The Day of Sir John Macdonald Part 6

TORONTO, _August_ 15, 1872.

MY DEAR SIR,--The fight goes bravely on.... We have expended our strength in aiding outlying counties and helping our city candidates.

But a big push has to be made on Sat.u.r.day and Monday for the East and West divisions.... We therefore make our grand stand on Sat.u.r.day.

There are but half a dozen people that can come down handsomely, and we have done all we possibly can do, and we have to ask a few outsiders to aid us. Will you be one? I have been urged to write you, and comply accordingly. Things look well all over the Province.... Things look bright in Quebec.--Faithfully yours,

GEO. BROWN.

[17] Senate Debates, 1879, p. 565.

[18] 'I now refer to the diplomatic blunder committed in undertaking solemn engagements that the entire resources of the Empire could not possibly implement.... You will see how unlikely it was that that road, with all the power of man and all the money of Europe, could have been completed in 1881' (Mackenzie at Sarnia, October 11, 1875).

Even after the completion of the C.P.R. the _Globe_ mocked at the enterprise in this fashion: 'The iron band of Confederation has been completed.... The salubrious Rocky and Selkirk ranges may now become a summer resort for the fashionable and crowded populations situated between Callander and Rat Portage. In short, the Canadian Pacific Railway has been opened.... For our own part, we have not the slightest doubt that the C.P.R. will be no less effective than the N.P.

in creating wealth for Canada.... This will be amply proved by the spectacle of a railway 2500 miles long operated on the strength of a traffic with about 150,000 people. Such a thing was never tried before, and is unlikely ever to be tried again' (_Globe_, July 13, 1886).

[19] 'You don't, I think, give sufficient weight to the troubles and difficulties which beset the Government, and you have exaggerated our power--forgetting that we have a strong opposition and a watchful press which charge us with being mere tools of the C.P.R., and not knowing that more than once we were deserted by our own parliamentary friends in caucus, and that it was only my individual power over them that enabled us on more than one occasion to come to your relief (Sir John Macdonald to Sir George Stephen, dated August 1, 1890).

[20] This was the Hon. P. Landry, the present speaker (1915) of the Senate. He was a fast friend and supporter of Macdonald, but he disapproved of the execution of Riel.

{139}

CHAPTER III

OLD AGE

'With the Canadian Pacific Railway finished, and my Franchise Bill become law, I feel that I have done my work and can now sing my _Nunc dimittis_.'

So wrote Sir John Macdonald to Lord Carnarvon shortly after the close of the arduous parliamentary session of 1885. There can be little doubt that these words expressed his inmost sentiments at the time. He had pa.s.sed the allotted span of threescore years and ten, had 'sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,' and was beginning to look forward to a brief period of freedom from the cares of state before he should be too old to enjoy it. His great work was done. The scattered colonies had been united into a vast Dominion. The great North-West and the Pacific province had been added and Canada now extended from ocean to ocean, its several provinces joined together by iron {140} bands. The reader of these pages can form some idea of the difficulties, of the labours, the anxieties, and the discouragements encountered in the execution of this giant task; and also of the marvellous courage, patience, and endurance which sustained the master builder throughout, and eventually enabled him to triumph over all opposition. Small wonder that Sir John Macdonald, with the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, sometimes in later life yearned for that rest which he was fated never to enjoy.

Party considerations forbade it. Macdonald's political friends could not reconcile themselves to his retirement, and he, in turn, could not make up his mind to abandon them. They declared that his withdrawal meant the certain disintegration and consequent defeat of the great party which he had built up, the party whose destinies he had so long guided. There were, moreover, at this particular time special reasons which rendered his controlling hand more than ever necessary. It was no secret that the French-Canadian ministers, Langevin, Caron, and Chapleau, were far from showing that spirit of mutual trust and confidence which is supposed to exist among members of the same Ministry. {141} Sir Hector Langevin, the senior of the triumvirate, had been the lieutenant of Cartier, but, in this instance, the mantle of Elijah had not fallen upon his successor. In my experience I never met a man who more neatly fulfilled Bismarck's cynical description of Lord Salisbury--'a lath painted to look like iron.' He was a good departmental officer--but he was nothing more. The moment Sir John Macdonald's support was taken away, he fell. Yet Sir John stood by him against the attacks of his opponents, and generally sided with him in his differences with his colleagues.

