MACKENZIE, HENRY (1745-1831), Scottish novelist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Edinburgh in August 1745. His father, Joshua Mackenzie, was a distinguished physician, and his mother, Margaret Rose, belonged to an old Nairnshire family. Mackenzie was educated at the high school and the university of Edinburgh, and was then articled to George Inglis of Redhall, who was attorney for the crown in the management of exchequer business. In 1765 he was sent to London to prosecute his legal studies, and on his return to Edinburgh became partner with Inglis, whom he afterwards succeeded as attorney for the crown. His first and most famous work, The Man of Feeling, was published anonymously in 1771, and met with instant success. The “Man of Feeling” is a weak creature, dominated by a futile benevolence, who goes up to London and falls into the hands of people who exploit his innocence. The sentimental key in which the book is written shows the author’s acquaintance with Sterne and Richardson, but he had neither the humour of Sterne nor the subtle insight into character of Richardson. One Eccles of Bath claimed the authorship of this book, bringing in support of his pretensions a MS. with many ingenious erasures. Mackenzie’s name was then officially announced, but Eccles appears to have induced some people to believe in him. In 1773 Mackenzie published a second novel, The Man of the World, the hero of which was as consistently bad as the “Man of Feeling” had been “constantly obedient to his moral sense,” as Sir Walter Scott says. Julia de Roubigné (1777), a story in letters, was preferred to his other novels by “Christopher North,” who had a high opinion of Mackenzie (see Noctes Ambrosianae, vol. i. p. 155, ed. 1866). The first of his dramatic pieces, The Prince of Tunis, was produced in Edinburgh in 1773 with a certain measure of success. The others were failures. At Edinburgh Mackenzie belonged to a literary club, at the meetings of which papers in the manner of the Spectator were read. This led to the establishment of a weekly periodical called the Mirror (January 23, 1779-May 27, 1780), of which Mackenzie was editor and chief contributor. It was followed in 1785 by a similar paper, the Lounger, which ran for nearly two years and had the distinction of containing one of the earliest tributes to the genius of Robert Burns. Mackenzie was an ardent Tory, and wrote many tracts intended to counteract the doctrines of the French Revolution. Most of these remained anonymous, but he acknowledged his Review of the Principal Proceedings of the Parliament of 1784, a defence of the policy of William Pitt, written at the desire of Henry Dundas. He was rewarded (1804) by the office of comptroller of the taxes for Scotland. In 1776 Mackenzie married Penuel, daughter of Sir Ludovick Grant of Grant. He was, in his later years, a notable figure in Edinburgh society. He was nicknamed the “man of feeling,” but he was in reality a hard-headed man of affairs with a kindly heart. Some of his literary reminiscences were embodied in his Account of the Life and Writings of John Home, Esq. (1822). He also wrote a Life of Doctor Blacklock, prefixed to the 1793 edition of the poet’s works. He died on the 14th of January 1831.
In 1807 The Works of Henry Mackenzie were published surreptitiously, and he then himself superintended the publication of his Works (8 vols., 1808). There is an admiring but discriminating criticism of his work in the Prefatory Memoir prefixed by Sir Walter Scott to an edition of his novels in Ballantyne’s Novelist’s Library (vol. v., 1823).
