The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin
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angry entreaties of his friends.” In a formal debate, MPs could speak only once. Macdonald wanted to reply to the leading opposition orator, Edward Blake, “but — calculating on the effect of his physical infirmities breaking his adversary down — Blake determined to hold back.” Privately, Macdonald feared the disclosure of some further incriminating document. Meanwhile, as an Ottawa diarist put it, “‘ratting’ goes on daily” as MPs fell away “like autumn leaves.” Agnes broke gender restrictions to lobby one wavering government supporter, but he “ratted” too.
By the time Macdonald spoke, on November 3, his reticence seemed an admission of guilt. Pale and frail from exhaustion and booze, he nonetheless delivered a five-hour oration. A Cabinet colleague was persuaded to pass him glasses of neat gin, a transparent spirit that conveniently resembles water: it was said that Macdonald had two more suppliers, none of them knowing of the others’ existence. For once, alcohol proved not a handicap but a fuel, for he closed with a dignified peroration. “I have fought the battle of Confederation,” he claimed, as he looked beyond the parliamentary vote to the judgment of the people and the verdict of history. Nobody had “given more of his time, more of his heart, more of his wealth, or more of his intellect and power, such as they may be, for the good of this Dominion of Canada.” It was an electrifying finale, but they were the words of a beaten politician.
Four days later, Alexander Campbell complained that “had Sir John A[.] kept straight during the last fortnight, the Ministry would not have been defeated.” Dufferin regarded Macdonald’s “physical infirmity” as “a source of intolerable embarrassment at every turn, for unfortunately it is when affairs are at a crisis that it overtakes him.” But the alcohol problem was only a symptom. Fundamentally, the crisis stemmed from Macdonald’s failure to win a strong majority in 1872. He had hoped that the six recently arrived MPs from Prince Edward Island, Canada’s newest province, would support the government that now ruled their destinies. The Islanders reviewed the political situation — and four of them joined the opposition. On November 4, the influential Manitoba MP Donald A. Smith sought an interview. Smith had proved a wise negotiator during the Red River troubles, but Macdonald disliked him and agreed to the meeting reluctantly. After twenty minutes, Smith stalked out, complaining that Macdonald had “done nothing but curse and swear at me.” Smith “ratted” that evening. Next day, November 5, 1873, the government resigned, with Macdonald putting his characteristic “spin” on the disaster that most believed would end his career. “I have long yearned for rest and am not sorry to have it forced on me,” he assured Gowan. “I believe Canada will do me justice in the long run.” As Alexander Mackenzie formed the new government, Liberal MPs celebrated by singing their own version of Clementine: “Sir John is dead and gone for ever.” But was he?
The five years that John A. Macdonald spent in opposition are dismissed by his admirers as a blip that the voters corrected after enduring the inadequate Mackenzie Liberals. In fact, that period divided into three phases. The first, one of wild and ill-advised activity, crashed after four months with a Conservative rout in a snap general election. The second, from 1874 to 1876, plunged Macdonald’s life into its deepest trough. The third saw him solve both personal and political challenges, overcoming his alcohol problem and rebuilding his party to return to office in 1878.
Tactically, Macdonald should have adopted a low profile after his resignation. Mackenzie encountered problems hammering disparate factions into a Cabinet. Luther Holton, the party’s finance expert, refused the portfolio, which went to Richard Cartwright, the former Conservative outraged by the appointment of Hincks (“and now you see the company he has got into,” sneered Macdonald). Two other prominent Liberals, Edward Blake from Ontario and A.-A. Dorion from Quebec, soon resigned. Mackenzie would have called (and won) an early election anyway, but initially he planned a short parliamentary session to clean up election laws. This would have highlighted the inexperience of the new ministers, only three of whom had previously held political office, two of them very briefly. Renewing his proclaimed opposition strategy of 1862–63, Macdonald promised to “subordinate Party to Country.” In reality, he seemed to be planning to repeat the ambush that had destroyed George Brown in 1858. This was a tactical blunder which gave Mackenzie the excuse to go to the polls immediately.
