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

8thly, We are firmly persuaded that, if this experiment were tried in any one county or district, it would be found to answer so well that others would adopt and imitate it. The service it would render to government might be most important in stirring times; and being a bonâ fide and really effective corps, it would revive the martial and manly feelings of the people, now somewhat blunted by the long duration of peace, and would diffuse a most wholesome spirit throughout the land. From the sentiments of honour, and loyalty too, with which such a corps would be animated, (for it would be composed of the very flower and hope of the land,) it would, by its moral weight alone, keep in check that crowd of discontented persons who always exist in our empire. The loyal and honourable sentiments possessed by this corps would spread themselves abroad among the people; the good example set would be followed by the most respectable part of the nation, and a healthier tone would be thereby given to society in general.

9thly, Taking into consideration the number of parishes, and the population of Great Britain, (for we could not admit the Irish into our loyal ranks) we should estimate the probable force that could thus be raised and maintained at its own expense, at not less than 50,000 men, of whom 10,000 would be effective light cavalry; and we should suppose that at least 40,000 of this total number might be counted on for active service, in any emergency.

The mere fact, if this calculation be not overrated, of our being thereby able to add such a degree of strength to our regular army – or that of our being able to replace such a number of our regular troops, if called abroad suddenly for distant duty – or else, the knowledge that there would always be such a numerous body of men in the country, armed and arrayed in the support of the monarchy and the constitution; either of these facts, taken separately, might justify the formation of such a corps, but, taken conjointly, they seem to carry with them no small weight.

An anomaly in the present constitution of noble society which requires remedying, is the frequent inadequacy of the territorial means possessed by noble families for the maintenance of their power and dignity. This has reached to such a pitch, of late days, that we have seen the ladies of two peers of the realm claiming public support in formâ pauperum; and we have witnessed the breaking-up and sale of such a princely establishment as that of Stowe. Many noble families are forced to depend on public offices, and other indirect sources, for the support of their members. Many noble families of high distinction and renown are poorer than ordinary commoners. There are very few estates of nobles (we say nothing of those of commoners) which are not oppressed by mortgages, and which, in reality, confer much less power than they nominally represent. From whatever causes these circumstances may have arisen, – whether from the folly and extravagance of the nobles themselves as a main cause, or from the imprudence of the crown in making unworthy creations, as a subsidiary cause – they have produced the most injurious effects upon the order, and have even justified the boast of the first commoner who thought himself superior to the last of the nobles. By few things has the order been more injured in public opinion than by the inequality and inadequacy of its territorial resources. This, too, becomes the more painfully evident in a nation where commerce has been allowed to assume an undue preponderance in the public mind, and where the means of gaining money are so various and so many, that the rapid acquisition of handsome fortunes is a very common occurrence. It is an evil, a negation of the ends of life, and a main cause of the decline and fall of a nation, that such a state of things should exist; but, seeing that it does exist, it is doubly the duty and the interest of all who have the honour and the permanency of national prosperity at heart, to favour the establishment and the maintenance of the strongest possible antagonistic principle – the forming and preserving of large territorial possessions in favour of the order of nobles. Believing that the law of primogeniture is the basis of all political freedom, we would urge the expediency of modifying the law, so that certain great estates, like the fiefs of old, should become inalienable by any person, unattachable for any liabilities, and indivisible under any circumstances, in favour of the order of nobles: and that the holders of such estates should be nobles, and nobles only. In the same spirit we would say, that the extent of territory should determine the rank of the noble, taking, as the starting-point, the estates as they might exist at any period of time; that to each title a certain territory should be inalienably attached, and that the title itself should derive its name from that territory – the holder of the territory, whoever he might be, always taking the title. It would be productive of great good if facilities were given as much as possible for massing together the properties of the noble; and if estates widely spread over the kingdom could be exchanged for others lying close together, and forming a compact territory. The powers of the nobles are now greatly frittered away and lost by the dispersion of their properties: he who holds nearly a whole county continuously, like the Duke of Sutherland, is of much more weight in the state than another, like the Duke of Devonshire, whose estates, though of very great value, lie more widely scattered.

