Part 9 (2/2)
They accordingly proceeded to the premises. Mrs. McNab and the children were in the house; her husband and Mr. James McKay were in the bush at the time chopping for potash. The Deputy-Sheriff proceeded to his duty; took everything out of the house, turned the family out of doors, gave the Chief possession, and immediately went away. The Chief ordered Lipsy to draw everything to the concession line. Forcibly he dragged Mrs.
McNab thither. Then ordering Lipsy to set fire to the shanty, he himself applied the burning brand to the barn and outhouses. Mrs. McNab saw the smoke rising. She missed two of her children. With frantic shrieks she rushed up to the burning buildings, called her children by name, and almost in despair ran into the burning barn. There, under the straw, frightened at what was taking place, the two children had concealed themselves. To drag them out from amidst the flames was the work of a moment; and had the mother been a few minutes later, two helpless infants would have perished in the flames, and been the martyred victims of revenge and malevolence. When Mr. James McKay and Duncan McNab saw the flames rising they hurried to the spot, and found the buildings in ruins and the family of the latter on the concession line, in all the misery of despair. Prompt measures were taken to remedy the evil. For the present the ejected ones took refuge in Mr. McKay's house, about half-a-mile distant. Together with all his summer's provisions and a barrel of pork, a number of Duncan Isla's agricultural implements were consumed in the flames.
This outrage filled the towns.h.i.+p and all the neighborhood with horror and dismay. A feeling was fast being discussed among the people that the Laird should be lynched. Mr. James McKay, a leading member of the church--a pious and good man, and a warm-hearted neighbor and friend--when he saw the house and barn in flames, exclaimed, ”What a pity it is the good old times would not come back again, and a bullet would soon reach him for the deed!”
The people got up a subscription, turned out and put up a shanty on another lot, and rendered the family as comfortable as circ.u.mstances would permit. James McKay, Mrs. McKay, Duncan McNab, and the writer, two days after the perpetration of the outrage, proceeded to the residence of Mr. Alexander McVicar, the nearest magistrate, and laid the information necessary to commence criminal proceedings against the Chief. Squire McVicar immediately issued his warrant. The Laird was arrested and brought to Pakenham village. All the witnesses for the prosecution were present; Squires Richey, Scott and McVicar took their seats on the bench, and without hearing a witness, or entering into the case at all, dismissed the case, and referred the parties to Perth--to the a.s.sizes. Mr. McVicar did all that he could to get the examination proceeded with, and the Chief committed for trial, but it was useless.
The Chief's partizans were on the bench, and they out-voted him, and referred the matter to the Crown officer. Duncan McNab (Isla) and his friends had not the means to go to Perth, or proceed further with the prosecution; and thus the matter rested, and one of the most daring and atrocious crimes in the category of criminal jurisprudence was allowed to pa.s.s over with impunity, and the perpetrators to stalk abroad in the land unwhipt of justice. Besides losing his land and provisions, Duncan McNab nearly lost two of his children; and he never received any compensation from the Government, or from the legal tribunals of the law. He was poor, and poverty could be outraged and trampled upon without redress, and scarcely a single remonstrance.
In the fall of this year (1841), a number of witnesses were summoned to Toronto to give evidence on the part of the defence in the celebrated McNab and Hincks libel suit. They were Duncan Campbell, an old soldier, aged 75, who had two years before been imprisoned by the Chief for rent, Donald Mohr McNaughton, Daniel McIntyre, Alex. McNab, the Chief's first incarcerated victim, Andrew Taylor, and Dugald McNab. These parties arrived at Toronto on the second day of the Fall a.s.sizes, remained in the City three days, when, on an affidavit and on payment of the costs of the day, the Laird procured a postponement of the trial till the spring. His object was to weary out the defence. He dreaded an exposure.
An adjournment of six months might be attended with more favorable results. The witnesses then a.s.sembled to prove all the oppressions and exactions of McNab might not again appear. They were now present; but the distance was so great and the travelling communications so difficult of access that they might be deterred from again appearing. It was also questionable whether Mr. Hincks could afford the expense of bringing them to court again. On the whole the putting off the trial was advantageous to McNab and postponed the exposure he dreaded, and the domestic criminality involved, which would overwhelm him with shame and degrade him even in the estimation of his friends the ”Family Compact.”
