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Liberty or Loyalty: The Contrasting Views of Two Upper Canadian Editor-Printers: William Lyon Mackenzie and Charles Fothergill Chris Raible – chrisraible1@gmail.com

Charles Fothergill William Lyon Mackenzie

When William Lyon Mackenzie launched his Colonial Advocate1 newspaper in Queenston on May 18, 1824, he was in attack mode. His target: the administration (to Mackenzie, the “maladministration”) of Lieutenant Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland. But he also had a secondary target. That Advocate issue featured a quotation: “

this fine country has so long languished in a state of comparative stupor and inactivity, whilst our more enterprising neighbours are laughing us to scorn.2

The words were Charles Fothergill’s. Fothergill, editor of the government newspaper, The Upper Canada Gazette, had spoken not as the “King’s Printer,” butas a candidate seeking election as member of the provincial Assembly. Could Fothergill, Mackenzie

1 Hereinafter often referred to as simply the Advocate.2 The source of this Fothergill quotation has not been located; it couldnot be found in the Weekly Register (supplement to The Upper Canada Gazette).

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mused, be an independent politician who challenged the government and at the same time be a dependent journalist who operated the government press? Couldone man serve two masters: the electors of Durham and the Lieutenant Governor in York?

In the May 27th Weekly Register – the editorial supplement to the official Gazette – Fothergill’s response was fast, full, fierce and furious. He hadbeen misquoted, misunderstood – worse, misrepresented. As printer for the government, he could not risk being seen as a government critic; his very livelihood was at stake. His editorial commentary, peppered with words and phrases in italicsand in UPPER CASE, betrayed the intensity of his concern. After reading only one issue of Mackenzie’s paper, Fothergill described it as

a new work to be published weekly … conducted, professedly on what are called independent principles…. [by an editor with] neither genius nor knowledge nor industry nor sprightliness; but CONTEMPT OF SHAME AND INDIFFERENCE TO TRUTH.… He who by a long familiarity with infamy … may confidently tell today what he intends to contradict tomorrow; he may affirm fearlessly what he knows that he shall be obliged to recant … a foul mass of falsehood malignity and FOLLY … personal calumnyand detraction, as degrades human nature.3

For two-and-a-half columns, 1500 words, Fothergill thundered on in manner mean, mocking, condescending, even cruel. The Advocate was newspaperpurportedly originating in Queenston, Fothergill repeatedly reminded his readers, was actually printedin across the river in Lewiston. Mackenzie was thus3 This quotation and the next: Weekly Register, 1824 May 27.

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invading … this Province … with American printers, from an American would-be city, with American paper and American types – Allrepublican agents, animate and inanimate, and with righteous republican principles … and … all under false colours! … This paper of motly, unconnected, shake-bag, periods; this unblushing, brazen faced Advocate, affects to be a Queenston and Upper Canadian paper, whereas it is … radically, a Lewiston and genu-wine Yankee paper. How canthis man of truth, this pure and holy reformer and regenerator of the unhappy and prostrate Canada reconcile such bare-face and impudent deception!

Fothergill had held his post long enough to know the drill: when a critical voice is raised against the Government, question the critic’s patriotism, doubt his loyalty; assail the speaker not the substance.

A week later in a column of equal length and vigour, the King’s Printer pounded on, insults tumbling over one another:

corrupt or malicious perversion of manifest truth … malicious democrat, bent on mischief, and lost to the mazes of his own bewilderment, … envious and crack-brained … the most insolent and wretched specimen of a total abandonment of all truth, principle, sense and decorum … unprincipled and abandoned plebian … scurrilous abstainer from all truth … flimsy tissue of absurdity and falsehood …

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ridiculous pomposity and egregious stupidity.4

The “very extravagance” of the Advocate, Fothergillpredicted,

will prove its own antidote; and even as the scorpion, when surrounded by a wall offire, is said to retire into the centre ofits own narrow circle, and there commit a felo di se by the sting of its own tail, so will the venom of this malignant libeller,of genuine and unaffected worth, recoil onhis recreant head.

The tirade concluded: The pale characters of disease and death are already stamped on the countenance of this mis-shapen mantling, conceived in iniquity, and brought forth in shame an dishonour, and it would be cruel to add pain to those convulsive throes under which it labours to crawl for a little space, up those fatal heights of Queenston, from which so many of its country men have already precipitated at the points of British and Canadian Bayonets!’

