederates in the
States and the disaffected in Canada were un
consciously deceiving one another, by erroneous
estimates and misplaced reliances, as the time of
action approached, cannot very well be doubted,
even if proof had not been afforded that, to an
extent, such was in reality the case.
Among the more prorainent measures of the
conspirators, were the formal appointraent of
officers to coramand their army ; the nomination
of a president and a vice-president for the pro
posed Canadian republic ; and the promulgation
of the prospectus of an embryo bank, the pro-

PROJECTED BANK. 159
jected capital wliereof, fixed at 7,500,000 dollars,
or £1,687,500 sterling, was to be exclusively
employed in effecting the conquest of Canada,
and reimbursed by the confiscation of Canadian
lands, the holder of so much stock, being enti
tled to its estimated equivalent in land.
The general proceedings of the association
were not conducted with so much secrecy, not
withstanding an affectation of masonic mystifica
tion, but that they occasionally transpired ; and
the following sketch, derived from authentic
sources, will serve to show the mode of initiating
persons to the different degrees of merabership
of the lodges, into which, as in masonry, the as
sociation was, divided, and also the nature of the
so-admitted Hunter's obligation.
Persons about to be initiated as members were
introduced into the lodge blind-folded ; on which
the following oath was administered to them : —
" You swear, in the presence of Almighty God,
that you will not reveal the secret sign of the
snow-shoe to any, not even to the members of the
society. You will not write, print, mark, en
grave, scratch, chalk, or in any conceivable man-

160 HUNTERS' OATH.
ner whatsoever, make the shape or sign of the
snow-shoe to any living being, not even to the
members of this society. You, furthermore,
solemnly swear that you will not reveal any of
the secrets of this society, which may come to
your knowledge, through the president, vice-
president, or hi& cabinet. You, furthermore,
soleranly swear that you will give tiraely notice
to any raeraber or brother, if you know of any
evil, plot, or design, that has been carried on
against hira or the society. You, furthermore,
soleranly swear thai you will render all assistance
in your power, without injuring yourself or
faraily, to any brother or member of this society,
who shall at any tirae raake the sign of distress
to you. You, furtherraore, solemnly swear that
you will attend every raeeting of your lodge, if
you can do so without injury to yourself or fa
mily. This you swear, as you shall answer to
God." The first degree was called the " Snow-shoe "
degree, and had four signs. The test made use of,
upon which most reliance was placed, in case a
stranger should become acquainted with any of

SNOW-SHOE DEGREE. 161
the signs, was that of membership, or the snow-
shoe. Should all other questions have been satis
factorily answered, the person under examina
tion was asked if he had ever seen a snow-shoe,
and required to make such sign upon paper. If
he attempted to raake any representation of it,
he was iraraediately known not to be a member ;
since, as above stated, all were sworn not to
raake that sign.
The first of the signs used in communication,
was to lay the palm of the left hand over the
back of the right, with the fingers of both hands
extended and apart from each other, and then to
let both hands fallcarelessly in front of the body.
The second sign in the snow-shoe degree was
used in shaking hands, when the parties took
the cuff of each other's coat between the finger
and thumb. The third sign consisted in the in
quiry — "Are you a Hunter?" The answer was
the name of the day succeeding the day of the
week on which the question raight be asked. The
fourth sign was lifting the right-hand to the ear,
with the palm in front, and pressing the ear
slightly forward.

162 BEAVER DEGREE.
The signs were answered by the sarae sign, or
by any of the signs.
The second degree was called the " Beaver "
degree; the oath pertaining thereto being — "You
swear, in the presence of Alraighty God, that you
will not reveal the sign of the beaver degree to
any one who is not a raeraber of the sarae degree
with yourself." The sigh of this degree was as
follows : " Do you know the beaver to be an in
dustrious aniraal .''" No answer was made ver
bally, but the left hand was lifted to the mouth
— the palm nearest the face; the fingers were
bent, the fore-finger being placed under the chin,
and the nail of the thumb between the front
teeth, which were closed upon it, to imitate the
action of a beaver gnawing a tree.
The third degree was called the " Master Hun
ter's" degree : the oath belonging to it was sirai
lar to that last-mentioned. .The sign was the
interrogation — " Trouble ? " and the answer
thereto, " Calm :" the right-hand being at the
same time moved from the right to the left side
of the body, the back of the hand upwards, and
the fingers and hand horizontal.

OTHER DEGREES. 163
The fourth degree was called the " Patriot
Hunter" degree : the oath was similar to that
preceding. There were three signs belonging to
it ; the first of which was comprised in the ques
tion — " Do you snuff and chew ?" The answer
was — " I do." At the sarae tirae, if the party
questioned had a snuff-box about him, he took it
out, and made upon it three scratches with his
nail ; but if he had no such article, he put the
thumb of his left-hand into the left pocket of his
waistcoat, and made three scratches with the fin
ger-nail upon the waistcoat. The second sign
was — " Have you any news for me .'" Artswer
— " Some." The third sign of this degree was
the sign of distress. The left-hand was raised,
with the palm forward ; the fingers extended,
but not apart ; the thumb pointing to the coat-
collar. There was a method of gaining admission to
the lodge, exclusive of all these signs. You went
to the door and gave two raps on the outside,
which were answered by two on the inside. You
then gave one rap on the outside, which was an-

164 OBJECTS OF CONSPIRACY.
swered by one on the inside. You then made
three scratches on the outside, and were there
upon admitted.
The first, or "Snow-shoe" degree, was intended
to be universal in the " array" of the self-styled
'' patriots :" the privates took this degree ; the
commissioned officers, two degrees ; the field-
officers, three degrees ; the coraraanders-in-chief,
four or more degrees. The members of the so
ciety, whether enlisted or not, always took four
degrees; but they were only to use the first de
gree in the army, if they enlisted.
The object of the society was stated after the
party initiated had taken the fourth degree, as
also some of the plans and operations ; but the
whole was not communicated except to the grand
masters, coraraanders-in-chief, and others, in
whora implicit confidence was reposed. The
general object of the society or association was
stated to be, " the emancipation of the British
colonies from British thraldom."
The Hunters' signs, as above described, having
been more or less divulged during the winter of

CHANGE OF SIGNS. 165
1838, underwent some changes in the course of
the year following, when a fresh invasion of Ca
nada was in agitation.
The sign of recognition in the States was now
stated to be, the moving of the index-finger of
the right-hand with a circular raotion, acknow
ledged by waving the left-hand. In Canada, the
sarae object was effected by one party putting
either of his hands into his pocket, taking there
frora some change, and saying, "times are easier;"
the answer being, " truly."
In 1839, when a person was initiated into a
lodge, he beheld, after the removal of the ban
dage frora his eyes, a man, having before him
on a table, either a dagger or a pistol, and was
told that such weapon was intended to remind
him of the manner of his death, should he reveal
any secret to the injury of the cause he had
espoused, or of a brother. In 1838, the same
weapons were also laid upon the table, on similar
occasions ; but nothing was then said respecting
them, unless the party was initiated as a "Patriot
Mason," or " Beaver Hunter."
It was indeed said, that several persons had

166 INVASION AT PRESCOTT.
been secretly disposed of, for divulging the secrets
of the association, or giving information respect
ing its proceedings.
The judicious railitary arrangeraents made
by the high railitary authorities, must alone be
considered, humanly speaking, as having saved
Canada at this crisis of its fate. Public confi
dence, before so completely shaken, as to the effi
cacy of the utmost raeans of resistance available,
was thenceforth in some degree restored; andthe
general gloom which had threatened to resolve
itself into a settled despondency, was gradually
dispelled. It would be no easy task to describe the sen
sation produced throughout the province, but
more especially at Toronto (where I was then
residing), by the news of the descent made near
Prescott by a body of armed Americans on the
12th of November. Indignation, however, was
the dominant feeling on the part of all, save
the incurably disaffected, and these were deterred
from any open manifestation of their satisfaction,
by the uncertainty if they yet possessed suffi
cient cause for rejoicing.

/ REPULSE OF INVADERS. 167
With the railitary proceedings incident to this
invasion, I do not propose to detain my readers,
further, than to observe, that the victory of the
British over their opponents, was purchased, con
sidering the numerical superiority of the forraer,
at a very undue rate, the total loss in killed and
wounded amounting to no less than four officers,
and about forty-five rank and file.
The whole number of invaders did not proba
bly exceed at the utmost 250 men, of whom, ac
cording to official statements, 157 were captured,
and about fifty-six killed; the remainder being
unaccounted for, and having probably contrived
to recross the river before the means of retreat
were entirely cut off.
As shewing the spirit by which, in despite of
their still lingering discontent, the Canadian
militia engaged on this occasion were animated,
I may state, on the authority of an officer who
was present, that one man, rushing from the
ranks, and singling out an antagonist, plunged
his bayonet into him, exclaiming, as he did so,
" You  scoundrel, you wanted to rob
me of my farm, did you.'' There; take that in
stead."

168 EXASPERATION OF MILITIA.
So great, indeed, was the exasperation of the
militia, that it is averred they were with diffi-
culty induced to make any prisoners at all; while
it is possible, that, but for the example of for
bearance set them by the regulars, who had not
the same cause of provocation as themselves,
much after trouble would have been saved to
the provincial executive.
While the contest was going on, repeated at
tempts were made to throw over reinforcements
from the American side, but the presence of an
armed British steam-boat in the river frustrated
every attempt of this kind, and compelled the
adventurers to retreat with loss.
The American authorites made, as usual, when
too late to be of service, a show of active inter
ference to thwart the operations of the invaders,
and of course effected nothing; while the popu
lace of Ogdensburg, lining the shore, rent the
air with their shouts and acclamations of encou
ragement to the unhappy beings who had periled
their lives in this desperate undertaking, and who
would doubtless not have ventured on it, had
they supposed they should be left unsupported.

RAGE AT OGDENSBURG. 169
Waggon-loads of men who were ready to take
part in the affray, carae pouring into Ogdensburg
from all parts of the adjacent country, and these
individuals were frantic with rage, in common
with the townspeople at large, at the obstacles
which prevented them from affording succour to
their countrymen.
Very different, it is obvious, must have been
the result of this expedition but for the oppor
tune intervention of the steara-boat in question.
Frora the uncertainty which at first prevailed
respecting the projected movements of the enemy,
this boat did not arrive at the scene of action in
sufficient time to prevent the landing; but it
effectually neutralized the after-plan of opera
tions, and may justly be considered as the
mainspring of the successful defensive measures
that were taken.
Had a larger body of Americans reached the
Canada shore, they must have overpowered the
sraall railitia force that raerely sufficed to keep in
check the actual invaders, until the arrival of
detachments of regular troops from Kingston,
and would in this case have probably succeeded
in effecting a junction with the provincial raal-
vot. I. I

170 CAPTURE OF INVADERS.
contents in the neighbourhood, who were deterred
from coming forward under the actual circum
stances. As it was, the enemy made a stout and bold
resistance, worthy, according to all accounts, of a
better cause, though disgracing himself in other
4-espects by sorae revolting acts of cruelty; and he
was only dislodged from the strong stone-mill and
houses in which he had taken up his position, by
the play of some heavy pieces of ordnance ; after
a few salutations from which he was forced to
surrender at discretion.
The public mind had not had time to recover
from the excitement which this event produced,
when it was further agitated by a fresh invasion
which took place at Moy, near Windsor, on the
westem frontier, on the 4th December follow
ing. The well-affected part of the community were
beginning however, by this time, to have the
fullest confidence in themselves and their re
sources; and, inspired with the late success at
Prescott, they did not doubt a similar result at
Windsor.

AFFAIR AT WINDSOR. 171
On this occasion the invaders were encoun
tered by the militia alone, and dispersed after a
running fight, in which they sustained a heavy,
and their pursuers a trivial, loss in killed and
wounded. Subsequently, about fifty prisoners
fell into the hands of the victors, who in the
excitement of the moment, shot four or five of
them on the spot. Nor was this extraordinary,
however contrary to the usages of civilized war
fare and the dictates of huraanity, considering
the extreme degree of resentraent kindled in the
railitia by the enormities which had signalized
the landing of the marauders. They cora
raenced operations by setting fire to a steam-boat,
tad to a guard- house, in which a small picquet
which they surprised was stationed, burning in
it one or two of its defenders; murdered, without
the slightest cause or provocation, a staff surgeon
of the regular forces, afterwards mutilating his
body in a way too horrible to mention ; and
slew an inoffensive coloured man, simply because
he declined to join thera. A claira of 4,500/.
has been made as indemnity for the destruction
of the steam-boat above alluded to, but the case
i2

172 ENTHUSIASM AT DETROIT.
has apparently been left in the sarae position as
that of the Sir Robert Peel.
The number of the invading force was esti
mated at about four hundred raen, the greater
part of whom having the means of conveyance
at their disposal, succeeded, after their dispersion,
in making good their retreat into the United
States' territory ; their egress from which had, as
at Prescott, either been connived at or ineffec
tually resisted. It is but justice, however, to
state, that the American military officer com
manding on the station prevented, at the risk of
his popularity, reinforcements from being thrown
across, by cruizing between the two shores in an
armed steara-boat.
The sarae enthusiasra fbr the success of the
hostile incursion that had been raanifested at
Ogdensburg, also displayed itself at Detroit,
where thousands were assembled to cheer on the
adventurers. This was the last enterprize of the kind at
tempted ; its failure following so close upon the
defeat at Prescott, and combined with appre
hensions respecting the fate of the prisoners

TRIALS AND EXECUTIONS, 173
taken on both occasions, sufficed to suspend fur
ther hostile deraonstrations on the part of the
conspirators in the States, who now accused the
partizans in Canada, on whdse co-operation they
had relied, of pusillaniraity, and an abject sub
mission to the yoke from which they professed a
desire to free themselves.
The trials of the captives were the all-absorb
ing topic which engaged public attention for
sorae time afterwards. The majority were con
demned to death by the militia general courts-
raartial, -before which they were arraigned ; such
sentence being carried into effect in the cases of
seventeen individuals ; eleven of whora were the
leading actors in the affair at Prescott, and six
in that at Windsor.
These executions, though unquestionably both
necessary and justifiable, were considered by
raany to have been far too long protracted ; the
first, that of Von Schoultz, having taken place
on the 8th of December, and the last not before
thd close of February. The end contemplated,
of striking a timely salutary terror, would pro-

174 JUDICIOUS CLEMENCY.
bably have been more effectually attained, had
the infliction of the punishraent raore quickly
followed the commission of the offence; by which
meansalso, the indefinite repetition of a revolting
spectacle would have been avoided.
The convicts whose lives were spared were not
finally disposed of until sorae tirae afterwards.
A considerable number of those, whose youth
and inexperience pleaded in extenuation bf their
guilt, were pardoned, and set at liberty on the '
United States' territory in the course of the
ensuing suramer. Though rauch objected to in
Canada, their liberation gave rise to considera
ble satisfaction in the United States ; but despite
of the assurances of gratitude put forth, it
seeraed after all to be there viewed, save by the
parties themselves, and the respectable portion
of the press, less as a boon than as a right which
had been conceded. Nevertheless, the measure
must be considered a very judicious one, and to
have been dictated by a sound policy.
The remaining prisoners who could prefer no
claim to similar clemency, had their original sen-

SUMMARY OF CAPTIVES. 175
tences corarauted to transportation, and were
conveyed to Van Diemen's Land direct from
Quebec, in corapany with a batch of convicts
from Lower Canada, on board the Queen's ship
Buffalo, in the month of October last.
The subjoined statement, corapiled from offi
cial documents, shews the whole number of in
dividuals captured in the various attempts to
invade Upper Canada, during the winters of
1837-38, and 1838-39, together with the manner
of their disposal: —
Acquitted by the several Courts*  6
Pardoned on various grounds  90
Discharged from various causes  21
Died in the Hospital  2
Executed  17
Transported  7B
Remained in confinement towards the end of 1839 6
Total  220
The year 1839, though not marked, as had
been the two preceding years, by any actual in
vasion of the Canadian provinces, was never
theless fertile as well of political agitation, as of
* Including the self-styled General Sutherland, whose
conviction was held to be invalid by the law officers of
the Crown in England.

