The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881 (43 page)

When the debate began on the Canadian Pacific Railway Act Amendment Bill, at the time of its second reading on April 4, 1878, Macdonald and his followers were ready with sharpened claws. It had scarcely been launched when George Kirkpatrick, a locomotive manufacturer who was Member for Frontenac, pointed out that the group seeking the lease were proprietors of the reviled Kittson Line of steamboats which “had ground down the people of Manitoba.” A railway to Winnipeg, Kirkpatrick pointed out, would simply increase their monopoly. But the real opening guns were fired by Riel’s old adversary, Dr. John Christian Schultz. Schultz came armed with facts and figures. He revealed the Kittson Line’s interest in the newly organized St. Paul railroad and showed how Smith and his partners had acquired a huge land grant in Minnesota. Then he referred to repeated reports in the St. Paul
Pioneer Press
that the Pembina lease was a
fait accompli
. If the Prime Minister was right, he said, and no deal had been made, then Smith and his partners “must be using the grossest falsehoods” to strangle competition. If they succeeded, “Manitoba may expect no mercy in the way of reduced freight.”

Another
M.P
. (and a future prime minister), Mackenzie Bowell, pressed the attack on Smith when he warned the Government that there might be persons connected with the St. Paul line “who had political influence which they used to their own advantage and to the detriment of this country.”

In the acrimonious set-to which followed, Smith never at any
time admitted to his own substantial interest in the company, even when pressed and taunted by the Opposition – though it was clear to all that he was deeply and personally involved. He spoke as one who had inside knowledge: “Some gentlemen of enterprise and means were at length induced to look into the matter and he believed they had been able to make arrangements by which they would be prepared to open up communication with the North West.” He did not believe that they would charge rates higher than if there were competition. They were prepared to act “in the most fair way possible to the people of the North West.” As for the Kittson Line, “not having been in any way personally interested in that company, even to the extent of sixpence, he had no right to have any knowledge of its internal affairs.” This was, strictly speaking, true. Smith’s shares, held by Kittson, had belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company and he had turned them over to his successor when he retired from the commissionership in 1874 to take another post. But whether he had the right or not, he was certainly intimately informed about the line’s affairs, especially as the firm was about to merge all its assets with the newly purchased St. Paul railway, in which Smith was a major partner.

Schultz returned to the attack. Smith had made repeated references to “certain persons” and “parties” involved in the St. Paul line.

“Who are they?” Schultz asked.

“The hon. gentleman says he has the authority of certain persons for making a statement and, when asked, he will not say who they are,” Macdonald broke in.

“I do not think it necessary to do so,” Smith replied.

The debate grew warmer and more personal. Mackenzie Bowell put his finger on Smith’s tenderest spot when, referring to the St. Paul report, he declared that if what was stated in the paragraph was a matter of fact then the House was witnessing “the extraordinary spectacle of the champion of this proposed lease using his power and influence as a very humble and obedient supporter of the Government to secure to himself and his partners in this transaction the advantage of a lease.” Smith, Bowell continued, had but one object: “…  to secure the lease which the Government ask power to grant this company, thereby benefiting himself individually.” He did not believe the line should be leased; running rights should be granted over it to any line which the government could control. There should be no monopoly.

J. J. C. Abbott, when he was both a Member of Parliament and
solicitor for Sir Hugh Allan’s Canada Pacific company, had been careful to absent himself from all debates dealing with the railway – a practice he followed again when he became solicitor for the
CPR
in 1880. But Smith gave no indication that, as a Member of Parliament, he was involved in a clear conflict of interest. He replied obliquely to Bowell’s taunts. He felt “humble, so very humble, under the correction of the hon. member”; but all that was being discussed was the government’s power to lease the line; when a specific agreement came before the House, as it must, they could approve it or not. He had no desire to use any influence one way or another.

