had personal reasons for criticism; but he was
speaking well within the truth, when he attacked the Tory government of
1858, not only for grave corruption in the late general election, but
for other weightier offences. It was elicited, he said, by the Public
Accounts Committee that L500,000 of provincial debentures had been sold
in England by government at 99-1/4, when the quotation of the Stock
Exchange was 105 @ 107, by which the province was wronged to the extent
of L50,000. It was elicited that a member of Parliament, supporting
the government, sold to the government L20,000 of Hamilton debentures
at 97-1/4 which were worth only 80 in the market.... It was elicited that
large sums were habitually drawn from the public chest, and lent to
railway companies, or spent on services for which no previous sanction
of Parliament had been obtained.[20] It is, perhaps, the gravest
charge {318} against Macdonald that, at the entrance of Canada into the
region of modern finance and speculation, he never understood that
incorrupt administration was the greatest gift a man could give to the
future of his country.

In a young and not yet civilized community it was natural that the
early days of self-government should witness some corruption among the
voters, the more so because, at election times "there were no less than
four days, the nomination, two days' polling, and declaration day, on
all of which, by a sort of unwritten law, the candidates in many
constituencies were compelled to keep open house for their supporters,"
while direct money bribes were often resorted to, especially on the
second day's polling in a close contest.[21]

Apart from jobbery and frank corruption, Canadian politicians
condescended at times to ignoble trickery, and to evasions of the truth
which came perilously near breaches of honour. The most notorious
breach of the constitutional decencies was the celebrated episode
nicknamed the "Double Shuffle." Whatever apologists may say, John A.
Macdonald sinned in the very first essentials of political fair-play.
He had already {319} led George Brown into a trap by forcing government
into his hands. When Brown, too late to save his reputation,
discovered the sheer futility of his attempt to make and keep together
a government, and when it once more fell to the Conservatives to take
office, Macdonald saved himself and his colleagues the trouble of
standing for re-election by a most shameful constitutional