He had still hopes that they would be reinstated in power, and if so, he would reap some of the benefits of the restoration.
In the fall of 1841 and the winter of 1842, the water in White Lake was very low. The Chief caused fresh planks to be nailed on his dam and raised it to such a height as to keep the water entirely from getting out. Mr. Paris was the object of his vengeance, and through him he could punish his refractory and victorious settlers. For seven months Mr.
Paris could not get a drop of water to grind the grists that were daily brought to him. At last the inhabitants had to remove their wheat and proceed to Pakenham to get their work done. During the whole of the winter this was the case. The Chief was remonstrated with without effect. Some of McNab's particular friends went to him and besought him to let the water go, but it was useless.
Mr. Paris even offered a sum of money for the water, but his answer was, ”Go to Duncan McLachlin, he may get you water.” In this oppressive transaction he had a willing coadjutor in the person of William Yuill, a lumberer at the time, but since he became a federal soldier and perished in the late American civil war. Yuill in the spring of 1842 pretended to lease the dam from the Chief, for the purpose, as he alleged, of getting out his timber, but would not open a sluice or let a drop of water out, and it was not till the end of April when the dam was opened, and when the grinding season was pa.s.sed, that Mr. Paris could procure any water.
Had Mr. Paris then appealed to the courts he would have obtained ample redress, but he was loath to go to law. He hated litigation and resolved to wait another season before he would take any steps, in order to see if a recurrence of the vexatious stoppage would again take place. Some of Mr. Paris's friends, among whom was the writer, advised him to proceed at once and prevent such an act of unmeaning and malicious injury to the public as well as individuals from again being practiced; but that gentleman, deeming that there was as much courage evinced in quietly enduring wrong for a season than in at once resenting it, resolved to wait and see, a course, which however prudent in some respects was attended, in so far as Mr. Paris was concerned, as we shall hereafter see, with further vexation and more loss, damage and expense, than he could well afford, and which took a steady and possessing course of industry for years afterwards to make up.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE M'NAB AND HINCKS TRIAL--1842--SECOND PERSECUTION OF MR. JOHN PARIS.
The Provinces had been united. A new Parliament had been convened. In September of the former year Lord Sydenham had been thrown off his horse and died in consequence of his fall. He was succeeded by Sir Charles Bagot. The union had scarcely been inaugurated, when the mighty genius that had perfected its consummation had been called away by a fiat that there is no resisting. The seat of Government was removed to Kingston.
The celebrated resolutions establis.h.i.+ng ”Responsible Government,”
introduced into the House by the late Hon. S. B. Harrison, were now the law of the land. The irresponsibility of the Executive was no more.
Munic.i.p.al Inst.i.tutions were accorded to the people, and in the commencement of the year the first District Councillors were elected.
Each towns.h.i.+p sent one representative to the District Council. It controlled the statute labors, district treasury, and the several munic.i.p.al officers required by the Act. It also had under its direction the educational affairs of the District. Mr. James Morris, Sr., was the first District Councillor elected for McNab, and Mr. David Airth for Horton; the towns.h.i.+ps in the rear were being surveyed and had not yet been organized into munic.i.p.alities. A new county was formed in the Ottawa from Pakenham upwards, called the County of Renfrew and for electoral purposes was attached to the County of Lanark. The Hon. M.
Cameron was the first member for Lanark and Renfrew under the Union Act.
He defeated Mr. John Powell, the then Sheriff of the Bathurst District, by a large majority. Such was the social and political condition of the people in the spring of 1842, when the tocsin of war again sounded. The Chief had determined to press on his libel suit. The roads were in an execrable condition. Access to Toronto was almost an impossibility.
Navigation had not yet opened, and he imagined that none of the settlers could be induced to go to Toronto, and if they started they could not reach their destination in time. Only eight days' _notice of trial_ had been given, and it was only three days before the opening of the a.s.sizes that the subpoenas for the witnesses reached the writer. He immediately filed them all. The following witnesses were summoned:--Messrs. W. R. Bereford, Francis Allan, John Robertson, Daniel McIntyre (Dancie), Alex. McNab (the martyr), Duncan McNab, (Paisley), D.
