of Colonel Prince ... come out boldly and say so,” was the challenge of
those who did not approve. It was taken up. The approval became more
emphatic, the friendly sheets were only sorry that he had not shot
“every single miscreant of the batch,” and it was proposed to raise £50
to present him with a sword. The Park Farm had a New Year visitation
from Captain Leslie and the officers of the Colonel’s battalion, Mr.
Ross carrying the ensign; healths were drunk, and Prince’s came second
only to Her Majesty in fervour, and continued three times three. In
his response the Colonel told them that the disposition of those who
were against him was resolving itself into a conspiracy upon his fame,
but he meant to treat them as Sir Francis Bond Head had treated the
rebels--allow them to go the whole length of their vain, inglorious and
ungrateful measures, and “_then he would destroy them_.”
Prince promised not a whit more than it turned out he was able to
perform.
About this time his Excellency Sir George Arthur took the Erie border
towns in one of his tours. Prior to his arrival in Sandwich it was said
that he was one of those who disapproved of Prince. To fire the first
shot, the Colonel drew up the address which it was proposed to present,
and, assuming the possibility of fresh trouble, foreshadowed results:
“_Certain, instant and inevitable death at our hands will be their
fate, without any recognition of them as prisoners of war, or as any
other sort of prisoners._” Some delay occurred in the time of arrival,
and the address was sent to Toronto. When the Governor did arrive,
another, expressing very different sentiments, was presented--which he
demurred at receiving. The people found he had nothing prepossessing in
appearance, “indeed, he is as indifferent a looking person as can be
imagined,” and all waited to see the result of the interview with their
beloved Colonel.
Immediately afterwards there appeared in Detroit papers, and in large,
closely printed hand-bills, an anonymous and detailed narrative called
“The Battle of Windsor,” written on this side and printed across the
river. A copy signed by a militia colonel and twelve others was sent
to the Governor in Toronto, accompanied by affidavits vouching for the
truth of the charges therein contained. At once a court-martial or
court of inquiry was instituted, composed of Lieutenant-Colonel Airey,
Major French of the 85th, and Major Deedes, of the 34th. Never did
people more speedily occupy a pit which they had digged for others. The
militia colonel had been proud to preside at the meeting where summary
measures and no quarter were proposed and ratified; he was now proved
to have made bad feeling in the service by his literary composition;
to have exaggerated, and thereby lowered the character of the service;
to have aggravated the feelings of hostility already rampant on either
border--and he was relieved of his commission. A meeting at once took
place between Prince and one of his late libellers, at
“A gentlemanly distance, but not too near,
If you have got your former friend for foe;”
shots were exchanged, the Colonel’s bullet lodged in his adversary’s
cheek, the latter’s weapon was discharged in the air; and some dozen
other challenges ensued. There was also the duello by correspondence,
when sharp things were penned. Prince shook off his quondam friends,
and one of them smartly replied, “You are at perfect liberty to cast
off your quondam friends, as it may save them the unpleasant trouble of
doing the same by you.”
The huzzas of the triumphant after all this may be easily imagined.
His former townsmen in England set about getting up a testimonial; he
was dined in Toronto, and made his usual triumphal progress home. The
85th were ready to draw him to the Park Farm, substituting themselves
for his horses, and immediate preparation was made to dine and wine
him in Sandwich. A carriage with the Dinner Committee was despatched
to the Park Farm, preceded by another carriage containing a band of
music, all under escort of the brave and loyal 2nd Essex Cavalry. The
“flag of our country” and the green and gold colours of the Windsor
volunteers floated over them; and on their return with the guest the
carriage was brought up by a peremptory “Halt!” the cheering 85th set
the horses free, and in the midst of the shouting populace, and to the
inspiriting sounds of “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” took him to the
officers’ quarters. Here “God Save the Queen” was struck up; and from
the officers’ quarters the way was led to the dinner, set in an arbour
of oak boughs.
Then--the Queen, God bless her, nine times nine; the Queen Dowager,
Lord Hill of the army, and Lord Minto of the navy, all lesser fry
who had to be content with three times three. The President called
upon a hundred guests “to fill to the very brim--_which was done
accordingly_;” John Prince, may long life and prosperity attend
him--nineteen times nine, and one cheer more.
