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THE part played by
William Lyon Mackenzie in the making of Canada embraces the political
history of Upper Canada, and more particularly of the Reform party in
Upper Canada, from the year 1824, when he came upon the scene as the
editor and publisher of a newspaper in the interests of good government
and constitutional reform, down to the outbreak in December, 1837.
Mackenzie's work and influence may also not unfairly be held to extend
to the results of the revolutionary movement with which he was
identified—to Lord Durham's mission, his Report, which formed the basis
of the Union Act of 1840, the beneficent change of imperial policy
towards Canada, and the reforms which followed in its train. The good as
well as the ill should be weighed in the balance of popular judgment.
The period itself was one of unrest and growing discontent, of agitation
and turbulence, of stress and storm, but it was also a period of rapid
development of public opinion in favour of a radical change in the
constitution of the Canadas. Mackenzie was conspicuous all those years
as a journalist and parliamentarian, employing every legitimate means
and power at his command for the progress and improvement of political
conditions, and the betterment of the people. The culmination of the
struggle was a civil war, undertaken and ended unsuccessfully for the
concession to Canada of those principles of self-government within the
Empire which were denied the advocates and friends of reform, and the
denial of which, under circumstances of intolerable provocation, set the
country aflame with insurrection.
In writing this
biography it will be my duty, as far as convenient, to allow the subject
of it to tell his own tale; and where opinions must be expressed, it
will be my aim to make them judicial and just, though I may not conceive
that he was always right, either in act or opinion.
Mackenzie's parents
were married at Dundee, Scotland, on May 8th, 1794. Of this marriage,
William Lyon Mackenzie, the subject of this biography, was the sole
issue. He was born at Springfield, Dundee, on March 12th, 1795; and his
father died when the child was only twenty-seven days old. His mother,
by the death of her husband, who left behind him no property of any
account, became to a great extent dependent upon her relatives, of whom
she had several in the Highlands; and she sometimes lived with one and
sometimes with another. Some of them were poor, others well to do; but
the mother always managed, by some ingenuity of industry, to keep a
humble home over the heads of herself and her boy. Her constitutional
temperament always kept her busy, let her be where she might, her highly
nervous organization rendering inaction difficult to her, except towards
the close of her life. In this respect, there was a remarkable
resemblance between herself and her son; and from her, it may safely be
affirmed, he derived the leading mental characteristics that
distinguished him through life.
Her dark eyes were
sharp and piercing, though generally quiet; but when she was in anger,
which did not often occur, they flashed out such gleams of fire as might
well appal an antagonist. The small mouth and the thin, compressed lips,
in harmony with the whole features, told of that unconquerable will
which she transmitted to her son. The forehead was broad and high, and
the face seldom relaxed into perfect placidity; there were always on the
surface indications of the working of the indomitable feelings within.
Her strong religious
bias made Mrs. Mackenzie an incessant reader of the Scriptures, and such
religious books as were current among the Seceders. With this kind of
literature she early imbued the mind of her son; and the impressions
thus formed were never wholly effaced. The strongest reciprocal
affection existed between her and her son, at whose house she spent the
last seventeen years of her life, having followed him to Canada in 1822.
She had attained the mature age of ninety years when she died, a fact
which goes to show that it was through her that Mackenzie inherited a
physical frame capable of extraordinary endurance, as well as his
natural mental endowments.
Daniel Mackenzie,
father of the subject of this biography, is described as a man of dark
complexion ; and his grandfather, Colin Mackenzie, used to bear the
cognomen of "Colin Dhu," or black Colin. Daniel learned weaving in all
its branches; but, entering into an unprofitable commercial speculation,
he was reduced to keeping a few looms for the manufacture of "green
cloth."
In June, 1824, just
when he had entered on his editorial career, Mackenzie was called upon
to meet the charge of disloyalty; and his defence, which traces his
ancestry, is in his happiest mood.
