Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/23

 THE GREEN BAG granted, and he was executed on February 11,1869. (The arguments and proceedings a.nd judgments in this cause celebre fill one liundred and eighty-five pages of U. C. Re ports, volume 28.) What was known to the Canadian poli ticians of "the seventies" as the Big Push case, was one of the most interesting legal matters in which Mr. Robinson was con cerned. In 1872, the Hon. George Brown, for more than a generation an active and prominent politician of the Dominion and a leader of the Reform or Clear Grit party, the manager of the printing company that published the Toronto Globe, and the dic tator of its policy, in August, while a gen eral election was in progress, wrote a letter to the Hon. John Simpson, a member of "the Senate of Canada and the then presi•dent of the Ontario Bank, in which he said that "a big push" had to be made on elec tion days in Toronto if the Reformers were "'not to succumb to the cash" of the Con servative government of which Sir John A. Macdonald was the head. He wrote, ""There are but half a dozen people that can come down handsomely, and we have all done what we possibly can do, and we have to ask a few outsiders to aid us; will you be one?" However, the banker did not rise to the occasion. One Wilkinson, in 1875, in the West Durham News, pub lished some articles containing scathing -remarks anent the political acts of the bank president and the favors his institu tion had received from the new Reform government — Sir John Macdonald and his friends having been submerged by the tempest raised by the Canadian Pacific 'Scandal — Mr. Simpson made application "for a criminal information for libel against Wilkinson. Mr. Robinson (the late Dalton McCarthy, Q.C. being with him) showed -cause against the application. The matter •was exhaustively argued before Harrison, <J.J. and Wilson & Morrison, J.J. Wilson J. In his judgment discussed certain docu ments filed by the defendant, including

George Brown's letter, saying that "if they shew political intriguing in parliamentary elections for corrupt purposes, or conduct of that nature, or improper and unjustifi able, the extraordinary aid of the court should not be invoked for the service of the complainant." The learned judge con sidered that the charge of political intrigu ing was proved. But the court as to two of the articles complained of allowed the application, refusing it as to the other. The comments on his letter by his old friend, follower, and colleague in the politi cal field, Justice Wilson, greatly annoyed Mr. George Brown, and in about a week appeared in the daily Globe, and a few days afterwards in the weekly Globe, a most powerful and trenchant article from his pen entitled "Justice Wilson on the war-path." This speaks of the judge "in dulging in assumptions, surmises and insin uations " (in a way) "totally unparalleled in the judicial proceedings of any Canadian court:" states that the judge "did not con tent himself with indulging in legal eccen tricities;" that "it was ridiculous enough to hear Tory newspapers for nearly a year past, making night and day hideous with their howlings about the ' Big Push Letter; ' but the Bench has descended low indeed when a judge of the Queen's Bench con descends to take up the idiotic howl and rivals the party-whoop of the most blatant pot-house politician." For these and similar sentences in November, 1876, by Wilkin son (who alleged that his trial was pre judiced by the article) a rule was obtained calling upon Brown to show cause why a writ of attachment should not issue against him, or why he should not be committed for contempt of court. Brown filed an affidavit, most voluminous and most in teresting to all students of Canadian poli tics during that stormy period. He himself showed cause but he had (two learned counsel at his elbow) occupying the court for nearly two whole days, speaking with great force and courage, repeating and