The Day of Sir John Macdonald Part 4

Fortune favoured the design, for in the session of 1873 occurred what has come to be commonly known as the 'Pacific Scandal.'

Briefly stated, the charge involved in the Pacific Scandal was this: that the Government had corruptly granted to Sir Hugh Allan and his a.s.sociates the charter for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, in consideration of a large sum of money supplied by him for election purposes. In a letter addressed to Lord Dufferin, which has been before the public for twenty years, Sir John Macdonald completely answered this accusation.[15]

{98}

In the light of all that has happened in the last forty years, it is difficult to repress a smile when reading the impa.s.sioned invectives poured out upon Sir John Macdonald by his political opponents of that day in connection with the Pacific Scandal. According to them he had basely betrayed his country, selling her honour for filthy lucre; he had shamefully prost.i.tuted his office; he was a great criminal for whose punishment justice cried aloud, and much more to the same effect.

Yet every one who dispa.s.sionately considers the affair to-day in its true perspective sees quite plainly that, however indiscreetly he acted in his {99} relations with Sir Hugh Allan, Sir John's sole thought was for the advantage of Canada. In the face of great difficulties he had carried Confederation, had pacified Nova Scotia, had brought Manitoba, British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island into the Union; and in order that this Union should abide, he was putting forth all his energies for the construction of the great link that was to hold the distant provinces together.

In all these matters he had to encounter at every step the rancorous opposition of his political adversaries. It is, therefore, not surprising that he attached much importance to the general elections of 1872. He had no personal ambitions unfulfilled--he was weary of it all--but he entertained a profound {100} conviction that to confide the destinies of Canada to men who, among other things, were opposing the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway by every means in their power, would be to undo the great work to which he had set his hand and to disrupt the Confederation. 'With five years more,' he writes, 'I thought we might safely consider that the gristle had hardened into bone, and that the Union had been thoroughly cemented.' And so we find him, though far from strong, throwing himself with vigour into the elections of 1872, and, his colleagues being everywhere hard pressed, himself doing much that might better have been confided to others.

Every one knows, to use the expression of the late Israel Tarte, that 'elections are not made with prayers.' Every one knows, and it is mere hypocrisy to disclaim the knowledge, that there are election funds in both parties, to which wealthy friends of the respective parties are invited to contribute. Sir John's mistake was in asking favours of a man who at that time was seeking advantages from the Government. No matter how sure he might be of his own rect.i.tude, it was setting a dangerous precedent for a weaker man, who might be placed in his position, to follow. No doubt, too, he would have {101} done better not to have mixed himself up with money matters at all, though in acting as he did he only followed the usual practice. In that day the leaders of political parties in Canada personally solicited campaign funds.[16] Macdonald took contributions from the rich men of his party--among others from Sir Hugh Allan--to fight that party's battles.

But there was no barter. Sir Hugh Allan was, of course, playing his own game. His motive is quite apparent. He wanted to build the Pacific Railway, and was naturally interested in preventing the accession to power of men opposed to the whole scheme as premature and beyond the resources of the country.

What seems plain now was not so apparent forty years ago. The current set in strongly {102} against the Ministry. As Mr S. H. Blake would say, 'There was the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees.' There was a general feeling that the days of the Government were numbered. The country was ripe for a change. The Conservatives had been in office for nearly ten years consecutively, and people were beginning to get a little tired of them. Men began to think that it was time to give the other side a chance. Long periods of exclusion from office of the representatives of nearly one-half the community is not good for the Opposition, for the state, nor for the dominant party itself. Sir John Macdonald, at a later period, seems to have recognized this, for one of his letters, written to a friend on the eve of the contest of 1887, contains the significant words, 'the Government is too old.' It was not as old as was his Government at its resignation in 1873. However that may be, amid shrieks of 'corruption'

the Administration of Sir John Macdonald bowed to public opinion, and the Liberals at last got their chance.

In the general elections, which took place in the month of January 1874, the newly formed Mackenzie Government swept the country, returning with a majority of {103} seventy-five or upwards. Among the new members was Mr (now Sir Wilfrid) Laurier.

