A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treason, Trials and Transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels

A Deep Sense of Wrong

The Treason, Trials, and Transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels after the 1838 Rebellion

BEVERLEY BOISSERY

Copyright © The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 1995

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Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Boissery, Beverley, 1939–

A deep sense of wrong: the treason, trials, and transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian rebels after the 1838 rebellion

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-55002-242-3

1. Canada – History – Rebellion, 1837–1839 – Prisoners and prisons.

2. Prisoners, Transportation of – Canada – History – 19th century.

3. Prisoners, Transportation of – New South Wales – History – 19th

century. 4. Penal colonies – New South Wales – History – 19th

century. 5. Canada – Exiles – History – 19th century. 6. New South

Wales – Exiles – History – 19th century. 7. Canadians – New South

Wales – History – 19th century. 8. Trials (Treason) – Canada –

History – 19th century. I. Title.

FC457.P7B6     1995     971.03'9       C95-931838-0

F1032.B65   1995

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Contents

TABLES

FIGURES

PUBLICATIONS OF THE OSGOODE SOCIETY FOR CANADIAN LEGAL HISTORY

PATRONS OF THE OSGOODE SOCIETY

Aird & Berlis

Blake, Cassels & Graydon

Davies, Ward & Beck

Holden Day Wilson

McCarthy Tétrault

Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt

Reynolds, Mirth, Richards & Farmer

The Harweg Foundation

Tory Tory DesLauriers & Binnington

Weir & Foulds

The Society also thanks The Law Foundation of Ontario and the Law Society of Upper Canada for their continuing support.

Foreword

THE OSGOODE SOCIETY FOR CANADIAN LEGAL HISTORY

The purpose of The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History is to encourage research and writing in the history of Canadian law. The Society, which was incorporated in 1979 and is registered as a charity, was founded at the initiative of the Honourable R. Roy McMurtry, former attorney-general for Ontario, and officials of the Law Society of Upper Canada. Its efforts to stimulate the study of legal history in Canada include a research support program, a graduate student research assistance program, and work in the fields of oral history and legal archives. The Society publishes (at the rate of about one a year) volumes of interest to the Society’s members that contribute to legal-historical scholarship in Canada, including studies of the courts, the judiciary, and the legal profession, biographies, collections of documents, studies in criminology and penology, accounts of significant trials, and work in the social and economic history of the law.

Current directors of The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History are Jane Banfield, Tom Bastedo, John Brown, Brian Bucknall, Archie Campbell, E. Susan Elliott, J. Douglas Ewart, Martin Friedland, Charles Harnick, John Honsberger, Kenneth Jarvis, Allen Linden, Virginia MacLean, Wendy Matheson, Colin McKinnon, Roy McMurtry, Brendan O’Brien, Peter Oliver, Paul Reinhardt, James Spence, and Richard Tinsley.

The annual report and information about membership may be obtained by writing The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5H 2N6. Members receive the annual volume published by the Society.

Beverley Boissery has written a moving book about one of the most dramatic and tragic episodes of Canadian history. In it she combines social and legal history to tell a fascinating story. Using a wide range of Canadian and Australian sources, she employs not only her own training in historical method but the skills of the popular writer to provide readers with a compelling account which is legal history in its most human dimension. We are confident that A Deep Sense of Wrong will be read with great interest and will cast new light on one of the darker events of Canadian history. In particular it will offer considerable enlightenment about the trials and tribulations of men banished thousands of miles from their homeland who took with them to exile a sense of honour, dignity, and pride and whose return years later brought comfort and joy to all who understood and appreciated the qualities of fortitude and humanity demonstrated during their period of exile.

R. Roy McMurtry

President

Peter Oliver

Editor-in-Chief

Acknowledgments

Although this book was written almost entirely in 1994, my debts of gratitude go back more than twenty years, to the time I entered the History Honours program at the University of British Columbia, one of that university’s greatest treasures. Jean Elder, Allen Sinel, and Chris Stocker began the process of turning a volleyball coach into a scholar. Their teaching was refined by Jim Huzel, who became a good friend, and not only supervised my honours thesis but introduced me to Lawrence Stone and the idea of prosopography. At the same time I was extremely fortunate to work under George McWhirter of the Creative Writing Department.

