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THE election of 1891
was the last great effort of a long political career, and the short
remainder of Macdonald's life story may be briefly told. The strain
of the winter campaign, with all its excitements, was too much for
the strength of a man who was now more than seventy-five years old,
and who had never known what it was to spare himself when an
emergency demanded an extraordinary effort. He had returned to his
own constituency of Kingston exhausted by continuous travel and much
speaking in Western Ontario. Carried away by the eagerness of his
supporters to see and hear him, he consented to attend a final
demonstration at Napanee, and there, driving from one heated hall
and crowded audience to another, to address an overflow meeting, he
received a chill from which he never thoroughly recovered. For a
time his strong will and wonderful vitality held him up, and after a
few days of complete rest, insisted upon by his physicians at
Kingston, he returned to Ottawa in time to record his own vote, and
to receive the reports of the election itself.
Most of the time from the day of the
election, March 5th, till the day when parliament opened on April
29th, was spent under medical care. The opening of the session,
however, found him in his place in the House. He was cheered by the
presence of his son, who had just been elected in Manitoba, and now
entered the Dominion parliament for the first time. But the
characteristic alertness of his step—the brightness of his
humour—the cheeriness with which he greeted the devoted followers
who had fought under his banner and shared his victory—the energy he
showed in trying to fulfil his accustomed social and official
duties, were but the last flicker of fires about to go out. Early in
May a slight stroke of paralysis, which affected his speech, warned
himself and his friends that his physical powers were failing. He
recovered sufficiently, however, from his first attack to resume his
social duties and return to parliament.
His last appearance in the House of
Commons, which he had ruled so long, was on May 22nd, when, in
answer to criticism by a member of the Opposition, he took upon
himself the full responsibility for having brought Sir Charles
Tupper over from London, where he was at the time filling the office
of high commissioner, to take part in the electoral struggle. On the
following day he gave the last of his many sessional dinners, and
seemed in excellent spirits. But increasing weakness and a return of
partial paralysis within the next two or three days made him
conscious that his time was short. His secretary and biographer has
told in detail of the calm demeanour and quiet dignity which he
showed when he realized the gravity of his condition. He insisted on
signing at once a document in regard to the disposition of his
property, "while" as he said, "there is time." Then he turned to his
correspondence and to parliamentary matters, while "neither by
voice, look, nor manner did he manifest the slightest disquietude."
He continued to interest himself in public business up to May 29th,
when a further stroke of paralysis rendered him unconscious. In this
condition he lingered for eight days, and on June 6th, 1891, his
strenuous life came to a quiet end.
From the moment that the fatal character
of his illness was understood, messages of enquiry and sympathy came
in on every side—from the queen —from viceroys under whom he had
served—from colleagues and friends at a distance with whom he had
worked; while, wherever men met together throughout Canada, the
impending loss of the country was the absorbing subject of thought
and discussion. Parliament was in session when he died; a State
funeral was at once ordered, and the Houses adjourned for eight days
as a formal expression of the national sorrow. After lying in state
in the senate chamber, his body was conveyed with imposing ceremony
and with demonstrations of popular respect and affection without
previous parallel in Canada, to Kingston, the town where his
childhood had been spent, and the constituency which he had
represented throughout nearly the whole of his long political
career. There, in accordance with his own desire, he was buried
beside the grave of his mother, in the Cataraqui cemetery. The
emigrant boy of 1820, grown to be a leader of men and the
master-builder of a great Dominion, who as a statesman had planned
the future of the nation, and as prime minister had often been
called "to shape the whispers of a throne," was laid to rest amid
the universal sorrow of a people who had come to look upon him as
the chief pillar of the State, columen rei publicae.
A wreath of white roses on his breast as
he lay in his coffin, "From Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, in memory
of her faithful and devoted servant;" a patent of nobility conferred
upon his widow as the Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe, were marks
bestowed by his sovereign—the one of private regard, the other of
official recognition of the unique work which he had accomplished
for the good of the empire. A memorial service in Westminster Abbey,
the first of its kind held in honour of a colonist ; a tablet
erected soon after his death in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral,
were more public and equally fitting indications of the sense of
national loss felt in the motherland.
In its mention of the memorial service
held at the greatest of all centres of English history, the London
Times accurately interpreted the significance of the ceremony.
"Westminster Abbey yesterday offered a spectacle which is without
precedent in the long and varied annals of that venerable building.