Alexander Mackenzie, the prime minister, like his predecessor, was a Scotsman by birth. Like Sir John Macdonald, too, he had emigrated to Canada at an early age and had settled first at Kingston, subsequently removing to Sarnia. In 1861 he entered parliament as member for Lambton, and took rank from the first as a strong and effective debater on the side of the Opposition. In office he proved a capable administrator of unimpeachable integrity, with a remarkable capacity for labour. It could not be said of him, however, that he possessed the essential qualities of a leader. Not only was he dest.i.tute of that mysterious personal attribute known as 'magnetism,' but he was disposed to be arbitrary and dictatorial. His political supporters respected and perhaps feared him, but it cannot be said that he was popular among them.

Goldwin Smith was once driving a newly arrived English friend through the streets of Toronto at the time Mackenzie was in the zenith of his power. When pa.s.sing Mackenzie's house he remarked the fact. 'And who is Mr Mackenzie?' inquired the {104} friend. 'Mr Mackenzie,' replied Goldwin Smith, 'was a stonemason; _he is a stonemason still_.'

This, of course, was not fair. Mackenzie, despite his narrowness, rigidity, faults of manner, and perhaps of temper, was an able man. No fairer was Goldwin Smith's cynical observation that the alliance between Macdonald and Brown in 1864 was 'as brief and perfidious as a harlot's love'; but n.o.body--at any rate, no Canadian public man--ever looked for fairness from Goldwin Smith, whose idea of independence seemed to consist of being alternately unjust to each side. Both sayings, however, are extremely clever, and both had sufficient truth about them to give point at once to the author's malevolence and to his wit.

A man of very different mould from that of the Liberal leader was his nominal follower Edward Blake, one of the rarest minds that have adorned the bar of Canada or of any other country. Blake was not merely a great equity lawyer; he was, as well, a distinguished authority on the principles of government. Viewed as intellectual performances, his speeches in the Canadian House of Commons have never been surpa.s.sed. But to his great {105} gifts were joined great weaknesses, among which may be set down an abnormal sensitiveness. He was peculiarly susceptible to the daily annoyances which beset a public man. So marked was this infirmity that men without a t.i.the of his ability, but with a better adjusted nervous system, would sometimes presume to torment him just for the fun of the thing. While he was minister of Justice, political exigencies compelled Mackenzie to take into his Cabinet a man who, by reason of his unsavoury political record, was eminently distasteful to Blake. This man knew perfectly well that the great lawyer was not proud of the a.s.sociation, but being as thick-skinned as Blake was sensitive, he rather enjoyed his colleague's discomfort. He was known to go into Blake's office on a short winter's afternoon, and, standing with his back to the fire in a free and easy att.i.tude as though perfectly at home, to say, 'Well, _mon cher collegue_' (here Blake would visibly writhe, to the equally apparent delight of the intruder), 'I have called for you to come for a walk with me.' 'My good sir,' Blake would tartly reply, 'I have work here that will keep me for the next two hours.' 'But it will be dark then,' objected the caller. 'Well, my good {106} sir,' was the retort, 'we can walk in the dark, I suppose'--which Blake would naturally much prefer. Edward Blake's outward bearing was cold and unsympathetic. He was often repellent to those desiring to be his friends. Intimates he appeared to have none: he would not allow people to be intimate with him. He would hardly even, when leader of the Opposition, accept the co-operation of his supporters or allow them a share in his labours.

So exacting was his standard that he felt no one would do the work as well as himself, and any one who proffered a.s.sistance was likely to get a snub for his pains. Whenever he spoke in the House of Commons, he so exhausted his subject that there was nothing left for his followers to say--an impolitic course for a leader. Yet it was impossible, such is the compelling power of genius, to withhold admiration for that lonely and impressive figure whose external bearing spoke so plainly of the intellectual force within. I had the honour of only a slight personal acquaintance with Blake, yet I never recall his memory without a tinge of sadness that so gifted a man should not have accomplished more in the way of constructive statesmanship. Before the age of forty he was prime minister of {107} Ontario, but within a twelvemonth he gave it up to devote his attention to federal politics. When the Liberal party succeeded to power in 1873, men thought that Blake's opportunity had at last arrived, and it was learned with surprise that he had not taken a portfolio in the new Administration. He had, however, a seat in the Cabinet, but this he resigned within three months. In 1875 he re-entered the Cabinet as minister of Justice. But, beyond writing a few masterly dispatches on the pardoning power and obtaining certain modifications in the governor-general's instructions in that regard, he does not appear to have accomplished much during his tenure of office.

