cidedly bitter; but the Assembly swallowed it, nevertheless, though with a clause in favour of their own body; but as this clause had only a prospective effect, the executive still kept Bedard in prison. The Assembly now passed a resolution declaring this course illegal, and voted a humble address to his Excellency, praying that Pierre Bedard, Esq., might be released, and allowed to take his seat in the House. But the committee appointed to present it had not sufficient moral courage to beard the old general in his castle 1811. of St Louis, and the Assembly were fain to sympathise with their want of nerve, and relieved them from this duty. The victory was decidedly on the side of the Governor, so he released Mr Bedard shortly after at his own pleasure.

The session of the Legislature assembled in the beginning of 1811, passed smoothly over. The bill to disqualify judges from becoming members of the House was passed, and received the royal sanction through the Governor. The health of the latter was very feeble; he was about to return to his native country; and, after alluding to the great prosperity of the province, he recommended the Legislature to act unanimously for the public good. "I am earnest in this advice, gentlemen," said he. "It is probably the last legacy of a very sincere well-wisher; who, if he lives to reach the presence of his sovereign, would be proud to be able to say that the people he had found separated by mistrust and jealousy, he had left cordially united, and rivalling each other only in the affectionate attachment to his Majesty's government, and in generous exertions for the public good."

This language bears every mark of sincerity; and even if General Craig, from previous habit, and a long training in the camp and barrack-room, was arbitrary in his conduct, there can be no doubt that his intentions were of the purest character. Although he had overstepped the bounds of constitutional government, and thereby caused some individual suffering, his firmness had a salutary effect: it repressed the unwholesome spirit of dissension which had begun to manifest itself in the Assembly, and tended on the whole to the public good. Still, it must be admitted, he could have been equally firm, without being equally arbitrary, and that he would have promoted the public weal just as effectually, had he not imprisoned innocent men, and violated the rights of private property. Having obtained leave of absence, he quit Canada on the 19th of June, to the great regret of the British population. His frame had long been sinking under dropsy and other infirmities. The shadow of death. was already falling on him, and he died in England in the January

of the next year, at the age of sixty-two, having served his country forty-seven years in all parts of the world. Simple, earnest, and honest, there can be little doubt that Sir James Craig was the victim of circumstances, and that his confidence had been abused by the oligarchy, who, as in Upper Canada, then held supreme sway in the province. An irresponsible executive was at the root of most public disorders, and as time progressed it became evident that Lower Canada had to pass through the same revolutionary ordeal as its western sister. In both provinces identical causes were producing precisely similar results, and at nearly the same time.

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CHAPTER XII.

UPPER CANADA FROM 1791 TO 1811.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN GRAVES SIMCOE, ESQ.

E have already seen that Upper Canada, or Ontario as it is now termed, remained a mere wilderness, with the exception of a few trifling settlements, till the termination of the American war of Independence. From that period to its separation from Lower

Canada in 1791, it continued a portion of the Province of 1791. Quebec, and was under the immediate control of its government. Its population had in the meantime slowly increased, and when erected into a separate province, with a legislature modelled on the same principle as that of its sister government, Upper Canada contained about twenty thousand souls. These were scattered along the St Lawrence from Lake St Francis upwards to Kingston, thence around the Bay of Quinte; along the Niagara frontier, at Amherstburg, in the old French settlement on the Thames, and in the Iroquois' settlement at Grand River.*

The backwoodsman, whose fortunes are cast in the remote inland settlements of the present day, far removed from churches, destitute

*The Mohawk tribe, almost to a man, quit their beautiful valley and retired to Canada with the loyalists, under the leadership of their celebrated chief, John Brant, on whom Campbell conferred an unenviable, though it would seem unjust, immortality in his "Gertrude of Wyoming." Stone asserts, in his Life of Brant, that he was not even present at the massacre of Wyoming, and with every appearance of truth. Brant was a Christian, and a member of the Church of England. In 1786 he built a church on the Grand River, for which he collected funds during a visit to England, and there he placed the first "church-going bell" that ever tolled in Upper Canada. Shortly before his death he built a commodious dwelling-house, two stories high, for himself near Burlington Bay. Here he died on the 24th November 1807, at the age of sixty-five years, after a painful illness borne with Christian patience and resignation. He was succeeded in the chieftainship of the Mohawks by his fourth son, John.-See Stone's Life of Brant, vol. ii pp.

494-500.