176 BORDER OUTRAGES.
indications that the least relaxation of precau
tionary defensive measures on the part of the
Canadian authorities and people, would entail at
any raoraent upon the country a renewal of past
calamities-. Indeed, such was the feverish state
of anxiety which general appearances induced
during the greater part of the year, that the
anticipation of some hidden danger being on the
eve of explosion was continually uppermost.
Awaiting time and opportunity for attempting
greater undertakings, the executive of the Hun
ters'' Association would seem to have decreed a
systematic crusade against life and property,
wheresoever these might be assailable with im
punity along the Canadian line of frontier. On
the Niagara frontier in particular, this spe
cies of raolestation was carried to the greatest
excess, midnight incendiarism, robbery, and
attempts to raurder, being there of constant oc
currence. In the early part of the preceding winter, a
gentleraan naraed Usher, living in that district,
was barbarously assassinated in his ovm house,
under very atrocious circumstances. An Ameri-

COBOURG CONSPIRACY. 177
can citizen, named Lett, has publicly avowed
hiraself in various of the American border towns
to be the perpetrator of the deed ; boasting of it
as a meritorious act, and declaring that he re
ceived for it a pecuniary consideration. No steps,
however^ to arrest this ruffian were taken by the
United States' authorities, who uniformly turned
a deaf ear to the applications made to them by
the provincial government, to cause him to be
brought to justice either in the one country or the
other. Lett further stands accused of leading parti
cipation in the conspiracy discovered at Cobourg
in August last, the object of which was the raur
der of a selected number of individuals, and the
plunder of the local bank. The majority of the
desperadoes implicated proved to be American
citizens, who had lately crossed over from the
United States, for the express purpose of acting
in this atrocious business. The existence of the
plot was revealed by one of their number, a man
named Moon, just on the eve of its explosion,
and most of the miscreants were, on his evidence,
secured ; ample proofs of their premeditated
i3

178 TIMELY DISCOVERY.
guilt being, besides, found upon thera, or in the
house where they were captured. Lett, however,
having his suspicions of Moon's sincerity, had
effected his escape, and being in disguise, got
back to the States in safety.
Many curious revelations are said to have been
made by the prisoners, respecting the designs of
the Canadian malcontents and their partisans in
the States; revelations tending to criminate many
notable persons in both countries^ who had not
before been even suspected of favouring the
" patriot cause."
Earlier in the season, a trooper in a corps of
local cavalry stationed at Toronto, was arrested
on the strength of some papers accidentally found
in his possession, proving him to be an emissary
from the American side, and revealing a design
on his part to take the life of the Lieutenant Go
vemor for the sake of a pecuniary reward. It was
remembered, that on various occasions he had en
deavoured to get himself placed on duty as an
orderly at the Government-House, and had been
very particular in his inquiries as to the where
about of the Governor's sleeping-room. To com-

SIR GEORGE ARTHUR. 179
plete the chain of evidence against him, there
was found in his possession a minute sectional
plan of the Government-House, and also of the
fort and garrison at the western extreraity of the
town. This worthy, as also those first mentioned,
were tried and sentenced to various terms of im
prisonment. On a previous occasion. Sir George Arthur's
life would seem to have been placed in jeopardy
through similar agency, if a deposition may be
relied on to the effect that his Excellency was
aimed at with a rifle, while passing near Cobourg,
on his way from the Lower Province, in October
1838, and only escaped by the weapon missing
fire. In May of this year, a very daring act was
perpetrated by some marauders from the United
States, in the robbery of the Upper Canada mail,
between Kingston and Gananoque; the plun
derers retreating with their boot}^ which com
prised a considerable sum of money, into the
territory from whence they had issued. A small
portion of the money was accidentally recovered.

180 PROFESSIONS AND PRACTICES.
but redress for the injury, though the parties
were well known, was unattainable ; the Ameri
can authorities, as in the case of Lett, not daring,
or not desiring, to interfere with the working of
the popular feeling against Canada.
Soon after the re-establishment of the naval
coraraand on the Lakes, which has its head
quarters at Kingston, an agreement had been
entered into between the naval authorities and
one of the American military officers stationed
on the frontier, for the purpose of undertaking
in concert such measures as should insure the
preservation of neutrality. The moment, how
ever, that any fruits were likely to result from
this arrangement, the American officer was seen
to back out of it, by alleging that public excite
ment respecting the object to which it had refe
rence, ran too high to admit of it being opera
tive. In like manner, on the occasion of the mail
robbery just mentioned, a similar sort of under
standing having been come to between the naval
authorities and another United States' officer,
went on well enough, until a practical benefit

UNTOWARD OCCURRENCE. 181
was likely to accrue frora it, when its letter in
lieu of its spirit was regarded, and it becarae a
nullity. Regarding the case of the notorious Macken
zie, we raay be assured from every concurrent
testimony, that his imprisonment at Rochester
was the result rather of his having rendered him
self personally obnoxious to various persons in the
States, and of the Americans having fairly be
come tired of him, than of a real desire on their
part to evince abhorrence of the manifold crimes
wherewith he had stained himself.
But an event, originating on the British side,
of a nature far more calculated to precipitate
imraediate hostilities between the two countries
than any I have yet narrated, occurred in the
course of the summer. This was the. seizure at
Brockville by the collector of customs, on his
ovra authority, of the Araerican schooner G. S.
Weeks, which, being on her way from Oswego
to Ogdensburg, had stopped at Brockville to
discharge a portion of her cargo intended for that
place. The ground of the seizure was, an al
leged irregularity in the papers of the schooner.

18-3 POPULAR EXCITEMENT.
respecting a piece of ordnance which appeared
upon her deck, and formed part of the cargo in
transitu for Oswego. By a rigorous interpreta
tion of the provincial law, prohibiting the en
trance into Canadian ports of foreign vessels,
with arras or munitions of war on board, this
seizure might have been justifiable ; but under
all the circumstances, and considering the tick
lish state of the political relations of the two
countries, it was, to say the least of it, neither
a necessary nor prudent proceeding.
On the other hand, the exhibition of the gun
on deck was extremely reprehensible on the part of
the captain of the vessel, as tending to inflame,
which, in effect, it did to the highest degree, the
passions of the populace, who were still labour
ing under a keen sense of the nefarious invasions
of the province during the preceding winter.
The result was as might have been anticipated :
on the collector deciding to make the seizure,
the people, being now in the wildest state of ex
citement, boarded the vessel, forcibly possessed
themselves of the gun, and paraded it with
shouts of triumph through the town. The whole

COLONEL WORTH. 183
difficulty raight readily have been obviated in the
first instance, without the slightest sacrifice of
principle or honour, had the vessel been required
to leave the port forthwith, with an injunction
not to return to it, unless the obnoxious gun
should be first left at its place of destination ;
whereas, the proceedings taken terrainated in an
abandonraent of the seizure under extreraely
hurailiating circurastances.
On learning what had occurred. Colonel
Worth, of the United States' array, repaired from
Oswego to Brockville, in an armed stearaer, filled
with soldiers, and imperatively demanded the re
stitution both of the vessel and the gun; intimat
ing, — as his presence in such array sufficiently
indicated, — that in case of refusal, hostilities on
his part would ensue.
In this dilemma, the collector held a consulta
tion with the civil authorities, when it appearing
upon an inspection of sorae further papers, tardily
produced by the raaster of the schooner, that
the seizure was not so sustainable as at first
appeared; while, at all events, the physical
means of resistance available were inadequate to

184 COMPROMISE.
the emergency, the resolution was adopted of
acceding to Colonel Worth's deraand.
To avoid the appearance of a surrender on
compulsion, it was stipulated on the one hand,
and subscribed to on the other, that the schooner
and the gun should not be given up until the
arraed steara-boat had withdrawn from the Bri
tish waters.
At this stage of the proceedings, a British
steara-boat, also armed, and with troops on
board, arrived frora Kingston. Had it raade its
appearance sooner, there can be little doubt that
lamentable consequences would have ensued, as
the naval coraraander would have felt hiraself
bound to enforce Colonel Worth's departure ere
any terras of adjustraent could be listened to,
and to deny his right to interfere in a matter
purely of a civil nature, without trenching on the
question as towhether the seizurewere legal or not.
The original agreement was happily adhered
to ; but it required the aid of a military force
on shore to preserve order during the transit of
the gun to the wharf, and its replacement on
board the schooner.

AMERICAN EFFRONTERY. l85
It is obvious in this affair, that if, as raust be
perhaps, adraitted, the detention of the schooner
and the gun were an uncalled-for act, well de
serving censure, the conduct of Colonel Worth,
in atterapting to enforce their restitution by an
armed demonstration, was to the last degree un
warrantable; clearly depriving the United States'
government of any after right of civil reclama
tion, even assuraing it in the first instance to have
possessed one.
Nevertheless it is averred, and the report rests
on very good authority, that the Federal execu
tive has had the unparalleled effrontery, as in
the case of the Caroline, to raake a formal
deraand for inderanity on the Govemment of
Great Britain in relation to this matter !
But I should fill a volume were I to attempt
to narrate in chronological order of detail the
various border occurrences, more particularly
those emanating from the American side, out of
which national strife raight at any raoment have
arisen. Apart frora the Brockville affair, truth
compels me to add that a few isolated acts of
trivial aggression against American citizens were

186 FOURTH OF JULY.
committed by the Canadians, under momentarily
excited feelings, or while inebriated; but in
every case, where requisite, ample apology or
reparation was made by the provincial authori
ties ; while, to the lasting credit of the people in
general, be it said, such was their forbearance,
that no positive retaliation was attempted for the
bitter ^vrongs they had themselves sustained and
were continually sustaining.
The dreaded 4th of July, the day on which,
according to secret communications and general
report, another formidable irruption was to take
place, passed off without any thing serious oc
curring ; though it was pretty well established
that the state of preparation exhibited by the
two provinces, rather than any voluntary for
bearance on the part of those who meditated
aggression, was the substantial cause of the pre
servation of order and tranquillity. A few ebul
litions of anti-British feelings displayed them
selves in various parts of the country, chiefly
populated with American settlers, (noted for
previous disaffection,) in the exhibition of repub
lican banners bearing treasonable devices, and

HOSTILE SYMPTOMS. 187
either hoisted upon poles or carried in proces
sion; but such atterapts to excite commotion
were rendered innoxious through their prompt
suppression by peaceful means, and the actors in
them were, for the most part, fain to indemnify
themselves for their disappointment in a. tavern
carouse. It was pretty generally known that, up to this
period, cases of musket-barrels were constantly
being sent from New York vid the Hudson, their
ostensible destination being principally Roches
ter. One such cargo was seen to go off in the
care of a notorious French-Canadian rebel, dwel
ling on the confines of Verraont, who was in the
habit of issuing frora thence inflaramatory pub
lications, in the French language, for circulation
araong his deluded countrymen.
Later in the season it transpired, through an
authentic source, that an extensive purchase of
ammunition for the patriot service had just been
effected in the city of New York, and transmitted
to the frontier, to be there in readiness for use
on the first occasion. Lastly, as shewing how
unchanged remained the views of at least a por-

188 CONFLAGRATION.
tion of the American citizens in regard to the
affairs of Canada, so late as the end of August
1839, I subjoin, in the Appendix, a copy I pro
cured of a very curious document, emanating
from an executive committee, forming a rami
fication of the Honou^rable the Association of
Hunters, while assembled in one of the towns
of the State of New York.
As regards the chief events of domestic policy
or import, of which the year 1839 was pregnant,
the sarae were ushered in with the destruction
by fire, on the 6th of January, of the episcopal
church at Toronto ; originating, as it seeraed on
an investigation of the circurastances, in accident
rather than design. A very valuable organ, the
gift, I believe, of a private individual, was de
stroyed in the conflagration, which raged so
fiercely as to leave nothing but the bare walls of
the building standing. On the score of archi
tecture there was little to regret in the disaster,
but very serious inconvenience was occasioned to
a part of the coraraunity by its occurrence. A
new edifice, raised on the old foundation, has
since been built by raeans of the joint agencies of

CHURCHES IN CANADA. 189
credit and voluntary contributions, and towards
the close of the year the outer structure was weH
nigh corapleted.
The only difference between the external ap
pearance of the old building and the new was
the addition to the latter of a light steeple,
which, owing to the ingenious combination of
shape, a tin covering, and a crooked cross sur
mounting the apex, looked for all the world like
a well-polished extinguisher, whereof the handle
had chosen to assert its independence by forsak
ing its usual place.
Nevertheless, the steeple, such as it is, im
parts a degree of finish to the edifice, that gives
it an advantage over the episcopal church at
Kingston, and the Catholic cathedral at Mont
real ; both of those places of worship appearing,
from the absence of a spire, as though they had
been decapitated.
During the early part of the year, the public
raind was rife with agitation and exciteraent on
the subject of the Clergy Reserves' question ;
discussions respecting which had been' revived,
and conducted with their usual acrimony in the

190 CLERGY RESERVES.
House of Assembly. So undecided appeared to
be the views and principles of the whole body
of provincial legislators as to the mode of effect
ing an adjustment of the difficulty their col
lective wisdom was required to solve, and so
strangely blended were individual religious feel
ing and political bias, that parties themselves
were split into minute particles, and no two
members seemed to entertain for four-and-twenty
hours together the same set of opinions. It was
at once both distressing and amusing to witness
the inconsistency which prevailed in the debates,
and to compare, as I afterwards took the trouble
from curiosity to do (though I will not detain
my readers with the results), the various schemes
successively proposed and abandoned, revived
and abandoned again, with variations ad infini
tum, for unravelling this skein, needlessly ren
dered an intricate one. At the very heel of the
session a Government measure was introduced
providing for the realization of the Reserves, and
leaving the after distribution of the proceeds to
the British Parliament ; the same being finally
carried in the Asserably by a majority of one !

