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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 Win<i8<.
vhe -Province of N<iv» fckoli «i*^ irf |>ecewiWt%
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 ?^<xv. ^
Her eldest aou hit i,uwi*Mt>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^
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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be generally known as the author, my name sliould not be published as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
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I
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•=*.h. \
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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 prove<l to bo '* a hit," and the articles
greatly amused tlio readers of that paper, and were widely
copied by the American press. They were collected together
and published anonymously by Mr. Howe, of Halifax, and
several editions were issued in the United States. A copy
was taken thence to England by General Fox, who gave it to
Mr. Richard Bentley, the publisher. To Judge Haliburton's
surprise, he found that an edition that had been very favorably
received had l)een issued in England. For some time the
authorship was assigned to an American gentleman in London,
until Judge Haliburton visited England and became known
as the real author.
For his •* Sam Slick " he received nothing from the
publisher, as the work had not been copyrighted, but Mr.
Bentley presented him with a silver salver, on which was an
inscription written by the Rev. Richard Barham, the author
of the " Ingoldsby Legends." Between Barham, Theodore
Hook and Judge Haliburton an intimacy sprang up. They
frequently dined together at the Athenieum Club, to which
they belonged, and many good stories told by Hook and Bar-
ham were remembered by the Judge long after death had
deprived him of their society.
As regards "Sam Slick," he never expected that his name
would be known in connection with it, or that his productions
■would escape the usual fate of colonial newspaper articles.
On his arrival in London, the son of Lord Abinger (the
famous Sir James Scarlett) who was confined to his bed,
asked him to call on his father, as there was a question which
he would like to put to him. When he called, his Lordship
said, " I am convinced that there is a veritable Sam Slick in
13
the fleHh now Helling cIucIcm to the BluenoHes. Am I right 1"
♦* No," replied the Judge, " there is no such person. He was
a pure accident. I never intended to describe a Yankee
clockmaker or Yankee dialect ; but Sum iiVick slipped into
my book before I was aware of it, and once there he was
there to stay."
In some respects, perhaps, the prominence givon to the
Yankee dialect was a mistake, for, except in very isolated
communities, dialect soon changes. A Harvard professor,
nearly fifty years ago, indignantly protested against Sam
Slick being accepted " as a typical American." His indigna-
tion was a little out of place. It would be equally foolish in
an Englishman should he protest against Sam Weller being
regarded as a typical Englishman. Do typical Americans
wander about in out-of-the-way regions selling wooden clocks 1
Sam Slick represented a very limited class that sixty years
ago was seen oftener in the Provinces than in the United
States, but we have the best proof that The Clockmaker
suggested a true type of some " Downeasters " of that day in
the fact that the people of many places in the North-eastern
States were for many years convinced that they had among
them the original character whom Judge HeJiburton had
met and described.
Sixty years ago the Southern States were familiar with the
sight of Sam Slicks, who had always good horses, and whose
Yankee clocks were everywhere to be seen in settlers' log
houses.
Since Sam Slick's day the itinerant vendor of wooden
clocks has moved far west, and when met with there, is a
very diflferent personage from Sam Slick. Within the past
forty years, however, veritable Sam Slicks have occasionally
paid a visit to Canada. One of them sold a large number of
14
wooden cIocIch throughout Nova Scotia and Capo Breton.
They wore warranted to keep accurate time for a year, and
hundreds of noteH of hand wore taken for tlie price. The
notes passed by indorsement into thiid hands, but, unfortu-
nately, the clocks would not go. Actions were brought in
several counties by the indorsees, and the fact that Beth's
clocks had stopped caused as much lamentation and dismay
OS a money panic. The first case that came up was tried
before Judge Haliburton, much to the amusement of the
public and to the edification of the Yankee clockmaker, who
had a long homily read to him on the impropriety of cheating
Bluenoses with Yankee clocks that would do anything sooner
than keep time.
