| Allan Stewart, Esq., Township of McNab. | } |
CHAPTER XVII.
FINAL DECISION OF THE GOVERNMENT—BURNING OF DUNCAN M'NAB'S (ISLA) HOUSE, BARN, AND PROVISIONS—WATER STOPPED ON MR. JOHN PARIS.
In August the long suspense was ended. The Government had decided. The settlers were free. Mr. Allan's report was adopted, and made the basis of Executive action. An Order-in-Council was passed that McNab should immediately give up to the Government all undelivered patents he had drawn up for any of the settlers, and his patent for the timber—that the settlers were to receive their lands at the valuation put on them by Mr. Allan, which they were to pay to the Crown Lands Department in four annual instalments—that all labor they had performed for McNab, and all rents they had paid to him were to be deducted from these payments, and all these to be withheld from the money payable to the Chief, as fixed by the Order-in-Council of September, 1839. Thus McNab's £4,000 was reduced to £2,500, of which he had already received £1,000. Many of the settlers had paid by these means for their lands in full. McNab's receipts for rent were accepted as payment. They now flocked in with their first instalments. Mr. Duncan McLachlin and Mr. Donald Mohr McNaughton were the first two who commenced the joyful expenditure. They were no longer feudal serfs. The lands were their own in perpetuity. No landlord could now lord it over them with arbitrary haughtiness. No Highland Chieftain, his heirs, or successors, could claim their allegiance, or call them "my tenants." They felt they were free—that in four years no one could put a trespasser's foot on their soil. An universal jubilee pervaded the whole township. The leaders of the movement, Mr. Allan Stewart, Donald McIntyre, Mr. McNab, and others, were feted to their heart's content. Fresh energies were infused into their labors. The clearances began to increase, and new inroads were made in the forest. Fresh settlers came; New Glasgow and Lochwinnoch were occupied, and all the arable lands taken up. The people had, single-handed and unaided, achieved the victory.—Looked down upon by the neighboring townships as rebels, as ungrateful malcontents and as a discontented rabble, from them they received neither advice nor assistance. All the magnates of Perth beheld them with a holy horror, and did all that lay within the scope of their feeble efforts to oppose them—all but Mr. Hincks and Mr. Malcolm Cameron.—They stood true, but the battle was fought and the victory achieved before these gentlemen came into the field. The spirit of their ancestors—that same British pluck that obtained the Magna Charta, swept away the throne of the Charles's, obtained the Bill of Rights, enthroned William III. and established popular and constitutional government in the old country—animated the settlers in McNab to struggle even against hope, to battle for their rights—and amid poverty, persecution, and imprisonment, win one of the greatest moral victories ever recorded in the historic annals of Canada, or of any other country. They were essentially alone in all these struggles—their triumph was the more glorious, their victory more satisfactory and praiseworthy.
Deprived of his township, stripped of his power, the Chief would not forego his revenge. Now that everything had been arranged, a spirit of reconciliation might have supervened and he could have settled down and still lived happily among the people. But no; he still had some power over one or two individuals. The dying struggles of the leviathan of the deep are attended with the greatest peril. The "flurry" of the whale in its expiring agonies, is most dreaded by its captors. So it was with the Laird. The Judgment in Ejectment against Duncan McNab (Isla) was held in abeyance. Now that the decision of the Government was given, and that, too, hostile and prejudicial to the Chief's interests, which no cajolery could alter, and no persuasion overcome, there was nothing to gain in withholding its execution. The writ of possession was in August placed in the hands of the Sheriff, and his deputy, accompanied by the Chief and a creature of the name of Lipsy, proceeded to put it into force. They accordingly proceeded to the premises. Mrs. McNab and the children were in the house; her husband and Mr. James McKay were in the bush at the time chopping for potash. The Deputy-Sheriff proceeded to his duty; took everything out of the house, turned the family out of doors, gave the Chief possession, and immediately went away. The Chief ordered Lipsy to draw everything to the concession line. Forcibly he dragged Mrs. McNab thither. Then ordering Lipsy to set fire to the shanty, he himself applied the burning brand to the barn and outhouses. Mrs. McNab saw the smoke rising. She missed two of her children. With frantic shrieks she rushed up to the burning buildings, called her children by name, and almost in despair ran into the burning barn. There, under the straw, frightened at what was taking place, the two children had concealed themselves. To drag them out from amidst the flames was the work of a moment; and had the mother been a few minutes later, two helpless infants would have perished in the flames, and been the martyred victims of revenge and malevolence. When Mr. James McKay and Duncan McNab saw the flames rising they hurried to the spot, and found the buildings in ruins and the family of the latter on the concession line, in all the misery of despair. Prompt measures were taken to remedy the evil. For the present the ejected ones took refuge in Mr. McKay's house, about half-a-mile distant. Together with all his summer's provisions and a barrel of pork, a number of Duncan Isla's agricultural implements were consumed in the flames.
