Curious it is how good men reared in the old school, where the masses exist for the benefit of the classes and the governed are to be allowed to exist only by favor of those who govern--curious how good men fail to read the sign of the times. Colonel Tom Talbot's settlement in West Ontario has, by 1832, increased to 50,000 people, and the mad harum-scarum of court days is becoming an old man. Talbot has been a legislative councilor for life, but it is not on record that he ever attended the council in Toronto. Still he views with high disfavor this universal discontent with "being governed." The secret meetings held to agitate for responsible government, Tom Talbot regards as "a pestilence" leading on to the worst disease from which humanity can suffer, namely, democracy. The old bear stirs uneasily in his lair, as reports come in of louder and louder demands that the colony shall be _permitted to govern itself_. What would become of kings and colonels and land grants by special favor, if colonies governed themselves? Colonel Tom Talbot doffs his homespun and his coon cap, and he dons the satin ruffles of twenty-five years ago, and he mounts his steed and he rides pompously forth to the market place of St. Thomas Town on St. George's Day of 1832. Bands play; flags wave; the country people from twenty miles round come riding to town. Banners {414} inscribed with "Loyalty to the Constitution" are carried at the head of parades. The venerable old colonel is greeted with burst after burst of shouting as he comes prancing on horseback up the hill. The band plays "the British Grenadiers." The Highland bagpipes skurl a welcome. Then the old man mounts the rostrum and delivers a speech that ought to be famous as an exposition of good old Tory doctrine: Some black sheep have slipped into my flock, and very black they are, and what is worse, they have got the rot, a distemper not known in this settlement till some I shall call for short "rebels" began their work of darkness under cover of organizing Blanked Cold Water Drinking Societies, where they meet at night to communicate their poisonous schemes and circulate the infection and delude the unwary! Then they assumed a more daring aspect under mask of a grievance petition, which, when it was placed before me, I would not take the trouble to read, being aware it was trash founded on falsehood, fabricated to create discontent. At the end of a half hour's tirade, of which these lines are a sample, the good old Tory raised his hands, and in the words of the Church's benediction blessed his people and prayed Heaven to keep their minds untainted by sedition. Looking back less than a century, it is almost impossible to believe that the colonel's speech--it cannot be called reasoning--was applauded to the echo and regarded as a masterly justification of people "being governed" rather than governing themselves.