all their republican prejudices and feelings, to take possession of the most fertile inland portion of the province.

The tower and small work at Niagara was also put in order, the line of the Chippewa was well guarded by detachments stationed at the Falls of Niagara and Queenston, and in the West, Fort Malden or Amherstburgh was repaired, whilst beyond Kingston, on the weakest part of the frontier adjacent to Lower Canada, a tower was erected on the ruins of Fort Wellington or Prescott, which was, unfortunately, owing to the severity of the winter, not quite finished when Von Schultz made a serious demonstration against it; but finding that, even incomplete as it was, it was so well covered that he could have made no impression even against the few militiamen that were thrown into it, he passed by and shut himself up in a stone windmill about a mile and a half or so lower down the river, hoping to convert it into a temporary fortress, where he could rally the army of invaders, which he confidently expected the Americans would send across the St. Lawrence when once he had obtained a footing in Canada.

The Dockyard at Kingston, as well as all the fortifications in Upper Canada, excepting the citadel redoubt of Point Henry at Kingston, which was nearly completed, had, from the

"Canker of a calm world and a long peace,"

:

been suffered to go entirely to decay in fact, the fortifications erected during the war of 1812 deserved their fate; for as they were originally constructed of earth

work and timber, for the temporary purposes of that war, it would have been a wasteful expenditure of the public money to have kept patching them up from year to year. The error was in not dismantling them altogether, and substituting from year to year works of defence of a permanent nature, which had been recommended by the first general of the age; but money was scarce, and the concurrent opinions of all the military officers of high rank, who had served in or knew the Canadas, could not then be listened to by the Ministry, on account of the necessary expenditure which these works of defence, of which the Rideau Canal and the Citadel of Kingston were parts, and which had both absorbed so large a portion, would have entailed upon the nation. But has the nation been a gainer by that temporary fit of economy? Perhaps I shall be told that as an engineer-officer I was an unfit judge of the question, and am biassed by my professional habits. To this natural demurrer I have only to answer, that experience in the country has afforded me plenty of time to get rid of professional prejudices, and to argue unbiassedly on a broad national question like the present.

Has the nation gained or lost by the permanent system of defence for the Canadas not having been carried into effect? In my humble opinion it has lost, and that most terribly. The sum of a million sterling did not suffice to cover her expenditure, to support the honour and dignity of Great Britain against the sympathizing Americans of 1837, 1888, 1839, 1840, 1841, and 1842, whilst it has taught the whole frontier of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a lesson

which will not hereafter be lost sight of; and that lesson is that their Government is powerless internally, and that the popular will of any section of the Union, whether directed against the unoffending Canadians, the timid Mexicans, or the unfortunate red men of Florida and the West, is always superior to the power of the president, the senate, the congress, or the regular army and its generals.

Let us look back a little farther, and reflect upon some very natural suppositions which suggested themselves when the disturbances broke out simultaneously on the exposed frontier line of both provinces. Upper Canada having one lieutenant-colonel (who was an assistant adjutant-general), one captain of engineers, and four artillery-men at Toronto; one lieutenantcolonel of artillery, one adjutant of the same corps, and seven or eight gunners, and one major of engineers, and a subaltern of that corps at Kingston, composing the regular force to protect a country with an open frontier of a thousand miles; whilst in Lower Canada the Commander-in-chief had the disposal of only five regiments and five companies of artillery, all on the peace establishment, and dispersed at various garrisons.

Suppose, therefore, that instead of the pseudogenerals, Van Rensellaer, Sutherland, Dr. Nelson, William Lyon M'Kenzie, and Dr. Duncombe, there had been regularly-bred military leaders of the United States army, and a concerted plan of simultaneous operations directed against the weak and ungarrisoned passes of the frontier, with a large disposable force, instead of a band of sympathising felons and their rebel

friends, what must have been the consequences? They are self-evident. The country would have been laid waste, and for a time disaffection and conquest would have joined hands, and it would have cost treasure and blood to an extent which can scarcely be conceived, before the Flag of the Crosses would have again recovered its ancient and wonted supremacy.

CHAPTER V.

Condition of Canada from the Peace in 1815 to 1826, and first very marked Revolutionary symptoms towards 1837.

It is, no doubt, very tiresome for the general reader to trace the historical events of any well-known country, from its earliest date down to the more interesting epoch of our own days; but as everything must have a beginning as well as an end in sublunary affairs, so we shall continue a self-imposed task, in order the more clearly to introduce matter more germane to modern taste.

Canada, after the war of 1814, became gradually quiet; the sword was fashioned into the reaping-hook, and but few soldiers of the regular army were left in the Upper province, whilst Government turned its undivided attention there to the extension of settlement and of agricultural resources.

Lower Canada, from the domination of French and feudal laws and customs, offered but a poor field for the British emigrant at first; nor was it until after some years had elapsed that the capabilities of the soil in the Eastern townships, or, in other words, the terri