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At the close of the
American struggle, Upper Canada entered upon a new era. The patriotic
spirit which had proved more than sufficient, during that rugged crisis,
served to quicken the Province into active and independent political
existence. The invaders had been driven from the soil, notwithstanding
the odds in their favour, and now the country was to reap the reward of
its strenuous exertions in the field. Yet, from a political point of
view, there should have been misgivings from the first. No sooner was
peace proclaimed than immigration set in on a scale hitherto
unprecedented. Large numbers of settlers came in from the United States
and were naturally regarded with jealousy by the official monoplists.
The ranks of the latter had been reinforced by large numbers of regular
and militia officers who had been provided for by gifts out of the
public domain. The exclusive caste was definitively formed, and it
became only a question of time when the conflict between it and the new
comers – mainly democrats – should commence. It is the besetting sin
of modern historians to survey the attitude of past generations from a
modern standpoint. A lost cause has seldom any defenders after the lapse
of a decade or so; yet surely the veracious chronicler ought, so far as
may be to project himself so far into the period he describes as to
realize, however faintly, the views and feelings of those who are
without literary champions to-day. There is no difficulty in eulogizing
the asserters of principles which have since asserted themselves, but so
much the more necessary does it seem to be a duty to vindicate the
motives of those who come into court posthumously without the benefit of
counsel.
In 1815 the position was
something like this. The loyal defenders of the country had repelled the
invaders of its soil. They were in possession of the choicest Crown
lands, and controlled every department of government, executive,
legislative, judicial, administrative, and municipal as of right divine.
That they should assume that position was not surprising. The burden and
heat, not merely of the struggle with the United States, but of pioneer
settlement had fallen upon them, and it was not in human nature to
abstain from a determination to reap the fruits of what they had sown.
So soon as there appeared a danger from the influx of American settlers,
the dominant party at once set its foot down upon immigration from that
quarter. Free grants of land were refused to all new-comers from the
United States, and, in order to prevent the acquisition of lands by
purchase, naturalization was abolished. A stringent Alien Act was passed
under which any American was liable to arrest and deportation on a
charge of sedition—a law which virtually amounted to a suspension of
the Habeas Corpus Act. Nor was this all. There was a well-grounded
feeling of discontent against the authorities for their partiality in
the sale of Crown lands. Large numbers of the volunteers and active
militia, who had fought during the war, found themselves, on some
pretext or other, deprived of the grants promised on the faith of the
Crown. It is easy to see why the party objected to American immigration;
indeed, under the circumstances, one might have expected some such
outcome of jealousy on the part of victors who claimed an exclusive
title to the spoils. But their treatment of the disbanded troops is
explainable on only one supposition, warranted apparently by the facts.
The militia of the Niagara frontier especially had, before the war, been
intimately associated in trade and otherwise with their neighbours
across the river. They were not, in political complexion, therefore, by
any means Conservative. But when the struggle came, they proved manfully
loyal to the Crown, to their homes and country. The time arrived for
carrying out the promise of reward to all who had risked life during the
war, and the government at York, in its alarm at a supposed increase of
power to political adversaries—then for the most part imaginary—trifled
with the claimants, and in many cases withheld the grants of land to
which they were unquestionably entitled.
Meanwhile, so early as
February, 1815, the British Government undertook an emigration scheme. A
free passage was offered to emigrants, with a hundred acres for
themselves and for their sons, on arriving at adult age. No great
results flowed from this measure, except in one direction to be noted
immediately. Mr. McMullen [History of Canada, p. 330.] very
naturally points out that the excitement of the war had unsettled the
habits of the people, and that discontent supervened upon it. But it is
doubtful whether that be a full explanation of the political change
which was imminent. The people had suffered and were strong, not merely
in a spirit of national pride, but from the assurance borne in upon
every man that he was a unit in the commonweal. The result evident1y
must be a strong assertion of individualism—an awakening to national
life and vigour. Citizen soldiers do not, as our historian thinks,
"return discontented to the drudgery of their farms." On the
contrary, they come back with a greater zest for the labours of peace,
but with an augmented sense of their own personal importance. Like the
youth of Greece and Rome, like the apprentices to chivalry in the Middle
Ages, they never felt assurance of manhood until they had met the shock
of combat. So soon as they had laid down their arms, the Canadian
yeomanry felt that the period of adolescence and tutelage was over, and
that they were members, active and independent, of the body politic. War
is, of itself, a hateful thing; and yet when it takes the dimensions of
a struggle for existence—a conflict for home and hearth, wife and
children—there can be no better educator for freemen. That which stirs
the fibres of the heart and quickens its action healthfully, stiffens
the back-bone of the man, and raises his political stature for all time
to come.
The war of 1812-15
accomplished both purposes, and so it came about that when the Assembly
met in 1817, signs of dissatisfaction with the Administration were
forcibly presented to public notice. At that period, it must be borne in
mind that the lands of the Province, except in so far as they had been
alienated, belonged to the Crown. A large portion had been granted
"for the support of a Protestant clergy," and this was to form
a bone of contention for forty years to come. The House found fault with
the impediments thrown in the way of immigration, a bad postal system,
and the wrongs of the militia. Of course no Executive in those days
could submit to legislative impertinences of so pronounced a character,
and the Governor hurried down to the House only to send it about its
business. A Scot now appeared upon the scene, so unique in character and
career, that his life must be sketched at some length.
Robert Fleming Gourlay
was born in Fifeshire somewhere between 1780 and 1784. He was evidently
a man of keen observation, shrewd and talented. But it must be confessed
that he was the victim of a litigious and irritable disposition. The
chief materials for his biography are to be found in his collection of
occasional pamphlets bearing the singular title of "The Banished
Briton and Neptunian." [The latter designation is explained in one
of those brochures by the following document written at sea, after a
visit to Scotland: "The Pacific, at Sea, Nov. 9, 1838. Notice to
Creditors - I hereby intimate that I have sailed for America, not to
evade payment of debts, but that all may be paid in full, for which
funds are more than sufficient. Witness my hand, Robt. Gourlay, Late of
Leith, subject to the King, Robert Fleming Gourlay, of the Ocean, and
subject to Neptune."] That he was in every way an honest and
conscientious man is clear from first to last. That he was, at the same
time, energetic, painstaking and philanthropic seems equally obvious. So
early as the first year of the century he was employed by the Imperial
Government to enquire into the condition of the English poor and suggest
a remedy for prevailing distress. Upon his report a Bill was introduced
as a Government measure, but rejected by the Lords. In personal business
he was certainly unfortunate, through no fault of his own. He inherited
a bankruptcy, and set himself loyally to work to pay off the paternal
debts and carve out a fortune for himself. Unhappily he leased a farm in
Wiltshire, in England, on a lease, and expended his earnings in
improvements; but he quarrelled with his landlord, a Duke, and finally
threw all up and resolved to make his fortune here in America. In 1817
he left England for New York, and was accidentally called to Canada to
visit some relatives. Notwithstanding his liberal opinions, he was a
thoroughly loyal subject, and the idea at once struck him that if the
Upper Canadian land policy were improved, and the resources of the
country made known, the tide of British immigration might he diverted
hither, with advantage both to the settler and the Empire. On his
arrival at York he was at first received cordially by the rulers of the
day. But the sudden and, as it appeared to him, arbitrary prorogation of
the Legislature, with its business unfinished, gave to his career, most
unfortunately for him, a political tinge, not contemplated at the
outset. ["In Upper Canada my efforts had no view whatever to a
reform in Parliament. The people there have a perfect representation,
and before long they will make a better use of it than they have
hitherto done. Soon after my arrival in that country I viewed it as the
most desirable place of refuge for the redundant population of Britain,
and I conceived schemes for promoting a grand system of
immigration." Statistical Account of Upper Canada, compiled with
a view to a Grand System of Emigration. By Robert Gourlay; London,
1822; General introduction, p. vi. It may be mentioned that this
introduction is a sort of piece justification, making a volume in
itself of over four hundred pages. The work proper, in two volumes,
covers with appendices nearly fifteen hundred more.] "Without the
slightest idea of evil," as he avers, "he took the novel step
of proposing that a Convention should be called of Deputies from all the
constituencies to deliberate upon the propriety of sending Commissioners
to England to call attention to the affairs of the Province." It
may be readily conceived that such an unusual step annoyed, and may
possibly have alarmed the authorities. Gourlay’s aims were clearly
distinguishable from any ordinary form of political agitation; and there
can be little doubt that if the Executive had been less arbitrary, and
he had been less pugnacious when threatened, the movement would have
proved productive of great good. The Convention was held, and so far as
appears, its proceedings were not of a character to alarm anyone. It is
true they petitioned the Prince Regent, and made some complaints about
the Crown land management, and the hostile attitude taken up with regard
to immigration; but the Crown lands then absolutely belonged to the
monarch, and there was certainly nothing seditious in meeting publicly
and adopting petitions to be laid at the foot of the Throne. [Mr.
McMullen somewhat sneeringly remarks that "Upper Canada was too
young for patriots; and the public welfare was lightly considered when
balanced against personal profit." Page 341. This is to be unjust
to both sides; but allowances must be made, no doubt, for what passes as
historical impartiality.] The Government at once commenced to assert its
authority. It was announced that the Colonial Secretary had enjoined
upon the Governor an immediate allotment of lands to the militia; but
that the Provincial Government had determined that no grant should be
made in favour of any man who had supported the Convention movement.