CLERGY RESERVES. 191
The Bill, which was necessarily a reserved one,
never became An Act; since the British Go
vernment declined to recoramejid its confirraation,
on the ostensible ground of sorae informality in
passing it.
Had those persons in England who, either
from the institution of false analogies, or from
ignorance of the peculiar local circumstances of
the case at issue, are so clamorous in their outcry
against the alienation of any portion of the Re
serves in question from a purely episcopal clergy,
been resident in Upper Canada at the period to
which I allude, they must have been convinced
of the fallacy of the arguments they adduce in
support of their premises ; and may even now
become enlightened on reference to the records
of the provincial legislature incident to the occa
sion, and, above all, to the tone and spirit of the
colonial press.
To agitation on the Clergy Reserves' question,
succeeded an all-absorbing interest created by
the appearance of the Earl of Durham's Report
on the affairs of Canada. It was, of course,
favourably or unfavourably received by different

192 LORD DURHAM'S REPORT.
parties, according to the various degrees of their
peculiar bias, self-interest, or prejudice; but, on
the whole, the dqcument in its general ' tenor
must be said to have been one of great popu
larity with all, save a very exclusive class of
persons. The proceedings which took place in the pro
vincial legislature in regard to this publication,
offer a very limited criterion whereby to estiraate
the sentiments of the community at large ; nor
do they in the least militate against the fore
going conclusions, which relate exclusively to
the generality of the various constituencies, and
not to their representatives.
The summer and autumn were signalized
by meetings in various parts of the country, for
the discussion ofthe subject of what was termed
responsible government, and a very large pro
portion of its advocates included men whose at
tachment to British connection was undoubted,
and who had already raade every effort to pre
serve it. It may be assuraed, therefore, that
they would not have supported the responsible
system but for the sake of carrying out, by its

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 193
agency those economical reforms on which they
felt the future prosperity of the country to
depend. These meetings, for the most part, went off
quietly, ending in the passing of resolutions
only, and would have done so in every case
had not adverse feeling induced a few atterapts
to put them down. At an assemblage of this
nature, on the Yonge Street Road, in October,
the partizanship of the sheriff of the district
occasioned a serious disturbance, in the confiision
of which a man accidentally lost his life by
falling from his waggon, the wheels of which
passed over his body. Both parties, however,
were to blame, but most so the " Anti-respon-
sibles," since they went from Toronto avowedly
for the purpose of driving their opponents from
the ground.
It must be obvious, that, as a representative
forni of governraent has been given to the Cana
dian people, a systera of responsible government,
limited in its operation to purely domestic
affairs, is both necessary and expedient under
existing circumstances; while a disposition to
VOT., T. K

194 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT.
concede this privilege to an extent, has already
been evinced by the home Government, as shewn
by Lord John Russell's recent despatch, autho
rizing the removal of public functionaries in
cases where their views or conduct may prove
obstacles in the way of the well-working of the
govemment. But, apart from the consideration of the ab
stract question of a prescriptive right, it must
be remembered that, unless the affections of the
people be secured, Canada cannot be retained ;
and that, therefore, whatever the majority of
the British population may consider conducive
to their good, must, from the very necessity of
the case, be yielded to them. If they be reck
less, and evince a desire to sever prematurely
the state of colonial connexion with England,
they must, from the circumstances of their geo
graphical position, attain their object ; but if,
as now, they evince a disposition to draw closer
the bonds of such connexion, contingent on their
reasonable demands being complied with, it is
surely something worse than folly to trifle with
their expressed wishes.

DOUBTFUL POLICY. 195
By the timely employment of judicious means,
Gr?at Britain may retain, for an indefinite
period, her North A.merican provinces, in de
spite of the machinations of the neighbouring
Republic ; but she cannot hope to do so if their
British inhabitants will it otherwise ; and their
attachment being thus her mainstay, it behoves
her rightly to appreciate it^ value,.
In conclusion, it may not be irrelevant to the
subject-matter to observe, that it is, perhaps,
after all, a very questionable point, whether,
in regard to the Canadian provinces, a repre
sentative form of governraent should not have
been withheld, until the country were qualified,
cceteris paribus, for a supreme local executive,
when both might have been accorded with
greater advantage than the first alone ; which,
practically, so far from having proved a means
of promoting the qualification needed, has, in
effect, by its evil working, hitherto served to
thwart it.
But the gift having been conferred, cannot
with safety or propriety be resuraed ; though as
a general principle, we may be assured, that its
k2

196 DOUBTFUL POLICY.
premature possession by small coraraunities, only
serves to set them by the ears, by creating in them
undue pretensions to the substance of that whereof
they have the shadow : for the very essence of a
representative form of govemment being inde
pendence, is in itself virtually at issue with
colonial relations ; and hence, inherently possess
ing a corrosive tendency, must inevitably, unless
surrounded by efficient safeguards, precipitate
separation ; which, to prove salutary, should
result alone from the natural maturity of the
weaker party, attained through the protective
medium of the strong : since, otherwise, the
former, overshooting the mark, would find itself
in a position which, neither raorally nor physi
cally, it would be able to maintain.
My narrative of the chain of occurrences,
political or domestic, which have the most
strongly marked the history of Canada within
the last few years, here terminates. I am unable
to extend the record to a later period, since
I left Toronto, on my return to England, very
early in December ; the last event of public in
terest I had an opportunity of witnessing being

MR. POULETT THOMSON. 197
the opening of the Provincial Legislature on the
3d of that month, by the Right Hon. C. Poulett
Thomson, who had just before arrived from the
Lower Province, to assume the local govern
ment.

198

CHAPTER V.
General Review of the Conduct of the American Autho
rities throughout the proceedings herein-before nar
rated. — Development of the Designs of the Republic
on British North America. — Insidious Policy prac
tised. — Identification of the Maine and Canada Ques
tions, viewed in conjunction.— Revelations regarding
Implied Intrigues of Russia, in fomenting distur
bances in Canada.
How great soever, as in the abstract they may
be, it is after all far less inward elements of dis
cord that England has to fear in respect of her
North American possessions, than outward ele
ments of aggression, whose moral influence and
physical weight, by their susceptibility of being
brought at any time to bear upon the first,
impart to them a quality of inherent strength
which they would not otherwise possess. It is
doubtful if the annals of history could furnish a
parallel to the moral turpitude and the positive
guilt which have marked the conduct of no in
considerable portion of the American citizens.

CAUSES AND EFFECTS. 199
in the prosecution, for a long time past, of
their nefarious designs against a neighbouring
people, with whom they are nominally at peace,
who have done them no wrong, and whose sole
offence has consisted in the rightful occupancy
of a territory the possession of which is eagerly
coveted by their assailants.
It matters little to those who suffer by their
effects to what primary cause such measures
may be ascribable,-^whether they originate in
political institutions of a defective character, —
in unsound laws, — iin a laxity of moral feeling,
— ^in the sheer depravity of human nature, — or
in all these things combined : it is not for them
to care about the investigation of their nature,
seeing that no remedial measures admitting of
application are vested in their keeping; but it is
of the utmost importance to thera to be pre
served from the periodical recurrence of the
evils flowing from them, and not to be sub
jected, as in effect they are, to the extreme hard
ship of being continually in arms, for the de
fence of their lives, -their property, and the
sacredness of their homes.

200 FALLACIOUS ARGUMENTS.
To say that this relative position is a conse
quence ofa state of colonial dependence, con
veys no satisfactory answer to the complaint
preferred ; because, it must be first established
that the bulk of the complainants, if deprived
in their present weak condition by a severment
of connection, of such protection as England is
able to afford them, would not, in reahty, be
more exposed to the assaults of lawless rapacity
than heretofore, and be equally liable to the
spoliation which has already been attempted.
But, in conjunction with this view of the case,
remains also to be considered the moraentous
question of England's impaired vitality; first,^
by the prostration of her dependencies by hostile
hands; and, secondly, by the future strength o£
those dependencies developed by such hands,
and not, as they should be, by her own, being
turned against herself.
Regarding, with relation to the affairs of Bri
tish North America, executive govemment and
authority, as constituted, or, rather as practi
cally understood in the United States, we have
only to take a brief retrospect of the past to ar-

HYPOTHETICAL CONCLUSIONS. 201
rive at'the conclusion, that the conduct of the
official functionaries representing such govern
ment and authority, from. the affair of Navy Is
land to the present tirae, has been based on one
of two latent springs of action — insincerity or
impotence ; if not, indeed, on an union of both.
On the first of these hypotheses, — judging
by the contrast of professions with results,: — the
constituted authorities ofthe Union, whilst claim
ing credit for the actual eraployment of vigorous
preventive measures, would have been through
out desirous to let the reiterated experiment of
invading Canada by American citizens go on,
for the purpose of insidiously effecting, without
any apparent participation of their own, at a
price less costly than that of war, the acquisition
of an extensive territory, long forming a pri
mary coveted object of the national ambition.
On the second hypothesis, assuraing thera to
have been actuated by sincerity of raotive, their
moral power being a nullity, they would haye
shrunk intuitively from bringing iiito direct
collision with the popular will, on whose breath
their official existence depended, the raeans of
k3

202 AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.
resistance nominially at their disposal, to con
trol its excesses, from a conviction that the
consequences would recoil very fearfully upon
themselves. Hende, the means of preventing aggression by
native citizens on a friendly, unoffending power,
are in reality at their disposal, or they are not.
If they be, the result has shewn, during the
period mentioned, that they have not efficiently
employed them ; while, otherwise, they have
professed to exercise a power which they did not
possess ; and in either case must stand convicted
of duplicity at the bar of naitions desirous to
retain the appellation of civilized communities.
In a word, we have seen the American go
vernment favouring Great Britain with the ex
pression of its best wishes, for the preserva
tion of neutrality, but remaining perfectly in
competent or unwilling to enforce even the sem
blance of such neutrality, on the part of its bor
der citizens.
By a further parity of reasoning, the conclu
sion follows, that under existing circumstances,
the American citizens are unsafe neighbours ;

PRETEXT FOR INTERFERENCE. 203
but it does not equally follow that those who
have the misfortune to dwell in .their vicinity
are, therefore, to insure the.preservation of their
lives by the abandonment of their possessions, at
the tequisition of lawless rapacity and tyranny;
far the admission of such a doctrine, whether as
regards nations or individuals, would be at once
subversive of the fundamental laws of social life.
So long as a plan for actively interfering in
Canadian affairs was wanting, the citizens of the
Union could not very well create one ; but when
from incidental circumstances — Chastened, perad
venture, by their own wily machinations-rr-it is
offered to :them, they are seen to cling to it witli
a degree of tenacity which sufficiently reveals
not only the pre-existence of a cherished purpose,
but a feeling of deep-seated enmity to the race
from which they sprung, as ungenerous as it is
certainly unnatural.
The pretext eagerly sought for being fur^
nished by the events which took place in Canada
in the winter of 1837, it;has been ever since the
endeavour of the American citizens to keep the
question open, and the public mind excited.

204 AFTER MEASURES.
from a perception that it would be a task of less
difficulty to preserve in being than to resuscitate,
the demon of mischief, created opportunely for
their purpose.
Failing, therefore, to carry into immediate effect
their design of overrunning Canada, their next
great object preparatory to the renewal of such
a measure, would be, as in effect it has been, to
prevent the country from settling down to a state
of permanent tranquillity, with a view to check,
save by themselves, that development of its great
natural resources, by the united means of capi
tal and labour, which, if accomplished, would
prove so formidable a barrier to the accom
plishment of their ambitious schemes.
A.fter the summary suppression of the first
Canadian insurrection, and the manifested at
tachment of the bulk of the entire British popu
lation of the two provinces to British institu
tions, it is not perhaps hazarding too great an
assumption, that no further attempts to disturb
the public peace would have been raade by the
disaffected within the country, had not their
expiring hopes been revived by extensive aid.

VIEWS OF THE DISAFFECTED. 205
promised or expected, on the part of American
citizens : while here, a practical illustration is at
once afforded of ray preliminary remark respect
ing the bearing of outward influences on internal
elements of discord.
In both provinces, the objects iraraediate and
prospective of the disaffected were identical, and
in both the same raeans to the attainraent of
a coramon end were put in requisition; but,
apart frora their crirainality, it must be obvious,
that the real motives of action of the respective
parties were as dissimilar as were their creeds
and their capacities.
It has been shewn that the disaffected consti
tute in the Lower Province the raajority, and
in the Upper Province the minority, of the po
pulation. The first are disaffected by nature,
from habit, frora ignorance, and from feeling ;
the latter frora principle, association, and rest
lessness for change : but the result has proved
that either body, frora the superior raoral ener
gies of its counterpoise, will become positively
dangerous or formidable in proportion only as it
may be acted on by the influence of outward
agents.