A congregation, eminently representative of all ranks and classes of
Englishmen, from the sovereign downwards, assembled to take part in
a solemn service held in memory of Sir John Macdonald, and to
testify to the strength and sincerity of the sympathy felt in this
country with our fellow-subjects in Canada. Many a great Englishman
sleeps within the Abbey, and many a requiem sung within its walls
has awakened mournful echoes in the hearts of English-speaking
peoples beyond the seas. But this is the first time that a great
sorrow, primarily falling upon our fellow-subjects abroad, has
awakened in the mother country a sentiment so strong as to demand
and receive expression in the ancient church that is consecrated by
so many of our proudest associations. Our roll of heroes would be
sadly curtailed were we to remove from it the names of those who did
their work in foreign lands and laid broad and deep foundations of
empire on which self-governing communities have since based the
fabric of their liberties. But the great soldiers and
administrators, whose reward was sealed and perfected by their final
entry into the national Pantheon, have always hitherto been the
servants of England, directly responsible to the English people; and
the conscious aim of their work, whatever might be its indirect
issues, has been to extend the power and add to the greatness of
their fatherland. Sir John Macdonald has primarily laboured for the
greatness of Canada, has been the devoted servant of the Canadian
people, and has sought at their hands the guerdon of faithful
service. It is in the character of a Canadian statesman that he is
now honoured and mourned by the people of this country, as they have
been wont to honour and mourn men whose lives were given to their
own service. Because he was a Canadian statesman, his bones may not
mingle with those of our illustrious dead, but the service at the
Abbey is the outward sign of a profound conviction that the great
Canadian is also a great Englishman, and that his service to the
Dominion ranks him with the most distinguished of those who have
served the mother country."
Throughout Canada the intense popular
feeling found general and spontaneous expression in many forms; in
elaborate tributes from the press of all political shades of
thought; in addresses of condolence to Lady Macdonald from almost
every corporation of importance in the country; in sermons and
speeches dealing with the great leader's work; in movements to
perpetuate his memory by statues or portraits in the principal
cities of the Dominion. Though the echoes of a fiercely contested
election were still in men's ears when he died, criticism seemed
hushed and faults forgotten in the prevailing sense of public loss.
He had applied to himself the thought that to him "much had been
forgiven, because he loved much." It was now made clear that he had
in this rightly interpreted the final judgment of his countrymen on
his public career. They had not merely forgiven; they returned him
love for love.
Macdonald was not a man who had many confidants, or who was effusive
in his friendships, yet there were thousands to whom his death
brought a sense of keen personal loss. Devotion to the service of
his country and innate human sympathy were repaid by the devotion of
others to himself. To one who reads the records of the time, nothing
seems more striking than the strong note of personal affection which
runs through much that was said of him.
The things that are said of a man soon
after his death are not always the best helps for forming an
accurate judgment of his real worth. But there is reason to think
that Macdonald's case furnishes an exception to the rule. The
conflict from which he had just emerged—the heat of party passion
which had been evoked—the hard blows given and received—the
consciousness that every expression would be closely scrutinized by
an interested public —created a situation in which men felt bound to
measure their words and judgments with peculiar care.
Sir Hector Langevin, to whose lot as
senior member of the government it fell to announce to parliament
the death of his leader, broke down entirely under his strong
emotion, and was unable to proceed. Sir Wilfrid Laurier's speech on
the occasion was a generous appreciation of his great opponent,
while its phrases, though carefully weighed, bore none the less the
stamp of a deep sincerity. Addressing the House after Sir Hector
Langevin he said among other things: "I fully realize the emotion
which chokes the honourable gentleman. His silence, under the
circumstances, is far more eloquent than any human language can be.
I fully appreciate the intensity of the grief which fills the souls
of all those who were the friends and followers of Sir John
Macdonald, at the loss of the great leader whose whole life has been
so closely identified with their party, a party upon which he has
thrown such brilliancy and lustre. We on this side of the House, who
were his opponents, who did not believe in his policy, nor in his
methods of government—we take our full share of their grief—for the
loss which they deplore today is far and away beyond and above the
ordinary compass of party range. It is in every respect a great
national loss, for he is no more who was, in many respects, Canada's
most illustrious son, and in every sense Canada's foremost citizen
and states- man.......
"The place of Sir John Macdonald in this
country was so large and so absorbing that it is almost impossible
to conceive that the political life of this country, the fate of
this country, can continue without him. His loss overwhelms us. For
my part, I say with all truth his loss overwhelms me, and it also
overwhelms this parliament, as if indeed one of the institutions of
the land had given way. Sir John Macdonald now belongs to the ages,
and it can be said with certainty that the career which has just
been closed is one of the most remarkable careers of this century.
