Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
History
Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2
Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
Canada -- Description and travel; Ontario -- Description and travel
The Upper Canadians should follow the example of the good people of
Amherstburgh, and erect a monument in the capital of Upper Canada to
the memory of those who died in consequence of the folly, the
hardihood, and the presumption of this man.
There may have been some excuse pleaded for the Canadian French.
Misled by designing men, these excellent people of course fancied
that, contrary to all possible reason and analogy, a population of
about half a million was strong enough to combat with British
dominion. Their language, laws, and religion, they were told, were in
danger.
But what excuse could the Upper Canadians have--men of British birth,
or direct descent, who had grievances, to be sure, but which
grievances resolved themselves into the narrow compass of the Family
Compact and the thirty-seven Rectories? Quiet farmers, reposing in
perfect security under the AEgis of Britain, were the mass of Upper
Canadians.
The "Family Compact" is still the war-cry of a party in Upper Canada;
and one person of respectability has published a letter to Sir Allan
Macnab, in which he states that, so long as the Chief Justice and the
Bishop of Toronto continue to force Episcopalianism down the throats
of the people, so long will Canada be in danger. This gentleman, an
influential Scotch merchant of Toronto, in his letter dated Hamilton,
C. West, 18th November, 1846, says, that the Family Compact, or Church
of England tory faction, whose usurpations were the cause of the last
rebellion, will be the cause of a future and more successful one, "if
they are not checked;" and, while he fears rebellion, he dreads that,
in case of a war, his countrymen, "the Scotch, could not, on their
principles, defend the British government, which suffers their
degradation in the colony."
This plainly shows to what an extent party spirit is carried in
Canada, when it suffers a man of respectability and loyalty coolly to
look rebellion in the face as an alternative between his own church
and another.
A Church of England man, totally unconnected with colonial interests
and with colonial parties, is a better judge of these matters than a
Church of Scotland man, or a Free Church man, who believes, with his
eyes shut, that Calvinism is to be thrust bodily out of the land by
the influence of Dr. Strachan or Chief Justice Robinson.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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