So far so good; from Halifax to Amherstburg every newspaper exploited
him, every mail recorded fresh triumphs; he had only to show himself
to be cheered to the echo. But he had yet to pass through the hands of
Lord Brougham.
The ex-Chancellor was ready to fight any number of duels, rhetorical
or conversational, of black-letter law or black-mouthed insinuation,
upon any conceivable occasion. He now pounced upon the word outlaw and
twisted it through all the maze of meaning. The “mealy-mouthed” Sir
George Arthur’s opinion and the exculpation by court-martial availed
not; nothing but insanity could excuse Colonel Prince. In his opinion
he, Prince, was guilty of murder; he had made assurance doubly sure
by anticipation of legal proceedings and results. That there was
great support given Colonel Prince throughout Canada, advanced as a
mitigating circumstance by Lord Ellenborough, seemed but to justify
the ex-Chancellor in his sweeping condemnation. The Duke of Wellington
drew attention to the fact that it was not Colonel Prince’s commission
that was involved, or even his life alone, but the conduct of the Upper
Canadian government; that if all alleged were true, another gallant
friend of his, Sir John Colbome, whose duty it was to have brought
Colonel Prince at once to court-martial and punish him, would have been
remiss, and (evidently) warming to his subject, his Grace predicted
that a system of retaliation would be followed, that if Her Majesty had
not the power to protect her Canadian subjects the colony ought to be
abandoned. “Is there a single spot,” he asks, “except that on which a
soldier stands, in which Her Majesty’s authority is enforced?”
Brougham’s reputation when travelling was that at Inverness he was
Conservative, but, changing his opinions as often as his horses, he
was downright revolutionary by the time he reached Dundee; there at
the full, at Edinburgh he waned. By the time the Duke of Wellington
had finished Brougham’s sympathies were modified, and he ends with an
opinion that if the Government of the United States had not power to
repress such warfare they could hardly be called a civilized nation.
Upheld by the Duke, with the approval of the Imperial Parliament,
rewarded by a commission in the 71st for his son--a gift straight from
the hand of the great man himself--Colonel Prince held his head high
for the rest of his life, took good care to keep out of Detroit, fought
his remaining enemies to the last, and might well have said, “Honour
and policy, like unsevered friends, i’ the war do grow together.”
Always manly, he was ready to meet his former vilifiers half-way in a
reconciliation in which Sir Allen MacNab, the Rector of Sandwich, Major
Lachlan and John Hillyard Cameron undertook the rôle of mediators.
All reflections contained in the skit upon the colonel’s valour were
withdrawn, and on his side he expressed, in writing, his regret for his
many hasty expressions. It was, in fact, a true amnesty, in which each
party had to pay its own costs, for more than one bit of litigation had
begun.
Well might a temperate New York newspaper say, “With all our hearts
we wish those who feel themselves oppressed in Canada might have the
liberty they seek, if they could get it without resorting to measures
endangering the peace of the whole Anglo-Saxon race.”
“Come, Mighty Must!
Inevitable Shall!
In Thee I trust;
Time weaves my coronal.”
Huron’s Age Heroic.
“Huron, distinguished by its lake,
Where Manitoulin’s spirits wake,”
before ’37 had but one central point, which, to use a Paddyism, was
on the very confines of the still primeval forest. The mysterious
wilderness had a few spots between Goderich and the other limit of
the Canada Company, Guelph, in which woodmen, thinking solely of the
grain and roots to be grown in the cleared spaces, were unconsciously
ameliorating the climate of their continent by the patches of sunlight
their axes were letting in through the green gothic above.
At the one end Galt, “churning an inarticulate melody,” with shoulders
straight and upright, caught his foot in a tree root. Pryor, his
right-hand man, said, “Look after your feet, man, and keep your head
out of the stars.” In a moment Pryor hit his head against a branch.
“Man, keep your eyes frae your feet,” rejoined Galt, “or else you’ll
damage all the brains you’ve got.”
They jested; but they made the way of the pioneer. And the pioneer
is the Canadian man of destiny. He is in a thousand valleys and on a
thousand hillsides, sometimes cold and hungry, but he swims on the
crest of the wave, and sees the beginning of a new thing. The spirit
of adventure which bore Columbus, Cabot, Cartier, and Champlain into
untrodden paths, sustains him and makes him brother to them, even if
his scope is but the patch cleared by his own axe.
