e? Were they in total ignorance of what was going on all around
them? Not at all. They were kept regularly informed of the banners,
speech-makings, drillings, pigeon-matches and what not; and--at least in
some instances--they contrived to obtain pretty accurate reports of the
proceedings at Mackenzie's meetings. But they committed the grave error
of undervaluing their opponents. They would not believe it possible that
Mackenzie could ever again be dangerous. He had been so completely
worsted in his hand-to-hand fight with Toryism that it was not to be
credited that he would ever again be able to secure a following large
enough to be worth seriously considering. True, he threatened all manner
of dire calamities, but he had for so many years been accustomed to
indulge in loud-mouthed threats that he had lost all power to create
alarm. He was like the shepherd's boy who had cried "wolf" so often that
nobody paid heed to him. The official party spoke of him as an upstart
mannikin who had enjoyed his little day of notoriety, but whose power
for either good or ill was past and gone. Sometimes, when he published
anything of special ferocity in his paper, the attention of the
Lieutenant-Governor would be drawn to it by his supporters, who would
urge that a prosecution should be instituted. But Sir Francis's wiser
counsellors knew better than to adopt any such foolish course. They knew
that State prosecutions had done more to alienate popular sympathy and
to weaken the power of the Government in times past than any other cause
whatever. The editor of the _Constitution_, they believed, had steadily
lost his influence--an influence which he could never hope to regain
unless some imprudent act of his enemies should once more create for him
a specious sympathy and notoriety. Nothing, it was felt, would be so
certain to give him a fictitious importance as to prosecute him for
treason, at least until he should proceed to such lengths as to render a
prosecution imperative. Sir Francis Head, Chief Justice Robinson,
Attorney-General Hagerman, Judge Jones, and the whole race of
officialdom refused to believe in the possibility of an actual
rebellion. They all declared that there were not fifty men in the
Province who would consent to take arms against the Government. Plenty
of low Radicals, it was said, were ready enough to boast and bluster,
but their courage was only skin-deep. As for Mackenzie, he was admitted
to be an exception, so far