Cornwall, was descended from a Highland
family of much antiquity and respectability, and was born at St. Raphael,
on December 12th, 1812. His father, Alexander Macdonald, is said to have
swallowed Solomon's maxim of "spare the rod and spoil the
child", and the discipline to which he subjected young John Sandfield
was of such a nature that the high-spirited lad frequently ran away from
home. The first of these excursions took place before he had completed his
eleventh year. He was pursued by his irate parent, and conveyed back again
to his home; but he soon made a second attempt, with a similar result. His
second capture was effected at Cornwall, just when he was in the very act
of negotiating with an Indian to convey him across the river in a canoe.
His entire capital at this time was a quarter of a dollar, and the noble
savage was disposed to hold out for double that sum. The negotiation was
abruptly put an end to by the arrival of the father in pursuit of his
prodigal son. Subsequently the lad became a clerk in a store at Cornwall,
but became disgusted with an occupation which he so often heard
characterised as that of a "counter-hopper". He, therefore, set
his face in another direction. He went to school at Cornwall, and
afterwards studied law in the office of Mr. McLean, of Cornwall. He
finished his legal studies in the office of Mr. Draper, afterwards chief
justice of Upper Canada. He was first elected to Parliament after the
union in March, 1841. In the last Parliament there were two beside
himself, Sir Henry Smith and the Honourable W. H. Merritt. Lord Sydenham
had been sent out to carry the union into effect; and with that view too
many of the Lower Canada elections, where the people had been opposed to
the union, were carried by violence. Mr. Guvillier, the nominee of the
Government, was elected speaker, in opposition to Sir Allan MacNab. And
here it may be remarked that, in Canada, a speaker seldom retains his
seat, as such, more than one parliament. Every new House of Assembly
elects its own speaker; so that there are often several ex-speakers in the
prime of political life, who return, contrary to the English practice, to
the floor of the house. The government was a mixture of politicians of
different shades of opinion. The legislature was not free from placemen;
and the government was not conducted by heads of departments who possessed
the confidence of the representatives of the people. Neither the head of
the crown lands office nor the surveyor-general was a member of the
Executive Council. Family-compact Toryism had acquired a subdued tone in
official circles, in consequence of the despatch of Lord John Russell,
sent out in 1839, in which the alternative of supporting the government or
retiring from their places was held out to the officials who had seats in
either branches of the legislature. Mr. Macdonald was opposed to the
government; but he was an Upper Canadian, and was far from being cordial
with Sir Allan MacNab, the opposition leader for that section of the
country. The rebellion, of which the effects had not passed away, had
reduced everything to a question of loyalty and allegiance, especially in
that part of central Canada which Mr. Macdonald represented. His position
was a peculiar one. He voted with the Upper Canada Conservatives and the
Lower Canada French leaders against the government; but he never attended
a Tory "caucus", as party meetings are called in America, much
less had he any intimate alliance with the Lower Canada opposition. In
1848, 1852 and 1854, Mr. Macdonald was elected without a contest in his
old constituency of Glengarry. In the latter part of the year 1849, he was
appointed solicitor-general under the Lafontaine-Baldwin administration,
which office he held till the breaking up of that government in the autumn
of 1851. He was elected speaker in Quebec in 1852, and held that position
till the dissolution in 1854. In 1858 he was attorney-general in the
Brown-Dorion government. In 1857 he was elected for Cornwall, his brother,
D. A. Macdonald, succeeding him in the country, and this year was again
returned for that town. He was one of the few Upper Canadians who was
persistently opposed to representation by population; and although a Roman
Catholic, he was never an advocate of separate schools. His opposition to
them brought down upon him the censure of the priests; but although they
from the alter recommended the electors to vote for Protestant candidates
in preference to him, that recommendation was ever disregarded by the
Highlanders. In 1862, on the defeat of the Cartier-Macdonald
administration, Mr. Macdonald was called upon to form a government, which
he succeeded in doing, Mr. Sicotte being the leader of the Lower Canada
section of the Cabinet. In 1864, having resigned the seals, after the
completion of Confederation, to which he was, by the way, strenuously
opposed, he was called upon to form an administration in Ontario. In 1871
he retired from public life, and died the following year at his residence,
Ivy Hall, in Cornwall. In 1840 he married a lady from Louisiana, the
daughter of a United States Senator, who owned a large plantation of
negroes, and who was shot dead in a duel in 1843. |