ng the number. No more certain means of intensifying his
opposition could have been found than an attempt to put him down by the
strong hand. He continued to make motion upon motion and speech upon
speech, and before the session was half over he had managed to cause an
amount of annoyance to the Government such as they had never before
known. And all this time the party to which he belonged was in an
insignificant minority in the Assembly. What then was to be anticipated
when the chances and changes of time should once more place that party
in the ascendant there?

In former times it had been possible for the official party to rid
themselves of a troublesome opponent upon any slight pretext. Why not
now, when the Assembly was well-nigh as obedient as the Upper House, and
when some of the ablest members of the Reform party had ceased to occupy
themselves with public affairs? Certainly there had never been a time
when suppression was more imperatively required, for did not this man
Mackenzie spout something very much like democracy in their very faces?
Had he not made several speeches in the House which had aroused a
spirit of inquiry? If he were allowed to continue, was it not inevitable
that some of his waspish stings must take serious effect?

Prosecutions for libel had become unpopular. The case of Francis Collins
had aroused such a clamour that it was not deemed wise to try further
experiments in that direction. In April, 1828--about the same time when
measures had been instituted against Collins--an indictment for libel
had actually been laid against Mackenzie for a paragraph published in
the _Advocate_, in which the Crown lawyers and other supporters of the
Government had been referred to in contumelious terms, and wherein a
hope had been expressed that the constituencies returning certain Tory
members to Parliament would clear the Assembly of "the whole of that
ominous nest of unclean birds."[150] But the Attorney-General, after
keeping the prosecution impending over the defendant's head for many
months, had seen fit to abandon it. The times, in fact, had ceased to be
propitious for libel prosecutions, and some other way out of the
difficulty had to be found. The device actually hit upon to get rid of
Mackenzie's opposition in the Assembly was worthy of the minds which had
plotted the ruin of Captain Matthews, Justice Willis and Francis
Collins. Mackenzie, who had the contract for printing the journals of
the Hou