The life and times of Wm. Lyon Mackenzie : with an account of the Canadian rebellion of 1837, and the subsequent frontier disturbances, chiefly from unpublished documents

Front matter

the estate of

J. Stuart Fleming

THE

Introduction

A VERT general impression prevails throughout Canada that the late William Lyon Mackenzie had, for some years, been engaged in writing his autobiography ; and that, at the time of his death, the work was nearly completed. An examination of his papers showed that such was not the case. He had indeed projected such a work, and arranged much of the material necessary for its construction. The foundation had been dug ; but the first stone of the superstructure had not been laid. About his intention, or rather his desire, there can be no doubt. He had made known to all his friends that he had laid out this work for himself ; and even his own family were under the impression that he had made considerable progress in its execution. But on examining his papers, I soon discovered that, except detached and scattered memoranda, he had written nothing. Of autobiography, not previously written when some momentary exigency seemed to demand it, or fancy spurred him to put down some striking passage in his life, there was nothing. Beyond this, every thing had to be done by his biographer, if his life was to be written ; and such was the public curiosity to learn the connected story of his eventful life, that I was pressed, on all hands, to undertake the work. At great inconvenience, and under a

pressure of other exacting literary engagements, I consented.

i

INTRODUCTION.

A vast raass of materials was put into my hands. Although it had been subjected to a certain system of arrangement, I did not always readily discover the key to the connection. The general plan of reference was very simple. Take fifty common-place books numbered, by pages, up to seven thousand, with an index of subjects, and you are furnished the same facility of reference as to a ledger. It is required to find all the available information on any particular subject. Under the proper head in the index, we are directed, let us suppose, to page 6,059. We find a book numbered “ 6,001 to 6,062.’* It will therefore contain the intermediate number required. On opening at the page indicated, we find a number of manuscripts, letters, leaves from pamphlets, and cuttings from periodicals, intermingled with written notes on slips of paper, cut to the exact size necessary to contain the observations noted. All these papers are left loose for facility of removal.

So far all is plain sailing. Deficiencies, I soon found, had to be supplied ; and I was sometimes puzzled to see the connection of documents lying entombed between the same pages. One subject runs into another ; and to exhaust the available information on any one point, an endless number of references and comparisons had to be made. Some twenty years of newspaper files had to be carefully read. To give an idea of the mass of materials with which I had to deal, it will suflSce to say that the Navy Island correspondence alone, occupying a single page of one of fifty-five common-place books — and there is a second series with a second index — would make a large printed volume.

These facts are characteristic of the methodical habits of the man whose life is, however imperfectly, delineated in this work.

Full of the fiery energy of the Celtic race ; impetuous and daring ; standing in the front rank of party combatants, in times and in a country where hard knocks were given and taken, it was the fate of Mr. Mackenzie to have many relentless enemies. If I had undertaken to refute all the calumnies of which he was the subject, and to correct all the false statements made to his

INTEODUCTION.

Injury, this biography would have taken a controversial form, which must have rendered it less acceptable to a large class of readers. The plan I have followed has been to tell the story of his life as I find it, without much reference to what friends or enemies, biased one way or the other, may have said under the excitement of events that have now passed into the great ocean of history. There were some few cases in which it was necessary to clear up disputed questions, over which men still continue to differ.

The striking want of moral courage in many who were engaged with Mackenzie in the unfortunate and ill-advised insurrection, in Upper Canada, in 1837, led them to attempt to throw the odium of an enterprise that had failed in its direct object entirely upon him. Men, of whose complicity in that affair the clearest evidence exists, cravenly deny all knowledge of it. Mackenzie never shrank from his share of the responsibility. He lived to see and admit the error of the movement, and to express deep regret for the part he had taken. But an enterprise which cannot be justified, and the engaging in which involved him in ruin, was in the end advantageous to the country. Much of the liberty Canada has enjoyed, since 1840, and more of the wonderful progress she has made, are due to the changes which the insurrection was the chief agent in producing. Unless those changes had been made — unless a responsible government especially had been established — Canada would ere now either have been lost to the British Crown • or, ruled by the sword, it would have been stunted in its growth, its population poor, discontented, and ready to seek the protection of another power. The amelioration which the political institutions of Canada have undergone would probably have come in time, if there had been no insurrection ; but it would not have come so soon ; and there is no reason to suppose that the Province would yet have reached its present stage of advancement.

