Chapter III: Part 3

That letter did more for Loyalism in Upper Canada than the concentrated action of Governor, oligarchy, and Tory press could ever do to hurt it. Mackenzie, to work off a private spleen of his own against Dr. Ryerson, published the obnoxious document without comment. Vain was it for its author to hasten to say “that the misrule of the Government of Canada, and the monopolizing, selfish domination of such men as had lately (though but a small faction of the people) resisted all improvement and reform, would lose the countenance of the authorities in Downing Street, and leave the people in freedom to manage their own affairs.” The mischief was done. On the one hand, many of the most reputable of that body through which amelioration of condition might be hoped to come were forever divorced from a party that could voice such sentiments; and on the other, it placed a weapon ready to the hand of those men who, the incarnation of Toryism, honestly believed themselves to be the only conservers of loyalty left. By noon of that day, in May, ’34, when the “copious extracts” were published by Mackenzie, he and the writer of them were execrated by many who, an hour before that electrical sheet was issued, had been friends or silent sympathisers.

The whole country was under baneful domination; but not of the mother-land. Great provocations had brought just condemnations, and the match was about to be put to the torch. The rights of the people and the prerogative of the Crown bade fair to become parallel lines that could not meet. Some still believed in a brighter future; but the few streaks of light which they declared they could discern in that darkest hour before dawn were blood-red. Day was to be ushered in with much woe, although more than one writer has been found to call Rebellion “a magniloquent word” as applied to all the unsettled humours of the land in that episode of Canadian history.

Had Shakespeare, born to still further glory, tarried till Canadian times, he might have added a syllable or so when he wrote “The devil knew what he did when he made men politic.” But then, a contemporary diary of his time tells us: “I have heard it stated that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, but had not any art at all;” and he would have needed both to do justice to the Canadian question.

That which was called “the almost romantically loyal Canadian population” had diverse ways of showing loyal enthusiasm, when (to quote Mackenzie in after years), a “person known as Victoria, the sovereign of England and the Canadas,” came “to keep up the dignity of that article called a crown.” _Te Deums_ were sung in the French cathedrals, it is true, but many in the congregations rose and walked out. But at the coronation illuminations in Toronto, although one transparency quoted the words of the late king, “The Canadas must not be lost or given away,” another came as rider to it, “The Constitution, the whole Constitution, and nothing but the Constitution.” For many in Upper Canada were as dissatisfied with the portions of that system imported by Governor Simcoe as their French brethren were. Here as there the broad basis of it, the Will of the People, was a dead letter.

Happily for Toronto on that occasion it had that British characteristic which, however Tory might abuse Whig, or Reformer predict the ruin of everything Tory, made all men unite--for the day at least--in fealty to the young Queen, and, more wonderful still, in good-will towards one another. Elsewhere there were forecasts of petticoat government, when “the speech from the throne would dwell chiefly on embroideries, nurseries and soap.” How were they to know that the slim and beautiful young fingers which held the sceptre were strong, tenacious, and of an even touch, or that the girlish form held a mother heart large enough and to spare for her own and every bairn within her realm.

So did the shuttles angrily fly to and fro in the warp and woof of coming catastrophe in the year when Her Majesty came into her inheritance of discontent.

The Canadas at Westminster.

“_I put not my faith in Princes, for that would be forgetting the rules of Holy Writ; but, begging your pardon, I still put my faith in Peers._”

“‘_I am glad I am not the eldest son,’ said the younger Pitt when he heard of his father’s elevation to an earldom; ‘I want to speak in the House of Commons like papa._’”

“_A politic caution, a guarded circumspection, were among the ruling principles of our forefathers._”

The man who wrote the letter calculated to create trouble and promote that already begun was quite a personage in the Radical wing of the House of Commons. A Scotchman from Montrose, born in 1777, he was son of a captain of a trading vessel; the father’s early death left this Joseph and numerous brothers and sisters to the care of a mother who was a woman of extraordinary perseverance and energy. She kept a small stand on market-day in Montrose, and Fox Maule, afterwards Lord Panmure, seeing young Joseph there, was seized with the whim to apprentice him to a druggist. A subsequent apprenticeship to surgery and a voyage to India led to his study there of the native dialects, a knowledge of which he made such good use that in the war with the Mahrattas he became interpreter, an office of emolument and honour. He returned to Britain at the peace of 1807, and began a tour there so minute and exhaustive that he visited every manufacturing town. He then went as thoroughly through Southern Europe, and with his head thus equipped entered the House as Tory member for the borough of Weymouth in 1812, calculated to make a figure there and carry much weight through native ability and wide experience. Once more he tried his rôle of interpreter between those who could not or would not understand each other. His opponents found it impossible to tire or baffle him; repulses were thrown away on him, and he returned to the charge, unconscious, ready to repeat a hundredth time that which they had declared unreasonable.

