Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

by Various

From the circumstances attending the early settlement of Upper Canada, and from the character of the early settlers themselves, the preachers of the Methodist denomination were not merely almost the only preachers they had for many years an opportunity of hearing, but were, of all others, those they most desired to hear. The clergymen of the Church of England were few, and stationed in the larger towns. But it is one of the peculiarities of Methodism, that however numerous or scattered the settlers might have been, the preacher could always manage to live among them; for he received with his circuit a sort of universal billeting-ticket, and the houses of all his flock, and all his flock's friends, thereupon became one vast home to him; and wherever he happened to take up his temporary abode, he conferred a sort of honour instead of receiving a favour. The system had another peculiarity too—at all events, at the early period we are speaking of—it had no standard of fitness in the way of education for its ministry. Yet where men of education could never think of penetrating or existing, these men were willing to go. Where no bishop could dream of sending a pastor, it is the principle of Methodism to believe the Lord will raise up or send one. If his talents are none of the brightest, they are willing to trust to Heaven to make up the deficiency; and certainly, in some instances, there is much need of it.

It is not difficult to perceive how great must have been the influence of these preachers over a people so circumstanced: how eagerly—in the absence of newspapers, and of nearly every means of learning what was going on in the province, much less in the affairs of the world—the leading characters of the neighbourhoods gathered round the preacher, after the meeting was over, at the fireside of some brother of the Church, to hear the latest news, to get the last newspaper or pamphlet, and to receive his oracular opinions upon the measures and the men agitating the country. And in two-thirds of the districts in the province, these preachers had for years, unopposed and unquestioned, those opportunities of instilling a political education—which, if they chose to make use of them, would enable them to plant a crop, whether of good or of evil, for or against the institutions of England, wholly, uneradicable,—were there even the same opportunities afforded of eradicating it that there were of sowing it.

For five successive parliaments in Upper Canada, previous to the rebellion, each party had alternately the majority in the house—the one party being known as the Tory or Family Compact; the other as the Radical or the Saddle-bag faction—a name more truthfully than elegantly applied to it, on account of its owing its majority to the exertions of these same Methodist preachers in its favour; and from their mode of travelling through the country being on horseback, with large saddle-bags swung on each side of the nag, and, by way of adding to the picturesque, with a leathern valise strapped on immediately over his tail. These bags and valise, it was alleged by their opponents, were always filled—with, we suppose, the necessary exception of stowage for hymn-books, and the other paraphernalia of their craft—with papers and pamphlets against the monarchy, the Church, and the institutions of England, and in favour of the democracy of the States. But whether the bags and valise were so filled or not; or whether, indeed, these preachers, at this early period, had it in their power to treat their friends to as many pamphlets, and papers, and almanacs—for the last was and is a method of disseminating political opinions much resorted to in America—as they were accused of, we shall not undertake to determine. This, however, we certainly can assert—that if we had out of the whole world to select the most perfect embodiment of the spirit of hostility to all the pomp, and pride, and distinction, and deference to rank, incident to monarchy, wherever it may exist, we should select these same Methodist preachers. Educated, for the most part, in the United States, or in Canada by American schoolmasters; with their conferences held in the States; the seat of their church in the States; their ministers ordained in the States; their bishops sent from there—for they were all, at this time, Episcopal Methodists—and the great body of their church flourishing there,—they imbibed, from the very beginning, American feelings of hostility to the established Church of England, and to the pride and love of distinction—to all the characteristics which must exhibit themselves wherever English society has a footing, and England's monarchy a representative. Hostility to these was, in truth, the very genius of their religion. Looked upon with contempt by Episcopal clergymen, they took a pious revenge in wildly declaiming against the pride and arrogance of those who derided them, and incidentally pointed to the luxurious grandeur and sumptuous living of the great dignitaries of the church, while its poor hard-working curates had scarcely the means of living. Treated with contumely by the few educated English who, from time to time, settled among their hearers, they pointed in their indignation to that country, and to those institutions, where one man was held no better than another, and where the many could soon level the pride and bring down the pretensions of the few. Deprived by law, as they were at this time, of nearly all the rights of Christian ministers—of the right to marry, and all similar ones, (for both the government and the church had long contended against men whom they regarded and believed, in point of education and character, to be wholly unfit to exercise these sacred functions,) they declaimed from the very bottom of their hearts against the illiberality and exclusiveness of English institutions, of English feelings, and of English pride, in depriving them of these rights; and they applauded, with equal earnestness, that government under which their church flourished, in the fullest exercise of the widest privileges of a Christian denomination. There is no exaggeration on the one side or on the other in this. It would be offensive to the church and to its adherents to say, that they regarded these preachers otherwise than we have described. It would be unjust to the Methodists to say, that they did not feel, and that they did not act, as we have given them credit for doing.

