The Project Gutenberg eBook of Humours of '37, Grave, Gay and Grim: Rebellion Times in the Canadas
Title: Humours of '37, Grave, Gay and Grim: Rebellion Times in the Canadas
Author: Robina Lizars
Kathleen Macfarlane Lizars
Release date: August 4, 2017 [eBook #55260]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Wayne Hammond and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from scanned images of public domain
material from the Google Books project.)
Transcriber’s Note:
The correction listed in the Erratum has been incorporated into the original.
HUMOURS OF ’37
GRAVE, GAY AND GRIM
REBELLION TIMES IN THE CANADAS.
BY
ROBINA AND KATHLEEN MACFARLANE LIZARS,
Authors of “In the Days of the Canada Company: the Story of the
Settlement of the Huron Tract.”
“The humours are commonly the most important and most
variable parts of the animal body.”
TORONTO:
WILLIAM BRIGGS,
Wesley Buildings.
| C. W. COATES, Montreal. | S. F. HUESTIS, Halifax. |
| 1897. | |
Entered, according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, by Kathleen MacFarlane Lizars, at the Department of Agriculture.
PREFACE.
The title of this book is built upon the assumption that humour is a sense of incongruity, not that there was anything specially humorous in the affairs of ’37 beyond that which arose from the crudeness of the times.
A medium between the sacrifice of detail attendant on compilation, and the loss of effect in a whole picture through too close application of the historic microscope, has been attempted. True proportion is difficult to compass at short range, yet the motives, ideas and occurrences which produced the animosities leading to the Rebellion were the inheritance, the special property, of the men who lived then; and of them few remain. To those who do and who have so kindly given their reminiscences special thanks are due. The works of the documentary and the philosophic historian lie on the shelves ready to one’s hand; but those who were “Loyalist” and “Rebel” are quickly dropping into that silence where suffering and injustice, defeat and victory, meet in common oblivion.
Like lichens on rocks, myths have grown about that time; but the myth is worth preserving for the sake of the germ of truth which gave it birth. Historians sometimes tell the truth, not always the whole truth, certainly never anything but the truth, and nothing is to be despised which gives a peep at the life as it really was. For complexion of the times, the local colour of its action, there can be nothing like the tale of the veteran, of the white-haired, dim-eyed survivor, whose quaking voice tells out the story of that eventful day. A page from Pepys or Bellasys lifts a curtain upon what really took place when the historic essence fails; then some morsels of secret history come to light, and motives and actions hitherto puzzling stand revealed.
Were all contributed sentences herein to have their rights in inverted commas the publisher’s stock would be exhausted. The prejudice in favour of Italics has not been observed in certain cases. “A bas les prejudices;” in Canada French is not a foreign language.
It is also assumed that every Canadian is familiar with Canadian history, and that some one or other of its masters is well fixed in school memories. To those masters, and to many others, an apology is tendered for wholesale appropriation of their matter. If every statement made herein were substantiated by the customary foot-note many unsightly pages would be the result; therefore, as no statement has been made without due authority, we commend our readers to the writings of Parkman, Garneau, Dent, McMullen, McCarthy, Macaulay, Michelet, DeGaspé, LeMoine, David, Morgan, Carrier, Bonnycastle, F. B. Head, George Head, Macgregor, Bender, Lindsay, Rattray, Scadding, Thompson and others; to the writings and biographies of the statesmen and governors quoted; to Governmental Journals and House of Commons Debates; for the record of events as they daily took place to innumerable manuscripts, pamphlets and newspapers, written or published between Sarnia and Quebec and in many American cities, covering in particular the years ’36, ’37, ’38, ’39, ’40; and to various sources where Canada is treated as a side issue and not as a main point. Theller and McLeod have been used where the corroborative testimony of others warrants a transcription of their humours.
“Whether an eagle or ant in the intellectual world seems to me not to matter much,” says Joubert. The work of the humble ant is to gather fragments, and, as the humblest in the tribe, the collectors of the data from which this mélange has risen offer it to the public, and as humbly hope they have come within the same writer’s further observation: “A small talent, if it keeps within its limits and rightly fulfils its task, may reach the goal just as well as a great one.”
Stratford, October, 1897.
