The Family Compact believed the chief beauty of government to be simplicity, the foremost tenet loyalty to one another. But men outside the Pact, every whit as much gentlemen and each in turn bearing his part of that heat and burden, awoke to a sense of individualism, each to realize that he was a unit in the commonweal. The forerunner of the new dispensation was Robert Gourlay. And what and if his sorrows had so overwhelmed his wits, he yet was the founder of public opinion in Upper Canada; nor is it less true that the first outcome of his martyrdom was that life was made harder for those who dared to follow where he had failed. “Whaur ye gaun, Sawndie?” “E’en to the club just to conthradick a bit;” and Mackenzie, right as he was in many points, leaves us in no doubt as to his descent and his ability to “conthradick” for pure love of so doing. Also his club covered a wide area, and his influence over a tract as wide as his ability to contradict was phenomenal. Passing the line between the Canadas, Glengarry showed the change from French to British ways. Not only were the features and tongues of the inhabitants different, but there was an entire absence of that thrifty, snug cottage comfort which distinguished the half-brother below. With outsides unfinished, no taut lines about them, both houses and original huts proclaimed a people undaunted by obstacles and surmounting them by indifference to detail. Here all were loyal. Stories of the famous Glengarry Fencibles of 1812 took up the leisure hours, and the spirit of the Loyalist fighting bishop was paramount. That prelate would not tell his people _how_ to vote, but he talked of “these radicals who aim at the destruction of our Holy Religion;” and this word to those already wise was sufficient. Next came Prescott, once La Galette, well built on a rocky prominence, the site of a former entrenchment, a place mentioned in old French diaries from the time of La Salle, the white of its tall, massive tower, roofed with a tin dome and built out on a rounding point covered with evergreen, making an abrupt feature in the river bank. Enormous sails flapping in the breeze proclaimed its functions, and a fort in process of erection, not having a moiety of its aggressive strength of appearance, lay near it. Here the people were of two minds, many ready to be sympathisers in a movement though lacking the force to be leaders; prominent men, some of them, and wishing for a lead, while others, living in the remote shadow of the dominant party, were so securely attached to crown and flag that they were ready to defend that party for the sake of the flag whose exclusive property it seemed to be.