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Swayze openly boasted that he had been concerned in the abduction of Morgan, and in the execution of Masonic vengeance upon him. He professed to be able to indicate the precise spot where the body was buried which spot, he declared, was not far from the bottom of his garden. Upon investigation these vainglorious boastings proved to be utterly without any foundation in fact.
Dickson, Claus and Swayze, in common with nearly every one in Upper Canada, well knew that their victim had been resident in the Province for nearly three times the period specified in the Act. Dickson had been in constant and familiar intercourse with him for sixteen months. Claus had known him nearly as long.
Isaac Swayze, Esquire, having been robbed of £178 5s. 8d., was exonerated from the payment of it; £6,000 was granted for the rebuilding and repair of gaols and Court Houses in the Western, London and Niagara Districts, each £2,000; an Act was passed to remove doubts with respect to the authority under which the Courts of General Quarter Sessions had been erected and holden; an Act to license practitioners in physic and surgery throughout the province, providing for the appointment of a Board of Surgeons to examine applicants, and imposing a penalty of £100 for practicing without license, but excepting from the application of the Act such as had taken a degree at any University in His Majesty's dominions, was passed; £292 was granted to repay advances on team-work, and for the apprehension of deserters by certain Inspectors of Districts; £1,500 was granted to provide for the accommodation of the legislature at its next session; £6,090 was granted for the uses of the incorporated militia; £111 11s. 7d. was granted for the Clerks of Parliament; £1,700 was appropriated to the erection of a monument to the memory of the late Major-General Sir Isaac Brock; the Quarter Sessions Act was again amended; £400 was repaid to the Honorable James Bayley, which he had paid for hemp delivered to him as a commissioner for the purchase of that commodity; and an Act incorporating the Midland District School Society.
Swayze had conversed with him at York more than a year before, and had been acquainted with his proceedings from month to month almost from week to week during the entire interval. The charge of being an evil-minded and seditious person was too absurd to be seriously entertained for a moment by any one who knew Mr. Gourlay as intimately as Dickson had done for more than eight years.
It is more especially absurd when we consider that the law was expressly made for their protection." General Introduction to Statistical Account of Upper Canada, p. lxviii. Seven or eight years after this time Swayze narrowly escaped prosecution for the murder of Captain William Morgan, who is presumed to have been slain for his threatened disclosure of the Masonic Ritual.
Charles J. Jenkins had already carried the cause of Georgia into the courts, and Linton Stephens, before United States Commissioner Swayze in Macon, had made an exhaustive argument upon the whole subject. Toombs forced these issues constantly into his cases, and kept public interest at white heat. In July, 1868, the people of Georgia made the first determined stand against the Republican party.
Swayze was a resident of the Niagara District, and the representative of the Fourth Riding of Lincoln in the Legislative Assembly, but was nevertheless a man of indifferent character, and so illiterate as to be barely able to write his name. During the Revolutionary War he had been a spy and "horse-provider" to the loyalist troops.
The Assembly, however, in early years, was always largely made up of such men as Isaac Swayze subservient creatures of the Administration, who opposed their influence to that of the tribunes of the people, and prevented any collision between the two Houses from assuming a very serious constitutional aspect.
But before any arrest could be effected under the Act of 1804 it was necessary that perjured testimony should be forthcoming. It was easily provided. On the 18th of December, 1818, a secret consultation took place between Dickson and one Isaac Swayze, at the former's private abode.
Isaac Swayze was a veritable modern counterpart of the client Marcus, and when he gained votes by holding his patrons in terrorem over the heads of the electors, he was merely echoing his ancient prototype: "I wait on Appius Claudius, I waited on his sire; Let him who works the client wrong beware the patron's ire."
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