The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged MartinЧитать онлайн книгу.
Scott was court-martialled for insubordination — and sentenced to death. Unwisely believing that it would strengthen his authority, Riel confirmed the execution. On March 4, 1870, Scott was shot by firing squad, although there were rumours that he was still alive when dumped in his coffin, and that his body was contemptuously thrown into an icy river. Ontario honoured him as a slaughtered Orangeman. The Catholic bishop, Alexandre-Antonin Taché, reached Red River four days after Scott’s killing, bearing Macdonald’s verbal assurance (not quite a binding promise) of a general amnesty — but Ontario would not forget what it regarded as cold-blooded murder.
By late April, 1870, Parliament in Ottawa was waiting for the prime minister to introduce legislation to create the new province. But, suddenly, Macdonald’s Commons attendance became “very irregular”: reports that he was “indisposed” caused “much comment and speculation.” Tired and in poor health, he had gone on a bender. News even filtered back to England where one politician noted that, generally, “no especial notice” was taken in Ottawa of Macdonald’s twice-yearly binges. The complaint on this occasion was not that he was drunk for a whole week but rather “that he should not have waited till the urgent business … was disposed of.”
The Globe was less philosophical. In a leader headed “A Foul Disgrace,” it charged that Macdonald had “again yielded to the temptation of drink.” No other country would tolerate its prime minister “staggering” around the parliamentary bar, “babbling in maudlin intoxication” as his colleagues steered him to safety. Since “Sir John A. Macdonald’s drinking fits usually last for some little time,” nobody knew how long he would “leave the affairs of the country to look after themselves.” Two days later, the inebriate managed to introduce the Manitoba Bill but the Globe kept up a sustained denunciation that few politicians could survive.
Suddenly, it was not Macdonald’s career that was threatened, but his life. He had returned to his desk after a Cabinet meeting on Friday afternoon, May 6, 1870. From his adjoining office, Hewitt Bernard heard a strange noise and found Canada’s prime minister writhing in agony on the floor. Macdonald’s underlying health problem was finally diagnosed: he had been felled by a gallstone, much of it still trapped in his system. With a barely detectable pulse, John A. Macdonald seemed to be dying. Parliament adjourned; an Ottawa newspaper typeset an eight-column obituary. Agnes converted Macdonald’s office into a sickroom where he remained for almost three weeks, with bursts of pain so severe that morphine injections were required. Recovery was slow. Early in June, he was carried the short distance to the apartment of the Speaker of the Commons, and on fine days he was wheeled to the cliff overlooking the Ottawa River. The first, dangerous experiments in gallbladder surgery lay a decade in the future, so his diet had to be tightly controlled. Limiting him to half an oyster as a treat, his doctor sternly reminded him that “the hopes of Canada” depended upon Macdonald’s survival: Sir John A. was amused at the hopes of Canada depending upon half an oyster.
Macdonald’s illness reminded Canadians that they appreciated him and needed him. Luther Holton, who had often clashed with him, expressed “the highest admiration” and “the warmest personal regard” for the stricken prime minister. As the Montreal Gazette sympathetically observed, “few have any notion of the wear and tear of mind, and downright fag work” of Cabinet ministers “from early morn till late at night. It is a constant strain.” Macdonald seemed “to divine by the intuition of genius what he could and what he could not do” in managing Parliament, returning good humoured replies to the most insulting provocations.
In July, Macdonald escaped the heat of Ottawa for a summer of convalescence on Prince Edward Island, which was still not part of the Dominion. Perhaps the journey stimulated memories of travelling with Isabella in her illness, while the route retraced that optimistic mission just six years earlier to woo the Maritimers into Confederation at Charlottetown. He spent two months incommunicado in the Gulf, but likely had informal discussions with pro-Confederation politician John Hamilton Gray, who welcomed him to the island. In late September, feeling “nearly as strong as before my illness,” Macdonald returned to a “gratifying” welcome in Montreal. His resolve to take things easy “for some months” did not last long: the following April, he admitted that “after my long illness, I was overwhelmed with arrears of work.”