Several score of authorities, known or comparatively unknown, have been drawn on in the compilation of Gallows Hill. Bill Johnston and Colonel Prince, as they appear here, are derived from twenty-one and twenty-six authorities respectively. Therefore when the hundredth, and the twenty-second, and the twenty-seventh, shall arise to contradict, or disagree with, each and every word herein, the authors beg to be allowed to see nothing but a humour in the situation.
NEW WORDS TO AN OLD SONG;
OR, JOHN GILPIN TRAVESTIED.
[We are indebted to Miss FitzGibbon for a copy of the Cobourg Star of February 7th, 1838, in which appears, under the above title, an epitome, from one point of view, of Rebellion events. Its humours make it a fitting introduction for the papers which follow.]
And fools rebelled; but what about
They could not tell.”
A man not very big,
A belted knight was he likewise,—
Knight of the old bay wig.
From Scotia’s land he came,
To sow and reap—if e’er he could—
The seeds of future fame.
To slander and to lie,
The good to libel—but the bad
Around him close to tie.
To join him in the cause
Of Freedom, which but truly meant
Upturning of our laws.
With grievances his cry;
Then off to father John, at home,
Right quickly did he hie.
That John began to stare;
And eke he talked so very large
That John began to swear.
Of those who did complain;
And for redress of grievances
He bawled with might and main.
A Janus-looking elf,
Who cared for nothing else of earth
But sleeping and himself.
His custom every day—
Then up he got and rubbed his eyes
To brush the sleep away.
In it we do delight;
So now you may go back again,
We’ll soon set things to right;
By it our place we keep.”
But scarcely had he spoke these words
When he was fast asleep.
He called him for a pen;
But long before it ready was
He’d sunk to sleep again.
In whispering accents said—
“Both pens and paper now, my Lord,
Are on your table laid.”
And wrote a neat despatch;
Says he, “I think that that, at least,
Their Tory wiles will match.
Whichever way you like,
Or Whig or Tory, as may best
The reader’s fancy strike.
A learned knight is he,—
Successor to the brave Sir John
I vow that man shall be.”
The proffered post to take,
Until convinced by Lord Glenelg
’Twas for Reform’s sake.
“And in it you may see
The many wrongs that do oppress
A people blest and free.
And read it over well;
But to the people you need not
Its whole contents to tell.”
In hurry to be here;
And rabble shout and rabble praise
Fell thick upon his ear.
The good Sir John depart;
For blessings flowed from many a lip
And sighs from many a heart.
Which I do now behold,
For that Sir John most hated was
In England we were told!”
And said he’d let them know,
What his instructions fully were
He meant to them to show.
Were met in Parliament,
And unto them a copy neat
Of the despatch he sent.
And acted as if mad,
And said though things were bad before,
They now were twice as bad.
Six Councillors he’d choose—
Six men of wisdom, whose advice
In all behests he’d use.
And quickly tried the plan, sir:
But quite as quickly he found out
That it would never answer.
From which I’ll never swerve—
The Constitution I’ll uphold
With all my might and nerve.”
He sent them in a hurry,
Which caused among their loving friends
A most outrageous flurry.
Who of a joke were fond;
They thought it would be mighty fine
To ask him for a “Bond.”
With nonsense and with rant,
And “Rights of Council” soon became
Reformers’ fav’rite cant.
And in a flaming speech
He vowed that he Sir Francis Head
The use of laws would teach.
The country’s temper try,
And then he moved him that the House
Would stop the year’s supply.
Of who’d be first to vote;
For they their lessons well had read
And knew them all by rote.
With hasty step arose,
A letter from a friend below
He on the table throws.
With treason full well pack’d;
It begg’d that rebels from below
Might by that House be back’d.
Alas! they were not able,
For, dire mischance, some wicked wight
Had stole it from the table.
He was as quick as they—
And with a speech that made them wince
He sent them all away.
To him came pouring in,
That he would give the people chance
Of choosing better men.
Right joyous at the thought,
That they at length had gained the
Which they so long had sought.
Of rebel well aware,
Defied their malice, and them told
“To come on if they dare.”
Was heard a joyous shout—
Of forty-seven, rebels all,
Full thirty were left out.
Vow’d politics he’d quit;
For well he know in that there House
He never more could sit.
“And whete and phlower” too,
Mud Turtle and his hopeful gang
Were left their deeds to rue.
In almost every place,
Its bitter foes were left at home
To batten on disgrace.
