CHAPTER 11

Mackenzie and the Grievances of Upper Canada

The history of the province in the six or seven years before December 1837 involves a great deal more than the activities of one little red-headed Scottish newspaper editor and assemblyman. Indeed, he might seem to be a rather insignificant individual when compared with Sir John Colborne, John Strachan, Egerton Ryerson, or William Hamilton Merritt, to name only a few, who exercised power and were constructively engaged in furthering the growth of Upper Canada on many fronts. Not only was Mackenzie not the leader of the reform party, but his disruptive course brought much harm to that party. Nor was his final resort to violence inevitable or in any way beneficial; the rule of the Family Compact could and would have been ended without recourse to rebellion. Notwithstanding, Mackenzie exerted a powerful and at times decisive influence on the course of events. Since he more than anyone else contributed toward making the times abnormal and contradictory, as well as exciting, he deserves some pride of place when they are recounted.

As we have seen, Mackenzie first appeared before the provincial public as an intemperate and often a scurrilous critic of the local oligarchy. Whether it was because people of standing snubbed and despised him as an impudent upstart or because, as he once suggested, of his “rebel” Highland blood,¹ he was anti-government from the start of his public career. As his later life, twenty years of it beyond the scope of this book, showed, he would be so all his life. He was a perverse, angular, cantankerous man. He was entirely unsuited to the life of politics, unable to work with colleagues toward an agreed objective, and quite without perspective. But he was also more than this. He was an omnivorous, if indiscriminate reader and an intense and unflagging student of public affairs. With complete disregard for personal gain or advancement, he put himself unreservedly at the disposal of the plain people of Upper Canada. Much of his effort was misguided or positively harmful, yet he gained a faithful following and he shook the provincial government to its foundations.

As to his goal, Mackenzie was remarkably consistent. He wanted a free government, without “favouritism and prodigality,” that would “enlighten the minds of the people, and by every lawful means promote their happiness and comfort.”² Of course, no government this side of heaven would ever have satisfied him in these respects, but one did not have to be an extremist to find the Family Compact somewhat wanting in the scale.

For many years he had no doubt that British ways were best or that Upper Canada would find its salvation within the orbit of the mother country, especially if it became part of a British North American union. He disliked the tone of American politics, and wanted no part of a country sanctioning slavery. But after an extensive trip in the United States during the first year of Andrew Jackson’s administration, his outlook perceptibly changed. Here was democracy at work, and he liked it. In particular, he was enthusiastic about the Jacksonian practice of rotation in office (a polite term for the spoils system). What a wonderful way to get rid of the impudent “puppies and underlings of office” who so abounded in Upper Canada!³ Presently he was serializing the biography of his new hero, Andrew Jackson, in the pages of the Colonial Advocate. None of this meant that he wanted a political connection with the United States and its “southern and northern quarrels,” but he was more convinced than ever of the feasibility of a “federative union” of the British North American colonies that would do away with “slavish dependence” on England, and he now regarded it as proved that “the representative system of government” worked, and worked well.⁴ Opposing the growing English tendency to speak of the “Omnipotence of Parliament,” he was sympathetic to the idea of a written constitution, to which all laws passed by the legislature must conform.⁵

But it was the contrast between provincial extravagance and republican frugality that Mackenzie found most glaring. Across the line the public debt of the federal government was being steadily reduced, while in Upper Canada the debt was growing to support the Welland Canal and other improvements. Mackenzie, along with other reformers, denied any opposition to these improvements, but he did argue that the province should not be saddled with increased obligations until it had a government that was responsible to public opinion. In Upper Canada, he asserted, “mismanagement of the public revenue prevails, of so gross and disgraceful a nature that the mere detail looks more like a romance than a reality.”⁶

Early in 1831 the British government made what was meant to be an important concession to the two Canadian legislatures when it relinquished control over the revenue raised from customs duties under the Quebec Revenue Act of 1774. Henceforth the legislatures were to be free to appropriate these revenues. In return the legislatures were asked to pass civil list bills making permanent provision for the salaries of certain provincial government officials, who had previously been paid from these revenues. The Lower Canadian Assembly flatly refused to co-operate, but the recently elected conservative Assembly in the upper province was willing to pass such a bill, although it provided less than the executive asked for. It seemed to be a reasonable measure, especially since the revenues conceded were somewhat larger than the sum voted in the civil list bill, and it meant an expansion of the legislature’s financial competence. But Mackenzie and some of his reform colleagues bitterly opposed this “Everlasting Salary Bill,” claiming that there should be no permanent grants until “a constitutional responsibility” had been conceded. There could be no real check on the government as long as its principal officers were free of annual dependence upon the Assembly for their salaries.⁷ Mackenzie and his friends lost this battle, but they never ceased to denounce the idea of a permanent civil list. They were fully aware of how effectively the assemblies in the old American colonies had harassed a financially vulnerable executive authority.