As Macdonald faced death, admirers became aware of his losses in the Commercial Bank crash. Toronto businessman David Macpherson organized a testimonial fund, to ensure that Agnes would not be left a penniless widow. Macdonald was not unique in being the beneficiary of such generosity: D’Arcy McGee and Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie also received public subscriptions, and even the ultra-virtuous George Brown accepted supporters’ cash to develop the Globe. Formally launched in November 1870, the campaign raised two-thirds of its $100,000 target. To safeguard his wife and child — not least from Macdonald’s own financial recklessness — the fund was controlled by trustees. “All the men whom John A. has helped into office are expected to subscribe,” sneered the Globe. In fact, the indirect relationship spared Macdonald from conflict-of-interest issues. Far from encouraging “a lively sense of favours to come,” he took a tough line with Macpherson over the Pacific Railway soon afterwards. Indeed, the big loser from Macdonald’s health crisis was the Globe itself, furious — as a rival newspaper put it — that its target had been “snatched from the very mouth of the grave.” Twice in four years, it had broken the taboos and denounced his weakness for the bottle. Twice Macdonald had escaped. He still had to tackle his alcohol problem, but it was now less likely that journalists would risk raising the issue.
Despite the wave of goodwill, Macdonald’s political problems remained challenging. While he was ill, a delegation from British Columbia had arrived, via California, to agree terms for admission to Confederation as Canada’s sixth province. During the negotiations, carried on just yards from Macdonald’s sickroom, Cartier offered to build a transcontinental railway. Macdonald would have approved. The Red River crisis had persuaded him that the Americans would “do all they can” to grab the Northwest, and Canadians must “show unmistakeably our resolve to build the Pacific Railway.” But the expansive Cartier added a condition that the cautious Macdonald later downplayed: the railway would be started within two years and finished within ten. This timetable was unrealistic: no route had been surveyed, and nobody knew how to build through the mountains. For British Columbians, of course, Cartier’s promise was engraved in stone, and would cause problems in the years ahead.
Macdonald’s weakness in his home province was greater than ever, and his coalition strategy was coming apart. Of the three Ontario Reformers appointed to Cabinet in 1867, Fergusson-Blair had died (aged only fifty-two), Howland had become Ontario’s lieutenant-governor and McDougall had gone to the Red River and off the political rails. Opponents gibed that the stray Reformers Macdonald gobbled up since 1854 rarely lasted long, and now he found it hard to attract replacements. In 1869, he resorted to the ploy of recruiting Francis Hincks, who had been out of politics (indeed, mostly out of Canada) since ceasing to be premier fifteen years earlier. Macdonald explained away his 1854 slating of Hincksite corruption as a criticism of his Cabinet, not of Hincks himself. Appointed to the demanding portfolio of finance minister at the age of sixty-one, Hincks had little energy for political campaigning, and his resurrection struck few chords among Reformers.
The addition of the veteran Hincks cost Macdonald the support of thirty-three-year-old Richard Cartwright, nephew of John S. Cartwright, the Kingston Tory of his early years. Although a Macdonald supporter since his first election in 1863, the younger Cartwright could not swallow Hincks. Cartwright’s defection highlighted another weakness. Macdonald and Campbell, the only two Ontario Conservatives in Cabinet, were both from Kingston, now a far smaller city than Toronto. In 1866, Macdonald had told an importunate supporter that “as soon as Toronto returns Conservative members, it will get Conservative appointments, but not before.” Toronto had indeed elected hungry Conservatives to the first Dominion Parliament, and Cartwright had no chance of ever becoming the third Cabinet minister from Ontario’s fifth largest city. In 1873, in a logical trajectory, Cartwright became Kingston’s minister in a Liberal Cabinet.
The alliance of the two Macdonalds was also under strain. In 1869, a revolt in the Ontario legislature forced Sandfield to support a motion condemning Nova Scotia’s “better terms,” but he was still widely condemned as the puppet