Читать книгу A Cyclopædia of Canadian Biography - Various - Страница 55

Table of Contents

Hemming, Edward John, D.C.L., ex-M.P.P., Advocate, etc., Drummondville, province of Quebec, is the third son of the late Henry Keene Hemming, estate agent, and for many years lessee of extensive brick-fields at Gray’s, Essex on the Thames; and Sophia Wirgman, daughter of Thomas Wirgman, from Stockholm, Sweden, and aunt to Lieut.-Colonel Wirgman, late of the 10th Hussars, in their lifetime of London, England, and Lismore, Ireland (in connection with the Duke of Devonshire estates), and latterly (where they died and were buried), of Great Marlow, Bucks, having previously lived farming near Drummondville, P.Q., for a few years, when they returned to England. There is every reason to believe that his father was directly descended from John Hemming, Shakespeare’s associate and literary executor. An uncle of his father, the Rev. Samuel Hemming, D.D., was chaplain to the Royal Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, and as such intimate with all the then royal dukes, the Duke of Sussex standing godfather to two of his children. His father was also uncle to the late Hon. Judge Dunkin, member of the Privy Council of Canada, etc., etc. (his sister being the judge’s mother), and also cousin to the late Charles F. Smithers, president of the Bank of Montreal. After the lapse of about a hundred years, the two families of Hemming and Smithers have intermarried again, Walter G. A. Hemming, of Toronto, a nephew of the subject of this sketch, having lately married a daughter of Charles F. Smithers. Edward John Hemming was born on the 30th August, 1823, in London, England, that is to say Clapham, Surrey, and was educated at the Clapham Grammar School, under the Rev. Charles Pritchard, M.A., a Cambridge wrangler. Among his schoolmates who have since achieved distinction may be mentioned the Rev. Dr. Bradley, dean of Westminster Abbey; Sir George Groves, of Sydenham Palace fame; and his brother, George Wirgman Hemming, of Lincoln’s Inn, Q.C., lately of Hyde Park, now of South Kensington, London, late fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, senior wrangler of the university—one of the commissioners named by the Imperial Parliament for revising the statutes of Cambridge University;—editor of the “Equity Law Reports” under the council of the English bar, etc., who married his second cousin, a grand niece of Sir David Baird, the hero of Seringapatam and Corunna. To show the heredity of genius we may mention that one of his sons, now in the Royal Engineers, not only came out first at the final examination at the Royal Military College, Woolwich, but surpassed the one next to him by more than a thousand marks. On leaving school in 1839, Mr. Hemming went to sea as a midshipman, making his two last trips to India in the old East Indiaman, Herefordshire, commanded by Captain Richardson, a cousin. He left her at Bombay in 1843, to join the Seyd Khan, opium clipper trading to China with a Lascar crew, as second officer, under Captain Horsburgh, a nephew of the famous Captain Horsburgh of East India Directory fame. During his voyages, he visited the Cape of Good Hope, Isle of France, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Batavia, Hong Kong, Canton, Amoy, Chusan, Woosing and St. Helena, this latter before the removal of the great Bonaparte. After remaining in China a couple of years, he returned home to his father in Ireland in 1845, where he remained studying farming till 1851. During his residence at Lismore, the Smith O’Brien rebellion broke out, and he then made acquaintance with Nicholas O’Gorman, once secretary to the Catholic Emancipation League, under O’Connell, but then a loyal subject; also of Richard O’Gorman, his nephew, one of the Young Irelanders; who had to flee the country in order to escape prosecution for his action in that rebellion. Richard O’Gorman is now a judge in New York. Liebig’s work on agricultural chemistry, then lately published, having caused a great sensation, he turned his attention to the subject, and the Royal Agricultural Society of England having offered a prize open to all the world on the occasion of the International Exhibition of 1851, for the best essay on chemistry applied to agriculture, Mr. Hemming entered the competition and carried off the prize. This essay may be found in the Parliamentary library at Ottawa. While attending the International Exhibition in 1851, he met his cousin, afterwards Judge Dunkin, who prevailed upon him to enter his office in Montreal as a law student, and he commenced his legal studies in the office of Bethune & Dunkin in the fall of that year. Among his fellow students were the Judges Ramsay, and Papineau, and Julius Scriver, the M.P. for Huntingdon; and he also entered the law course of McGill College, and in 1855, took his degree of B.C.L., being first in honours; and in 1871, took his degree of D.C.L. in course. While he was a law student he was elected president of the Law Students’ Society, succeeding the late Judge Ramsay of the Court of Queen’s Bench; Judge