1* V ^ :^b024C AGE, ABOUT 45. T^ •v SHTFTrH fW TIT- T AMP ti\'. JUO iiAUBURTON* '•The ClocknaAkrtr/'lm. vy }«iu«l ttiuwt to th« follow r !f<» »wl tiuitte. Tliomas Cliariciu.. iiAUuuru WinecewiWt% ITfM'l V - .-18 de>ir«mtkid fi .,«(,* v^,.. and Ktwuiaaius, fi Border f:i. Malibxirton, only child o) ,m ii*i»if*r{^. lUiiiins, who tmrsi^l Hober -vhimi was Walfcfr ?^Ui4 ii«w«*wiii*i * The anwiymous , .. in writing the above sketeh, and it ^' bo generally kuown m fclMfrautho; STich. Ah, bowcver. >>im*7k th',^ ttoiineing tho; f;.r!h-v:;r;tig voiu!^ nection wit; houghr Bight huiHlreUftna iilnetx-aevttn, b.v Ho. e-.j f^ ^>^ > /^ ZbOZid T' ^..^•MW^YtMl /A-'^-^,^^^. * < i. i A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE HALIBURTON.* IN thj absence of any suitable biography of the author of " The Clockmaker," his centenary may lend an interest to the following brief sketch of his life and times. Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born at Windsor, in the Province of Nova Scotia, on the 17th day of December, 1796. He was descended from the Haliburtons of Mertoun and Newmains, a Border family, one of whom was Barbara Haliburton, only child of Thomas Haliburton, of New- mains, who married Robert Scott, and whose second son was Walter Scott, the father of the immortal Sir Walter. Her eldest son left numerous descendants. Sir Walter's tomb * The anonymous form seemed to me the most convenient to adopt in writing the above sketch, and it was understood that, while I should be generally known as the author, my name sliould not be published as such. As, however, since the above was v ritten, the circulars an- nouncing the forthcoming volume have mentioned my name in con- nection with it, I have thought it best to append this note. —R. G. Haliburton. Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, by Robert Grant Haliburton, at the Department of Agriculture. 1 is in the anciont burial place of the Haliburtons, St. Mary's Aisle, in Dryburgh Abbey. About the beginning of the last century nearly all of her numerous uncles migrated to Jamaica, and the eldest of them, Andrew Haliburton, re- moved thence to Scituate, near Boston, INIassachusetts, where he, and. subsequently, his .son William, married members of the Otis family, to which the well-known James Otis belonged. William Haliburton (whose cousin. Major John Haliburton, Olive's colleague, was, according to Mill's History of India, " the Founder of the Sepoy force,"*) removed to Nova Scotia with many persons from Scituate, when the vacant lands of the Acadian French were offered to settlers. His son, the Hon. William Hersey Otis Haliburton, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, in Nova Scotia, mar- ried Lucy Grant, a daughter of Major Alexander Grant, one of Wolfe's Highland officers at the siege of Quebec, who, after the French war, settled in the colony of New York, where he married a Miss Kent, a near relative of the famous Chancellor Kent. He was killed in the Revolutionary War, at the storming of Fort Stanwix, while in command of the New York Volunteers. Chief Justice William Hersey Otis Haliburton left an only child, the future author of " Sam Slick," who was educated at the Grammar School, Windsor, and afterward, at the same place, at the University of King's Coliege, for Tory King's College of the Colony of New York had migrated to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where, preserving the traditions * The only references to him in Scott's " Memorials of the Halibur- tons " (printed privately in 1820 to show that that family had become extinct in the male line) are, "killed on parade at Madras by a fanatical Sepoy," and "he was the last survivor in the male line of the Hali- burtons of Newmains and Mertoun." Mill speaks of his death, and says that " the name of Haliburton was long remembered by the Madras Sepoys." There is no tablet to his memory in the burial place of his family. 2 of Oxford of olden times, it remained out and out Tory in its politics, and continued unchanged, even after Oxford itself had long felt the influence of modern ideas. In its colle- giate school, as late at least as 1845, that venerable heirloom, "Lilly's Latin Grammar," which had not a word of English from cover to cover, and which was a familiar ordeal for boys long before Shakespeare was born (Cardinal Wolsey, it is said, assisted in its composition), was still employed. It even retained the quaint old frontispiece representing boys with knee-breeches and shoebuckles (probably a picture of the original " Blue-coat Bo3's ") climbing up the tree of know- ledge, and throwing down the golden fruit. Daily, too, at the meals in the College Hall there was, and