Millicent Chalmers, Diane Cunningham, Margaret Sharpe, and Anne Thorsen all put me up and put up with me in December 1994. In the 1970s, I was lucky enough to study under Manning Clark at the Australian National University; both my husband and I owe him and his wife Dymphna debts of hospitality we can never pay. Since then, we have cherished the academic camaraderie and personal friendship of Noel McLaughlan and Miriam Dixson, both of whom read and critiqued the Australian portion of this book. Moya and Rob Adams of Sydney have been lifelong friends. My cousin, Bruce Thorsen, as long as he’s been alive, has supported my hopes, given his love, and never let me settle for less than my dreams.

I have taught for the Surrey School District in British Columbia since 1964, when I was hired to teach grade 4 by the then superintendent Earl Marriott. He encouraged me to think about getting a degree. In the 1970s, his successor, Jack Evans, gave me the necessary leaves that enabled me to get my BA and doctorate. Lyn Hagglund, a super boss in the 1980s, encouraged my intellectual pursuits. As can be imagined, I’ve made many friends during my thirty-plus years in Surrey, too many, unfortunately to mention by name. For the past several years, I have taught at l’École sécondaire Earl Marriott Secondary school under a marvellously understanding principal, Margaux Molson. One of my colleagues, Nicolas Rebselj, translated the patriote songs for me. Another, John Mylod, photographed many of the pictures in this book. I would also like to thank my classes, particularly the Humanities 9 and 10, for not taking too much advantage of my preoccupation during 1994–95. For those of you in Humanities 10 who have had classes with me every day since the beginning of the book, a special thanks.

Many people helped me make the jump from theses to novels and back again to academic writing. I miss the critique groups of the Ottawa Romance Writers Association (ORWA) in Ottawa and the helpful advice of Michele McManus in White Rock, B.C. Gerry Hallowell made several suggestions on improving the readability of my thesis. In particular I thank those who have read parts of this manuscript and tried to advise me on the thorny question of the fictional transitions that introduce each chapter (I evolved the idea of these prologues as a way to include material that might otherwise not have fitted easily into the book): Susan Tuttle, Catherine Whiteley, and Evelyn Kolish. George Tuttle read the entire manuscript and made several helpful suggestions. Jo Beverley advised me on improving the fictional parts. Detailed critiques for the academic sections came from Chris Raible, Peter Moogk, Miriam Dixson, and Katie Guth.

In 1973 I met and became friends with Patricia Kennedy of the National Archives of Canada. She not only taught me how to use the archives but kept me abreast of acquisitions made since then. More than that, she has generously shared her unpublished research on convicts, particularly those North Americans sent to the Bermuda hulks and the Australian penal colonies.

I have also appreciated the friendship and cheerful efficiency of Marilyn MacFarlane of The Osgoode Society. She and Peter Oliver have been marvellous. Peter has encouraged me from the moment he heard of my thesis, reading each chapter as it was written. I also thank The Osgoode Society not only for giving me the chance to publish but for a research grant as well. Judith Turnbull, my editor at Dundurn, did a marvellous job with sensitivity, making the text flow more smoothly.

More than to anyone else, I owe a great debt to Murray Greenwood. Since 1972 he has been the solidity in my life, the constant who allowed me to experiment with different interests. Our conversations have been inspiring, our quiet companionship sustaining. Through typing and word processing his articles and books over the years, I learned enough to become a legal historian in my own right. He translated the often difficult French of the patriotes for me, and unless otherwise indicated, all other translations are his as well. Murray read and critiqued who knows how many drafts and never complained when my preoccupation made me do something stupid. His tolerance has seemed limitless, and without his love this book would never have been written.

Thank you all.

Preface

I first met New South Wales convict 40-578,¹ François-Maurice Lepailleur, and his comrades in the summer of 1972. At that time I was finishing a summer school course in creative writing at the University of British Columbia, preparing for my final undergraduate year as a History Honours student and the thesis I would have to write. My tentative topic: Henry VI’s administration of England.

Rummaging through the UBC stacks that August in 1972, I ran across a reference to ‘Papineau’s followers’ who had been transported to Sydney. This was news to me. Just days before, I had met my future husband, Murray Greenwood, then a professor of Canadian history. Thinking he might help, I rushed across to his office and in one of the classic lines of our romance asked, ‘Have you ever heard of a guy called Papineau?’ His reaction said it all. Henry VI was summarily dropped. What could I, as an undergraduate in Vancouver, hope to add to English history? But Papineau’s so-called followers? That was indeed another story.

