William Lyon Mackenzie - Career As A Reform Advocate, 1827–1834

Career As A Reform Advocate, 1827–1834

Mackenzie now aligned himself with John Rolph in arguing that American-born settlers in Upper Canada should have the full rights of British subjects. Mackenzie played a role in organizing a committee to present grievances to the British government: the committee selected Robert Randal to travel to London to advocate on behalf of the American-born settlers. In London, Randal allied himself with British Reformer Joseph Hume in presenting the colonists' grievances to the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Goderich. Goderich agreed that injustice was being done and instructed the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada to redress the grievances. This incident taught Mackenzie the efficacy of appealing directly to Britain.

John Strachan, who was then the rector of York, as well as a member of the Executive Council of Upper Canada and a prominent member of the Family Compact, also understood the efficacy of petitioning. He was in London the same year to seek a charter for his proposed King's College (which would ultimately become the University of Toronto) and to argue that the Church of England should receive the proceeds of sales of the clergy reserves. Allying himself with Methodist minister Egerton Ryerson, who felt that the Methodist Church should share in the proceeds of sale of the clergy reserves, Mackenzie declared himself opposed to Strachan's plans for Upper Canada.

Mackenzie declared his intentions to run in the elections for the 10th Parliament of Upper Canada and entered into correspondence with Reformers like Joseph Hume in England and John Neilson in Lower Canada. He ran in York County, a riding dominated by colonists of American extraction. Mackenzie was one of four Reformers vying for York County's two seats – the others included two moderates (J. E. Small and Robert Baldwin) and one radical Reformer, Jesse Ketchum. During the campaign, Mackenzie published a "Black List" in the Colonial Advocate, a series of attacks on his opponents, leading to the rival Canadian Freeman and the Tories dubbing him "William Liar Mackenzie". Nevertheless, Mackenzie's tactics were successful and he and Ketchum won the seat as part of a landslide that saw the Reformers win a majority of the seats. However, given the undemocratic nature of Upper Canada at this time, this win did not give the Reformers the right to form a cabinet, with the cabinet (the Executive Council of Upper Canada) still being chosen by the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, Sir Peregrine Maitland, who remained allied with the Family Compact.

The 10th Parliament of Upper Canada opened in January 1829. Although there was speculation that Mackenzie would be elected speaker, that honour went to Mackenzie's former lawyer, Marshall Spring Bidwell. Nevertheless, Mackenzie now had a prominent position from which to advocate for further reforms in the colony. He organized committees on agriculture, commerce, and the post office (he denounced the post office because it was run to make a profit for British businessmen and he wanted it to come under local control). He was also critical of the Bank of Upper Canada, which was a monopoly and a limited liability company (Mackenzie distrusted limited liability companies and favoured hard money). Later in the session, he also spoke out against the Welland Canal Company, denouncing its close links with the Executive Council and the financing methods of William Hamilton Merritt.

In March 1829, Mackenzie traveled to the U.S. to study the new president Andrew Jackson. He admired the small size of the American government; the spoils system (whereby a party that wins an election can distribute government jobs to its supporters – unlike in Upper Canada, where those jobs remained controlled by the lieutenant governor no matter who won the election to the Assembly); and Jackson's opposition to the Second Bank of the United States, which corresponded to Mackenzie's feelings towards the Bank of Upper Canada. Mackenzie was also impressed with Jackson personally when he had the occasion to meet with the president. Following Mackenzie's 1829 trip to the U.S., his political attitudes became increasingly pro-American and anti-British.

The 10th Parliament of Upper Canada was dissolved in 1830 following the death of George IV, and fresh elections were called. Unfortunately for Mackenzie and the Reformers, the mood of Upper Canada had changed somewhat from 1828 for a number of reasons: Sir John Colborne, who replaced Sir Peregrine Maitland as lieutenant governor in 1828, was less allied with John Strachan and the Family Compact; Colborne had encouraged immigration to Upper Canada from the British Isles, and these new settlers felt more loyalty to the home country than Upper Canadians born in the New World; and the Reform party had seemed to accomplish little during the two years they had controlled the Assembly. Consequently, the 1830 election saw the Reformers win only 20 of the 51 seats in the 11th Parliament of Upper Canada, though both Mackenzie and Ketchum were returned as members for York.

Disappointed at the setbacks to the Reform movement, Mackenzie became something of a troublemaker. He published vitriolic personal attacks on his political enemies in the Colonial Advocate. He refused to join an agricultural society organized by the Tories, but nevertheless turned up at their meetings and insisted on speaking. And he also caused a ruckus in church: as a member of the assembly, he had attended services at St. James's Cathedral, the anchor congregation of the established Anglican church, as well as services in an independent Presbyterian church which opposed church-state connection. In summer, 1830, however, he joined St. Andrew's Presbyterian, a congregation organized by Tories who supported the church-state connection. At St. Andrew's, he opposed the church-state connection, leading to a four-year battle within the congregation which ended with the departure of both Mackenzie and the congregation's minister, William Rintoul.

Meanwhile, the 11th Parliament of Upper Canada met in January 1831 and Mackenzie continued to denounce abuses in the province. Influenced by the burgeoning Reform movement in England, he also began calling for a review of representation in Upper Canada. He chaired a committee which recommended increased representation for Upper Canadian towns (as opposed to rural areas), a single day's vote and voting by ballot instead of voice.