One clue to Macdonald’s intentions only surfaced four years later. As prime minister, he had personally administered Canada’s secret service fund. With casual arrogance, he omitted to inform Mackenzie that he still controlled its $32,000 balance. By the time Macdonald wound up the fund in 1875, another $6,000 had been disbursed for purposes, as Mackenzie grumbled, “of which he constituted himself the sole judge.” Protesting that “not one farthing of the money was ever in my hands,” Macdonald insisted he could not name the recipients without endangering them. Hence Ontario Protestants never discovered that the fund had been used to bribe Louis Riel to get out of Manitoba.
Far from radiating dignified humility, Macdonald defiantly accepted a banquet in his honour just one week after his resignation. He was led through the Ottawa streets by a band, playing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.” “Can I believe my senses?” he asked the assembled throng. “Am I a defeated man or am I a victorious minister?” Dismissing the Pacific Scandal charges against him as “unjust … foul and unfair,” he predicted that his party would soon return to office, but hoped he would “never be a member of any administration again.” He gave contradictory signals. “I cannot last much longer.… But I will remain as long as I can of any service.” Conservatives would find younger leaders, whom “you will be proud to follow with the same constancy as you have followed me.” In an era before party conventions and mass memberships, it is hard to see how this new leadership could emerge, especially while Macdonald remained in place. The shell-shocked caucus had re-elected him as leader: nobody else wanted the job.
Mackenzie’s new ministers faced the usual by-elections, and most were returned by acclamation. But Macdonald denounced the “ingratitude, and base treachery” of his former acolyte, Cartwright. Insultingly, the new finance minister sent Macdonald a forty dollar cheque for travelling expenses so that they could debate face to face: Macdonald, of course, never cashed it. At the ensuing confrontation, Cartwright, who was handily re-elected, tried to goad Macdonald into punching him as he had assaulted Carruthers at Kingston. A second by-election resulted from a last-minute Macdonald patronage appointment, which opened the strong Tory riding of West Toronto. Just before Christmas 1873, the 1,043 to 574 Conservative majority of 1872 was turned around into a 1,577 to 1,066 Liberal triumph.
Now confident of victory, Mackenzie capitalized on West Toronto to call an immediate general election. In February 1874 the Conservatives were reduced to sixty-seven MPs in the 206-seat House of Commons. In some respects, Macdonald’s party did surprisingly well. In Ontario, although thirteen Liberals were returned by acclamation, the Conservatives polled almost half the votes across the contested ridings, a good base for a comeback. However, they retained only twenty-two seats in the province: Macdonald himself won Kingston by just thirty-eight votes, and was promptly hit by a petition to unseat him for corruption. His own government had tightened election laws so that candidates could be disqualified even if they were conveniently ignorant of corrupt actions by supporters — and the petition alleged seventy-one of them! If barred from representing Kingston, Macdonald would have found it hard to find another riding — and he might even have been disqualified from sitting in Parliament altogether. When the case was heard in November 1873, he attempted damage limitation, acknow-ledging that “indiscreet” expenditure by his campaign manager, Alexander Campbell, rendered his election invalid. Campbell had prudently decamped to the United States and could not be summoned to give evidence. The manoeuvre saved Macdonald from outright disqualification, but he had to contest Kingston again, scraping in by seventeen votes.
Sir John A. Macdonald’s career had now reached his lowest point. Reviewing the political scene in March 1874, Lord Dufferin thought it tragic that Macdonald’s “creditable” public service “should have ended in such humiliation.” Macdonald himself seemed unsure of his future. “My fighting days are over, I think,” he told Tupper. But at about the same time, he gave the journalist N.F. Davin a lively sketch of the future transcontinental Canada, adding “in his own emphatic way,” “That is the time when I should like to lead.”
During 1874–75,