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1839.] Approaching Independence of Canada Inevitable.

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country in flames as far as the eye could reach round the whole circuit of the horizon-the hundreds of peasantry, men, women, and children, of every age, driven forth to perish in the woods amid the severities of a Canadian winter-the refusals of quarter to the white flag and the suppliant knee-the numerous acts of individual atrocity necessarily perpetrated by an inflamed soldiery in such a state of things, of which we have heard many revolting details, for which a government may not be responsible, but which a people can never forgive-all these new elements the past year has added to the question at issue, and who can, then, dispute our statement that the chasm of separation between Canada and the mother-country yawns already too widely and fearfully ever to be closed again?* Who can doubt that the first use that the Canadians will make of the increased power, which must be given them by the concessions that cannot be withheld, must be to complete the separation by the establishment of their independence?

Will the British Parliament shut its eyes and its ears against the admission of these truths? Will they enter into a vain contest with necessity and fate, and endeavour much longer to maintain a barren dominion over a reluctant people, at the point of the bayonet and the muzzle of the cannon, under the ill-omened shadow of the guard he might think proper, to prevent their escape and of serve their language—to convince them of the hopelessness of resistance, and to induce them to lay down their arms and disperse. The offer was promptly rejected by the hoary and pious singer of psalms. After the failure of this attempt (which the sheriff can deny if incorrectly stated by us) it is not to be wondered at that the white flag and bended knees of the people of whom this "example" was to be made, met with so little success, in averting the impending destruction. To be fairly appreciated, this fact ought to be taken in connexion with another, which we also venture to state, and for which the evidence can be adduced when challenged by a responsible denial,-namely, that a few days previously, before the overthrow of the insurgent cause at St. Charles by Colonel Wetherell, when it is well known that great alarm prevailed on the side of the government party, messengers being sent to Colonel Wetherell commanding him to return to Montreal, with the view of retreating to the citadel of Quebec, (which messengers were intercepted by the insurgents, and by the stupidity of General Brown detained instead of being sent forward) a paper was prepared by Sir John Colburn, or for him at his orders, addressed to the insurgent leaders, urgently invoking a cessation of hostilities, on principles of Christianity and humanity, to stop the effusion of blood, and engaging on his part to have all their wrongs redressed and their demands granted. The change that came over the spirit of his dream, on the news of the success of Colonel Wetherell, is quite in character with the author of the massacre and conflagration of St. Eustache, and of the other impressive "examples" of the present year.

"He must be a bold man, indeed, who should now dream of a popular pacification of Canada by means of such stinted powers as Government can grant. The destiny of Canada is, in all human probability, decided. Some years of commotion, the intensity of mutual aggravation, and then separation from this country forever. Canada is gone. The days of its subordinate connexion with Great Britain are numbered. Lord Normanby, or any statesman, will scarcely be ambitious of being in at the death."-London True Sun, Oct. 28.

gallows? We look with the greatest interest to the proceedings in England that are to grow out of the confronting of the ministers, Lord Durham, and Brougham. We do not censure the Canadians for the unhappy events of last winter.* But the late attempt,

*Justice is not fully done by public opinion in this country, to the men implicated in that unfortunate affair. On the presumption that it was an intentional and concerted rebellion, they have been held to the heavy responsibility of failure, and the criminality of rashly hazarding such disastrous consequences with such inadequate means. O'Connell has undertaken to censure Papineau for having departed from his system of agitation unaccompanied by violence. This opinion is entirely erroneous and unjust; and it is too important a point to the reputation of many noble and gallant men to allow us to pass it over in silence. There was no concert, preparation, or even intention, of insurrection last winter. The system adopted, and which was in process of being most admirably and efficiently carried out, was one of peaceful agitation, to extort the redress and reforms demanded, by constitutional and legal means. The great meeting of the Six Counties, on the 23d of October, at which six thousand persons were present, and over which Wolfred Nelson presided, was entirely open in all its proceedings. The only steps in contemplation then and there, were to organize the people effectively for the execution of the plan of agitation proposed, of which the principal features were as follows: non-consumption of British manufactures, and of all dutiable articles, so as to increase the weight of the burthen of the Colonies upon England—the resignation, by all friendly to the popular cause, of all commissions in the militia, &c. which it could be no honor to hold under a government of oppression-the refusal to resort to the government tribunals and officers of "justice" for the settlement of disputes, and the appointment of the three or four best men in each parish, possessing the popular confidence. to perform the functions of friendly arbitrators—a general determination to make common cause with any of their friends selected as objects of prosecution by the government, to sustain them by their best assistance and contributions-contributions to arm their friends in the towns and at points where the interference of the military in elections had before taken place, and might again be apprehended in the general election which was now approaching,-these were the leading features of the plan, which could not have failed of success if the government had not suddenly and violently interfered to frustrate it, by driving the people into premature acts of open rebellion. The meeting of the Six Counties appointed another meeting of delegates, to assemble on the 23d of November, who were to confer on the common interests, and take the proper measures for carrying out this plan-to direct and combine this great popular movement of constitutional agitation. But no plan of insurrection was concerted or intended; the hope, though faint, was still entertained, that such an extreme would not be necessary to obtain from the Government the concessions demanded.

