He had a deep sense of his country's injuries, and of the
effect of the laws which pressed so heavily on her energies, political
and commercial; but was entirely loyal, and maintained the highest tone
of loyalism in argument. He saw deeply the evils, but not the remedy,
which he thought to lay rather in future and peaceful developments.
He suffered greatly and unjustly in the war of 1812, in which his place
was pillaged by the American troops, and some forty thousand dollars of
his private property destroyed, contrary to the instructions of the
American commandant. Low-minded persons who had been in his service as
clerks, and disliked his pretensions to aristocracy, were the cause of
this, and piloted the detachment up the river. He was, however, in
nowise connected with the North-west Company, far less "one of its
agents." He was a civil magistrate under Gov.-Gen. Prevost, and was
honestly attached to the British cause, and he had never accepted any
office or offers from the American government.
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