After the passing of this detested measure Mackenzie redoubled his efforts to bring home to the people the iniquities of the government and of the conservative majority in the Assembly. During the summer and fall of 1831 he travelled extensively over the province, and especially in his own constituency in York County, distributing tracts and pamphlets and getting signatures on grievance petitions. This activity, joined with the ceaseless stream of criticism carried in the Colonial Advocate, proved to be highly effective in strengthening and enlarging Mackenzie’s political following among the farmers east and west of Yonge Street between the capital and Lake Simcoe. He convinced them that he had their best interests at heart; they in turn looked to him for information and guidance. Among these people were a great many of the old American population that had come into the province some thirty years before, and who were still ruffled by the recent alien controversy. A majority of them, including families of German and Irish origin, became unswerving supporters of Mackenzie.⁸

Supporters of the government watched these efforts of the little agitator with growing irritation. Already, earlier in the year, his endless round of motions and demands for investigation had led to an unsuccessful effort to expel him from the Assembly. By the time that body met again at the end of the year Mackenzie had provided his opponents with better ammunition to use against him, for in the November 24 issue of his paper he had referred to the Assembly as “a sycophantic office for registering the decrees of as mean and mercenary an Executive as ever was given as punishment for the sins of any part of North America in the nineteenth century.” Accusing him of a libel against the House the tory leaders pressed a motion for expulsion, which was carried on December 13. It is probable that many of Mackenzie’s reform colleagues had little sympathy with his extreme language, either as used in his paper or in his speech defending himself in the House, but they stood loyally by him. Bidwell saw the issue essentially as one of freedom of the press; in a province where the executive had so much power – over revenues, lands, and banking, and even over the Assembly, through “placemen” – freedom would be destroyed if the opposition press were trampled down.⁹ This argument had only a limited relevance, since no action was being taken against Mackenzie’s paper.

Less than three weeks later, on January 2, 1832, a by-election was held, at which Mackenzie was triumphantly re-elected, with only one vote being cast for his opponent. He took his seat the next day. Two days later the Colonial Advocate was out with a slashing attack on Sir John Colborne, and the following day Christopher Hagerman was on his feet with another demand for expulsion, which was again carried. And this time Mackenzie was declared ineligible to sit again in that Assembly. Nevertheless he was easily re-elected.

When the Colonial Secretary received word of these events, he was greatly alarmed. No good British Whig could ever forget the famous case of John Wilkes back in the 1760’s, and be unaware of the folly of a legislature attempting to contend against a resolute constituency. In a confidential dispatch, dated April 2, 1832, Lord Goderich advised Colborne that the Assembly had no power to keep Mackenzie out permanently and instructed him to use his influence with the Assembly to end its vendetta against this “unprincipled demagogue.”¹⁰

Meanwhile, Mackenzie, unable to take his seat, was again touring the country, haranguing meetings, and finding an enthusiastic response to his fulminations against the government and the Assembly majority. Sympathy for Mackenzie had much to do with the organizing of political unions, getting under way at this time. After several weeks of this kind of activity Mackenzie set out for England with a sheaf of petitions under his arm, determined on an appeal from Upper Canadian Toryism to British Reform.

