provide for the indemnification of parties in Lower Canada whose property was destroyed during the Rebellion in 1837 and 1838:’  a ‘questionable measure,’ to use Lord Elgin’s own words in first mentioning it, ’but one which the preceding administration had rendered almost inevitable by certain proceedings adopted by them’ in Lord Metcalfe’s time.  As the justification of the measure is thus rested on its previous history, a brief retrospect is necessary before proceeding with the account of transactions which formed an epoch in the history of the colony, as well as in the life of the Governor.

[Sidenote:  History of the measure.]

Within a very short time after the close of the Rebellion of 1837 and 1838, the attention of both sections of the colony was directed to compensating those who had suffered by it.  First came the case of the primary sufferers, if so they may be called; that is, the Loyalists, whose property had been destroyed by Rebels.  Measures were at once taken to indemnify all such persons,—­in Upper Canada, by an Act passed in the last session of its separate Parliament; in Lower Canada, by an ordinance of the ’Special Council’ under which it was at that time administered.  But it was felt that this was not enough; that where property had been wantonly and unnecessarily destroyed, even though it were by persons acting in support of authority, some compensation ought to be given; and the Upper Canada Act above mentioned was amended next year, in the first session of the United Parliament, so as to extend to all losses occasioned by violence on the part of persons acting or assuming to act on Her Majesty’s behalf.  Nothing was done at this time about Lower Canada; but it was obviously inevitable that the treatment applied to the one province should be extended to the other.  Accordingly, in 1845, during Lord Metcalfe’s Government, and under a Conservative Administration, an Address was adopted unanimously by the Assembly, praying His Excellency to cause proper measures to be taken ’in order to insure to the inhabitants of that portion of the province, formerly Lower Canada, indemnity for just losses by them sustained during the Rebellion of 1837 and 1838.’

In pursuance of this address, a Commission was appointed to inquire into the claims of persons whose property had been destroyed in the rebellion; the Commissioners receiving instructions to distinguish the cases of those persons who had joined, aided, or abetted in the said rebellion, from the case of those who had not.  On inquiring how they were to distinguish, they were officially answered that in making out the classification ’it was not His Excellency’s intention that they should be guided by any other description of evidence than that furnished by the sentences of the Courts of Law.’  It was also intimated to them that they were only intended to form a ‘general estimate’ of the rebellion losses, ’the particulars of which must form the subject of more minute inquiry hereafter under legislative authority.’