perhaps may be to this day, heard a quaint Latin grace, which was droned by the "senior scholar," beginning, Oculi omnium ad te apectant, Domine ; probably the same that wjis heard in some college halls in. the days of the Crusades. It is to be hoped that the " spirit of the age " has not led it to discard this and other venerable heirlooms derived from an ancient ancestry. This truly conservative and orthodox institution, in which the future author was crammed with classics, and taught to " fear God and honour the King," was then considered one of the most successful educational institutions in America, and it still ranks high in its reputation as a college. It is the oldest in the Colonies, and it is the only one that has a Royal Charter. Mr. Haliburton used often to puzzle his friends by saying that lie and his father were born twenty miles apart, and in the same house. The enigma throws some light on the early history of "Windsor. His father had extensive grants of land at Douglas, a place situated at the head waters of the St. 3 Croix, a tributary of the Avon, as to -vliich there is a grue- some tablet at St. Paul's Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the memory of a nobleman, who lost his life " from exposure during an inclement winter, while settling a band of brave Carolinians " at Douglas. The famous Flora McDonald, whose husband was a cap'.ain in that regiment, spent a winter in Fort Edward, the old blockhouse of which still overlooks the village of Windsor. The house at Douglas was built in the middle of the last century, like a Norwegian lodge, of solid timber covered with boaixis. When Mr. Haliburton's father removed from Douglas it was floated down the river, and was placed on the bank of the Avon, where th'^ town of Windsor now is, and in it Mr. Haliburton was born. The tide there is very remark- able, as it rises over thirty-six feet ; and while at high tide hundreds of Great Easterns could float there, when the tide is out the river dwindles into a rivulet, lost in a vast expanse of square miles of chocolate. The village early in the century consisted of one straggling street along the river bank, under green arches formed by the meeting of the boughs of large elms, a pretty little Sleepy Hollow, the quiet of which was only at times distui'bed by the arrival from Halifax of a six-hoi'se stage-coach at full gallop, or by the melancholy whistle of a wheezy little steamer from St. John, New Brunswick. The limited society of the j^lace, a bit of rural England which had migrated, was far more exclusive and aristocratic than that now found in Halifax, or any Canadian city (for a shop-keeper or retailer, however wealthy, could not get the entree to it), and was composed mainly of families of retired naval and military officers, " U.E. Loyal- ists," professional men, Church of England clergy, and pro- fessors at the College, and also one or two big provincial 4 A (li^^nitarie.s, with still bigger salaries, who had country seats whore thoy spent their summers. Tho officers, too, of a (li'tachmcnt of infantry stationed there largely contributed to break the monotony of tho place. Th(< migratory luiuse was in time succeeded by a much more coiiunodious one, built almost opposite to it ; and this, in its turn, soon after Mr. Ifaliburton was made a Judge, was deserted for what was his home for a quarter of a cen- tury, Olifton, a pictures(jue property to the west of tho village, consisting in all of over forty acres, bounding to the eastward on the village, to tho north on the river, and to the south on tho lands of King's College. Underlaid by gypsum, it was nmch broken up and very uneven ; and the enormous amount of earth excavated in opening up the gypsum quarries was all needed to make the pi-operty a comfortable and suitable place of residence. Lord Falkland, a Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, used to say that he had never seen any place of its size that had such a variety of charmijig scenery. One precipitous, sunny bank, about one hundred and fifty feet long and thirty feet high, became a dense thicket of acacias, and when they were in bloom, was one mass of purple and white blossoms, while pathways wandered up and down through gleaming spruce copses and mossy glades. One of its special points of interest was the "Piper's Pond," so named after a probably mythical piper of a Highland regiment, who, having dropped his watch into the water, dived after it, and never came up. It was one of the few " punch-bowls " in gypsum regions that are not found dry. As a landscape gardener, he was greatly aided by the thorough art training his assistant had obtained at the best ladies' school of her