And such was the genesis of this book, which tells the story of fifty-eight men who were sent to Australia in 1839 after having been convicted of high treason. It is based largely on surviving legal and law enforcement records, and of these, two were crucial: the Archives nationales du Québec’s huge collection of voluntary examinations, depositions, and magistrates’ reports² and the Report of the State Trials, Before a General Court Martial Held at Montreal in 1838–1839.³

Of the ninety-nine men convicted in a military court for high treason in 1838–39, proceedings exist for sixty-six. In the majority of these cases, no significant distortion of the law occurred, as the evidence was conclusive enough to warrant conviction. In all likelihood, the results for this majority would have been the same if they had been tried before juries in the criminal courts. But would all the verdicts have been the same in a traditional court? Given the unpredictability of juries in treason and sedition cases, one can only conjecture. Even carefully chosen jury panels that excluded known sympathizers might have ignored instructions from judges and acquitted those who had played minor roles or who managed to produce some evidence of coercion. As a result, more defence witnesses might have come forward, without fear of military or local intimidation.

When evaluating the fairness of the trials, we have only the records of the court martial, depositions/voluntary examinations, a few notes by the lawyers and their clients, and some scribbled comments, presumably by one of the officer-judges for one case. From these and from the testimony and exhibits presented in court, we can deduce that at least eighteen of the sixty-six accused were victims of a miscarriage of justice. I include among these those cases where there was clearly insufficient evidence for conviction presented at trial, even though extra-judicial records might suggest the accused were guilty as charged. After all, in the British system, the crown must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

In most cases though, the extra-judicial evidence is ambiguous. Was Benjamin Mott a drunken spectator at the battle of Lacolle as he claimed or a leading participant as none-too-credible crown witnesses asserted. Or did his citizenship (American) make him a convenient scapegoat as David McLane had been years earlier?⁴ A damning deposition against François Camyré may be found in the Archives nationales du Québec, but the deponent was not called to testify at Camyré’s trial.⁵ Why? Perhaps the deputy judge advocates (the prosecution at the court martial) found the informer unreliable.

When asking questions such as these, the legal historian is at the same disadvantage as an appeal judge. She (or he) has not seen or heard the witnesses: their demeanour, gestures, tone of voice, hesitations, and so on. Lack of credibility, however, is often clear from the written proceedings (see chapter 3 for an example of an untruthful magistrate). Sometimes the prosecution admitted as much. Moreover, it was a regular occurrence for the accused and the deputy judge advocates to comment unfavourably on the manner in which witnesses gave testimony.

These trial records, though limited, offer a valuable perspective on the Rebellion of 1838. It is through these sources and the extant legal and law enforcement records that we discover the middle leadership, whose members, lacking political or family clout, were punished through death or transportation.

The men are unique – both in Canadian and Australian history. For Canadian readers, their value lies in the richness of the documentation left behind. Although most were illiterate farmers, we know a surprising amount about them. For example, 26 percent were tattooed and they had an average of 2.67 moles per person!⁶ We know which teeth the men were missing, their average height (a little less than five feet, four inches), the number of children they had at the time of their arrival in Sydney, and the extent of their property (on average 115 arpents [an arpent roughly equals five-sixths of an acre]).⁷ Far more importantly, we know why they rebelled and in what way they had been involved in politics. We know the costs, both monetary and emotional, they and their families paid for participating in the 1838 insurrection. Clearly, we do not have to speculate about the personal history and motive of many of them.

With regard to their exile in Australia, we do not have to hypothesize about their viewpoints, particularly their desire to be reunited with the loved ones they had left behind. Of all the many thousands of men and women sent to Australia as prisoners, only the Canadiens left records of daily life.⁸ From their journals we learn how relatively easy it was for them to earn money, to escape the confines of their stockade, and to save for eventual reunion with their families – either in Sydney or Lower Canada. Because the details of their lives as prisoners in Australia cut against many historical assumptions, their story deserves telling.

