A Sketch of the Life and Times of Judge Haliburton

Title: A Sketch of the Life and Times of Judge Haliburton

Author: R. G. Haliburton

Release date: December 15, 2014 [eBook #47670] Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47670

Credits: Produced by Larry Harrison, Cindy Beyer, Ross Cooling and the Project Gutenberg team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF

JUDGE HALIBURTON.[1][2]

In the absence of any suitable biography of the author of “The Clockmaker,” his centenary may lend an interest to the following brief sketch of his life and times.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born at Windsor, in the Province of Nova Scotia, on the 17th day of December, 1796. He was descended from the Haliburtons of Mertoun and Newmains, a Border family, one of whom was Barbara Haliburton, only child of Thomas Haliburton, of Newmains, who married Robert Scott, and whose second son was Walter Scott, the father of the immortal Sir Walter. Her eldest son left numerous descendants. Sir Walter’s tomb is in the ancient burial place of the Haliburtons, St. Mary’s Aisle, in Dryburgh Abbey. About the beginning of the last century nearly all of her numerous uncles migrated to Jamaica, and the eldest of them, Andrew Haliburton, removed thence to Scituate, near Boston, Massachusetts, where he, and, subsequently, his son William, married members of the Otis family, to which the well-known James Otis belonged. William Haliburton (whose cousin, Major John Haliburton, Clive’s colleague, was, according to Mill’s History of India, “the Founder of the Sepoy force,”[3]) removed to Nova Scotia with many persons from Scituate, when the

vacant lands of the Acadian French were offered to settlers. His son, the Hon. William Hersey Otis Haliburton, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, in Nova Scotia, married Lucy Grant, a daughter of Major Alexander Grant, one of Wolfe’s Highland officers at the siege of Quebec, who, after the French war, settled in the colony of New York, where he married a Miss Kent, a near relative of the famous Chancellor Kent. He was killed in the Revolutionary War, at the storming of Fort Stanwix, while in command of the New York Volunteers.

Chief Justice William Hersey Otis Haliburton left an only child, the future author of “Sam Slick,” who was educated at the Grammar School, Windsor, and afterward, at the same place, at the University of King’s College, for Tory King’s College of the Colony of New York had migrated to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where, preserving the traditions of Oxford of olden times, it remained out and out Tory in its politics, and continued unchanged, even after Oxford itself had long felt the influence of modern ideas. In its collegiate school, as late at least as 1845, that venerable heirloom, “Lilly’s Latin Grammar,” which had not a word of English from cover to cover, and which was a familiar ordeal for boys long before Shakespeare was born (Cardinal Wolsey, it is said, assisted in its composition), was still employed. It even retained the quaint old frontispiece representing boys with knee-breeches and shoebuckles (probably a picture of the original “Blue-coat Boys”) climbing up the tree of knowledge, and throwing down the golden fruit. Daily, too, at

the meals in the College Hall there was, and perhaps may be to this day, heard a quaint Latin grace, which was droned by the “senior scholar,” beginning, Oculi omnium ad te spectant, Domine; probably the same that was heard in some college halls in the days of the Crusades. It is to be hoped that the “spirit of the age” has not led it to discard this and other venerable heirlooms derived from an ancient ancestry. This truly conservative and orthodox institution, in which the future author was crammed with classics, and taught to “fear God and honour the King,” was then considered one of the most successful educational institutions in America, and it still ranks high in its reputation as a college. It is the oldest in the Colonies, and it is the only one that has a Royal Charter.

Mr. Haliburton used often to puzzle his friends by saying that he and his father were born twenty miles apart, and in the same house.

The enigma throws some light on the early history of Windsor. His father had extensive grants of land at Douglas, a place situated at the head waters of the St. Croix, a tributary of the Avon, as to which there is a gruesome tablet at St. Paul’s Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the memory of a nobleman, who lost his life “from exposure during an inclement winter, while settling a band of brave Carolinians” at Douglas.

The famous Flora McDonald, whose husband was a captain in that regiment, spent a winter in Fort Edward, the old blockhouse of which still overlooks the village of Windsor.