A stung Mackenzie reacted immediately – he had, no doubt, anticipated a counterattack, but not accusations of “democracy, disloyalty and foul play.” His “good name” had been “unexpectedly and rudely assailed.”5 Fothergill seemed to think him an American!

Had he not, in the first Advocate, made it clear?

4 This quotation and the next two: Weekly Register, 1824 June 03.5 Colonial Advocate, 1824 June 10.

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[W]e have made our election; it is to have only one patron, and that patron is the People;— the people of the British Colonies.… We would never wish to see British America an appendage of the American Presidency; yet would we wish to see British America thrive and prosper full as well as does that Presidency. We like American liberty well, but greatly prefer British liberty. British subjects, born in Britain, we have sworn allegiance to a constitutional monarchy, and we will die before we will violate that oath.6

Much of the Advocate for June 10th was devoted to alengthy defence, decrying all notions of his not being loyally British

[I]n Scotland … I was born and reared, andthere are many persons in this very colonywho have known me from infancy.7

The editor invited readers to refer to the four issues of the Advocate by then published and judge:

whether they do not, in every line, speak the language of a free and independent British subject?… whether I have not endeavoured, by every just means, to discourage the unprofitable unsocial system of the local governments, so detrimental to British and to Colonial interests, and which has been productive of so much misery to these Colonies?… The doctrines I have advocated will bear any

6 Colonial Advocate, 1824 May 18.7 This and the several succeeding quotations: Colonial Advocate, June 10, 1824.

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inspection, for they are of a truly British stamp.

Mackenzie quoted two British peers – Lord Camden:“taxation and representation are inseparable,” and Lord Chatham: “to be taxed without being represented, is contrary to the maxims of law, and the first principles of the constitution” – and righteously declared:

I have … adverted to the danger if this truth is disregarded, set at naught, and trampled on — is this democracy and foul play? Then indeed I am disloyal. I have said that I despise and hold in utter detestation the venal tribe … are now fattening on the spoils of this country — is this sedition? Then am I seditious. I have pointed out the neglect which successive governors, more or less ignorant of our wants, have been guilty ofin regard to domestic improvements…– is this treason: Then I am also a rebellious subject. I have spoken well of the institutions and of the people of a neighbouring country, where I found eitherdeserving of praise; and I have been equally free with my censures, where I conceived them merited — is this disaffection, calumny, and detraction? Then am I a calumniator, and disaffection person. — In short, when Mr. Fothergill can prove that black is white, and that white is black, that evil is good, and good evil — then will he also be able to hold a Mackenzie up to the world as an enemy to his country — but not till then.

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Loyalty, Mackenzie insisted, did not require one silence all criticisms. Even “our meanest peasants”understand the difference

between passive obedience and non-resistance, to a tyrannical government, ascompared with free discussion of the public measures of a represented and responsible one.

Referring to the debates in the House of Commons at the time of the creation of the province of Upper Canada, he affirmed his faith:

that it was a sincere wish of every enlightened member of the British Senate, to have given to this province, when we received our constitution, free institutions.… [I]f the errors that were then made require to be rectified, the liberality of the present age, will accomplish it assisted by proper representations from this country.

Mackenzie had been hurt, deeply hurt. In column after column (some 3,000 words) he thundered on, fully willing to confess that hisloyalty had

not descended so low as to degenerate intoa base fawning cringing servility. I may honor my sovereign surely, and remember the ruler of my people with the respect that is due unto his name and rank, without allowing my deportment to be equally respectful and humble to his majesty’s butcher, or his baker, his barber, or his tailor.

He dismissed all suggestions of disloyalty by recalling his own family history

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My ancestors … stuck fast to the legitimate race of Kings and though professing a different religion, joined Charles Stewart, whom … almost all Scotland considered as it rightful sovereign. [M]y paternal grandsire … at the command of hischieftain willingly joined the Stewart Standard, in the famous 1745 as a volunteer. [M]y mother’s father … had the honor to bear a commission from the Princeand served as an officer in the highland army … and after the fatal battle of Culloden … accompanied his unfortunate prince to the low countries, and was abroad with him on the continent, following his adverse fortunes for years.

Fothergill offered little in reply, feeling no doubt that he had already disposed of the Advocate editor. He could not, however, miss pointing out the foolishness of this last defence:

We must give this little Hero of Radicalism … full credit for boldness … [T]his illustrious descendant of the breechless marauders of the north … endeavours to prove his own loyalty by proving and vindicating the rebellion of his great progenitors under the flag of the Pretender.8

Fothergill was clearly on target – surely no colonial officials, no representatives of King George IV, were reassured as to Mackenzie’s loyaltyby his boasts of his ancestors fighting for Bonnie Prince Charles!

