May it Please Your Excellency,We, the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the City of Toronto, in Common Council assembled, beg leave to approach Your Excellency as the representative of our Most Gracious and beloved Sovereign, with renewed assurances of our attachment and devotion to Her Majesty's person and government.We will not conceal from Your Excellency, that great diversity of opinion, and much consequent excitement, exists among us on questions connected with the political condition of the Province; but we beg to assure Your Excellency, that however warmly the citizens of Toronto may feel on such subjects, they will be prepared on all occasions to demonstrate their high appreciation of the blessings of the British Constitution, by according to the Governor-General of this Province that respect and consideration which are no less due to his exalted position, than to the well tried loyalty and decorum which have ever distinguished the inhabitants of this peaceful and flourishing community.The City of Toronto has not escaped the commercial depression which has for some time so generally prevailed. We trust, however, that the crisis is now past, and that the abundant harvest with which a kind Providence has blessed us, will ere long restore the commerce of the country to a healthy tone.We watch with lively interest the prospect which the completion of our great water communications with the ocean, will open to us; and we fervently hope that the extension of trade thus opened to Her Majesty's North American Provinces will tend to strengthen the union between these Provinces and the Parent State.We congratulate Your Excellency and Lady Elgin upon the birth of an heir to Your Excellency's house; and we truly sympathise with Her Ladyship upon her present delicate and weak state, and venture to hope that her tour through Upper Canada will have the effect of restoring her to the enjoyment of perfect health.REPLY.Gentlemen,—I receive with much satisfaction the assurance of your attachment and devotion to Her Majesty's person and government.That the diversities of opinion which exist among you, on questions connected with the political condition of the Province, should be attended with much excitement, is greatly to be regretted, and I fully appreciate the motives which induce you at the present time, to call my attention to the fact. I am willing, nevertheless, to believe that however warmly the citizens of Toronto may feel on such subjects, they will be prepared, on all occasions, to demonstrate their high appreciation of the blessings of the British Constitution, by according to the Governor-General that respect and consideration which are no less due to his position than to their own well-tried loyalty and decorum.It is my firm conviction, moreover, that the inhabitants of Canada, generally, are averse to agitation, and that all communities as well as individuals, who aspire to take a lead in the affairs of the Province, will best fit themselves for that high avocation, by exhibiting habitually in their demeanour, the love of order and of peaceful progress.I have observed with much anxiety and concern the commercial depression from which the City of Toronto, in common with other important towns in the Province, has of late so seriously suffered. I trust, however, with you, that the crisis is now past, and that the abundant harvest, with which a kind Providence has blessed the country, will ere long restore its commerce to a healthy tone.The completion of your water communications with the ocean must indeed be watched with a lively interest by all who have at heart the welfare of Canada and the continuance of the connection so happily subsisting between the Province and the Parent State. These great works have undoubtedly been costly, and the occasion of some financial embarrassment while in progress. But I firmly believe that the investment you have made in them has been judicious, and that you have secured thereby for your children, and your children's children, an inheritance that will not fail them so long as the law of nature endures which causes the waters of your vast inland seas to seek an outlet to the ocean.I am truly obliged to you for the congratulations which you offer me on the birth of my son, and for the kind interest which you express in Lady Elgin's health: I am happy to be able to inform you, that she has already derived much benefit from her sojourn in Upper Canada.
May it Please Your Excellency,
We, the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the City of Toronto, in Common Council assembled, beg leave to approach Your Excellency as the representative of our Most Gracious and beloved Sovereign, with renewed assurances of our attachment and devotion to Her Majesty's person and government.
We will not conceal from Your Excellency, that great diversity of opinion, and much consequent excitement, exists among us on questions connected with the political condition of the Province; but we beg to assure Your Excellency, that however warmly the citizens of Toronto may feel on such subjects, they will be prepared on all occasions to demonstrate their high appreciation of the blessings of the British Constitution, by according to the Governor-General of this Province that respect and consideration which are no less due to his exalted position, than to the well tried loyalty and decorum which have ever distinguished the inhabitants of this peaceful and flourishing community.
The City of Toronto has not escaped the commercial depression which has for some time so generally prevailed. We trust, however, that the crisis is now past, and that the abundant harvest with which a kind Providence has blessed us, will ere long restore the commerce of the country to a healthy tone.
We watch with lively interest the prospect which the completion of our great water communications with the ocean, will open to us; and we fervently hope that the extension of trade thus opened to Her Majesty's North American Provinces will tend to strengthen the union between these Provinces and the Parent State.
We congratulate Your Excellency and Lady Elgin upon the birth of an heir to Your Excellency's house; and we truly sympathise with Her Ladyship upon her present delicate and weak state, and venture to hope that her tour through Upper Canada will have the effect of restoring her to the enjoyment of perfect health.
Gentlemen,—I receive with much satisfaction the assurance of your attachment and devotion to Her Majesty's person and government.
That the diversities of opinion which exist among you, on questions connected with the political condition of the Province, should be attended with much excitement, is greatly to be regretted, and I fully appreciate the motives which induce you at the present time, to call my attention to the fact. I am willing, nevertheless, to believe that however warmly the citizens of Toronto may feel on such subjects, they will be prepared, on all occasions, to demonstrate their high appreciation of the blessings of the British Constitution, by according to the Governor-General that respect and consideration which are no less due to his position than to their own well-tried loyalty and decorum.
It is my firm conviction, moreover, that the inhabitants of Canada, generally, are averse to agitation, and that all communities as well as individuals, who aspire to take a lead in the affairs of the Province, will best fit themselves for that high avocation, by exhibiting habitually in their demeanour, the love of order and of peaceful progress.
I have observed with much anxiety and concern the commercial depression from which the City of Toronto, in common with other important towns in the Province, has of late so seriously suffered. I trust, however, with you, that the crisis is now past, and that the abundant harvest, with which a kind Providence has blessed the country, will ere long restore its commerce to a healthy tone.
