High as Dr. Baldwin stood in the Reform ranks, however, he was destined to be eclipsed by his more distinguished son. It is safe to say that no public man in Canada has ever gained so enviable a reputation as attaches to the name of Robert Baldwin. As was intimated two or three pages back, he stood upon a lofty pedestal, and was a very man per se. And this high position he attained, not by means of brilliant oratory, keenness of perception, or subtle comprehensiveness of judgment. No one has ever pretended to claim for him any special intellectual greatness of any kind. He was a plain man, of abilities not much above the average, who possessed strong convictions, and whose high principles, sterling honesty and disinterestedness of purpose were unimpeachable. Had he been a member of the British House of Commons during Sir Robert Walpole's régime, the proverbial dictum of that high priest of corruption would never have been uttered, for certainly no man would ever have dreamed of offering a bribe to Robert Baldwin. He has been in his grave for more than a quarter of a century; thirty-four years have elapsed since his withdrawal from public life; yet he is still referred to by adherents of both political parties in Canada as a statesman of unblemished integrity, whose character was without spot, and in whose bosom was no guile. He more than once occupied the foremost position in the public eye. During much of his career a fierce light beat upon him, yet failed to disclose anything whereof the most august character in history would have had any cause for feeling ashamed. As I have said elsewhere: "We can still point to him with the admiration due to a man who, during a time of the grossest political corruption, took a foremost part in our public affairs, and who yet preserved his integrity untarnished. We can point to him as the man who, if not the actual author of Responsible Government in Canada, yet spent the best years of his life in contending for it, and who contributed more than any other person to make that project an accomplished fact. We can point to him as one who, though a politician by predilection and by profession, never stooped to disreputable practices, either to win votes or to maintain himself in office. Robert Baldwin was a man who was not only incapable of falsehood or meanness to gain his ends, but who was to the last degree intolerant of such practices on the part of his warmest supporters. If intellectual greatness cannot be claimed for him, moral greatness was most indisputably his. Every action of his life was marked by sincerity and good faith, alike toward friend and foe. He was not only true to others, but was from first to last true to himself.... Robert Baldwin was neither a bigot nor a fanatic, but he was in the best and truest sense of the word a Christian. He was strict in his observance of religious duties, and brought up his children to seek those things which make for righteousness, rather than the things of this world. His piety was an ever-present influence in his life, and was practically manifested in his daily walk and conversation. As we contemplate the fifty-four years which made up the measure of his earthly span, we cannot fail to be impressed by its uniform consistency, its thorough conscientiousness, its devotion to high and noble objects. It is a grand thing to acquire a famous name, but it is a much grander thing to live a pure and noble life; and in estimating the character of Robert Baldwin it should be remembered that he was not merely a statesman and a lawyer, but was, over and above all else, a man and a Christian."[63]
The foregoing account, be it understood, applies to a later period. At the date of the general election in 1824 Robert Baldwin was still a young man, whose reputation, professional and political, was yet to be made. He had not even been called to the bar, and was still a student in his father's office. Notwithstanding his youth, however—he was only in his twenty-first year—he had given some thought to the political questions of the time, and had even begun to look forward to the possibility of an ultimate political career. His father, from whom he had learned many political lessons, had recently become very wealthy through the death of Miss Russell, as already mentioned. Much of his wealth consisted of landed property. Robert was the first-born child of his parents, and, as the law of primogeniture was then in force in Upper Canada,[64] it was to be anticipated that he would succeed to large possessions, and would be independent of any income arising from his own exertions. He bore an honoured name, and it was tolerably certain that, under such a combination of circumstances, he would sooner or later find his way to Parliament. He had already imbibed what were in those days considered as advanced Liberal views, and was in full accord with his father, who had to a large extent moulded his opinions. He was present at the meetings of the Reform members held during the first session following the elections of 1824, for the purpose of organization. It was then that a distinct Reform Party, with common objects and a specific policy, may be said to have been formed in this Province. There had been Upper Canadian Reformers from the very foundation of the Province, but no Reform Party can strictly be said to have had an existence prior to the latter part of the year 1824.