“What manner of man is Joseph Hume?” asks _The Noctes_. “Did you never see him?” says North. “He is a shrewd-looking fellow enough, but most decidedly vulgar. Nobody that sees him could ever for a moment suspect him of being a gentleman born. He has the air of a Montrose dandy at this moment, and there is an intolerable affectation about the creature. I suppose he must have sunk quite into the dirt since Croker curried him.” “I don’t believe anything can make an impression on him. A gentleman’s whip would not be felt through the beaver of a coal-heaver.” He was, in fact, short, broad, stiff, square and copperfaced. He exhibited the uncouthness of the Scot in relief, and his speech, in all the worst of the Scotch brogue, “barbarous exceedingly,” baffled description. “Depend upon it, Joseph will go on just as he has been doing.” And he had been going on from his place as Radical member for Montrose. Added to all, he was a master of detail. In spite of his earnestness, he often convulsed the House with his Scotch bulls when he intended most to impress. Expatiating on the virtues of the French-Canadians, he exclaimed, “I say, sir, they are the best and gentlest race in Europe (laughter), aye”--waxing hotter--“or in Africa” (roars of laughter). Sir Francis Bond Head did not scruple to say that Hume was the greatest rebel of the lot, and, in his turn, Hume made a furious attack on Sir Francis. However, he was just as vigorously answered by Lord Grey, and then the morning papers said “that Hume had not been able to make Head.” Politics were so bitter then that all Reformers were rebels. Hume’s letter of March 29th, 1834, in which he says, “_Your_ cause is _their_ cause, _your_ defeat would be _their_ subjection. Go on, therefore, I beseech you, and success, glorious success, must inevitably crown your joint efforts,” sounds as if Sir Francis might have had reason for his opinion. By 1839 a public dinner had been given this erstwhile Tory, in testimony of his eminent public services and constant advocacy in the cause of reform. Says North, “Why, a small matter will make a man who has once ratted rat again. We all remember what Joe Hume was a few years ago!”

“A Tory?”

“I would not prostitute the name so far, but he always voted with them.”

“At the Whigs it was then his chief pleasure to rail,
He opposed all the Catholic claims tooth and nail....”

“Why, no wonder ... he hates the Tories. They never thought of him while he was with them, and now the Whigs do talk of Joe as if he were somebody. But, as _John Bull_ says,

“‘A very small man with the Tories
Is a very great man ’mong the Whigs.’”

It was a time of general unrest and suspicion, just from the likelihood of change and the alarming precedents set up. No two men could be seen anywhere in the same neighbourhood without arousing ideas of coalition, hope, suspicion and a host of feelings--as, for instance, when “Mr. Roebuck was seen in a quarter which left little doubt that he had been with Lord Brougham. It is very generally thought that something is about to happen.” Mr. Roebuck, like Mr. Hume, was a marked man and an out-and-out Canadian sympathiser. He, according to a well-known and accredited newspaper, “was paid by the Lower Canadian House of Assembly to expatiate on grievances, and to declare at all times and in all places to those who have no personal acquaintance with the Canadas that the people there are _restless, dissatisfied, yearning for republican institutions, and that unless the never-ending, still-beginning concessions they require are granted, another American war must be the result_.” The effect of his words was weakened by his appearance, which was that of a boy of eighteen. “If we do not immediately take active measures,” was Sir John Colborne’s antiphon from across the sea, “to arm and organize our friends, the province (Lower Canada) will be lost to us.”

He did organize--“Why, slaves, ’tis in our power to hang ye.” “Very likely,” came the answer, “’tis in our power, then, to be hanged and scorn ye.”

What in Canada were called Roebuck’s “remarques ordinaires” were constant philippics against administrative abuses there. He wanted some means to be found as remedy for the defects. He laboured unceasingly. In speeches, writings in journals and pamphlets and periodicals, in season and out of season, he lost no chance to plead the cause of the Canadas. Naturally, he was “abusive and ridiculous” in these letters to such as did not agree with him. Had his nomination been properly confirmed, his income as agent would have been £1,000 a year; but the want of it did not slacken his efforts. “While such is the nature and conduct of this petty and vulgar oligarchy, I beseech the House to consider the peculiar position of the people over whom they domineer.” He then goes on to draw a picture of the superior scene across the St. Lawrence; a natural enough picture to be drawn by an American, born with prejudices in favour of his native land. He goes on: “With such a sight before them it is not wonderful that the Canadian people have imbibed the free spirit of America, and that they bear with impatience the insolence, the ignorance, the incapacity and the vice of the nest of official cormorants who, under the festering domination of England, have constituted themselves an aristocracy, with all the vices of such a body, without one of the redeeming qualities which are supposed to lessen the mischiefs which are the natural attendants of all aristocracies. It is of a people thus high-spirited, pestered and stung to madness by this pestilential brood, that I demand your attention.”

But the Canadians, though grateful, were aware he did not always act with prudence in their behalf. He and Mr. Hume together had presided at a meeting where the latter declared that Canada was of no advantage to Britain. But they gave him and all who mentioned them kindly in the House of Commons--O’Connell, Pakington and others who had spoken for them--their heartfelt thanks.

Labouchere, French by descent, stood up in their defence and vindicated their claims. “I look upon the Act of 1791,” said he, “as the Magna Charta of Canadian freedom,” and contended that a more rigid following of Pitt’s intentions would have resulted in better things. He denounced the prejudice of one race against another, nor deemed a council so altogether British wholesome government for people so entirely French. The French had many champions in that historic chamber. Sir James Mackintosh, author of “_Vindiciæ Gallicæ_,” a man whose whole bias of mind had been turned and held fast by French revolution, equipped by nature with all the powers and attributes of statesmanship, and who had brought all to bear on home politics and legislation in the broadest imperial sense, was not the least of these. He had undertaken, years before the blooming of that bitter blossom, the Canadian aloe--tenacity of life is one of its virtues,--the successful defence of a French emigrant for libel on the consul; his residence in Bombay, as Recorder, had been famous for his wholesome administration between British and native rights; he had strongly opposed “the green bag and spy system;” had voted against the severe restrictions of the Alien Bill, and had moved against the existing state of the criminal law; so that he did not speak, as many did on Canadian affairs, without special or collateral experience. He wanted the dependency governed on principles of justice, few and simple; protection against alien influence, and freedom to conduct their own affairs and manage their own trade.

