SSI CANADIAN NOMS-DE-PLUME IDENTIFIED. 



movers of tlie address [to Sir George, on his departure from Qiiebec| 

 in reference to the war, Veritas has suffered himself to go to the- 

 verge of injustice." Again, in Col. W. F. Coffin's admirable and 

 eloquent work, entitled " 1812 ; or the War and its Moral : a Cana- 

 dian Chronicle," it is observed, " If York (Toronto) had been left 

 defenceless and unprotected ; if a ship of war in the hands of the 

 shipwright had been recklessly exposed to destruction, the fault was 

 not with Sheaffe nor with his direct superior, Sir George Prevost, as 

 charged by Veritas, but with the authorities in England, who trifled 

 with the emergency until too late, and then spent treasures in life 

 and money to repair an irreparable error." 



In Tupper's " Life and Letters of Major-General Sir Isaac Brock," 

 Veritas is also largely quoted, but in the same abstract way. Th& 

 author of an article in the Qua/rterly Review of July, 1822, headed 

 " Campaigns in the Canadas," evidently knew who Veritas was ; but 

 he refrains from naming him. " The Letters of Veritas," the writer 

 says, " were originally printed in a weekly paper published at Mon- 

 treal, in Lower Canada, and subsequently collected in the little volume 

 before us. Within a small compass," the reviewer continues, " these 

 unpretending letters contain a greater body of useful information 

 upon the campaigns in the Canadas than is anywhere else to be found. 

 They are, we believe, the production of a gentleman in Montreal of 

 known respectability. Though not a military man, he enjoyed the 

 best opportunities for acquaintance with the circumstances of the- 

 war; and as these letters, which excited great attention in the 

 Canadas, appeared in successive papers while Montreal was filled 

 with almost all the_^ officers of rank who had served in the country, 

 it may reasonably be presumed that his errors, had he committed 

 any, would not have escaped without censure ; yet no reply was ever 

 attempted to his statements — no doubt ever expressed in the pro- 

 vinces of the correctness of his assertions." My curiosity, a few 

 years since, having become aroused as to the identity of Veritas, it 

 came to be with me, for a time, a kind of Junius-question which I 

 sought to solve : for a long time, but not, finally, without success. 

 I searched in vain in the useful works of Mr. H. J. Morgan, of 

 Ottawa, the compiler of " Sketches of Celebrated Canadians," and the 

 Bihliotheca Canadensis ; but I found no clue. I interrogated the late 

 Rev. Dr. Richardson on the subject (he, in his younger days, lost an 

 arm while actively serving in a naval capacity in one of the expedi- 