As will be shown in the concluding chapter, this story refutes much of the latest theorizing by a group of economic historians about convicts and their lives. Ironically, I first began work on the 1838 transported Canadiens partly as a reaction against the quantification of Canadian history and the loss of the individual to statistics. To a large extent my doctoral dissertation was a prosopographical study, meaning that it focused on individuals.⁹ Had Stephen Nicholas and his group of historians read the words of the men they speculated about, they might have avoided some embarrassing statements (see chapter 13).¹⁰

A Deep Sense of Wrong is ‘micro-history.’ As such, it concentrates on a small group (fifty-eight men) rather than on the thousands of rebels in 1838 or the thousands of Australian convicts, and thus allows the researcher to make connections that might otherwise not have been discernible. But more than that, this approach allowed me to ask questions not normally attempted. The rebels of 1837–38 have been ‘statisticised,’ glamorized, and glorified. They have been chosen as university mascots, revered as icons, and dismissed as lightweights, sometimes cowardly ones. Yet few have asked the crucial questions – What were they like as human beings? – as members of a communal society? Did they cherish their families? Did they love their wives? In much the same way as another micro-history, Babette Smith’s A Cargo of Women (see chapter 13),¹¹ this book attempts to answer such non-quantifiable questions.

Sophisticated readers of history and legal history may miss this book’s limited references to other writers’ work and to specific historical points of contention within the text itself. As my goal was to tell a story, these sorts of references, which generally impede the flow of the narrative, are largely confined to the endnotes or the concluding chapter. This has meant, unfortunately, that I discussed neither the many fascinating theories found in Allan Greer’s recent study The Patriots and the People nor his pioneering work on the establishment of rural police. Readers wishing a more detailed treatment of the Rebellions of 1837–38 in Lower Canada than this book provides are referred to the bibliography and advised that The Osgoode Society plans to publish at least one volume on the subject in the Canadian State Trials series.¹²

I believe the Rebellion of 1838 must be viewed as distinct from that in 1837. To begin with, in 1838 a Republic of Lower Canada was proclaimed and a proto-constitution enunciated that answered many of the grievances felt so deeply in the colony. In 1838 the patriotes had a relatively detailed plan to take control of the area around Montreal. To put the rebellions in perspective for readers who may have forgotten their high school history and for Australians who never heard of them, chapters 1 and 2 sketch the events and tensions that culminated in revolt.

The book’s unusual format to some extent comes from the fun I’ve had writing novels. As a means of including details that do not strictly belong in the flow of the text, I began each chapter with what I call a transition, a short excerpt from my version of an interview that a reporter actually did conduct with Lepailleur in 1888. The subsequent story was published in the Montreal Star, 15 December 1888 (see Appendix B). My interview is largely speculative, although many details are based by provable fact, and my reporter, Frank Warwick, is entirely fictional, as are some of his stories. Judging from the reactions of those who read parts of this manuscript, there was no middle ground – readers either loved or hated them. The transitions are not meant to offend or antagonize academics. Instead I hope they will encourage those who might not otherwise venture into the depths of legal history to keep reading.

A Deep Sense of Wrong

For those who have taught me to write –

George McWhirter, Manning Clark, Bobby Hutchinson,

Jo Beverley, and Murray Greenwood

PART ONE

Background to Rebellion

1

The First Blow, Autumn 1837: They ‘Wanted Reform, and Not Revolution’

¹

170 SANGUINET STREET, MONTREAL, NOVEMBER 1888

– as it might have been

Frank Warwick found it difficult to believe that fifty years earlier Maurice Lepailleur had been considered one of his country’s biggest enemies. Yet, as a reporter for the Montreal Star, he dealt in facts and the fact was that in 1838 Lepailleur had been condemned to death for high treason, missing the gallows by the slimmest of margins.

He looked at the silver-haired gentleman sitting so serenely across from him. Time had dealt gently with François-Maurice Lepailleur. Although he may have shrunk an inch or so from his original five feet four inches, Lepailleur did not appear fragile. The passage of years had only gentled his face, and laughter lurked behind the eyes so busily assessing the reporter.

‘Where would you like me to begin?’

A cough and the soft question broke into Warwick’s thoughts. The answer seemed obvious. What had brought a man like Lepailleur to the heinous crime of treason? What had happened in 1838 to drive such a respectable man to open rebellion? Equally softly, he answered, ‘Tell me about 1838, Mr Lepailleur. It’s so difficult to even imagine what this country was like then.’

‘I know. My grandchildren, even my own sons, have the same problem because so much has changed.’ Lepailleur leaned forward and picked up an envelope from the table between them. ‘See this?’ he asked, pointing to the stamp on the top corner. ‘It’s something we take for granted, but in 1838 we had never thought of stamps.’ He put the envelope back, then picked up a newspaper. ‘And here, a gentleman in Germany has invented a motorized bicycle. Who can imagine why, but nevertheless he’s done so. But in 1838, Mr. Warwick, we depended on horses for almost all our travel. We had a few steamboats, a few miles of railroad tracks. None of us ever dreamed a man might ride on something like a motorized cycle.’

