I saw he was
unwilling to speak out, and that it was a mere effort to button up and
evade the subject. So to draw him out, I said,
"'Well, there is one thing you can boast. Canada is the most valuable
and beautiful appendage of the British Crown.'
"'England may boast of it as such,' he said, 'but I have no right to
do so. I prefer being one of the pariahs of the empire, a mere
colonist, having neither grade nor caste, without a country of my own,
and without nationality. I am a humble man, and when I am asked where
I come from, readily answer, the Chaudiere River. Where is that? Out
of the world? Extra flammantia limina mundi. What is the name of your
country? It is not a country, it is only a place. It is better to have
no flag than a borrowed one. If I had one I should have to defend it.
If it were wrested from me I should be disgraced, while my victorious
enemy would be thanked by the Imperial Legislature, and rewarded by
his sovereign. If I were triumphant, the affair would be deemed too
small to merit a notice in the Gazette. He who called out the militia,
and quelled amid a shower of balls the late rebellion, was knighted.
He who assented amid a shower of eggs to a bill to indemnify the
rebels, was created an earl. Now to pelt a governor-general with eggs
is an overt act of treason, for it is an attempt to throw off the
yoke. If therefore he was advanced in the peerage for remunerating
traitors for their losses, he ought now to assent to another act for
reimbursing the expenses of the exhausted stores of the poultry yards,
and be made a marquis, unless the British see a difference between a
rebel mob and an indignant crowd, between those whose life has been
spent in hatching mischief, and those who desired to scare the foul
birds from their nests.
Pages:
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463