the briefest and crudest sort, were a still later
development. The bucolic mind had no intellectual stimulant whatever
except such as was to be obtained from contact with other bucolic minds
through the medium of conversation. It was no wonder, then, that for the
first fifteen years after the creation of Upper Canada, the Provincial
Government should have been permitted to do very much as it chose,
without being subjected to any formidable criticism on the part of the
community.

The Legislative Council, as has been said, was composed of members
nominated by the Sovereign's representative. By the sixth section of the
Constitutional Act provision had been made for the creation of a
hereditary nobility, with the hereditary right of being summoned to the
Legislative Council. Happily this authority was not exercised;
otherwise, as Gourlay has remarked, "we should have seen, perhaps, the
Duke of Ontario leading in a cart of hay, my Lord Erie pitching, and Sir
Peter Superior making the rick; or perhaps his Grace might now have been
figuring as a pettifogging lawyer, his Lordship as a pedlar, and Sir
Knight, as a poor parson, starving on five thousand acres of Clergy
Reserves."[31] We were spared the spectacle of such absurdities, and
life members of the Legislative Council were the nearest approach to a
nobility vouchsafed to us. Some of the first appointees were men of
intelligence and probity, but few of those subsequently created could
with any show of truthfulness be so characterized. They were for the
most part dependants of the Government, with no fitness, educational or
otherwise, for the discharge of grave legislative functions, and with no
motive but to do the bidding of those who had clothed them with the
dignity of office. All things considered, this condition of things was
to be looked for; but the inevitable result followed. The few upright
members either died off in the course of time, and were succeeded by
sycophantic placemen, or, finding themselves outnumbered, ceased to
attend the sittings of the branch of the Legislature to which they
belonged. In one way and another, those who really wished to preserve
the public interests were weeded out, and nothing was left but a rump
devoted to the Executive will. Instead of answering the purpose for
which it was originally intended, the Legislative Council became a mere
instrument in the hands of the oligarchy for stemming back the tide of
public opinion. Instead of f