“A British king see now assume
Judicial sovereignty, ‘_coutume_,’
And that of Paris cease to reign
Throughout the Canada domain.”[2]

He even allowed merit to that old _coutume_ in comparison with affairs as they existed under British law, and in sarcastic humour ran a parallel between them.

When

“Quebec first raised the legal courts
For Does or Roes to hold their sports,”[2]

the spirit of the _Conseil Souverain_ was one which did not at the Conquest migrate to the new body: “Nous avons cru ne pouvoir prendre une meilleure résolution qu’en établisant une justice réglé et un Conseil Souverain dans le dits pays, pour y faire fleurir les lois, maintenir et appuyer les bons, chatier les méchants, et contenir chacun en son droit.”

Sir James now held the Governor responsible for the existing state of affairs; he accused the Colonial Minister of appealing to the sympathies of the House in favour of British interests only. Were the twenty thousand British to be privileged at the expense of the four hundred thousand French? Were the former to be cared for exclusively, their religious sympathies so fostered as to bring about Protestant domination? Again he draws a parallel between what Ireland was and what Canada might become, and in the name of heaven, his eloquence aided by large grey melancholy eyes, adjured them solemnly that such a scourge fall not a second time upon any land under Britain’s sway. “Above all, let not the French-Canadians suppose for a moment that their rights or aspirations are less cared for by us than those of their fellow-adult colonists of our own blood.... Finally, I look upon a distinction in the treatment of races and the division of a population into distinct classes as most perilous in every way and at all times.”

Then Melbourne rose to reply that nothing was as unsafe as analogy, particularly historical analogy.

And Lord Aylmer thought, after an extensive tour of the French province, giving all these questions earnest consideration, that the best way to settle the question was to bring in thousands of the Irish to the colony; the Eastern Townships he estimated could take five hundred thousand, and the valley of the Ottawa one hundred thousand. These painstaking, conscientious governors generally left England laden with minute instructions, and came on the scene with exact directions as to their action. The Canadians, first credulous, afterwards wary and lastly suspicious, shrewdly guessed that many of the “_impromptus_” were in the Governor’s pocket; they also knew that Lord Glenelg was a Reformer in London and a Conservative in Quebec. They believed that orders publicly given carried with them secret advice not to have them enforced, as they were meant “only to blarney the Radicals.” And Papineau had told them that the same hand which wrote the King’s speech penned the answer to it. When the Irish emigrant did come he brought the cholera with him, and Jean cried out again that legislation and emigration only meant fresh trouble.

The amount of thought bestowed upon the Canadas by these statesmen no one, not even the most discontented Canadian, denied. But the mistaken data from which many of the arguments were drawn maddened some; and aristocratic mannerisms, when brought into contact with the democratic Upper Canadian, gave offence. There was a great deal of the picturesque about Jean Baptiste, and of him much was known; retiring governors and officers took with them bulky note-books full of anecdotes. In Upper Canada there was nothing of the picturesque, and the same note-books, developed into goodly volumes, tell us it in print without flinching. True, those intent on learning had Basil Hall’s Sketches, with accounts of Hall’s five thousand two hundred and thirty-seven miles of travel; but though the former were beautifully done the latter were meagre, and with the exception of Niagara make the Upper Province as uninteresting as its own crows. For foundation they had Charlevoix; but, says Charlevoix, “The horned owl is good eating, many prefer his flesh to chickens. He lives in winter on ground mice which he has caught the previous fall, breaking their legs first, a most useful precaution to prevent their escape, and then fattens them up with care for daily use.” Could housewife with Thanksgiving turkey do more!

Now a good many of those who came after Charlevoix and reported on us took him--perhaps unconsciously, perhaps conscientiously, for Charlevoix was a good man--for a literary model, pushing to the extreme limit their rights and privileges as travellers. They read, did these mighty and well-meaning statesmen, in their leisure hours. Nor in later years were the English less credulous when Canadian curiosities came to them bodily. When a party of Indians were nightly attracting large and wondering masses of the classes, one of the Royal Household, with two others as white as himself, one of the trio six feet two of apparent savagedom, arrayed themselves as magnificent Bois Brûlé, a Sac and a Sioux respectively, to appear before a brilliant array of fashion, wealth and beauty, carry out an unusually thrilling programme and be loaded with gifts by the spectators. The “interpreter” of the three got into rather a mess through his attempt to interpret too much, and in a final frenzy of dancing they danced off some paint made liquid by their desire to be honest in giving enough for their lavish remuneration. An earl in the audience failed to recognize his brother in one of the chief actors, voice and speech being disguised by a rifle bullet held in the mouth. The sequel was the return of the presents and a chase home to lodgings, followed by a yelling crowd of ragamuffins who turned out to be truer savages than those whom they termed Hopjibbeways. The Indian came first in romantic interest to the Englishman, particularly when got ready for an audience by a clever manager. To hear a handsome, strapping Bois Brûlé sing “To the land of my fathers, white man, let me go,” was enough to draw tears. Next in point of interest to this link between red and white came the habitant. The Upper Canadian was very tame after these two, and Toronto was but “a place of considerable importance ... in the eyes of its inhabitants.”

