The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion | Page 3

knowing, or even
suspecting, whence the blow proceeded. They were the head and front
of the junto of oligarchs who formed the Vehmgericht known as the
Family Compact, and for all practical purposes their judgment in
matters relating to the dispensing of patronage and the disposal of
Crown property was final and conclusive.
The counsel for the prosecution was a handsome young man of
twenty-eight, who for some years past had been steadily fitting himself
for the important part he was destined to play--that of Mr. Powell's
judicial[1] and political successor in the colony. The time was only ten
years distant when he, in his turn, was to become Chief Justice of
Upper Canada. The time was still less remote when he was to succeed
Chief Justice Powell as Dr. Strachan's most active colleague--as the
chief lay spokesman of his party, and the chief lay adviser of successive
Lieutenant-Governors. His name was John Beverley Robinson, and his
destiny was doubtless sufficiently clear before him on this 20th of
August, 1819. He had strong claims upon his party, for he was the son
of a United Empire Loyalist, and during the late war with the United
States had proved that he was no degenerate scion of the stock whence
he had sprung. He had been present at the surrender of Detroit, and had
borne himself gallantly at the battle of Queenston Heights. Nor had his

party shown any disposition to ignore his claims. On the contrary, they
had pushed him forward with a rapidity which would have turned any
head with a natural tendency to giddiness. He had been appointed
Attorney-General of the Province before he had been called to the bar,
and when he was only twenty-one years of age--a special Act of
Parliament being subsequently passed to confirm the proceeding. In
1815 he had been appointed Solicitor-General, chiefly in order that he
might draw the salary incidental to that office during a two years' visit
to England. Soon after his return he had again been appointed
Attorney-General, and had early signalized his re-accession to office by
his manner of prosecuting certain criminals from the Red River country,
who had been placed on trial at York. Those proceedings do not fall
within the purview of this work, but it may be said with reference to the
young Attorney-General's connection with them that he had proved
himself an exceedingly narrow partisan and a docile pupil of Dr.
Strachan. He now presented himself to take a leading part in one of the
most shameless and iniquitous prosecutions that ever disgraced a court
of justice. His personal appearance was decidedly prepossessing. His
figure, clad in well-fitting garments of the fashionable cut of the period,
was light, agile and compact, and his face, rather inclining to
narrowness, was surmounted by a high and smoothly-finished brow,
beneath which looked out a pair of steel-grey eyes, the usual expression
of which was eager and firm, but on the whole not unkindly. His mouth
was finely formed, and when he was in a pleasant humour--as indeed
he not infrequently was--his smile was sweet and ingratiating. In
intellectual capacity he was considerably in advance of most of his
professional brethren of that day, and he had cultivated his natural
abilities by constant watchfulness and study. His features, one and all,
were well and sharply defined, and he was probably the handsomest
man at the Provincial bar.
Several other members of the legal profession, all of them more or less
widely known in the forensic, judicial or political annals of the
Province, were present. Conspicuous among them was the brilliant but
unscrupulous Christoper Alexander Hagerman, who had already taken
high rank at the bar, and was destined to be one of the most active and
intolerant directors of the oligarchical policy. Archibald McLean, tall

and lithe of limb, had then been more than four years at the bar, and he
had already given evidence of the high abilities which were to gain for
him an honoured seat upon the judicial bench. He had been retained to
defend two prisoners at the Niagara assizes, and his presence in the
court-room was due to this fact. Another figure at the barristers' table
was Samuel Peters Jarvis, his hands yet red with the blood of young
John Ridout, ruthlessly shed by him in a duel two years before, and
never to be effaced from the tablets of his memory. There, too, sat
Henry John Boulton, a young man of much pretension but mediocre
intellect, who had been appointed acting Solicitor-General during the
previous year, and who united in his own person all the bigotry and
narrow selfishness of the faction to which he belonged. He, also, had
been concerned in the shedding of young Ridout's blood, having acted
as second to the surviving principal