The British distinction between Whig and Tory, like the London fog,
was supposed not to cross the ocean with these pioneers. But in the
wilderness of Huron they throve by ’37 with a vigour derived from
transplanting. After the Gourlay affair men learned to put bridles on
their tongues; but if, as in Governor Maitland’s opinion, all Reformers
were deluded, unprincipled and designing, there were men in Dumfries,
Guelph, and from the Wilmot Line westward, who could differ from that
opinion and yet sing,
“Far from our Fatherland,
Nobly we’ll fall or stand,
For England’s Queen.
In town and forest free,
Britons unconquered, we
Sing with true loyalty,
God save the Queen.”
Dumfries and all about Galt was largely settled by shepherds from the
neighbourhood of the Ettrick Shepherd, Galashiels, Abbotsford, and
thereabouts. If any of the good Tory sentiments recorded at Ambrose’s
are to be believed, the Ettrick Shepherd would have been dismayed had
he known what manner of opinion some of his fellow-shepherds held in
Canada. Walter Cowan, bailiff to Sir Walter, told his master he wanted
to emigrate. “Well, Walter, if you think it best to go,” said his
genial employer, “I’ll assist you; but if you ever need to give it up,
let me know, and I’ll help bring you back to Scotland.”
But did any ever wish to return? “I have never been home again,” says
one, “although I have often wished to see the place, and I don’t think
my sons or other Canadians appreciate it half enough; but I never
heard of any emigrant wanting to go back to _live_. If you have thriven
here, you are too high to have aught to do with them you left; and
those above you, no matter how you have thriven, are too high to have
aught to do with you.”
“I was born at Yarrow,” continues a mellow old Radical, bedridden,
but bright as the proverbial shilling, “and I was naught but a poor
shepherd lad; now, at ninety-three, I am one of the most fortunate men
alive. I am sinking down to the grave, bedridden, but I have all my
faculties, and I do not use spectacles by day or night. I came out in
’34, and that journey across the Atlantic was my wedding jaunt, for I
was married on my way to the ship, sixty-three years ago the 26th of
May it was; and there at the foot of my bed they have put the picture
of my good lady, where I can see it all day long. In ’35 I felt I must
have books, so I said, ‘Is there anyone in this place will help me get
some together?’ Then three men, all cobblers, came forward, and among
us we started what is now the Mechanics’ Institute--three cobblers and
a former shepherd lad; and that was the first public work I put my hand
to here. When I was naught but a callant at home I mind how my heart
nearly broke because there were no shillings to buy the books I longed
for, and when Mr. Chambers brought out that journal for the people and
we could buy it for three baubees, I thocht he was the noblest man that
ever lived. On the way out there was a lady who listened to our talk,
and I said I should never be content without a volume of Pollok, on
which I had set all my desires. So when we came through Rochester she
bought the book for a shilling, and made me a present of what I had
so long wanted; and I thought this must be a fine country where books
could be got for a shilling!”
After the arrival of Sir Francis, Judge Jones and Colonel FitzGibbon
had their conversation about the bags of pikes and pike-handles and
signs of their immediate use. Said the Judge, “You do not mean to
say these people are going to rebel?” The Colonel was no Thomas; he
firmly did believe. “Pooh-pooh,” said Jones, turning to Sir Francis,
who wearied for his pillow. So Sir Francis, humane man, addressed by
what he called “the industrious classes,” expressed himself in “plain
and homely language,” with as much care as if intended for “either
branches of the Legislature:” “The grievances of this Province _must_
be corrected; impartial justice _must_ be administered. The people have
asked for it; their Sovereign has ordained it; I am here to execute
his gracious commands.” Nor did these industrious classes, one time
shepherd laddies and the like, feel more than the Governor himself
allowed.
