MAYOR BOWES--CITY DEBENTURES.
Of all the members of the City Council for 1850, and up to 1852, John G.
Bowes was the most active and most popular. In educational affairs, in
financial arrangements, and indeed, in all questions affecting the
city's interests, he was by far the ablest man who had ever filled the
civic chair. His acquirements as an arithmetician were extraordinary;
and as a speaker he possessed remarkable powers. I took pleasure in
seconding his declared views on nearly all public questions; and in
return, he showed me a degree of friendship which I could not but highly
appreciate. By his persuasion, and rather against my own wish, I
accepted, in 1852, the secretaryship of the Toronto and Guelph Railway
Company, which I held until it was absorbed by the Grand Trunk Company
in 1853.[23]
In the same year, rumours began to be rife in the city, that Mr. Bowes,
in conjunction with the Hon. Francis Hincks, then premier, had made
$10,000 profits out of the sale of city debentures issued to the
Northern Railway Company. Had the Mayor admitted the facts at once,
stating his belief that he was right in so doing, it is probable that
his friends would have been spared the pain, and himself the loss and
disgrace which ensued. But he denied in the most solemn manner, in full
Council, that he had any interest whatever in the sale of those
debentures, and his word was accepted by all his friends there. When, in
1854, he was compelled to admit in the Court of Chancery, that he had
not only sold the debentures for his own profit to the extent of $4,800,
but that the Hon. Francis Hincks was a partner in the speculation, and
had profited to the same amount, the Council and citizens were alike
astounded. Not so much at the transaction itself, for it must be
remembered that more than one judge in chancery held the dealing in city
debentures to be perfectly legal both on the part of Mr. Bowes and Sir
Francis Hincks, but at the palpable deception which had been perpetrated
on the Finance Committee, and through them on the Council.
While the sale of the $50,000 Northern Railway debentures was under
consideration, Mr. Bowes as Mayor had been commissioned to get a bill
passed at Quebec to legalize such sale. On his return it was found that
new clauses had been introduced into the bill, and particularly one
requiring the debentures to be made payable in England, to which
Alderman Joshua G. Beard and myself took objection as unnecessarily
tying the hands of the Council. Mr. Bowes said, "Mr. Hincks would have
it so." Had the committee supposed that in insisting upon those clauses
Mr. Hincks was using his official powers for his own private profit,
they could never have consented to the change in the bill, but would
have insisted upon the right of the Council to make their own debentures
payable wheresoever the city's interests would be best subserved.[24]
It is matter of history, that the suit in Chancery resulted in a
judgment against Mr. Bowes for the whole amount of his profits, and that
in addition to that loss he had to pay a heavy sum in costs, not only of
the suit, but of appeals both here and in England. The consequence to
myself was a great deal of pain, and the severance of a friendship that
I had valued greatly. In October, 1853, a very strong resolution
denouncing his conduct was moved by Alderman G. T. Denison, to which I
moved an amendment declaring him to have been guilty of "a want of
candour," which was carried, and which was the utmost censure that the
majority of the Council would consent to pass. For this I was subjected
to much animadversion in the public press. Yet from the termination of
the trial to the day of his death, I never afterwards met Mr. Bowes on
terms of amity. At an interview with him, at the request and in presence
of my partner, Col. O. R. Gowan, I told the Mayor that I considered him
morally responsible for all the ill-feeling that had caused the
cancellation of the first Esplanade contract, and for the loss to the
city which followed. I told him that it had become impossible for any
man to trust his word. And afterwards when he became a candidate for a
seat in parliament, I opposed his election in the columns of the
_Colonist_, which I had then recently purchased; for which he denounced
me personally, at his election meetings, as a man capable of
assassination.
Notwithstanding, I believe John G. Bowes to have been punished more
severely than justice required; that he acted in ignorance of the law;
and that his great services to the city more than outweighed any injury
sustained. His subsequent election to Parliament, while it may have
soothed his pride, can hardly have repaid him for the forfeiture of the
respect of a very large number of his fellow-citizens.
[Footnote 23: I was offered by Sir Cusack Roney, chief secretary of the
G. T. R. Co., a position worth $2,000 a year in their Montreal office,
but declined to break up my connections in Toronto. On my resigning the
secretaryship, the Board honoured me with a resolution of thanks, and a
gratuity of a year's salary.]
[Footnote 24: The judgment given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council expressly stated that "the evidence of Ald. Thompson and
Councilman Tully was conclusive as to the effect of their having been
kept in ignorance of the corrupt bargain respecting the sale of the city
debentures issued for the construction of the Northern Railway; and that
they would not have voted for the proposed bill for the consolidation of
the city debt, if they had been aware of the transaction."]