The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People by Sir John George Bourinot (bookstand for reading .txt) 📕

_British Colonist_, owned and edited originally by Hon. Amor de Cosmos, for some time Premier, and now a well-known member of the House of Commons, who made his paper a power in the little colony by his enterprise and forcible expression of opinion. The _Standard_ is also another paper of political influence, and is published daily, like the _Colonist_. Two papers are printed in New Westminster, and one in Nanaimo; the total number in the province being five.

In the previous paragraphs, I have contained myself to the mention of a few facts in the early history of journalism in each of the Provinces of Canada. Proceeding now to a more extended review, we find that a few papers exercised from the outset a very decided influence in political affairs, and it is to these I propose now to refer, especially, before coming down to later times of extended political rights and consequent expansion of newspaper enterprise. The oldest newspaper now in Canada is the Montreal _Gazette_, which was first published as far back as 1787, by one Mesplet, in the French language. It ceased publication for a time, but reappeared about 1794, with Lewis Roy as printer. On the death of the latter, the establishment was assumed by E. Edwards, at No. 135 St. Paul Street, then the fashionable thoroughfare of the town. It was only a little affair, about the size of a large foolscap sheet, printed in small type in the two languages, and containing eight broad columns. In 1805, the Quebec _Mercury_ was founded by Thomas Gary, a Nova Scotian lawyer, as an organ of the British inhabitants, who, at that time, formed a small but comparatively wealthy and influential section of the community. Mr. Gary was a man of scholarly attainments and a writer of considerable force. The _Mercury_ had hardly been a year in existence, when its editor experienced the difficulty of writing freely in those troublous times, as he had to apologize for a too bold censure of the action of the dominant party in the Legislature. But this _contretemps_ did not prevent him continuing in that vein of sarcasm of which he was a master, and evoking, consequently, the ire of the leading Liberals of those days--Stuart, Vanfelson, Papineau, Viger, and others. One of the results of his excessive freedom of speech was an attempt to punish him for a breach of privilege; but he remained concealed in his own house, where, like the conspirators of old times, he had a secret recess made for such purposes, and where he continued hurling his philippics against his adversaries with all that power of invective which would be used by a conscientious though uncompromising old Tory of those days, when party excitement ran so high. The Quebec _Gazette_ was at that time, as in its first years, hardly more than a mere resume of news. [Footnote: From 1783 to 1792, the paper scarcely published a political 'leader,' and so fearful were printers of offending men in power, that the Montreal _Gazette_, so late as 1790, would not even indicate the locality in which a famous political banquet was held, on the occasion of the formation of a Constitutional Club, the principal object of which was to spread political knowledge throughout the country. See Garneau II. 197 and 206.] Hon. John Neilson assumed its editorship in 1796, and continued more or less to influence its columns whilst he remained in the Lower Canada Legislature. In 1808, Mr. Neilson enlarged the size of his paper, and published it twice a week, in order to meet the growing demand for political intelligence. The _Gazette_ was trammelled for years by the fact that it was semi-official, and the vehicle of public notifications, but when, subsequently, [Footnote: In 1823, an Official Gazette was published by Dr. Fisher, Queen's Printer. Canadian Magazine,' p. 470.] this difficulty no longer existed, the paper, either under his own or his son's management, was independent, and, on the whole, moderate in tone whenever it expressed opinions on leading public questions. Mr. Neilson, from 1818, when he became a member of the Legislature, exercised a marked influence on the political discussions of his time, and any review of his career as journalist and politician would be necessarily a review of the political history of half a century. A constant friend of the French Canadians, a firm defender of British connection, never a violent, uncompromising partisan, but a man of cool judgment, he was generally able to perform good service to his party and country. As a public writer he was concise and argumentative, and influential, through the belief that men had in his sincerity and honesty of purpose.

In 1806, there appeared in Quebec a new organ of public opinion, which has continued to the present day to exercise much influence on the politics of Lower Canada. This was the _Canadien_, which was established in the fall of that year, chiefly through the exertions of Pierre Bedard, who was for a long while the leader of the French party in the Legislature, and at the same time chief editor of the new journal, which at once assumed a strong position as the exponent of the principles with which its French Canadian conductors were so long identified. It waged a bitter war against its adversaries, and no doubt had an important share in shaping the opinions and educating the public mind of the majority in the province. If it too frequently appealed to national prejudices, and assumed an uncompromising attitude when counsels of conciliation and moderation would have been wiser, we must make allowance for the hot temper of those times, and the hostile antagonism of races and parties, which the leaders on both sides were too often ready to foment, The editor of the _Canadien_ was also punished by imprisonment for months, and the issue of the paper was stopped for a while on the order of Chief Justice Sewell, in the exciting times of that most arbitrary of military governors, Sir James Craig. The action of the authorities in this matter is now admitted to have been tyrannical and unconstitutional, and it is certainly an illustration of human frailty that this same M. Bedard, who suffered not a little from the injustice of his political enemies, should have shown such weakness--or, shall we say, Christian forbearance--in accepting, not long afterwards, a judgeship from the same Government which he had always so violently opposed, and from which he had suffered so much.