It would be premature at this time to attempt to fix or anticipate
what will be the final judgment of history upon him ; but there were
in his career and in his life features so prominent and so
conspicuous, that already they shine with a glow which time cannot
alter, which even now appear before the eye, such as they will
appear to the end in history. I think it can be asserted that, for
the supreme art of governing men, Sir John Macdonald was gifted as
few men in any land or in any age were gifted—gifted with the
highest of all qualities, qualities which would have made him famous
wherever exercised, and which would have shone all the more
conspicuously the larger the theatre. The fact that he could
congregate together elements the most heterogeneous and blend them
into one compact party, and to the end of his life keep them
steadily under his hand, is perhaps altogether unprecedented. The
fact that during all those years he retained unimpaired not only the
confidence, but the devotion—the ardent devotion—and affection of
his party, is evidence that, besides those higher qualities of
statesmanship to which we were daily witnesses, he was also endowed
with those inner, subtle, undefinable graces of soul which win and
keep the hearts of men.
16 As to his statesmanship, it is
written in the history of Canada. It may be said without any
exaggeration whatever, that the life of Sir John Macdonald, from the
date he entered parliament, is the history of Canada, for he was
connected and associated with all the events, all the facts which
brought Canada from the position it then occupied—the position of
two small provinces, having nothing in common but their common
allegiance, united by a bond of paper, and united by nothing else—to
the present state of development which Canada has reached. Although
my political views compel me to say that, in my judgment, his
actions were not always the best that could have been taken in the
interest of Canada, although my conscience compels me to say that of
late he has imputed to his opponents motives which I must say in my
heart he has misconceived, yet I am only too glad here to sink these
differences, and to remember only the great services he has
performed for our country—to remember that his actions always
displayed great originality of view, unbounded fertility of
resource, a high level of intellectual conception, and, above all, a
far-reaching vision beyond the event of the day, and still higher,
permeating the whole, a broad patriotism—a devotion to Canada's
welfare, Canada's advancement, and Canada's glory."
The late Principal Grant, his ardent
supporter in the great lines of policy by which Canada was
consolidated, his unflinching opponent in lesser matters where the
upholder of the moral law and the political leader could not see eye
to eye, summed up his final view of Macdonald's character and career
in a few weighty words: "Though dead, the ideas that inspired him
live. He believed that there was room on the continent of America
for at least two nations, and he was determined that Canada should
be a nation. He believed in the superiority of the British
constitution to any other for free men, and that the preservation of
the union with the mother country was necessary to the making of
Canada. He had faith in the French race, and believed that a good
understanding between French and English people was essential to the
national welfare. The people followed him, not only as a leader but
as an actual embodiment of those fundamental ideas. . . . . To the
doing of his work he brought great qualities, and all were laid
unreservedly on the altar of his country. The combination of
imaginative power and insight, with a just appreciation of the
necessities of the present, made him a statesman. In virtue of a
quick judgment and extraordinary grasp of detail, he was a supreme
man of affairs. Those who knew him best, knew him also to be
essentially just, humane and God-fearing. He loved power, but the
people believed that he sought it that he might minister to the
country and not to himself. Canadians will not let the memory of
this great man die."
There was truth in the description of
him given in Blackwood at the time of his death as "one of the
greatest of the Conservative forces in the colonial empire."
It was as impossible to question his
loyalty to Canada as it was to question his loyalty to the empire.
The unique lesson of his life rests in the proof which it furnishes
that these two loyalties are not incompatible. To those who watch
closely the processes of national development, it seems as if two
special dangers threaten the British Empire. One arises from the
limited view of a considerable class of public men in Britain, at
the centre of imperial influence, it is true, and yet essentially
provincial in thought and experience, who fail to grasp what the
expansion of the empire means, and find it difficult to look beyond
the borders of the United Kingdom in their consideration of national
questions. To such men the prospect of national disintegration
presents no anxieties, and seems a thing rather to be welcomed than
otherwise. The other danger comes from the equally limited vision of
many in the colonies who, in questions of difficulty, unduly press
the local point of view without considering the necessities of the
empire as a whole. Both groups of thinkers fail to see that unity of
national purpose and action is for British people the essential
condition of national greatness and national safety. Between these
two types of men Macdonald stands as an example of the statesmanship
to which the nation must look in the future. Even his opponents
admitted the truth of his boast, modestly but emphatically made at
the gloomiest crisis of his public life, that "there does not exist
in Canada a man who has given more of his time —more of his
heart—more of his wealth—or more of his intellect and power, such as
they may be, for the good of the Dominion of Canada."
Yet it was the same man who had thus
devoted his life and powers to the service of Canada who could say
to his fellow-Canadians in his last appeal for their political
support: "A British subject I was born—a British subject I will die.
With my utmost effort, with my latest breath, will I oppose the
'veiled treason' which attempts by sordid means and mercenary
proffers to lure our people from their allegiance."
