The hot blood of the Metis as he careered over the prairie on his steed boiled up at the least provocation.
But the disheartening law suits through which Lord Selkirk passed in Sandwich, Toronto, and Montreal, reflected more dishonor on the Canadians than did even the bloody violence of the Bois-Brules.

The chicanery employed by the Canadian courts, the procuring of special legislation to adapt the law to Lord Selkirk's case, and the invocation of the highest social and even clerical influence in Upper Canada for the purpose of injuring his Lordship will ever remain a blot on earlier Canadian jurisprudence.

Fortunately the rights of man, whether native or foreigner, are now better understood and more fully protected in Canada than they were in the second decade of the nineteenth century.

Col.
Coltman's report, as already stated, was a model of truthfulness, fair play and freedom from prejudice, and Coltman was a Canadian appointee.
So grave, however, were the rumours of these events happening on the plains of Rupert's Land, as they reached Britain that the House of Commons named a committee to enquire into the troubles.

This committee sat in 1819, and the result is a blue-book of considerable size which exposes the injustice most fully.