[332] 



SOME CANADIAN NOMS-DE-PLUME IDENTIFIED: 



WITH SAMPLES OF THE WRITINGS TO WHICH THEY 

 ARE APPENDED. 



BY HENRY SCADDING, D.D. 



fCorUinued from page S76.J 



We now come to our political noms-de-plume. 



Canada, both in its French and its English }Dortions, has had a 

 troubled history. With a very mixed population, teeming with a 

 variety of clashing prejudices, brought with them or inherited from 

 the Old World, governors sent out by the parent state to guide their 

 destinies, to amalgamate them into one mass, to mould their character 

 into a national consistency, have found, especially in years bygone, 

 that their task was not an easy or a trifling one ; and whatever their 

 line of conduct, they were sure to be criticized with severity by one 

 coterie or another in the community. Here, as elsewhere, the news- 

 papers and other local periodicals have been vents for the spleen of 

 individuals ; and as at early periods in Canada, Upper and Lower, 

 men in power held it to be proper to stand on their dignity more 

 punctiliously than they do now, it was not quite safe for writers to 

 come out with their, strictures in propria persona. Consequently, 

 the local periodicals of the day abound with objurgatory communica- 

 tions under the fictitious signatures usually adopted in the newspapers 

 and periodicals of the same period in Great Britain and Ireland. 

 And when I say in former days men in power were specially touchy, 

 I include in the expression the Houses of Assembly themselves, 

 which were very r^ady to summon oifenders before them for verbal, 

 breaches of privilege. Thus Mr. Gary, editor of the Quebec Mercury, 

 was sent for by the Lower Canadian House, in 1813, for publishing 

 a communication signed " Juniolus Canadensis," an invective,' in the 

 style of Junius, against Mr. Stuart, a member of the House. Mr. 

 Cary absented himself from the city during the remainder of .the 

 Session, and so eluded the search of the Serjeant-at-Arms. But the 



