d the Americans less. He felt surer of religious
freedom under English rule, which guaranteed it to him, than under the
rule of the new republic, which he had harried and which had harried
him in border raid for two centuries. The War of 1812 left Canada
crippled financially but stronger in national spirit because she had
tested her strength and repelled invasion.

If mountain pines strike strong roots into the eternal rocks because
they are tempest-tossed by the wildest winds of heaven, then the next
twenty years were destined to test the very fiber of Canada's national
spirit. All that was weak snapped and went down. The dry rot of
political theory was flung to dust. Special interests, pampered
privileges, the claims of the few to exploit the many, the claims of
the many to rule wisely as the few--the shibboleth of theorists, the
fine spun cobwebs of the doctrinaires, governmental ideals of
brotherhood that were mostly sawdust and governmental practices that
were mostly theft under privilege--all went down in the smash of the
next twenty years' tempest. All that was left was what was real; what
would hold water and work out in fact.

It is curious how completely all records slur over the significance of
the Rebellion of 1837. Canada is sensitive over the facts of the case
to this day. Only a few years ago a book dealing with the unvarnished
facts of the period was suppressed by a suit in court. As a rebellion,
1837 was an insignificant fracas. The rebels both in Ontario and
Quebec were hopelessly outnumbered and defeated. William Lyon
MacKenzie, the leader in Ontario, and Louis Papineau, the leader in
Quebec, both had to flee for their lives. It is a question if a
hundred people all told were killed. Probably a score in all were
executed; as many again were sent to penal servitude; and several
hundreds escaped punishment by fleeing across the boundary and joining
in the famous night raids of Hunters' Lodges. Within a few years both
the leaders and exiles were permitted to return to Canada, where they
lived honored lives. It was not as a rebellion that 1837 was
epoch-making. It was in the clarifying of Canada's national
consciousness as to how she was to be governed.

Having migrated from the revolting colonies of New England and the
South, the ultra-patriotic United Empire Loyalists unconsciously felt
themselves more British than the French of Quebec. Canada was governed
direct from Downing Street.