John A

by Richard J. Gwyn

  Macdonald set up his first office in rented quarters in Kingston’s Quarry Street. A year later, early in 1836, both he and his entire family moved into a substantial house, two and a half storeys high and of roughcut limestone, on Rideau Street.*16 Within this residence, he had both his bedroom and his study in the attic, confirming that he was already a success as a lawyer and was now effectively the head of the family, in place of the diminished and scarcely more than tolerated Hugh Macdonald.

  Three years later, Macdonald moved both his office and the family home to the more fashionable Queen Street. In this office, helped by his clerks Campbell and Mowat, he busied himself with lucrative but tedious work, such as chasing down unpaid bills and searching titles. And then, abruptly, he gave it all up—not the law itself, but the kind of law he was engaged in. For two years, from 1837, Macdonald devoted himself entirely to the practice of criminal law.

  A youthful Oliver Mowat, later Macdonald’s implacable opponent as premier of Ontario, but at this time a clerk in his law office.

  His reasons for the switch can only be guessed at, because no record of his motive remains. However, a plausible explanation is easy to construct. As a criminal lawyer who took on dramatic cases, Macdonald got himself noticed well beyond the narrow confines of the Kingston business community. He was operating now in the arena where he would spend by far the greatest part of his life—the court of public opinion. And while there he was learning the arts of argument and of persuasion that would serve him all his political life. For a lawyer new in practice and still aged only twenty-two, he was taking a short-term gamble on a long-term goal, particularly given that he lost almost as many cases as he won.

  Macdonald’s first case involved William Brass, the son of a respected Loyalist accused of the horrendous crime of rape of an eight-year-old girl.*17 The sentence for such a crime was death. Working with an experienced courtroom lawyer, Macdonald offered a triple defence: Brass was not guilty; he was the victim of a conspiracy; or he had been insane at the time the crime was committed. His legal opponent was William Draper, then solicitor general and later premier of the United Province of Canada. While Macdonald lost the case, the Kingston British Whig reported that “Mr. John A. Mcdonald [sic]…made a very able defence in favour of the unhappy prisoner.” At Brass’s execution, the rope proved to be too long and the wretched man fell to the ground from the gibbet, landing in his own coffin. He screamed out, “You see. I am innocent; this gallows was not meant for me.” The sentence was nevertheless carried out, the second time with a rope of the proper length.

  Macdonald won his next case. Peter Anderson was charged with the murder of a friend, James Cummings, whom he had followed into the woods with a rifle after a quarrel between them. Later, Cummings was found dead from a rifle wound. Macdonald handled this case alone. After extensive cross-examination of Crown and defence witnesses, he was able to argue that Anderson had been seen two miles from the scene of the crime at the time it was committed. To the surprise of the local newspapers, the jury rendered a not-guilty verdict. The British Whig praised Macdonald for “an excellent address.” Campbell, who was then Macdonald’s student at law, later observed in his memoir that Macdonald had won the jury over by his “humour and strong liking for anecdote more than for his professional knowledge.”*18

  His third case attracted much wider attention. In 1837 William Lyon Mackenzie rose up against the colonial administration and staged a brief tragicomic uprising in the capital of York. In Kingston, eight of his supporters assembled with a few weapons, but when they realized that no one else was going to join them they returned home. Still, they had taken up arms against the Queen. Macdonald took the bold course of appealing directly to the judge for an acquittal of the rebels on the grounds that the self-incriminating affidavits the defendants had signed after their arrest had been executed illegally by a police magistrate. The judge agreed and directed the jury to acquit the eight accused.