No man was more conspicuous in contributing to the founding of the Reform Party than was William Lyon Mackenzie, whose personality yet remains to be considered. Owing in some measure to the force of circumstances, but chiefly to his own energy, impulsiveness and love of notoriety, Mr. Mackenzie's name and achievements have become more widely known than have those of many abler and wiser men. He was the only child of humble parents, and was born at Springfield, a suburb of Dundee, in Forfarshire, Scotland, on the 12th of March, 1795. When he was four weeks old his father died, leaving him and his mother wholly unprovided for, insomuch that they were dependent upon the bounty of relatives. To adopt his own language, poverty and adversity were his nurses, and want and misery were his familiar friends. "It is among the earliest of my recollections," wrote he in 1824, "that I lay in bed one morning during the grievous famine in Britain in 1800-1, while my poor mother took from our large kist the handsome plaid of the tartan of our clan, which in her early life her own hands had spun, and went and sold it for a trifle, to obtain for us a little coarse barley meal, whereof to make our scanty breakfast; and of another time during the same famine when she left me at home crying from hunger, and for (I think) eight shillings sold a handsome and hitherto carefully preserved priest-gray coat of my father's, to get us a little food." His mother, from whom he inherited his most salient peculiarities, was a woman of strongly-marked character. She was endowed by nature with a high temper, and with a tendency to act from impulse rather than from reason. To these qualities were added great energy and strength of will. She brought up her son in the straitest of theological creeds, which left a certain permanent mental impress upon him, though during the last quarter of a century of his life he wandered far afield from the religious teachings of his childhood. He seems to have been born with a genuine love for knowledge, for, notwithstanding the inauspicious surroundings of his youth, he contrived to acquire a better education than was commonly obtainable by lads in his rank of life in Scotland in those times. The education thus acquired was almost to the end of his days supplemented by reading and study. As soon as he was old enough to enter upon employment he became an assistant in a draper's shop, after which he filled various temporary situations which led to nothing. When only nineteen he opened a small store on his own account at Alyth, a village about twenty miles from Dundee. This he conducted for about three years, by which time it had become apparent that the business could not be successfully carried on, so he abandoned it and removed to England. There he spent more than two years, during some part of which he acted as clerk to a coal company. In the spring of 1820 he sailed for Canada, where he was destined to gain great notoriety, and to become an important factor in the moulding of public opinion.
In a new country like Canada a young man of Mackenzie's energy was soon able to make his presence felt. After being employed for a short time on the survey of the Lachine Canal, he opened a store at York, whence he removed to Dundas, and entered on a more extensive mercantile business in partnership with Mr. John Lesslie, the style of the firm being "Mackenzie & Lesslie." His mercantile venture in Dundas was fairly successful. During his residence there he married Miss Isabel Baxter, a native of Dundee, after a brief courtship of three weeks. In the spring of 1823 the firm of Mackenzie & Lesslie was dissolved, and for a few months thereafter the senior partner carried on business by himself. In the autumn of the same year he removed to Queenston, where he embarked in business by opening a general store. The store had not been many months in operation before its proprietor abandoned commercial pursuits and embraced the life of a journalist. This change seems to have been the result of some deliberation, and it must be admitted that Mr. Mackenzie possessed considerable aptitude for the new field of labour which he had chosen. His writing, though very unequal, and sometimes exceedingly verbose and amateurish in point of style, was almost always direct and easy to understand. His observation was keen, and he had taken a warm interest in politics ever since his arrival in the country. Though many of his views were what would now be considered Toryish and out of date, they were then classed by the Compact and their adherents as ultra-Radical and revolutionary. He had formed the acquaintance of Rolph, Perry, the Bidwells, and other prominent Reformers, by all of whom the sincerity of his political professions were regarded as being beyond question. The first number of his newspaper, which was christened The Colonial Advocate, made its appearance on the 18th of May, 1824. It consisted of thirty-two pages, and, although its owner had neither received nor sought a single subscriber, he issued an edition of twelve hundred copies. Whether he embarked in newspaper life at this particular time with a view to influencing votes during the impending general election cannot now be known with certainty. Probably enough this may have been one of his motives, which were doubtless of a mixed nature. That he was sincere in his advocacy of Reform must in all fairness be conceded, though his itch for notoriety must always be considered in reviewing and estimating his actions. This tendency of his mind would readily lead him to select journalism as his vocation in life, more especially as he found that his opinions were regarded as having some value. As compared with his life in Britain, his career in Canada had been an undoubted success. He had acquired some property, and was in fair pecuniary circumstances. From the inner side of his counter he had been in the habit of holding forth to his customers on the political and other questions of the day, and had found that his arguments were accepted by a majority of the unlettered yeomen of Wentworth as being unanswerable. He was looked up to as a man of weight and influence in the community, and the consciousness of this was naturally gratifying to the whilom shop-boy of Dumfries. He felt incited to address larger audiences than any which had hitherto listened to him. The time seemed propitious for the establishment of a Reform newspaper. There was a general awakening in the direction of Reform, extending over the greater part of the Province. There could be no sort of doubt that public opinion was in a state of transition: that many people had begun to look forward to a time when Responsible Government would be conceded, and when the domination of the Compact would be no more. When that much-wished-for epoch should arrive, those who had been the means of bringing it about, or of hastening its advent, would stand high among the Reformers of Upper Canada. Who would be likely to stand higher than a clever and aspiring man who was at once editor and proprietor of the leading organ of Liberal opinion in the Province? Such a personage might command anything within the power of his party to grant. That he would soon be able to write his way into Parliament was a foregone conclusion; and a seat in Parliament appeared a very proud distinction in the eyes of one whose past surroundings had been so far removed from such a sphere.