Whilst the _Canadien_, _Gazette_, and _Mercury_ were, in Lower Canada, ably advocating their respective views on the questions of the day, the Press of Upper Canada was also exhibiting evidences of new vigour. The _Observer_ was established at York, in 1820, and the _Canadian freeman_ in 1825, the latter, an Opposition paper, well printed, and edited by Francis Collins who had also suffered at the hands of the ruling powers. An anecdote is related of the commencement of the journalistic career of this newspaper man of old times, which is somewhat characteristic of the feelings which animated the ruling powers of the day with respect to the mass of people who were not within the sacred pale. When Dr. Home gave up the publication of the _Gazette_, in whose office Collins had been for some time a compositor, the latter applied for the position, and was informed that 'the office would be given to none but a _gentleman_.'

This little incident recalls the quiet satire which Goldsmith levels in 'The Good-natured Man,' against just such absurd sensitiveness as Collins had to submit to:--

FIRST FELLOW--The Squire has got spunk in him.

SECOND FELLOW--I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us
nothing that's low.

THIRD FELLOW--O, damn anything that's low; I cannot bear it.

FOURTH FELLOW--The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if so
be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.

THIRD FELLOW--I likes the maxum of it. Master Muggins. What,
though I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all
that. May this be my poison, if my bear ever dances but to the very
genteelest of tunes--'Water Parted,' or 'The Minuet in Ariadne.'

No doubt this little episode made the disappointed applicant inveterate against the Government, for he commenced, soon afterwards, the publication of an Opposition paper, in which be exhibited the rude ability of an unpolished and half-educated man. [Footnote: C. Lindsey's 'Life of W. Lyon Mackenzie,' Vol. I., p. 112, note.]

Mr. W. Lyon Mackenzie appeared as a journalist for the first time in 1824, at Queenston, where he published the Colonial _Advocate_, on the model of Cobbett's _Register_, containing 32 pages, a form afterwards changed to the broad sheet. From the first it illustrated the original and eccentric talent of its independent founder. Italics and capitals, index hands and other typographic symbols, were scattered about with remarkable profusion, to give additional force and notoriety to the editorial remarks which were found on every page, according as the whim and inspiration of the editor dictated. The establishment of the paper was undoubtedly a bold attempt at a time when the province was but sparsely settled, and the circulation necessarily limited by the rarity of post-offices even in the more thickly-populated districts, and by the exorbitant rates of postage which amounted to eight hundred dollars a-year on a thousand copies. More than that, any independent expression of opinion was sure to evoke the ire of the orthodox in politics and religion, which in those days were somewhat closely connected. The _Advocate_ was soon removed to York, and became from that time a political power, which ever and anon excited the wrath of the leaders of the opposite party, who induced some of their followers at last to throw the press and type of the obnoxious journal into the Bay, while they themselves, following the famous Wilkes' precedent, expelled Mackenzie from the legislature, and in defiance of constitutional law, declared him time and again ineligible to sit in the Assembly. The despotic acts of the reigning party, however, had the effect of awakening the masses to the necessity of supporting Mr. Mackenzie, and made him eventually a prominent figure in the politics of those disturbed times. The _Advocate_ changed its name, a short time previous to 1837, to the _Constitution_, and then disappeared in the troublous days that ended with the flight of its indiscreet though honest editor. Contemporaneous with the _Advocate_ were the _Loyalist_, the _Courier_, and the _Patriot_--the latter having first appeared at York in 1833. These three journals were Conservative, or rather Tory organs, and were controlled by Mr. Fothergill, Mr. Gurnett, and Mr. Dalton. Mr. Gurnett was for years after the Union the Police Magistrate of Toronto, while his old antagonist was a member of the Legislature, and the editor of the _Message_, a curiosity in political literature. Mr. Thomas Dalton was a very zealous advocate of British connection, and was one of the first Colonial writers to urge a Confederation of the Provinces; and if his zeal frequently carried him into the intemperate discussion of public questions the ardour of the times must be for him, as for his able, unselfish opponent, Mr. Mackenzie, the best apology.

Mrs. Jameson, who was by no means inclined to view Canadian affairs with a favourable eye, informs us that in 1836 there were some forty papers published in Upper Canada; of these, three were religious, namely, the _Christian Guardian_, the _Wesleyan Advocate_, and the _Church_. A paper in the German language was published at Berlin, in the Gore Settlement, for the use of the German settlers. Lower Canadian and American newspapers were also circulated in great numbers. She deprecates the abusive, narrow tone of the local