" Fortunately the last absurdity of creating Dukes of
Toronto and Barons of Niagara Falls was never carried through, or
rather was postponed a full century; but this touch was scarcely
needed to give the clique its cachet. The ten-year governorship
of Sir Peregrine Maitland (1818-28), a most punctilious person,
gave the finishing touches to this backwoods aristocracy.
The great majority of the group, men of the Scott and Boulton,
Sherwood and Hagerman and Allan MacNab types, had nothing but
their prejudices to distinguish them, but two of their number
were of outstanding capacity. John Beverley Robinson, Attorney
General from 1819 to 1829 and thereafter for over thirty years
Chief Justice, was a true aristocrat, distrustful of the rabble,
but as honest and highminded as he was able, seeking his
country's gain, as he saw it, not his own. A more rugged and
domineering character, equally certain of his right to rule and
less squeamish about the means, was John Strachan, afterwards
Bishop of Toronto. Educated a Presbyterian, he had come to Canada
from Aberdeen as a dominie but had remained as an Anglican
clergyman in a capacity promising more advancement. His abounding
vigor and persistence soon made him the dominant force in the
Church, and with a convert's zeal he labored to give it exclusive
place and power. The opposition to the Family Compact was of a
more motley hue, as is the way with oppositions.
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