Now it was Macdonald’s turn to unleash a cutting attack on his old enemy:

“There was seen the indecent spectacle of an honourable gentleman coming into the House as an advocate and pressing this lease in his own interest … he advocated more warmly and strongly this Bill, which was in his own interest, and which would put money in his own pocket, than the Minister who introduced it. The hon. gentleman admitted he was a partner in this concern, and the House should know something about it.”

“I have admitted no such thing,” Smith retorted; but Macdonald pointed out that he had not denied it, “and there is no doubt that, if he could have done so, he would.”

So great was Macdonald’s antipathy to Smith at this time that in the course of the debate he actually appeared to champion the cause of the Northern Pacific, as an alternative to or competitor of the St. Paul line, on the Pembina Branch. This was the same Northern Pacific, reorganized after the Jay Cooke debacle, whose attempts to move into Canada by this very route he had once so stoutly resisted.

It was inevitable that the bill should pass; the Government’s majority saw to that. But it was a different story in the appointed Senate, where the Tories still had a preponderance of votes. The Senate, in effect, threw the bill out and there is no doubt it did so because of Smith’s involvement.

On May 9, the day before the end of the session, Mackenzie took occasion to reprimand the Senate for its actions. This allowed Macdonald to return to the attack. The Senate’s action, he said, put a stop to the Government’s bargain with Smith “to make him a rich man, and to pay for his servile support.”

Macdonald’s sally provoked, in the closing moments of what
turned out to be the final session of the Mackenzie parliament, the most explosive and perhaps the most harrowing scene in the history of the House of Commons.

Smith was not in the House on May 9 but he read an account of Macdonald’s attack in the press. The following day the House was scheduled to dissolve. The members were in their seats at 3 p.m., awaiting the traditional knock of the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod when Smith, brandishing the Ottawa
Free Press
in his hand, arose on a question of privilege.

He denied that he had ever admitted being a member of the St. Paul syndicate.

“Even had I done so, I think that hon. gentleman had no right to speak of me as he did on that occasion. Whatever I have done in this respect I have done in the most open manner possible.”

Smith said that as a Member from Manitoba, he had laboured earnestly for a railway connection for two or three years; now that it had become possible, the Opposition was putting every obstacle in its way. He declared that he had never asked the Macdonald government for a favour, that he had never “received a sixpence of public money … either for myself or any other persons connected with me.” Then he went on to discuss Tupper’s attack on him at Or ange ville.

“I think it was at what is called the Orangeville picnic. I know very little of these picnics, I have not followed them closely, nor indeed have I followed them at all. I was otherwise, I trust, honestly and more properly occupied in the pursuit of my duties.”

Macdonald broke in: “More profitably engaged, no doubt!”

“I trust so,” said Smith smoothly. “More profitably and more properly.” He began his reference to Tupper again; but Tupper, seeing Black Rod at the door, realized that in a few moments Smith would have had his say and he would have no opportunity to answer. The Cumberland War Horse had no intention of allowing that. He rose at once on a point of order, forced Smith to his seat and asked the Speaker if it were not an abuse of the rights of Parliament to bring up an old matter, since Smith had had three months during the session to refer to it. Tupper charged that Smith’s tactics were “to shelter himself from the answer he would otherwise get.”

“And the punishment he would otherwise get,” Macdonald threw in.

“I had no opportunity,” Smith protested.

But Tupper was warming to his task: “And a more cowardly thing I have never seen ventured in this House,” he cried.

Smith began again. Again Tupper interrupted: “Anything more cowardly I never heard of … I have sat here for three months and no reference has been made to this by the honourable gentleman or anybody else.”

The murmurs on both sides of the House became an uproar as members shouted for order.

Tupper continued to speak, but Smith interrupted: “The charge of being a coward I throw back at the honourable gentleman.”

“Let the poor man go on,” Macdonald advised his colleague. Smith then read the account of Tupper’s attack upon him into the record and made a positive denial of the charge that he had “held back and sat on the fence.” Both parties had approached him, Smith said, and he had made it very clear what his conscience dictated at the time of the Pacific debate.

