James Morris, member for Leeds, was also a man of some mark, and in after days held high public offices of trust. He had had some Parliamentary experience, having sat for Leeds in the Legislative Assembly of the Upper Province throughout the last Parliament before the Union. Without possessing any remarkable vigour of understanding, he exerted a good deal of influence, and was highly respected as a thoroughly upright and well-intentioned man. His political reputation, such as it was, was still to be made. Colonel John Prince was an English barrister who had emigrated to Western Canada about eight years before the consummation of the Union, and settled on an estate in the county of Essex, which county he now represented in the Assembly. He also practised his profession with much success, and in the month of August, 1841, was appointed a Queen's Counsel. During the troubled days following the outbreak of December, 1837, he had taken an active part in repelling the incursions of filibustering parties of American "sympathizers" upon Canadian territory. Upon one occasion he had captured five of these marauders near Windsor, and had ordered four of them to be shot without any form of trial. And, to use his own concise phrase, "they were shot accordingly." This highhanded proceeding had made some noise at the time, and an official investigation had been held, which had resulted in Colonel Prince's acquittal. He was a frank and genial, but impetuous man, with

the old Government Tory party, but as an independent man I shall ever raise my voice against their selfish and exclusive political creed. However respectable or amiable some of them may be, as individuals, I must view them, as a Compact, to be the worst enemies of their country, and blind enough not to see that they are thus the enemies of themselves and their children. . . . I object to the old official party, because they never had, nor would their principles ever permit their possessing the confidence of the people of Upper Canada. And confidence in ourselves must precede the confidence of the people of England in our stability, without which we cannot expect, nor could we honestly advise, emigration to Canada, without which this cannot long remain a British Province.

If elected by you, I shall be found a great conservator of our principles, and an unwearied and fearless reformer of details. The perpetuation of the connection between the Colony and the Mother Country I view to be at once the glory and advantage of both."

* It ought to be mentioned that the marauders had murdered an army-surgeon-a Mr.

a fine presence and excellent intentions, but with no particular capacity or taste for politics. In England he had been a Whig. In Canada he acted with the Conservatives, but called himself a moderate Reformer. He was not always amenable to party discipline, and voted in an independent, not to say erratic fashion. He had a pleasant voice and a smooth accent, and his elocution— it could scarcely be called oratory-was listened to with an interest not always accorded to more powerful speakers. George Morss Boswell, who represented the South Riding of Northumberland, was an active politician in those days, and took a prominent part in some of the debates on constitutional questions. He acted with the moderate Reformers. Mr. Boswell is still living, and has long occupied the position of Judge of the County Court of the United Counties of Northumberland and Durham. Among other more or less conspicuous Upper Canadian members may be mentioned Edward Clarke Campbell, member for the town of Niagara; David Thorburn, representing the South Riding of Lincoln; John S. Cartwright, representing Lennox and Addington; James Hervey Price, representing the First Riding of York; and George Sherwood, representing the town of Brockville. Mr. Sherwood is the sole survivor of the four or five Upper Canadian members who represented ultra-Conservative principles in the First Parliament under the Union. He is, and has long been, Judge of the County Court of the County of Hastings.

In the Legislative Council, in addition to Mr. Sullivan, already referred to as a member of the Government, there were several men of some note. Réné Edouard Caron, a Quebec advocate of high character, and father of the present Minister of Militia, had sat in the Legislative Council of Lower Canada before the Union. He

Hume-in cold blood, and had burned two other British subjects to death. The Colonel's act was high-handed and legally unjustifiable, but it was committed in a season of intense excitement, and the provocation was great.