day — one at Paris supported by the old 5 Xoblesae. Her history, from early eliildhood to the time when she arrived at Windsor, the youthful bride of Mr. llaliburton, who himself was still a minor, was a singular Huccession of romantic incidents. She was a daughter of Captain Laurence Neville, of the 19th Light l>ragoons, and as she was very young when her mothei- dit»d, her father, having made provisioii for her support and education before rejoining his regiment in Inilia,* left her in char^o of the widow of a brother rdllcer, a sister of Sir Alexander Lockhart, who subsequently, unknown to him, married William Put- nam McCabe, a man of means, who became the Secretary of " the United Irishmen " of '98. When he escaped to Franco in an open smuggler's lx)at, he took with liim his wife and also her ward, Miss Neville ; and in 181G, the year the latter was married, in spite of the ten thousand pounds placed on his head ho secretiy went to I'^nglaiid to bid lier good-bye. Long before the thrilling tales of his escapes from the troops in pursuit of him, and other adventures, appeared in Madden's " History of the United Irishmen," they had been household words in the nursery at Clifton. The story of her marriage was equally romantic. When her father, who was living at Henley-on-Thames in 1812, was Oil his death-bed, he heard that a very old military friend, named Captain Piercy, was living not far from that place, and he therefore wrote to him, asking him to call on Miss Neville, and to render her such services as she might need until the arrival of her only brother, who was then in India with his regiment, the 11th Hussars. He died in ignorance * Tlie sworil of Tippoo Sahil), taken from his dead body by Capt. Neville, after the famous charge of hia rogimont at Seringapatam, which earned for them the name of "the Terror of India," ia now in the i.K)aae8sion of Sir Arthur Haliburton, G.C.B. 6 of the fact thiit ho had written to n porfoct stranger, an old retired naval officer of that name, who, with his wife, on receipt of the letter, called on Miss Neville, and invited her, as they had no children, to make their house her home. His step-nophow, Mr. Halihurton, while on a visit to England, mot her at his house, and though still a minor, l)ecarae engaged to and married her. The memory of these incidents was long preserved in the local traditions of Henley-on-Thames. Mr. Halihurton, who had graduati'd with honors on leavin<» college, in time wius called to the bar, and practised at Annapolis Royal, the former capital of Nova Scotia, where he ac(iuired a large and lucrati\e practice; hut a wider sphere of action was opened to him when ho became the represen- tative of the county of Annapolis, and, as such, by his power of debate and his ability, he speedily attained a leading position.* He was the first public man who in a British Legislature successfully advocated the removal of Roman Catholic dis- abilities. Speaking of his speech on that occasion, Mr. l>eamish Murdoch, in his " History of Nova Scotia," says it was " the most splendid bit of declamation that it has ever been my fortune to listen to. Ho was then in the prime of life and vigor, both mental and physical. The healthy air of country life had given him a robust appearance, though his figure was yet slender and graceful. As an orator, his manner and attitude were extremely impressive, earnest and dignified ; and, although the strong propensity of his mind to wit and humor was often apparent, they seldom detracted from * With the pormia^iou of Mr. Homy J. Morgan, portions of thia piipor are repio.liiced, in an abridged form, from his " Bibliotheca Caiiiulensis," published in 1867. the seriousness of his language, when the subject under dis- cussion was important. Although he sometimes exhibited rather more hauteur than was agreeable, yet his wit was usually kind and playful. On this occasion he absolutely entranced his audience. He was not remarkable for readi- ness of reply in debate ; but when he had time to prepare his ideas and language he was almost always sure to make an impression on his hearers." On this point Mr. Duncan Campbell, in his " History of Nova Scotia " (p. 334), says : *' The late Mr. Howe spoke of him to the writer as a polished and eflFective speaker. On some passages of his more elaborate speeches he bestowed great pains, and in the delivery of them, Mr. Howe, who acted in the capacity of a reporter, was so captivated and entranced that he had to lay down his pen and listen to his sparkling oratory. It is doubtless to one of these passages that Mr. Beamish Slurdoch refers." It is difficult to imagine a more uninviting arena than was presented at that time by