It may appear an innovation, but we are persuaded that it would be only a return to the fundamental and ancient principles of the constitution, to make the possession of a real estate of a certain value, for a certain time, a legal title to claim the right to nobility. Thus the possession of an estate of £10,000 per annum clear rental, or of 5000 acres, by the same family, in direct descent for four generations, should of itself constitute a right for its owner to be ranked in the lowest order of nobility, – that of barons, – and the barony should give its name to its possessor; while, the possession of land of greater extent and value should modify the superior titles of those who held them, until the highest rank in the peerage were attained. All nobles holding not less than £100,000 per annum of clear rental, or 50,000 acres, should ipso facto and de jure become dukes, and so on in proportion between these two extremes of the peerage. Baronets should rank, in virtue of their estates, immediately after the barons; and in their turn, too, the possession of a certain income from landed property, such as £5000 a-year clear for four generations, in the same family, should immediately entitle its owner to rank among the baronets, and to have the style and privileges of that order.

It will be urged, on the other hand, that the crown would thereby be deprived of the power of rewarding meritorious public servants, by calling them up to the House of Peers, if the possession of a certain large amount of landed property were made a sine quâ non for every creation. To this it may be replied that, though the prerogatives of the crown require extension rather than contraction, yet that a sufficient power of reward would be possessed, if men of eminence in the public service, whether great commanders or distinguished lawyers, were summoned to the Upper House for their lives only, without their titles being made hereditary; and further, that other distinctions might be given which would be fully sufficient rewards in themselves without any encroachment being made on the privileges of the order of nobles. Thus, in former times, when the honour of knighthood was not so common as it has now become, a great general and a great judge considered themselves rewarded enough if knighted: they never thought of being created peers. And the fact is, that though personal nobility – the nobility acquired by the performance of great actions – is in itself of the highest value to the state, as well as to the individual, it is not sufficiently valuable to entitle the heirs of a great man to take perpetual rank among the great landed proprietors of the realm. The duties and responsibilities of nobility depend more upon the trust reposed in each member than upon that member's personal qualifications. The noble cannot be separated from his lands nor from his tenants, nor from the multifarious heavy responsibilities thereby incurred; he is the representative of a great interest in the state; he is the representative of his land, and of all connected with it; he is the representative of a great class and gathering: his duties are not merely personal; he cannot found his right to nobility upon personal merit alone. Personal qualifications can give no valid right to hereditary privileges, whereas land is perpetual —rura manebunt– and the privileges as well as the duties attached to it should be perpetual also.

It would, therefore, be another step towards constituting the aristocracy of the state on a more solid and reasonable basis, if the orders of baronets, and of knights of various descriptions, were purified of their anomalies, and rendered attainable only under rules of a more general and fixed nature than at present prevail. Both these classes of nobles – for so they may be called – require considerable purification; the former, that of baronet, should be made the intermediate class between the nobles by personal merit, or knights, and those who are nobles by their lands, the peers. As was observed before, no baronetcy should be conferred unless a real estate of a certain value could be shown to be possessed, clear of all mortgage and debt; and the retention of such an estate for a certain number of generations should establish a legal claim to the title of baronet; while the subsequent increase of the same estate, and a similar retention of it for a certain number of descents, should establish a further claim to the honour of the peerage. If the orders of knighthood were made more difficult of entry, and if they were specially reserved only for public personal services, they would rise again in public estimation, and would be suitable for all purposes of reward required by the sovereign.

At the same time, and as a consequence of this, peers and baronets should not be admitted into the orders of knighthood – they should be satisfied with their own dignities. The garter, the thistle, and the shamrock should be reserved especially for the great military and naval commanders of the realm: the bath, and perhaps one or two other new orders, should be destined for men of eminence in whatever line of life they might be able to render service to their country.

It is an opinion controverted by some, but it seems founded in reason, that the twelve judges, who are at the head of their most honourable profession, should not merely be allowed to sit on the benches of the House of Lords, but that they should have the right of voting therein, and, in fact, be summoned as peers for life upon their elevation to the bench. No order of men in the whole state would exercise power more conscientiously, and from no other source could the Upper House derive at once such an immense increase of deliberative strength in the revision and framing of the laws. The bench of spiritual lords, and the bench of legal lords, ought to form two of the purest ornaments in the bright galaxy of the peers of the realm.

We shall content ourselves for the present with indicating two other points, recognised and admitted by the constitutional forms of the government, but at present much lost sight of; and they may be considered as affecting the lowest order – the very root of the whole nobility of the land.