Another writes of travel by water as he finds it in America: “There is no toothbrush in the country, simply I believe the article is entirely unknown to the American toilet. A common towel, however, passes from hand to hand, and suffices for the perfunctory ablutions of the whole party on board.” No man in England would take the trouble to contradict this; it was much easier to buy the book, read, be amused, and believe--as he did with the Indian party.

Much as Mackenzie was instrumental in doing for his country, he was scarcely a person to make his province interesting when he presented himself in London.

“Now Willie’s awa’ frae the land o’ contention,
Frae the land o’ mistake and the friends o’ dissension;
He’s gane o’er the waves as an agent befitting
Our claims to support in the councils o’ Britain,”

sang a Canadian bard in 1832, when Mackenzie, with his monster grievance book under his arm, set sail for the Home Office.

The quiet of the vessel after his late life in Little York was irksome; so this stormy petrel went aloft one night in a howling tempest, no doubt in a fit of home-sickness, and remained for hours at the masthead. Scarcely had he descended when one of the sails was blown away.

“Then there the Reformers shall cordially meet him,
An’ there his great namesake, King William, shall greet him.”

He lost no time in putting himself in communication with Hume, Roebuck, Cobbett and O’Connell, and with Lord Goderich, then Colonial Secretary; but just how far the meeting was cordial, with those from whom cordiality was expected, only a long comparison of data can show. Even then our opinions had weight, as in ’31 when Brougham wrote: “Dear Lord Grey, the enclosed is from a Canadian paper; they have let you off well, as being priggish and having a Newcastle burr, and _also_ as _not_ being like O’Connell.” Mackenzie was in the nick of time to see that wonderful sight for eyes such as his--a great aristocracy bowing to the will of a great people--to hear the third reading of the Reform Bill. He was lucky enough to get into that small gallery in the House of Lords which accommodates only some eighty persons. He noticed that but few peers had arrived, and that a number of members from the Lower House stood about. To stand they were forced, or sit upon the matting, for there were neither chairs nor benches for them--a state of things highly displeasing to the fiery little democratic demagogue perched aloft, anxious to hear and determined that others should yet hear him.

At the Colonial Office he was simply a person interested in Canadian affairs, and useful as one able to furnish information. But he furnished it in such a discursive manner and adorned it with so much rhetoric that the Colonial Secretary found his document “singularly ill-adapted to bring questions of so much intricacy and importance to a definite issue.” The impression Mackenzie might have made was nullified by the counter-document adroitly sent in ahead of his own by the Canadian party in power, wherein a greater number of signatures than he had been able to get appended to dissatisfaction testified to satisfaction with affairs as they then existed in the Upper Province. The customary despatch followed. Some of Mackenzie’s arguments were treated with cutting severity; but an impression must have been made by them, for the despatch carried news most distressing to the oligarchy, which was modelled after the spirit of St.Paul,--that there should be no schism in the body, that the members should have the same care one for the other.

To these Tories of York it was all gall and wormwood. Nor could they accept it. Mackenzie had spent six days and six nights in London, with only an occasional forty winks taken in his chair, while he further expressed himself and those he represented. His epistolary feat was regarded by the Upper Canadian House with unqualified contempt, and Lord Goderich’s moderately lengthy one as “not calling for the serious attention of the Legislative Council.” Mackenzie had ventured to predict in his vigil of ink and words that unless the system of the government of Upper Canada was changed civil war must follow. But peers also sometimes have insomnia and know the distressing results; so he was warned: “Against gloomy prophecies of this nature, every man conversant with public business must fortify his mind.” The time was not far distant when he might say, “I told you so.” The Home Office listened with great attention, but observed close reticence in regard to itself. The Colonial Minister looked upon such predictions as a mode to extort concessions for which no adequate reason could be offered. Nevertheless, the two Crown officers who were Mr. Mackenzie’s most particular aversions at that time had to go. The weapon of animadversion sent skipping across seas for the purpose of his humiliation had proved a kind of boomerang, and the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General were left free to make as many contemptuous expressions as they pleased concerning the Colonial Secretary and his brethren, being looked upon by the last-named as rebels themselves, since they had, “in their places in the Assembly, taken a part directly opposed to the assured policy of His Majesty’s Government.” Such is the strength of point of view; for the libellous rebel doing his busiest utmost against them was to them “an individual who had been twice expelled” this same House of Assembly. Under the first affected hauteur of the dismissed officials there had been many qualms; the Attorney-General thought it ill became the Colonial Secretary to “sit down and answer this rigmarole trash” (Mackenzie’s hard work of seventy-two sleepless hours), “and it would much less become the Canadian House of Assembly to give it further weight by making it more public.” One, a little more sane, thought that if Mackenzie’s papers contained such an amount of falsehood and fallacy, the best way to expose such was by publication. But a large vote decided that it should not go upon the Journals, and the official organ called Lord Goderich’s despatch an elegant piece of fiddle-faddle, ... full of clever stupidity and condescending impertinence. The removal of the two Crown officers was described as “as high-handed and arbitrary stretch of power as has been enacted before the face of high heaven, in any of the four quarters of this nether world for many and many a long day.” The organ’s vocabulary displayed such combinations as “political mountebank--fools and knaves--all fools and knaves who listened to the silly complaints of the swinish multitude against the honourable and learned gentlemen connected with the administration of government.”

