The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation. Volume 1

by Charles Roger

The income this year was £36,417, and the civil expenditure £36,213.

In Upper Canada, Francis Gore, Esquire, it has been previously intimated, was Lieutenant-Governor. He first met Parliament on the 2nd of February, 1807. Twelve Acts were passed, the most remarkable of which were the Act to establish Public Schools in every district of the Province, £800 having been appropriated for that purpose, with the view of giving to each of the eight districts of the Province, a schoolmaster having a salary of £100 a year; the Act imposing licenses on Hawkers, Pedlars, and Petty Chapmen,—to the amount of three pounds for every pedlar, with twenty shillings additional for a hawker with a horse; eight pounds for every chapman sailing with a decked vessel and selling goods on board;—five pounds for the same description of traders sailing in an open boat; and eight pounds on transient merchants; and the Act for the Preservation of Salmon, which permitted that fish to be taken with a spear or hook, but prohibited the use of a net in the Newcastle and Home Districts.

When next the Parliament met, on the 20th January, 1808, the same fears that were felt in Lower Canada, being felt in Upper Canada, an Act was passed to raise and train the Militia; £1,600 was granted towards the construction of roads and bridges; £200 of yearly salary was granted to an Adjutant-General of Militia; £75 additional was given to the Clerks of the Assembly; £62 10s. per ton was to be the price of hemp purchased under an Act of Parliament for the encouragement of its growth in the Province; an Act for the more equal representation of the Commons was passed; and Collectors of Rates were to enter into bonds of £200 security.

On the 2nd February, 1809, the Parliament of Upper Canada was again convened. An Act was adopted for quartering and billeting the Militia and His Majesty's troops on certain occasions. Householders were to furnish them with house-room, fire, and utensils for cooking. Officers, in case of an invasion, having a warrant from a Justice of the Peace, could impress horses, carriages, and oxen, on regulated hire. Upper Canada was evidently preparing for an expected struggle, as well as Lower Canada. £1,045 was this session granted for the Clerks of Parliament and contingencies, including the erection of a Light House on Gibraltar Point; Menonists and Tunkers were permitted to affirm in Courts of Justice; £250 was appropriated for a bridge across the Grand River; and £1,600 was granted for bridges and highways. In the next session of the Fifth Parliament, which Governor Gore assembled at York, on the 1st of February, 1810, £2,000 were granted for the roads and bridges; the Common Gaols were declared to be Houses of Correction for some purposes; a duty of £40 a year was set upon a Billiard Table set up for hire or gain; £606 were applied to printing Journals, Clerks of Parliament, and building Light Houses. The Act establishing a Superior Court of Criminal and Civil jurisdiction, and regulating a Court of Appeals, was repealed; and £250 additional was granted for the erection of a bridge across the Grand River.

To return to Lower Canada, Lieutenant-General Sir James Henry Craig arrived at Quebec in the capacity of Governor General, on the 18th October, 1807, in the frigate Horatio, and relieved Mr. President Dunn of the government, on the 24th of October. Mr. Secretary Ryland was very busy at the time. He was flattering himself, he told the Bishop of Quebec, that the Secretary of State would have received from him a series of despatches which would "give that functionary a general and useful knowledge of the state of things in Lower Canada." There were some who had exerted themselves to defame and injure the President, with a view to their own private interests. He particularly alluded to that contemptible animal, Chief Justice Alcock; to his worthy friend and coadjutor, of whose treacherous, plausible, and selfish character, he had never entertained a doubt; and to that smoothfaced swindler, whom the Lieutenant-Governor had taken so affectionately by the hand, as the man, who, of all others, came nearest in point of knowledge, virtue, and ability, to the great Tom of Boston. He would add to these worthies a pudding-headed commanding officer (General Brock!) who, if the President had given in to all his idle "Camelian" projects, would have introduced utter confusion into the whole system, civil and military. He anxiously expected Sir James Craig, whose established fame assured him that a better choice could not have been made. And he thought it probable that if his dear, dear Lordship, should not have had an opportunity of honoring him with a recommendation to His Excellency of established fame, his services would be dispensed with, and then he could join his family in England. But should he remain as Secretary to General Craig, he had it in contemplation to lay before him a copy of his letter to Lord S., concerning ecclesiastical affairs, though it would not be prudent to do so until he had ascertained how far the General's sentiments accorded with his own. In a postscript to his letter to the dear Lord Bishop, Mr. Ryland goes into raptures. He had just received a message from Mr. Dunn, telling him that the Governor General had arrived. He dressed himself immediately and got on board the frigate with Mr. Dunn's answer to the General's despatch, before the ship cast anchor, and before any of the other functionaries knew even that the Governor General was at hand. He found the General ill in bed, but was so politely received, that the General begged that he would do him the favor to continue his secretary. He never was so pleased with any person at first sight. Although he saw him to every disadvantage, the General appeared to be a most amiable, a most intelligent, and a most decided character. He, (the General,) landed about one o'clock, but was so unwell that he begged to be left alone, and Mr. Ryland only saw him for an instant. But that curious beast, the Chief Justice, after intruding himself with unparalleled assurance, upon the General, before he landed, forced himself again upon him, at the Chateau, when every body but the President had withdrawn, and most impudently sat out the latter. He did so for the purpose of recommending as secretaries, his father-in-law, and a young man named Brazenson, or some such name, whom he had brought out with him from England, but his scheme entirely failed, and his folly would fall upon his own pate! Mr. Ryland had transacted business with the Governor every day since he had landed, and had even drawn up a codicil to his will, the poor, decided Governor, who had adopted Mr. Ryland, was so ill. Nay, Mr. Ryland, for the love of this one honorable and just man, could have almost forgotten that he was surrounded by scoundrels, and would bury in oblivion the mean jealousies of a contemptible self-sufficiency, and the false professions of smiling deceit. But should it please Almighty God to remove the incomparable man, and should there be a chance that the civil government of the province should be again disunited from the military command, he did hope that the dear, dear Lord, would favor him with his utmost interest towards enabling him to make the exchange which Mrs. Ryland would tell his dear Lordship, the Bishop, her husband had in contemplation.

