THE NORTH-WEST REBELLION

The métis had constituted a most valuable connecting link between the white invaders and the old lords of the soil. Blackfoot and Cree now grew restless as they saw the discontent of their friends and leaders. Nor is a darker shadow absent. The debauchery of low whites, and their unfair dealing, added fuel to Indian passion. A rising of the prairie tribes, who had not yet experienced the generous treatment since accorded to them by the Dominion, was imminent.

The mutterings of the coming storm grew louder. Petitions poured into the Department of the Interior, to be pigeon-holed and neglected. Bishop Taché pleaded the cause of the scattered people whom he loved so well. Charles Mair, the author, who was living at Prince Albert in close proximity to the half-breeds, came on several occasions to Ottawa to impress on the authorities the seriousness of the situation. Macdonald heard him courteously, recognized the justice of the case which he stated, and made a passing attempt to stimulate his colleague at the Interior into action. But counsels were divided. Two ministers, who visited the country, heard from their flatterers that all was going well, and reported that nothing serious need be feared.

Such was the situation when in 1884 the halfbreeds of the St. Laurent settlement sent a deputation on a weary foot journey of seven hundred miles to their old leader, Louis Riel, who had

for some years been living quietly in Montana. In his fiery and fanatical brain ambition seems to have mingled with his old idea of a western theocracy, French and Catholic, free from the defiling taint of the Englishman and the heretic. But though he returned with the deputation to the Saskatchewan, nothing more than constitutional agitation was anticipated, till, after one or two scattered outbreaks of lawlessness, the affair at Duck Lake set the whole country ablaze.

In face of the thought of an Indian rising, party divisions were hushed and troops were sent forward under Major-General Middleton, the general officer commanding the Canadian militia. The citizen soldiery of Canada fought well in a series of small engagements; on May 12th the rebel camp was stormed at Batoche and three days later Riel surrendered. He was tried for high treason, condemned, and, after several reprieves granted in order to test his sanity, he was hanged on November 16th in the yard of the Mounted Police Barracks at Regina. Fanatic he doubtless was, but he was no coward, and he met his fate with something of the high constancy of a martyr.

Such a circumstance could not fail to arouse the latent jealousies between Ontario and Quebec, French and English, Protestant and Catholic. To Ontario, Riel was either a twice convicted traitor, or an American fillibuster. The powerful Orange order recalled the murder of Scott at Fort Garry,

THE RIEL AGITATION

and cried aloud for the punishment of his murderer.

To no small section of Quebec, on the other hand, Riel appeared as the most heroic of all the métis, the upholder of their race, religion and language; consequently when Macdonald refused to interfere with the course of law, an ominous revolt broke out among the Quebec Conservatives. The position of both political parties now became extremely difficult. The Opposition at first endeavoured to make capital out of the undoubted defects in administration which had in part brought on the rebellion, and on July 6th Mr. Blake spoke for several hours in support of a motion of want of confidence. He had material for argument, but the progress of events soon threw mere debate into the background. The Liberal leader in Quebec was Mr. Honore Mercier, the most brilliant, fascinating and unscrupulous politician that the provincial politics of Canada has produced. With consummate skill he formed an alliance between the clericals and the "Nationalistes"; the Liberals, so long under the ban of the Church, found themselves suddenly its allies. In the flood of feeling that had been aroused Mercier saw his political opportunity and turned all his influence as Liberal leader under these new conditions towards the protection of Riel.

Amid this swelling and raging tide, Macdonald stood firm. When a life-long friend, unconnected

with either party, urged on him the need of mercy, in order to conciliate Quebec, the old man turned on him with toss of head and stamp of foot, all the lion in him roused. "He shall hang," he said fiercely, "though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour." He would have no more of this firebrand who had twice set the Dominion in a blaze, twice attempted to undo in one mad hour the work of a generation. Had political expediency been consulted it would doubtless have dictated the same decision, for Ontario was at as white a heat as Quebec. The Toronto Mail, the official Conservative organ, declared that rather than submit to the yoke of the French-Canadians "Ontario would smash Confederation into its original fragments, preferring that the dream of a united Canada should be shattered forever, than that unity should be purchased at the price of equity."

MA

CHAPTER XII

PROVINCIAL RIGHTS

ACDONALD'S preference for a legislative rather than a federal union was strongly put forward at the Quebec conference. In submitting the result of that conference to the parliament of the old provinces of Canada in 1865 he stated it anew. "As regards the comparative advantage of a legislative and a federal union, I have never hesitated to state my own opinions. I have again and again stated in the House that, if practicable, I thought a legislative union would be preferable. I have always contended that if we could agree to have one government and one parliament legislating for the whole of these peoples, it would be the best, the cheapest, the most vigorous, and the strongest system of government we could adopt." The explicit way in which he at the same time publicly announced his conviction, as the result of the conference, that a legislative union was impracticable, and that he yielded his own judgment to the general opinion, renders quite incredible the statement made with some hesitation by the biographer of Sir Georges Cartier that Macdonald again tried during the negotiations of 1866-7 in London to modify to this end the British North America Act, and was only prevented from doing so by the resolute opposition of Cartier.