When the Laird of McNab received the communication, he was surprised at its audacity. To discover its author was his first object, to punish him his next effort. Being without a name it did not come within the category of privileged communication, and consequently the author in those days was liable to punishment. He, on the impulse of the moment, selected one of the settlers as the author--one Alexander McNab, who had been a teacher in Scotland, and who had specially emigrated to Canada to follow his profession. As such he received the location ticket for 200 acres instead of one, as had been awarded to other settlers. He was now the only educated man among the settlers. He had shown symptoms of insubordination some time previously. His handwriting was very like that of the libellous communication. He resided within two miles of Kennell Lodge, near the present Flat Rapid Road. His place is now occupied by his son-in-law, Mr. John Yuill. He received a peremptory summons to attend upon the Laird. At once obeying the mandate of his Chief, he appeared before him anxious and apprehensive. The missive he received was couched in these terms--not by any means calculated to remove his apprehension:--
Degraded Clansman,--You are accused to me by Sir John Colborne, of libel, sedition, and high treason. You will forthwith compear before me, at my house of Kennell, and there make submission; and if you show a contrite and repentant spirit, and confess your faults against me, your legitimate Chief, and your crime against His Majesty King George, I will intercede for your pardon.
When he appeared at Kennell, McNab read the communication and asked poor Sandy to confess. Mr. McNab stoutly denied it. He was completely astonished and indignant at being thus charged and asked to acknowledge a crime he had never contemplated, and which, if his name had been affixed to it, would have been a privileged communication and beyond the bounds of prosecution.
"Well, my man," exclaimed the Chief, "I must send you to jail, and I assure you that your neck is in danger."
Alexander McNab was an innocent man, and had a bold and courageous spirit. Instead of begging for mercy, he defied the Chief. This was enough. The least opposition was sure to raise a whirlwind. He drew up a warrant of commitment, swore in two special constables, and sent Alex. McNab to Perth without bail or mainprize. He was six weeks imprisoned when the Assizes came on. Defended by the Hon. Jonas Jones afterwards the late Judge Jones, of the Queen's Bench, he was at once acquitted, and the warrant of commitment was the subject of amusement from its quaint and patriarchal style to the lawyers and others assembled in Court. Alexander Ross, the writer of the alleged libellous communication, was in Court, and if Alexander McNab had been convicted, he would have acknowledged the authorship, and thus saved an innocent man from severe punishment. For in those days the law of libel was very stringent and severe. It was a favorite axiom with both Judges and law officers of the Crown "the greater the truth the greater the libel"--a doctrine now justly exploded and subject to merited ridicule. Alexander McNab returned to his family in triumph. This was the first check the Chief had received, and he resolved to punish the "black sheep" the first opportunity that offered. His name was accordingly entered in the prescribed list, with what results the sequel will show. The Laird of McNab was a Magistrate, and this case shows the despotic sway of the Family Compact. He had, without information laid, without examination, without _ex parte_ evidence, acted as witness, prosecutor and Judge; and the first process issued was a warrant of commitment, so utterly illegal in point of force and substance that in the present day, no keeper of a prison would have received the person committed under it; yet the Laird of McNab, instead of being dismissed from the Commission of the Peace, was warmly applauded for his energy and decision. Times have changed. The occurrence of such a _betise_ in the present day would be denounced in no measured terms by the public opinion and by the press, until the perpetrator would have been brought to justice and adequately punished. Our liberties are so sacredly guarded, our constitutional rights so well defined and protected that such an outrage is impossible; and this we owe not only to responsible government, which was attained in 1841, after a severe and protracted struggle, but to the spirit of liberty it infused, and to the wholesome and salutary safeguards introduced.