The Family Compact : a chronicle of the rebellion in Upper Canada

WINDSOR

CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton

In thirty-two volumes

24

THE FAMILY COMPACT
BY W. STEWART WALLACE

Part VII

The Struggle for Political Freedom

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THE

FAMILY COMPACT

A Chronicle of the Rebellion
in Upper Canada

BY

W. STEWART WALLACE

TORONT

GLASGOW, BROOK

HOLY RJflKMER LIBRARY, WINDSOR

Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention

PKBSS o» THB HUNTBR-ROSB Co., LIMITBD. TOKONTO

TO
MY FATHER

CONTENTS

Page
I. A LOCAL OLIGARCHY. . , . , I

II. THE 'JACOBINS' , . . . . 8

III. THE BANISHED BRITON .. * . . 27

IV. THE MAITLAND REGIME . .. ." .* 43
V. A REFORM ASSEMBLY . . . , . 66

VI. 'ONE OF THE MEMBERS FOR THE COUNTY

OF YORK' . , . . »'• . . 74

VII. THE SEVENTH REPORT . * . -93

VIII. THE 'TRIED REFORMER' . ' . . .100

IX. ' REBEL BLOOD ' . . . „ . 114

X. THE OUTBREAK . . , . . . 128

XI. THE AFTERMATH . . . •. . 149

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . . 4 . 161

INDEX 165

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE FIGHT AT MONTGOMERY'S FARM, 1837 Frontispiece
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys.

JOHN STRACHAN .. • / . Facing page 30

From a painting- in the Department of Education,
Toronto.

SIR PEREGRINE MAITLAND . . . „ 44

From the John Ross Robertson Collection,
Toronto Public Library.

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE . ... „ 48

From the painting by J. W. L. Forster.

SIR JOHN COLBORNE, LORD SEATON , ,, 66

From an engraving in the Dominion Archives.

SIR FRANCIS BOND HEAD . •'.».'• . i „ IOO

From an engraving in the Chateau de Ramezay.

WILLIAM WARREN BALDWIN . II2

From the John Ross Robertson Collection,
Toronto Public Library.

JOHN ROLPH ,,138

From a steel engraving in Dent's • Upper Canadian
Rebellion.'

xii THE FAMILY COMPACT

ROBERT BALDWIN . • Facingpage 146

From the John Ross Robertson Collection,
Toronto Public Library.

SIR JOHN BEVERLEY ROBINSON . » 154

From a painting in the Department of Education,
Toronto.

MARSHALL SPRING BIDWELL . »» &

From a photograph in the Collection of the Lennox
and Addington Historical Society, Napanee,
Ontario.

CHAPTER I

A LOCAL OLIGARCHY

THE first forty years of the nineteenth century
saw in Upper Canada a political struggle which
culminated in armed rebellion. This struggle
was, in the main, constitutional : its roots lay
in the constitution which William Pitt gave
Upper Canada in 1791. The Constitutional
Act seemed on the surface a very liberal
measure. It gave the people of Upper Canada
a Legislative Assembly elected on a wide basis.
But what it gave with one hand, it took away
with the other. The actual work of govern-
ment it threw into the hands of a lieutenant-
governor and an Executive Council, who were
wholly independent of popular control, and
who were responsible only, in a vague and
nominal way, to the distant secretary of state
at Westminster. And even the work of legis-
lation was placed partly in the control of the
lieutenant-governor and his advisers. For
there was an upper chamber, known as the

F.C. A

2 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Legislative Council, which was able to block
any measures passed by the popular Assembly ;
and the power of nominating the members
of this upper chamber was virtually placed in
the hands of the lieutenant-governor. Under
these arrangements, human nature being what
it is, there sprang up inevitably in Upper
Canada a governing clique, prone to ad-
minister the affairs of the province at its own
pleasure, and sometimes in its own interest.

This clique came to be known as the Family
Compact. The term, drawn from the alliances
between the crowned heads of Europe during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriefc, was
not only absurd as applied to Canadian party
politics, but was even less appropriate than
party designations usually are. ' There is,
in truth/ confessed Lord Durham, l very
little of family connection among the persons
thus united.' The Rev. John Strachan, for
instance, one of the leading spirits in the
Family Compact for many years, had no
family relationships in York until his son
married in 1844 tne daughter of John Beverley
Robinson. Nor was there the nepotism
among the Family Compact that has been
commonly imagined. ' My own sons/ testi-
fied John Beverley Robinson, * have never

A LOCAL OLIGARCHY 3

applied, and I have never applied for them,
to the Government for any office of any kind,
and they none of them receive a shilling from
the public revenue of the country in which
I have served so long.' But however in-
appropriate the term Family Compact may
be, it has become part and parcel of Canadian
history ; and in the following pages it is used
to denote, without offence, the governing
class of Upper Canada from 1800 to 1841.

Just when the name first came into use is
not certain. Its origin has generally been
attributed to William Lyon Mackenzie, who
in his Sketches of Canada and the United States,
published in 1833, gave a list of thirty public
men in the colony between whom a relation-
ship could be traced, and asserted that ' this
family compact surround the lieutenant-
governor and mould him like wax to their
will.' This, however, was certainly not the
first use of the term. As early as the year
1828 it occurs in a letter written by Marshall
Spring Bidwell to Dr William Warren Baldwin.
' I think it is probable/ wrote Bidwell, ' that
I shall have the pleasure of paying my respects
to you at York in Michaelmas Term, and I
shall be happy to consult with yourself and
Mr Rolph on the measures to be adopted to

4 THE FAMILY COMPACT

relieve'this province from the evils which a
family compact have brought upon it.'1

Just when the Family Compact may be said
to have taken form is hard to decide. It has
been usual to trace its origin to the second
period of Francis Gore's regime, when its
influence was used to crush Robert Gourlay.
But there are good reasons for placing it
earlier than this. If it were necessary to put
one's finger on the point at which, more than
any other, the Family Compact may be said
to have come into existence, that point might
reasonably be the end of General Hunter's ad-
ministration in 1805, when an element among
the public officials secured the selection of
Alexander Grant as president and adminis-
trator of the province over the head of Peter
Russell, who had been president from 1796
to I799.2 It was this element which those in
opposition to the government denominated
' the Scotch faction ' or ' the clan.' The
lieutenant-governor, wrote Robert Thorpe in
1806, is ' surrounded with the same Scotch
pedlars, that had insinuated themselves into

1 Toronto Public Library MSS., B 104, p. 153.

3 Between the departure of one lieutenant-governor and the
arrival of his successor there was often an interregnum, during
which a ' President and Administrator ' was appointed.

A LOCAL OLIGARCHY 5

favour with General Hunter, and that have so
long irritated and oppressed the people ; there
is a chain of them linked from Halifax to
Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, York, Niagara
and so on to Detroit — this Shopkeeper Aristo-
cracy has stunted the prosperity of the
Province and goaded the people until they
have turned from the greatest loyalty to the
utmost disaffection.' In another letter he
described the lieutenant-governor as ' sur-
rounded by a few half-pay Captains, men of
the lowest origin with every American pre-
judice and every idea of military subjection,
and directed by half a dozen storekeepers,
men who have amassed wealth by the plunder
of England, by the Indian Department and
every other useless Department, by a Monopoly
of Trade and extortion on the people ; this
shopkeeper aristocracy who are linked from
Halifax to the Mississippi, boast that their
interest is so great in England that they made
Mr Scott (their old Attorney) Chief Justice by
their advocate Sir Wm. Grant, that they will
keep Lt. Governor Gore in his place, drive me
away, and hold the people in subjection.'
When every allowance is made here for
partisan exaggeration, it is still clear from
these statements that there already existed

6 THE FAMILY COMPACT

in 1806 in Upper Canada something strongly
resembling the Family Compact of later times.
The principle upon which admission to the
charmed circle of the Compact was determined,
is indeed a mystery. Birth and family were
no 'open sesame.' Charles Burton Wyatt,
whose brother was private secretary to the
Duke of Wellington, was excluded ; while
Thomas Scott, who had been a ' Methodist
preacher,' and John M'Gill, who had risen
from the carpenter's bench, were the moving
spirits of the administration. Later, John
Walpole Willis, who was married to the
daughter of an earl, was given the cold
shoulder ; while John Strachan, the son of an
Aberdeenshire quarryman, sat in the seats of
the mighty. The Baldwins, father and son,
were as well-born, as wealthy, and as able as
any member of the Family Compact ; yet from
first to last they were in the ranks of opposi-
tion. Not even John Beverley Robinson
was a sounder statesman or truer gentleman
than Marshall Spring Bidwell, the leader of
the moderate wing of the Opposition ; and
Allan MacNab and James FitzGibbon, the
commanders of the governmental forces at
Montgomery's Farm, were tyros in the art of
war by the side of the rebel commander,

A LOCAL OLIGARCHY 7

Anthony Van Egmond. All that can be said
about the Family Compact is that it was a
local oligarchy composed of men, some well-
born, some ill-born, some brilliant, some stupid,
whom the caprices of a small provincial
society, with a code all its own, had pitch-
forked into power.

CHAPTER II

THE 'JACOBINS'

ON October 7,. 1804, there occurred on Lake
Ontario a marine tragedy which had an im-
portant effect upon the political history of
Upper Canada. The government schooner
Speedy, bound for the assizes in the Newcastle
district, foundered on that day with all on
board forty miles east of York (now Toronto).
Among those lost were Thomas Cochran, one
of the judges of the court of King's Bench,
and Angus Macdonell, the member of the
Legislative Assembly for the constituency
of Durham, Simcoe, and East York. The
vacancies thus created in the judicial bench
and the parliamentary representation of the
province were filled respectively by two men,
Robert Thorpe and William Weekes, who may
be described as the founders of the Reform
party in Upper Canada.

William Weekes was an Irish barrister who
had spent some time in New York in the law

THE « JACOBINS' 9

office of the famous Aaron Burr. He went to
Upper Canada in 1798, and was admitted
(' rather hastily and unadvisably,' wrote
Francis Gore later) to the provincial bar.
He seems to have plunged immediately into
provincial politics. In the summer of 1800
he was, according to Richard Cartwright, the
chief agent in securing the election of Mr
Justice Allcock to the Legislative Assembly.
In 1804 Weekes himself came forward for
election as the member for Durham, Simcoe,
and East York. ' I stand/ he said in his
electoral address, * unconnected with any
party, unsupported by any influence, and
unambitious of any patronage, other than the
suffrages of those who consider the impartial
enjoyment of their rights, and the free exercise
of their privileges, as objects not only worthy
of the vigilance of the legislator, but also
essential to their political security and their
local prosperity.' He was defeated by Angus
Macdonell ; but a few months later Macdonell
went down on the Speedy, and in the by-
election, which was held in February 1805,
Weekes was elected in his place.

In the House Weekes lost no time in making
his influence felt. The very day after he took
his seat he gave notice of motion ' that it is

io THE FAMILY COMPACT

expedient for this House to enter into the con-
sideration of the disquietude which prevails
hi the Province by reason of the administra-
tion of Public Offices.' The motion was lost
on division ; and the next day the lieutenant-
governor, General Hunter, prorogued the
House. But when the House reassembled a
year later, Weekes once more took up the
attack. In the interval which had elapsed
General Hunter had died, and a junto of
officials, headed by John M'Gill, the inspector-
general, and Thomas Scott, the attorney-
general, had placed in the presidency of the
province a nominee of their own, Alexander
Grant. Grant was a weak man, and it was
expected that he would be the tool of his
friends. These facts doubtless added edge
to the vigour of Weekes 's attack. In the first
place, he obtained his committee on the state
of the province. In it he attacked the
administration of the land-granting depart-
ment, and championed the cause of those
United Empire Loyalists and military claim-
ants who found it difficult to get justice in the
allotment of lands. He advocated improved
communications. He took up the cudgels
on behalf of the Methodists and Quakers, who
at that time in Upper Canada were under legal

THE JACOBINS' II

disabilities. He attacked the Alien Bill of
1804, which made a residence in the province
of seven years necessary before the franchise
could be obtained. But his greatest achieve-
ment was the discovery of some irregulari-
ties in the public accounts. He found that
moneys amounting to £617, 135. yd. had
been paid out of the provincial treasury. It
was not charged that there was any corrupt
motive in this ' misapplication ' of the public
funds; but the House voted that there had
been a violation of its rights and privileges, and
when Francis Gore assumed the administra-
tion of affairs in 1806 he thought it well to
replace the money in the provincial treasury.

In this course of opposition to government
Weekes did not want for support. He had
behind him in the House a little knot of men,
foremost among whom were David McGregor
Rogers and Philip Dorland, the representa-
tives of the Loyalists of the Bay of Quinte
district, and Benajah Mallory, a Methodist
preacher who in 1812 went over to the
American cause. Outside the House he was
aided and abetted by Robert Thorpe, the
successor of Cochran as one of the justices of
King's Bench, and by Charles Burton Wyatt,
the surveyor-general.

12 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Thorpe and Wyatt, like Weekes, were both
Irishmen. Thorpe was a barrister who had
been appointed in 1802 a puisne judge in
Prince Edward Island ; but his relations with
the islanders had not proved happy, and when
word reached the Colonial Office of the loss
of the Speedy and of the death of Cochran,
Thorpe was ordered to proceed to Upper
Canada to fill his place. He reached York in
September 1805. He had not been long in
the province before he discovered the exist-
ence of some discontent. ' From a minute
inquiry for five months/ he wrote to England,
' I find that Govr. Hunter has nearly ruined
this province.' When the provincial parlia-
ment met in the beginning of February 1806,
Thorpe lent his support to those who were
agitating against the government. Although
he was not at this time a member of the
Assembly, he even aimed at guiding the
deliberations of the House. ' In a quiet way
I have the reins so as to prevent mischief,'
he wrote, ' though like Phaeton I seized them
precipitately.' He was constantly within the
bar of the House, and Weekes and his friends
were in the habit of leaving their seats to con-
sult him. On one occasion, when the clerk
of the Executive Council refused to answer

THE « JACOBINS > 13

questions relative to transactions in the
Council, Thorpe actually rose uninvited and
announced to the House that the clerk could
be compelled to answer.

Wyatt was hardly less backward in support-
ing the popular cause. In his administration
of the surveyor-general's office, to which he
had come out in 1805, he had fallen foul of
the Executive Council; and he was only too
ready to air before the Legislative Assembly
the grievances which he nourished and the
abuses of which he complained. He even
went the length of producing for the examina-
tion of the Assembly's committee, without the
permission or knowledge of the president, his
commission and the books of his office.

In this course of action Thorpe and Wyatt
were probably impelled partly by a genuine
desire for reform. Their establishment of
an Agricultural and Commercial Society for
Upper Canada in the winter of 1805-6 showed
that they had the interests of the province
at heart. But they were actuated also by
personal feelings. They had not received a
warm welcome from the Government House
set. Moreover, in the summer of 1806, news
arrived that the ' Scotch party ' had suc-
ceeded in putting their attorney-general,

14 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Thomas Scott, into the chief justiceship, a
position which Thorpe had confidently counted
on getting. When the news arrived, Thorpe's
annoyance knew no bounds. ' A being has
been put over my head, and made Chief
Justice/ he wrote, 'who has neither talent,
learning, nor manner.'

Such was the state of affairs when Francis
Gore arrived in the province as lieutenant-
governor in August 1806. Gore was a retired
cavalry officer who had had one year's ex-
perience of civil government as lieutenant-
governor of Bermuda. His ideas were those of
the average English gentleman of his time. ' I
have had the King's Interest only at Heart,'
he wrote a year after his arrival in Upper
Canada, ' and I have [contended] and ever
will contend against Democratic principles.'
In view of this fact, it was almost a foregone
conclusion that he would be repelled by
Thorpe's appeal to popular rights. More-
over, when Gore arrived in York, Thorpe was
away on circuit, and before he returned the
members of the Executive Council had had an
excellent opportunity to gain the lieutenant-
governor's ear, and to poison his mind against
Thorpe and his friends.

Only a few days before Thorpe and Gore

THE 'JACOBINS' 15

had their first interview, the political struggle,
for the first time in Upper Canada, bore tragic
fruit. William Weekes, while arguing a case
before Thorpe at the assizes at Niagara,
allowed himself to descend, apparently, to a
political harangue against the government.
He described General Hunter, for instance, as
a ' Gothic Barbarian whom the providence
of God had removed from this world for his
tyranny and iniquity.' To all this Thorpe
listened ' with the greatest composure.' At
the conclusion of Weekes's speech, however,
William Dickson, one of the counsel engaged
in the case with him, rose and objected to
Weekes's language as ' disrespectful in the
highest degree to a Court of Justice.' The
result of this reproof was that Weekes chal-
lenged Dickson to a duel with pistols. At
dawn on the loth of October the two men,
with their seconds, met on the eastern side of
the Niagara river, behind the American fort.
Shots were exchanged, and Weekes fell,
mortally wounded.

Thorpe was much blamed for having allowed
in court the intemperate language which
brought about the duel ; and he was even
accused of having instigated the challenge.
Certainly, the incident did not improve his

16 THE FAMILY COMPACT

standing with Gore. When, on his return to
York, he called on Gore at Government House,
he met with a reception that was far from con-
ciliatory. The charges and complaints which
Thorpe, with indiscreet frankness, brought
against the executive government were copied
down by the lieutenant-governor's secretary ;
and the remarks which Gore appended to the
interview for the benefit of the secretary of
state show that he was already bitterly pre-
judiced against Thorpe and his party. Nor
was Thorpe's opinion of Gore flattering. * In
our first interview,' he wrote, ' I found him
imperious, self-sufficient, and ignorant, im-
pressed with a high notion of the old system.'
The death of William Weekes created a
vacancy in the constituency of Durham,
Simcoe, and East York. Hardly had Thorpe
reached York before a requisition was addressed
to him by a meeting of the freeholders, asking
him to stand for the vacant seat. Without
a moment's hesitancy he accepted the invita-
tion. The lieutenant-governor represented to
him ' the impropriety of a Judge becoming a
candidate for a seat in a popular assembly ' ;
but Thorpe pointed out to him, what was then
an undoubted fact, that there was no rule
preventing judges from sitting in the legis-

THE 'JACOBINS' 17

lature, either in England or in Canada, and
he declined to alter his decision. The election
was bitterly contested. A government candi-
date was nominated, and every effort was made
to have him elected. ' The Lt. Governor and
Storekeepers,' wrote Thorpe, * worked with
all their force against the people, every species
of undue influence, bribery, coercion and
oppression, was used by them, the Lt. Governor
himself demeaned by trying to seduce both
high and low.' On the other hand, Gore
charged that Thorpe and his friends went to
the poll under the banner of the Irish rebels,
a harp without the crown, and that they
made seditious references to the American
Revolution and the fate of Charles the First.
Thus for the first time we find the governor's
party employing against the Reformers that
weapon which was later to become so familiar
and so deadly, the charge of disloyalty.

The result of the poll was the triumphant
election of Thorpe. This rebuff to the lieu-
tenant-governor was the signal for strong
measures on his part. He seems at this time
to have made up his mind that the Opposition
must be crushed. In the first place, he
denied the ' Jacobins,' as Thorpe's party now
came to be called, the freedom of the press.
F.C. B

i8 - THE FAMILY COMPACT

i

He allowed to be printed in the Upper Canada
Gazette and Oracle a post-election address of
Thorpe's opponent charging Thorpe and his
friends with disloyalty ; but when Thorpe's
friends sent an answer rebutting this charge,
it was refused admission to the paper by order
of the lieutenant-governor's secretary. In
the second place, he dismissed or suspended
from office two of the government officials
who had supported Thorpe's candidature.
These two officials were Surveyor-General
Wyatt and Joseph Willcocks, sheriff of the
Home district.

The charges against Wyatt were several.
He was charged with having taken the books
of the surveyor-general's office before a com-
mittee of the House without the government's
permission, and with having defended his
action on the ground that ' the House of
Assembly was omnipotent and it was his duty
to obey it.' He was accused of having sub-
stituted his own name for that of another in
the books of the surveyor-general's office, with
the object of getting a favourable grant of
land — an action which, though perhaps irregu-
lar, he explained later to the satisfaction of
the secretary of state. And he was accused
of having dismissed the chief clerk in the

THE < JACOBINS' 19

survey or-generaPs office because he had voted
for Thorpe's opponent — a charge which Wyatt
easily disposed of, as he had recommended the
clerk's dismissal a month before the election
took place. The truth is that the head and
front of Wyatt 's offending was his support of
the Thorpe party while he was an officer of
government.

Against Willcocks no specific charges were
levelled. He was dismissed merely on account
of his general character and his support of
Weekes and Thorpe. Gore described him
as ' an United Irishman, who fled from
Thomas Street, got on in Upper Canada as a
clerk to the Receiver General, was turn'd out
by him. Was a sort of upper servant after-
wards to Mr Allcock, who to provide for him
got him appointed sheriff.' He seems to have
been at heart a republican ; and Gore obtained
affidavits showing that one evening after
dinner, at the house of John Mills Jackson in
Yonge Street, he had inveighed bitterly against
the governor and ' his damned Scotch faction.'
Such expressions as ' Damn the Governor and
the Government; push about the bottle/ and
the avowal of republican principles, would not
perhaps be regarded to-day as serious offences.
But in 1807 the horrors of the French Revolu-

20 THE FAMILY COMPACT

tion were still so recent that it is possible to
understand how Gore thought it necessary to
remove a republican like Willcocks from his
official position.

In the spring of 1807 Wyatt returned to
England, in company with John Mills Jackson,
to lay his case before the authorities. Both
men had influence at Westminster. Wyatt
expected, through his father and brother, to
obtain influence at court and with the ministry,
and Jackson's brother was a member of the
House of Commons. Jackson was a very
interesting figure. He was a gentleman com-
moner of Balliol College, Oxford, and a man of
some wealth. He had gone to Upper Canada
in 1806, but had promptly fallen foul of the
government over a grant of land, and had
joined hands with the Thorpe party. His
republican sentiments had earned him the
soubriquet of ' Jacobin Jackson.' In England
both Wyatt and Jackson had interviews with
Lord Castlereagh, who was then in charge of
the Colonies ; but though it looked for a time
as though they might succeed in bringing
about Gore's recall, they found that the wheels
of government moved very slowly, and Wyatt
had in the end to turn to the law-courts for
redress. Jackson caused the question of the

THE * JACOBINS' 21

administration of Canada to be brought up
in the House of Commons ; and he published
a pamphlet entitled A View of the Political
Situation of the Province of Upper Canada,
which, on account of some indiscreet state-
ments, was unanimously voted a libel by the
Upper Canada Assembly. Many years later
Jackson returned to Upper Canada, and took
up land on Lake Simcoe : Jackson's Point,
now a popular watering-place, is named after
him.

While Wyatt and Jackson were seeking to
obtain redress in England, Thorpe and Will-
cocks were continuing the struggle in Upper
Canada. The provincial parliament met in
the beginning of February 1807. The session
had hardly begun when an attempt was made
to upset the election of Thorpe to the As-
sembly on the ground that judges were not
eligible to sit. The Assembly confirmed him
in his seat, but it gave him little support
during the session. On one occasion he stood
alone in a division in the House. There is
good reason for believing that a judicious
distribution of the loaves and fishes among
members of the House had contributed to
bring about this result.

