When Mackenzie made his appearance in Galt in ’33 a very partial local critic calls him somewhat of a political firebrand; he certainly was full of what in Lower Canada just then was called “fusées de la rhétorique.” He spoke from the south window of the village inn, with the usual results. One “Whose rhetoric could rouse the Olympian host,
And scare into fits poor Demosthenes’ ghost,”
was no commonplace figure. Set on steel springs, the hands opening and shutting, the light-blue eyes sending keen and piercing glances through the ranks of “these people” before him, who were already in the best of training from the local agitator Mr. Bennett, the master of Liberty Cottage, “this fellow” spoke in a way direct and easy to understand. His writing was sometimes verbose, unequal and amateurish; but in speech “the superlative littleness of the man” was lightened by gleams of humour, facial expression and gesture which would not commit themselves to paper, nor did they hinder the deadly earnestness that carried conviction to any wavering mind. Now as he spoke a great clatter arose from an incoming crowd which bore a blackened, bedizened and hideous effigy of himself; the likeness was so good that the sight of it provoked a smile from the original. He paused in his speech and looked on in silent and grim amusement. Had he but known it, the lay figure held almost an allegory of the real. It was stuffed with gunpowder and other combustibles, and, as its original was destined to do, went off prematurely; it knocked down a man or two, but did no great harm. The figure wore a pair of very good boots, which someone in the crowd, not so well furnished, begrudged. The man worked his way through, seized the burnt brogues, and made off with them as fast as his legs could carry him.
It is marvellous the bandit was not arrested as a suspect; it took very small evidence to make a case. One Irish Loyalist, John McCrea, was sent a summons to join the company then forming in Guelph for the front; he considered his farm and home duties of more importance, and was at once reported as “disaffected.” Shortly afterwards he went to the general store kept by Captain Lamphrey, a retired English officer, and was asked, as was the usual custom, into the parlour for a glass of wine. To his surprise he there found three others, a bench of magistrates, who without further ado began to try him. Why had he not responded to the command to join the corps? Because he had private and important domestic concerns on hand. He asked for the name of his accuser and the specific accusation, but in reply was told he must give a bond for his good behaviour. This was surely the Star Chamber, Scroggs and Jeffreys, the secret-service principle of Mackenzie’s written and spoken diatribes, and Mr. McCrea’s justified Irish obstinacy rose as a wall against the combination. One of the trio offered to become the bondsman, but the accused contended its acceptance would be an admission of guilt. Mr. McCrea insisted upon knowing their authority; they could not furnish it, and there was an end of the matter.
Captain Lamphrey’s treats were full of unexpected results. One of the loyal, who carried despatches to Hamilton, went to him one early morning with signs of too many glasses already apparent and asked for more. The captain could not refuse, knew the despatch must go, and saw its safety was already endangered. He took H. M.’s special messenger to the cellar and drew a glass of vinegar. “Drink it, man; down with it! down with it!” which was done, and the lately demoralized special messenger was “as sober as a clock.”
It was a joke to the Wellington neighbourhood that one company should be headed by a Captain Poore and another by a Captain Rich. A brusque Yorkshireman, William Day, volunteered in Poore’s company. The roads were very bad, food was scarce, and as Day got hungry his loyalty waned. At last he demanded something to eat. This was flat rebellion; Poore called it insubordination, and said that instead of comforts Day should have night guard, and stand upon his feet until the small hours lengthened.
“So you won’t give me anything to eat?”
“No.”
“Then I know where I can get it, and that’s at Guelph. And I’d like to see the man that’d stand between me and that door.”
No one offered to do so, and he walked back twenty-six miles, “got his victuals,” and so ended his active military service.
