pacity of mayor he was fairly assiduous in his attention to
his duties. The city was subjected to a visitation of Asiatic cholera
during the year, and he appears to have done his utmost to stay the
progress of the pestilence, as well as to provide for the treatment of
the stricken patients. He was nevertheless guilty of a number of
indiscretions which rendered him odious to a large proportion of the
population. His pettiness of spirit was incessantly asserting itself. No
person in the community, however insignificant, was beneath his wrath
when his sense of personal dignity was wounded. On one occasion a
wretched woman of intemperate habits and loose character was brought
before him in the Mayor's Court. She was loquacious and abusive, and
Mackenzie, in a rage, ordered her to be placed in the public stocks.
There were still a public pillory and stocks within the city, but, like
those in Squire Hazeldean's parish, they had long been disused.
Mackenzie had probably never heard of the maxim _Quieta non movere_. At
any rate, the greater part of his life was spent in efforts in an
opposite direction. His sentence was carried out, and the culprit was
placed in the stocks. Had this been the act of a fossilized member of
the Compact it would not have appeared very incongruous, but in
Mackenzie it seemed ludicrously out of keeping with his professions. It
aroused the popular indignation against him to a higher pitch than ever;
but it had one good effect: it led to the removal and destruction of the
barbarous relics of mediaevalism. To Mackenzie belongs the questionable
credit of reviving their use when Tory magistrates had become ashamed to
employ them any longer. He is entitled to the further distinction of
being the last magistrate in Upper Canada to sanction their use; and
that, too, in the case of a poor and defenceless woman, whose
wretchedness ought to have removed her far from the possibility of his
vengeance.

A considerable part of the summer was spent by both the political
parties in the Province in preparing for the general election contest
which was to take place before the close of the year. It was held in
October. Had it been held some months earlier, while the public sympathy
with Mackenzie in consequence of his repeated expulsions was at its
height, an overwhelming preponderance of Reform members would have been
returned. The publication of Mr. Hume's letter in the interval had
alienated many sympathies and lost