ined nothing on the other side, who only advanced in audacity; and
added the charge of personal cowardice to their other outrages. At
home, too, I forfeited much moral support; for although the Government
sustained me with that honourable confidence which entitles a
Government to be well served, they were puzzled. The logic of the case
was against me. Lord Grey and Lord J. Russell both felt that either I
was right or I was wrong. If the latter, I ought to be recalled; if
the former, I ought to make the law respected. And, lastly, I lost any
chance of moral support from the opinion of our neighbours in the
States; for, like all primitive constitutionalists, the ideas of
government they hold in that quarter are very simple. I have been told
by Americans, 'We thought you were quite right; but we could not
understand why you did not _shoot them down!_'

I do not, as you may suppose, often speak of these matters; but the
subject was alluded to the other day by a person (now out of politics,
but who knew what was going on at the time, one of our ablest men),
and he said to me, 'Yes; I see it all now. You were right--a thousand
times right--though I thought otherwise then. I own that I would
have reduced Montreal to ashes before I would have endured half what
you did; and,' he added, 'I should have been justified, too.' 'Yes,' I
answered, 'you would have been justified, because your course would
have been perfectly defensible; but it would not have been the _best
course_. Mine was a _better one_.' And shall I tell you
what was the deep conviction on my mind, which, apart from the
reluctance which I naturally felt to shed blood (particularly in a
cause in which many who opposed the Government were actuated by
motives which, though much alloyed with baser metal, had claims on my
sympathy), confirmed me in that course? I perceived that the mind of
the British population of the province, in Upper Canada especially,
was at that time the prey of opposing impulses. On the one hand, as a
question of blood and sensibility, they were inclined to go with the
anti-French party of Lower Canada; on the other, as a question of
constitutional principle, they felt that I was right, and that I
deserved support. Depend upon it, if we had looked to bayonets instead
of to reason for a triumph, the _sensibilities_