McKENZIE, SIR JOHN (1838-1901). New Zealand statesman, was born at Ard-Ross, Scotland, in 1838, the son of a crofter. He emigrated to Otago, New Zealand, in 1860. Beginning as a shepherd, he rose to be farm manager at Puketapu near Palmerston South, and then to be a farmer in a substantial way in Shag Valley. In 1865 he was clerk to the local road board and school committee; in 1871 he entered the provincial council of Otago; and on the 11th of December 1881 was elected member of the House of Representatives, in which he sat till 1900. He was also for some years a member of the education board and of the land board of Otago, and always showed interest in the national elementary school system. In the House of Representatives he soon made good his footing, becoming almost at once a recognized spokesman for the smaller sort of rural settlers and a person of influence in the lobbies. He acted as government whip for the coalition ministry of Sir Robert Stout and Sir Julius Vogel, 1884-1887, and, while still a private member, scored his first success as a land reformer by carrying the “McKenzie clause” in a land act limiting the area which a state tenant might thenceforth obtain on lease. He was still, however, comparatively unknown outside his own province when, in January 1891, his party took office and he aided John Ballance in forming a ministry, in which he himself held the portfolio of lands, immigration and agriculture. From the first he made his hand felt in every matter connected with land settlement and the administration of the vast public estate. Generally his aim was to break up and subdivide the great freehold and leasehold properties which in his time covered four-sevenths of the occupied land of the colony. In his Land Act of 1892 he consolidated, abolished or amended, fifty land acts and ordinances dealing with crown lands, and thereafter amended his own act four times. Though owning to a preference for state tenancy over freehold, he never stopped the selling of crown land, and was satisfied to give would-be settlers the option of choosing freehold or leasehold under tempting terms as their form of tenure. As a compromise he introduced the lease in perpetuity or holding for 999 years at a quit rent fixed at 4%; theoretical objections have since led to its abolition, but for fifteen years much genuine settlement took place under its conditions. Broadly, however, McKenzie’s exceptional success as lands minister was due rather to unflinching determination to stimulate the occupation of the soil by working farmers than to the solution of the problems of agrarian controversy. His best-known experiment was in land repurchase. A voluntary law (1892) was displaced by a compulsory act (1894), under which between £5,000,000 and £6,000,000 had by 1910 been spent in buying and subdividing estates for closer settlements, with excellent results. McKenzie also founded and expanded an efficient department of agriculture, in the functions of which inspection, grading, teaching and example are successfully combined. It has aided the development of dairying, fruit-growing, poultry-farming, bee-keeping and flax-milling, and done not a little to keep up the standard of New Zealand products. After 1897 McKenzie had to hold on in the face of failing health. An operation in London in 1899 only postponed the end. He died at his farm on the 6th of August 1901, soon after being called to the legislative council, and receiving a knighthood.
MACKENZIE, SIR MORELL (1837-1892), British physician, son of Stephen Mackenzie, surgeon (d. 1851), was born at Leytonstone, Essex, on the 7th of July 1837. After going through the course at the London Hospital, and becoming M.R.C.S. in 1858, he studied abroad at Paris, Vienna and Pesth; and at Pesth he learnt the use of the newly-invented laryngoscope under J. N. Czermak. Returning to London in 1862, he worked at the London Hospital, and took his degree in medicine. In 1863 he won the Jacksonian prize at the Royal College of Surgeons for an essay on the “Pathology of the Larynx,” and he then devoted himself to becoming a specialist in diseases of the throat. In 1863 the Throat Hospital in King Street, Golden Square, was founded, largely owing to his initiative, and by his work there and at the London Hospital (where he was one of the physicians from 1866 to 1873) Morell Mackenzie rapidly became recognized throughout Europe as a leading authority, and acquired an extensive practice. So great was his reputation that in May 1887, when the crown prince of Germany (afterwards the emperor Frederick III.) was attacked by the affection of the throat of which he ultimately died, Morell Mackenzie was specially summoned to attend him. The German physicians who had attended the prince since the beginning of March (Karl Gerhardt, and subsequently Tobold, E. von Bergmann, and others) had diagnosed his ailment on the 18th of May as cancer of the throat; but Morell Mackenzie insisted (basing his opinion on a microscopical examination by R. Virchow of a portion of the tissue) that the disease was not demonstrably cancerous, that an operation for the extirpation of the larynx (planned for the 21st of May) was unjustifiable, and that the growth might well be a benign one and therefore curable by other treatment. The question was one not only of personal but of political importance, since it was doubted whether any one suffering from an incapacitating disease like cancer could, according to the family law of the Hohenzollerns, occupy the German throne; and there was talk of a renunciation of the succession by the crown prince. It was freely hinted, moreover, that some of the doctors themselves were influenced by political considerations. At any rate, Morell Mackenzie’s opinion was followed: the crown prince went to England, under his treatment, and was present at the Jubilee celebrations in June. Morell Mackenzie was knighted in September 1887 for his services, and decorated with the Grand Cross of the Hohenzollern Order. In November, however, the German doctors were again called into consultation, and it was ultimately admitted that the disease really was cancer; though Mackenzie, with very questionable judgment, more than hinted that it had become malignant since his first examination, in consequence of the irritating effect of the treatment by the German doctors. The crown prince (see [Frederick III.]) became emperor on the 9th of March 1888, and died on the 15th of June. During all this period a violent quarrel raged between Sir Morell Mackenzie and the German medical world. The German doctors published an account of the illness, to which Mackenzie replied by a work entitled The Fatal Illness of Frederick the Noble (1888), the publication of which caused him to be censured by the Royal College of Surgeons. After this sensational episode in his career, the remainder of Sir Morell Mackenzie’s life was uneventful, and he died somewhat suddenly in London, on the 3rd of February 1892. He published several books on laryngoscopy and diseases of the throat.
