on on pain of death if he refuses. He
was calmly asked if he had anything to say, if there were any reason
why sentence should not be pronounced.

"Anything . . . to . . . say? Any reason . . . why . . .
sentence . . . should not be pronounced?" From 1818 to 1820 {417}
Gourlay had been having things "to say," had been giving good and
sufficient reasons why sentence should not be pronounced! The question
is repeated: "Robert Gourlay stand up! Have you anything to say?" The
court waits, Chief Justice Powell, bewigged and wearing his grandest
manner, all unconscious that the scene is to go down to history with
blot of ignominy against _his_ name, not Gourlay's.

Gourlay's face twitches, and he breaks into shrieks of maniacal
laughter. The petty persecutions of a provincial tyranny have driven a
man, who is true patriot, out of his mind. As Gourlay drops out of
Canada's story here, it may be added that the English government later
pronounced the whole trial an outrage, and Gourlay was invited back to
Canada.

If at this stage a man had come to Canada as governor, big enough and
just enough to realize that colonies had some rights, there might have
been remedy; for the imperial government, eager to right the wrong, was
misled by the legislative councilors, and all at sea as to the source
of the trouble. While men were being actually driven out of Canada by
the governing ring on the charge of disloyalty, the colonial minister
of England was sending secret dispatches to the Governor General,
instructing him plainly that if independence was what Canada wanted,
then the mother country, rather than risk a second war with the United
States, or press conclusions with the Canadas themselves, would
willingly cede independence. It is as well to be emphatic and clear on
this point. _It was not the tyranny of England that caused the
troubles of 1837_. It was the dishonesty of the ruling rings at Quebec
and Toronto, and this dishonesty was possible because of the
Constitutional Act of 1791.

Unfortunately, just when imperial statesmen of the modern school were
needed, governors of the old school were appointed to Canada. After
Sir John Sherbrooke came the Duke of Richmond to Quebec, and his
son-in-law, Sir Peregrine Maitland, as lieutenant governor to Ontario.
Men of more courtly manners never graced the vice-regal chairs of
Quebec and Toronto. {418} Richmond, who was some fifty years of age,
had won notoriety in his