As for Gourlay himself,
advantage was taken of an Act of 1804, which would have been worthy of
Lord Castlereagh at a time of absolute danger, to arrest the prime
mover. He was twice tried under it, and on both occasions aquitted.
Under cover of a new Act (1816), however, and on a sworn information,
savouring strongly of perjury, Gourlay, having refused to depart from
the Province, was incarcerated at Niagara, and kept in durance for
months. Now there can be no question about the illegality of the whole
proceeding. Gourlay was arrested under a law which applied only to
aliens, and he was beyond question a British born subject, and had never
been naturalized in the States, and even if he had the fact would
not have been recognized by the Imperial Government at that time. The
information and commitment bore falsehoods upon the fate of them, and if
the unhappy Scot chafed under the injustice done him, and used
violent language after the arbitrary treatment he had received, who can
blame him? The man was in fact driven to the verge of insanity and all
that he subsequently wrote proves this conclusively. The opinion of
English counsel was taken, and it was clearly against the
legality of the imprisonment. Finally the prisoner was once more brought
to trial, not on the factitious charge of rebellion, but for refusing to
leave the Province, and was forcibly banished to the United States. Thus
a man who was a British subject, unconvicted of any offence known to the
law, was expatriated under a statute directed against aliens.
Now, whatever may be said
in disparagement of Gourlay by literary gentlemen "who sit at home
at ease," there can be no doubt that he really laboured with effect
in two directions. In the first place he was the first to collect
statistical information concerning the Upper Province, and thus
recommend it to the world as a suitable field for the emigrant.
He had only been a few months in the country when he submitted
thirty-one questions to the chief inhabitants of every township, with a
view of ascertaining definitely the agricultural capabilities of Upper
Canada. There can be no reason for any sinister interpretation of his
motives. Unluckily for himself, however, his final query was interpreted
as having a political significance. It would now be considered an
extremely innocent one, even had its purpose been political. "What,
in your opinion, retards the improvement of your township in particular,
or of the Province in general; and what would most contribute to the
same?" were the words used. The ruling party, however, at once
scented treason in the air, and although Gourlay’s intentions were
then strictly non-political, he became thenceforth a marked man. Forced
into the unsavoury slough of partisanship, to some extent from a feeling
of natural astonishment, and still more from the strong stubbornness
which characterized him, instead of making his way out of the Serbonian
bog as fast as he could, Gourlay floundered and struggled with his
enemies until he sank in the manner already described.
It is a plausible account
of the matter to attribute the poor man’s troubles to infirmity of
temper; but the very, laudable attempt he made, apart altogether from
party considerations, rendered him obnoxious to the dominant caste. The
Imperial Government were on Gourlay’s side, without perhaps being
conscious of his efforts. An Act had been passed in England to provide
facilities for emigration to Canada, another for the naturalization of
aliens; and finally, the Upper Canadian Lieutenant-Governor had been
commanded to concede grants of land to the complaining militiamen. And
yet it was because he sided with the advisers of the Crown in England
that Gourlay was arrested for sedition. The party in power at York was
vehemently opposed to immigration, either British or American. It must
be borne in mind that at this time the population of the Province was
certainly under two hundred thousand, and the influx of settlers had
been comparatively small. But the colonial government set its face
determinedly against any scheme to augment the population by
immigration. Of this there can be no doubt, since the Chancellor of the
Exchequer stated in the Commons that "the North American colonies
had been so overloaded with emigrants that the Government of Canada had
made the strongest remonstrances on the subject." In plain English
the ruling clique desired to preserve the Province, not exactly for
game, but none the less as "a happy hunting ground" for
themselves and their numerous official hangers-on, civil, military, and
ex-military. The colonial resistance to settlement from without was
quite as strenuous, if not as reasonable, as that of the Australians in
after years to the transportation thither of convicts.
Gourlay, in the freshness
of his early innocence and enthusiasm, was entirely ignorant of this
determined hostility to immigration. He had two objects in view: first,
to relieve the suffering poor of Britain during the melancholy years
which fo1lowed after the great continental war, and secondly, to fill up
the wilderness of Upper Canada with a stalwart yeomanry under the Crown.
He was an eminently loyal man, and nothing appears to have galled him
more than the accusation of treasonable purposes. So late as 1838 he was
a bitter opponent of William Lyon Mackenzie, because the latter had
proposed as his object "independence of European domination for
ever." [Gourlay addresses Mackenzie thus (Banished Briton,
No. 2): "Mr. Hume is a little man, and you, less. During four years
in the United States I have witnessed far worse than European
domination. You call yourself a patriot, and fly from home, and enlist
scoundrels for the conquest of your country. This is patriotism with a
vengeance; but God will avenge. I am, more in sorrow than in anger,
yours, &c., R.F.G. To Gen. Van Renssalaer, who was mustering the
"patriots" he wrote: "David before Goliath seemed little,
but God was with him. What are you in the limbo of vanity, with no stay
but the devil?" – a sentence eminently Carlylesque.] Moreover, in
the Metcalfe controversy he took strong ground in favour of the
Governor-General. It is clear that no abstract, theories of government
troubled him, and if he had been left alone, Ministries and Assemblies
might have done as they pleased. Still his influence, brief though his
career in Canada was, had an important bearing upon the future. His
Convention—a term he himself disliked because it was American—stimulated
the political growth of the colony beyond question. From that time forth
there was undoubtedly such a thing as public opinion. The sufferings
endured by Robert Gourlay most certainly shook his reason and utterly
ruined him: but the fruit of his brief labours remain with us to this
day. The Province thus owes to him two inestimable titles to respect. He
was the first to lay its claims as a field for colonization before the
world in a detailed and systematic form; and the first also to stimulate
political activity, and usher in the new era of free responsible
government. That he was conscious of no political aim is not at all to
his discredit. He was the forerunner of a new dispensation, and, like
other forerunners, had only a dim appreciation of its scope and
tendency. [It is only fair to Gourlay, as mention has been made of his
opposition to the rebels in 1837-8, and his eulogy upon Lord Metcalfe,
to quote his views with regard to Lord Durham’s Report, which paved
the way for responsible government. "It is highly beneficial to
meet and support Lord Durham’s Report." (Letter to the Examiner,
May 25, 1839.) "Now that we see his report, I am doubly anxious to
give him aid. I read it for the first time this week, and though
shortcoming as regards this Province, I am highly delighted with it.
From beginning to end, it is candid, fearless, straightforward, and to
the point; no useless verbiage - no mystification as in most State
papers. In its very style, indeed, we have hope that the age of darkness
is over, and that common sense is to have a chance." And then, he
adds, looking regretfully back at his own abortive efforts. "Twenty
years ago, all this information might have been obtained at one-tenth of
the cost had my projects gone into effect; but the fullness of time,
unfortunately for me, was not come." – Ibid.] That the treatment
he received was not merely unconstitutional and illegal, but simply
barbarous, has been acknowledged on all sides. In 1836, Mr. Sherwood
only contended for a pardon simply because the other alternative was an
acknowledgment of the injustice to which he had been subjected. By this
time the extraordinary Act of 1816, under which Gourlay was convicted,
had been repealed, avowedly because of its unconstitutionality. The
sentence of banishment was kindly annulled, but the matter did not rest
there. In 1841 Gourlay, in a petition to the House, gave a detailed
account of his sufferings. It was referred to a select committee which
reported that the petitioner’s imprisonment in 1819 "was illegal,
unconstitutional and without the possibility of excuse or
palliation." It went on to set forth that the refusal of counsel,
and especially the trying character of the imprisonment, during part of
which Gourlay was confined in a close cell, "for five weeks in the
dog-days," were unjust, unconstitutional and cruel. Sir Allan McNab
stated, during the debate, that he had heard of the sufferings of Mr.
