Charles Roger

“ There being only thirty thousand inhabitants in the whole province, small as the Parliament was, the people, if not fairly, were at least sufficiently represented. It is somewhat doubtful, nevertheless, that a constitution which gave only a quasi-sovereign to Upper Canada, neither directly, nor, as the Governors of Canada now are, indirectly responsible to the people, could have been the very image and transcript of the British Constitution. There was a misty resemblance to that celebrated and unwritten form of government, in the erection of three estates—King, Lords, and Commons—and no more. ”

“ A war of invasion might invite a retort of invasion. When Americans visited the peaceable, and, to Americans, the innocent colonies of Great Britain, with the horrors of war, could Americans be assured that their own coast would not be visited with like horrors. At such a crisis of the world, and under impressions such as these, the minority could not consider the war into which the United States had, in secret, been precipitated, as necessary, or required by any moral duty, or any political expediency. ”

“ The events of the war had drawn closer the bonds which connected Great Britain with the Canadas. Although at the epoch of the declaration of war the country was destitute both of troops and money, yet from the devotion of a brave and loyal, yet unjustly calumniated people, resources sufficient for disconcerting the plans of conquest devised by a foe, at once numerous and elate with confidence, had been derived. The blood of the sons of Canada had flowed mingled with that of the brave soldiers sent for its defence, when re-inforcements were afterwards received. ”

“ If the British exulted over the fall of Detroit and the surrender of General Hull, and the United States viewed these occurrences with indescribable pain and a sense of humiliation, the Americans could now boast of the success of their arms at sea, while Britain regretted a disaster upon that element, on which she had long held and yet holds the undisputed mastery. There was now no room for the American government, on the ground of having been too much humiliated, to refuse peace if it were offered to her. ”

“ There was to be an equality in tonnage, an equality in the number of guns, an equality in the weight of metal, an equality in the thickness of a ship's sides, and above all an equality in men, so far as such equality could be ascertained. Equality in sailing power was of great importance, but where it was wanting, the superior sailor, if superior in metal and men had an advantage which nothing but a calm or a lucky hit aloft could destroy. The crews of every ship on the North American Station were to be exercised in gunnery. ”

“ Murmur and discontent filled the American camp, disease and death were now so common, and General Smyth's self-confidence was so inconsiderable that the literary hero, who had spoken of the "eternal infamy" that awaits him who "basely shrinks in the moment of trial," literally fled from his own camp, afraid of his own soldiery, who were exasperated at his incapacity. Thus ended the first year of the invasion. The Americans had learned, the not unimportant lesson, that, as a general rule, it is so much more easy successfully to resist aggression, than, as the aggressor, to be successful. ”

“ Had the views of Governor Pownall, of Massachusetts, with regard to the representation of the colonies in the British Parliament, been adopted, no umbrage could have been taken at the imposition of taxes, because the colonies would have been open to civil and military preferment in the state equally with the residents of the United Kingdom. It was, and is, an unfortunate mistake to look upon colonists with contempt. Colonists, more even than the inhabitants of old countries, inhale a spirit of independence. Often, lords of all they survey, they call no man lord. ”

“ Sir George Prevost met the parliament on the 21st of February, 1812. He congratulated the country on the brilliant achievements of Wellington, in the deliverance of Portugal and the rescue of Spain from France. Notwithstanding the changes, so astonishing, which marked the age, the inhabitants of Canada had witnessed but as remote spectators the awful scenes which had desolated Europe. While Britain, built by nature against the contagious breath of war, had had her political existence involved in the fate of neighboring nations, Canada had hitherto viewed without alarm a distant storm. ”

“ General Smyth had, with the true trickery of the diplomatist, rather than with the blunt honesty of the soldier, exerted himself during the armistice, in the preparation of boats for another attempt to invade Upper Canada. Alexander Smyth, Brigadier-General, in command of the American army of the centre, though a rogue, in a diplomatic point of view, was not necessarily a fool. He had shrewd notions in a small way. Like a true downeast Yankee, he knew the effect of soft sawder upon human nature. ”

“ No hint was thrown out that Canada would be more prosperous under the American, than under the English dominion. It was not even insinuated that Canada should be wholly governed by Canadians. All that was claimed for French Canadians was a fair share in the official spoils of the land they lived in, freedom of speech, and liberty of conscience. Governor Craig asked the inhabitants of St. Denis or any of the other inhabitants of the province to remind him of any one act of oppression or of arbitrary imprisonment. And at that very moment the printer of the Canadien was in prison. ”

