The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4)

Strange to say, this sad story is not exaggerated. The poor man's mind, never very firmly set in its place, had been thrown completely off its balance, and throughout the remaining forty-four years of his life he was subject to frequent intervals of mental aberration.

To return to the narrative: he was found guilty under the Act of 1804, and ordered to quit the Province within twenty-four hours, under pain of death in case of his return. He crossed over into the United States, and published, at Boston, a pamphlet under the title of "The Banished Briton," giving an account of his wrongs. From Boston he made his way to England. His family and affairs there were in a state of unspeakable disorder, which had been grievously aggravated by his long imprisonment. At Michaelmas, 1817, the Duke of Somerset had made a distraint for rent. Poor Mrs. Gourlay had contrived to borrow money to pay the rent, but she had been panic-struck by calamity, and, by her brother's advice, had abandoned Deptford Farm. An assignment of the tenancy had been forwarded by her across the Atlantic to her husband, which he had executed and returned. His successor had contrived to get possession of the lease and stock for next to nothing, and Mr. Gourlay's pecuniary condition had thus been rendered more desperate than ever. When he landed in England in December, 1819, he found that his father had just breathed his last, and that his mother was in much affliction at her home in Fifeshire. He hastened thither, and spent a month in adjusting her affairs, after which he waited upon a bookseller in Edinburgh with a formidable collection of manuscript for publication. We have seen that during his stay in Canada he had become the confidential friend of Mr. Barnabas Bidwell. That gentleman had, just before the breaking out of the war of 1812-'15, written a series of historical and topographical sketches of Upper Canada, embodying a large amount of useful information. They were not published, but the author carefully preserved the manuscript, and after the close of the war revised it throughout, and inserted a considerable amount of additional matter. Soon after Mr. Gourlay's arrival in Canada, Mr. Bidwell presented the MS. to him, partly for the latter's personal information, and partly with a view to ultimate publication. We have also seen that Mr. Gourlay received numerous replies to his series of questions addressed to persons in the various townships of the Province. During his confinement in jail at Niagara, he had beguiled his saner moments by carefully going through these various MSS. After his return to Great Britain he re-read them all with great care, and wrote a great mass of rambling matter on his own account, giving a description of his trials and persecutions, and embodying various official documents and Acts of Parliament. The entire collection amounted to a formidable mass of MSS., and he was desirous of laying the whole before the public. Hence his interview with the Edinburgh bookseller as above recorded. The bookseller declined to undertake the publication, and Mr. Gourlay carried his MSS. to London, where they were published in three large octavo volumes in 1822. The second and third volumes contain what the author calls the "Statistical Account of Upper Canada;" and the first contains a "General Introduction." The value of the work as a whole is beyond question, but it is strung together with such loose, rambling incoherence, that only a diligent student, accustomed to analyze evidence, can use it with advantage, or even with perfect safety. His wife had meanwhile been removed from a life of turmoil and anxiety, and his children had been placed under the care of some of their relatives in Scotland. Mr. Gourlay himself engaged in further litigation with his old enemy, the Duke of Somerset, about the tenure of Deptford Farm. Into the history of this litigation there is no time to enter. Suffice it to say that the Duke's purse was too long for Mr. Gourlay, whose household furniture and effects were sold to meet law expenses. He avenged himself by attacking the Lord Chancellor (Eldon), and various other persons high in authority, through the public press. Quiescence seemed to be an utter impossibility for him. He was also involved in litigation arising out of the winding-up of his father's estate. Erelong he was left absolutely penniless, and became for a time nearly or quite insane. On the 9th of September, 1822, he threw himself upon the parish of Wily, in Wiltshire, where he had formerly resided. Having proved his right of settlement, he was set to work by the overseer of the poor of that parish to break flints on the public highway. This was not such a hardship as it appears, for it was deliberately brought about by Mr. Gourlay himself, with a view to the reëstablishment of his mental and physical health, which he believed would be most effectually restored by hard bodily labour. This state of things went on for some weeks, after which he seems to have wandered about from one part of the kingdom to another, in an aimless sort of way, and generally with no particular object in view. He was at times by no means insensible to his mental condition, and there is something ludicrous, as well as pathetic, in some of his observations about himself at this period. His health, however, was much improved, and his many afflictions seem to have sat lightly upon him. He compared his condition with that of the Marquis of Londonderry, who, while suffering from mental derangement, had committed suicide. "A year before Lord Castlereagh left us," says Mr. Gourlay, in a paper addressed to the Lord Chancellor, "I heard him in the House of Commons ridicule the idea of going to dig; but had he then 'gone a digging' he might still have been prating to Parliament. I have had greater provocation and perplexity than the departed minister, but I have resorted to proper remedies; and among these is that of speaking out. I have not only laboured and lived abstemiously, travelled and changed the scene, but I have talked and written, to give relief to my mind and play to my imagination." He at this time had a mania for presenting petitions to the House of Commons on all sorts of subjects, but chiefly relating to his personal affairs. This line of procedure brought him into collision with Mr. Henry Brougham, the member for Westmoreland — afterwards Lord Brougham and Vaux. Mr. Brougham seems to have presented one or two petitions for him as a mere matter of form, but finally became weary of his continual importunity, and left his letters unanswered. With an irritation of temper bordering on insanity, Mr. Gourlay determined to take a decisive step which should call the attention of the whole nation to his calamities. On the afternoon of the 11th of June, 1824, as Mr. Brougham was passing through the lobby of the House of Commons, to attend his duty in Parliament, a person who walked behind him, and held a small whip in his hand, which he flourished, was heard by some of the bystanders to utter, in a hurried and nearly inarticulate manner, the phrase, "You have betrayed me, sir; I'll make you attend to your duty." Mr. Brougham, on encountering this interruption, turned round and said, "Who are you, sir?" "You know well," replied the assailant, who without further ceremony laid his whip smartly across the shoulders of the august member for Westmoreland. The latter made his escape through the door leading into the House of Commons. The bustle excited on the occasion naturally attracted the attention of the constables, and Mr. Brougham's assailant — who of course turned out to be Mr. Gourlay — was taken into custody for a breach of privilege, deprived of his whip, and handed over to the Sergeant-at-Arms. The Courier of the next morning (June 12th) contained the following account of the poor man's aspect and conduct after his arrest: "From the appearance of the individual yesterday, coupled with the eccentricity of his recent conduct, an inference would arise more of a nature to excite a feeling of compassion for this person, who once moved in a different situation of life, than to point him out as a fit person to be held sternly responsible for his actions. His appearance is decayed and debilitated; and, when removed into one of the committee-rooms of the House of Commons, in the custody of the constable who apprehended him, he let fall his head upon his hand, as a person labouring under the relapse incidental to violent excitement. He complained of some neglect of Mr. Brougham's respecting the presentation of a petition from Canada, which, we understand, has no foundation, and the course taken by Mr. Canning in postponing the consideration of the breach of privilege supports the inference of the irresponsibility of the individual, for a reason apparent from the very foolish nature of the act itself. On being, in the course of the evening, told that, if he would express contrition for his outrage, Mr. Brougham would instantly move for his discharge, he refused to make any apology to Mr. Brougham, but said he had no objection to petition the House. He added, that he was determined to have a fight with Mr. Brougham, because he had shamefully deserted his cause, and taken up that of a dead missionary. It is hardly necessary to add that Mr. Brougham is totally unconscious of the alleged desertion, and that Gourlay labours under a complete and melancholy delusion."

