On receipt of this opinion, immediate notice was sent by circular to all the company's agents, warning them to suspend operations at once. A bill was introduced at the following session, in February, 1877, which received the royal assent in April, remitting all penalties, and authorizing the company either to wind up its business or to transmute itself into a stock company. But in the meantime, fire insurance had received so severe a shock from the calamitous fire at St. John, N. B., by which many companies were ruined, and all shaken, that it was found impossible to raise the necessary capital to resume the Beaver business.
Thus, without fault or error on the part of its Board of Management, without warning or notice of any kind, was a strong and useful institution struck to the ground as by a levin-bolt. The directors, who included men of high standing of all political parties, lost, in the shape of paid-up guarantee stock and promissory notes, about sixty thousand dollars of their own money, and the officers suffered in the same way. The expenses of winding up, owing to vexatious litigation, have amounted to a sum sufficient to cover the outside liabilities of the company.
These particulars may not interest the majority of my readers, but I have felt it my duty to give them, as the best act of justice in my power to the public-spirited and honourable men, with whom for twenty-three years I have acted, and finally suffered. That the members of the company—the insured—have sustained losses by fire since October, 1876, to the amount of over $45,000, which remain unpaid in consequence of its inability to collect its assets, adds another to the many evils which are chargeable to ill-considered and reckless legislation, in disregard of the lawful vested rights of innocent people, including helpless widows and orphans.
CHAPTER LIX.
THE HON. JOHN HILLYARD CAMERON.
On the 20th day of April, 1844, I was standing outside the railing of St. James's churchyard, Toronto, on the occasion of a very sad funeral. The chief mourner was a slightly built, delicate-looking young man of prepossessing appearance. His youthful wife, the daughter of the late Hon. H. J. Boulton, at one time Chief Justice of Newfoundland, had died, and it was at her burial he was assisting. When the coffin had been committed to the earth, the widowed husband's feelings utterly overcame him, and he fell insensible beside the still open grave.
This was my first knowledge of John Hillyard Cameron. From that day, until his death in November, 1876, I knew him more or less intimately, enjoyed his confidence personally and politically, and felt a very sincere regard for him in return. I used at one time to oppose his views in the City Council, but always good-naturedly on both sides. I was chairman of the Market Committee, and it was my duty to resist his efforts to establish a second market near the corner of Queen and Yonge Streets, in the rear of the buildings now known as the Page Block. He was a prosperous lawyer, highly in repute, gaining a considerable revenue from his profession, and being of a lively, sanguine temperament, launched out into heavy speculations in exchange operations and in real estate.
As an eloquent pleader in the courts, he excelled all his contemporaries, and it was a common saying among solicitors, that Cameron ruled the Bench by force of argument, and the jury by power of persuasion. In the Legislature he was no less influential. His speeches on the Clergy Reserve question, on the Duval case, and many others, excited the House of Assembly to such a degree, that on one occasion an adjournment was carried on the motion of the ministerial leader, to give time for sober reflection. So it was in religious assemblies. At meetings of the Synod of the Church of England, at missionary meetings, and others, his fervid zeal and flowing sentences carried all before them, and left little for others to say.
In 1849, Mr. Cameron married again, this time a daughter of General Mallett, of Baltimore, who survives him, and still resides in Toronto. After that date, and for years until 1857, everything appeared to prosper with him. A comfortable residence, well stored with valuable paintings, books and rarities of all kinds. The choicest of society and hosts of friends. An amiable growing family of sons and daughters. Affluence and elegance, popular favour, and the full sunshine of prosperity. Honours were showered upon him from all sides. Solicitor-General in 1846, member of Parliament for several constituencies in turn, Treasurer of the Law Society, and Grand Master of the Orange Association. Judgeships and Chief-Justiceships were known to be at his disposal, but declined for personal reasons.
My political connection with Mr. Cameron commenced in 1854, when, having purchased from the widow of the late Hugh Scobie the Colonist newspaper, I thought it prudent to strengthen myself by party alliances. He entered into the project with an energy and disinterestedness that surprised me. It had been a semi-weekly paper; he offered to furnish five thousand dollars a year to make it a daily journal, independent of party control; stipulated for no personal influence over its editorial views, leaving them entirely in my discretion, and undertaking that he would never reclaim the money so advanced, as long as his means should last. I was then comparatively young, enterprising, and unembarrassed in circumstances, popular amongst my fellow-citizens, and mixed up in nearly every public enterprise and literary association then in existence in Toronto. Quite ready, in fact, for any kind of newspaper enterprise.