In March 1807 Gore wrote to the secretary

22 THE FAMILY COMPACT

of state asking that Thorpe should be sus-
pended, and prophesying that the most seri-
ous evils would ensue if he were allowed to
retain his position. The only charge against
him was that of his opposition to the govern-
ment while retaining a seat on the judicial
bench. In July the lieutenant-governor, al-
though he had not received the decision of the
secretary of state, left Thorpe's name out of
the commission of assize. Thorpe was already
in financial difficulties, owing to his large
family and the inadequacy of the emoluments
attaching to his position ; and this action,
which robbed him of his pay as judge on cir-
cuit, reduced him to serious straits. In the
autumn news reached York through unofficial
channels that Thorpe's suspension had been
determined upon by Lord Castlereagh. The
news was conveyed to Thorpe by William
Dummer Powell, one of his fellow- judges, and
he was given to understand that Gore was
willing to grant him leave of absence and
money to take him back to England before
the official notification should arrive. Thorpe,
however, declined to put himself under any
obligation to Gore ; but after publishing an
address to the electors of Durham, Simcoe,
and East York announcing that he had been

THE « JACOBINS ' 23

suspended as a result of misrepresentation
on the part of the lieutenant-governor, he
abruptly left the colony. He returned to
England, and was there given the post of
chief justice of Sierra Leone, a position of
nearly twice the value of that of puisne judge
in Upper Canada. Both Wyatt and Thorpe
brought actions for libel against Gore in the
courts in England ; and both of them obtained
verdicts in their favour, Wyatt for £300,
Thorpe for a lesser amount. Gore's expenses
in these suits were, after some demur, paid
by the British Treasury.

On the departure of Thorpe, Willcocks was
left to fight the battle single-handed. Since
the columns of the Upper Canada Gazette
were closed to the popular party, Willcocks
had founded, in August 1807, a paper entitled
the Upper Canada Guardian, or Freerhan's
Journal, the first of a long line of party news-
papers in Upper Canada. As far as is known,
there is only one copy of this paper in existence.
It seems to have been printed at first on the
American side of the border ; and there is
reason for believing that Willcocks obtained
the funds for carrying it on from the Irish
republican leaders in New York. It evidently
obtained a good circulation, for in 1809

24 THE FAMILY COMPACT

William Dummer Powell found it in every
house as he went on circuit.

In the parliamentary session of 1808 Will-
cocks entered the Legislative Assembly as
one of the members for Lincoln, Haldimand,
and West York. It was not long before he
embroiled himself with the majority in the
Assembly. On January 29 a paragraph in the
Upper Canada Guardian, in which it was
charged that the members of the Assembly
had been bribed by the lieutenant-governor,
was brought to the attention of the House.
A prosecution of Willcocks was talked of, but
was dropped, apparently at the request of
Gore ; but when Willcocks repeated the state-
ments he had made, he was tried by the House,
and was unanimously found guilty of using
expressions that were ' false, slanderous and
highly derogatory to the dignity of this House.'
By the speaker's warrant he was committed
to the common jail, and there he languished
until the end of the session.

Willcocks remained a member of the As-
sembly until the War of 1812. He was one
of those members who obstructed the govern-
ment during the session of 1812 in its attempt
to suspend the operation of the Habeas Corpus
Act. The statement has been made that

THE « JACOBINS' 25

Willcocks fought on the British side at the
battle of Queenston Heights ; but this may
be doubted. Certainly, early in 1813, he was
found in the American ranks. In 1814 he was
killed while wearing the uniform of a colonel
of the American army at the siege of Fort
Erie. On him it is difficult to pass a fair
judgment. He was a renegade and a republi-
can, but he had seen little in Ireland or in
Upper Canada to commend to him monarchi-
cal institutions.

Nothing is more striking about these early
opponents of government than the predomi-
nance among them of men of Irish blood.
Weekes, Thorpe, Wyatt, Willcocks were all
Irishmen. There is even reason for believing
that racial jealousy between the Scotch and
the Irish was one of the roots of the trouble
in Upper Canada in 1806. All these men had
the defects of the Irish race. They were
turbulent, headstrong, and indiscreet. Like
the later Reformers, they made grave mistakes.
None of them should have attempted to carry
on an agitation against the government while
in the government's employ. But they had,
in the main, the interests of the common
people of Upper Canada at heart. They were
not a disreputable or, on the whole, a disloyal

26 THE FAMILY COMPACT

party. The fact that they numbered among
their supporters at first William Jarvis, the
secretary of the province, Dr William Warren
Baldwin, the father of Robert Baldwin, and
the Rev. Robert Addison, the rector at Niagara,
is proof that they were not merely noisy
agitators.

The Family Compact was latent in the
Constitutional Act of 1791. In 1806 it was
just budding. In John M'Gill and Thomas
Scott may be recognized the forerunners of
the Family Compact of the twenties and
thirties ; Francis Gore was, in some respects,
a prototype of the later lieutenant-governors ;
and William Weekes, Robert Thorpe, and
Joseph Willcocks are the true predecessors
of the rebels of '37.

CHAPTER III

THE BANISHED BRITON

FOR ten years after the events of 1806-7
there was no political disturbance in Upper
Canada of any moment. It was not until
1817 that Robert Gourlay came into the pro-
vince. The story of Gourlay is one of the
most painful passages in the history of Family
Compact rule in Upper Canada. It is so pain-
ful that it is difficult to understand, in the
light of the twentieth century, the attitude of
mind which made it possible for men like
Peregrine Maitland, John Strachan, William
Dummer Powell, and John Beverley Robin-
son to play the parts in it which they played.
Robert Gourlay was a Scotsman of good
birth, good education, and good intentions.
His father had been a writer to the signet in
Fifeshire. He himself was a graduate of the
University of St Andrews ; and the great
Thomas Chalmers, who had been his friend
and classmate, afterwards described him as

27

28 THE FAMILY COMPACT

' one of the ablest of my fellow-students.'
At the age of thirty-seven he was reduced
through misfortune to comparative poverty,
and he determined to emigrate to America.
He settled in Upper Canada, and immediately
set up in business as a land-agent. In con-
nection with his business he began to formu-
late a scheme for systematic emigration from
the British Isles to Canada. He had been
attached in Great Britain to the commission
appointed to inquire into the causes of pauper-
ism ; and he believed that systematic emigra-
tion to the colonies would relieve the over-
population which was thought to be at the
root of the economic evils from which Great
Britain was suffering, and would at the same
time supply Canada with that labouring
population of which she stood most in need.
It was in pursuit of this scheme that Gourlay
first came into conflict with the Family Com-
pact party of that time.

The governing clique of Upper Canada in
1817 was not greatly different from what it
had been in 1807. Thomas Scott had retired
from the chief justiceship and the Executive
Council ; but his place had been taken by
William Dummer Powell, long a faithful
adherent of the governor's party. John M'Gill

THE BANISHED BRITON 29

and James Baby still remained members of
the Executive Council, though both were
growing old and the reins were slipping from
their hands. D'Arcy Boulton, who had been
solicitor-general in 1807, was attorney-general
in 1817. The new faces among the leaders
of the party were those of John Strachan and
John Beverley Robinson. Strachan was an
Aberdeenshire schoolmaster who had emi-
grated to Canada as early as 1799, and who
had carried on a school at Kingston, at which
the sons of many of the leading families in
Upper Canada were educated. He had taken
orders in the Church of England, and by his
great force of character had rapidly risen to
importance. In 1812 he had yielded to the
solicitations of Gore and Brock, and had
accepted the charge of the church at York.
In 1815, on the recommendation of Gore, he
had been appointed to a seat on the Executive
Council ; and from the first he had exercised
over that body a powerful influence. He
was a man of whom it is difficult to form a fair
opinion : he had, in his own way, high ideals,
but he had also a good idea of feathering his
own nest, and his influence on the course of
public affairs in Upper Canada was almost
uniformly pernicious. John Beverley Robin-

30 THE FAMILY COMPACT

son was a pupil and proteg£ of Strachan's.
He was a young man of brilliant abilities and
high character, whom Strachan had hailed as
' a second Pitt.' In 1817 he had become
solicitor-general.

To this ruling party Robert Gourlay first
gave offence by addressing a circular letter,
containing thirty-one questions, to the various
townships of the province. His object was
merely to obtain information which would
assist him in his immigration schemes. The
questions seem nowadays innocent enough ;
but unfortunately the thirty-first question,
which ran, ' What in your opinion retards the
improvement of your township in particular,
or the province in general, and what would
most contribute to the same ? ' was regarded
as an attack upon the government. And it so
happened that the answers which were received
to this question revealed the existence of a
considerable amount of discontent in the
province. As Robert Thorpe had prophesied
ten years before, the administration of the
Crown Lands department had begun to bear
evil fruit. In every township two-sevenths
of the land had been set apart as crown and
clergy reserves, and of the rest large blocks
were held by speculators and by government

JOHN STRACHAN
From a painting in the Department of Education, Toronto

THE BANISHED BRITON 31

officials. Only a fraction of each township,
under these circumstances, had been settled ;
and the townships could not secure a popula-
tion of sufficient density to maintain roads,
schools, and churches. The vacant lands,
moreover, were not taxed, and the whole
burden of taxation fell on the resident settlers.
When John Beverley Robinson in 1818 intro-
duced a bill into the Legislative Assembly
proposing to tax vacant lands, the vested
interests were strong enough to defeat the bill
by an overwhelming majority.

These were real grievances ; and if Gourlay
had possessed common prudence, he might
have effected much good by his inquiries.
But, unhappily, common prudence was what
he lacked most. Although he had been in
the province for only a few months, he rushed
into print, and assailed the administration of
affairs in language which certainly lacked
urbanity. He earned the bitter enmity of
Strachan, for instance, by describing him as
' a lying little fool of a renegade Presbyterian.'
When he had his pen in hand he possessed
neither tact nor moderation. * With regard
to sound principles of emigration/ he wrote
candidly to Wilmot Horton, one of the officials
of the Colonial Office, ' you are as blind as a

32 THE FAMILY COMPACT

mole.* ' Corruption,' he announced in one
of his pamphlets, ' has risen to such a height
in the province, that it is thought no other
part of the British Empire witnesses the like.'
In the spring of 1818 Gourlay brought his
agitation to a climax by issuing a call to the
* resident ' landowners to send up delegates to
a provincial convention to be held at York,
for the purpose of discussing grievances and
of drawing up a petition to be forwarded to
the Prince Regent in England. The con-
vention met, and was widely attended. The
delegates were mostly men of respectable
standing, half-pay officers, militia veterans,
and gentlemen - farmers. They drafted an
address to the Prince Regent in which their
grievances were stated. They complained,
in the first place, of the abuses connected with
the granting of lands and the settlement of
the colony ; and they complained also of the
failure of the British government to meet the
, claims for losses sustained by the Canadian
militia during the War of 1812. Finally, they
prayed that a royal commission should be sent
out to inquire into the condition of Upper
Canada. This address was published in the
American newspapers, and so reached the ears
of the public in England. It was largely

THE BANISHED BRITON 33

owing to the attention it created that the
British government took up the question of
the militia claims the next year, and that a
settlement was arrived at.

At the time of this convention Gourlay
became a sort of popular hero. ' He was
idolized by the Canadians,' wrote an English-
man in Canada, ' as much as ever Bonaparte
was by the French.' It was clear that dis-
content was gathering head, so much so that
Sir John Sherbrooke, the governor-general of
Canada, residing in the lower province, actu-
ally contemplated a visit to Upper Canada to
deal with the situation. The difficulty hither-
to had been that Gore had left the province
in 1817, and since that time the government
had been in the hands of an administrator,
Samuel Smith. Smith had been loath to pro-
ceed to strong measures against Gourlay, in
spite of pressure brought to bear upon him by
Strachan ; but after the meeting of the con-
vention and the publication of the address to
the Prince Regent, Smith agreed to the prose-
cution of Gourlay for a libel on the govern-
ment.

It was while this charge was hanging over
Gourlay's head that Sir Peregrine Maitland
arrived in Upper Canada as lieutenant-

F.C.

34 THE FAMILY COMPACT

governor. Maitland was an able soldier and
a man of charming personality ; but he was
a reactionary Tory of the type then dominant,
not only in England, but all over Europe. It
was not to be expected that he would have
much in common with a Scotch Radical like
Gourlay, and he seems to have accepted the
Family Compact view of Gourlay from the
first. He had been in the province only a few
days when he wrote home describing him as
' half Cobbett, half Hunt ' ; and when Gourlay
was acquitted at Kingston, on August 15,
1818, of the charge of libelling the government,
Maitland wrote home expressing his regret,
but announcing his hope that Gourlay would
be crippled by a second prosecution to be
brought against him shortly for libel upon a
private person. His hope was ill-founded,
however, for so great was Gourlay's popu-
larity that it was found impossible to get a
jury to convict him.

Defeated in the law-courts, the govern-
ment turned to other avenues of attack.
When the provincial parliament met on
October 12, 1818, Maitland told the members
that he did not doubt that ' they would feel
just indignation at the attempts which had
been made to excite discontent and organize

THE BANISHED BRITON 35

sedition ' ; and he suggested that such con-
ventions as that which Gourlay had called
might be made illegal. The Assembly took
up the suggestion ; and while they main-
tained theoretically the right of petition, they
denied it practically by resolving that ' the
Commons House of Assembly is the only
representation of the people,* and that such
conventions as that which Gourlay had called
were unconstitutional. Legislation was actu-
ally passed which constituted such public
meetings a misdemeanour.

This Act, which remained on the statute-
book for only two years, was fearlessly
attacked by Gourlay. In the columns of the
Niagara Spectator he assailed the action of the
legislature in an article entitled ' Gagged,
gagged, by jingo ! ' The language of the
article was severe, but no severer than leaders
which appear every morning and evening in
Opposition newspapers to-day. The article
was, however, promptly voted by the Assem-
bly to be a libel, and the attorney-general
was instructed to prosecute the editor of
the Spectator. This unfortunate man, whose
name was Bartemus Ferguson, had not really
been responsible for the appearance of the
article complained of. It had been published,

36 THE FAMILY COMPACT

under Gourlay's name, during Ferguson's
absence and without his knowledge. Yet
Ferguson was arrested in his bed, in the dead
of night, carried to Niagara, and thence to
York, where he had difficulty in rinding friends
to bail him out ; and in the summer of 1819
he was tried at Niagara and sentenced to
pay a fine of £50 and to undergo eighteen
months1 imprisonment : during the first month
of this time he was to stand in the public
pillory for one hour a day, and at the end of
the eighteen months he was to give and find
security for his good behaviour to the amount
of £1000.

Gourlay was, however, the chief culprit, and
it was not intended that he should get off with
impunity. On December 21, 1818, he was
arrested and brought before two legislative
councillors, William Dickson and William
Claus, as an ' evil-minded and seditious person '
under the meaning of the Alien Act of 1804.
The Alien Act was an obsolete law of doubtful
constitutionality, directed against the dis-
affected Irish and American immigrants, who
had flocked into the colony in early days.
It gave authority to certain officials, and
among them to members of the Legislative
Council, to issue a warrant for the arrest of

THE BANISHED BRITON 37

any person, not having been an inhabitant of
the province for the preceding six months,
who had not taken the oath of allegiance and
who was suspected of sedition. In case the
person so arrested failed to establish his
innocence, he might be notified to leave the
province within a specified time ; and if he
failed to depart, he was to be imprisoned
until the time of the general jail delivery.
If found guilty, upon trial, he was to be
banished from the province, under penalty of
death.

Dickson and Claus had both been friends
of Gourlay, but in some unknown way
Gourlay had alienated them. Whether their
action in arresting Gourlay was taken at the
instigation of the government party at York
cannot be determined. Maitland, at any
rate, seems to have had no hand in it. It is
fortunate for his reputation that this is so,
for the prosecution was a very reprehensible
business. Dickson and Claus both knew that
Gourlay was loyal to the British crown, and
that he did not come under the provisions of
the Alien Act. In order to convict him, per-
jured evidence was necessary. This was ob-
tained from Isaac Swayzie, a disreputable
and illiterate member of the Legislative

38 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Assembly, who was a hanger-on of the
government. Swayzie swore that Gourlay
had been domiciled in the province less than
six months, although it was a matter of com-
mon knowledge that he had been a resident
of Upper Canada for eighteen months. Sway-
zie also gave testimony that Gourlay was a
seditious person. The trial was the veriest
farce, and Gourlay was condemned to leave
the province within ten days.

To submit to this sentence would have
ruined Gourlay's business. It would have
been a tacit acknowledgment of guilt and a
denial of his natural allegiance. He deter-
mined, therefore, to ignore the verdict. The
result was that when the ten days had passed
he was arrested and thrown into jail. After
some delay he caused himself to be taken,
under a writ of habeas corpus, before Chief
Justice Powell at York, for the purpose of
being either discharged from custody or ad-
mitted to bail. He presented excellent evi-
dence to the effect that he had been domiciled
in the province for more than six months,
that he was a loyal British subject, and that
he had taken the oath of allegiance. There
could hardly have been a clearer case. But
Gourlay's release at this time would have been

THE BANISHED BRITON 39

regarded as a triumph for him and 'a defeat
for the government. Chief Justice Powell
therefore remanded Gourlay to jail, on the
technical plea that the warrant of commit-
ment was regular and that the Act made no
provision for bail.

Gourlay then attempted to bring actions
against Dickson and Claus for false imprison-
ment ; but here, too, he was defeated by legal
chicanery. The defendants each obtained an
order for security for costs, and Gourlay,
lying in jail, with his business going to ruin,
was not able to raise this security. The
actions therefore lapsed, and Dickson and
Claus escaped prosecution.

It was not until August 20 that Gourlay's
trial took place. During the months that
intervened he lay in jail at Niagara. The
close confinement and the mental distress
which he suffered seem to have affected both
his mind and his health. During his imprison-
ment he was attacked frequently by violent
headaches, and no attempt seems to have
been made to alleviate for him the prison
conditions of that time. When he came up
for his trial, he was a wreck of his former self
and was not in full possession of his faculties.
During the progress of the trial he appeared

40 THE FAMILY COMPACT

to be only half-conscious of what was going
on. He had a written defence and protest
in his pocket, but he seems to have forgotten
to use it. He does not even appear to have
heard the verdict of guilty. And when Chief
Justice Powell, who was presiding, asked him
if he had any statement to make before judg-
ment should be rendered, he burst into a loud
peal of maniacal laughter. It must have been
clear to every one in the court-room that
Gourlay was not in his right mind. Yet no
considerations of mercy seem to have affected
the determination of the court officials to
secure his conviction. John Beverley Robin-
son, the attorney-general, who conducted the
prosecution, based his case not on the ground
of Gourlay's guilt within the meaning of the
Alien Act, but on the technical ground of his
having refused to leave the province when
ordered to do so. There is reason to suspect
that the sheriff packed the jury. And neither
Chief Justice Powell nor Sir Peregrine Mait-
land lifted a finger to see that Gourlay obtained
fair play.

The sentence of the court was that Gourlay
should leave Upper Canada within twenty-
four hours, on pain of death without benefit
of clergy. The next day he crossed to the

THE BANISHED BRITON 41

American side of the Niagara river. He went
first to Boston, where he published an account
of his persecution under the title of The
Banished Briton. Thence he went to the
British Isles, where he published in 1822 his
Statistical Account of Upper Canada, a valu-
able work which embodies the information
he collected in 1818. He proved to be very
much a rolling stone. In 1837 he was living
at Cleveland, Ohio ; and it is interesting to
know that at that time, in spite of what he
had suffered, his sympathies were still British.
After the Union of 1841 his case was taken up
by the Canadian parliament, and his arrest
and sentence were pronounced ' illegal, un-
constitutional, and without possibility of
excuse and palliation/ In 1856, when an old
man of seventy-eight years, he returned to
Canada, and a pension of £ 50 was granted him ;
but this pension he never drew.

Robert Gourlay had grave defects of char-
acter. Like William Lyon Mackenzie, he was
a confirmed grievance-monger. He was pug-
nacious, tactless, and extravagant in his
language. But the head and front of his
offending was his criticism of the govern-
ment, and it is not now necessary to
remark that criticism of the government is

42 THE FAMILY COMPACT

not at English common law a crime. If
the leaders of the Family Compact party
had remembered this fact in 1818, they
would have deserved better at the hands of
historians.

CHAPTER IV

THE MAITLAND REGIME

SIR PEREGRINE MAITLAND was a Tory of the
Tories. In our time, when a governor makes
no attempt to rule, he might have proved an
ideal official, for he performed the ceremonial
duties of viceroyalty to perfection. But
from 1818 to 1828, when the actual adminis-
tration of public affairs was in the hands of
the lieutenant-governor, his regime was re-
actionary and autocratic. For this, however,
Maitland was not wholly to blame. He had
had little experience of civil government, and
he leaned heavily on the advice of those about
him : probably at no period was the influence
of the Family Compact over the lieutenant-
governor greater than under his regime. And
it should never be forgotten that this was the
period when the reactionary ideas of Welling-
ton and Metternich were dominant, not only
in England, but in the whole of Europe ; and
that Maitland and his advisers, in their

44 THE FAMILY COMPACT

political views, were merely the children of
their time.

Maitland regarded it as incumbent upon
him to suppress liberal opinions. The perse-
cution of Gourlay was, of course, the outcome
of such a policy ; but persecution did not
stop with Gourlay. An instructive case was
that of the militia officers who had attended
Gourlay 's convention in 1818. They were all
men who had fought in the War of 1812, and
had suffered losses in their support of the
British crown. They had attended the con-
vention partly in order to protest against the
delay on the part of the British government
in granting them compensation ; and it was
largely owing to their efforts that compensa-
tion in the form of grants of land was made
in 1819. Yet when Maitland received orders
to grant this compensation, he and the Family
Compact leaders took it upon themselves to
refuse allotments of land to all those who had
taken part in the convention.

An attempt was made also to prevent the
election to the Legislative Assembly of persons
of ' republican ' views. The Assembly had
always tended to be democratic : as early as
in 1792 Simcoe had noted a tendency on the
part of the people to elect as their representa-

SIR PEREGRINE MAITLAND
From the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library

THE MAITLAND REGIME 45

tives men who * kept one table ' — that is,
who ate with their servants. But except for
one or two short periods, the executive had
been successful in maintaining a majority in
the Assembly. Some alarm was felt, however,
when in 1821 a by-election occurred in Lennox
and Addington. This was a United Empire
Loyalist constituency ; but the United Empire
Loyalists were by no means all supporters of
the Family Compact. The member elected
was Barnabas Bidwell. Bidwell was a man
of unusual ability and superior education :
he had been attorney-general of Massachusetts
and a member of the United States Congress.
In 1810 his political enemies had accused him
of misappropriation of public money, and to
avoid the consequence of this accusation he
had fled to Canada, where, on the outbreak
of the War of 1812, he had taken the oath of
allegiance. He had been a friend of Robert
Gourlay, and was known to be strongly opposed
.to the policy of the Upper Canada government.
When he took his seat in the House his elec-
tion was promptly challenged, on the ground
that he was a person of immoral character and
a fugitive from justice, and that he had taken
the oath of citizenship in the United States.
It appeared in the proceedings that the govern-

46 THE FAMILY COMPACT

ment had gone so far as to send an agent to
Massachusetts to collect evidence against him.
Bidwell, for his part, contended that the
charges were those of his political enemies,
and that the fact of his having at one time
been a citizen of the United States was no bar
to his admission to the Canadian legislature.
A motion for his expulsion was, however,
brought forward, and after a long debate it
was carried by a majority of one vote. When
a new election was ordered, and the son of
Barnabas Bidwell, Marshall Spring Bidwell,
attempted to take his father's place, he too
was declared ineligible for election, because
he had been born in Massachusetts and had
never taken the oath of allegiance ; and it was
only when the election law was amended in
1824 that he was enabled to sit.

