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CANADIAN LANDSCAPES/ PAYSAGES CANADIENS Upper Canadas rebellion was not far behind. In December 1837, almost a thousand adherents followed leader William Lyon Mackenzie in a march on Toronto. A Scottish immigrant, he had founded his own newspaper, The Colonial Advocate, in 1824. With this mouthpiece he advocated constitutional reform. Throughout the 1820s, Mackenzie supported ‘responsible government,’ whereby the executive body acts pursuant to the will of the elected Assembly, not the Crown. Having held a seat in the colonial assembly and served as Toronto’s mayor, he had experienced first-hand some of the offending imperial actions, such as when Lt. Governor Francis Bond Head interfered in the election of members to the assembly, establishing a conservative majority. An enduring irritant was the ‘Family Compact,’ the cohesive bloc of governmental officials connected by marriage, patronage, an arrangement assailed relentlessly by Mackenzie. In addition, long-standing political support for the privileged place of the Church of England resulted in its ownership of about one-seventh of the colony’s land, creating resentment. Mackenzie produced several documents in the latter 1830s which are modelled on, albeit not identical to, the United States’ Declaration of Independence. His 1837 “Declaration of the Toronto Reformers” reads: Government is founded on the authority, and is instituted for the benefit of the people; when therefore, any Government long and systematically ceases to answer the great ends of its foundation, the people have a natural right given them by their Creator to seek and establish such institutions as will yield the greatest quantity of happiness to the greatest number (McKay 18). His was a republican vision. Mackenzie’s draft constitution for Upper Canada resembled some of the newer state constitutions, such as Ohio’s and Kentucky’s, and the United States Constitution. All political power, he stressed, lies with the people, which they exercise through popularly elected representatives. Delegated powers should be limited and separated. Rights, including those of property, should be enumerated. The intent of its author to require official legal equality could not have been made clearer than in his draft’s summative provision that “in all laws made or to be made, every person shall be bound alike...” (McKay 19). This rebellion, though destabilizing, was foiled by local militia and British troops. Mackenzie fled to the U.S. with his lieutenants hanged or banished. For a while, he and other veterans of his failed army conducted raids from New York and Vermont, gaining support from Americans who were members of the ‘Hunters’ Lodges’ there. In 1840, they torched the steamship Robert Peel in the Thousand Islands but their success was fleeting. Ironically, British military expenditures to suppress these revolts aided the late 1830s’ economic recovery. ¢ 142 +