MACKENZIE, WILLIAM LYON (1795-1861), Canadian politician, was born near Dundee, Scotland, on the 12th of March 1795. His father died before he was a month old, and the family were left in poverty. After some six years’ work in a shop at Alyth, in April 1820 he emigrated with his mother to Canada. There he became a general merchant, first at York, then at Dundas, and later at Queenston. The discontented condition of Upper Canada drew him into politics, and on the 18th of May 1824 he published at Queenston the first number of the Colonial Advocate, in which the ruling oligarchy was attacked with great asperity. Most of the changes which he advocated were wise and have since been adopted; but the violence of Mackenzie’s attacks roused great anger among the social and political set at York (Toronto), which was headed by John Beverley Robinson. In November 1824 Mackenzie removed to Toronto, but he had little capital; his paper appeared irregularly, and was on the point of suspending publication when his office was attacked and his type thrown into the bay by a number of the supporters of his opponents. In an action against the chief rioters he was awarded £625 and costs, was thus enabled to set up a much larger and more efficient plant, and the Colonial Advocate ran till the 4th of November 1834.
In 1828 he was elected member of parliament for York, but was expelled on the technical ground that he had published in his newspaper the proceedings of the house without authorization. Five times he was expelled and five times re-elected by his constituents, till at last the government refused to issue a writ, and for three years York was without one of its representatives. In May 1832 he visited England, where he was well received by the colonial office. Largely as the result of his representations, many important reforms were ordered by Lord Goderich, afterwards earl of Ripon, the colonial secretary. While in England, he published Sketches of Canada and the United States, in which, with some exaggeration, many of the Canadian grievances were exposed. On his return in March 1834 he was elected mayor of Toronto. During his year of office, the heroism with which he worked hand in hand with his old enemy, Bishop Strachan, in fighting an attack of cholera, did not prevent him from winning much unpopularity by his officiousness, and in 1835 he was not re-elected either as mayor or alderman. In October 1834 he was elected member of parliament for York, and took his seat in January 1835, the Reformers being now in the majority. A committee on grievances was appointed, as chairman of which Mackenzie presented the admirable Seventh Report on Grievances, largely written by himself, in which the case for the Reformers was presented with force and moderation, and the adoption of responsible government advocated as the remedy.
In the general election of June 1836 the Tory party won a complete victory, Mackenzie and almost all the prominent Reformers being defeated at the polls. This totally unexpected defeat greatly embittered him. On the 4th of July 1836, the anniversary of the adoption of the American Declaration of Independence, he began the publication of the Constitution, which openly advocated a republican form of government. Later in the year he was appointed “agent and corresponding secretary” of the extreme wing of the Reform party, and more and more openly, in his speeches throughout the province, advocated armed revolt. He was also in correspondence with Papineau and the other leaders of the Reformers in Lower Canada, who were already planning a rising. Early in December 1837 Mackenzie gathered a mob of his followers, to the number of several hundred, at Gallows Hill, some miles to the north of Toronto, with the intention of seizing the lieutenant-governor and setting up a provisional government. Misunderstandings among the leaders led to the total failure of the revolt, and Mackenzie was forced to fly to the United States with a price on his head. In the town of Buffalo he collected a disorderly rabble, who seized and fortified Navy Island, in the river between the two countries, and for some weeks troubled the Canadian frontier. After the failure of this attempt he was put to the most pitiful shifts to make a living. In June 1839 he was tried in the United States for a breach of the neutrality laws, and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment, of which he served over eleven. While in gaol at Rochester he published the Caroline Almanac, the tone of which may be judged from its references to “Victoria Guelph, the bloody queen of England,” and by the title given to the British cabinet of “Victoria Melbourne’s bloody divan.” He returned to Canada in consequence of the Amnesty Act 1849. A closer inspection had cured him of his love for republican institutions.