A successor in the premiership of the
Dominion, Sir .John 'Thompson, when unveiling Macdonald's statue at
Hamilton said: "Addressing the vast assemblage which is here to see
that statue unveiled, I beseech that you will learn by looking upon
that figure the lessons which he whom it represents desired that his
countrymen should learn and practise; devotion to the interest of
Canada, our country, and the determination that the banner of
England shall continue to wave over this country as long as time
shall last." In
like manner it was as a Conservative force in the empire that he
chiefly appealed to the statesmen of England. This was the dominant
note in the noble tribute paid to him by Lord Rosebery, then
secretary of state for foreign affairs, when unveiling the bust
erected to his memory in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral the year
after his death.
"We are gradually collecting," he said,
"within this cathedral the Lares and the Penates—the household
gods—of our commonwealth. Up above there sleep Wellington and
Nelson, those lords of war who preserved the empire; below here we
have effigies of Dailey and Macdonald, who did so much to preserve
it. We have not, indeed, their bodies. They rest more fitly in the
regions where they lived and laboured; but here to-day we consecrate
their memory and their example. We know nothing of party politics in
Canada on this occasion. We recognize only this, that Sir John
Macdonald had grasped the central idea, that the British Empire is
the greatest secular agency for good now known to mankind ; that
that was the secret of his success, and that he determined to die
under it, and strove that Canada should live under it. It is a
custom, I have heard, in the German army that, when new colours are
presented to a regiment, the German Emperor first, and then his
princes and chiefs in their order, each drive a nail into the staff.
I have sometimes been reminded of this practice in connection with
the banner of our empire. Elizabeth and her heroes first drove their
nails in, and so onward through the expansive eighteenth century,
when our flag flashed everywhere, down to our own times, when we
have not quailed nor shrunk. Yesterday it wrapped the corpse of
Tennyson ; to-day we drive one more nail in on behalf of Sir John
Macdonald. This standard, so richly studded, imposes on us, the
survivors, a solemn obligation. It would be nothing were it the mere
symbol of violence and rapine, or even of conquest. It is what it is
because it represents everywhere peace and civilization and
commerce, the negation of narrowness, and the gospel of humanity.
Let us then, today, by the shrine of this signal statesman, once
more remember our responsibility, and renew the resolution that come
what may, we will not flinch or fail under it."
To form a complete estimate, at once
just and impartial, of a career so varied, a character so
many-sided, and a mind so versatile, as those of Sir John Macdonald
is no easy task, and a biographer is therefore glad to call in the
aid of such deliberately expressed opinions of contemporary men of
weight as those which have been given. For the rest, one would
willingly and perhaps with advantage leave the individual reader to
judge for himself from a study of the facts. But, as we survey this
long and chequered career, a few salient features of character or
conduct unfold themselves so clearly that they may be spoken of with
some degree of confidence.
Whatever other faults Macdonald may have
had, he was no hypocrite. He made no pretence of a superhuman virtue
in carrying on his work of governing Canada. He always said that it
was an exceedingly difficult task, and he freely acknowledged the
fact that he was sometimes reduced to great straits, and was
compelled to do things that he would rather have left undone, while
feeling bound to do the best he could with the material that came to
his hand. So he shut his eyes at times to doubtful things rather
than lose a useful colleague; he condoned serious shortcomings in
faithful followers, and helped to shield them when attacked; he
gratified vanities in weak men if by doing so he could gain support
for large ends. He studied alike the strength and foibles of men and
turned both, with consummate dexterity, towards the accomplishment
of his large purposes. But these sins are as old as politics. Are we
to blame the leader or the conditions of public life—themselves a
reflex of the average tone of society—which force the hands of the
leader? A man with large patriotic plans in his mind finds his
purposes thwarted or delayed by men whom he must either break or
bend. Shall he adapt his methods to the human nature with which he
has to deal, or give up the plans? For the moral idealist, confident
in the ultimate triumph of right, and counting, in his large way, a
thousand years but as one day, there is but one answer. For the
practical politician, whose concern is with the interests of to-day
or to-morrow, the answer often seems nearly as ambiguous as the
response of an ancient oracle. In that ambiguity Macdonald found
latitude for a wide range of action. The arts of the politician were
ingrained in his very nature and habits of thought as the natural
result of long years spent amid the intrigues of provincial
politics. To some it even seemed as if the skilful playing of the
political game and the out-manoeuvring of an opponent gave him as
much satisfaction as did success in gaining the end to which all
this was subsidiary.
So, like many another nation builder, he
must be pronounced lacking in that delicate scrupulousness which
shrinks from using unworthy men and unworthy means for the
accomplishment even of great purposes. What opponents branded as
political immorality, his apologists considered the necessary
concessions of a strong leader to the temper and conditions of the
time in which he lived and the weakness of the instruments with
which he had to deal. There were those who conscientiously believed
that, considering the imperfect development of public opinion in
Canada in his time, the methods which he employed were the only ones
which could have accomplished the great ends he had in view. Whether
any end is worth gaining at such a price is a point upon which
opinions will differ. There is reason to think that some of his
political methods have, by their very success, left a stamp upon
Canadian public life as undesirable as it has proved hard to efface.
