Subjects:
office for sixteen months, between 1894 and 1896, before a revolt in his
cabinet forced him to resign. “With considerable force of character but no
special capacity in administration, he was unable either to command the
respect of his colleagues or to avoid committing his government to a
politically dangerous question of public funding for religious schools in
Manitoba” (Smith, R. 1974. p.145). For most of his time in office, Bowell
was minister of customs, and as such he put into operation of protective tariff,
or tax on imports, to aid Canadian manufactures. The tariff was the substance
of the celebrated National Policy of former prime minister Sir John A.
Macdonald. The main work of Bowell’s forty years in politics was as an
organizer of the Conservative Party in the province of Ontario.
Bowell was born in 1823, in Rickinghall, England, the son of a
carpenter. “The family emigrated to the province of Upper Canada, later
Ontario, in 1833 and settled in the town of Belleville. There Bowell was
apprenticed to the printer of the local newspaper” (Harris, C. 1987. p.29) He
remained in the town, becoming the newspaper’s editor and e
. . .
provincial government of Manitoba had abolished its system of separate
Roman Catholic schools. Bowell did most of the work for preparing it, and he
stated the Canadian position clearly: Colonial preference for British goods
implied British preference for colonial goods.
When Thompson died suddenly in 1894, Bowell, was in terms of
service, the oldest man in Parliment. “Bowell became prime minister, and most of the other ministers
agreed to service under him, as Sir Charles Tupper, another potential
candidate for the post of prime minister, had accumulated too many enemies
to be called back from his post as Canadian high commissioner in London. When Sir
John Thompson became prime minister and the party leader in 1892, Bowell
took over the new department of trade and commerce. Before long no one had any confidence in
Bowell. Long an advocate of the protective tariff, he saw it mainly as a
political instrument. AS Bowell wavered, his Cabinet ministers resigned in relays,
first from Ontario, then from Quebec, then again from Ontario. Bowell was responsible for sending
to Australia the first salaried trade commissioner from Canada.
No one else was preeminent enough to brush aside the stubbornness with
which Bowell clung to his seniority” (Smith, R. Bowell
rose to be grand master of the order and consequently wielded considerable
political influence (Smith, R.
It also gave the Liberals time to devise a compromise, so that they could offer
relief to Manitoba Roman Catholics without attacking the Manitoba
government.
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