Sir James now held the Governor responsible for the existing state of affairs; he accused the Colonial Minister of appealing to the sympathies of the House in favour of British interests only. Were the twenty thousand British to be privileged at the expense of the four hundred thousand French? Were the former to be cared for exclusively, their religious sympathies so fostered as to bring about Protestant domination? Again he draws a parallel between what Ireland was and what Canada might become, and in the name of heaven, his eloquence aided by large grey melancholy eyes, adjured them solemnly that such a scourge fall not a second time upon any land under Britain’s sway. “Above all, let not the French-Canadians suppose for a moment that their rights or aspirations are less cared for by us than those of their fellow-adult colonists of our own blood.... Finally, I look upon a distinction in the treatment of races and the division of a population into distinct classes as most perilous in every way and at all times.”
Then Melbourne rose to reply that nothing was as unsafe as analogy, particularly historical analogy.
And Lord Aylmer thought, after an extensive tour of the French province, giving all these questions earnest consideration, that the best way to settle the question was to bring in thousands of the Irish to the colony; the Eastern Townships he estimated could take five hundred thousand, and the valley of the Ottawa one hundred thousand. These painstaking, conscientious governors generally left England laden with minute instructions, and came on the scene with exact directions as to their action. The Canadians, first credulous, afterwards wary and lastly suspicious, shrewdly guessed that many of the “impromptus” were in the Governor’s pocket; they also knew that Lord Glenelg was a Reformer in London and a Conservative in Quebec. They believed that orders publicly given carried with them secret advice not to have them enforced, as they were meant “only to blarney the Radicals.” And Papineau had told them that the same hand which wrote the King’s speech penned the answer to it. When the Irish emigrant did come he brought the cholera with him, and Jean cried out again that legislation and emigration only meant fresh trouble.
The amount of thought bestowed upon the Canadas by these statesmen no one, not even the most discontented Canadian, denied. But the mistaken data from which many of the arguments were drawn maddened some; and aristocratic mannerisms, when brought into contact with the democratic Upper Canadian, gave offence. There was a great deal of the picturesque about Jean Baptiste, and of him much was known; retiring governors and officers took with them bulky note-books full of anecdotes. In Upper Canada there was nothing of the picturesque, and the same note-books, developed into goodly volumes, tell us it in print without flinching. True, those intent on learning had Basil Hall’s Sketches, with accounts of Hall’s five thousand two hundred and thirty-seven miles of travel; but though the former were beautifully done the latter were meagre, and with the exception of Niagara make the Upper Province as uninteresting as its own crows. For foundation they had Charlevoix; but, says Charlevoix, “The horned owl is good eating, many prefer his flesh to chickens. He lives in winter on ground mice which he has caught the previous fall, breaking their legs first, a most useful precaution to prevent their escape, and then fattens them up with care for daily use.” Could housewife with Thanksgiving turkey do more!
Now a good many of those who came after Charlevoix and reported on us took him—perhaps unconsciously, perhaps conscientiously, for Charlevoix was a good man—for a literary model, pushing to the extreme limit their rights and privileges as travellers. They read, did these mighty and well-meaning statesmen, in their leisure hours. Nor in later years were the English less credulous when Canadian curiosities came to them bodily. When a party of Indians were nightly attracting large and wondering masses of the classes, one of the Royal Household, with two others as white as himself, one of the trio six feet two of apparent savagedom, arrayed themselves as magnificent Bois Brûlé, a Sac and a Sioux respectively, to appear before a brilliant array of fashion, wealth and beauty, carry out an unusually thrilling programme and be loaded with gifts by the spectators. The “interpreter” of the three got into rather a mess through his attempt to interpret too much, and in a final frenzy of dancing they danced off some paint made liquid by their desire to be honest in giving enough for their lavish remuneration. An earl in the audience failed to recognize his brother in one of the chief actors, voice and speech being disguised by a rifle bullet held in the mouth. The sequel was the return of the presents and a chase home to lodgings, followed by a yelling crowd of ragamuffins who turned out to be truer savages than those whom they termed Hopjibbeways. The Indian came first in romantic interest to the Englishman, particularly when got ready for an audience by a clever manager. To hear a handsome, strapping Bois Brûlé sing “To the land of my fathers, white man, let me go,” was enough to draw tears. Next in point of interest to this link between red and white came the habitant. The Upper Canadian was very tame after these two, and Toronto was but “a place of considerable importance ... in the eyes of its inhabitants.”
Another writes of travel by water as he finds it in America: “There is no toothbrush in the country, simply I believe the article is entirely unknown to the American toilet. A common towel, however, passes from hand to hand, and suffices for the perfunctory ablutions of the whole party on board.” No man in England would take the trouble to contradict this; it was much easier to buy the book, read, be amused, and believe—as he did with the Indian party.
Much as Mackenzie was instrumental in doing for his country, he was scarcely a person to make his province interesting when he presented himself in London.
“Now Willie’s awa’ frae the land o’ contention,
Frae the land o’ mistake and the friends o’ dissension;
He’s gane o’er the waves as an agent befitting
Our claims to support in the councils o’ Britain,”
sang a Canadian bard in 1832, when Mackenzie, with his monster grievance book under his arm, set sail for the Home Office.
The quiet of the vessel after his late life in Little York was irksome; so this stormy petrel went aloft one night in a howling tempest, no doubt in a fit of home-sickness, and remained for hours at the masthead. Scarcely had he descended when one of the sails was blown away.
“Then there the Reformers shall cordially meet him,
An’ there his great namesake, King William, shall greet him.”
He lost no time in putting himself in communication with Hume, Roebuck, Cobbett and O’Connell, and with Lord Goderich, then Colonial Secretary; but just how far the meeting was cordial, with those from whom cordiality was expected, only a long comparison of data can show. Even then our opinions had weight, as in ’31 when Brougham wrote: “Dear Lord Grey, the enclosed is from a Canadian paper; they have let you off well, as being priggish and having a Newcastle burr, and also as not being like O’Connell.” Mackenzie was in the nick of time to see that wonderful sight for eyes such as his—a great aristocracy bowing to the will of a great people—to hear the third reading of the Reform Bill. He was lucky enough to get into that small gallery in the House of Lords which accommodates only some eighty persons. He noticed that but few peers had arrived, and that a number of members from the Lower House stood about. To stand they were forced, or sit upon the matting, for there were neither chairs nor benches for them—a state of things highly displeasing to the fiery little democratic demagogue perched aloft, anxious to hear and determined that others should yet hear him.