Members of the Lower House for counties are always called knights of the shires they represent; and so they ought to be. No person should be eligible to represent a county unless previously adorned with the honour either of knighthood or of the baronetage, or unless the younger son of a peer of the realm; and indeed the attaching of titles of nobility to the possession of estates of a certain value and fixity of tenure, and the annexing of baronetcies to similar properties, would put all the principal country gentlemen in a position suited to the duties of a knight of the shire. We should not then see the absurd and mischievous anomaly of an ambitious theorist of no landed property in his own possession, but backed by the democrats of a manufacturing district, thrust upon the legislature as the representative of a large agricultural county. We should rather find the knights of the shires forming a compact and most influential body in the imperial parliament, the real representatives of the interests of their constituents, and the main conservative element in the Lower House of the legislature.

The bearing of arms, and the gratuitous assumption of the title of esquire, now so universally adopted, require to be more strictly limited, unless it is desired that the whole system should fall from inevitable ridicule into ultimate disuse. It is a kind of morbid feeling that has thus been produced by national vanity, and will some day or other work out its opposite extreme, unless restrained in due time. For the undue granting of arms the Herald's College is greatly responsible; but for the universal assumption of the correlative title, society at large is to be blamed. It is one of the weaknesses of the day, that men and things are no longer called by their true names, and it indicates a downward progress in the national fortunes rather than the contrary. The evil might be checked by the confining of the right to wear coats of arms or shields to the orders of knighthood only – as it used to be at the first institution of the custom; while for all persons under that standing in society, some distinctive badge or family token might be adopted, sufficient to identify their lineage, yet showing a difference of grade. It is more difficult to say how the appellations of the various classes of commoners shall be settled; but there can be no doubt that the common herding of all men together – whether under the names of esquires, gentlemen, or even of "gents" – is an absurdity: mischievous, inasmuch as it tends to level what ought to be unequal, and as it renders ridiculous what ought to be respected.

We readily allow that the ideas propounded above are more or less Utopian; so, however, are all ideas of change. With this excuse, however, we content ourselves for the present. If we have advocated any amendments, they are not in the direction of what is called, falsely enough —Progress, but in that of what is really and truly improvement, because it implies a reverting to the fundamental and unalterable basis of the modern European social system. "Progress" now means advancement in the cause of democracy – that is, in the path which marks the decline and fall, and ultimate destruction of any old nation. Far be it from us to lend a hand to aught that can assist this fatal and destructive process. We would preserve, and restore, and improve, rather than destroy. And it is because we believe this ancient spirit of feudalism to be that which contains the great elements of national prosperity, that we therefore advocate a return towards some of its first principles. A further development of this we reserve for a future occasion. But this we will maintain, that in the great cycle of years which constitute the life of a people, the upward rising of the nation is characterised by the active vitality of what we will call feudalism, its downward sinking by the existence of democratic license and opulent enervation, following upon the decline of warlike and chivalrous pursuits. The process of corruption and of disintegration may be slow, but it is not the less certain. It overtakes even the most prosperous nations at last. Would that we could check and avert that evil from our own country!

CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS

Strange though it sound to speak of a revolution in these provinces, where the representative of the crown is notoriously supported by a large majority in the provincial parliament, and where, for years past, there has scarcely been an inquiry made as to when a regiment either came or went, or even how many troops were in the whole American colonies; yet it is nevertheless a fact, that a more important and effective revolution is now going on in the Canadas, than if half their population were in open arms against the mother country.

Before attempting either to describe or to account – which we trust in the course of this paper to be able to do – for this extraordinary state of things, it will be necessary to touch upon a few leading events in the history of both provinces, and, incidentally, upon the character and intentions of the parties engaged in them.

It is well known to all English readers, that the French of Lower Canada, forming a population of some four hundred thousand people, after a long course of factious and embarrassing legislation; after a species of civil, social, and parliamentary strife for nearly half a century, which was far more withering in its effects upon the prosperity of the country than a good fight in the beginning would have been, finally, in 1837, took up arms against the British government. Shortly afterwards they were joined by the party in Upper Canada which had long made common cause with them, though without common principles, aims, or hopes – the one's pride being indissolubly wedded to institutions which were pregnant with retrogression and decay, the other's chief merit consisting in pretension to raise men from beneath old ruins, instead of bringing old ruins down upon them. Yet both agreed in hating England, and in taking up arms, jointly and severally, to overthrow her institutions. Whatever other lesson England might have learned from the fact, she should at least have learned this – that it was no ordinary feelings of desperation or of difference that made them forego so much to each other, in order to strike an effectual blow at her; and that it could be no ordinary circumstance, if it was even in the nature of things, after they had become partners in the same defeats and humiliations – after they had been made bed-fellows by the same misfortunes – that could disunite them in favour of their common enemy; and not only turn the tide of their hatred against each other, but make the party that became loyal to England kiss the rod that had so severely scourged it.