The completion of your water communications with the ocean must indeed be watched with a lively interest by all who have at heart the welfare of Canada and the continuance of the connection so happily subsisting between the Province and the Parent State. These great works have undoubtedly been costly, and the occasion of some financial embarrassment while in progress. But I firmly believe that the investment you have made in them has been judicious, and that you have secured thereby for your children, and your children's children, an inheritance that will not fail them so long as the law of nature endures which causes the waters of your vast inland seas to seek an outlet to the ocean.
I am truly obliged to you for the congratulations which you offer me on the birth of my son, and for the kind interest which you express in Lady Elgin's health: I am happy to be able to inform you, that she has already derived much benefit from her sojourn in Upper Canada.
As not a little fictitious history has been woven out of these events, I shall call in evidence here theGlobenewspaper of the 11th, the following day, in which I find this editorial paragraph:—
"It is seldom we have had an opportunity of speaking in terms of approbation of our civic authorities, but we cannot but express our high sense of the manly, independent manner in which all have done their duty on this occasion. The grand jury[19]is chiefly composed of Conservatives, the Mayor, Aldermen and the police are all Conservatives, but no men could have carried out more fearlessly their determination to maintain order in the community."
"It is seldom we have had an opportunity of speaking in terms of approbation of our civic authorities, but we cannot but express our high sense of the manly, independent manner in which all have done their duty on this occasion. The grand jury[19]is chiefly composed of Conservatives, the Mayor, Aldermen and the police are all Conservatives, but no men could have carried out more fearlessly their determination to maintain order in the community."
Of all the Governors-General who have been sent out to Canada, Lord Elgin was by far the best fitted, by personal suavity of manners, eloquence in speech, and readiness in catching the tone of his hearers, to tide over a stormy political crisis. He had not been long in Toronto before his praises rang from every tongue, even the most embittered. Americans who came in contact with him, went away charmed with his flattering attentions.
The number of citizens is becoming few indeed, who remember Toronto Bay when its natural surroundings were still undefaced and its waters pure and pellucid. From the French Fort to the Don River, curving gently in a circular sweep, under a steep bank forty feet high covered with luxuriant forest trees, was a narrow sandy beach used as a pleasant carriage-drive, much frequented by those residents who could boast private conveyances. A wooden bridge spanned the Don, and the road was continued thence, still under the shade of umbrageous trees, almost to Gibraltar Point on the west, and past Ashbridge's Bay eastward. At that part of the peninsula, forming the site of the present east entrance, the ground rose at least thirty feet above high-water mark, and was crested with trees. Those trees and that bank were destroyed through the cupidity of city builders, who excavated the sand and brought it away in barges to be used in making mortar. This went on unchecked till about the year 1848, when a violent storm—almost a tornado—from the east swept across the peninsula, near Ashbridge's Bay, where it had been denuded of sand nearly to the ordinary level of the water. This aroused public attention to the danger of further neglect.
The harbour had been for some years under the charge of a Board of Commissioners, of which the chairman was nominated by the Government, two members by the City Council, and two by the Board of Trade. The Government, through the chairman, exercised of course the chief control of the harbour and of the harbour dues.
In the spring of 1849, the chairman of the Harbour Commission was Col. J. G. Chewett, a retired officer I think of the Royal Engineers; the other members were Ald. Geo. W. Allan and myself, representing the City Council; Messrs. Thos. D. Harris, hardware merchant, and Jno. G. Worts, miller, nominees of the Board of Trade. I well remember accompanying Messrs. Allan, Harris and Worts round the entire outer beach, on wheels and afoot, and a very pleasant trip it was. The waters on retiring had left a large pool at the place where they had crossed, but no actual gap then existed. Our object was to observe the extent of the mischief, and to adopt a remedy if possible. Among the several plans submitted was one by Mr. Sandford Fleming, for carrying out into the water a number of groynes or jetties, so as to intercept the soil washed down from the Scarboro' heights, and thus gradually widen the peninsula as well as resist the further erasion of the existing beach. At a subsequent meeting of the Harbour Commission, this suggestion was fully discussed. The chairman, who was much enfeebled by age and ill-health, resented angrily the interference of non-professional men, and refused even to put a motion on the subject. Thereupon, Mr. Allan, who was as zealously sanguine as Col. Chewett was the reverse, offered to pay the whole cost of the groynes out of his own pocket. Still the chairman continued obdurate, and became so offensive in his remarks, that the proposition was abandoned in disgust.[20]
In following years, the breach recurred again and again, until it produced an established gap. Efforts were made at various times to have the gap closed, but always defeated by the influence of eastern property owners, who contended that a free current through the Bay was necessary to the health of the east end of the city. The only thing accomplished from 1849 to 1853, was the establishment of buoys at the western entrance of the harbour, and a lighthouse and guide light on the Queen's wharf; also the employment of dredges in deepening the channel between the wharf and the buoys, in which Mr. T. D. Harris took a lively interest, and did great service to the mercantile community.
Beyond the erection of wharves at several points, no attempt was made to change the shore line until 1853, when it became necessary to settle the mode in which the Northern and Grand Trunk Railways should enter the city. An esplanade had been determined upon so long ago as 1838; and in 1840 a by-law was passed by the City Council, making it a condition of all water-lot leases, that the lessees should construct their own portion of the work. In May, 1852, the first active step was taken by notifying lessees that their covenants would be enforced. The Mayor, John G. Bowes, having reported to the Council that he had made verbal application to members of the government at Quebec, for a grant of the water-lots west of Simcoe Street, then under the control of the Respective Officers of Her Majesty's Ordnance in Upper Canada, a formal memorial applying for those lots was adopted and transmitted accordingly.
