Page:Statement of facts relating to the trespass on the printing press in the possession of Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie, in June, 1826.djvu/14

 had gone to their graves in peace—and the feelings of their relations had never been harrowed by brutal and inhuman attacks, which the dead cannot repel. Many of our Townswomen—aged and respectable Mothers of families—had arrived at the verge of life, without having been distressed and insulted by having their names bandied about, with the coarsest abuse, in the columns of Newspapers. Many of our Townsmen had here—as in all other countries—risen to independence and to respectability, in character and circumstances, by their own exertions, without having drawn upon them, by their prosperity, the envy of malignant spirits—without having their Wives and Mothers, their Daughters and Sisters, and even their Grand-mothers, insulted and spoken of, with coarse and unfeeling insolence, in Newspapers, industriously circulated throughout the Province; for no offence of theirs; for no provocation they had given:—in short, for no other reason, and upon no other pretext, than that their relatives happened to fill those respectable stations which some person must fill in all civilized societies—but which are always objects of envy to the mean and the vicious.

It was, I think, some time in the year 1824, that Mr. Mackenzie set up a Paper, called the "Colonial Advocate," in the District of Niagara.—The principal object it professed was, to advance the Commercial and Agricultural interests of the Province; but it very soon became evident that the Conductor of the Paper was determined to try whether there was not in this Colony an appetite for calumny, which he might turn to good account, and which he might gratify with less trouble to himself, and less exertion of intellect, than would be required for more honest purposes; for, indeed, it had been proved very clearly to the people of Upper Canada, that when a writer has once brought himself to lay aside all regard to decency and truth, nothing is easier than for him to fill the