Gourlay, which he regretted as much as any man. [In referring to the
case, Dr. Dunlop, of whom mention will be made hereafter, argued that
the Act of 1804 was unconstitutional, as no body on the face of the
earth, whether King, Lords or Commons of Great Britain, or Governor,
Council or Assembly of Canada, had the power to banish a British subject
unconvicted and uncharged with crime. Moreover the statute only
authorized the banishment of British subjects who had not resided in the
Province more than six months; whereas it was well known that Gourlay
had been an inhabitant for more than two years. He pointed out the
absurdity of the judge’s decision that only a freeholder, and not a
tenant, can be an inhabitant – in short exposed the invalidity of all
the proceedings.] A resolution was carried unanimously in both houses to
address the Governor-General praying that the recommendation of the
report might be carried out, and to this address Lord Sydenham assented
on the following day. In 1842, Gourlay petitioned the House for
compensation. The Speaker stated that this petition was informal, and
was couched in disrespectful language. To this Dr. Dunlop retorted that
it was the natural language of a man who had suffered twenty-eight years’
persecution. Sir Charles Bagot granted Gourlay a pension of £50 from
the civil list; but he appears to have declined it on the ground that he
did not desire to seem a state pensioner, but a recognised creditor of
the Government, and entitled to adequate compensation for wrongs
inflicted upon him, now acknowledged to be such by the Legislature. That
Gourlay’s reason was unhinged by the sufferings he had undergone there
can be no doubt. Naturally of an irritable temperament, he had endured
more than enough to madden a man of the most equable and patient
disposition. It was not to be wondered at that such a man, conscious of
upright intentions, the victim of acknowledged injustice should chafe
and fume under a sense of wrong. His imprudent writings were the natural
safety-valve by which much dangerous emotion escaped without harming
anyone but himself. It is to his credit that from first to last, however
his personal wrongs may have crazed him, he never burst out into wild
schemes of rebellion. The very charges under which he was imprisoned
were in his case even technically absurd. No man ever lived who had a
greater horror of sedition, lawlessness and rebellion than he. But his
life had been wrecked and the whole fair vision of usefulness to his
fellows blurred, and wiped out by the narrowly conceived action of those
who might have made of him a valuable servant to the Province. If his
life were a failure, for which he was in part to blame, or perhaps his
inherited nature, the bulk of responsibility must be borne by those who
misconstrued his motives, and were too exclusive in their aims to
understand the value of his energy and the manly sturdiness of his
nature. In looking over his later utterances no one can fail to be
touched by the irrepressible wail of pain which comes up from that
rebellious and stricken soul. That his mind was shaken by persecution
there is abundant evidence. His protest against the tyranny in London
which kept him in confinement for three years and eight months "on
the plea of insanity" is sufficient evidence of the fearful
consequences of arbitrary rule. Gourlay possessed the consciousness that
his motives were pure and patriotic; that he was not, in the remotest
degree, guilty of anything that could be construed as seditious or
rebellious; it was equally clear that the proceedings taken against him,
his imprisonment and banishment, were undoubtedly illegal and
unconstitutional, as even his opponents subsequently admitted; and with
a man like him a struggle, utterly hopeless as it was, meant the
dethronement of reason, at all events for a time. Yet when the fit was
off him, in later years, when he ceased to brood over his personal
wrongs, no man could be more prescient, more fertile in suggestion, more
practically helpful than he. It is not gracious to dwell upon his
infirmities of character, because under more auspicious circumstances he
certainly would have been a patriotic worker of the highest order. He
fell upon evil times, however, and the energy and fiery impetuosity
which might have done effective service in a young country was pent up
until it broke its bounds and was dissipated in aimless brawlings, to be
finally lost in the bosom of the remorseless sea, where alone it found
eternal rest. With the after events of Gourlay’s life we are not here
concerned. He survived until 1863, when he died in Edinburgh, having
attained the age of at least eighty years. Like other men who have
passed the prime of life in turbulent excitement, he outlived all the
struggles of the past, and nearly all the actors in them, and passed
serenely away, with religious confidence, and the sense of old wrongs
forgotten. There in the tomb we may leave him, with the simple
reflection that, in spite of weaknesses and infirmities of temper, no
man in our Provincial history, who intended to do so much for his
adopted country, was privileged to do so little. Partly himself at
fault, he was only measurably so. He appeared too early, and the
enthusiasm of his nature which might have been of so much utility to his
adopted country was wasted like a bud in the later frosts of spring. He
was at any rate the harbinger of better times to come, and, amongst the
Upper Canadian pioneers of progress, there should be a conspicuous niche
for poor Robert Gourlay.
Having thus sketched the
career of the first Canadian Reformer, it may be well to introduce to
the reader’s notice a strong, hard-headed, but generous-hearted
Scotsman, who made an imposing figure on the other side in the early
annals of Upper Canada. It is not so long since the lithe, slight figure
of Bishop Strachan was a familiar sight in the streets of Toronto. The
dapper little man, clad in orthodox episcopal fashion, with
knee-breeches and gaiters, must have been amongst the earliest
reminiscences of young men still on the sunny side of thirty. The brisk
gait of the old Bishop, the cheery greeting, the subdued whistle of
"Bonnie Dundee," are amongst the writer’s earliest
recollections of a man who played no small part in the affairs,
ecclesiastical and political, of this country. The biography of the
great Upper Canada prelate of the Church of England has been so often
presented to the public that it does not appear necessary to do more
than sketch it in outline. [Our chief authorities in addition to the
other ordinary histories are Fennings Taylor, Dr. Scadding in a brochure
entitled "The First Bishop of Toronto; a Review and Study,"
and Morgan in Celebrated Canadians, and the Bibliotheca
Canadensis.] In whatever aspect the character of Dr. Strachan may be
viewed, there is no mistaking the strength and consistent earnestness of
the man. As Mr. Taylor has well remarked, "men knew where to look
for, and where to find him. He took no tortuous course, for he detested
all crooked ways;" [Portraits of British Americas. Second
series, p. 154.] it might have been added "with the strong
conscientiousness of a Scot." His judgment, may at times, have
erred; but he was, above all things, a brave, true man throughout.
John Strachan was born at
Aberdeen on the twelfth of April, 1778, and received his early education
at the Grammar-school of that city. [Mr. McMullen sneers at the
"the little classical learning" the Bishop picked up there,
evidently from ignorance of the thorough drilling which the pupils
underwent in those old borough seminaries.] His father was a poor man,
straitened in circumstances; yet with the characteristic ambition of a
Scotsman he had determined that his son should be well equipped for
future conflict with the world. Whatever else may be laid to the charge
of the Scot, he, at all events, stands acquitted, by universal consent,
of neglecting the future of his offspring. To place the sons in a better
position than their father; above all to equip them with a solid
education, moral and religious, no less than secular, is the persistent
aim of every cotter in the Highlands and Lowlands, who has no other
portion to give his children when he sets them adrift upon the ocean of
life. But to secure that generous purpose he toils and works without
regard to self, and when the fruit of his labour appears in the early
successes of his sons, he is willing to thank God, and lie down in
death, with his inward vision turned upon a field only now springing up
with the promised grain, to see it, in affectionate imagination,
whitening to the harvest. [Carlyle’s Reminiscences show how a
Scottish son can reverence the self-denying work of a Scottish father;
and the perusal of his noble eulogy upon his parent calls to mind
another picture of Scottish family life in The Cotter’s Saturday
Night.] John Strachan did not complete his education, as the
historian supposes, at the Grammar-school. As he himself has stated, he
finished his terms at King’s College in 1796, and proceeded to a
Master’s degree.
It was no doubt a proud
epoch in the future Bishop’s life when he was declared the successful
candidate for the parochial schoolmastership of Kettle. He was then an
undersized, fresh and sturdy youth of nineteen, and when he presented
himself before the Kirk Session, they were somewhat dismayed at the
choice which a competitive examination had forced upon them. They did
not then know the energy and will-strength of the man with whom they had
to deal, and consequently installed him in office with not a few
misgivings. There were nearly a hundred and fifty pupils in the school,
among them Sir David Wilkie, the artist, and Commodore Robert Barclay
doomed to misfortune on Lake Erie, from no fault of his own. [The
Bishop, in referring to this period of his life, said long afterwards of
Barclay, "he was a youth of the brightest promise, and often have I
said in my heart that he possessed qualities which fitted him to be
another Nelson, had the way opened for such a consummation."] John
Strachan remained "dominie" of Kettle for three years, when an
invitation to Canada came to change the current of his life. It was
towards the close of the eighteenth century, that some liberal friends
of education, anxiously contemplating the proposed establishment of a
high school and university, bethought them of applying to Scotland for a
teacher to whom they could confide the training of their sons.
["The families referred to – Hamiltons, Stuarts and Cartwrights
– when casting about for the education of their sons appear to have
looked toward Scotland rather than England, partly perhaps from national
predilection, and partly from a reasonable impression that the economic
and primitive university system of Scotland was better adapted to a
community constituted as that of Upper Canada then was, than the more
costly and more complicated systems of England." Scadding: The
First Bishop of Toronto, p. 12.] Amongst these the most directly
instrumental in securing Mr. Strachan’s services was the Hon. Richard
Cartwright, a man of enterprize and far-sighted views, the grandfather
of Sir Richard Cartwright, the ex-Finance Minister of our own time.
Towards the end of 1799, the future Bishop, still of course a
Presbyterian, sailed from Greenock, by way of New York; but so wretched
were the passage and the means of inland transportation that Kingston
was not reached until the last day of the year. Mr. Strachan’s first
experience of Upper Canada took the form of disappointment. Had nothing
more offered itself than the prospect of tutorship, the "dominie"
would probably have remained at Kettle, until something turned up in one
or other of the universities of his native land. But there was a
prospect that he might, within a reasonable time, be placed at the head
of an Upper Canada university. Governor Simcoe, with that statesmanlike
prescience which characterized him throughout an official term all too
brief for the Province, had from the first made the establishment of a
university his "first and chief" desideratum. [On the 20th
July, 1796, in a dispatch to the Secretary of State, he proposed that
one-seventh of the Crown Lands should be sold for public purposes,
"the first and chief of which I beg to offer, with all respect and
deference to your Grace, must be the erection and endowment of a
university from which more than from any other service or circumstance
whatsoever, a grateful attachment to His Majesty’s Government,
morality and religion will be fostered, and take root through the whole
Province." Portraits, &c., p. 162.] Unfortunately the
first Governor had been removed before his patriotic scheme was carried
into effect, and just when Mr. Strachan arrived at Kingston, there
seemed to be no prospect that either the university or grammar school
system would be attempted for the present. Mr. Cartwright recognised the
trying position of the young teacher, and generously set himself to work
on his behalf. He had four sons himself, and his friends could add to
the number of pupils and so provide the young Scot with an honourable
and fairly remunerative living until the plans of the Government were
matured. Mr. Cartwright was a sincere and active member of the Church of
England, and, by his advice, the tutor be-took himself to the study of
divinity. Dr. Stuart who, in some sort, represented the Bishop of
Quebec, advised him in the same direction. The result was that the
future Bishop received deacon’s orders in 1803.
