onging to a loyal Scottish family. His men cut down the trees about
the farm-house, fortified it rudely, and lived in it at rack and manger
until Colborne came to St Eustache. These were typical cases of loss,
and surely, when order was again restored, they were cases for
compensation. The loyal and the innocent should not have to suffer in
their goods for their innocence and their loyalty.

{114}

Claims for compensation were made early. In the very year of the
rebellion the Assembly of Upper Canada passed an Act appointing
commissioners to inquire into the amount of damage done to the property
of loyal citizens; and in the following year it voted a sum of L4000 to
make good the losses. Men were paid for a cow driven off, or for an
old musket commandeered. The Special Council of Lower Canada made
similar provision, as was only natural and right; but its task was much
harder than that of the Assembly's. Clearly, the property of loyalists
destroyed or injured during the civil strife should be made good. This
was mere justice. It was equally clear that the property of open
rebels which had been destroyed or injured should _not_ be made good.
But there was a third category not so easy to deal with. There were
those who were not openly in rebellion, but who were grievously suspect
of sympathy with declared insurgents of their own race and religion.
How far sympathy might have become aid and comfort to opponents of the
government was hard to say. The village of St Eustache, for example,
was set on fire the night following the fight; the troops turned out in
the bitter cold to fight the fire, {115} but did not master it until
some eighty houses were burned. What claim could the owners have upon
the government for their losses? In the winter of 1838 the sky was red
with the flames of burning hamlets, says the _Montreal Herald_.

The law's delay is proverbial. Compensatory legislation dragged its
slow length along for years, and the loyalists who had suffered in
their pocket saw session after session pass, and their claims still
unsatisfied. In 1840 the Assembly of Upper Canada passed an Act
authorizing the expenditure not of four thousand, but of forty thousand
pounds, to indemnify the loyalists who had lost by the 'troubles.'
However, as the Assembly, at the same time, forbore to provide any
funds for the purpose, the Act remained with the force of a pious wish.
The claimants for compensation were none the be