  Less dramatic in its legal consequence but of considerable political consequence was Macdonald’s next case involving a prison warden, John Ashley, who had been arrested without a warrant and held for eight hours by Colonel Dundas, the commander of Fort Henry, on suspicion that he had provided the tools that had enabled fifteen rebel prisoners to escape by burrowing through the jail’s four-foot-thick stone walls. On being released, Ashley brought a thousand-pound suit for damages. Macdonald argued that nothing justified Ashley’s being arrested in this way and, in any case, that he was innocent. There was some evidence to show that other people had provided the tools. The judge instructed the jury to take account of the fact that the colonel had, at the time, acted in good faith. The jury disagreed and awarded Ashley damages of two hundred pounds. This time the Kingston Chronicle judged that Macdonald had displayed “much ingenuity and legal knowledge.”

  The case that in retrospect reveals the most about Macdonald’s attitudes to the law occurred early in 1839, when he took up a cause that directly threatened any future political interests he might have. The 1837 rebellion had stirred up support in the United States, particularly along the northern border of New York State after Mackenzie fled there for safety. American citizens eager to liberate Canadians from political oppression set up a number of so-called Hunters’ Lodges to work for the cause. In November 1838 a contingent of Hunters boarded the steamship United States, with two schooners in tow behind it, and set off for Prescott on the Canadian side. Some 180 of them landed at Windmill Point not far from Prescott. After assuring his men that a much larger force was right behind them, the expedition’s leader got into a small boat and sped away across the lake. Those remaining took possession of a stone windmill and, led by Nils Gustaf von Schoultz, dug in there and waited for developments.

  Schoultz was a mysterious figure. By origin a Swede, he’d fought with the Poles defending Warsaw against the Russians, was captured and then escaped (some said in exchange for becoming a Russian spy). He made it to Italy, where he married the daughter of a British general, then abandoned her and fled to the United States, entering into relationships with at least two other women who didn’t know he was already married. After reading about Canadians’ need to be liberated from British oppression, Schoultz joined the Hunters. He was attractive and brave, but befuddled. The local militia and British regulars soon surrounded the windmill. For two days the invaders remained untouched behind the stones walls of their redoubt. Then heavy cannon were brought up, forcing them to surrender. The death of a Canadian lieutenant in an early attack on the windmill, and the rumour that his body had been deliberately mutilated, made it difficult for the soldiers to protect their prisoners as they marched them to jail through Kingston.

  Legally, the prisoners were without hope. Their trial was to be a military court-martial on the grounds they had made an invasion into Canada, and as a consequence no civilian defence lawyer could argue on their behalf. Worse, because of the roused public opinion, no local lawyer wanted even to advise the prisoners on how best to defend themselves. In a display of personal courage and out of a conviction that everyone deserved a defence, Macdonald stepped forward to help the first two men to be tried, Schoultz and Daniel George, the expedition’s paymaster. Macdonald suggested a series of arguments to George, one being that there was no proof he had ever fired a gun. George was nevertheless found guilty. Schoultz, for his part, declared himself guilty. Standing stiff and proud before his fellow officers, he explained that the lieutenant’s body had been mutilated by pigs, not by his men; that wounded Canadian soldiers had been cared for; and that he now realized Canadians were not oppressed. The one thing Macdonald could do for Schoultz was help him compose his will; when Schoultz said he wanted to include in it a payment for the service, Macdonald refused the offer. The two prisoners died bravely.

  One aspect of the case had lasting relevance. Schoultz and the others were tried under a 1352 statute of Edward III that defined as treason an act committed by a non-citizen who “most wickedly, maliciously and
traitorously, did levy and make war against our Said Sovereign.” Macdonald tried to defend his clients against the application of that law. Almost exactly fifty years after the Hunters’ case, this archaic statute would be deployed once again in Canada. On that occasion, the allegedly treasonable act was committed by a Canadian who had become an American citizen. The person responsible for the decision to prosecute the offence under the old statute was the prime minister. He was Macdonald, by then Sir John A. The defendant was Louis Riel.