Probably this might have been thought difficult. But where the hostility to England might have been regarded as accidental, rather than of settled and determined principle, it might be urged that the reconciling one or both these parties to the British government, might not have been impossible; or the bringing the one back to loyalty, even at the expense of its having to oppose the other, might still be in the power of wise legislation.

This brings us to consider the character and the principles, the prejudices and the predilections, of the two parties. And if the reader will follow us over a little scrap of history, possibly new to him, if we do not happen to differ on the road, we apprehend we shall agree in summing up the general results.

For many parliaments previous to the rebellion in Lower Canada, the majority in favour of the French was on an average equal to four-fifths of each house. And, instead of this majority being diminished by the agency of immigration, or by reason of the detachment of almost every Englishman and American in the province from their cause – who at first sided with them for the purpose of procuring the redress of all real abuses, most, if not all, of which, arose from the nature of their own institutions, – it continued to increase, until at last every county in the province which had a preponderance of French influence, sent a member to parliament to carry on a kind of civil war with the government. Men of the first talents in the country, who had freely spent the best of their lives and their efforts in its service, when they were compelled to leave this faction, or take leave of their loyalty to the crown, found that the breadth of their own intellects was all they were ever able to detach from its ranks. Every concession the imperial government could make, every effort to conciliate them, was met only by fresh demands – demands conceived in a spirit of hostility, and wilfully and knowingly of such a character as could not be conceded. Yet their majorities continued, and even increased, in parliament. In 1832, they carried their measures of hostility to the British, and even the Irish population so far, as to refuse to employ them for any purposes whatever, and, in some cases, those employed were dismissed. It is matter of Lower Canadian history, that one of their greatest grievances was, that they had not the control of the appointments of judges and other public officers, and the apportioning of their salaries; yet it is well known – it was publicly avowed by them in Parliament – that their object was, to starve out the British government, by starving out its officers. Still the French leaders who mooted these measures gained in popularity, and the English members for French counties continued to lessen. British manufactures were solemnly denounced in their parliament, and the use of them declared a disgrace to every Frenchman; and a tax, which they intended as a prohibition, was attempted to be placed upon British emigrants: yet withal, Mr Papineau, the great French leader, rose the higher, and his party grew the stronger. The more, in short, the French leaders could embarrass the government, and the more they could throw obstacles in the way of the improvements incident to the activity and enterprise of the English race, the more they rose in the estimation of the French constituencies. They claimed, in truth, for these very acts, their confidence, and they received what they claimed to the fullest extent. In a well-written, and, considering all the circumstances, a temperate address of the Constitutional Association of Montreal in 1832 – an association got up with the view of making the situation of the British population known to the imperial government, and an association that afterwards greatly contributed to save the province during the rebellion – we find the following among other passages to the same effect, upon this subject: —

"For half a century has the population of English and Irish descent in Lower Canada been subjected to the domination of a party whose policy has been to retain the distinguishing attributes of a foreign race, and to crush in others that spirit of enterprise which they are unable or unwilling to emulate. During this period, a population, descended from the same stock with ourselves, have covered a continent with the monuments of their agricultural industry. Upper Canada and the United States bear ample testimony of the flood-tide of prosperity – the result of unrestricted enterprise, and of equitable laws. Lower Canada, where another race predominates, presents a solitary exception to this march of improvement. There, surrounded by forests inviting industry, and offering a rich reward to labour, an illiterate people, opposed to improvements, have compressed their growing numbers almost within the boundaries of their original settlements, and present, in their mode of laws, in their mode of agriculture, and peculiar customs, a not unfaithful picture of France in the seventeenth century. There also may be witnessed the humiliating spectacle of a rural population not unfrequently necessitated to implore eleemosynary relief from the legislature of the country."