In the last parliamentary session which
took place before the elections of 1825 a very
unwise action was taken by the governing
party in regard to religious disabilities. The
view which had hitherto obtained was that
the Church of England was established by
law in Canada. Some colour was lent to this
view by the language of the Constitutional
Act ; and from the earliest times the govern-
ing clique had been composed of members

THE MAITLAND REGIME 47

of the Church of England. One of the dis-
abilities under which the Methodists and
other nonconformists suffered was that their
ministers could not solemnize marriages. In
the session of 1824 a bill was passed by the
Assembly removing this disability, and giving
to marriages conducted by Methodist ministers
the legality which they had hitherto lacked.
But this very just provision was thrown out
by the Legislative Council, apparently with
the full approval of the government. The
Methodists were then, as now, a powerful
political element in the province ; and apart
from the question of religious equality, this
discrimination against them was, on the part
of the government, a piece of egregious folly.
The result was that the elections of 1825
saw the return to parliament of a number of
men strongly opposed to the government.
The United Empire Loyalists of Lennox and
Addington sent up two advanced reformers
in the persons of Marshall Spring Bidwell
and Peter Perry. Bidwell was one of the
noblest spirits that ever crossed the threshold
of Canadian history ; Perry was a man of
much humbler education, but of real elo-
quence and common sense. Middlesex sent
up John Rolph and Captain John Matthews.

48 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Rolph was a young Englishman of great
ability and subtlety of mind, who was destined
to become one of the founders of modern
medical science in Upper Canada, and one i
the leaders of rebellion in 1837. Matthe
was a retired officer of the royal artillery, wno
was destined to be the first of that little band
to fall ; a victim to the Family Compact.
Dr William Warren Baldwin had had a seat
in the previous parliament, but to this House
he was not elected. Many years had passed
by since Francis Gore had described him as
' an Irishman ready to join any faction ' ; yet
his interest in the cause of Reform had never
faltered, and he was always ready to help the
Opposition to the best of his ability. His high
public character was a great asset to them :
' I have frequently heard him named/ wrote an
English visitor, ' the only honest man in the
Province/

It was at this time that William Lyon
Mackenzie first attracted attention by his
advocacy of Reform in his newspaper. Mac-
kenzie was a Scotsman who had come to
Canada in 1820 at the age of twenty-five
years. He had begun life in the old country
as an assistant in a draper's shop. In Canada
he went into business as a chemist and book-

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE
From the painting by J. W. L. Forster

THE MAITLAND REGIME 49

seller, first at York and then at Dundas ; but
in 1824 he cast aside his prospects of success
in business and embarked on the precarious
enterprise of publishing a newspaper. The
name of the paper was the Colonial Advocate,
and it was published first on May 18, 1824, at
Queenston. In it he began that propaganda
which was to culminate in the events of '37.
He was a born agitator. Fearless even to
recklessness, wholly indifferent to his own
interest, public-spirited according to his own
lights, extravagant in his language, he was
precisely the sort of man who was likely
to obtain an ascendancy over the common
people of Upper Canada at that time. He
was not a clear political thinker ; he was
governed often by personal pique ; his utter-
ances were lacking sometimes in tact and good
taste. Men like Bidwell and the Baldwins
found little in common with him. But his
influence was nevertheless great ; and his
little wiry figure, filled with a veritable St
Vitus's dance of nervous energy, and sur-
mounted by a large head set with burning
blue eyes, commanded attention then, as it
commands attention now.

The outbreak of a reforming spirit in 1824
brought with it the usual aftermath of perse-

F.C. D

50 THE FAMILY COMPACT

cution by the government. The first victim
was Captain Matthews. Matthews, though a
half-pay officer, had aligned himself with the
Reformers in the House, and had made himself
obnoxious to the heads of the government.
On New Year's Eve 1825 he gave the govern-
ment a chance to strike at him. A company
of travelling actors from the United States
had been stranded in York, and on New Year's
Eve they gave a performance, under the
patronage of the Legislative Assembly, to
enable them to leave town. Matthews, who
had been dining very well, attended the per-
formance with many other members of the
House. The occasion proved very convivial.
The band was called upon to play many
tunes, among them ' Yankee Doodle ' and
' Hail Columbia.' * Hail Columbia ' they were
not able to play, but ' Yankee Doodle ' was
rendered amid great enthusiasm. During the
performance some one called for ' hats off/
and Matthews was one of those who complied
with the demand. There is no doubt that his
behaviour was prompted by mere hilarity.
Yet for this innocent offence of having called
for the national anthems of the United States
on New Year's Eve, Matthews had his pension
stopped, and was himself ordered back to

THE MAITLAND REGIME 51

England. He succeeded in having his pension
restored, but he never again set foot on
Canadian soil.

One of the most striking features of
the persecution to which the Reformers were
subjected was its pettiness. Because Charles
Fothergill, the king's printer, had given
several votes in the House that did not meet
the approval of the government, he was dis-
missed from his position ; because Francis
Collins, the official reporter of the House, had
attacked the government in his paper, the
Canadian Freeman, he was denied the remuner-
ation regularly voted to him by the legis-
lature ; and because William Lyon Mackenzie
had made himself obnoxious to the lieutenant-
governor, he was refused the grant voted to him
by the legislature for publishing the debates.

The most famous political incident of this
period, however, was the destruction of
William Lyon Mackenzie's printing-press at
York on June 8, 1826. The Colonial Advocate,
which had not been a financial success, had
been moved by Mackenzie from Queenston to
York in the preceding November. Its tone
had given great offence in government circles.
This was due, however, not so much to the
political views it contained as to the personal

52 THE FAMILY COMPACT

abuse with which those views were accom-
panied. Mackenzie was never able to dis-
sociate the sin from the sinner. He assailed
public men with whom he had no private
difference as if they were his bitterest personal
enemies. In the early summer of 1826 his
newspaper broke into a carnival of abuse of
some of the most respectable families of York,
abuse so gross that it did not deserve to be
noticed. On the evening of June 8, however,
when Mackenzie was absent from town, a
number of young men, most of them sons or
proteges of leading members of the Family
Compact party, and one of them the private
secretary of Sir Peregrine Maitland, entered
the office of the Colonial Advocate and pro-
ceeded to demolish the printing-press, to
upset the type, and to scatter some of it into
the bay. There is no doubt that these young
men took this action on their own initiative.
It is a mistake to regard the episode as an
instance of political persecution on the part
of the Family Compact. It was merely an
attempt, on the part of a number of well-
meaning youths, to teach Mackenzie, as they
thought, a much deserved lesson in public
manners.

At the same time, it was a grave error in

THE MAITLAND REGIME 53

judgment, a fact which the rioters themselves
were among the first to recognize. In the
first place, it roused sympathy for Mackenzie.
He had been out of town when the attack on
his press took place, and the scurrility of his
paper was either forgotten or condoned in
view of the loss he had suffered. It was
inevitable, too, that the attack should be given
a political complexion. In the second place,
the destruction of the press proved the means
of setting Mackenzie on his feet financially.
When the attack took place he was on the
verge of bankruptcy, and it is doubtful if he
could have continued the publication of the
Advocate much longer. Now, on the advice
of his friends, he brought against the rioters
not a criminal action, but a civil action for
damages. The trial took place in the autumn
of 1826. The lawyers for the defence made
no attempt to deny the fact of the trespass,
and did not, from motives of delicacy, submit
to the court all the passages in the Advocate
which had given rise to the trespass. The
result was that the jury awarded to Mackenzie
heavy damages — £625. This was far in excess
of the value of the property destroyed, and
the verdict must have been due in part to
political feeling. The amount was raised by

54 THE FAMILY COMPACT

subscription among the members of the Family
Compact party ; and Mackenzie was launched
forth once more, with a new press and a new
bank account, on his turbulent journalistic
career.

Mackenzie was not the only journalist with
whom the governing class had trouble. In
1825 an Irish Roman Catholic named Francis
Collins had established the Canadian Freeman
in opposition to the government. Collins was
a writer who mistook coarseness for vigour,
and the general tone of his paper was much
lower than that of Mackenzie's. For three
years he was allowed to have his say with
impunity : then, in the spring of 1828, two
indictments were brought against him by the
attorney-general, John Beverley Robinson.
One was for libel against the lieutenant-
governor, whom he had accused of ' partiality,
injustice, and fraud.' The other was for libel
against the solicitor-general, Henry John
Boulton, whom he had accused of murder in
connection with a duel in which Boulton had
been a second eleven years before.

The case came up on April n, 1828, before
Mr Justice Willis at the York assizes. Willis
was an English lawyer who had come to
Upper Canada in September of the previous

THE MAITLAND REGIME 55

year as one of the puisne judges of the court
of King's Bench. He was a man of good
abilities and was well connected : his wife,
Lady Mary Willis, was the daughter of the
Earl of Strathmore. He had been politely
received in York, but he soon found that he
was regarded as an interloper. There were
a number of men who considered themselves
entitled to the position which he had secured.
Moreover, Lady Mary Willis does not seem to
have made herself a persona grata with Lady
Sarah Maitland. And when it became known
that Willis was a candidate for the chief
justiceship of the province, for which John
Beverley Robinson was considered in official
circles the proper nominee, the gulf between
Willis and the official set appreciably widened.
It was at this juncture that the case of
Collins came up at the assizes. As soon as
Willis took his seat on the bench, Collins rose
and asked for permission to speak. When
this was granted, Collins began to attack the
attorney-general for partiality in the discharge
of his duty, pointing out that Robinson was
prosecuting him, whereas he had not prose-
cuted the destroyers of Mackenzie's press.
At this point Robinson himself entered the
court. When he had gathered the drift of

56 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Collins's speech, he rose, and pointing out that
it was entirely irregular, expressed the hope
that the business of the court would not be
interrupted any longer. Collins, however,
proceeded with his speech without interrup-
tion ; and when he had finished, Willis replied,
amid the silence of the court : ' If the attorney-
general has acted as you say, he has very much
neglected his duty. Go you before the grand
jury, and if you meet with any obstruction or
difficulty, I will see that the attorney-general
affords you every facility.'

The attorney-general rose to defend him-
self. He pointed out, with perfect self-con-
trol, that it was not his business to hunt
for indictments. He had followed the practice
of proceeding only upon information and
complaint, and not of setting the law in
operation of his own motion. Willis replied
that this merely proved his practice to have
been uniformly wrong. At this the attorney-
general lost, his temper, and answered that he
knew his duty as well as any judge on the
bench.

' Then, sir,' retorted Willis, ' if you know
your duty, you have neglected it.'

Collins took the advice of Willis, and
brought his complaints before the grand jury.

THE MAITLAND REGIME 57

The result was that two true bills were found,
one against H. J. Boulton and J. E. Small for
having been accessory to the Jarvis-Ridout
duel, and the other against seven young men
for participation in the destruction of Mac-
kenzie's press. The trials took place imme-
diately. Boulton and Small were acquitted
of the charge against them ; and the ' type-
rioters ' were let off with a nominal fine of
five shillings each. But Collins's vigour in
carrying the war into Africa evidently caused
the attorney-general to reconsider his course
of action. With great good sense Robinson
determined to drop the prosecutions against
Collins for libel, and to hold over some other
actions against Collins which had emanated
from the grand jury. * I will forbear any
further action during the present assizes,' he
said, l and in proceeding or not hereafter, I
shall be governed in a great measure by the
sense which the defendant shall show of his
duty and obligations as the conductor of a
public newspaper.'

But Collins was not a man who learned by
experience. He continued in his paper as
violent and defamatory as ever. The attorney-
general thereupon revived one of the indict-
ments which had been temporarily dropped.

58 THE FAMILY COMPACT

But in this case Collins was acquitted by the
jury. Then Robinson brought against him
an action for libel on his own account. Collins
had accused Robinson of ' native malignancy '
and ' open, palpable falsehood.' These ex-
pressions, perhaps, would not now be con-
sidered libellous, but in 1828 the jury brought
in a verdict of guilty. Collins was sentenced
to pay a fine of £50, to undergo imprisonment
for twelve months, and to find securities for
his good behaviour. This was a heavy
sentence ; but in view of the forbearance
which had been shown Collins at first, it
should not be described as excessive.

Long before Collins fell under the penalties
of the law, his champion, Mr Justice Willis,
had left the province for good. Relations
between him and the government had reached
a climax when he had declined to sit in the
court of King's Bench on the ground that it
was improperly constituted. Willis's action
was obviously taken with a view to embar-
rassing the government. At the same time,
the Family Compact were only too glad to
find a pretext for getting rid of him. He had
begun to associate with the Reform element,
' who,' wrote Maitland, ' are not very re-
spectable in any sense ' ; and there may have

THE MAITLAND REGIME 59

been fears that he would develop into a second
Thorpe. The Executive Council therefore re-
commended his removal, and a writ to this
effect was issued on June 26, 1828. A few
days later Willis left for England, to lay his
case before the Colonial Office. The judgment
of the Privy Council went against him, and he
was appointed to a judgeship in British Guiana.
The case of William Forsyth created a great
deal of attention at that time, and was used
as an example of Sir Peregrine Maitland's
tyrannical rule. Forsyth was a tavern-keeper
on the Canadian side at Niagara Falls. He
had encroached upon the government reserve
which ran along the bank of the river, had
enclosed it with a fence, and had built a
blacksmith's shop on it. His action was a
gross and impudent invasion of the public
domain. If recourse had been had to the law-
courts, he would have been summarily ejected.
But Maitland merely gave orders to the
engineer officer of the district to remove
the fence and to demolish the building.
The fence was removed, but Forsyth replaced
it. A second time it was removed. Then
Forsyth brought suit against the sheriff and
the officer who had performed the task. Both
actions, however, failed on technical grounds.

6o THE FAMILY COMPACT

Forsyth then appealed for redress to the House
of Assembly. The Assembly conceived that
there were grounds for an inquiry, since there
had obviously been an illegal exercise of force
by the military. A committee was appointed,
and it proceeded to summon witnesses to give
evidence. The adjutant-general of militia
and the superintendent of Indian Affairs,
when summoned to attend, applied to Mait-
land for permission. This Maitland refused
to grant, and the two officers were im-
prisoned by order of the speaker for contempt
of the House of Assembly. Maitland 's con-
duct in refusing to allow these officers to
testify, and indeed in using military force in
the first place, was severely condemned later
by the secretary of state, Sir George Murray.
But his actions should be regarded as errors
of judgment rather than as wilful tyranny.
Certainly, William Forsyth should never be
entered on the martyr-roll of Reform.

Two more incidents of Maitland's regime
must be noticed. One of these was the publi-
cation of the letter and ' ecclesiastical chart *
which Archdeacon Strachan sent in May 1827
to the Colonial Office. These documents were
composed primarily for the purpose of press-
ing on the home government the claims of the

THE MAITLAND REGIME 61

Church of England in Canada. There had
grown up in Canada, notably among the
members of the Church of Scotland, a strong
disposition to dispute the exclusive right of
the Church of England to the land reserves
which had been set apart in 1791 for the sup-
port of ' a Protestant clergy,' and Strachan
was mainly concerned in combating this view.
He argued that the Church of England in
Upper Canada was the established church,
and should obtain more liberal support from
the home government. Unfortunately, he
thought it necessary to his argument to
blacken the good name of other religious
bodies in Upper Canada. ' The teachers of
the different denominations,' he wrote, ' with
the exception of the two ministers of the
church of Scotland, four congregationalists,
and a respectable English missionary of a
Wesleyan Methodist meeting at Kingston, are,
for the most part, from the United States,
where they gather their knowledge and form
their sentiments. Indeed, the Methodist
teachers are subject to the orders of the con-
ference of the United States of America ; and
it is manifest that the colonial government
neither has, nor can have, any other control
over them, or prevent them from gradually

62 THE FAMILY COMPACT

rendering a large portion of the population,
by their influence and instructions, hostile to
our institutions, both civil and religious, than
by increasing the number of the established
clergy.* These ungenerous imputations were
answered by the Rev. Egerton Ryerson, then
a young Methodist preacher of only twenty-
four years of age, in a pamphlet which he him-
self described as ' the first defiant defence of
the Methodists, and of the equal and civil
rights of all religious persuasions ; the first
protest and argument on legal and British
constitutional grounds, against the erection of
a dominant church establishment supported
by the state in Upper Canada.' A storm of
indignation broke about the head of Arch-
deacon Strachan ; and from this time dates
the beginning of a Methodist agitation against
the monopolization of the clergy reserves by
the Church of England, an agitation which
continued until the reserves were applied to
secular purposes in 1854. Sir Peregrine Mait-
land himself had no share in the prepara-
tion of Strachan's letter and chart, but he
was known to be in sympathy with Strachan's
views, and so did not escape some of the
obloquy which they called forth. It was,
indeed, the fact that the governing clique were,

THE MAITLAND REGIME 63

almost to a man, supporters of the Church of
England that lent to this religious quarrel its
real importance. The cause of the Church of
England became identified with that of the
Family Compact, and the political quarrel
took on some of the bitterness and intensity of
the religious quarrel. It will be found that,
in what follows, the religious question often
affords the clue to the true interpretation of
the course of events.

The other incident to be noticed was the
agitation over the Naturalization or Alien
question. In 1824 the chief justice of England
had ruled that any one who had continued to
reside in the United States after the peace of
1783 could not possess or transmit British
citizenship, and consequently that no such
person could inherit real estate in any part of
the British Empire. The effect of this judg-
ment upon Upper Canada was to disfranchise
and denaturalize a large part of the popula-
tion; and to render their titles to land invalid.
The colonial secretary suggested that a bill
should be passed by the parliament of Upper
Canada restoring to these persons their civil
and political rights. The bill originated in
the Legislative Council, and when it came to
the Assembly, the members of that body were

64 THE FAMILY COMPACT

aghast when they found that it did not pre-
tend to grant full naturalization. This was
regarded by the Assembly, and by the great
body of American immigrants into Canada,
as an attempt on the part of the government
to discriminate against them. So far as
Maitland is concerned, it should be said that
he merely followed the instructions of the
Colonial Office. A battle royal over the
question continued for several sessions, and
in the end the members of the Assembly, after
memorializing the home government, had
their way. But the action of the provincial
government was misconstrued throughout
Upper Canada, andmany an American im-
migrant into the colony was driven into
opposition by the agitation over the Natural-
ization Act. The presence of this element
in the Reform party was afterwards partly
responsible for the charges of republicanism
and disloyalty so frequently levied against
the Reformers by the Family Compact party.
Sir Peregrine Maitland left Upper Canada
in the beginning of November 1828. Before
he went, however, the elections for a new
Assembly were held. To Maitland the result
of these elections must have been a disagree-
able pill. The Reformers carried the country

THE MAITLAND REGIME 65

by a substantial majority. In the county of
York, William Lyon Mackenzie and Jesse
Ketchum were returned ; elsewhere such men
were elected as Marshall Spring Bidwell,
John Rolph, Peter Perry, and the elder
Baldwin. The reasons for this result are
obvious. The motives lying behind the de-
struction of Mackenzie's press had been mis-
construed ; the letter and * ecclesiastical
chart ' of Archdeacon Strachan had aroused
against the government the feeling of the
Methodists ; the Americans in the colony had
been antagonized by what they regarded as an
attempt to rob them of their civil and political
rights ; and many regarded the prosecutions
for libel which had taken place through Sir
Peregrine Maitland's regime as an attempt to
stifle freedom of speech.

F.C.

CHAPTER V

A REFORM ASSEMBLY

SIR PEREGRINE MAITLAND'S successor was
Sir John Colborne. Colborne was a distin-
guished veteran of the Napoleonic wars who
had been lieutenant-governor of Guernsey
since 1825. He was at this time forty- two
years of age. Though not a brilliant man, he
possessed mature judgment and steady nerves,
and as an administrator he stood head and
shoulders above both his predecessor and his
successor in office. He had no illusions about
the leaders of the Family Compact. Of Arch-
deacon Strachan he wrote, a few months after
his arrival in Canada : ' I cannot blind myself
so far as not to be convinced that the political
part he has taken in Upper Canada destroys
his clerical influence, and injures to a very
great degree the interests of the episcopal
church, and, I am afraid, of religion also.' At
first Colborne held himself distinctly aloof
from Family Compact influences, and it was

SIR JOHN COLBORNE, LORD SEATON
From an engraving in the Dominion Archives

A REFORM ASSEMBLY 67

only when Reformers like Mackenzie became
factious in their opposition to government
that he was forced into the Family Compact
camp. Colborne was not of a democratic
turn of mind. But it is noteworthy that
during his period of office there were no per-
secutions and prosecutions by government
such as had taken place under Maitland. The
expulsions of Mackenzie from the Assembly
were the work of a Tory majority in the House
itself, and there is no doubt that Colborne did
not wholly approve of their course. His real
interest in the welfare of the colony was shown
by his founding of Upper Canada College and
by his advocacy of good roads. ' In allowing
your roads to remain in their present state,'
he bluntly told the Assembly, 'the great
stimulus to agricultural industry is lost.'
Colborne's ideal was something very different
from the dolcefar niente policy of Maitland.

The Assembly, which had been elected in the
summer of 1828, met on January 9, 1829. It
was the tenth which had been elected since
1792, and the first in which the Reformers had
secured a steady majority. The complexion
of the House was immediately shown by the
election of Marshall Spring Bidwell as speaker,
and by the passing of an address to the lieu-

68 THE FAMILY COMPACT

tenant-governor complaining of c the injurious
policy hitherto pursued by the provincial
administration,' and regretting that he was
surrounded by c the same advisers as have so
deeply wounded the feelings and injured the
best interests of the country.' This address
must have greatly embarrassed Colborne. He
replied dryly that it was * less difficult to
discover the traces of political dissensions and
local jealousies in this province than to efface
them.' Early in the session, also, an address
was presented by the Assembly asking for the
remission of the sentence of Francis Collins.
This request Colborne found himself unable to
grant; but when the matter was referred to
the Imperial authorities, Colborne's influence
was thrown on the side of leniency, and Collins
was released.

The relations between the House and the
Family Compact soon became strained. When
the case of Collins was being investigated, the
judges who had tried him, Sherwood and
Hagerman, were subpoenaed to attend as
witnesses. They attended, but declined to
answer the questions put to them. Shortly
afterwards, Henry John Boulton, the solicitor-
general, and Allan MacNab, then a struggling
young barrister in Hamilton, were summoned

A REFORM ASSEMBLY 69

to attend before a committee. They both
showed their ignorance of parliamentary law
by following the example of Sherwood and
Hagerman, and refusing to answer. The
Assembly determined to assert its authority.
Mac Nab, who had remained obdurate, was
committed to jail for a breach of the privileges
of the House ; and Boulton, who, on finding
that he could net count on the support of
Colborne, had recanted, was admonished by
the speaker. The short speech in which this
admonition was administered is one of the
classics of Canadian parliamentary speaking.
Bidwell and Boulton were almost hereditary
enemies. It had been a Boulton who had gohe
down to Massachusetts in 1821 to ferret out
evidence against Barnabas Bidwell. But in
the calm, lucid periods of the speech there was
no trace of personal feeling.

