with the Clear Grits, a new political movement in Canada West. On October 5, 1852, Mackenzie wrote a letter to the Examiner that Lesslie wanted to edit before printing. Mackenzie rejected the edits and Lesslie did not publish any of Mackenzie's letters. Losing his only way to communicate with his constituents, Mackenzie began his own newspaper on December 25, 1852, called Mackenzie's Weekly Message, which he later renamed the Toronto Weekly Message. Mackenzie faced a difficult re-election campaign in 1854 for his Haldimand seat. Local newspapers complained he only came to the constituency during elections and his colleagues in the assembly had a negative opinion of Mackenzie. His positions against religious school boards caused some voters to withdraw their support. He won the election by 54 votes, a smaller majority than in the previous election. In the 5th Parliament of the Province of Canada, Mackenzie opposed the MacNab–Morin coalition government and denounced Reform members who supported the administration. He believed it was unconstitutional when Lord Elgin did not give Reform legislators a chance to form a government before accepting a Tory coalition. He was chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts while its reports criticized the province's disorganized record-keeping and exposed government expenditures that parliament had not approved. Mackenzie proposed a resolution that condemned previous administrations for similar acts and parliament removed him from the committee in retaliation. In 1855, Mackenzie's health deteriorated and in February he closed the Toronto Weekly Message. He wrote columns for Examiner until it merged with The Globe in August 1855. In December 1855, he revived the Message and published the Reader's Almanac in April 1856, outlining his arguments to split the union of Upper and Lower Canada. Mackenzie felt that tax revenue from Upper Canada was subsidizing infrastructure projects in Lower Canada and that the union maintained duplicate government officials, records and executives for Canada East (formerly known as Lower Canada) and Canada West. In the 1857 election, Mackenzie was narrowly reelected to the constituency of Haldimand with 38% of the vote. He accepted Brown's invitation to caucus with opposition members against the Macdonald–Cartier administration. When the government was defeated, he supported the Brown–Dorion administration, although he criticized the differing viewpoints of ministers and was disappointed when he was not appointed to be a minister. Mackenzie resigned his seat on August 16, 1858, calling the legislature illegitimate after the Governor-General reinstated the Macdonald–Cartier administration