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was conveyed to the Governor. By this time Sir Francis felt safe, and refused to ratify his embassy. Mr. Baldwin was therefore compelled to return to Mr. Mackenzie with an admission that the Governor had declined to furnish any written authority. This transaction is not the least scandalous of Sir Francis Head's achievements. By refusing to accredit his ambassador he placed Mr. Baldwin in an equivocal light before the country, and furnished the political enemies of the latter with a pretext for repeated insults. Everybody knows the rest of the story. Next day Dr. Rolph lost no time in making the best of his way across the Niagara River, where he admitted his complicity with the rebellion. Both Mr. Mackenzie and the unhappy men who suffered on the gallows for their share in that day's work gave the same account of the message delivered by Dr. Rolph to the insurgents, which, as they declared, enjoined the latter to wait until nightfall, and then not to lose a moment in advancing on the city, as the Governor was only pretending to negotiate in order to gain time. Assuming this message to have been really delivered by Dr. Rolph, it must be admitted that it places him in an unenviable light, for in that case he was guilty not merely of treason to his country, but of treachery to his friend. Mr. Baldwin never forgave him, and was never again on speaking terms with him.
The rebellion was, for a time, a serious blow to the Reform Party in Upper Canada. The ruling faction and their adherents saw their opportunity, and used it without stint. A cry of disloyality was raised, and everything was done to create a false idea in the public mind as to what really constitutes Reform principles. Disloyalty and rebellion were represented as the inevitable outcome of the principles of Upper Canadian Reformers. Every man who professed Liberal opinions was declared to be a rebel. Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Bidwell were placed in the same category as Mackenzie and Rolph. Those who were instrumental in promulgating this doctrine were morally guilty of a great crime, for none knew better than they that the leading spirits among the Reformers of Upper Canada were patriots, in the truest and best sense of that word. For some time Mr. Baldwin treated these calumnies with silent contempt. By some, his silence was construed into inability to defend himself, and more than four years afterwards one gentleman—the late Sir Allan MacNabb—presumed so far upon Mr. Baldwin's forbearance as to taunt him in a speech delivered several years afterwards in the House of Assembly. This was
