 (brother of his cousins wife, Lady Vincent Meredith), took over from the ageing Sir John Abbott and William Badgley to become the firm's new senior partners.Since the departure of his father from Montreal to Quebec City in 1849, the law firm of Abbott (who had articled under his father) and Badgley had become the most influential in the city, which was then the financial capital of Canada.The firm's major clients included Canadian Pacific Railway, the Bank of Montreal, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Allan Line, the Bank of British North America, Molson Bank, Dominion Textile, Hugh Allan's Merchant's Bank and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.