Being several thousands of miles distant when the insurrection and the frontier troubles took place, and having never been in

INTRODUCTION-.

Canada till several years after, I lay under tlie disadvantage of not having any personal recollection of what occurred in those stirring times. But considering the stores of materials and the sources of information at my command, perhaps this is no great loss ; certainly it will be more than compensated by the impartiality with which an unconcerned spectator can pass in review the events of that troubled period.

In the private documents in my possession, containing the secret history of the frontier movements, I found much that had never seen the light; including projects of invasion and insurrection, of which the public has never had more than the vaguest notions. - The use I have made of these documents will, I presume, not be regarded as unwarranted.

I first saw Mr. Mackenzie, in 1849, when he came from New York to Canada, on a visit. Our differences of opinion on the politics of Canada during the last ten years have been notorious. Still I knew his real views perhaps better than any one else. In private he never concealed his hand to me, during the whole of* that time. By the hour, when no third person was present, he would speak with great earnestness and animation on the claims of justice, the odiousness of oppression, and the foulness of corruption. The offer of ofiice under the Government was more than once obliquely — once, I think, directly— made to him after his return to Canada, and it always threw him into a fit of passion. He received it as an attempt to destroy his independence or to shackle his freedom of action. A thousand times I have heard him protest that he would rather die of starvation than descend to any meanness, or be guilty (f any act that would deprive him of that title to an unpurchasable Patriot, which he deemed the best heritage he could bequeath to his children.

Chapter I. Page

General Remarks — Mackenzie’s Parents — Birth — School Days — Characteristic Incidents— Religious Instruction — Books he read 11

Chapter II

Mackenzie first Employed in a Draper’s Shop, then in the Counting House of Gray of Dundee — Dr. Chalmers — Starts business at Alyth, and fails — Clerk to Kennett and Avon Canal Co., in England — London — Resolution to go to Canada — France 28

Chapter XI

Visit to United States — Cameronian Preaching and Scottish Psalmody — States and Canada Compared — Charge of Disloyalty met — Action for Libel — Session of 1830 — Change of Administration demanded — Contemptuous Reply — Reforms proposed 160

Chapter XII

Small Libel Suit — Mackenzie pleads his own Cause and Succeeds — Responsible Government — Opposition to his Re-election — Successful Appeal to the People- Success of the Official Party 173

Chapter XIII

McLean Speaker in New House — State Church — Cause of the Party Revolution- State of the Representation — Permanent Civil List — An Attempt to Expel Mackenzie— Journey to Quebec — Shipwreck 187

CHAPTER XrV.

Expulsion of Mackenzie — Defence Voted an Aggravation of his Offence — Feeling excited — Military Preparations — Public Meeting — Re-election — Gold Medal and Chain Presented 209

Meeting of the New House — Hume’s Letters — Grievance Committee — Read by the King — Mackenzie appointed Director of the Welland Canal — Disclosures — Hinck’s Career — Visit to Papineau — Letter to Hume.

Chapter XX

Sir Francis Bond Head arrives — His Speech — Censured — Troubles — Separation from England — Stoppage of Supplies and Reservation of Money Bills — Dissolution of the House — ^Violent means to carry Elections — Mackenzie loses his Election — Dangerous Illness

CHAPTER XXL

The Constitution — Mock Trial of Sir F. B. Head — Samuel Lount — Fatal Resolutions— Session of 1836, 7 — Its turbulent Close — Mackenzie goes to New York — Purchases at Trade Sales of Books

PAOH

89<

LIFE

OF

WIILIAM LYON MACKENZIE

Chapter I

General Eemarks — Mackenzie’s Parents — His Birth — School Days — Youth— Characteristic Incidents — Eeligious Instruction imposed by his Mother — The Books he read.