C. McNab, Peter Campbell (Dochart), and Andrew d.i.c.kson, Esq., of Pakenham. They reached Toronto in safety and in good time. Two days after their arrival the case was called. Mr. Justice McLean held the a.s.sizes, and the evening before the eventful day in April the Judges had a consultation among themselves which of them would try the case. Judge McLean was loath to do so. He was a Highlander and was on intimate terms with the Chief, and felt delicate on the subject. Mr. Justice Macaulay was away on circuit. Chief Justice Robinson declined to have anything to do with it. In fact the Judges were more or less afraid of Mr. Hincks and the terrible _Examiner_. At length Mr. Justice Jonas Jones exclaimed, ”I'll try the case, I'm not afraid of Hincks or any of the radical crew.” Accordingly he took his seat on the bench and a special jury was empanelled. A brilliant array of talent was engaged on both sides. On part of the plaintiff appeared Attorney-General Draper, Solicitor-General Sherwood and Mr. Crawford. On the side of defence were ranged the Hon. Robert Baldwin, the Hon. Mr. Blake (late Chancellor), and Mr. (afterwards Judge) Adam Wilson.
Mr. Henry Sherwood in a flowery and harum-scarum speech opened the case for McNab, and as the publication of the alleged libel was admitted called no witnesses.
The Hon. Robert Baldwin rose in reply and opened the case for the defence in a speech of two hours duration. He detailed the wrongs of the settlers and the exactions of the Chief in glowing terms, and was extremely severe on the ”Family Compact.” The first witness called was Mr. Francis Allan who proved everything that had been stated in his report as published in a former chapter. Point by point of the pleas in justification was sustained by evidence. That the Chief had exacted rent--that he had represented the Towns.h.i.+p of McNab as his own private property--that he had sold and received the value of the timber on the settlers' lots--that he had used his people harshly and oppressively--that he had imprisoned several of his leading and more intelligent followers causelessly, or when a milder course would have been attended with better or more advantageous results, both to himself and his people--that he had hara.s.sed them with lawsuits--that his private life was not in accordance with the strict principles of domestic morality--that he had in procuring grants for a few favorites made false representations to the Government in stating that they were for school, carpenter, blacksmith and other establishments for the benefit of the towns.h.i.+p--that he had attempted to get deeds of the settlers' lands in his own name, by representing to the executive that the locatees had died or absconded--that he had been presented by a Grand Jury as a public nuisance--were all proved upon oath and clearly sustained by unimpeachable evidence except the last point. Mr. Bereford, Clerk of the Peace, had searched, but could not find the ”presentment.”
Secondary evidence was admitted, and an argument arose as to the exact wording of the doc.u.ment, whether it was a legal presentment or not. The court ruled this point to be obscure and left it to the jury. The Attorney-General replied in an able and eloquent speech. The Judge then charged the jury, leaning if anything towards the Chief. One remarkable point in his charge is worthy of notice. He said, ”The Chief could not have stated that the Towns.h.i.+p was his own property, and even if he did say so it was impossible the settlers could have believed him, because in the location tickets he agreed to procure them patents from the Crown. Now, if he had undertaken to give them transfer deeds, then there might have been some grounds for such a belief.” This was casuisty of the most refined complexion. How could poor, ignorant, verdant emigrants know the difference between a patent and a transfer deed? They took everything the Chief said for granted, and implicitly believed all his statements. Even the inhabitants of all the towns.h.i.+ps in the Bathurst District firmly believed that the land was wholly McNab's. The Judge concluded his charge, which many thought was far from being impartial.
The jury retired and after two hours' deliberation brought in a ”verdict for the plaintiff, 5 _damages_,” stating at the same time that that part of the justification respecting ”public nuisance presentment” was not clearly proved. This was a great triumph. The exposure was overwhelming and disgraceful. The eyes of the whole Province were opened to the wrongs of the settlers and the oppressions of McNab. His glory had departed, his _prestige_ was gone. Although nominal damages were given for the failure of substantiating an immaterial point in the justification, the great and important charges in the alleged libel were by an intelligent jury of the Metropolis of Upper Canada declared to be true, and that the wrongs of the settlers were not imaginary but real.
This great trial for some time occupied the attention of the Canadian and American press. It was commented upon in the leading journals of the continent. The New York _Albion_, at that time a great stickler for rampant toryism, had the following paragraph in its issue of May, 1842:
SMALL POTATOES.--”The McNab of McNab, a _quasi_ Canadian n.o.bleman and Highland Chieftain, obtained from a Toronto jury the sum of 5 for the loss of his character.”
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