many votes to the Reform cause.
Still, there was a strong tendency throughout the greater part of the
Province in the direction of Reform, and the Reformers made
unprecedented exertions. They succeeded in winning to their side a large
number of the Roman Catholic electorate, and they absorbed most of the
recent arrivals from beyond sea. Bidwell and Perry were re-elected for
Lennox and Addington. William Benjamin Wells, a young lawyer of
twenty-five, who afterwards made some mark as a newspaper writer on the
Reform side, and from whose "Canadiana" several extracts have already
been made in these pages, was returned for the County of Grenville. He
was an Upper Canadian by birth, of U. E. Loyalist stock, and the
grandson of a volunteer who fought at the siege of Louisbourg. Oxford
returned for one of its members Dr. Charles Duncombe, who was destined
to take a conspicuous part in the insurrectionary events of two years
later. He was a medical practitioner of great intelligence and wide
influence, an eloquent and forcible speaker, and an ardent Reformer. He
resided on the Burford Plains, near the present village of Bishopsgate,
a few miles west of Brantford. The two members returned for the County
of Simcoe represented very nearly the two extremes of political opinion.
William Benjamin Robinson, a brother of the Chief Justice, was, as
became one of his race, the incarnation of Family Compact Toryism. His
colleague was Samuel Lount, whose name, owing to his untimely fate and
the melancholy circumstances attending it, arouses a host of sad
memories. It may safely be said that of all the victims of the rising of
1837 none has been so sincerely and generally mourned. His execution is
justly regarded in the light of a judicial murder and a stain upon our
country's annals. As a peculiar interest has ever since attached to his
name, and as but little is generally known with respect to him, it may
be proper to record a few particulars. He was born on the banks of the
Susquehanna River, in the State of Pennsylvania, on the 24th of
September, 1791. His father, Gabriel Lount, was an Englishman, and a
native of Bristol, who settled in the United States after the close of
the Revolutionary War, and married an American lady of English descent.
Gabriel Lount never lost his British proclivities during his residence
in the republic, and in the spring of the year 1811, accompanied by his
son and the rest of his family, he removed to Upper Cana