ordinary circumstances would have merited lightness of touch on the part
of the historian. But Mr. Mackenzie is identified with a movement which
forms a conspicuous and dramatic passage in Upper Canadian chronicles,
and in justice to others it becomes highly necessary to form a correct
estimate of his personality. This is all the more essential from the
fact that he himself at different times gave various and conflicting
accounts of the episode with which his name is inseparably blended,
which accounts have hitherto been the only sources of information drawn
upon by so-called historians. All the references to the Upper Canadian
Rebellion to be found in current histories are traceable, directly or
indirectly, to Mackenzie himself, and all are built upon false
hypotheses and perverted representations of events. To Mackenzie, more
than to any other person, or to all other persons combined, are to be
attributed all the worst consequences which flowed from that
feebly-planned and ill-starred movement. All the facts point to the
conclusion that if he had been content to play the patient and
subordinate part properly belonging to him, the whole course of his
subsequent life might have been shaped much more smoothly, and he might
have been saved the most serious of the privations which he was
compelled to undergo. Much sorrow and suffering would also have been
spared to others. The injury that may be done in a primitive community
by a man who combines good intentions and great energy with excessive
obstinacy, misguided ambition, and perversity of judgment, is simply
incalculable. The subsequent course of the narrative will be found to
fully bear out these reflections, and to point a moral even where there
is no intention to moralize.

Beyond the perpetual friction which was kept up between the Executive
body and the Opposition, the session of 1829 was barren of events of
permanent political importance. The Executive was tolerably independent
of the popular branch of the Legislature, for it retained the casual and
territorial revenues, and could get along without an annual vote for
supplies. No fewer than twenty-one Bills passed by the Assembly were
rejected by the Legislative Council during the session. "The Province,"
says Mr. MacMullen,[142] "presented the unconstitutional spectacle of a
Government requiring no moneys from the Assembly, and a Legislative
Council of a totally different political complexion from the popular
br