Warwick nodded gravely in agreement even though a motorized cycle sounded just fine to him. ‘My grandparents think the same. They live in Richmond and I used to feel I was visiting a museum when I was a boy. It was an adventure but I thought their house very old-fashioned and wondered how people could live like that.’

‘And like it!’ Lepailleur retorted, darting a sly glance at the fashionably dressed reporter. ‘That was part of the problem in 1838. We liked the old ways. They had served us well. Where I lived in Chateauguay, families farmed the same land for generations. We had enough for a good life. Perhaps without running water or electricity or gaslight, mind you, but enough to live without hunger, to give our sons and daughters a good start and to enjoy ourselves. It was a hard life maybe, but not one people wanted to give up.’

‘And they had to?’

Lepailleur nodded. ‘It’s taken me years to realize it, but we had far fewer choices than we thought. The thirties were, I think, both the end of what had been and the beginning of so much we take for granted nowadays.’

‘Like Janus?’

Lepailleur had not been fortunate enough to have had a classical education in a collège. Experience, though, had been a good teacher. ‘The two-faced god?’ He thought for a while, then continued. ‘Exactly. With one face looking back to the traditional ways and systems, seeing all the breakdowns and threats to them. To the language, our customs, even our farms. Then, there’s the other face. Looking forward to now.’

‘And 1888 is not so bad, is it?’

‘Ah, you say that because you know it. Fifty years ago, of course,’ Lepailleur shrugged, ‘we had no certainties. Only problems. In every area of our lives.’

Warwick stopped taking notes. ‘But the farmers could still sell their crops, couldn’t they? It could not have been that bad for them. They could still put food on the table.’

‘The fortunate ones, yes.’ Lepailleur perhaps sensed the younger man’s impatience, his desire to get on with the main story. ‘You asked why cautious men rebelled? The 1830s were years of depression. Our crops failed, immigrants flooded into the colony. Just at the time that we had less produce, we had more people to feed.’

‘Then, surely, the farmers should have become rich.’ Warwick lit a cigarette and puffed on it a few times. He played the stock market a little and understood the law of supply and demand. To him it seemed a classic situation – not one where farmers would rebel.

‘You don’t understand. It didn’t work that way. Most farmers struggled to feed themselves.’ Lepailleur thought for a while, trying to get the right words. ‘Mr Warwick, all my life until then, I had eaten pure wheat bread. Suddenly, it seemed, the farms could no longer produce enough wheat. Farmers began sowing other grains, like oats and rye. It was as if God himself was punishing us, sending us black or brown bread. We were, we are, a very religious people. With all the other changes and problems, this darker-coloured bread made us think that maybe the saints and our father in heaven had deserted us.’

Warwick attended church each Sunday, but he prided himself on being modern. ‘Surely men did not rebel over the colour of bread. Over the notion that God might be punishing them,’ he scoffed.

‘No, of course not. Not just that,’ Lepailleur answered. ‘But it was a symbol. Some felt that if we could get rid of the newcomers and their newfangled ways, everything would go back to normal.’

‘Did you think that?’

‘No. I could see, even then, that many new things were here to stay. But we had so many grievances. We had tried so many different ways to make the governor listen. Nothing worked. Then, like the Americans had years earlier, we began to feel we should control our own money, that lords and ministers in England should not direct how it was spent.’

‘And people fought for that?’

‘A few did,’ Lepailleur shrugged. He knew as well as anyone that people did things for the strangest reasons. ‘In 1837 some simply wanted to protect our leaders when the government ordered their arrest. But I know that others thought that if we made a stand, the governor would have to listen to us.’

THE WANING DAYS OF FEBRUARY 1839 were unusually warm for Montreal.² Snow melted and the ice thawed, enticing the city’s inhabitants from their homes. On the twenty-second of the month, many found their way to the courthouse on Notre Dame Street – some, to watch the arrival of three of the country’s most notorious prisoners for trial by court martial; others, to crowd the courtroom where military officers, some of whom had recently fought against the rebels, presided.