Who off to England hies,
And thought a wondrous job to work
By pawning off his lies.
He looked so mighty gay,
And how his name he quickly changed
When he got well away.
And Josey Hume, also,
And what a jolly set they were
When planning what to do.
The “tottle” for to find;
Said Josey, “Soon a storm I’ll raise,”
Said Duncombe, “That is kind.
At trick’ry or at lie;
I think we might make out a case
Twix’t Roebuck, you and I.”
And vented all their spleen,
The truth it shortly came to light,
Such things had never been.
And just applauses met,
And by his King he straightway was
Created Baronet.
His nat’ral bent to show,
The titled minion had become
Of Speaker Papineau.
Was sure to find a friend;
His only study seemed to be
His utmost help to lend.
Some resolutions passed,
To which they swore that they would stick
Unto the very last.
Three knowing G’s (geese) did send,
To see if they could calm the French
And make their murmurs end.
A pretty set were they,
And Jean Baptiste, he swore outright
He not a sou would pay.
And spoke as lion bold,
That he the money soon should get
As in the time of old.
Did loud assert their right;
But soon they found ’twas easier far
To make a speech than fight.
Their much loved flag did rally,
The battle-shout was heard throughout
The broad St. Lawrence valley.
With gallant Wetherall,
And many loyal men, prepared
To conquer or to fall.
Let razed St. Charles tell;
St. Eustache, also, where in scores
The dastard rebels fell.
And others if I could;
Of Weir, who most inhumanly
Was murdered in cold blood.
With grief to bite the dust;
They crouched beneath the British flag,
As every traitor must.
Who led the people on?
In vain you searched, for they away
To Yankee-land had gone.
Some dozen M.P.P.’s;
Who now confined in jail may pass
The winter at their ease.
From whom we’ve strayed too long;
This verse, I think, will just conclude
The middle of my song.
In Doel’s brewery met,
“A bung-hole pack,” Jim Dalton calls
This mischief-brewing set.
Of this great revolution,
And destined Rolph to be the head
Of their new Constitution.
A flaming speech addressed,
And told the plan which after all
Did unto him seem best.
Though we have promised been
Reform these many years, yet we
Reform have never seen.
In anxious doubt must wait,
The time has come for pulling down
The Church, the Queen, and State.
And stars and garters too,
And we must hang Sir Francis Head,
With all his Tory crew.
That they should ready be,
And as of them we are now sure
We’ll gain the victory.
And dream they’ve naught to fear,
Nor little think that to their end
They now are drawing near.
And Robinson likewise;
But soon at Freedom’s shrine of them
We’ll make a sacrifice.
Removed from every station,
And now it is our time to burst
From ‘hateful domination.’
To lend a helping hand
To breed confusion and dismay
Throughout this happy land.
We’ve little time to spare,
Go quick, collect your several bands
And arm them with great care.”
To show their courage high,
And then obedient to his words
In various paths they fly.
Both spears and swords to make,
And General Duncombe hoped that soon
Fort Malden he might take.
A most delightful trade
For one who every blackguard art
Erstwhile had well essayed.
All brave ones as himself,
He then marched to Toronto town
To see and gain some pelf.
I’m sure I need not tell,
How full four hundred armed men
Ran from the College bell.
Did one old man attack,
Nor dared to fight him face to face,
But shot him in the back.
With Rolph and Baldwin sent
Unto the rebel camp, to ask
Them what was their intent;
Declared ’twas their intention
To settle all the State affairs
By General Convention.
They threatened for to set,
But nearer than Montgomery’s
They ne’er to it could get.
Which we do call December,
Sir Francis Head led out his men,—
That day we’ll long remember.
What rabble rout could do,—
They every man took to his heels,
The word was, Sauve qui peut.
On that eventful day;
Sir Francis with too kind a heart
He let them all away.
I think I hear you ask;
To tell which way they took, I ween,
Would be an arduous task.
Had gone the country through,
It was a glorious sight to see
How quick to arms they flew;
To quell the rebel band,
Old Erin’s dauntless shamrock stood
A guardian of the land.
In all its pride and glory;
And Scotland’s thistle, which is known
In many a deathless story.
My own adopted land,
To form around the Queen and laws
A glorious valiant band.
Led anxious to the fight,
And all the west poured in her troops
To stand in freedom’s right.