206 MAINE BOUNDARY,
Reviewing, with reference to what precedes,
the past relations of the United States with Ca-
nada,in connexion with subsequent occurrences,
on the Maine and New Brunswick frontier, —
with the spirit of the debates which have en
sued thereon in Congress, — ^with the measures
in relation thereto, that have been taken by the
nominal executive, — ^with the tone pervading the
Araerican press, and, above all, with the feeling
which seems to aniraate the great bulk of the
coraraunity, constituting, in fact, the real go
vemment — no other conclusion can be formed
in the mind of the least biassed observer, even if
doubt before existed, that it is the settled pur
pose of the Republic to sweep, if possible, of
all jurisdiction but its own, the entire continent
of North America ; and that the attempt having
been begun, as one means fails others will con
tinue to be successively resorted to, either until
success shall be the crowning result, or constant
disaster and defeat shall prove success to be
hopeless. But let not the period when, nor the circum
stances under which, the American citizens seek

UNDUE ADVANTAGES, 207
to carry out this one great design, be over
looked. They see, from the lowering aspect of affairs
in other quarters, that England is in a fair way
of being embroiled with one or other of her in
sidious enemies ; they are aware that the state of
European politics is such, that a spark applied
at almost any point would kindle a general con
flagration ; and thus availing theraselves of what
they consider a favourable opportunity, when
England is likely to have her hands full, they
seek tacitly to coerce her into corapliance with
the most preposterous demands. In fine, just
as the slippery game of European politics may
fluctuate to the weal or Woe of England, so will
the plans of the United States in regard to her
North American possessions be retarded or ac
celerated. They will acquire those possessions,
if possible, without war ; but, otherwise, will
avert the period of such war until they can un
dertake it with a probability of success.
It must have been painfully obvious to every
person anxious to see peace preserved between
the two countries, that it was seriously en-

208 EARLY INDICATIONS.
dsmgered fromthe moment when the Republicans
received with honour and distinction, amounting
to acclamation, the first rebel fugitives from Ca
nada ; for the application of this touchstone
revealed a general state of morbid feehng raost
startling to behold.
The occurrences which had caused the flight
of the individuals in question, were too strictly
in unison with the secret views and wishes of
their entertainers, for them not to determine that
the ball which had been so opportunely set in
motion, should be kept thenceforward rolling.
No sense of honour, no sense of justice, no sense
of duty towards England, would have been al
lowed to operate against their own interests and
inclinations could they, without danger to them
selves, have then thrown openly their balance
as a nation into the scale.
But short of this they were prepared to go ;
and if, whilst amusing England with professions
of good faith and moderate desires, they could
only attain their cherished object by insidious
means, they need care but little for the after-
consequences, seeing that they would have been

CHANGE OF MEASURES. 209
well indemnified beforehand for the retribution
they would have provoked.
Let any one who has pondered over late events,
deny, if conscientiously he can, the reasonable
ness of these conclusions. Time gives to col
lective data an increased value to that they may
possess, if considered singly at the moment of
the occurrences to which they bear reference : if
circumstantial evidence be sometiraes perraitted
to hang an individual, of whose guilt no moral
doubt reraains, it raay surely suffice to convict a
coraraunity. The atterapt to win Canada by a coup de
main, that is by revolutionizing it, through
the medium of domestic raalcontents, and then
overrunning it by predatory hordes, having raet
with the signal discorafiture that it merited, the
aggressors had to devise a fresh, plan of opera
tions in order to preserve their cause from
languishing. Hence, such was the quickened
state of the public pulse, such the morbid nature
of the virus, that the contagion, raging thereto
fore in Ohio and Michigan, was seen at once to

210 MEANS AND ENDS.
transfer itself to distant Maine as though by a
galvanic stroke !
Let it be borne in mind — ^for the fact is an
important one — that the present clamour res-
pecting the disputed territory, did not fairly
commence until after the winter of 1888, when
a second attempt to wrest Canada from Great
Britain, by means other than open warfare, had
been made and frustrated !
It was clearly only with reference to the mode
of acquiring Canada that the Republicans dif
fered ; the majority of them agreed in the de
sirability, and united in the wish, but it required
that previous endeavours should have failed, to
warrant the general determination now evinced,
that the broad mantle of Maine should cover the
next cmtp d'essai.
In a word, it was not thought worth while to
risk hostilities on the North Eastern boundary
case, so long as it remained unproven that Ca
nada could be won by the means actually em
ployed. This open question, being a peg whereon

UNJUST DEMANDS. 211
to hang, at any convenient period, a quarrel
covering a latent design, was too invaluable to
be closed by an equitable adjustment. Thus
the unanimous voice of the Republic demands
from England the almost unqualified cession of
a tract of territory the possession of which would
virtually throw Canada into her lap, and inti-
raates that the alternative of non-compliance
with this exorbitant requisition shall be war !
Making this the apparent ground of quarrel,
the real object to foreign eyes is less apparent,
and a show of self-justice is made, to sanctify an
act which in effect is one of monstrous political
depravity. The very anxiety of the Republic on this
point, at a junction like the present, should alone
enlighten England as to the true state of the
question, and teach her the real value to herself
of a portion of the disputed territory, even if its
geographical position did not sufficiently point
it out. Maine is made to interpret as it suits her
purpose the treaty of 1783, and suddenly to
enforce her views by an armed demonstration of

212 PARALLEL CASES.
a nature to -invite collision. She rejects con
tumaciously the award made by a disinterested
third party, notwithstanding that it gives her
very great advantages ; deraands raore than she
ever before presuraed to ask ; and declares that
she will submit to no adjustment other than she
dictates, the terms of which she knows to be
inadraissible, unless upon corapulsion.
Maine is, in fact, put forward to play, as
though her own, the garae of the whole Union,
whose representative, knowing that he is utter
ing the sentiments of the masses which control
him, exclaims, with assuraed coyness, " I cannot
coerce Maine frora acting in her individuality if
she see fit ; but I ara constitutionally bound to
afford Maine the benefit of the federal aid if
she involve herself in hostilities with a foreign
power; and therefore she raust be allowed to
aot with impunity, if peace be coveted ! " Such
is practically the language now held by the
United States of North America towards Great
Britain. The self-same farce was enacted throughout
the Canada troubles, fomented by American

MOB XAW. 213
agency, and maintained by American inter
ference. The state arsenals were pillaged — recruits
raised — the Canadas invaded — without any real
effort on the part of the American authorities to
prevent either the one or the other act. But im
mediately those who were suffering from the ex
cesses coraraitted, asserted their right to retaliate
upon their aggressors, they were warned " off
the premises," and reminded of the obligation of
the federal executive, to protect and defend un
der all and any circumstances, the citizens whora
it had before been impotent to restrain. In other
words, the executive could shield them from the
penalty of their transgressions, because they
willed that it should do so ; but it could not
prevent their misconduct, because they forbade
its interference !
I rail not at Republicanism in the abstract
because of its evil working in the United States,
but I regard it as I there see it brought to bear
on the welfare and interests of another people,
and as prejudicially affecting that welfare and
those interests from the want of a regulating

214 PSEUDO GOVERNMENT.
principle, which, by causing it to harmonize, as
well with social as with national obligations,
should ensure permanent good relations, amity,
and peace.
The arguments deducible from the foregding
premises, lead to the conclusion that the Ameri
can democracy being virtually the govemment,
it is with that democracy that England has in
reality to deal, and not, as is apparently the
case, with a govemment properly so called,
capable and willing of itself to act upon a fixed
rule of conduct, based on principle and justice.
In considering the past and present aspect of
affairs on the North American continent, there
remains another cause to be adverted to, as
having exercised- — ^and as still exercising — apart
from mere political considerations, a decided
influence on the conduct of American citizens in
regard to Canada.
I allude to a subject which I have not before
seen mooted, but which very forcibly impressed
itself upon my mind during my residence in
Canada, and frequent intercourse with American
citizens.

DISRUPTION OF SOCIETY. 215
It may be adraitted as an axiora, that when a
nation is prospering, and its inhabitants in gene
ral are individually well to do, there is but
little fear of their neglecting their own concerns
to interfere with those of Other people. But
when the converse is the case, when distress or
discontent prevails, and when the public mind is
left, as it were, to prey upon itself,— then is an
inclination engendered on the part of the restless
and enterprising spirits of a community to ex
cite, or, if already excited, to participate in
commotions elsewhere, which shall serve to dis
tract their attention from the contemplation of
the disordered state of affairs in their native
land, or enable them to enforce particular doc
trines on which before they have only had leisure
to theorize. The peculiarity of this state of
things consists in the anomaly, that with nations,
as with individuals, there is a disposition to ima
gine others wrong, for the purpose of setting
them to rights, according to self-conceived no
tions, in lieu of first performing that friendly
office for themselves.
It is by no means necessary to cross theAtlan-

216 DISRUPTION OF SOCIETY.
tic for illustrations of this remark ; but on the
continent of North America the theory pro
pounded has been raore strikingly exemphfied
than in other quarters. But to the point. The
disruption of social order (never effectually re
paired), which took place in the United States,
consequent on the great commercial and mone
tary crisis of the spring of 1837, threw into
dangerous activity a mass of mind, theretofore
absorbed in pursuits of gain, and, in like man
ner, threw into dangeruos inactivity a very large
araount of bodily labour.
Both had, therefore, to seek fresh channels of
eraployraent ; the vast prairies of the west took
off a large portion of the better quality of each,
but far too rauch of the refuse reraained behind ;
and hence, when the insurrection broke out in
Canada a few months afterwards, an accumula
tion of inflammable material was at hand to fan
the flame of the conflagration kindled.
By depriving them of their accustomed, em
ployments, the first occurrence laid the foundia-
tion of a sort of erratic vagabondage on the part
of those who were equally devoid of fixed prin-

AMERICAN SYMPATHY. 217
ciples and fixed means of subsistence ; while the
second, by arousing their natural cupidity for
the possessions of their foreign neighbours, at
the same tirae with the latent desire of national
aggrandizement animating the great mass of the
community, held forth temptations which the
general low tone of moral feeling in respect of
national as well as social obligations was in-
sufficient to overcome.
It is an error to suppose, that the liberation
of Canada from British rule was a cherished
object only with the northern and north-wes
tern border population of the Union. That
population, from the circumstance of contiguity
to the scene of action, and of actual participa
tion in what took place, stood raore prominently
forward than the rest ; but, with the exception
of those classes of the community immediately
¦ interested in the preservation of peaceful rela
tions with England, the sympathies and good
wishes of the whole American people may, with
out exaggeration, be said to have been more or
less strongly enlisted in the success of a cause
VOL. I. L

218 EXTENT OF SYMPATHY.
which they considered as promoting, by indirect
means, an object of their national solicitude.
It is not by wliat was said or done in the
Atlantic cities' ofthe Union, — in this town or in
that, — with the view to preserve appearances^
th^t we must judge of the general state of feel*
ing in this matter. The only means of appre
ciating, it rightly,' was and is to traverse the
different States, more especially those bounding
the British provinces, converse indiscriminately
with the inhabitants, and compare the notes of
observation so collected. They who have done
this liave been startled at the result of their in
quiries, — at the extent of the deep-seated animo
sity rankling in the Araerican breast against
the British name and people, — and have been
convinced that nothing but a salutary fear-,
(now daily, watiing,) of England's power, can
-counteract the propensity to aggression insepar
able from such a morbid state of feeling '
To the partially influencing cause which
I haye mentioned, must be superadded the dan
gerous contemplation of the successful issue of
the nefarious attempt on Texas ; the institution

INCENTIVES. 219
of a false parallel, — since no analogy existed, —
between the case of the Canadian insurgents
and that of the old American revolutionists ; a
notion, founded on appearances, that the sever
ment of the colonial connexion was secretly
desired by the British rainistry ;* and, lastly, a
recklessness of consequences, an inordinate self-
vanity, and an indifference to means so that ends
were answered — all peculiar features in the
Araerican character.
To believe that mere passing incident, rather
than premeditated design, has worked out these
results, would be almost a perversion of intel
lect. Time and opportunity serving, America
commenced the game which she had to play ;
and though hitherto foiled in two successive
bouts, is following it up with a degree of perti
nacity commensurate with the importance of the
object which she hopes to accomplish.
But, as resulting from this line of conduct;
there is a further point to be adverted to. Them
selves the aggressors, the Araerican citizens are
seeking to reverse the appearance of the fact, so
* Vide Appendix.
L 2

220 ARTFUL POLICY.
that a colouring of justification may be given to
their after measures in petto: while, in antici
pation of the claims which it is felt that England
has a right to make upon them for the positive
injuries which she has sustained by their re
peated violations of her territory, they seem
ingly contemplate the balancing of all accounts
by the application of a sponge to the sum total
of the score, in order at once to escape frora a
present dilemma, or, in their own phraseology^
" an awkward fix," and to hasten the denouement
of the plot thus far unravelledf
Hence their constant harping on the perfectly
justifiable, howsoever impolitic, transaction of
the steam-boat C'aro/me; as also their demand for
indemnity for the destruction of that vessel, and
for the detention, under the circumstances al
ready narrated, of the schooner G. S. Weeks, at
the port of Brockville. Hence their affecting
to feel alarmed at the amount of the armed
force which, in consequence solely of their raa-
chinations, England is corapelled, at a ruinous
expense, to keep on foot within her North Ame
rican provinces. Hence, in fine, their past and

DISPUTED TERRITORY, 221
present clamour respecting the disputed territory
lying between the borders of New Brunswick
and Maine !
If this territory, on the exclusive possession
or on the equitable division of which, appears to
hinge the momentous question of peace or war
between England and the United States, in
volved, de facto, no other consideration than
that of its abstract worth, it need perhaps require
but a stretch of generosity on the part of the
former to yield it to the latter as a boon — even
as an indulgent parent gives to a petted, pout
ing child, a worthless bauble wherewith to stay
the clamour of its discontent: albeit a rod
might prove the more fitting remedy.
But considering the question at issue by its
own merits, it is obvious that the claims pre
ferred by the Republic strike, as it is intended
that they should do, at the vitality of British
interests ; since, by acceding to them, England
must depend for access to Canada, during nearly
one moiety of the year, upon the sufferance of the
Republic ; and thus a persistence by the latter
in claims involving such undue sacrifices, would

222 FU,TILITY OF CONCES.SIOJV.
leave England no alternative but the resistance
of a fratricidal war, or the comraission of an act
having a suicidal tendency ! Without caring to
enter, under these circumstances, into a nice
disquisition on intersectional hnes, it is sufficient
to advert to the matter of discussion on its broad
principles; and to disclaim generally,^^whilst
advocating from a love of peace and justice, a
fair adjustment of the difficulty, — against any
concessions being made to clamour, that would
bring to within a. span of the waters of the St.
X>awrence, the. banner ofthe United States.
, But let it not be supposed that by deferring
even , thus far, from false notions of. expediency,
to the views of the Republic, future peace and
tranquillity would be insured : far from it. The
..elements of discord, would be as great, if not
greater than at present ; and nothing beyond a
ibrief respite would have b^en gained.
The boundary of the United States extending
to the point designated, the free navigation of
the St. Lawrence is speedily demanded. Would
it be conceded .'' Possibly it might, on the same
plea of expediency as before. But- otherwise.

ULTERIOR CONSEQUENCES. 223
what is the consequence ? War ; an assault on
the British provinces with the whole energies of
the Union ; and, considering the impoverished
means of resistance they would then possess,
their complete subjugation in detail.
Is it asked what object the American citizens
have to gain by the expulsion of Great Britain
from the North American continent ?: The rdply
is-^" All, and every thing."
In the first place, they would becorae perfectly
invulnerable by land. Secondly, they Would be
relieved of their anxiety respecting an indefen-
^ble line of inland frontier, fifteeahundred toiles
ifi extent, and would practically reduce such ex
tended line to the mere breadth of the St, Law-
rience jiist below Quebec, where a boom thrown
across the river, would, in any emergency, insure
them from assault . Thirdly, they would acquire
a port on the Atlantic (now wanting to them), ca
pable of fostering any number of vessels. Lastly,.
they would be able to devote their whole energies
without the slightest fear of interruption from.
any foreign foe, to those great objects of their
ambition, the unlimited increase of their navy,.

