Sir Richard John Cartwright GCMG PC (December 4, 1835 – September 24, 1912) was a Canadian businessman and politician.

In particular, his debates with his Conservative counterpart, Sir George Eulas Foster, are the stuff of Canadian Parliamentary legend.

Richard Cartwright was a major landowner in the area, and became prominent in Kingston's financial community as president of the Commercial Bank of Canada.

[4] Cartwright entered politics when he was elected as a Conservative Party member and supporter of John A. Macdonald in the Province of Canada's legislative assembly in 1863.

In the year 1869, he broke with the Conservatives over Macdonald's appointment of Sir Francis Hincks as Minister of Finance, and crossed the floor to join the Liberal Party of Canada.

[5] In the 1890s, the Liberals moved away from support for unrestricted reciprocity with the United States, and Cartwright's influence in the party diminished.

Laurier denied Cartwright the finance ministry as a way of assuring Canada's business community that the government was not going to adopt free trade.

Cartwright also served as a Canadian member of the Anglo-American Joint High Commission to resolve diplomatic problems between Canada and the United States in 1898.

He served in the suppression of the 1885 Riel rebellion and in the Boer war in South Africa, where he was mentioned in dispatches four times.