But a man may be a Yankee clockmaker without having
the "cuteness" and common sense of Sam Slick. In his
Early Reminiscences ^ Sir Daniel Lysons describes such an one
who, while soiling clocks in Canada, was tempted to stake his
money and clocks, etc., on games of billiards with a knowing
young subaltern. "The clocks soon passed into British pos-
session. They then played for the waggon and horse. Finally,
Sam Slick, pluck tu the backbone, and still confident, staked
his broad-brimmed hat and his coat; Bob won them; and
putting them on in place of his own, which he gave to his
friend Sara, he mounted the waggon and drove into barracks
in triumph, to the immense amusement of the whole garrison."
An English Reader has for half a century been in use in
French schools, which gives Sam Slick's chapter on ♦' Buying
a Horse " as one of its samples of classical English literature.
Experience is proving that the value attached by Sam
Slick to the geographical position and natural advantages of
the Province of Nova Scotia was not a mistaken one. We
are, however, apt to be more grateful to those that amuse
16
1
il I
! i
than to those who instruct us. Many persons who laughed
at Sam Slick's jokes did not relish his truths, and his popu-
larity as an author was far greater out of Nova Scotia than
in it; but it had ceased to depend on the verdict of his
countrymen.
Artemus Ward pronounced him to be the " father of the
American school of humor."
The illustrations of the Clockmaker by Hervieu, and of
Wise Saws by Leech, supplied the conventional type of
'* Brother Jonathan," or " Uncle Sam," with his shrewd smile,
his long hair, his goatee, his furry hat, and his short striped
trousers held down by long straps, a precise contrast to the
conventional testy, pompous, pot-bellied John Bull, with his
knee-breeches and swallow-tail coat.
Among all the numerous notices of Sam Slick's works that
have appeared from time to time, that by the Illustrated
London Neivs, on July 15th, 1842, which was accompanied
by an excellent portrait of Judge Haliburton, is the most
discriminating and appreciative.
" Sam Slick's entree into the literary world would appear to
have been in the columns of a weekly Nova Scotiau journal,
in which he wrote seven or eight years ago a series of
sketches illustrative of homely American character. There
was no name attached to them, but they soon became so pop-
ular that the editor of the Nova Scotian newspaper applied
to the author for permission to reprint them entire ; and this
being granted, he brought them out in a small, unpretending
duodecimo volume, the popularity of which, at first confined
to our American colonies, soon spread over the United States,
by all classes of whoso inhabitants it was most cordially wel-
comed. At Boston, at New York, at Philadelphia, at Balti-
! more, in short, in all the leading cities and towns of the
16
1 I
i
lii
Union, this anonymous little volume was to be found on the
drawing-room tables of the most influential members of the
social community; while, even in the emigrant's solitary
farm house and the squatter's log hut among the primeval
forests of the Far West, it was read with the deepest interest,
cheering the spirits of the backwoodsman by its wholesome,
vigorous and lively pictures of every-day life. A recent
traveller records his surprise and pleasure at meeting with a
well-thumbed copy in a log hut in the woods of the Mississippi
valley.
"The primary cautic of its success, we conceive, may be
found in its sound, sagr.cious, unexaggerated views of human
nature — not of human nature as it is modified by artificial
institutions and subjected to the despotic caprices of fashion,
but as it exists in a free and comparatively unsophisticated
state, full of faith in its own impulses and quick to sympathize
with kindred humanity ; adventurous, self-relying, untram-
melled by social etiquette ; giving full vent to the emotions
that rise within its breast ; regardless of the distinctions of
caste, but ready to find friends and brethren among all of
whom it may come in contact.
*' Such is the human nature delineated in Sam Slick.
" Another reason for Sam Slick's popularity is the humor
with which the work is overflowing. Of its kind it is
decidedly original. In describing it we must borrow a
phrase from architecture, and say that it is of a • composite
order ; ' by which we mean that it combines the qualities of
English and Scotch humor — the hearty, mellow spirit of the
one, and the shrewd, caustic qualities of the other. It derives
little help from the fancy, but has its ground-work in the
understanding, and affects us by its quiet truth and force
and the piquant satire with which it is flavored. In a word —
it is the sunny side of common 8e7ise."
