Edinburgh society. He was nicknamed the “man of feeling,” but he was in reality a hard-headed man of affairs with a kindly heart. Some of his literary reminiscences were embodied in his Account of the Life and Writings of John Home, Esq. (1822). He also wrote a Life of Doctor Blacklock, prefixed to the 1793 edition of the poet’s works. He died on the 14th of January 1831.
In 1807 The Works of Henry Mackenzie were published surreptitiously, and he then himself superintended the publication of his Works (8 vols., 1808). There is an admiring but discriminating criticism of his work in the Prefatory Memoir prefixed by Sir Walter Scott to an edition of his novels in Ballantyne’s Novelist’s Library (vol. v., 1823).
McKENZIE, SIR JOHN (1838–1901). New Zealand statesman, was born at Ard-Ross, Scotland, in 1838, the son of a crofter.
He emigrated to Otago, New Zealand, in 1860. Beginning as a
shepherd, he rose to be farm manager at Puketapu near Palmerston
South, and then to be a farmer in a substantial way in
Shag Valley. In 1865 he was clerk to the local road board
and school committee; in 1871 he entered the provincial council
of Otago; and on the 11th of December 1881 was elected member
of the House of Representatives, in which he sat till 1900. He
was also for some years a member of the education board and
of the land board of Otago, and always showed interest in the
national elementary school system. In the House of Representatives
he soon made good his footing, becoming almost at once
a recognized spokesman for the smaller sort of rural settlers
and a person of influence in the lobbies. He acted as government
whip for the coalition ministry of Sir Robert Stout and Sir
Julius Vogel, 1884–1887, and, while still a private member, scored
his first success as a land reformer by carrying the “McKenzie
clause” in a land act limiting the area which a state tenant
might thenceforth obtain on lease. He was still, however,
comparatively unknown outside his own province when, in
January 1891, his party took office and he aided John Ballance
in forming a ministry, in which he himself held the portfolio of
lands, immigration and agriculture. From the first he made
his hand felt in every matter connected with land settlement
and the administration of the vast public estate. Generally his
aim was to break up and subdivide the great freehold and leasehold
properties which in his time covered four-sevenths of the
occupied land of the colony. In his Land Act of 1892 he consolidated,
abolished or amended, fifty land acts and ordinances
dealing with crown lands, and thereafter amended his own act
four times. Though owning to a preference for state tenancy
over freehold, he never stopped the selling of crown land, and
was satisfied to give would-be settlers the option of choosing
freehold or leasehold under tempting terms as their form of
tenure. As a compromise he introduced the lease in perpetuity
or holding for 999 years at a quit rent fixed at 4%; theoretical
objections have since led to its abolition, but for fifteen years
much genuine settlement took place under its conditions.
Broadly, however, McKenzie’s exceptional success as lands
minister was due rather to unflinching determination to stimulate
the occupation of the soil by working farmers than to the
solution of the problems of agrarian controversy. His best-known
experiment was in land repurchase. A voluntary law
(1892) was displaced by a compulsory act (1894), under which
between £5,000,000 and £6,000,000 had by 1910 been spent in
buying and subdividing estates for closer settlements, with
excellent results. McKenzie also founded and expanded an
efficient department of agriculture, in the functions of which
inspection, grading, teaching and example are successfully
combined. It has aided the development of dairying, fruit-growing,
poultry-farming, bee-keeping and flax-milling, and
done not a little to keep up the standard of New Zealand products.
After 1897 McKenzie had to hold on in the face of failing
health. An operation in London in 1899 only postponed the
end. He died at his farm on the 6th of August 1901, soon after
being called to the legislative council, and receiving a knighthood.
MACKENZIE, SIR MORELL (1837–1892), British physician, son of Stephen Mackenzie, surgeon (d. 1851), was born at Leytonstone,
Essex, on the 7th of July 1837. After going through the
course at the London Hospital, and becoming M.R.C.S. in 1858,
he studied abroad at Paris, Vienna and Pesth; and at Pesth he
learnt the use of the newly-invented laryngoscope under J. N.
Czermak. Returning to London in 1862, he worked at the
London Hospital, and took his degree in medicine. In 1863
he won the Jacksonian prize at the Royal College of Surgeons
for an essay on the “Pathology of the Larynx,” and he then devoted
himself to becoming a specialist in diseases of the throat.
In 1863 the Throat Hospital in King Street, Golden Square, was
founded, largely owing to his initiative, and by his work there and
at the London Hospital (where he was one of the physicians
from 1866 to 1873) Morell Mackenzie rapidly became recognized
throughout Europe as a leading authority, and acquired an
extensive practice. So great was his reputation that in May
1887, when the crown prince of Germany (afterwards the emperor
Frederick III.) was attacked by the affection of the throat of which
he ultimately died, Morell Mackenzie was specially summoned
to attend him. The German physicians who had attended the
prince since the beginning of March (Karl Gerhardt, and subsequently
Tobold, E. von Bergmann, and others) had diagnosed
his ailment on the 18th of May as cancer of the throat; but Morell
Mackenzie insisted (basing his opinion on a microscopical examination
by R. Virchow of a portion of the tissue) that the
disease was not demonstrably cancerous, that an operation for
the extirpation of the larynx (planned for the 21st of May) was
unjustifiable, and that the growth might well be a benign one
and therefore curable by other treatment. The question was
one not only of personal but of political importance, since it was
doubted whether any one suffering from an incapacitating disease
like cancer could, according to the family law of the Hohenzollerns,
occupy the German throne; and there was talk of a renunciation
of the succession by the crown prince. It was freely hinted,
moreover, that some of the doctors themselves were influenced
by political considerations. At any rate, Morell Mackenzie’s
opinion was followed: the crown prince went to England, under
his treatment, and was present at the Jubilee celebrations in
June. Morell Mackenzie was knighted in September 1887 for his
services, and decorated with the Grand Cross of the Hohenzollern
Order. In November, however, the German doctors were again
called into consultation, and it was ultimately admitted that the
disease really was cancer; though Mackenzie, with very questionable
judgment, more than hinted that it had become malignant
since his first examination, in consequence of the irritating effect
of the treatment by the German doctors. The crown prince
(see Frederick III.) became emperor on the 9th of March 1888,
and died on the 15th of June. During all this period a violent
quarrel raged between Sir Morell Mackenzie and the German
medical world. The German doctors published an account of
the illness, to which Mackenzie replied by a work entitled
The Fatal Illness of Frederick the Noble (1888), the publication
of which caused him to be censured by the Royal College of
Surgeons. After this sensational episode in his career, the
remainder of Sir Morell Mackenzie’s life was uneventful, and
he died somewhat suddenly in London, on the 3rd of February
1892. He published several books on laryngoscopy and diseases
of the throat.
MACKENZIE, WILLIAM LYON (1795–1861), Canadian politician, was born near Dundee, Scotland, on the 12th of March 1795. His father died before he was a month old, and the family were left in poverty. After some six years’ work in a shop at Alyth, in April 1820 he emigrated with his mother to Canada. There he became a general merchant, first at York, then at Dundas, and later at Queenston. The discontented condition of Upper Canada drew him into politics, and on the 18th of May 1824 he published at Queenston the first number of the Colonial Advocate, in which the ruling oligarchy was attacked with great asperity. Most of the changes which he advocated were wise and have since been adopted; but the violence of Mackenzie’s attacks roused great anger among the social and political set at York (Toronto), which was headed by John Beverley Robinson. In November
