Notwithstanding the writer's perfect sympathy with both of these opinions, it is but fair to state that the Council of Assiniboia did in ordinary times do many things which were most beneficial and helpful to the Red River Community.
Its most distressing failures were in those things which are very essential. (1) Being a compromise body it had no power of progressive development, and in the whole generation of its existence it did practically nothing to advance the public, intellectual, or moral interests of the people. (2) Perhaps its most serious breakdown took place, as we shall see, in the failure of its judicial system. Executive power it had none, as seen in the cases where jail-delivery took place again and again by the friends of the prisoners boldly extricating whom they would. (3) But most alarming and miserable was its failure to act in its moribund days, when it allowed, as we shall see, a mob to seize Fort Garry and bring in an era of disorder which made every self-respecting British subject blush with shame.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE OGRE OF JUSTICE.
The wild life of the prairie or mountain cultivates a spirit of freedom. When individuals must become a law unto themselves, when the absence of steamers, railways, electric power, work-shops, and mills, throws men on their own resources, they find it irksome to obey the law. They regard its restrictions as tyrannical. The prairie horse becomes free. He must be caught with the lasso, he needs to be hobbled near the camp, it is necessary to curb him in his temper, but in his wild state he can provide for himself. He knows the best pasture and seeks it, he is acquainted with the water courses and finds them, he returns or not to his stable or covert at his own sweet will, he fights the wolf or the bear and protects the colts from the wild beasts.
As is the prairie steed, so to a large extent is his master. He is apt to despise civilization, prefers his buckskin coat and fringed leggings, and loves the moccasin rather than the stiff leather shoe.