Of course it is open to
anyone to say that Mr. Strachan was actuated by personal gain, or even
ambition, in taking this step. No one who knew him will entertain the
suspicion for a moment. Throughout his life he was eminently tolerant in
his views, and what is more to the purpose, eminently practical. The
prevailing tendency in the Province was towards Anglicanism. He saw that
to be useful he would be compelled to surrender inherited views or
prejudices regarding church government So far as essentials were
concerned he never changed his views in the slightest degree; nor is
there any reason to believe that he dissembled or affected an alteration
of theological opinions from motives of worldly ambition. At that time,
there was the slenderest prospect of ecclesiastical preferment; but he
saw that some of his Scottish friends were Episcopalians, and that so as
to be of use to them and their children it would be wise to adopt the
formulae of the Church to which he had been opposed in his youth. It may
well be believed that to him it was a sacrifice, not a betrayal. Those
who had the fortune to meet him in later years, know well the thorough
catholicity of his nature. He never disguised his own views, or
simulated belief in opinions his conscience disapproved; indeed, on
occasion, he could be rather too outspoken. But he was eminently
charitable to all who differed from him, an apostolic churchman, worthy
of the primitive age. And it was that essentially Christian spirit which
animated him when he left the church of his fathers and became an
Anglican. Stern and inflexible in matters of principle, he could
fraternize with fellow-believers of every creed, Protestant and Roman
Catholic alike. His own opinions were well known, for he never disguised
them; the warm geniality of his nature prompted him to recognise the
substratum of truth where, to his view, it was overlaid with an unhappy
incrustation of error. His own theology, like all else that he
cherished, was crystalline and clear; but he held, in the depths of a
fervid and eminently philanthropic nature a deep regard for all who
loved his Master "in sincerity and truth." There was still
another reason for the change of denomination. Mr. Strachan’s father
was an Episcopal non-juror—a champion of the lost cause of the
Stuarts, and his earliest recollections of church services were those he
attended with his father at Aberdeen, presided over by Bishop Skinner.
Subsequently he habitually accompanied his widowed mother to the Relief
Church, of which she was a member. He was thus only a Presbyterian by
accident. When he arrived at Kingston, and was thrown in contact with
the Rev. Dr. Stuart, who, although an Anglican, was the son of a
Presbyterian, Mr. Strachan was naturally attracted to the Church of his
father. There is no pretext for imputing interested motives to the
future Bishop at all, since at the time his future was a sealed book,
and there was no reason why he should prefer one communion to the other,
except from deliberate choice. That he retained to the last the
confidence and friendship of so noteworthy a Presbyterian as Dr.
Chalmers, with whom he regularly corresponded until the great Free
Churchman’s decease in 1847, is sufficient evidence that the rectitude
of his motives was recognised by one whose moral standard was
confessedly high. The Bishop of Niagara, who was afterwards one of his
pupils, at Toronto, has given a graphic description of Mr. Strachan’s
methods, and of his remarkable success as a teacher. [Fennings Taylor: Portrait
of British Americans. p. 168.] His great care was to interest the
boys in their studies, and draw out their latent capabilities by
attractive means. To him education meant what its etymology implies, not
cramming, but development. Perhaps no instructor could boast of a larger
number of pupils who obtained eminence in after life. Chief Justice
Robinson, and his brother the Hon. W. B. Robinson, Chief Justices
Macaulay and McLean, Judge Jonas Jones, Dean Bethune, of Montreal, and
his brother, Bishop Strachan’s successor in the see of Toronto, the
Hon. H. J. and G. S. Boulton, Col. Vankoughnet, father of the
Chancellor, Donald AEneas Macdonell [Mr. Macdonell only died the other
day. Born in Cornwall in 1794, he was an early pupil of the Bishop’s.
In the year 1812, he was with the Glengarries at Lundy’s Lane, Stoney
Creek and Sackett’s Harbour. Entering the 98th, he served
for some years in the piping time of peace, and then returned to Canada.
During the Rebellion he commanded a corps, and was returned three times
for the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. After
enjoying the Shrievalty for some years he became Warden of the
Provincial Penitentiary, an office he filled for over twenty years,
resigning in 1869. At the time of his death, he was over eighty-six
years of age.] and others sat at the feet of the ex-dominie of Kettle.
Dr. Strachan [He was made
an LL.D. by the University of St. Andrews in 1807, and a D.D., in the
same year by that of Aberdeen.] removed to York, at the instance of
General Brock, and, in 1812, became rector of York. For the first time
he now entered the political sphere, by taking the initiative in forming
a loyal and patriotic society. The times were but of joint; war was
imminent, and, with characteristic vigour, the new rector came to the
fore. There was a strong heart beating beneath the ecclesiastical
vestments, and he had an opportunity soon of showing his mettle. When
the long expected shock of war came on, there never was a busier or more
useful man than Dr. Strachan. It has been remarked that when York was
taken, he was "priest, soldier, and diplomatist" all in one.
At the capture of York he was incessantly active. After the explosion,
by which General Pike was killed at the old fort, the Americans
threatened vengeance upon the defenceless town which had been evacuated
by General Sheaffe and his forces. The rector, however, was equal to the
occasion; and, as a contemporary writer puts it, "by his great
firmness of character saved the town of York in 1813 from sharing the
same fate as the town of Niagara met with some months afterwards."
The sturdy clergyman at once visited General Dearborn, and threatened
that if he carried out his threat of sacking the town, Buffalo,
Lewiston, Sackett’s Harbour and Oswego should be destroyed so soon as
troops arrived from England. His earnestness and determination moved the
American, and he spared the little Yorkers from any systematic burning
and plunder.
But all the danger was
not over; marauding parties wandered about the town seeking for plunder,
and not unfrequently were confronted by the sturdy little rector. On one
occasion two Yankee soldiers visited the house of Col. Givens, who was
an officer in the retreating army. The inmates were absolutely helpless,
and the marauders made off with the family plate. Dr. Strachan at once
went after them, and demanded back the stolen property. Under the
circumstances this was a singularly courageous thing to do, and
apparently a hopeless one. But the rector was a man of unwavering
resolution, and managed at last, without any other weapon than that
which nature had placed in his mouth to secure the return of the goods
to their rightful owners. The pluck and bravery displayed by him
throughout that trying time showed sufficiently the real
"grit" of the man, and the boldness and strength of will shown
then, characterized his life. In resolution and determined perseverance,
he was every inch a Scot.
In 1818 began Dr.
Strachan’s public life in the ordinary sense of the term; for he was
then nominated an executive councillor and took his seat in the
Legislative Council. He remained a member of the Government until 1836,
and of the Upper House up to the union of the Provinces in 1841. There
was nothing singular in these appointments; nor do they seem to require
the elaborate defence offered for them by Dr. Strachan’s biographers.
The state needed all the available talent at its disposal in those days,
much as England was sorely bested in the old days when prelates were
Lord Chancellors. Moreover the constitutional theory then in vogue
required at least some approach to English theory and practice. That
"the image and transcript" was a pale and bloodless simulacrum
must be conceded; the forms were there, but the substance was to come
thereafter. Dr. Strachan was not then a Bishop, indeed he only became
Archdeacon of York in 1825. But, as Dr. Scadding and Mr. Fennings Taylor
remark, he was the most prominent churchman at York, and, therefore,
naturally came forward as the representative of religion in the councils
of the state, on as clear a title at all events as the first Protestant
Bishop of Quebec when elevated to the rank of an Executive Councillor in
the Upper House upon his arrival. [There is another possible reason why
the Bishop and Dr. Strachan were made Executive Councillors. Under the
old French regime, even before their appointment as Bishops, and
more than once during an Episcopal interregnum, Vicars-General sat at
the Council Board at Quebec as of right. It is at any rate probably that
after the conquest, and especially when a new Church establishment was
contemplated, the Governors resolved to remain faithful to ancient
precedent throughout the Province. After 1791, of course, the same
system would naturally be maintained.]
About the time of Dr.
Strachan’s appointment as councillor, began the
politico-ecclesiastical conflict which was only brought to a close
within the memory of the existing generation. By the Imperial Act of
1774, which conceded to the Gallican clergy the right to collect tithes,
provision was made for the support of "a Protestant
clergy;"and in 1791, one-seventh of the lands was set apart for
that purpose in Upper Canada under the name of Clergy Reserves. Dr.