224 VIEW TO BE TAKEN.
and the rapid extension of their manufactures of
all kinds; so as, in the one case, to be in a con
dition to dispute, at no distant period, the supre
macy of England on her own element, and con
sequently, to threaten her security ; and, in the
other, to enter into a successful rivalry with her
in every foreign market.
It is from this enlarged point of view that we
should accustom ourselves to consider the ulterior
consequences of the annexation of the British
North American possessions to the great Re
public. Even assuming that political disunion
should, as is probable, at sorae time or another,
cause the motto of that Republic to be reversed,
in what would such circumstance militate against
the conclusions here drawn, if unity of mind and
purpose in regard to objects not of a domestic
nature, be preserved inviolate .''
For the reasons stated, we may rest assured
that, notwithstanding so many rife causes of
domestic discord within it, there will be no fall
ing to pieces of the American Union — that
flattering unction which so many lay prema
turely to their souls— so long as there remain on

NATIONAL FEELING. 225
the North American continent a great European
power ; whose presence, while creating a feehng
of bittemess difficult to describe, is perhaps
the very hoop which binds together the staves
of the ill-constructed cask that is seen inces-
. santly whirling in the eddy of conflicting ele
ments. The Americans both feel and know that they
cannot afford to plunge into anarchy of this
kind under existing circurastances : what they
might do were they free from the observanc^^of
their British neighbours is another question.
But, even then, of this we may be certain, that
in all raatters tending in the least to affect them
in their foreign relations, they will always be ani
mated as now, by the strongest possible feeling
of nationality, in its most rigorous sense, and
capable of uniting their raeans and energies, in
the promotion of any measure involving objects
either of a comratm aggression or defence.
Considering, therefore, all these things ; con
sidering that the political aggrandizeraent of
Araerica can only be effected at the expense of
England, in the western hemisphere; consider-
l3

,226 VALUE OF CANADA.
ing further, that the point at issue is purely a
matter of degree ; let us exaraine into the means
at England's disposal for averting the evil where
with she is imminently threatened.
Instead, then, of looking on her North Ame
rican provinces, as mere colonies, and instead of
seeking to retain them as such for an indefinite
period, England should regard them as parts of
a future nation, and, treating them accordingly,
should qualify thera to becorae such. The rule
of generalization she has adopted with regard to
all her colonies indiscriminately, without sufficient
reference to the pecuhar local circurastances of
each, has constituted the great evil of her systein
of Colonial Governraent.
What is suited to detached islands is un
suited to continents, or sections thereof, nor
could any thing prove more fatal, in the case of
Canada, than continuing to act on a contrary
belief. In her past treatment of that country, Eng
land has practically borne out the remark of
Benthara,* who says, in speaking of colonists,
* Rationale of Reward. B, 4, Chap. 14;

MEANS TO ENDS. 227
" little is cared for their affection, nothing is
feared frora their resentment, and their despair
is contemned." Let it be hoped that her future
pohcy will be of a different character.
Inasmuch as, for the reasons stated, it will be
henceforth the endeavour of the American citi
zens (if present war be averted) to retard or
stunt the growth of the Canadas, so long as they
reraain British Colonies, so should it be the en
deavour of England to counteract those machina
tions, by working steadily towards the end of
raising Canada to a condition adraitting alike of
self-government and self-defence ; transferring,
at a ripe maturity, a present weak dependence
into a strong independent power, which, from
the triple bond of feeling, interest, and similarity
of institutions, . should possess a natural leaning
towards herself, and become an efficient local
counterpoise to the ambition or hostility of the
United States.
Before this consuraraation can be effected,
muoh will of course require to be done ; and
while raising up Canada with one hand, England
will require to ward off the United States with

228 IMMIGRATION.
the other — ber power to do so being gradually
strengthened in the progress of the work, by the
adoption of judicious measures in the outset.
A marked repugnance to amalgamate with the
United States has been manifested, in a way not
to be mistaken, by the bulk of the British popu
lation of Canada, and all, consequently, that is
now demanded, is to turn such feeling to a lasting
profitable account.
To this end, in lieu of frittering away inva
luable time in profitless legislation, for a weak,
scanty population, it is of paramount necessity
to increase forthwith the physical strength of the
country, through the raedium of iraraigration,
whereby alone can present precarious tenure be
converted into future security of possession, or
any durable superstructure raised.
I have elsewhere adverted to the obstacles in
the way of such an immigration as is needed ; but
they will not be found insuperable, if the reme
dies suited for them be timely applied.
To conclude. If England effectually sustains
her North-American provinces now, they will
prove a shield to her hereafter ; whereas, if she

RUSSIAN INTRIGUES. 229
loses them preraaturely, — that is, before they are
sufficiently quahfied to stand alone, — their future
strength will be turned against her.
The great object of colonization of the ancients
was this ; and while taking care to do their duty
towards the distant coraraunities they had plan
ted, so long as they needed their assistance and
protection, they insured from them in return,
both gratitude and attachment.
Among the many strongly-marked features of
the Canadian draraa enacted during the memo
rable period to which these reminiscences refer,
was that of a belief, amounting indeed to a
strong moral conviction, on the part of numerous
intelligent individuals in the British provinces,
in the agency of the Russian Governraent having
been secretly eraployed to foment the troubles
which took place ; as also in the existence of a
secret good understanding on Canadian raatters,
between that governraent and the government of
the United States.
It would be but little flattering to the usual
sagacity of Russian diplomacy to suppose that
Russia aims at supplanting England in the pos-

230 RUSSIAN INTRIGUES.
session of her North- American provinces, because
it is sufficiently apparent that Araerica would to
lerate the presence of no other European power
in her vicinity were England thence expelled ;
but it would be still less flattering to Russian
diplomacy to ascribe to it a want of perception
that Russian, as opposed to British interests,
might be raaterially proraoted by successful re
bellion in England's dependencies, or a want of
inclination to act in consonance with such view,
when and wheresoever a favourable opportunity
of doing so raight present itself, whether by ac
cident or design.
Throughout the occurrences which, within the
period mentioned, have disturbed the peace of
Canada, and indeed down to the period of my
quitting it, various suspicious circumstances
transpired, calculated to leave but little moral
doubt — positive proof being, of course, in such ¦
cases almost irapossible — of Russia having indi
rectly lent herself to aid the scheraes of those,
who were plotting and endeavouring to wrest
the Canadian provinces frora British sway.
In corroboration of such view, raay be ad-

RUSSIA ^f INTRIGUES. 231
duced the following points of collective evi
dence, which rest on the recorded testiraony of
individuals whose raeans of acquiring accurate
information were said to be undoubted, and
who had no necessary connexion with each
other., I know not how far it may be generally known,
neither am I aware if the real facts of the case
have hitherto in any way transpired, but in
the winter of 1838, a Russian diplomatic func
tionary from the United States visited Lower Ca
nada, and when in Montreal, had, it seems, his
travelling equipage seized and examined by the
local authorities. It is true that nothing impli
cating him was discovered on an examination of
his effects, but he was inforraed that the step had
been taken on the strength of adequate testi
mony against him ; while, shortly after the event,
it was said to have been declared by a competent
authority, that conclusive proofs of the Rus
sian's criminality resting on legal evidence and
sworn depogitions of facts, had been adduced in
the first instance, and that, judging by all the
circumstances, no moral doubt whatever could

232 RUSSIAN INTRIGUES,
be reasonably entertained of the efforts of Rus
sian emissaries in America being directed to in
cite disaffection in the Canadas,
On a subsequent occasion, a Canadian poli
tical refugee, of some eminence, residing in
the United States, is stated to have said, in
alluding to the object of M, Papineau's visit
to Paris, that it was not from the French, but
from the Russian Governraent, that he expected
succour in the execution of his plans for the de
liverance of Canada from British rule : further
reraarking that there had always existed between
the Russian Government and the " Patriots," a
very deep sympathy ; while he had good reason
to believe, that upon the occasion of the first
outbreak of the French Canadians, in 1837, a
person connected with the Russian mission in
Paris, caused an intimation to be raade to sorae
one in that capital, of the good wishes of the Rus
sian Governraent for the success of the " patriot"
cause, and of its desire to afford thereto if pos
sible substantial assistance. As a conspicuous
adherent of M. Papineau chanced to be in Paris
about the time specified, the belief prevailed that

RUSSIAN INTRIGUES. 233
it was to him, or to some member of the Ame
rican embassy there, that the foregoing alleged
information was imparted.
Another Canadian, residing in New York, who,
without himself being an actual partisan, was un
derstood to be connected by parentage with some
members of the " patriot" party, and was known
to be on terms of the most confidential intimacy
with many of its active emissaries, was also said
to have made disclosures implicating certain
Russian officials in the States, and tending ma
terially to confirm the allegations hereinbefore
mentioned. He is, moreover, reported to have
stated, as the result of special inquiry, that there
existed a strict alliance between the rebel Papi
neau and the Russian Govemment ; that from
the latter, liberal assistance was to be furnished
for the support of the "patriot" cause; that
Papineau was gone to Paris for the express pur
pose of Tiegociating more conveniently with the
Russian Government ; and that arrangements
even had been raade to admit of his being con
veyed from thence, in a quiet way, to St. Peters
burg, to confer personally with the Emperor.

234 RUSSIAN INTRIGUES.
To the latter part of the story, in particu
lar, the individual alluded to is said to have
adhered with the greatest pertinacity ; and, as
^hewing the general degree of weight attaching
to his testimony, it was averred that he had
forewarned the General Government of Canada
of what was about to happen, long prior to each
of the two successive insurrections which took
place, and that subsequeiit events fully con
firmed, even to minute details, all that he liad
predicted, both as to the raeans and ends, as
well as to the deliberations and raoveraents of
the leading actors : raention being made, among
other things, of an extensive supply of arms
from New York that was in effect furnished.
According to this man's alleged further state
ment, it would seem to have been generally
understood amongst those with whom he asso
ciated, that, in 1838, money was paid by a
Russian agent for the purchase of arms for the
" patriot " service ; and that such money passed
through the handsof a Frenchman in NewYork,
whose name assimilated precisely with that of a
second Frenchman, engaged in extensive mer-

RUSSIAN INTRIGUES. 235
eantile transactions in the same city, who was
known to be a prorainent meraber of a secret
club there, terraed " Societe de Bienveillance,"
devoted to the interests of the " patriots ;" was
in strict intiraacy with raany of the leading rebels
in Lower Canada, and also discovered to be in di
rect coraraunication with M. Papineau, at Paris.
It was furtherraore represented, that through
this channel, proof sheets of Papineau's inflara-
raatory writings, published in the French capital,
^ere constantly transraitted by the French pac
kets, in order to be reprinted in the States, the
copies being sent frora thence to Lower Canada,
for the purpose of circulation among the habitans.
Another Frenchman, zealous in the patriot
interest, whose means of subsistence were a mys^
tery, and who lived at the Cafe Franqais in New
York, a notorious place of resort for obscure
foreigners, and French Canadian political refu
gees, clairaed, it is averred, as his particular friend,
a Russian diploraatic functionary in the United
States, whora he represented as being warmly en
hsted in the "patriot " cause ; adducing, in sup
port of this allegation, the still more extraordi-

236 RUSSIAN INTRIGUES.
nary one, that both Hindelang and Von Schoultz
had conferred personally with the functionary in
question before they proceeded to the northern
frontier, in the winter of 1838, to engage in the
expedition against Canada, which, as regarded
themselves, terminated, as may be remembered, in
the forfeiture of their lives upon the scaffold.
According to all accounts, an intimate ac
quaintance and a constant associate of the same
functionary, was an American of disreputable
character, who was represented as having been
living for many years by swindling practices;
had been publicly accused, without, on his part,
any attempt at refutation, of effecting the ruin
of some respectable individuals by fraudulent
transactions ; was a close ally of the notorious
William Lyon Mackenzie, an abettor of his
proceedings, and also one of that worthy's baQ
on the occasion of his mock arrest by the Ame
rican authorities, shortly after his return from
Navy Island.
Nor was the alleged connection of the Rus
sian official with this very reputable character
confined to mere intercourse, if reliance may be

RUSSIAN INTRIGUES. 237
placed on the asseverations of third parties pro
fessing to have cognizance of the transaction,
that bills of exchange to some amount drawn by
the forraer on St. Petersburg, were given by him
to the latter, for the purpose of being discounted^
How the proceeds were applied did not certainly
transpire, unless they raay be associated with the
purchase of arras effected through the French'
raan already mentioned'
Another grave circumstance of at least sus»
picion against the Russian, was the alleged fact
of his sudden return to New York a few days
previous to the 4th of July last, for the express
purpose, as it was positively stated, of forwarding
a series of renewed attacks on Canada, which,
according to every concurrent testiraony, were to
take place on that anniversary of the declaration
of American independence. That such measures
of aggression were seriously projected, cannot
with propriety be doubted ; while it is probable
that their execution was alone averted, either by
the conspirators being overawed by the state of
watchful preparation in which they found their
adversaries, or by their own arrangements not

238' RUSSIAN INTRIGUES.
being sufficiently matured to admit of execution
at the time appointed. As regards the Russian
himself, it was said to have been ascertained by
persons who professed to keep an ej'e upon his
movements, that for some time after his arrival in
New York, he was in the habit of retiring to
his apartments, after dark, with various myste
rious foreigners, including the Frenchman who
boasted of his intimacy with hira, and of there
remaining in such company until the night was
very far advanced, sometimes, indeed, trenching
upon day-light.
Of the proceedings of this secret conclave, no
thing appears to have transpired beyond the fact
that writing implements were rauch in requisition
among the party. As social intercourse with
persons of the character and description of those
in question would seem to be at variance with the
station and habits of a person answering to the
description given of the Russian, there can be
but one conclusion left regarding the nature of
the connection he had formed, and that needs no
explanation. He was further represented to have returned

RUSSIAN INTRIGUES, 239'
from Buffalo (whither he had been for some un
known object), in corapany with a Russian colonel
of engineers and the Araerican worthy engaged
in the bill-discounting transaction. This colonel
was reputed to have been on active service in Cir
cassia, and to have proceeded from thence direct
to America by order of the Imperial govern
ment. Be this as it may, it was at least main
tained that he had travelled along the whole
Canadian frontier, as had also two other officers
of the Russian engineer corps, one of whom
reached New York, on his return from Lower
Canada, with a companion, who proved to bfe no
other than an active intelligent French Canadian
rebel, who had just exchanged a state of mural
incarceration for one of self-exile from his native
land. Lastly, towards the end of 1839, a Russian
naval officer was represented to have made his
appearance on the scene ; his arrival being viewed
with great complacency by those whose views it
was his supposed object to proraote.
On a point involving so rauch obscurity as

240 RUSSIAN INTRIGUES,
would naturally attach to the still more serious
question of a secret good understanding between
Russia and the United States, in a matter of this
nature, but little beyond surmise can of course
be hazarded. It is said to be the generally en
tertained opinion of many eminent American
diplomatists and statesmen that the diplomatic
intercourse of the two countries in question
should be placed on a footing of the closest inti
macy, because of the presumed congeniality of
their re.spective interests, as opposed to those of
England ; while in consonance with such view,
we find that, in effect, it hasbeen the practice for
sorae years past, in the public messages of the
President to Congress, to advert, whensoever
there was an opportunity, in raore flattering
terras to Russia than to any other nation.
One, in particular, of the distinguished indi
viduals referred to, who is peculiarly qualified,
frora past avocations and great political know
ledge, to deduce correct conclusions from a poli
tical chain of arguraent, is stated to have ex
pressed his belief, when speaking, inthe course