Under the guidance of Mackenzie, who did
not conduct himself with the usual caution
and reserve of a new member, the House went
on a still hunt for grievances. It instituted
an inquiry, first of all, into the administration
of the Post Office. At that time the Post Office
was under Imperial control, and it was be-
lieved to be a source of considerable revenue
to the government. Certainly, the rates of

70 THE FAMILY COMPACT

postage were very high, and the service was
inefficient. But that the Post Office was a
mine of gold may well be doubted. An attack
also was made by Mackenzie on the custom
which had grown up whereby the officials of
the Legislative Assembly were appointed by
the executive government. Chief among
these officials was the chaplain of the House.
Hitherto the chaplain had always been a
clergyman of the Church of England. Mac-
kenzie did not hesitate to stir up religious
discord by attacking this arrangement. He
carried a resolution to the effect that the
clergy and ministers of the town of York
should be asked to officiate in turn ; and
he carried through the Assembly a bill re-
pealing the clause in the statute determining
the salary to be paid to the chaplain, a bill
that would have become law had it not been
thrown out by the Legislative Council. All
these matters may have been fit and proper
subjects for inquiry, but there is no doubt that
Mackenzie occupied the time of the House over
them to the exclusion of much more urgent
and important matters, such as the establish-
ment of schools and the building of good roads.
In the summer of 1829 John Beverley
Robinson was raised to the bench as chief

A REFORM ASSEMBLY 71

justice of the province, and his place as
member of the Assembly for the county of
York was taken by Robert Baldwin. Baldwin
was then a young man of only twenty-five
years of age, but he had already given signs
of great promise, and was in the confidence of
Reformers like Bidwell and Rolph. In the
Assembly, however, he preserved a studious
silence — a fact which may serve to explain
his defeat in the elections of 1830.

During the session of 1830 the Assembly
once more addressed the lieutenant-governor,
praying for the dismissal of his advisers, on
the ground that they had lost the confidence
of the country. The reply of the lieutenant-
governor was almost a snub. * Gentlemen of
the House of Assembly/ he said, ' I return you
my thanks for your address.* Thus rebuked,
the Assembly applied itself to business, and
passed some useful legislation. It settled
finally the question of the losses sustained in
the War of 1812; it made provision for the
maintenance of roads ; and it granted aid to
the Welland Canal, which had been begun
with very inadequate means during Sir
Peregrine Maitland's regime. Mackenzie's
flair for grievances found scope in an in-
quiry into the expenditure in connection with

72 THE FAMILY COMPACT

the canal ; the investigating committee, how-
ever, reported that they found very little to
censure.

The tenth parliament of Upper Canada
came abruptly to an end in the summer of
1830. On June 26 George IV was gathered
to his fathers ; and it was the rule in those
days that with a new king there must also be
a new parliament. The elections took place
at the end of October. The outcome was a
surprise to every one, but most of all to the
Reformers. Both the Baldwins were defeated
at the polls ; Rolph failed of re-election ; and
only Bidwell, Perry, Mackenzie, and a few
others were left of the Reform group that had
dominated the previous House.

In attempting to explain this sudden right-
about-face in public opinion, one is tempted
to take refuge in Sir John Macdonald's proverb
that elections are as uncertain as horse-races.
It is possible that the change was due in part
to the confidence which the country had begun
to feel in the justice and integrity of Sir John
Colborne. Perhaps the most important factor
in it was the disappointment which many
people undoubtedly felt in the behaviour of
the Reform Assembly. Not enough useful
legislation had been passed ; as was indeed

A REFORM ASSEMBLY 73

natural. When the government party were
able to control a majority in the Assembly,
they were able to direct legislation ; but when
the majorityin the Assembly were in opposition
to the government, there was no leadership or
direction, and the proceedings of the House
became wild and aimless. There had been a
great outcry over abuses, and many com-
mittees for inquiry had been appointed : but
the mountain had brought forth a mouse.
' Although there may be some abuses which
have crept in,' wrote John Ryerson, a member
of a prominent Methodist family, ' yet I
believe that we enjoy as many political and
religious advantages as any people.'

As yet the Reformers had advanced no
satisfactory constructive programme. Vague
demands were heard for an Executive Council
possessing the confidence of the people, but
it was not until 1836, when Robert Baldwin
addressed a communication on the subject
to the colonial secretary, that a definite plan
was formulated for the government of the
colony by a cabinet of men sitting in the
legislature and responsible to it.

CHAPTER VI

•ONE OF THE MEMBERS FOR THE
COUNTY OF YORK'

THE House of Assembly which met in the
beginning of 1831 was like nothing that had
preceded it. It was not only Tory, it was
more royalist than the king. Throughout its
four years of existence the cool and courteous
leadership of John Beverley Robinson, who
had led the Tory phalanx in the House from
1821 to 1829, was sorely missed. His place
was taken by the new attorney-general, Henry
John Boulton, by the new solicitor-general,
Christopher Alexander Hagerman, and by
Allan MacNab. Boulton was a peculiar
mixture of insolence and incompetence ;
Hagerman, though a brilliant speaker, was
violent and extreme in his views ; and
MacNab belonged to that type of Toryism
which places its main reliance in prejudice and
stupidity. Under Robinson the Tories in
the House had reflected in some measure the

74

' ONE OF THE MEMBERS ' 75

views of the executive government ; but not
even Sir John Colborne himself could restrain
the dancing dervishes who led the House of

I83I-35-

The first important measure of the session
was what Mackenzie and his friends called the
' Everlasting Salary Bill.' In 1830 there had
come into power in Great Britain a Whig
ministry — the ministry which two years later
carried the first Reform Bill. One of the first
actions of the Colonial Office under the new
regime had been to abandon to the parliaments
of Upper and Lower Canada the control of a
considerable revenue which had hitherto been
at the disposal of the Imperial government.
At the same time, however, the colonial
secretary had expressed the hope that a per-
manent civil list would be voted by the
Canadian legislature, making provision for the
payment of the salaries of the lieutenant-
governor, the Executive Council, the judges,
and the law-officers of the crown. Bills for
this purpose were introduced in both the
Upper and the Lower Canadian parliaments.
In Lower Canada the bill was rejected by the
French majority in the lower house. In
Upper Canada the bill was passed, but it met
with strong opposition from the Reform

76 THE FAMILY COMPACT

who, ignorant of constitutional usage, wished
to have the holders of office appointed during
good behaviour — that is, while their conduct
met with the approval of the House of Assem-
bly. The concession made by the British
government had placed in the hands of the
Assembly the power of withholding by far
the greater part of the supplies, and the Re-
formers might well have allowed the ' Ever-
lasting Salary Bill ' to pass unopposed. It
was not advisable, for instance, that the pay
of the judges should be made dependent on
the caprice of a popular Assembly.

The truth is, that the small band of Re-
formers in the House interpreted the duties
of an Opposition in a very literal sense. This
was especially true of Mackenzie. Undismayed
by the hostile majority against him, he con-
tinued his agitation just as in the previous
session. He attacked the presence of Arch-
deacon Strachan and the Roman Catholic
Bishop Macdonell on the Executive Council ;
he renewed his attack on the practice of having
a Church of England clergyman as chaplain
of the House ; he moved for a committee to
inquire into the constitution of the House, in
view of the fact that so many members held
office of profit under the crown. This last

' ONE OF THE MEMBERS ' 77

measure was a move in the right direction ;
it was identical with that bill for the ' better
security of the independence of parliament '
which Burke had introduced into the Imperial
parliament half a century before ; but even
in this case there was in Mackenzie's presenta-
tion of his argument much to offend the
feelings of many of his fellow - members.
Meanwhile Mackenzie was carrying on his
paper, the Colonial Advocate. In its columns
the abuse in which he indulged in the House
was repeated week by week, generally with
embellishments. From a prosecution for per-
sonal libel, however, he was protected by his
seat in the House ; and even if an action
for libel had been entered against him, there
was always the doubt whether a jury from the
county of York could be persuaded to convict
him.

Faced by this difficulty, the leaders of the
House hit upon the idea of expelling Mackenzie
from their midst. This was a course which,
whatever may be thought of its wisdom,
the House had a perfect right to adopt.
Nor can it be said that, when Mackenzie was
expelled, he deserved any sympathy; for
he had vigorously defended the action of
the Lower-Canadian Assembly in expelling

78 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Robert Christie two years before. Indeed, if
the expulsion of Robert Christie had not
taken place in Lower Canada, it is possible the
expulsion of Mackenzie might not have taken
place in Upper Canada.

The grounds on which the first attempt to
expel Mackenzie was made were, however,
ridiculously inadequate. He was charged
with breach of privilege in having published
the journals of the House without the appen-
dices. If the charge had been made in the
eighteenth century, it might have been valid ;
but the principle contravened was one which
had long since fallen into disuse. If Mackenzie
was guilty, then every newspaper editor in
the British Empire was guilty. When, there-
fore, Allan MacNab brought forward a motion
to the effect that Mackenzie had been guilty
of a breach of privilege, his motion was voted
down. Having failed in this direction, the
Tory extremists then had recourse to another
expedient. They brought against Mackenzie
a charge of libelling the Assembly. But before
the matter came up, the House was prorogued,
and proceedings were stayed.

The second session of the legislature began
on November 17, 1831. On December 6 the
attack on Mackenzie was renewed. In recent

' ONE OF THE MEMBERS ' 79

numbers of the Colonial Advocate some edi-
torials had appeared reflecting strongly upon
the Assembly. It had been described as 'a
sycophantic office for registering the decrees
of as mean and mercenary an executive as
ever was given as a punishment for the sins
of any part of North America in the nine-
teenth century/ Such language would not
to-day be regarded as unusual, but in 1831
there still existed men of the old school, who
had not been reconciled by a lifetime of
democratic politics to having their honour
and integrity called in question. The House
declared the editorials to be ' gross, scandalous,
and malicious libels, intended and calculated
to bring this House and the government of
this Province into contempt.' Mackenzie de-
fended himself with his usual vigour and
resourcefulness, but his fate was foreordained,
and on December 12 he was expelled from the
House. The debate on his expulsion did not
reach a high level. The attorney-general
called Mackenzie a ' reptile,' and the solicitor-
general described him as a ' spaniel dog.'

As might have been foreseen, the effect of
this expulsion on Mackenzie's constituents was
to raise him to the proportions of a hero. On
the very day of the expulsion a deputation of

8o THE FAMILY COMPACT

over nine hundred people waited on Sir John
Colborne and asked him to dissolve the House.
To this deputation Colborne replied with one
of his laconic speeches : ' Gentlemen, I have
received the petition of the inhabitants.'

The by-election took place on January 2.
A Tory candidate had been nominated, but
after the poll had been open an hour and a
half he retired, having received only one vote
as against one hundred and nineteen cast for
Mackenzie. Mackenzie himself was escorted
to the poll by a procession of forty sleighs,
and afterwards he was presented by his con-
stituents with a gold medal and chain, ' as a
token of their approbation of his political
career.' Small wonder if Mackenzie swelled
with pride ! Men with steadier heads than his
have been carried away by popular applause
no more vociferous than the cheers which
rang that day about the polling-booth in the
Red Lion Inn.

But the battle was not yet over : it was
barely begun. When Mackenzie presented
himself at the bar of the House to be sworn in,
some of his opponents tried to keep him from
taking his seat. The majority, however, saw
clearly that expulsion from the House did
not create disability ; and Mackenzie was

' ONE OF THE MEMBERS ' Si

admitted. He had hardly entered the House
when a fresh accusation of libel was brought
against him. On January 5 he had reiterated
in his paper the charges of ' sycophancy '
against the members of the House which had
brought about his previous expulsion. The
article in question was voted to be a ' false,
scandalous, malicious libel' (as a matter of
fact, it hardly exceeded the bounds of
legitimate discussion), and Mackenzie was not
only expelled from the House, but was de-
clared incapable of holding a seat in that
parliament. This action of the House was
not only foolish, it was illegal ; for it created a
disability unknown to the law.

When the second by-election took place in
the county of York, on January 30, 1832, the
House had already risen. Three candidates
presented themselves : a straight Tory candi-
date, who retired with twenty-three votes
after one day's polling ; a moderate Reformer,
who came forward on the ground that Mac-
kenzie was ineligible to sit in the House ; and
Mackenzie himself. Mackenzie was elected
by 628 votes against 96 cast for his chief
opponent.

Despairing of justice at the hands of the
Assembly or of the lieutenant-governor,

F.C. F

82 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Mackenzie now turned his eyes towards
England. During the remainder of the winter
he busied himself in holding indignation meet-
ings throughout the country and obtaining
signatures to petitions which he intended
presenting to the king and to parliament in
England. The Tories organized rival meet-
ings and signed counter-petitions ; and some
rioting was the result. At Hamilton, on
March 19, Mackenzie was the victim of a brutal
attack by some of Allan MacNab's satellites ;
and the only one of his assailants who was
brought to trial escaped with a fine of $100.
A few days later an attack was made on the
office of the Colonial Advocate in York, and
some windows were broken. Feeling began
to run so high that Mackenzie deemed it
prudent to retire to the country for a few
weeks ; and on May I he set sail for London.
It was his intention to return to Canada in
time for the opening of the legislature in the
autumn, but he remained in England for a year
and a half. On the whole, his visit to Eng-
land was crowned with success. Through the
offices of Joseph Hume, one of the Radicals
in the House of Commons, he obtained a
number of audiences with Lord Goderich, the
colonial secretary. At Lord Goderich's re-

' ONE OF THE MEMBERS ' 83

quest he presented a long written memoir
with regard to the state of Upper Canada and
the grievances of which he complained. This
memoir was not one of Mackenzie's greatest
achievements ; it was a document in which
innuendo, sarcasm, and invective took the
place of argument. But it showed Lord Code-
rich that there was ' something rotten in the
state of Denmark ' ; and it inspired the famous
dispatch of November 8, 1832, which caused
such a flutter of the dove-cotes in Upper
Canada.

The third session of the legislature of Upper
Canada began on October 31, 1832. Though
Mackenzie was not present, the question of
his election immediately came up. On the
advice of the law-officers of the crown, Boulton
and Hagerman, who declared that the House
had the right of determining the eligibility of
members, it was resolved that Mackenzie,
having been twice expelled, had no right to
sit in the House and vote. This outrageous
doctrine was carried by a majority of fifteen
to eight, and a new writ was ordered. Such
was the indignation of Mackenzie's con-
stituents at this proceeding that no Tory
candidate ventured to present himself to
the electors, and on November 26, 1832,

84 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Mackenzie, though absent from the country,
was returned by acclamation. This was his
fourth election to the eleventh parliament of
Upper Canada.

It was during this session that Sir John
Colborne received Lord Goderich 's dispatch
of November 8, 1832, to which reference has
already been made. Goderich had prepared
this dispatch with great care, and had striven
to hold the balance even. Certainly, he had
not spared Mackenzie. He wrote to Colborne
instructing him to publish the dispatch,
evidently in the hope of creating a moderate
party which should keep in check the ex-
tremists. At first Colborne hesitated about
publishing the dispatch before the legislature
had risen ; but, in the end, he decided to take
prompt action, and to communicate the docu-
ment to the two Houses. The result was a
tempest in the parliament buildings. Instead
of making the best of the dispatch, and point-
ing out how severely it condemned Mackenzie,
the Tories flew into a rage because the secre-
tary of state had even dared to give audience
to Mackenzie. Lord Goderich, said Boulton,
might have found something better to do than
to answer Mackenzie's ' rigmarole trash ' ;
and Hagerman declared that Goderich had

' ONE OF THE MEMBERS ' 85

stultified himself by noticing statements made
by a libeller who had been several times ex-
pelled from the House of Assembly. Then
they proceeded to reinforce their remarks by
moving the fourth expulsion of Mackenzie
from the House, although he had committed
no new offence, and it was clear that both Sir
John Colborne and Lord Goderich disapproved
of their course of action.

Nemesis was swift and sure. The mails
had barely time to cross and recross the
Atlantic when word reached Sir John Colborne
that Boulton and Hagerman had been dis-
missed from the attorney-generalship and the
solicitor-generalship, on the ground that they
had taken a part, as members of the Assembly,
directly opposed to the avowed policy of Her
Majesty's government. While this dispatch
was on the way to Upper Canada, Hagerman
was on the way to England. When he reached
London, and heard of his dismissal, he
promptly applied to Lord Stanley, who had
just succeeded Lord Goderich in the Colonial
Office, and so plausibly did he defend himself
that Lord Stanley reinstated him. Boulton,
on receiving news of his dismissal, followed
Hagerman to England. But on his arrival
he found that the attorney-generalship had

86 THE FAMILY COMPACT

already been offered to an English barrister,
Robert Sympson Jameson. Boulton made
abject apologies, and was consequently ap-
pointed chief justice of Newfoundland. In
1833, therefore, he disappeared for a time from
Canadian history. When he reappeared, after
having been removed from office in Newfound-
land in 1838, it was — mirabile dicta ! — as an
exponent of responsible government.

Mackenzie returned to Canada in the
summer of 1833, well pleased, on the whole,
with the result of his trip. He had roused
the Colonial Office, and he had helped to bring
about the dismissal of the two officials who
had opposed him most bitterly. When the
House of Assembly met on November 19 he
once more attempted to take his seat. He had
been declared ineligible to sit ; but, owing to
the prorogation of the previous session, no
new writ had been issued. This defect was
now remedied, however : Mackenzie was re-
fused permission to take his seat, and a new
election — the fifth during this parliament —
was ordered in the county of York.

The Assembly might as well have saved
itself the trouble of ordering the new election,
for on December 16, 1833, Mackenzie was once
more returned by acclamation. Then fol-

' ONE OF THE MEMBERS ' 87

lowed scenes which might well have had a
place on the boards of a burlesque theatre.
When Mackenzie went to the House to take
his seat, he was accompanied by a motley
throng of his constituents. They filled the
galleries and crowded about the bar of the
House, and their behaviour was such that
the speaker ordered the galleries to be cleared.
When the sergeant-at-arms ordered Mackenzie,
who was among the rest, to depart, Mackenzie
replied that he had a right to be there, as he
was waiting to be sworn in. The sergeant-
at-arms seized him by the collar, and was
dragging him to the door when he was inter-
cepted by a brawny Highlander. At that
moment the doors were burst open by the
crowd, and for a few moments there was a
general struggle between the members and
the intruders. When order was restored,
the sergeant-at-arms informed the speaker
that Mackenzie claimed permission to remain
in order to take the oath. The speaker, how-
ever, refused to allow Mackenzie to take the
oath, and Mackenzie was obliged to with-
draw.

On the following day the House declared
Mackenzie guilty of yet another libel. This
libel, it should be added, was of a date two

88 THE FAMILY COMPACT

years previous. But it was deemed by the
House sufficient ground for a fifth expulsion.
Meanwhile Mackenzie was writing to Colborne
complaining that he had been refused per-
mission to take the oath. Colborne advised
him to apply to the clerk of the Executive
Council, who had been instructed by Colborne
himself to administer the oath. But when
Mackenzie found himself expelled again from
the House, he did not at first think it worth
while to take the oath. Nearly two months
elapsed before, on the advice of his friends, he
decided to renew the attempt to take his seat.
On February 10, 1834, having taken the oath
before the clerk of the Executive Council,
Mackenzie walked into the House and sat
down. The sergeant -at -arms' immediately
approached him and asked him to withdraw.
Mackenzie produced the attested copy of the
oath he had taken, and refused to withdraw.
Three times an attempt was made to remove
him by force ; finally the sergeant-at-arms
arrested him. A six hours' debate then
followed, in which the extreme Tory members
used language in no way complimentary to
Colborne for his action in affording Mackenzie
facilities in taking the oath. The result of
the debate was that Mackenzie was ad-

' ONE OF THE MEMBERS ' 89

monished by the speaker and discharged from
custody ; but he was not permitted to take
his seat in the House. Nor, in truth, did he
again attempt to do so. The eleventh parlia-
ment of Upper Canada had already nearly run
its allotted span of life ; and it doubtless
seemed, even to a man of Mackenzie's tenacity
of temperament, hardly worth while to fight
for a seat in an Assembly which was on the
verge of dissolution.

By 1834 Mackenzie had become a popular
hero. Even among those who did not ap-
prove of his political course, sympathy for
him and indignation at his persecution out-
weighed other considerations. Hardly had
parliament been dissolved when a signal
honour was conferred upon him by his fellow-
citizens. On March 6, 1834, the town of York
was incorporated as the city of Toronto, and
Mackenzie was elected its first mayor. His
year of office illustrated well his capacities and
his defects. A system of municipal govern-
ment had to be organized ab initio, and here
his executive ability stood him in good stead.
That knowledge of finance which he had often
shown in the House appeared in the establish-
ment of a new method of taxation ; his pro-
gressive spirit found vent in the introduction

90 THE FAMILY COMPACT

of wooden footways ; and when the cholera
swept the city, his energy did much to alleviate
the distress. But, at the same time, his period
of office revealed that fatal want of judgment
which cursed his political career. He had
been only a few weeks in office when he per-
petrated one of the most extraordinary mis-
takes of his life in publishing what has come
to be known as the ' baneful domination '
letter of Joseph Hume. This was a letter
which Hume, the Radical politician who had
espoused Mackenzie's cause in England, sent
to him, prophesying that a crisis was fast
approaching in the affairs of Canada which
would * terminate in independence and free-
dom from the baneful domination of the
mother country.' For Mackenzie to publish
this letter, with apparent approval, was
almost to admit the charges of disloyalty and
separatism which the Tories had been hurling
against him. An attempt was made by the
Reformers to put another construction on the
letter than that which the text seemed to
warrant, but there is no doubt that the effect
of the letter was to injure Mackenzie greatly
in the minds of many moderate and loyal
people. Another unwise action was his plac-
ing of a drunken prostitute in the public

1 ONE OF THE MEMBERS ' 91

stocks, largely on account of her abuse of
himself — the last instance of the use of the
stocks in British North America. And all
this time the Colonial Advocate was pursuing
the abusive tenor of its way. Small wonder
that John Ryerson, voicing the views of many
others, should have exclaimed : ' We should
fare sumptuously, should we not, with W. L.
Mackenzie, of Toronto, and Radcliffe, of
Cobourg [editor of the Cobourg Reformer], for
our rulers ! '

There is good reason for believing that, had
it not been for Mackenzie's indiscretions, the
Reformers would have carried nearly every
riding in the elections which took place in
October 1834. As it was, they obtained a
majority in the new House. The county of
York sent up a solid phalanx of four Re-
formers, headed " by Mackenzie. Toronto
elected a moderate Reformer. Bidwell and
Perry were returned for Lennox and Adding-
ton. Dr Duncombe, destined to be the leader
of the emeute in the west, was elected for
Oxford ; and Samuel Lount, of unhappy
memory, carried one of the seats in Simcoe.
On the other hand, there were lacking in
the new House some familiar faces. The
Baldwins and Rolph, together with Jesse

92 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Ketchum, who had been Mackenzie's fellow-
member in the county of York, all refused
to stand ; owing, without doubt, to a lack
of sympathy with Mackenzie's methods and
ideals, and an unwillingness to fight shoulder
to shoulder beside him.

CHAPTER VII

THE SEVENTH REPORT

THE new House assembled on January 15,
1835. The Reformers immediately showed
their strength by electing Marshall Spring
Bidwell to the speakership. The action was
unfortunate, for it removed from the fighting
ranks of the Reformers in the House their
sanest and ablest leader.

Within ten days of the beginning of the
session Mackenzie moved for a select com-
mittee to inquire into grievances. Mackenzie
himself was appointed chairman of the com-
mittee, and the members were all his own
immediate followers. The report of the com-
mittee, which is known as The Seventh Report
on Grievances, may therefore be taken as em-
bodying the views of that branch of the
Reform party which in the autumn of 1837
broke out in rebellion.