The bill establishing the Supreme Court, pa.s.sed about this time, was the work primarily of Sir John Macdonald, and was piloted through the House of Commons by Telesph.o.r.e Fournier, Blake's immediate predecessor in the department of Justice. Early in 1878 Blake again left the Cabinet, and he was not even in the country during the elections of that year which overwhelmed his late colleagues. He became leader of the Opposition after the retirement of Mackenzie in 1880, but resigned the post after his failure to carry the elections of 1887. He afterwards {108} went to Great Britain, and became a Nationalist member from Ireland of the House of Commons. For fifteen years his great talents lay obscured at Westminster in the shadows of Parnell and Redmond. Broken in health, he finally returned to his native country; but it was only to die.

But if Blake's mind was not of the constructive order, his critical and a.n.a.lytical faculties were highly developed. Always effective, often trenchant, sometimes cruel, his powers of sarcasm and invective were unrivalled. Once, when a former minister of Inland Revenue, not remarkable for his knowledge of the affairs of his department, had proposed a resolution to the effect that a barrel should no longer be considered a measure of capacity, Blake offered an amendment to the effect that 'in future the office of Cabinet minister be no longer considered a measure of capacity!' Again, in one of his orations against the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he prefaced a minute and exhaustive narration of events connected with the enterprise in these words: 'Mr Speaker, on the first of April--_a fitting day_--in the year 1871, ...' That was his estimate of the project as late as the early eighties.

{109}

During Blake's period of office an old and faithful official of his department, who rather prided himself upon his discrimination in the use of words, wrote on a file of papers, 'Referred to the Minister for his instructions.' When this came before Blake, he wrote underneath the memorandum: 'My officers do not _refer_ matters to me; they _submit_ them.--E.B.' It is due to Blake to say that, when leaving the department, he called for this file and expunged these words with his own hand.

Sometimes, however, he was in lighter vein, and, indeed, I have known him to betray a transient gleam of humour. One day a letter, the envelope addressed to Blake, was left at 'Earnscliffe,' Macdonald's Ottawa residence. The letter inside, however, as appeared later, was addressed to Sir John Macdonald. Ignorant, of course, of this fact, Macdonald sent it to Blake, who returned it with this note:

COBOURG, _June_ 28_th_, 1889.

MY DEAR SIR,--Thanks for the mysterious package, which, however, I return, perceiving that in this, as in some other cases, if I have a better t.i.tle to the sh.e.l.l, you have the better t.i.tle to the oyster.

It is a curious example of the workings {110} of the mind and of the phraseology of a deaf mute. It is a sad sort of letter, and I intend to write to Jones to enquire if anything can be done for the poor creature.

Yours faithfully, EDWARD BLAKE.

Here we get a glimpse of the really kind and generous heart that beat under the chilling exterior of Edward Blake.