But it is no new lesson to learn, that an inert and unprogressive race, with pride clinging to decay, and customs withering to enterprise, cannot harmonise, in legislative provisions, with men who want laws to assist the steps of advancing civilisation, rather than ways and means of keeping up old ruins; who prefer to gather the fruits of a thousand trees, for the planting of which enterprise has explored, and industry has employed, new and rich domains, to tying up the decaying branches of a few old ones, to which possibly memory may love to cling, but under which plain human nature might starve. To expect, in fact, that men with such opposite characteristics, apart even from their other elements of discord, should harmonise, when the party weaker in legislation was the stronger in civilisation, when the party that stood still had the power of making the other stand still also, was to expect an impossibility. And this was exactly the nature of the contest so long carried on in Lower Canada. An ox and a race-horse had been yoked together in the same legislative harness. But the misfortune was increased by the race-horse's being subject – however much he might struggle, and rear, and foam – to the motions of his dogged companion, and to the necessity of not moving at all, whenever it pleased his venerable mate to stand still. It is clear, therefore, that any legislative provision, after the rebellion, which would restore to the French this ascendency, would be but causing confusion worse confused – would be but entailing upon both parties constant contentions, with the probability, if not the certainty, of a final appeal to arms; in which case England would be left without a friend in either party – the one looking upon her as their natural enemy – the other as a power which had always sacrificed its friends when it had the means of benefiting them – had perpetually raised its defenders very high, to see how very far it could let them fall.

The party in Upper Canada which had opposed the government step by step, until it ended with rebellion in conjunction with the French, was composed of vastly different materials from these its allies. And it is somewhat singular, but it is nevertheless a fact, that this party, both as to its strength, and the true causes of its hostility to England, has never been very thoroughly understood even in the Canadas. The principle of under-rating enemies was always applied to it by its opponents in the province. The pernicious habit of looking upon men with too much contempt to take the measure of their strength, is as bad in politics as it is in a physical struggle. But the party known as the government party in Upper Canada, was generally far too self-important and too great to calculate how many dark-looking clouds it takes to make a storm. The government of England too, never very clear-sighted in colonial affairs, and with its Argus eye as directed to Canadian prospects always suffering from some defect of vision, or looking through very distorting media, was not very likely to catch the height and cut of each individual in a colonial multitude, which it scarcely ever saw even in gross; while the Governors who "did the monarch" in the province, did not generally betray much taste for sitting down by the farmer's fireside, and eating apple-sauce and sauerkraut at his table, where there neither was, nor could have been, recognised a distinction between the master and the man, – between the lord of the castle and the cook in the kitchen. Yet such were the places where governors and rulers might have seen at work the elements of democracy; might have witnessed the process of education to the levelling system. An education which, with the vast facilities for independence in America, irrespective of situation or institutions – men never get over; and in which they might have traced the natural growth of feelings and principles, that must, in the very nature of things, be in a state of continual warfare with the customs, the pride, and the love of distinction, which are the inalienable offspring of the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the social system of England. Yet here they never penetrated either to count the voters or the children. They felt – they were obliged to feel – that the great wheel of the government, which was the majority in parliament, often performed extraordinary revolutions the wrong way. But they knew not how or wherefore. They never went where they might have studied, and could have understood, the difficulty; where, to make a long story short, in order to get at what they missed, and to understand what they did not, the reader has possibly anticipated the necessity of accompanying us.

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.

Lord Durham, in speaking of this party, and of that which opposed it, observes: —

"At first sight it appears much more difficult to form an accurate idea of the state of Upper than of Lower Canada. The visible and broad line of demarcation which separates parties, by the distinctive characters of race, happily has no existence in Upper Canada. The quarrel is one of an entirely English, if not British, population. Like all such quarrels, it has, in fact, created not two but several parties, each of which has some objects in common with some one of those to which it is opposed. They differ on one point and agree on another; the sections which unite together one day are strongly opposed the next; and the very party which acts as one against a common opponent, is in truth composed of divisions seeking utterly different or incompatible objects. It is very difficult to make out, from the avowals of parties, the real objects of their struggles; and still less easy is it to discover any cause of such importance as would account for its uniting any large mass of the people in an attempt to overthrow, by forcible means, the existing form of government."