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of ministers of the gospel and medical men, without schools, or roads, or the many conveniences that make life desirable, can alone appreciate, or even understand, the numerous difficulties and hardships that beset the first settler among the ague-swamps of Western Canada. The clothes on his back, with a rifle or old musket and a well-tempered axe, were not unfrequently the full extent of his worldly possessions. Thus lightly equipped he took possession of his two hundred acres of closely-timbered forest-land and commenced operations. The welkin rings again with his vigorous strokes, as huge tree after tree is assailed and tumbled to the earth; and the sun presently shines in upon the little clearing. The best of the logs are partially squared, and serve to build a shanty; the remainder are given to the flames. Now the rich mould, the accumulation of centuries of decayed vegetation, is gathered into little hillocks, into which potatoes are dibbled. Indian corn is planted in another direction, and perhaps a little wheat. If married, the lonely couple struggle on in their forest oasis, like the solitary traveller over the sands of Sahara, or a boat adrift in the Atlantic. The nearest neighbour lives miles off, and when sickness comes they have to travel far through the forest to claim human sympathy. But fortunately our nature, with elastic temperament, adapts itself to circumBy and by the potatoes peep up, and the corn-blades modestly show themselves around the charred maple stumps and girdled pines, and the prospect of sufficiency of food gives consolation. As winter approaches a deer now and then adds to the comforts of the solitary people. Such were the mass of the first settlers in Western Canada. Within the brief space of seventy-six years, how marvellous has been the change.

stance.

When Governor Simcoe arrived in Upper Canada, on the 8th of July, beyond a small village at Kingston, and another 1792. at Newark, or Niagara, with an occasional cluster of log-cabins, there was nothing in the country that was entitled to the name of town. Newark being the most central, and at the same time the most populous of these villages, he determined should be his capital for the present; and here he accordingly fixed his residence in a small frame house, about half a mile from the village; and here, also, he assembled the first Provincial Parliament of Upper Canada on the 17th of September. The Lower House was composed of sixteen members, plain farmers or merchants; the Upper House of a still smaller number. Yet the acts of the first session of the first Parliament of Upper Canada displayed great common sense, and an intimate acquaintance with the necessities of the country. They were eight

in number. One introduced the English civil law; another established trial by jury; a third provided for the easier recovery of small debts. There was an act to regulate the toll to be taken in mills; from which we may gather, that millers were as much disposed to take more than their share in those days as at a later period. They were now restricted to one-twelfth as their proportion for grinding and bolting. Another act made provision for building a jail and court-house in each of the four districts, into which the province had been divided. These comprised the Eastern, or Johnstown district; the Middle, or Kingston district; the Home, or Niagara district; and the Western, or Detroit district. These districts were again subdivided into twelve counties.

Even in these rude times when men flung down the axe, left the plough to repose, or ceased to swing the scythe to mature laws, in what was little better than a log barn, at Niagara, there was more of the spirit of real progress in Upper than in Lower Canada. It took the courtly seigniors of the latter seven months, at their first session of Parliament, to mature eight bills; the home-spun farmers of Upper Canada did precisely the same amount of work in five weeks. They were evidently men after Governor Simcoe's own heart, to judge from the speech with which he closed the session on the 15th of October.*

"It is with very great satisfaction that I have considered the acts which you have found it expedient to frame, and to which, in consequence of the power delegated to me, I have this day given my assent, that they shall become laws of Upper Canada.

"As the division which his Majesty, in his wisdom, thought proper to make of the late province of Quebec obviated all inconveniences, and laid the foundation for an establishment of the English laws in the province, it is natural to presume that you would seize the first opportunity to impart that benefit to your fellowsubjects; and by an act to establish trial by jury, and by that, which makes the English law the rule of decision, in all matters of controversy, relative to property and civil rights, you have fully justified the public expectation. Your other acts seem calculated to promote the general welfare and convenience of the province. "His Majesty, in his benevolence, having directed a seventh from such lands as shall be granted to be reserved to the Crown, for the public benefit, it will become my duty to take those measures which shall appear to be necessary fulfil his Majesty's gracious intentions; and make no doubt but, as citizens and magistrates, you will give every assistance in your power to carry into full effect a system, from which the public and posterity must derive such peculiar advantages.

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"I cannot dismiss you without earnestly desiring you to promote, by precept and example, among your respective counties, the regular habits of piety and morality, the surest foundations of all private and public felicity; and, at this juncture, I particularly recommend to you to explain, that this province is singu larly blest, not with a mutilated constitution, but with a constitution which has