bbon, and a poor Irish private, James O'Hara, won
fame by refusing to surrender at the capture of Toronto Fort. As usual,
however, a fictitious standard of "loyalty," which, in fact, meant
privilege, was set up, obscuring those questions of good government
which were the only real matters at issue in Canada, as in Ireland.
There were Republican immigrants of many denominations from America,
Radicals of Cobbett's school from England and Scotland, tenants of a
democratic turn from Ulster, and a growing stream of Catholic cottiers
flying from the "clearances" and tithe war in other Irish Provinces. All
these classes of men made excellent settlers, and only wanted fair and
equal treatment to make them perfectly peaceable citizens. To the
official oligarchy, however, even their moderate leaders came to be
viewed as rebels, and were often subjected to imprisonment or to
banishment.

Among others William Gourlay, a Scotsman, Stephen Willcocks and Francis
Collins, Irishmen, all three perfectly respectable reformers, suffered
in this way. Bidwell, the great Robert Baldwin, and other good men were
rendered powerless for good. As invariably happens in any part of the
world where a course is pursued which estranges moderate men and
embitters extreme men, agitators came to the front lacking that
self-control and sense of responsibility which the sobering education of
office alone can give, and generally ruining themselves while they
benefit humanity at large. Chief of these was W.L. Mackenzie, a
Presbyterian Scot from Dundee. All this man really wanted was what
exists to-day as a matter of course in all self-governing
countries--responsible government. He even conceived that great idea of
the Confederation of British North America, which came to birth in 1867.
Thwarted in his attacks on the oligarchy, he degenerated into violent
courses, and ultimately organized, or rather was provoked into
organizing, the rebellion of 1837. The grievances which led to this
outbreak were genuine and severe, and were all in course of time
admitted and redressed. One, the powerlessness of the Assembly, owing to
the control by the Executive of annual sums sufficient to pay the
official expenses of Government, corresponded to a pre-Union Irish
grievance, and was remedied by an Act of 1831. Most of the other
grievances were incurable by constitutional effort. They may be found
summarized in the "Seventh Report of Grievances," a temperate and
truthful do