This we venture to assert on indisputable authority. If any additional confirmation of the assurance be required by any, we will cite, in proof of it, three out of many circumstances that it would be easy for us to adduce: In the first place, Dr. Nelson, obnoxious as he was to the government party, did not scruple to expose himself to arrest by going freely among the magistrates and soldiery, after the meeting of the Six Counties, both at Sorel and at Montreal-replying to the cautions of his friends who, fearing the unscrupulousness of those with whom he had to deal, advised him to conceal himself or fly, that he was guilty of no offence against any law, and had nothing to fear-remaining longer in such exposure than he had intended, or than his business required, and even attending a general review of the troops on the Champ-de-Mars at Montreal.

In the second place, when Dr. Nelson and six others of the prisoners were induced, as an act of self-sacrifice, to sign the letter to Lord Durham, of which the latter ven

inadequate and ill-combined, and, in many cases at least, under leaders whose conduct would render them a disgrace to any cause, right or wrong, with which they might be connected, we look upon as wrong and foolish* in a very high degree, even on the part of

tured to publish only a garbled extract-prevailed upon by the urgent solicitations of an emissary of the government, appealing to them in hypocritical professions of friendship and sympathy, and by assurances that no harm was intended them, and that that concession was alone required to enable the government to release their fellow prisoners (about a hundred and fifty in number) from the severe incarceration in which they had been suffering for already seven months-an acknowledgment of having been guilty of high-treason could not be extorted from them; and it was only by mutilating and garbling the paper they were duped into signing, and by totally misrepresenting the circumstances of the act, that Lord Durham was able to trump up a shadow of decent pretext for the unconstitutional and illegal measure which he undertook to adopt, and for which he was most justly rebuked by Parliament, that of transporting them to Bermuda. For the evidence of this, see the statement of Dr. Nelson and Mr. Bouchette, recently made public in their letter to the Editor of the Bermudian.

In the third place, on the morning of the embarkation of the exiles, in a conversation between Dr. Nelson and the Attorney General, the latter, in reply to an appeal of the former, acknowledged substantially that he could not say that he was in possession of any document or evidence to convince himself of his (Dr. Nelson) having been guilty of the crime, high-treason, of which he was charged, and for which he was about to be, illegally and unconstitutionally, sent into banishment.

It is well known that the signal for the outbreak was the issuing of warrants for the arrest of all the principal leaders of the popular party, on charges of high-treason, (issued in most cases in blank, to be filled up as occasion might require,) and the violent and brutal manner in which the warrants were executed in the case of Messrs. Demaray and Davignon. A person of very high authority has assured us that, but for that latter circumstance, he does not believe a shot would have been fired. On the approach of the troops under Col. Gore, with the sheriff bearing the warrant for the arrest of Dr. Wolfred Nelson, in whose house at St. Denis a large number of the peasantry had hastily assembled for his defence, no summons was made to surrender, nor was any obedience to the warrant in the hands of the civil officer demanded,-which Dr. Nelson has always declared he was prepared to render, well knowing that no one durst or could harm him. The first summons that he received was a cannon-ball that killed three men, followed by a second that killed two, sprinkling him with their blood and brains. Then only did he give direction to fire, for the defence of their lives; and with what effect was proved by the sanguinary repulse that the troops sustained.

Without here recapitulating the events of the struggle, which, notwithstanding the entire absence of preparation, would probably, we think, have been successful, but for the miserable incapacity and misconduct of Brown, we have said enough in this Note to sustain our statement, that there was no plan or intention of a rising last winter; and that therefore all the odium which many have been disposed to heap on the heads of some of the most gallant and worthy men that live, has been entirely unjust and misplaced.

