of his opinions, sadly wanting in sound judgment and common sense when his feelings were excited, able to write with vigour, but more inclined to emphatic vituperation than well-reasoned argument, he made himself a force in the politics of the province.  In the Colonial Advocate, which he established in 1824, he commenced a series of attacks on the government which naturally evoked the resentment of the official class, and culminated in the destruction of his printing office in 1826 by a number of young men, relatives of the principal officials—­one of them actually the private secretary of the lieutenant-governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland.  Mr. Mackenzie obtained large damages in the courts, and was consequently able to continue the publication of his paper at a time when he was financially embarrassed.  The sympathy felt for Mr. Mackenzie brought him into the assembly as member for York during the session of 1829.  So obnoxious did he become to the governing class that he was expelled four times from the assembly between 1831 and 1834, and prevented from taking his seat by the orders of the speaker in 1835—­practically the fifth expulsion.  In 1832 he went to England and presented largely signed petitions asking for a redress of grievances.  He appears to have made some impression on English statesmen, and the colonial minister recommended a few reforms to the lieutenant-governor, but they were entirely ignored by the official party.  Lord Glenelg also disapproved of the part taken by Attorney-General Boulton—­Mr. Robinson being then chief justice—­and Solicitor-General Hagerman in the expulsion of Mr. Mackenzie; but they treated the rebuke with contempt and were removed from office for again assisting in the expulsion of Mr. Mackenzie.

In 1834 he was elected first mayor of Toronto, then incorporated under its present name, as a consequence of the public sympathy aroused in his favour by his several expulsions.  Previous to the election of 1835, in which he was returned to the assembly, he made one of the most serious blunders of his life, in the publication of a letter from Mr. Joseph Hume, the famous Radical, whose acquaintance he had made while in England.  Mr. Hume emphatically stated his opinion that “a crisis was fast approaching in the affairs of Canada which would terminate in independence and freedom from the baneful domination of the mother country, and the tyrannical conduct of a small and despicable faction in the colony.”  The official class availed themselves of this egregious blunder to excite the indignation of the Loyalist population against Mr. Mackenzie and other Reformers, many of whom, like the Baldwins and Perrys, disavowed all sympathy with such language.  Mr. Mackenzie’s motive was really to insult Mr. Ryerson, with whom he had quarrelled.  Mr. Ryerson in the Christian Guardian, organ of the Methodists, had attacked Mr. Hume as a person unfit to present petitions from the Liberals of Canada, since he had opposed the measure