In the same year, rumours began to be rife in the city, that Mr. Bowes, in conjunction with the Hon. Francis Hincks, then premier, had made $10,000 profits out of the sale of city debentures issued to the Northern Railway Company. Had the Mayor admitted the facts at once, stating his belief that he was right in so doing, it is probable that his friends would have been spared the pain, and himself the loss and disgrace which ensued. But he denied in the most solemn manner, in full Council, that he had any interest whatever in the sale of those debentures, and his word was accepted by all his friends there. When, in 1854, he was compelled to admit in the Court of Chancery, that he had not only sold the debentures for his own profit to the extent of $4,800, but that the Hon. Francis Hincks was a partner in the speculation, and had profited to the same amount, the Council and citizens were alike astounded. Not so much at the transaction itself, for it must be remembered that more than one judge in chancery held the dealing in city debentures to be perfectly legal both on the part of Mr. Bowes and Sir Francis Hincks, but at the palpable deception which had been perpetrated on the Finance Committee, and through them on the Council. While the sale of the $50,000 Northern Railway debentures was under consideration, Mr. Bowes as Mayor had been commissioned to get a bill passed at Quebec to legalize such sale. On his return it was found that new clauses had been introduced into the bill, and particularly one requiring the debentures to be made payable in England, to which Alderman Joshua G. Beard and myself took objection as unnecessarily tying the hands of the Council. Mr. Bowes said, "Mr. Hincks would have it so." Had the committee supposed that in insisting upon those clauses Mr. Hincks was using his official powers for his own private profit, they could never have consented to the change in the bill, but would have insisted upon the right of the Council to make their own debentures payable wheresoever the city's interests would be best subserved.[24]