ould not be understood as pronouncing a
sweeping condemnation upon all the individual members of that body. John
Beverley Robinson, for instance, though he lent himself to many
high-handed acts of oppression, was a man of undoubted ability, and of a
character which inspired respect. His descendants are to-day among the
most respected and influential members of society in our Provincial
capital. Several others were men of high personal character, and of
abilities above the average. They acted in accordance with time and
circumstance, and must be supposed to have done so conscientiously. But
such persons as these composed but a very slender proportion of the
Compact's entire membership. The rank and file were of a totally
different complexion. The characteristics of the more poverty-stricken
among them have already been hinted at; but, independently of these,
there were many who were well-to-do, and who held their heads high in
the air, who were nevertheless very ill qualified to win admiration for
the caste to which they belonged. To state the simple truth, most of
them were very ordinary commonplace personages, respectable, sapless,
idealess--what Dr. Johnson would have characterized as exceedingly
barren rascals. Some were of obscure origin, and would have been hard
put to it if required to trace their ancestry beyond a single
generation. Of these latter, a few, as has already been seen, had
amassed wealth by trade or speculation, and had made their way into the
exclusive circle by a fortunate combination of circumstances.

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