THE HONORABLE WILLIAM HAMILTON MERRITT.

ST. CATHARINES, UPPER CANADA.

THE Honorable William Hamilton Merritt was truly regarded as a remarkable man. His opinions were striking alike for their merit and their contrariety; and though sometimes paradoxical, they were generally attractive, and were always in harmony with his character. His heart and feelings, for example, were ardently British, while his manner and style of thought were eminently American. On questions of allegiance he knew no wavering; on questions of progress he knew no rest. On his duty to his Sovereign he did not permit himself to reason; on his duty to his Country he reasoned overmuch. In one aspect his course was silent, and pointed like the needle to the pole; in another it was restless, as if overwrought by exertion, or shaken by fatigue. His intellectual vagaries stood in the way of his leading men, while the peculiar independence of his perceptions prevented his following them; but though he might fail to control others he would not on that account cease to govern himself. He began life by anticipating the period of his own existence, for, as we learn, he discovered an impatience to glimpse, as an infant, the land whose topography and institutions he subsequently studied as a man ; for, on the 3rd July, 1793, he inconsiderately made his appear- . ance in the flesh at Winchester in the State of New York, when his parents were journeying from one British Province to ano

ther. In doing so, he incidentally paid the country which they had disowned, and against which he subsequently fought, the neat compliment of being born within its borders. He drew his first and we may add his last breath on a journey, for he died in the state room of a steam vessel as he was passing through one of those grand artificial estuaries which mainly owe their existence in Canada to his energy and perseverance.

William Hamilton Merritt was the only son of Mr. Thomas Merritt, of Winchester County in the State of New York, a Royalist of the revolutionary time, and a Cornet in the Queen's Ranger Hussars. In 1781 this gentleman married a young lady of Charleston, South Carolina, who was beset with the desire to add "Merritt” to her pretty maiden names of Mary Hamilton. When her son was baptized, the names she had prized as a spinster, and pinned together as a wife, were blended anew, and in due season, with added honors, were transmitted by that son to another generation. In 1783 Mr. Thomas Merritt, with other Royalists, left the United States for New Brunswick, and ten years afterwards he with his family, removed from thence to Canada. After their arrival in this Province, young Merritt was sent to a school under the charge of Mr. Richard Cockle, at Ancaster, and afterwards to the Reverend Dr. Burns at Niagara. In 1808 he was entered as an undergraduate of Windsor College, Nova Scotia, where, unfortunately as we think, he remained but a short time. He left at the request of his uncle Mr. N. Merritt, to undertake the duties of supercargo in a vessel bound for the West Indies. His father, Mr. Thomas Merritt, appears to have been a gentleman of influence and consideration, for, in the year 1800, he received the appointment of Surveyor of Woods and Forests in Upper Canada, and three years afterwards that of High Sheriff of the Niagara District, which he retained until 1820. In 1812 he received a commission as a Major of Cavalry, and saw service in the war of that time.

To return to the career of his son. In 1810, on completing his

engagement with his uncle, he returned to Canada. On 25th May, 1811, he received from Governor Gore a commission of Ensign in the Fourth Lincoln Militia. On 24th April, 1812, he was appointed by General Brock, a Lieutenant of the first troop of Niagara Light Dragoons, and in the following year he received his commission of Captain from Sir Roger Hailles Sheaffe. He was present with General Brock at the surrender of Detroit, for which he had a medal, and, besides participating in almost all the stirring events on the Niagara frontier, he was engaged at the battles of Queenston, Stoney Creek, and Lundy's Lane, at the last mentioned of which he was made prisoner. In a Journal of Events kept by him during the war, and published in 1863, there are many interesting notes. Having in the first instance been disappointed in his expectation of being called on to raise a troop of Cavalry, he, on the 25th February, 1813, "went quietly home, entered into a contract for timber, and made more money in a week than he had done during the war." His gains seem to have put him in good spirits, for he adds: "I made a peace, the ensuing spring, in my own warm imagination." However the dream of peace was but of short duration, for General Vincent, then in command, commissioned him to raise a troop. The order was issued on the 11th of March, and on the 25th of that month his troop was reported for duty. Captain Merritt appears to have possessed a more than ordinary share of coolness and address. After the battle of Stoney Creek, for example, he was desired by Colonel Harvey to return to the field, and if possible find Major General Vincent, who was supposed to be dead or wounded." Whilst I was looking over the dead," he writes, "I was challenged by a sentry under old Gage's house. I was on the point of surrendering, as my pistols were in my hostlers, when I adopted the stratagem of inquiring in a peremptory tone, “Who placed you there?" at the same time I rode boldly up to the soldier. By my blue military coat he took me for one of his own party, and answered, "My Captain, who has just gone into the house with a

