We do not doubt but that the MacNabs have ever been a spirited race. Their representatives here have always been such; and like their kinsmen in the old home, too, they have had, during their brief history in Canada, their share of the hereditary vicissitudes. We owe to a Sheriff's advertisement in the _Upper Canada Gazette or American Oracle_ of the 14th of April, 1798, published at Niagara, some biographical particulars and a minute description of the person of the Mr. MacNab who was afterwards, as we have already stated, Usher of the Black Rod to the House of Assembly and father of his successor, Mr. David MacNab, in the same post; father also of the Allan MacNab, whose history forms part of that of Upper Canada. In 1798, imprisonment for debt was the rigorously enforced law of the land. The prominent MacNab of that date had, it would appear, become obnoxious to the law on the score of indebtedness: but finding the restraint imposed irksome, he had relieved himself of it without asking leave. The hue and cry for his re-capture proceeded as follows: "Two hundred dollars reward! Home District, Upper Canada, Newark, April 2, 1798. Broke the gaol of this District on the night of the 1st instant, [the 1st of April, be it observed,] Allan MacNab, a confined debtor. He is a reduced lieutenant of horse," proceeds the Sheriff, "on the half-pay list of the late corps of Queen's Rangers; aged 38 years or thereabouts; five feet three inches high; fair complexion; light hair; red beard; much marked with the small-pox; the middle finger of one of his hands remarkable for an overgrown nail; round shouldered; stoops a little in walking; and although a native of the Highlands of Scotland, affects much in speaking the Irish dialect. Whoever will apprehend, &c., &c., shall receive the above reward, with all reasonable expenses." The escape of the prisoner on the first of April was probably felt by the Sheriff to be a practical joke played off on himself personally. We think we detect personal spleen in the terms of the advertisement: in the minuteness of the description of Mr. MacNab's physique, which never claimed to be that of an Adonis; in the biographical particulars, which, however interesting they chance to prove to later generations, were somewhat out of place on such an occasion: as also in a postscript calling on "the printers within His Majesty's Governments in America, and those of the United States to give circulation in their respective papers to the above advertisement," &c. It was a limited exchequer that created embarrassment in the early history--and, for that matter, in much of the later history as well--of Mr. MacNab's distinguished son, afterwards the baronet Sir Allan; and no one could relate with more graphic and humorous effect his troubles from this source, than he was occasionally in the habit of doing.