The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion | Page 7

He certainly had no selfish or pecuniary purpose
to serve; and indeed it is hard to conceive of a man less influenced by
mercenary motives. His life was passed in a perpetual war against
veritable and undoubted evils; but unfortunately his hotheadedness and
want of tact prevented him from doing justice to himself and his views.
He lacked the calm intellect and patient temper necessary to the
successful fighting of life's stern battle, and had the unhappy faculty of
generally putting himself in the wrong, even when there could be no
doubt that he had originally been in the right. Some of his letters to the
newspapers were remarkable for nothing but their indiscretion, violence
and bad taste, and he came to be looked upon by the landlords of
Wiltshire as a visionary and dangerous man. His own landlord, the
Duke of Somerset, was of this way of thinking, and after some
remonstrances at second-hand which proved unavailing, his Grace
resolved that this "pestilent Scotchman" must be got rid of. A bill in
Chancery was filed against him on some pretext or other, with the view
of putting an end to his tenancy. Years of irritating and ruinous
litigation followed, the ultimate result of which was a decision in Mr.
Gourlay's favour. But it was the old story of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. The
protracted litigation had eaten up the substance of the successful
litigant, and upon the promulgation of the decree the Wiltshire Radical
was a ruined man. This would have been a matter of secondary
importance to the heir of a wealthy Fifeshire laird, but unhappily his
father had also come to the end of his resources. Injudicious
speculation and the mismanagement of an agent, combined with the
necessity of placing a large quantity of real estate in the market at an
inauspicious time, were the causes which led to the bankruptcy of the
elder Gourlay, who was stripped of his great possessions and left with a

bare subsistence. The son's prospects of inheriting a fortune were thus
at an end, and at thirty-seven years of age he found himself almost
wholly without means, and with a family of five children and a wife in
delicate health dependent upon him for support. The howl of the wolf
began to be audible to him; distant, as yet, but still gradually drawing
nearer. To his mind, a change of the base of his operations was clearly
indicated.
Five years before this time he had acquired a block of land in the
Township of Dereham, in the County of Oxford, Upper Canada, where
his wife also owned some property. He now began to cast his eyes
anxiously towards the setting sun, with a view to the rehabilitation of
his broken fortunes. After weighing the matter carefully, he resolved to
cross the Atlantic and pay a visit to Canada, in order to ascertain
whether it would be prudent to remove his family thither. He seems to
have been very deliberate about making up his mind, as he did not set
sail from Liverpool until the month of April, 1817, and did not reach
Canada until early in June. The country delighted him, more especially
the Upper Province; but one with so keen an eye for abuses had not far
to look throughout our fair land in those days for subjects of criticism.
Having made himself acquainted with some of the most glaring
iniquities of the ruling faction, and with the various causes which
tended to retard the progress of the colony, he began to liberate his
mind by written and spoken utterances such as had not theretofore been
heard in the Province. The effect of these appeals to popular sentiment
was soon apparent. People who had long smarted silently under
injustice did not hesitate to make known their discontent. The disturber
of the public tranquillity continued to speak and write, and he made his
presence felt more and more from month to month. Having resolved to
engage in business as a land agent, and to set on foot a huge scheme of
immigration to Canada from Great Britain, he went diligently to work
to gather specific and definite information, and to attack one abuse after
another. He travelled about the country hither and thither, addressed
public meetings, and wrote letters to all the papers that would publish
his animadversions. He was in deadly earnest, and put all the energy of
his impassioned nature into his appeals. In commenting upon the
delinquencies of public officials he did not mince matters, though I

search in vain throughout his voluminous writings for any evidence that
he was ever guilty of a misstatement, or even an exaggeration. He
regaled his readers and hearers with indubitable facts--facts which, for
the most part, were easily susceptible of proof, and which were