Among others William Gourlay, a Scotsman, Stephen Willcocks and Francis Collins, Irishmen, all three perfectly respectable reformers, suffered in this way.  Bidwell, the great Robert Baldwin, and other good men were rendered powerless for good.  As invariably happens in any part of the world where a course is pursued which estranges moderate men and embitters extreme men, agitators came to the front lacking that self-control and sense of responsibility which the sobering education of office alone can give, and generally ruining themselves while they benefit humanity at large.  Chief of these was W.L.  Mackenzie, a Presbyterian Scot from Dundee.  All this man really wanted was what exists to-day as a matter of course in all self-governing countries—­responsible government.  He even conceived that great idea of the Confederation of British North America, which came to birth in 1867.  Thwarted in his attacks on the oligarchy, he degenerated into violent courses, and ultimately organized, or rather was provoked into organizing, the rebellion of 1837.  The grievances which led to this outbreak were genuine and severe, and were all in course of time admitted and redressed.  One, the powerlessness of the Assembly, owing to the control by the Executive of annual sums sufficient to pay the official expenses of Government, corresponded to a pre-Union Irish grievance, and was remedied by an Act of 1831.  Most of the other grievances were incurable by constitutional effort.  They may be found summarized in the “Seventh Report of Grievances,” a temperate and truthful document drawn up by a Committee of the Assembly in 1835.  The huge unsettled Clergy Reserves and Crown Lands were the worst concrete abuse, and matters had just then been aggravated by the sudden establishment of scores of sinecure rectories.  Jobbery, maladministration, and the dependence of the judges on the Executive were other complaints; but the main assault was made quite rightly on the form of the Colonial Government, which rendered peaceful reform of any abuse as impossible as in Ireland, and the cardinal claim was that the Executive should act, not under the dictation of Downing Street, of an irresponsible Governor, or of a narrow colonial oligarchy, but in accordance with popular opinion.  Mackenzie’s rebellion of 1837 was a no more formidable affair than the similar efforts in Ireland made under incomparably greater provocation by Emmett in 1803 and Smith O’Brien in 1848, and was as easily suppressed; but, unlike the Irish outbreaks, and in conjunction with a revolt arising in the same year and from similar causes in the adjoining Province of Lower Canada, it led to a complete change of system.