Of men both good and true;
In truth it was a cheering sight
Their bearing high to view.
Which on that trying day
The fire of virtuous loyalty
Did to our eyes display.
With Calcutt and with Clarke,
And Warren, with his rifle band,
Whom every eye did mark.
To stop the foes rebelling;
How many prisoners they took
Would take some time in telling.
Had got to Buffalo;
The Yankees sympathized with him
And made him quite a show.
But that they never minded,
They sympathized with rebels so
It quite their reason blinded.
With nonsense and with lies:
So fast they told them, that you’d think
They lied but for some prize.
They got two hundred men,
Mackenzie in high spunk set off
To try the job again.
At Waterloo to land,
But Newcastle’s good rifles there
Were ready to their hand.
Of those degraded wretches,
For some had neither coat nor hat,
And some not even breeches.
And there made a great splutter,—
A Constitution printed off,
And many threats did utter.
It really is quite shocking,
Some ladies made the rebels shirts,
And some, too, sent them stocking.
Right gallantly were done,
I’ve spun my verse to such a length
I can relate but one.
Of Captain Andrew Drew,
Whose name must be immortalized,
Likewise his daring crew.
The rebels aid to bring;
This English seaman swore that he
Would not allow the thing.
Whose names I wot not all,
From Schlosser cut the steamboat out
And sent her o’er the Fall.
And spoke of reparation;
A mighty flame then rose through this
Tobacco-chewing nation.
The risk of war to run,
For he was one who never thought
In fighting there was fun.
Sent General Winfield Scott,
Who in last war at Lundy’s Lane
A right good drubbing got.
Our guns so well did play
With shot and shell that they right soon
Were glad to run away.
The Doctor, brave and bold?
Some say that he is dead and gone,
Being perished in the cold.
Let each true Briton sing,
Long live the Queen in health and peace,
And may each rebel swing.
With health and peace be crowned;
May earthly happiness to him
For evermore abound.
Thy sons so brave and true,
A heavy debt of loyalty
Doth England owe to you.
They well may pine and fret,
For, by lord Harry, they will have
To pay us all the debt.
To end his life of evil;
Soon may he take the last long leap
From gibbet to the——.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| Baneful Domination | 13 |
| More Baneful Domination | 44 |
| The Canadas at Westminster | 63 |
| A Call to Umbrellas | 91 |
| Le Grand Brule | 132 |
| Gallows Hill | 161 |
| Autocrats All | 202 |
| Huron’s Age Heroic | 272 |
| Deborahs of ’37 | 308 |
HUMOURS OF ’37.
Baneful Domination.
“Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.”
The vivacious Pompadour enlivens the twenty years of her boudoir conspiracies playing les graces with her lord’s colonies. She throws the ring; Pitt, at the other end of the game, catches Canada.
The mills of the gods in their slow grind have reversed the conditions of the contestants; the Norman conquest of England becomes a British conquest of New France. The descendants of the twenty thousand barbarians who landed at Hastings have but come to claim their own.
Life is “moving music.” The third movement in this historic sonata comes back to the original subject, even if the return to the tonic opens in a minor mode.
“Gentlemen, I commend to your keeping the honour of France,” says the dying Montcalm.
“Now, God be praised, I die in peace!” and Wolfe expires.
The fiercest of the conflict ever rages round a bit of bunting on the end of a stick. The lilies of France come down; up goes the Union Jack to usher in the birthday of the Greater Britain, and Horace Walpole says, “We are forced to ask every morning what victory there is, for fear of missing one.”
Voltaire gives a fête at Fernay to celebrate the deliverance from fifteen hundred leagues of frozen country; the Pompadour tells her Louis that now he may sleep in peace; and outsiders ask of Pitt that which a celebrated novelist, a century later, asks of his hero—“What will he do with it?” “The more a man is versed in business,” said the experienced Pitt, “the more he finds the hand of Providence everywhere.”
But Providence would need to have broad shoulders if generals, kings and statesmen are to place all their doings there.
By 1837 Canada was no longer a giant in its cradle. Colonial boyhood had arrived; a most obstreperous and well-nigh unmanageable youth, with many of the usual mistakes of alternate harshness and indulgence from the parent. For it was not all wisdom that came from Downing Street, either in despatches or in the gubernatorial flesh. It is easy now to see that much emanating therefrom came from those whose vision was confined to the limits of a small island.