Unfortunately for Mackenzie, the Assembly was now in the control of his Tory enemies: Archibald McLean was speaker and Henry John Boulton was solicitor general as well as an important member of the House. The Tories, however, also felt threatened: Lieutenant Governor Colborne was reforming the Legislative Council (traditionally dominated by the Family Compact) and paying less heed to John Strachan and the Executive Council. In the meantime, the British election of 1830 had brought the Reformer Earl Grey to power in the United Kingdom, and Grey's government was suggesting giving power over certain revenues to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada in exchange for a permanent civil list. Mackenzie supported giving control of revenues to the Legislative Assembly, but he opposed granting a permanent civil list, which he dubbed the "Everlasting Salary Bill".

Mackenzie spent 1831 traveling throughout Upper Canada collecting signatures for petitions to redress Upper Canadian grievances. He also met with Lower Canadian Reformers. New Irish immigrants and those of American descent were particularly supportive of Mackenzie.

In the legislative session that opened in November 1831, Mackenzie demanded investigations of the Bank of Upper Canada, the Welland Canal, King’s College, the revenues, and the chaplain’s salary. Taking his language even a step further, in the Colonial Advocate he denounced the Legislative Assembly as a sycophantic office. This was too much for the Assembly, and in December 1831, they voted to expel Mackenzie by a vote of 24 to 15.

Mackenzie's expulsion helped him to recreate his reputation as a martyr for Upper Canadian liberty. On the day the Assembly voted to expel him, a mob of several hundred stormed the Assembly, demanding that Colborne dissolve the Assembly and call fresh elections. Colborne refused, but on January 2, 1832, Mackenzie won the byelection called to replace him by a vote of 119 to 1. A parade of 134 sleighs down Yonge Street, accompanied with bagpipes, celebrated the occasion.

Nevertheless, on January 7, 1832, Henry John Boulton and Allan MacNab again succeeded in getting through a motion expelling Mackenzie from the Assembly (on the basis of new attacks Mackenzie had published in the Colonial Advocate). A second byelection was called, and Mackenzie won by a landslide for a second time. When he was again expelled from the Assembly, Mackenzie appealed to London for redress; in response, the Tories organized the British Constitutional Society. 1832 was a time of great political turmoil in Upper Canada. When the Roman Catholic bishop Alexander Macdonell organized a rally in York to demonstrate Catholic support for the Tories, Mackenzie and his supporters disrupted the meeting. In Hamilton, Tory magistrate William Johnson Kerr arranged to have Mackenzie beaten by thugs. On March 23, Catholic Irish apprentices in York, furious at Mackenzie's attack on Bishop Macdonnell, pelted Mackenzie and Ketchum with garbage; riots broke out in York later that day and Mackenzie might have been killed by the crowd, but for the intervention of Tory magistrate James FitzGibbon. Following the riots, Mackenzie went into hiding.

In April 1832, Mackenzie travelled to England to petition the British government for redress. In London, he met with reformers Joseph Hume and John Arthur Roebuck and wrote in the Morning Chronicle to influence British public opinion in his favour. Lord Goderich, serving as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies for a second time, received Mackenzie, along with Egerton Ryerson and Denis-Benjamin Viger, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, on July 2, 1832. Mackenzie felt that Goderich gave him a fair hearing (Goderich suggested that Mackenzie should send him a report on Upper Canada). Mackenzie remained in London for some time, and was present in the galleries for the debate on the Reform Act 1832. He also wrote a book during this period, Sketches of Canada and the United States, designed to acquaint the British public with his grievances.

In Mackenzie's absence, the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada voted to expel him a third time; on this occasion, he was re-elected by acclamation.

On November 8, 1832, Lord Goderich sent a dispatch to Lieutenant Governor Colborne, which arrived in January 1833, instructing him to make certain financial and political improvements in Upper Canada, and instructing him to rein in the Assembly's vendetta against Mackenzie. The House of Assembly and the Legislative Council were furious at this interference in Upper Canadian politics, and in February again deprived Mackenzie of his vote in the House and refused to call fresh elections. When news of this insubordination reached Lord Goderich, he dismissed Attorney General Boulton and Solicitor General Hagerman. Lieutenant Governor Colborne protested and Boulton and Hagerman travelled to London to make their case.

In April 1833, Lord Goderich was replaced as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies by the more conservative Lord Stanley. Lord Stanley reappointed Hagerman as solicitor general and named Boulton chief justice of Newfoundland.

This incident contributed to Mackenzie's decaying faith in Great Britain. Returning to Upper Canada, in December 1833 he renamed the Colonial Advocate simply The Advocate, a sign that he no longer valued the tie to Great Britain. On December 17, 1833, he was again expelled from the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, and later in the month was again re-elected: twice, he was refused admission to the House, and in the end it was only Lieutenant Governor Colborne's intervention which resulted in Mackenzie finally being able to take his seat.

Mackenzie broke with his old ally Egerton Ryerson in late 1833. In 1832, Ryerson had negotiated an agreement between the British and Canadian Methodists, and the Methodists agreed to take state aid. Ryerson began attacking British Reformer Joseph Hume in the pages of the Methodist newspaper, the Christian Guardian. Mackenzie disagreed with Ryerson's positions and broke with him at this point.