While detained in custody in the House of Commons he was visited by Sir George Tuthill and Dr. Munro, two eminent "mad-doctors," who concurred in pronouncing him deranged, and unfit to be at large. He was accordingly detained in custody until the close of the session several days afterwards, when he was set at liberty. He walked out of the committee-room in which he had been detained, and proceeded up Parliament Street and along the Strand. As he was walking quietly along he was again arrested by a constable, not for the breach of privilege, but for a breach of the peace in striking Mr. Brougham. He was consigned to the House of Correction in Cold Bath Fields, where he lay for several years. The sole grounds of his detention after the first day or two were the medical certificates that he was unfit to be at large. He might have had his liberty at any time, however, but he persistently refused either to employ a solicitor or to give bail for his good behaviour. To several persons who demanded from him his reasons for horsewhipping Mr. Brougham in the sacred purlieus of the House of Commons, he quoted the illustrious example of One who scourged sinners out of the temple. During part of the time of his imprisonment he occupied the same cell with Tunbridge, who had been a warehouseman of Richard Carlile, and had been sentenced to two years' confinement for blasphemy. The cell was during the same year occupied by Fauntleroy, the banker and forger, whose misdeeds form one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of English criminal jurisprudence.

While he lay in durance he was an indefatigable reader of newspapers, and took special note of everything relating to Canada. He was also a persistent correspondent, and in a letter written to his children, under date of July 27th, 1824, we find this quasi-prophetic remark with reference to Canada: "The poor ignorant inhabitants are now wrangling about the Union of the Canadas, when, in fact, those Provinces should be confederated with New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and Newfoundland, for their general good, while each retained its Local Government, as is the case with the United States."