Whenever time dragged withal in the Upper Canadian House they re-expelled Mackenzie and fulminated anew against “the united factions of Mackenzie, Goderich, and the Yankee Methodists.”

Mackenzie’s friends lost no time in celebrating what was to be a short-lived triumph:

“They sneered at Mackenzie and quizzed his red wig;
That the man was too poor they delighted to show,
Nor dreamed with such triumph the future was big,
As chanting the death song of Boulton and Co.

Rail on, and condemn the corps baronial,
Lord Goderich and Howick despatched at a blow,
Those peers who knew nothing of interests colonial,
In proof read the march route of Boulton and Co.”

Lord Goderich’s polite wish not to hamper any nor coerce--that these gentlemen might be “at full liberty, as members of the Legislature, to follow the dictates of their own judgment”--ended in the dictates of anger appearing in hard words in the official press. The affections of these tried Loyalists were said to have been estranged; moreover, “they were casting about in their mind’s eye for some new state of political existence” which would put them and their colony beyond “the reach of injury and insult from any and every ignoramus whom the political lottery of the day may chance to elevate to the chair of the Colonial Office.”

Now Mackenzie himself could not have done better than this, nor had he yet gone even thus far.

But the official in that chair was used to many hard knocks, and the individual was changed so often that the blows had no time to take effect. Nor was the incomer ever anxious to avenge the woes of his predecessor.

“Prosperity Robinson,” _alias_ “Goosey Goderich,” soon to be Lord Ripon, “the dodo of the Reform party,” stepped out. Mr. Stanley, “Rupert of debate,” stepped in. The two dispossessed of Canadian power lost no time in presenting themselves at the Colonial Office, one of them going in as his small adversary, Mr. Mackenzie, happened to be coming out, and the personal interview with the possessors of “alienated affections” made the new Secretary make a bid for the return of these valuables by reinstating the ex-Solicitor-General, and giving the ex-Attorney-General the Chief-Justiceship of

“Some place abroad,
Where sailors gang to fish for cod,”

in what was called the Cinderella of the colonies, Newfoundland. History is silent, as far as we can learn, on the state of his affections thereafter, transplanted and uprooted so often. We presume they withered and a’ wede awa’.

Now this Chief-Justice had formerly called Mackenzie a reptile, and the other gentleman had dubbed him a spaniel dog--quite a leap from the general to the special, had but Darwin, then somewhere near American waters casting his search-light of enquiry from H. M. S. _Beagle_, known of it.

Mackenzie was in despair: “I am disappointed. The prospect before us is indeed dark and gloomy.” But rallying from this despondency, in his usual peppery style he told Mr. Stanley the appointments would be “a spoke in the wheel in another violent revolution in America.” Hume wrote that he judged the disposition of the Secretary was to promote rather than to punish for improper conduct, and thereby encourage the misgovernment in Canada, which Lord Goderich’s policy had been likely to prevent.

Well might a Canadian paper, announcing the advent of the new Attorney-General, Jameson, say: “It is to be hoped he will view the real situation of the people of this province from his own observation.”

The Iroquois was always ready to drink to the King’s health, be he a George or a William; Stanley might declaim about “the most odious and blood-thirsty tyranny of French republicanism;” but this little Canadianized Scotchman, with his clever pen and tongue, misty conceptions of statesmanship, real grievances and revolutionary speech, was more than the Home Government could “thole.” The Earl of Ripon, in 1839, stated that Mackenzie in his correspondence of 1835 sought to make himself appear a very great man, whereas in reality he was a very little man. In his apologetic we find: “Well, he saw Mr. Mackenzie. He did not know that Mr. Mackenzie was a broken-down peddler. He knew that Mr. Mackenzie was an exceedingly troublesome person. He was perfectly satisfied, from the conduct of the individual, that Mr. Mackenzie was as vain and shallow a person as he had ever encountered. If the conference alluded to by Mr. Mackenzie was of only two hours’ duration, he must say it was the longest two hours he had ever known.”

How to make a common unity, a compact and harmonious people, out of their uncommon ancestors became the problem. “Not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald,” said the Canadian mélange, “but that our wits are so diversely coloured.” Some of the men who were to solve the problem do not read as if equipped by appearance or culture to handle with their delicate fingers such homely subjects. Scarcely a week passed without a fresh turn up of the cards in Canada; and although Mr. Warburton wondered if the colony were worth retaining, the game worth the candle, the young Queen, in that part of her speech which dealt with the Canadian question, had an undertone of determination “to maintain her supremacy throughout the whole of the North American colonies,” and how the game would finally turn out became daily involved at Westminster in greater doubt and difficulty. At this time an editor in the United States uttered prophecy: “We do earnestly believe that the Virgin Queen of England is destined to be one of the most extraordinary characters of the present age or any country. She is a little Napoleon in petticoats--as determined, as lofty, as generous, as original as he was. Wait and see.”

“My Lords,” said the Great Duke, referring to her speech quoted from, “I could have wished that this declaration of Her Majesty had been accompanied by corresponding efforts to enable Her Majesty to carry those intentions into effect.”

“Sir Robert Peel, who played upon the House as upon an old fiddle,” regretted that there was not also in that speech a stronger expression of sympathy for the sufferings of their brave and loyal fellow-subjects in the colonies--at which there were cheers from both sides of the House. He could not too much admire the bravery, the loyalty, the devotedness of the Canadians. Nor did this arise from interested motives; it was sincere attachment to monarchical principles, and sincere opposition to a republican form of government.

