The Canadian Commonwealth | Page 3

of 1812 probably helped Canada's national spirit more than it
hurt it. It tested the French Canadian and found him loyal to the core;
loyal, to be sure, not because he loved England more but rather because
he loved the Americans less. He felt surer of religious freedom under
English rule, which guaranteed it to him, than under the rule of the new
republic, which he had harried and which had harried him in border
raid for two centuries. The War of 1812 left Canada crippled
financially but stronger in national spirit because she had tested her
strength and repelled invasion.
If mountain pines strike strong roots into the eternal rocks because they
are tempest-tossed by the wildest winds of heaven, then the next twenty
years were destined to test the very fiber of Canada's national spirit. All
that was weak snapped and went down. The dry rot of political theory
was flung to dust. Special interests, pampered privileges, the claims of
the few to exploit the many, the claims of the many to rule wisely as
the few--the shibboleth of theorists, the fine spun cobwebs of the
doctrinaires, governmental ideals of brotherhood that were mostly

sawdust and governmental practices that were mostly theft under
privilege--all went down in the smash of the next twenty years' tempest.
All that was left was what was real; what would hold water and work
out in fact.
It is curious how completely all records slur over the significance of the
Rebellion of 1837. Canada is sensitive over the facts of the case to this
day. Only a few years ago a book dealing with the unvarnished facts of
the period was suppressed by a suit in court. As a rebellion, 1837 was
an insignificant fracas. The rebels both in Ontario and Quebec were
hopelessly outnumbered and defeated. William Lyon MacKenzie, the
leader in Ontario, and Louis Papineau, the leader in Quebec, both had
to flee for their lives. It is a question if a hundred people all told were
killed. Probably a score in all were executed; as many again were sent
to penal servitude; and several hundreds escaped punishment by fleeing
across the boundary and joining in the famous night raids of Hunters'
Lodges. Within a few years both the leaders and exiles were permitted
to return to Canada, where they lived honored lives. It was not as a
rebellion that 1837 was epoch-making. It was in the clarifying of
Canada's national consciousness as to how she was to be governed.
Having migrated from the revolting colonies of New England and the
South, the ultra-patriotic United Empire Loyalists unconsciously felt
themselves more British than the French of Quebec. Canada was
governed direct from Downing Street. There were local councils in
both Toronto and Quebec--or Upper and Lower Canada, as they were
called--and there were local legislatures; but the governing cliques were
appointed by the Royal Governor, which meant that whatever little
clique gained the Governor's ear had its little compact or junta of
friends and relatives in power indefinitely. There were elections, but
the legislature had no control over the purse strings of the government.
Such a close corporation of special interests did the governing clique
become that the administration was known in both provinces as a
"Family Compact." Administrative abuses flourished in a rank growth.
Judges owing their appointment to the Crown exercised the most
arbitrary tyranny against patriots raising their voices against
government by special interests. Vast land grants were voted away to

favorites of the Compact. Public moneys were misused and neither
account given nor restitution demanded from the culprit. Ultra-loyalty
became a fashionable pose. When strolling actors played American airs
in a Toronto theater they were hissed; and when a Canadian stood up to
those airs, he was hissed. Special interests became intrenched behind a
triple rampart of fashion and administration and loyalty. Details of the
revolt need not be given here. A great love is always the best cure for a
puny affection--a Juliet for a Rosalind; and when a pure patriotism
arose to oust this spurious lip-loyalty, there resulted the Rebellion of
1837.
The point is--when the rebellion had passed, Canada had overthrown a
system of government by oligarchy. She had ousted special interests
forever from her legislative halls. In a blood and sweat of agony, on the
scaffold, in the chain gang, penniless, naked, hungry and in exile, her
patriots had fought the dragon of privilege, cast out the accursed thing
and founded national life on the eternal rocks of justice to all, special
privileges to none. Her patriots had themselves learned on the scaffold
that law must be as sacredly observed by the good as by the evil, by the
great as by the small. From the death scaffolds of these patriots sprang
that part of