Then followed an extraordinary episode in the history of Upper Canada. Mackenzie regarded himself, and to a considerable extent was accepted by the Colonial Office, as a spokesman for all the dissatisfied elements in the province. He was accorded interviews by high Colonial Office officials, and his endlessly repetitious screeds were attentively read in Downing Street. It need scarcely be said that Mackenzie left no subject untouched. It was a long, hard summer for Lord Goderich and his colleagues, but they felt that they must be polite to a man whom they regarded as the leader of the opposition in Upper Canada. At the same time Mackenzie was making a considerable impact upon opinion in the British capital through a series of articles appearing in the Morning Chronicle. No other emissary from Upper Canada was ever taken so seriously in London. Eventually, on November 8, Goderich sent a most curious dispatch to Colborne. In one breath it vigorously discounted many of Mackenzie’s complaints, but in the very next it assumed that some things might be wrong after all, which Colborne should seek to correct.¹¹

Encouraged by his reception Mackenzie stayed on in London, continuing to press his charges against those in power in Upper Canada. For a man who believed so strongly in local self-government he was most persistent in seeking imperial intervention in provincial affairs. One of his main demands was that the British government should disallow recent bank legislation in Upper Canada. Mackenzie was convinced, and with some reason, that it was his fierce opposition to these bills that had really led to his expulsion, and he was determined to carry on the fight in England. On this matter he met with a good deal of sympathy, for British officials were always rather sceptical of the soundness of colonial banking bills.

This subject was slow in coming to a head, however. In the meantime, in March 1833, Mackenzie was elated to learn from the Colonial Office that a dispatch had gone out to Sir John Colborne ordering the dismissal of both Attorney General Boulton and Solicitor General Hagerman, as punishment for their part in expelling him from the Assembly. Here was success, indeed, with the possibility of more to come if the banking bills were disallowed. Mackenzie could well imagine the discomfiture of his enemies in Upper Canada.

Discomfiture is in fact too mild a word to describe the feelings of tories and conservatives as they learned of the Colonial Office’s response to Mackenzie’s mission. They were outraged by the tone of Lord Goderich’s long dispatch of November 8, which took seriously so many of Mackenzie’s complaints. After stating that a dispatch based on allegations from so contemptuous a source did not call for their serious attention, the legislative council returned it to the Lieutenant-Governor. In the Assembly Perry and Bidwell moved to thank the Secretary, but the conservatives by a vote of eighteen to ten carried an amendment regretting that Goderich did not rely on better testimony than that from a man who had twice been expelled from their House.¹² Conservative newspapers were still more outspoken, declaring that the Whig government at home never meddled in colonial concerns without doing “mischief.”¹³

But outrage and disdain were succeeded by an almost uncontrolled fury when it became known that Boulton and Hagerman had been removed. The leading pro-government newspaper wondered what “this political imbecile…this foolish Colonial Minister” would do next. Everything was reduced to “a state of uncertainty” in which:

The minds of all the well affected people of the country (and they, to the certain ultimate discomfiture of the United factions of Mackenzie, Goderich and the Yankee Methodists are a vast majority) begin to be unhinged. Instead of dwelling with delight and confidence upon their connection with the glorious Empire of their sires, with a determination to support that connection, as many of them have already supported it, with their fortunes or their blood, their affections are already more than half alienated from the Government of that country, and in the apprehension that the same insulting and degrading course of policy towards them is likely to be continued, they already begin to “cast about” in “their minds eye,” for some new state of political existence, which shall effectually put the Colony beyond the reach of injury and insult from any and every ignoramus whom the political lottery of the day may chance to elevate to the Colonial Office.¹⁴

Try as they might, Mackenzie and his friends were never able to surpass this tory denunciation of Downing Street rule.

Now, of course, it was the turn of the reformers to roll their eyes heavenward as they deplored this “shameless libel” upon a loyal people. The St Thomas Liberal called it “treasonable language” and the Hamilton Free Press asked all honest men to support the King’s ministers in their reforms, and put down the tory threat of “Revolution and separation from the British government.”¹⁵ Public meetings were soon busy passing resolutions to the same effect. The outlook seemed to be very bright. A Whig Government might grant the essential reform demands – a responsible executive, control of the provincial revenue, and permanent tenure to judges and magistrates – and then Upper Canada would soon “become one of the finest countries in the world.”¹⁶

But the reformers soon learned that their battles were not to be won in London. The “lottery” of British politics could work against them just as surely as against the tories. Soon it became known that a new Colonial Secretary had reappointed Hagerman to his old post and promoted Boulton to the office of Chief Justice of Newfoundland. Mackenzie, of course, already had this information, and he returned to the province in the early summer of 1833, disillusioned and bitter after his year in the old country. He was convinced that the reform impulse there was already spent, and that the people of Canada would henceforth have to rely on their own efforts. Canada did have staunch friends in the British Parliament but they were to be found among the radical members of the opposition, especially Hume and Roebuck, not in the government.