The report itself occupied forty-eight quarto
pages in the reprint ordered by the House, and

94 THE FAMILY COMPACT

with the numerous appendices made up a bulky
volume. It was written in a very moderate
style ; and, although it was intensely partisan,
and although many essential facts were sup-
pressed, it yet established beyond the shadow
of a doubt the existence of real grievances.
The first object of attack was the extent of the
patronage enjoyed by the executive govern-
ment. The committee even expressed the
opinion that this patronage was so extensive
that it would be useless for the Assembly to
attempt to follow Lord Stanley's advice about
withholding supplies — an opinion not borne
out by subsequent events. In attacking the
amount of the salaries and pensions paid by
the government there can be no doubt that
the committee made a mistake. A few men
like Archdeacon Strachan had done very well
out of the public exchequer ; but, on the
whole, the scale of salaries was low. Nor can
one admire the committee for grudging the
money spent on Upper Canada College. As
to the granting of moneys, without Vote of the
legislature, to the Church of England, the
Presbyterian churches, the Methodist churches
(except the Primitive Methodist), and to the
Roman Catholic Church, it can only be said
that the committee was right in opposing on

THE SEVENTH REPORT 95

principle such an expenditure ; but it should
have been recognized that the grants had been
made with the best objects in view, and that
nothing but practical good had resulted. The
fact cannot be stated too often or too em-
phatically that, whatever irregularities may
have existed during the Family Compact
regime in the administration of the public
funds, there were no scandals comparable
with those which have disgraced the era of
responsible government.

The committee expressed the opinion that
the extent and abuse of the patronage of the
crown were ' the chief sources of colonial dis-
content ' ; but they made out a better case
in connection with the purely constitutional
grievances which they urged. There was
real force in their complaint that ' little re-
spect is paid, even in subordinate matters,
to the wishes of the House of Assembly.'
That this state of affairs may have been due
in some measure to the factious behaviour of
the Assembly itself does not seem to have
occurred to the committee ; still, it cannot be
denied that the Legislative Council had been
very free in throwing out measures sent up by
the Assembly, and that both Maitland and
Colborne, in their horror of democratic prin-

96 THE FAMILY COMPACT

ciples, had not always given the representa-
tions of the Assembly the attention they de-
served. But when the committee began to
suggest remedies for this state of affairs, they
came to grief. Their chief remedy was the
application of the elective principle to the
second chamber, or Legislative Council. The
Legislative Council was undoubtedly a stum-
bling-block. Sir John Colborne, when he had
come to the country in 1829, had reported
that the executive government possessed far
too much influence in the upper chamber, and
had recommended an increase in the number
of its members. The increase had been made,
but the influence of the executive had not been
removed. To make the Council elective, how-
ever, would have been to fly to the other ex-
treme ; and, in the light of subsequent ex-
perience, it would not have been a satisfactory
solution. The elective principle was applied
to the upper chamber of the legislature of
United Canada in 1854, and was not found to
work well.

The committee had something to say also
about the introduction of ' a responsible
government.' But their remarks in this con-
nection were of a rather hazy character. The
essential feature of the system of responsible

THE SEVENTH REPORT 97

government which we now enjoy is that the
executive should sit in the legislature and
render there daily an account of their actions ;
but all that the committee advocated was a
vague ' responsibility to public opinion ' on
the part of the Executive Council. As to how
that responsibility was to be made effective
they had no practical suggestions to make.
They di£ indeed observe that a certain class
of persons examined by them had desired 'a
responsible Ministry, some heads of depart-
ments well paid, to direct the government, to
prepare bills and most of the business of the
session, and to hold office or lose it accord-
ing as they may happen to be in the minority
or majority in the House of Assembly ' ; but
they did not pronounce in favour of this idea,
and apparently did not think it feasible in
Canada without some modifications.1

Over two thousand copies of the report
on grievances were printed. The first copy
struck off was sent to the colonial secretary,
and one was sent to each member of the
Imperial parliament. The report produced
an impression in England, and Lord Glenelg,
who was then at the Colonial Office, saw that
it would be necessary to introduce some

1 See Seventh Report on Grievances, p. xxx.
F.C.

98 THE FAMILY COMPACT

changes in the government of the colony.
Many of the recommendations of the report
it was impossible for the British government
to accept, but some modifications of the
old system seemed feasible. A change of
governor, therefore, was in order. Sir John
Colborne had been compelled to administer
the affairs of Upper Canada under several
colonial secretaries, a fact which must have
entailed no small amount of embarrassment ;
and it was obviously unfair to ask him to
embark on a new line of policy. He was,
therefore, relieved of his duties ; and Sir
Francis Bond Head, an English baronet of
some distinction as an author and traveller,
was appointed in his stead. Sir Francis
Bond Head was sworn in at York on January
25, 1836 ; and the next day Sir John Colborne,
amid evidence of the deepest regret at his de-
parture and of esteem for his character, left
the province, to take over the command of
His Majesty's forces in British North America.
Before he did so, however, he took an action
which has been much criticized by later writers.
This was the endowment of forty-four rec-
tories ' according to the establishment of the
Church of England ' out of the clergy reserves,
or lands set aside for the state endowment of

THE SEVENTH REPORT 99

religion. The clergy reserves question was a
very thorny subject in 1836. The right of the
Church of Scotland to share in the endow-
ment had been admitted, and the Methodists
were now pressing their claim. It was un-
fortunate that action should have been taken
just when feeling was running so high on the
subject. It is difficult to blame Colborne, for
his action was in complete accord with the
law and with instructions from the Colonial
Office. But the idea of religious equality had
made such strides in Upper Canada that any
special treatment of the Church of England,
which, it must be remembered, was the church
of nearly all the members of the Family Com-
pact, was sure, whether legal or illegal, to
arouse indignation. This endowment of the
rectories was one of the chief grievances of the
rebels of 1837.

CHAPTER VIII

THE 'TRIED REFORMER'

THERE is a story, which may or may not
be apocryphal, that the appointment of Sir
Francis Bond Head as lieutenant-governor of
Upper Canada was an error. It is said that
after the appointment had been offered in vain
to several persons, who had all declined it on
account of the insufficiency of the emoluments
attached to it, some one suggested that it
should be offered to ' young Head.* The man
meant was Sir Edmund Head, afterwards the
successor of Lord Elgin as governor-general of
Canada, then a young man of thirty years of
age. The colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg,
understood, however, that Sir Francis Bond
Head, the cousin of Sir Edmund, was meant ;
and he therefore promptly offered him the
position.

One would willingly believe that the story
was true> for a man less fitted for the duties
of a representative of the crown in any of the
colonies could hardly have been sent out.

100

SIR FRANCIS BOND HEAD
From an engraving in the Chateau de Ramezay

THE « TRIED REFORMER ' 101

Certainly, Head himself was greatly surprised
when he was roused from bed at his Kentish
home by the king's messenger conveying the
offer of the colonial secretary. He had had
no experience of civil government save as a
poor law commissioner, and he had taken so
little interest in politics that he had never
voted in his life. At first he declined the
appointment ; but When the Colonial Office
pressed him to accept, he gave way, on the
understanding that he should be given a
baronetcy.

When the appointment was gazetted,
Joseph Hume wrote out to Mackenzie con-
gratulating the province on its good fortune,
and describing Sir Francis Bond Head as one
whose * conduct and principles have been
much approved of.' On his arrival in Upper
Canada, therefore, Head was given a very
warm reception by the Reformers. It was
commonly supposed that a new era had
begun. As Head rode through the streets of
Toronto he found himself placarded on the
walls as ' Sir Francis Head, a Tried Reformer.'
At this description he was naturally much
surprised.

On his arrival in Upper Canada, Head's
mind was probably a tabula rasa so far as

102 THE FAMILY COMPACT

the affairs of Upper Canada were concerned.
He told the legislature when he went down
to address them that he had ' nothing either
to promise or profess.' But he acquired with
astonishing rapidity a violent dislike for the
Reformers. This dislike seems to have been
aroused, in the first instance, by interviews
which he had with Bidwell and Mackenzie,
for both of whom he conceived an aversion.
He has left of Mackenzie an extraordinary
picture : ' Afraid to look me in the face, he
sat, with his feet not reaching the ground,
and with his countenance averted from me,
at an angle of about seventy degrees ; while,
with the eccentricity, the volubility, and
indeed the appearance of a madman, the tiny
creature raved about grievances here and
grievances there, which the Committee, he
said, had not ventured to enumerate.1 Within
a week of his arrival Head had learned to talk
glibly, in those amazing dispatches which he
sent back to England, of ' the republican
party/ and of their desire ' to possess them-
selves of the government of this province for
the sake of lucre and emolument/

He had come out to Upper Canada, how-
ever, to inaugurate a new regime, and some
measure of conciliation was necessary. The

THE ' TRIED REFORMER ' 103

measure which he adopted was the drafting of
new blood into the Executive Council. The
moment was opportune, as the Council had
been reduced to three members — Peter
Robinson, George H. Markland, and Joseph
Wells. The first person to whom Head
applied was Robert Baldwin, whom all parties
agreed in recommending. Baldwin refused at
first to accept office unless the old members
of the Council were all dismissed ; but find-
ing Head adamant on this point, he agreed
to accept office if Rolph and Bidwell were
named with him. To Bidwell, Head objected
strongly. Finally, it was agreed that the
new members should be Robert Baldwin,
John Rolph, and John Henry Dunn, an
Englishman of high character and ability
who had hitherto held himself aloof from pro-
vincial politics.

The new appointments were very popular ;
for it was believed, not only by the public,
but by Robert Baldwin himself, that they
heralded a real constitutional change. It
soon became clear, however, that no such
change was imminent. The new members
found that they were not consulted upon
matters- of any moment. Their duties were
only ministerial. Appointments were made to

104 THE FAMILY COMPACT

office without their knowledge or consent,
and the lieutenant-governor's assent was with-
held from a bill without the reference of the
bill to the Council at all. On March 4, only
two weeks after the new members had taken
the oath, the whole Council, old members and
new, addressed a protest to the lieutenant-
governor. Head replied on March 10 : he
laid down the principle that he alone was
responsible to the Colonial Office for his acts,
and was bound to consult his Council only
when he felt need of their advice. The ability
with which the reply was drawn up gave rise
to the suspicion that it had been prepared
by the chief justice, John Beverley Robinson,
and many thought that Sir Francis, like his
two predecessors, had fallen under the sway
of that brilliant and powerful mind. In any
case, the reply was unsatisfactory to the
Council ; and on March 12 the members, old
and new, resigned in a body.

Sir Francis lost no time in getting together
a new Council. Within a day or so he had
induced four men to accept office — John
Elmsley, William Allan, Augustus Baldwin,
and Robert Baldwin Sullivan. This Council
was quite an achievement, as the last two
members were relatives of Robert Baldwin

THE ' TRIED REFORMER ' 105

himself. But not even this stroke of political
dexterity saved Sir Francis from condemna-
tion. The resignation of the old Council
caused great excitement in the Assembly.
On March 14 a resolution was carried, by a
vote of 53 to 2, asserting the principle of ' a
responsible Executive Council to advise the
Lieutenant-Governor on the Affairs of the
Province/ Ten days later an address was
carried, by a vote of 32 to 19, declaring an
entire want of confidence on the part of the
Assembly in the new Council.

One of Sir Francis Head's chief character-
istics was a complete absence of fear. Where
even a strong man like Sir John Colborne
had trod delicately, he stepped gaily and reck-
lessly ahead. In his reply to the address
of the Assembly he did not recede one inch
from the position which he had taken up.
Nor can it be said that his position was weak.
Few people nowadays recognize what powerful •
logic lay behind the arguments of the oppon-
ents of the principle of executive responsibility
in the colonies before 1837. The lieutenant-
governor was responsible to the Colonial Office ;
if he were to accept implicitly the advice of
an Executive Council responsible to the legisla-
ture, he would be accepting a dual responsi-

io6 THE FAMILY COMPACT

bility which would place him permanently
on the horns of a dilemma. The solution of
this difficulty has been attained in our own
day only through the virtual abdication by
the Colonial Office of its authority, and before
1849 the Colonial Office declined to take this
step. But Sir Francis was a man who would
lay himself open to attack even when in the
right. When an address complaining of his
actions was presented to him from a meeting
held in the City Hall of Toronto, he received it
surrounded by the officers of the garrison, and
announced that since it came from * the in-
dustrial classes/ he would express himself in
' plainer and homelier language/ He levelled
against his opponents indiscriminately charges
of republicanism and disloyalty ; and he even
conjured up the bogey of a foreign invasion of
Canada, supported by the Reformers, an idea
which can only be described as the hallucina-
tion of a disordered imagination. ' In the
name of every regiment of militia in Upper
Canada/ he exclaimed hysterically, ' I publicly
promulgate, Let them come, if they dare ! '

The Assembly, on the other hand, did not
conduct itself with fitting moderation and
restraint. It accused Sir Francis, on very
slender grounds, of ' misrepresentation and

THE « TRIED REFORMER ' 107

deviations from candour and truth ' ; and it
actually went the length of stopping sup-
plies. This is a step which should be the last
resort of a representative Assembly. On this
occasion it cannot be said that what had
happened was a justification for so extreme a
course.

On April 20, 1836, Sir Francis Head came
down and prorogued the House, with a speech
which occupied an hour in delivery and was
very argumentative in tone. A month later
he dissolved the House, although it had run
barely half of its natural life, and writs were
issued for a new election, to take place in June.

The elections of 1836 were fought with a
bitterness unusual even in those days. Sir
Francis Head threw himself into the contest
as if he were a candidate for popular election.
His way of stating the issue was thus : ' Are
you for me, or for the House of Assembly ? '
He strove in every way to create the impres-
sion that the designs of the Reformers were*
disloyal and traitorous, and that the connec-
tion of Canada with the mother country was
at stake ; although he admitted that * the
Republicans in Canada generally mask their
designs by professions of attachment to the
mother country.' The cry of disloyalty was

io8 THE FAMILY COMPACT

taken up by the Tories, in whose hands it was
so familiar a weapon ; and there was re-
established in Toronto the British Constitu-
tional Society, which had been formed for the
purpose of preserving the Imperial tie during
the War of 1812-14. On the other hand, the
Reformers were not idle. They organized an
association named the Constitutional Reform
Society, of which Dr Baldwin was president,
and Francis (afterwards Sir Francis) Hincks
was secretary. The platform of this associa-
tion was, first, an elective Legislative Council ;
second, an Executive Council responsible to
public opinion ; third, the surrender of the
whole provincial revenue into the hands of the
legislature ; and, fourth, the non-interference
of the British government in the internal
affairs of the colony.

Each party was confident of victory. The
Reformers felt that, since they had carried
the country in 1834, there was no reason why
they should not do so in 1836. Sir Francis
and his friends, on the other hand, thought
that they discerned signs of a reaction in the
country, and loudly professed their faith in
the attachment of Canadians to the British
crown. The result was probably a surprise
even to Sir Francis. Not only were the

THE ' TRIED REFORMER ' 109

Reformers defeated in the elections, but they
were almost driven from the House. Perry
and Bidwell were both defeated in the con-
stituency which they had so long represented ;
Mackenzie failed of election in the county of
York ; Lount was defeated in Simcoe ; and
Rolph alone of the leaders of the Reform party
was returned. In the previous Assembly the
Reformers had been in a majority of about
eleven ; in the new Assembly they were in a
minority of at least twenty-five.

So extraordinary a result deserves an ex-
planation. The causes of the turn -over
appear, in the main, to have been two. In
the first place, the lieutenant-governor un-
doubtedly succeeded in frightening many
people into the belief that the Reformers were
actuated by disloyal motives If the king's
representative, they argued, undertook to
make such charges, there was surely some
truth in them. In the second place, the
Methodist vote was cast almost wholly for the
Tory candidates. This was due mainly to
the influence of the Rev. Egerton Ryerson.
Ryerson, who had founded the Christian
Guardian in, 1829, had at first espoused the
cause of the Reformers ; but he had had a
violent falling out with Mackenzie, and had

no THE FAMILY COMPACT •

gravitated toward the Tory side. In the early
summer of 1836 he had published a number
of letters in The Times, the first of which
reached Upper Canada just before the election,
and produced a powerful impression ; and an
attack by him on Peter Perry, published as an
election fly-sheet under the title Peter Perry
Picked to Pieces, was undoubtedly a factor
in the result in Lennox and Addington. The
behaviour of Sir Francis Bond Head during the
election was highly improper. He was un-
doubtedly guilty of intimidating voters. He
appointed returning-officers who were notori-
ously partisan. And he sent down govern-
ment agents to some of the polling-booths,
armed with patents for land, some of which
seem to have been conferred upon persons who
had no title to them. But questionable as his
behaviour was, it cannot be said to have been
in this respect a material factor in the result.
His success at the polls seems to have turned
Sir Francis's head. He wrote to the colonial
secretary announcing that he had ' saved the
Canadas,' and that he had been * engaged
single-handed in one of the severest moral
contests on record in the Colonial Office.'
Glenelg, for his part, conveyed to him the
king's approbation of his ' foresight, energy,

THE ' TRIED REFORMER

in

and moral courage ' ; but at the same time
he warned him that * His Majesty's Govern-
ment look to no transient results or temporary
triumphs/

In the latter part of the summer of 1836 Sir
Francis made a tour of the province, as a result
of which he announced that ' upon the loyalty
of the people of Upper Canada his Majesty's
Government may now build as upon a rock.'
In the autumn, on November 8, he called
together the new House. As was always the
case when the Assembly was in harmony with
the executive government, the session proved
to be a very businesslike one. The House
voted the supplies which had been held up ;
it attempted to deal with the question of the
clergy reserves ; and it made appropriations
amounting to $4,000,000 (a vast sum for
Upper Canada in those days) for new surveys,
for the building of roads, harbours, and light-
houses, for the improvement of the Trent and
Grand rivers, and for the completion of the
Welland Canal. The trouble, indeed, with
this Tory parliament was that it was too pro-"
gressive, and it saddled Upper Canada with
a burden of public debt which the colony
could not well carry. The House rose on
March 4, 1837. An extraordinary session

ii2 THE FAMILY COMPACT

was held from June 19 to July n, in order to
take measures to meet the financial and com-
mercial crisis arising from the collapse of credit
in the United States ; but this meeting of the
House had no political significance.

On several occasions Sir Francis Head had
tentatively offered his resignation to the
colonial secretary. He had openly dissented
in his dispatches from the policy of the royal
commissioners in Lower Canada ; he had
complained that his services were not ap-
preciated ; and he had openly rebelled against
the instructions issued to the lieutenant-
governor of New Brunswick, a copy of which
had been sent him for his information as to the
policy of the home government. His ulti-
mate removal, however, was due to other cir-
cumstances. After the elections of 1836 he
had dismissed from official positions three men,
Dr W. W. Baldwin, George Ridout, and James
E. Small, on the ground that they were
members of the Constitutional Reform Society,
which had issued a statement reflecting upon
himself. Ridout had appealed to the Colonial
Office, and had established the fact that he
was not a member of the society in question.
The colonial secretary, therefore, instructed
Head to restore Ridout to his official position.

WILLIAM WARREN BALDWIN
From the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library

THE 'TRIED REFORMER' 113

About the same time there occurred some
vacancies on the bench in Upper Canada. In
filling these vacancies Head passed over
Marshall Spring Bidwell, although BidwelPs
claims to a judgeship seem to have been urged
by the Colonial Office, and although Head
himself admitted that BidwelPs legal acquire-
ments were superior to at least one of those
who had been appointed. Head's reluctance
to appoint Bidwell was due to personal
antagonism ; but the reason he adduced was
that ' the welfare and the honour of the pro-
vince depended on his Majesty never appoint-
ing a disloyal man.' Glenelg wrote in reply
that no attempt had been made to prove
disloyalty against Bidwell, and requested
Head to appoint him to the next vacancy*
On September 10, 1837, Head wrote a long
dispatch, stating, with his usual self-assertion,
that he declined to appoint Bidwell to the
bench, or to restore Ridout to his position,
and that he felt it his duty to tender his re-
signation. On November 24 Glenelg replied
that the ministry had advised that the re-
signation be accepted.

But before this dispatch reached Toronto
armed rebellion had broken out in Upper
Canada.

F.C. H

CHAPTER IX

'REBEL BLOOD*

THE elections of 1836 had left Mackenzie a
changed man. Hitherto he had shown in his
character a strong undercurrent of geniality ;
but after his defeat he became soured, sullen,
and excitable. He had severed his connection
with the Colonial Advocate some time before
the elections ; but now he re-entered the field
of journalism by founding a new paper, the
Constitution. The first number of this paper
was published on July 4, 1836, the sixtieth
anniversary of the American Declaration of
Independence ; and its columns betrayed a
bitter revolutionary spirit which had been
absent from the Colonial Advocate. In the
Advocate Mackenzie had exclaimed that dis-
loyalty could never enter his breast ; in the
Constitution he boasted of his ' rebel blood,'
and cried, ' I am proud of my descent from a
rebel race.' He gave the government many
opportunities to prosecute him ; but he was
m

'REBEL BLOOD1 115

now regarded as a discredited man, and the
government affected to treat him with con-
tempt.

Early in the session of 1836-37 Mackenzie
petitioned against the election of his opponent
in the second riding of York, on the ground of
corrupt practices ; but owing to a technicality
his petition was thrown out. The proceeding
was one which it is difficult to defend, and
there is no doubt that it greatly increased
Mackenzie's bitterness. As yet, however, it
seems that no idea of armed resistance to
authority had entered Mackenzie's head ; for
in March 1837 ne went to New York and
made extensive purchases in connection with
his book business.

In the spring of 1837 one thing happened
after another to exasperate the Reformers,
and to make them take refuge in counsels of
despair. In Upper Canada the Tories failed
to carry out their pre-election pledges to the
Methodists with regard to the settlement of
the clergy reserves question. In England
the colonial secretary refused audience to both
Robert Baldwin and Dr Charles Duncombe,
who had gone over to lay the case of the
Reformers before the British government.
And in March 1837 the British House of

n6 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Commons adopted Lord John Russell's re-
solutions authorizing the seizure of the funds
in the hands of the receiver-general of Lower
Canada, in consequence of the refusal of the
Assembly of Lower Canada to vote supplies.
It was on this occasion that William Ewart
Gladstone, then a brilliant young Tory of
twenty-seven years of age, stood up in the
House and championed the cause of the
Family Compact in Upper Canada and the
Chateau clique in Lower Canada. ' Was
there not in Canada,' he asked, l personal
security, security for property, religion un-
fettered, and light taxation ? '

When word of these events reached Upper
Canada, the faces of many old Reformers
no doubt set more firmly ; and there was
a noticeable revival of Reform agitation.
Mackenzie, as usual, was in the thick of it.
Together with Samuel Lount, of Holland
Landing, who had also been defeated in the
elections of 1836, and who attributed his de-
feat to fraud and corruption, he organized a
series of what were called ' Union meetings '
in the country north and north-west of
Toronto. At first the speakers at these
meetings showed a good deal of caution, but
as time went on they became more reckless.

, ' REBEL BLOOD' 117

On June 30, at a secret meeting held at
Lloydtown, a resolution was passed to the
effect that, constitutional resistance having
failed, every Reformer should arm in defence
of his rights. Within a fortnight similar
resolutions had been passed by meetings all
over the Home district. These resolutions
did not mean that the idea of actual rebellion
had yet taken shape ; they meant merely that
recourse to arms was justifiable, and might
become necessary.

