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._”
In 1837 people did not do things by halves. _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_
doubled its meaning from the fervour of the abuse and obloquy cast upon
the subject of it during life. William IV. found even his Queen--to
whom, by the way, though she was jostled on the edge of accession by
Mrs. Jordan and others, he seems to have been devoted--satirized,
lampooned, vilified, by press and tongues alike. No sooner is he
himself dead than his demise becomes “mournful intelligence,”
“melancholy event,” “affecting news,” “distressing circumstance of the
death of our beloved monarch.”
Out of the chaos left behind him steps a girlish figure, not unlike,
in her bare feet and streaming hair, to some picture of early Italy, a
Stella Matutina.
Her head and hands are touched with the holy Chrism; Melbourne redeems
the sword of state with a hundred shillings; two archbishops and
some peers lift the tiny figure into the throne; no champion throws
the glove; the acclamations of thousands proclaim her crowned, peers
and peeresses put on their coronets; trumpets blare above the boom
of cannon; the heads of a nation are bowed in the silence of prayer;
“Stand firm and hold fast,” adjures His Grace; the old do homage and
become her liege men of life and limb and of earthly worship, and of
faith and truth which they will bear unto her, to live and die against
all manner of folk. All the romance of the Middle Ages seems crowded
round that small figure in St. Edward’s chair, and Stella Matutina
becomes Queen Regnant.
When she opened her first Parliament the Repeal Cry and disturbed
Canada were vexing elements in discussion; but the young sovereign
placed her trust “upon the love and affection of my people;” and that
trust, as we see, was not misplaced.
The Far West was long in hearing of her accession. “There was a deep
slumberous calm all around, as if Nature had not yet awoke from her
night’s rest; then the atmosphere began to kindle with gradual light;
it grew brighter and brighter; towards the east the sky and water
intermingled in radiance and flowed and glowed together in a bath of
fire. Against it rose the black hull of a large vessel, with masts
and spars rising against the sky. One man stood in the bows, with an
immense oar which he slowly pulled, walking backwards and forwards; but
vain seemed all his toil with the heavy black craft, for it was much
against both wind and current and it lay like a black log and moved
not. We rowed up to the side and hailed him, ‘What news?’ What news
indeed, to these people weeks away from civilization, newspapers and
letters. ‘William Fourth was dead, and Queen Victoria reigned in his
stead.’”
“Canada will never cost English ministers another thought or care if
they will but leave her entirely alone, to govern herself as she thinks
fit.” Then came the division of opinion as to what was fit, to be
followed later by the opinions of Lords Durham and Sydenham upon the
dominant party, to be in the meantime fought for by all. Some held it
wisdom to say that a despotic government was the best safeguard of the
poorer classes. A certain gentleman aired this idea in Canada, saying a
governor and council was the only thing for that country. His Canadian
listener looked at him fixedly for a moment, asking again if that were
really his opinion,--“Then, sir, I pity your intellects.”
There was an ominous smoke from the fire in Canadian hearts over this
question of class prejudices. Those were the days when a barrister
would not shake hands with a solicitor, nor would a “dissenting”
minister be allowed within the pale of society. Governor Maitland had
been particularly hard upon this latter so-called shady lot of people.
A store-keeping militia officer refused a challenge because the second
who brought it was a saddler. The honourable profession of teaching was
looked at so askance that to become a teacher was an avowal of poverty
and hopelessness. Yet joined to this Old World nonsense, transplanted
to a world so new that the crops sprung out of untilled ground, was the
fact that many of the noblesse, indigenous as the burdock and thistle,
drew their rent rolls from the village stores, and with the rearing of
the head of what was called “the hydra-headed democracy,” Froissart’s
fear was shared “that all gentility was about to perish.”
Under these circumstances military life naturally gave scope for much
originality in uniform, accoutrement, and deportment. At one drill
three or four hundred men were marshalled, or rather scattered in
a picturesque fashion hither and thither. A few well-mounted ones,
dressed as lancers, in uniforms which were anything but uniform,
flourished back and forth over the greensward to the great peril of
spectators, they and their horses equally wild, disorderly, spirited
and undisciplined. Occasionally a carving or butcher knife lashed to
the end of a fishing pole did good duty for lance,--not a whit more
astounding in appearance and use than the concert of marrow-bones and
cleavers which some years before had nearly frightened the Duchess of
York to death on her arrival in England.
But the lancers were perfection compared with the infantry. Here
there was no attempt at uniformity of dress, appearance or movement;
a few had coats, others jackets; a greater number had neither coats
nor jackets, but appeared in shirt-sleeves, white or checked, clean
or dirty, in edifying variety. Some wore hats, some caps; some had
their own shaggy heads of hair. Some had fire-locks, some had old
swords suspended in belts or stuck in waistbands; but the greater
number shouldered sticks. An occasional umbrella was to be seen, but
umbrellas were too precious to allow of liberties; some said, “But for
these vile guns I myself would have been a soldier;” some were willing
to enlist for gardin’, but not for shootin’. The word of command was
thus given:--“Gentlemen with the umbrellas, take ground to the right;
gentlemen with the walking-sticks, take ground to the left.” They
ran after each other, elbowed and kicked, stooped, chattered; and if
the commanding officer turned his back for a moment, very easily sat
down. One officer made himself hoarse shouting out orders which no one
thought of obeying with the exception of two or three men in front. But
the lancers flourished their lances, galloped, and capered, curvetted
(and tripped) to the admiration of all. The captain of the lancers was
the proprietor of the village store, and shortly after the military
display might have been seen, plumed helmet in hand, vaulting over his
counter to serve one customer a pennyworth of tobacco and another a
yard of check. The parade day ended in a riot, in which the colonel
was knocked down and one or two others seriously, if not fatally,
injured. “Most elegantly drunk,” “superbly corned,” the gallant
lancers, for want of an enemy, fought with one another. One invention
of ’37 was a fuddleometer, an instrument designed to warn a man when
he had taken his innermost utmost. But it does not seem to have been
adopted at the War Office. Be that as it may, “these were the men who
were out in ’37, and they did good work too.”