The house at Douglas was built in the middle of the last century, like a Norwegian lodge, of solid timber covered with boards. When Mr. Haliburton’s father removed from Douglas it was floated down the river, and was placed on the bank of the Avon, where the town of Windsor now is, and in it Mr. Haliburton was born. The tide there is very remarkable, as it rises over thirty-six feet; and while at high tide hundreds of Great Easterns could float there, when the tide is out the river dwindles into a rivulet, lost in a vast expanse of square miles of chocolate. The village early in the century consisted of one straggling street along the river bank, under green arches formed by the meeting of the boughs of large elms, a pretty little Sleepy Hollow, the quiet of which was only at times disturbed by the arrival from Halifax of a six-horse stage-coach at full gallop, or by the melancholy whistle of a wheezy little steamer from St. John, New Brunswick. The limited society of the place, a bit of rural England which had migrated, was far more exclusive

and aristocratic than that now found in Halifax, or any Canadian city (for a shop-keeper or retailer, however wealthy, could not get the entrée to it), and was composed mainly of families of retired naval and military officers, “U.E. Loyalists,” professional men, Church of England clergy, and professors at the College, and also one or two big provincial dignitaries, with still bigger salaries, who had country seats where they spent their summers. The officers, too, of a detachment of infantry stationed there largely contributed to break the monotony of the place.

Clifton, Windsor, N.S.

The migratory house was in time succeeded by a much more commodious one, built almost opposite to it; and this, in its turn, soon after Mr. Haliburton was made a Judge, was deserted for what was his home for a quarter of a century, Clifton, a picturesque property to the west of the village, consisting in all of over forty acres, bounding to the eastward on the village, to the north on the river, and to the south on the lands of King’s College. Underlaid by gypsum, it was much broken up and very uneven; and the enormous amount of earth excavated in opening up the gypsum quarries was all needed to make the property a comfortable and suitable place of residence. Lord Falkland, a Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, used to say that he had never seen any place of its size that had such a variety of charming scenery. One precipitous, sunny bank, about one hundred and fifty feet long and thirty feet high, became a dense thicket of acacias, and when they were in bloom, was one mass of purple and white blossoms, while pathways wandered up and down

through gleaming spruce copses and mossy glades.

One of its special points of interest was the “Piper’s Pond,” so named after a probably mythical piper of a Highland regiment, who, having dropped his watch into the water, dived after it, and never came up. It was one of the few “punch-bowls” in gypsum regions that are not found dry.

The Piper’s Pond.

As a landscape gardener, he was greatly aided by the thorough art training his assistant had obtained at the best ladies’ school of her day—one at Paris supported by the old Noblesse. Her history, from early childhood to the time when she arrived at Windsor, the youthful bride of Mr. Haliburton, who himself was still a minor, was a singular succession of romantic incidents. She was a daughter of Captain Laurence Neville, of the 19th Light Dragoons, and as she was very young when her mother died, her father, having made provision for her support and education before rejoining his regiment in India,[4] left her in charge of the widow of a brother officer, a sister of Sir Alexander Lockhart, who subsequently, unknown to him, married William Putnam McCabe, a man of means, who became the Secretary of “the United Irishmen” of ’98. When he escaped to France in an open smuggler’s boat, he took with him his wife and also her ward, Miss Neville; and in 1816, the year the latter was married, in spite of the ten thousand pounds

placed on his head he secretly went to England to bid her good-bye.

Long before the thrilling tales of his escapes from the troops in pursuit of him, and other adventures, appeared in Madden’s “History of the United Irishmen,” they had been household words in the nursery at Clifton.

