[2] One of the Conservative papers of the day wrote:--'Bad as the payment of the rebellion losses is, we do not know that it would not be better to submit to pay twenty rebellion losses than have what is nominally a free Constitution fettered and restrained each time a measure distasteful to the minority is passed.' [3] 'I confess,' he wrote in a private letter of the same date, 'I did not before know how thin is the crust of order which covers the anarchical elements that boil and toss beneath our feet.' [4] 'When he entered the Government House he took a two-pound stone with him which he had picked up in his carriage, as evidence of the most unusual and sorrowful treatment Her Majesty's representative had received.'--Mac Mullen, p. 511. [5] 'Cabs, caleches, and everything that would run were at once launched in pursuit, and crossing his route, the Governor-General's carriage was bitterly assailed in the main street of the St. Lawrence suburbs. The good and rapid driving of his postilions enabled him to clear the desperate mob, but not till the head of his brother, Colonel Bruce, had been cut, injuries inflicted on the chief of police. Colonel Ermatanger, and on Captain Jones, commanding the escort, and every panel of the carriage driven in.'--Mac Mullen, p. 511. [6] In the midst of this time of anxiety and even of danger to himself and his family, his eldest son was born at Monklands, on May 16. Her Majesty was graciously pleased to become godmother to the child, who was christened Victor Alexander. [7] The motives, he afterwards said, which induced him to abstain from forcing his way into Montreal, might be correctly stated in the words of the Duke of Wellington, who, when asked why he did not go to the city in 1830, is reported to have answered, 'I would have gone if the law had been equal to protect me, but that was not the case. Fifty dragoons would have done it, but that was a military force. If firing had begun, who could tell when it would end? one guilty person would fall and ten innocent be destroyed. Would this have been wise or humane for a little bravado, or that the country might not be alarmed for a day or two?' [8] His valued Secretary, to whose personal recollections most of these details are due. [9] Some years afterwards, in the 'Address' already quoted, Mr. Gladstone made something of an _amende_ for this attack; but he does not appear to have been fully informed, even then, either as to the intention with which the Act was framed, or as to the manner in which it had been carried out. [10] 'This,' observes Lord Grey, 'owing to the extreme forbearance of Lord Elgin and his advisers, was the only life lost throughout these unhappy disturbances.'