Another prominent Upper Canadian made his own journey to England at this time, but he came to a very different conclusion. While on his mission to arrange the details of the union with the British Wesleyans, Egerton Ryerson closely observed some of the leading personalities in British politics. Upon his return to the province he set forth his “English Impressions” in the Christian Guardian, which were sharply critical of the radicals in general, and of Joseph Hume in particular. These men were painted as infidels in religion, republicans in politics, and insincere and inconsistent in their concern for human welfare. Such men had no real standing or influence in the mother country, and Ryerson advised the people of the province to cease looking to them for advice and help.¹⁷

These comments may have been intended to work on Mackenzie’s low boiling-point; certainly they succeeded in doing so. Within a few hours the Colonial Advocate was on the streets of York in a special edition, describing Ryerson as “Another Deserter,” who had gone “over to the enemy, press, types, & all, & hoisted the colours of a cruel, vindictive tory priesthood.” To Mackenzie it was plain that Ryerson’s new course was the first fruit of the union with the conservative British Wesleyans: “a jesuit in the garb of a methodist preacher” had betrayed the liberties of the people of Upper Canada.¹⁸ For his part Ryerson summoned up his resources of Christian charity to offer a gentle reply, saying that he had often admired Mackenzie’s energy but thought him injudicious at times. A week later Ryerson sharpened his pen somewhat, when he accused his fellow editor of an “open and unqualified avowal of republican principles.”¹⁹

Most reformers and most Methodists were extremely unhappy about this quarrel, and tended to blame Ryerson more than Mackenzie for a split that could only benefit the church-and-state tories. To be sure, Egerton’s brother John strongly backed him up, with the argument that it was necessary “to obtain the confidence of the government & entirely disconnect ourselves with that tribe of villans [sic] with whom we have been too intimate….”²⁰ But what was undoubtedly a more general reaction came from a group of five Methodist preachers, including Egerton’s younger brother Edwy, who said that they were meeting a “torrent of opposition” on the circuits, with subscribers cancelling the Guardian left and right. They stated that they and their “brethren in the ministry” had not changed their political views, that they still felt themselves to be connected with the reformers, and implored Egerton to abandon the quarrel.²¹

The majority of the Methodists did retain their reform sympathies for some time, and many of them remained loyal to the cause throughout the decade. If Mackenzie had stopped at this point, Ryerson might have been nearly isolated within his own community. But with his usual abandon Mackenzie pushed his quarrel with Ryerson and the Methodist leadership to such extremes that he lost the reformers a significant portion of their Methodist support.

The leaders of the reform party were becoming increasingly embarrassed by their involuntary association with Mackenzie. From time to time they protested that the little editor did not speak for the party, yet they had no choice but to support him in his continuing contest with the majority in the Assembly. The latter, probably sensing this embarrassment, kept up the farce of expulsion, thus giving Mackenzie a prominence which the reform leaders did not covet for him. While he was in England Mackenzie had again been expelled, re-elected and yet again declared ineligible for membership, despite the known objection of the Colonial Office to this course. After his return he was once more elected, and then twice forcibly ejected from the House amid mob scenes of tumult and disorder. Bidwell complained that the House was making a martyr of Mackenzie and a spectacle of itself, but the majority was determined to have its way.²² Mackenzie nevertheless had a revenge of sorts, for when the town of York was incorporated as the city of Toronto early in 1834, he was chosen as its first mayor by the aldermen victorious in the municipal election. Whatever misgivings reformers throughout the province might have had about him, Mackenzie’s local support was still as firm as ever.

With the new mayor about to take up his municipal duties the House prepared to face one of the consequences of his trip to England – the proposed disallowance of recent banking legislation. In his paper Mackenzie had continued his barrage of attacks on limited liability and note-issuing banks, frequently praising President Andrew Jackson for his veto in the summer of 1832 of the bill rechartering the Second Bank of the United States and calling on King William to emulate this example.²³ A tory paper, The Patriot, twitted him for his sudden tenderness toward the home government, noting that he had “always been a stickler for self Government, but to effect a purpose he can change his opinion as the Camelion its color; sure proof of utter destitution of principle.” This paper was indignantly opposed to any “puerile meddling of the Lords of Trade with our tills and money-chests.”²⁴

