such
candidate. Say George Duggan, you blockhead." "Oh, yes, George Duggan;
it's all the same thing." There were candidates who described
themselves as "governor-general's men"; there were candidates whose
royalist enthusiasm was expressed in the name "Cavaliers." In the
Montreal election petition it was charged that during two days of
polling the electors were exposed to danger from the attacks of bands
of fighting men hired by the government candidates or their agents,
and paid, fed, and armed with "bludgeons, bowie-knives, and pistols
and other murderous weapons" for the purpose of intimidating the
Liberal electors and preventing them from gaining access to the polls;
that Liberals were driven from the polls by these fighting men, and by
cavalry and infantry acting under the orders of partisan magistrates.
The polls, it was stated, were surrounded by soldiers, field-pieces
were placed in several public squares, and the city was virtually in a
state of siege. The charges were not investigated, the petition being
rejected for irregularity; but violence and intimidation were then
common accompaniments of elections.

In November the governor was able to record his victory thus: Upper
Canada, avowed supporters of his government, thirty; avowed
adversaries, seven; undeclared and uncertain, five. Lower Canada,
avowed supporters, sixteen; avowed adversaries, twenty-one; undeclared
and uncertain, four. Remarking on this difference between Upper
and Lower Canada, he said that loyalty and British feeling
prevailed in Upper Canada and in the Eastern Townships of Lower
Canada, and that disaffection was predominant among the French-Canadian
constituencies.[2] Metcalfe honestly believed he had saved Canada for
the empire; but more mischief could hardly have been done by
deliberate design. In achieving a barren and precarious victory at the
polls, he and his friends had run the risk of creating that
disaffection which they feared. The stigma of disloyalty had been
unjustly affixed to honest and public-spirited men, whose steadiness
alone prevented them, in their resentment, from joining the ranks of
the disaffected. Worse still, the line of political cleavage had been
identified with the line of racial division, and "French-Canadian" and
"rebel" had been used as synonymous terms.

The ministry and the legislative assembly were now such as the
governor had desired, yet the harmony was soon broken. There appeared
divisions in the c