The session of 1829 was a noisy and quarrelsome one. Hardly had Mackenzie taken his seat before he began that system of inquiry and agitation which he thenceforward pursued throughout the whole of his career as a member of Parliament. He instituted an investigation into the management of the Provincial Post Office, conducted an inquiry as to the privileges of members of the Assembly, and as to the behaviour of certain returning officers, and generally busied himself with important matters of detail. He displayed precisely the same characteristics as a legislator that he had displayed as the conductor of a newspaper--great energy and vigilance, accompanied by a critical and fault-finding spirit, and an almost entire absence of tact and discretion. He gave wanton and unnecessary offence to those who differed from him in opinion, not only on important political questions, but even on comparatively insignificant matters of every-day occurrence. His coadjutors found that, independently of the sincerity or insincerity of his intentions, his judgment was not to be trusted. He could be misled by any _ignis fatuus_ that displayed a bright light, and was led into many a Serbonian bog from which he was not extricated without serious difficulty. Some men have an unerring instinct which, even in the absence of calm judgment or mature reflection, commonly leads them in the right path. Mackenzie's first conceptions, on the contrary, were almost invariably erroneous; and he had a perverse habit of frequently clinging to an idea once formed, even when experience and deliberation had proved it to be unsound.[141] At other times his opinions were as changeable as the hue of the chameleon. In short, he was a creature of impulse, and too often acted upon the motto of "First fire--then inquire." This was perhaps a misfortune rather than a fault, and under ordinary circumstances would have merited lightness of touch on the part of the historian. But Mr. Mackenzie is identified with a movement which forms a conspicuous and dramatic passage in Upper Canadian chronicles, and in justice to others it becomes highly necessary to form a correct estimate of his personality. This is all the more essential from the fact that he himself at different times gave various and conflicting accounts of the episode with which his name is inseparably blended, which accounts have hitherto been the only sources of information drawn upon by so-called historians. All the references to the Upper Canadian Rebellion to be found in current histories are traceable, directly or indirectly, to Mackenzie himself, and all are built upon false hypotheses and perverted representations of events. To Mackenzie, more than to any other person, or to all other persons combined, are to be attributed all the worst consequences which flowed from that feebly-planned and ill-starred movement. All the facts point to the conclusion that if he had been content to play the patient and