The story of her marriage was equally romantic. When her father, who was living at Henley-on-Thames in 1812, was on his death-bed, he heard that a very old military friend, named Captain Piercy, was living not far from that place, and he therefore wrote to him, asking him to call on Miss Neville, and to render her such services as she might need until the arrival of her only brother, who was then in India with his regiment, the 11th Hussars. He died in ignorance of the fact that he had written to a perfect stranger, an old retired naval officer of that name, who, with his wife, on receipt of the letter, called on Miss Neville, and invited her, as they had no children, to make their house her home. His step-nephew, Mr. Haliburton, while on a visit to England, met her at his house, and though still a minor, became engaged to and married her. The memory of these incidents was long preserved in the local traditions of Henley-on-Thames.

Mr. Haliburton, who had graduated with honors on leaving college, in time was called to the bar, and practised at Annapolis Royal, the former capital of Nova Scotia, where he acquired a large and lucrative practice; but a wider sphere of action was opened to him when he became the representative of the county of Annapolis, and, as such, by his power of debate and his ability, he speedily attained a leading position.[5]

He was the first public man who in a British Legislature successfully advocated the removal of Roman Catholic disabilities. Speaking of his speech on that occasion, Mr. Beamish Murdoch, in his “History of Nova Scotia,” says it was “the most splendid bit of declamation that it has ever been my fortune to listen to. He was then in the prime of life and vigor, both mental and physical. The healthy air of country life had given him a robust appearance, though his figure was yet slender and graceful. As an orator, his manner and attitude were extremely impressive, earnest and dignified; and, although the strong propensity of his mind to wit and humor was often apparent, they seldom detracted from the seriousness of his language, when the subject under discussion was important. Although he sometimes exhibited rather more hauteur than was agreeable, yet his wit was usually kind and playful. On this occasion he absolutely entranced his audience. He was not remarkable for readiness of reply in debate; but when he had time to prepare his

ideas and language he was almost always sure to make an impression on his hearers.”

On this point Mr. Duncan Campbell, in his “History of Nova Scotia” (p. 334), says: “The late Mr. Howe spoke of him to the writer as a polished and effective speaker. On some passages of his more elaborate speeches he bestowed great pains, and in the delivery of them, Mr. Howe, who acted in the capacity of a reporter, was so captivated and entranced that he had to lay down his pen and listen to his sparkling oratory. It is doubtless to one of these passages that Mr. Beamish Murdoch refers.”

It is difficult to imagine a more uninviting arena than was presented at that time by Nova Scotian politics, or more undesirable associates in public life than the politicians of that day. The Province was ruled over by a Council consisting of a few officials living at Halifax, one of the leaders of which was the Church of England Bishop. In vain, therefore, year after year Mr. Haliburton got the House to vote a grant to a Presbyterian institution, the Pictou Academy. It was invariably rejected by the Council; while a small grant in aid of public schools was contemptuously rejected without any discussion as to it. His ridicule of the conduct of the Council in that matter gave them great offence, and they demanded an apology from the House, which, however, was refused, as the House resolved that there was nothing objectionable in his remarks, and also that they were privileged. The Council again more peremptorily demanded an apology, when the House, incredible as it may seem, unanimously stultified itself by resolving that Mr.

Haliburton should be censured for his remarks. He accordingly attended in his place, and was censured by the Speaker! It must, therefore, have been an infinite relief, when an opportunity offered of escape from such an ordeal as public life was in those days.

He lived in the district embraced by the Middle Division of the Court of Common Pleas, of which his father was Chief Justice, while he himself was the leader on that circuit. When, therefore, his father died, the vacant post was, as a matter of course, offered to him, and was gladly accepted.

But in Pictou County, which was largely settled by “dour” Cameronians, and which gloried in those annual and ever-recurring battles against the Bishop and his followers, there are no doubt types of “Old Mortality” that will never cease to denounce his retirement from the perennial strife as a great sin, and an act of treason to his country, or (what is the same thing) to the Pictou Academy.

In 1828, when only thirty-two years of age, he received the appointment of Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1841 the Court of Common Pleas was abolished, and his services were transferred to the Supreme Court. In February, 1856, he resigned his office of a Judge of that Court, and soon afterwards removed to England, where he continued to reside till his death.