Baby, now of the same court, being elected secretary-treasurer. Shortly after, in May, 1855, he was admitted to the bar, and immediately returned to England, where, on the 19th July, 1855, he was married to Sophia Louisa Robinson (a cousin), eldest daughter of the late Thomas Robinson, of London and Norwood, merchant, and returned to Montreal the same year, and commenced practising law in partnership with A. H. Lunn. He was employed by G. W. Wickstead, Q.C., law clerk of the Legislative Assembly of Canada, on behalf of the government, to compile a digested index of all the statute law in force from the conquest to that date, preparatory to a consolidation of the statutes, which work he accomplished to his satisfaction. In 1851, he entered the active militia force by joining the Montreal Light Infantry Battalion as second lieutenant, and served therein for seven years, until he was gazetted out on leaving limits as unattached, retaining his rank of captain. In 1858, at the suggestion of Judge Dunkin, who, at that time, was member for Drummond and Arthabaska, and who intended residing in Drummond county (and his father having just arrived from England and purchased a farm in the neighbourhood of Drummondville), he left his practice in Montreal and came to Drummondville, which was then nothing but a deserted village in the middle of the woods and out of the world, although practically the chef-lieu of the then newly constituted district of Arthabaska, the only resident lawyers living there; now, thanks to the railroad, Drummondville is a thriving village of two thousand inhabitants, with flourishing manufactures and magnificent water powers, but has lost its pre-eminence in law since the erection of a court house at the chef-lieu, and the formation of a resident bar at Arthabaskaville. Mr. Dunkin, however, being defeated afterwards by J. B. E. Dorion, l’Enfant Terrible, obtained a seat in Brome county and permanently settled in that county at Knowlton. In 1867, on the death of l’Enfant Terrible (the then member for Drummond and Arthabaska), shortly before confederation, Mr. Hemming was invited by a large number of the electors to become a candidate for the Quebec legislature under confederation, and although he was opposed by the late Judge Dorion (a brother of l’Enfant Terrible), on the Liberal side, and by N. Hébert, as a French Conservative, he had a majority over both candidates combined, and stood at the head of the poll with nearly two hundred majority, and this, notwithstanding that the constituency was five-sixths French. During that parliament he took a prominent part in inaugurating the railway fever of that time and the government policy of subsidizing the railways consequent thereon. He obtained a charter for what is now the northern branch of the South Eastern Railway, under the then name of the Richelieu, Drummond and Arthabaska River Railway, one hundred miles in length; successfully (for every one but himself) promoted the scheme and constructed the road, was elected president of the company and gave to L. A. Sénécal the first railway contract he ever had, and finally transferred the road to the South Eastern Company on certain conditions which, we regret to say, were never fully carried out. He also greatly developed the two counties by opening up colonization roads; and took an active part in revising the municipal code. During this time he was elected president of the Agricultural Society of the county of Drummond, No. 1, and held the office until the society was constituted for the whole county. In 1870, a vacancy occuring in the lucrative office of prothonotary for the district of Arthabaska, the Hon. M. Chauveau, the then premier, nominated him to the same, but a difficulty arising in connection with the Hon. G. Irvine, who was then solicitor-general in the Chauveau administration, and who represented a portion of the district, in order to oblige Hon. M. Chauveau, he finally consented to decline the nomination, and to present himself once more in 1871 for re-election against the Hon. W. Laurier, the Liberal candidate, but was defeated by a large majority, principally on the ground of nationality and railway difficulties. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Hemming was elected warden of the county of Drummond, which office he resigned, when two years afterwards, he was appointed district magistrate (the equivalent of county judge in the other provinces) for the districts of Arthabaska and St. Francis, in conjunction with G. E. Rioux, but practically the two districts were divided, Mr. Hemming taking the former, and Mr. Rioux the latter. About the same time it was commonly reported in the press and elsewhere, that he was to be the new Superior Court judge, for the district, as the representative of the Protestant element among the six new judges, but at the end the Protestant element was eliminated altogether. While holding the office of district magistrate he was named sole commissioner by the Quebec government to investigate and report on the management and working of the prothonotary’s and other offices