During a holiday of 1888 Sir John said to me one day at Dalhousie, N.B., where he was spending the summer: 'George Stephen keeps pressing me to retire, and I think I shall. My only difficulty is about my successor.' 'Whom do you think of as such?' I asked. 'Oh,' replied he, 'Langevin; there is no one else.'[1] 'Well,' I remarked, 'I have a candidate--one who lives on the border line between the two provinces, speaks both languages with facility, and is equally at home {142} in Quebec and Ontario.' 'Who is he?' 'Mr Abbott,' I replied. 'John Abbott,' said Sir John incredulously. 'Why, he hasn't a single qualification for the office. Thompson,' he went on, 'is very able and a fine fellow, but Ontario would never endure his turning Catholic.

No, I see no one but Langevin.' Yet it was Abbott after all. When asked why he thought so much of Langevin, the reply was at once forthcoming: 'He has always been true to me.' The same thing might have been said of Sir Adolphe Caron, ever a faithful supporter, and from his youth up, equally in prosperity and adversity, a close personal friend of the old chief; but Sir John thought that Caron sometimes allowed his personal feelings to obscure his judgment, or, as he expressed it, 'Caron is too much influenced by his hates--a fatal mistake in a public man, who should have no resentments.' Sir Adolphe Chapleau, with all his attractiveness and charm, Sir John never quite trusted. The relations between these three French-Canadian ministers were hard to define. I frankly confess that, with all my opportunities, I could never master the intricacies of Lower-Canadian politics in those days. In the beginning it seemed to be a case of Langevin and {143} Caron against Chapleau; later it sometimes looked as though Langevin and Chapleau were making common cause against Caron; perhaps most often it resembled a triangular duel. There was absolutely no difference between those three men in respect of public policy, but the personal jealousy and suspicion with which they regarded one another was amusing.

'Langevin,' said Sir John, 'on his way down to Quebec, cannot stop off for lunch at Montreal, but Chapleau writes me that he is interfering in his district, and if he leaves his house in Quebec for a walk down John Street, Caron wires in cypher that a breach in the party is imminent.'

Langevin, on his part, was equally vigilant to resent the encroachments, real or supposed, of his colleagues upon his domain, and altogether Sir John had no pleasant time keeping the peace among them.

In the English section of the Cabinet three vacancies had recently taken place. Immediately after the close of the session of 1885 considerations of health compelled Sir David Macpherson to give up the portfolio of the Interior. This in no sense interfered with the personal and political friendship which had long existed between him and his leader. Sir David, albeit over cautious and deliberate in {144} his methods, was a man of good judgment, and wholly animated by a desire for the public good. His administrative record suffered from his delays in settling the grievances of the half-breeds of the North-West. This had afforded Riel the pretext for the second rising, but how far responsibility in this matter properly attached to Macpherson, I am not prepared to say.

Sir David Macpherson was succeeded in the office of minister of the Interior by Thomas White, a well-known Conservative journalist of Montreal, where he and his brother Richard conducted the Montreal _Gazette_. For many years White had been a faithful exponent of Conservative principles in the press. In his efforts to enter parliament he had been singularly unfortunate. In 1867 he had been defeated in South Wentworth by three votes; in 1874 in Prescott by six votes; in 1875 in Montreal West by seven votes; and in the following year in the same const.i.tuency by fifty votes. Finally, he was elected in 1878 for the then existing electoral division of Cardwell, in the province of Ontario. Seven years later he became a colleague of the chieftain whose cause he had so long and so effectively promoted. To the great grief of {145} Sir John Macdonald, White died within three years of taking office. Few statesmen of so great merit have experienced such persistent ill fortune. Had he lived, he might not improbably have become prime minister of Canada.

