The Leader of the Canadian Rebellion.

Evening Star, Issue 6914, 29 May 1885, Page 3

The Leader of the Canadian Rebellion.

It would seem, from an interesting passage in Captain Kuyshe's "The Ked River Expedition," that, after all, Kiel, who is now leading another rising in Canada, inMit have »ccu easily captured had Colonel Wolseley wished to take him (says the ' St. James's Gazette.') Captain Huyslie was on the staff" of the expedition, and had excellent opportunities of seeing what took Place. He says that Kiel would have " fou-'ht it out, liad his men stuck to him (he is° reported to have said, on the very morning that the troops appeared at the gates Sf Fort Garry, that « it was as well to be shot defending the fort as to give. it up and be hung afterwards")? and that Riel refused to credit the report of the approach of the expedition until he actually saw them marching round the village, when he «'hurriedly gaJJope.d.off." about a quarter

of an hour before they arrived at the fort. "There is little doubt but that Kiel anil his two friends (Lcpino ami O'Donoghue) might have been easily taken prisoners had Colonel Wolsclcy desired to do so : but iu his position he did not desire to trclieh on the civil authority, and refused to allow his soldiers to be' turned into policemen or constables?" Many of the inhabitants, iioweVcr, offered to capture "Kiel and his gang'' if authorised to do so. Some even asked permission to take him dead or alive, and if they had got it, " would simply have shot him down on the first opportunity, without aiiy parleying at all." Subsequently a warrant was obtained from a Justice of the Peace for the arrest of Kiel and his two friends on a charge of murder, fiilse imprisonment, ami robWy : but "being found to be informal, it was never executed '; though, adds Captain ll'uyshc, "there were no constables and no civil authority " until the arrival of the Lieu-tenant-Governor designate. .So liicl was permitted to get away to the United States, whence be returned to his own home in St. Joseph's—a small hamlet about thirty miles west of Pembina, and chiefly inhabited by half-breeds—where ho "was ullowed to remain unmolested." One would think that an essential part of the suppression oi a rebellion is the capture and punishment of the ringleader ; and whatever leisons there may have been for permitting Kiel to escape literally out of our hands, the circumstance, regretted as it was at the time, is still liiore to be regretted now,