in the Montreal court-house, including the police office. Mr. Bréhaut (a Protestant) having resigned his office of police magistrate, and received another appointment in consequence of this report, it was again positively reported that Mr. Hemming was to be appointed police magistrate in his stead, but at the very last moment Judge Desnoyers was substituted. In 1878, during Mr. Joly’s short régime, when great efforts were made to introduce the American system, “to the victors belong the spoils,” Mr. Hemming and thirteen other district magistrates had their commissions revoked, on the ground of economy, without receiving any indemnity whatever for the loss of their office, and Mr. Rioux, being a Liberal, was awarded Mr. Hemming’s district in addition to his own, thus eliminating the only Protestant on the police bench in the whole province of Quebec. Strange to say, the succeeding Conservative administration in Quebec never took any steps either to reinstate or indemnify Mr. Hemming for the loss of his office, although nearly all his French colleagues were provided for one way or the other. As he had to commence his practice anew he retired from public life for some years; but in 1881, at the urgent request of the local government, consented to run against the Hon. George Irvine in the Conservative interest in Megantic, but was again defeated, not having received the support promised him, and having entered into the contest only a week before the polling. In this year he was named census commissioner for the county of Drummond by the Dominion government; and in 1885 revising officer for the same county under the Franchise Act. Having a short time previously consented to take a part in municipal matters again, he was elected mayor of Drummondville and warden of the county for the second time. He was also elected syndic of the Bar of Arthabaska, which office he held until his recent appointment as joint prothonotary and Clerk of the Crown for that district. Mr. Hemming has for some years past been an associate member of the Protestant Committee of the Council of Public Instruction for the province of Quebec, where he has been working for some time past to procure the introduction of religious teaching in the Protestant public schools, and has so far succeeded as to have the Bible placed upon the list of authorized text books. In religious matters Mr. Hemming is a member of the Church of England, and has acted for many years past as lay reader whenever his services have been required. And on one occasion in the absence of a clergyman after the church at Drummondville was destroyed by fire, conducted the services for nearly a year, and thereby kept the congregation together. He was churchwarden of St. George’s Church, Drummondville, for eighteen years, and has been elected a delegate to the Diocesan Synod of Quebec and to the Provincial Synod since 1862 without any intermission, and during these 25 years has never failed attending a single session of either of these synods. Mr. Hemming is old-fashioned enough to believe in the Bible, and consequently has no faith in Darwinism, secular education or prohibition. With regard to the latter, he says he cannot bring himself to believe that the Saviour was a criminal when he made and drank wine at the marriage feast, nor when he commanded his disciples to drink wine in his memory at the Lord’s Supper. In politics, he is and has always been a Conservative, and does not believe in the principles of the French or American revolutions, nor in the divine right of the people, and he believes that authority ought to come from above and not from below. Mr. Hemming cannot understand the theory of allowing the fools to elect the wise men, nor why a majority should have the right to utterly crush out the minority, and still less why a small minority that happens to hold the balance of power under our constitution, should have the power of controlling the overwhelming majority of the nation. Neither does he believe in Adam Smith. He has been a protectionist ever since the times of Sir Robert Peel, D’Israeli and Lord George Bentinck, and has never seen any occasion to change his opinion, notwithstanding it was considered rank heresy to say so. After a lifetime he begins to see signs that the British are beginning to discover that our social system is founded on the family, each with its own interest (the nation being merely an extension of that idea), and that until the whole world becomes one family, the theory of free trade which is based on that idea must be inapplicable. It will be seen by the foregoing that Mr. Hemming has led a pretty active life, which may be considered as decidedly professional, having been a sailor, soldier, farmer, lawyer, legislator, judge, doctor (in law) and (lay) parson. His sons are taking different branches of the professions. His eldest son being a law student, another is in the Canadian army, being a lieutenant in the Infantry School corps, and a third in the Canadian marine, being second officer on board of one of the government cruisers for the protection of the fisheries.