Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men

by Mrs. Jameson

THE COMMUTED PENSIONERS.

At Penetanguishene there is a hamlet, consisting of twenty or thirty log-houses, where a small remnant of the poor commuted pensioners (in all a hundred and twenty-six persons) now reside, receiving daily rations of food, and some little clothing, just sufficient to sustain life.

From some particular circumstances the case of these commuted pensioners was frequently brought under my observation while I was in Canada, and excited my strongest interest and compassion. I shall give you a brief sketch of this tragedy, for such it truly is; not by way of exciting sympathy, which can now avail nothing, but because it is in many points of view fraught with instruction.

The commuted pensioners were veteran soldiers, entitled to a small yearly pension for wounds or length of service, and who accepted the offer made to them by our government in 1832, to commute their pensions for four years' purchase, and a grant of one hundred acres of land in Canada.

The intention of the government seems to have been to send out able-bodied men, who would thus cease, after a few years, to be a burthen on the country. A part of the money due to them was to be deducted for their voyage and expenses out; of the remaining sum a part was to be paid in London, part at Quebec, and the rest when settled on the land awarded to them. These intentions sound well; unluckily they were not properly acted upon. Some received the whole of the money due to them in England, and drank themselves to death, or squandered it, and then refused to leave the country. Some drank themselves to death, or died of the cholera, at Quebec; and of those who came out, one half were described to me[57] as presenting a list of all the miseries and diseases incident to humanity—some with one arm, some with one leg, bent with old age or rheumatism, lame, halt, and even, will it be believed, blind![58] And such were the men to be set down in the midst of the swamp and forest, there to live as they could. When some few, who had been more provident, presented themselves to the commissary at Toronto for payment of the rest of the money due to them, it was found that the proper papers had not been forwarded; they were written for to the Chelsea Board, which had to apply to the War-office, which had to apply to the Treasury: the papers, after being bandied about from office to office, from clerk to secretary, from secretary to clerk, were sent, at length, after a lapse of eight or ten months, during which time the poor men, worn out with suspense, had taken to begging, or to drinking, in utter despondency; and when the order for their money did at last arrive, they had become useless, abandoned creatures.

Those who were located were sent far up into the bush (there being no disposable government lands nearer), where there were no roads, no markets for their produce if they did raise it; and in this new position, if their hearts did not sink, and their limbs fail at once, their ignorance of farming, their improvidence and helplessness, arising from the want of self-dependence, and the mechanical docility of military service, were moral obstacles stronger than any physical ones. The forest-trees they had to contend with were not more deeply rooted than the adverse habits and prejudices and infirmities they had brought with them.

According to the commissary, the number of those who commuted their pensions was about twelve hundred. Of these it is calculated that eight hundred reached Upper Canada; of these eight hundred, not more than four hundred and fifty are now living; and of these, some are begging through the townships, living on public charity: some are at Penetanguishene: and the greater part of those located on their land, have received from time to time rations of food, in order to avert "impending starvation." To bring them up from Quebec during the dreadful cholera season in 1832, was a heavy expense to the colony, and now they are likely to become a permanent burthen upon the colonial funds, there being no military funds to which they can be charged.

I make no reflection on the commuting the pensions of these poor men at four instead of seven years' purchase: many of the men I saw did not know what was meant by commuting their pension: they thought they merely gave up their pension for four years, and were then to receive it again; they knew nothing of Canada—had never heard of it—had a vague idea that a very fine offer was made, which it would be foolish to refuse. They were like children—which, indeed, disbanded soldiers and sailors usually are.

All that benevolence and prudence could suggest, was done for them by Sir John Colborne[59]: he aided them largely from his own purse—himself a soldier and a brave one, as well as a good man—the wrongs and miseries of these poor soldiers wrung his very heart. The strongest remonstrances and solicitations to the heads of the government at home were sent over in their behalf; but there came a change of ministry; the thing once done, could not be undone—redress was nobody's business—the mother country had got rid of a burthen, and it had fallen on Canada; and so the matter ended;—that is, as far as it concerned the Treasury and the War-office; but the tragedy has not yet ended here. Sir Francis Head, who never can allude to the subject without emotion and indignation, told me, that when he was at Penetanguishene last year, the poor veterans attempted to get up a feeble cheer in his honour, but, in doing so, the half of them fell down. "It was too much for me—too much," added he, with the tears actually in his eyes. As for Sir John Colborne, the least allusion to the subject seemed to give him a twinge of pain.

From this sum of mischief and misery you may subtract a few instances where the men have done better; one of these I had occasion to mention. I have heard of two others, and there may be more, but the general case is as I have stated it.