That these, or something like these, were among the chief motives whereby Mr. Mackenzie was actuated in establishing The Colonial Advocate seems tolerably certain. Nor is there anything unusual or censurable in such an ambition. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and no labourer is better entitled to a full recompense than is the man who, through long and weary years, struggles to win success for a depressed and righteous cause. That he was not devoid of a spirit of sincere patriotism is evident, alike from his words and his deeds. He had amassed a few hundreds of pounds, and was in no dread of poverty, being sanguine and self-confident to an uncommon degree. He ardently longed to see this fair colony rescued from the thraldom under which it groaned. In a letter[65] written many years afterwards, when he was an outlaw and an exile, he gives his own version of the motives which impelled him to embark upon what he calls "the stormy sea of politics." "I had long," he writes, "seen the country in the hands of a few shrewd, crafty, covetous men, under whose management one of the most lovely and desirable sections of America remained a comparative desert. The most obvious public improvements were stayed; dissension was created among classes; citizens were banished and imprisoned in defiance of all law; the people had been long forbidden, under severe pains and penalties, from meeting anywhere to petition for justice; large estates were wrested from their owners in utter contempt of even the forms of the courts; the Church of England, the adherents of which were few, monopolized as much of the lands of the colony as all the religious houses and dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church had had the control of in Scotland at the era of the Reformation; other sects were treated with contempt and scarcely tolerated; a sordid band of land-jobbers grasped the soil as their patrimony, and with a few leading officials, who divided the public revenue among themselves, formed the Family Compact, and were the avowed enemies of common schools, of civil and religious liberty, of all legislative or other checks to their own will. Other men had opposed, and been converted by them. At nine-and-twenty I might have united with them, but chose rather to join the oppressed, nor have I ever regretted that choice, or wavered from the object of my early pursuit."
A man entertaining such views as these, more especially a man of energy and intelligence, with a newspaper at his back, could not fail to be acceptable to the little knot of politicians who formed the nucleus of the Reform Party of Upper Canada. Mr. Mackenzie was cordially welcomed into the ranks, and was soon recognized as a most useful and valuable acquisition thereto. He could make no pretence to the various learning, fine presence, subtle intellect or polished eloquence of Rolph, nor even to the high but less marked qualities of the Bidwells, but the time was at hand when he was to prove that he possessed the power to move audiences, by his voice as well as by his pen. In person he would have been pronounced by a casual passer-by to be rather insignificant, being exceedingly short in stature, and not well proportioned as to his figure, which was slight, wiry, and—owing to a restless habit and a highly-strung nervous system—seldom in repose. Still, no one who contemplated his features with attention would ever have dreamed of pronouncing him commonplace. His intellectual vigour and determination were attested by his large head, massive brow, keen, light-blue eyes and firmly-set mouth. His physical energy was placed equally beyond doubt by the nervous activity above mentioned. Until he was long past the prime of his manhood he was never still for many consecutive moments during his waking hours. When labouring under any unusual excitement his frame seemed to be set on steel springs. As his temper was easily aroused, it was no uncommon thing to see him in one of these phases of excitement. But though he was thus quickly moved to anger, it could not with justice be said that his temper was bad, for, so far from being implacable, he was readily appeased, and always quick to forget and forgive. Altogether, he had an active but ill-balanced organization. His sympathies were too quick and strong for his judgment, and he frequently acted from impulse and hot blood. From his cradle to his grave he was never fit to walk alone and without guidance through any great emergency.