There could not have been anything more mischievously incorrect, or more likely to lead to unfortunate conclusions, than these statements. We can safely challenge the whole parliamentary history of the province, the character of the leading measures and of the leading men, and the result of every election, for twenty-five years, to find even a reasonable pretext for them, although we believe they were made in full conviction of their truth by the nobleman who made them. Of course, he could not have properly understood what he was writing about. For six successive elections previous to the rebellion, the whole history of England does not afford an example of each party's going to the hustings with so little change in men, measures, principles, or feelings, as in every one of these. In every new House of Assembly the same identical leaders, and the same followers, singled out the same men four years after four years; and neither accidents nor changes, the reproaches of treason on the one side, or the accusations of corruption on the other, caused the loss of a man to one party or the gain of one to the other. The whole heart, soul, and hopes of the two parties were as distinct and opposite as those of any two parties that ever had an existence. Nor could it have been otherwise, when the tendencies of the one were so manifestly against the existence of a fabric, which every feeling of the other urged them to preserve at all hazards and under all circumstances.

At last an important event in the history of the province brought the contest between these parties to an issue. When Sir Francis Head assumed the government in 1836, he found the party which had opposed it for so many years with a large majority in Parliament. With the view, if possible, of reconciling the two parties, and of getting both to unite with him in furthering the real interests of the province, he formed an executive council of the leaders of both. But the council had scarcely been formed, before the leaders of the party which had been so perpetually in opposition declined remaining in it, unless Sir Francis would surrender up to them, practically, the same powers that are enjoyed by the ministry in England. This he neither could nor would do. An angry correspondence ensued. They significantly pointed, in the event of the character of the struggle being changed, to aid from the great democracy of America. He asserted that the great right arm of England should be wielded, if necessary, to support the crown. They finally concluded by stopping the supplies. He dissolved the house.

In the election contest which ensued, it was distinctly and emphatically declared by the government, that the contest was no longer as between party and party in a colony, but as between monarchy and democracy in America. Monarchy was, in fact and in truth, the candidate at the election. And whether the whole of the party engaged in this desperate opposition participated in the declaration made to Sir Francis, that they would look for aid to the States, and which elicited from him the reply, "Let them come if they dare," is not a matter that they have ever enlightened the public upon. But that he was forced and obliged to make monarchy the candidate in this election, or let democracy threaten and bully him out of the country, is a historical fact, and incontrovertible in the Canadas, but most grossly and most unfortunately misunderstood in England.

The government party gained the election. But after the contest, the opposition, seeing their hopes of success – which were founded upon the plan of embarrassing the government into their measures, by gaining majorities in parliament and stopping the supplies – all destroyed by the result of this election; and knowing that immigration was every year adding to the strength of their opponents, finally determined to change the struggle from the hustings and the parliament, to the camp and the battle-field – to risk all in a bold attempt to strike down the oak at a blow, instead of attempting to destroy it, branch by branch, by democratic measures and factious legislation. That there were men of this party who did not approve of this desperate step, and that there were others who thought it premature, we believe and know; but that the great body of the party itself sympathised with the leaders in it, and would have gloried in, and contributed by all the means in their power to their success, had it been attainable, we are not only sure of, but could prove by the history of the whole affair, given by those who had the best means of understanding it.

When Lord Durham arrived in Canada, he found this party in the situation of masses of threatening, but scattered clouds. Some had voluntarily withdrawn to the States; others were there, either to escape arrest, or from consciousness of their guilt in the rebellion. The great body of the party remained in the province, with all those feelings towards England and her loyalists, that humbled pride, many sufferings, a contemptible struggle, and a mortifying defeat, were likely to engender. But though the storm had passed over, the clouds were nearly all left. The party had, in reality, gained by experience much more than it had lost in numbers. It had come to the understanding that England's great right arm could not be so easily broken. It had learned, and its friends in the States had learned – what was most useful to both under the circumstances – that if England's institutions were to be destroyed in America, it must be done by some other means than by blows and bayonets.