In the autumn of 1885 the minister of Finance, Sir Leonard Tilley, resigned to become lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick. In another volume I have alluded to his close friendship with Sir John Macdonald.

If White was an unlucky politician, a.s.suredly the same cannot be said of Sir Leonard Tilley. In 1867 he gave up the office of prime minister of New Brunswick to enter the Dominion Cabinet; he remained minister until a few days before the downfall of 1873, when he was appointed lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick. This post he held throughout the period when the Conservatives were in opposition (1873 to 1878). Upon the return of the party to power in 1878, Tilley, having just completed his term as lieutenant-governor, became minister of Finance. After holding this office for seven years, he slipped back again into the post of lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick. Sir Leonard's place in the Cabinet was taken by Mr (now Sir) George {146} E. Foster, whose signal ability was thus recognized thirty years ago by Sir John Macdonald.

In May 1884 Sir Charles Tupper relinquished the portfolio of Railways and Ca.n.a.ls in order to devote himself exclusively to the office of high commissioner for Canada in London, to which he had been appointed a year before. It is unnecessary to say that the withdrawal of Sir Charles from the Cabinet, in which he had so long exercised a commanding influence, proved a serious loss. Indeed, as the sequel shows, his presence became so necessary that he had to return. Sir John Macdonald's choice of a successor from Nova Scotia fell upon Mr Justice (afterwards Sir John) Thompson, a brilliant man, who will never be appreciated at his true worth because his term of office was too short. The selection was at variance with Sir John's expressed views on the inexpediency of judges leaving the bench to return to political life, but it proved singularly happy, and in time Thompson became prime minister. 'Thompson,' observed Macdonald, 'has just two faults. He is a little too fond of satire, and a little too much of a Nova Scotian.'

It cannot be denied that, in spite of Thompson's great ability, his point of view remained {147} provincial to the end. In his heart of hearts Nova Scotia rather than Canada ever held first place. No more upright man ever breathed. He had a fierce intolerance of the slightest departure from absolute rect.i.tude. The case of a chief clerk in the Civil Service, who had committed serious irregularities in connection with the public funds, once came up before the Cabinet.

Thompson, always severe in such matters, considered that the gravity of the offence called for dismissal, but to this Macdonald would not consent, holding that reduction in rank to a first-cla.s.s clerkship, with corresponding loss of salary, would be sufficient punishment. It was seldom that Macdonald, in the ordinary course of administration, interposed his paramount authority as first minister, but, though the Council as a whole rather inclined towards Thompson's view, Macdonald insisted that the more merciful punishment should be imposed. Thompson was angry, but said nothing more at the time. Not long afterwards a third-cla.s.s railway mail clerk, with a salary of $500 a year, got into similar trouble. 'What shall be done with this man?' asked Macdonald at the Council Board. There was a moment's pause, which was broken by the bland {148} suggestion from Thompson that, 'following precedent, he be made a first-cla.s.s clerk.'

Thompson had a caustic wit. A certain inventor of Toronto, who had devised an ingenious means for safeguarding level railway crossings, had long bombarded Sir John Macdonald with applications for Government patronage. When Sir John became minister of Railways in 1889, the inventor thought that his day had at last arrived. He went post-haste to Ottawa, obtained the requisite permission, and installed his models in a room belonging to the Railway department. One day Macdonald and Thompson happened to come along the corridor going to Macdonald's office. The inventor, who had been lying in wait, pressed them to step aside for a minute and inspect his models. Sir John, seeing no escape, said to his companion, 'Come along, Thompson, and let us see what this fellow's got to show us.' Thompson hated mechanical contrivances, but there was no way out of it, so he followed the chief. The delighted inventor felt that he had at last realized his desire, and was in great form. He volubly descanted on the frequent loss of life at level crossings and proceeded to show his devices for lessening such dangers.

