MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER (1822-1892), Canadian statesman, was born in Perthshire, Scotland, on the 28th of January, 1822. His father was a builder, and young Mackenzie emigrated to Canada in 1842, and worked in Ontario as a stone-mason, setting up for himself later as a builder and contractor at Sarnia with his brother. In 1852 his interest in questions of reform led to his becoming the editor of the Lambton Shield, a local Liberal paper. This brought him to the front, and in 1861 he became a member of the Canadian parliament, where he at once made his mark and was closely connected with the liberal leader, George Brown. He was elected for Lambton to the first Dominion house of commons in 1867, and soon became the leader of the liberal opposition; from 1871 to 1872 he also sat in the Ontario provincial assembly, and held the position of provincial treasurer. In 1873 the attack on Sir John Macdonald’s ministry with regard to the Pacific Railway charter resulted in its defeat, and Mackenzie formed a new government, taking the portfolio of public works and becoming the first liberal premier of Canada. He remained in power till 1878, when industrial depression enabled Macdonald to return to office on a protectionist programme. In 1875 Mackenzie paid a visit to Great Britain, and was received at Windsor by Queen Victoria; he was offered a knighthood, but declined it. After his defeat he suffered from failing health, gradually resulting in almost total paralysis, but though in 1880 he resigned the leadership of the opposition, he retained a seat in parliament till his death at Toronto on the 17th of April 1892. While perhaps too cautious to be the ideal leader of a young and vigorous community, his grasp of detail, indefatigable industry, and unbending integrity won him the respect even of his political opponents.
His Life and Times by William Buckingham and the Hon. George W. Ross (Toronto, 1892) contains documents of much interest. See also George Stewart, Canada under the Administration of the Earl of Dufferin (Toronto, 1878).
MACKENZIE, SIR ALEXANDER CAMPBELL (1847- ), British composer, son of an eminent Edinburgh violinist and conductor, was born on the 22nd of August 1847. On the advice of a member of Gung’l’s band who had taken up his residence in Edinburgh, Mackenzie was sent for his musical education to Sondershausen, where he entered the conservatorium under Ulrich and Stein, remaining there from 1857 to 1861, when he entered the ducal orchestra as a violinist. At this time he made Liszt’s acquaintance. On his return home he won the King’s Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, and remained the usual three years in the institution, after which he established himself as a teacher of the piano, &c., in Edinburgh. He appeared in public as a violinist, taking part in Chappell’s quartette concerts, and starting a set of classical concerts. He was appointed precentor of St George’s Church in 1870, and conductor of the Scottish vocal music association in 1873, at the same time getting through a prodigious amount of teaching. He kept in touch with his old friends by playing in the orchestra of the Birmingham Festivals from 1864 to 1873. The most important compositions of this period of Mackenzie’s life were the Quartette in E flat for piano and strings. Op. 11, and an overture, Cervantes, which owed its first performance to the encouragement and help of von Bülow. On the advice of this great pianist, he gave up his Edinburgh appointments, which had quite worn him out, and settled in Florence in order to compose. The cantatas The Bride (Worcester, 1881) and Jason (Bristol, 1882) belong to this time, as well as his first opera. This was commissioned for the Carl Rosa Company, and was written to a version of Merimée’s Colomba prepared by Franz Hueffer. It was produced with great success in 1883, and was the first of a too short series of modern English operas; Mackenzie’s second opera, The Troubadour, was produced by the same company in 1886; and his third dramatic work was His Majesty, an excellent comic opera (Savoy Theatre, 1897). In 1884 his Rose of Sharon was given with very great success at the Norwich Festival; in 1885 he was appointed conductor of Novello’s oratorio concerts; The Story of Sayid came out at the Leeds Festival of 1886; and in 1888 he succeeded Macfarren as principal of the Royal Academy of Music. The Dream of Jubal was produced at Liverpool in 1889, and in London very soon afterwards. A fine setting of the hymn “Veni, Creator Spiritus” was given at Birmingham in 1891, and the oratorio Bethlehem in 1894. From 1892 to 1899 he conducted the Philharmonic Concerts, and was knighted in 1894. Besides the works mentioned he has written incidental music to plays, as, for instance, to Ravenswood, The Little Minister, and Coriolanus; concertos and other works for violin and orchestra, much orchestral music, and many songs and violin pieces. The romantic side of music appeals to Mackenzie far more strongly than any other, and the cases in which he has conformed to the classical conventions are of the rarest. In the orchestral ballad, La Belle Dame sans Merci, he touches the note of weird pathos, and in the nautical overture Britannia his sense of humour stands revealed. In the two “Scottish Rhapsodies” for orchestra, in the music to The Little Minister, and in a beautiful fantasia for pianoforte and orchestra on Scottish themes, he has seized the essential, not the accidental features of his native music.