The Patriot on this occasion spoke for the business community in the capital and, as it turned out, for nearly everyone in the province as well. Intimations of imperial interference led to a remarkable demonstration in the Assembly, as representatives of all shades of opinion joined in the protest. In this conservative House Bidwell, seconded by Perry, moved an amendment to an address to the King, containing the following words:

…if Your Majesty’s Ministers, at a distance of more than 4000 miles, not at all controlable [sic] by or accountable to Your Majesty’s Subjects here, and possessing necessarily a slight and imperfect knowledge of the circumstances of this country, the wants and habits and feelings of the inhabitants, and the mode of transacting business among us, can dictate a different course in relation to measures affecting only ourselves from that which the people by their Representatives, and with the concurrence of the other branches of the Provincial Legislature, have chosen, we are reduced to a state of mere dependence upon the will and pleasure of a Ministry that are irresponsible to us, and beyond the reach and operation of the public opinion of the Province….²⁵

Only one member, Mackenzie’s friend Jesse Ketchum, voted against this amendment. There could hardly be more convincing proof that men of every political outlook were determined to have local self-government, however much they might disagree over the means. Mackenzie contented himself with stating that “a more plain and distinct declaration of independence has not emanated from any British American Colony since the 4th day of July, 1776.”²⁶ He could hardly be unaware that the rebuke extended to him no less than to the British government.

Following its policy of interfering as little as possible in colonial affairs, the Whig ministry did in fact draw back, and decided not to disallow the banking legislation.

It would, of course, be incorrect to leave the impression that Mackenzie was less devoted to the goal of self-government than any of his colleagues. Banking was one of the questions on which he felt most strongly, and some aberration was perhaps inevitable when he saw the chance of striking down these engines of the money power. Moreover, he probably thought that many of the supporters of the amendment were hypocritical, since they consistently winked at violations of the free flow of public opinion in other areas.

Since his return from England he had in fact lost nearly all of his readiness to turn to the British government for help against the local oligarchy. In replying to a reform address complimenting him on his work in England, he stated that he no longer wished to see the British Constitution “in practical operation in this country,” because “a cheap elective, representative government, including both an elected Legislative Council and an elected governor, would be much preferable.”²⁷ In dropping the adjective Colonial from the name of his newspaper at the end of 1833, he announced that he was doubtful that he “could any longer conscientiously advocate the continuation of the colonial system as now established, without great modifications.” He had become “more democratic” as he observed the contrast between the United States, “where taxes and public monies return among the people to enrich them,” and Upper Canada, where “the vast sums drawn from us for Canada Company’s lands, Crown and Clergy Reserves, and large portions of the taxes, drain the country of a safe circulating medium.”²⁸ In counselling reformers on how to plan for the forthcoming provincial elections he strongly urged them to adopt the American practice, which he carefully outlined, of regular nominating conventions as the only certain way of getting candidates who would remain “sincere reformers.”²⁹

He was cutting his ties with moderate men. He had broken with Ryerson, and had criticized the Baldwins for having “left the reformers in the lurch.”³⁰ He attacked Neilson for breaking with Papineau.³¹ He was ready to strike out on his own.

At the end of February 1834 he joined with a group of the more radical reformers in and around the provincial capital to assemble a general convention of delegates to nominate candidates. Neither John Rolph nor Dr Baldwin would participate, and Bidwell refused a nomination proffered by the convention. But the group went ahead, nominated candidates for the four ridings of York County, and pledged them in advance to fight for “the full control of the whole public revenue,” the ballot, an elective legislative council, a responsible executive council, and several other changes. Each candidate was asked to promise that he would resign if he changed his mind on any of these questions.³² At about the same time in many other parts of the province similar meetings were held which owed much to the example of Mackenzie and his friends in York County, who provided the party with a detailed program and inspired it to fashion effective local organizations. Men like Bidwell and Perry and Rolph could not oppose such activity, but they viewed with misgivings a movement in which Mackenzie was so prominent. Perry intimated as much when he said at a political meeting in his own county that “no two persons disapproved more at times of Mr. Mackenzie’s occasional violence than Mr. Bidwell and himself, but they both supported him on principle, seeing that the people had been insulted in his person”³³ – a reference to Mackenzie’s expulsion from the Assembly. These men were well aware of Mackenzie’s active and successful efforts to give the reform party a fighting edge, but they also knew that his capacity to embarrass the party remained undiminished. This capacity was soon given vivid demonstration when Mackenzie imprudently published a letter from his close friend, Joseph Hume. Like many of the British radicals, Hume hoped to see the colonies cut adrift, because he saw them as a burden on the British treasury and a means of providing outdoor relief to the aristocracy. When he heard of Mackenzie’s latest altercation with the Assembly, in December 1833, he wrote that this incident “must hasten that crisis which is fast approaching in the affairs of the Canadas, and which will terminate in independence and freedom from the baneful domination of the Mother Country and the tyrannical conduct of a small and despicable faction in the Colony.” He advised Canadians never to forget “the proceedings between 1772 and 1782 in America.”³⁴