17
A review of *• Nature and Human Nature " drew attention
to the fact that no writer lias produced purer conceptions of
the female character than are to be found in Sam Slick's
works. They show none of those morbid, sexualistic
tendencies which are betrayed in some modem novels written
by young ladies, or in semi-scientific papers on sexual subjects
by "advanced females." Tacitus praised the social purity of
the Germans at the expense of his corrupt fellow-countrymen.
" No one there makes a jest of vice," which we may now read,
"No one there writes novels about adultery." Sam Slick
tells us how he romped and flirted with country girls ; but in
all he has written there is not the slightest trace of impro-
priety, even by the most remote implication. There is no
harm in Sam Slick's jokes, which were originally intended for
rough, plain-spoken backwoods Bluenoses of sixty years ago ;
for, while impurity corrupts, however refined it may be,
coarseness does not. The Bible is often coarse, but never
impure.
Some years before Sydney Smith made what is generally
set down as his best joke, as to a day being so hot that it
would be a comfort to " take off our flesh and sit in our
hones" it had made its appearance in " Sam Slick ; " and
the country girl who says, " I guess I wasn't brought up at
all, I growed up," probably suggested Topsy's, "spec I
growed."
After this sketch had been written, a somewhat startling
suggestion, that the idea of The Clockmaker had been
borrowed from Dickens, and that Sam Slick was merely a
Yankee version of Sam Weller, led to an inquiry into the
point. The coincidences were many, and could hardly be
accidental. Dickens sends off Pickwick in his wanderings
without any apparent object in view, accompanied by a
18
\
shrewd and humorous Cockney valet, whose sayings and
doings are the prominent feature of the book; while Judge
Haliburton sends off the author on very similar travels,
accompanied by a cute Yankee, for whose yarns and jokes
the book is simply a peg on which they can be hung. In
both cases there is the faintest apology for a connected story.
If any one had been guilty of plagiarism, it was Dickens,
for the first number of the "Pickwick Papers" appeared
m April, 1836, while the early chapters of "The Clock-
maker" were pu},lishcd in 1835, and were at once widely
copied by the American press, and may have been seen by
Dickens.
The Cockney dialect was used as far back as 1811 in a
farce by Samuel Beazley, architect; and no doubt the
Yankee dialect in - The Clockmaker » was not its first appear-
ance in literature.
Duncan Campbell says in his "History of Nova Scotia"
(p. 335), " Sam Slick, the Clockmaker, immediately attracted
attention. The character proved to be as original and
amusing as Sam Weller. Samuel amuses us only. Slick
both amuses and instructs. Rarely do we find in any
character, not excepting the best of Scott's, the same
degree of originality and force, combined with humor,
sagacity, and sound sense, as we find in the Clockmaker!
Industry and perseverance are effectively inculcated in
comic story and racy narrative. In the department of
instructive humor Haliburton stands, perhaps, unrivalled in
English literature."
The Spectator (London) calls him " One of the shrewdest
of humorists;" and his biographer in Chambers' Encyclo-
pedia says, " he attained a place and fame difficult to acquire
at all times-that of a man whose humor was a native of one
19
country and became naturalized in another, for humor is
the least exotic oJ: the gifts of Genius."
Philar^te Chasles in the Revue ;» Deux Mondes,* in a
long and favorable notice of Judge Haliburton's works,
pronounced them to be unequalled by anything that had been
written in England since the days of Sir Walter Scott.
Long after " Sam Slick, the Clockmaker," first appeared, it
was by many persons referred to as a store-house of practical
wisdom and common sense, and a vade mecum as to the
affairs of every-day life. Forty years ago an able but very
eccentric Danish Governor at St. Thomas, in the West Indies,
was noted far and wide for his excessive admiration for Sam
Slick's works. Whenever a very knotty point arose before
him and his Council, which consisted of three persons, he
used to say " We must adjourn till to-morrow. I should like
to look into this point. I must see what Sam Slick has to
say about it."
A traveller on reaching the most northern town in the
world, Hammerfest, found that Sam Slick had been there
before him, for the " Clockmaker " was a hobby and a text-
book of a humorous Scotchman, who was the British consul
there at that time.