This outrage filled the township and all the neighborhood with horror and dismay. A feeling was fast being discussed among the people that the Laird should be lynched. Mr. James McKay, a leading member of the church—a pious and good man, and a warm-hearted neighbor and friend—when he saw the house and barn in flames, exclaimed, "What a pity it is the good old times would not come back again, and a bullet would soon reach him for the deed!"
The people got up a subscription, turned out and put up a shanty on another lot, and rendered the family as comfortable as circumstances would permit. James McKay, Mrs. McKay, Duncan McNab, and the writer, two days after the perpetration of the outrage, proceeded to the residence of Mr. Alexander McVicar, the nearest magistrate, and laid the information necessary to commence criminal proceedings against the Chief. Squire McVicar immediately issued his warrant. The Laird was arrested and brought to Pakenham village. All the witnesses for the prosecution were present; Squires Richey, Scott and McVicar took their seats on the bench, and without hearing a witness, or entering into the case at all, dismissed the case, and referred the parties to Perth—to the Assizes. Mr. McVicar did all that he could to get the examination proceeded with, and the Chief committed for trial, but it was useless. The Chief's partizans were on the bench, and they out-voted him, and referred the matter to the Crown officer. Duncan McNab (Isla) and his friends had not the means to go to Perth, or proceed further with the prosecution; and thus the matter rested, and one of the most daring and atrocious crimes in the category of criminal jurisprudence was allowed to pass over with impunity, and the perpetrators to stalk abroad in the land unwhipt of justice. Besides losing his land and provisions, Duncan McNab nearly lost two of his children; and he never received any compensation from the Government, or from the legal tribunals of the law. He was poor, and poverty could be outraged and trampled upon without redress, and scarcely a single remonstrance.
In the fall of this year (1841), a number of witnesses were summoned to Toronto to give evidence on the part of the defence in the celebrated McNab and Hincks libel suit. They were Duncan Campbell, an old soldier, aged 75, who had two years before been imprisoned by the Chief for rent, Donald Mohr McNaughton, Daniel McIntyre, Alex. McNab, the Chief's first incarcerated victim, Andrew Taylor, and Dugald McNab. These parties arrived at Toronto on the second day of the Fall Assizes, remained in the City three days, when, on an affidavit and on payment of the costs of the day, the Laird procured a postponement of the trial till the spring. His object was to weary out the defence. He dreaded an exposure. An adjournment of six months might be attended with more favorable results. The witnesses then assembled to prove all the oppressions and exactions of McNab might not again appear. They were now present; but the distance was so great and the travelling communications so difficult of access that they might be deterred from again appearing. It was also questionable whether Mr. Hincks could afford the expense of bringing them to court again. On the whole the putting off the trial was advantageous to McNab and postponed the exposure he dreaded, and the domestic criminality involved, which would overwhelm him with shame and degrade him even in the estimation of his friends the "Family Compact." He had still hopes that they would be reinstated in power, and if so, he would reap some of the benefits of the restoration.