Scadding is no doubt in the right when he interprets the intention of
the Imperial Government to have been the establishment of the Church of
England in the one Province as an off-set to the quasi establishment
of the Roman Catholic Church in the other. But it is not so much with
the aim of Parliament as with the letter of the statute that we have to
do. Even though it be taken for granted that by "a Protestant
clergy," the Government meant the clergy of the Established Church;
the question still remains, which of those which are by law established
in Great Britain and Ireland? North of the Tweed, the Presbyterian
communion was the State Church and Episopalians were Dissenters; south
of it, the latter formed the establishment. Across the channel, both
were endowed, although the Anglican Church maintained the supremacy,
with representatives in the House of Lords. If then, in a new country,
towards which people of all the great religious communions were tending,
by "a Protestant clergy" were meant the Anglican clergy, why
was the ambiguous phrase adopted? The Presbyterian faith was established
in Scotland and Ireland, and there seemed no valid reason why it should
cease to be in as favourable a position in Upper Canada. Moreover, the
Nonconformists, especially the earnest and growing Wesleyan Connexion,
as well as the older Congregationalists could not be excluded under the
terms of land reserve. No one could fairly deny to them the title
Protestant; indeed they were, perhaps, more distinctly Protestant than
the Church of England which has disclaimed the term.
The immigration which set
in after the peace of 1815, had been of a somewhat miscellaneous
character, and so it came about that grave discontent arose amongst the
new settlers, occasioned by reserves and grants of all sorts, especially
those set apart for the clergy. They were, for the time, in the dead
hand of the Church, and where every seventh two-hundred acre lot was
closed up and fenced about ecclesiastically though not literally, there
was certainly some reason for complaint. In 1819, the Presbyterians of
Niagara petitioned the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, for
a grant of £100 for the support of a Scottish Church minister, and
boldly hinted that the grant should come from the funds arising from the
Clergy Reserves. This memorial was forwarded in due course to Earl
Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary, who replied that the Reserves were
intended for the Established Churches of England and Scotland, and not
for "the denominations," referred to by the Governor. This
dispatch at once aroused Dr. Strachan, who in 1823 forwarded a memorial
protesting against the attempt to distribute funds intended for the
Anglican Church. [One extract from this memorial will suffice.
"They" (the petitioners) "are impelled by a sense of duty
most earnestly, though most respectfully, to deprecate the rivalry to
the Church of England and those endless evils of disunion, competition
and irritation of which a compliance with the ministers of the Kirk of
Scotland cannot fall, in the opinion of your Lordship’s petitioners,
most widely to scatter the seeds." The memorial goes on to urge the
need of unanimity in religion, by "a judicious protection of the
English Church establishment already formed, and the completion of the
plan already provided by the wisdom of the Government."] The rector
of York, to be rightly understood, must be viewed from his own
standpoint. He had a deep and sincere veneration for the English
constitution, and naturally regarded the Anglican Church as one of its
chief pillars. The image and transcript of old country institutions
could not be regarded as complete, he thought, unless the Church were
not merely established, but represented also in the councils of the
Province. [McMullen, in his history, utters some harsh words about the
Bishop, not to be justified by any impartial judge of the spirit of the
time. See especially p. 350.] Dr. Strachan was eminently a patriot; such
he showed himself to be from first to last. That he erred in his
political course we may readily admit; but in so far as he did so, he
merely thought and acted like other men who floated on the current of
the time, instead of attempting to stem it. His course during the war,
and subsequently, when it appeared necessary to meet the false
aspersions and mis-statements of American historians, made him the
special champion of Upper Canada.
His somewhat narrow
creed, political no less than ecclesiastical, may be readily condoned
when one contemplates his vigour and patriotic impulse. It is easy to
affect contempt for a strong character like his; but it asserted itself
during a long life, and bore well the wear and tear of nearly ninety
years of unflinching exertion for the public weal, as he regarded it.
Certainly on the two great questions about which Dr. Strachan was so
keenly concerned, he was doomed to disappointment. The law officers of
the Crown decided that the Clergy Reserves were not intended exclusively
for the Anglican Church. As there were two established churches, each
equipped with "a Protestant clergy," they were of opinion that
the Church of Scotland had an equal right with the sister communion to a
share in the land endowment. They went further still, and vindicated the
claims of other Protestant denominations, known as nonconformist in
England. No sooner was this conceded by Parliament than the entire
ground was cut from beneath the feet of those who advocated a monopoly
in state support for religion. Before the Union of 1841, no less than
sixteen measures which had passed the Lower House for the secularization
of the Reserves were rejected in the Legislative Council. The Act of
1840 provided simply for a redistribution; and under it, one-half was
devoted to the Anglican and Scottish Churches, and the other to purposes
of "public worship and religious instruction, among the remaining
denominations, according to the discretion of the Governor in
Council." [Scadding, p. 44.] As this burning question will thrust
itself frequently upon our attention hereafter, it is only necessary to
note here that after a series of bitter struggles lasting over more than
thirty years, it was finally set at rest by the Act of 1854. During the
whole period, Dr. Strachan was faithful to his principles, mistaken as
they now appear to everybody to have been. In matters relating to
ecclesiastical supremacy he could brook no compromise. Agreeable in
personal intercourse, he was stern and inflexible whenever the cause he
had most sincerely at heart seemed to be in jeopardy. In 1836 he
resigned his place as Executive Councillor, and in 1839 became the first
Bishop of Toronto. The following year he ceased to be a member of the
Legislative Council, and abstained thenceforth from taking any part in
public affairs, save in that department which may be termed church
politics.
The other subject of
intense interest with him was the Provincial University. How the first
flush of his hopes had been disappointed has already been recorded.
Twenty-eight years elapsed before any attempt was made to carry out the
project of Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe. In 1827 a royal charter was
granted in favour of King’s College. The charter was drawn no doubt
mainly on the lines laid down by the archdeacon himself. It was to be
essentially an Anglican university. In the four faculties, all the
Professors were to be "members of the Established United Church of
England and Ireland," and were required "to severally sign and
subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles." The only liberal provision in
it was an exemption from any religious test on the part of students and
graduates in faculties other than that of divinity. King’s College was
not opened until 1843, and in 1850 all that made it valuable in the
Bishop’s eyes was eliminated. All that was distinctively Anglican
disappeared. The faculty of divinity was abolished and, so far as
education was concerned, "all semblance of connection between
church and state" proclaimed afterwards in the preamble to the
Clergy Reserve Act, was done away.
The venerable Bishop was
equal to the emergency, for the old fire was not yet dead, although it
burned in an aged bosom which had breasted the tide of life during more
than seventy years. His mission to England was a wonderful effort at his
advanced age. Yet in little more than six months he returned with the
first fruits—some sixteen thousand pounds sterling. [Dr Scadding
mentions as a noteworthy circumstance that the circular of "the
committee of friends" was signed by Mr. Gladstone.] In the spring
of 1857 the corner-stone of Trinity College was laid, and in the
beginning of the following year the building was so far completed as to
be fit for occupation. The Royal Charter was secured in 1853. Thus, by
the inextinguishable ardour and energy of one zealous prelate was the
purpose of his life at last secured. It may be doubted whether the
experiment of a rival University was a wise one, since the establishment
of a Divinity Hall was all that the crisis required. By the time that
Trinity University was established, the people generally—the bulk of
the laity certainly—had come to the conclusion that religious training
for the clergy was a matter entirely alien from the purposes of state
endowment. In a short time after, whether wisely or unwisely it is not
necessary to discuss here, the Legislature resolved that no specially
professional education should be given in University College, and the
faculties or law and medicine shared the fate of the divinity staff.
This radical measure may be open to some objection. Certainly it does
seem, in one or two respects, to have maimed our educational system. A
liberal culture which excludes a fair modicum of instruction in the
constitutional history and polity of the country, in its jurisprudence
generally, and in the broader facts of physiological and hygienic
science, appears to be singularly defective in character.
To Bishop Strachan, the
University was nothing if not rounded and complete in all its parts—modelled
after the ancient foundations of England and Scotland. He had no
patience with lop-sided institutions; and, having determined to make an
Anglican university, he resolved that it should be one in fact as well
as in name. In other directions, the memorable prelate certainly
effected work of unquestionable value. So soon as the severance between
Church and State had been formally proclaimed, his administrative and
legislative tact was employed in placing the Anglican Church upon a
sound governmental basis. To him the laity of that communion owe it that
they are represented in the Synods of the church as substantially as
with the Presbyterians. The elders of the latter correspond with the lay
delegates of the former; they are elected alike by the members of
congregations, and have given a stimulus to parochial and church life
generally, which cannot be estimated too highly.
