It is easy at this time of day to cast reflections upon the ruling class of that period, a class chiefly composed of sons of officers in the army and navy, for the most part gentlemen in the conventional sense of the term--a crime laid to their charge by some who could not forgive it. They naturally came to centre in themselves all offices of honour and emolument; and the governors, all gentle if some foolish, looked to them for counsel and support, before time was allowed for reflection, the governors so cleverly governed that they knew it not. Gifts of the Crown naturally followed, and the great Pact grew richer, alongside of that older Compact of the sister province. It is a case for “put yourself in his place.” The burden and heat of the day had fallen on these men; they but followed the instinct to reap where one has strawed, and carried out to the letter the axiom that unlimited power is more than mortal is framed to bear. “The tyrannical government of palace pets” furnishes pages of misgovernment. It took a clear head, a steady will and a true heart to cling to British connection and the Union Jack, when desperation made some determined to be rid of the Toronto rule, which was to them odious, unjust, intolerable. And yet, when we review that epoch of dissolution and transformation, the errors and shortcomings of either party, the two sides of the dispute stand out so clearly that we wonder anyone could then think he was altogether right. “Flayed with whips and scorped with scorpions,” one side said, “there is no alternative but a tame, unmanly submission or a bold and vigorous assertion of our rights as freemen;” while the other, by the mouth of its governor, likened Canada, standing in “the flourishing continent of North America,” to a “girdled tree with drooping branches.” Certainly, the simile was good; and with all justice to the side of Tory or Reformer, Royalist, Rebel, Loyalist _and_ Loyalist, a retrospective glance discloses a knife on either side busy at the process of girdling. “What is the best government on earth?” asks a school-book in use in Duncombe’s District and printed in Boston for Canadian schools; “A Republican Government like the United States,” is the unqualified next line. “What is the worst government on earth?”--“A Monarchical Government like that of England and Canada.” “Can the King of England order any man’s head cut off and confiscate his property?”--“Yes.” “Will you, if the occasion arrives, rise up and rebel against such a government as yours, and join the States?”--“Yes, with all my power and influence.” The Yankee school-master, a chief agent of this propaganda, was one of the first prisoners.