During his long tenure of power a tradition gradually sprung up that
these methods were the only ones by which Canada could be governed.
Certain it is that men who climbed into power by denouncing them
have silently yielded to the persuasion of that tradition, and have
gained and held power by similar means carried out on a larger scale
and with more cunningly devised machinery. No honest Canadian,
Conservative or Reformer, who knows how elections are conducted,
will deny these things. Nor is it likely to be otherwise so long as
individuals or communities put themselves up for sale. The
temptation to buy is too great for ordinary human resistance. The
only complete remedy is in the hands of the electors themselves.
One form of what might be called
political corruption has long been used by Canadian politicians and
accepted by Canadian constituencies as a more or less justifiable
weapon of party struggle. In opening up a vast country like the
Dominion the construction of public works on a great scale
necessarily falls upon the shoulders of government. The demand for
assistance to railways, canals, bridges, harbour equipment, public
buildings, and so on, is always far in advance of the means at the
command of an administration. A selection has to be made, and that
selection lies in the hands of the party in power. That the
selection should be made to favour friends seems to many as natural
as the distribution of offices and appointments among political
supporters. Thus men, who in their individual capacity would scorn a
bribe, will in a collective capacity with little compunction give
their votes in return for promised expenditure upon a railway or
other public work, salving their conscience, perhaps, with the
general argument of public utility.
In a closely contested election, such
influences have so often proved decisive that they probably account
in no slight degree for the prolonged continuance in office of any
Canadian government which has once grasped the reins of power. This
influence was used freely by Macdonald and his colleagues, as it has
been freely used by their Liberal successors in office.
Are we to throw all the blame upon the
men who manipulate the constituency, or shall we equally blame the
constituency which lends itself wittingly and willingly, nay,
eagerly, to manipulation? In these matters, to apologize for
Macdonald is to arraign the general condition of Canadian politics.
In all his earlier and later struggles the use of money—of patronage
in public offices—the indirect subsidizing of the party press by
means of government printing and advertising—the diversion of
support to public works in such a way as to strengthen at needful
points the party in power, were all accepted, tacitly or openly, as
counters in the political game. The fact that each party tried to
conceal the worst features of what it thus did and to make its
opponents appear the more corrupt, may be regarded as a tribute to
the general soundness of the Canadian electorate, or at least, of
its professed principles. But the fact that each party found it
necessary to use such means, proves the existence of an element in
the constituencies ready to be swayed by corrupt considerations.
It is doubtful whether it can honestly
be said that Macdonald ever vigorously used his great influence to
combat this evil, or even thought the contest was one that he was
called upon to wage. A statesman of higher ideals might have done
so. He accepted men at their own valuation and the world as he found
it. But it was admitted on all hands that, if he was ready to offer
corrupt inducements to others, he remained incorrupt himself. "These
hands are clean," he said, with dramatic earnestness after the
Pacific Scandal, and his protestation was believed by the Canadian
people so far as any suspicion was concerned that he had made mean
gains or been actuated by petty personal motives in what he had
done. But if he
was not so much of a political idealist as his best friends would
have wished him to be, or as posterity would prefer that he had
been, the special virtues which he did possess were such as appealed
very strongly to ordinary human nature. A life of party struggle
such as his could scarcely be entirely free from bitter animosities.
But as a rule, and especially throughout his later life, his good
humour and kindliness were well-nigh invincible. The sunshine of his
friendly nature shone on opponents as well as on supporters. He had
a natural inclination to the use of those arts which so often
control men's heads by influencing their hearts. Young members
entering parliament were captivated by the friendly notice which,
coming from a great leader, was in itself a subtle flattery. He was
always ready to relieve the weariness of a long sitting or a dry
debate by a joke—not always brilliantly witty, but at least
spontaneous, and indicative of high spirits and intellectual
readiness, and always gaining something from the manner of its
delivery. The ponderous arguments of opponents in deadly earnest
were often countered by an epigram or story, which, passing from
mouth to mouth, and caught up by the press, seemed as effective,
politically, as a reasoned reply, and with the public at large was
often more so. An admirer has compiled a volume of anecdote and
repartee [Biggar's Anecdotal Biography of Sir John Macdonald.]
culled from newspaper reports of his speeches, from the pages of
Hansard, or from the personal recollections of friends. The natural
kindness of Macdonald's heart is illustrated by this collection even
more than the readiness or keenness of his wit. Retorts made even in
the heat of party debate are singularly free from the sting which
leaves behind the sense of pain.
I have said that he was no hypocrite.