Few men who have led a life of great mental acti vity long survive the abandonment of their accustomed habit of labor. ]^or was it different with Mr. Mackenzie When he resigned his seat in the Legislative Assembly, in 1858, few of his colleagues were equal to the endurance he underwent. It was no uncommon thing for him to burn the midnight oil till streaks of gray were visible in the eastern horizon. He would do this three or four nights in the week. He could jump as high, and run as fast, as the youngest and the most athletic member of the House. E^^ery one thought there were still left many years of wear in his slender but wiry frame; but the seeds of mortality had been already sown in his system. As a steam engine of disproportionate size shakes to pieces the too frail vessel in which it is placed, his ponderous brain, overworked with long years of mental toil, wore out the bodily frame. IN'or did the brain itself escape the penalty of over-exertion. Loss of memory was the first symptom of the brain-softening thus superinduced. Violent pains in the head, accompanied by the refusal of the stomach to perform its accustomed functions, followed. For the last two years of his life, he failed more rapidly than his most intimate friends were able to realize. In his declining health, pecuniary embarrassments threw a gloom over the latter days of his existence. Whether he was himself aware of the extent to which his health had failed, that the iron frame was so far shaken and debilitated as it was, it is impossible to say. His tenacity of life would probably prevent him from admitting to himself the true state of the case ; and though he often spoke of the decline of his strength, he generally did so by way of inquiry and with a view of eliciting the opinion of others on the subject. It was a point on which he was morbidly sensitive ; and the last time he was out, before being confined to his death-bed, he inquired anxiously of one of his daughters whether people remarked that he was failing. When he did so, he drew himself up in a more erect posture and walked with a show of unwonted firmness, as if desirous to disprove an impression that he dreaded. Relying on the extraordinary strength of his constitution, he promised himself, in his moments of flickering hope, many years of life. But at length he became weary of battling the world, and was anxious to lie down to rest.

The public probably fancied that the Homestead

THE CANADIAN REBELLIOlSr.

subscription had given him some degree of ease in his worldly circumstances ; but the truth was that beyond the house in which he lived and died, the product was very little, and when that little was exhausted, he found himself without an income. It is doubtful whether the paper he published. The Weekly Message^ ever yielded any profit ; and he was finally compelled to abandon its publication. After this, he lived on borrowed money, obtained at usurious rates, upon the endorsement of political friends. When at last, he had to battle with despair, he ceased to desire to prolong the painful endurance of life. One day he remarked to some members of his family, that though he would not destroy the life that Grod had given him — that he had no right to do so— he cared not how soon it might please the Author of existence to take back the life that he had given. He died heart-broken with disappointment, as much as of brain-softening ; died because he no longer knew where to find the means of existence, and because his proud spirit forbade him to beg. From his most intimate friends, who might have helped him, he concealed the embarrassments of his pecuniary position.

Such were the causes of the death of this extraordinary man, whose powers of agitation, at one period of his life, gave him an almost absolute command over the masses in his adopted country. When he had ceased to be able to speak or write, he seemed much concerned for his family ; and placed the hand of the mother of his children in mine, as if to commend her to my protection. It seemed his last hope and his last wish.

In writing his biography, it will be my duty, as far as convenient, to alloAv him 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. In this spirit and with these feelings, I begin this tale of shipwrecked hopes and overwhelming disappointments.

Under the head “Mackenzie,”* I find among Mr.

Mackenzie’s papers several slips of memoranda, going over a long story of pedigrees. On reading them my curiosity was excited to see whether he was going to give point to the recital by tracing his own descent from some of the ennobled members of his family name ; but the conclusion somewhat brusquely excluded any claim of this kind. According to what was long the orthodox method of writing history, he derived the Mackenzies from Noah ; but with this difference, that, instead of pretending to complete the chain, he made a safe assumption of the fact.