“ The time is therefore come, when I feel that the security as well as the dignity of the King's government, imperiously require that the people should be made to understand the true limits of the rights of the respective parts of the government, and that it is not that of the House of Assembly to rule the country." And Mr. Bedard, sensible of having done no wrong, remained in gaol until the Parliament was prorogued, as an example to the people that there was no public opinion worth heeding, in the province, and that the power of the Governor was something superior to that of the Assembly. ”

“ No one, on any pretence, under pain of similar punishment, was to write or print, utter or publish, any malicious writing against the government of the United States, or against either House of the Congress, or against the President. In a word, the liberty of discussion was annihilated. A more extraordinary law could not possibly have been put upon the Statute Books of a country, where every official, being elective by the people, his conduct, while in office was, in a common sense point of view, open to popular animadversion. ”

“ The United States were independent. But, however much the war in America, between Great Britain and her own old colonies, had temporarily interfered with, it had paved the way for a more extended, commerce in Canada. There were men in New England who would not, on any account, be rebels. Many of these, with their families, sought an asylum in Canada, and the advancement of the Far West, on the British side of the lines, is, in no small degree, to be attributed to the integrity and energy of those highly honourable men. Canada was then entirely, or almost entirely, under military rule. ”

“ You have been so intemperate in debate that moderation and forbearance is scarcely to be looked for without a new Assembly. Gentlemen, Parliament is dissolved. A new Parliament will be convened as soon as convenience will permit. My object in thus acting, is to preserve the true principles of the free and happy constitution of the Province." He turned with peculiar satisfaction from lecturing to the Assembly, to offer his acknowledgements to the gentlemen of the Legislative Council, for their unanimity, zeal, and unremitting attention to the public business, manifested in their proceedings. ”

“ Lawrence, and the great lakes which receive the cold blasts of the mountainous region which constitutes the Arctic highlands, and from which the rivers running to the northward into Hudson's Bay, and to the southward into the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, take their rise. The icy breath of the distant north and northwest sweeps down such rivers as the Ottawa, the St. Maurice, and the Saguenay, to be gathered into one vast channel, extending throughout Canada's whole extent. And, clear the forest as we may, Canada will always be the same cold, healthy country that it now is. ”

“ There was much jealousy at the progress of the Eastern Townships, which were settled by American loyalists. The country was beginning to look up to the members of the Assembly as the governors of the country. Formerly the cry was—"La Chambre to the devil!" He thought that the only remedy for the state of things which he had described was to deprive the province of its constitution, as the provincialists termed their charter. The people were unfitted for liberty. And here are the Governor's reasons for saying that a people were incapable of free institutions. ”

“ The Americans now gathering up their strength, irritated by their repeated failures on the land, and disheartened, but yet not discouraged by their original weakness on the lakes, were about, in some degree, to be compensated more suitably for their inland losses than by the capture or rather by the negative kind of advantage of destroying at considerable cost and risk, frigates and sloops of war at sea, inferior in every respect, the bravery of the sailors and the skill of the officers excepted, to the huge and properly much esteemed American double-banked frigates and long-gunned brigs. ”

“ It is extremely to be regretted indeed that so excellent a Civil Governor should have been so indifferent a military commander. But, entirely different qualifications are required in the civilian and in the soldier. It is indeed on record that the Great Duke, who was the idol of the British people as a soldier, was the reverse of being popular as a statesman. ”

“ It indeed seems quite evident that the supremacy, which Sir James Yeo, an officer at once brave, prudent, and persevering, had obtained upon the lakes, contributed, in some measure, to the total evacuation of Upper Canada by the Americans. He did not conceive that with a couple or more of armed schooners he could sail hither and thither, and effect daring feats, but carefully husbanded the means at his disposal, took advantage of circumstances, and obtained the construction of vessels so much superior to those of the Americans that it needed not the test of a battle to decide upon superiority. ”

“ Canada was looked upon as a mere military post. The people were compelled to live in perpetual warfare and insecurity. There was no general trade. Trade was in the hands of companies. Famine was of frequent occurrence. Public and private property were insecure. Personal liberty was daily violated. Year after year the inhabitants of Canada were dragged from their homes and families to shed their blood, and carry murder and havoc from the shores of the great lakes and the banks of the Mississippi and Ohio, to the coasts of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Hudson's Bay. ”