The Bishop’s later
years were passed in efforts to extend the usefulness of the Church to
which he was so ardently attached, and to promote harmony amongst the
various types of thought, doctrinal and ceremonial, within its pale. He
was a warm-hearted man, unspoilt by the fierce contentions, political
and ecclesiastical, through which he had passed. Like other ardent
spirits, he was at once dogmatic and tolerant; firm, not to say
stubborn, in opinion; yet in practice catholic, and systematically
benevolent. During the evening of his long and eventful life, the
venerable Bishop was universally respected by men of all creeds and
political parties. The embers of departed struggles had burned
themselves out, and everyone felt respect for the statesman-prelate who
served as the chief remaining link between a distant and almost
forgotten past, and the new and altered life of the present. That he had
combatted the reforming spirit of progress in the earlier time, and had
failed, was no ground for prejudice in men’s eyes, now that the battle
had been lost and won. It was enough that Dr. Strachan was active,
earnestly human and undaunted even when the people had decided
emphatically that he was mistaken in his zeal, as well as in his
methods. So, at the last, when he was almost alone in the world, bereft
of domestic solace, he found human sympathy from the large and liberal
heart of the entire community. ["For several years before his
departure hence, however, his well-known form, caught sight of in the
streets, or at public gatherings for patriotic or benevolent purpose,
had him regarded and saluted with the same kind of universal interest
that used to accompany the great Duke towards the end of his career, in
the parks and squares of London." Dr. Scadding, p. 66.] He had
lived in the Province and been a conspicuous actor in its affairs from
the days of Governor Simcoe to the opening year of confederation, and
died on the second of November, 1867, in the eighty-ninth year of his
age, manful, energetic and courageous to the last. Funereal pomp is not
always the evidence of either respect or regret. Still there was no
mistake about the sincerity of the tribute paid to the deceased Bishop.
The two universities with whose early fortunes his name was indissolubly
associated, the national societies, the clergy of all churches,
Protestant and Catholic, [Bishop (now Archbishop) Lynch took part in the
mournful procession, and his presence there reminded the writer of an
incident which occurred some four years before. In connection with a
philanthropic movement on foot at the time, it had been resolved that
the aid of two Bishops should be solicited. The mayor and those
associates with him, first visited Dr. Strachan, who received them with
a cheery smile, and, when informed that the delegation intended to visit
the Catholic Bishop, he looked and said in that hearty, but rather rough
Fifeshire accent of his; "Ech, Dr. Lynch is a fine mon, and a great
frien’ of mine; we often hae a crack thegither." In turn, the
Catholic Bishop expressed himself with equal warmth touching his rival
in the See, but his friend by the hearth.] all the civic dignitaries and
institutions, were fully represented on the occasion. It was not without
significance that the troops, regular and other, lined the streets and
that the strains of martial music were heard at the burial of one who
was first a churchman of the militant type, and next a patriotic
citizen. The new order had succeeded to the old; but the military
authorities had not forgotten the brave rector who stepped into the
breach, when the invader attempted to sack the town wherein he lived and
died. With many, perhaps with most, of Bishop Strachan’s earlier views
it is impossible to express more than a qualified sympathy; still he was
a brave, strong, conscientious man, rough-hewn in some respects, yet
worthy of sincere admiration for all the good he accomplished, apart
from the theories he held concerning church and state. Scotland has no
reason to be ashamed of her prelate-son, since the weaknesses of his
policy were frustrated, and only the sturdy, sharply-cut figure of the
courageous little Bishop remains as a salient example of good Scottish
pluck, energy and perseverance.
We have already alluded
to Dr. Dunlop, and this appears as fitting a place as any that may
present itself hereafter to sketch a character singularly eccentric and
almost bizarre. William Dunlop was born at Greenock, in the last decade
of the eighteenth century. He came to Canada with Mr John Galt—of whom
hereafter—in 1826, and took part in the founding of Guelph. He had
been an old contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine, and was
intimately acquainted with John Wilson, Maginn, Hogg, and the whole
circle celebrated in "The Recreations of Christopher North."
He resumed his contributions to Blackwood after his arrival in
Canada and their character may be inferred from the title of one of them
"The Autobiography of a Rat." In an article from Fraser, quoted
by Morgan, [Bib. Canaden, p. 112.] we find some interesting details of
his early career. He was a surgeon in the Connaught Rangers (88th), of
all regiments in the world, for some years, and served in
America from 1813 to 1815. Thence he accompanied the regiment to India,
where he edited a news paper, hunted and lived convivially after the old
Edinburgh fashion. At last the jungle fever laid him low, and he was
compelled to return home on half-pay. His next move was a
characteristically eccentric one. He delivered a course of lectures on
medical jurisprudence at Edinburgh, described as a mixture "of fun
and learning, law and science, blended with rough jokes and anecdotes,
not at all of the most prudish nature." He then went to London and
played the editor for a time in his usual jaunty fashion. Sometimes
leading articles appeared; at others, the British Press appeared
without them, especially when he had more serious work on hand. He had a
strong antipathy to the French, and, on a significant change of Ministry
under the Bourbons, he simply wrote: "We perceive that there is a
change of Ministry in France; we have heard of no earthquakes in
consequence." He next published an edition of Beck’s Medical
Jurisprudence, and started the Telescope, a Sunday paper,
"the history of which would be a comedy of the drollest kind."
It fared tolerably well; but after a year, he got tired of it, as he did
of most other undertakings which involved continuous labour. In 1825
when the stock mania was at its height, Dr Dunlop was interested in
brick, iron, salt, and other companies either as secretary or director.
He superintended the salt works in Cheshire. "But," says
Fraser, "as the Tiger is an honest fellow—a strictly honest
fellow in every sense of the word—it is perfectly unnecessary to state
that he made nothing of the bubbles except what salary he may have
received." About the same time, he founded a club bearing the
peculiarly euphonious name of "The Pig and Whistle."
In 1826 the Doctor came
to Western Canada in company with John Galt, and still continued his
contributions to the press in England and here. He wrote for the
literary and political press—for the former chiefly in the Canadian
Literary Magazine of York, and the Literary Garland of
Montreal. In 1836 he founded the Toronto Literary Club, before which he
frequently lectured. The first Union Parliament met in 1841 at Kingston,
and Dunlop was returned to it from the County of Huron, a constituency
he represented until 1846, when he resigned; his death took place in
1848. During his brief public career, the Doctor was a general favourite,
partly on account of his well-known eccentricity, and partly from the
racy character of his speeches. He was a forcible, but scarcely an
eloquent, speaker; yet, no sooner was he expected to speak than the
House filled at once.
Dr. Dunlop had a brother
almost as eccentric as himself, residing with him, and they kept a
housekeeper possessed of means, from whom they had been compelled either
to borrow money, or, what was much the same thing, to go in arrears in
the payment of her wages, in order to tide them over an emergency. It
was found, on an examination of the accounts, that they were hopelessly
in her debt; the Doctor, therefore, startled his brother by stating that
the only way out of the difficulty was for one or other of them to marry
Betty. This was agreed upon at last, and the Doctor gave his brother a
penny with which to toss up for the wife. It is said that the coin had
two heads, so that there was after all no element of chance in the
matter. The coin went up, the Doctor cried, "heads," and of
course head it was. The housekeeper was nothing loth, and the brother
was married to her without unnecessary delay. Doctor Dunlop was
unquestionably a most eccentric man; but he had a strong practical vein
in him, and although somewhat fitful at work, could, on occasion, as in
the service of the Canada Company, approve himself a man of vigorous
energy and intelligence. No sketch of the man would be complete which
did not conclude with a copy of his will. As a mutilated version has
often appeared in the press—indeed, it appears to go the rounds
periodically—a correct copy is here given from the Surrogate Court
records of the County of Huron. [To the kindness of Mr. John Macara, of
Goderich, the writer is indebted for this document, as well as for
access to a rare volume of Canadian political pamphlets.] It reads as
follows:—
In the name of God, Amen.
I, WILLIAM DUNLOP, of
Fairbraid, in the Township of Colborne, County and District of Huron,
Western Canada, Esquire, being in sound health of body, and my mind just
as usual (which my friends who flatter me say is no great shakes, at the
best of times), do make this my last Will and Testament as follows,
revoking of course all former wills:—
I leave the property of
Fairbraid, and all other landed property I may die possessed of
to my sister Helen Boyle Story, and Elizabeth Boyle Dunlop, the former,
because she is married to a minister whom (God help him) she henpecks.
The latter because she is married to nobody, nor is she like to be, for
she is an old maid, and not market-rife. And also, I leave to them and
their heirs my share of the stock and implements on the farm; Provided
always, that the enclosure round my brother’s grave be reserved, and
if either should die without issue, then the other to inherit the whole.
I leave to my
sister-in-law, Louisa Dunlop, all my share of the household furniture
and such traps, with the exceptions hereinafter mentioned.
I leave my silver tankard
to the eldest son of old John, as the representative of the family. I
would have left it to old John himself, but he would melt it down to
make temperance medals, and that would be sacrilege—however, I leave
my big horn snuff-box to him, he can only make temperance horn spoons of
that.
I leave my sister Jenny
my Bible, the property formerly of my great-great-grandmother, Bethia
Hamilton, of Woodhall, and when she knows as much of the spirit of it,
as she does of the letter, she will be another guise Christian than she
is.
I also leave my late
brother’s watch to my brother Sandy, exhorting him at the same time to
give up whiggery, radicalism, and all other sins that do most easily
beset him.
I leave my brother Alan
my big silver snuff-box, as I am informed he is rather a decent
Christian, with a swag belly and a jolly face.
I leave Parson Chevasse (Maggy’s
husband), the snuff-box I got from the Sarnia Militia, as a small token
of my gratitude for the service he has done the family in taking a
sister that no man of taste would have taken.