The Committee on Wharves, Harbours, etc., for 1852, consisted of the Mayor, Councilmen Tully and Lee, with myself as chairman. We were actively engaged during the latter half of the year and the following spring, in negotiations with the Northern and Grand Trunk Railway boards, in making surveys and obtaining suggestions for the work of the Esplanade, and in carrying through Parliament the necessary legislation. Messrs. J. G. Howard, city engineer; William Thomas, architect; and Walter Shanly, chief engineer of the Grand Trunk Railway, were severally employed to prepare plans and estimates; and no pains were spared to get the best advice from all quarters. The Mayor was indefatigable on behalf of the city's interests, and to him undoubtedly, is mainly due the success of the Council in obtaining the desired grant from Government, both of the water-lots and the peninsula.
The chairman of the Committee on Wharves and Harbours, etc., for 1853, was the late Alderman W. Gooderham, a thoroughly respected and respectable citizen, who took the deepest interest in the subject. I acted with and for him on all occasions, preparing reports for the Council, and even went so far as to calculate minutely from the soundings the whole details of excavation, filling in, breastwork, etc., in order to satisfy myself that the interests of the city were duly protected.
In September, 1853, tenders for the work were received from numerous parties, and subjected to rigorous examination, the opinions of citizens being freely taken thereon. In the meantime, it was necessary, before closing the contract, to obtain authority from the Government with respect to the western water lots, and I was sent to Quebec for that purpose, in which, but for the influence of the Grand Trunk Company, and of Messrs. Gzowski & Macpherson, I might have failed. The Hon. Mr. Hincks, then premier, received me rather brusquely at first, and it was not until he was thoroughly satisfied that the railway interests were fairly consulted, that I made much progress with him. I did succeed, however, and brought back with me all necessary powers both as to the water lots and the peninsula.
Finally, the tender of Messrs. Gzowski & Co. was very generally judged to be most for the interests of the city. They offered to allow £10,000 for the right of way for the Grand Trunk Railway along the Esplanade; and engaged for the same sum to erect five bridges, with brick abutments and stone facings, to be built on George, Church, Yonge, Bay, and either York or Simcoe Streets, to the wharves.[21]The contract also provided that the cribwork should be of sufficient strength to carry stone facing hereafter.[22]
When canvassing St. George's Ward in December, 1852, for re-election as alderman, I told my constituents that nothing but my desire to complete the Esplanade arrangements could induce me to sacrifice my own business interests by giving up more than half my time for another year: and it was with infinite satisfaction that on the 4th of January, 1854—the last week but one of my term in the Council—I saw the Esplanade contract "signed, sealed and delivered" in the presence of the Wharves and Harbours Committee. On the 11th January, a report of the same committee, recommending the appointment of a proper officer to take charge of the peninsula, and put a stop to the removal of sand, was adopted in Council.
I heartily wish that my reminiscences of the Esplanade contract could end here. I ceased to have any connection with it, officially or otherwise; but in 1854, an agitation was commenced within the Council and out of doors, the result of which was, the cancellation by mutual consent of the contract made with Messrs. Gzowski & Co., and the making a new contract with other parties, by which it was understood the city lost money to the tune of some $50,000, while Messrs. Gzowski & Co. benefited to the extent of at least $16,000, being the difference between the rates of wages in 1853 and 1855. The five bridges were set aside, to which circumstance is due the unhappy loss of life by which we have all been shocked of late years. Of the true cause of all these painful consequences, I shall treat in my next chapter.
Of all the members of the City Council for 1850, and up to 1852, John G. Bowes was the most active and most popular. In educational affairs, in financial arrangements, and indeed, in all questions affecting the city's interests, he was by far the ablest man who had ever filled the civic chair. His acquirements as an arithmetician were extraordinary; and as a speaker he possessed remarkable powers. I took pleasure in seconding his declared views on nearly all public questions; and in return, he showed me a degree of friendship which I could not but highly appreciate. By his persuasion, and rather against my own wish, I accepted, in 1852, the secretaryship of the Toronto and Guelph Railway Company, which I held until it was absorbed by the Grand Trunk Company in 1853.[23]
In the same year, rumours began to be rife in the city, that Mr. Bowes, in conjunction with the Hon. Francis Hincks, then premier, had made $10,000 profits out of the sale of city debentures issued to the Northern Railway Company. Had the Mayor admitted the facts at once, stating his belief that he was right in so doing, it is probable that his friends would have been spared the pain, and himself the loss and disgrace which ensued. But he denied in the most solemn manner, in full Council, that he had any interest whatever in the sale of those debentures, and his word was accepted by all his friends there. When, in 1854, he was compelled to admit in the Court of Chancery, that he had not only sold the debentures for his own profit to the extent of $4,800, but that the Hon. Francis Hincks was a partner in the speculation, and had profited to the same amount, the Council and citizens were alike astounded. Not so much at the transaction itself, for it must be remembered that more than one judge in chancery held the dealing in city debentures to be perfectly legal both on the part of Mr. Bowes and Sir Francis Hincks, but at the palpable deception which had been perpetrated on the Finance Committee, and through them on the Council.
While the sale of the $50,000 Northern Railway debentures was under consideration, Mr. Bowes as Mayor had been commissioned to get a bill passed at Quebec to legalize such sale. On his return it was found that new clauses had been introduced into the bill, and particularly one requiring the debentures to be made payable in England, to which Alderman Joshua G. Beard and myself took objection as unnecessarily tying the hands of the Council. Mr. Bowes said, "Mr. Hincks would have it so." Had the committee supposed that in insisting upon those clauses Mr. Hincks was using his official powers for his own private profit, they could never have consented to the change in the bill, but would have insisted upon the right of the Council to make their own debentures payable wheresoever the city's interests would be best subserved.[24]
It is matter of history, that the suit in Chancery resulted in a judgment against Mr. Bowes for the whole amount of his profits, and that in addition to that loss he had to pay a heavy sum in costs, not only of the suit, but of appeals both here and in England. The consequence to myself was a great deal of pain, and the severance of a friendship that I had valued greatly. In October, 1853, a very strong resolution denouncing his conduct was moved by Alderman G. T. Denison, to which I moved an amendment declaring him to have been guilty of "a want of candour," which was carried, and which was the utmost censure that the majority of the Council would consent to pass. For this I was subjected to much animadversion in the public press. Yet from the termination of the trial to the day of his death, I never afterwards met Mr. Bowes on terms of amity. At an interview with him, at the request and in presence of my partner, Col. O. R. Gowan, I told the Mayor that I considered him morally responsible for all the ill-feeling that had caused the cancellation of the first Esplanade contract, and for the loss to the city which followed. I told him that it had become impossible for any man to trust his word. And afterwards when he became a candidate for a seat in parliament, I opposed his election in the columns of theColonist, which I had then recently purchased; for which he denounced me personally, at his election meetings, as a man capable of assassination.
