The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion

The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, by

John Charles Dent This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion
Author: John Charles Dent
Release Date: July 24, 2007 [EBook #22131]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE STORY OF THE UPPER CANADIAN REBELLION.
[Illustration: Yours truly, John Rolph]

THE STORY
OF THE
=UPPER CANADIAN REBELLION=
JOHN CHARLES DENT
AUTHOR OF "THE LAST FORTY YEARS" &C.
VOL. I.
[Illustration]
TORONTO.
PUBLISHED BY C. BLACKETT ROBINSON
1865
New York

THE STORY
OF THE
UPPER CANADIAN REBELLION;
LARGELY DERIVED FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES AND DOCUMENTS.
BY JOHN CHARLES DENT,
Author of "The Last Forty Years," etc.
* * * * *
"Well, God be thanked for these rebels."--I Henry IV., Act iii, sc. 3.
"Truth is not always to be withheld because its expression may wound the feelings of public men, whose official acts have subjected them to public censure. If it were, history and biography would cease to be guiding stars, and, above all, would offer no wholesome restraint to the cruel, or corrupt, or incompetent exercise of authority."--Tupper's Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir Isaac Brock.
"We rebelled neither against Her Majesty's person nor her Government, but against Colonial mis-government.... We remonstrated; we were derided.... We were goaded on to madness, and were compelled to show that we had the spirit of resistance to repel injuries, or to be deemed a captive, degraded and recreant people. We took up arms, not to attack others, but to defend ourselves."--Letter to Lord Durham from Dr. Wolfred Nelson and others, confined at Montreal, June 18th, 1838.
* * * * *
=Toronto:=
C. BLACKETT ROBINSON, 5 JORDAN STREET.
1885.

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year 1885, by C. BLACKETT ROBINSON, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture.

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY ESTEEMED FRIEND,
GEORGE STEWART, JUN'R.
OF QUEBEC:
WHOSE RESEARCHES IN A KINDRED DIRECTION WILL ENABLE HIM TO
DO FULL JUSTICE TO WHATEVER IS MERITORIOUS IN IT; WHILE
HIS GENEROUS APPRECIATION OF THE EFFORTS OF HIS
LITERARY BRETHREN WILL RENDER HIM
INDULGENT TO ITS DEFECTS.
JOHN CHARLES DENT.
Toronto, 1885.
[Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors, including punctuation, have been corrected. All other inconsistencies have been left as they were in the original.]
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
CHAPTER I.
THE BANISHED BRITON 9
CHAPTER II.
A BILL OF PARTICULARS 46
CHAPTER III.
THE FAMILY COMPACT 71
CHAPTER IV.
FATHERS OF REFORM 96
CHAPTER V.
A "FREE AND UNFETTERED" PRESS 122
CHAPTER VI.
THE CASE OF CAPTAIN MATTHEWS 144
CHAPTER VII.
THE NIAGARA FALLS OUTRAGE 151
CHAPTER VIII.
THE "AMOVAL" OF MR. JUSTICE WILLIS 162
CHAPTER IX.
THE CASE OF FRANCIS COLLINS 195
CHAPTER X.
LIGHTS--OLD AND NEW 213
CHAPTER XI.
PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGE 231
CHAPTER XII.
DISENFRANCHISEMENT 253
CHAPTER XIII.
MR. HUME'S "BANEFUL DOMINATION" LETTER 264
CHAPTER XIV.
"SEE, THE CONQUERING HERO COMES!" 282
CHAPTER XV.
"A TRIED REFORMER" 296
CHAPTER XVI.
THE TRIUMPHS OF A TRIED REFORMER 324
CHAPTER XVII.
REACTION 342
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FORGING OF THE PIKES 354

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
John Rolph Frontispiece
David Gibson 284

THE STORY
OF
THE UPPER CANADIAN REBELLION.
CHAPTER I.
THE BANISHED BRITON.
[Sidenote: 1819]
In the afternoon of a warm and sultry day, towards the close of one of the warmest and most sultry summers which Upper Canada has ever known, an extraordinary trial took place at the court-house in the old town of Niagara. The time was more than threescore years ago, when York was a place of insignificant proportions; when Hamilton could barely be said to have an existence; and when the sites of most of the other towns of the Province whose names are now familiar to us still formed part of the hunting-grounds of the native Indian. The little town on the frontier was relatively a place of much greater importance than it is at present; though its fortunes, even at that early period, were decidedly on the wane, and such glory as it could ever boast of possessing, as the Provincial capital, had departed from it long before. To speak with absolute precision, the date was Friday, the 20th of August, 1819: so long ago that, as far as I have been able to learn, there are only two persons now living who were present on the occasion. The court-room, which was the largest in the Province, was packed to the doors, and though every window was thrown open for purposes of ventilation, the atmosphere was almost stifling. Even a stranger, had any such been present, could not have failed to perceive that the trial was one in which a keen interest was felt by the spectators, many of whom were restless and irritable, insomuch that they found it impossible to keep perfectly still, and from time to time shifted uneasily in their places. Whispers, "not loud, but deep," occasionally reverberated from the back benches to the