To these army men, with their impassive faces, straight backs, and disciplined souls, accused traitor Louis Bourdon explained why it had been necessary to take arms against Her Britannic Majesty’s might: a ‘deep sense of wrong.’ This succinct plea did not impress them. Bourdon’s frustration and anger, provoked by deeply felt injustices, could not mitigate the fact that he had rebelled against a duly constituted authority. On the last day of the month, they sentenced Bourdon to hang by the neck until death came.

Up until fourteen months earlier, the ambitious, literate Bourdon had been a model for young Canadiens³ to emulate. He had married into the powerful Papineau family,⁴ and his future had seemed bright. Why would he have risked rebelling? What deeply felt wrongs prompted him and thousands of other men to fight with scythes, pitchforks, and ancient muskets against crack regiments of the British army?

Unlike Louis Bourdon, most rebels were illiterate farmers, or habitants. Conservative men with a deep attachment to the soil, they had a traditional way of life reaching back, almost unchanged, to that of their ancestors in the seventeenth century. Instead of clustering in villages and sharing common land like their counterparts in England or Europe, they spread out, one beside the other, along river banks, farming long, narrow strips. Decades of struggling for survival in a harsh climate and a small domestic market had dictated the goal of self-sufficiency. Rather than developing a strong sense of community as other pioneering settlers might, they came to consider the family all-important.⁵ The head of each family tried to ensure that his sons had land and the wherewithal to establish themselves.⁶

This inheritance pattern was distinctly Canadien. The family farm did not normally pass to the eldest son, as in England, nor was it subdivided among all the heirs as was common in France. Instead, the parents chose as the successor one of the middle or younger sons, with whom they contracted for support in their old age. In return for the farm, the heir undertook the maintenance of his parents and the provision of certain stipulated comforts. He also often assumed the responsibility for his younger brothers or sisters. This unique system impressed outsiders. Hugh Murray, a British visitor to Lower Canada in 1839, noted that this ‘custom of parents and children living together, often to the third generation, in the same house . . . [marked] a mild and friendly temper.’⁷ More likely, it illustrated the care with which the parents had chosen their heir.⁸

The farms were held under a land-owning system known as seigneurial tenure – a legacy from France. Rather than possessing vested rights, the seigneurs of New France were, in theory, obliged to grant vacant land to all who undertook to farm it at the rent and on the conditions customary on the seigneury.⁹ The French legislation known as the Edicts of Marly, 1711, established the seigneurial obligations of tenant and lord, enforced by the intendant, the civil administrator of New France. A farmer, if refused a concession by the seigneur, might apply to the intendant, who could, together with the governor, not only concede the land but receive the customary rent for the crown, in perpetuity. With penalties such as these, few seigneurs refused prospective tenants and fewer farmers, or censitaires, foresaw a time when the system would break down. This is not to say things were halcyon in New France, but clearly the law and the surplus of land favoured the censitaire.

Once Britain conquered New France in 1760, the system’s demise became inevitable. Neither the new judiciary, trained, of course, in common law, nor the new administration wished or even felt obliged to assume the duties of the intendant. Furthermore, after the withdrawal of French administrators, military officers, and many nobles, British landlords bought many of the better and more valuable seigneuries. Several French seigneurs did remain, and they, together with ecclesiastical landlords such as the Jesuits, the Quebec Seminary, and the Seminary of St-Sulpice (Montreal), provided an element of continuity.

For a while the seigneurial system continued to work, but gradually and surely, its erosion began. Not surprisingly the new British seigneurs saw their lands as speculative investments, and by the 1830s the seigneurs or their agents were demanding higher rents than those set in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries by the intendants. In many cases, the seigneur refused to grant land at all.

These seigneurs, governed by the law of supply and demand rather than by paternalistic attitude, found themselves in a classic seller’s market. The population had increased dramatically – from roughly 70,000 at the time of the Conquest, to about 160,000 in 1791, to more than half a million by 1831. As Quebec and Montreal became more densely peopled and the amount of arable land decreased, demand for new acreage rose, as did rents and new, extraordinary obligations on the tenants – for example, a tithe on maple sugar or on hay from meadows. Some farmers, unable or unwilling to pay the higher rents now demanded for uncultivated lands, subdivided their holdings to provide for their sons, ‘whereby the population, instead of diffusing itself in the extension’ of settlement, now crowded ‘within a smaller space, contrary to the wise policy of the ancient [i.e., French] government.’¹⁰ As abuses became routine in some seigneuries, twenty-one petitions came before the Lower Canadian House of Assembly between 1831 and 1837 requesting relief from such situations.

