It should be mentioned that Dickson's evidence, so far as "extraordinary and undue influence by the Local Government" is concerned, is fully confirmed by the evidence of the Hon. Thomas Clark, who was also a member of the Upper House, and was present at the proceedings above described. There could not well be any more conclusive proof of the unconstitutional and corrupt manner in which the Government was carried on during Sir Peregrine Maitland's time than is afforded by the circumstances just narrated. They read like a chapter out of the political history of England during the last century. The methods employed by Walpole exhibit nothing baser or more repulsive than these. His aphorism about "every one of them" having his price might well have been echoed by Sir Peregrine, so far as the Legislative Council was concerned, with the addition that the price in Upper Canada was sometimes ridiculously low. The persons who were guilty of these gross violations of the constitution, to say nothing of the commonest principles of honesty, were incessantly prating of their devoted loyalty to the Crown. Yet it is plain enough that their fealty was always subservient to what they deemed to be their personal interests. This was as clearly apparent in 1837 as it had been in 1828. When, a few years later,[140] a crisis arose in which they were compelled to choose between those interests and their devotion to the Crown, it was once more abundantly manifest that theirs was the veriest lip-loyalty. The burning of the Parliament Buildings at Montreal was as direct an act of treason as was the affair at Montgomery's Farm. [Sidenote: 1829.]