CANADIAN NOMS-DE-PLUME IDENTIFIED. 333 



day after the prorogation tlae following Card appeared in the Mercury: 

 "The Editor's respects to a majority of the House of Assembly. 

 Being just arrived from a tour of business, he learns that the House 

 had evinced much anxiety to see him during his absence. Unfor- 

 tunately, his return has taken place a day too late for him to have 

 the honour of waiting on the House. He is, however, rather at a 

 loss to conceive how his presence could be iii any manner useful in 

 assisting them in their vocation of framing laws." 



It would be, of course, an endless and unprofitable undertaking to 

 trace the authorship of the great bulk of pseudonymous productions 

 in early Canadian journals on political subjects. But one nom-de- 

 plume which appeared in the columns of the Montreal Herald, in the 

 years 1813-lS, presents exceptional claims to consideration. The 

 signature of Veritas has become historical. Moreover, it possessed 

 for a time an additional degree of interest from the slight mystery 

 and uncertainty which attached to it, the author having taken some 

 pains, as I suppose, to maintain an incognito. As all persons con- 

 cerned have long passed off the scene, no hai-m will be done now if 

 I remove the veil^ as I shall do presently, and for the fii-st time since 

 an uncertainty on the subject sprang up. 



Sir George Prevost was the Governor-General of Canada and Com- 

 mander-in-Chief of the Forces in 1812, when the war broke out 

 between Great Britain and the United States, and the letters of 

 Veritas are devoted to an adverse criticism of Sir George's military 

 tactics throughout the unnatural contest. In many of the subsequent 

 accounts of the war of 1812, Veritas is quoted as an authority, but 

 I do not observe anywhere that the real name of the writer is men- 

 tioned. It became, in fact, as We shall see, almost irretrievably lost. 

 So late as 1855, after all reason for secrecy had passed away, AiTchin- 

 leck, in his "History of the War, '12, '13, '14," defends Sir George 

 Prevost against the strictures of the shadowy Veritas. "Veritas 

 observes," he says, " that it is the acme of assurance to insinuate that 

 the [British] Ministry were to blame for the insufficiency [of force in 

 the two Provinces at the outbreak of the war], especially as they 

 could only have a knowledge of our wants through Sir George's in- 

 formation. Now, how in justice," Auchinleck asks, " can Sir George 

 be blamed for not informiug Ministers of his requirements for a war 

 which he was instructed [by that Ministry] by all the means in his 

 power to avoid the promotion of? In his anxiety to attack the 