Sir James Craig was an officer of good family. He was one of the Craigs of Dalnair and Costarton, in Scotland, but was born in Gibraltar, where his father had the appointment of Civil and Military Judge. He had seen much service in the camp and in the field. In 1770 he was appointed Aid-de-Camp to General Sir Robert Boyd, then Governor of Gibraltar, and obtained a Company in the 47th Regiment of the line. Having gone to America, with his regiment, in 1774, he was present at the battle of Bunker's Hill, where he was severely wounded. In 1776, he accompanied his regiment to Canada, commanding his company at the action at Trois Rivières, and he afterwards commanded the advanced guard in the expulsion of Arnold and his "rebels." He was wounded at Hubertown, in 1777, and was present at Ticonderoga in the same year. He was wounded again at Freeman's Farm, and was at Saratoga with Burgoyne, and after that disastrous affair was selected to carry home the despatches. On his arrival in England, he was promoted to a majority in the 82nd Regiment, which he accompanied to Nova Scotia, in 1778, to Penobscot, in 1779, and to North Carolina, in 1781, where he was engaged in a continued scene of active service. He was promoted to the rank of Major General, in 1794, and the following year was sent on the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, where, in the reduction and conquest of that most important settlement, with the co-operation of Admiral Sir G. K. Elphinstone and Major General Clarke, he attained to the highest pitch of military reputation. Nor were his merits less conspicuous, it is said, in the admirable plans of civil regulation, introduced by him in that hostile quarter, when invested with the chief authority, civil and military, till succeeded in that position by the Earl of Macartney, who was deputed by the King to invest General Craig with the Red Ribbon, as a mark of his sovereign's sense of his distinguished services. Sir James served, subsequently, in India and in the Mediterranean, where he contracted a dropsy, the result of an affection of the liver. This was the officer, of an agreeable but impressive presence, stout, and rather below the middle stature, manly and dignified in deportment, positive in his opinions, and decisive in his measures, though social, polite, and affable, who was sent out to govern Canada because a rupture with the United States was considered probable. Sir James on arrival at Quebec did not, however, consider hostilities imminent. Nor did he immediately organize the militia. But he lauded the Canadians for the heroic spirit which they had manifested. One of his first acts was to release from prison a number of persons convicted of insubordination, and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment in the gaol of Montreal. The militia of the parish of L'Assomption, in the district of Montreal, had formed a painful exception in the spirit which they exhibited on being called upon to enrol for service, to that which had been exhibited everywhere else. But the rioting had been immediately suppressed, and the rioters punished by the ordinary Courts at Montreal. In gaol the rioters manifested contrition, promised good behaviour for the future, and Sir James, overlooking the faults of the few in consideration of the general merit, set the prisoners free. On the 29th of January, 1808, he convened the Legislature. He regretted, in his opening speech, that there was little probability of a speedy cessation of hostilities, in Europe. He congratulated the "honorable gentlemen," and "gentlemen," on the capture of Copenhagen and the Danish fleet, defending the morality of the offensive measures against Denmark. He lamented the discussions that had taken place between His Majesty's government and that of America. He hoped that the differences would be so accommodated as to avert the calamities of war between two nations of the same blood. He intended that no means should be neglected to prepare for the worst. Though the militia had been selected, he did not think it necessary to call them together, no immediate circumstance seeming to require it. He had appointed commissioners for the erection of new gaols in Quebec and Montreal. And he expected perfect harmony and co-operation between the legislative bodies and himself, as the representative of the sovereign. All that Sir James wished to be done the Assembly promised to do.

