TO MRS. HOLLAND.
Thornhill, April 3, 1838.
You kindly allude to the circumstance of apparent danger in which we have been placed during our recent revolt, but God has been very merciful to us, and, not merely screened us under the sheltering wing of his good providence, but graciously kept our minds in sweet serenity and peace. You may judge of the apparent peril to which we were exposed, when I tell you, that on the afternoon of the evening on which they (the rebels) proceeded to Toronto, two parties passed our door, the one consisting of 200, and the other of 300 persons; and were, under God’s providence, kept from the execution of their murderous and destructive designs against the persons and houses of the more loyal and opulent, merely in consequence of their being obliged to hurry past us to Toronto two or three days sooner than they had anticipated. As a clergyman too, and more especially as a beneficed one, noted and vilified as possessing one of the obnoxious rectories, concerning which they have so loudly clamoured; on this account I was a doubly marked man; my name was inserted in their list of intended arsons, and my family as well as myself were to be shot, as we were attempting to escape the flames; at least, such were the pleasing tidings which were widely circulated among us, and the fearful and timid found it no easy matter to restrain their feelings, or to exhibit calmness of spirit, or manliness of conduct. Many passed sleepless nights, and all around us gave indication that there were solid and extensive grounds for alarm. Colonel M—, the person who was shot on the first night of the revolt, was an attendant on our church and a resident in our neighbourhood, and, in the very midst of the excitement, was brought to our churchyard for interment. A hostile attack was expected by many, and the mob, who assembled to pay the last sad offices to their veteran friend and neighbour, came accoutred in their swords, daggers, pistols and fowling pieces. A novel and a painful scene, but which was altogether uncalled for; no attempt having been contemplated. My eye glanced on one of the assembly; a loyal, but strange and penurious man, whose habits had never suffered him to become possessed of anything in the shape of arms, and he was leaning on his trusty lengthened pitch fork, a weapon, of which I heard, he was afterwards vaunting that there was nothing like that. His presence, however, to my mind at least, was far from pleasing; it ill-accorded with the scene before us, and seemed so ridiculous, that I could hardly refrain from a momentary smile. Of the general and more public details you are doubtless most fully apprized; for I perceive that our Canadian affairs are exciting a peculiar interest in our fatherland, and are commented on with an accuracy, which shows that they must have been perused with every means of the fullest information lying before them. All is now, through God’s providence, in a state of quietness; while, therefore, we feel indebted to our friends for their kind sympathy, and their affectionate expressions of hope, that our provincial troubles may cause us either quickly, or eventually to retrace our steps towards our beloved native land, we must still assure them that nothing is further from our thoughts; our path has been deliberately chosen, our objects have been extensively gained, much of God’s temporal smile is resting upon us, we are now established in our ample, commodious, and, I might say, beautiful house, the society around us is superior to what is found in most country places in England; our income is ample and enough for all exigencies. Life is gliding gently along with as little disquietude and as much comfort as we can ever expect to find in the present world; peace and tranquillity reign in our domestic circle, God’s spiritual blessings are experienced by the majority of our family, and some hopeful indications given by all, and, therefore, why should we wish for a change? Of myself and my own immediate duties, I would say, but little good is being done. Ministers are much wanted, and, were I in England, it would be only to extrude and thrust out some of the partially engaged or wholly unoccupied with which you are overburdened already. No, my endeared sister, much as we love our native land, much as we value our still more beloved friends, we ought not to close our eyes on our present mercies, or so mix up the cherishing of regret with causes for thanksgiving, as to destroy their efficacy, or to diminish their heart-stirring effect.
While Mr. Mortimer’s friends did not approve of his expatriating himself and family, so some of them, who visited him in Canada, were by no means convinced of his having improved on his lot and position in life by his change of country. The Rev. B. Luckock was one of these, who was so struck with the inferiority of everything which he saw, that he afterwards wrote to him in no very measured terms of his dislike and almost detestation of what he called his wretched situation. These condoling and sympathizing notes produced no echo in the mind of Mr. Mortimer, and he wrote to his friend in the following playful terms, united to strains of piety and seriousness, very expressive of his own satisfaction with the change which he had made:—
“Both your letters found me at Thornhill, and from the same miserable and deserted place, I date, as you will perceive, my present letter. It is difficult to determine what class of feelings we should indulge in at the accumulated epithets of loathing and abhorrence with which you speak of our delightfully happy sojourn; our disposition, however, to merriment prevailed, and we all laughed most heartily at your intemperate and ill-timed abusings, so completely and so pleasantly had the whole class of our own feelings and circumstances been changed since your visit to that anything but “happy valley.” I need not detail to you the various incidents which, through the kind providence of our God, have tended both to fix our steps and to settle our minds; the hundreds of miles which were previously travelled—the ineligibility of every spot and every abode in some important particular—the striking Providence which put some unexpected and final stop to our negotiations in each of the matters on which we were disposed to venture—the altered feeling and conduct discovered by my people, when they perceived me fully resolved to leave—their solicitations, accompanied with proffered, though not accepted, pecuniary liberality to remain among them—the erection of a large, commodious, and tasty, not to say beautiful, house, on the few acres of my own, near the church, which I had some time before purchased—the settling of a most esteemed, and delightful, intelligent, well-educated, Christian family, within a few stones’ throw of our residence—and, finally, the induction and installing of the long unbeneficed curate into that most lucrative and honourable piece of preferment, “the Rectory of Thornhill.” Happy consummation of the most ambitious wishes, or only to be credited by the envied and enviable dignitaries of our Church, of which “I am proud to think” that my valued and respected friend is one! But I wander; there, then, we are at Thornhill; but, through God’s mercy, under circumstances of great comfort, much, very much, indeed, which calls forth our gratitude and praise; so that what I partly smilingly, partly ironically, and partly believingly, predicted, has been strongly fulfilled; the course adopted by the Abyssinian Prince has been closely followed by ourselves, and not an atom of wish do we now feel to exchange the place of our abode for any other in the province, and we may say even in the world. Of the younger branches of the family, I am not of course speaking; they may possibly be far from the rest and quiet, a and satisfaction of the older folk. As to ourselves, however, we wish for no change; to live and to die where God’s good providence has now at length fixed us is the ultimatum of all our wishes.”