BUSINESS EXPERIENCES IN QUEBEC.
When I began to feel the effects of official hostility in Quebec, as
above stated, I was also suffering from another and more vital evil. I
had taken the contract for parliamentary printing at prices slightly
lower than had before prevailed. My knowledge of printing in my own
person gave me an advantage over most other competitors. The consequence
of this has been, that large sums of money were saved to the country
yearly for the last twenty-four years. But the former race of
contractors owed me a violent grudge, for, as they alleged, taking the
contract below paying prices. I went to work, however, confident of my
resources and success. But no sooner had I got well under weigh, than my
arrangements were frustrated, my expenditure nullified, my just hopes
dashed to the ground, by the action of the Legislature itself. A joint
committee on printing had been appointed, of which the Hon. Mr. Simpson,
of Bowmanville, was chairman, which proceeded deliberately to cut down
the amount of printing to be executed, and particularly the quantity of
French documents to be printed, to such an extent as to reduce the work
for which I had contracted by at least one-third. And this without the
smallest regard to the terms of my contract. Thus were one-half of all
my expenditures--one-half of my thirty thousand dollars worth of
type--one-half of my fifteen thousand dollars worth of presses and
machinery--literally rendered useless, and reduced to the condition of
second-hand material. I applied to my solicitor for advice. He told me
that, unless I threw up the contract, I could make no claim for breach
of conditions. Unfortunately for me, the many precedents since
established, of actions on "petition of right" for breach of contract by
the Government and the Legislature, had not then been recorded, and I
had to submit to what I was told was the inevitable.
I struggled on through the session amid a hurricane of calumny and
malicious opposition. The Queen's Printers, the former French
contractor, and, above all, the principal defeated competitor in
Toronto, joined their forces to destroy my credit, to entice away my
workmen, to disseminate but too successfully the falsehood, that my
contract was taken at unprofitable rates, until I was fairly driven to
my wits' end, and ultimately forced into actual insolvency. The cashier
of the Upper Canada Bank told me very kindly, that everybody in the
Houses and the Bank knew my honesty and energy, but the combination
against me was too strong, and it was useless for me to resist it,
unless my Toronto friends would come to my assistance.
I was not easily dismayed by opposition, and determined at least to send
a Parthian shaft into my enemies' camp. The session being over, I
hastened to Toronto, called my creditors together at the office of
Messrs Cameron & Harman, and laid my position before them. All I could
command in the way of valuable assets was invested in the business of
the contract. I had besides, in the shape of nominal assets, over a
hundred thousand dollars in newspaper debts scattered over Upper Canada,
which I was obliged to report as utterly uncollectable, being mainly due
by farmers who--as was generally done throughout Ontario in 1857--had
made over their farms to their sons or other parties, to evade payment
of their own debts. All my creditors were old personal friends, and so
thoroughly satisfied were they of the good faith of the statements
submitted by me, that they unanimously decided to appoint no assignee,
and to accept the offer I made them to conduct the contract for their
benefit, on their providing the necessary sinews of war, which they
undertook to do in three days.
What was my disappointment and chagrin to find, at the end of that term,
that the impression which had been so industriously disseminated in
Quebec, that my contract prices were impracticably low, had reached and
influenced my Toronto friends, and that it was thought wisest to
abandon the undertaking. I refused to do so.
Among my employees in the office were four young men, of excellent
abilities, who had grown into experience under my charge, and had, by
marriage and economy, acquired means of their own, and could besides
command the support of monied relatives. These young men I took into my
counsels. At the bailiff's sale of my office which followed, they bought
in such materials as they thought sufficient for the contract work, and
in less than a month we had the whole office complete again, and with
the sanction of the Hon. the Speaker, got the contract work once more
into shape. The members of the new firm were Samuel Thompson, Robert
Hunter, George M. Rose, John Moore, and Francois Lemieux.