a distinguished man, who had done good service for the Empire. He was spoken of as " Charles the Simple," as " Old Square Toes ;"* he was held up to execration as a designing and unscrupulous despot. He was the great butt of after dinner speeches and banquet orations.

On February the 2nd, 1844, Mr. S. Wortley asked, in the Imperial Parliament, whether the proceedings of Sir Charles Metcalfe received the sanction and approbation of the Government. Lord Stanley, who had supported Sir Charles Bagot against the Tories, now supported Sir Charles Metcalfe against the Reformers. He answered in the affirmative. Yet when we remember the utterances of Sir Robert Peel, we must place his approval to the account of official loyalty rather than conviction. The BaldwinLafontaine Ministry had resigned at the end of November. the end of February no Ministry had been formed, and the statutory period at which Parliament must meet approaching! The Governor had to continue to issue addresses. In some of these he declared that there was an insuperable barrier between him and his late Ministers. What! Even supposing they were supported by the people at a general election!

At

The utterly false position assumed by Sir Charles Metcalfe is thrown into relief in a letter to Lord Stanley, in which he states that, on the resignation of his "dictatorial cabinet," the Conservative party came forward manfully and generously to his support, and if he could have thrown himself into their arms, that support would have been complete and enthusiastic. But under Responsible Government this is what he should have done. He attempted a task impossible to perform with success or dignity. In a country in which constitutional government had been established, and where there were two clearly-defined parties, the one known as Reformers, the other as Tories or Conservatives, he wanted to administer public affairs independent of party. The desire may have been beautiful and amiable in theory. But was it a practicable desire? Would it ring clear on the flags of every day life? Did it belong to the currency of fact? He did not

*This phrase has descended to our own time, and has been frequently applied to a gentleman who has had his own share of civic honours.

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even act strongly. He found the Reformers in power. We have seen he had no sympathy with them. He was too weakly bland, too hesitatingly prudent to remove them. Nevertheless, he was covertly hostile, and at last placed himself in open but indirect antagonism to them by appointing to place men who were their foes. The consequence was, of course, that he was wholly deserted by the Reformers, and against his will, there being no middle party, was at last driven to lean on the extremest wing of the Conservative party. What Lord Bute unsuccessfully attempted in England, Sir Charles Metcalfe in United Canada, and Lord Falkland in Nova Scotia sought to accomplish, and with equal glory. These men really aimed at establishing two ministries; one responsible and powerless; the other secret, powerful, and irresponsible. Agitation rose high.

On the 25th of March, the first of a series of great meetings of the Reform Association took place. The Association which was formed in December, 1843, had leased a suite of rooms at the corner of Front and Scott Streets. The meeting was called at the early hour of six o'clock. By half-past six the room was densely crowded. Hundreds went away unable to gain admission. The Hon. Robert Baldwin who occupied the chair was greeted with enthusiastic cheers when he rose. He was glad to be called on to preside at such a meeting because it showed him that, in the opinion of his fellow citizens, he had proved himself the firm and uncompromising friend of the great and vital principles of constitutional liberty. He quoted largely from Lord Durham's report in support of the proposition that it was not by weakening, but strengthening the influence of the people, not by enlarging, but by cooping within narrow limits the power of the Imperial authorities in colonial affairs, that harmony was to be res tored, where dissension had long prevailed, and a vigour hither. to unknown introduced into the administration of these provinces. All that was necessary was to follow out the principles of the British Constitution. But Sir Charles Metcalfe held that it was only necessary for him to consult his Ministers on occasions of " adequate importance," a doctrine which would reduce them to the merest tools. Upon the practical application of the principle of Responsible Government in all local affairs depended not

only the happiness and prosperity of the colony but its connexion with the parent state. This was no new opinion of his. He had communicated it to Lord Glenelg in 1836 and to Lord Durham in 1838. Born under the British flag, under the protection of that standard he wished to live and die and to leave that protection as an inheritance to his children, not as a mark of degradation but as the precious seal of honour and safety. He spoke at length, with great power and not without some gleams of humour.

He was followed by the Honourable Henry John Boulton, who proposed the first resolution. Mr. William Hume Blake proposed the second resolution, that ministerial responsibility to the people of the country for every act of the Executive connected with local affairs was an essential ingredient of our constitution. Mr. Blake's speech gives one the impression of a kind of untamed force. He paid a magnificent tribute to Baldwin and argued the question like a scholar and an orator. So vehement was he that his voice broke down in the excitement of his delivery. After a brief pause he went on to denounce the complaints uttered against men asking their undoubted rights, not as the language of genuine love to British greatness and British liberty, but as the foul offspring of flattery and slander. He was frequently interrupted by bursts of applause.

