By Silencing Dissent with the Sedition Act, Upper Canada Creates a Reformist Martyr

This "gagging act" was accompanied by renewed attempts by the executive to bring Gourlay himself under control. In December 1818 Gourlay was charged before the magistrates in Niagara under the old Sedition Act of 1804. After some time in jail, he was convicted and was given ten days to leave the colony. His refusal to do so earned him another eight months in jail. It was not until August 1819 that Gourlay finally crossed the border into New York....

Though in the short run Gourlay's expulsion did dampen the flames of dissent, the legacy of his activities and of the government's response to them remained. Gourlay had raised the political consciousness of many Upper Canadians. He had asked basic questions about the rights of Englishmen and he had opened to door to political dissent in Upper Canada. Moreover, as Gerald Craig has observed in his authoritative history of the colony, Gourlay "came to be regarded as a martyr" whose image haunted the tory leadership. The growing forces of reform in the colony had only to mention his name to evoke memories of an autocratic government which would obviously take any measure to maintain its own position.

--Jane Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994), 110-111.