8 Weekly Register, 1824 July 08.

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For Fothergill to go after the Advocate was nothing new. Already in his two-and-a-half years asgovernment journalist, Fothergill had scolded the editor of the Quebec Gazette for plagiarism.9 had charged the York Observer with printing “scribbles …strange unambiguous, though truly absurd;10 and withissuing a “vast column of innoxious vapour,”11 and he had accused the Montreal Gazette of using “language strangely grotesque.12

But why was his storm against Mackenzie so heatedand hostile? The King’s Printer was not only dutifully defending his employer, the Lieutenant Governor, against darts thrown by Mackenzie, Fothergill was artfully shielding himself against possible arrows aimed at him by His Excellency. Fothergill’s fervour was fired by his own insecurity – and not without reason.

For the past seventy-three years – since the first press imported into Canada (in New France, there were no printing presses) – nearly every King’s Printer had found himself in trouble with his government employers. Two years after establishing a garrison and colonizing Nova Scotia,administrators lured a yankee Boston printer to Halifax. The next year, 1752, the Halifax Gazette was launched.13

That first newspaper in Canada was strictly a tool of the Government. That first King’s Printer, John Bushell, printed what his superiors told him to print. His press was the medium for their 9 Weekly Register, 1822 November 21.10 Weekly Register, 1823 January 13.11 Weekly Register, 1823 October 09.12 Weekly Register, 1824 April 17.13 See Donald Chard, “John Bushell,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. III (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974).

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messages, the means by which the governments exercised its authority by publicizing its proclamations, its laws, its appointments, its regulations, its ideas, its news – all matters essential to the social order. For fifty years there was no Freedom of the Press in Canada. Throughout British North America – in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec (after 1791, Lower and Upper Canada) – the printers all served the colonial government, printing what the governors wanted printed.

Yet from the beginning, there was tension. King’sPrinters were subsidized, but they were independententrepreneurs, selling their newspapers and soliciting job printing. They soon discovered that what their readers wanted to read was not necessarily what their superiors wanted them to print. Further, nearly all the printers were Americans – skilled British printers were not aboutto risk the hazards of Canada’s “acres of snow.” These printers were tainted – or governors feared they were tainted – by seditious Yankee notions. Asa result, nearly every King’s Printer found himselfin trouble, caught between the idealistic principles of liberty and the economic essentials of loyalty.

In Upper Canada the tensions were worse. The Administrators believed it essential to maintain strong British connections. They thus demanded thatthe Upper Canada Gazette and American Chronicle, as the official newspaper was first called, be British in content. Yet nearly all its readers were Americans.Some Loyalists, many more “late loyalists” but nonetheless American-born with American friends andrelatives and interests.

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With the King’s Printers, there were problems from the start. The first, Louis Roy, a French Canadian, but he was still suspected of republican biases. He lost his post (in part because of his limited English).14 Roy was replaced by the brothersTiffany, Oliver and Silvester, who were instructed to use “their own good sense and discretion,” but to be sure to print news “favorable to the British Government.”15 Soon the Chief Justice, John Elmsley was questioning their loyalty, calling the Tiffanys“unprincipled and unattached republicans” and complaining that “every trifle relating to the damn’s States is printed in large character.”16 The brothers were dismissed.

It is no wonder that Fothergill so quickly over-reacted to when the Advocate first quoted him. His hostile response was aimed at Mackenzie, but its purpose was to impress his employers, to protect the editor-printer from official reprimand, even dismissal. The post of King’s Printer was never secure. In January, 1801, the government (includingits printshop) having moved from Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake), Silvester Tiffany launched an independent newspaper, The Niagara Herald.17 The ink wasbarely dry on the first issue, when from York in the official Upper Canada Gazette came this comment about its new rival:14 See John E. Hare, “Louis Roy,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. IV (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979).15 E.B. Littlehales to Tiffany, 1795 April 19 in E.A. Cruickshank, editor, The Correspondence of Lieut. Governor John Graves Simcoe. (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1921), V. 1, 346.16 Elmsley to Simcoe in E.A. Cruickshank, editor, The Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell. (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1935), v. 2, 103-4.17 The brothers had started the Canadian Constellation, the province’s first independent newspaper in 1799 – the paper lasted only a year.