In those days not only was the Chief Justice a member of the Upper House, but the Judges of the King's Bench were not ineligible for election to the Lower House, and some, or all of them, contrived to get seats there. It does not appear that the Chief Justice was in the Upper House a mere government tool, for Sir Robert Milnes most bitterly complained to the Duke of Portland, of the opposition to certain measures, which he had met with, from Chief Justice Osgoode, who, even in public, treated him contemptuously. But it is yet probable that some of the judges in the Assembly, were less the representatives of the people who had elected them, than the mouth-pieces of the government, to whom they were indebted for their appointments to the Bench, and on whose good pleasure, their continuance on the judgment seat, depended. Be that as it may, the Assembly were jealous of their presence in the House, and accordingly, this session of Parliament, a motion was introduced into the Assembly, declaring it to be expedient that the Judges of the Court of King's Bench, the Provincial Judges of the Districts of Three Rivers and Gaspé, and all Commissioned Judges of any Courts that might afterwards be established, should be incapable of being elected, or of sitting, or of voting in the House of Assembly. The motion was adopted, and a bill framed upon the resolution, passed the Assembly. Unfortunately, heedless of the pressure of public opinion, the Legislative Council threw out the bill! The Assembly were greatly incensed, and the idea of expelling the judges was entertained; but for a while relinquished.

Mr. Ezekiel Hart appeared at the Bar of the House to take his seat for Three Rivers, Mr. Lee, the previous representative of that town, had died in the course of the previous session, and Mr. Hart had been elected to succeed him. Mr. Hart was a merchant of good standing. Of the most spotless private character, he stood in high esteem with his neighbours and fellow townsmen. But Mr. Hart was not faultless. He was, by birth, education, and religion, a Jew. When he prayed, he placed the ten commandments next his heart. In him, those devoted members of the Society of Jesus, found neither a sympathizer nor a persecutor. A Christian Legislative Assembly, like that of Canada, of which Sir James Craig afterwards privately expressed an opinion so ludicrously high, could not be contaminated with the presence of a Jew. By a vote of twenty-one to five, it was resolved:—"That Ezekiel Hart, Esquire, professing the Jewish religion, cannot take a seat, nor sit, nor vote in this House." Ezekiel departed. The word "baruch," was on his tongue, the signification of which, like that of the French word "sacré," may signify, according to the humour of the utterer, either an anathema or a blessing. The Assembly being, however, ignorant of the Hebrew tongue, Mr. Hart was not sent to gaol for breach of privilege, nor was he even required to apologize. These were the chief topics of debate, and much time was occupied with them. A sum was voted to repair the Castle of St. Louis then tottering to decay. The Militia and the Alien Acts were continued for another year. A bill for the trial of controverted elections was passed, and in all thirty-five bills were carried through, all of which His Excellency, the Governor, sanctioned, except that relative to gaols in Gaspé, which, though afterwards sanctioned, was reserved for the pleasure of the King to be expressed on it. On the 14th of April the Parliament was prorogued. The speech was somewhat lengthy, and on the whole, it was a good one. Sir James was induced to put a period to the session that he might be enabled to issue writs for a new House. The critical situation of affairs made him anxious for legislative assistance, under circumstances, that would not be liable to interruption from the expiration of the period, for which one of the branches was chosen. He was glad that so much attention had been paid to business. He was very much pleased to find that a sum of money had been granted for the repair of the Chateau. Events of great magnitude had taken place in Europe. Napoleon had succeeded in exciting Russia, Austria, and Prussia, to hostilities, against England, and the Ministers of those Courts had demanded their passports to retire from the Court of St. James. Napoleon had done more than that. The disturber of mankind had subverted the government of Portugal, but that magnanimous Prince, Don Pedro, had emigrated with his Court to the Brazils, rather than submit to the degrading chains of such a master. His Majesty, the King of Great Britain, had offered the Americans reparation, immediately and spontaneously, for the unauthorised attack upon the Chesapeake, but the American government taking advantage of the state of affairs in Europe, were endeavoring to complicate the difficulty, to the injury of that power which alone stood between it and an inevitable doom to the worst of tyranny. And in conclusion, he begged the representatives of the people to instruct their constituents, by the influence of their education and knowledge; to point out to them a sense of their duties in due subordination to the laws; to advise them to be faithfully attached to the Crown; to let them into the knowledge of their true situation; to conceal not the difficulties by which the empire was surrounded, but, at the same time, to point out the miseries Britain was combatting to avoid; and to assure them that while Britons were united among themselves, there was no dread of the result of the present struggle between liberty and despotism.