Notwithstanding, I believe John G. Bowes to have been punished more severely than justice required; that he acted in ignorance of the law; and that his great services to the city more than outweighed any injury sustained. His subsequent election to Parliament, while it may have soothed his pride, can hardly have repaid him for the forfeiture of the respect of a very large number of his fellow-citizens.
In 1853, I removed to the village of Carlton West, on the gravel road to Weston, and distant seven miles north-west of the city. My house stood on a gravel ridge which stretches from the Carlton station of the Northern Railway to the River Humber, and which must have formed the beach of the antediluvian northern ocean, one hundred and eighty feet above the present lake, and four hundred and thirty above the sea. This gravel ridge plainly marks the Toronto Harbour at the mouth of the Humber, as it existed in those ancient days, before the Niagara River and the Falls had any place on our world's surface. East of Carlton station, a high bluff of clay continues the old-line of coast, like the modern, to Scarboro' Heights, showing frequent depressions caused by the ice of the glacial period. In corroboration of this theory, I remember that for the first house built on the Avenue Road, north of Davenport Road, the excavations for a cellar laid bare great boulders of granite, limestone, and other rock, evidently deposited there by icebergs, which had crossed the clay bluff by channels of their own dredging, and melted away in the warmer waters to the south. I think it was Professor Chapman, of Toronto University, who pointed this out to me, and mentioned a still more remarkable case of glacial action which occurred in the Township of Albion, where a limestone quarry which had been worked profitably for several years, turned out to the great disappointment of its owner to be neither more nor less than a vast glacial boulder, which had been transported from its natural site at a distance of at least eighty miles. This locomotive rock is said to have been seventy feet in thickness and as much in breadth.
While speaking of the Carlton gravel ridge, it is worth while to note that, in taking gravel from its southern face, at a depth of twenty feet, I found an Indian flint arrow-head; also a stone implement similar to what is called by painters a muller, used for grinding paint. Several massive bones, and the horns of some large species of deer, were also found in the same gravel pit, and carried or given away by the workmen. The two articles first named are still in my possession. Being at the very bottom of the gravel deposit, they must have lain there when no such beach existed, or ever since the Oak Ridges ceased to be an ocean beach.
My house on the Davenport Road was a very pleasant residence, with a fine lawn ornamented with trees chiefly planted by my own hands, and was supplied with all the necessaries for modest competence. It is worth recording, that some of the saplings—silver poplars (abeles) planted by me, grew in twelve years to be eighteen inches thick at the butt, and sixty feet in spread of branches; while maples and other hardwoods did not attain more than half that size. Thus it would seem, that our North-West prairies might be all re-clothed with full-grown ash-leaved maples—their natural timber—in twenty-five years, or with balm of Gilead and abele poplars in half that time. Would it not be wise to enact laws at once, having that object in view?
I have been an amateur gardener since early childhood; and at Carlton indulged my taste to the full by collecting all kinds of flowers cultivated and wild. I still envy the man who, settling in the new lands, say in the milder climates of Vancouver's Island or British Columbia, may utilize to the full his abundant opportunities of gathering into one group the endless floral riches of the Canadian wilderness. We find exquisite lobelias, scarlet, blue and lilac; orchises with pellucid stems and fairy elegance of blossom; lovely prairie roses; cacti of infinite delicacy and the richest hues. Then as to shrubs—the papaw, the xeranthemum of many varieties, the Indian pear (or saskatoon of the North-West), spiræa prunifolia of several kinds, shrubby St. John's-wort, oenothera grandiflora,cum multis aliis.
Now that the taste for wild-flower gardens has become the fashion in Great Britain, it will doubtless soon spread to this Continent. No English park is considered complete without its special garden for wild flowers, carefully tended and kept as free from stray weeds as the more formal parterre of the front lawn. Our wealthier Canadian families cannot do better than follow the example of the Old Country in this respect, and assuredly they will be abundantly repaid for the little trouble and expenditure required.
In May, 1853, I sold out my interest in thePatriotto Mr. Ogle R. Gowan, and having a little capital of my own, invested it in the purchase of theColonistfrom the widow of the late Hugh Scobie, who died December 6th, 1852. It was a heavy undertaking, but I was sanguine and energetic, and—as one of my friends told me—thorough. TheColonist, as an organ of the old Scottish Kirk party in Canada, had suffered from the rivalry of its Free Kirk competitor, theGlobe; and its remaining subscribers, being, as a rule, strongly Conservative, made no objection to the change of proprietorship; while I carried over with me, by agreement, the subscribers to the dailyPatriot, thus combining the mercantile strength of the two journals.
I had hitherto confined myself to the printing department, leaving the duties of editorship to others. On taking charge of theColonist, I assumed the whole political responsibility, with Mr. John Sheridan Hogan as assistant editor and Quebec correspondent. My partners were the late Hugh C. Thomson, afterwards secretary to the Board of Agriculture, who acted as local editor; and James Bain, now of the firm of Jas. Bain & Son, to whom the book-selling and stationery departments were committed. We had a strong staff of reporters, and commenced the new enterprise under promising circumstances. Our office and store were in the old brick building extending from King to Colborne Street, long previously known as the grocery store of Jas. F. Smith.