I leave John Caddie a
silver teapot, to the end that he may drink tea therefrom to comfort him
under the affliction of a slatternly wife.
I leave my books to my
brother Andrew, because he has been so long a Jungley Wallah that he may
learn to read with them.
I give my silver cup,
with a sovereign in it, to my sister Janet Graham Dunlop, because she is
an old maid and pious and therefore will necessarily take to horning:
And also my Granma’s snuff mull, as it looks decent to see an old
woman taking snuff.
I do hereby constitute
and appoint John Dunlop, Esquire, of Fairbraid; Alexander Dunlop,
Esquire, Advocate, Edinburgh; Alan C. Dunlop, Esquire, and William
Chalk, of Tuckersmith; William Stewart and William Gooding, Esquires,
Goderich, to be the Executors of this my last Will and Testament.
In witness whereof I have
hereunto set my hand and seal the thirty-first day of August, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty two.
(Signed) W. DUNLOP. L.S.
The above Instrument of
one sheet was, at the date thereof, declared to us by the Testator,
William Dunlop, Esquire, to be his last Will and Testament, and he then
acknowledged to each of us, that he had subscribed the same and we at
his request, signed our names hereunto as attesting witnesses.
(Signed) JAMES CLOWTING,
PATRICK MCNAUGHTON, L.S.
ELIZABETH STEWARD.
I, Daniel McDonald,
Registrar of the Surrogate Court of the County of Huron, hereby certify
that the within is a true and correct copy of the original last Will and
Testament of the said William Dunlop, Esquire, deceased.
Given under my hand and
seal at Goderich, in the said County, this eighteenth day of April, in
the year A.D. 1881.
(L.S.) D. McDONALD, Registrar.
To return to the period
properly under review, Robert Gourlay, driven to the verge of insanity,
had been banished. That he had no special predilection for
constitutional change has been seen; but in 1820 another Scot appeared
upon the scene, who was destined to play a more conspicuous part, and
indirectly to revolutionize the old colonial system of the time. William
Lyon Mackenzie was born at Springfield, Dundee, Forfarshire, on the 12th
of March, 1796. Daniel, his father, who died within a month of his son’s
birth, left behind a widow and an only child in rather straitened
circumstances. Educated but imperfectly at school, he was obliged at an
early age to work for his living. [The chief authority here is The
Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie. By Charles Lindsey.
Toronto, 1862. The Histories and Morgan’s Celebrated Canadians have
also been used.] His mother appears to have been a woman of singular
force of character, and it was from her, doubtless, that Mr. Mackenzie
inherited the salient qualities in mind and action for which he was
afterwards noted. From school, while yet a lad, he went into a draper’s
shop at Dundee; thence to the counting-house of a wool merchant named
Grey, of whom he always spoke with the greatest respect. There the
mysteries of the accountant’s craft were made plain to him, and by the
knowledge thus acquired, he afterwards profited when in a sphere of life
he never contemplated in those early times. With Scottish pluck and
independence, when only nineteen, he went into business for himself at
Alyth, keeping what in America is called "a general store,"
and also a circulating library. Mackenzie was always an insatiable
reader, and he knew good literature from that which was worthless; hence
the latter feature in his venture. His business, however, was
unsuccessful as perhaps might have been anticipated under the
circumstances, yet his creditors were all paid to the uttermost farthing
years after he had left the country.
In 1817 we find him in
England, in Wiltshire, where he became managing clerk in the service of
a Canal Company, and subsequently for a brief time in London. After
paying a flying visit to France, in the spring of 1820, Mackenzie sailed
for Canada. Although only twenty-four years of age, he was bald from the
effects of fever; but his slight, sinewy frame was capable of great
exertion, informed as it was by a quick, nervous and resolute spirit.
Shortly after his arrival, Mr. Mackenzie was appointed on the survey of
the Lachine Canal, but his tenure of that situation must have been
brief, for he turns up soon after at Little York (now Toronto). There he
was in business with Mr. Lesslie in the book and drug business. [This
conjunction of the trades in medicine for the body and the mind was
continued to a comparatively recent period by Mr. James Lesslie, who was
also the proprietor of the Examiner newspaper until it ceased to
live.] The profits of the books, we are told, went to Mr. John Lesslie,
whilst Mr. Mackenzie received those arising from the drug business. A
second business establishment was afterwards opened at Dundas, placed
under the care of Mr. Mackenzie, and conducted by him apparently with
profit for about a year and a half. [Mr. Lindsey writes (p. 30):
"In a printed poster I find the firm styled Mackenzie & Lesslie,
Druggists, and Dealers in Hardware and Cutlery, Jewelry, Toys, Carpenter’s
Tools, Nails, Groceries, Confections, Dye-stuffs, Paints, &C., at
the Circulating Library, Dundas."] In 1823 this partnership was
dissolved, and Mackenzie removed to Queenstown, on the Niagara, and
opened a general store, which, at the end of the year, he abandoned to
embark upon the stormy sea of politics. That he did so from necessity is
clear, since, as he has himself stated, his business was not highly
remunerative. Perhaps that constitutional unrest which followed him
through life was the moving cause, since he had hitherto taken no part
whatever in public affairs. [Mr. McMullen’s personal description is
clearly the portraiture of the man in later life; still it is
sufficiently graphic to bear quoting in this connection: "Of
slender form, and only five feet six inches in stature, his massive
head, bald from early fever, and high and broad in the frontal region,
looked far too large for the small body it surmounted. His eyes clear
and piercing, his firm set Scotch mouth, his chin long and broad, and
the general contour of his features, made up a countenance indicative of
strong will and great resolution, while the ceaseless activity of his
fingers, and the perpetual twitching of the lower part of his face
betrayed that restlessness and nervousness of disposition which so
darkly clouded his existence." History, p. 359. Lindsey, p.
35.] At all events, on the 18th of May, 1824, he issued twelve hundred
copies of a newspaper called the Colonial Advocate, without
having, as he himself has left on record, a single subscriber. In a
letter, quoted by his biographer, Mr. Mackenzie explained his motives.
The "family compact," to his view were the enemies of
immigration, of popular education, of civil and religious liberty, and
although he might have been united with them on terms personally
advantageous, he preferred "at nine-and-twenty to join the
oppressed." [This letter is too long for insertion, but as it was
written in exile, there are two sentences worth preserving because they
show that he was not quite so headstrong and unyielding as is generally
thought. "So far," he writes, "as I or any other
professed Reformer, was concerned in inviting citizens of this (the
American) Union to Interference in Canadian affairs, there was culpable
error. So far as any of us, at any time, may have proposed that the
cause of freedom would be advanced by adding the Canadas to this
Confederation, we were under the merest illusion.]
The truth is, as Mr.
Lindsey partly admits, that Mr. Mackenzie employed Rembrandt tints too
plentifully in pourtraying the political landscape of the time, and in
his paper he certainly aimed at being a pen-and-ink Hogarth. He had at
hand a strong vocabulary, and used it without stint; and the sardonic
humour in which he indulged, must have been galling to those who then
held power. They had now a second Gourlay on their hands, whom they
could not banish, and were not as yet able to silence. After having
changed the form of his paper, the neophyte in journalism resolved to
beard the dragon in its lair, and removed to York. Already the
Government was alarmed; but its organs confined themselves to vague
threats and such return of the Mackenzie fire as came to hand.
Singularly enough, the Colonial
Advocate gave utterance to moderate views on most subjects.
[Lindsey, p. 43.] The endowment of religion it regarded as a most
laudable act. ["In the part of the constitution of the Canadas,"
he writes, "Is the wisdom of the British legislature more apparent
than in the setting apart a portion of the country, while it yet
remained a wilderness, for the support of religion."] The
University, for which Dr. Strachan was earnestly contending, met with
his entire approval. All that he urged in both cases was that there
should be no exclusiveness in the matter of endowment. He favoured the
levelling up of the denominations, not the exclusive establishment of
one. But while Mr. Mackenzie was, on the whole, exceedingly moderate,
and even conservative in his general views, he made bitter onslaughts
upon the whole official and privileged class or coterie, from the
Lieutenant-Governor downward. The pen he wielded was hard-nibbed, and
there was an excess of gall in his ink. It was this, more than anything
else, that exasperated the party in power. They did not so much object
to gentlemanly remonstrance as to personal assault. Political
discussion, being a sign of nascent vitality in the Province, was
distasteful to them; but when it took the form of invective against the
Governor, the Executive, the judges and office-holders generally, it
seemed time to take alarm. After all, Mackenzie’s views were far from
being revolutionary in 1824. He was a constitutional Reformer; yet his
programme was certainly moderate enough. He was a staunch friend to
British connection, opposed to the abortive Union Bill of 1818, and one
of the first to propose a British North American confederation. He
certainly objected to the Clergy Reserves being monopolized by a single
Church, and also wrote against maintaining the right of primogeniture.
But on the endowment question in general he was at one with Dr. Strachan
at that time, and would have denounced secularization as a monstrous
piece of sacrilege. [Lindsey, p. 47. McMullen (p.360) says: "The
very first issue of the Advocate awoke the greatest alarm in the
minds of the Family Compact. Another prying Scotchman of the Gourlay
stamp had come to disturb their repost, and their organ suggested that
he should be forthwith banished the Province, and the whole edition of
his paper confiscated."]