Meanwhile the Reformers in Toronto were
beginning to bestir themselves. Great sym-
pathy was expressed among the Reformers
in Toronto with the French Canadians, who
had openly announced their intention of re-
belling against Lord John Russell's resolutions.
On July 5 Mackenzie boldly reviewed in the
Constitution the situation in the lower pro-
vince, and predicted a successful French-Cana-
dian revolt. During the summer a number of
meetings were held by the leading Reformers,
at which an exchange of views was made.
The usual place of meeting was Elliott's
tavern, on the north-west corner of Yonge
Street and Queen Street ; but the more secret
conferences took place in the brewery of John
Doel, which was situated behind his house on

n8 THE FAMILY COMPACT

the north-west corner of Adelaide Street and
Bay Street. Toward the end of July some
meetings were held for the discussion of a
written Declaration which should embody the
platform of the local members of the Radi-
cal party. The Declaration was evidently
modelled upon the Declaration of Independ-
ence of 1776. It set forth the grievances of
which the Reformers complained ; declared
that the time had come for the assertion of
rights and the redress of wrongs ; and pro-
claimed the duty of every Upper-Canadian
Reformer to co-operate heartily with Papineau
and his French- Canadian patriotes. Finally,
it recommended that a convention of delegates
should be held at Toronto to consider the
political situation, ' with authority to its
members to appoint commissioners to meet
others to be named on behalf of Lower Canada
and any of the other colonies, armed with
suitable powers as a congress to seek an
effectual remedy for the grievances of the
colonists/ After several meetings the De-
claration was adopted clause by clause on the
evening of July 31. A resolution was then
passed appointing delegates to the proposed
convention. Two of those named were Rolph
and Bidwell, who had hitherto held aloof from

< REBEL BLOOD ' 119

the meetings at Elliott's and DoePs : Rolph
was with some difficulty persuaded to allow
his name to stand, but Bidwell firmly de-
clined the nomination, on the ground that
he had retired into private life. Lastly, a
' permanent Committee of Vigilance ' was
appointed, * to carry into immediate and
practical effect the resolutions of this meeting
for the effectual organization of the Reformers
of Upper Canada/ The ' Agent and Corre-
sponding Secretary ' of the committee was
Mackenzie.

For the work of organization Mackenzie was
peculiarly fitted. He knew the ground and
the people ; he was zealous and indefatigable ;
and he possessed, in considerable measure, the
power of moving his hearers. He addressed
himself to his task in a methodical manner.
The province was divided into four districts,
each of which was broken up into minor sub-
divisions. In all subdivisions where Re-
formers were numerous, local branch societies
were to be formed. Each of these branches
was to report regularly to a central society,
and this central society was to report to
Mackenzie. Then Mackenzie would classify
and digest < the reports, and lay them before
the central committee. In this work of

120 THE FAMILY COMPACT

organization the latter half of the summer and
the first half of the autumn passed away.
Mackenzie held in all between one and two
hundred meetings in different parts of the
country. At these the Declaration was usu-
ally approved, and delegates to the conven-
tion to be held in Toronto were appointed,
though as yet the date of the convention had
not been fixed. In some places Mackenzie
met opposition from the Tories and Orange-
men ; but, on the whole, he was allowed to go
his way unmolested.

By this time Mackenzie seems to have been
genuinely bent on mischief. He was in
constant communication with the leaders of
the projected revolt in Lower Canada, and
the idea of a simultaneous outbreak in Upper
Canada seems to have been in his mind.
Early in the autumn he communicated to a
few choice spirits a plan involving an appeal
to arms. This was the project, which origin-
ated with Samuel Lount, of a monster armed
demonstration which should converge on
Toronto at the time of the proposed con-
vention. This demonstration would wait
upon the government, as the Paris mob had
waited on Louis XVI, and would wring from
it assent to a constitution founded on the

' REBEL BLOOD ' 121

Toronto Declaration. But this plan was not
openly divulged. Mackenzie knew that the
great body of Reformers were not yet ready for
armed rebellion. He therefore went at first
very slowly, and displayed a caution such as
he did not show at any other period of his life.

As the autumn advanced, a system of secret
military training was inaugurated through-
out the townships. Men met by night in
sequestered corners, and were drilled in the
use of old muskets and shotguns. Small
quantities of arms and ammunition were
obtained surreptitiously from the United
States. In Lount's blacksmith's shop at
Holland Landing the manufacture of pike-
heads was carried on from morning till night.
Finding that they were not hindered, the
Reform militia grew bolder. They began to
assemble openly to engage in rifle practice,
and in matches for shooting pigeons and
turkeys. Bidwell was applied to for an
opinion as to the legality of such meetings,
and he replied that gatherings for the slaughter
of birds and for trials of skill with the rifle he
conceived to be within the law.

It must not be imagined that the govern-
ment was ignorant of these proceedings. It
kept a close watch on Mackenzie and all his

122 THE FAMILY COMPACT

doings. ' First/ said Sir Francis Head later,
' he wrote, and then he printed, and then he
rode, and then he spoke, stamped, foamed,
wiped his seditious little mouth, and then
spoke again ; and thus, like a squirrel in a
cage, he continued with astounding assiduity
the centre of a revolutionary career/ The
attorney-general was instructed to report as
soon as Mackenzie had gone so far that his
conviction for treason would be certain. But
until that time it was determined that no
action should be taken. Sir Francis Head's
policy, in short, was to give Mackenzie rope
enough with which to hang himself. Of an
armed rebellion, neither Sir Francis nor any
of his advisers had any fear or expectation.

This frame of mind affords the only ex-
planation of an action taken by Sir Francis in
the beginning of the autumn, an action which
can be described only as an invitation to
rebellion, and v/hich was taken to be such
by Mackenzie. In order to strengthen the
position of Sir John Colborne, who was pre-
paring to cope with the rebellion imminent
in Lower Canada, Sir Francis moved all the
regular troops stationed at Toronto to
Kingston, some two hundred miles away.
This left several thousand stand of arms in

' REBEL BLOOD ' 123

the City Hall of Toronto wholly unprotected
save by two constables placed in charge of
them, and liable to seizure by any determined
body of men. Sir Francis's explanation later
of his action was that, in the unlikely con-
tingency of trouble, he relied on the loyal
militia to save Upper Canada, and that if they
could not save the province, it was not worth
saving. This was very well, but it was no
valid excuse for placing temptation directly
in the way of the disaffected.

On October 9 Mackenzie received a message
from Lower Canada announcing that the
French Canadians were about to make a
'brave stroke for liberty/ and inviting him
to co-operate by raising simultaneously the
standard of revolt in Upper Canada. This
message, and the removal of the military
from Toronto to Kingston, induced Mackenzie
to change his plans. He immediately rode to
Toronto, and summoned a small secret con-
ference at Doel's brewery. Eleven persons
met altogether, including Mackenzie. Rolph,
who was invited to attend, did not see fit to
go. To this meeting Mackenzie proceeded to
unfold an amazing plan. He proposed to
send out messengers immediately to summon
to Toronto four thousand men, who, he

124 THE FAMILY COMPACT

announced, were ready to support him. In
the meantime, he advocated gathering a
body of Reform foundrymen and axemakers,
proceeding to Government House and the
City Hall, and taking possession of Sir Francis
Head, the arms and ammunition, and the
government buildings. Then it would be pos-
sible, he said, to proclaim a provisional ad-
ministration. As he proceeded, he was inter-
rupted by sounds of dissent and amazement.
At last Dr Morrison, one of the members
for the county of York, rose and exclaimed :
'This is treason; if you think to entrap me
into any such mad scheme, you will find I
am not your man.' Others expressed similar
sentiments, perhaps because they were afraid
of treachery at the meeting ; and Mackenzie
was obliged to withdraw his proposals.

The next day Mackenzie had an interview
with Rolph, who had heard from Morrison
of the proposal of the previous evening.
Rolph questioned Mackenzie closely as to the
statements he had made regarding the number
of men who could be counted upon to aid in a
revolt, and was shown by Mackenzie docu-
mentary evidence that about four thousand
men would be available. So impressed was
Rolph with this evidence that he agreed to

* REBEL BLOOD7 125

consider Mackenzie's proposal. After talking
the matter over with Morrison, Rolph seems
to have come to the conclusion that a coup
d'etat was feasible. That he should have done
so is strong proof of the defencelessness of
the government. Rolph was a cautious man,
and not at all the sort of person to plunge into a
forlorn hope. It was agreed, however, to com-
municate once more with the leaders in Lower
Canada before any action should be taken,
and a messenger was dispatched to Montreal.
In the first week of November (the exact
date is not known) the messenger returned
with a letter in cipher from Thomas Storrow
Brown, one of the leaders of the Lower Canada
insurrectionary party. This letter announced
that the Lower Canadians were ready to rise,
but that they wished the Upper Canada
Radicals to make the first move, in order to
draw off some of the troops from the lower
province. On the receipt of the letter an
earnest consultation was held by Rolph,
Morrison, and Mackenzie. Mackenzie was in
favour of immediate action. Rolph and
Morrison, however, preferred to be a little
more certain of their ground ; and it was
therefore agreed that Mackenzie should make
another tour of the local committees to sound

126 THE FAMILY COMPACT

them and to discuss plans. He was given
permission to make use of the names of Rolph
and Morrison, but it was stipulated that until
his return no one was to be committed to any
definite action.

Mackenzie left for the north toward the end
of the first week in November. He was away
in all about two weeks. During this time he
did not communicate with Rolph or Morrison,
but they received word through a number of
sources that Mackenzie, with his customary
indiscretion, was exceeding his instructions.
It appeared that Mackenzie and Lount had
held a secret meeting in the township of East
Gwillimbury, and that Thursday, December 7,
had been agreed upon as the date on which
the rebels should assemble. Rolph and
Morrison were naturally annoyed that Mac-
kenzie should have gone on with his plans
without everi notifying them, and were
alarmed at the incautious manner in which
Mackenzie was showing his hand ; but they
were powerless to restrain him.

When Mackenzie returned to Toronto in the
third week in November, his plans for the
revolt were fully formed. He announced that
he had between four and five thousand men
ready to rise against the government. These

' REBEL BLOOD ' 127

men were to repair in the early days of
December to Montgomery's tavern, about four
miles north of Toronto in Yonge Street, where
they were to place themselves under the
command of Samuel Lount and Captain
Anthony Anderson of Lloydtown, a man of
some military experience, who had been
drilling the farmers of North York into a fair
state of efficiency. On December 7 the com-
bined forces were to advance quickly on
Toronto, and it was anticipated that they
would effect a bloodless revolution. When
the revolution had been effected, a pro-
visional government was to be established,
with Rolph at its head. In these plans
Rolph and Morrison acquiesced, Morrison,
however, not without a strong protest against
the authority Mackenzie had arrogated to
himself. At the same time, they pressed on
Mackenzie the necessity of having competent
military leadership ; and he therefore promised
to obtain the services of Colonel Anthony
Van Egmond, a Dutch veteran of the Napo-
leonic wars, who had been the Reform can-
didate for the constituency of Huron in the
elections of 1836. On November 24 Mackenzie
set off again for the north, to superintend
the rising.

CHAPTER X

THE OUTBREAK

THE government had ample warning of the
impending revolt. Loyalists in the disaffected
districts had notified them of the secret drill-
ing and the manufacture of pikes. James
Hogg, of Hogg's Hollow, near Toronto, to
whom Mackenzie had imprudently confided
the fact that an attack was to be made on
December 7, had immediately communicated
the news to the lieutenant-governor. Colonel
James FitzGibbon, a veteran of the War of
1812, had repeatedly urged on the lieutenant-
governor the necessity for the defence of the
city. But Sir Francis was deaf to all warn-
ings. He dismissed the military preparations
of the rebels as a move undertaken for political
effect. When he found that Hogg's informa-
tion came from Mackenzie, he treated it with
contempt. And he curtly assured FitzGibbon
that he did not ' apprehend a rebellion in
Upper Canada.'

128

THE OUTBREAK 129

In the last days of November, however,
word reached Toronto of the outbreak of
rebellion in Lower Canada, and the repulse of
Colonel Gore's troops by Wolfred Nelson's
men at Saint Denis. At the same time,
evidence accumulated of the activities of the
Upper Canada rebels. On December I a
meeting of the Executive Council was called to
consider, among other things, whether any
action should be taken. The meeting was
adjourned until the next day, when a number
of other prominent officials, including the
chief justice, the law-officers of the crown, and
the speaker of the House of Assembly, were
invited to be present. The majority of the
meeting, with Sir Francis Head himself, were
at first opposed to any action. At last, how-
ever, as a concession to the fears of FitzGibbon
and some of the citizens of Toronto, it was
agreed that Mackenzie should be arrested,
that two regiments of militia should be
organized, and that FitzGibbon should be in-
vested with the authority of adjutant-general.
There was, however, no unseemly haste
displayed, and FitzGibbon was not notified
of his appointment until two days later.

News of these proceedings soon reached
the ears of Rolph. Naturally he was much

130 THE FAMILY COMPACT

alarmed. He did not know the extent of
the government's information, but obviously
they had scent of something. After con-
sultation with Morrison he determined to
send Mackenzie warning. He did not know
Mackenzie's whereabouts, but he sent off a
messenger to the house of David Gibson,
three miles up Yonge Street, suggesting that,
in view of the turn events had taken, the
rebels should assemble three days earlier.
Gibson was also ignorant of Mackenzie's
whereabouts, but he sent the message off
by another messenger to Lount at Holland
Landing. The message was received by Mrs
Lount, and was later given by her to her
husband. It therefore passed through several
intermediaries, and perhaps reached Lount in
the form of an imperative. In any case,
Lount took counsel with Anthony Anderson,
and determined to act on Rolph's message.
It was now Sunday, December 3. Word was
at once sent to the members of the Lloydtown
company to hold themselves in readiness to
march on Monday, December 4, instead of
Thursday, December 7 ; and messengers were
dispatched to Montgomery's tavern to make
arrangements for their reception.

The next morning Lount and Anderson set

THE OUTBREAK 131

out with their men. They proceeded south-
wards in small detachments, in order not to
attract notice, and picked up reinforcements
on their way. They reached Montgomery's
after nightfall, over one hundred strong, hun-
gry and footsore. They had expected to find
there arms, ammunition, and food: to their
disgust they found none of these, as their
avant-couriers had not been able to come to
terms with the proprietor of the hotel. They
had therefore to obtain what food they could
by foraging among the farms near by.

Meanwhile Mackenzie had arrived at Gib-
son's house, near Montgomery's, the night
before, and had there learned for the first time
of Rolph's message, and its transmission to
Lount. He immediately sent off a message
to Lount, asking him to keep to the original
arrangement. But by the time the messenger
reached Holland Landing, Lount was already
on his way south. Another messenger Mac-
kenzie sent in to the city, to ask Rolph to
come out and discuss with him what should
be done.

Rolph met Mackenzie at one o'clock
on Monday afternoon, at a house near Mont-
gomery's. Rolph came in a very depressed
state of mind, as news had just arrived in

132 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Toronto of the crushing defeat of the French-
Canadian rebels at Saint Charles ; and he
bluntly advocated the abandonment of the
revolt. Mackenzie, on the other hand, still
favoured adhering to the original plan. The
difficulty, however, was that until it was
known whether Lount was acting on Rolph's
suggestion or not, no decision could be arrived
at. And when word arrived on Monday after-
noon that Lount and his men were already on
the way south, it was apparent that the die
was cast, and that the rebels must strike at
once, and strike hard.

Rolph returned to the city and Mackenzie
repaired to Montgomery's, to await the arrival
of the Lloydtown company. He evidently
had some men with him, for he was able to
place three lines of guard across Yonge Street,
in order to prevent communication with the
city, and a number of loyalists riding south
were arrested. About eight o'clock in the
evening detachments of the Lloydtown men
began to arrive, and they continued to come
in until the small hours of the morning. As
soon as Captain Anthony Anderson arrived,
a council of war was held. Mackenzie and
some of the men were in favour of an immedi-
ate advance ; but Anderson objected that his

THE OUTBREAK 133

men were tired, and were in no condition to
make an attack until they had had a night's rest
and a good meal. It was accordingly agreed
that an advance on the city should be
made at daylight on the following morning,
December 5.

But before the morning dawned the first
blood had been shed on both sides in the
Upper-Canadian rebellion. It was only a
little after ten o'clock that night when
Colonel Moodie, a Peninsular veteran who
lived in Yonge Street, attempted, with two
companions, to ride through the guard at
Montgomery's to carry news of the rising to
the city. The three horsemen burst through
the first two cordons ; but at the third,
Moodie, having fired his pistol, was shot by
one of the guards. He was carried into the
tavern, where he died two hours later in great
agony. One of his companions was taken
prisoner, but the other escaped toward the
city. This man, whose name was Brooke,
soon encountered Anderson and an insurgent
named Shepard, who had gone out on a re-
connoitring expedition with Mackenzie, and
who were now returning with two prisoners,
one of whom was John Powell, an alderman of
the city. Brooke recognized Powell, and cried

134 THE FAMILY COMPACT

out, as he dashed by, that the rebels had killed
Colonel Moodie and were advancing on the
city. This news seems to have goaded Powell
to action. He had on his person two loaded
pistols, of which his captors had neglected
to deprive him; and reining his horse back
suddenly, he discharged one of these pistols
into Anderson's back. Anderson fell from his
horse without a sound, and in the confusion
both Powell and his companion effected their
escape. As they galloped southwards they
passed Mackenzie, who was still reconnoitring.
Mackenzie and his men pursued them, and
captured Powell's companion near the toll-
gate at Bloor Street. Powell, however, turned
aside at the old Indian trail now known as
Davenport Road, and made his way on foot
through the forest to the city. He went
immediately to Government House, forced his
way into the lieutenant-governor's bedroom,
and roused him from sleep. In a few minutes
the bells of the city were ringing loudly, and
the inhabitants were astir. A picket was
sent up Yonge Street to the northern out-
skirts of the city, and loyal volunteers were
enrolled for the defence of the arms in the
City Hall.

At sunrise the next morning FitzGibbon

THE OUTBREAK 135

rode out and reconnoitred the rebel position.
The rebels had increased during the night to
a small force of about five hundred men.
FitzGibbon learned, however, that they were
but half-armed, and that they had made no
attempt to fortify their position. He there-
fore rode back, and proposed to Sir Francis
Head an immediate attack upon them. But
Sir Francis, who had now gone from the ex-
treme of over-confidence to that of nervous
dread, refused to sanction such a plan. He
placed his family and that of the chief justice,
John Beverley Robinson, on board a steamer
in the bay, and prepared to stand his ground
at the City Hall until reinforcements should
arrive from Hamilton and elsewhere.

In the meantime, he conceived the idea of
gaining time by sending out a flag of truce
to hold parley with the rebels. It was at first
proposed that Sheriff Jarvis should be the
bearer of the flag of truce, but in the end it
was thought better to send out some one who
would have more influence with the rebels.
Application was therefore made to Robert
Baldwin. Baldwin consented to act as an
intermediary, but stipulated that some one
else should be associated with him. Bidwell,
whom he first suggested, declined to act.

136 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Then recourse was had to Rolph, who was as
yet not suspected of complicity in the re-
bellion. Rolph at first refused to have any-
thing to do with the embassy, as he saw that
it would place him in a very false position ;
but he was afraid of rousing suspicion, and at
last he agreed to accompany Baldwin. A
little before one o'clock Baldwin and Rolph
rode away in the direction of the rebel camp,
accompanied by a carpenter bearing a white
flag.

At Montgomery's tavern the sun had risen
that morning on a gloomy and dispirited
rabble of men. Through the night they had
heard the ringing of the bells in Toronto, and
it was clear that their chance of seizing the
arms in the City Hall without bloodshed had
passed away. They had lost, too, in Anthony
Anderson their most trusted and experienced
military leader, and they had no one who
could take his place. After much fruitless
discussion, Mackenzie, impatient of delay, had
volunteered to lead the rebels into Toronto
himself. About eleven o'clock he had mar-
shalled his army, which now numbered be-
tween seven and eight hundred men, and had
proceeded down Yonge Street. He must
have presented a strange spectacle : he was

THE OUTBREAK 137

mounted on a small white horse, and he wore,
buttoned up to the neck, a greatcoat so ample
in size that his men suspected that ' he had on
a great many coats, as if to make himself
bullet-proof/ When the rebel force reached
Gallows Hill, just south of what is now St
Clair Avenue, it divided, with the intention of
making two simultaneous attacks on the city
from different quarters. Lount was to lead
one division down Yonge Street, and Mac-
kenzie the other division down what is now
Avenue Road. The hour for the advance was
fixed at two o'clock.

The rebels had just got into position, and
were waiting for the word to advance, when
Baldwin and Rolph arrived at Gallows Hill
with the flag of truce. They brought a
message from Sir Francis Head to the effect
that if the rebels dispersed at once, a complete
amnesty would be granted them for all offences
committed up to that time. A conference of
the rebel leaders was held, to which Mackenzie
seems to have been summoned to come from
his position on Russell Hill ; but just what
answer was given to the envoys is uncertain.
Mackenzie afterwards stated that his reply
was ' Independence and a convention to
arrange details ' ; but Mackenzie's post-re-

I38 THE FAMILY COMPACT

bellion statements are all open to grave doubt,
and it is more probable that the rebels asked
that the promise of an amnesty should be
committed to writing. Baldwin and Rolph
agreed to ride back and obtain Sir Francis
Head's signature to such a document. When
they reached the city, however, they found
that the situation there had somewhat altered.
The small numbers and the half-armed con-
dition of the rebel force had become known,
and advice had been received that loyal re-
inforcements were on their way to Toronto.
Sir Francis Head felt, therefore, much safer
than he had felt in the morning, and he now
positively refused to hold any further com-
munication with the rebel leaders. The device
of the flag of truce had served its purpose.

Baldwin and Rolph immediately rode back
to the rebels, and acquainted them with the
failure of their mission. But before they came
away, Rolph drew Mackenzie aside, and said
to him, * Wend your way into the city, as
soon as possible, at my heels.' For this action,
and for his participation in the embassy at all,
Rolph has been severely criticized. On their
return to the city Baldwin and Rolph separ-
ated. Baldwin rode quietly to his home,
while Rolph repaired to Elliott's tavern,

JOHN ROLPH
From a steel engraving in Dent's Upper Canadian Rebellion

THE OUTBREAK 139

where he found a number of trusted Radicals
anxiously awaiting him. He told them to lose
no time in arming, as Mackenzie was coming
in forthwith. He then summoned a council
of war at DoePs brewery, and laid his plans
for aiding Mackenzie on his arrival.

But the hours passed, and there was no
sign of Mackenzie and his men. The reason
was that, after Rolph's departure, serious
insubordination had developed in the rebel
ranks. When the men were ordered to ad-
vance, they replied that they wanted their
dinner. They seem to have been disturbed by
Rolph's arrival with the flag of truce, and they
had lost confidence in Mackenzie. Mackenzie's
nerves had been wrought into such a state of
excitement that he was not in his right mind.
' All day on Tuesday,' said one of the insur-
gents afterwards, ' Mackenzie went on like a
lunatic. Once or twice I thought he was going
to have a fit.' There is, indeed, reason to
believe that throughout the week of the re-
bellion Mackenzie's mind was unhinged — a
belief which is partly borne out by the mental
troubles which afflicted him in later days.

It was not long before Mackenzie gave
tangible evidence of his state of mind. While
some light rations were being served out to the

140 THE FAMILY COMPACT

rebels, Mackenzie went aside into the house
of Dr R. C. Home, the assistant cashier of the
Bank of Upper Canada, situated on the east
side of Yonge Street, about one hundred yards
above Bloor Street, and with his own hands
set it on fire — apparently in satisfaction of a
private grudge. He then announced his in-
tention of dealing likewise with Sheriff Jarvis's
villa of ' Rosedale,' a quarter of a mile farther
north, and was only with difficulty dissuaded
by Lount and some other of the insurgents.