The ministry then in power was that known as the Hincks-Taché Government. Francis Hincks had parted with his old radical allies, and become more conservative than many of the Tories whom he used to denounce. People remembered Wm. Lyon Mackenzie's prophecy, who said he feared that Francis Hincks could not be trusted to resist temptation. When Lord Elgin went to England, it was whispered that his lordship had paid off £80,000 sterling of mortgages on his Scottish estates, out of the proceeds of speculations which he had shared with his clever minister. The St. Lawrence and Atlantic purchase, the £50,000 Grand Trunk stock placed to Mr. Hincks' credit—as he asserted without his consent—and the Bowes transaction, gave colour to the many stories circulated to his prejudice. And when he went to England, and received the governorship of Barbadoes, many people believed that it was the price of his private services to the Earl of Elgin.
Whatever the exact truth in these cases may have been, I am convinced that from the seed then sown, sprang up a crop of corrupt influences that have since permeated all the avenues to power, and borne their natural fruit in the universal distrust of public men, and the wide-spread greed of public money, which now prevail. Neither political party escapes the imputation of bribing the constituencies, both personally at elections, and by parliamentary grants for local improvements. The wholesale expenditure at old country elections, which transferred so much money from the pockets of the rich to those of the poor, without any prospect of pecuniary return, has with us taken the form of a speculative investment to be "re-couped" by value in the shape of substantial government favours.
Could I venture to enter the lists against so tremendous a rhetorical athlete as Professor Goldwin Smith, I should say, that his idea of abolishing party government to secure purity of election is an utter fallacy; I should say that the great factor of corruption in Canada has been the adoption of the principle of coalitions. I told a prominent Conservative leader in 1853, that I looked upon coalitions as essentially immoral, and that the duty of either political party was to remain contentedly "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition," and to support frankly all good measures emanating from the party in office, until the voice of the country, fairly expressed, should call the Opposition to assume the reins of power legitimately. I told the late Hon. Mr. Spence, when he joined the coalition ministry of 1854, that we (of theColonist) looked upon that combination as an organized attempt to govern the country through its vices; and that nothing but the violence of theGlobeparty could induce us to support any coalition whatsoever. And I think still that I was right, and that the Minister who buys politicians to desert their principles, resembles nothing so much as the lawyer who gains a verdict in favour of his client by bribing the jury.
The union of Upper and Lower Canada is chargeable, no doubt, with a large share of the evils that have crept into our constitutional system. The French Canadianhabitans, at the time of the Union, were true scions of the old peasantry of Normandy and Brittany, with which their songs identify them so strikingly. All their ideas of government were ultra-monarchical; their allegiance to the old French Kings had been transferred to the Romish hierarchy and clergy, who, it must be said, looked after their flocks with undying zeal and beneficent care. But this formed an ill preparation for representative institutions. TheRougeparty, at first limited to lawyers and notaries chiefly, had taken up the principles of the first French revolution, and for some years made but little progress; in time, however, they learnt the necessity of cultivating the assistance, or at least the neutrality of the clergy, and in this they were aided by ties of relationship. As in Ireland, where almost every poor family emaciates itself to provide for the education of one of its sons as a "counsellor" or a priest, so in Lower Canada, most families contain within themselves both priest and lawyer. Thus it came to pass, that in the Lower Province, a large proportion of the people lived in the hope that they might sooner or later share in "government pap," and looked upon any means to that end as unquestionably lawful. It is not difficult to perceive how much and how readily this idea would communicate itself to their Upper Canadian allies after the Union; that it did so, is matter of history.
In fact, the combination of French and British representatives in a single cabinet, itself constitutes a coalition of the most objectionable kind; as the result can only be a perpetual system of compromises. For example, one of the effects of the Union, and of the coalition of 1854, was the passage of the bill secularizing the Clergy Reserves, and abolishing all connection between church and state in Upper Canada, while leaving untouched the privileges of the Romish Church in the Lower Province. That some day, there will arise a formidable Nemesis spawned of this one-sided act, when the agitation for disendowment shall have reached the Province of Quebec, who can doubt?
In 1855 and subsequently, followed a series of struggles for office, without any great political object in view, each party or clique striving to bid higher than all the rest for popular votes, which went on amid alternate successes and reverses, until the denouement came in 1859, when neither political party could form a Ministry that should command a majority in parliament, and they were fain to coalesceen massein favour of confederation. At one time, Mr. George Brown was defeated by Wm. Lyon Mackenzie in Halton; at another, he voted with the Tories against the Hincks ministry; again, he was a party to a proposed coalition with Sir Allan MacNab. I was myself present at Sir Allan's house in Richey's Terrace, Adelaide Street, where I was astonished to meet Mr. Brown himself in confidential discussion with Sir Allan. I recollect a member of the Lower House—I think Mr. Hillyard Cameron—hurrying in with the information that at a meeting of Conservative members which he had just left, they had chosen Mr. John A. Macdonald as their leader in place of Sir Allan, which report broke up the conference, and defeated the plans of the coalitionists. This was, I think, in 1855. Then came on the "Rep. by Pop." agitation led by theGlobe, in 1856.[25]In 1857, the great business panic superseded all other questions. In 1858, the turn of the Reform party came, with Mr. Brown again at their head, who held power for precisely four days.
In 1858, also, the question of protection for native industry, which had been advocated by the British-American League, was taken up in parliament by the Hon. Wm. Cayley and Hon. Isaac Buchanan separately. In 1859, came Mr. Brown's and Mr. Galt's federal union resolutions, and Mr. Cayley's motion for protection once more.
All these years—from 1853 to 1860—I was in confidential communication with the leaders of the Conservative party, and after 1857 with the Upper Canadian members of the administration personally; and I am bound to bear testimony to their entire patriotism and general disinterestedness whenever the public weal was involved. I was never asked to print a line which I could not conscientiously endorse; and had I been so requested, I should assuredly have refused.
