ers of the ruling faction, two of whom were
magistrates, had been in close proximity to the scene of the raid at the
time when it took place; and there appears to be very little doubt that
all three must have been eye-witnesses of the outrage. One of these was
the Honourable William Allan, who, at the very moment when this evidence
was given, sat on the bench to the right of the Chief Justice as an
associate judge on the trial. Colonel Heward, whose son Charles was one
of the delinquents, was the other magistrate compromised by the
evidence. The third person alleged to have witnessed the transaction was
Mr. Macaulay, leading counsel for the defence. The utter incongruity and
unseemliness of the whole affair from first to last seems
incomprehensible at the present day. All sense of the fitness of things
seems to have been wanting.

The trespass had been flagrant and bold, and the only question which the
jury had to consider was the amount of damages. There were conflicting
elements among the jurors, who were long in coming to a decision. After
much deliberation they returned a verdict of L625, which sum, together
with costs of suit, was soon afterwards paid over to the plaintiff's
attorney.[82] But the rioters themselves were not suffered to sustain
this loss. Prominent adherents of the official party did not hesitate to
say that by the attack upon Mr. Mackenzie's press and type, and by the
consequent stoppage of publication of his paper,[83] the perpetrators of
the outrage had rendered an essential service to society, by abating an
intolerable nuisance. Under such circumstances it was only just that
society should bear harmless those who had thrown themselves into the
breach and vindicated her rights. It was resolved that a subscription
should be set on foot with this laudable object.

Among the few high Tories resident at York in those days upon whose
characters it is possible for one of modern ideas to look with sympathy,
and even with a considerable degree of admiration, was Colonel James
Fitz Gibbon. The Colonel was a gallant veteran who had fought the
battles of his country on two continents, at Copenhagen and the Helder,
at Fort Erie and the Beaver Dams. His military career was not yet quite
at an end, for he was destined to play an important part in the
putting-down of the Upper Canadian Rebellion; a circumstance which
furnishes a sufficient justification for a somewhat more extended
reference to him in this pla