In the year 1875 there occurred in Montreal an event which caused a good deal of ill-feeling between the English and French sections of the population throughout the province of Quebec. This was the epilogue of the famous Guibord case. Joseph Guibord was a member of a society known as _L'Inst.i.tut Canadien_. In 1858 the Roman Catholic bishop of Montreal issued a pastoral letter exhorting the members of this inst.i.tute to purge their library of certain works regarded as immoral, and decreeing several penalties, including deprivation of the sacraments and refusal of ecclesiastical burial, in the event of disobedience. The library committee returned a reply to the effect that they were the judges of the morality of their books, and, further, that there were no immoral works in their library. {111} The matter appears to have lain dormant for some years. In 1865 several members of the Inst.i.tute, including Guibord, appealed to Rome against the action of the bishop, but in vain. Shortly afterwards Guibord died, and as he had adhered to his membership in the Inst.i.tute despite the bishop's _mandement_, ecclesiastical burial was refused. His widow had recourse to the law, and ultimately the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ordered the burial of Guibord's remains in the Roman Catholic cemetery. The reasons upon which this judgment is based are that the Church of Rome in the province of Quebec, while lacking some of the features of an established church, differs materially before the law from voluntary religious bodies; that certain privileges, such as the right to collect t.i.thes, secured to it by law, beget corresponding obligations towards the laity. One obligation is to give ecclesiastical sepulchre to its members. The proceedings against Guibord had been legally insufficient to deprive him of this right; he had not been excommunicated personally and by name, but merely lay under a general excommunication.

The first attempts of Guibord's friends to bury the body in accordance with this {112} decision were frustrated by force; but on November 16, 1875, under a strong military escort, the remains of Joseph Guibord were finally laid to rest in the Cote des Neiges cemetery, in the presence of a sullen a.s.semblage. This forcible, albeit legal, proceeding was deeply felt by many who needed not to take lessons in loyalty to the Queen from the members of the Inst.i.tut Canadien, but who could not see why the Church of Rome should be debarred the right, supposed to appertain to every society, of determining its own conditions of membership, nor understand why the friends of a man should seek on his behalf, after his death, the ministrations of that Church whose teachings, during his lifetime, he had voluntarily despised.

The Liberal Government came to power in 1873 at a time of commercial depression extending over the whole continent. Canada suffered severely; and so did the Ministry. Business was bad, the revenues fell off, employment became scarce. It was during this period that the Conservative Opposition began the advocacy of what was called 'The National Policy'--a system of modified protection which it was hoped would both stimulate the industries of the country and {113} provide a sufficient revenue. Protection was no new policy with Sir John Macdonald. As long before as in 1846 he had advocated it from his place in parliament. In 1850 he belonged to an a.s.sociation which had as one of its aims a 'commercial national policy.' In 1858 he was joint-leader of a Government whose finance minister (Galt) announced protection to native industries as its policy. In 1861 he at various times and places expounded and developed this policy. Lastly, on the eve of the general elections of 1872, he wrote to the present Lord Mount Stephen:

At the hustings in Western Canada [Ontario] and in all the const.i.tuencies except Toronto, the battle will be between free trade and a national policy.... It is really astonishing the feeling that has grown up in the West [he is referring to Western Ontario] in favour of encouragement of home manufactures.

In 1876 the time was opportune for promoting this policy. Trade was depressed, manufactures languished, and the Canadian people as producers only of raw material were fast becoming hewers of wood and drawers of water for their more opulent neighbours in {114} the United States. On March 10 of that year Sir John Macdonald propounded to the House of Commons his scheme for improving the commerce of the country.

His proposals were contemptuously received by the Government. The prime minister, while admitting the serious character of the depression then prevailing, attributed the cause wholly to circ.u.mstances beyond their control, and denied the power of any government to remove it by legislation. They would have nothing to do with protection, which Mackenzie ridiculed as an attempt to relieve distress by imposing additional taxation.

Sir John thought differently. If he had done nothing else, his 'National Policy' campaign would have stamped him as a leader of men.

In the words of a political opponent of the time, 'he constructed with consummate skill the engine which destroyed the Mackenzie Administration. From the very first he saw what a tactician would do with Protection, and in so masterly a manner did he cover his troops with that rampart, that it was impossible for the Liberals to turn their flank.'

His political picnics in 1876 and 1877, and the enthusiasm he everywhere aroused, were long remembered, and are not forgotten to {115} this day by older men. Everywhere crowds gathered to his support, and the country impatiently waited the opportunity to restore him to his old position at the head of affairs. At length the fateful day arrived, and on September 17, 1878, the people of Canada declared by an overwhelming majority for 'John A.' and protection. In the preceding July Sir John had ventured a prophecy of the result--something, by the way, he was extremely chary of doing. 'If we do well we shall have a majority of sixty, if badly, thirty.' He had eighty-six.