Mr. Mackenzie’s parents were married at Dundee on the 8th of May, 1794, by the Rev. Mr. Macewen.f

* “ This ancient family,” writes Mr. Mackenzie, “traces its descent from the House of Gerald, Ireland, (whence sprung some of the noble families of Leinster, Desmond, etc.,) a member of which and his followers settled in Scotland about 1261, and was created Baron of Kintail. His name was Carlinus Fitzgerald, First Baron of Kintail. He married a daughter of "Walter, High Steward of Scotland ; was succeeded by his son Kenneth; who agair was succeeded by a son of the same name. Third Baron of Kintail, called in Gaelic, Kenneth Mackenneth, which in English was pronounced Mackenzie Mackainzie; and hence (says Burke’s peerage) arose all the families of Mackenzie, in Scotland.”

I The following entry is copied from an old family Bible :

Daniel Mackenzie and Elizabeth Mackenzie, both natives of Kirkmichael, Perthshire, Scotland, were married at Dundee, by the Bev. Mr. Macewen, on ihe 8th of May, 1794.

THE CANADIAN KEBELLION.

Of this marriage William Lyon Mackenzie, the object of this biogTaphy, was the sole issue. He was born at Springfield, Dundee, Scotland, on the 12th of March, 1795 f and his father died when the child was only twenty-seven days old.f His death was brought on .by a cold contracted at a dancing party ; and during his illness, which lasted only a few days, he suffered severely from a violent pain in the head. The knowledge of this circumstance caused the son, throughout his life, to dread the severe pains in the head with which he was occasionally afflicted, at long intervals, and generally after great and long continued mental exertion. What he had dreaded all his life came upon him before his death. For several weeks he complained of increasing and almost constant pains in the head. At all times, when they occurred, they had been extremely violent ; and in his last illness, but chiefly before he took to his bed, or had ceased to struggle against the disease, they were the cause of intense suffering. The discrepancy between the ages of his parents was great; his father being only twenty-eight years old when he died ; while his mother had seen forty-five summers when her only child was born.

His mother, by the death of her husband, who left

* William Lyon Mackenzie, born at Springfield, Dundee, Eorfarsbire, Scotland, March 12th, 1795. Baptized on the 29th by the Kev. Mr. Macewen, Seceder Minister. — Entry in Family Bible.

I Daniel Mackenzie died at Dundee on the 9th of April, 1795, leaving only one child, William Lyon, then tv^enty-seven days old. — Entry in Family Biblt.

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 ; and if it be presumed that she gave the largest share of her pa- . tronage to the latter, the former were probably not missed in their turn. At the same time she 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 high 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.

She was so small in stature as to be considerably below the average size of her sex. In complexion she was a brunette; her hair was dark-brown, till whitened by age, and at ninety it was as abundant as ever, and always long. 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 appall an antagonist. Her features, corresponding with her size, were small ; and the prominence of her cheek-bones gave unmistakable indications of her Celtic origin. 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 fore-

THE CAXAHIAH REBELLIOIS’.

head was broad and high, and the face seldom relaxed into perfect placidity ; there were always on the surface indications of the working of the volcanic feelings within. The subduing influences of religion kept her strong nature under control, and gave her features whatever degree of repose they ordinarily wore.

Her strong religious bias made her 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, it would not be diflicult to show, the impressions thus formed were never wholly effaced. Though of Highland origin, she spoke Graelic but rarely, it would seem, for she never imparted more than a very slight knowledge of it to her son. She cherished some plausible superstitions, firmly believing that a Mackenzie never died without warning of the coming event being given by some invisible messenger in a strange, unearthly sound, and had a strong suspicion that fairies were something more than myths. 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 company with Mr. J. Lesslie, in 1822, and died at Rochester, N, Y., in 1839, while her son was a state prisoner, in Monroe county jail, under sentence for a breach of the neutrality laws of the United States. She had attained the mature age of ninety years, a fact which goes to show that it was through her that Mr. Mackenzie inherited a physical frame capable of extraordinary endurance, as well as his natural mental endowments.

Daniel Mackenzie, father of the subject of this bio graph}^ is described as a man of dark complexion ; and his grandfather Colin Mackenzie, used to bear the cognomon 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.”

But Mr. Mackenzie may here be allowed to tell his own tale of his ancestry. In June, 1824, just when he had entered on his editorial career, he was called upon to meet the charge of disloyalty ; and his defence, which is in his happiest mood, shows how much better were his early compositions when youth was fresh and hope beat high, than those of his later days, when the pangs of disappointment had fastened upon his soul, and the great aims of his life had miscarried.