MACKENZIE, SIR GEORGE (1636-1691), of Rosehaugh, Scottish lawyer, was the grandson of Kenneth, first Lord Mackenzie of Kintail, and the nephew of Colin and George, first and second earls of Seaforth; his mother was a daughter of Andrew Bruce, principal of St Leonard’s College, St Andrews. He was born at Dundee in 1636, educated at the grammar school there and at Aberdeen, and afterwards at St Andrews, graduating at sixteen. He then engaged for three years in the study of the civil law at Bourges; on his return to Scotland he was called to the bar in 1659, and before the Restoration had risen into considerable practice. Immediately after the Restoration he was appointed a “justice-depute,” and it is recorded that he and his colleagues in that office were ordained by the parliament in 1661 “to repair, once in the week at least, to Musselburgh and Dalkeith, and to try and judge such persons as are there or thereabouts delate of witchcraft.” In the same year he acted as counsel for the marquis of Argyll; soon afterwards he was knighted, and he represented the county of Ross during the four sessions of the parliament which was called in 1669. He succeeded Sir John Nisbet as king’s advocate in August 1677, and in the discharge of this office became implicated in all the worst acts of the Scottish administration of Charles II., earning for himself an unenviable distinction as “the bloody Mackenzie.” His refusal to concur in the measures for dispensing with the penal laws against Catholics led to his removal from office in 1686, but he was reinstated in February 1688. At the Revolution, being a member of convention, he was one of the minority of five in the division on the forfeiture of the crown. King William was urged to declare him incapacitated for holding any public office, but refused to accede to the proposal. When the death of Dundee (July 1689) had finally destroyed the hopes of his party in Scotland, Mackenzie betook himself to Oxford, where, admitted a student by a grace passed in 1690, he was allowed to spend the rest of his days in the enjoyment of the ample fortune he had acquired, and in the prosecution of his literary labours. One of his last acts before leaving Edinburgh had been to pronounce (March 15, 1689), as dean of the faculty of advocates, the inaugural oration at the foundation of the Advocates’ library. He died at Westminster on the 8th of May 1691, and was buried in Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh.
While still a young man Sir George Mackenzie appears to have aspired to eminence in the domain of pure literature, his earliest publication having been Aretina, or a Serious Romance (anon., 1661); it was followed, also anonymously, by Religio Stoici, a Short Discourse upon Several Divine and Moral Subjects (1663); A Moral Essay, preferring Solitude to Public Employment (1665); and one or two other disquisitions of a similar nature. His most important legal works are entitled A Discourse upon the Laws and Customs of Scotland in Matters Criminal (1674); Observations upon the Laws and Customs of Nations as to Precedency, with the Science of Heraldry (1680); Institutions of the Law of Scotland (1684); and Observations upon the Acts of Parliament (1686); of these the last-named is the most important, the Institutions being completely overshadowed by the similar work of his great contemporary Stair. In his Jus Regium: or the Just and Solid Foundations of Monarchy in general, and more especially of the Monarchy of Scotland, maintained (1684), Mackenzie appears as an uncompromising advocate of the highest doctrines of prerogative. His Vindication of the Government of Scotland during the reign of Charles II. (1691) is valuable as a piece of contemporary history. The collected Works were published at Edinburgh (2 vols. fol.) in 1716-1722; and Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland from the Restoration of King Charles II., from previously unpublished MSS., in 1821.
See A. Lang, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (1909).