Nova Scotian politics, or more i I undesirable associates in public life than the politicians of i ; that day. The Province was ruled over by a Council consist- I j ing of a few officials living at Halifax, one of the leaders of I } which was the Church of England Bishop. In vain, there- ! I fore, year after year Mr. Haliburton got the House to vote a grant to a Presbyterian institution, the Pictou Academy. It was invariably rejected by the Council ; while a small i I grant in aid of public schools was contemptuously rejected I j without any discussion as to it. His ridicule of the 1 I conduct of the Council in that matter gave them great i I offence, and they demanded an apology from the House, which, however, was refused, as the House resolved that there was nothing objectionable in his remarks, and also that they 8 ■i«i> I ""#:3 ■. .^ ^^^m^- •=*.h. \ y. "'•^ «a^?^ were privileged. The Council again more peremptorily de- manded an apology, when the House, incredible as it may seem, unanimously stultified itself by resolving that Mr. Haliburton should be censured for his remarks. He accord- ingly attended in his place, and was censured by the Speaker! It must, therefore, have been an infinite relief, when an opportunity offered of escape from such an ordeal as public life was in those days. He lived in the district embraced by the Middle Division of the Court of Common Pleas, of which his father was Chief Justice, while he liimself was the leader on that circuit. When, therefore, his father died, the vacant post was, as a matter of course, offered to him, and was gladly accepted. But in Pictou County, which was largely settled by "dour " Cameronians. and which gloried in those annual and ever-recurring battles against the Bishop and his followers, there are no doubt types of "Old Mortality" that will never erase to denounce his retirement from the perennial strife as a great sin, and an act of treason to his country, or (what is the same thing) to the Pictou Academy. In 1828, when only thirty-two years of age, he received the appointment of Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1841 the Court of Common Pleas was abolished, and his services were transferred to the Supreme Court. In February, 1856, he resigned his office of a Judge of that Court, and soon afterwards removed to England, where he continued to reside till his death. It was a curious instance of "the irony of fate," when the successful advocate of the removal of the political disabilities of Roman Catholics was a quarter of a century afterwards called on as a Judge to rule that the rights of Roman Catholic laymen, as British subjects, could not be restricted by any ecclesiastical authority. ii: I I Garten, a very prominent and respected Irishman living in Halifax, having been excommunicated, was denied access to his pew in St. Mary's Cathedral, of which he was tlie legal owner. Judge Haliburton's ruling in favor of the plaintiff in Carten vs. Walsh et al, was a very able one. This was probably the only case in w'lich a judge in Nova Scotia ever had to order a court room to bo cleared in con- sequence of manifestations of public excitement and feeling. About 1870 the same point was raised at Montreal in the famous " Guibord case." The members of a French- Canadian literary society, which had refused to have standard scientific woikb weeded out of its library, were excommuni- cated. One of them, named Guibord, had bought and was the legal owner of a lot in the public cemetery at Montreal, a.id, when he died, his body was refused admission to it. Though t'lis proceeding was justified by the Quebec courts, their judgments were reversed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and upon the defendants refusing to obey " the order of Her Majesty in Council in the matter," some thousands of troops were called out, and the body, under military prote* tion, was buried under several feet of Portland cement in the G'.iibord lot. While the ruling in Cnrten vs. Wahh et al. created some bitter enemies that were powerful enough to make their hostility felt, some offence (perhaps not altogether without apparent cause) may also have beer, taken by them at a few incidental philosophical allusions in "Rule and Misrule of the English in America " to the important results that were likely to flow from the new role of the Roman Catholic Church as a political power in the New World, a subject that he would no doubt ha/e prudently avoided could he have foreseen the bitter controversy as to 10 that question that was about to be caused by the rise of the '• Know-nothing Movement." Thanks to that wonder-worker, Time, the lapse of fifty years rarely fails to take all the