THE REBELLION LOSSES BILL.
On the 25th of the same month of April, 1849, the Parliament Houses at
Montreal were sacked and burnt by a disorderly mob, stirred up to riot
by the unfortunate act of Lord Elgin, in giving the royal assent to a
bill for compensating persons whose property had been destroyed or
injured during the rebellion in Lower Canada in 1837-8. That the payment
of those losses was a logical consequence of the general amnesty
proclaimed earlier in the same year, and that men equally guilty in
Upper Canada, such as Montgomery and others, were similarly compensated,
is indisputable. But in Upper Canada there was no race hatred, such as
Lord Durham, in the Report written for him by Messrs. C. Buller & E. G.
Wakefield, describes as existing between the French and British of Lower
Canada.[17] The rebels of Gallows Hill and the militia of Toronto were
literally brothers and cousins; while the rival factions of Montreal
were national enemies, with their passions aroused by long-standing
mutual injuries and insults. Had Lord Elgin reserved the bill for
imperial consideration, no mischief would probably have followed. What
might have been considered magnanimous generosity if voluntarily
accorded by the conquerors, became a stinging insult when claimed by
conquered enemies and aliens. And so it was felt to be in Montreal and
the Eastern Townships. But the opportunity of putting in force the new
theory of ministerial responsibility to the Canadian commons, seems to
have fascinated Lord Elgin's mind, and so he "threw a cast" which all
but upset the loyalty of Lower Canada, and caused that of the Upper
Province almost to hesitate for a brief instant.
In Toronto, sympathy with the resentment of the rioters was blended with
a deep sense of the necessity for enforcing law and order. To the
passionate movement in Montreal for annexation to the English race south
of the line, no corresponding sentiment gained a hold in the Upper
Province. And in the subsequent interchange of views between Montreal
and Toronto, which resulted in the convention of the British American
League at Kingston in the following July, it was sternly insisted by
western men, that no breath of disloyalty to the Empire would be for a
moment tolerated here. By the loss of her metropolitan honours which
resulted, Montreal paid a heavy penalty for her mad act of lawlessness.
[Footnote 17: As originally introduced by the Lafontaine-Baldwin
Ministry, the bill recognised no distinction between the claims of men
actually in arms and innocent sufferers, nor was it until the last
reading that a pledge not to compensate actual criminals was wrested
from the Government.]