party of men." "I then enquired if he had found the British General, and pulled out my pistol, which made him drop his gun. At that moment an unarmed man ran down the hill; I called him, when I had the good fortune to secure both and bring them off." "By my dress," he adds, "they took me for one of their own officers. The stratagem had succeeded once before, or I should not have thought of it." It was, he might have added, a new illustration of an old proverb, that "fortune favors the bold." At the battle of Lundy's Lane, having carried out some directions of Major Robinson's, for the recapture of the gallant Major-General Riall, who had been taken prisoner by the Americans, Captain Merritt got too close to and became entangled with the enemy, and was made prisoner by a party of soldiers of the 28th regiment. He was sent with fourteen officers, including Major-General Riall, and Captains Loring, Nelles, McLean, and Washbourne, to Schlosser.

The Journal, during this period, is neither a record of war nor a confession of misery. On the contrary, the discipline of restraint seems to have been attended with very exhilarating accompaniments, and as it turned out, with very important results. Cricket, in the day-time, when the weather was fine, and billiards when it was wet, followed by social junketings, or set balls in the evening, seem to have been the daily routine. The Journal narrates with evident approval, that the British captives very successfully cut out their American gaolers in the estimation of "the girls." Our hero, by the way, appears to have had an appreciative eye for "the girls," for we find two or three entries in the following style: "Part of our company went to church, heard a Baptist Minister preach. His discourse was on everything; could not comprehend his meaning; an abundance of fine girls there." On another occasion, we read: "Church in the morning, the Elder's sermon not very edifying, a large concourse of people, many beautiful girls." This discipline of bad sermons and beautiful girls, of things painful to the intellect and pleasant to the sense, appears

to have resulted in the usual way. The doctrine of the preacher was treated as a puzzle, and given up, while the listener pleasantly resigned himself to a style of tuition which was apparently more agreeable and certainly more natural than the discourses of the Baptist Elder. As an apparent result of the influence of "the girls," we learn that on a particular day the imprisoned Captain drew a bill on George Platt, Esq., of Montreal, for £50, and in the evening supped, "by accident," with Dr. Prendergast, ("afterwards my father-in-law,") the journal parethentically adds. We are not informed who besides the Doctor was present at the accidental supper, but the words within brackets, coupled with some transactions which occurred on the following day, and which are thus narrated, "I got some clothes and toggery," go far towards filling up the hiatus. The entry about clothes and toggery" is sententious in the extreme, and suggests on the part of the writer a settled determination to crown the accident with what disagreeable bachelors in their ignorance call a "calamity." The form of reprisal however, to which the "clothes and toggery" led had the advantage of being classical as well as poetical. Perhaps it was somewhat Sabinean in its nature, but it was Sabineanism purified and made picturesque by religion and civilization. From the place of his unwilling captivity, and without any apparent difficulty, he bore a willing captive home; for she who had met him by accident, as the enemy of her country, designedly and on deliberation, elected to live her life with him, and to accept him for her husband, irrespective of the risk of becoming, as she did become in due time, the mother of a large family of British subjects. The Journal of Events ends thus: "All the prisoners got their freedom by the closing of the war." Mr. Merritt reached home about the end of March, 1815, but not alone, as another register informs us. "clothes and toggery," the suspicious successors of the "accidental supper," and the "chance-meeting with his father-in-law,"

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