Section II, 1920 [69] Trans. R.S.C. 



Humours of the Times of Robert Gourlay 

 By William Renwick Riddell, LL.D., F.R.S.C, Can. 



(Read May Meeting, 1920) 



Robert Fleming Gourlay the Neptunian and Banished Briton was 

 a man thoroughly in earnest; his high sense of public duty, his devo- 

 tion to the cause of the poor, his absolute truthfulness, his persever- 

 ance in the path of what he considered right all recommend him to 

 serious respect while his shameful treatment at the hands of the 

 authorities of Upper Canada a century ago, his unmerited sufferings, 

 his spirited if misguided conduct throughout the disgraceful prosecu- 

 tion move our sympathy and ensure our regard. We forget his self 

 centredness, his egotism, his jealousy of anyone else occupying the 

 stage and receiving the attention of the country, his unreason and 

 wrong headedness in his search for justification. So much so that 

 there has grown up a Gourlay myth — he is the father of Responsible 

 Government who publicly cried "Responsible Government; what 

 has that eflfected ? An unblushing waste of public money and a 

 monstrous debt. — "^ the forerunner of William L)'on Mackenzie and the 

 protagonist of political reform — he who despised Mackenzie and 

 lampooned him as a monkey, who dubbed him the "self styled Patriot 

 Hero of Navy Island and Prince of Mischief makers"^ and who had 

 no thought of reform anywhere but in the economic field'. 



Serious as he was, seriously as he was considered by the author- 

 ities of the Province, serious as were his wrongs and his sufferings, his 

 career was not without its humorous accompaniments and these or 

 some of them it is the object of this paper to state. 



Born in the ancient "Kingdom of Fife" and with more than usual 

 perversity^, he left his native land after a quarrel with the Earl of 

 Kellie over what he took it into his head to consider a deadly insult, 

 which, when investigated boils down to the simple fact that the Earl 

 being in the chair of a public meeting adjourned the meeting when 

 Gourlay was speaking — whereupon Gourlay wrote and circulated a 

 vicious pamphlet against him.^ He went to England and rented a 

 farm from the Duke of Somerset; he got into a mass of litigation 

 with his landlord to compel him to give him a lease which Gourlay 

 had himself refused to sign when offered to him. While he won some 

 of his litigation he was deprived of costs because before the Lord 

 Chancellor he jeered at the Duchess as wearing the breeches.* 



