Mackenzie’s Gazette: An Aspect of W. L. Mackenzie’s American Years
ON DECEMBER 11, 1837, William Lyon Mackenzie, fleeing from his political enemies in Upper Canada, crossed the Niagara River to take refuge in the United States. Years later, he was enabled to return by the passage of the Amnesty Act of 1849. What activities had filled Mackenzie's years in exile, what light do they throw upon him as a reformer, and how did they affect his post-rebellion career in Canada? To answer these questions, a full-scale study of the American years would be needed. This article makes a beginning but is limited to one topic: Mackenzie's Gazette, published first from New York City, later from Rochester. The Gazette makes clearer Mackenzie's position as a Canadian reformer who wanted more than political changes. For him, the immediate practical methods of advancing the cause of social democracy were to restrict severely the note-issuing powers of the chartered banks and to prevent hem using public funds for private profit. In the United States this was again the theme of his writings and the supposed inconsistency, unreasonableness, and apparent dishonesty his critics saw in his support of Van Buren yield when tested against what was for Mackenzie the fundamental question: Van Buren's tand on the Independent Treasury. Why did not Mackenzie choose to publish his Gazette in Buffalo, from which point it surely would have been easier to get copies into Canada than from New York? He did propose it to the Buffalo Committee of Thirteen on the very day the withdrawal from Navy Island was decided upon? Apparently this suggestion was not sympathetically
Political Operatives and Administrative Workers
This article sheds light on the agent, an overlooked participant in newspaper circulation networks in the early 1800s. Based on archival letters from the newspaper agents of Mackenzie s Gazette, which was published in New York state by Upper Canadian rebel leader William Lyon Mackenzie, this study shows that agents played key roles in circulation, collection, and feedback. The relationship between editor and agent also was highly political. The Gazette began as a platform to educate Americans about the rebel cause in Upper Canada, attracting agents from both the Whig and Democratic parties, but Mackenzie lost the support of agents as he attacked their parties. This study shows how the agent-editor relationship worked and characterizes the agents’ role as administrative, sparked by personal initiative, interactive, and allegiance to a cause.
Early Days in Upper Canada: Letters of John Langton from the Backwoods of Upper Canada and the Audit Office of the Province of Canada ed. by W. A. Langton (review)
the nominal administration of Colonel Smith, Mr. Gore, and Sir Peregrine Maitland, actually governed the province until they quarrelled amongst themselves "--to give the correct form of the quotation. (4) Documents that are accessible prove that Strachan was not "at Sir John Colhorne's ear". (5) Sir John, though admitted on page 49 to have been an "officer [?] du premier ordre", is called on page 58 "an excellent man, who had, among other notable things, helped to bury Sir John Moore at Corunna". A truly historical way surely in which to speak of the man to whom competent military authorities award the chief credit for the victory of the British arms at Waterloo and of the beneficent patron of education in Guernsey and in Upper Canada, who founded Upper Canada College. So long as McGill University, Trinity College, Toronto, the commutation funds of Anglican dioceses in Ontario, the dioceses of Toronto, Huron, and Ontario with their endowment funds, and the distinctive features of the Canadian synodical system endure, it is idle for Mr. Roberton to say, as he does at page 12: "At the end the Bishop had to suffer a total loss. He saw his policies discarded, his projects ruined, his privileges extinguished, his ambitions frustrated." All of these institutions and organizations, excepting the first mentioned, came into existence through Strachan's initiative and exertions between 1849 and 1867, that is long after the political part of his career was behind him, and much more than ten years after he became bishop of Toronto. Three years before his elevation to the see he had ceased (in 1836) to be a member of the Executive Council and the dominant political personage in the province. A. H. YOUNG