once driven back, and pursued to the very glacis of the fort, whither they retired with precipitation, having sustained a loss in killed, wounded, and missing of five hundred and nine men. The British loss amounted to six hundred, of whom one-half, however, had been made prisoners in the trenches at the commencement of the sortie. Finding his men becoming very sickly, and learning also the advance of General Izzard's division, Drummond raised the siege on the 21st, and retired totally unmolested on Chippewa.

During the autumn months Chauncey had the advantage, both in the number and size of his vessels, of the British squadron on Lake Ontario. At length, on the 10th of October, the St Lawrence, a vessel of one hundred guns, was launched at Kingston, when the American Commodore immediately withdrew, and was blockaded in turn at Sackett's Harbour. The lake freed from the enemy's ships, troops and stores were conveyed to the army on the Niagara frontier; and although Izzard had now a fine force of eight thousand men at Fort Erie, he blew up its works, recrossed the river, and left the harassed people of Upper Canada to repose. Beyond a foray of mounted Kentucky brigands, who marked their course with plunder and destruction, at the extreme west, the retreat of Izzard was the last event of a war, which completely burst the bubble of American invasion of Canada. The Treaty of Ghent, on the 24th of December, put a final termination to hostilities, and restored peace between two nations, whose language, laws, and religion were identical, and who should, therefore, never have unsheathed the sword against each other.

The ostensible grounds of the war, on the part of the United States, were the Orders in Council and the right of search; but its real cause was the desire to acquire Canada. On each of these points the American Democracy had been completely worsted. Peace was concluded without a word being said about the flag covering the merchandise, or the right of search-—while Canada remained unconquered, and far better prepared to defend herself at the close of hostilities than at the beginning.

From first to last the course pursued by the United States presents few grounds for justification. They had commenced an unrighteous war by the invasion of an unoffending and harmless people. When they found they could not seduce them from allegiance to their sovereign, their generals burned their villages and farm-houses, and plundered them of their properties. But, by a righteous dispensation of Providence they were most deservedly punished. Nothing had been gained by all the lavish expenditure of American blood and treasure.

Not one solitary dollar had been added to the wealth of the people of the United States, nor one inch of land to their territory. On the other hand, their export trade from twenty-two millions sterling had dwindled down, in 1814, to less than one and a half millions; and their imports, from twenty-eight million pounds sterling had been reduced to three. Nearly three thousand of their merchant vessels had been captured; their entire sea-board insulted; two-thirds of the mercantile and trading classes of the whole nation had become insolvent, and the Union itself was threatened with dissolution by the secession of the New England States.* Then, if Canada suffered much misery-if many of her gallant sons were laid low by the ruthless blow of the pitiless invader, and her soil steeped with the blood of her brave militia fighting in defence of their homes, the war was, nevertheless, a real benefit to her. The lavish expenditure of money enriched, more or less, all classes of her small population; and thus gave a vast impulse to the general prosperity of the country. Nor did this expenditure add much to the burdens of the people, being chiefly borne by the mother-country, while the inhabitants of the United States were grievously oppressed by taxation, and thus directly punished for their eagerness to engage in war, and coveting their neighbours' lands, while millions of acres of their own territory lay waste.

But the most extraordinary feature of this war was the course pursued by the great bulk of the Americans, who, aside from the U. E. Loyalists, had emigrated to Canada. To their honour be it said, they nobly adhered to their oath of allegiance, willingly enrolled themselves in the militia, and gallantly aided to stem the tide of invasion. It is true that a few Americans joined the armies of the United States, but so also did persons of British origin. Fortunately, the aggregate number of traitors of all descriptions was very small, when compared with the patriotic portion of the population. At the present day, the American settlers in Canada form a large and important class of the inhabitants. As a rule, they are sincerely attached to the country of their adoption, and make worthy, useful, and lawabiding citizens. Nor have they cause to blush for the land in which their lot has been cast. Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Frenchmen, or Americans should never hesitate to fuse themselves into a Canadian people, and help to build up a young, vigorous, and gallant nation in the valley of the St Lawrence, and along the borders of our inland seas. Whether at the Crystal Palace of London, at the Paris Exhibition, in the Stock Exchanges of the Old World, or in any

Alison's Hist. Europe, New York, vol. iv. pp. 482, 483.

other part of the globe, no man need ever blush to be called a Canadian. Gallant in war, honest in peace, enterprising in trade and commerce, we tread "free soil" as a free people. If we have not the wealth of England, neither have we its landed oligarchy to crush down the industrial classes; if we lack the population and cottonfields of the United States, we also lack its rabble and its slaves. Not a single national stigma rests on Canada. The course of its prosperity rolls on as steadily and as smoothly as the current of the noble river that forms its great highway to the ocean.