This letter might be read in two ways. It might simply be a call for the ending of colonial misrule and for a new and less subordinate relation to the mother country. The reformers, who fervently wished that Mackenzie had put it in his letter case instead of in The Advocate, tried hard to put this interpretation upon it. But from Hume’s known views on the Empire it was more likely to be a call for separation from the mother country, and one in which Mackenzie must be implicated, since he had published the letter with approval. It provided tories and conservatives with a heaven- (or rather Hume-) sent opportunity to denounce reformers as “wretched conspirators” who were now “gibetted together, TRAITORS IN THE FIRST DEGREE.”³⁵ Reformers had some very hard thoughts about Mackenzie as they squirmed through that summer.

If the provincial elections had been held in June, the reformers might have been caught badly off balance, but they were not held until October. By that time the sensation over Hume’s letter had died down, and the quarrel with Ryerson, although it left a residue of bad feeling, had not alienated many Methodists from the reform cause. The work of building a strong political organization went on, while Mackenzie sought both to reassure and to invigorate his supporters. Saying no more about his earlier view that the British Constitution could not and should not be established in Upper Canada and that he doubted the value of the connection with Britain, he returned to a course acceptable to a majority of reformers. Once again he emphasized the protection and the assistance which a powerful and liberal mother country could provide to a young and struggling colony. He assured the voters that their demands for control of the public lands and the whole revenue, for a responsible executive council and an elective legislative council would be readily conceded, if they would but “elect an intelligent and patriotic House of Assembly” that could “act in concert” with the “present enlightened government” at home.

In this address, “To the Reformers of Upper Canada,” Mackenzie placed special emphasis upon the distress of the farmers. All along, one of the main charges against tories and conservatives had been that they were too tender to the interests of merchants and millers and bankers and too insensitive to the crying needs of farmers. Now Mackenzie returned to the complaint that American agricultural produce was allowed to enter the province duty free and could reach the British market under the preference, as well as compete in the Canadian market, while an American tariff kept Canadian produce out of the United States. Mackenzie accused the conservative legislature of the last four years of having worsened this situation by tax policies harmful to the farmer. At a time when the agricultural prosperity of the later 1820’s was ebbing, this was an effective political argument.³⁶

An appeal along these lines, united with the strong local organizations built up in the last couple of years, brought victory to the reformers in the elections of 1834. It was apparent to all observers, both inside and outside the party, that the victors were still split into moderate and radical wings, but they put up a brave show of unity. Once again they put Bidwell forward as their candidate for Speaker, and despite Hagerman’s determined attempt to put a disloyal, pro-American label on him, the vote for him was overwhelming. As British freemen, seeking only constitutional reform, the members were not to be frightened, in Peter Perry’s words, “by imputations of treason, or the whining snivelling cry of loyalty, made by persons who were loyal only to their salaries.”³⁷ They then carried an address to the Lieutenant-Governor, asserting that reformers deeply cherished the British connection, and complaining of tory insinuations to the contrary.³⁸ As a further gesture aimed at closing ranks the majority passed a resolution expunging from the Assembly’s journals “all declarations, orders, and resolutions” related to Mackenzie’s several expulsions.³⁹

On many subjects it was indeed easy for reformers of all shades to agree. They wanted protection for the farmers against American agricultural imports. They denounced the patronage policies of the executive, which were so discriminatory against reformers. They sought (without much success) for information “respecting the powers, duties and responsibilities of the Executive Council.”⁴⁰ They repeated their demand for control of the whole revenue, and coupled it with criticism of the Canada Company. They passed bills embodying their views on jury selection, the Clergy Reserves, intestate estates, the University Charter, and many other subjects, which met their usual fate at the hands of the Legislative Council. Despite a resultant sense of frustration they remained hopeful that “obstacles to the peace, welfare and good government of the Province” would be removed; in particular, they wanted a system of “local responsibility,” especially needed in view of the “rapid succession” of Colonial ministers who are “strangers to the Province.”⁴¹ In all these matters the reform majority was substantially united – and ineffectual.