Captain Poore had been endeavouring for two or three years to form a volunteer rifle company. There was little time, and less inclination, to play at soldiering; but by ’35, when agitation among the progressive begot anxiety in the less progressive, he succeeded in forming a company sixty strong, which drilled every Saturday in a corner of his own farm. Many of the settlers were not gushing in their loyalty to the powers that were, and, while not allying themselves with Mackenzie, “had the governing party been drowned in the depths of the sea not a solitary cry would have gone up for them.” Even the schoolboys were keen politicians, and regarded those who dwelt in the shadow of the Pact as very poor types of humanity. Those who were of the required age and ordered to meet for drill every two weeks at the cross-roads, but who had not sufficient courage of their convictions to refuse service, performed it in a half-hearted manner. The most regular attendants were the schoolboys. They snowballed the men and snowballed the captain, made game of the execution of the various military movements and of Mr. Hiscock. The latter was the drill-instructor, an old soldier, who dressed partly in military uniform and carried a cane. Pompously he walked back and forth, contemptuous of the roll-call. One little Englishman, when going through the required answers, was asked, “Married or single?” “Single, sir, but under promise,” was the reply.
Great, then, was the excitement when the news came that “Toronto had fallen.” On the day of the engagement at Montgomery’s Captain Poore and his men left Guelph, and Lamphrey, by now a colonel, with Colonel Young was left in charge of the portion which was to protect Guelph. The knowledge that Galt and Eramosa were strongly disaffected did not tend to reassure the home-guard. It was feared that Guelph, too, might “fall.” For days men busied themselves running bullets, and it was soothing to know that a quantity of powder lay in the octagon house should they keep possession of it—such stores, no doubt, would be seized by the rebelliously inclined once they were in action. In the town of Guelph itself it was proudly claimed that only one man was disloyal, and that he, poor fellow, was only driven so by too long and silent study of grievances, “an honest, decent man otherwise.” As the chief evidence against him was that he went through Preston and other outlying hamlets to buy up all the lead he could find, it seems rather hard that when this was reported he should be apprehended, taken to Hamilton, and lie there in gaol for six or eight months without trial. Mr. James Peters, maliciously termed Captain Peters and said to be at the head of fifty men who were on their way to burn Guelph, was awakened before daylight on the morning of December 13th by the entry of sixteen armed men; the leader drew his glittering sword by Mr. Peters’ bedside and ordered him to get at once into one of the sleighs waiting at the door. After leaving the Peters’ farm these valiant special constables stopped at the house of a farmer magistrate, who not only bade them welcome, put up their horses, and gave the entire party a good breakfast, but delivered an encouraging homily to the magistrate in charge—an officiously zealous Irishman—saying he was glad to see the latter perform his duty so faithfully. When they were well refreshed and ready for the balance of the journey they took their departure, after arresting the host’s son. After that this farmer was not quite so loyal, nor had he such exalted views of a magistrate’s duty; moreover, he wished that he had saved that breakfast. The document upon which the arrests were founded set forth: “That (those enumerated) not having the fear of God in their hearts, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, and entirely withdrawing the love, and true and due obedience, which every subject of our said lady the Queen should, and of right ought to, bear towards our said present lady the Queen, and wickedly devising and intending to disturb the peace and public tranquillity of this Province ... on divers other days and times, with force and arms at the township of Eramosa, in the said district, unlawfully, maliciously and traitorously, did compass, imagine, and intend to bring and put our said lady the Queen to death.” In spite of efforts of judge and Crown, a jury took eight minutes to return a verdict of “Not guilty.” But in the meantime the building in which the prisoners were confined at Hamilton had been used by Government to store fifty kegs of gunpowder, protected by sand. Early in the morning the seven men, asleep in their two narrow cells, were roused to the fact that the tinder-wood building was on fire. They shouted until they were hoarse, pounded with all their strength, but failed to wake the sleeping guards. Exhausted, they threw themselves on the floor to await the horrible fate which seemed inevitable. But an alarm from without at last roused the guards, who at once set about saving the gunpowder, and gave no thought to the anxiety and terror of those within the cells. For long there was a popular idea that the fire was malicious incendiarism, but there appears to be no definite ground for such a belief.