No two human beings could well be more unlike than were William Lyon Mackenzie and John Rolph. They were compelled to work together in a common cause for many years, but the two entities were thoroughly antagonistic, and there was never much personal liking between them. The structure of their bodies was not more dissimilar than was that of their minds. The one, slight, wiry, and ever in motion, seemed as though it might be blown hither and thither by any strong current. The other, solid almost to portliness, was suggestive of fixity—of self-dependence, and unsusceptibility to outside influences. The one was suggestive of being in a great measure the creature of circumstances; the other of being a law unto himself—one who would be more likely to influence circumstances than to be influenced by them. Mackenzie's nature, though it could not strictly be called a shallow one, at any rate lay near the surface, and its characters were not hard to decipher, even upon a brief acquaintance. There were depths in Rolph's nature which were never fathomed by those nearest and dearest to him—possibly not even by himself. Mackenzie seems to have long regarded Rolph with a sort of distant awe—as a Sphinx, close, oracular, inscrutable. Rolph evidently estimated Mackenzie correctly, as one whose politics were founded upon deeply-rooted convictions, and not upon mere opinions, although he would probably have found it difficult to subject those opinions to a rigid analysis; as one whose energy and journalistic resources might be turned to good account in the cause of Reform, but whose discretion was not always to be relied on. This estimate, indeed, was sufficiently obvious to any one who maintained frequent or familiar relations with Mackenzie, and was concurred in by most, if not all, of his friends. His earnestness and good faith, however, were manifest to all who knew him, and these were sufficient to cover much more culpable weaknesses than any which he had hitherto displayed.
Having now become acquainted with some of the Fathers of Reform, it is desirable to cast a momentary glance at the material which went to the composition of the Reform Party generally. That material was of the most heterogeneous character imaginable. It included a few U. E. Loyalists of advanced opinions, and their descendants; but the bone and sinew were made up of more recent immigrants from Great Britain and the United States. The organization of the party, such as it was, was of too recent a date at this time to admit of any absolute unanimity of opinion on all questions of public policy having been arrived at among so numerous a body. On one cardinal point, however, all were agreed: it was in the highest degree desirable that the Canadian constitution should be more closely assimilated to that of the mother-country, and that the Executive Council should be made responsible to the popular branch of the Legislature. True, there was a small element—almost entirely made up of immigrants from across the border—who held republican theories, but no class of the community clamoured more loudly for Responsible Government than did the advocates of republicanism, very few of whom regarded their opinions as coming within the domain of practical politics in Upper Canada. On the question of the Clergy Reserves there was less uniformity of sentiment. Many sincere Reformers disapproved of the voluntary principle, and believed in a State provision for the Clergy,[66] though very few of them went so far in that direction as to defend the exclusive pretensions of the Church of England. On this and other important public questions, however, the diversity of opinion henceforth became less and leas from year to year. In point of numbers the adherents of Reform principles constituted a majority of the inhabitants of the Province.
The Advocate was only six months old when its proprietor removed to York. If any good service was to be done to Reform by his means it was clear that the Provincial capital must be the seat of his operations. The removal took place in November, 1824, and in the following January the new Parliament met for the first time. Much of the interval was spent by the Reformers in preparations for organization. In all these proceedings Mr. Mackenzie took an active and prominent part. He also assumed, to a greater extent than he had previously done, the role of a public censor, and, in the columns of his paper, opened a hot fire upon the official party and their myrmidons. His writing was "personal journalism," with a vengeance, for he usually expressed himself in the first person singular, and directed his animadversions against any one who, for the time being, happened to have attracted his notice. He wrote very erratically, and from the impulse of the moment; in one number lauding some particular personage in extravagant terms, and in subsequent numbers assailing the self-same individual in language which certainly reflected no credit upon the writer. Sometimes he even extended his attacks to the friends and relatives of those who had become obnoxious to him. In all this he merely followed the example of his opponents, from whom better things might have been expected, but he certainly lessened his influence, even among his friends and fellow-labourers, by his onslaughts upon particular individuals. There can be no manner of doubt, however, that he achieved his object of holding some of his opponents up to public ridicule, and that in at least one or two instances he was the means of affecting votes in the Assembly thereby. To what extent, if at all, his efforts in this direction contributed to the election of Mr. Willson, the Reform candidate for the Speakership in the Assembly, already referred to, is not easy to say. That his deliverances may have produced an effect upon one or two waverers, and thereby have brought about the desired result—the vote, it will be remembered, was a close one, standing twenty-one to nineteen[67]—is possible enough. It is at all events certain that the combined action of the Reform Party in and out of Parliament produced early and specific consequences. On a number of questions the Government found themselves confronted by a hostile majority considerably greater than they had encountered on the Speakership. But these seeming triumphs were of no immediate advantage to the Opposition. Let the majority against the Government be ever so great in the Assembly, the official policy remained the same. The Upper House rejected Bill after Bill which had been passed by the Lower, and the Executive clung to their places in undisturbed serenity.