If it were intended by those who committed this shameful outrage, that the injury should be irreparable, the scene which is now before us, on these interesting heights, shews that they little understood the feelings of veneration for the memory of BROCK which still dwell in the hearts of the people of Upper Canada.  No man ever established a better claim to the affections of a country; and, in recalling the recollections of eight and twenty years, there is no difficulty in accounting for the feeling which has brought us together on this occasion.  Among the many who are assembled here from all parts of this province, I know there are some who saw, as I did, with grief, the body of the lamented general borne from the field on which he fell—­and many who witnessed, with me, the melancholy scene of his interment in one of the bastions of Fort George.[144] They can never, I am sure, forget the countenances of the soldiers of that gallant regiment which he had long commanded, when they saw deposited in the earth the lamented officer who had for so many years been their pride; they can never forget the feelings displayed by the loyal militia of this province, when they were consigning to the grave the noble hero who had so lately achieved a glorious triumph in the defence of their country:  they looked forward to a dark and perilous future, and they felt that the earth was closing upon him in whom, more than in all other human means of defence, their confidence had been reposed.  Nor can they forget the countenances, oppressed with grief, of those brave and faithful Indian warriors, who admired and loved the gallant Brock, who had bravely shared with him the dangers of that period, and who had most honorably distinguished themselves in the field, where he closed his short but brilliant career.

* * * * *

It has, I know, Sir, in the many years that have elapsed, been sometimes objected, that General Brock’s courage was greater than his prudence—­that his attack of Fort Detroit, though it succeeded, was most likely to have, failed, and was therefore injudicious—­and that a similar rashness and want of cool calculation were displayed in the manner of his death.

Those who lived in Upper Canada while these events were passing, can form a truer judgment; they know that what may to some seem rashness, was, in fact, prudence; unless, indeed, the defence of Canada was to be abandoned, in the almost desperate circumstances in which General Brock was placed.  He had with him but a handful of men, who had never been used to military discipline—­few, indeed, that had ever seen actual service in the field; and he knew it must be some months before any considerable reinforcement could be sent to him.  He felt, therefore, that if he could not impress upon the enemy this truth, that—­wherever a major-general of the British army, with but a few gallant soldiers of the line, and of the brave