The violence and the excitement which prevailed in parliament were repeated and intensified throughout the country. Everything that could be effected by public meetings, petitions, protests, was done to prevent the bill from passing, or, if it passed, to prevent the governor-general from giving his assent to it, or, as a last resource, to induce the Queen to disallow the obnoxious measure. The whole machinery of agitation was set in motion and speeded up, to prevent the bill becoming law. 'Demonstrations'--in plain English, rows--took place everywhere. Sedate little Belleville was the scene of fierce riots. Effigies of Baldwin, Blake, and Mackenzie were paraded through the streets of Toronto {121} on long poles 'amid the cheers and exultations of the largest concourse of people beheld in Toronto since the election of Dunn and Buchanan.' Finally the effigies were burned in a burlesque _auto-da-fe_. This ancient English custom was a milder method of expressing political disapproval than the native American invention of tar-and-feathers; but it seems to have been equally soothing to the feelings. An outside observer, the _New York Herald_, expected the disturbance to end in 'a complete and perfect separation of those provinces from the rule of England'; but in those days American critics were always expecting separation. No clearer mirror of the crisis is to be found than in the words of the man on whom lay the heaviest responsibility, the governor-general himself. This is his private opinion of the bill: 'The measure itself is not free from objection, and I very much regret that an addition should be made to our debt for such an object at this time. Nevertheless I must say I do not see how my present government could have taken any other course.' He also calls it 'a strict logical following out' of the Tory party's own acts; and he has 'no doubt whatsoever {122} that a great deal of property was wantonly and cruelly destroyed at that time in Lower Canada.' He was petitioned to dissolve parliament if the bill should pass; his judgment on this alternative runs: 'If I had dissolved parliament, I might have produced a rebellion, but most assuredly I should not have produced a change of ministry.' The other alternative of reserving the bill seemed, as he balanced it in his mind, cowardly. He would create no precedent. Bills had been reserved before, and had been refused the royal sanction; to reserve this one would be no departure from established custom; but, he writes to Lord Grey, 'by reserving the Bill, I should only throw upon Her Majesty's Government ... a responsibility which rests, and ought, I think, to rest, on my own shoulders.' The sentences which follow evince an ideal of public service that can only be called knightly. The executive head of the government was ready to face failure and disgrace, to the ruin of his career, rather than shirk the responsibility which was really his. 'If I pass the Bill, whatever