[mayor] a chapter of CANADIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY 29 



dividends should be paid only out of actual profits; (3) that the 

 stock of the bank should not be pledged for discounts; (4) that non- 

 resident stock-holders alone might vote by proxy; (5) that either 

 branch of the legislature might appoint persons to ascertain the 

 financial position of the bank; (6) that the legislature might, if it 

 saw fit, prohibit the bank from issuing notes of a smaller denomination 

 than five dollars; (7). that the registers of the names of stock-holders 

 should be open to the stock-holders prior to the meetings at which 

 directors were to be elected; and (8) that full statements on a form 

 to be prescribed should be required of the banks periodically. These 

 recommendations and the draft Bill which embodied them were 

 ignored and, on this and other grounds, Mackenzie developed a 

 series of attacks upon the executive and upon the majority in the 

 Provincial Assembly in his newspaper, the Colonial Advocate. In 

 an article published on the 1st of December, 1831, he was especially 

 bitter on the banking question: "Are we not now," he wrote, "even 

 during the present week, about to give to the municipal officers of 

 the Government, as a banking monopoly, a power over the people 

 which, added to their already overgrown influence, must render their 

 sway nearly as arbitrary and despotic as the iron rule of the Czar 

 of Muscovy?" 40 



The executive and the majority of the House of Assembly 

 exercised their power, expelled Mackenzie on the 12th of December, 

 and ordered a new writ for the election of a member in his place. "^^ 

 Mackenzie was returned on the 2nd of January, 1832, and on 5th 

 January repeated his denunciations in the Colonial Advocate, launching 

 into a general philippic. On the banking question he wrote: "They 

 (the majority) get rid of bills for the general regulation of banking, 

 revenue enquiries, enquiries into salaries. . . . They (the majority) 

 are chiefly placemen . . . who receive from the government six, 

 if not ten, times the amount they obtained from the people as legis- 

 lators. . . ." 4^ On the following day, on the motion of the Solicitor- 

 General, Mackenzie was again expelled, and again a writ was issued. 

 The new election began on the 30th of January, and Mackenzie was 

 again returned. While Mackenzie was under expulsion the House 

 of Assembly passed the Bank Acts to which he had objected. Then 



^''Colonial Advocate, 1st December, 1831. 



^^Lindsey, Charles, Life and Times of W. Lyon Mackenzie, Toronto, C.VV., 1862, 

 vol. i, p. 222. 



^Colonial Advocate, 5th January, 1832. 