RUSSIAN INTRIGUES. 241
of general conversation, on the subject of Cana
dian troubles, that it was highly probable the
Russian governraent would seek, by indirect
raeans, to promote disaffection and disturbances
in Canada ; not, however, that he was aware of
any specific facts to warrant such opinion, but
because he conceived it to be the line of policy
which a power so " artful, active, and intriguing
as Russia," would be likely to pursue.
Such is the collective testimony which, being
more or less known in Canada, created a strong
impression in the minds of many intelligent
persons there, that Russian as well as Ame
rican agency was at work in fomenting the
aggravating occurrences which have marred the
peace and happiness of that country for so long
a period. If it be, in reality, as sustainable as the
general consonance of its different components,
springing frora sources wholly independent of
each other, would seem naturally to imply, it
presents a curious specimen of the diplomatic
usages of modem days.
VOL, I. M

242 RUSSIAN INTRIGUES.
Should this probable picture of the past, por
tray alone the possible shadow of the future, my
end in attempting the delineation will have been
effectually attained ; for, although, in a retro
spective sense, but little advantage can accrue
frora a knowledge of what is stated, still, in a
prospective one, in such a raatter, " fore-warned,
fore-arraed," is a good old maxim deserving of
regard. With reference to the general substance of
what precedes, on a dispassionate review of all
the circumstances, and arguing by the soraewhat
analogous case of Russia's alleged intrigues in
British India, a strong degree of plausibility, to
say the least of it, must be considered as attach
ing to the actual prevalence of similar alleged
intrigues in British America.
In former times (one cannot say the good old
times), nations seeking to gratify their animosity
or ambition at one another's expense, were wont to
have at once recourse to the word-and-a-blow, or
rather the blow-and-a-word system (the'frequent
inversion of the order of precedence, rendering

CASE OF CANADA. 243
the exception in effect the rule) ; but the mode
of procedure is now altered, and in lieu of im
raediate fisty-cuffs, the mutual weapons of attack
and defence resorted to by hostile governments,
are found to consist in fomenting discord and
rebellion, each araong the people subject to the
other's dominion.
How far, after all, the ultima ratio between
them may be by such means averted, is a ques
tion remaining to be solved, and at any rate
irrelevant to the present matter.
The case of Canada being a peculiar one,
elicits particular inquiry into every contingent
means whereby the welfare of that country may
be dangerously affected, in order, that being
known, they may serve at least to dispel indul
gence in a sense of false security, even if they
cannot be effectually guarded against ; and
therefore it is that I have considered it expe
dient to place exclusively, in juxta-position in
the same chapter, the two special subjects seera
ing to have affinity with each other, that have
led to these concluding reraarks.
I raay have over-rated the prospective danger,
M 2

244 PROBLEM UNSOLVED.
to the seeming advent of which I have wished
to aid in awakening public attention, and I may
also possibly be labouring, in respect of it, under
entirely erroneous views; but I shall be well
content to be convicted as a false prophet by the
issue of events ; nor, judging by present indica
tions, can such issue be very far remote.

245

CHAPTER VI.
The Englishman's Political Reverie from the summit of
Cape Diamond. — Original Errors committed by British
Statesmen in regard to Canada. — Restitution of Cana
dian Civil Law. — Impolitic Division of the Province
of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada. — Perversion
of Elective System in the latter. — Character of Feudal
Tenure. — Legislative Union of the Provinces. — Con •
elusions relative thereto.
It is a pleasant thing for an Englishman, who
may be even moderately imbued with a sense
of his country's past and present greatness, and
with patriotic feelings, to take his stand, on a fine
summer's evening, upon the sumrait of Cape
Diamond, at Quebec, and there, comrauning with
himself, to review in memory the leading inci
dents connected with the history of the vast con
tinent whose gigantic arms encircle him on every
side. Towards which point soever of the horizoii the
vision of his thoughts may be directed, it is met

246 ENGLISHMAN'S REVERIE.
alike by monuments commemorative of British
valour, enterprise, and skill.
Does he face the North, he views the records
of his countrymen's scientific labours, implanted
amidst the accumulated snow and ice of ages.
Does he turn to the south, he beholds a nation
mighty in its infancy, — the offspring of his own,
and reared by its hands, whether for future good
or evil, — developing its energies, displaying its
resources, and revelling in its freedom, attained
through the resistless vigour imparted by an
innate consciousness of maturity. Does he revert
towards the east or towards the west, he discerns
the embryo of a second nation engendered of the
same parent stock as the first, and requiring only
fostering care, and timely prudent cultivation,
to become, at no distant period, its contemporary
as well as counterpoise, in wealth, strength, and
prosperity. Eastward, also, he recognizes the wide waste
of waters, forraing his country's particular do-
raain, teeraing with her coramerce, and exhibit
ing indisputable evidences of the fertile genius
of her sons, in improving the modern means of
navigation.

ENGLISHMAN'S REVERIE. 247
At the base of the rock he paces, he sees
stretched out before him the memorable plains,
whereon the power, in the western hemisphere,
of a formidable rival European nation was
finally extinguished by his country's prowess.
He looks down upon that scene of former strife
with melancholy interest, rejoicing at the resplen
dent victory there won, as much, because it ter
minated the cruel and disastrous wars which had
theretofore been mutually waged by either party,
as that it added another brilliant leaf to his coun
try's laurel wreath.
Araid the busy sounds proceeding from below,
he misses the harrowing war-cry of the fierce
Algonquin,* or of the equally fierce Iroquois,f
formerly arrayed in deadly strife against each
other by the corrupting influence of European
gold. That cry, smiting with greater terror those
who heard it, than even the uplifted tomahawk
itself, is for ever hushed, it may be hoped,
* This tribe is almost extinct.
t Now known as the Six Nations' Indians: they are
very diminished in number.

248 ENGLISHMAN'S REVERIE.
within the sphere where formerly it resounded,
and is there succeeded by the notes of busy in
dustry. Pursuing the contrasts he is thus forming be
tween the present and the past, the raental soli
loquist goes back to the time when the sur
rounding vast inland waters, now ploughed by
busy steam-boats, were navigated alone by the
Indian canoe or the cumbersome bateau, and
associates the widely-extended local comraerce of
the present day with the insignificant though
profitable traffic carried on by the Canadian
voyageur, or thinks of the coraparatively recent
days when naked savages brought down their
peltries to barter in Montreal.
But after all, there is here, as in raost other
works of human undertaking, a dark side to the
picture; and this is speedily exhibited to the
meditative beholder.
In the raidst of the pleasurable eraotions ex
cited in him by the contemplation ofhis country's
abstract grandeur, as reflected in the reraote re
gion of her renown where now he finds hiraself,
and by the evidences carrying conviction to his

ENGLISHMAN'S REVERIE. 249
mind, that while civilization has effectually
supplanted there the desolation of savage life,
British enlightenment has no less released from
hereditary thraldom a race of foreign bondsmen
(how ungratefully soever these raay have re
ceived the boon), he is saddened by the thought
that much of what was requisite at the hands of
prudence to render durable the social structure,
which valour founded and enterprize partially
upraised, had been neglected ; and though the
legitimate means, still admitting of adoption for
the tardy reparation of original error, readily
suggest themselves to his imagination, an in
voluntary doubt shoots across his mind, as to
whether even the imraediate application of those
means can render them efficacious to the full
extent needed.
In the foreground of the reversed picture now
before him, he at once detects the primary cause
of the whole train of local evils, whose practical
effects have been exhibited within the period of
his own recollection. The living proof of a two
fold error of commission and omission, are there
M 3

250 ENGLISHMAN'S REVERIE.
palpably depicted : the first consisting in the
non-assimilation of a torpid race of men, there
tofore the exclusive occupants of a land in
adequately peopled, with the state of things
peculiar to a new era in their existence ; the
second, in the total neglect of their mental cul
ture, as a preparatory means of imbuing them
with notions which should prove alike condu
cive to their own future happiness, and to the
common safety of the community whereof they
now formed a part.
Looking to a later period, he is made sensible
that, notwithstanding unity of interests on the
continent he surveys, had ceased, by the secession
of one great body of its population from the
common system, no pains were taken to preserve,
prospectively, the still adhering fragments from
the encroachments or aggressions of the more
compact detached mass ; or, in other words, that
no adequate means were devised, calculated to im
part to the first that degree of physical and moral
strength which could alone enable them to keep
a relatively equal pace with the progress of the

ENGLISHMAN'S REVERIE. 251
last ; or to qualify themselves for an after state
of independence similar to that which, in th^
one case, had already been achieved.
Attendant upon this, as also upon the intes
tine elements of danger first adverted to, the
contingency of confl^icting constitutional princi
ples needlessly brought into collision, through
the obstacles impeding steady progressive im
migration, is also apparent on the darkened
canvas, and serves more strongly to reflect its
other gloomy objects^
It is time, however, to quit Cape Diamond.
A cloud long hovering there, portending tbe
discharge of wrath, which, unless prepared for,
shall rive the rock to its foundation, warns the
loiterer to depart; and, descending from his
post, he hurries to the solitude of his chamber,
in order to pursue on paper the train of thought
awakened by his past reverie.
On an impartial retrospect of the past, it will
be found that the first great political error com
mitted in Canada by British statesmen, subse
quently to that country becoming a dependence
of the British crown, was the restitution of the

252 OLD FRENCH LAW.
Canadian civil law, founded on the feudal anti-
commercial " Coutume de Paris,"" after the pro
vincial population had been for some years living
submissively under Enghsh laws, and accustom
ed to English rules of civil procedure.
This measure, effected by the Quebec Act,
passed hastily in 1774, would seem to have been
intended as a kind of political experiment, form
ing part of a series of harsh decrees, directed
against the old revolted colonies, and if at all
defensible, can alone be held so for the time it
served (if indeed, it did so) the temporary pur
pose for which it was apparently designed.
Its after inutility to this special end should,
obviously, have ensured its repeal at the earliest
opportunity; the more especially as the whole
body of British settlers in the province, already
feeling it to be diametrically at variance with
their interests, were strenuously opposed to its
continued operation, and earnestly petitioned the
British Parliament, on various occasions, to be
' relieved from the disabilities which it virtually
imposed upon them. One of these petitions,
bearing date the 24th of November 1784, is

ANOMALIES. 253
said to be notable for the lucid exposition it con
tained. The urgent representations of the British
inhabitants were, however, wholly disregarded ;
and in 1791 , the British Parliament consuraraated
its former folly and injustice by passing the Con
stitutional Act of 1791, whereby, as every one
knows, the province of Quebec was divided into
the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada ; the
obnoxious Canadian civil law being still left to
work its mischief in the latter. Now, no two
greater anomalies could, perhaps, have been
brought into juxta-position than the law in
question, and the representative form of govern
ment that was thus ostentatiously accorded to
the French Canadians ; who, imbued with the
most inveterate prejudices, besottedly ignorant
and blindly passive, were in no respect pre-qua-
lified to wield, with advantage either to them.
selves or others, the instrument of power placed
so inopportunely in their hands.
It was some time before the majority of thera
could be raade to comprehend the nature of the
gift ; many, indeed, inquiring, in their sim
plicity, as I have been assured on the most ere-

254 REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM.
dible testimony, if it were not a machine, and,
if so, how it was to be set a-going.?
The raischief perpetrated was very greatly
augmented by an injudicious division of the
Lower province into counties, without sufficient
regard to territorial extent, or the formation of
new settlements : for, the representation granted
was regulated in accordance with the wants of a
stationary, instead of a progressive, population,
and confined to the seigneuries, or lands held
under the feudal tenure.
Until within the last fourteen or fifteen years,
when a slight modification of the original system
was effected, the holders of freehold tenures, and
consequently the English population of the mo
dern townships, were precluded from returning a
single member; while, after all, even by the
tardy change in question, territorial extent,
diversity of tenure, and commercial as well as
general interests, remained virtually as much
unrepresented for any practical results, as they
bad been absolutely so in the first instance.
The almost universal suffrage established by
the Constitutional Act, combined with the ab-

ITS PERVERSION. 255
sence of any restrictive qualification, either as to
property or education, in the candidates for
election to the Assembly, destroyed every expec
tation of seeing intelligent and liberal-minded
representatives retumed by constituencies almost
entirely consisting of a class of persons resem
bling the peasantry of France a century ago.
For sorae tirae, indeed, after this act of pseudo-
designation carae into operation, a few raembers
friendly to comraercial and British interests,
were returned, mainly by the influence of
wealth and comraercial favours being brought
to bear upon portions of a population for the
most part poor, by a few sanguine enter-
prizing British capitalists. But, in proportion
as it became apparent to French Canadian dema
gogues, that the constitution their countryraen
had received admitted of perversion from its
legitimate, to the proraotion of their own exclu
sive objects, a corresponding handle was shaped,
and fitted by thera to the instruraent ; the pliant
materials thereof being the slumbering pre
judices and national antipathies of an anti-

256 UNEQUAL STRUGGLES.
British people, whose minds, at first gradually
awakened by insidious arts to the contemplation
of an eventual ascendancy of numbers, were
afterwards kept steadily directed to that point
by appeals of an inflamraatory nature, varying
in force just as proximate or contingent causes
of popular excitement chanced to preponderate.
Hence, though the numbers and the wealth of
the British population had an innate tendency
to increase, in a greater proportional ratio than
those of their French Canadian brethren, the
power and pretensions of the latter gradually
augmented beyond all safe or justifiable liraits.
But the very tendency in question on the one
part, also stimulated on the other the desire to
check it ; and as ample means of doing so had
unfortunately been furnished, there needed but
a determination to employ them.
Notwithstanding the most vigorous efforts,
renewed at intervals, to acquire an equal foot
ing, the British commercial minority gradually
dwindled into insignificancy ; so much so, that
one session of the provincial legislature exhibited

FRENCH DOMINION. 257
the extraordinary spectacle of the local executive
being unable to carry a single measure necessary
for its beneficial working or existence.
But endless embarrassraent to the executive,
was not the only evil resulting frora the original
error in the composition of the governraent.
The House of Assembly, having practically
become the organ of the most ignorant and pre
judiced part of the foreign population, incurred
as a body the positive conterapt and hatred of
the entire British population, who naturally re
coiled from submitting to the yoke of a French
antiquated oligarchy, and felt an insuperable re
pugnance to appeal, in almost any case, to a
body so incompetent and prejudging.
The French dominant faction resolved itself,
in effect, by its neutralizing power, into the sole
govemment of the country. Nationality was
the test whereby alone the merit of every sug
gested measure of improveraent, whether of a
special or general nature, was raeasured, and
hence the utraost opposition or the utmost fa
vouritism in reference to such raeasure prevailed.
As showing how little the dominant anti-British

