Arthur Meighen
Arthur Meighen was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the ninth prime minister of Canada from 1920 to 1921 and from June to September 1926. He led the Conservative Party from 1920 to 1926 and from 1941 to 1942.
Meighen was born in Anderson, Ontario. His family came from County Londonderry, Ireland. He studied mathematics at the University of Toronto, and then trained to be a lawyer. After qualifying to practise law, he moved to Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. Meighen entered the House of Commons of Canada in 1908, and in 1913 was appointed to the Cabinet of Prime Minister Robert Borden. Meighen prominently served as solicitor general, minister of the interior, and superintendent-general of Indian affairs.
In July 1920, Meighen succeeded Borden as Conservative leader and prime minister – the first born after Confederation. Meighen suffered a heavy defeat in the 1921 election to Mackenzie King and the Liberal Party. Meighen lost his seat but re-entered Parliament through a 1922 by-election and remained Opposition leader. In the 1925 election, the Conservatives won a plurality of seats, just eight short of a majority government, but Mackenzie King decided to hold onto power with the support of the Progressive Party. Meighen's brief second term as prime minister in 1926 came about as the result of the "King–Byng Affair," being invited to form a ministry after Mackenzie King was refused an election request and resigned. He soon lost a no-confidence motion, however, and faced another federal election. Meighen lost his own seat, and the Conservatives lost 24, as Mackenzie King's Liberals re-took power.
After losing the 1926 election, Meighen resigned as party leader and quit politics to return to his law practice. He was appointed to the Senate in 1932, and under Prime Minister R. B. Bennett served as leader of the Government in the Senate and minister without portfolio until 1935. In 1941, Meighen became leader of the Conservatives for a second time, following Robert Manion's resignation. Meighen unsuccessfully attempted to re-enter the House of Commons in a by-election for York South and resigned as leader shortly thereafter. He returned to practising law afterwards.
Early life
Meighen was born on a farm near the hamlet of Anderson in Blanshard Township, Ontario, to Joseph Meighen and Mary Jane Bell. He attended primary school at Blanshard public school in Anderson, where, in addition to being the grandson of the village's first schoolmaster, he was an exemplary student.In 1892, during his final high school year at St. Marys Collegiate Institute, Meighen was elected secretary of the literary society and was an expert debater in the school debating society in an era when debating was in high repute. He took first class honours in mathematics, English, and Latin.
Meighen then attended University College at the University of Toronto, where he earned a B.A. in mathematics in 1896, with first-class standing. While there, he met and became a rival of William Lyon Mackenzie King; the two men, both future prime ministers, did not get along especially well from the start. Meighen then earned his teaching qualifications from the Ontario Normal College.
Marriage
Meighen married Jessie Isabel Cox, a schoolteacher, in 1904. The couple had two sons and one daughter: Theodore, Maxwell, and Lillian. Their grandson Michael Meighen is a Canadian former senator, lawyer and cultural patron.Isabel Meighen died at the age of 103 and was interred next to her husband in the St. Marys Cemetery in the town of St. Marys, Ontario.
Early professional career
Meighen moved to Manitoba shortly after finishing his LLB at Osgoode Hall Law School. Early in his professional career, Meighen experimented with several professions, including those of teacher, lawyer, and businessman, before becoming involved in politics as a member of the Conservative Party. In public, Meighen was a first-class debater, said to have honed his oratory by delivering lectures to empty desks after class. He was renowned for his sharp wit.Meighen established a law practice in Portage la Prairie, and was briefly a partner with Toby Sexsmith.
Early political career (1908–1913)
Meighen was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1908, at the age of 34, defeating incumbent John Crawford when he captured the Manitoba riding of Portage la Prairie. In 1911, Meighen won re-election, this time as a member of the new governing party. He won election again in 1913, after being appointed as solicitor general.Cabinet minister (1913–1920)
Meighen served as solicitor general from June 26, 1913, until August 25, 1917, when he was appointed minister of mines and secretary of state for Canada. He was responsible for implementing mandatory military service during the Conscription Crisis of 1917. Meighen's portfolios were again shifted on October 12, 1917, this time to the positions of minister of the interior and superintendent of Indian affairs.Meighen was re-elected in the December 1917 federal election, in which Prime Minister Robert Borden's Unionist government defeated the opposition Laurier Liberals over the conscription issue.
As minister of the interior, Meighen steered through Parliament the legislation to consolidate several insolvent railways into the Canadian National Railway Company, which continues today.