There were many men, interesting in themselves, in debate on us then; but individually, and as he borrowed interest from his position towards that centre of all observation, the young Queen, came Melbourne.

While still William Lamb he had hated what he called the creeping palsy of misgiving, tried hard to resist it, and developed into one of those not afraid to advance with the age. He had no “extreme faith in religion, politics, or love.” Accordingly, to him patriotism and wisdom were not confined to the Whigs alone. The oh-oh’s and ironical cheers from what he knew to be a powerful majority moved him not; he was as easy, comfortable, good-humoured, as ever. Quaintness, originality of a manner fitful, abrupt, full of irony, at times of a tenderness almost feminine, distinguished him, together with an insuperable aversion to “platitudes, palaverings,”--and bishops. In an age when swearing was as common in drawing-rooms as in the field, England’s Prime Minister was an acknowledged past-master in the art, and by inflections gave a dozen changes to the small familiar four-lettered British adjective in most common use. In ordinary transactions he loved a chirpy oath; but in his dealings with the bishops was forced to coin a “superdamnable.” The Order of the Garter was a great favourite with him, “because there was no damned merit about it.” Utilitarian levelling like Bentham’s he regarded as nonsense; state parsimony like Hume’s, a “pettifogging blunder;” radicalism after the manner of Cobbett and others he called mere ragamuffinism; but he told his peers plainly that the time had gone by when any set of men could put themselves up as a check against national opinion, that antique usages could not prevail against reason and argument--truths spoken with the voice of the Commons in that place where such a voice was almost unknown, seldom heard. Yet rancour was foreign to his nature: “The great fault of the present time (1835) is that men hate each other so damnably; for my part, I love them all.” And all with the air of a good-tempered, jovial gentleman.

“If something of his amiable spirit could be caught by others,” said a friend, “and grafted on Lord Wellesley’s counsel to ‘_demolish these people_,’ matters would not be difficult.”

Called upon frantically by friend and foe at a time of crisis “_to do_ something,” the responsibility of the times thrown on him, he sat tight and calmly answered, “Whenever you are in doubt what should be done--do nothing.”

This all sounds like the man for the Canadas. Nine hundred or so of his peers gnashed their teeth at him,--if peers ever so use their molars; and in Canada they wrote of “the prolific source of political evil, the profligate course of imbecile rulers.”

William the Fourth had called him “a great gentleman,” although he and his government had been “kicked out” by that obstinate, morbid, prejudiced and somewhat imaginative monarch. Naturally, Melbourne refused an earldom and a garter; but in his final advice to the sovereign he was as tactful as ever in making the latter partially modify the note of dismissal, thereby averting a storm of popular feeling and individual resentment of ministers. “Mind what you are about in Canada,” said the King when final instructions were given to Lord Gosford before he left England, and Melbourne and Glenelg--the Sleeping Beauty--found the monarch as hard to manage as the colony itself. “By ---- I will never consent to alienate the Crown Lands nor to make the Council elective. Mind me, my lord, the cabinet is not my cabinet; they had better take care, or by ---- I will have them impeached. You are a gentleman, I believe, I have no fear of you; but take care what you do.”

Posing as a man of pleasure, in reality a capable man of business, Melbourne lounged through his duties in a way to exasperate friend and foe. But as he lounged, he learned men and manners, determined to _see into_ things, and even in Ireland, when Chief Secretary, said, “If agitation would not go to bed he would like to have a chat with it.” He was ever pleading for concession to the demands of the people, dreading the consequences of refusal. “Everything about him seems to betoken careless desolation; anyone would suppose from his manner that he was playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness, that he was always on the heels of fortune, that he would giggle away the great Charter.... But I accuse our Minister,” said his critic, “of honesty and diligence; I deny that he is careless and rude; he is nothing more than a man of good understanding and good principle, disguised in the eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a political _roué_.” Perfectly courteous to others, it was impossible for others to be discourteous to him, always excepting Brougham. But even before Brougham he did not quail, and always could give tit for tat, much to the delight of the audience of peers who, like schoolboys, exulted whenever their terror, the bully of the class, got a drubbing. The tongue which Brougham sarcastically spoke of as attuned to courtly airs, made to gloze and flatter, flayed him so completely with its quiet polish that he winced under its lash and betrayed, by his own increased violence of invective, the weight of the punishment. Soon after the accession the press said Lord Melbourne was about to publish a work on chess--the best method of playing the Queen, of getting possession of the castle, an entire disregard of the old system as to bishops, being points in the book. This genial, indolent statesman, who fearlessly told the truth irrespective of party, was rubicund, with the aquiline nose of the aristocrat; his large blue eyes sometimes flashed with fire, but oftener brimmed with merriment. The noble head, sturdy plainly clad and careless-looking figure, consorted well with the _laisser aller_ expression of face. Strange to say, he, like Lord John Russell, usually stuttered out his speeches, thumping the table or desk before him as if to work out the sentences that would not get themselves delivered. The Reform Bill made him specially energetic. Sitting next to him was a very noble earl who wore his hat well over his brows, weighing the _pros_ and _cons_ of too much liberty--for other people. Melbourne in his heat took his own white hat in his right hand, beat the air with it in inarticulate struggle, and brought the white to bear, crown to crown, upon the black one. The blow was fair, the arm muscular; the very noble earl looked like the ancient White Knight, with head apparently wedged between his shoulders. He sat speechless for a moment, and then nimbly springing to his feet, amid roars of laughter, twisted his head free and regained his vision. And when the roar subsided, the Duke of Buckingham thought that the great statesman so suddenly beclouded could scarcely see his way out of the difficulty, and the laughter was renewed. To see a way out of the Canadian difficulty was to find a clue in a maze.

