From the front page of the Huron Expositor
Friday, 13 November 1931

Reprinted with the permission of the Huron Expositor
Copyright: the Huron Expositor
“Your Community Newspaper Since 1860”
P. O. Box 69
11 Main Street
Seaforth, Ontario N0K 1W0

Chapter 8 Before the Legislature

The Reform House of Assembly of 1832-1836 possessed a Committee on Grievances on the active look-out for business, in which the most industrious member was, as might be expected, William Lyon Mackenzie. This Committee, perhaps instigated by Van Egmond, fell on the scent of the Canada Company dispute and proceeded to investigate it. They summoned witnesses from the Huron Tract, one for each side: Dr Dunlop for the Company; Colonel Van Egmond for the critics of that organization, and heard both in the sitting of February 6, 1835.

Dr Dunlop, in his capacity as Warden to the Forests of the Canada Company, gave evidence first. Asked concerning the organization of the Company, he stated that the nominal value of a share was one hundred pounds, the amount which each holder was obliged to pay if called on, but that in fact so far only seventeen pounds ten shillings had been paid on each share. The quotation on the London Stock Exchange had reached fifty-three pounds and in January 1835 had receded to forty-two pounds, a valuation which might seem optimistic for a share on which only seventeen and a half pounds had been paid, but which was, the Doctor said, in no way attributable to the operations of the Company; merely to the hoarding of bullion in Europe. The precise connection of the supposed hoarding with the exchange quotation, however, he failed to explain. To the enquiry whether the Company had been involved in lawsuits with settlers, he replied that it had experienced only two: one with Bergin for supplies he had furnished the Company’s clerks; the other pending with Van Egmond for the balance of a road account. For the rest, he was emphatic that no settler of the Company had ever been ejected from a lot. The Company were now selling lands in the Tract at from eight shillings nine pence to fifteen shillings an acre, for which they had paid two shillings sixpence an acre; for reserves in the unsettled townships they had charged nine shillings in the first year of their operations, 11s 6d in 1834. As terms, they usually gave credit with interest, payable in six instalments in five years. Only occasionally did the Company’s agents receive ready money, but they were finding sales much more extensive and payments more regular in 1835 than in the first three years - 1827 to 1830. For this satisfactory condition of affairs the arrival of the settlers of a more wealthy class was probably responsible.

To enquiries concerning finance, Dr Dunlop replied that the Company had paid 1,000 pounds taxes on unsold land in the Tract and nothing on unsurveyed land, from which facts it is to be deduced that taxation was not a serious burden on the Company’s finances. They had laid out 165,000 pounds which was ample compensation, said Dunlop, for any sums they drew out; they had never had loans from the government but had arranged in their contract with the Crown for a deduction of 48,000 pounds from the purchase price to be expended in improving lands, in building roads, bridges and harbours, a sum of which 2,600 pounds had already been spent to the satisfaction of the governor, who had power of supervision. The capital of the Company comprised 9,000 shares, most of which were held in London, some in Scotland, by people who received four percent on their money. But this four percent did not represent profits, merely part of the principal obtained from their subscriptions. The last statement seems to indicate a rather doubtful method of finance.

It is evident from the above that the worthy doctor said as little as he could concerning the Company, doubtless feeling himself in a hostile atmosphere and reluctant to discuss the affairs of his employers in such attendant circumstances of publicity. His main defence had been that the Company was far from making exorbitant profits, that it did not eject settlers, and that conditions in the Tract were improving largely on account of the Company’s expenditures on public services. On the other hand, it is evident that the shareholders were by no means unduly burdened in being required to pay only one-sixth of the sums for which they had contracted, that the price at which they sold was from three to four times that at which they had bought, and that the payment of interest was not done in a manner indicative of sound finance. The prospects of the Company were by no means bad.

Asked his opinion on more general topics, the Doctor stated his belief that the number of schools was insufficient, that letter rates were too high, that clergy of all denominations should share in payments made out of the public chest, i.e., the clergy reserves. He favoured the British Constitutional System of having the ministers chosen by the House of Assembly, but he objected to the election of the Legislative Council and he had no confidence in the ability of the Legislature to manage the clergy and crown reserves, as suggested by the Reformers. The worthy Doctor was by no means too confirmed a Tory; he had in mind the parliamentary system of the Britain of his time, and thought of the House of Assembly as corresponding to the Commons, the Legislative Council to the Lords, the executive council to the cabinet and the governor to the King, who still exercised considerable control over the executive and the property of the Crown. Only in detail would he have differed from William Lynn Mackenzie if both could have got rid of the emotional element which surcharged the politics of the time.