Three originated from the seigneury of Beauharnois, southwest of Montreal Island. Eight protested the exactions of William Plenderleath Christie and his heir to the seigneuries of La Colle, Foucault, Noyan, Sabrevois, de Bleury, and De Léry, also situated south of Montreal but closer to the Richelieu River.¹¹ Besides citing specific abuses, the petitions had one common factor: a detailed knowledge of the edicts and customs of the French regime and of various judgments on the system and the dates they had been registered in New France. Obviously, the petitioners had received professional help.¹²

The seigneurs’ refusal to concede new land and the inflated rents were together a veritable ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation for the tenant-farmers.¹³ If they fell into arrears with their rents and seigneurial obligations and then sold part of their land to raise money, they reduced their produce and consequent chances of future solvency. On the other hand, if they could not pay the new rents, they could be evicted for the arrears. The seigneurs won in every case. If land were sold, even to a censitaire wishing to buy it for his sons, seigneurs received one-twelfth of the purchase price (the lods et ventes) and the new farmer paid higher rents (see Figure 1.2 for seigneuries with the highest rents). The seigneurs also used such instances to force new deeds of concession on their hapless tenants, sometimes inserting new demands into the new deeds.¹⁴

Figure 1.1

Montreal and the Lower Richelieu Valley

Most censitaires, illiterate and unable to afford legal advice, signed with their crosses on the documents, ignorant of any changes or additions to the original deeds, then found themselves completely at the mercy of unscrupulous seigneurs and their agents. They had no assurance that the courts would uphold the old French edicts prohibiting rent raising and the imposition of new stipulations. Indeed, the Court of King’s Bench held in one case that the concession deed was the same as any voluntary contract, that the parties were absolutely free to bind themselves in any way they saw fit.¹⁵ In any case, few farmers dared risk a suit because, as one witness told a seigneurial abuse enquiry, they ‘always feared the hatred of the Seignior too much to go to law with him . . . especially those, who wishing to establish themselves have hardly sufficient means to do so.’¹⁶

Petitioners and witnesses before the assembly cited example after example of poverty denying justice to the seigneurial tenants, as in the case of a certain Terrien from L’Acadie who had the courage to sue his seigneuress, Mme de Longueuil, in the Court of King’s Bench, Montreal.¹⁷ After winning his case, Terrien found himself under attack when the seigneuress announced she would appeal the decision to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England. Lacking the immense financial resources needed to continue the fight, the tenant meekly worked out a compromise. The farmers from De Léry seigneury bitterly concluded that ‘no one since has ventured to go to law . . . Thus Seigniors have always had their own way, and done as they pleased.’¹⁸

The seigneurial privilege of lods et ventes, so commonly exacted in the 1830s, also outraged the farmers. It was a tremendous burden on the purchaser and was considered unfair. When wild land had been tamed, cleared, and cultivated by the sweat of the tenant’s brow, the purchase price naturally recognized such improvements. So did the lods et ventes. That the seigneur should receive such recompense for his tenant’s work was ‘a most crying injustice,’ claimed the De Léry censitaires.¹⁹

Other factors compounded the farmers’ woes. Until the late 1820s, wheat had been the principal crop in the area south of Montreal. In 1827 leaf mould appeared in the Chateauguay basin, and thereafter successive plagues ravaged the crops. Coupled with this, decades of traditional two-field farming began taking their toll, causing soil exhaustion. Conditioned by custom, the censitaires ignored warnings and the innovative methods used by English settlers, continuing to sow wheat. The results were devastating. By the 1840s oats and dairy products – preferred by the English farmer – had replaced wheat as the principal produce in most of the Montreal district.²⁰ Those who had relied on wheat were impoverished.