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…I give you rank of scavenger – from the perverseness of a swinish disposition, I anticipate nothing but to see you constantly groveling amongst the filth, your natural element.… Upper Canada … reluctantly tolerates the editor of the Herald, that same Upper Canada, which unfortunately … is an asylum to exiles andaliens, to atheists and prawling democrats. 18

With or without direct orders, but certainly withthe full approval of the provincial administration,King’s Printer Titus Greer Simons had taken direct aim at an independent, critical editor.19 Fothergill’s bombardment of Mackenzie thus had fullprecedent. But soon Simons was gone.

In the course of the next two decades, the difficulties faced by King’s Printers were less dramatic, but there was little job security. The administrative and financial pressures on Simons’ successor, John Bennett, drove him “out of his sense,” according to one report.20 A later occupant of the printing post, Charles Horne, was forced to defend himself before the Assembly and, on a motionput by Attorney General Robinson, was called upon to apologize for publishing reports of Assembly debates that “were so imperfectly and untruly reported that no dependence can be placed in their accuracy.” Instead the House voted to accept Horne’s declaration as to “the purity of his intentions and his extreme regret at the 18 Upper Canada Gazette, 1801 January 31.19 The Herald lasted eighteen months.20 York Observer quoting Quebec Gazette 1825 July 21, in Patricia Lockhart Fleming et al, History of the Book in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 315.

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misrepresentations of certain Debates.”21 Horne was quoted as intending to resign, being “thoroughly disgusted with a situation always peculiarly anxious and disagreeable.”22

In the less than thirty years of the Gazette’s existence, there were eight different King’s Printers.23 Unsteady is the hand that sets the typesand pulls the press for the Crown.

Despite this history of past tensions, Mackenzie’s challenging Fothergill was more serious– and more severe – because of the strong personalities and political passions of the two principals.

William Lyon Mackenzie was born 1795 in Dundee, Scotland, reared by his widowed strict Presbyterianmother. He was educated in parish and secondary schools and trained as a bookkeeper and an apothecary. With his mother he opened A general store opened with his mother in a small village near Dundee, failed in the post-Napoleonic-war economic decline, prompting a move to England wherehe worked as a clerk in London as a gauger on a canal in Wiltshire. In 1820 he emigrated to Canada at age 25. For four years he was a successful merchant – first in York, then Dundas, and then Queenston. Until he launched The Colonial Advocate in 1824, he had little experience in journalism and none in politics.24

21 Journal of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada , 1821, in Alexander Fraser, Tenth Report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario, 1913. (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1914), 1821 February 09, 318.22 As quoted by Mackenzie, Colonial Advocate, 1824 May 18.23 They are all listed in Brian Tobin, The Upper Canada Gazette and It Printers. (Toronto: Ontario Legislative Library, 1993), Appendix I.24 Unless otherwise noted, details of Mackenzie’s life are drawn from Charles Lindsey, The Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie. (Toronto: P.R. Randall, 1862) and Frederick A. Armstrong and Ronald Stagg, “William

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Charles Fothergill was born in England in 1782 ofQuaker parents. After a profligate youth and a failed career as an actor and as a racehorse breeder, he became an engraver, emigrated to Upper Canada and settled in Port Hope. There he became the first postmaster, a magistrate and, for a time,the owner of a brewery. He first attracted the attention of Lieutenant Governor Maitland by publicly confronting the radical reformer Robert Gourlay. In the elections of 1820, Fothergill actively supported Durham’s government candidate, George Strange Boulton. Boulton lost, but Fothergill gained, moving to York late the next year to become the King’s Printer. For the first time in his life he had access to a printing press and a secure income. His became editor of the weekly official newspaper, the Upper Canada Gazette with its supplement, re-named the Weekly Register. 25

Fothergill’s writing and publishing interests were much broader than putting out a weekly government newspaper. He issued almanacs for 1823, 1824 and 1825, but his projected “annual register,”a digest of political, agricultural, scientific andcultural information, never materialized. His failing to publish more substantive works may have intensified his distress over the launching of the Colonial Advocate. Its subtitle, Journal of Agriculture, Manufactures & Commerce, and its editor’s stated Mackenzie,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. IX (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976).25 Unless otherwise noted, details of Fothergill’s life are drawn from Paul Romney, “A Conservative Reformer in Upper Canada: Charles Fothergill, Responsible Government and the 'British Party,' 1824-1840”, Canadian Historical Association Historic Papers, (1984); Paul Romney, “Charles Fothergill,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography , Vol. VII (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), and James L. Baillie, “Charles Fothergill 1782-1840.” Canadian Historical Review, 25, 4 (December 1944).

