The British distinction between Whig and Tory, like the London fog, was supposed not to cross the ocean with these pioneers. But in the wilderness of Huron they throve by ’37 with a vigour derived from transplanting. After the Gourlay affair men learned to put bridles on their tongues; but if, as in Governor Maitland’s opinion, all Reformers were deluded, unprincipled and designing, there were men in Dumfries, Guelph, and from the Wilmot Line westward, who could differ from that opinion and yet sing, “Far from our Fatherland,
Nobly we’ll fall or stand,
For England’s Queen.
In town and forest free,
Britons unconquered, we
Sing with true loyalty,
God save the Queen.”
Dumfries and all about Galt was largely settled by shepherds from the neighbourhood of the Ettrick Shepherd, Galashiels, Abbotsford, and thereabouts. If any of the good Tory sentiments recorded at Ambrose’s are to be believed, the Ettrick Shepherd would have been dismayed had he known what manner of opinion some of his fellow-shepherds held in Canada. Walter Cowan, bailiff to Sir Walter, told his master he wanted to emigrate. “Well, Walter, if you think it best to go,” said his genial employer, “I’ll assist you; but if you ever need to give it up, let me know, and I’ll help bring you back to Scotland.”
But did any ever wish to return? “I have never been home again,” says one, “although I have often wished to see the place, and I don’t think my sons or other Canadians appreciate it half enough; but I never heard of any emigrant wanting to go back to live. If you have thriven here, you are too high to have aught to do with them you left; and those above you, no matter how you have thriven, are too high to have aught to do with you.”
“I was born at Yarrow,” continues a mellow old Radical, bedridden, but bright as the proverbial shilling, “and I was naught but a poor shepherd lad; now, at ninety-three, I am one of the most fortunate men alive. I am sinking down to the grave, bedridden, but I have all my faculties, and I do not use spectacles by day or night. I came out in ’34, and that journey across the Atlantic was my wedding jaunt, for I was married on my way to the ship, sixty-three years ago the 26th of May it was; and there at the foot of my bed they have put the picture of my good lady, where I can see it all day long. In ’35 I felt I must have books, so I said, ‘Is there anyone in this place will help me get some together?’ Then three men, all cobblers, came forward, and among us we started what is now the Mechanics’ Institute—three cobblers and a former shepherd lad; and that was the first public work I put my hand to here. When I was naught but a callant at home I mind how my heart nearly broke because there were no shillings to buy the books I longed for, and when Mr. Chambers brought out that journal for the people and we could buy it for three baubees, I thocht he was the noblest man that ever lived. On the way out there was a lady who listened to our talk, and I said I should never be content without a volume of Pollok, on which I had set all my desires. So when we came through Rochester she bought the book for a shilling, and made me a present of what I had so long wanted; and I thought this must be a fine country where books could be got for a shilling!”
After the arrival of Sir Francis, Judge Jones and Colonel FitzGibbon had their conversation about the bags of pikes and pike-handles and signs of their immediate use. Said the Judge, “You do not mean to say these people are going to rebel?” The Colonel was no Thomas; he firmly did believe. “Pooh-pooh,” said Jones, turning to Sir Francis, who wearied for his pillow. So Sir Francis, humane man, addressed by what he called “the industrious classes,” expressed himself in “plain and homely language,” with as much care as if intended for “either branches of the Legislature:” “The grievances of this Province must be corrected; impartial justice must be administered. The people have asked for it; their Sovereign has ordained it; I am here to execute his gracious commands.” Nor did these industrious classes, one time shepherd laddies and the like, feel more than the Governor himself allowed.
“I was a Scotch Radical, and would have helped Mackenzie all I could—until he drew the sword. That proved to me he was not constitutional, and I wouldna any such doings. I do know that if by my own puny arm, young and without influence as I was, I could have got rid of the Family Compact, I would have done it right willingly. A few days before the outbreak a neighbour told me of the great doings likely to be in Toronto, and I joked wi’ him. But he said, ‘Mind, man, it’s no joking matter, and it’s sure ye’ll see Mackenzie’s men through this way;’ and as I was a Scotch Radical he seemed to think it would be short whiles before I was in gaol. So I laughed, and said, ‘Well, if Mackenzie comes this way I’ll treat him well, for I have eight hogs hung in a row, and he shall have the best.’ I would have fed him and his people, for I would have rid the country of the Family Compact; but he didna mend matters to draw the sword.” Even such meritorious work must not be done in opposition to the Queen and country.
“I count only the hours that are serene,” is the motto on an old Venetian sun-dial. All the Canadian clocks must have stopped and the sun hasted not for a space of years in these exciting days when Canadians, but one remove in complexion from aborigines, allowed not toil, heat, sun, nor isolation to abate the vigour, ingenuity and resolution born of circumstances.
“William Lyon Mackenzie, hot-tempered and impulsive,” says another old Reformer, “had a keen eye for detection of a flaw in an argument; he lived by complaining, and had no thought beyond formulating and promoting grievances. So many years of such a tone of mind totally unfitted him for political life. When a practical question was put before him for a practical answer, the man was utterly at sea; his faculty of constructiveness was obliterated.”
Evidently, he who cannot live happily anywhere will live happily nowhere, and Mackenzie, “yellow and somewhat dwarfish,” bore out the supposed likeness to the Yellow Dwarf, a violent weekly journal published in London by an ultra Radical in 1819 and afterwards. Its editor, Wooler, set it up without copy, mind and composing-stick working together.
The Colonial Advocate and Mackenzie’s pamphlets did their work in the country side. Lords Brougham, Melbourne and Glenelg were gibbeted in Toronto and afterwards burnt on the night of October 22nd, ’37, and the Advocate informed them of it. It also kept up excitement about the “Kentish drillmaster,” corporals MacNab and Robinson, and the general system of rack rent; it stated that a pound loaf was at a shilling Halifax; that woe and wailing, pauperism and crime, were rife in a land never meant for the first three; that many in the new settlements seldom tasted a morsel of bread, and were glad to gnaw the bark off the trees. “But why are want and misery come among us? Ah, ye rebels to Christianity, ye detest the truth, ye shut your ears against that which is right. Your country is taxed, priest-ridden, sold to strangers and ruined ... Like the Iazzaroni of Italy, ye delight in cruelty and distress, and lamentation and woe.” He apostrophized the ruling Pact as false Canadians, Tories, pensioners, profligates, Orangemen, church-men, spies, informers, brokers, gamblers, parasites, knaves of every caste and description. It would be wonderful if each man’s grievance could not find an outlet with such a number and variety of scapegoats. “Never was a vagabond race more prosperous,” he writes, “never did successful villainy rejoice in brighter visions of the future. Ye may plunder, rob with impunity, your feet are on the people’s necks, they are transformed into tame, crouching slaves, ready to be trampled on. Erect your Juggernaut—the people are ready to be sacrificed under the wheel of the idol.” It is strange that he did not quote Culpepper: “They dip in our dish, they sit by our fire; we find them in the dye-fat, the wash-bowls and the powdering tub. They share with the cutler in his box; they have marked and sealed us from head to foot.”