Canadian Tories were triumphant over the fall of the Ministry on the Jamaica question. “We cannot guess,” says one editor, “into what hands Her Majesty may be pleased to commit the trust which Lord Melbourne has declared his unfitness to administer.” The incoming man, Peel, quoted the state of Canada as among the trying questions which made the office of premiership the most arduous, the most important that any human being could be called upon to perform ... the greatest trust, almost without exception, in the whole civilized world, that could fall on any individual. A few moments later he had to confess that there was one question worse than the Canadian one, greater than colonial politics, a “_question de jupons_.” So the Government, after forty-eight hours’ attempt at change, reverted to its former holders; Canadian Tories were as glum as ever, and said Melbourne was again the governor of the petticoatocracy.

The St. Lawrence alone made the colony worth keeping; also, Canada by its confines came in contact with Russia; it was the seat of the most valuable fur trade in the world, and England would not be out of possession of it for two months before a French fleet would be anchored in the Gulf. These were thoughts impossible to think with calmness, worse even than annexation to the United States. The least calm of these men who debated upon what we were worth, and just what should become of us, was Brougham. Like most who love to torment, he himself was easily tormented. How does this champion of liberty look as he rises to condemn the policy on the Canadian question as “vacillating, imbecile, and indolent;” as he puts his awkward questions to those whom he calls his “noble friends” or “the noble lords,” all looking marvellously uncomfortable when their names are in that merciless mouth. We hear of him as absent from his place, ill in Paris through having swallowed a needle; yet after his return, one could imagine, in spite of his pointed replies, that his gastronomic feat had been to swallow a flail. “The foolish fellow with the curls has absolutely touched him,” says a contemporary writer.... “Make way, good people, the bull is coming--chained or loose, right or wrong, he can stand it no longer; with one lashing bound he clears every obstacle--there he is, with tail erect and head depressed, snorting in the middle of the arena.” The eyes flash, the brows gather, the dark iron grey hair stands up rigid, his arm is raised, his voice high; he is well out of the lush pastures of rhodomontade and diffuseness. The display of his power and the fertility of his mind amazes friend and foe; for the genius of his fervent intellect includes French cookery, Italian poetry, bees and cell building, and a host of subjects seemingly far removed from law and politics. This must have been knowledge gained at the cost of his profession, for an epigram has it that he knew a little of everything, even of law. “Brougham, though a Whig, is not a goose,” says the _Noctes_. Certainly “the whipster peer” who was so lately defiant does not look as if he thought so, as his late pretty bits of rhetoric rattle about his own ears. Sarcasm on his tongue, bile in his heart, Brougham talks pure vitriol, and everywhere a word falls a scar remains.

His foes accused him of being “one of those juggling fiends”

“Who never spoke before,
But cried, ‘I warned you,’ when the event is o’er.”

He contended that his conduct on the Canadian question had been “impudently, falsely and foully aspersed.” So far from being a juggling fiend who did not warn until the event was o’er, instead of standing by and not giving a timely warning, he had, not less than ten months before, standing in that place, denounced the policy of the Government. More, he had entered his protests on the journals, warning, distinctly warning, the Government that their proceedings would lead to insurrection; and to mark the falseness of the quotation, more marvellous still, he had never twitted them when the event was o’er by saying he had warned them.

There were, however, occasions and combinations which dismayed even Brougham. He, Ellis, Hume, Papineau and Bedard, happened to meet in Paris. Much to the satirical disgust of some Canadian papers, Lord Brougham declined a dinner invitation and remained in bed in order to be quite incapacitated, as he had good reason to fear that his seat at table would be opposite Papineau.

But there is a grave in the Benchers’ Plot at Lincoln’s Inn which tells the tale of the one vulnerable spot, the wound which would not heal, in this extraordinary, audacious, eloquent man, this free lance, the critic of administrations, so prone to wound others. There he laid his only remaining child, a girl of seventeen, his application to have her so buried listened to by the Benchers because he too wished to be laid there in the same grave with her.

The third in this trio who faithfully laboured to abolish or mitigate “toil, taxes, tears and blood,”--who all for their pains were burned in effigy in Quebec and other places--was Lord Glenelg. The following is a travesty on what were supposed to be the instructions given by him, when debates as to what would prevent rebellion were followed by debates on what would cure it, Lord Durham chosen the Physician Extraordinary for colonial ills. The document was intended to regulate the Canadian Government, and showed the zeal and watchfulness of Lord Glenelg:

“First of all, endeavour to discover of what rebellion consists; it is not exactly murder or manslaughter, or precisely highway robbery or burglary; but it may, in a measure, consist of all.” The witty gentleman who wrote thus far was quite right, but his words were two-edged. Lount’s death has more than once been called murder, and rebellion losses discovered some pretty kinds of robbery. “I have looked into all the dictionaries, and I find that the definitions given are pretty much alike; but I would not be quite certain that they are right.” Lord Glenelg had personally written Sir F. B. Head on his appointment a year or so before, “You have been selected for this office at an era of more difficulty and importance than any which has hitherto occurred in the history of that part of His Majesty’s dominions. The expression of confidence in your discretion and ability which the choice implies would only be weakened by any mere formal assurance which I could convey to you.” Now any man who could ascribe discretion and ability to Sir Francis Bond Head had need of recourse to dictionaries.

