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The Scot in New France (1535-1880)


pose of being embalmed, many bullets by which he had been wounded last in Germany and Canada, were extracted.

"Of the Scots connected with Canada during the period from the conquest to the war of 1812, there are some who seem to require special notice. One of these was Sir William Grant, the third Attorney General of Quebec, born in 1754, at Elchies on the Spray, in the North of Scotland. His distinguished judical career has no connection with Canada, and he was only temporarily a resident in this country, during a brief period from 1774. When he returned home, Lord Thurlow said of him: "Be not surprised if that young man should one day occupy this seat,"—and it is stated that he might have occupied the wool-sack but refused it. He filled high judical offices in England, being successively Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Master of the Rolls." RATTRAY’S Scot in British North America, P. 313.)

Later on, two eminent Scotchmen found a resting place in the vaults of the English Cathedral at Quebec. Lieut. Governor Peter Hunter, in 1805, the brother of two celebrated physicians, John and William Hunter; and our then Governor-in-Chief, the Duke of Richmond, on 4th September 1819.

In that long list of Viceroys charged with the administration of Canada from our first Scotch Governor Murray, to our present, the Marquis of Lorne, more than one exhibited the distinctive, the most commendable traits of the Scotch character. In the critical times of the first Empire, in 1807, when England, in addition to her gigantic struggle with Napoleon I, expected (and was not disappointed) a war with the United States, the reins of office, in Canada were confided to a Scotchman, General Sir James Craig; and if there were faults in the tried old soldier, ‘twas not want of nerve, want of back-bone, in the hour of danger. t


t See Appendix Letter F.


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