n the Prince Albert district secretly fomented the rising
with the hope that it might also result in the establishment of a
province on the banks of the Saskatchewan, despite its small
population. The agitators among the half-breeds succeeded in bringing
Riel into the country to lead the insurrection. He had been an exile
ever since 1870, and was at the time teaching school in Montana. After
the rebellion he had been induced to remain out of the Northwest by the
receipt of a considerable sum of money from the secret service fund of
the Dominion Government, then led by Sir John Macdonald. In 1874 he
had been elected to the House of Commons by the new constituency of
Provencher in Manitoba; but as he had been proclaimed an outlaw, when a
true bill for murder was found against him in the Manitoba Court of
Queen's Bench, and when he had failed to appear for trial, he was
expelled from the house on the motion of Mr. Mackenzie Bowell, a
prominent Orangeman, and, later, premier of the Canadian Government.
Lepine, a member also of the so-called provisional government of Red
River, had been tried and convicted for his share in the murder of
Scott, but Lord Dufferin, when governor-general, exercised the
prerogative of royal clemency, as an imperial officer, and commuted the
punishment to two years' imprisonment. In this way the Mackenzie
government was relieved--but only temporarily--of a serious
responsibility which they were anxious to avoid, at a time when they
were between the two fires: of the people of Ontario, {395} anxious to
punish the murderers with every severity, and of the French Canadians,
the great majority of whom showed a lively sympathy for all those who
had taken part in the rebellion of 1869. The influence of French
Canada was also seen in the later action of the Mackenzie government in
obtaining a full amnesty for all concerned in the rebellion except
Riel, Lepine, and O'Donohue, who were banished for five years. The
popularity enjoyed by Riel and his associates in French Canada, as well
as the clemency shown to them, were doubtless facts considered by the
leaders in the second rising on the Saskatchewan as showing that they
had little to fear from the consequences of their acts. Riel and
Dumont--the latter a half-breed trader near Batoche--were the leaders
of the revolt which broke out at Duck Lake in the March of 1885 with a
successful attack on the Mounted Police and the Prince Albert
Volunteers, wh