he Honourable
James Buchanan Macaulay, a gentleman who in after years attained the
honour of knighthood, and became Chief Justice of the Court of Common
Pleas for Upper Canada. At the period under consideration he was a
member of the Executive Council, and occupied a high position at the
local bar. The language employed by the _Advocate_ with respect to him
was comparatively mild, and did not even mention him by name. Moreover,
the editor's remarks appear to have been entirely in accordance with
facts. At any rate they were altogether insufficient to account for the
state of ferocity into which Mr. Macaulay allowed himself to be lashed.
He prepared and published a pamphlet, in which he gave vent to such
scurrility as it seems incredible that any man of education, or even of
decent social training, could ever have descended to write. Truly, no
man is ever so effectually written down as when he himself holds the
pen. Those readers who wish to be better acquainted with the depths to
which an angry man can lower himself, and who have not access to Mr.
Macaulay's pamphlet, can obtain some inkling of the truth by reference
to Mr. Lindsey's "Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie."[68] As Mr.
Lindsey very justly remarks:--"The cause of the quarrel was utterly
contemptible, and Mr. Macaulay showed to great disadvantage in it." It
seems probable enough that one main object of the publication of the
pamphlet was to goad Mr. Mackenzie into a retort which would render him
amenable to the law of libel. In one sense this plan--if such there
were--succeeded. The _Advocate_ came out with a long reply which
contained an abundance of scandalous matter, a great part of which, as
the writer must have been well aware, had no shadow of foundation in
truth. The matter related not only to persons occupying public
situations, but to individuals altogether unconnected with public life,
including respectable married women and persons who had long been dead.
But most of the statements and insinuations, even those which were
unsupported by a tittle of evidence--nay, even those which were
notoriously groundless--related to and were interwoven with
circumstances which, as the persons involved well knew, would not bear
discussion. It would never do to permit such matters to become the
subject of judicial investigation. Anything in the shape of an enquiry
would inevitably lead to disclosures seriously affecting the honour of
more than one member of th