  Macdonald’s last appearance as a defence lawyer occurred late in 1839, when he represented a Mohawk Indian, Brandt Brandt, charged with murdering a fellow Mohawk. Macdonald defended him with the aid of an interpreter. He cross-examined the Crown’s principal witness, showing that the deed had been done in a house in the dark, when everyone there was drunk, making it impossible to be certain who had wielded the knife. The judge directed the jury that the facts could not sustain a verdict of manslaughter, so a conviction for murder was the only option. The jury nevertheless decided on manslaughter, and the judge sentenced Brandt to just six months in jail. Again, the Chronicle judged Macdonald’s defence as “ingenious.”

  Macdonald never again appeared in the courts, except in civil actions. The immediate reason was the sudden death, on September 10, 1839, of the prominent lawyer Henry Cassady, who was also mayor of Kingston and solicitor to the Commercial Bank of the Midland District. At the age of just twenty-four, Macdonald took over many of Cassady’s accounts and was chosen to succeed him in the prime post of solicitor for the bank. It’s also easy to guess that, by now, Macdonald judged he had gained all the attention and publicity he needed for his legal career—or for another one.

  Henceforth, Macdonald concentrated entirely on corporate matters. Though a major part of his legal work derived from the Commercial Bank accounts, he began to extend his reach to nearby towns such as Belleville and, eventually, to the financial centre of Montreal. Initially, most of his work involved debt collection and the foreclosure of mortgages, but he began to develop new lines of business. As early as 1842, he went into real estate, buying and selling lots and parcels of land in Kingston; he did well at first, but later all his gains were wiped out by a real estate crash. He eventually became a director of no less than a dozen Kingston companies, involved in everything from insurance to canals. In 1842 he used the opportunity of a trip to Britain to make legal and commercial contacts there; they eventually paid off in his becoming solicitor for the London-based Trust and Loan Company of Upper Canada.

  In 1841 his father died, at the comparatively young age of fifty-nine. He was now officially head of the family and responsible for the financial security of his mother and two sisters, both unmarried. The strain took its toll. Beginning in 1840, and off and on through 1841, Macdonald was stricken by some ailment that, while never really identified, as was common then, left him weak and listless. His doctor thought that a long holiday, beginning with a sea trip, might do wonders for his health. That could mean only Britain; much more probably by coincidence rather than calculation, the prescription worked.

  Macdonald sailed from Boston in January 1842 in the company of two friends, Thomas Wilson and Edward Wanklyn. Before leaving Kingston, he got into a high-stakes card game known as loo with some business associates and, over three nights, won the astounding sum of two thousand dollars. Afterwards, he vowed never again to gamble—and he never did, except once, when he made a throwaway bet at a horse-race and won.

  Macdonald’s stay in Britain, which eventually extended to six months, proved to be the most important holiday he ever took in his life. During it, he fell in love with the woman who would become his first wife. He also fell in love with England. More exactly, he came to understand the reasons for the love he already possessed for British culture, style and accomplishments. And radiant and compelling they were: a glowing young woman now sat on the throne; the glory of the defeat of Napoleon still reverberated in the recent past; the Royal Navy policed the seven seas; London, with its incredible population of more than two million, was easily the largest and richest city in the world; British parliamentary and legal systems were regarded as models just about everywhere—except in France, and, as didn’t really count, in the United States. Macdonald’s anglophilia did not begin on this trip, but what he saw and experienced during his months there at the still-impressionable age of twenty-seven deepened his lifelong conviction that whatever was British was best—both in itself and also for Canada.

  Of all the letters Macdonald wrote over the years to members of his family (of which, sadly, comparatively few have survived),*19 the letter he sent to his mother from London on March 3, 1842, stands apart from the rest by its sheer, uninhibited joy. He’s excited and dazzled by the city, by its gargantuan buildings and affluence, and by himself. He’s like the clever boy not quite certain of his gifts and aching for the approval of the one person whose applause, or censure, he really cares about. So he tells her everything.