It was a curious instance of “the irony of fate,” when the successful advocate of the removal of the political disabilities of Roman Catholics was a quarter of a century afterwards called on as a Judge to rule that the rights of Roman Catholic laymen, as British subjects, could not be restricted by any ecclesiastical authority.

Carten, a very prominent and respected Irishman living in Halifax, having been excommunicated, was denied access to his pew in St. Mary’s Cathedral, of which he was the legal owner. Judge Haliburton’s ruling in favor of the plaintiff in Carten vs. Walsh et al. was a very able one. This was probably the only case in which a judge in Nova Scotia ever had to order a court room to be cleared in consequence of manifestations of public excitement and feeling.

About 1870 the same point was raised at Montreal in the famous “Guibord case.” The members of a French-Canadian literary society, which had refused to have standard scientific works weeded out of its library, were excommunicated. One of them, named Guibord, had bought and was the legal owner of a lot in the public cemetery at Montreal, and, when he died, his body was refused admission to it. Though this proceeding was justified by the Quebec courts, their judgments were reversed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and upon the defendants refusing to obey “the order of Her Majesty in Council in the matter,” some thousands of troops were called out, and the body, under military protection, was buried under several feet of Portland cement in the Guibord lot.

While the ruling in Carten vs. Walsh et al. created some bitter enemies that were powerful enough to make their hostility felt, some offence (perhaps not altogether without apparent cause) may also have been taken by them at a few incidental philosophical allusions in “Rule and Misrule of the English in America” to the important results that were likely to flow from the new rôle of the Roman Catholic Church as a political power in the New World, a subject that he would no doubt have prudently avoided could he have foreseen the bitter controversy as to that question that was about to be caused by the rise of the “Know-nothing Movement.”

Thanks to that wonder-worker, Time, the lapse of fifty years rarely fails to take all the caloric out of “burning questions,” and is able to convert the startling forecasts of thinkers into the trite truisms of practical politics.

The animus against him, however, was probably of a persistent type. “From the ills of life,” says Longinus, “there is for mortals a sure haven—death, while the woes of the gods are eternal.” But successful authors are not much better off than the unlucky gods, for their names and their works survive them and can be tabooed.

The generous tribute from the Archbishop of Halifax and Mr. Senator Power, at the Haliburton Centenary meeting at Halifax, to the important services he had rendered three-quarters of a century ago, is a pleasing proof that a public man may safely do his duty and leave his life to the impartial verdict of a later generation.

A few years after taking up his residence in England, he paid a visit to Ontario, Canada, where he negotiated the purchase by the Canadian Land and Immigration Company of an extensive tract of country near Peterborough. Most of it that is not now sold is included in the county of Haliburton, which returns a member to the Ontario Legislature, and the county town of Haliburton is the terminus of the Haliburton branch of the Grand Trunk Railway.

In 1816, as already stated, he married Louisa, only daughter of Captain Laurence Neville, of the 19th Light Dragoons (she died 1840), by whom he had a large family.[6] And secondly, in 1856, Sarah Harriet, widow of Edward Hosier Williams, of Eaton Mascott, Shrewsbury, by whom he had no issue, and who survived him several years.

That life-long exile, the poet Petrarch, says that men, like plants, are the better for transplanting, and that no man should die where he was born. For years Judge Haliburton stagnated and moped in utter solitude at Clifton, for his large family had grown up and were settled in life elsewhere, while death had removed the little band of intellectual companions whose society had been a great source of enjoyment to him. But he got a new lease of life by migrating to England. His second wife was a very intelligent and agreeable widow lady of a good social position, who even after having made a considerable sacrifice of her means in order to marry him, was comfortably off. It was a very happy match, and she proved to be a most devoted wife. Before they were married she had leased Gordon House, situated on the Thames, not far from Richmond (a house built by George I. for the Duchess of Kendal, who after his death believed that her royal lover used to visit her in the form of a crow in what is still known as “The haunted room”). In time the gardens

and grounds there were referred to as showing what lady floriculturists can accomplish. His family, most of whom resided in England, were delighted at seeing him in his old age well cared for in a comfortable home.

Gordon House, Isleworth.