258 BURDENS ON COMMERCE.
party was anipiated by a desire to co-operate in
any modification of the old Canadian laws, so
as to alleviate the burdens it imposed on com
raercial interests, it need only be raentioned, that,
on one occasion, a bold attempt was made by the
House of Asserably to extend the application of
the feudal tenure (hereafter to be analyzed) to a
considerable portion of the ungranted lands of
the crown, esta.blishing there as elsewhere, accord
ing to the Quebec Act of 1774, already adverted
to, the Canadian civil laws, with all their train
of hurailiating consequences.
During a long series of years, commercial men
were engaged in unavailing efforts to obtain from
this anti-commercial branch of the legislature,
measures essentially requisite for iraproving the
domestic econoray ofthe province, so as to render
it an eligible field for British commercial enter
prise. In short, all propositions for laws tending to
effect assimilation, to encourage iraraigration,
to facilitate and render secure transfers of pro
perty, to bestow a just participation in common
rights of every kind, were alraost uniformly re-

FEUDAL SYSTEM. 259
jected; not, indeed, from a want of perception
of the general advantage of such measures, but
because their adoption would augment English
settleraents, and thereby lessen the local influence
of those who had been allowed to raonopohze all
representative power.
It is truly painfril to reflect how a small popu
lation which, at the period of the conquest,
would have passively received from the con
queror's hand the shape most conducive to sub
serve British interests, was permitted, through
a false system of indulgence and a meagre
policy, to grow into hideous deformity, and to
become so self-willed and untractable, through
distorted views, arising from the want of proper
education, as to consider in the light of posi
tively oppressive measures, those progressive
changes of social improvement which the people
of other countries regard and are wont to solicit
as boons of the highest value.
Foremost among the burdens peculiar to the
feudal system, that have been and continue to
be experienced as the most oppressive, not only
to comraerce, but also to every sort of industry

260 MUTATION FINES,
and iraproveraent, is the seigneurial claim of
lods et ventes, or mutation fines ; being an im
position of eight per centum, or nearly one-
twelfth part, upon the purchase-money or ex-
negotiable value of all lands and houses, rigidly
enforced upon every transfer, howsoever fre
quent, except that of inheritance or testaraentary
bequest. Until the seigneuries themselves shall
be held in free and comraon soccage, in Ueu, as
now, of mortraain, this evil systera must be
expected to exist. Next in degree is the droit
des retraits, or right of pre-emption, enjoyed by
the seigneur over all such property as his tenant,
or censitaire, njay dispose of, with the abovo
exceptions. The Canadian law allows to the seigneur forty
days after the presentation ofthe deed of transfer,
to decide as to accepting the mutation fine, and
granting possession of the property to the pro
posed transferree, or resuraing it at the price
stipulated between the contracting parties !
Another invidious right of the Canadian seig
neur rainor only in the coraparison, is that of
monopolizing all the mill seats within the limits of

SEIGNEURIAL RIGHTS. 261
his seigneurie, and of obliging all his tenants to
have their corn ground at his mills, which, in
addition to being often out of repair^ are fre
quently inconveniently situated; and he exacts
for the service, a toll or moulture of one^four-
teenth part ; an allowance that, in a state of
free competition, would encourage the establish
ment of excellent mills, in central situations,
with good roads made at the railler's expense.
It is notorious that this seigneurial right has
been exercised in the province, to the serious
detriment of the export trade in flour, which
requires an improved manufacture.
The feudal right of hds et ve-ntes, weighing
heavily as it does Upon general industry through
out the province, is a forraidable bar, not only
to local improvement, but to that ready circu
lation of property which the interest of cora
merce imperatively requires ; and, in the present
state of Canadian law, the seigneur^ even if will
ing, cannot, by any act of his, render binding on
his heirs and successors the corarautation of any
feudal privilege, for what consideration soever.
Lands held under the seigneurial tenure, as well

262 MORTGAGES,
as buildings erected on them, are rendered, by
the operation of this law, so onerous and pre
carious, that a merchant, when obliged, as is
frequently the case, to purchase them from per
sons indebted to him, is quickly driven to sell
them again at a great sacrifice ; and consequently
two payments of mutation fine on the same pro
perty may take place within a few weeks or
months. Sometiraes, indeed, these mutation fines
are purposely left to accumulate ; and as they
constitute a privileged mortgage above all other
mortgages, they may sweep away the whole sum
reaUzed at the latest sale of the property.
In addition to the exclusive privileges already
mentioned as preying on the very vitals of the
province, allusion must be made to the burthens
incident to mortgage, which, in the present state
of Canadian law, no human foresight can enable
a contracting party always to evade. In Lower
Canada, fixed property, or real estate, can be
secretly mortgaged for its full estimated value,
without a surrender of the title deeds, to different
individuals, as often as the necessities or the
temerity of the proprietor may prompt him to

NOTARIES. 263
such courses; which, however fraudulent they
be, the laws now in force do not recognize as
criminal. These raortgages affect not only pre
sent, but also prospective property. The owner
has only to go from one to another paire Jldele
of French- Canadian notaries,* (who claim ex
emption from answering inquisitorial questions
as to the state of the case, on the plea of trieir
official oath,) in order to mortgage his estate ad
infinitum; such mortgages, when brought to
light, being entitled to precedence as securities
over all other claims, according to seniority of
date, and preserving a hold upon the property
for the space of thirty years.
The non-existence of an office of registration
or, in its absence, of any law or statute com
pelling the notarial corps to deposit, for public
inforraation, with the provincial authorities,
copies of their acts or instruraents burthening
fixed property or real estate, induces, in all tran
sactions for the transfer of such possessions, a
• According to the Quebec Almanac, the number of
notaries in the province, in 1837, was 380 ; of whora 340'
or about nine-tenths, bore a French designation.

264 IMPEDIMENTS TO COMMERCE.
feeUng of suspicion and distrust, from which, in
order to relieve the mind of a purchaser, the
most honourable proprietor can alone exerapt
himself by the no less humiliating than expen
sive means of a friendly suit, terrainating in
the sale of the property by the district sheriff",
and this is after all a very precarious security.
Apart frora their obstinate adherence to the
antiquated laws tolerating these abuses, a review
of the journals of the provincial asserably will
furnish ample proof of the anti-comraercial, un-
iraproving spirit displayed from first to last by
the French Canadian merabers of that body.
The inadequate progress made by agriculture,
the imperfect cultivation of the soil, and the
tardy improveraent of the channels of internal
coraraunication, all resulting from the inauspici
ous train of circumstances hereinbefore described,
have hitherto prevented the merchants of Lower
Canada from furnishing to the British West-
India islands, that abundant supply of pro
visions which, with the aid of the supply derived
from Upper Canada and Nova Scotia, would
have rendered them less dependent on the

COLLATERAL EVIDENCE, 265
United States' markets, at the sarae tirae that
it would have enriched British subjects in lieu of
Araerican citizens.
As confirraatory of many of the views I have
expressed in this, and in a previous chapter, re
specting the state of Lower Canada, I subjoin a
few extracts, from a series of articles from the pen
of an able writer on the affairs of that country,
which were published in one of the Montreal
newspapers five or six years ago. Their general
substance will also be found to correspond with
many of the opinions recorded by the Earl of
Durham, in his report.
" That the population," says the writer, " is
generally uneducated, is obvious from the noto
rious facts, that trustees of schools are specially
perraitted by statute to affix their crosses* to their
scholastic reports, and that within the last two
years, in each of two grand juries of the Court
of King's Bench for the district of Montreal,
selected, under a provincial law, frora araong the
wealthiest inhabitants of the rural parishes, there
* As a substitute for signatures,
VOL. I. N

266 COLLATERAL EVIDENCE.
was found only one person competent to write his
narae. " For fifty years after the cession of the pro
vince, the two races, if they did not harraonize in
social intercourse, were in sorae degree blended
on political occasions, and but for the haughty
doraination of an official faction which indiscri-
rainately oppressed Britons and Canadians, and
but for the selfish arabition of a few agitators,
who after humbling the comraon eneray, trans
ferred their hatred from the British executive to
the British name, they raight ere now have for
gotten or neglected national distinctions.
" About twenty-five years ago," he continues,
" commenced a struggle between a knot of here
ditary placemen and independent individuals,
of either origin — a struggle not for power, but
for liberty; a struggle which ended, as the bat
tles of freedora generally do end, in the exposure
of official corruption, and in the prostration of
usurped power.
" Flushed with success, and unfettered by
honesty or policy, the Canadian agitators cruelly

COLLATERAL EVIDENCE. 267
deceived their uneducated constituents into a be
lief, that the British inhabitants of the province
and Britons generally, were the bitter, persevering
enemies of Canadians ; and thus divided the pro
vincial population into two distinct and irrecon
cilable raasses, the French raajority and the
British minority.
" To perpetuate this numerical supremacy,
the patriots have systematically attempted to de
ter Britons from settling in Lower Canada.
" They have taxed British iraraigrants, and
British immigrants only, in defiance of consti
tutional principles, in defiance of national grati
tude, in defiance of coramon sense. They have
raet with silent contempt the Governor's repeated
and urgent request, that they would establish
an efficient quarantine for the benefit at once of
the immigrant and of the province.
" They have strained every nerve to ruin the
banks of the colony, and thus to strike with fatal
aim the very vitals of comraerce. They cherish
with obstinate tenacity the most petty vexations
of the feudal tenure, not because such vexations
are profitable to any one, but because they pos-
N 2

268 COLLATERAL EVIDENCE.
sess the recommendation of being hateful to
Britons." The writer illustrates such vexations by ad
ducing the seigneurial right of fishery and
chace, and of calling for the title-deeds of
every vassal.
He then goes on to say : " The patriots may,
on more intelligible grounds, defend the muta
tion fine {lods et ventes), and the seigneur's ex
clusive privilege of grinding the grain of the
seigneurie. It is not to be supposed that the
seigneurs will voluntarily relinquish lucrative
claims without being adequately remunerated by
law; but in the course of forty-two years of
industrious legislation, one might reasonably
have expected some attempt to remove or araeli-
orate so absurd, so galling, so impoUtic burdens.
The evils that spring directly from the mutation
fine are three-fold. It prevents the free transfer
of property; it gives the seigneur an interest in
driving an embarrassed vassal to a sale; and
being levied on all improvements, it is virtually
a tax on industry, and seriously diminishes the
demand for manual labour and mechanical
skill."

COLLATERAL EVIDENCE. 269
" In fine," he adds, " it checks the growth of
cities, thus crippling at once comraerce and agri
culture; it carries the immigrant, whether
labourer or mechanic, to a raore open market,
and by damping the enterprise of capitalists,
depresses, below the just level, the value of real
property. From feudal prejudices, our antago
nists also oppose the registration of real pro
perty, and thus strive to perpetuate a host of
practical grievances of an intolerable character, —
secret and general mortgages ; forced sales, from
the difficulty of borrowing money ; interminable
litigation ; and the expense, if not the irapos
sibility, of procuring an unexceptionable title.
This last remark tends to explain the more intel
ligible grounds of attachment to the feudal law.
The seigneur's motives are obvious and natural ;
and the legal circumstances alluded to, suffi
ciently account for the feudal predilections of
lawyers and notaries of French extraction, who,
as they form a majority of the educated laymen,
have unbounded influence, as well in the country
as in the Assembly.
" Supposing," he argues, " a manufactory or

270 COLLATERAL EVIDENCE.
building worth f 12,000 to be erected upon a
lot not worth £100, if the proprietor has occa
sion to sell, and could even find a purchaser
willing to give in all the sum paid by the pro
prietor for the erection of the edifice, the pro
prietor is nevertheless liable to lose £1,000 as a
pumshment for having had the industry, the
raeans, and the enterprize to build, because the
claim of the seigneur is not merely the twelfth
of the original value of the ground, but the
twelfth of the amount of the money and labour
of others laid out upon the building also.
" This, under the feudal system, becomes a
privileged debt to the seigneurs, who have not
expended a farthing. But this is not all. The
next, and the next vendor, ad infinitum, must
each in turn lose to the seigneurs a twelfth of
the purchase-money; so that if, by inevitable
misfortunes, the buildings should change hands
a certain nuraber of tiraes, the seigneurs will
benefit by these evils to the amount of the
£12,000, or full cost of the edifice, being one
hundred and twenty times the value of the lot.
" But the seigneur's privilege does not even

COLLATERAL EVIDENCE. 271
end here; for when he has obtained for once
the £12,000 of the raoney of others, as in the
case supposed, his claims proceed again in the
same raanner as before."
The following remarks, by the sarae writer, on
the subject of insecurity of title, and also on the
systera of general mortgages, as aggravating the
evils of secret obligations, will more fully illus
trate those evils than my own imperfect attempts
to do so.
He observes: "If a raan take to himself a
wife, with or without a special contract, he
grants a mortgage to the amount bf the lady's
dower, over all the real property which he either
does then, or may thereafter possess." "But
this," he continues, " is a coraparatively feeble
illustration, for a man can hardly take to him
self a wife without a tolerably general notoriety
of the fact. The descendants of a deceased wife
inherit all her clairas, and raay possibly exi.st
abroad, in the third or fourth generation, with
out the knowledge or suspicion of a single inha
bitant of the province. Such claim of dower is
neither dissipated nor weakened by time; it is.

272 COLLATERAL EVIDENCE.
in truth, practically strengthened by the lapse
of years, for every year necessarily weakens the
evidence by which the claim might be defeated.
" Mortgages are created in various other ways
than by marriage. When a rustic proprietor
owes money to his grocer, or his baker, or his
butcher, or haberdasher, he is generally com
pelled to pay hira by a notarial obhgation on all
his real property, actual or contingent ; and he
soraetiraes grants a similar mortgage in favour of
sorae pettifogging French lawyer, in considera
tion of the contingent costs of a newly begun
law-suit. Every judgment of court also operates
as a mortgage. But the most cruelly oppressive
of all raortgages is the seigneur's lods et ventes,
not considered raerely as a fine, but with regard
to the accumulations of such fine, advisedly per
mitted by the seigneur.
" Not one mortgage in a hundred takes its
rise from the lending of money ; so that the
obstacles which the insecurity of titles throws
in the way of borrowing, hardly tend, in any
degree, to diminish the number of mortgages."
Again : " Where mortgages spring from such

I
COLLATERAL EVIDENCE. 273
a variety of circumstances, their secrecy, even if
they were special, would be sufficiently perni
cious ; but their generality engenders evils
absolutely intolerable and almost incredible.
Through such generality of raortgages, a man
cannot hold real property for an hour, without
vitiating its title to the amount of all his pre
viously granted notarial obligations. In this
way, a man may pollute* the title even of real
property that virtually never belonged to him.
He may have bought a farm or a house on
credit, may have been obliged from want of
funds to. restore it to the seller, and may thus
have burdened it with a hundred previously
contracted, debts of indefinite araount."
In lieu of adopting the natural and only
effectual measure of relief, — naraely, the intro
duction of public registers, — the Asserably made
a show of remedying these grievances, by passing
a practically unbeneficial act for the ratification
of titles.
Of it, the writer already quoted, thus speaks :
" That act," he says, " is ruinously expen-
* i. e. by mere temporary possession,
n3

274 COLLATERAL EVIDENCE.
sive, retrospectively imperfect, and prospectively
worthless, " It is ruinously expensive, for the cost even
of the unsatisfactory ratification is about ten
pounds currency, being thirty or forty times as
much as the ordinary cost of registration, and
equal in amount on small properties to a second
mutation fine for the benefit of the lawyers and
the officers of Court.
" It is retrospectively iraperfect, since it does
not relieve the property from a Uving wife's or
a minor's claim for dower.
" It is prospectively worthless, for the pro
perty as soon as it passes into the hands of the
purchaser, under a comparatively pure title, is
potentially polluted by that purchaser's previous
notarial obligations.
" So slovenly and worthless an Act places the
self-styled reforraers morally in a worse position
than that in which they previously stood. It
confesses the evil; but so far frora reraoving
that evil, it only tempts purchasers to squander
fees in the Court of King's Bench — fees, which,
like the mutation-fine itself, must be renewed on
every successive sale."