A glance at the method of preparation at times employed by their
enemies shows a uniformity in style. One captain, in calling his
company together, enumerating “You gentlemen with the guns, ramrods,
horsewhips, walking-canes and umbrellas, and them that hasn’t _any_,”
could not get his men together, because at the time most of them
happened to be engaged either as players in, or spectators of, a most
interesting game of fives. The captain consulted his hand-book of
instructions to see what was proper to do in such circumstances, and
exhorted them persuasively and politely:
“Now, gentlemen, I am going to carry you through the revolutions of
the manual exercise, and I hope, gentlemen, you will have a little
patience. I’ll be as short as possible; and I hope, gentlemen, if I
should be going wrong, one of you gentlemen will be good enough to
put me right again, for I mean all for the best. _Take aim! Ram down
cartridge_--no, no, _fire_--I remember now, firing comes next after
taking aim; but with your permission, gentlemen, I’ll _read_ the words
of command.”
“Oh, yes, read it, Captain, read it, that will save time.”
“_’Tention_, the whole then. Please to observe, gentlemen, that at the
word ‘fire,’ you _must_ fire, that is if any of your guns are loaded;
and all you gentlemen fellow-soldiers, who’s armed with nothing but
sticks and riding switches and cornstalks, needn’t go through the
firings, but stand as you are and keep yourselves to yourselves....
_Handle cartridge!_ Pretty well, considering you done it wrong end
foremost.... _Draw rammer!_ Those who have no rammers to their guns
need not draw.... Handsomely done, and all together too, except that
a few of you were a little too soon and some a little too late....
_Charge bagonet!_”
(Some of the men) “That can’t be right, Captain. How can we charge
bagonets without our guns?”
“I don’t know as to that, but I know I’m right, for here it is printed,
if I know how to read--it’s as plain as the nose on your--faith,
I’m wrong! I’ve turned over two leaves at once. I beg your pardon,
gentlemen,--we’ll not stay out long, and we’ll have something to drink
as soon as we’ve done. Come, boys, get off the stumps.... _Advance
arms!_ Very well done; turn stocks of your guns in front, gentlemen,
and that will bring the barrels behind; and hold them straight up and
down please.... Very well done, gentlemen, you have improved vastly.
What a thing it is to see men under good discipline. Now, gentlemen, we
come to the revolutions--but Lord, men, how _did_ you get into such a
higglety-pigglety?”
The fact was, the sun had come round and roasted the right wing of
the veterans, and, as they were poorly provided with umbrellas, they
found it convenient to follow the shade. In a vain attempt to go to
war under the shadow of their own muskets, and huddling round to the
left, they had changed their crescent to a pair of pothooks. The men
objected to the captain’s demand for further “revolutions,” as they
had already been on the ground for three-quarters of an hour, and they
reminded him frequently of his promise to be as quick as he could. He
might fine them if he chose, but they were thirsty and they would not
go without a drink to please any captain. The dispute waxed hotter,
until he settled it by sending for some grog, and the fifteen guns,
ten ramrods, twelve gun-locks, three rifle-pouches and twenty-two
horse-whips, walking-canes and umbrellas, fortified themselves for
further exertions. The result of the next order or two was doubly
groggy.
“’Tention to the whole. To the left, no--that is the left--I mean the
right--left wheel--march.” He was strictly obeyed, some wheeling to the
right, others left, and some both ways.
“Halt--let’s try again! I could not just tell my right hand from my
left--long as I have served, I find something new to learn every
day--now gentlemen, do that motion once more.” By the help of a
non-commissioned officer in front of each platoon they succeeded in
wheeling this time with some regularity.
“’Tention the whole--_by divisions--to the right, wheel--march!_”
They did wheel and they did march, and it seemed as if Bedlam had
broken loose; every man took the command:
“Not so fast on the right!”
“Haul down those umbrellas!”
“Faster on the left--keep back in the middle!”
“Don’t crowd so!”
“I’ve lost my shoe!” And by this time confusion was so many times
confounded that the narrative had to cease perforce.
There is a Sherlock Holmes-like story told of a deserter from the
British army who tried to enlist in Buffalo. His good manner and
address were noticeable, and he was supposed to be no common recruit.
A surgeon who suspected him suddenly called out “Attention!” and as the
man’s hands dropped by his side he stood confessed a soldier.
At Fort Brady, with its whitewashed palisades and little mushroom
towers, was a castle, unrivalled in modern architecture. On the
greensward in front were drilled an awkward squad of matchless
awkwardness, in that way the superiors of any Canadians whom they might
propose to attack. On occasion one would give his front file a punch
in the small of the back to speed his movements, another would aim a
kick for the same purpose; each had a humour to knock his neighbour
indifferently well. The sentinels, in flannel jackets, were lounging
up and down, looking like ploughboys ready to shoot sparrows, quite in
keeping with their surroundings. But on the Canadian side there were
not even these vivid demonstrations of power. Enthusiasm, however, made
up for many shortcomings.
In all the newspapers of the two provinces such productions as that
shown in reduced fac-simile on the opposite page might be seen; age
has robbed the original, now lying before us, of a few words, but the
lettering and alignment are unaltered.