Mr. William L. Perrin having spoken, Mr. James Henry Price followed with a resolution which was seconded by Mr. Jesse Ketchum. Then rose the Honourable R. B. Sullivan with a resolution and a speech on which it is not necessary to dwell now. Mr. William A. Baldwin, Mr. Cathcart, Mr. Skeffington Connor followed. On this occasion Mr. (the Honourable) George Brown made his first speech. That he would speak with force would at once be inferred by everybody, but the present generation would not perhaps expect him to speak with humour. In concluding his speech he ridiculed the idea of carrying on the Government of the country by a Ministry selected from various parties, and as his remarks bear on a question we have all discussed within recent years and display the quality I have mentioned, I will give them.

"Imagine, sir, for a moment, yourself seated at the Council table, and Mr. Draper at the bottom-on your right hand we will place

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the Episcopal Bishop of Toronto, and on your left, the Rev. Egerton Ryerson on the right of Mr. Draper sits Sir Allan MacNab, and on his left Mr. Hincks. We will fill up the other chairs by gentlemen admirably adapted for their situations, by the most extreme imaginable differences of opinion. We will seat his Excellency at the middle of the table, on a chair raised above warring elements below, prepared to receive the advice of his constitutional conscience-keepers. We will suppose you, sir, to rise and propose the opening of King's College to all Her Majesty's subjects—and then, sir, we will have the happiness of seeing the discordant-producing-harmony-principle in the full vigour of peaceful operation. Oh, sir, it is an admirable system—there would not be a single point on which you could be brought to agree, and his Excellency might kindly interfere at any time to prevent the possibility of your adopting the absurdity of a united principle * His Excellency might let the Council fire off at one another he could not of course adopt the advice of all, and so to keep the peace among the belligerents, he would kindly decide the point for them, and carry out his own ideas. Where is the man who would accept office under such an absurd and antiBritish principle?"

of action.

Among the other speakers were Dr. Workman, Mr. M. O'Donoghue, Mr. Joseph C. Morrison (the judge), Mr. John Macara and Mr. Boyd.

Metcalfe had raised a storm which was never to abate until amid obloquy and the pangs of death, he had turned his back on our-to him-unhappy shores.

CHAPTER XI.

THE spectacle presented by the country for nearly a year was distressing. Nor need we be surprised that the Baldwin and independent press are full of notes of exclamation; nor that everything

takes the hue of the party passions which are flaming to heaven.

Lord Metcalfe in his extremity sent for Dr. Ryerson, of Victoria College, and the British Whig of Kingston, announced that he was to be Chief Superintendent of Education with a seat in the Executive Council, an announcement which the Globe of March 8th, 1844, characterised as an "alarming feeler." The rumour was vehemently denied at the time, but the Doctor defended Metcalfe in pamphlets which dropped with ease from his facile pen dipped in no pale ink. Party violence was never more pronounced. A meeting of the friends of the late Administration at Hamilton was broken up, and Metcalfe's secretary wrote a letter to the Sheriff of the Gore District in regard to the unjustifiable rowdyism, in a congratulatory tone, glad-notwithstanding the difference of opinion as to the construction of the statute that everything passed in a manner so creditable to the inhabitants of the town and township. One day you read that the "loose fish are veering round." Another an article is headed "More Perverts." The Hon. S. B. Harrison, afterwards County Judge for York, was coquetting with the Government. Elmes Steele, of Simcoe, and Boswell, of Cobourg, were feeling the "draw" of "vice-regal blandishments." On the 9th of April an article was headed "Ryerson traded for." Later still we are told "Tommy Parke does something for a living." Mr. Parke, though not a member of the late Executive Council was a member of the late Government and had voted for Price's motion condemning the Governor. The sneer had reference to a letter he wrote defending Sir Charles Metcalfe.

On the 27th May Mr. Ryerson published a letter defending Sir Charles Metcalfe. The newspapers put it that he had turned "political slash-buckler." On the 8th of June, a meeting was called in West Gwillimbury to organize a Reform Association. Baldwin and Skeffington Connor went out to attend it. But Mr. George Duggan, M.P.P., (the late Judge) and Mr. E. G. O'Brien, with some of their friends paraded in a hostile manner, and the meeting was postponed.

About this time a meeting was held at Kingston to establish a United Empire Association which should resist all attempts