Among the Compact, then, the number of persons of good birth and descent, possessed of sufficient qualifications to justify their aristocratic predilections, and of sufficient capacity to enable them to direct the colonial policy, was small. And it must by no means be supposed that all the good blood in the Province was confined to the Compact. There were many persons among the pioneers of Upper Canada of gentle nurture and breeding, who nevertheless scorned to pose in the character of aristocrats in a land where such assumptions were altogether out of place, and who manfully accommodated themselves to their primitive surroundings. As has been well remarked by Mr. MacMullen,[56] "While they learned to wield the axe and swing the cradle with the energy and skill of the roughest backwoodsman, they retained their polished manners, their literary tastes, their love for the beautiful and the elegant; and thus exercised the most beneficial influence upon their rustic neighbours. In the absence of schools, of churches, of most of the refining influences of civilized society, this class of the early settlers of Upper Canada were foremost in usefulness. Their superior education, their well-bred manners, their more refined habits, raised them in the estimation of the rural population, who soon tacitly admitted a superiority which would never have been conceded [had it been] more directly asserted." Most, though not all, of these gentlemen were Tories, and, with hardly an exception, preserved their loyalty through all chances and changes. During the War of 1812-15, and again during the agitation arising out of the Rebellion, they proved true to their Tory instincts, and rallied to the side of the Government with ready fervour. Their social proclivities were equally removed from the rude boorishness of the ordinary settler as from the pretence and ceremonial of the clique of self-constituted aristocrats. They generally preserved a modicum of state in the regulation of their household affairs, though they kept aloof from the Compact and its practices, and devoted themselves to various branches of industry--among others, to the education of youth; to the practice of the learned professions; to the opening and cultivating of new avenues of commerce; and to reducing the pathless forests to arable and smiling fields.