caloric out of " burning questions," and is able to convert the startling forecasts of thinkers into the trite truisms of practical politics. Tiie animus against him, however, was probably of a per- sistent type. - From the ills of life," says Longinus, «« there is for mortals a sure haven-death, v.hile the woes of the gods are eternal." But successful authors are not much better off than the unlucky gods, for their names and their works survive them and can be tabooed. The generous tribute from the Archbishop of Halifax and Mr. Senator Power, at the Haliburton Centenary meeting at Halifax, to the important services he had rendered three''- quarters of a century ago, is a pleasing proof that a public man may safely do his duty and leave his life to the impartial verdict of a later generation. A few years after taking up his residence in England, he paid a visit to Ontario, Canada, where he negotiated the pur- chase by the Canadian Land and Immigration Company of an extensive tract of country near Peterborough. Most of it that is not now sold is included in the county of Haliburton, which returns a member to the Ontario Legislature, and the ' county town of Haliburton is the terminus of the Haliburton branch of the Grand Trunk Railway. In 1 8 1 6, as already stated, he married Louisa, only daughter of Captain Laurence Neville, of the 19th Light Dragoons (she died 1840), by whom he had a large family.* And secondly, in 1856, Sarah Harriet, widow of Edward Hosier Williams,' *He left two sons and five daughters. 11 i!ii I of Eaton Mascott, Shrewsbury, by wliom ho hjul no issue, and who survived him several years. That life-long exile, the poet Petrarch, says that men, like plants, are the better for transplanting, and that no man should die where ho was lx)rn. For years Judgo Haliburton stjignated and moped in utter solitude at Clifton, for his largo family had grown up and were settled in life elsewhere, while death had removed the little band of intellectual companions whose society lu-uJ been a great source of enjoyment to him. But he got a now lejise of life by migrating to England. His second wife was a very intelligent and agreeable widow lady of a good social position, who even after having made a con- siderable sacrifice of her means in order to marry him, was comfortably off. It was a very happy match, and she proved to be a most devoted wife. Before they were married she had leased Gordon House, situated on the Thames, not far from Richmond (a house built by George I. for tlie Duchess of Kendal, who after his death believed that her royal lover used to visit her in the form of a crow in what is still known as "The haunted room "). In time the gardens and grounds there were referred to as showing what lady floriculturists can accomplish. His family, most of whom resided in England, were delighted at seeing him in his old age well cared for in a comfortable home. As an author, he first came before the public in 1829, as the historian of his native Province. His work, which was well received by both the public and the press, and was so highly thought of that the House of Assembly tendered him a vote of thanks, is to the present time regarded as a standard work in the Province. Six years subsequently he became unconsciously the author of the inimitable " Sam Slick." In a series of anonymous 18 c c c 3! c o c articles in the Xova Scotinn newspaper, then edited hy Mr. Joseph Howe, he made use of a Yankee peddler as his mouth- piece. The character proveon found that he had fallen on evil times, and that among al classes above the mass of the people, but especially amon. politicians. Conservative as well as Liberal, there was I growing hostility to the colonies. " Oh ! was it wise, when, for the love of gain, Knglanrl forgot lior sons beyond the main ; Held foes as friends, an.l friends as foes, for they To hor are dearest, who most dearly pay ? " Though no one in Pariiament dared to openly advocate disintegration, there was a settled policy on the part of a secret clique, whose headquarters were in the Colonial Office to drive the colonies out of the Empire by systematic snub- oing. injustice and neglect. 