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intentions that the new paper would be much more than a periodical of political commentary, made thepaper a potential competitor to Fothergill’s broader publishing ambitions.

The initial May-June jousting between the two journalists paused, but it erupted anew in October.The complexities of the affair are beyond the scopeof this article.26 Suffice it to note that Fothergill editorially noted but did not print an anonymous letter apparently libeling Chief Justice William Dummer Powell. Mackenzie proceeded to printthe infamous letter, along with critical comments about the King’s Printer, hardly enamouring him to Mackenzie. Fothergill immediately complained about the Advocate editor’s “very unfair and uncandid animadversions … in his usual hicklety-picklety style.”27 Once again, Fothergill had felt himself forced to publicly attack Mackenzie in order to privately defend himself to his government superiors. The Advocate editor mused:

The independence, or rather the dependence of the York Free Press, alias, the GazetteRegister, & Co. is … [now] made quite conspicuous; so much so, that in future wewill make it no matter of speculation; nor, we dare say, will any body else.28

Fothergill countered with an accurate, but largely irrelevant, censure of Mackenzie’s erratic publishing record:

[W]e never have seen any publication so tardily and irregularly conducted as under his

26 See Paul Romney, “The Spanish Freeholder Imbroglio of 1824: Inter-Elite and Intra-Elite Rivalry in Upper Canada.” Ontario History, 76,1 (1984 March).27 Weekly Register, 1824 November 04.28 Colonial Advocate, 1824 December 16.

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management; for our own part, we have not seen more than half his twenty numbers, andone of them … we are told has never been published at all – and those we have seen … were long after date.29

In mid-November, Mackenzie pulled up stakes in Queenston and moved family and business to York. Toput out a political publication, he needed to be atthe centre of political activity. The two editor-printers were now near neighbours.

Fothergill soon had other matters on his mind. Inthe previous summer’s election, he ran against and nearly defeated the Durham incumbent, George Strange Boulton (son of the Chief Justice, brother of the Attorney General) When Parliament assembled the next winter, Fothergill challenged the electionresult and a select committee investigated the matter – for many weeks. Mackenzie mocked this waste of the Assembly’s time:

Petitions in loads are lying on the table,most important bills are waiting another reading – all in this case must take the rear of a question, as to whether a son ofJustice Boulton, or the King’s Printer forthe province should sit in parliament, to protect the rights of the people, against the influence of the executive; a difficult question truly and hard to solve!30

Worse, and far more threatening to Fothergill, for several weeks Mackenzie complained of the exorbitant prices charged by the King’s Printer forprinting the Statutes. Further, that the format of theprinting – wide margins, large type, excessive 29 Weekly Register, 1824 December 02.30 Colonial Advocate, 1825 February 14.

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leading between lines – had unnecessarily inflated the costs even more. It was a direct attack on the printer’s competence and character.

The previous May, Mackenzie, in passing, had taken Fothergill to task for the quality of his printed edition of a

brown paper Statutes [of Upper Canada] … not a fit task for weak eyes.… [One] cannot see these laws and statutes, even with glasses, and we are sure that at home no person would ever think of wrapping even apound of coffee in such dingy materials.31

With this new reproof, Fothergill was livid – defending himself by being offensive:

If the people of this Province have appetites so depraved as to require food of that foetid description which is alone offered by the larder of the Advocate – wemust say that our estimate of their character is considerably lowered.… [The] honest well-disposed yeomanry of this country are gulled and imposed upon by this ranting, raving, moon struck, envious, malignant, Scottish renegade, under the pretense of advocating their rights.32

A week later, Mackenzie shot back in kind:[T]he Editor of Sir Peregrine Maitland’s official paper… follow[s] the example of the skunk. When the Advocate relates a series of plain facts in relation to … [his printing of the statutes, Fothergill pours out at once upon him a volley of

31 Colonial Advocate, 1824 May 27.32 Weekly Register, 1825 February 23.

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abusive epithets, a whole legion of blackguard names.… This is just like the SKUNK, it has a fair … appearance calculated to deceive those who are unacquainted with its real disposition. Touch it in a sore place as the Advocate did Fothergill and it will lift up its posteriors and discharge upon you a liquorhaving a horrid smell, a most disagreeable, nauseating stench.33

