The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin

declaring it was “a great mistake in politics ... to resist when resistance is hopeless.” However, he turned the tables on the Grits by granting the churches a favourable good deal. Britain insisted on safeguarding those clergy already receiving incomes from the reserves. Macdonald proposed to commute these payments, offering sixteen years’ payment as a lump sum. However, he refused to buy out individual clerics, dealing instead with the churches that employed them. Far from depriving the Anglicans of State support, as Grits demanded, Macdonald handed them almost one million dollars, while the Presbyterians netted over $400,000 — permanent cash endowments replacing an unpopular land fund. He had captured the opposition’s policy, and turned it inside out. If anything, the dodge was too clever. When Macdonald backed Confederation a decade later, many suspected his sincerity.

      In May 1855, late in the parliamentary session, Macdonald pulled another trick. A bill passed through Parliament extending the privileges of Catholic schools in Upper Canada. Many politicians from the upper province had already gone home, and the measure was passed by French Canadian votes against Protestant objections. Resenting Lower Canadian interference in their local affairs, the Grits stepped up their demands for rep. by pop., a campaign that placed the two sections on a potential collision course.

      Soon afterwards, the alternation of the capital back to Toronto enabled Macdonald to reunite his family, moving his wife and son from Kingston. The upheaval was too much for Isabella. In January 1856 she was so desperately ill that her new Toronto doctor warned she might die. Tory John Hillyard Cameron was Macdonald’s party rival, but his wife stepped in to become Hugh John’s child-minder. Coupled with his workload and money problems, Macdonald found his family crisis too much to bear. He had always been fond of a drink, but now he developed a full-scale alcohol problem. Early in 1856, his secretary twice noted that Macdonald was on a “spree,” binge drinking to escape his worries. Soon, his weakness became a political embarrassment.

      Late on February 26, John A. Macdonald, obviously drunk, berated George Brown in the Assembly. Even hardened politicians were shocked by his virulent language as he branded Brown “a convicted liar” who had “falsified evidence” to the Penitentiary Commission. Pale with fury, Brown demanded an investigation to clear his name. The next day, Macdonald tried to explain away comments made “in the heat of the debate” although, lawyer-like, he would neither “admit nor deny” whatever he was alleged to have said. “I am carrying on a war against that scoundrel George Brown,” he told Helen, but only his mother could believe he was winning. Macdonald escaped formal censure since the committee of enquiry was stacked in his favour, but he failed to prove his most serious charges. Brown’s enmity was now implacable.

      Fortunately, Macdonald won the regard of his new Hincksite allies. Indeed, they wanted him to replace Sir Allan MacNab. Although only fifty-eight, MacNab was immobilized by gout and seemed a relic of bygone days. In May 1856, the Hincksite ministers walked out of Cabinet. Macdonald was desperately torn: MacNab was his leader, but he needed those ex-Reformers to stop the Tories from recapturing the party. Reluctantly, he also resigned, forcing MacNab into retirement. The fallen premier ridiculed “progressive conservatives or liberal progressives or what they call it.” Macdonald defended himself, pointing out that MacNab had largely discarded “the conservative element” in forming his coalition government. But Macdonald made no reply when an opposition member sarcastically asked “whether, in future, he will call himself a Conservative or a Reformer?” John A. Macdonald emerged as Upper Canada leader in the reconstructed Cabinet, but at the cost of seeming devious and disloyal.

      The alternating capital system, moving the administrative machine every four years, made no sense. Unfortunately, the Assembly could not agree on a permanent seat of government. Party discipline vanished, members voted for their local city and then combined to block more distant alternatives. In March 1857, the government decided to dodge the issue by referring the issue to Queen Victoria. The governor general, Sir Edmund Head, sent three-point secret advice to London: accept the request; delay the reply until after the next election; choose Ottawa. It proved a time bomb for Macdonald.

      In July 1857, Macdonald made his third visit to Britain, his first as part of a government delegation. Isabella was “tolerably well” after her health crisis of the previous year: his secretary found her “very talkative.” Indeed, in March 1857, she seemed in “very unusual health and strength.” John A. Macdonald would not have crossed the ocean had there been a serious risk that he might return to find his wife dead and buried. Indeed, Isabella was well enough for her husband to plan on taking her on a New England vacation before escorting her to Kingston. There she would stay during the forthcoming elections, returning to Toronto when the new Assembly met.

      The delegation to London failed to interest the British government in a railway linking Quebec with Halifax, but the visit to London gave Macdonald a valuable opportunity to think about British North America in a broader perspective. There were confidential discussions about the Hudson's Bay Company. Its trading monopoly west of the lakes would lapse in 1859, and the tacit assumption was that Canada would eventually inherit the prairies. A Nova Scotian delegation was also pressing for the Halifax-Quebec railway, and its leader, Premier James W. Johnston, favoured British North American union. Johnston probably persuaded Macdonald that Confederation would provide the framework to resolve Canada’s internal divisions and support westward expansion — and that Nova Scotia would willingly join. But it was still an idea to be handled cautiously in Canada. The Globe exploded when it discovered from a Nova Scotian report that the delegates to Britain had discussed “a Union of the British North American Provinces! Who authorized Mr. Macdonald, in the name of ... the people of Canada, to proceed on such an embassy?”

      “I am ... in good health and spirits & enjoying myself amazingly,” Macdonald reported from England. He visited relatives, attended the opera, and when he became “tired of London,” dashed over to Paris. Early in September, he returned to Canada, bearing luxury gifts for Isabella and a child’s kilt to remind Hugh John of his Scottish heritage — and prepared to fight his fifth general election. Although ministries in the province of Canada were named after both sectional leaders, one co-premier was always the senior figure: Macdonald was the junior partner in the Taché-Macdonald Cabinet. With elections approaching, the respected Étienne Taché decided to bow out. He remained in the upper house, but George-Étienne Cartier, a combative Montrealer, succeeded him as Lower Canada leader. John A. Macdonald led the new Macdonald-Cartier Cabinet. On November 26, 1857, he became — in the grandiloquent terminology of a Kingston newspaper — “Prime Minister of Canada.” At forty-two, Macdonald had achieved the highest office in his adopted country. It was the start of a nine-month nightmare that almost torpedoed his political career.

      The new premier took over a tired ministry that had run out of ideas. He called an immediate election and, lacking eye-catching new policies, decided to campaign on the government’s record. By contrast, Reformers energetically denounced Catholic schools and demanded representation by population. Many Conservatives felt pressured to agree that Upper Canada should have a larger say in running the province. Macdonald cynically advised one supporter to couple the issue with “extent of territory,” to give country districts a counterweight against Toronto and Montreal. Farmers should be warned that urban politicians would tax them for big city projects. “These are good bunkum arguments.” He also claimed that George Brown could never deliver representation by population, since he could only form a ministry if he found Lower Canadian allies, who would veto his plans. But Macdonald’s specious arguments could not resist what he called the “fanatical” Protestant campaign.

      Until 1874, general elections were spread over several weeks. As premier, Macdonald chose the order in which ridings polled, and he planned to raise his supporters’ morale by beginning with his own return by acclamation at Kingston. He was “much disgusted” when a rival candidate spoiled his walkover. Although dismissed by Macdonald as a “fool,” John Shaw was a local businessman and prominent member of the Orange Order. Shaw condemned Macdonald for failing to force the Grand Trunk to bring its line to Kingston’s waterfront “before granting the aid they supplicated for.” Of course, Macdonald could not hold a major provincial project to ransom for the benefit of his own riding, but Shaw’s criticism illustrated the problems of combining advocacy of Kingston’s interests with his responsibilities as provincial leader.