The bogus Lord Glenelg then continues his theorizing, on the basis that a mascot is a mascot. “A rebel is undoubtedly a person who rebels, and rebellion is unquestionably the act of a rebel; you will therefore ascertain whether there is a rebel, whether that rebel rebels, and if he does rebel whether it be rebellion. Having decided the point, you will then consider what is to be done. I am strongly of opinion that as long as rebellion lasts it will continue. Now, it would be requisite to learn the probable duration of the rebellion, which, I should think, would depend in some measure on the causes which excited it. Your object will be, therefore, to make its continuance as short as possible; and if you cannot suppress it all at once, you will do it as soon as you can. Then, as to the method of suppressing. I know of no way so efficacious as that of putting it down. I would advise neither severity nor conciliation, but only measures which will deter the bad or win them over. I would neither hang, pardon nor fine a single rebel, but let the law take its course, tempered with mercy.” The last Sir George Arthur did.

“By following these general instructions you will most assuredly set the Canadian question at rest, and I comfort myself with the idea that my rest will not be broken up again while I hold the colonial seat. Should any difficulty occur, I beg of you to send to me for further instructions; but I place such confidence in the advice I have already given that I shall not anticipate any application to disturb my slumbers.”

At the date of this ironical issue there were questions, seriously enough put, as to why Lord Gosford should be decorated with the Order of the Bath, the inference from the wording being that, unlike the Garter, it had some “merit” in it; merit which this Tory sheet failed to discover: “Given in a mad spirit of democratical arrogance to make rank and honours mere butts for public derision ... they generate a swarm of obscure baronets”--poor Sir Francis! “Last, and worst, they bestow that distinction, which was intended for the highest military and civil merit, on Lord Gosford, who found a colony in peace(!) and left it in rebellion.” The colony did not think so: il était un excellent homme. L. O. David says that only where he found it impossible to work out his mission of pacification he took vigorous measures, which were forced upon him. He left behind him, says the legend, le trop-célèbre Colborne.

I have laboured with all my wits, my pains and strong endeavours, said each debater; and Canada, Shakespearian in turn, replied, “Pray you, let us not be the laughingstocks of other men’s humours.”

There were many winter nights of ’37 made anxious to the colonies, when “Goderich, amiable but timid, ... Lord Glenelg, sleepy, ... Howick, mischievous, ... and the _real Judas_, Mr. Stephen, debated leisurely, and Mr. Disraeli began his romance of politics.”

“Well, Mr. Disraeli,” said Lord Melbourne, “what is your idea in entering Parliament?” “To be Prime Minister, my Lord,” was the daring answer; not quite as, in their minor world of politics, Papineau and Mackenzie dreamt of presidency in new republics.

On the night of Gallows Hill, December 7, ’37, while Toronto was in a flutter of excited wonder and self-congratulation, while Mackenzie was speeding one way, Rolph another, and Papineau had already crossed the lines, the British House of Commons echoed to the sonorous brogue of the Celtic Thunderer and to Mr. Disraeli’s famous failure of a maiden speech. “A failure is nothing,” said the man destined to be great; “it may be deserved or it may be remedied. In the first instance, it brings self-knowledge; in the second, it develops a new combination which may be triumphant.” Words as prophetic for the failure in Canada as for his own.

If, with Henry VI., we can say of Mackenzie, a bedlam and ambitious humour makes him oppose himself against his king, so might these Lords and Commons, Governors and Commanders, have taken pains with the habitant to “attend him carefully and feed his humours kindly as we may.” The French were such very children. “Oh mon Dieu,” cried one from the bottom of a boat while he and his companions looked momentarily for destruction, “if you mean to do anything, do it quickly! Once we are at the bottom it will be too late. Allons mon Dieu! just one little puff of wind, and we shall escape!”

Far back as the times of the beloved Murray, when they had at his recall petitioned the King to send him back to them--for he and his military council “were upright officers, who, without prejudice and without emolument,” did their best--and received as answer the arrival of Carleton in his stead, they were satisfied. For Carleton “was chosen by your Majesty.” Even the Duke of Richmond, in his short and stormy encounter with the Houses of Assembly, was beloved; why? They hailed the prestige of his exalted rank, for he was not only Duke of Richmond but Duc d’Aubigny, direct from the Duchess of that title, who had been invested with it by _Louis Quatorze_, their own Grand Monarque, as his other ancestors had been by Charles. Why did not some quick wit in the year ’37 follow the Scotch plan of providing a monarch for England instead of allowing that that place provided rulers for Scotland, and draw a parallel between James, who was Sixth of Scotland before he added England to his domain, and the young Queen whose claim to anything and everything came straight down from France? “The Norman-French of Quebec may well feel proud when they remember that they can claim what no other portion of the Empire can assert--that they are governed by a monarch of their own race, who holds her sceptre as the heir of Rollo, the Norman sea-king, who first led their ancestors forth from the forests of the north to the plains of Normandy.”

A Call to Umbrellas.

“_We must have bloody noses, and cracked crowns, and pass them current, too._”