And, adding injury to insult, Mackenzie respondedto being labeled

a renegade, which means a revolter from his prince, or an apostate from the faith.[T]he Advocate [editor], is the most loyalsubject in America … and moreover a rigid presbyterian. How then and with what shadow of justice could he be termed a renegade, by an “Apostate Quaker,” 34

To which Fothergill responded:There is surely no respectable or decent person who will expect us to notice the coarse and malignant ravings uttered by the last Advocate. – As a man brews so must he bake!35

Difficult as it may be to believe, in the light of all this, within a few months these two editors were allies, professionally and politically. An agreement was reached whereby York’s four printers – Fothergill, Mackenzie, John Carey (the Observer) and Francis Collins (the

33 This quotation and the next: WLM writing as “Henry Clod,” Colonial Advocate, 1825 March 03.34 As noted above, Fothergill was the child of a Quaker family.35 Weekly Register, 1825 March 10.

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Canadian Freeman). Rather than compete to print the Statutes, a single bid was submitted in Fothergill’s name and the work equally divided.

Moreover, that spring a new Durham election was won handily by Fothergill. Much to Mackenzie’s amazement, Fothergill emerged as a leading member of the opposition, questioning land granting policies and conducting a committee on “the state of the province ”that presented resolutions on thealien question, immigration, the post office, and an independent judiciary, none in harmony with Government policies.

Fothergill was indeed attempting the impossible, working for the government as a printer and acting against the government as a Member of Parliament. By late December, there were rumours that Fothergill post as King’s Printer was in danger. Mackenzie could write:

Mr. Fothergill’s conduct in the legislature has forced from me the reluctant acknowledgement that I am very liable to be deceived in respect to political men. … [S]o long as he shall persevere in the manly independent, upright course … in parliament, he shall have my sincere wishes for his and his family’s prosperity. … [The Lieutenant Governor] possesses too honorable a mind, too generous and elevated a disposition, to attempt injuring Mr. Fothergill for having manifested … in parliament … in despite of consequences, [to] speak and act as became the son of an ancient and

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honourable family, as became A FREE BORN ENGLISHMAN.36

Nonetheless, the axe fell. In his Canadian Freeman,Francis Collins commented on the King’s Printer’s dismissal:

[T]he fact of his having been so discharged, after the very desirable improvements he has made in that department, proves to a demonstration thatno man but a sycophant or a mere automatoncan fill the situation.37

In his own farewell editorial, writing of himselfin the third person, Fothergill mused.

After holding this Office for the period of four years, Mr. Fothergill, has received the commands of His Excellency toresign the situation, … suddenly without any previous notice or intimation,… The independent conduct of Mr. Fothergill as arepresentative of the people in the House of Assembly, is the undoubted cause of this sudden dismissal from Office; and it is for the public to say whether the causeis most honorable to himself or dishonorable to the advisers of the measure.38

Warming to his subject, he continuedWe deeply lament that the state of things should be such in a British Colony that anopen manly independence of conduct and sentiment grounded on strict

36 Colonial Advocate, 1825 December 29.37 Canadian Freeman, 1826 January ??, quoted in Colonial Advocate, 1826 January 19.38 This quotation and the next: Weekly Register, 1826 January 12.

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constitutional principles, and according with the general interests of the British empire – should under any circumstances beat variance with, and absolutely hateful to persons high in power in the local government; and that a publick officer, who happens to be in parliament cannot be faithful to his Constituents without beingmarked for destruction.

There could be no question as to the reason for Fothergill’s dismissal. It was not his competence as a printer, a financial manager or editor, but his expressions as a legislator. When, Attorney General Robinson, when challenged in the Assembly, admitted as much, albeit reversing the issue, declaring that Fothergill had been fired, “not frommotives of cruelty or oppression,” but that he “might be free from restraint … to pursue his legislative inquiries into the state of the Colony.”39

Either way, Fothergill was out of a job, deprivedof an income. And worse, thanks to Mackenzie’s having complained months earlier about apparent Fothergill’s excess charges for printing the Statutes,a select committee of the Assembly had forced him to post a bond until the matter was fully inquired into. Therefore, the government held back nearly £400 owed him for work done, ads run, rent paid andother items. Not until April was the matter settled. To his credit, Mackenzie as much as apologized:

It is now generally understood that Mr. Fothergill from the manner in which his office was then conducted, and from the