"My ancestors," he
said, "stuck fast to the legitimate race of kings, and, though
professing a different religion, joined Charles Stuart, whom (barring
his faith) almost all Scotland considered as its rightful sovereign.
Colin Mackenzie, my paternal grand-sire, was a farmer under the Earl of
Airly in Glenshee, in the highlands of Perthshire; he, at the command of
his chieftain, willingly joined the Stuart standard, in the famous 1745,
as a volunteer. My mother's father, also named Colin Mackenzie, and from
the same glen, had the honour to bear a commission from the prince, and
served as an officer in the Highland army. Both my ancestors fought for
the royal descendant of their native kings; and after the fatal battle
of Culloden, my grandfather accompanied his unfortunate prince to the
Low Countries, and was abroad with him on the continent, following his
adverse fortunes for years. He returned at length, married, in his
native glen, my grandmother, Elizabeth, a daughter of Mr. Spalding of
Ashintully Castle, and my aged mother was the youngest but two of ten
children, the fruit of that marriage. The marriage of my parents was not
productive of lasting happiness; my father, Daniel Mackenzie, returned
to Scotland from Carlisle, where he had been to learn the craft of Rob
Roy's cousin, Deacon Jarvie of the Saltmarket, Glasgow, in other words,
the weaving business, took sickness, became blind, and, in the second
year of his marriage with my mother, died, being in his twenty-eighth or
twenty-ninth year. I was only three weeks old at his death; my mother
took upon herself those vows which our Church prescribes as needful at
baptism, and was left to struggle with misfortune, a poor widow, in want
and in distress. . . .
"Well may I love the
poor, greatly may I esteem the humble and the lowly, for poverty and
adversity were my nurses, and in youth were want and misery my familiar
friends; even now it yields a sweet satisfaction to my soul that I can
claim kindred with the obscure cotter and the humble labourer of my
native, ever honoured, ever loved Scotland.
"My mother feared God,
and He did not forget nor forsake her; never in my early years can I
recollect that divine worship was neglected in our little family, when
health permitted; never did she in family prayer forget to implore that
He, who doeth all things well, would establish in righteousness the
throne of our monarch, setting wise and able counsellors around it. A
few of my relations were well to do, but many of them were poor farmers
and mechanics, (it is true my mother could claim kindred with some of
the first families in Scotland; but who that is great and wealthy can
sit down to count kindred with the poor?) yet amongst these poor
husbandmen, as well as among their ministers, were religion and loyalty
held in as due regard as they had been by their ancestors in the olden
time. Was it from the precept, was it from the example, of such a mother
and such relations, that I was to imbibe that disloyalty, democracy,
falsehood, and deception, with which my writings are by the government
editor1 charged? Surely not. If I had followed
the example shown me by my surviving parent, I had done well; but as I
grew up I became careless, and neglected public and private devotion.
Plainly can I trace, from this period, the commencement of those errors
of the head and of the heart which have since embittered my cup, and
strewed my path with thorns, where at my age I might naturally have
expected to pluck roses." . . .
His first school
teacher was Mr. Kinnear, of Dundee, who was master of a parish school.
One of his schoolmates, from whom I have sought information, describes
him as "a bright boy with yellow hair, wearing a short blue coat with
yellow buttons." Though very small when he first entered school, he was
generally at the head of his class. His progress in arithmetic,
particularly, was very rapid. He was often asked to assist other boys in
the solution of problems which baffled their skill; and, while he
rendered this service, he would pin papers or draw grotesque faces with
chalk on their coat-backs.
