SIR JOHN SHERBROOKE, GOVERNOR GENERAL OF CANADA, 1816-1818
Curious it is how good men reared in the old school, where the masses exist for the benefit of the classes and the governed are to be allowed to exist only by favor of those who govern—curious how good men fail to read the sign of the times. Colonel Tom Talbot's settlement in West Ontario has, by 1832, increased to 50,000 people, and the mad harum-scarum of court days is becoming an old man. Talbot has been a legislative councilor for life, but it is not on record that he ever attended the council in Toronto. Still he views with high disfavor this universal discontent with "being governed." The secret meetings held to agitate for responsible government, Tom Talbot regards as "a pestilence" leading on to the worst disease from which humanity can suffer, namely, democracy. The old bear stirs uneasily in his lair, as reports come in of louder and louder demands that the colony shall be permitted to govern itself. What would become of kings and colonels and land grants by special favor, if colonies governed themselves? Colonel Tom Talbot doffs his homespun and his coon cap, and he dons the satin ruffles of twenty-five years ago, and he mounts his steed and he rides pompously forth to the market place of St. Thomas Town on St. George's Day of 1832. Bands play; flags wave; the country people from twenty miles round come riding to town. Banners inscribed with "Loyalty to the Constitution" are carried at the head of parades. The venerable old colonel is greeted with burst after burst of shouting as he comes prancing on horseback up the hill. The band plays "the British Grenadiers." The Highland bagpipes skurl a welcome. Then the old man mounts the rostrum and delivers a speech that ought to be famous as an exposition of good old Tory doctrine:
Some black sheep have slipped into my flock, and very black they are, and what is worse, they have got the rot, a distemper not known in this settlement till some I shall call for short "rebels" began their work of darkness under cover of organizing Blanked Cold Water Drinking Societies, where they meet at night to communicate their poisonous schemes and circulate the infection and delude the unwary! Then they assumed a more daring aspect under mask of a grievance petition, which, when it was placed before me, I would not take the trouble to read, being aware it was trash founded on falsehood, fabricated to create discontent.
At the end of a half hour's tirade, of which these lines are a sample, the good old Tory raised his hands, and in the words of the Church's benediction blessed his people and prayed Heaven to keep their minds untainted by sedition.
Looking back less than a century, it is almost impossible to believe that the colonel's speech—it cannot be called reasoning—was applauded to the echo and regarded as a masterly justification of people "being governed" rather than governing themselves.
Perhaps, after all, it was not so much the Constitution of Canada that caused the conflict as the clash between the old-time feudalism and the spirit of modern, aggressive democracy. The United States fought this question out in 1776. Canada wrestled, it cannot be called a fight, the same question out in 1837.
It is necessary to give one or two cases of individual persecution to understand how the disorders flamed to open rebellion.
One Matthews, an officer of the 1812 War, living on a pension, had incurred the distrust of the governing ring by expressing sympathy with the agitators. Now to be an agitator was bad enough in the eyes of "the family compact," but for one of their own social circle to sympathize with the outsiders was, to the snobocracy clique of the little city of ten thousand at Toronto, almost an unpardonable sin. Such sins were punished by social ostracism, by the grand dames of Toronto not inviting the officer's wife to social functions, by the families of the upper clique literally freezing the sinner's children out of the foremost circles of social life. Many a Canadian family is proud to trace lineage back to some old lady of this tempestuous period, whose only claim to recognition is that she waged petty persecution against the heroes of Canadian progress. Now the annals of the times do not record that this special sinner's wife and children so suffered. At all events Matthews' spirits were not cast down by social snobbery. He continued to sympathize with the agitators. The "family compact" bided their time, and their time came a few months later, when a company of American actors came to Toronto. A band concert had been given. When the British national air struck up, all hats were off. Then some one called for "Yankee Doodle," and in compliment to the visitors, when the American air struck up, Matthews shouted out for "hats off." For this sin the legislative council ordered the lieutenant governor to cut off Matthews' pension, and, to the everlasting shame of Sir Peregrine Maitland, the advice was taken, though Matthews had twenty-seven years of service to his credit. Matthews appealed to England, and his pension was restored, so that in this case "the family compact" for political reasons was pretending to be more British than Great Britain. It was not to be the last occasion on which "the loyalty cry" was to be used as a political dodge.
The persecution of Robert Gourlay was yet more outrageous.