John A (43 page)

 

NINETEEN

Parliament vs the People

If we do not represent the people of Canada, we have no right to be here. John A. Macdonald

T
he sweeping success of the Quebec Conference was followed by the double afterglow of a triumphal tour of Canada by the Maritime delegates and the plaudits for the accomplishment expressed by British newspapers from the
Times
on down. Macdonald's response to all this praise was to go on a prolonged binge. He performed like a tightly wound spring that, once released, flies all over the place and then collapses in a heap.

The post-conference tour, which had the dual purpose of showing Canada to the Maritimers and showing off the Maritimers to Canadians, began in Montreal with a gala dinner hosted by Cartier. To encourage the delegates to complete their good work, the program of toasts included the verse “Then let us be firm and united / One country, one flag for us all; / United, our strength will be freedom / Divided, we each of us fall.” The cavalcade then moved to Ottawa, where Macdonald was to act as host. It began well: the crowds were huge and they escorted the
visitors in a torchlight procession to the Russell Hotel, where they were to dine. As the gala's principal speaker, Macdonald got to his feet, said a few words, then stopped and fell silent.
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Galt had to fill up the vacuum with an extemporaneous speech. Macdonald rejoined the group when it left by train for Kingston, with succeeding stops planned at all the communities—Belleville, Cobourg, Port Hope—on the way to Toronto, where Brown would be host. But Macdonald never left Kingston. It's safe to guess that he spent most of his time at Eliza Grimason's tavern, periodically collapsing into the bed kept for him there.

As all who knew him realized well, Macdonald, from this period on, would every now and then go on one of these binges and be unable to do anything until they were over. Then suddenly he would reappear as though nothing had happened, as full of vigour and zest as ever. His constitution was a minor marvel. Macdonald did enjoy walking, but he never undertook any strenuous exercise. He ate lightly, not because he drank heavily as is frequently the case, but because he always ate lightly. A photograph of Macdonald taken at around this time—in 1863 by the famed William Notman of Montreal, and the front cover of this book—portrays him as lean and fit and impressively erect.
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The photo also captures perfectly the distinctive quality of his eyes—amused, observant, commanding. It may have been Notman's magic (all the more magical because he used only natural light),
but absolutely nothing about the photo suggests a public figure with a single care in the world, least of all that of his having become, if irregularly, an out-of-control public drunk.

After Macdonald had finished wrestling with whatever devils were assailing him, he went right back to the job at hand. With the Quebec Conference over and a constitution agreed on, the way ahead was clear. Macdonald needed now to get approval for the Confederation scheme first from Canada's legislature, and then from the legislatures of the key Maritime provinces, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. As the climactic step, he needed the approval of the Parliament at Westminster. Thereafter, he could come back home with Confederation's constitution in his pocket.

One intervening step was required, though. The British press had indeed been laudatory, but it had also expressed some disquieting notes. The
Edinburgh Review,
while applauding the accomplishment, had gone on to describe it as the “harbinger of the future and complete independence of British North America,” while the
Saturday Review
judged the achievement as “not so much a step towards independence as a means of softening the inevitable shock.” The
Times,
in its more orotund way, declared that while “nothing could be more in correspondence with the interests and wishes of this country” than Confederation, nevertheless “the dependency that wishes to quit us has only to make up its mind to that effect.” What Macdonald needed, then, was an official stamp of approval to Confederation from the Imperial government that could be waved in front of the Canadian and Maritime legislatures, and, as an additional reassurance, a cessation of talk in London about possible Canadian independence.

For this vital but delicate mission, Macdonald chose Brown. It was a deft choice. Brown's key qualifications were that he wasn't Macdonald and that he was the leader of Canada's largest party. He would carry in his person to London the message that
support for Confederation was widespread. He would also allow Macdonald to get on with his immediate task of assembling the legislature and of figuring out how to secure as quickly as possible its agreement to the scheme.

For Brown, this transatlantic trip had to be one of the most agreeable he ever made, not least because Anne went along with him. They travelled first to Edinburgh, and then Brown went on alone to London.

On December 3, 1864, Brown called on the colonial secretary, Edward Cardwell, who received him almost as a brother. Cardwell had already drafted a memorandum setting out his views on the Quebec Resolutions; this, if Brown approved of it, he intended to dispatch to the governor general in Ottawa and to the Maritime lieutenant-governors. Brown not only approved but was ecstatic. “A most gracious answer to our constitutional scheme. Nothing could be more laudatory—it praises our statesmanlike discretion, loyalty and so on,” he wrote afterwards to Macdonald.

Cardwell had one more bit of news of even greater import to pass on. Confederation, he told Brown, was a subject “of great interest…in the highest circles.” Brown immediately picked up the reference that Queen Victoria herself wanted Confederation for her distant colonies. He was so overcome by this confidence that he asked whether the Queen might come to Canada to open the first post-Confederation Parliament. Cardwell's reply, no doubt couched in the correct circumlocutory phrases, was that Victoria, a grieving widow ever since the recent death of her beloved Prince Albert, was so emotionally shattered that it was “totally out of the question” for her even to open Parliament in next-door Westminster.

Nothing else was denied Brown, and so by extension Canada's Confederates. He went to Prime Minister Lord Palmerston's country house in Hampshire and took a long stroll with the prime minister through the gardens. He met the foreign secretary and the rising political titan and fellow-Liberal William Gladstone. A bit carried away, Brown afterwards told Anne of his encounter with Gladstone: “Though we had been discussing the highest questions of statesmanship—he did not by any means drag me out of my depth.” Then hastily he added, “Don't for any sake read this to Tom or Willie, or they will think I have gone daft.”

Brown did have one concern to report to Macdonald: “There is a manifest desire in almost every quarter that ere long the British colonies should shift for themselves, and in some quarters evident regret that we did not declare at once for independence.” The cause, Brown said, was “the fear of invasion of Canada by the United States,” an affront that might compel Britain, for the sake of honour and of face, to make the futile gesture of intervening to try to save its colony. In fact Brown and Macdonald would have been even more concerned had they known of a letter sent at this time to Governor General Monck by the junior minister for the colonies, C.B. Adderley. In it, he reported, “Gladstone said to me the other day: ‘Canada is England's weakness, till the last British soldier is brought away & Canada left on her own. We cannot hold our own with the United States.'”

Britain was onside all right, but in its own way.

Brown landed back in Canada on January 13, 1865. Two days earlier, Macdonald had passed a significant milestone—he'd reached the age of fifty. He either paid no attention to his birthday or
marked it by consuming a bottle in his room in some boarding house. But for cronies, Macdonald was now alone. Hugh John, at the age of fifteen, was distant from his father, both because he had been brought up by Margaret and James Williamson in Kingston and because he was now beginning to feel the strain of being the son of a famous father. That fall, Hugh John entered the University of Toronto as an undergraduate.
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At this same time Macdonald was becoming increasingly concerned about the condition of his law practice. His law partner Archibald Macdonnell had died the previous spring, and ever since Macdonald had been discovering just how deeply his company was in debt, with some of the debts resulting from transactions of highly questionable probity, but for which he would be personally responsible. Brown, in one letter to Anne at this time, confided that “John A.'s business affairs are in sad disorder, and need more close attention.”
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Macdonald's two escapes from solitude now were the Confederation project and drink.

Macdonald in his prime. This photo was taken by the famous William Notman of Montreal in 1863. The two minutes of motionlessness required for a photograph at the time did nothing to dim his energy and vivacity.