Judge Haliburton was very fond of youthful society ; old
men were too old for him, for he used to say that a large
majority of men when they begin to grow old become very
prosy. On the other hand, his humor and conversational
powers were very attractive to young men. In illustration
of this, the late Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who considered him the
most agreeable talker he had ever met, used to tell of meeting
him once during the shooting season, at a country house.
Next morning, to his surprise, he found all the young men
* Tome XXVI, 307 (1841).
20
/
\
r
IS, he
('
d like '
las to
n the
there
■ ■ !
text-
consul
f ; old
t large
e very
itional
oration
im the
leeting
house.
ig men
/
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1
!
X
H
o
a
O
X
o
Q
o
3:
en
gathororl around the Judge in tho s.n.king room, instead of
tl^ezr born, among tho turnips. They preferred hearing Sam
Shck talk to the delights of shooting.
In 1859. he consented to run for Launceston, where his
fnend. the Duke of Northumberland, had groat influence.
On his election he thanked his constituents. '«in behalf of
four million of British subjects on the other side of the water
who. up to the present time, had not one individual in the
House of Commons through whom they might be heard "
It seems almost providential that when an advocate of tho
Unity of the Empire was most sorely needed, he had for a
quarter of a century been writing in favor of the colonic-s
But for tho strong public opinion as to their value amon-^
the masses, whom the popularity of his works had enabled him
to reach, fanatical free-traders, in order to prevent the possi-
bility of a return to '.the Colonial System," might have
persuaded the nation to burn its ships by getting rid of its
colonies.
A solitary colonist at that period in the House of Commons
s.>on 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 receive<l by your Majesty."
The petition, after urging that by proclamation the mother country
and the colonies should be declared to be one Empire, adds, "we
would also submit that your Majesty might call to your Privy Council
representatives from the colonies for the purpose of consultation on
the affairs of the more distant parts of your Majesty's dominion."
23
England im a BrHt cI)VH8 powor was in the balance, tlioro wom
no need for the masses to be "educated up" to the subject;
it was rather their statesmen and politicians that rec^uired to
be educated down — down to the common senso of the coinmon
people.
The next move against the Disintegrationists was made
four years later, in 1K72, when " The United Empire
Review " revived the now familiar watchword of the old
"U. E. Lc^yalists" of 1770 (those Abe Lincohis, who fought
for the Union a hundred years ago), "a United Empire;"
and in 1873 an agitation was begun in the Premier's own
constituency (Greenwich) against the dismemberment policy
of the Government, that six months later drove them out of
power at the general election.
While Gladstone was deliberately striving to breed dis-
raion between the i)eople of England, Scotland, Ireland and
"gallant little Wales," and Ut get rid of our Colonial Empire,
his exact antipodes in everything, Bismarck, that Colossus of
the Nineteenth Centuiy, was devoting his giant energies to
his life-work, — the unity of Germany, and the creation of a
German Colonial Empire. It is possible that, as Sam Slick's
works are among his favorite books, he may have imbibed
to some extent Sam Slick's ideas as to the value of our
colonies, and the incredible folly of those that wished to get
rid of them ; and that we may hei'e find a clue to the
unmeasured contempt which the Prince used so often to
openly express for English politicians. But he must have
been most interested in Rule and Misrule of the English in
America, one of the most profoundly philosophical and pro-
phetic works to be found in the literature of any country.
Published in England, and by Harper Brothers, New
York, in 1851, a troubled time all over Europe, and
2i
oven in Americn, which had its Tamnmny Kail rule, and,
later on, its ** Know-nothing Movement," it pointed out that
American republican iiiRtitutions, which dated back to tho
old Puritans, were of slow growth, and could not \ye accjuire*!
or preserved in European countries by revolutions and uni-
versal suffrage ; and he foretold tho collapse of the French
Republic, the rise of Communism, the stern rule of self-
imposed Imperialism, and nearly all the leading features of
the political history of Europe and America since that date.
Time, however, had a marvel in store, the fruit of half a
century of social and political development, which even ho
did not foresee — a Frtsnch-Canadian Roman Catholic, sup-
ported by a Liberal majority from Quebec, ruling from ocean
to ocean over a new Dominion !