Up to the year 1857, I had gone on prosperously, enlarging my establishment, increasing my subscription list, and proud to own the most enterprising newspaper published in Canada up to that day. TheDaily Colonistconsisted of eight pages, and was an exact counterpart of theLondon Timesin typographical appearance, size of page and type, style of advertisements, and above all, in independence of editorial comment and fairness in its treatment of opponents. No communication courteously worded was refused admission, however caustic its criticisms on the course taken editorially. The circulation of the four editions (daily, morning and evening, bi-weekly and weekly) amounted to, as nearly as I can recollect, 30,000 subscribers, and its readers comprised all classes and creeds.
In illustration of the kindly feeling existing towards me on the part of my political adversaries, I may record the fact that, when in the latter part of 1857, it became known in the profession that I had suffered great losses arising out of the commercial panic of that year, Mr. George Brown, with whom I was on familiar terms, told me that he was authorized by two or three gentlemen of high standing in the Liberal party, whom he named, to advance me whatever sums of money I might require to carry on theColonistindependently, if I would accept their aid. I thanked him and replied, that I could publish none other than a Conservative paper, which ended the discussion.
The Hon. J. Hillyard Cameron, being himself embarrassed by the tremendous pressure of the money market, in which he had operated heavily, counselled me to act upon a suggestion that theColonistshould become the organ of the Macdonald-Cartier Government, to which position would be attached the right of furnishing certain of the public departments with stationery, theretofore supplied by the Queen's Printer at fixed rates. I did so, reserving to myself the absolute control of the editorial department, and engaging the services of Mr. Robert A. Harrison (of the Attorney-General's office, afterwards Chief Justice), as assistant editor. Instead, however, of alleviating, this change of base only intensified my troubles.
I found that, throughout the government offices, a system had been prevalent, something like that described inGil Blasas existing at the Court of Spain, by which, along with the stationery required for the departments, articles for ladies' toilet use, etc., were included, and had always theretofore been charged in the government accounts as a matter of course. I directed that those items should be supplied as ordered, but that their cost be placed to my own private account, and that the parties be notified, that they must thereafter furnish separate orders for such things. I also took an early opportunity of pointing out the abuse to the Attorney-General, who said his colleagues had suspected the practice before, but had no proof of misconduct; and added, that if I would lay an information, he would send the offenders to the Penitentiary; as in fact he did in the Reiffenstein case some years afterwards. I replied, that were I to do so, nearly every man in the public service would be likely to become my personal enemy, which he admitted to be probable. As it was, the apparent consequence of my refusal to make fraudulent entries, was an accusation that I charged excessive prices, although I had never charged as much as the rate allowed the Queen's Printer, considering it unreasonable. My accounts were at my request referred to an expert, and adjudged by him to be fair in proportion to quality of stationery furnished. Gradually I succeeded in stopping the time-honoured custom as far as I was concerned.
Years after, when I had the contract for Parliamentary printing at Quebec, matters proved even more vexatious. When the Session had commenced, and I had with great outlay and exertion got every thing into working order, I was refused copies of papers from certain sub-officers of the Legislature, until I had agreed upon the percentage expected upon my contract rates. My reply, through my clerk, was, that I had contracted at low rates, and could not afford gratuities such as were claimed, and that if I could, I would not. The consequence was a deadlock, and it was not until I brought the matter to the attention of the Speaker, Sir Henry Smith, that I was enabled to get on with the work. These things happened a quarter of a century ago, and although I suffer the injurious consequences myself to this day, I trust no other living person can be affected by their publication now.
The position of ministerial organist, besides being both onerous and unpleasant, was to me an actual money loss. My newspaper expenses amounted to over four hundred dollars per week, with a constantly decreasing subscription list.[26]The profits on the government stationery were no greater than those realized by contractors who gave no additionalquid pro quo; and I was only too glad, when the opportunity of competing for the Legislative printing presented itself in 1858, to close my costly newspaper business in Toronto. I sold the goodwill of theColonistto Messrs. Sheppard & Morrison,[27]and on my removal to Quebec next year, established a cheap journal there called theAdvertiser, the history of which in 1859-60, I shall relate in a chapter by itself.
When I began to feel the effects of official hostility in Quebec, as above stated, I was also suffering from another and more vital evil. I had taken the contract for parliamentary printing at prices slightly lower than had before prevailed. My knowledge of printing in my own person gave me an advantage over most other competitors. The consequence of this has been, that large sums of money were saved to the country yearly for the last twenty-four years. But the former race of contractors owed me a violent grudge, for, as they alleged, taking the contract below paying prices. I went to work, however, confident of my resources and success. But no sooner had I got well under weigh, than my arrangements were frustrated, my expenditure nullified, my just hopes dashed to the ground, by the action of the Legislature itself. A joint committee on printing had been appointed, of which the Hon. Mr. Simpson, of Bowmanville, was chairman, which proceeded deliberately to cut down the amount of printing to be executed, and particularly the quantity of French documents to be printed, to such an extent as to reduce the work for which I had contracted by at least one-third. And this without the smallest regard to the terms of my contract. Thus were one-half of all my expenditures—one-half of my thirty thousand dollars worth of type—one-half of my fifteen thousand dollars worth of presses and machinery—literally rendered useless, and reduced to the condition of second-hand material. I applied to my solicitor for advice. He told me that, unless I threw up the contract, I could make no claim for breach of conditions. Unfortunately for me, the many precedents since established, of actions on "petition of right" for breach of contract by the Government and the Legislature, had not then been recorded, and I had to submit to what I was told was the inevitable.
I struggled on through the session amid a hurricane of calumny and malicious opposition. The Queen's Printers, the former French contractor, and, above all, the principal defeated competitor in Toronto, joined their forces to destroy my credit, to entice away my workmen, to disseminate but too successfully the falsehood, that my contract was taken at unprofitable rates, until I was fairly driven to my wits' end, and ultimately forced into actual insolvency. The cashier of the Upper Canada Bank told me very kindly, that everybody in the Houses and the Bank knew my honesty and energy, but the combination against me was too strong, and it was useless for me to resist it, unless my Toronto friends would come to my assistance.
