Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/678

 forcibly presented what appeared to him to be the only possible alternatives, viz. a dissolution of the union between the two provinces, which he would deprecate, or the federation of the two provinces with a local legislature established in each, whereby alone, he held, could representation by population be attained, and the wealthy and more populous province be relieved from the domination of the French minority. He declined office in the John Sandfield Macdonald-Sicotte ministry of 1862, which refused to countenance the principle of representation by population. When the seventh parliament of Canada assembled in 1863, the J. S. Macdonald-Dorion ministry in control left representation by population an open question, and Mowat accepted the office of postmaster-general in the administration. His chief reforms were acts of retrenchment. He cancelled the existing Allan contract for ocean mails, renewing it on much more favourable terms, and he fixed the Grand Trunk railway postal subsidy at $60 a mile in lieu of the $300 to $800 a mile which the company claimed. In 1864, after the accession to office and early defeat of the Taché-John A. Macdonald government, George Brown's proposal of a coalition government for the purpose of 'settling for ever the constitutional difficulties between Upper and Lower Canada' was adopted. Mowat joined the coalition and took part in the conference on federation which met at Quebec (10 to 28 October 1864). Mowat advocated a senate elected for a fixed term, instead of an appointed senate which might prove a mere mechanical device for registering the acts of the party in power.

Mowat's labours on confederation were cut short by his appointment, on 14 Nov. 1864, as one of the vice-chancellors of Ontario. He held that office until Oct. 1872. In 1872, when Edward Blake and Alexander Mackenzie [q. v.], leaders of the Ontario legislature, abandoned, in accordance with the new constitution, local for federal politics, Mowat at their request resigned his judgeship and, re- joining the local legislature as member for North Oxford, became premier of Ontario on 29 Nov. 1872. He remained at the head of the province until 1896, when he entered Dominion politics as a supporter of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

The enactments for which Mowat was responsible during his twenty-four years' premiership of Ontario aimed, as in the Ballot Act of 1874 and the Manhood Suffrage Act of 1888, at democratising Ontario institutions. At the same time he sought to simplify and cheapen the operation of justice. By the Administration of Justice Acts (1873 and 1874) and the Judicature Acts of 1880 and 1881 he effectively assimilated the practice and procedure of the common law and equity courts. Finally Mowat was responsible for an important series of measures which, checked by the federal veto and sanctioned in six instances on appeal to the privy council, served to define the proper limits of provincial rights under the constitution and rendered Mowat the victorious champion of provincial rights. In the first year of his premiership Mowat claimed the right of the lieutenant-governor-in-council to appoint queen's counsel with precedence in Ontario courts. In 1876 the province secured the right to regulate by legislation companies incorporated whether under a Dominion, British, or foreign charter. Again in 1883 the privy council pronounced, after much litigation, in favour of Mowat's claims on behalf of the province to enact liquor legislation in spite of the general control of trade and commerce vested in the Dominion parliament, and the judgment at the same time declared the power of the provincial legislature to be within prescribed limits 'as plenary and as ample as the imperial parliament in the plenitude of its power possessed and could bestow.' Among other of Mowat's victories was the final delimitation by a decision of the privy council in 1884 of the boundaries of Upper Canada (in Ontario) after a long and heated struggle with the Dominion parliament and with the neighbouring province of Manitoba. The ownership and control of 144,000 square miles of territory were thereby secured to Ontario. Mowat was made K.C.M.G. in 1892 and G.C.M.G. in 1893.

In 1896 Mr. Laurier, the liberal leader of the Dominion, induced Mowat to resign the premiership of Ontario and assist the liberal party in the general elections of that year. The dominant issue was the Manitoba school question, touching the claims of Roman catholics to separate state education, which the Manitoba legislature declined to admit. Mowat was in accord with his leader in advocating a compromise between the catholics and the Manitoba legislature which should not prejudice liberal and unsectarian principles. The result was a victory for Mr. Laurier and his party, and Mowat accepted a seat in the senate, and the office of minister of justice in the Laurier cabinet. In 1897 he retired to