In 1919, as acting minister of justice and senior Manitoban in Borden's government, Meighen helped to subdue the Winnipeg General Strike. Shortly after the strike ended, he enacted the Section 98 amendments to the Criminal Code to ban association with organizations deemed seditious. Though Meighen has often been credited by historians with instigating the prosecution of the Winnipeg strike leaders, in fact he rejected demands from the Citizens' Committee that Ottawa step in when the provincial government of Manitoba refused to prosecute. It took the return to Ottawa in late July 1919 of Charles Doherty, Minister of Justice, for the Citizens' Committee to get federal money to carry forward their campaign against labour.
Meighen was re-appointed Minister of Mines on the last day of 1920.
Prime Minister (1920–1921)
Meighen became leader of the Conservative and the Unionist Party, and Prime Minister on July 10, 1920, when Borden resigned and William Thomas White declined the Governor General's invitation to be appointed prime minister. During this first term, Meighen was prime minister for about a year and a half.Economy
Meighen's government combatted the Depression of 1920–1921. His government cut spending, resisted regulation, and minimally intervened in the economy and employers.In April 1921, Meighen's government established a royal commission to investigate the grain trade, partially responding to calls from farmers to restore the Canadian Wheat Board that was dissolved the year previously.
Foreign policy
Believing that the economic power of the United States was the main threat to Canada's existence as a nation, Meighen advocated for protective tariffs.At the 1921 Imperial Conference, Meighen successfully campaigned against the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance by citing that the alliance would alienate the United States and negatively affect Canada's relationship with the United States, which Canada depended upon for its security. Although the subject of unrest in Ireland was avoided at the conference, Meighen urged the British representatives to make sincere efforts to achieve peace in Ireland.
1921 election
Meighen fought the 1921 election under the banner of the National Liberal and Conservative Party in an attempt to keep the allegiance of Liberals who had supported the wartime Unionist government. However, his actions in implementing conscription hurt his party's already-weak support in Quebec, while the Winnipeg General Strike and farm tariffs made him unpopular among labour and farmers alike. The party was defeated by the Liberals, led by William Lyon Mackenzie King. Meighen was personally defeated in Portage la Prairie, with his party nationally falling to third place behind the newly formed agrarian Progressive Party.Opposition (1921–1926)
Meighen continued to lead the Conservative Party, and was returned to Parliament in 1922, after winning a by-election in the eastern Ontario riding of Grenville.Despite his party finishing in third place, Meighen became Leader of the Opposition after the Progressives declined the opportunity to become the Official Opposition. Unlike the situation with Laurier and Borden, who had a generally respectful personal relationship despite their clear ideological differences, there existed between Meighen and King a very deep personal distrust and animosity. Meighen looked down upon King, whom he called "Rex", and considered him unprincipled. King viewed Meighen as an unreconstructed High Tory who would destroy the nation's social peace after the traumatic domestic events of World War I. The bitter and unrelenting rivalry between the two party leaders was probably the nastiest in the history of Canadian politics.
Meighen's term as opposition leader was most marked by his response to the crisis at Chanak, in which British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, then serving in the cabinet of David Lloyd George, leaked to the press that the Dominions might be called upon to help British forces in the Chanak, Turkey. With Parliament not in session, King refused to commit the country to military action without Parliamentary approval, and announced that the matter was not important enough to recall Parliament. Meighen strongly condemned King's statement, and quoted Laurier's remark made on an earlier occasion: "When Britain's message came, then Canada should have said, 'Ready, aye ready, we stand by you.'" The crisis subsided within days before any formal request for Canadian help could be made, and Lloyd George's government was a casualty of the whole affair. Meighen was left with a reputation as being blindly in favour of Britain's interests.
The Liberal government of Mackenzie King was soon beset with scandal. While the uneven performance of the government and disorganization of the Progressive movement created some opportunity for the Conservatives, Meighen generally refused to change from his general philosophy of restoring the pre-war social order and returning to National Policy level tariffs. His strategy in Quebec consisted of granting Esioff-Léon Patenaude general autonomy to run a full campaign without any interference from Conservative headquarters.
Meighen and the Tories won a plurality of seats in the inconclusive election of 1925. King, as the already sitting prime minister, opted to retain confidence in the house through an informal alliance with the Progressives. Meighen denounced King as holding onto office like a "lobster with lockjaw."