I was not easily dismayed by opposition, and determined at least to send a Parthian shaft into my enemies' camp. The session being over, I hastened to Toronto, called my creditors together at the office of Messrs Cameron & Harman, and laid my position before them. All I could command in the way of valuable assets was invested in the business of the contract. I had besides, in the shape of nominal assets, over a hundred thousand dollars in newspaper debts scattered over Upper Canada, which I was obliged to report as utterly uncollectable, being mainly due by farmers who—as was generally done throughout Ontario in 1857—had made over their farms to their sons or other parties, to evade payment of their own debts. All my creditors were old personal friends, and so thoroughly satisfied were they of the good faith of the statements submitted by me, that they unanimously decided to appoint no assignee, and to accept the offer I made them to conduct the contract for their benefit, on their providing the necessary sinews of war, which they undertook to do in three days.
What was my disappointment and chagrin to find, at the end of that term, that the impression which had been so industriously disseminated in Quebec, that my contract prices were impracticably low, had reached and influenced my Toronto friends, and that it was thought wisest to abandon the undertaking. I refused to do so.
Among my employees in the office were four young men, of excellent abilities, who had grown into experience under my charge, and had, by marriage and economy, acquired means of their own, and could besides command the support of monied relatives. These young men I took into my counsels. At the bailiff's sale of my office which followed, they bought in such materials as they thought sufficient for the contract work, and in less than a month we had the whole office complete again, and with the sanction of the Hon. the Speaker, got the contract work once more into shape. The members of the new firm were Samuel Thompson, Robert Hunter, George M. Rose, John Moore, and François Lemieux.
Iresided for eighteen months in the old, picturesque and many-memoried city. My house was a three-story cedar log building known as the White House, near the corner of Salaberry Street and Mount Pleasant Road. It was weather-boarded outside, comfortably plastered and finished within, and was the most easily warmed house I ever occupied. The windows were French, double in winter, opening both inwards and outwards, with sliding panes for ventilation. It had a good garden, sloping northerly at an angle of about fifteen degrees, which I found a desolate place enough, and left a little oasis of beauty and productiveness. One of my amusements there was to stroll along the garden paths, watching for the sparkle of Quebec diamonds, which after every rainfall glittered in the paths and flower-beds. They are very pretty, well shaped octagonal crystals of rock quartz, and are often worn in necklaces by the Quebec demoiselles. On the plains of Abraham I found similar specimens brilliantly black.
Quebec is famous for good roads and pleasant shady promenades. By the St. Foy Road to Spencer Wood, thence onward to Cap Rouge, back by the St. Louis Road or Grande Allée, past the citadel and through the old-fashioned St. Louis Gate, is a charming stroll; or along the by-path from St. Louis Road to the pretty Gothic chapel overhanging the Cove, and so down steep rocky steps descending four hundred feet to the mighty river St. Lawrence; or along the St. Charles river and the country road to Lorette; or by the Beauport road to the old chateau or manor house of Colonel Gugy, known by the name of "Darnoc." The toll-gate on the St. Foy Road was quite an important institution to the simplehabitans, who paid their shilling toll for the privilege of bringing to market a bunch or two of carrots and as many turnips, with a basket of eggs, or some cabbages and onions, in a little cart drawn by a little pony, with which surprising equipage they would stand patiently all morning in St. Anne's market, under the shadow of the old ruined Jesuits' barracks, and return home contented with the three or four shillings realized from their day's traffic.
One of the specialties of the city is its rats. In my house-yard was a sink, or rather hole in the rock, covered by a wooden grating. A large cat, who made herself at home on the premises, would sit watching at the grating for hours, every now and then inserting her paw between the bars and hooking out leisurely a squeaking young rat, of which thirty or forty at a time showed themselves within the cavity. I was assured that these rats have underground communications, like those of the rock of Gibraltar, from every quarter of the city to the citadel, and so downward to the quays and river below. Besides the cat, there was a rough terrier dog named Cæsar, also exercising right of occupancy. To see him pouncing upon rats in the pantry, from which they could not be easily excluded by reason of a dozen entrances through the stone basement walls, was something to enchant sporting characters. I was not of that class, so stopped up the rock with broken bottles and mortar, and provided traps for stray intruders.
The Laurentine mountains, distant a few miles north of the city, rise to a height of twenty-five hundred feet. By daylight they are bleak and barren enough; but at night, seen in the light of the glorious Aurora Borealis which so often irradiates that part of Canada, they are a vision of enchanting beauty. This reminds me of a conversation which I was privileged to have with the late Sir William Logan, who most kindly answered my many inquisitive questions on geological subjects. He explained that the mountains of Newfoundland, of Quebec, of the height of land between the St. Lawrence and Lake Nipissing, and of Manitoba and Keewatin in the North-West, are all links of one continuous chain, of nearly equal elevation, and marked throughout that vast extent by ancient sea-beaches at an uniform level of twelve hundred feet above the sea, with other ancient beaches seven hundred feet above the sea at various points; two remarkable examples of which latter class are the rock of Quebec and the Oak Ridges eighteen miles north of Toronto. He pointed out further, that those two points indicate precisely the level of the great ocean which covered North America in the glacial period, when Toronto was six hundred feet under salt water, and Quebec was the solitary rock visible above water for hundreds of miles east, west and south—the Laurentides then, as now, towering eighteen hundred feet higher, on the north.
In winter also, Quebec has many features peculiar to itself. Close beside, and high above the little steep roofed houses—crowded into streets barely wide enough to admit the diminutive French carts without crushing unlucky foot-passengers,—rise massive frowning bastions crowned with huge cannon, all black with age and gloomy with desperate legends of attack and defence. The snow accumulates in these streets to the height of the upper-floor windows, with precipitous steps cut suddenly down to each doorway, so that at night it is a work of no little peril to navigate one's way home. Near the old Palace Gate are beetling cliffs, seventy feet above the hill of rocky debris which forms one side of the street below. It is high carnival with the Quebecgamins, when they can collect there in hundreds, each with his frail handsleigh, and poising themselves on the giddy edge of the "horrent summit," recklessly shoot down in fearful descent, first to the sharp rocky slope, and thence with alarming velocity to the lower level of the street. Outside St. John's Gate is another of these infantile race-grounds. Down the steep incline of the glacis, crowds of children are seen every fine winter's day, sleighing and tobogganing from morning till night, not without occasional accidents of a serious nature.