The great lubberly youth was given to measuring himself from time to time; for Canadian epochs are much like the marks made by ambitious children on the door jamb, marks to show increase in height and a nearer approach to the stature of the parent.
Canadians’ privileges, like children’s, existed only during the good pleasure of those who governed them. Some meant well and did foolishly; others were “somewhat whimsical, fond of military pomp, accustomed to address deputations, parliamentary or others, as if they had been so many recruits liable to the quickening influence of the cat-o’-nine-tails.” One peer in the House of Lords, during a debate on the vexed Canadian question, demurred at the members of Colonial Assemblies being treated like froward children, forever tied to the Executive leading-strings. Canada was, in fact, bound to the Mother Country by bonds of red tape and nothing else. “Who made you?” catechized Great Britain. In the words of Mr. Henry Labouchere’s precocious young catechumen: “Let bygones be bygones; I intend to make myself,” replied the colony.
The problem of assimilation created by the influx of all nations, and the fact of two divisions, a conquering and a conquered, with languages, customs and creeds as diverse as the peoples, made up an enigma the solution of which still occupies French and English wits alike.
The English and the French temperaments, each the antipodes of the other, called for mutual patience and forbearance. But historic truth compels many admissions: first, that British rule with British freedom left out made a dark period from the Conquest to the Rebellion; second, that the national, religious and intellectual ideas of the French-Canadians, their whole mental attitude, were dominated by the Quebec Act; and the motto given them by Etienne Parent, “Nos institutions, notre langue et nos lois,” had become a kind of fetich. They looked upon themselves as the agents of their mother country and the Church in the New World; and they argued did they give up these laws, institutions and language, and become Anglicized, their nationality would be forever lost.
The toast among officers en route to the Conquest had been, “British colours on every fort, port and garrison in America.” For many years after the British flag had first waved on the citadel the habitant on the plain lifted his eyes to where he had seen the lilies of France, and with heavy heart said to himself that which has become an historic saying, “Still we shall see the old folks back again”—words as pathetic in their hope as the Highlanders’ despairing “We return no more, no more.”
It is doubtful if at this period the old folks bothered themselves much about their late colony. Like their own proverb, “In love there is always one who kisses and one who holds the cheek,” French Canada was expending a good deal of sentiment upon people who had forgotten that tucked away in a remote corner of the new world was “a relic preserved in ice,” a relic of France before the Revolution, its capital the farthermost point of manner and civilization, a town with an Indian sounding name, which yet bore upon its front the impress of nobility. For Quebec is and should be the central point of interest for all Canadians; the history of the old rock city for many a day was in effect the history of Canada. History speaks from every stone in its ruined walls—walls that have sustained five sieges.
The Revolution did not create the same excited interest in Canada that might have been looked for, yet there were those who “wept bitterly” when they heard of the execution of the King. The patois, ignorance, superstition, devotion of its inhabitants, were identical with a time prior to the Revolution; and with them were the same social ideas and the same piety.
But the power divided in France among king, nobles, and priest, in Canada was confined to priest alone; and when the dream of a republic was dreamt it was the priest and not the British soldier who made the awakening. The British soldier and those who sent him seem to have been not a whit better informed about the colony gained than France was about the colony lost. Some London journalists were not sure whether Canada formed part of the Cape of Good Hope or of the Argentine Republic. For a long time the English Government annually sent a flagpole for the citadel, probably grown in a Canadian forest. Nor did time improve their knowledge, for as late as the Trent affair one statesman in the House of Commons informed his more ignorant brethren that Canada was separated from the United States by the Straits of Panama.
The acts of Regicide France inspired horror in Canada, yet were not without their fruits. Despite his title of the “Corsican ogre” and their horror of revolution, the submission of all Europe to Napoleon did not make the French of Canadian birth more submissive. Nor did the nation of shop-keepers, whom he despised and who were to cut his ambition and send him to his island prison, become more plausible, courteous or conciliatory, through their sense of victory. Many a thing, had the positions been reversed, which would have been passed unnoticed by a phlegmatic Briton, was to the Gallican a national insult.
And LeMoine, that past grand master of the Franco-Anglo-Canadian complexion, says all too truthfully that conciliation was not a vice-regal virtue; and one of the singers of the day, a Briton of the Britons, confirms the opinion: