m's Report.

It is generally overlooked that at this period Canada stood in danger
from external as well as internal enemies. Hardly had Durham landed at
Quebec when there occurred a series of incidents which might have led
to war between Great Britain and the United States. A Canadian
passenger steamer, the _Sir Robert Peel_, sailing from Prescott to
Kingston, was boarded at Wells Island by one 'Bill' Johnson and a band
of armed men with blackened faces. The passengers and crew were put
ashore without their effects, and the steamer was set on fire and
destroyed. Very soon afterwards an American passenger steamer was
fired on by over-zealous sentries at Brockville. Together {12} the
twin outrages were almost enough, in the state of feeling on both
sides, to set the Empire and the Republic by the ears.

The significance of these and other similar incidents can only be
understood by recalling the mental attitude of Americans of the day.
They had a robust detestation of everything British. It is not grossly
exaggerated by Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit. And that attitude was
entirely natural. The Americans had, or thought they had, beaten the
British in two wars. The very reason for the existence of their nation
was their opposition to British tyranny. They saw that tyranny in all
its balefulness blighting the two Canadas. They saw those oppressed
colonies rising, as they themselves had risen, against their
oppressors. To make the danger all the more acute, the exiled
Canadians, notably William Lyon Mackenzie, went from place to place in
the United States inciting the freeborn citizens of the Republic to aid
the cause of freedom across the line. There was precedent for
intervention. Just a year before the fight at St Charles, an American
hero, Sam Houston, had wrested the huge state of Texas from the misrule
of Mexico and founded a new and independent republic. {13} Hence arose
the huge conspiracy of the 'Hunters' Lodges' all along the northern
border of the United States, of which more in the next chapter.

Durham took prompt action. He offered a reward of a thousand pounds
for such information as should bring the guilty persons to trial in an
American, not a Canadian, court. Thereby he said in effect, 'This is
not an international affair. It is a plain offence against the laws of
the United States, and I am confident that the United States desires to
prevent such outrages.' He followed up this bold dec