And it was with this party, thus situated, and composed of the materials, and influenced by the considerations, we have mentioned, that Lord Durham proposed, by a union of the provinces, to neutralise the legislative influence of the French of Lower Canada – to destroy their supremacy, which was pregnant with rebellion, and to subvert their power, which had been synonymous with decay. For without the aid of this party, or a great portion of it, the loyalists could not accomplish this; much less could it ever be accomplished if this party should happen to unite with the French. A vast power, too, whether for good or for evil, and hitherto unknown in a colony, was thrown among them all to be scrambled for. We mean a power analogous to that of the ministry in England, and known by the name of a Responsible Government in Canada. This power, always held in England by the heads of great parties – by men of lofty intellects and great characters – by men who were literally invested with the moral worth, the intelligence, the rank, and the honour of millions – this mighty power was tossed up in the Canadas like a cap in a crowd, to fall upon the head of whomsoever it might chance. It mattered not whether it was a Frenchman, the dearest object of whose existence was the destruction of England's power, that gained the majority. The cap must be his. It mattered not whether it was a democrat, whose secret but highest aim was the annihilation of England's monarchy, that succeeded at the elections: the mantle of England's honour, and of upholding England's crown in America, must fall upon him. We should be sorry to propose the curtailment of a single privilege of a single Briton, in any part of the world where the flag of his country waves over him. In what we shall have to say hereafter as to the government of the colonies, we do not intend doing so. But what we mean to say of this vast power, which was thrown among the people to be scrambled for at this time in the Canadas, is, that what in England must have been, from the very nature of things, a guarantee for all orders in the state being preserved and protected under it, was in the Canadas, equally from the nature of things, precisely the reverse. No ministry in England could be formed without the nobility, the gentry, the wealth – all that owed its all to the preservation of the institutions of the country – being represented in it. In the Canadas a ministry could be – yes, from the very nature of things, a ministry must be – formed, where Frenchmen, who hated England – where democrats, who hated monarchy, must control the destinies of England's subjects – the existence of England's empire in the west. We would not be understood, therefore, as desiring to curtail a single privilege; but we would, nevertheless, keep edge-tools out of the hands of madmen and enemies. We would not remove the rope from the neck of another to put it round our own.

Extraordinary though it seem that human credulity could go so far – if the character of the parties, if the character even of the measures of the parties, in Upper Canada was understood – as to expect that the giving to the one which had opposed the government, as it were by nature, the power, by uniting with the French, of crushing its enemies for ever, that it would not do so; that it would not join with its old allies in dividing the spoils of prosperity, as it had already done in sharing the mortifications of defeat; that it would not join them, even for the purpose of having revenge, each of its own enemy in its own province; – yet such was the hope, such the infatuation of Lord Durham. He let a little stream of abstract right fall into a whole sea of French prejudices and democratic infatuations, and he expected that it would change the great face of the waters. And what has been the result? – that the little stream has been lost in the great sea; that, instead of its changing the sea, it has but added to its weight; that all the prejudices, all the infatuations are left; and the power that was expected to change them has been converted into tools for them to work with.

Up to the last election, the French had never fairly recovered their former influence, or rather had not the opportunity of fully exerting their powers in the elections. Up to the same period, the reform party, as they styled themselves in Upper Canada, had laboured under a similar disadvantage. The latter had suffered for the want of its leaders, three of whom were outlaws in the States, as well as from other causes. But at the last election – a fair one for all parties – the French recovered all their former power, and the Upper Canadian party all its former counties. The French, therefore, were making all the strides they could towards the domination that, according to Lord Durham, was pregnant with rebellion; the reform party had just the opportunity that he fondly wished for them, of checking the evil, and of establishing an enlightened and moderate British party between the two extremes. And what did they do? The measures and the facts must speak for themselves.

The following resolution, moved by Mr Lafontaine, attorney-general for Lower Canada, taken in the abstract, would seem harmless and fair enough: —

"Resolved, that this house do now resolve itself into a committee to take into consideration the necessity of establishing the amount of losses incurred by certain inhabitants of Lower Canada during the political troubles of 1837 and 1838, and of providing for the payment thereof."

But when the following commentary of items, intended to be paid under it, is added to it, the nature of the political troubles of 1837 and 1838, and the intention of the resolution, will be better understood: —

Items selected from the Report of the Commissioners appointed to ascertain the Amount of Rebellion Losses in Lower Canada, and their observations thereon: —

"No. 1109. Wolfred Nelson, Montreal. Property destroyed, £23,109, 19s. 5d.; but Dr Nelson deducts the amount of his liabilities (for which his creditors have claimed, or may claim) and claims the balance only, say £12,379, 12s. 7d.

1089. Pierre Beauchere, St Ours. £69, 10s., quartering insurgents under the command of 'General Mathiot,' and £131, 6s. 3d. for imprisonment five months and nine days.

1107. Jos. Guimond, Chateauguay, conviction recorded. The wife claims £8, 10s. for the purchase of the confiscated estate bought by her.