How he at last contrived to procure his liberty from Cold Bath Fields Prison we have not been able to ascertain. He persisted in his refusal either to give bail or employ a solicitor. It is not improbable that he was permitted to depart from prison unconditionally. In 1826 we find him publishing "An Appeal to the Common Sense, Mind and Manhood of the British Nation;" and two years later a series of letters on Emigration Societies in Scotland. For some time subsequent to this date we have no intelligence whatever as to his movements. He came over to America several years prior to the Canadian rebellion, but the sentence of banishment prevented him from entering Canadian territory. While the rebellion was in progress, he resided in Cleveland, Ohio, where he saw a good deal of the American filibusters who took part in the attempt to capture Canada at that period. We have said that Robert Gourlay was a loyal subject of Great Britain. He proved his loyalty at this time by doing his utmost to dissuade the conspirators from their enterprise, and by sending over important information to Sir Francis Bond Head as to their movements. For this he received several letters of thanks from Sir Francis, and an invitation to return to Canada, which, however, he declined to do until the sentence of banishment should be reversed. This was done by the House of Assembly after the Union of the Provinces in 1841, upon the motion of Dr. Dunlop. A pension of fifty pounds a year was at the same time granted to him, which, however, he refused to accept. He was not satisfied with a mere reversal of his sentence and the granting of a pension. He said, in effect, "I do not want mercy, but justice. I do not want to have the sentence merely reversed, but to have it declared that it was unjust from the beginning, that I may not go down to the grave with this stain resting on my children." Nothing further was done in the matter at that time, and for some years we again lose sight of him. He seems to have returned to Scotland, and to have contrived to save from the wreck of his father's estate sufficient to maintain himself with some approach to comfort. He resided for the most part in Edinburgh. It might well have been supposed that all the trials and sufferings he had undergone would have taught him a lesson, and that he would not again be so ill-advised as to recklessly bring trouble upon himself by interfering in public affairs which did not specially concern him. But his foible for searching out abuses was ineradicable and ingrained in his constitution. He could not behold injustice without showing his teeth, and his bumptiousness was destined to bring further suffering down upon his head. When he was not far from his seventieth year some land in or near Edinburgh which had theretofore been unenclosed, and which, in his opinion, should have continued unenclosed, was in some way or other appropriated, and the public were debarred from its use. We are not in possession of sufficient details to go into particulars. Mr. Gourlay denounced the enclosure as an act of high-handed tyranny, and harangued the common people on the subject until he had worked them up into a state of frenzy. Something resembling a riot was the result, in which he, while attempting to preserve the peace, was thrown down, and run over by a carriage. One of his legs was broken; a serious accident for a man of his years. The fracture refused to knit. He was confined to his bed for many months, and remained a cripple throughout the rest of his life.

His case was again brought before the Canadian Assembly during Lord Elgin's Administration of affairs in this country, but nothing final was accomplished on his behalf. In 1857 he once more came out to Canada in person, and remained several years. He owned some property in the township of Dereham, in the county of Oxford, and took up his abode upon it. At the next general election he announced himself as a candidate for the constituency, and put forth a printed statement of his political views. He received, we believe, several votes, but of course his candidature never assumed a serious aspect. In 1858 the late Mr. Brown, Mr. M. H. Foley, and the present Chief Justice Dorion took up his cause in the Assembly, and procured permission for him to address the House in person. On the 2nd of June he made his appearance at the Bar, and liberated his mind by a speech in which he commented rather incoherently on his banishment and subsequent life, and concluded by handing in certificates from Dr. Chalmers and other eminent men in Scotland as to his personal character and abilities. The final result was that an official pardon was granted by the Governor-General, which pardon Mr. Gourlay repudiated as an insult. He also continued to repudiate his pension. Having completed his eightieth year, he married a young woman in the township of Dereham, who had been his housekeeper. This marriage was a source of profound regret to his friends, and especially to his two surviving daughters. The union was in no respect a felicitous one, for which circumstance the proverb about "crabbed age and youth" is quite sufficient to account, even had there not been other good and substantial reasons. In course of time the patriarchal bridegroom quietly took his departure for Scotland, leaving his bride — and of course the farm — behind him.

He never returned to this country, but continued to reside in Edinburgh until his death, which took place on the 1st of August, 1863. He had completed his eighty-fifth year four months previously, and the tree was fully ripe.

At the time of his death he had two daughters surviving, and we understand that all arrearages of pension were paid to them by the Canadian Government. One of these ladies went out to Zululand as a missionary several years since, but was compelled by ill health to return to her home in Scotland, where she has since died. The youngest daughter, Miss Helen Gourlay, still resides in Edinburgh.