tland overturned
fourteen feet of the Brock Monument to remove a copy of Mackenzie's
journal, the "Colonial Advocate", which had inadvertently been included
in the corner stone.

The weapons of the Reformers were the platform, the press, and
investigations and reports by parliamentary committees. The Compact hit
back in its own way. Every critic was denounced as a traitor. Offending
editors were put in the pillory. Mackenzie was five times expelled from
the House, only to be returned five times by his stubborn supporters.
Matters were at a deadlock, and it became clear either that the British
Parliament, which alone could amend the Constitution, must intervene or
else that the Reformers would be driven to desperate paths. But before
matters came to this pass, an acute crisis had arisen in Lower Canada
which had its effect on all the provinces.

In Lower Canada, the conflict which had been smoldering before the war
had since then burst into flame. The issues of this conflict were more
clearcut than in any of the other provinces. A coherent opposition had
formed earlier, and from beginning to end it dominated the Assembly.
The governing forces were outwardly much the same as in Upper Canada--a
Lieutenant Governor responsible to the Colonial Office, an Executive
Council appointed by the Crown but coming to have the independent power
of a well-entrenched bureaucracy, and a Legislative Council nominated by
the Crown and, until nearly the end of the period, composed chiefly of
the same men who served in the Executive. The little clique in control
had much less popular backing than the Family Compact of Upper Canada
and were of lower caliber. Robert Christie, an English-speaking member
of the Assembly, who may be counted an unprejudiced witness since he was
four times expelled by the majority in that house, refers to the
real rulers of the province as "a few rapacious, overbearing, and
irresponsible officials, without stake or other connexion in the
country than their interests." At their head stood Jonathan Sewell,
a Massachusetts Loyalist who had come to Lower Canada by way of New
Brunswick in 1789, and who for over forty years as Attorney General,
Chief Justice, or member of Executive and Legislative Councils, was the
power behind the throne.

The opposition to the bureaucrats at first included both English and
French elements, but the English minority were pulled in contrary ways.
Their antecedents were not such as to