But if the editor of the Colonial
Advocate did not offend by the extravagance of his political creed,
he certainly gave just cause for trepidation in other ways. To begin
with, he had made his journal, in fact as well as in name, a newspaper,
and this feature in the case irritated the other editors. But his chief
offence, we repeat, lay in the restless energy with which he exposed
abuses, corruption, official pluracies, nepotism—the final flower and
fruit of a primitive and stagnant political life. The language used in
the Advocate was of the vituperative order, and a native genius
for humour and sarcasm had made its editor somewhat callous to the
feelings of others whose only crime was that they had enjoyed the good
things at the command of the Government, according to the prescriptive
order of the time. ["He speedily became noted as a grievance-monger
and a hunter-up of abuses in the various public departments." –
McMullen, p. 360.] It was clear that the Gourlay experiment could not be
tried again; but violence might be employed to silence the agitator. In
the ninth Provincial Parliament, the Assembly for the first time
contained a Reform majority. To this result Mr. Mackenzie can scarcely
be said to have contributed, since only a few numbers of his paper had
been issued, and that was not a reading age. Postage was so high as to
be an insuperable obstacle to any extended circulation. [This was, no
doubt, the moving cause of that dead-set which Mackenzie made against
the Post Office department.] By removing to York, the editor of the Advocate
was on the spot, could report the debates, and beard his political
adversaries in their den. It is hardly necessary to remark that no such
system as "responsible government" then obtained. The Ministry
was in a minority in the House, but had the Lieutenant-Governor and the
Legislative Council at its back. Constantly defeated, the Executive paid
no attention to the want of confidence votes of the Assembly. When Mr.
(afterwards Dr.) Rolph spoke of Cabinet responsibility to the House, the
Attorney-General, afterward Sir John Beverley Robinson, disdained any
united responsibility at all. [Mr. Robinson said "he was at loss to
understand what the learned member for Middlesex" (Mr. Rolph was
then practicing at the bar) "meant by a Prime Minister and a
Cabinet; there was no Cabinet; he sat in that House to deliver his
opinions on his own responsibility; he was under no out-door influence
whatever." – Lindsey, p. 67.]
During this time
Mackenzie was engaged in stimulating Liberalism at last triumphant in
the Assembly; but his paper had not been a success. An effort was made,
in 1826 to secure him the moderate grant of £37 16s. currency, for
publishing the debates. As it appeared in the Bill of Supply when passed
by the House, the Legislative Council could not eliminate it; but the
Lieutenant-Governor struck out the item with his own pen. The Advocate
had been published irregularly, and Mackenzie was vacillating in his
intentions, when a sudden act of violence restrained him from going to
Dundas, to Montreal, or the United States. His residence and printing
office were situated on the north-eastern corner of Palace street and
Post-office (now Caroline) streets, immediately fronting the bay. On the
opposite side was the residence of Col. Allan, the Police Magistrate,
and on the same side to the north were the Post-office and the Bank. On
the eighteenth of June, 1826, in broad daylight, a number of young
gentlemen entered the Office and set about the destruction of everything
in it. Three pages of the paper, and some other work were upon the
imposing stones. The face of the type was destroyed, some of it
scattered on the floor, some thrown into a neighbouring garden, some
taken boldly down to Allan’s wharf and cast into the bay. The press
was demolished and the stone thrown on the floor. The respectability of
those concerned was one bad feature in the case. They appear to have
been all of them —there were fifteen—young men of position; either
the sons or subordinate officers of men in place. The Inspector-General
had two sons engaged in the exploit; there were the son of a Judge, also
the son of a magistrate, and the confidential secretary of Sir Peregrine
Maitland, the Lieutanant-Governor, as well as others intimately
connected with the family compact. Besides this awkward fact, there can
be no doubt that at least two magistrates were eyewitnesses of all that
occurred outside the office; for they were noticed on the street during
the affair, and certainly saw the type thrown into the bay.
This act of violence,
committed during Mackenzie’s absence from the city, excited greater
indignation than had been anticipated, and the parties against whom the
evidence was clear were at once arrested. The Hon. J. B. Macaulay,
appeared for the rioters, and made several ineffectual attempts to come
to a settlement. Mackenzie, when the terms were made known, rejected
them with scorn. [Mr. Macaulay (who, of course, only appeared
professionally) urged on behalf of his clients, that they had always
been willing to pay a reasonable amount of damages, and were only
deterred from making an immediate offer because of the clamour, and the
exertion used to prejudice the public mind. He further pleaded that the
act was "not to be ascribed to any malice, political feeling or
private animosity; the personal calumnies" contained in the Advocate
being a sufficient motive.] The truth is that in their endeavour to
destroy Mr. Mackenzie’s influence, the rioters had added to his
popularity, or, as McMullen puts it, made a political martyr of him. [History,
p. 363.] Hence their anxiety to secure peace at the price of two or
three hundred pounds. [See Macaulay’s letters in Lindsey, pp. 82 and
84.] So far as the "personal calumnies" were concerned, it is
clear that Mr. Mackenzie did not begin them in the columns of his paper.
On the contrary, in one of the earliest numbers he had said: "When
I am reduced to personalities, I will bring the Advocate to a
close." That he criticized official acts with a freedom and warmth
to which the ruling class were unaccustomed, must be admitted. But he
was generous enough to recognise the good qualities of his opponents,
and, until they assailed him personally with a virulence nothing he had
written could justify, he never assailed individual character. He even
expressed regret for strong language he had used in regard to public
acts. [Speaking of Mr. (Sir J.B.) Robinson, he frankly wrote that he had
risen in his estimation, and that, having observed him without disguise,
and "watched his movements, his looks, his language, and his
actions, I will confess this, I reproached myself for having used him at
one time too harshly.] He had quarrelled with Dr. Rolph, because he
thought his assaults on the Government too severe; and there is nothing
to prove that, if he had been spared those bitter personal attacks, he
would not have maintained his policy of moderation and forbearance.
No settlement having been
arranged in the matter of the riot and destruction of printing plant,
the trial came off at York, in 1826. It was a civil action, and
conducted before Chief-Justice Campbell, with a special jury. Before
proceeding with the case, it seems proper to give a slight biography of
the judge. Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Campbell was born in Scotland in
1758. He came to America as a noncommissioned officer, or private, in a
Highland Regiment to take part in the Revolutionary War, and his career
ended with the surrender of Cornwallis, in 1781, when he became a
prisoner with the rest of the command. In 1783, he retired to Nova
Scotia, and, having obtained his discharge, devoted himself to the study
of the law. After nineteen years’ practice, he was appointed
Attorney-General of Cape Breton, and elected to the Assembly of that
Province. In 1811 he was promoted to a puisne judgeship in Upper Canada,
and, in 1825, upon the retirement of William Dummer Powell, became
Chief-Justice. In 1829 he retired from ill health, and was succeeded by
the Attorney-General, afterwards Sir J. B. Robinson. On this occasion he
received the honour of knighthood, and died in 1834, in the
seventy-sixth year of his age. His funeral was attended by both Houses
of Legislature, the Bench and the Bar. He appears to have been a man of
great force of character, sterling integrity, and personal worth. [Scadding,
p. 131; Morgan, 238. The former quotes from a work by Dr. Henry, the
physician who attended him in his last illness. Finding medicine of no
avail, he prescribed a diet of snipes. "On this delicate food the
poor old gentleman was supported for a couple of months; but the frost
set in, the snipes flew away, and Sir William died."]
To return to the trial.
With the Judge were seated, as associates, two Magistrates, the Hon.
William Allan and Alexander Macdonell. The evidence, all on one side,
proved conclusively that the eight defendants had taken part in the
riot. They were defended by Messrs. Hagerman and Macaulay; but after
being confined for thirty-two hours, the jury returned a verdict for
£625, which was paid not long after by subscription. As Mr. Mackenzie
himself said: "This verdict re-established the Advocate on a
permanent footing." So that the net results of the type-riot were,
that an obnoxious journal, which probably would have perished of
inanition, received a new lease of life, and its proprietor was at once
elevated to a prominent place in the sympathies of the people. Mr.
Mackenzie declined to prosecute criminally; he had already been largely
a gainer by the violence of his opponents, and, no doubt, thought that
to appear vindictive would do himself more harm than good. But by a
singularly complicated series of prosecutions, seven of them were
brought to trial criminally, though distinctly against Mackenzie’s
wishes. Mr. Francis Collins of the Freeman, was criminally
prosecuted for libels upon the Attorney-General. In 1828 Collins
retaliated by laying an information against the rioters, who were tried
and found guilty; but they escaped with nominal punishment. Then there
was a murder trial, also set on foot by Collins, against two of his
opponents, for participation in a fatal duel; but they were acquitted.
The next step was to prosecute Mackenzie himself. The accused appeared
in his own defence behind a rampart of law books and political
authorities; but the trial was first postponed, and afterwards
abandoned. [Collins was not so fortunate; for in October, 1828, he was
found guilty, and sentenced to a fine of 50 pounds and imprisonment for
a year.]
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