39 Quoted by editor Francis Collins, Canadian Freeman, 1827 November 09.

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difficulty with which workmen were inducedto remain in York at any price, as also onaccount of other circumstances long beforethe public, did not make of this job the amazing profits that might have been expected.40

Had the government pressed for payment of this bond,

it would have been impossible for their discharged servant to have fulfilled his engagements with many who in turn dependedon him for money. – We waited with impatience for the result. Will they try to crush him? We asked – or will they morenobly disdain to take advantage of their bold opponent, as such a critical moment? – Will they press the payment of their bond or will they grant him the usual warrants? – Cheerfully do we place upon record, to the honour of the executive andits advisers, that they have paid Mr. Fothergill every farthing of his demand and allowed the bond to sleep in peace among the archives of the Attorney General.

Further, the printers of York rallied round theirformer colleague. Nineteen of them contributed a dollar each, as did a number of other persons, including at least eight fellow members of the Assembly, to purchase and inscribe a piece of silver plate and present it to Fothergill

as a mark of our esteem and approbation ofhis manly, upright, and independent

40 This quotation and the next: Colonial Advocate, 1826 April 13.

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conduct as a representative of the people of this colony in Parliament.41

The former editor limped back to Port Hope where he still held property. Mackenzie meanwhile, facingsevere financial difficulties, was prompted in desperation in May1826 to publish a series of supposedly humourous satirical commentaries that scandalized certain members of the ruling elite, those later labeled by Mackenzie the “Family Compact.”

The story of the resulting “Types Riot” destruction of the Colonial Advocate printing office and “Types Trial” response is well known.42 When Mackenzie sued the perpetrators. Fothergill happilytravelled back to York to testify on Mackenzie’s behalf – offering his professional opinion as to the monetary worth of the damaged equipment – and thus aid in the Advocate editor’s success. The jury awarded Mackenzie enough in damages to discharge his debts and re-establish his business.

Moreover, it made him a popular hero – the government had tried to silence him, as it had successfully stifled others, and failed. The affairserved to launch his volatile career in politics.

Fothergill, meanwhile, continued for the next several years, as a leading reformer in Parliament,but with limited success otherwise in his various business endeavours. Even in the Assembly, as fellow reformer John Rolph commented

Prudence … was not one of Fothergill’s characteristics … [he] had every sense but

41 Colonial Advocate, 1826 March42 See Chris Raible, Muddy York Mud: Scandal and Scurrility in Upper Canada. (Creemore, ON: Curiosity House, 1992).

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good sense … [and a] habit of speaking hismind very bluntly.43

On at least two occasions, Fothergill felt compelled to defend himself against distorted newspaper reports of his speeches in the Assembly. The offending paper was the U.E. Loyalist, published asa supplement to the official Upper Canada Gazette. Whenthe paper’s editor, King’s Printer Robert Stanton, refused to publish Fothergill’s letters correcting the erroneous reports, Fothergill made use of the columns of Mackenzie’s Colonial Advocate.44

Mackenzie and Fothergill had reached an accommodation – but not an agreement. Both were seeking reform, but not in the same way. Fothergill, at heart, was an 18th century whig, He saw Upper Canada as totally loyal, part of the British Empire, but a colony that should have the power to impeach imperial officers and representatives for malfeasance or unconstitutionalconduct. Mackenzie, in company with other reformers, was not necessarily a republican, nor inany way “disloyal,” but he affirmed popular sovereignty, that is, believing that the ultimate political authority lies with the people, not with the British Crown.

The next few years, Mackenzie was constantly in the news:

In 1828-31 he was pressing for reform as a member of the provincial for Assembly;

In 1831-32 he was organizing public meetings and petitions to the King and British House of Commons;

43 In Baillie, “Charles Fothergill …” 44 Colonial Advocate, 1827 March 29 and 1828 April 24.

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1831-33 he was repeatedly expelled from the Assembly and was immediately re-elected;

In 1832-33 he was in London appealing, over theheads of provincial administrators, directly tothe higher authority of the Colonial Office;

In 1833 he returning with some success yet was soon disillusioned about Britain ever making significant reforms in Upper Canada;

In 1834 he was easily elected to Toronto’s first city council and was made Toronto’s firstmayor;

In 1835 he was successfully re-elected to the Assembly and was made chair of its Committee onGrievances;

In 1836 he was defeated at the polls thanks to the efforts of the Lieutenant Governor, Sir Francis Bond Head;

In1836 he launched a new newspaper, The Constitution, and was soon pressing for more radical reform;

In 1837 he despaired of change through political efforts, resorted to armed rebellion,failed miserably and barely escaped to the United States..