A second attempt was then made to induce
the rebels to advance, but the attempt was
ineffectual. The rank and file had completely
lost confidence in their leaders ; and they
urged the lateness of the hour, and the ex-
pectation of reinforcements, as reasons for
deferring action. At the critical point, in
fact, their courage wavered ; and when a
messenger came out from Rolph to discover
why an advance had not taken place, he found
the rebels scattered over the whole route from
Bloor Street to Montgomery's tavern.

At dusk Mackenzie and Lount collected their
men, and persuaded them to make a night
attack. This was the first real attempt to
take the city ; and there was still a chance
that, with competent leadership, the attempt

THE OUTBREAK 141

might succeed. At six o'clock the rebel force
had assembled at the Bloor Street toll-gate.
At ten minutes past six they proceeded down
Yonge Street, over seven hundred strong.
They encountered no opposition until they
reached what is now Maitland Street. At this
point was stationed a picket of twenty-seven
men under Sheriff Jarvis. As the rebels
approached, Jarvis gave the order to fire, and
an irregular volley was delivered into the head
of the rebel column. Then was enacted a
piece of pure comedy. The picket, having
discharged their guns, beat a hasty retreat.
The rebels returned the fire ; but, when the
front ranks kneeled or lay down in order to
allow those behind to fire too, those behind
thought that the head of the column had been
mowed down, and were seized with panic ;
and in a few moments the whole rebel column
was in flight up Yonge Street. The body of
one of the insurgents was left behind lying on
the roadside, where it remained until morning.
Thus passed away the last chance of success
for the insurgents. Some two hours later
Allan Mac Nab had arrived in Toronto with
reinforcements from Hamilton, and small
bodies of armed loyalist volunteers had begun
to come in from the surrounding country.

142 THE FAMILY COMPACT

The rebels spent the night at Montgomery's.
About midnight a message came from Rolph
and Morrison advising Mackenzie and his men
to disperse ; but Mackenzie and Lount felt
that it was now too late for them to withdraw,
and that the only thing to do was to wait until
Thursday, December 7, when Van Egmond
and the rebel contingents who had not been
notified of the change of plan would arrive at
Montgomery's. They felt that with several
thousand men they might still renew the
attack with a chance of success.

The whole of Wednesday was therefore
spent in virtual inaction. The westerly mail
was intercepted by Mackenzie on Dundas
Street, and some money was by this means
obtained by the rebels, whose exchequer had
run very low. But beyond this nothing was
done. In the city, on the other hand, there
was great activity. Throughout the day
loyalist volunteers continued to pour in, and
before sunset more than twelve hundred well-
armed volunteers were at the disposal of the
government. At the same time, the govern-
ment took the offensive against the rebels in
the city by searching Mackenzie's house and
office, and by arresting Morrison for high
treason. Rolph they did not molest, for in-

THE OUTBREAK 143

criminating evidence against him had not yet
been discovered. However, as soon as Rolph
received news of Morrison 's arrest, he antici-
pated action against him by taking flight
along the Dundas road. After several hair-
breadth escapes he succeeded in reaching the
United States.

About eight o'clock on Thursday morning
Colonel Van Egmond arrived at Montgomery's.
A council of war was immediately held by
the rebel leaders. Mackenzie again advocated
an immediate advance on the city ; but Van
Egmond characterized his plan as 'stark
madness,' since the rebel force had dwindled
to about five hundred, and was outnumbered
by the loyalist militia in the city by over two
to one. He recommended deferring action
until the expected reinforcements arrived, and
in this view he was sustained by the others.
It was, indeed, likely that the government
forces would come out and attack the rebels ;
and in order to stave off such an attack by
creating a diversion in another quarter, Van
Egmond dispatched about sixty men under
Peter Matthews down the valley of the Don,
to the eastward of the city.

The ruse, however, proved ineffective. At
a council-meeting held in Toronto the night

144 THE FAMILY COMPACT

before at the house of Archdeacon Strachan,
it had been decided that an attack should be
made on the rebels during the following
morning. Allan MacNab had been appointed
to the command of the Home district militia,
and, after some bickerings and heartburnings,
FitzGibbon had been appointed to the chief
command of all the government forces. While
Van Egmond was holding his first council of
war, FitzGibbon was already organizing his
raw levies for the attack. The work of
organization proved almost too much even for
the veteran of 1812 ; but eventually he got
his men in position, and at high noon Sir
Francis Head gave the word to advance.

The loyalist force, about eleven hundred
strong, advanced northward in three columns.
The main column, over six hundred strong,
under the command of MacNab, followed the
line of Yonge Street ; and the wing columns,
each about two hundred strong, made their
way northward about half a mile to the
right and to the left respectively. The three
bodies were to converge on Montgomery's
tavern.

As the main body, accompanied by two
cannon and the music of two military bands,
crested the rise of Gallows Hill, their approach

THE OUTBREAK

145

was observed by the rebel outposts. Immedi-
ately there was a great scurrying to and fro
at the rebel headquarters. Van Egmond lost
no time in placing his men in position. He had
not many more than two hundred effectively
armed men, and he must have known that he
was many times outnumbered by the enemy ;
but the brave old man, who had led many
a forlorn hope in the service of the great
Napoleon, resolved to stand his ground. In a
belt of woods about half a mile south of Mont-
gomery's tavern, on the west side of Yonge
Street, he placed the main body of his men ;
the rest he stationed in the fields on the east
side of the road.

The skirmish that ensued was very brief.
As soon as Mac Nab reached the summit of
the hill just north of what is now Mount
Pleasant cemetery, he placed his two guns
in position and opened fire on the rebels in
the woods. The fire did no damage, and the
rebels made an attempt to reply with their
muskets ; but the noise of the cannon-balls
crashing through the woods seems to have
upset the nerves of the simple farmers who
composed the rebel force. Just at this
juncture the left wing of FitzGibbon's force
came up, and took the rebels in the flank.

F.C.

146 THE FAMILY COMPACT

A few shots were exchanged, and then the
rebel force broke and ran. Some of them took
refuge in Montgomery's tavern, as though to
make a stand there ; but MacNab's cannon
were moved up Yonge Street, and a couple of
cannon-balls were sent through the building.
Thereupon the rebels poured out like bees
from a hive, and fled in every direction. The
whole skirmish did not last much more than
fifteen or twenty minutes, and only one man
was killed, a rebel named Ludwig Wideman.
On the government side there were no casu-
alties whatever.

Among the first to arrive at Montgomery's
tavern was Sir Francis Bond Head himself.
During the engagement he had remained in
the background ; but he now came forward
and took charge of the situation. His first
action was to pardon some rebels who had
been taken prisoners, and it must be said to
his credit that he pursued this policy through-
out the afternoon ; but he later stultified him-
self by ordering the arrest of many whom he
had pardoned. His next action was to order
the burning of Montgomery's tavern, in order
to ' mark and record, by some act of stern
vengeance, the important victory that had
been achieved. ' Before the tavern was burned,

ROBERT BALDWIN
From the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library

THE OUTBREAK 147

however, it was searched, and a large carpet-
bag was discovered, filled with Mackenzie's
papers. These papers contained the name
of practically every man who had been im-
plicated in the rebellion. Having burned
Montgomery's tavern to the ground, Head
turned his attentions elsewhere. He next
determined to set fire to the house of David
Gibson, near Montgomery's, and in spite of
the remonstrances of FitzGibbon, who was
too good a soldier to wish to take such a
vengeance on a beaten and helpless foe,
David Gibson's residence was burned to the
ground, and his wife and his four small
children were driven homeless on the road.
The best that can be said about Sir Francis
Bond Head's behaviour on that Thursday
afternoon is that it was worse than the be-
haviour of William Lyon Mackenzie on the
preceding Tuesday.

The Rebellion of 1837 was, on the whole,
a very sordid episode. Throughout its course
nearly every one did the wrong thing, and did
it at the wrong time and in the wrong way.
There are few relieving features about it.
The tall, military figure of FitzGibbon doing
his duty like a soldier of the school of 1812 ;
the lonely form of Robert Baldwin, riding

148 THE FAMILY COMPACT

home in quiet dignity after the failure of his
effort at mediation ; the aged Anthony Van
Egmond, fighting his last fight against terrific
odds — these, and one or two others, are the
only bright and pleasant spots in the picture.

CHAPTER XI

THE AFTERMATH

THE rebellion was over. In the western part
of the province, at the village of Scotland,
west of Brantford, two or three hundred
insurgents remained in arms for several days
after December 7 under the command of Dr
Charles Duncombe ; but on the approach of
Allan MacNab with five hundred loyalist
militia, they dispersed, and the leaders escaped
to the United States. During the whole of
1838 there were disturbances along the
American frontier, first on the Niagara river,
then on the Detroit river, and lastly on Lake
Ontario and the upper St Lawrence. But
though an occasional Canadian refugee was
concerned in these affairs, and though they
were conducted in the name of the ' Patriot '
cause, they were really the work of American
filibusters, who hoped to play the part on the
Canadian border that their southern com-
patriots were playing at that time on the con-
no

ISO THE FAMILY COMPACT

fines of Mexico. Navy Island, Bois Blanc,
Point Pelee Island, the battle of the Windmill,
the expedition against Windsor — the story of
these episodes belongs properly, not to the
history of the Upper- Canadian rebellion, but
to the history of the relations between the
United States and Canada. They therefore
fall outside the scope of this chronicle.

It remains to trace briefly the fortunes of
the chief figures in the rebellion. After the
order was given to retire at Montgomery's,
Mackenzie ran off. He fled westward toward
the head of Lake Ontario, and then south-east-
ward toward the Niagara frontier, where he
crossed in safety to the United States. His
experiences read like a chapter from a boy's
book of adventure. It was only the loyal
devotion of the Radical farmers with whom
he took refuge on the way that saved him from
capture by the numerous pursuers who were
bent on obtaining the reward of £1000 placed
on his head by the government. At Buffalo,
where he addressed several public meetings,
he aroused much sympathy ; and he was able
to obtain men and money for the occupation
of Navy Island, a small island in Canadian
waters just above Niagara Falls. Here he
held out, with a force composed mainly of the

THE AFTERMATH 151

riff-raff of the American border, for two or
three weeks ; but the cutting-out of his supply
boat, the Caroline, by a body of Canadian
loyalist volunteers, and the shelling of Navy
Island itself, compelled him to evacuate
his position. For several months he con-
tinued his attempts to stir up trouble on the
frontier, and to embroil the United States in
war with Canada. He was convicted of a
breach of the United States neutrality laws,
and for eleven months he languished in jail
at Rochester. During this period, and for
years afterwards, he attempted to support
himself and his family by means of a low
type of journalism, in which he appealed
to the instincts of the lowest Fenian element
in the United States. In 1849 he availed
himself of the Amnesty Bill passed by the
Baldwin- LaFontaine government, returned to
Canada, re-entered Canadian public life, and
was elected to the Assembly of United Canada.
But he proved quite unable to adjust him-
self to the new conditions which had arisen
under responsible government. He died in
Toronto in 1861, a poor and disappointed man.
His place in Canadian history is difficult to
determine. He possessed serious defects of
character; and his efforts were often mis-

152 THE FAMILY COMPACT

directed. But he followed the gleam as he
saw it ; and it must never be forgotten that
his efforts, misdirected though they were,
played a necessary part in ushering in a new
era of colonial political history.

Rolph's escape from Toronto has already
been referred to. He made his way to
Lewiston, on the American side of the Niagara
river, where he was enthusiastically received.
When Mackenzie reached Buffalo, Rolph gave
him at first a tentative support. But after
a visit to Mackenzie's headquarters at Navy
Island, he forthwith withdrew from all co-
operation. He settled with his family in
Rochester, and there practised medicine for
several years. In 1843 he was granted a
special pardon under the Great Seal, and re-
turned to Toronto, where he did useful ser-
vice to the community by founding a medical
school. He became one of the originators
of the Clear Grit party, and he was a mem-
ber of the Hincks-Morin administration from
1851 to 1854. But his re-entry into politics
did not add to his reputation, and in 1857
he retired once more into private life.

Morrison, whose arrest for high treason had
occasioned Rolph's flight from Toronto, lay
in jail for several months. He was brought

THE AFTERMATH 153

up for trial on April 24, 1838 ; but, owing to
the insufficiency of the evidence against him,
he was acquitted by the jury. News reached
him, however, that another indictment was
being prepared against him, and he promptly
fled to Rochester, where he joined Rolph. In
1843 he was pardoned, at the same time as
Rolph, and returned to Toronto.

The fate of Van Egmond, Lount, and
Matthews was tragic. Van Egmond made
his way up Yonge Street after the skirmish
at Montgomery's, but he had not gone far
when his strength broke down. The old man
took refuge in a farmhouse near by, and was
there taken by the loyalists. In Toronto he
was confined in the common jail. The rigours
of the winter nights in that barbarous hole
shattered his feeble health, and long before
the date set for his trial in the court of Queen's
Bench in Upper Canada, he went to appear
before a Judge elsewhere.

Lount came within an ace of escaping. After
having wandered about the western part of
the province for some weeks, he attempted to
cross Lake Erie in an open boat, and was
actually off the southern shore when a storm
came up and blew him back. On reaching the
Canadian shore he was arrested, and sent to

154 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Toronto for trial. Matthews, who had com-
manded the expedition sent down the valley
of the Don on the morning of December 7,
did not fare any better. He was seized, with
a number of his companions, on the night of
Saturday, December 9, at a farmhouse in
East York, and was marched into Toronto
the next morning. The two men came up
for trial on March 26, 1838. They both
pleaded guilty of high treason, and were
condemned to suffer the last penalty of the
law on April 12. They were men held in
much esteem by many who did not approve
of their political course, and widely signed
petitions were immediately presented to the
new lieutenant-governor, Sir George Arthur,
praying for the commutation of their sentence.
One of these petitions was presented by Mrs
Lount herself, who went down on her knees
and begged for mercy. Sir George Arthur,
however, had received his training in civil
government in the convict settlements of
Australia, anu he seems to have thought that
Upper Canada was another Botany Bay.
John Beverley Robinson, the chief justice who
had imposed sentence, declined to recommend
a pardon or a respite ; and the law, therefore,
took its course. At eight o'clock on the morn-

SIR JOHN BEVERLEY ROBINSON
From a painting in the Department of Education, Toronto

THE AFTERMATH 155

ing of April 12, 1838, before the old jail at the
corner of Toronto Street and Court Street,
Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews were
1 hanged by the neck.' Both bore themselves,
in dying as in living, with calmness and self-
control. They were buried in the Potter's
Field, among the nameless and the outcast ;
but many years later their ashes were removed
to the Necropolis in Toronto, and there they
still lie, under a simple white tablet bearing
the words :

SAMUEL LOUNT
PETER MATTHEWS

The execution of Lount and Matthews was
honestly deemed by the authorities wise and
necessary. But it was unfortunate that the
victims of justice should have been two of
the worthiest men in the rebel ranks, and
more than unfortunate that a respite should
not have been granted ; for when Sir George
Arthur received his instructions from the Col-
onial Office a fortnight later, he found that
he was commanded to temper justice with
mercy.

Mention must be made of the expatriation
of Bidwell. There is no fact more clearly
established in connection with the Upper
Canada rebellion than the fact that Bidwell

156 THE FAMILY COMPACT

had no hand in it. But there was found at
Montgomery's on December 7 a banner bear-
ing the legend :

BIDWELL AND THE GLORIOUS MINORITY
1837, AND A GOOD BEGINNING

The explanation of this legend was simple :
the banner was an old election banner, and
the figure 7 had been substituted for the
figure 2. The discovery, however, was re-
garded as incriminating evidence ; and after
the fight BidwelPs letters were held up by
the authorities at the post office. Bidwell
immediately went to the lieutenant-governor
to protest his innocence. He did not know
then, or for many years afterwards, of the
correspondence which had passed between Sir
Francis Head and the Colonial Office with
regard to his proposed elevation to the bench ;
and when Sir Francis, while protesting that
he himself believed fully in BidwelPs innocence,
recommended him at the same time to leave
the country, Bidwell thought that Sir Francis's
advice proceeded from kindness and goodwill.
He therefore sat down and wrote a letter
promising to leave the province for ever, and
in return received his letters unopened. Two
days later he took passage for Niagara ; and

MARSHALL SPRING BIDWELL

From a photograph in the Collection of the Lennox and
Addington Historical Society, Napanee, Ontario

THE AFTERMATH 157

Sir Francis Head was able to write to the
colonial secretary that the man whom he had
been dismissed for refusing to appoint to the
bench had fled from the country. Bidwell,
however, was not long without a champion.
In the spring of 1838 the Rev. Egerton
Ryerson, the most powerful Canadian con-
troversialist of those times, and one whose
weight was all the greater because of his un-
doubted loyalty, wrote two letters, the first
signed ' A United Empire Loyalist/ the second
signed with his own name, in which he estab-
lished once and for all time BidwelPs innocence
of any connection with the rebellion. Un-
fortunately, Ryerson did not know enough to
be able to place the contemptible conduct of
Sir Francis Head in its true light. But
Bidwell was probably well rid of Canada,
though Canada was not well rid of him. He
rose in New York to the highest place at the
bar, and not even the blandishments of Sir
John Macdonald succeeded in wooing him
back to the country he had left.

A superficial observer might have said that
in 1838 the Family Compact had become more
firmly entrenched in power than ever. Its
strength after the rebellion was, however,
more apparent than real. The fact that

158 THE FAMILY COMPACT

considerable numbers of men, both in Upper
and in Lower Canada, had actually risen in
armed revolt, had profoundly impressed the
Colonial Office. It was clear that something
was seriously amiss in the government of the
Canadas, and that no time should be lost in
discovering the root of the trouble. In the
spring of 1838, therefore, the Earl of Durham,
a wealthy and powerful English nobleman
of Radical leanings, was dispatched to Canada
as governor-general and lord high commissioner
to deal with the situation arising out of the
rebellion, and to report on remedies. Durham
was in Canada barely five months, and he was
in Upper Canada only a few days. Yet the
report which he submitted on his return to
England was the most important state-paper
ever issued by the Colonial Office, and was, in
the insight which it showed into Canadian
problems, a work of genius. It contained,
naturally, some inaccuracies, and of these
the apologists for the old regime made the
most. The Family Compact replied to Lord
Durham in reports of special committees
appointed by both the Legislative Council
and the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada,
reports in which the case for the old system
was put with a force and logic unanswered, in

THE AFTERMATH 159

some respects, to this day. But Durham's
recommendation of the union of the two pro-
vinces and his recommendation of the introduc-
tion of responsible government were adopted
by the home authorities; and they sounded
the death-knell of the Family Compact.

Responsible government in its present form
was not, of course, immediately introduced.
The system of later governors, of Sydenham,
of Bagot, and of Metcalfe, was a sort of transi-
tion from the old to the new. The change
was fought at every stage by the leaders of the
old Family Compact party. But the coalition
effected between the Upper Canada Reformers
under Robert Baldwin and the great body of
the French Canadians under Louis LaFon-
taine, the rebel of '37, proved too strong for
the Opposition, and in 1849 full responsible
government was introduced by Lord Elgin.
The burning in that year of the parliament
buildings at Montreal, and the pelting of Lord
Elgin with stones and rotten eggs, were the
last expiring efforts of the Family Compact
party. After that only a few remnants of
the party remained in the fight. In 1854
there were still half a dozen high Tories in
the House of Assembly ; and their leader, Sir
Allan Mac Nab, became the nominal head of

160 THE FAMILY COMPACT

the administration which was formed in that
year by the new Liberal- Conservative party.
But two years later Sir Allan Mac Nab made
an unwilling and ignominious exit from the
cabinet, and with him the Family Compact
disappeared from the arena of political life.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

THE published authorities for the history of the
Family Compact and the Upper-Canadian rebel-
lion are numerous, but they are of a very one-
sided nature. No book yet published tells the
story of the rebellion from the Family Compact
point of view. The official biographies of Sir John
Beverley Robinson and Bishop Strachan (men-
tioned later), and W. L. Baby in an essay on 'The
Family Compact* in his Souvenirs of the Past
(Windsor, Ontario, ,1896), have attempted to de-
fend the Family Compact; but they have been
voices crying in the wilderness. Virtually every-
thing published about the rebellion in the last
half-century has had a strong Liberal bias.

Among general histories the fairest account of
the rebellion is that of William Kingsford in his
History of Canada (Toronto, 1887-1898), though
the account possesses all the defects of that
monumental and laborious work. MacMullen,
History of Canada (Toronto, 1868), is based partly
on contemporary accounts of the rebellion, but
is full not only of bias, but of error. Garneau,
Histoire du Canada (Quebec, 1845-1848), discusses
mainly the rebellion in Lower Canada.

F.C. T.

i62 THE FAMILY COMPACT

Several books have been published about the
rebellion itself. The most important of these is
Dent, The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion
(Toronto, 1885). Dent is at times very partisan,
and he attempts too obviously to magnify Rolph
at the expense of Mackenzie ; but as a narrative
of the facts of the rebellion itself, his book is a
work of first-class importance. His attack upon
Mackenzie was replied to by King, The Other Side
of the 'Story' (Toronto, 1886).

Biographies have been written of some of the
chief actors in the rebellion. Charles Lindsey,
The Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie
(Toronto, 1862), is the official biography of
Mackenzie by his son-in-law. It is based on
Mackenzie's papers. An abridged and revised
edition of the book was contributed by G. G. S.
Lindsey to the * Makers of Canada' series (Tor-
onto, Ipio). C. W. Robinson, Life of Sir John
Beverley Robinson (Edinburgh and London, 1904),
is a somewhat sketchy and formal biography of
the ablest man in the Family Compact party.
Bethune, Memoir of the Right Reverend John
Strachan (Toronto, 1870), contains some very
valuable material relating to Upper Canada in
pre-rebellion days; and the same may be said
of Egerton Ryerson's posthumous Story of My
Life, edited by J. G. Hodgins (Toronto, 1883).
FitzGibbon, A Veteran of 1812 (Toronto, 1898),
contains the account of the rebellion written by
the commander-in-chief of the loyalist forces;

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 163

in Samuel Thompson, Reminiscences of a Cana-
dian Pioneer (Toronto, 1884), there are some inter-
esting notes on the rebellion by a sympathizer
with the Radicals.

A number of local histories will be found to
throw light on the rebellion. Notable among
these is Scadding, Toronto of Old (Toronto, 1878),
a work of real learning.

Mention should be made, finally, of the original
authorities which are in print. The troubles of
1805-8 are described in the documents published
in Dominion Archives Report for 1892, Note D;
and in John Mills Jackson, View of the Political
Situation of the Province of Upper Canada (London,
1809). The career of Gourlay is dealt with in his
The Banished Briton and Neptunian (Boston, 1843)
and his General Introduction to the Statistical
Account of Upper Canada (London, 1822). Talbot,
Five Years' Residence in the Canadas (London,
1824), contains some interesting observations on
life in Upper Canada in the early twenties; and
other books of travel may also be laid under con-
tribution. The newspapers of that time should
be consulted, especially, on the one hand, Mac-
kenzie's Colonial Advocate, and, on the other, the
New York Albiony the Toronto correspondent of
which was an admirable champion of the Family
Compact point of view. Mackenzie, Sketches of
Canada and the United States (London, 1833), is
not without value, as showing the Radical point
of view. The most important document, how-

164 THE FAMILY COMPACT

ever, on the Radical side is The Seventh Report
from the Select Committee of the House of
Assembly of Upper Canada on Grievances (Toronto,
1835). For Sir Francis Bond Head's period of
office the student should consult his Narrative
(London, 1839) and The Emigrant (London, 1847),
as well as Lord Glenelg's Dispatches (London,
1839). And last, but not least, reference should
be made at all stages to Lord Durham's Report
(London, 1839), the most famous and important
blue-book ever issued on colonial affairs.