Once more in the Assembly, and with heightened influence, Mackenzie willingly joined his reform colleagues in passing these resolutions, addresses, and bills. But he never believed that such activity would be sufficient, or very useful. Moreover, he was always suspicious of Assemblies, no matter how reformist they were at the beginning, it was all too easy, as he thought, for the executive to detach and corrupt the more timid and weak-kneed by appointments to office (postmasterships and so on) and by other enticements, such as invitations to the Governor’s dinner table. Continuing pressure must be exerted on the government from outside the Assembly, and that body must be watched. Within the Assembly more was needed than futile talk. Mackenzie girded himself for action.

His first step was to free himself for “other and more important duties” by giving up The Advocate after more than a decade of arduous, not to say furious, journalism. This was a safe step to take, because Toronto now had another radical paper, The Correspondent, edited by William J. O’Grady, an apostate Roman Catholic priest, who was as implacably opposed to the government as Mackenzie himself. Accordingly, The Advocate was merged with The Correspondent a few weeks after the election.⁴²

It was not long before Mackenzie revealed what his “more important duties” would be. On December 9, 1834, a general meeting in Toronto established the Canadian Alliance, and he was appointed its corresponding secretary. This organization intended to encourage the formation of branch societies throughout the province and to “enter into close alliance with any similar association that may be formed in Lower Canada or the other Colonies, having for its object ’the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’ ” Apparently the spirit of the recently departed Jeremy Bentham was to preside over the Alliance. It intended to “watch the proceedings of the Legislature,” to spread “sound political information by tracts and pamphlets,” and to “support honest, faithful and capable Candidates” for office. All members must agree in writing to support its political program.

That program included the usual reform demands for a “responsible representative system of Government,” sale of the Clergy and Crown Reserves “under the control of the representatives of the people,” support for education and internal improvements, the vote by ballot, not only for “representatives” and aldermen but for “justices of the Peace, &c.,” and “control of the whole Public Revenue.” Amended jury laws, an end of primogeniture, a “responsible Post Office,” the “extinction of all monopolizing Land Companies,” and the “total disunion of Church and State” were inevitably included among the planks. In addition, however, the Alliance called for the abolition of the legislative council, not content to have it elective,⁴³ and for a “Written Constitution for Upper Canada, embodying and declaring the original principles of the government.” Nothing was said about the British connection except that they opposed “all undue interference by the home government” in the “domestic affairs of the Colonists.”⁴⁴ In the opinion of the Christian Guardian, the Alliance Reformers had abandoned “Colonial connexion and monarchy” for “Republican independence and democracy.”⁴⁵

Mackenzie was soon busy at his corresponding duties, believing that “unless we get societies up hav’g one common object to be pursued by the same means,” the new parliament would “disappoint our hopes – but if we enlist the people in our cause we are safe.”⁴⁶ During the next several months branch societies were organized in many parts of the province.

Within the Assembly, Mackenzie saw one role that was worth playing above all others. Like members of the American Congress from time to time, he decided that the best way to get at an independent executive was to investigate it. Satisfied to let his reform colleagues go on with their bills and resolutions, he prevailed upon them to set up a Committee on Grievances, appoint him as its chairman, and fill it with radicals of his own kind. The Reform leaders agreed, probably hoping that Mackenzie would go off with his committee and leave them alone.

Here was a marvellous opportunity to hold a grand inquisition. After years of being scorned and despised by the great men of the province he was now armed with the authority of the Assembly to summon them before him and to put searching and embarrassing questions to them. He was also in a position to ask for papers and documents bearing on past and present government operations, and he accumulated these by the basketful. Now at last both the province and the mother country would see the true extent of colonial misrule.

