Abstract
A letter to William Lyon Mackenzie from Wolfred Nelson, dated April 28, 1851. Nelson congratulates Mackenzie on his election to Parliament as the representative for Haldimand County. Nelson was also a member of Parliament who represented Richelieu. The two men were both reformers who were prominent figures in the Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions in 1837 and 1838. Nelson writes “allow me to congratulate you on your election. This is a great moral triumph. It is a proof that you have not lost the esteem or the confidence of your old friends…Now that we have in name and substance a truly constitutional govt we will strenuously maintain it, and then convince mankind that we were quite justified in protesting as we did against the abuse that was oppressing us into slavery…I am proud of your success, as it tends to confirm my own position, and I am delighted, for the character of the Canadian yeomanry, not, you permit me to say, that Mr. Brown has been defeated, because it is my conviction he would prove an acquisition to the Reform party, but it strikes me you had peculiar claims with the people of Upper Canada, and nobly have they acknowledged it. I should like to have my seat beside you in the House because I am perfectly assured that in all governmental matters we shall go together…” He continues that “we are both getting to be old men, but thank a most beneficent Providence we both possess that mental and bodily vision which is in truth the best qualities a man can have for passing through the transitory life with honour and utility and which confers more dignity of character than governors or courts can bestow…I feel happy in the impression that people will say ‘Mackenzie and Nelson have acted upon principle, and to it have sacrificed every thing, if in error, the men are still deserving of respect; not so Papineau whose every action it is now clear was based upon the most selfish motives…”Collections
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