Chapter XXIII

1795-1861.

Sketch of Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie.

The story of Dr. Ryerson's life would scarcely be complete without giving some information in regard to the chief opponents whom he encountered in the earlier part of his career--men well known at the time, but whose names and memories are now passing away.

With the exception of Bishop Strachan, no man came so immediately in contact with Dr. Ryerson in the first years of his public life as did Mr. W. L. Mackenzie.

Mr. Mackenzie was born in Scotland, in March, 1795. He died in Toronto, on the 28th August, 1861, in the 67th year of his age. He came to Canada in 1820, and until 1824 was engaged in mercantile pursuits. In May of that year he entered public life, and commenced the publication of the _Colonial Advocate_ at Queenston. From that time until near the close of his life, he maintained his connection, more or less, with the press; but he was always on the stormy sea of politics, even when not a journalist. The reasons which induced him to enter public life are thus given in Mr. Charles Lindsey's "Life and Times of Mackenzie," page 40. They are in Mr. Mackenzie's own words, and were written some time after the rebellion of 1837-8:--

I had long seen the country in the hands of a few shrewd, crafty,
covetous men, under whose management one of the most lovely,
desirable sections of America remained a comparative desert. The
most obvious public improvements were stayed; dissension was
created among classes; citizens were banished and imprisoned
[Gourley, Beardsley, etc.] in defiance of all law; the people had
been forbidden, under severe pains and penalties, from meeting
anywhere to petition for justice; large estates were wrested from
their owners in utter contempt of even the forms of the courts; the
Church of England, the adherents of which were few, monopolized as
much of the lands of the Colony as all the religious houses and
dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church had had the control of in
Scotland at the era of the Reformation. Other sects were treated
with contempt, and scarcely tolerated; a sordid band of
land-jobbers grasped the soil as their patrimony, and with a few
leading officials, who divided the public revenue among themselves,
formed "the family compact," and were the avowed enemies of common
schools, of civil and religious liberty, of all legislative or
other checks to their own will. Other men had opposed and been
converted by them. At nine-and-twenty I might have united with
them, but chose rather to join the oppressed; nor have I ever
regretted that choice, or wavered from the object of my early
pursuit. So far as I, or any other professed reformer, was
concerned in inviting citizens of [the United States] to interfere
in Canadian affairs, there was culpable error. So far as any of us,
at any time, may have supposed that the cause of freedom would be
advanced by adding the Canadas to [that] confederation, we were
under the merest delusion. Mr. Lindsey adds:--In some respects the
condition of the Province was worse than Mr. Mackenzie described
it. He dealt only with its political condition.

With a Scotchman's idea of justice and freedom, he felt a longing desire to right the wrongs which he saw everywhere around him. This, therefore, constituted, as he believed, his mission as a public man in Canada, and it furnishes the key to his life and character.

Mr. Mackenzie was a political pessimist. He looked upon every abuse which he attacked, with a somewhat severe, if not a jaundiced, eye. Every evil which he discovered was, in his estimation, truly an evil; and all evils were about of equal magnitude. Besides, in attacking an evil or an abuse, he did not fail to attack the perpetrator or upholder of it also, and that, too, with a strength of invective, or of cutting sarcasm, which brought every foible, and weakness of his, and even those of his father before him, vividly into view. This was the baleful secret of his strength as an assailant; but this, too, caused him to be regarded by his victims with intense dislike, bordering on hatred. This style of attack, on the part of Mr. Mackenzie, did not necessarily arise from anything like vindictiveness, but rather from a keen sense of dislike to what he conceived to be wrong in the thing he was attacking.

In 1849 (12 years after the rebellion), Mr. Mackenzie, in a letter to Earl Grey, used the following remarkable language:--

A course of careful observation during the last eleven years has
fully satisfied me that, had the violent movements in which I and
many others were engaged on both sides of the Niagara proved
successful, that success would have deeply injured the people of
Canada, whom I then believed I was serving at great risks.... I
have long been sensible of the errors committed during that
period.... No punishment that power could inflict or nature
sustain, would have equalled the regrets I have felt on account of
much that I did, said, wrote, and published; but the past cannot be
recalled.... There is not a living man on the continent who more
sincerely desires that British Government in Canada may long
continue, etc. Page 291, 292.

No man was more unselfish than Mr. Mackenzie. He would rather suffer extreme hardship than accept a doubtful favour. Even in regard to kindly and reasonable offers of help, he was morbidly sensitive (as mentioned on page 298 of his "Life and Times"); and yet, looking at the conduct of many men in like circumstances, he deserved commendation rather than censure for his extreme conscientiousness.

Mr. Mackenzie did the State good service in many things. His investigations into the affairs of the Welland Canal were highly valuable to the country, greatly aided as he was by Mr. (now, Sir) Francis Hincks as chief accountant. His inquiries in regard to the Post Office and Prison management were also useful. Besides, he advocated many important reforms which were afterwards carried out. Mr. Mackenzie was the first Mayor of Toronto.

Towards the close of his life he and Dr. Ryerson were not on unfriendly terms; and when in 1852, as a member of the Legislature he instituted an inquiry into the management of the Educational Depository, he expressed himself satisfied with its usefulness.[59] At a later period when Mr. John C. Geikie[60]--then a bookseller in Toronto--commenced his attack upon the Depository in 1858, Mr. Mackenzie thus rebuked him in his _Weekly Message_ of April 9th, of that year:--

At one time we thought with the redoubtable Geikie that Dr.
Ryerson's book concern was a monopoly, but a more thorough inquiry
induced us to change that opinion. We found that great benefits
were obtained for the townships, the country schools, and general
education through Dr. Ryerson's plan which could in no other way be
conferred upon them, etc.

Dr. Ryerson, on his part, felt kindly towards Mr. Mackenzie. He mentioned to the Editor of this book near the close of the year 1860, that on the ensuing New Year's day he (Dr. Ryerson) would call upon and shake hands with his old antagonist, and wish him a "Happy New Year."

FOOTNOTES:

[59] Mr. Mackenzie frequently visited the Educational Depository to make inquiries, etc. The Editor of this book had frequent conversations with him on the subject, and explained to him the details of management. He was pleased to know that through the agency of the Depository thousands of volumes of good books were being yearly sent out to the schools.

[60] Now the Rev. Dr. Cunningham Geikie, of England, and author of the "Life and Words of Christ," and other valuable books. He declined the use of the title of reverend in his controversy with Dr. Ryerson.