But in addition to the effect, political and national, produced by these preachers, the peculiarity of the Methodist church-government spread the same influences by many minor, but not less effectual ramifications. Every little society, in every neighbourhood, had what is called a class-leader, or local preacher, whose duty it was to exercise a sort of half-religious and half-civil domination over the part of the church immediately surrounding him, to give them advice, settle their differences, and practise the arts of small oratory and miniature government.

It is not difficult to perceive how this system must have furnished a leader to every little neighbourhood; how the ambition first formed by a class-meeting must have wished the larger sphere of a political one; and how the consciousness of ability to govern a congregation naturally led to the conviction that the same abilities might be usefully employed in the magistracy, or even in parliament. And it is a significant fact, that since the friends of these class-leaders have been in power, in every neighbourhood where the Methodists have had a footing, two-thirds of the magistrates appointed by the government were, and are, these very class-leaders themselves. But, at the time we are speaking of, the idea of appointing a person a magistrate, whose only qualification consisted in his exhibiting a stentorian voice at Methodist meetings, or being an influential member of "his society," was utterly repugnant to the feelings of men educated to dislike such persons, even when they are unpretending, much less when they aspire to offices of honour and distinction. No class-leaders, therefore, in neighbourhoods where every man was alike a lord of the soil, saw themselves looked up to as leaders by the many, at the same time that they were looked down upon as boorish pretenders by the few. But what galled them yet more was, that they constantly saw the few placed in offices of honour and emolument over them, and thus "rubbing in," as they termed it, the insult and the injustice of their own exclusion. Like the preachers, too, they pointed, in their indignation and revenge, to that country and those institutions where the people could raise the man, and not the crown—where they could not only attain what they aimed at, but crush what they abhorred.

Partly from this system of religious and political education, and partly from the great number of Americans who settled in the province immediately after the revolutionary war, and who came in with, and at the suggestion of Governor Simcoe, as well as the many who came in without him—but mainly from the tinge of nationality that all large communities impart to small ones adjacent to them—the manners, the customs, the accent, and even the prejudices, of the rural native population in Upper Canada, are scarcely distinguishable from the American. Their very slang words are the same, and their dislike of what they term "blooded critters,"—namely, Englishmen, who cannot help evincing their inveterate dislike of either associating themselves, or allowing their families to associate, with persons whose education and habits they consider beneath them. Every feature, indeed, by which an Englishman can detect the influence of the levelling system in the States, particularly among the farming and lower classes, he can also detect, and fully to the same extent, among all the American, the Dutch, and most of the rural native Canadian population in Upper Canada. It would be digressing too far from the main object of this paper to bring forward examples—and we know hundreds—where English gentlemen have been subjected to innumerable petty annoyances, (such as cutting down their fences, and letting the cattle into their corn-fields,) merely because it became hinted about the neighbourhoods where they had settled that they were "blooded critters," and refused to eat at the same table with their labourers, and associate upon an equal footing with their neighbours, irrespective of their habits, character, and education; where men have left the harvest-fields as soon as they discovered that two tables were set in the house; and where families have been obliged, to avoid inconveniences that could not be endured, to conform, if not altogether, at least for a time, to the general usage of admitting no distinction between master and man. It must suffice for our purpose now, to say that these things exist—that they exist to the extent that we have described them; and without going into the question of the policy or the impolicy of Englishmen not conforming to the general and prevailing customs of the country in which they settle, or of the merit or demerit of these customs themselves, all we wish to say here is, that these customs are, in our humble opinion, inimical to all monarchical education—to that state of society where rank must be recognised, respectability distinguished, and refinement preserved, or monarchy cease to exist, or become a mockery.