The war had had its effect upon the trade of the country. The revenue had fallen off nearly £1,000, being only £35,943, while the civil expenditure had increased to £47,231.

In May the general election took place. The contests were not marked by much bitterness. As before, in the larger towns, the two origins were equally represented. Even in the counties, several gentlemen of English extraction, were returned to the Assembly. Mr. James Stuart, the Solicitor General, now no friend to the Governor nor to his sub rosa adviser, Mr. Ryland, was returned for the East Ward of Montreal. Mr. Stuart, a lawyer of excellent acquirements, of great independence of spirit, and of extraordinary mental capacity, instead of being raised to the Attorney-Generalship, on the elevation of Mr. Sewell to the Chief Justiceship, in the room of Mr. Chief Justice Alcock, who had died in August, had been superseded by Mr. Edward Bowen, a barrister of very limited acquirements, and, being then only a young man, professionally, very inexperienced. Nay, he was soon afterwards dismissed from the Solicitor-Generalship, by the Governor, to whom he had, in some mysterious way, given offence. The Honorable Mr. Panet, Speaker of the Assembly for the four previous parliaments, was nominated for the Upper Town of Quebec, and went to the hustings. He presided at an election meeting, at which there was something like plain-speaking, a particular kind of speaking most distasteful to the Acting Paymaster General of Burgoyne's army, an army with which even Sir James Craig had himself served. All the official class of the city, "including the resident military officers, and dependents upon the Commissariat, Ordnance, and other departments in the garrison," entitled to vote, voted in favor of another French gentleman, more acceptable to the government. The Quebec Mercury was strongly opposed to the Speaker, who, by his plainspeaking, had become offensive to Mr. Ryland, the confidant of Sir James Craig. Mr. Panet lost his election for Quebec, but was returned to the Assembly for Huntingdon. The Governor and his Secretary were very much displeased, and the Mercury was inspired to speak against the bilious spleen of the triumphant Panet, who was connected with that vile print, the Canadien. During the election for Quebec, a handbill had appeared, calling the government feeble. Those who issued that handbill, the Mercury exultingly remarked, would have felt that they were not quite under the government of King Log. The Canadien was, in abuse, the freest of any paper in the province. It was licentious. It no more consulted that which it was expedient for a free press to do, than did the House of Assembly consider that which was suitable to it, a few years past, on the article of privilege. Mr. Ex-Speaker Panet was connected with the Canadien. He was also a Colonel of Militia. It occurred to Mr. Ryland that the position of a militia officer was incompatible with the proprietorship of a newspaper. Accordingly, a few days after the return of Mr. Panet for Huntingdon, Mr. "H. W. R." the Private Secretary of the Governor General, was directed to inform Messrs. J. H. Panet, Lieutenant-Colonel, P. Bedard, Captain, J. T. Taschereau, Captain and Aid-Major, J. L. Borgia, Lieutenant, and F. Blanchet, Surgeon, proprietors of the Canadien, that the Governor-in-Chief considered it necessary for His Majesty's service to dismiss them from their situations as Colonel, Captain, Aid-Major, Lieutenant, and Surgeon, of the Militia. With regard to the Honorable Mr. Panet, in particular, His Excellency could place no confidence in the services of a person whom he had good reason for considering as one of the proprietors of a seditious and libellous publication, disseminated through the province, with great industry, to vilify His Majesty's government, to create a spirit of dissatisfaction and discontent among his subjects, and to breed disunion and animosity between two races. Had it been the purpose of the Canadien and of its proprietors to breed discord between the two races of settled inhabitants, the censure of Sir James Craig would have been deserved. But that was not its purpose. It aimed only at equality of privileges, and complained of the sway of officials having no abiding interest in the country. It was a war between the imported official class and the native-born or naturalized classes which the Canadien waged. Doubtless, it went, occasionally, too far. Doubtless, it forgot to make such distinctions between the officials and the traders or agriculturists of British origin. Doubtless, it did remember that the French Canadians had been captives at the conquest, and their souls revolted at the idea of being lorded over still, though no longer captives, but British subjects, anxious for the honour of their King, and ready to defend him from his enemies.