In May, 1853, I sold out my interest in the _Patriot_ to Mr. Ogle R. Gowan, and having a little capital of my own, invested it in the purchase of the _Colonist_ from the widow of the late Hugh Scobie, who died December 6th, 1852. It was a heavy undertaking, but I was sanguine and energetic, and--as one of my friends told me--thorough. The Colonist, as an organ of the old Scottish Kirk party in Canada, had suffered from the rivalry of its Free Kirk competitor, the Globe; and its remaining subscribers, being, as a rule, strongly Conservative, made no objection to the change of proprietorship; while I carried over with me, by agreement, the subscribers to the daily _Patriot_, thus combining the mercantile strength of the two journals.

I had hitherto confined myself to the printing department, leaving the duties of editorship to others. On taking charge of the Colonist, I assumed the whole political responsibility, with Mr. John Sheridan Hogan as assistant editor and Quebec correspondent. My partners were the late Hugh C. Thomson, afterwards secretary to the Board of Agriculture, who acted as local editor; and James Bain, now of the firm of Jas. Bain & Son, to whom the book-selling and stationery departments were committed. We had a strong staff of reporters, and commenced the new enterprise under promising circumstances. Our office and store were in the old brick building extending from King to Colborne Street, long previously known as the grocery store of Jas. F. Smith.

The ministry then in power was that known as the Hincks-Taché Government. Francis Hincks had parted with his old radical allies, and become more conservative than many of the Tories whom he used to denounce. People remembered Wm. Lyon Mackenzie's prophecy, who said he feared that Francis Hincks could not be trusted to resist temptation. When Lord Elgin went to England, it was whispered that his lordship had paid off £80,000 sterling of mortgages on his Scottish estates, out of the proceeds of speculations which he had shared with his clever minister. The St. Lawrence and Atlantic purchase, the £50,000 Grand Trunk stock placed to Mr. Hincks' credit--as he asserted without his consent--and the Bowes transaction, gave colour to the many stories circulated to his prejudice. And when he went to England, and received the governorship of Barbadoes, many people believed that it was the price of his private services to the Earl of Elgin.

Whatever the exact truth in these cases may have been, I am convinced that from the seed then sown, sprang up a crop of corrupt influences that have since permeated all the avenues to power, and borne their natural fruit in the universal distrust of public men, and the wide-spread greed of public money, which now prevail. Neither political party escapes the imputation of bribing the constituencies, both personally at elections, and by parliamentary grants for local improvements. The wholesale expenditure at old country elections, which transferred so much money from the pockets of the rich to those of the poor, without any prospect of pecuniary return, has with us taken the form of a speculative investment to be "re-couped" by value in the shape of substantial government favours.

Could I venture to enter the lists against so tremendous a rhetorical athlete as Professor Goldwin Smith, I should say, that his idea of abolishing party government to secure purity of election is an utter fallacy; I should say that the great factor of corruption in Canada has been the adoption of the principle of coalitions. I told a prominent Conservative leader in 1853, that I looked upon coalitions as essentially immoral, and that the duty of either political party was to remain contentedly "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition," and to support frankly all good measures emanating from the party in office, until the voice of the country, fairly expressed, should call the Opposition to assume the reins of power legitimately. I told the late Hon. Mr. Spence, when he joined the coalition ministry of 1854, that we (of the Colonist) looked upon that combination as an organized attempt to govern the country through its vices; and that nothing but the violence of the _Globe_ party could induce us to support any coalition whatsoever. And I think still that I was right, and that the Minister who buys politicians to desert their principles, resembles nothing so much as the lawyer who gains a verdict in favour of his client by bribing the jury.

The union of Upper and Lower Canada is chargeable, no doubt, with a large share of the evils that have crept into our constitutional system. The French Canadian habitans, at the time of the Union, were true scions of the old peasantry of Normandy and Brittany, with which their songs identify them so strikingly. All their ideas of government were ultra-monarchical; their allegiance to the old French Kings had been transferred to the Romish hierarchy and clergy, who, it must be said, looked after their flocks with undying zeal and beneficent care. But this formed an ill preparation for representative institutions. The Rouge party, at first limited to lawyers and notaries chiefly, had taken up the principles of the first French revolution, and for some years made but little progress; in time, however, they learnt the necessity of cultivating the assistance, or at least the neutrality of the clergy, and in this they were aided by ties of relationship. As in Ireland, where almost every poor family emaciates itself to provide for the education of one of its sons as a "counsellor" or a priest, so in Lower Canada, most families contain within themselves both priest and lawyer. Thus it came to pass, that in the Lower Province, a large proportion of the people lived in the hope that they might sooner or later share in "government pap," and looked upon any means to that end as unquestionably lawful. It is not difficult to perceive how much and how readily this idea would communicate itself to their Upper Canadian allies after the Union; that it did so, is matter of history.

In fact, the combination of French and British representatives in a single cabinet, itself constitutes a coalition of the most objectionable kind; as the result can only be a perpetual system of compromises. For example, one of the effects of the Union, and of the coalition of 1854, was the passage of the bill secularizing the Clergy Reserves, and abolishing all connection between church and state in Upper Canada, while leaving untouched the privileges of the Romish Church in the Lower Province. That some day, there will arise a formidable Nemesis spawned of this one-sided act, when the agitation for disendowment shall have reached the Province of Quebec, who can doubt?

In 1855 and subsequently, followed a series of struggles for office, without any great political object in view, each party or clique striving to bid higher than all the rest for popular votes, which went on amid alternate successes and reverses, until the denouement came in 1859, when neither political party could form a Ministry that should command a majority in parliament, and they were fain to coalesce en masse in favour of confederation. At one time, Mr. George Brown was defeated by Wm. Lyon Mackenzie in Halton; at another, he voted with the Tories against the Hincks ministry; again, he was a party to a proposed coalition with Sir Allan MacNab. I was myself present at Sir Allan's house in Richey's Terrace, Adelaide Street, where I was astonished to meet Mr. Brown himself in confidential discussion with Sir Allan. I recollect a member of the Lower House--I think Mr. Hillyard Cameron--hurrying in with the information that at a meeting of Conservative members which he had just left, they had chosen Mr. John A. Macdonald as their leader in place of Sir Allan, which report broke up the conference, and defeated the plans of the coalitionists. This was, I think, in 1855. Then came on the "Rep. by Pop." agitation led by the _Globe_, in 1856.[25] In 1857, the great business panic superseded all other questions. In 1858, the turn of the Reform party came, with Mr. Brown again at their head, who held power for precisely four days.

In 1858, also, the question of protection for native industry, which had been advocated by the British-American League, was taken up in parliament by the Hon. Wm. Cayley and Hon. Isaac Buchanan separately. In 1859, came Mr. Brown's and Mr. Galt's federal union resolutions, and Mr. Cayley's motion for protection once more.

All these years--from 1853 to 1860--I was in confidential communication with the leaders of the Conservative party, and after 1857 with the Upper Canadian members of the administration personally; and I am bound to bear testimony to their entire patriotism and general disinterestedness whenever the public weal was involved. I was never asked to print a line which I could not conscientiously endorse; and had I been so requested, I should assuredly have refused.

[Footnote 25: The same year occurred the elections for members of the Legislative Council. I was a member of Mr. G. W. Allan's committee, and saw many things there which disgusted me with all election tactics. Men received considerable sums of money for expenses, which it was believed never left their own pockets. Mr. Allan was in England, and sent positive instructions against any kind of bribery whatsoever, yet when he arrived here, claims were lodged against him amounting to several thousand dollars, which he was too high-minded to repudiate.]