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This family compact surround the Lieutenant-Governor, and mould him, like wax, to their will; they fill every office with their relatives, dependants, and partisans; by them justices of the peace and officers of the militia are made and unmade; they have increased the number of the Legislative Council by recommending, through the Governor, half a dozen of nobodies and a few placemen, pensioners, and individuals of well-known narrow and bigoted principle; the whole of the revenues of Upper Canada are in reality at their mercy; they are Paymasters, Receivers, Auditors, King, Lords, and Commons!"
The history of human delusions is a very sad one, as sad almost as the history of human wickedness; and all those poor enthusiasts had a sad awakening, for they found that the barren fights of placemen would still go on, that the people would continue to be shorn, and that the condition of the poor was uncommonly likely to be worse than ever.
The Lords, aware of the insecure footing on which they stood, were careful not to provoke the hostility of the Commons. Clarend. Pap. iii. 423, 424, 425, 428, 432, 434, 436. There were forty-seven republicans; from one hundred to one hundred and forty counterfeit republicans and neuters, seventy-two lawyers, and above one hundred placemen. Ibid. 440.
Forced to dance attendance, day after day, among sneering courtiers and insolent placemen, and to submit to the criticism of practical sages and philosophers of routine, while, he was constantly denied an opportunity of explaining his projects, the quick-tempered Italian had gone away at last, indignant.
A public meeting of the people for any political purpose had never before been held in Bath, and therefore it attracted greater attention than is usual in other cities. Resolutions were now proposed and passed, which exposed the glaring injustice of paying away enormous sums of the public money to sinecure placemen and unworthy pensioners, &c.
Elevated with prosperity, or infatuated with vanity and pride, he spoke a language which his placemen, courtiers, and even his brother Joseph at first thought premature, if not indiscreet.
As a trusted friend and loyal supporter of the oligarchy of the day, whom a well-known radical who figured prominently in the later history of the Province was wont to speak of as that army of placemen and pensioners, "Paymasters, Receivers, Auditors, King, Lords and Commons, who swallowed the whole revenue of Upper Canada" the reference to a man of the type of young Dunlop, who aspired to political honours, was particularly distasteful, and sure to bring upon the object of his bitter animadversion the full vials of his wrath.
But the cases in which refusals impair or spoil a Government are very common. It almost never happens that the Ministry-maker can put into his offices exactly whom he would like; a number of placemen are always too proud, too eager, or too obstinate to go just where they should. Now Lord Salisbury, who, when this was written, was Indian Secretary.
The little clique of intriguing courtiers thought that it portended danger to their own influence. Some who had proved ineffective asserters of the views of the country party were alarmed for their seats; the King was easily persuaded that many of his own most obedient placemen might disappear. Buckingham and his friends managed even to
Moreover, though the selected nobles were all Tories, and almost all placemen, many of them had begun to look with uneasiness on the King's proceedings, and to doubt whether the case of Delamere might not soon be their own. Jeffreys conducted himself, as was his wont, insolently and unjustly. He had indeed an old grudge to stimulate his zeal.
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