Abbott, Sir John Joseph Caldwell (1821-1893), served as prime minister of Canada from June 1891 to November 1892. He succeeded Sir John A. Macdonald, who died in office. Abbott inherited many problems from Macdonald’s administration that he could not solve. They included a severe nationwide depression and major conflicts between English- and French-speaking Canadians. Abbott became prime minister at the age of 70 and resigned after a brief and frustrating administration because of poor health.
Abbott was a distinguished lawyer, a position that drew him into politics. Before he became prime minister, he had served in the legislature of the Province of Canada and, later, in the Parliament of the Dominion of Canada. He also had been dean of the law school of McGill College (now McGill University) in Montreal.
Abbott claimed he did not like politics. He said he held political office because he believed public service was his duty. Shortly before taking office as prime minister, Abbott wrote a friend, “I hate notoriety, public meetings, public speeches, caucuses, and everything that I know of what is apparently the necessary incident of politics—except doing public work to the best of my ability.”
Abbott had a wide range of interests. He owned a salmon stream where he often fished, and he grew many varieties of rare orchids. He also loved animals and helped establish the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Early life.
John Abbott was born on March 12, 1821, in St. Andrews, near Montreal, Lower Canada (in present-day Quebec province). His father, Joseph Abbott, was an Anglican missionary who had moved there from England in 1818. Soon after arriving in Canada, he married Harriet Bradford, the daughter of a Canadian minister.
The Abbott family moved to Grenville, Lower Canada, in 1830, but John spent much time with an uncle in St. Andrews. He learned about astronomy and mathematics from a retired sea captain there and attended school in the nearby village of Carillon.
Abbott left home at age 17 and began a business career, which he followed most of the time through the mid-1840’s. He conducted his activities, which included selling cloth, packing apples, and buying grain, in Montreal, then Canada’s leading commercial center. He interrupted these activities to attend law school at McGill College.
Abbott received a law degree in 1847 and began to practice in Montreal that year. He specialized in corporation law and soon became known as an authority in this field. In 1849, he married Mary Bethune, whose father was the principal of McGill College. Abbott served as dean of the law school at McGill from 1855 to 1880.
Early political career.
Abbott was elected to the Assembly of the Province of Canada in 1857 and served until 1867. He entered politics as a Liberal but gradually shifted toward the Conservative Party. During the early 1860’s, a coalition of Conservative and Reform politicians favored the unification under one government of all the British colonies in North America. In 1865, Abbott joined these Conservatives in support of the movement for confederation. The Dominion of Canada was established in 1867. It consisted of the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec. That same year, Abbott was elected to the Dominion’s first House of Commons, where he served until 1874.
Abbott continued his thriving law practice while serving as a legislator. During the early 1870’s, he became involved in negotiations for the construction of a Canadian transcontinental railroad. Two financial groups were competing for the construction contract. Sir Hugh Allan, a Montreal shipping line owner and a client of Abbott, headed one group. Abbott tried to unite the two groups into one company, but he was unsuccessful. Allan’s group eventually received the construction contract.
The Pacific Scandal.
In 1873, a clerk in Abbott’s office stole some papers that revealed large campaign contributions by Allan to the Conservatives in the 1872 general election. The papers included a telegram in which Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, the Conservative leader, had demanded of Allan: “Send me another ten thousand. Do not fail me.” Liberal members of Parliament acquired the papers and revealed their contents. Macdonald admitted receiving the money, but he denied that the contributions had influenced his decision to give the contract to Allan. The government appointed a royal commission to investigate the case, which became known as the Pacific Scandal.
The scandal finally forced Macdonald to resign as prime minister in November 1873 and led to formation of a Liberal government headed by Alexander Mackenzie. Abbott lost his seat in the House in the 1874 election. Historians disagree about the extent of Abbott’s involvement in the scandal. Most believe he was innocent of personal misconduct but was probably aware of some of the dealings between Macdonald and Allan.
The railroad project was abandoned after the scandal, and Mackenzie failed in his efforts to reorganize it. The Conservatives regained control of Parliament in 1878, and Macdonald again became prime minister. He quickly revived the railroad plans. In 1880, Abbott became the lawyer of the Canadian Pacific Railway, based in Montreal. He wrote the charter for the railroad, which was completed in 1885.
Return to Parliament.
Abbott was reelected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1880 and served until 1887. He was then appointed to Macdonald’s Cabinet and to the Canadian Senate, where he served as government leader. In 1887, Abbott was also elected mayor of Montreal, a position he held until 1889. In 1891, Prime Minister Macdonald wanted to increase Abbott’s duties in the Cabinet. However, Abbott refused because he did not feel capable of handling more speeches and public meetings.
Prime minister.
Macdonald died in June 1891. The Conservatives wanted either Sir John S. D. Thompson, the Minister of Justice, or Sir Charles Tupper, the Canadian High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, to be the party leader. Both of the men refused the position, however, and the Conservatives chose Abbott. They believed he would appeal to both English- and French-speaking members of the troubled party. Abbott, who preferred Thompson for the leadership, reluctantly took over as party leader and became prime minister. Abbott relied on Thompson to handle many of the responsibilities in the House of Commons and in the Cabinet.
Even before Abbott took office, a scandal in the public works department had shaken the Conservative government. Some employees in that department were found guilty of awarding railroad contracts to companies in exchange for money. An investigation was conducted, and the department head, Sir Hector-Louis Langevin, was found to have been negligent. Abbott asked for his resignation, and Langevin submitted it in September 1891.
A dispute about schools in the province of Manitoba caused additional problems within Abbott’s party. In 1890, Manitoba’s government passed a law that abolished tax support for Roman Catholic and French-language schools. It then established a single nonreligious, English-language school system. Manitoba’s Roman Catholic and French-speaking population argued that abolishing tax support violated an earlier law passed in 1870. The English-speaking wing of the national Conservative Party largely approved of the 1890 law. But the Catholic and French-speaking wing of the party was outraged. In 1891, Canada’s Supreme Court declared the 1890 law unconstitutional. But in 1892, the British Privy Council, then the highest court of appeal, reversed the court’s ruling. Tension between English- and French-speaking Canadians increased. But Abbott, with Thompson’s help, prevented a political crisis by keeping the dispute in court.
An economic depression that had begun in the 1870’s became worse during Abbott’s term. His health began to fail, and he was able to handle fewer responsibilities. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom knighted Abbott in May 1892. He went to London in October for medical advice but resigned from office in November. Thompson succeeded Abbott as leader of the Conservative Party and as prime minister. Abbott later returned to Montreal, where he died on Oct. 30, 1893.
See also Prime minister of Canada .
