He had come to Canada soon after the War of 1812, and in the course of collecting statistics for a book on the colony was quick to realize how Canada's progress was being literally gagged by the policy of the ruling clique. Gourlay attacked the local magistrates in the press. He pointed out that the land grants were notorious. He advocated bombarding the evils from two sides at once, by appealing to the home government and by holding local conventions of protest. The pass to which things had come may be realized by the attitude of the council. It held that the colony must hold no communications with the imperial government except through the Governor General; in other words, individual appeals not passing through the hands of the legislative council were to be regarded as illegal. It is sad to have to acknowledge that such a palpably dishonest measure was ever countenanced by people in their right minds. But "the family compact" went a step farther. It passed an order forbidding meetings to discuss public grievances. This part of Canada's story reads more like Russia than America, and shows to what length men will go when special privileges rather than equal rights prevail in a country. Gourlay met these infamous measures by penning some witty doggerel, headed "Gagged, gagged, by Jingo!" The editor in whose paper Gourlay's writings had appeared, was arrested, and the offending sheet was compelled to suspend. Gourlay himself is arrested for sedition and libel at least four times, but each time the jury acquits him. At any cost the governing clique must get rid of this scribbling fellow, whose pen voices the rising discontent. An alien act, passed before the War of 1812, compelling the deportation of seditious persons, is revived. Under the terms of the act Gourlay is arrested, tried, and sentenced to be exiled, but Gourlay declares he is not an alien. He is a British subject, and he refuses to leave the country. He is thrown in jail at Niagara, and for a year and a half left in a moldy, close cell. One dislikes to write that this outrage on British justice was perpetrated under Chief Justice Powell, whose failure to obtain decisions from the jury in the Red River trials brought down such harsh criticism on the bench. At the end of twenty months Gourlay is again hauled before the jury and sentenced to deportation on pain of death if he refuses. He was calmly asked if he had anything to say, if there were any reason why sentence should not be pronounced.
"Anything … to … say? Any reason … why … sentence … should not be pronounced?" From 1818 to 1820 Gourlay had been having things "to say," had been giving good and sufficient reasons why sentence should not be pronounced! The question is repeated: "Robert Gourlay stand up! Have you anything to say?" The court waits, Chief Justice Powell, bewigged and wearing his grandest manner, all unconscious that the scene is to go down to history with blot of ignominy against his name, not Gourlay's.
Gourlay's face twitches, and he breaks into shrieks of maniacal laughter. The petty persecutions of a provincial tyranny have driven a man, who is true patriot, out of his mind. As Gourlay drops out of Canada's story here, it may be added that the English government later pronounced the whole trial an outrage, and Gourlay was invited back to Canada.
If at this stage a man had come to Canada as governor, big enough and just enough to realize that colonies had some rights, there might have been remedy; for the imperial government, eager to right the wrong, was misled by the legislative councilors, and all at sea as to the source of the trouble. While men were being actually driven out of Canada by the governing ring on the charge of disloyalty, the colonial minister of England was sending secret dispatches to the Governor General, instructing him plainly that if independence was what Canada wanted, then the mother country, rather than risk a second war with the United States, or press conclusions with the Canadas themselves, would willingly cede independence. It is as well to be emphatic and clear on this point. It was not the tyranny of England that caused the troubles of 1837. It was the dishonesty of the ruling rings at Quebec and Toronto, and this dishonesty was possible because of the Constitutional Act of 1791.
Unfortunately, just when imperial statesmen of the modern school were needed, governors of the old school were appointed to Canada. After Sir John Sherbrooke came the Duke of Richmond to Quebec, and his son-in-law, Sir Peregrine Maitland, as lieutenant governor to Ontario. Men of more courtly manners never graced the vice-regal chairs of Quebec and Toronto. Richmond, who was some fifty years of age, had won notoriety in his early days by a duel with a prince of the blood royal, honor on both sides being satisfied by Richmond shooting away a curl from the royal brow; but presto, an Irish barrister takes up the quarrel by challenging Richmond to a second duel for having dared to fight a prince; and here Richmond satisfies claims of honor by a well-directed ball aimed to wound, not kill. Long years after, when the duke became viceroy of Ireland, the Irishman appeared at one of Richmond's state balls.
"Hah," laughed the barrister, "the last time we met, your Grace gave me a ball."
"Best give you a brace of 'em now," retorted the witty Richmond; and he sent his quondam foe invitation to two more balls.
Richmond it was who gave the famous ball before the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The story of his daughter's love match with Sir Peregrine Maitland is of a piece with the rest of the romance in Richmond's life. Richmond and Maitland had been friends in the army, but when the duke began to observe that his daughter, Lady Sarah, and the younger man were falling in love, he thought to discourage the union with a poor man by omitting Maitland's name from invitation lists. When Lady Sarah came downstairs to a ball she surmised that Maitland had not been invited, and, withdrawing from the assembled guests, drove to her lover's apartments. She married Maitland without her father's consent, but a reconciliation had been patched up. Father and son-in-law now came to Canada as governor and lieutenant governor.
The military and social life of both unfitted them to appreciate the conditions in Canada. Socially both were the lions of the hour. As a man and gentleman Richmond was simply adored, and Quebec's love of all the pomp of monarchy was glutted to the full. No more distinguished governor ever played host in the old Château St. Louis; but as rulers, as pacifiers, as guides of the ship of state, Richmond and Maitland were dismal failures. To them Canada's demand for responsible government seemed the rallying cry of an impending republic. "We must overcome democracy or it will overcome us," pronounced Richmond. He failed to see that resistance to the demand for self-government would bring about the same results in Canada as resistance had brought about in the United States, and he could not guess—for the thing was new in the world's history—that the grant of self-government would but bind the colony the closer to the mother land.