After Dunlop, Van Egmond appeared, described with his military rank and initials in full; Colonel A G W G Van Egmond of “Ross,” Hullett Township, in the Huron Tract. “I have been settled in the Tract six years this Christmas,” he declared, “And I am the oldest settler in it,” by which he probably meant that he was the first seriously to set about the business of farming as a means of living. He commenced by a recital of certain facts concerning the Company’s finance. It had contracted to pay 2s 10 ½ d per acre for the Tract over a period of sixteen years without interest, and less the deduction of 48,000 pounds, a sum equal to a shilling an acre, allowed for its own improvements to its own land. The company had received in return 1,200,000 acres of which 100,000 was given them for nothing as valueless swamp; and they were selling this land at from 12s 6d to 13s 9d an acre. Only in the first year, according to the Colonel, had the Company encouraged settlement, not since that date. Last year the officials had engaged a steamboat to bring settlers from Detroit to Goderich, but instead of so using it, they had taken it for pleasure trips up the lake for weeks at a time, through one of which the settlement had lost sixty Scots families. The Colonel believed that altogether from 250 t0 350 families had been lost, who settled in Michigan and other states because the Company had neglected to attract them. Worse, the agents of the Company, except Mr Wilson, were “very arbitrary, very tyrannical . . . I speak of agents residing on the Tract.” There were nineteen townships and only three magistrates, Charles Prior, John Webster, Captain Dunlop, “who do just what they please,” the particulars of which pleasure the Colonel omitted to specify. “We must be very polite to the agents.” The Company had scared settlers out of the Tract and ejected them without any form of law or justice; “there is no other law than the Company’s servants.” What inducement was there to the settlers to come or stay, the Colonel implied, when land in the States was selling at 6s 3d per acre and was likely to come down to 3s 9d? The European working settlers expressed themselves as “dissatisfied in the highest degree.” As regards improvements, the Company had constructed one road from Wilmot to Goderich and another from Vandersburg to London village, ninety miles in all, at a cost of 17,000 pounds, which was allowed out of the purchase money; they had also laid out about 5,000 pounds of grist and saw mills. They had made a profit of 28,000 pounds in 1833 after paying all expenses. Whether they took large sums out of the country, the Colonel did not know. The Company had been in the habit of paying for a third of their labour in money, for the other two-thirds in land at the rate of 7s 6d an acre, which had cost them not much more than 1s an acre. These terms they had continued during their first five years. In response to questions other than that of the Company’s alleged misdeeds, the Colonel stated that there was only one school in the Tract, in Goderich, a school maintained by the Company, that there were no ministers of religion of any kind and that there was no militia organization. Money was not more scarce than in any other place since Mr Taylor kept a private bank and issued notes from a dollar to a pound denomination which served as currency. The population of the Tract was generally estimated at 2,000 in all, a figure which could be only approximately correct. Asked where the best polling places would be in case Huron were formed into a county with representation in the Legislature, he replied, “One at Goderich and one where the big Thames River crosses the Huron road about thirty-three miles from Goderich,” the last place being apparently in the neighbourhood of Mitchell. This question evidently foreshadowed the intention of the Government to grant Huron representation in the House of Assembly in the capital.

From the evidence it is clear that the Colonel felt strongly on the subject of the Company. “Very arbitrary, very tyrannical . . . . dissatisfied in the highest degree.” These expressions seem hardly justified by the facts. His declaration that the Company had ejected settlers is at variance with Dr Dunlop’s emphatic statement to the contrary. Perhaps the Colonel referred to the rather high-handed action by Mr Prior, the deportation of twelve families adjudged “of a bad stamp” whom Dr Dunlop would not have classed as settlers of the Company: perhaps he referred to squatters and intruders who may have helped themselves to the Company’s land or perhaps to people who had abandoned their land through inability to keep up the payments. The Colonel’s definite charges amounted to these, that the Company sold land at a price high in comparison with the purchase price, high also in comparison with the price at which similar land could be obtained in the States, and that the agents in Goderich were neglecting opportunities to bring in settlers: in brief, that the Company was not properly promoting settlement. The Company would have replied that they were compelled to charge a high price to recoup themselves of their expenditures, that they had built the Huron Road for the settlers, were allowing part of the purchase price of land to be worked off in labour, and were maintaining a school, in short, that they were caring for the settlers to the best of their ability. The controversy narrows down to the single point whether the company's price for land, stated by Dr Dunlop to be 8s 9d to 15s an acre was too high. At that time the current price for Crown land appears to have been 5s to 10s an acre, depending on the location. Whether the excess charged by the Company more than balanced the cost of the conveniences they provided for the settlers could be decided only by an examination of the Company's books. A superficial glance, however, does not suggest that the charges, where exorbitant.

For Van Egmond himself this appearance before the Grievance Committee of the Legislature seems to have had important results. On this occasion (if not before) he made the acquaintance of William Lyon Mackenzie. The two must have found much in common in their Liberal sentiments. Whether the acquaintance ripened into personal friendship we do not know, but it led Van Egmond into close political association with the leaders of the Reform party and eventually into participation in the venture of 1837. In all probability, the Dutch Colonel returned to his home in that February of 1835, the home in that February of 1835, the Party in the Huron Tract.

NOTE: the type-setters of 1931 scrambled the last sentence of this chapter.