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Date: 1868-01-21
By: The Globe
Citation: “The Vacant Senatorship,” The Globe (21 January 1868)
Other formats: n/a

THE VACANT SENATORSHIP

The death of Mr. Ferguson-Blair leaves a vacancy in the Senate of the Dominion. Two or three journals have undertaken to write up the claims of Mr. James Cowan, ex-member for South Waterloo, to be appointed to the vacant place. If ministers wish to fly in the face of public opinion, and to create a demand for an elective Senate, they will give the Senatorship to a gentleman who was a few months since rejected by his constituents by a majority of several hundreds. It is true that we cannot expect any Government always to appoint the man whom the people would choose if the district in which he resides were polled; but we can fairly ask that men shall not be chosen to the Senate immediately after it has been emphatically proved that they are not acceptable to the people among whom they reside. The Senate should not be made an asylum for rejected politicians.

It is easy to find men who have infinitely stronger claims upon the vacant Senatorship than Mr. Cowan. Mr. Benson, member of the House of Commons for Lincoln, was an elected member of the Legislative Council of the late Province of Canada, and was “dropped” when the selection of Senators was made. Since that time he has been unanimously elected a Members of the House of Commons, and two elections by acclamation ought to be some evidence that he is acceptable to the people of his part of the country. Then, it is certainly that the members of the Legislative Council who were left out when the first Senators were appointed, ought, if they are qualified, to have the preference when the first vacancies occur. And no one can say aught against Mr. Benson’s fitness for the position.  It is said, moreover, that he has had a promise which will be fulfilled if he gets the Senatorship now vacant—and though a promise from politicians of a certain type may not go for much, it should count for something in favour of a man whose other claims are so strong. The geographical argument is used on behalf of Mr. Cowan, and it is argued that his district is without a Senator. But if the geographical argument is worth anything in Mr. Cowan’s case, it is just as good in that of Mr. Benson, who also lives in a district where there is no Senator.