But what was the strength of all these natural and unmistakable elements of hostility to monarchy under any form, and to a people bred under monarchical institutions in any circumstances? What was the power of the Methodists, in so far as that was used against the government, over the constituencies of the province? What was the power of those who were not Methodists, but who united with them in opposing the government? And what was the power of the really honest Yankees in the province, who never hesitated to avow that they hated the British government, root, branches, and all? And in what way did their united feelings and intentions develop themselves?

For upwards of a quarter of a century they maintained,—with all the power and patronage of the government against them; with most of the talent born in the province, and the whole, or very nearly so, of that imported into it, against them; and with seven-eighths, yes, nine-tenths, of the emigrants who were able to purchase property when they came, or who subsequently became voters, against them,—alternate, and more than alternate, majorities in parliament. It can answer no good purpose now, it never answered any, to deny or to disguise this fact. This class of men formed, as what we have already stated must have satisfied the reader, fully two-thirds of the electors in the counties. In the Home District, where M'Kenzie, who headed the rebellion in 1837, had absolute control over the elections; in the Midland District, where Mr Bidwell, an American by birth, by education, and from principle, exercised a similar influence; in the London District, where Duncombe, who also headed the rebels, could carry any man into parliament he pleased; what was the character of the voters in the townships and counties which gave them this power? They were the Methodists, educated as we have described; they were the Americans and Dutch, with strong predilections in favour of democracy, and still stronger dislike of the natural and inevitable characteristics of society which arise from monarchy itself. In the Gore district, in the Niagara district, and in the Newcastle district, what do the poll-books exhibit for the counties which sent member after member, with hardly an exception, to support M'Kenzie in the parliament, and some of them to support him in the rebellion? The number of Hezekiahs, and Jedediahs, and Jonathans, of Eliacums, and Ezekiels, shows pretty clearly what was their origin, and what were their political predilections. But these democratic leanings were by no means arbitrarily confined to names, for there was both a Duke of Wellington and a Horatio Nelson in the Gore District gaol for treason in 1838. The Duke was a preacher, and regularly held forth to his fellow prisoners, until the scamp at last—we suppose to acquire a practical idea of the nature of sin—stole a watch from one of his companions, and was thereupon regularly deposed from his high calling; and the scene of his labours changed from among the political offenders down to the petty larceny fraternity. All of which may be found duly chronicled in the records of the sheriff's office of the Gore District for the period.

But there is no circumstance, perhaps, that we could mention, that could convey a better idea of the relative regard for England and the United States, of the class of people we have been describing, than the fact—well known to every person who has lived among them—that a Yankee schoolmaster, without either education or intelligence—with nothing on earth to recommend him, save an inveterate propensity for vapouring and meddling in the affairs, religious and political, of every sect and class wherever he goes—can, and ever has, exercised more influence among them in a few months, than a whole neighbourhood of English gentlemen could in years. And we speak neither from hearsay nor conjecture: we speak from what we have seen and know, and what is susceptible of full proof.

The political measures of this party, like all others, soon shaped themselves into an embodiment of their motives and principles, and into a means, the most natural and the most certain, of gaining and keeping power. Ambition, mounted between two saddle-bags, upon a jog-trot pony, was not likely to shine in the character of a courtier. A strong nasal accent, and a love of the levelling system, were but poor recommendations to English gentlemen, and English governors, for offices of distinction and the command of her Majesty's militia forces. But both were powerful at the hustings. What they could not win from the crown they could gain from the electors. What monarchical feelings and a monarchical education could not brook, democratic voters would assuredly elevate. The consequences were such as may be conceived. Their measures became, to all intents and purposes, democratic. They began by requiring, as indispensable to the proper "image and transcript," as they called it, of the British constitution, that the legislative council—analogous to the House of Lords—should be rendered elective; that the magistracy should be made elective; that voting by ballot, as it is practised in the States, should be introduced; and that every officer in the country, from a colonel to a constable, should be chosen by the people. How much of monarchy would have been left after all this—how many of the distinguishing characteristics that the English government imparts to a British people, would have been discernible, after all these measures were in full operation, it would not have been very difficult to foresee.