* As for that portion of the movement organized in Vermont by Robert Nelson, Cote, and others, for the invasion of Lower Canada, we have certain information that every word and act of its leaders were reported to Sir John Colburn; and among those who furnished them money, with the most zealous expressions of sympathy, they little dreamed that some procured the money from Sir John Colburn himself! It is not for us to undertake to pass upon these gentlemen the exact degree of condemnation which their attempt may merit-it being their own cause and their own

those whose quarrel it more properly was. It appears to have been undertaken in a spirit entirely unworthy of a truly good and popular cause-witness such men as a Birge, and others of that stamp ; it does not appear to have received any countenance from Mr. Papineau, who seems to have had no connexion with it; and we are confident that it would never have been thus undertaken had Wolfred Nelson been in this country, instead of being chained, by an illegal and arbitrary mandate, to the rocks of Bermuda. Of the participation in it by American citizens-whether from motives of a thoughtless and deluded generosity, a desire of excitement and notoriety, or on a cool and mercenary calculation of pay, emoluments and bounty lands-we have already expressed the strong reprobation which it is unnecessary here to repeat. Yet still it must be evident that the Canadas are to be retained, yet a little longer if at all, only by military force, lavishly and rigorously applied. Meantime the whole country runs to waste. Probably not less than fifty thousand persons have emigrated to the United States within the past year. Industry, commerce-all that can make the country happy and prosperous itself, or in any way useful to Great Britain-must continue paralysed; and the English people gratuitously taxed a hard-grudged million a year, to maintain a dominion which, under such circumstances, must be a burthen instead of an advantage-instead of a glory, a disgrace.

The difficulties for the present are, it is to be hoped and presumed, over; and with them the agitation of our frontier will doubtless subside. Those persons who have been able to dupe a portion of our young and adventurous border population into a wild and desperate enterprise, in which the situation of the survivors is probably now more to be regretted than that of their fallen comaffair. It is certainly not unnatural that men of spirit and sanguine courage, forced thus into exile, under all the circumstances attending their case, and conscious of the certain fact that at least four-fifths of the people of Lower Canada were hostile to the government, should embark in such enterprises. And it is certainly due in justice to them personally to state, that we have been assured by a friend of Robert Nelson, speaking on positive knowledge, that he was only induced to undertake the attempt of an attack upon the government, by urgent and influential invitations which he received from the country itself-he being the only person on the frontier whose name was deemed of sufficient popularity for the purpose. These invitations were, it is stated, from persons who had heretofore abstained from taking part in their political movements-from some who had been cool-others who had even been advers representing great changes to have been wrought against the government by the history of the preceding year, and by Lord Durham's administration. W. are assured that that gentleman has in his possession upwards of a hundred strong letters of this character. No opportunity was afforded for testing the truth of these representations; for, so badly does the affair seem to have been managed by the Patriots, and so skilfully by Sir John Colburn, that, on entering Canada with a handful of men, where there was a perfect preparation for their reception, as for expected guests, within forty-eight hours they were overwhelmed by a greatly superior force, and compelled to disperse and return.

rades-and to send so gallant a band as the forlorn-hope of Prescott to meet a fate they did not dare to face in person themselves— after so dreadful a lesson of experience, those persons are not likely again to succeed in a similar criminal attempt. The friends of the popular cause must now needs do that which they ought to have done before, to wait for the action of the British Parliament and people on the subject. Apart from its criminality-on which, with our abhorrence of blood and force where other means, with the aid of a little time and patience, afford a probability of success, we cannot but look with a severe eye, in spite of all the general views of the subject expressed in the course of this and of former Articles—no mistake could have been greater, than that of thus rashly and stupidly interfering when the current of events was already setting so strongly, while peacefully, in their favor. What was the state of things?

The failure of Lord Durham's mission of dictatorship stood confessed; and having been looked to by the people of England as the sole and sovereign panacea by which the diseased state of the Province could be restored to health, the disappointment of those hopes was a great step forward towards the preparation of public opinion for that result which must necessarily follow, unless some adequate means could be devised for the tranquillization and satisfaction of the Colonies-namely the relinquishment of them. If the descent of such a power from the skies into the midst of the conflict of the parties in Canada was ineffectual to restore harmony, what was to be looked for from other attempts or other means? Lord Durham's very unwise and unskilful administration of the government, followed by his sudden throwing up of his commission, plunged the matter into a more difficult state of embarrassment than ever before-a confusion still worse confounded. It was a signal triumph for the popular party, who had witnessed with grief and indignation this most extraordinary measure, of sending out a vice-regal dictator, with all the terrors and splendors of a despotism to awe and dazzle all men into submissive acquiescence with the acts of its irresistible will, guided by its infallible intelligence. Nothing, we think, could justify the ministry in adopting a mode of settling or quelling popular discontents so foreign to the ideas of the age and the country to which applied, nothing but the conviction of its necessity, as the sole untried expedient, before concession, that remained to them. We are entitled to take its adoption as the acknowledgment of such a conviction; and are willing to pardon the ministry its absurdity for the sake of our satisfaction at its failure. Its effect could not but be greatly to encourage the popular party, who raised a shout of rejoicing-not unmingled with the laughter of ridicule-over his inglorious departure from the land upon which he had descended as a Deus ex machina. They

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