The day was {149} piping hot and he had taken off his coat. He rushed round the table and touched bells here and there, which caused gates to close and open, semaph.o.r.es to drop, and all sorts of things to happen.

As the ministers took their leave, Macdonald said to his companion, 'Well, Thompson, what do you think of that chap?' 'I think,' replied Thompson with great energy, 'that he deserves to be killed on a level crossing.'

Once, while Lord Aberdeen was governor-general, Sir John Thompson was dining at Government House on an evening in June when the mosquitoes were unusually troublesome. Lady Aberdeen suggested the shutting of the windows. 'Oh! thank you,' replied Sir John, 'pray don't trouble; I think they are all in now!'

Sir Alexander Campbell was from youth intimately connected with Sir John Macdonald--as a fellow-citizen of Kingston, as law student and subsequently as partner in a legal firm, as a colleague for many years in the government of the old province of Canada and afterwards in that of the Dominion. Yet the two were never kindred spirits. Sir Alexander Campbell was a Tory aristocrat, a veritable grand seigneur, of dignified bearing {150} and courtly mien. He made an excellent minister of Justice, but he lacked that _bonhomie_ which so endeared Sir John Macdonald to the mult.i.tude. I do not think that Sir John's pre-eminence in that direction ever gave Sir Alexander much concern.

My impression is that he regarded the mult.i.tude as an a.s.semblage of more or less uninteresting persons, necessary only at election times; and if Sir John could succeed in obtaining their votes, he was quite welcome to any incidental advantages that he might extract from the process. It was alleged by Sir Richard Cartwright that in the year 1864 a movement was started in the Conservative party with the object of supplanting Macdonald and putting Campbell in his place, and that Sir John never forgave Campbell for his part in this affair. Something of the kind was talked about at the date mentioned, but the movement proved a complete fiasco, and it is not at all clear that Campbell was a consenting party to it. I doubt too the correctness of Sir Richard's inference, for, leaving the 1864 incident out of account, there never was the slightest political division between the two men. At the time of the Pacific Scandal, Campbell behaved exceedingly {151} well to his chief. Yet, speaking of the period within my own knowledge--that is to say, during the last ten years of Macdonald's life--while ever externally friends, the two in their personal relations were antipathetic. This may in part be ascribed to Campbell's dignified love of ease and disinclination to join in the rough-and-tumble of party politics. When elections were to be fought (I speak only of my own time) Campbell, if he did not find that he had business elsewhere, was disposed to look on in a patronizing sort of way. He seldom took off his coat or even his gloves in the fight, but he always turned up when the victory was won. Sir John resented this. Yet a.s.suredly Campbell had some merits, or Macdonald would not have kept him in successive Cabinets. Sir Alexander was an ideal leader of the Senate, and this qualification alone rendered him of much value. He was, moreover, _par excellence_ the aristocrat of the Cabinet, and such a type of public man is rare in Canada.

The ant.i.thesis of Sir Alexander Campbell was John Henry Pope, sometime minister of Agriculture and later of Railways and Ca.n.a.ls. Pope was a man of small education and less culture, but of great natural ability, and was {152} gifted with remarkable political sagacity. Macdonald used to say that Pope could have been anything he desired had he only received a good education in his youth. He added that he had never known Pope's judgment to be at fault. In times of stress and difficulty Pope was the colleague of whom he first sought advice and counsel, and upon whose rough good sense he implicitly relied. Pope died two years before his chief, who never ceased to mourn his loss.

Another self-made colleague of the same stamp was Mr Frank Smith of Toronto. Mr Smith was a member of the Cabinet from 1882 to 1891, during which long period his keen business sagacity and sound common sense were ever at his chief's disposal.