Even his own personal shortcomings he was wont to refer to with
humorous frankness. On one occasion in the earlier stages of his
career when he had been violently attacked in the columns of the
Globe by his chief political opponent for some lapse into
intemperance, his only rejoinder was to tell a large gathering of
electors that, granting the truth of all that had been said, he knew
that they would any day prefer "John A. drunk to George Brown
sober." The story was current, too, that when D'Arcy McGee first
joined his government Macdonald solemnly warned him that he (McGee)
must reform his habits, since "no cabinet could afford to carry two
drunkards." In
a somewhat similar vein he would at times refer to demands which he
occasionally made upon his followers to support doubtful proceedings
which in some way stood related to party interests. The late
Principal Grant, the head of Queen's University, was one of his
strongest and most ardent supporters in the Confederation of Canada,
in his railway policy, and in other great measures. But there came a
time when with all the good-will in the world he could not continue
his support. "How I wish," Sir John said to him one day at a social
gathering, "that you would be a steady friend of mine." "But, Sir
John, I have always supported you when I felt you were right." "Miy
dear man," said the premier, with a friendly touch and a humorous
twinkle of the eye, "I have no use for that species of friendship."
He was not an orator in the ordinary
acceptation of that term. Few purple patches can be found among his
speeches ; few passages either smell of of the lamp or smack of the
school; very few lend themselves to striking quotation. In beginning
to speak, his manner was usually marked by a certain hesitation ;
facility of expression set in with the full tide of thought. He
often repeats himself —a fault from the literary point of
view—inevitable in a speech not carefully prepared, but often a
strength in appealing to the average audience which requires time to
grasp an idea, and is glad to survey it at leisure and from slightly
varying angles. But as a parliamentary debater he was
extraordinarily effective, especially in his later years, when he
had learned the art of self-control, and when unrivalled experience
gave weight and prestige to all he said. His strength lay in getting
at the heart of the matter under discussion. His thought is always
of carrying his point—not of winning applause or impressing
posterity. If he paid comparatively little attention to the form of
his parliamentary speeches, full atonement was made by the careful
thought given to the matter. His keen intellect grasped what was
essential; and the plain common sense which stamped his views
carried more conviction with it than finished oratory could have
done. Some of his more important speeches—notably that in which he
moved in the legislature the resolutions which led up to
Confederation, as also that in which he explained and defended the
Washington Treaty in 1872, are models of clear arrangement and
convincing exposition. His nearest approaches to eloquence are in
passages inspired by patriotism. By nothing else was his imagination
so touched as by the thought of his own country growing in greatness
and dignity ; of an empire gaining new strength and honour from the
upspringing of daughter, nations.
Macdonald has left it on record that in
the year after the general election of 1878, when in London with Sir
Leonard Tilley and Sir Charles Tupper, they made a formal
proposition to the British government of reciprocal trade on
preferential terms. He had at that time private as well as official
intercourse with Lord Beaconsfield, and the Right Hon. W. H. Smith,
then leader of the House of Commons, and there is reason to think,
from the correspondence that took place between him and those two
statesmen, that had their government been supported in the election
that came in the same year, Macdonald's views might have received
practical consideration. The defeat of the Beaconsfield
administration and the return of Mr. Gladstone to power destroyed
any hopes of immediate action that Macdonald may have entertained.
But he returned to the question again and again as opportunity
offered. To the movement inaugurated by the Right Hon. W. E. Forster
and others in favour of imperial federation, he gave a cordial
support so far as the general principle was concerned. While he had
doubts about the possibility of working out the complete
parliamentary federation of the empire, he was a firm believer in an
ever strengthening union for trade, defence, and cooperation in
questions of national policy. A material bond of mutual advantage in
the exchange of products between the motherland and the colonies
seemed to him a necessary supplement to the bond of sentiment, and
in the last year of his life he mentions in a letter to a friend his
intention to renew the formal offer of 1878, in case Lord Salisbury
succeeded in the general election. It is an interesting fact that,
at about the very time when Macdonald was stricken down by his last
illness, another great empire builder, Cecil Rhodes, inditing to him
a letter of congratulation on his recent electoral success, was
suggesting, as he also did to Sir Henry Parkes in Australia, a
united effort to bring about a system of preferential trade within
the empire. That letter Macdonald never saw, but it was one with
which he would have strongly sympathized, as many of his speeches
clearly show. Indeed, through all his public speeches and all his
legislation there is to be constantly discerned the central
principle of his political faith that the supreme interest of Canada
and the supreme interest of the empire are one. In that faith he
began, and in that faith he ended, his political career.
He kept in close touch with imperial
politics, and with many of the leading minds of the motherland. No
doubt the intimate personal relations into which he was necessarily
brought, as cabinet minister and premier, with the succession of
distinguished public men who filled the post of governor-general
during his time, had much to do with his political education and the
remarkable grasp which he obtained of the broad principles of
government. He
keenly enjoyed his many visits to England on public business, and
the opportunity they furnished for discussion with the rulers of the
empire. We are justified in believing that in range of national
vision he was on the level with the best.
