But what was the strength of all these natural and unmistakable
elements of hostility to monarchy under any form, and to a people bred
under monarchical institutions in any circumstances? What was the power
of the Methodists, in so far as that was used against the government,
over the constituencies of the province? What was the power of those
who were not Methodists, but who united with them in opposing the
government? And what was the power of the really honest Yankees in
the province, who never hesitated to avow that they hated the British
government, root, branches, and all? And in what way did their united
feelings and intentions develop themselves?
For upwards of a quarter of a century they maintained,--with all the
power and patronage of the government against them; with most of the
talent born in the province, and the whole, or very nearly so, of
that imported into it, against them; and with seven-eighths, yes,
nine-tenths, of the emigrants who were able to purchase property when
they came, or who subsequently became voters, against them,--alternate,
and more than alternate, majorities in parliament. It can answer
no good purpose now, it never answered any, to deny or to disguise
this fact. This class of men formed, as what we have already stated
must have satisfied the reader, fully two-thirds of the electors in
the counties. In the Home District, where M'Kenzie, who headed the
rebellion in 1837, had absolute control over the elections; in the
Midland District, where Mr Bidwell, an American by birth, by education,
and from principle, exercised a similar influence; in the London
District, where Duncombe, who also headed the rebels, could carry any
man into parliament he pleased; what was the character of the voters
in the townships and counties which gave them this power? They were
the Methodists, educated as we have described; they were the Americans
and Dutch, with strong predilections in favour of democracy, and still
stronger dislike of the natural and inevitable characteristics of
society which arise from monarchy itself. In the Gore district, in the
Niagara district, and in the Newcastle district, what do the poll-books
exhibit for the counties which sent member after member, with hardly an
exception, to support M'Kenzie in the parliament, and some of them to
support him in the rebellion? The number of Hezekiahs, and Jedediahs,
and Jonathans, of Eliacums, and Ezekiels, shows pretty clearly what
was their origin, and what were their political predilections. But
these democratic leanings were by no means arbitrarily confined to
names, for there was both a Duke of Wellington and a Horatio Nelson in
the Gore District gaol for treason in 1838. The Duke was a preacher,
and regularly held forth to his fellow prisoners, until the scamp
at last--we suppose to acquire a practical idea of the nature of
sin--stole a watch from one of his companions, and was thereupon
regularly deposed from his high calling; and the scene of his labours
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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