[mayor] a chapter of CANADIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY 31 



1837, he counselled the suspension of specie payments by the banks.*'' 

 This measure was, no doubt, wise under the circumstances, since it 

 would have been difficult for the weak Canadian banks to have pro- 

 tected themselves against the complete withdrawal of their small 

 amount of specie to the United States during the suspension there 

 of specie payments; but on the face of it, and external influences 

 apart, it strongly confirmed the attitude towards the banking question 

 which Mackenzie had maintained for the previous eight years. 



Mackenzie had been elected and expelled five times in succession, 

 and his constituency was for a time practically disfranchised. It is 

 difficult to dissociate these repeated expulsions from the irritation 

 produced in the minds of his opponents by his persistent and vigorous 

 attacks upon their financial methods. The armed disturbances in 

 the Lower Province, which had partly a racial and partly an economical 

 foundation, seem to have suggested to Mackenzie similar action in 

 Upper Canada, and he engaged impulsively in what is known as the 

 Rebellion of 1837. Not for three or four years did the country, 

 now once again united into one Province, assume a normal economical 

 or political condition. 



To interpret the Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada fully, would 

 require, a more extended exposition than would be appropriate to 

 an economic history in the strict sense, but some brief suggestions 

 may be offered. The activity and bustle which Lord Durham notices 

 in the United States, and Mackenzie also notices in his '^Sketches,'" 

 had evidently impressed itself,*^ especially upon new comers. Lord 

 Durham must have derived his knowledge of the United States almost 

 wholly at second hand. Mackenzie arrived in Canada from Scotland 

 in 1820, at the age of twenty-five; he visited the United States 

 for the first time in 1829. The furore for industry, which has already 

 been noticed, was in full vigour. The towns were crowded with 

 people and there was bustle and movement everywhere. 



Prosperity was abundant and obvious. Protectionists were 

 ascribing it to the tariff of 1828; others looked upon it as occurring 

 in spite of the tariff. It seems to have been due principally to the 

 influx of population from Europe, to the difficulty which the new- 

 comers experienced in obtaining land, to the consequent abundance 

 of hirable labour and to the energy with which the capitalists, who 



^''An Act (7 & 8 Will. IV, c. 2) was passed on 11th July, 1837, permitting 

 chartered banks to refuse to exchange specie for their notes without forfeiting their 

 charter. 



^^See Sketches of Canada and the United States, by W. Lyon Mackenzie, London, 

 1833. 