21 This infuinous stAie of things, of which all clnssefi of Englishmen profoHS now to be ashamed, was made apparent when Judge Ilnlilmrton moved in the House of Commons that some months' notice should be given of the Act to throw open British markets to Baltic timber, a measure which, if suddenly put in operation, would seriously injure New Brunswick merchants ; and he urged as a reanon for due consideration for that interest, that it was not represented in Parliament. Mr. Gladstone did not condescend to give any explanation or reply, but led his willing majority to the vote, and the Bill was passed. People sometimes cite what occurred at this debate as a proof that " Judge Haliburton was not a success in the House of Commons ; " but it is difficult to imagine a more uncon- genial audience for an advocate » ' Imperial Unitj', Gladstone, as if to remove any doubt as to his aninms in these proceedings, sent a singularly insolent reply to a letter written to him by a New Brunswick timber merchant pro- testing against this unexpected measure. " You protest, as well as remonstrate. "Were I to critically examine your language, I could not admit your right, even individually, to protest against any legislation which Parliament may think fit to adopt on this matter." Had the protest only been in the form of dynamite he would have submissively bowed down at the sound of that " chapel bell" which has since then from time to time called him and his cabinets to repentance. His two .attempts to destroy the Empire, first by attacking its extremities through Imperial disintegration, and, next, its heart by Home Rule, alike failed ; and he has retired from public life, leaving behind him the fragments, not of a great Empire, but of a shattered party. Though a majority of lx)th parties. Conservatives as well as 22 of ent lona row h,if New due ed in e any vote, e as a House uncon- mus in a letter ,nt pro- )test, as le your ually, to think been in bowed ace then lentance. stacking next, its ired from of a great as well as ^y Liberals, agreed with thoir two leaders in their wish to got rid of the Colonies, (for Disraeli, as far back as 1852, wrote, "Those wretched Colonies will all be independent in a few years, and are a millstone around our neck"), the people wore wiser and more patriotic than their politicians; and in 18G9 (only four years after Judge Haliburton's death) over one hundred and four thousand workingnien of London signed an address to the Queen protesting against any attempt to get rid of that heritage of the people of England — the Colonial Empire. This memorial was not considered worthy of any reply or acknowledgment.* At that time, when the fate of * It could not have been conveniently jwjeoji-lto/nt, for i1 re- quired six men to carry it ; but wo may assimio that it never j^ot farther than the Home Office, and that Her Majesty never heard of it, and therefore never replied to it. The petition was writttn by tlio truest friend the colonies have ever had — one who died in liarnoHS while working in their cause — the late C. W. Eddy, wiio infonnod the writer that the Disintegration party had for a time so effectually "captured" the Royal Colonial Institute, of whicli he was Secretary, that the Council refused to allow the jK'tition to lie on the table of the reading-room on the ground that it was "revolutionary!" So un- satisfactory was their conduct as late as 1872, that another colonial society would have been founded, had not the colonial clement gained the day in the Institute. How far the petition was "revolutionary"' may bo seen from tlio following extracts : "We beg to represent to your Maje.sty that we have heard with regret and alarm that your Majesty has Ijeen advised to consent to give up the colonies, containing millions of acres of unoccupied land, which might be employed profitably' both to the colonies and to our- selves as a field for emigration. We respectfully submit that your Majesty's colonial possessions were won for your Majesty, and settled by the valor and enterprise and the treasure of the English people ; and that, having thus become part of the national freehold and in- heritance of your Majesty's subjects, they are held in trust by your Majesty, and ought not to be surrendered, but transmitted to 3'our Majesty's successors, as they were receivein ; uorunntiunn aro blank dayH to thorn ; no brevots go acrons tho wator excupt to tlio En){liNli ulIicnrH, who are 'on foreii^n nnrvico in tho oolonioH.' No kni^hthcKKl U known thoro — no Htw whit«) families and a thounand or two of blacks. As the manufacturu of Montserrat liniH-juico bad not then l)een coininonced, the island must havo b<'on even inoro dnsolat<> and woe-lxigone than it now is. " Judgo Haliburton died at his rosidonor at Isleworth, on the banks of the Thames, where he had greatly ondoared himself to the people of the place during the few years which he had spent among them, and was buried in the Islewtirth churchyard ; and, in accordance with one of his last wishes, his funeral was plain and unostentatious." " In the words of a local chronicler : — * The village of Islo- worth will henceforth be associated with the most pleasing reminiscences of Mr. Justice Haliburton; and the nan.