“I was a Scotch Radical, and would have helped Mackenzie all I
could--until he drew the sword. That proved to me he was not
constitutional, and I wouldna any such doings. I do know that if by
my own puny arm, young and without influence as I was, I could have
got rid of the Family Compact, I would have done it right willingly. A
few days before the outbreak a neighbour told me of the great doings
likely to be in Toronto, and I joked wi’ him. But he said, ‘Mind, man,
it’s no joking matter, and it’s sure ye’ll see Mackenzie’s men through
this way;’ and as I was a Scotch Radical he seemed to think it would
be short whiles before I was in gaol. So I laughed, and said, ‘Well,
if Mackenzie comes this way I’ll treat him well, for I have eight hogs
hung in a row, and he shall have the best.’ I would have fed him and
his people, for I would have rid the country of the Family Compact; but
he didna mend matters to draw the sword.” Even such meritorious work
must not be done in opposition to the Queen and country.
“I count only the hours that are serene,” is the motto on an old
Venetian sun-dial. All the Canadian clocks must have stopped and
the sun hasted not for a space of years in these exciting days when
Canadians, but one remove in complexion from aborigines, allowed not
toil, heat, sun, nor isolation to abate the vigour, ingenuity and
resolution born of circumstances.
“William Lyon Mackenzie, hot-tempered and impulsive,” says another
old Reformer, “had a keen eye for detection of a flaw in an argument;
he lived by complaining, and had no thought beyond formulating and
promoting grievances. So many years of such a tone of mind totally
unfitted him for political life. When a practical question was put
before him for a practical answer, the man was utterly at sea; his
faculty of constructiveness was obliterated.”
Evidently, he who cannot live happily anywhere will live happily
nowhere, and Mackenzie, “yellow and somewhat dwarfish,” bore out the
supposed likeness to the _Yellow Dwarf_, a violent weekly journal
published in London by an ultra Radical in 1819 and afterwards. Its
editor, Wooler, set it up without copy, mind and composing-stick
working together.
The _Colonial Advocate_ and Mackenzie’s pamphlets did their work in
the country side. Lords Brougham, Melbourne and Glenelg were gibbeted
in Toronto and afterwards burnt on the night of October 22nd, ’37,
and the _Advocate_ informed them of it. It also kept up excitement
about the “Kentish drillmaster,” corporals MacNab and Robinson, and
the general system of rack rent; it stated that a pound loaf was at
a shilling Halifax; that woe and wailing, pauperism and crime, were
rife in a land never meant for the first three; that many in the new
settlements seldom tasted a morsel of bread, and were glad to gnaw
the bark off the trees. “But why are want and misery come among us?
Ah, ye rebels to Christianity, ye detest the truth, ye shut your ears
against that which is right. Your country is taxed, priest-ridden, sold
to strangers and ruined ... Like the Iazzaroni of Italy, ye delight
in cruelty and distress, and lamentation and woe.” He apostrophized
the ruling Pact as false Canadians, Tories, pensioners, profligates,
Orangemen, church-men, spies, informers, brokers, gamblers, parasites,
knaves of every caste and description. It would be wonderful if each
man’s grievance could not find an outlet with such a number and
variety of scapegoats. “Never was a vagabond race more prosperous,” he
writes, “never did successful villainy rejoice in brighter visions of
the future. Ye may plunder, rob with impunity, your feet are on the
people’s necks, they are transformed into tame, crouching slaves, ready
to be trampled on. Erect your Juggernaut--the people are ready to be
sacrificed under the wheel of the idol.” It is strange that he did not
quote Culpepper: “They dip in our dish, they sit by our fire; we find
them in the dye-fat, the wash-bowls and the powdering tub. They share
with the cutler in his box; they have marked and sealed us from head to
foot.”
When Mackenzie made his appearance in Galt in ’33 a very partial local
critic calls him _somewhat_ of a political firebrand; he certainly
was full of what in Lower Canada just then was called “fusées de la
rhétorique.” He spoke from the south window of the village inn, with
the usual results. One
“Whose rhetoric could rouse the Olympian host,
And scare into fits poor Demosthenes’ ghost,”
was no commonplace figure. Set on steel springs, the hands opening
and shutting, the light-blue eyes sending keen and piercing glances
through the ranks of “these people” before him, who were already in
the best of training from the local agitator Mr. Bennett, the master
of Liberty Cottage, “this fellow” spoke in a way direct and easy to
understand. His writing was sometimes verbose, unequal and amateurish;
but in speech “the superlative littleness of the man” was lightened
by gleams of humour, facial expression and gesture which would not
commit themselves to paper, nor did they hinder the deadly earnestness
that carried conviction to any wavering mind. Now as he spoke a great
clatter arose from an incoming crowd which bore a blackened, bedizened
and hideous effigy of himself; the likeness was so good that the sight
of it provoked a smile from the original. He paused in his speech
and looked on in silent and grim amusement. Had he but known it, the
lay figure held almost an allegory of the real. It was stuffed with
gunpowder and other combustibles, and, as its original was destined
to do, went off prematurely; it knocked down a man or two, but did no
great harm. The figure wore a pair of very good boots, which someone
in the crowd, not so well furnished, begrudged. The man worked his way
through, seized the burnt brogues, and made off with them as fast as
his legs could carry him.