“ To change the military character of the sixty-nine thousand inhabitants of Canada ceded by France to England, could not be done immediately. That was as impossible as to make them abjure by proclamation, their religion. All changes, to be lasting, must be gradual, and the government of Great Britain only contemplated a lasting change, by the introduction into Canada of her own people, imbued with somewhat different ideas, religiously, legally, and commercially, from those which actuated the conquered population. ”

“ One really wonders that even a general officer could have ventured upon sending to England such trash, a country which had produced a Charles Fox, who took at the passing of the Separation Act so opposite a view of human nature. Doubtless, the habitants are precisely, even at this day, as Sir James represented them to be. But it was superlative impudence in a man of plebeian extraction to say that he could not associate with members of Parliament, who followed the occupation of shopkeeping for a living. It surely was enough for Buonaparte to have stigmatized England as a nation of shopkeepers. ”

“ Indeed the Americans did very quietly send one or two cruisers and privateers to dodge about that marine paradise, the Thousand Islands, forming the delta of Lake Ontario, and covered to this day with timber to the water's edge, islands of all sizes and of all forms, gently rising out of the limpid rippling stream, or boldly standing forth from the deep blue water, presenting a rugged, rocky moss-clad front to the wonderstruck beholder. ”

“ Placed at the head of the administration, he breathed into the British Councils a new soul. He revived the energies of the colonies. He gave new life to dependencies, whose loyalty was weakened, and whose means were exhausted by a series of as ill-contrived and unfortunate expeditions as were ever attempted. He addressed circulars to the colonial Governors, assuring them of the determination of the ministry to send a large force to America, and called upon the colonies to raise as many troops as possible, and to act promptly and liberally in furnishing the requisite supplies. ”

“ An anathema was about to be coupled by the worthy and much irritated commander-in-chief with the name of Hampton, when Wilkinson recollected that he too had been checked in the most extraordinary way, in the very outset of a scheme so well calculated to subdue a country, only occupied by three thousand soldiers, scattered over a frontier of upwards of a thousand miles, and numbers of militia, formidable enough in the woods, but no match for a well disciplined, well provided, and numerous army, in the open field. The British regulars, elated with their late success, were in his rear. ”

“ There were great advantages to be derived from a new population. Lower Canada, he was aware, had a population sufficiently numerous to settle the waste lands. There were, undoubtedly, prejudices against the introduction of strangers to be overcome, and there were also prejudices in the minds of strangers, affecting their settlement in Lower Canada, fertile as it was, offering as it undeniably did, so many facilities for manufacturing operations, and presenting, as was apparent, so wide a field for internal trade. ”

“ There was an apprehension that the affairs of the general government were mismanaged, and, to many, it appeared that a crisis was forming, which, unless seasonably provided against, would involve the country in ruin. That apprehension particularly prevailed throughout New England. Indeed, Massachusetts proposed that measures should be taken for procuring a convention of delegates from all the United States to revise the constitution, and more effectually to secure the support and attachment of all the people, by placing all upon the basis of fair representation. ”

“ The beauties of colonial irresponsible government were as discernible in Upper Canada, where there were no seditious, English-hating, Frenchmen, as in Lower Canada. A private gentleman, two editors of newspapers, a member of parliament, a captain in the army, and a judge had experienced some of the benefits derivable from a constitution, the very transcript and image of that of Great Britain, managed by a General of Division and a clique of placemen. ”

“ He resigned the government of Canada and demanded a Court Martial, but he had a judge within himself, from whom he could not escape, and whose judgment weighed upon "a mind diseased," in the broad noonday and at the midnight hour, with such overpowering weight that the nervous system became relaxed, and death at last relieved a man, who, only that he wanted decision of purpose, was amiable, kind, well intentioned, and honest, of a load of grief, before even the sentence of a Court Martial could intervene to ameliorate his sorrows. ”

“ From any part of a people conquered from wretchedness into every indulgence, and the height of prosperity, such treatment, as the government daily received was far different from that which ought to have been expected. But there were characters in the world on whom benefits have no other effect than to produce insolence and insult. The stroke was struck, the Mercury would say no more. The greatest misfortune that can ever happen to the press is for it to be in the possession of invisible and licentious hands. ”