  “You would be surprised at the breakfasts I eat,” he wrote. “Wilson laughs as he sees roll after roll disappear and eggs and bacon after roll. My dinners are equally satisfactory to myself…. Now only fancy, my commencing my dinner with a sole fried, with shrimp sauce, demolishing a large steak, and polishing off with bread and cheese and a quart of London Stout.” He told her he was getting on well with the girls. Through a Lord De La Warr he had obtained “an order to see the Queen’s private apartments” at Windsor Castle. He didn’t go alone: “I had a very pretty girl, Margaret Wanklyn [a relative of his other companion from Canada], on my arm, to whom the scene was also new,” he enthused, “so we were agreeably engaged in comparing our impressions. Our ideas sympathized wonderfully.” He also described his networking successes. “I have formed acquaintances and dined with two or three lawyers here by whose assistance I have seen all the great guns of the law.” Among them, as he looked down from the gallery in the House of Lords, were “the great Law Lords, Lyndhurst, Brougham, Campbell and Cottenham. At the Guildhall, I saw Lord Denman and Sir Nicholas Tindal.” Later, he went to the House of Commons, where he spotted “Peel, Goudham, Lord John Russell, Lord Stanley, O’Connell, Duncombe, Walkley.” He had plans to go on to the Tower and dine with two members of Parliament. Still, he hadn’t forgotten his domestic commitments: he would buy, as requested, damask, and “paper hangings and some chimney ornaments.”

  Macdonald gave to and received from his mother, Helen, pure unconditional love, right up to her death and then beyond; he was buried beside her in Kingston’s Cataraqui Cemetery. In different ways, their lives were hard, and they both deserved this pure intercourse between them.

  Yet, as so often with Macdonald, nothing was ever simple. He worshipped his mother, but he didn’t copy her. She was deeply pious; he most certainly was not. She came from a long line of military men; he, as was most unusual among public figures of the day, never held an officer’s commission in the militia and always regarded the military with a distinct skepticism. In the end, Macdonald did his own thing in his own way.

  During his long stay in Britain, Macdonald travelled widely: to Manchester (where he bought wallpaper and the damask, and also a kitchen stove and iron railings); over to Chester to see a son of the family’s now-deceased patron, Colonel Macpherson; on up to Scotland; and then a side trip to the Isle of Man to see yet more relatives. It was fully summer by the time he returned home.

  Macdonald went back to the grind of law. His Kingston properties did exceptionally well for a time, until the real estate crash. Confident of his business skills nevertheless, Macdonald eventually bought and sold land all over the province, in Guelph and Toronto and Peterborough and as far away as Sarnia. At one time, he and Campbell jointly owned a steamship, though it promptly sank. Macdonald did better with a steam yacht that he managed to resell at a profit. Surprisingly, in view of his future history, Macdonald almost never invested in railways.*20

  Even as he was trying to become a tycoon, though, friends no
ticed a distinct change in the line of his interests. He asked one of them what he should do to prepare himself for political office should he ever seek it. Back came the reply, “Join the Orange Lodge and become an alderman.” He asked Tom Wilson, his companion on the trip to Britain, about the financial side of political life. Back came the sound advice: “Secure a handsome independence first and then give as much attention as you please to the public weal.”

  FIVE

  A Conservative in a Conservative Country

  In a young country like Canada, I am of the opinion that it is of more consequence to endeavour to develop its resources and improve its physical advantages than to waste the time of the legislature and the money of the people on abstract and theoretical questions of government. John A. Macdonald

  Macdonald took the advice and joined the Orange Lodge; to cover all bases, he later joined the Masonic Lodge and the Oddfellows. In February 1843 he announced that he would contest a vacant seat for alderman in Kingston’s Fourth Ward. Helped by the Chronicle’s praise for his “well-known talents and high character,” he won easily. As word of his new diligence in civic duties spread, he was elected president of Kingston’s influential St. Andrew’s Society. He was also an active supporter of the campaign to establish a university, Queen’s, at Kingston.