It is marvellous the bandit was not arrested as a suspect; it took
very small evidence to make a case. One Irish Loyalist, John McCrea,
was sent a summons to join the company then forming in Guelph for the
front; he considered his farm and home duties of more importance, and
was at once reported as “disaffected.” Shortly afterwards he went
to the general store kept by Captain Lamphrey, a retired English
officer, and was asked, as was the usual custom, into the parlour
for a glass of wine. To his surprise he there found three others, a
bench of magistrates, who without further ado began to try him. Why
had he not responded to the command to join the corps? Because he had
private and important domestic concerns on hand. He asked for the
name of his accuser and the specific accusation, but in reply was
told he must give a bond for his good behaviour. This was surely the
Star Chamber, Scroggs and Jeffreys, the secret-service principle of
Mackenzie’s written and spoken diatribes, and Mr. McCrea’s justified
Irish obstinacy rose as a wall against the combination. One of the
trio offered to become the bondsman, but the accused contended its
acceptance would be an admission of guilt. Mr. McCrea insisted upon
knowing their authority; they could not furnish it, and there was an
end of the matter.
Captain Lamphrey’s treats were full of unexpected results. One of
the loyal, who carried despatches to Hamilton, went to him one early
morning with signs of too many glasses already apparent and asked for
more. The captain could not refuse, knew the despatch must go, and saw
its safety was already endangered. He took H. M.’s special messenger
to the cellar and drew a glass of vinegar. “Drink it, man; down with
it! down with it!” which was done, and the lately demoralized special
messenger was “as sober as a clock.”
It was a joke to the Wellington neighbourhood that one company should
be headed by a Captain Poore and another by a Captain Rich. A brusque
Yorkshireman, William Day, volunteered in Poore’s company. The roads
were very bad, food was scarce, and as Day got hungry his loyalty
waned. At last he demanded something to eat. This was flat rebellion;
Poore called it insubordination, and said that instead of comforts Day
should have night guard, and stand upon his feet until the small hours
lengthened.
“So you won’t give me anything to eat?”
“No.”
“Then I know where I can get it, and that’s at Guelph. And I’d like to
see the man that’d stand between me and that door.”
No one offered to do so, and he walked back twenty-six miles, “got his
victuals,” and so ended his active military service.
Captain Poore had been endeavouring for two or three years to form a
volunteer rifle company. There was little time, and less inclination,
to play at soldiering; but by ’35, when agitation among the progressive
begot anxiety in the less progressive, he succeeded in forming a
company sixty strong, which drilled every Saturday in a corner of his
own farm. Many of the settlers were not gushing in their loyalty to the
powers that were, and, while not allying themselves with Mackenzie,
“had the governing party been drowned in the depths of the sea not a
solitary cry would have gone up for them.” Even the schoolboys were
keen politicians, and regarded those who dwelt in the shadow of the
Pact as very poor types of humanity. Those who were of the required age
and ordered to meet for drill every two weeks at the cross-roads, but
who had not sufficient courage of their convictions to refuse service,
performed it in a half-hearted manner. The most regular attendants were
the schoolboys. They snowballed the men and snowballed the captain,
made game of the execution of the various military movements and of
Mr. Hiscock. The latter was the drill-instructor, an old soldier,
who dressed partly in military uniform and carried a cane. Pompously
he walked back and forth, contemptuous of the roll-call. One little
Englishman, when going through the required answers, was asked,
“Married or single?” “Single, sir, but under promise,” was the reply.