Toronto of Old / Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario

by Henry Scadding

It was intended originally that lanterns should have surmounted and given additional elevation to both buildings, but these were discarded, together with tin as the material of the roofing, with a view to cutting down the cost, and thereby enabling the builder to make the pilasters of cut stone instead of "Roman cement." John Hayden was the contractor. The cost, as reduced, was to be £3,800 for the two edifices.

We extract from the Canadian Review for July, 1824, published by H. H. Cunningham, Montreal, an account of the commencement of the new buildings: "On Saturday, the 24th instant, [April, 1824,] his Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor, attended by his staff, was met by the Honourable the Members of the Executive Council, the Judges of the Court of King's Bench, and the Gentlemen of the Bar, with the Magistrates and principal inhabitants of York, in procession, for the purpose of laying the foundation-stone of the new Jail and Court House about to be erected in this Town.—A sovereign and half-sovereign of gold, and several coins of silver and copper, of the present reign, together with some newspapers and other memorials of the present day, were deposited in a cavity of the stone, over which a plate of copper, bearing an appropriate inscription, was placed; and after his Excellency had given the first blow, with a hammer handed to him for the purpose, the ceremony concluded with several hearty cheers from all who were present.—If the question were of any real importance," the writer adds, "we might have the curiosity to inquire why the deposit was made in the south-east, rather than in the north-east corner of the building?"—a query that indicates, as we suppose, a deviation from orthodox masonic usage.

In one of the lithographic views published in 1836 by Mr. J. Young, the Jail and Court House, now spoken of, are shewn. Among the objects inserted to give life to the scene, the artist has placed in the foreground a country waggon with oxen yoked to it, in primitive fashion.—Near the front entrance of the Jail, stood, to the terror of evil-doers, down to modern times, a ponderous specimen of the "parish stocks" of the old country, in good condition.

After 1825, the open area in front of the Jail and Court House became the "Public Place" of the town. Crowds filled it at elections and other occasions of excitement. We have here witnessed several scenes characteristic of the times in which they occurred. We here once saw a public orator run away with, in the midst of his harangue. This was Mr. Jesse Ketchum, who was making use of a farmer's waggon as his rostrum or platform, when the vehicle was suddenly laid hold of, and wheeled rapidly down King Street, the speaker maintaining his equilibrium in the meanwhile with difficulty. Mr. Ketchum was one of the most benevolent and beneficent of men. We shall have occasion to refer to him hereafter.

It was on the same occasion, we believe, that we saw Mr. W. L. McKenzie assailed by the missiles which mobs usually adopt. From this spot we had previously seen the same personage, after one of his re-elections, borne aloft in triumph, on a kind of pyramidal car, and wearing round his neck and across his breast a massive gold chain and medal (both made of molten sovereigns), the gift of his admirers and constituents: in the procession, at the same time, was a printing-press, working as it was conveyed along in a low sleigh, and throwing off handbills, which were tossed, right and left, to the accompanying crowd in the street.

The existing generation of Canadians, with the lights which they now possess, see pretty clearly, that the agitator just named, and his party, were not, in the abstract, by any means so bad as they seemed: that, in fact, the ideas which they sought to propagate are the only ones practicable in the successful government of modern men.

Is there a reader nowadays that sees anything very startling in the enunciation of the following principles?—"The control of the whole revenue to be in the people's representatives; the Legislative Council to be elective; the representation in the House of Assembly to be as equally proportioned to the population as possible; the Executive Government to incur a real responsibility; the law of primogeniture to be abolished; impartiality in the selection of juries to be secured; the Judiciary to be independent; the military to be in strict subordination to the civil authorities; equal rights to the several members of the community; every vestige of Church-and-State union to be done away; the lands and all the revenues of the country to be under the control of the country; and education to be widely, carefully and impartially diffused; to these may be added the choice of our own Governor."

These were the political principles sought to be established in the Governments of Canada by the party referred to, as set forth in the terms just given (almost verbatim) in Patrick Swift's Almanac, a well known popular, annual brochure of Mr. McKenzie's. It seems singular now, in the retrospect, that doctrines such as these should have created a ferment.

But there is this to be said: it does not appear that there were, at the time, in the ranks of the party in power, any persons of very superior intellectual gifts or of a wide range of culture or historical knowledge: so that it was not likely that, on that side, there would be a ready relinquishment of political traditions, of inherited ideas, which their possessors had never dreamt of rationally analyzing, and which they deemed it all but treason to call in question.