At the age of ten
years, some difficulty occurring between him and his mother, he resolved
to leave home and set up on his own account. For this purpose he induced
some other boys of about his own age to accompany him to the Grampian
Hills, among which he had often been taken, and where, in a small castle
which was visible from Dundee, and of which they intended to take
possession, they made the romantic resolve of leading the life of
hermits. They never reached the length of the castle, however, and after
strolling about a few days, during part of which they were terribly
frightened at the supposed proximity of fairies, they were glad to
trudge their way back to the town, half famished. This incident is
characteristic, and might have been regarded as prophetic; for the
juvenile brain that planned such enterprises would not be likely to be
restrained, in after life, where daring was required. It is probable
that the difficulty between young Lyon and his mother, which led to this
escapade, arose out of the long reading tasks which it was her custom to
impose upon him. He was in this way thoroughly drilled in the
Westminster Catechism and Confession of Faith; he learned the Psalms and
large portions of the Bible by rote, and was early initiated into
Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and several similar works. When one of
these tasks had been given him, his mother used to confine him closely
till it had been mastered. This early exercise of the memory, it may be
reasonably assumed, tended to give to that faculty the strength which in
after life was a source of astonishment to many.
Those who did not know
Mackenzie's personal habits often attributed to his unaided memory much
that was the result of reference to those stores of information which he
never ceased to collect, and which were so arranged as to admit of easy
access at any moment. He has left in his own hand-writing a list of
"some of the books read between the years 1806 and 1819," in which are
fifty-four works under the head of "divinity," one hundred and
sixty-eight on history and biography, fifty-two of travels and voyages,
thirty-eight on geography and topography, eighty-five on poetical and
dramatic literature, forty-one on education, fifty-one on arts, science,
and agriculture, one hundred and sixteen miscellaneous, and three
hundred and fifty-two novels; making, in all, nine hundred and
fifty-eight volumes in thirteen years. One year he read over two hundred
volumes. With his tenacious memory, Mackenzie must have been enabled to
draw, from time t9 time, upon these stores, during the rest of his life.
The works are confined almost exclusively to the English language; and
the truth is, that he had only an imperfect knowledge of any other. Of a
tendency to scepticism, of which he was accused in the latter part of
his life— with what justice will hereafter be seen—there is, in the
works which must have tended to give a cast to his mind, an almost
entire absence.
In early youth,
politics already possessed a charm for him, the Dundee, Perth and Cupar
Advertiser, the first newspaper he ever read, serving to gratify this
inclination. But he was soon admitted to a wider range of political
literature; for he was introduced to the Dundee news-room at so early a
period of life that he was for years after its youngest member.
For a short time after
leaving school, and when he must have been a mere boy, he was put into
Henry Tullock's draper shop, Dundee ; but disliking the work he did not
long remain there, probably only a few months. He afterwards became an
indentured clerk in the counting-house of Gray, a druggist in a large
way of business in Dundee. It was probably while in the counting-house
of Gray, that Mackenzie acquired that knowledge of the mysteries of
accounts which afterwards made his services of considerable value as
chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts in the assembly of Canada,
and which enabled him to render important service in the Welland Canal
investigation, and on other occasions when financial mysteries had to be
solved.
At an early age,
apparently when he was about nineteen, he went into business for himself
at Alyth, some twenty miles from Dundee, setting up a general store in
connection with a circulating library. He remained there for three
years, when the result of inexperience assumed the shape of a business
failure. His creditors were all honourably paid after he had acquired
the necessary means in Canada, at the distance of some years. It was
about the middle of May, 1817, when he left Alyth; and he soon
afterwards went to England, where at one time we find him filling the
situation of clerk to the Kennett and Avon Canal Company, at another
time in London; and he used to relate that he was for a short time in
the employ of Earl Lonsdale as a clerk.
The idea of going to
Canada is said to have been first suggested to him by Edward Lesslie, of
Dundee. Before starting he visited France. The date of this visit cannot
be fixed with certainty; but it was probably in November or December,
1819. He confesses to having, a little before this time, 42 plunged into
the vortex of dissipation and contracted a fondness for play. But all at
once he abandoned the dangerous path on which he had entered, and after
the age of twenty-one never played a game at cards. A more temperate man
than he was, for the rest of his life, it would have been impossible to
find.