It was observed that as far as possible the new ministers in the Cabinet formed by Macdonald were taken from the ranks of his old colleagues, from those who had suffered with him on account of the 'Pacific Scandal.' Sir George Cartier was dead, but Tilley and Tupper, Langevin, Pope, Campbell, Aikins, O'Connor, and others of the 'Old Guard' not hitherto of Cabinet rank, became members of the new Administration, which was destined to last for thirteen years.

Lord Dufferin's term of office as governor-general was about to expire.

One of his last acts before leaving Canada was to send for Macdonald to form the new Ministry. Sir {116} John's relations with Lord Dufferin had always been pleasant, though I think he considered the governor-general a bit of a humbug. Speaking to me one day of men's liking for flattery, Sir John said that 'almost anybody will take almost any amount of it,' but he thought that Lord Dufferin transgressed even those wide limits. 'He laid it on with a trowel.'

Sir John added that Lord Dufferin was proud of his cla.s.sical acquirements. He once delivered an address in Greek at the University of Toronto. A newspaper subsequently spoke of 'His Excellency's perfect command of the language.' 'I wonder who told the reporter that,' said a colleague to the chief. 'I did,' replied Sir John. 'But you do not know Greek.' 'No,' replied Sir John, 'but I know men.'

Lord Dufferin's successor in the office of governor-general was the Duke of Argyll, at that time Marquess of Lorne, who spent five interesting and, as the duke himself said more than once, pleasant years in the Dominion. The personal relations between him and the prime minister were always of the most agreeable description. The story, published in Sir Richard Cartwright's _Reminiscences_, that Sir John Macdonald was guilty on one occasion {117} of rudeness to his royal consort the Princess Louise is without a particle of foundation.

It was categorically denied by Her Royal Highness, and characterized as 'rubbish' by the duke in a cable to the Montreal _Star_. I have now arrived at the stage in this narrative when I have personal knowledge of everything upon which I write. I was Sir John Macdonald's private secretary during the latter half of Lord Lorne's term of office, and I positively a.s.sert that the relations between Government House and Earnscliffe were of the most friendly character during the whole period. Had there been the slightest truth in the story, it is incredible that such relations should have existed.

The policy of protection which Sir John had offered to the people in 1878 was brought into effect during the session of 1879. So completely was his promise fulfilled that the Liberal leader, Mackenzie, declared that Sir John had 'gone the whole hog.' George Brown made a similar admission.[17] Sir John Macdonald, it may be said, always carried out his promises. I never knew him to fail. He was guarded in making them, but if he gave an unconditional promise he was sure to {118} implement it, no matter at what inconvenience to himself. I have seen this ill.u.s.trated again and again. The late Sir Richard Cartwright--no very friendly witness--observed in recent times, in his own characteristic fashion: 'I will say this for that old scoundrel John A.

Macdonald, that if he once gave you his word, you could rely upon it.'

Sir John had not been long in power when death removed the most implacable of his foes. On May 9, 1880, died George Brown, struck down in his office by the bullet of an a.s.sa.s.sin. This shocking occurrence, which was due to the act of a discharged printer, had no relation to public affairs.

The fiscal policy having been settled, Sir John Macdonald again turned his attention to the problem of a railway to the Pacific. The Liberal Government, on the ground that the agreement with British Columbia to build the road within ten years was impossible of fulfilment, had not considered Canada bound by it, but had decided to build the railway, not by means of a private company, but as a government work, and to construct it gradually in sections as the progress of settlement and the state of the public treasury might warrant. Sir John Macdonald rejected this piecemeal {119} policy, and resolved to carry out the original scheme of a great national highway across the continent, to be built as rapidly as possible so as to open up quickly the resources of the Great West.

