Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 | Page 8

with few friends--calumniated, falsely accused, and the
feelings of honest, faithful Republicans artfully excited against me--and
that among the foremost of my traducers and slanderers would be found
Edwin Croswell and the 'Argus,' Thomas Ritchie and his journal, Green
and the 'Boston Post,' with the Pennsylvanian and other newspapers
called Democratic; and that these presses and their editors would
eagerly retail any and every untruth that could operate to my prejudice,
but be dumb to any explanation I might offer, I could not have believed
it. But if a pamphlet (like mine) had been then written, exhibiting, with
unerring accuracy, the true characters of the combination of
unprincipled political managers, among whom you have long acted a
conspicuous part; if a Jesse Hoyt had come forward as state's evidence
to swear to the truth of the pamphlet, while the parties implicated
remained silent; and if you and your afflicted presses had, as you do
now with the letters in my pamphlets, defended the real criminals,
declared solemnly that you could see nothing wrong in what they had
done, and directed the whole force of your widely circulated journal
against the innocent person who had warned his countrymen against a
most dangerous cabal of political hypocrites of the basest class--in
other words, had I known you and your partnership as well in October,
1837, as I do, by dear-bought experience, in November, 1845, I would
have hesitated very long indeed, before assuming any share whatever in
that responsibility which might have given you the Canadas, as an
additional theatre for the exhibition of those peculiar talents, by which
this State and Union, and thousands in other lands, have so severely
suffered. While reproving gambling and speculation in others, you and
your brother wire-pullers have made the property, the manufactures, the
commerce of America, your tributaries--even the bench of justice, with
its awful solemnities and responsibilities, has been so prostituted by
your friends that, when at sea and about to launch three of his

fellow-creatures into eternity, a captain in the American navy hesitated
not to avow that he had told one of them 'that for those who had money
and friends in America there was no punishment for the worst of
crimes.'--Nor did the court-martial before whom that avowal was freely
made censure him.
"Observe how Mr. and Mrs. Butler sneer at poor judges, corrupt judges,
pauper judges, partial chancellors, and at the administration of
American justice, though by their own party--and how their leader
pities Marcy, throws him on the Supreme Court bench as a stopping
place, to save him from ruin.--Look at the bankrupt returns of this
district alone--one hundred and twenty millions of dollars in debt, very
little paid or to be paid, many of the creditors beggared, many of the
debtors astonishing the fashionable with their magnificent carriages and
costly horses. No felony in you and your friends, who brought about
the times of 1837-8. Oh, no! All the felony consists in exposing you.
Two hundred years ago it was a felony to read the Bible in English.
Truth will prevail yet.
"I confess my fears that, as I have now no press of my own, nor the
means to get one, and am persecuted, calumniated, harassed with
lawsuits, threatened with personal violence, saying nothing of the
steady vindictiveness of your artful colleague, nor of the judges chosen
by Mr. Van Buren and his friends, whom the 'Globe Democratic
Review' and 'Evening Post' denounced in 1840, and declared to be
independent of common justice and honesty, you may succeed in
embittering the cup of misery I have drunk almost to the dregs. The
Swedish Chancellor, Count Axel Oxenstiern, wrote to one of his
children, 'You do not know yet, my son, how little wisdom is exhibited
in ruling mankind.' I think that Mr. Butler cannot be a pure politician,
and yet the corrupt individual whose dishonesty I have so clearly
shown.--Perhaps the United States government may justify him, and
the laws punish me for exhibiting him in his true colours. Be it so--I
had for many years an overflow of popularity; and if it is now to be my
lot to be overwhelmed with obloquy, hatred, and ceaseless slander, I
am quite prepared for it, or even for worse treatment. Being old, and
not likely at any future time to be a candidate for office, it is of very

little consequence to society what may become of me--but I have a
lively satisfaction that I was an humble instrument selected, at a
fortunate moment, to prove, by their own admission in 1845, every
charge I had made against you and your friends through the 'New York
Examiner,' before I left the service of the Mechanics' Institute here, in
1845.
"W. L. Mackenzie."
The Upper Canadians should follow the example