He was made a K.C.B. on the consummation
of Confederation in 1867; was summoned to the Privy Council after
the Washington Treaty in 1870, though not sworn in till seven years
later; and in 1884 he received, on the recommendation of Mr.
Gladstone, the Grand Cross of the Bath. But the imperial honours
thus bestowed upon him in recognition of imperial service, were,
after all, merely ratifications of Canadian judgment of his merits.
This was equally true of the peerage conferred upon his widow after
his death. The
conditions under which he won his way to commanding place and power
are sufficiently striking. None of the adventitious circumstances
which in older countries usually smooth the path of the rising
statesman, were in his favour. From boyhood he was compelled to earn
his own living and that of others. He had no influential family
connection to give him support, nor any of that early educative
association with the representatives of fixed political tradition
which so commonly moulds the principles and gives consistency to the
course of public men in the motherland. His political judgment had
to be formed in reliance upon his own observation and common sense;
his political philosophy by self-directed study. He was not endowed
with those compelling powers of oratory which captivate the
multitude, nor had university training given finish to his natural
ability. His earlier political alliance was with the least popular
party in the State, so that the weight of public sentiment as well
as the political majority of his own province were often opposed to
him. That,
notwithstanding these circumstances, usually regarded as obstacles,
he worked steadily forward through so long a term of public life
indicates the possession of exceptional qualities. They were
qualities which appealed to widely different classes of people. The
plodding farmer of Ontario and the plain fisherman or lumberman of
the Maritime Provinces recognized in him that common sense in
practical affairs which they most value and esteem. The
light-hearted Frenchman of Quebec enjoyed his geniality and wit, and
on points of national sensitiveness trusted in the sincerity of his
sympathy. The strongest among his Canadian contemporaries cheerfully
accepted him as their leader. A succession of governors-general,
drawn from the highest ranks of English public life, pronounced him
one of the ablest men with whom they had ever been called upon to
deal. There is
therefore cumulative evidence that he possessed that combination of
qualities which, here and there, among the masses of mankind, stamps
an individual as an appointed ruler of men. Few statesmen have had
more severe tests applied to their capacity for rule. In carrying
out the necessary task of reconciling jealousies, not to say
animosities, of race he must have had many a moment of great
anxiety. A
large parliamentary group which on certain questions votes and acts
independently of the motives which actuate the general policy of a
party, must always be embarrassing to a party leader. In matters
connected with the Church and education this is generally true of
the French-Canadian, who for the most part feels bound in these
things to take direction from his spiritual advisers, themselves
nothing loath to push their influence in the field of politics. On
the other hand, to a large part of the English-speaking population
of Canada, trained in an entirely different school of thought, the
exercise of such ecclesiastical influence is well-nigh anathema.
In Canada, again, the evils of a violent
party press have at times been greatly aggravated by difference of
language. In the early days of Confederation the French journals of
Quebec had few readers in the English provinces ; outside the
cities, the French-Canadian never read the papers of Ontario or the
Maritime Provinces, and inside the cities very seldom. The
circumstances furnished an unrivalled field for the reckless and
irresponsible agitator. Translations, garbled or divorced from their
context, often presented to the voters of one race false ideas of
the acts or opinions of their fellow-citizens in another province.
Skill, tact and patience of no ordinary kind were required to allay
the whirlwinds of feeling thus originated, which swept over the
provinces from time to time. No mere skill, however—nothing but a
genuine understanding of and sympathy with the French
character—could have done what Macdonald did in the management of
Quebec. He appreciated the solid virtues which dwell in the habitant
and had a large tolerance for his peculiarities. He recognized his
inherited impulsiveness and made due allowance for it. But brought
up among people of Scottish descent he understood the Puritan temper
as well, though perhaps less in sympathy with it. In his early years
he had himself joined the Orange body, and, though the connection
did not continue, he understood the spirit of the organization.
Between conflicting races and temperaments he acted not only as a
buffer, breaking the force of collision, but also, to no small
extent, as reconciler and peacemaker.
It was those who best knew the
difficulties with which he had to deal, who most fully appreciated
in this respect the work which he did. Speaking of Macdonald in
1881, Lord Dufferin, who was governor-general at the time of his
overthrow in 1873, said :-
"I am inclined to think that what bears
most conclusive testimony to his extraordinary talents has been the
even tenor with which Canada has pursued her successful way during
recent years, the absence of all serious complications from her
history, and the freedom from all anxiety on her account which we
have enjoyed during the last half century, notwithstanding the
peculiar delicacy of her geographical position and the ethnological
diversity of her population, with the conflicting interests it
naturally engenders. What might have happened had the affairs of our
great dependency been directed by a less cautious and less skilful
or a less patriotic pilot, those only who are well acquainted with
the intricacies of Canadian political problems can adequately
appreciate."