In April, 1820,
Mackenzie was among the passengers of the Psyche bound for Canada, a
young man just turned twenty-five years of age, who, without having
enjoyed any other advantages of education than the parochial and
secondary schools of Dundee offered, had a mind well stored with varied
information which he had devoured with keen literary appetite and
appreciation. It wag fated that this young man should change the destiny
of the country to which the good ship Psyche was bearing him. He was of
slight build and scarcely of medium height, being only five feet six
inches in stature. His massive head, high and broad in the frontal
region and well rounded, looked too large for the slight wiry frame it
surmounted. He was already bald from the effects of a fever. His keen,
restless, piercing blue eyes, which threatened to read your most inward
thoughts, and the ceaseless and expressive activity of his fingers,
which unconsciously opened and closed, betrayed a temperament that could
not brook inaction. The chin was long and rather broad; and the firm-set
mouth indicated a will which, however it might be baffled and thwarted,
could not be subdued. The lips, firmly pressed together, constantly
undulated in a mass, moving all that part of the face which lies below
the nostrils; with this motion the twinkling of the eyes seemed to keep
time, and gave an appearance of unrest to the whole countenance.
After his arrival in
Canada, Mackenzie was for a short time employed in connection with the
survey of the Lachine Canal; but it could only have been a few weeks,
for in the course of the summer he entered into business in York, as the
present city of Toronto was then called. There John Lesslie and he were
in the book and drug business, the profits of the books going to Lesslie,
and those of the drugs to Mackenzie. The question arose of finding
another place at which to establish a second business, and Dundas was
selected. Here he conducted the business of the partnership for fifteen
or sixteen months, during which time, I have heard him say, a clear cash
profit of £100 a month was made, until the partnership was dissolved, by
mutual consent, in the early part of 1823. A division of the partnership
effects was then made; and, in papers which have been preserved,
Mackenzie appears as a purchaser from the firm of Mackenzie & Lesslie to
the amount of £686 19s 3½d. The goods included in this purchase were as
miscellaneous as can well be imagined, and with this stock a separate
business was commenced; but it was not long continued, for in the autumn
of the same year Mackenzie removed 44 to Queenston, and there opened a
general store. He remained only a year; and before the expiration of
that time he had abandoned commerce for politics ; the stock of goods
was disposed of to a storekeeper in the country; and, as a journalist,
he made the first step in the eventful career which opens with this
period of his life.
While living in Dundas,
Mackenzie was married on July 1st, 1822, at Montreal. Miss Isabel
Baxter,1 his bride, may be said to have been a native of the same town
as himself; for she was born at Dundee, and he at Springfield, a suburb
of the same place; they both were at the same school together.
Up to this time,
Mackenzie had not held any other office in Canada than that of school
trustee; and he confessed that even that mark of public confidence
inspired him with pride. He and David Thorburn were elected to that
office at the same time, at Queenston.
1 Miss Isabel Baxter
was the second daughter of Peter Baxter of Dundee, Forfarshire,
Scotland, who settled near Kingston in the county of Frontenac, where he
became the owner of a valuable farm property, which, after his death,
passed into the hands of George Baxter, one of his sons. George Baxter
was master of the Royal Grammar School at Kingston, and had, as two of
his pupils, Sir Richard Cartwright and the late Sir John A. Macdonald.
His sister, Isabel, who married Mackenzie, came to Canada with
Mackenzie's mother, and the marriage took place three weeks after her
arrival. The youthful bride, who had scarce attained her majority, has
been described as "a bright, handsome, Scotch lassie, who preserved her
refined features, and her gentle, winsome manner till past the age of
seventy." Mrs. Mackenzie died at Toronto 011 January 12th, 1873, in her
seventy-first year. See sketch of her life, with portrait, at page 221
of Morgan's interesting work on Types of Canadian Women (1903). |