COLLATERAL EVIDENCE. 275
Some further idea of the sentiments animating
the French Canadian leaders, and of their en
deavours to inflame the passions of the masses
whose interests they professed to advocate, may
be gathered from the following passages, selected
from a French pamphlet, published in Montreal,
under their auspices, a few years since, its cir
culation being specially designed for the rural
population. " A host of Britons hastened to the shores of
the new British colony to avail themselves of its
advantages, in order to improve their own con
dition. " Owing to the facilities afforded by the ad
ministration, for the establishraent of Britons
within our colony, the latter came in shoals to
our shores to push their fortunes at our expense.
" Many of them established themselves in our
cities, where they were encouraged by their
fellow-countrymen, and have succeeded in raaking
theraselves raasters of all the trade both foreign
and domestic.
" They have introduced a systera of paper
money, based solely upon their own credit, and

276 CAUSES AND EFFECTS.
have persuaded our habitans to commit the folly
of receiving it as ready money, although it is
not hard cash, current among all nations, but,
on the contrary, is of no value, and would not
pass current beyond the limits of the province."
The whole of these extracts are sufficiently
indicative of intense national animosity, but the
last, in particular, exhibits a strange admixture
of ignorance, cunning, and anti-commercial views.
Such, generally, was the calamitous state of
things which led, owing to the natural resistance
it provoked, to the passing of the celebrated
ninety-two resolutions of the French Canadian
House of Assembly, and brought about the sub
sequent suspension of the constitution, in part
originating all the mischief, as also two succes
sive insurrections-— to be succeeded, peradven
ture, should further folly afford the opportunity,
by a third !
Labouring under the manifold grievances
that have here been exhibited, the British po
pulation of Lower Canada regarded with in
tense anxiety the prospect of partial emancipa
tion from them, held out to their hopes rather

CANADA COMMITTEE. 277
than to their expectation, in 1822, by the intro
duction of a Bill into the British Parliament for
effecting a Legislative Union of the Canadian
Provinces ; and were then almost as unaniraous
in their wish to see that object accoraplished, as
they have shewn themselves to be on a late occa
sion. But party influence, distorted or interested
views, and short-sighted policy, conspired to de
fraud them of the coveted measure of relief;
while, a few years afterwards, they were plunged
into despair by the report (published in 1828)
of the Canada Coraraittee of the House of Com
mons, the suggestions contained in which for
effecting a few nominal improvements of a super
ficial nature, were heavily counterbalanced by
the spirit of marked partiality evinced by the
Coramittee towards the French Canadians, as
raanifested by their expressed desire to see pre
served, and even extended, the raeans of per
petuating the distinctive French nationality which
had so long been under the fostering care of the
British Governraent.
In the Appendix will be found sorae interest-

278 LEGISLATIVE UNION.
ing documents illustrative of the views and posi
tion of the British inhabitants of Lower Canada
at a period ulterior to that just raentioned, and
also further explanatory of rauch that has been
stated in relation to the peculiarity of their pre
vious condition.
The efficacy of the legislative union of the
Canadas, as an ingredient for restoring the supre
raacy of British principles and institutions, on
that section of the North American^Gontinent,
raust obviously depend entirely upon the contin
gency of it being, or not being associated with
other raeasures of a fundaraental nature.
On the first hypothesis, perraanent benefits raay
be anticipated frora its operation ; but on the
last, it can be productive of but little advantage
beyond the present relief of the Upper Province
from its pecuniary burdens, and may, nay, must,
prove a delusion.
The auxiliaries whose simultaneous agencies
it requires are, primarily, immigration ; secondly
preponderance of representation for the Upper,
so long as the French Canadian population of the
Lower Province remain, as now, numerically

LEGISLATIVE UNION. 279
superior to the British inhabitants of the cities
and townships ; thirdly, the abolition of the anti-
comraercial old French law of 1774, already ad
verted to, and the substitution in its place of
English civil law; and lastly, the introduction
of a systera of popular education, whereby the
use of the English language should become dis
seminated among the ignorant, raisled hahitans
of the rural districts.
It is assuraed, of course, that the English lan
guage should alone be tolerated as that of the
legislature, the executive, and the courts? its
gradual adoption in the last, in particular, being
iraperatively enforced.
Surrounded by the safeguards indicated, the
measure of the Union, by at once identifying the
British population of Lower Canada with the
well-affected portion of the inhabitants of the
Upper Province, would seem eminently calcu
lated to insure to both greater protection against
revolutionary influences than they have possessed
since 1 791 ; nor would the unholy alliances, pre
dicted by some as likely to ensue for subversive
purposes, between the ultra-radical merabers of

280 MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS.
French or British origin, who might find seats in
the United Asserably, be likely to prove under
such circurastances very baneful in their effects.
As regards the establishraent of municipal in
stitutions in Canada, they must be viewed as ne
cessary adjuncts to the well- working of the repre
sentative systera, if that itself be established on
a safe and proper basis. Being part and parcel
of a popular form of government, they could
not with propriety be withheld longer than the
tirae when their introduction raight seera benefi-
ficial ;' and such period would appear to have now
arrived.. The people of Toronto, and, in general, the
whole of the adherents of the petty oUgarchy
notoriously existing in Upper Canada, have
always been as much opposed to the Legislative
Union, whensoever the subject has been mooted,
as the French Canadians theraselves ; and this
apparently for no better reason than that a few
local and private interests would be sacrificed to
the public good.
I have often, with surprise, remarked, when
conversing on the subject with Upper Canadians

STRANGE DELUSION. 281
of the better class, how little, generally speak
ing, they appeared to be impressed with the
conviction, so strongly felt by strangers, that
the interests of the two provinces are, in all
respects identical ; and, also, how little they
seemed to imagine that the affairs of Lower
Canada, whether for good or for evil, were closely
blended with their own.
They felt sensibly the inconvenience of being
pent up, as in a prison-house, by the United
States on one side, and Lower Canada on the other,
without any egress to the ocean, but through
one or other of those countries; but then they
proposed, as the raeans of surraounting the diffi
culty, not to raake common cause, as bodies,
with their British brethren in the Lower Pro
vince, against two coraraon eneraies, but to ap
propriate to themselves the district and island of
Montreal, thereby leaving the British inhabitants
dwelUng in other sections of the province more
exposed than ever, because of their circumscrip
tion in such case within a narrower circle, to the
evils from which they had so long been strug
gling to get free.

282 LEGISLATIVE UNION.
For these reasons, and considering the senti
raents known to prevail upon the subject among
various influential persons, as inferred from the
debates of the previous session, it was seriously
apprehended by the advocates of the Union, at
the period when I left Toronto, that how much
soever opposed to the sense of the community at
large might be such conduct, a majority in the
Legislature would have, nevertheless, been found
of sufficiently biassed views and restricted notions,
to reject the bill about to be propounded to thera,
for operating the Union, and that consequently
no alternative would have remained to the Go
vernor-general but that of a dissolution of the
Assembly, and an appeal to the constituencies.
The explanation of the apparently ready assent
which was given to the measure by both
branches of the legislature, in the face of former
expressed grounds of objection, not reraoved, is
probably to be found in the fact, that while many
members of the Assembly shrank from the con
tingency of a dissolution, all were alike sensible
that through the medium of the Union alone
could the impending bankruptcy of the Upper

LEGISLATIVE UNION. 283
Province, resulting from causes hereafter to be
mentioned, be averted.
It is, however, scarcely worth while to inquire
by what process many inconsistent members of
the Provincial Assembly becarae all at once con
sistent in this raatter, seeing that, happily, the
principle contended for has, been conceded ; but
it is much to be regretted that the legislature of
Upper Canada should not have exacted better
terras as the condition of their acquiescence, by
stipulating, that whatever raight be the nuraber
of representatives assigned to Lower Canada,
that number should be exceeded by at least one-
third in favour of the Upper Province, until
such time as there should be a sufficient influx
of British iraraigrants to render positively safe,
equality of representation for the two pro
vinces. FaiUng, as it raust if an isolated measure, to
produce the early political advantages anticipated
from it, the legislature would be ill able to with
stand the after pressure of events upon it ; and
we raay be assured, in such case, that further

284 GENERAL REMARKS.
opportunity of remodelUng the fragments would
be sought in vain.
I have endeavoured to show, in a preceding
chapter, that a present severment of the actual
political relations of England and Canada, so far
from conducing, as some suppose, to the future
welfare of each, would, on the contrary, prove
disastrous to both, by striking at the vitality
of the one, and crushing, while in embryo, the
reserved independence of the other.
But the strict logical sequence of this view,
from the train of reasoning adduced, points no
less forcibly to the mutual advantages that might
be confidently expected to accrue when Canada
should have acquired the strength and means to
stand alone, from the exchange of the colonial
connexion for the bond of a national alliance,
cemented, as in such case it would be, by the
ties of a common interest, a coraraon sympathy,
and, above all, by a coramon safety.
Entertaining very strongly this twofold con
viction, which extensively obtains in Canada,
I should be indeed happy could I know that

GENERAL REMARKS, 285
I had succeeded in imparting it to any num
ber of those who may chance to peruse these
pages, and should consider myself as well
repaid by such result for the task of their
compilation.

END OF VOL. I.

Printed by J. L. Cox and Sows, 75, Great Queen Street,
Lincoln's-Inn Fields.

NEW BOOKS OF TRAVELS,
JUST PUBLISHED BY
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.

I.
NARRATIVE OF A WHALING VOYAGE ROUND
THE GLOBE,
In the South-Seaman Tuscan,
During the Years 1833, 1834, 1835, and 1836.
Comprising Sketches of Polynesia, California, the Indian Archipe
lago, and the most interesting Islands of the Pacific Ocean ; with an
account of the Sperm Whale Fishery, and the Natural History of the
Whale. By F. DEBELL BENNETT, Esq., F.R.G.S., &c.
Two Vols. 8vo., with numerous IUustrations.
II.
ELEVEN YEARS IN CEYLON.
By MAJOR FORBES,, 78th Highlanders.
Two Vols. Svo. with Illustrations.
" Major Forbes is just the writer from whom the British public would most
willingly receive an account of Ceylon, which is at this moment a subject of
especial interest. He has all the franlcness of a soldier, mingled with the
taste and judgment of a scholar. Whether he recites the annals of ancient
wars, describes the relics of former grandeur, exhibits the proofs of present
improvement, or leads us into the forest jungles to enjoy the exciting chase
of the wild elephant, we find him equally full of information. This is high
praise ; but it may easily be justified by reference to the work." — Atlienteum.
III.
Mr. BAILLIE ERASER'S TRAVELS
IN KOORDISTAN AND MESOPOTAMIA.
Two Vols. Svo. with Engravings.
** One ofthe most valuable books of travels which has emanated from the
press for a considerable time. All the regions visited are curious and charac
teristic in their natural features, and the manners ofthe people; and a great
part of the ground has been rarely traversed. -We recommend the work to
the reader as one of the best accoimts of the coimtries of which it treats." —
Spectator. IV.
NORWAY AND THE NORWEGIANS.
By R. G. LATHAM, Esa.
FELLOW OF king's COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
Two Vols, post 8vo.
" In these entertaining and valuable Volumes Mr. Latham furnishes us with
a very complete account of his Travels in Norway, and of the information he
acquired there concerning the people and their innitutions. The work is
written with freedom and vivacity, and the reader will be amply rewarded in
its perusal." — Atlas.

V.
A SUMMER IN ANDALUCIA,
By GEORGE DENNIS, Esa.
Two Vols. Svo. with Illustrations.
" An entertaining and instmctive work." — John Bull.
" In the long list of our modern travellers it would be difficult to find one so
uniformly entertaining and agreeable as the author of these volumes. That
he is a scholar, and a man of taste and talent, the reader must soon perceive.
His style is elegant, unaffected, and attractive ; his information respecting
Spain, its history, antiquities, language, and peculiar characteristics, is singu
larly comprehensive and diversified; while his powers of observation and
description are first-rate." — Glasgow Constitutional.
VI.
THE HON. C. A. MURRAY'S
TRAVELS IN AMERICA,
INCLUDING
HIS RESIDENCE WITH THE PAWNEE INDIANS.
{Dedicated, b-y special permission, to the Queen.)
Two Vols. Svo. with Plates.
" The most novel and exciting part of this work is the author's residence
with the Pawnee Indians. Here a scene opens upon us, wbich for the strange
ness of its aspect, tbe romantic dangers to which it exposed the solitary
adventurer in the Prairies, and the general interest ofthe pictures it exhibits,
is as fascinating as one of the Arabian tales, and more vivid and striking
than any passage of a similar kind with which we, are acquainted in any mo
dem work of travels." — Atlas. VII.
PERU AS IT IS :
A RESIDENCE IN LIMA AND OTHER PARTS OF THE
PERUVIAN REPUBLIC.
By dr. ARCHIBALD SMITH.
Two Vols, post Svo. price Eighteen Shillings.
" A lively and intelligent book of travels. The reader is fully initiated into
all the wonders and attractions of Peru. The work forms a concise but ex
tremely interesting summary of the social customs, institutions, politics, and
geographical features of the country; and this is interspersed with good-
humoured remarks, and anecdotes of a miscellaneous character,"— Courier.
VIII.
THE CITY OF THE CZAR.
;By THOMAS RAIKES, Esa.
One Vol. Svo. price 12s.
" This book contains very curious and interesting pictures of Russian
society. It is a perfect magazine of anecdotes, and we really know not where
we have met with so many amusing, and so new. Those who love this most
entertaining kind of reading, in which history condescends to talk a little
scandal, had better look to the work itself. It is written in the form of letters ;
these letters are as good as Wraxall's, and must find a place in all libraries,
along with Walpole, Madame Sevigne, and Grimm, — the most easy and plea
sant, perhaps the most authentic, histories we have,"— Times,

3 9002 00888 6088

#¦¦

1