Throughout the whole course of his official life Macdonald was a
poor man. His case is not exceptional. It has been a common lot of
the largest figures in the public life of Canada. A new country has
no large class of men with fixed wealth and hereditary position,
such as exists in older lands, to be drawn upon for public service
performed merely as a matter of public duty, or for the honours
which it brings. Even if such a class did exist the democratic
spirit of the people does not favour the absorption of political
power by the wealthy alone. The public life of Canada has been
largely recruited from the ranks of professional, commercial or
industrial ability. But in this, as in other things, it is
impossible to serve two masters. The business of a professional or
commercial man must suffer when he gives his time and best thought
to the service of the public. This difficulty is accentuated in
Canada, as compared with England, by the vast size of the country,
which compels the man who devotes himself to parliamentary life to
remain for months together far removed from his business interests.
The result is that political success has usually gone hand in hand
with narrowness of private means. The circumstance that nearly all
of Canada's premiers have so far been poor men is, from more than
one point of view, an honour to the country and the men--to the
country which gives an equality of opportunity to merit irrespective
of fortune—to the men, no one of whom has used his position as a
means of enriching himself. Nor is the fact without its gains to
balance manifest disadvantages. The poor man is, indeed, in a less
independent position as regards the retention of place and power
than one whose wealth makes him indifferent personally to the
vicissitudes of politics. On the other hand public men drawn chiefly
from a wealthy class can scarcely hope to have an intimate sympathy
with the ordinary life of the people, or a full understanding of its
conditions. Macdonald had both in a degree that he could never have
attained save in that hard school of experience in which his early
life was passed. His youth had made him familiar with the lot of the
poor; and fortunately these early struggles never made him greedy of
wealth. In one
sense he might be considered, at least in his later years, as a
professional politician, but no man ever took part in public life
who thought less of the material advantages which are supposed to
furnish the motive of that type of man. For the service of his
country he gave up professional success, which was easily within his
grasp, and he put aside, more than once, judicial appointments which
would have given him freedom from financial care. His indifference
to money for its own sake—his carelessness, indeed, about money in
the management of his private resources, were well known. It was
only the accident of complete prostration by illness in 1870 that
revealed to his friends the fact that the man who had for so many
years been giving all the best that was in him to the service of his
country was practically penniless, and had made no provision for his
family. A sum of about seventy thousand dollars was raised by his
friends at the time, but it was wisely placed in the hands of
trustees to manage for the benefit of those he might leave behind.
To a man of this temper people were ready to forgive that love of
power which he never disclaimed.
In nearly all the large towns of Canada
statues have been erected to transmit to posterity the figure and
the fame of the great premier. They are tributes of admiration from
a people, sections of whom often differed widely from the public
policy of the politician, but who were united in sincere regard and
affection for the man and the patriot. Before his death he had
become the "Grand Old Man" of Canadian public life. His long
experience in public affairs; his unrivalled knowledge of the
conditions with which he had to deal ; his unequalled skill in
manipulating the various factors in the political problem; his
freedom from fanaticism; his high sense of courtesy in political
life; his enthusiastic faith in the future of Canada; his consistent
loyalty to the great imperial idea, all combined to make him stand
out among his fellows as by far the most conspicuous and influential
man in the Dominion.
Slowly, through more than three
centuries of difficulty, conflict and doubt, from painful but
picturesque beginnings, the history of Canada has gradually unfolded
itself, until there has emerged a nationhood of distinct type, the
resultant of many contrasted and often conflicting forces. The
romantic daring of the early pioneers in war and commerce; the
dauntless courage of the Roman Catholic missionary; the Frenchman's
loyalty to creed, race and language; the Puritan zeal for spiritual
independence; the mingled love of liberty and devotion to noble
tradition which stamped the United Empire Loyalist; the opposing
passion of the two more virile and dominant races of the last
centuries—Celt and Saxon; these and many other streams of influence
have gone to mould Canadian institutions and Canadian character. As
a net result of all, the present of the Dominion has become a pride,
its future an inspiration, to all its sons. The man who drew
together all these complicated threads, who welded the northern half
of the North American continent into a united whole, who held it
true to its British relationship while retaining an individuality
all its own, will always live in the grateful memory not only of his
own Canadian people, but of the British race.
And if against the greatness of the man
history must set the shortcomings which he himself so candidly
admitted, Canadians who are just, and who know the conditions,
political and moral, under which their great leader wrought out his
life work, will not leave him to bear alone the burden of blame. |
