Wellington.”
“Victory is not always a certainty even with the ablest Generals in command of the best troops. Many unreflective admirers of Wellington, military men as well as civilians, have asserted that he never engaged in battle but with the certainty of success. He has himself affirmed the contrary, and what he said should be treasured as words of caution to over confident officers in command of armies or detachments. Writing to Sir Charles Stuart, British Envoy at Lisbon, in March, 1811, previous to a new campaign, he said:—“I have but little doubt of success; but as I have fought a sufficient number of battles to know that the result of any one of them was not certain, even with the best arrangements, I am anxious that the Government should adopt preparatory arrangements and take out of the enemy’s way those persons and their families who would suffer if they were to fall into the enemy’s hands.”
Where was Canada drifting in 1863?—The following passage from the Canadian Illustrated News of May, 16, 1863, was widely reprinted in British newspapers, its sentiments meeting the popular British opinion of that time, as it expressed the opinions of the press and people of Canada with but few exceptions. It is given here that Americans who peruse this Book of the Fenian invasion, may see that sympathy for the people who were loyal to the legitimate authority in the United States was in Canada a fact in the years of the war, not an after-thought in this year of the Fenian trouble, 1866, as some of them now allege. One of the exceptions just noted, a Brantford paper, had jeered at the American army then on the Potomac; and spoke lightly of a rupture which it said, “might occur between England and the Federal States at any time.” A rejoinder of rebuke by the present writer, which accorded with the popular voice of Canada, was in these terms, necessarily now abbreviated:
“‘May lead at any time to an open rupture.’ And what might that be to Brantford? Read the selections from the report of the committee of Congress on page 4 of this journal. ‘An open rupture’ means the probable sequences of war; the stoppage of all through traffic on the Buffalo and Lake Huron railroad, whose central works are at Brantford. It means the enemy’s occupation or bombardment of Goderich town from Lake Huron. It means the approach of an army of invasion from Buffalo and Port Dover, and all the ports on the north shore of Lake Erie towards Brantford and Hamilton; and a battle perhaps the bloodiest in the annals of time, the Thermopylæ of Canada fought on the banks of the Grand River near the village of Caledonia, or between that village and the lake shore, but more probably in and around Brantford town. Then will every brick of that place be battered to rubbish heaps, in the battle which decides which army shall hold the key-ground of Canada West. The key-ground of Canada West extends from the Grand River below Caledonia, by way of Brantford to Paris, and northerly to Guelph; from thence to Toronto eastward, and to London westward. The three railways, Buffalo and Lake Huron, Great Western, and Grand Trunk, will be kept open to the last extremity, for though we may be terribly tried, Canada will submit willingly,—never.
“I will not describe in these columns the probable disposition of forces. I direct the reader’s eye through the curtain of the future to take that one glimpse, because of the fervency of a terrible apprehension that the wilful negligence of the Government of Canada to organize, or provide means for organizing a defensive force, may leave the Province to the appalling hazard of seeing a time of war with insufficiency of means to resist the invasion at the beginning.
“What, to Great Britain, are the aspects of the contingency of an ‘open rupture’ or Roebuck’s ‘declaration of war?’ War with the United States, the Southern blockade broken, and secession achieved, involves either the defence of Canada by all the might of the Mother country or abandonment. Abandonment means, the confiscation of every man’s estate, every child’s heritage.
“Then we may see Alabamas playing havoc on the wrong side. The sordid traitors to their Queen and country who, in 1862 and 1863, have built them on the Mersey and the Clyde, in breach of British neutrality, standing accursed in the presence of the British Empire immersed in the three-fold baptism of convulsion famine and pestilence, weird offspring of havoc and of war.
“Such, Mr. Roebuck, of Sheffield, would be the probable result of your crazy counsels. Such, Mr. Laird, of Birkenhead, will possibly be the early convulsion of nations in which your sordid iniquity is preparing to plunge the British Empire.
“And you, the suicidal section of the newspaper press of Canada, happily a minority of the whole, mocking common sense by retaining the otherwise respectable name of ‘conservative,’ outraging all moderation in blindly, prodigally goading to implacable anger our next-door national neighbour, struggling as that great nation has been during the last two years, in the noblest efforts that could engage the sympathy of conservatives—the conservation of nationality, the repression of internal rebellion—what of you in that day which I have depicted; in that conflagration which you will have contributed to kindle? you will stand, not as Cassandra stood, in frantic joy at the havoc of your torch, but you will be whiffed out, extinguished in the dread convulsion of this distracted Province, your types and presses in the custody of the provost-martial. That is where Canada is drifting to.”—Alexander Somerville, ‘Whistler at the Plough.’