But the crowning triumph of Quebec scenery, summer and winter, centres in the Falls of Montmorenci, a seven mile drive, over Dorchester bridge, along the Beauport road, commanding fine views of the wide St. Lawrence and the smiling Isle of Orleans, with its pilot-inhabited houses painted blue, red and yellow—all three colours at once occasionally—(the paints wickedly supposed to be perquisites acquired in a professional capacity from ships' stores)—and so along shady avenues varied by brightest sunshine, we find ourselves in front and at the foot of a cascade four hundred feet above us, broken into exquisite facets and dancing foam by projecting rocky points, and set in a bordering of lovely foliage on all sides. This is of course in summer. In winter how different. Still the descending torrent, but only bare tree-stems and icy masses for the frame-work, and at the base a conical mountain of snow and ice, a hundred and fifty feet high, sloping steeply on all sides, and with the frozen St. Lawrence spread out for miles to the east. He who covets a sensation for life, has only to climb the gelid hill by the aid of ice-steps cut in its side, and commit himself to the charge of the habitant who first offers his services, and the thing is soon accomplished. The gentleman adventurer sits at the back of the sleigh,—which is about four feet long—tucks his legs round the habitant, who sits in front and steers with his heels; for an instant the steersman manoeuvres into position on the edge of the cone, which slightly overhangs—then away we go, launching into mid-air, striking ground—or rather ice—thirty feet below, and down and still down, fleet as lightning, to the level river plain, over which we glide by the impetus of our descent fully half-a-mile further. I tried it twice. My companion was severely affected by the shock, and gave in with a bad headache at the first experiment. The same day, several reckless young officers of the garrison would insist upon steering themselves, paying a guinea each for the privilege. One of them suffered for his freak from a broken arm. But with experienced guides no ill-consequences are on record.
An appalling tragedy is related of this ice-mountain. An American tourist with his bride was among the visitors to the Falls one day some years back. They were both young and high-spirited, and had immensely enjoyed their marriage trip by way of the St. Lawrence. Standing on the summit of the cone, in raptures with the cataract, the cliffs ice-bedecked, the trees ice-laden, their attention was for an instant diverted from each other. The young man, gazing eastward across the river, talking gaily to his wife, was surprised at receiving no reply, and looking round found himself alone. Shouting frantically, no answering cry could be distinguished,—the roaring of the cascade was loud enough to drown any human voice. Hanging madly over the edge next the Falls, which is quite precipitous, there was nothing to be seen but a boiling whirlpool of angry waters. The poor girl had stepped unconsciously backward,—had slipped down into the boiling surf,—had been instantaneously carried beneath the ice of the river.
Another peculiarity of Quebec is its ice-freshets in spring. Near the vast tasteless church of St. John, on the road of that name, a torrent of water from the higher level crosses the street, and thunders down the steep ways descending to the Lower Town. At night it freezes solidly again, and becomes so dangerously slippery, that I have seen ladies piloted across for several hundred feet, by holding on to the courteously extended walking stick of the first gentlemanly stranger to whom they could appeal for help in their utter distress and perplexity. These freshets flood the business streets named after St. Peter and St. Paul on the level of the wharves. To cross them at such times, floating planks are put in requisition, and no little skill is required to escape a wetting up to the knees.
The social aspects of the city are as unique as its natural features. The Romish hierarchy exercises an arbitrary, and I must add a beneficial, rule over the mixed maritime and crimping elements which form its lowest stratum. Private charity is universal on the part of the well-to-do citizens. It is an interesting sight to watch the numbers of paupers who are supplied weekly from heaps of loaves of bread piled high on the tradesmen's counters, to which all comers are free to help themselves.
The upper classes are divided into castes as marked as those of Hindostan. French Canadian seigniors, priestly functionaries of high rank, government officials of the ruling race, form an exclusive, and it is said almost impenetrable coterie by themselves. The sons or nephews of Liverpool merchants having branch firms in the city, and wealthy Protestant tradesmen, generally English churchmen, constitute a second division scarcely less isolated. Next to these come the members of other religious denominations, who keep pretty much to themselves. I am sorry to hear from a respected Methodist minister whom I met in Toronto lately, that the last named valuable element of the population has been gradually diminishing in numbers and influence, and that it is becoming difficult to keep their congregations comfortably together. This is a consequence, and an evil consequence, of confederation.
Another characteristic singularity of Quebec life arises from the association, without coalescing, of two distinct nationalities having diverse creeds and habits. This is often ludicrously illustrated by the system of mixed juries. I was present in the Recorder's Court on one occasion, when a big, burly Irishman was in the prisoner's dock, charged with violently ejecting a bailiff in possession, which I believe in Scotland is called a deforcement on the premises. It appeared that the bailiff, a little habitant, had been riotously drunk and disorderly, having helped himself to the contents of a number of bottles of ale which he discovered in a cupboard. The prisoner, moved to indignation, coolly took up the drunken offender in his arms, tossed him down a flight of steps into the middle of the street, and shut the door in his face. The counsel for the complainant, a popular Irish barrister, lamented privately that he was on the wrong side, being more used to defending breaches of the laws than to enforcing them—that there was no hope of a verdict in favour of authority—and that the jury were certain to disagree, however clearly the facts and the law were shown. And so it proved. The French jurors looked puzzled—the English enjoyed the fun—the judge charged with a half smile on his countenance—and the jury disagreed—six to six. On leaving the court, one of the jurors whispered to the discharged prisoner, "Did you think we were agoing to give in to them French fellows?"