Mackenzie set about his work with a will, as he and his committee heard testimony from a parade of witnesses over a period of several weeks. From government officials he sought information on financial matters, on the amounts and origins of their salaries, and on the way the province was actually run. In most instances he was greeted with silence, or with haughty and unresponsive answers; some of these men were either uninformed or unprepared to give vital facts on government operations. In either event, the chairman’s worst suspicions were verified. On the other hand, he called a number of radical reformers, both assemblymen and private citizens, who gladly answered his loaded questions on the executive and legislative councils, on land granting and the Clergy Reserves, on misappropriation of the revenue, on schools, on banks, on judges, and so on and on. On the one hand, a supercilious and secretive oligarchy; on the other, an outraged and oppressed public.

From time to time Mackenzie sent off preliminary reports to the Assembly, asking for more documents or giving the committee’s findings on particular subjects such as the Post Office. But finally it was all gathered together in typically helter-skelter Mackenzie fashion – the voluminous testimony, the assorted documents, and the committee’s findings – in a Seventh Report, to make a thick book of grievances. Despite its miscellaneous character, however, the Report did fasten on one explanation of multitudinous evils afflicting the province. The “chief sources of Colonial discontent” stemmed from “the almost unlimited extent of the patronage of the Crown, or rather of the Colonial Minister for the time being and his advisers here, together with the abuse of that patronage.” By its control of extensive revenues, beyond the reach of the Assembly, the executive authority could reward or punish the clergy (including the Methodists), all civil officers, the judiciary, teachers and school trustees, and the whole military and naval establishment, to mention only the most obvious. The Crown’s influence was further enlarged by its “management of millions of acres of public Lands,” its control of “the expenditure of a large annual amount of local taxation,” and its influence over such semi-public corporations as the Canada Company, the Bank of Upper Canada and the Welland Canal Company. The whole system had “so long continued virtually in the same hands, that it is little better than a family compact.” The province was honeycombed with abuses which “are concealed, or palliated, excused and sustained by those who are interested to uphold them as the means of retaining office, for their private, and not for the public, good.”⁴⁷ It was the most detailed attack on Family Compact rule ever assembled in Upper Canada.

The report was completed near the end of the session, and presented late at night to a half-empty chamber, whose members had had little opportunity to examine a volume of over five hundred pages. Yet a motion was passed ordering two thousand copies of it to be printed at public expense. Thus it went out to the world with the apparent but not the real approval of the Assembly. With some reluctance the reform majority later endorsed the Report, but some influential reform leaders, including Peter Perry, voted against it, because of its factual inaccuracies, its extreme and unfair remarks about the Methodists, and its blanket indictment of everyone who held an office in the province.⁴⁸ Once again Mackenzie had embarrassed his colleagues.

Nevertheless, he had given the government of Upper Canada a mighty shaking. While he was off to Niagara during the summer to investigate the Welland Canal, his Report was on its way to England. There it was received with both apprehension and consternation by the Colonial Secretary, now Lord Glenelg. The Secretary, already beset by dangerous events in Lower Canada, was entirely at a loss to understand what had happened in the loyal province of Upper Canada to produce so violent a document which he assumed, reasonably enough, had the considered approval of an Assembly only recently elected. For some time he had in fact, as had his predecessors, been demanding fuller information from Sir John Colborne on the political situation in the province. Now he became still more insistent, yet Colborne contented himself with saying that the reform Assembly did not represent popular feeling, and that the Report was inaccurate. Such a reply was quite useless to Glenelg, and in justifiable exasperation he informed the Lieutenant-Governor that he might expect to be “speedily relieved” of his post.⁴⁹

Mackenzie, however, was in no mood to go back to the old game of appeals to England and reliance on the Whig government there. And he was finished with taking advice from Joseph Hume, who had optimistically told him that each Colonial Minister would do things the last had failed to do, and who even now was counselling him to welcome Colborne’s successor. They were all the same and they were all bad. Upper Canada would never flourish until Downing Street rule was ended, and until it had a written constitution and an elected governor who would wield the veto as Andrew Jackson did to strike down monopolies and guard against the corruption inherent in legislative bodies. No longer would he “put his trust in princes.”⁵⁰ And he informed John Neilson that he was “less loyal” than he had been; now he directed his attention only “to the people.”⁵¹ Clearly the removal of Sir John Colborne would do nothing to soften Mackenzie’s campaign against the system of government in Upper Canada.

But that campaign faced greater obstacles than Mackenzie realized, and would not turn out at all as he hoped or expected.