On the 20th day of April, 1844, I was standing outside the railing of St. James's churchyard, Toronto, on the occasion of a very sad funeral. The chief mourner was a slightly built, delicate-looking young man of prepossessing appearance. His youthful wife, the daughter of the late Hon. H. J. Boulton, at one time Chief Justice of Newfoundland, had died, and it was at her burial he was assisting. When the coffin had been committed to the earth, the widowed husband's feelings utterly overcame him, and he fell insensible beside the still open grave.

This was my first knowledge of John Hillyard Cameron. From that day, until his death in November, 1876, I knew him more or less intimately, enjoyed his confidence personally and politically, and felt a very sincere regard for him in return. I used at one time to oppose his views in the City Council, but always good-naturedly on both sides. I was chairman of the Market Committee, and it was my duty to resist his efforts to establish a second market near the corner of Queen and Yonge Streets, in the rear of the buildings now known as the Page Block. He was a prosperous lawyer, highly in repute, gaining a considerable revenue from his profession, and being of a lively, sanguine temperament, launched out into heavy speculations in exchange operations and in real estate.

As an eloquent pleader in the courts, he excelled all his contemporaries, and it was a common saying among solicitors, that Cameron ruled the Bench by force of argument, and the jury by power of persuasion. In the Legislature he was no less influential. His speeches on the Clergy Reserve question, on the Duval case, and many others, excited the House of Assembly to such a degree, that on one occasion an adjournment was carried on the motion of the ministerial leader, to give time for sober reflection. So it was in religious assemblies. At meetings of the Synod of the Church of England, at missionary meetings, and others, his fervid zeal and flowing sentences carried all before them, and left little for others to say.

In 1849, Mr. Cameron married again, this time a daughter of General Mallett, of Baltimore, who survives him, and still resides in Toronto. After that date, and for years until 1857, everything appeared to prosper with him. A comfortable residence, well stored with valuable paintings, books and rarities of all kinds. The choicest of society and hosts of friends. An amiable growing family of sons and daughters. Affluence and elegance, popular favour, and the full sunshine of prosperity. Honours were showered upon him from all sides. Solicitor-General in 1846, member of Parliament for several constituencies in turn, Treasurer of the Law Society, and Grand Master of the Orange Association. Judgeships and Chief-Justiceships were known to be at his disposal, but declined for personal reasons.

My political connection with Mr. Cameron commenced in 1854, when, having purchased from the widow of the late Hugh Scobie the Colonist newspaper, I thought it prudent to strengthen myself by party alliances. He entered into the project with an energy and disinterestedness that surprised me. It had been a semi-weekly paper; he offered to furnish five thousand dollars a year to make it a daily journal, independent of party control; stipulated for no personal influence over its editorial views, leaving them entirely in my discretion, and undertaking that he would never reclaim the money so advanced, as long as his means should last. I was then comparatively young, enterprising, and unembarrassed in circumstances, popular amongst my fellow-citizens, and mixed up in nearly every public enterprise and literary association then in existence in Toronto. Quite ready, in fact, for any kind of newspaper enterprise.

My arrangement with Mr. Cameron continued, with complete success, until 1857. The paper was acknowledged as a power in the state; my relations with contemporary journals were friendly, and all seemed well.

In the summer of 1857 occurred the great business panic, which spread ruin and calamity throughout Canada West, caused by the cessation of the vast railway expenditure of preceding years, and by the simultaneous occurrence of a business pressure in the United States. The great house of Duncan Sherman & Co., of New York, through which Mr. Cameron was in the habit of transacting a large exchange business with England, broke down suddenly and unexpectedly. Drafts on London were dishonoured, and Mr. Cameron's bankers there, to protect themselves, sold without notice the securities he had placed in their hands, at a loss to him personally of over a hundred thousand pounds sterling.

Mr. Cameron was for a time prostrated by this reverse, but soon rallied his energies. Friends advised him to offer a compromise to his creditors, which would have been gladly accepted; but he refused to do so, saying, he would either pay twenty shillings in the pound or die in the effort. He made the most extraordinary exertions, refusing the highest seats on the judicial bench to work the harder at his profession; toiling day and night to retrieve his fortunes; insuring his life for heavy sums by way of security to his creditors; and felt confident of final success, when in October, 1876, while attending the assize at Orillia, he imprudently refreshed himself after a night's labour in court, by bathing in the cold waters of the Narrows of Lake Couchiching, and contracted a severe cold which laid him on a sick bed, which he never quitted alive.

I saw him a day or two before his death, when he spoke of a heavy draft becoming due, for which he had made provision. In this he was disappointed. He tried to leave his bed to rectify the error, but fell back from exhaustion, and died in the struggle--as his friends think--from a broken heart.