Over the same period, from time to time Fothergill was also in the news: In 1829, while still a member of the Assembly,

he appealed to the new Lieutenant Governor, SirJohn Colborne, for assistance in putting out a government-supporting newspaper in Port Hope; he was turned down.

In 1830, he failed in his attempt to be re-elected to the Assembly.

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In 1831, he moved to Pickering, where a new career as a mill owner ended is disaster when his mill burned down.

In 1832, while Mackenzie was criss-crossing theprovince, speaking at meetings calling for change, Fothergill, at a meeting in Amherst, moved a counter resolution expressing Loyalty and full faith in the Lieutenant Governor.

In 1834 he again ran for parliament, campaigning as a “conservative reformer,” but he lost to a Mackenzie supporter.

All through this period, Fothergill pursued non-political interests in literature and in natural history, trying unsuccessfully to set up a combination museum, gallery, botanical garden and zoo. He was an undoubted genius, but was emotionally erratic and fated to fail in his economic enterprises. In a dark time, in the summerof 1837, Fothergill wrote Mackenzie, reflecting on the decade that had elapsed since his testifying atMackenzie’s Types Trial:

Although I well knew I should incur the mortal enmity of your powerful enemies (the effects of which I have since experienced to a fatal extent) I gave thatevidence in your favour which produced a verdict that laid the foundation of all your subsequent power and celebrity.45

When the Rebellion erupted the first week in December, Fothergill had no sympathy for it whatsoever. That same week, after nearly twelve year of journalist silence, he had marshalled the resources needed to launch a new Toronto newspaper,45 Fothergill to Mackenzie, 1837 July 25, in Baillie, “Charles Fothergill…”

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the Palladium. Beautifully produced and artfully written, the paper was not a commercial success. Helost interest in it in 1838; it died the next year.Fothergill himself died, penniless, in 1840.

Mackenzie lived a good deal longer. Having escaped to the United States, he launched another newspaper with the purpose of re-igniting the firesof Rebellion with American support. When those efforts failed, he became an American citizen, struggled on in various ways New York City, eventually finding employment with Horace Greeley’sNew York Tribune. A general amnesty enabled Mackenzie’s return to Toronto in 1850, where he wassoon back in Parliament, launching a newspaper, andhammering once again at the government. He died in 1861.

But, in 1838, there was one final episode in rivalry of the two journalists. Barely five weeks after the failed December Rebellion, in New York Mackenzie penned his version of the events that hadtaken place that fatal week. “An Account of the Rebellion Near Toronto,” running nearly 7,000 words, appeared in late January the Watertown New York Jeffersonian. It was picked up by Fothergill, who forthwith published it in pamphlet form, complete with annotations that left no doubt as to his antipathy for the “Arch-Traitor” and scorn for the whole enterprise. The last page of that published pamphlet offers a summary glimpse of the two editors

Mackenzie’s final paragraph read:The Canadian people owe to their American brethren a large debt of gratitude, and will, I trust, ever remember the kindness and sympathy extended towards them. The

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freemen of this frontier have … enthusiastically cheered our aspirants forliberty, indulging a lively hope that heaven would speedily bless their efforts and hasten the day in which they will be enabled to burst the bonds of ages of tyranny, attain liberal political institutions, and become prosperous and free46

Fothergill added this comment:Should Mackenzie’s eye ever rest upon these notes, we shall here assure him thathis very name is held in execration, even by his former friends in Canada – and both his public and his private conduct has secured the inheritance of an eternal infamy! and the very way to secure the freedom and peace he so hypocritically talks about – is to bring himself and all others as guilty as himself to speedy justice.47

So impressed was Mackenzie with this publication,a year later he reprinted it verbatim, complete withhis rival’s closing comment, thus, in a sense, giving Fothergill the final word.

46 William Lyon Mackenzie, Mackenzie’s Own Narrative of the Late Rebellion with Notes Critical and Explanatory Exhibiting the Only True Account of What Took Place at the Memorable Siege of Toronto in the Month of December 1837. (Ottawa: Golden Dog Press, 1980 – originally published Toronto: Palladium Office,1838).47 Charles Fothergill, his 1838 edition of Mackenzie’s Own Narrative…, note #49. A year later, in Rochester, New York, Mackenzie published the narrative,

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