The act has to be viewed, however, in the light of preceding events,
and with a knowledge of facts in the thrilling drama of Reform, at the
time being enacted on the political stage of Upper Canada. Society in
the Province was long wont to poise itself between two opinions, as to
the degree of justification for the course which Reform took at the
time of the Gourlay agitation, and which, in Mackenzie's day,
culminated in rebellion. The issues of the conflict have, however,
settled that point; and though Tory bias loves still to stand by the
"Family Compact," the popular sympathies are with the actors who were
whilom outlawed, and on whose heads the Crown did them the honour, for
a time, to set a high value.
Chief among these actors, at the time of which we are writing, was he
whose printing-presses had just been ruthlessly demolished, and whose
fonts of type youthful Torydom had gleefully consigned to the deep.
The provocation had been a long series of intemperate newspaper
criticism of the Government, numerous inflammatory appeals to the
people to rise against constituted authority, and much scurrilous
abuse of leading members of the "Family Compact," who wished, as a
safeguard against revolution and chaos, to crush the "patriot"
Mackenzie, and drive him from the Province.
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