INDEX

Addison, Rev. Robert, a
* Jacobin,' 26.

Alien Act of 1804, " ; a law
of doubtful constitutionality,
36-7-

Alien question, the, 63-4, 65.

Allan, William, member of
Executive Council, 104.

Allcock, Justice, member of
Assembly, 9.

Anderson^ Captain Anthony, a
leader in the Rebellion of
1837, 127, 130-1, 132, 136 ;
killed by John Powell, 133-4.

Arthur, Sir George, lieutenant-
governor, refuses to commute
the sentence of Lount and
Matthews, 154, 155.

Assembly, the, I, 2, 44-5 ; * mis-
application' of public funds
in 1806, ii ; « Jacobin ' Jack-
son's book, 21 ; the Will-
cocks case, 24 ; bill to tax
vacant lands defeated in, 31 ;
Gourlay's convention, 34-5 ;
the case of William Forsyth,
6p ; the Naturalization ques-
tion, 63-4. The first Reform
Assembly (1829), 64-5, 67 :
asserts its authority in con-
nection with the case of
Collins, 68-9 ; inquires into
the administration of the Post
Office, 69-70 ; its bill repeal-
ing clause determining the
p.c. y

chaplain's salary thrown out
by the Legislative Council,
70 ; some useful legislation,
71. The Tory Assembly of
1831, 72, 74-5 : the expulsions
of Mackenzie, 77-9, 80-1, 83-
89. The Reform Assembly of
1834, 91 : ' little respect paid
to,' 95 ; asserts the principle
of a responsible Executive
Council, 105 ; its relations
with Sir F. B. Head, 105,
106-7. The Tory Assembly
of 1836, 109: businesslike,
but too progressive, in.

Baby, James, member of Ex-
ecutive Council, 29.

Baldwin, Augustus, member of
Executive Council, 104.

Baldwin, Robert, 6 ; member of
Assembly, 71, 72, 91 ; his
plan of responsible govern-
ment, 73 ; appointed to the
Executive Council, 103 ; fails
in his mission to England,
115 ; accompanies the flag of
truce in the Rebellion of 1837,

i35-6» i37» I38, 147-8 J leader
of Reformers, 159.

Baldwin, Dr W. W., and the
Family Compact, 3-4, 6; a
* Jacobin,' 26 ; a Reformer,
48, 65, 72, 91 ; president of
the Constitutional Reform

> 165

166

THE FAMILY COMPACT

Society, 108 ; and Sir F. B.
Head, 112.

Bidwell, Barnabas, elected to
the Assembly but declared
ineligible, 45-6, 69.

Bidwell, M. S., 47; on the
Family Compact, 3-4, 6 ; his
difficulties of election to As-
sembly, 46 ; and Mackenzie,
49 ; elected speaker of As-
sembly, 65, 67, 72, 91, 93; ad-
monishes H. J. Boulton, 69 ;
his relations with Sir F. B.
Head, 102, 103; defeated in
election of 1836, 109 ; his
claims to a judgeship urged
by Lord Glenelg, 113, 156 ;
his connection with the rebels
in the rising of 1837, 118-19,
121, 135 ; his expatriation,
155-7 J and Sir John Mac-
donald, 157.

Boulton, D'Arcy, attorney-
general, 29.

Boulton, H. J., solicitor-gen-
eral, libelled by Francis Col-
lins, 54, 57; admonished
by the Assembly, 68-9 ; as
attorney- general involved in
the expulsions of Mackenzie,
74, 79, 83, 84 ; dismissed from
office, 85 ; his later career, 86.

British Constitutional Society,
the, re-established by the
Tories, 108.

Brooke, escapes from the rebels
at Montgomery's tavern,

*33-

Brown, Thomas Storrpw, a
leader of the insurrectionary
party in Lower Canada, 125.

Cartwright, Richard, on Wil-
liam Weekes, 9.

Castlereagh, Lord, colonial
secretary, 20, 22.

Chalmers, Dr Thomas, on
Gpurlay, 27-8.

Christie, Robert, expelled from
Lower Canada Assembly,
77-8.

Church of England, the, its
position in Upper Canada, 46-
47, 60-1, 98-9.

Church of Scotland, the, in
Upper Canada, 61, 99.

Claus, William, causes the
Alien Act of 1804 to be en-
forced against Gourlay, 36-9.

Clergy reserves question, the,
30-1, 61, 62, 98-9, in.

Cochran, Thomas, drowned in
the ' Speedy ' disaster, 8.

Colborne, Sir John, lieutenant-
governor, his character and
work, 66, 67, 72, 80, 96, 105 ;
on Archdeacon Strachan, 66 ;
his relations with the Re-
formers and the Family Com-
pact, 66-7, 68, 71 ; and Lord
Goderich's famous dispatch,
83, 84-5 ; advises Mackenzie
in taking the oath, 88 ; en-
dows forty-four rectories out
of the clergy reserves, 98-9 ;
and the Lower Canada Re-
bellion, 122.

Collins, Francis, 51 ; scores in
actions for libel brought
against him by the attorney-
general, 54-6, 57 ; but event-
ually goes under, 58, 68.

Colonial Office, and the govern-
ment of Upper Canada, 63,
64, 86, 104, 105-6, 155, 156,
158-9.

Constitutional Act of 1791, on
the, 1-2.

INDEX

167

Constitutional Reform Society,
the platform of, 108 ; Sir F.
B. Head's objection to, 112.

Crown reserves, troubles in
connection with the, 30-1.

Declaration of the Reformers
in 1837, 118, 120, 121.

Dickson, William, mortally
wounds Weekes in a duel,
15 ; causes Alien Act of 1804
to be enforced against Gour-

lay, 36-9-
oel'

Doel's brewery, a Reformers'

meeting-place, 117, 123, 139.
Dorland, Philip, a Reformer,

ii.
Duncombe, Dr Charles, 91,

115 ; escapes to the United

States in 1837, 149.
Dunn, John Henry, member

of Executive Council, 103.
Durham, Lord, his Report on

the state of Canada, 2, 158.

Elgin, Lord, introduces repon-

sible government into Can-

ada, 159.
Elliott's tavern, a Reformers'

meeting-place, 117, 139.
Elmsley, John, member of Ex-

ecutive Council, 104.
' Everlasting Salary Bill,' the,

75-6.

Executive Council of Upper
Canada, i, 59, 103-4; and
the Rebellion of 1837, 129,
143-4, 150.

Family Compact, the, its com-
position and origin, 2-7, 19, 26,
28-9, 66-7, 116 ; and the per-
secution of Gourlay, 27, 28,
33i 34. 36-42 J at the height

of its power, 43-5 ; its perse-
cution of Reformers, 45-6, 49-
51, 54, 58-9, 6A ; and religious
disabilities, 40-7 ; the Metho-
dist agitation in the clergy
reserves question, 60-2 ; and
the Church of England, 62-3 ;
its decline, 157, 158, 159-60.

Ferguson, Bartemus, suffers
for his connection with Gour-
lay, 35-6.

FitzGibbon, Colonel James, 6 ;
remonstrates with Sir F. B.
Head, 128, 147 ; commands
the government forces in the
Rebellion of 1837, 129, 134-5,
144, 145.

Forsyth, William, his impudent
invasion of a government re-
serve, 59-60.

Fothergill, Charles, a Refor-
mer, 51.

Gibson, David, 130 ; his house
burned down at the command
of Sir F. B. Head, 147.

Gladstone, W. E., champions
the cause of the Family Com-
pact, 116.

Glenelg, Lord, colonial secre-
tary, 97-8, 100 ; his relations
with Sir F. B. Head, no-n,
112-13.

Goderich, Lord, colonial secre-
tary, 82-3 ; raises a tempest,

Gore, Francis, lieutenant-gov-
ernor, 4, 9, ii, 14, 26, 33;
prejudiced against Thorpe
and the * Jacobins,' 16, 17, 21-
22, 23 ; loses in libel actions,
23 ; on Dr W. W. Baldwin,
48.

Gourlay, Robert, his career in

i68

THE FAMILY COMPACT

Scotland, 27-8 ; settles in Can-
ada and comes into conflict
with the Family Compact,
28, 30-1, 35 ; calls a conven-
tion to discuss land griev-
ances, 32-3; his prosecution
for libel fails, 33-4 ; prose-
cuted under the Alien Act of
1804, 36-8 ; ignores the sen-
tence and is lodged in jail,
38-9 ; his unjust trial and ban-
ishment, 4, 39-40, 44 ; his re-
turn to Canada, 41 ; his works
and character, 41-2.

Grant, Alexander, administra-
tor of Upper Canada, 4, 10.

Grievances, the Seventh Report
on, 93-8.

Hagerman, C.A., solicitor-gen-
eral, 68, 74, 79, 83 ; dismissed
from office, 84-5 ; reinstated,

85-

Head, Sir Edmund, governor-
general of Canada, 100.

Head, Sir Francis Bond, lieu-
tenant-governor, 98, 100-1 ;
his aversion for the Refor-
mers, 102, 103, 113, 156 ; his
troubles with the Executive
Council, 102-5 ; his relations
with the Assembly, 102, 104,
105-6 ; hisinjudiciousnessand
tactlessness, 106; his ques-
tionable behaviour in the pol-
. itical campaign of 1836, 107-
iii ; his resignation accep-
ted, 112-13; fails to realize a
critical situation, 121-2, 122-
123, 128, 129 ; his conduct in
the Upper Canada Rebellion,

i34> 135, 137, 138, 144, 146-7 ;

and in Bidwell s expatnation, I
156-7.

Hincks, Sir Francis, secretary
of the Constitutional Reform
Society, 108.

Hogg, James, warns Sir F. B.
Head of intended rising, 128.

Holland Landing, 121, 130.

Home, Dr R. C., his house
burned down by Mackenzie,
140.

Horton, Wilmot, criticized by
Gourlay, 31-2.

Hume, Joseph, assists Mac-
kenzie in London, 82; his

* baneful domination* letter,
90 ; his congratulations on
Sir F. B. Head's appoint-
ment, 101.

Hunter, General, lieutenant-
governor of Upper Canada,
4, 10, 12, 15.

Jackson, John Mills, nicknamed

* Jacobin Jackson,' 19, 20-1.
'Jacobins,' the nickname of

Thorpe's party, 13, 17-18 ; a
striking fact in connection
with the, 25.

Jameson, R. S., attorney-gen-
eral of Upper Canada, 86.

Jarvis, Sheriff, 135, 140 ; com-
mands a picket in the rebels'
night attack on Toronto, 141.

Jarvis, William, a 'Jacobin*
supporter, 26.

Ketchum, Jesse, a Reformer,
65, 92.

Legislative Assembly of Upper
Canada. See Assembly.

Legislative Council of Upper
Canada, 1-2, 46-7, 63-4, 70,
95 ; elective principle applied
to, 96.

INDEX

169

Lount, Samuel, ox, 109; a
leader in the Rebellion of
1837, 116, 120, 121, 126, 127,
130-1, 132, 137, 140, 140-1,
142 ; arrested and executed,

J53-S
Lount, Mrs, 130; pleads for

her husband's life, 154.
Lower Canada, and Lord John

Russell's resolutions, 116,

117 ; insurrection in, 123, 125,

132.

Macdonald, Sir J. A., on elec-
tions, 72 ; his admiration for
M. S. Bid well, 157.

Macdonell, Angus, member of
Assembly, drowned in the
« Speedy ' disaster, 8, 9.

Macdonell, Bishop, member of
Executive Council, 76.

M 'Gill, John, inspector-general
of Upper Canada, 6, 10, 26,
28.

Mackenzie, William Lyon, 3 ;
his early career and character,
4i, 48-9, 102, 114, 139; the
destruction of his printing-
press, 51-4, 55, 57, 65 ; mem-
ber for York, 05; institutes
hunt for grievances, 69-70,
71-2, 76 ; becomes obnoxious
to the government and is ex-
pelled the House, 76-9; a
popular hero, 70-80, 89 ; after
second expulsion rouses an
agitation in his favour,
causing disturbance in the
country and a brutal assault
on himself, 80-2 ; his mission
to Lord Goderich, 82-3 ; in
his absence elected to the
Assembly, and expelled, 83-
85; returns to Canada, and

is elected by acclamation,
86 ; scenes in the House,
87-9; elected first mayor of
Toronto, 89 ; publishes the
'baneful domination* letter,
90 ; elected in 1834, 91 ;
the Grievance Report, 93;
fails of election in 1836, 109,
114-15 ; organizes ' Union
* meetings ' and predicts revolt
in Lower Canada, 116-17;
secretary of the Committee of
Vigilance, 119-20; favours an
armed demonstration, 120-1 ;
persuades Rolph and others
to agree to a ' coup d'etat,'
123-7 ; at Montgomery's tav-
ern, 131-43, 147; escapes to
United States, 150 ; convicted
of a breach of the neutrality
laws and confined to jail, 150-
i£i ; returns to Canada, 151 ;
his place in history, 151-2.

MacNab, Sir Allan, 6, 74;
lodged injail by the Assembly,
68-9 ; no love for Mackenzie,
78, 82 ; commands Home
district militia in the Rebel-
lion, 141, 144, 145, 146, 149 ;
premier, 159-60.

Maitland, Sir Peregrine, lieu-
tenant-governor, 33, 43-4, 54,
58, 64, 05 ; and the Gourlay
persecution, 27, 34-5, 40 ; and
the case of William Fprsyth,
59-60 ; and the ' ecclesiastical
chart,' 62.

Mallory, Benajah, a member of
Assembly who went over to
United States in 1812, n.

Markland, George H., member
of Executive Council, 103.

Matthews, Captain John, a
Reformer, 47-8; his hilarity

170

THE FAMILY COMPACT

gives offence to the govern-
ment, 50.

Matthews, Peter, a leader in
the Rebellion, 143; arrested
and executed, 153-5.

Methodists of Upper Canada,
their legal disabilities, 10;
their religious disabilities, 47 ;
and the clergy reserves, 61,
62, 99; vote Tory in 1836,
109.

Montgomery's tavern, the
rebels' assembling-place, 127,
130, 131, 136, 142, 144. J46,
156.

Moodie, Colonel, mortally
wounded by rebels at Mont-
gomery's tavern, 133.

Morrison, Dr, consulted by
Mackenzie in planning the
Rebellion, 124, 125-6, 127 ;
arrested, 142 ; after acquittal
joins Rolph in the States,
152-3 ; returns to Toronto,

I53-

Murray, Sir George, colonial
secretary, 60.

Naturalization Act, the passing

of, 63-4, 65.
Navy Island, Mackenzie at,

150-1.
Nelson, Wolfred, a leader in the

Lower Canada insurrection,

129.

Papineau, Louis J., leader of

the French Canadians in 1837,

118.
'Patriot' cause, the, and

American filibusters, 149.
Perry, Peter, a Reformer, 47,

6$, 72, 91, 109; 'picked to

pieces,' no.

Post Office, the, inquiry by the
Assembly into its administra-
tion, 69-70.

Powell, Chief Justice, 22, 24, 27,
28 ; presides at Gourlay's
trial, 38-9, 40.

Powell, John, escapes from the
rebels and rouses Toronto,
133-4.

Quakers, their legal disabilities
in Upper Canada, 10.

Reform party, the, 47 ; and the
Naturalization Act, 64; and
the lieutenant-governor's ad-
visers, 68 ; its want of a con-
structive programme, 72-3,
76; effect of the 'baneful
domination ' letter on, 90-1 ;
and Sir F. B. Head, 101, 107-
no ; in the depths of despair,
115, 116, 120, 121 ; and the
French Canadians, 117-18.

Responsible government, 73, 96-
97, 159; compared with the
Family Compact regime, 95.

Ridout, George, and Sir F. B.
Head, 112, 113.

Robinson, John Beverley, on
nepotism in the Family Com-
pact, 2-3, 6; 'a second Pitt,'
29-30, 74J as attorney-gen-
eral conducts the prosecution
against Gourlay, 27, 40 ; and
against Francis Collins, 54,
157-8 ; taken to task by Justice
Willis, 55-6 ; as chief justice,
70-1, 104, 135, 154-

Robinson, Peter, member of
Executive Council, 103.

Rogers, David M'Gregor, a
Reformer, n.

Rolph, John, 3, 65, 72, 92, 103,

INDEX

171

109; his character, 47-8; a
delegate to the Reform con-
vention of 1837, 118-19 ; ac-
quiesces in Mackenzie's plans
of a revolt, 124-7, 129-31 ;
advocates abandonment, 131-
132, 142; accompanies the
flag of truce, 136, 137, 138,
140 ; escapes to the United
States, 143, 152 ; founds a
medical school at Toronto,
152.

Russell, Lord John, and Lower
Canada, 116, 117.

Russell, Peter, president of
Upper Canada, 4.

Ryerson, Rev. Egerton, his
protest against an established
church in Upper Canada, 62;
and the Reformers, 109-10,

157-

Ryerson, John, on the political
state of Upper Canada, 73,
91.

Scott, Thomas, chief justice of
Upper Canada, 5, 10, 14, 26,
28.

Shepard, a rebel in 1837, 133.

Sherbrooke, Sir John, gover-
nor-general of Canada, 33.

Sherwood, Justice, his en-
counter with the Assembly,
68.

Small, J. E., a second in the
Jarvis-Ridout duel, 57; and
Sir F. B. Head, 112.

Smith, Samuel, administrator
of Upper Canada, 33.

Stanley, Lord, colonial secre-
tary, 85, 94.

Strachan, Dr John, 2, 6, 27, 76,
144 ; his career and character,
29, 31, 66, 94; his 'ecclesias-

tical chart,' 60, 6 1, 62, 65 ; and

the Church of England, 66.
Sullivan, R. B., member of

Executive Council, 104.
Swayzie, Isaac, bears false

witness against Gourlay,

37-8.

Thorpe, Robert, his career, 12-
13 ; a founder of the Reform
party, 8, n ; interferes in de-
liberations of the Assembly,
12-13 ; and the Family Com-
pact, 4-5, 13-14, 16-17 ; and
the Weekes incident, 15-16 ;
leader of the 'Jacobins' in
the Assembly, 16-17, 2I» 26>
30 ; suspended from the
bench, 21-2 ; wins libel action
against Gore in England, 23.

Tory party, the. See under
Assembly,

United Empire Loyalists, the,
and the allotment of lands, 10 ;
and the Family Compact, 45,

47-

United States, and the Upper
Canada Rebellion, 121, 149,
151.

Upper Canada College, 67, 94.

Upper Canada Rebellion of
1837, at first a project of
armed demonstration, 120 ;
secret military training be-
gun, 121 ; government not
ignorant of revolutionary pro-
ceedings, I2I-2, 128-9; Mac-
kenzie's amazing plan, 123-
124 ; and co-operation with
Lower Canada in a simul-
taneous revolt, 125; date
settled, 126-7, and changed,
130 ; assembling of rebels at

172

THE FAMILY COMPACT

Montgomery's tavern, 131 ;
Toronto aroused, 134 ; the flag
of truce, 135-8 ; insubordina-
tion among the rebels, 139-
140 ; a night attack, 140-1 ;
the westerly mail intercepted
and robbed, 142 ; Van Eg-
mond takes command, 143 ;
the government forces attack
the rebels, 144-6; a sordid
episode, 147-8.

Van Egmond, Anthony, com-
mander of rebel forces in
1837, 6-7, 127, 142, 143, 145,
148 ; dies in jail, 153.

War of 1812 : Canadian militia
claims for losses settled, 32-

Weekes, William, a founder of
the Reform party, 8-n, 12,
26; mortally wounded in a
duel, 15, 16.

Welland Canal inquiry, the,
71-2, in.

Wells, Joseph, member of
Executive Council, 103.

Wideman, Ludwig, killed at
Montgomery's tavern, 146.

Willcocks, Joseph, 18, 19-20 ;
associated with Thorpe in
struggle for reform, 21, 23,
24, 26; a renegade in 1812,

Willis, John Walpole, 6 ; cen-
sures J. B. Robinson in the
Collins trial, 54-6 ; his asso-
ciation with the Reformers
leads to his suspension as a
judge, 58-9.

Wyatt, Charles Burton, sur-
veyor-general of Upper Can-
ada, 6 ; a Reformer, n, 13 ;
dismissed from office, 18 ;
seeks redress in England, 20,
21 ; and obtains a verdict
against Gore, 23.

THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Lang ton
of the University of Toronto

A series of thirty-two freshly-written narratives for
popular reading, designed to set forth, in historic con-
tinuity, the principal events and movements in Canada,
from the Norse Voyages to the Railway Builders.

PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS

1. The Dawn of Canadian History

A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

2. The Mariner of St Malo \

A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE

3. The Founder of New France

A Chronicle of Champlain

BY CHARLES W. COLBY

4. The Jesuit Missions

A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness

BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

5. The Seigneurs of Old Canada

A Chronicle of New- World Feudalism

BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO

6. The Great Intendant

A Chronicle of Jean Talon

BY THOMAS CHAPAIS

7. The Fighting Governor

A Chronicle of Frontenac

BY CHARLES W. COLBY

The Chronicles of Canada

PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION

8. The Great Fortress

A Chronicle of Louisbourg

BY WILLIAM WOOD

9. The Acadian Exiles

A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline

BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY

10. The Passing of New France

A Chronicle of Montcalm

BY WILLIAM WOOD

11. The Winning of Canada

A Chronicle of Wolfe

BY WILLIAM WOOD

PART IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA

12. The Father of British Canada

A Chronicle of Carleton

BY WILLIAM WOOD

13. The United Empire Loyalists

A Chronicle of the Great Migration

BY W. STEWART WALLACE

14. The War with the United States

A Chronicle of 1812

BY WILLIAM WOOD

PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA

15. The War Chief of the Ottawas

A Chronicle of the Pontiac War

BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

16. The War Chief of the Six Nations

A Chronicle of Joseph Brant

BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

17. Tecumseh

A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People
BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND

The Chronicles of Canada

PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST

1 8. The 'Adventurers of England ' on Hudson

Bay

A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
BY AGNES C. LAUT

19. Pathfinders of the Great Plains

A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons

BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE

20. Adventurers of the Far North

A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

21. The Red River Colony

A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba

BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

22. Pioneers of the Pacific Coast

A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
BY AGNES C. LAUT

23. The Cariboo Trail

A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia
BY AGNES C. LAUT

PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM

24. The Family Compact

A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada

BY W. STEWART WALLACE

25. The Patriotes of '37

A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada

BY ALFRED D. DECELLES

26. The Tribune of Nova Scotia

A Chronicle of Joseph Howe

BY WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT

27. The Winning of Popular Government

A Chronicle of the Union of 1841

BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN

The Chronicles of Canada

PART VIII. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY

28. The Fathers of Confederation

A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion

BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN

29. The Day of Sir John Macdonald

A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion
BY SIR JOSEPH POPE

30. The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier

A Chronicle of Our Own Times

BY OSCAR D. SKELTON

PART IX. NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

31. All Afloat

A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways

BY WILLIAM WOOD

32. The Railway Builders

A Chronicle of Overland Highways

BY OSCAR D. SKELTON

Published by
Glasgow, Brook & Company

TORONTO, CANADA

FC 162 .C47 v.24

SMC

Wallace, W. Stewart

(William Stewart) ,
The Family Compact

chronicle of the
AKB-3113 (mcab)