Tupper was now bellowing across the floor in the face of repeated cries of “Order!” that Smith had telegraphed his support of the Government back in 1873. Smith denied it. “I do deny it. I never telegraphed I would be here and support the Government. Never. Never.”

Now Macdonald tried to break in and, over more cries, shouted that Smith did not dare listen to an explanation. Smith kept going. He had, he said, expected a different amendment – one in which the Government frankly confessed its faults and took the issue to the country. That he would have voted for.

More bedlam! Tupper managed to call out: “That is not what you telegraphed.” He had to repeat himself to be heard, for the Liberal benches were in full cry. “It was a sight to make sluggish blood tingle!” one eyewitness recalled.

The argument continued. Smith entered the name of Peter Mitchell, one of Macdonald’s former cabinet, who, he claimed, “has got up in many an assembly where I have been and said I was perfectly justified in doing what I did.”

This drove both Macdonald and Tupper into a fury and created near anarchy in the House as both men dared Smith to name “one single meeting where Mr. Mitchell ever made such a statement anywhere.” The Opposition began to chant, “Name! Name!” The vain knocking of Black Rod could be heard faintly at the Commons door behind the uproar; the Speaker tried in vain to answer – then, with resignation, resumed his seat.

Smith continued to speak and with each new declaration the verbal contest grew more heated. As the Opposition cried “Order!” and the Government benches shouted “Hear! Hear!” he declared: “The right honourable gentleman … spoke of Selkirk [Smith’s riding] … as being a rotten borough, an Old Sarum, but in speaking of me, as he did, on the evening of November 4 [1873], he must have counted on the whole of Ontario being one great rotten borough, a veritable Old Sarum, as he said that if he appealed to it he would have Ontario to a man with him.”

Macdonald was on his feet in an instant: “There is not a single word of truth in that statement – not one single word of truth. The honourable gentleman is now stating what is a falsehood.”

“How much did the other side offer you?” cried a voice from the Opposition benches to Smith.

Smith ignored it as he twisted the knife into Macdonald, remembering perhaps that last evening before his speech of 1873, when the Prime Minister had received him with drunken abuse: “The honourable gentleman says he did not say so; certainly the spirit within him said it; for the words came out of the honourable gentleman’s mouth.”

This reference to Macdonald’s drinking was too much. The situation became more confused as Macdonald engaged Smith in a shouting match.

But Smith managed yet another dig: Tupper, he said, had told him that very night that Macdonald was not capable of knowing what he said.

Now Tupper was on his feet, demanding of the Speaker whether it was “competent for a man to detail private conversations while falsifying them.”

Through the hail of shouts and catcalls, Tupper cried that he had never witnessed such “cowardly abuse.”

Smith was allowed to continue. Over repeated protests and interruptions he asked if Tupper would deny “that he said to me that so soon as it was possible to make that right honourable gentleman [Macdonald] to understand right from wrong, or to that effect …”

More interruptions: Tupper, determined to turn the course of the debate into a less embarrassing channel, cried that he was prepared to prove that Smith’s statement that he had never sought a favour from the Government was “as false a statement as ever issued from the mouth of any man, and he has continued with a tissue …” Tupper was unable to finish the sentence because of the cries for order.

Smith, diverted from his intriguing account of Tupper’s remarks about Macdonald, retorted that he had “never asked, prayed for, desired or got a favour from the Government.”

But Tupper was on the attack and over the shouts and catcalls managed to declare that “the honourable gentleman begged of me to implore the leader of the Government to make him a member of the Privy Council of Canada. That is what he asked for and he was refused; and it was the want of that position, and that refusal, which, to a large extent, has placed him where he is today.”

It was now Smith who was on the defensive. “The hon. gentleman knows that he states what is totally untrue, and, driven to his wit’s end, is now going back to a journey he and I made to the North West in 1869, and I give the most positive denial to any assertion by him, or any other person, that I asked for or desired any favour from the Government.”

At this point, with the House at a fever pitch, the Sergeant-at-arms managed to announce “a message from the Governor General.”

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