In the summer of 1880, accompanied by three of his colleagues--Tupper, Pope, and Macpherson--Macdonald visited England for the purpose of inducing capitalists to take hold of the enterprise. After much negotiation they were successful, and on September 14, 1880, an agreement for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was signed in London. The company was to receive $25,000,000 and 25,000,000 acres of land in alternate blocks on each side of the railway running from Winnipeg to Jasper House at the Rockies. The line was to be completed by May 1, 1891, and the company was to deposit one million dollars as evidencing its ability to carry out the bargain.

The contract was finally executed at Ottawa on October 21, 1880.

Parliament was then summoned in order to ratify what the Government had done.

The contract was fiercely opposed. The Opposition denounced the terms as extravagant, as beyond the resources of the country, {120} and as certain to involve financial disaster. Blake affirmed that the road would never pay for the grease for the wheels of the engines that would pa.s.s over it, and appealed to his fellow-members not to throw the hard-earned money of the people of Canada 'down the gorges of British Columbia.' A rival company was hurriedly got up which offered to build the railway on much more moderate terms. The _bona fides_ of this opposition company or 'syndicate' was much doubted, and, in any event, the proposal came too late. The Government was bound to stand by its bargain, which was defended with great power by Sir John Macdonald, Sir Charles Tupper, and others. At length, by a vote of 128 to 49, the House of Commons ratified the contract, which pa.s.sed the Senate a few days later, and became incorporated in an Act of Parliament a.s.sented to on February 15, 1881.

Then began a period of railway construction hitherto unparalleled. At the date of the signing of the contract the only portions of the main line built were 152 miles from Fort William westward (the track was laid, but the line was not completed) and 112 miles from Keewatin to Selkirk--that is 264 miles. Mackenzie had declared the building of the road {121} within ten years to be a physical impossibility for Canada.

He even went so far as to affirm that the whole resources of the British Empire could not construct the railway in ten years.[18] As a matter of fact, it was built by Canada in less than five years. On November 7, 1885, Donald Smith drove the last spike at Craigellachie, twenty-eight miles west of Revelstoke, British Columbia; and on the 24th of the following July, just fifteen years (including the five lost years of the Mackenzie regime) after the engagement with British Columbia was made, Sir John Macdonald {122} arrived at Port Moody in the car in which he had left Ottawa a few days before.

This marvellous feat was not accomplished without great exertions, much anxiety, and the exercise of the highest arts of statesmanship. The opposition to the granting of the charter had been so keen, the arguments against the whole scheme had been so powerfully set forth, that the company found they could not sell their lands, nor obtain, in any other way, the money needed to carry forward the work. The Government was obliged to come to the rescue, and, in the session of 1884, to grant a loan of $22,500,000 to the company. On December 1, 1883, Sir John Macdonald sent this telegram to Sir Charles Tupper, who only a few months before had gone over to London to fill the position of high commissioner: 'Pacific in trouble, you should be here.' Next morning the characteristic reply was received: 'Sailing on Thursday.'

Sir Charles was as good as his word. With admirable courage, energy, and resolution he fought the measure of relief through parliament, and for a time at least all was well. But only for a time. Early in the year 1885 we find Mr Stephen, the president of the company, writing Sir John Macdonald:

{123}

[There is] imminent danger of sudden crisis unless we can find means to meet pressing demands.... It is clear as noon-day, Sir John, that unless you yourself say what is to be done, nothing but disaster will result. The question is too big for some of our friends, and nothing but your own authority and influence can carry anything that will accomplish the object.... I endeavoured to impress upon him again [the finance minister] that the object of the present application to the Government is to save the _life_ of the Company....

I do hope something will be done to-day that will have the effect of saving the life of the Company. I stayed over here [Ottawa] to-day in case I might be wanted. It is impossible for me to carry on this struggle for life, in which I have now been for over four months constantly engaged, any longer. Although I have done my best to save the life and the honour of the Company, I cannot help feeling that I have failed to impress the Government with a full sense of the extreme urgency of the necessities of the Company, and yet I do not know anything further that I can say {124} or do to enable the Government to realize the extreme gravity of the position in which the Company is now placed. If the Company is allowed once to go to the wall, the remedial measures proposed will be useless because too late. I shall be within reach if wanted. Mr Pope, your secretary, knows where to find me.