Another war with the United States is a very improbable contingency. If the Northern States sought to acquire Canada to make half a dozen new free states, the South would never give its consent. If the Southern States desired to make this a slave soil, the people of Canada would scorn to submit to such a fate. An independent nationality, or, what is still more probable, a continued connexion with the mother-country, on the present easy and mutual advantageous relations, is evidently the destiny of Canada. We would lose immensely by becoming a portion of the United States. Our import revenue would go to the general Government, instead of to purposes of public improvement as at present; our Legislature would dwindle into insignificance in the shade of Congress; and our commercial system would be wholly tributary to that of New York. Taxation, at the same time, would increase, while we would be completely involved in the slavery agitation, and in many other evils, from which we are now happily exempt.*

*

*The reader must remember that this was written before the late war in the United States gave freedom to its slave population. There is now less prospect than ever of the annexation of Canada to the United States.

TH

CHAPTER XVI.

LOWER CANADA FROM 1815 TO 1828.

THE GOVERNMENT OF SIR GEORGE PREVOST,-continued.

HE Legislature of Lower Canada assembled on the 21st of January, and Mr Panet having been called to the Upper House, Louis J. Papineau was elected Speaker of the Assembly. Among the measures of the Lower House was a grant 1815. of £25,000 for making the Lachine Canal; another of £1000 per annum, as a salary to their Speaker; and a third grant to Joseph Bouchette, Surveyor-General of the Province, to assist him in publishing his maps and topography of Canada. The question of having an agent in England was also taken up, and an address voted to the Governor, requesting him to procure the Prince Regent's sanction to the measure. It was also determined to prosecute their impeachment of Chief-Justices Sewell and Monk, and as this could only be done in England, the appointment of judges entirely resting with the Imperial Government, the necessity of having an agent there became more pressing.

While the attention of the Assembly was thus occupied, a message from the Governor, on the 1st of March, officially announced the conclusion of peace. Accordingly, the embodied militia were immediately disbanded, officers receiving a gratuity of eight days' pay. Provision was made, at the same time, for a pension of £6 per annum to each militiaman rendered incapable by wounds of earning a livelihood. A small gratuity was likewise given to the widows and orphans of such as had been killed during the and an address voted to the Crown, recommending that donations of land should be made to the embodied and other militia who had been engaged in actual service. The returns for the year ending January 5th, showed that the public revenues of the preceding twelve months amounted to £204,550, the expenditure to £197,250 currency. Of the latter sum, £111,451 sterling had been absorbed

war,

by military expenses, £5474 went to Upper Canada as its proportion of the customs' duties; while £339 defrayed the expenses of the recent general election, and £3693 those of the Legislature.

The business of the session having been completed, the House was prorogued by the Governor on the 25th of March. After alluding to the liberality of the Assembly, and the fortunate establishment of peace, he stated briefly that he had received the commands of the Prince Regent to return to England, "for the purpose of repelling accusations affecting his military character," preferred by Commodore Yeo, with regard to the loss of the fleet on Lake Champlain. He concluded by paying a well-merited compliment to the people of Canada, for the zeal and loyalty they had manifested during his administration.

Prior to his departure, on the 3d of April, Sir George Prevost received addresses from the French citizens of Montreal and Quebec, couched in the most flattering terms. With the British minority of Lower Canada he was not, however, by any means popular. His concessions to the French-Canadian majority had caused that minority to regard him with the utmost dislike, and his want of success at Sackett's Harbour and Plattsburg was eagerly seized upon by the press to lower him in the public estimation. A calm review of all the points at issue, while it leads to the conclusion that Prevost was not a great military genius, must accord him the merit of much political sagacity and wisdom. He effectually united a population of different origin and antagonistic feeling in defence of their common country, and thus preserved Canadian nationality through a period of the greatest danger. In his conduct towards the habitants he pursued the same line of policy followed by General Murray and Lord Dorchester, to both of whom the Lower Province was largely indebted. His bodily health, naturally delicate, was seriously injured by the hardships of his overland journey from Quebec to the sea-board, part of which was performed on foot, and the anxiety of mind consequent on his unpleasant position. He died on the 12th of January 1816, deeply regretted by his relatives and many friends.

his

THE GOVERNMENT OF SIR GORDON DRUMMOND.

Lieutenant-General Drummond, with whom the reader is already well acquainted, assumed charge of the government of Lower Canada on the departure of Sir George Prevost. His first measure of importance was the redemption of the Army Bills issued during These had passed equally current with gold and silver.

the war.