Some of his views, visionary as they may have appeared
fifty years ago, seem to have taken a practical shape at the
Queen's Jubilee.
" The organization is all wrong. They are two people, but
not one. It shouldn't be England and her colonies, but they
should 1x5 integral parts of one great whole — all counties of
Great Britain. There should be no tax on colonial produce,
and the colonies should not be allowed to tax British manu-
factures. All should pass free, as from one town to another
in England ; the whole of it one vast home market from
Hong-Kong to Labrador. . . . They should be repre-
sented in Parliament, help to pass English laws, and show
them what laws they want themselves. It should no more bo
a bar to a man's promotion, as it is now, that he lived beyond
the sea, than being on the other side of the channel. It
should be our navy, our army, our nation. That's a great
word, but the English keep it to themselves, and colonists
have no nationality. They have no place, no station, no
26
iliif
r
II
rank. Hutio'.-s don't nuicli th<>in ; 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 Ht<irs — no ariHtocracy — no
nobility. Thoy aro a mixnd race ; they have no bl<K)d. They
aro like our free niggeni. Thoy aro emancipated, but thoy
haven't the same social position hh tho whitt^H. The fottern
are oft', but the caHto, iia thoy call it in India, remainH.
ColonulH are the I'ariafis of the Empire."
Many per^onH have been surpriKod that tho ablost colonial
statesman and journalist since the days of Fratiklin, tho
Hon. Joseph Howe, *' the father of Responsible Government,"
and an advocate of the Unity of the Empire, died without
having received any mark of Imperial recognition, while a
motley crowd of Maltese, Levantines and stray Englishmen
in the colonies were able to tuld a handle to their unknown
names. That this was the case need not surprise us, for the
dispensing of uich favors was (and we must trust no longer
is) in the hands of those who were able, from behind the
scenes, to pull the strings of the Dismemberment movement.
The lie v. George Grant, D.D., in a very able address at
Halifax, on the life and times of Joseph Howe, said :
" We are, all of us, pupils of Haliburton and Howe. Is
not this a proof that, if you would know those secrets of the
future which slumber in the recesses of a nation's thought,
unawakened as yet into consciousness, you must look for them
in the utterances of the nation's greatest sons V
Before closing this sketch it is but right to mention an
instance (the only one) in which the British Government
seemed disposed to pay a tribute to tho ablest author and the
most profound thinker that the Colonir * Empire has yet
produced. As Judge Haliburton's unrivalled mastery of
86
colonial quoHtionH eminontly fitUnJ liiin to bo tlio Oovornor of
iiu iiiipoi'tunt(]op<Mi(loiicy, i\w Colonial OnU'c dflored to appoint
liiin Pi-eHidont of Montsorrat, a wnitolunl littlt? WoHt Indian
Island, inhabittMl by u f(>w 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.<es of
Cowley, Thompson, Pope, and Walpolo will find a kindred
spirit in the world-wide reputation of the author of Sam
Slick, who, like them, died on the banks of the Thames.'" *
In the same graveyard rests the immortal Vancouver.
Judge Haliburton, several years before his death, was told
by the sexton that a famous navigator was buried there, but
he did not remember the name, as it had become illegible on
the tombstone. It was found, on making enquiries, that the
person in question must have been Vancouver. A new
tombstone, with a suitable inscription, was placed over Van-
couver's grave; and several years subsequently a tablet to
hia memory was erected in the church. It is to be hoped
that the day will come when a suitable monument will be
raised to the great explorer ; and that Westminster Abbey
and St. Paul's may yet become the Valhalla, not only of the
Mother Country, but also of her Colonial Empire.
* Morgan's BiUiotheca Canadenaia, p. 169.
27
; ■
I
\
It matters not tlmt there is no public memoriivl to an
jvvithor whose writings croattHl among the nuusses a public
opinion in favor of the colonies that battleil the disuiember-
nient craze of English statesmen and theorists. Uo will have
a monument as long as the British Empire lasts.
liiil
S8
an
blic
ber-
iiive