fluence circumstances than to be influenced by them. Mackenzie's
nature, though it could not strictly be called a shallow one, at any
rate lay near the surface, and its characters were not hard to decipher,
even upon a brief acquaintance. There were depths in Rolph's nature
which were never fathomed by those nearest and dearest to him--possibly
not even by himself. Mackenzie seems to have long regarded Rolph with a
sort of distant awe--as a Sphinx, close, oracular, inscrutable. Rolph
evidently estimated Mackenzie correctly, as one whose politics were
founded upon deeply-rooted convictions, and not upon mere opinions,
although he would probably have found it difficult to subject those
opinions to a rigid analysis; as one whose energy and journalistic
resources might be turned to good account in the cause of Reform, but
whose discretion was not always to be relied on. This estimate, indeed,
was sufficiently obvious to any one who maintained frequent or familiar
relations with Mackenzie, and was concurred in by most, if not all, of
his friends. His earnestness and good faith, however, were manifest to
all who knew him, and these were sufficient to cover much more culpable
weaknesses than any which he had hitherto displayed.

Having now become acquainted with some of the FATHERS of Reform, it is
desirable to cast a momentary glance at the material which went to the
composition of the Reform Party generally. That material was of the most
heterogeneous character imaginable. It included a few U. E. Loyalists of
advanced opinions, and their descendants; but the bone and sinew were
made up of more recent immigrants from Great Britain and the United
States. The organization of the party, such as it was, was of too recent
a date at this time to admit of any absolute unanimity of opinion on all
questions of public policy having been arrived at among so numerous a
body. On one cardinal point, however, all were agreed: it was in the
highest degree desirable that the Canadian constitution should be more
closely assimilated to that of the mother-country, and that the
Executive Council should be made responsible to the popular branch of
the Legislature. True, there was a small element--almost entirely made
up of immigrants from across the border--who held republican theories,
but no class of the community clamoured more loudly for Responsible
Government than did the advocates of republicanism, very few of whom
regarded their opinions as