by way of Halifax, but upon being informed that there was a plot to aasassinate him before he could embark there, he determined to return by way of New York. Upon arriving there he took, up, his quarters at the City Hotel, where he invited Mr. Bidwell to call upon him. The invitation was accepted, and at the interview: which then took place, Sir Francis said:— "I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Bidwell, that you are the cause of my being recalled. I was instructed by the Colonial Secretary to place your name on the list of Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench, and was induced to send a remonstrange. That instruction was renewed, and, influenced by my advice, a further remonstrance was went. Afterward I received notice that my successor had been appointed." Mr. Bidwell then, perhaps, calling up in review all that he had lost and suffered, said:—"You may be correct in that, sir, but I now see why it was desired that I should leave the Province. You wished to be able to say to your superiors, whom you had disobeyed, that the man they intended to honour was a rebel, and had left the country." Mr. Bidwell retired without ceremony. But as an instance of the gentleness of the man's spirit, a gentleness which could not let the sun go down upon his wrath, he had not walked more than a block from the hotel before he felt ashamed of having been in such a temper, and was inclined to return and say so to Sir Francis, and bid him a respectful farewell. It is almost consoling to know that though he cherished no resentment against Sir Francis, he finally determined not to return to the hotel.
A well-known Canadian historian, while admitting that Sir Francis Head acted dishonourably in thus forcing Mr. Sidwell into exile, in order to sustain his own conduct in not raising him to the bench, remarks, very unjustly, that there seems to have been a secret consciousness of guilt on the part of Mr. Bidwell. He adds:—"An innocent man could scarcely have pronounced a voluntary sentence of expatriation on himself, as he well knew that the guilty only had anything to dread from British law and British justice." But it should not be assumed that Mr. Bidwell tamely accepted the condition imposed as to his leaving the Province. He was under terrible constraint; an extremity having few precedents. In the interview to which the Governor had called him he was assured that martial law was about, to be declared;, that his actual imprisonment was inevitable. Sir Francis, in great apparent tribulation, and with tears in his eyes, assured, Mr. Bidwell,