“My ancestors too 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 grandsire, 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 honor 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 or ‘he continent, fob

THE CANADIAN EEBELLION.

lowing his adverse fortunes for years. He returned at length ; married, in his native glen, my grandmother, Elizabeth Spalding, 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 Hob Hoy’s cousin. Deacon Jarvie of the Saltmarket, Glasgow, or 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 twentyninth year. I was only three weeks old at his death ; my mother took upon herself those vows Avhich our Church prescribes as needful at baptism, and was left to struggle with misfortune, a poor widow, in want and in distress. It 'is among the earliest of my recollections, that I lay in bed one morning during the grievous famine in Britain, in 1800-1, while my poor mother took from our large Hist (which is an article of furniture of a sort only to be found among the Scotch and Irish) the handsome plaid of the tartan of our clan, which in early life her own hands had spun, and went and sold it for a trifle, to obtain for us a little coarse barley meal, whereof to make our scanty breakfast ; and of another time during the same famine, that she left me at home crying from want and hunger, and for (I think) 85. sold a handsome and hitherto carefully preserved priest- gray coat of my father’s to get us a little food. How the mechanics and laborers ontrived to exist during these times, is

20 LIFE OF M.4CKENZIE, AND

Avliat I cannot tell; my recollections of this period ar^ faint and indistinct. 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 miserv mv familiar friends ; even now it yields a sweet satisfaction to my soul, that I can claim kindred with the obscure cottar, and the humble laborer, of my native, ever honored, ever loved Scotland. *

‘“Long may tliy Lardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content !”

“ My mother feared Grod, 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 l)rayer 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, asthey 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 writ-

THE CAXADIAIN’ KEBELLIOH.

mgs are by the goveinment editor"^ 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 these 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.

Earnestly did my mother desire me to honor my heavenly King, to remember my Creator in the days of my youth, and I at this distant day have much greater cause to regret the little attention I then paid to her well meant admonitions in that respect, than to take blame to myself for either thinking or speaking disrespectfully of our anointed sovereign. The celebrated traveller, my namesake. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, died on the same month on which I was born, and just a quarter of a century thereafter. I came into existence the 12th of March, 1795 ; he left the world the same date, 1820 ; he was no kinsman of mine, but he was a Mackenzie, and if I can spread the fame of The Advocate^ to regions as far west as to where he travelled, I shall be very well satisfied, whether Sir Thomas gets his copy or not.”

His first school-teacher was Mr. Kinnear, of Dundee, who was master of a parish school. One of his school-mates,J from whom I have sought information,

. * Mr. Charles Fothergill, editor of the Upper Canada Gazette, then published in Toronto, and King’s Printer. The Gazette, like the Moniieur of Paris, haJ an official and a non-official side.

f The name of the first newspaper he published.

J Mrs. Keid, of Eochester, N. Y.

describes him as a “bright boy, with yellow hair, wearing a blue short coat with yellow buttons.’^ The school-house, large and well lighted, had previously been a Catholic chapel. The stone basin, placed in a niche in the wall, which had formerly been a repository of “ holy water,” was now converted into a seat of punishment, called the “ holy cup.” Though very small when he first entered, Willie, as he was called, 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. “ He was ever ready,” says my informant, “ to help the girls, particularly if they were good looking.” Even then his power of declamation was considerable, and on one occasion the school was made a scene of uproar and confusion, on his account ; the scholars shouting at the top of their voices and hissing at the master. The thing happened in this wise.

One day he went into the master’s closet, donned the fool’s cap, and with the long leather taws tied a canvass sack round his shoulders, and then, with birch in hand, he took his seat on the “ holy cup,” to the great amusement both of the boys and girls. While thus seated, making grotesque faces and speechifying, in walked the dominie, a man six feet eight and proportionably stout, just when the mirth was at its height. Though boiling over with rage, Mr. Kinnear could hardly escape the contagion of the general laughter. When angry, his face was any thing but prepossess-