Lindsey, Charles. The Life and Times of Wm. Lyon Mackenzie, with an Account of the Canadian Rebellion of 1837, and the subsequent Frontier Disturbances, chiefly from unpublished documents. Toronto, C. W.: P. R. Randall, 1862. First Edition. [10914]
Two volumes bound as one. Publisher's black pebble cloth, gilt to spine, border & device in blind to boards, 8 1/2 x 6 inches, a little edge-wear, tight. Frontispiece portraits plus several additional illustrations, 401 + 400 pages, foxing to the plates, less elsewhere, adverts at end. Good. Hardcover.
William Lyon Mackenzie (1795-1861), b. Dundee, Scotland; d. Toronto, Upper Canada. As a journalist he founded and edited newspapers critical of the British rule in Canada; as a politician he did the same and aligned with the Reformers. He was at the head of the leaders who rebelled against the government in 1837, organizing resistance and delivering patriotic speeches.
His efforts failed, and he later regretted his involvement, "but an enterprise which cannot be justified, and the engaging in which involved him in ruin, was in the end advantageous to the country. Much of the liberty Canada has enjoyed, since 1840, and more of the wonderful progress she has made, are due to the changes which the insurrection was the chief agent in producing. Unless those changes had been made - unless a responsible government especially had been established - Canada would ere now either have been lost to the British Crown; or, ruled by the sword, it would have been stunted in its growth, it population poor, discontented, and ready to seek the protection of another power." - Introduction, p. 5.