was a man of moderation and high principle. His was the first French Canadian name on the roll of the Legislative Council of United Canada. His name is identified with certain correspondence of which some account will be given on a subsequent page. Peter McGill, a sagacious and benevolent citizen of Montreal, was connected with some of the leading banking and commercial institutions of Lower Canada. He did not make any specially conspicuous figure in political life, though six years later, in the early days of Lord Elgin's Administration, he accepted a seat in the Executive Council. He was a shrewd and useful man, popular, and highly respected by his fellow-citizens. He generally acted with the Conservatives, but was no hard and fast party man, and did not hesitate to support Liberal measures when they commended themselves to his judgment. William Morris, a brother of the above mentioned James, is chiefly remembered from his having been the mover, in 1820, of an address to the King, asserting the claims of the Church of Scotland to a share of the Clergy Reserves. With the subsequent agitation on that long-debated question, in all its phases, his name is inseparably bound up. He lived to see his strenuous exertions crowned with even a more complete success than he had at first permitted himself to count upon, for the claim was originally made on behalf of the Church of Scotland alone. During Sir Charles Metcalfe's tenure of office he became Receiver-General, and-later-President of the Executive Council. His eldest son, the Hon. Alexander Morris, is well known to the present generation of Canadians, having from 1872 to 1877 been Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Manitoba. He is the present representative of East Toronto in the Local Assembly of Ontario. Robert Sympson Jameson, who four days before the opening of the session was appointed to the post of Speaker of the Legislative Council, is partly remembered by reason of his subsequent tenure of office as Vice-Chancellor of Upper Canada,

but chiefly from the fact that he was the husband of the clever, brilliant sketcher and art critic, Anna Jameson. Adam Fergusson, James Crooks, Adam Ferrie and Peter Boyle De Blaquière are also names which are more more or less suggestive to persons in this country whose memories extend back over the last forty years.*

* Of the twenty-four members comprising the Legislative Council, eight were members of the Church of England, eight of the Kirk of Scotland, and the remaining eight of the Church of Rome. The Church of England members were R. B. Sullivan, R. S. Jameson, P. B. De Blaquière, George Pemberton, Augustus Baldwin, John Macaulay, Adam Fergusson, and P. H. Knowlton. The Scottish Kirk was represented by Peter McGill, William Morris, James Crooks, John Fraser, John Hamilton, John McDonald, Adam Ferrie, and Thomas McKay; and the Church of Rome by R. E. Caron, Jules Quesnel, Barthelemi Joliette, Etienne Mayrand, F. B. Bruneau, Olivier Berthelet, J. B. Taché, and Alexander Fraser. The Methodist, Baptist and other dissenting bodies were totally unrepresented in the Council.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FIRST TEST OF THE UNION ACT.

"It may be satisfactory to you to know that the first test of the Union Act has more than answered my expectations. I always considered the first start of the Union Parliament as the touchstone of the plan. The entire want of acquaintance with each other's feelings, character, political history, or state of parties, which prevails between the inhabitants of Lower and Upper Canada respectively, always made me feel that the opening was the crisis of the great work."—Letter of Lord Sydenham, dated 27th June, 1841.

OR some weeks prior to the opening of the First Parliament, the inhabitants of the historic old town of Kingston were in a state of considerable expectation. The hopes of half a century before were about to become realities. At the time of the division of the Provinces in 1791, the little military post at the foot of Lake Ontario had indulged the ambition of becoming the capital of Upper Canada, and Lord Dorchester, the Governor-General, had favoured this idea. Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, however, had refused to be dictated to in so important a matter as the choice of a capital for his provincial domain, and after spending a season at Newark had (literally) pitched his tent* near the mouth of the Don River, on the site where Little York subsequently emerged from the eternal swamp and scrub. Kingston's hopes were blasted for the time, and she

*The allusion here is to the historic canvas tent used by Captain Cook during his travels among the islands of the southern seas, and afterwards purchased in London by Colonel Simcoe before his departure for Canada. On taking up his quarters at York, this tent, or "movable house," was frequently called into requisition, and the LieutenantGovernor not only used it as his general private and official residence, but sometimes dispensed viceregal hospitalities within its canvas walls.