The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4). Dent John Charles
in 1861, when he contested the constituency of South Lanark, in Upper Canada, for the Legislative Assembly, in opposition to Mr. John Doran. His father had represented that constituency for twenty years, and he had no difficulty in securing his election. Upon the opening of the session he took his seat in the House, and made his first speech, on the debate on the Speech from the Throne, which was on the question of Representation by Population — a measure which he did not believe to be the true remedy for the unsatisfactory state of things which existed throughout the country. The true remedy, as he believed, and as he repeatedly urged, both from his place in Parliament and elsewhere, was the Confederation scheme which was subsequently adopted. In the negotiations which led to the formation of the Coalition Government, of which Sir John A. Macdonald and the late Hon. George Brown were members, and which secured the necessary Imperial legislation in order to bring about Confederation, he took an active and initiatory part, as appears by the record of the steps taken to form the Government, and secure that policy submitted to the Parliament of Canada at the time. He continued to represent South Lanark in the Assembly until Confederation, after which he represented it in the House of Commons until the general election of 1872. He was an active member, and stood high in the esteem of his Party. In the month of November, 1869, he accepted office in the then-existing Government as Minister of Inland Revenue, which he retained until, having resigned his position in the Government owing to broken health, he received the appointment of Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench of Manitoba, in July, 1872. Of this office he was the first incumbent, no Court of Queen's Bench having previously existed there. The highest judicial tribunal which had existed in the Prairie Province up to that time was the Quarterly Court, as it was called, organized under the authority of the Hudson's Bay Company's Charter, and conducted in a rather primitive way. A short time prior to the date last mentioned this tribunal was abolished, and the Court of Queen's Bench established in its place. After accepting the office of Chief Justice, Mr. Morris prepared a series of rules introducing the English practice into the Court. He did not long retain his seat on the Judicial Bench, as, two months after his appointment as Chief Justice, he was nominated as Administrator, in place of Lieutenant-Governor Archibald, who was absent on leave. On the 2nd of December, 1872, he received the appointment of Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, a position which he retained for five years. On the creation of the District of Keewatin he became Lieutenant-Governor of that territory ex officio. He was also appointed Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Manitoba Superintendency, and one of the Special Commissioners for the making of treaties three, four, five and six, and the revision of treaties one and two; and, as will be seen from the last report of the Minister of the Interior, he suggested the making of the last and seventh treaty — that with the Blackfeet. In the making of these treaties he was the active Commissioner and chief spokesman, and was very successful in winning the confidence of the Indian tribes. The treaties in question extinguished the natural title of the Indian tribes to the vast region extending from the Height of Land beyond Lake Superior to the Blackfeet country in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, covering the route of the Canada Pacific Railway, and opening up a vast extent of fertile territory to settlement. When Mr. Morris assumed the government of Manitoba the Province was in a very disturbed condition. He had the satisfaction of leaving it reduced to order, and far advanced in settlement and legislative progress. On his departure from Manitoba, the Free Press, the organ of the Liberal Party, thus referred to his career in the North-West: "To-morrow is the last day of Hon. Alexander Morris's connection with Manitoba as Lieutenant-Governor. When, five years ago, the announcement was made that Chief Justice Morris had been appointed to the position which he is now just about vacating, very general satisfaction was manifested by the people of the Province. Mr. Morris succeeded to the office when it was surrounded by difficulties great and complicated; and the task before its incumbent was by no means an easy one. The Province occupied a most peculiar position; having just had constitutional self-government thrust upon it, without any preparatory training. The Lieutenant-Governor necessarily found himself at the head of a people who, no matter how good their intentions, could not reasonably be expected to have a very perfect appreciation of the true position of a Lieutenant-Governor under such a government. Lieutenant-Governor Morris during the early part of his official career had plenty of evidence of this, and it devolved upon him, in no small degree, to impress upon them exactly what such government entailed — that the Lieutenant-Governor was supposed to act almost solely upon the advice of the Crown Ministers of the day, who in turn were responsible to the people's chosen representatives in Parliament. And in no one way has Governor Morris more distinguished himself than in the observance of this fundamental principle of our constitution, however much he may actually have assisted in the government of the country by his ripe experience and statesmanship. The smallest Province though Manitoba is, the office of its Lieutenant-Governor has entailed more extensive responsibilities than that of any other Province in the Dominion."
Upon the completion of his term of office Mr. Morris returned from Manitoba to his native town of Perth, in Ontario, where he had a residence. At the last general election for the House of Commons, in 1878, he contested the constituency of Selkirk, Manitoba, with the Hon. Donald A. Smith, but was defeated by nine votes. Mr. Smith was, however, unseated on petition. About two months later the Hon. Matthew Crooks Cameron, who sat in the Local Legislature of Ontario for East Toronto, was appointed to a Puisné Judgeship of the Court of Queen's Bench. This left a vacancy in the representation of East Toronto, and Mr. Morris, who was then a resident of Perth, was nominated for the vacancy by a Conservative Convention. He offered himself as a candidate for the constituency, and was elected by a considerable majority over his opponent, Mr. John Leys. At the general local elections held on the 5th of June following Mr. Morris was again returned for East Toronto — of which he had in the interval become a resident — by a majority of 57 over the Hon. Oliver Mowat, Premier of Ontario. He continues to represent that constituency, and occupies a prominent place as a member of the Opposition.
Mr. Morris has also made a creditable name for himself in literature. In 1854 he published a quasi-professional work embodying the Railway Consolidation Acts of Canada, with notes of cases. In 1855 appeared "Canada and Her Resources," an essay to which was awarded the second prize offered by the Paris Exhibition Committee of Canada — the first prize having been awarded to the well-known essay by the late Mr. John Sheridan Hogan by Sir Edmund Head, then Governor-General. Three years later — in 1858 — he delivered a lecture before the Mercantile Library Association of Montreal, in which was predicted the federation of the British American Provinces and the construction of the Intercolonial and Pacific Railways — subjects to which Mr. Morris had given a good deal of attention ever since, when a youth, he had read and studied Lord Durham's famous "Report" on Canada. This lecture was published, in pamphlet form, under the title of "Nova Britannia; or, British North America, its extent and future," by the Library Association. It was widely circulated, and attracted a good deal of attention, not only in this country but in Great Britain and the United States. No fewer than three thousand copies of it were sold in ten days. A contemporary notice of this pamphlet thus refers to the author and his theory: "Mr. Morris is at once statistical, patriotic and prophetic. The lecturer sees in the future a fusion of races, a union of all the existing provinces, with new provinces to grow up in the west, and a railway to the Pacific. The design of the lecture is excellent, and its facts seem to have been carefully collected." In 1859 Mr. Morris delivered and published another lecture of a somewhat similar nature, under the title of "The Hudson's Bay and Pacific Territories," advocating the withdrawal of the North-West Territories from the rule of the Hudson's Bay Company, and their incorporation with the Confederacy of Canada along with British Columbia. His latest work, published during the month of May last, is entitled, "The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories." It gives an account of all the treaties made with these Indians, from the original one made by Lord Selkirk down to the present time; contains suggestions for dealing with them, and predicts a hopeful future for them.
Mr. Morris has for many years taken an active part in the Church Courts of, first, the Presbyterian Church of Canada in connection with the Church of Scotland, and since the union of the four Presbyterian Churches of the Dominion as the Presbyterian Church in Canada, as a representative to the Assembly of that Church. He has been for twenty years a Trustee of Queen's College, Kingston, of which his father was one of the active founders. Mr. Morris actively assisted in bringing about the union of the