Figure 1.2

Seigneuries in the Lower Richelieu Valley Known to Have Charged Rents of Eight Sols per Arpent or More

Various travellers noticed the effect of wheat’s decline on Canadien life. Patrick Shirreff, a Scottish farmer from the Lowlands, travelled extensively in the parishes south of Montreal, remarking on the presence of wheat-fly and reporting that habitants in St-Philippe parish would walk in religious processions in an attempt to rid themselves of it. Even when possessing good soil, Canadien farmers sowed their wheat among ‘truly luxuriant indigenous tares, thistles, and white clover,’ clinging to their farms ‘until starved from them – that is, till the soil did not yield them food to subsist on.’²¹

Visitors were not the only observers of this profligacy. Shopkeepers and moneylenders moved quickly into the parishes to profit from the misery. Enticed by exotic wares ranging from tea to metal harrows,²² unable to cope with the rapid changes in their lives, many farmers mortgaged their futures. To maintain their farms, some sold their oxen, renting them back to work the ground. Others borrowed money at a few pence in interest a month, not realizing the annual rate was an exorbitant 50 to 100 percent, until forced to give up their farms and move to the city.²³

Further documentation of the widespread economic distress was lodged in the sheriff’s office in Montreal by various seigneuries. Between 1839 and 1842, 664 writs of execution (seigneurial eviction) were issued,²⁴ with the average number by any seigneur being 23 (see Figure 1.3 for the seigneuries in which this average was exceeded). Not surprisingly, given the state of their seigneurial relationships, Beauharnois and De Léry accounted for 41.4 percent of the total, with 96 and 179 respectively. As the Canadien farmers looked around their seigneuries in the area south of Montreal, they saw English, Scots, Americans, and Irish flooding into the vacated lands – despite their hostility to ‘feudalism.’ A new saying came into use, battering their pride and contributing to their hatred of all things English: ‘An Anglais would get rich on a farm where a French-Canadian would starve.’²⁵

By 1831 most families in the seigneuries of La Salle, De Léry, and Beauharnois had found subdivision inescapable if they were to avoid financial ruin and be able to provide for their children.²⁶ However, when subdivisions were further subdivided, farmers were forced to give only tiny allotments to their sons (Figure 1.4 shows the seigneuries with the highest levels of subdivision). Although these allowed the young men to keep a few cattle and grow vegetables, the lots effectively reduced the men’s status to labourers. The moral obligation to establish the following generation on land, felt so deeply until this point, became a memory in many parishes. Parents sadly watched their children leave for Upper Canada and the United States. Many of those emigrating, according to Surveyor General Joseph Bouchette, had been ‘desirous and able to erect new settlements, provided they could obtain lands near their relatives . . . or not far distant from them.’²⁷ But it was not to be.

Figure 1.3

Seigneuries in the Lower Richelieu Valley in Which an Above Average Number of Writs of Execution Were Issued, 1837–42

Figure 1.4

Seigneuries in the Lower Richelieu Valley with the Highest Levels of Subdivision

The English-speaking settlers who took advantage of these troubles aroused deep resentment. Many Canadiens believed, like a calèche driver in 1838, that the English ‘wanted to take . . . their laws, drive them from their lands, and make them work those lands for their own profit. ’²⁸ An unbridgeable chasm separated the two groups. The English, imbued with the spirit of laissez-faire and comfortable with the concept of economic growth, looked at Lower Canada’s potential with fresh eyes and a determination to succeed. The rural Canadiens, descended from families that had farmed in the new world for more than a 150 years, yearned for the survival of their traditional ways. Like a tree that had weathered many storms and seen many summers, and whose roots, although gnarled and weakened by age, clung tenaciously to the soil, their goal became endurance.

There could be little understanding – only contempt and resentment. The English despised what they perceived as Canadien lack of ambition. In return, the Canadiens hated their economic subjection to a minority ‘who cared nothing for them or the Country,’ and who only wanted to ‘make money out of it to carry away to spend elsewhere.’ Moreover, they believed the English would ‘trample under foot the laws and customs of the residents’ to obtain that objective.²⁹

In the Canadiens’ memories, the Roman Catholic Church had always been their salvation, offering protection from the unknown and the threatening.³⁰ But in the disastrous 1830s, a time when spiritual comfort or economic relief was needed, it failed its people. After the Conquest the church had guaranteed its internal autonomy by allying itself with the governor, and it hence became dependent on his good will. With the spectre of Elizabeth I’s Act of Supremacy (which provided for full state control of the church) hanging over their heads, parish priests willingly read official proclamations to their parishioners, preached loyalty, and took censuses. The economic disparity between the church and its parishioners was pointed out in 1835 by Dr Cyrille-Hector-Octave Côté, De Léry’s representative in the House of Assembly.³¹ Before a standing committee, he testified that the parish church in Napierville paid rent of one sol per arpent for its lands, while its neighbours’ rents ranged between 240 and 504 sols per arpent.³² Despite the economic distress of its parishioners, the church inflexibly exacted tithes, another source of widespread