Sir Mackenzie Bowell, 'the best Minister of Customs I ever had,' was another old-time friend and colleague for whom Sir John entertained a high regard and respect. Sir Mackenzie's chief claims to prominence are of a date subsequent to the day of Sir John Macdonald and therefore do not fall within the compa.s.s of this work; but he is one who in serene old age remains a connecting link with those stirring times.

The pre-eminence of Sir Charles Tupper {153} must not lead me to forget that his son had the honour of being one of Sir John's colleagues in the old chieftain's latter years. Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper became a Cabinet minister at thirty-two, the same age as that at which the youthful John A. Macdonald had entered the Cabinet of Draper, forty-one years before. During the years in which the younger Tupper held the office of minister of Marine and Fisheries he made an enviable record as an efficient and courageous administrator. I fancy Sir John used sometimes to think that he was perhaps more particular about the administration of patronage in his own department than in those of his colleagues. One day, shortly after Mr Tupper (as he was then) had become a minister, he sent a letter from some applicant for office over to Sir John with the request that if possible he would do something for the writer. Sir John took the letter, folded it, endorsed it, 'Dear Charlie, skin your own skunks. Yours always, J. A. M.D.,' and sent it back to the new minister; as much as to say, 'Now that you have a department of your own, look after these people yourself.'

Mr John Costigan was a member of Sir John Macdonald's Cabinet from 1882 till 1891. {154} Shortly after the appearance of my _Memoirs of Sir John Macdonald_, Mr Costigan publicly stated that I had made a mistake in saying that Macdonald had not been in favour of Home Rule for Ireland. Goldwin Smith declared, indeed, that Sir John Macdonald had no settled convictions upon Home Rule, but was ever ready to propitiate the Irish vote by any sacrifice of principle that might be required.

That Sir John reduced the original Home Rule resolutions before the Dominion parliament in 1882 and 1886 to mere expressions of contingent hope, such (to use Goldwin Smith's own words) 'as any Unionist might have subscribed,'[2] and that Macdonald voted against Mr Curran's substantive resolution in favour of Home Rule in 1887, when he could not modify it, was as well known to Goldwin Smith as to Mr Costigan.

In addition, Goldwin Smith possessed indubitable evidence, at first hand, of Sir John Macdonald's sentiments on the subject of Home Rule.

During the political campaign of 1886-87 Goldwin Smith said some hard things of Sir John and the Conservative party. He was at the same time attacking Gladstone very bitterly on his Home Rule policy. Some {155} weeks after the Canadian elections were over, Sir John Macdonald visited Toronto, and stayed at the Queen's Hotel. Among the visitors on the day of his arrival was Goldwin Smith, who, as he entered the room, murmured something about the doubtful propriety of making a social call upon one whom he felt it his duty to oppose in the recent contest. Sir John Macdonald held out both hands saying, 'My dear sir, I forgive you everything for your splendid defence of the Empire,'

alluding to his attacks on Home Rule. This remark and the conversation which ensued made quite clear where Sir John Macdonald stood on the question of Home Rule--a position which he never compromised by any word or act. To a.s.sert the contrary implies a charge of opportunism; but Goldwin Smith himself, when calmly a.n.a.lysing Macdonald's character sixteen years after his death, deliberately a.s.serted that 'if he [Sir John] was partisan, he was not opportunist.'[3] Goldwin Smith knew right well that Sir John Macdonald was just as resolutely opposed as he was himself to the establishment of a separate parliament in Dublin with an executive responsible thereto. On the evening of the day just mentioned {156} Macdonald dined with Goldwin Smith. As we drove to 'The Grange' Sir John asked me if I had ever been there before. I had not.

'Well,' said he, 'you are going to a very interesting house with a charming host, but notice Mr Smith's habit of interlarding his otherwise agreeable conversation with tiresome references to the n.o.bility. Why, to hear him talk, you would imagine he never consorted in England with anybody under the rank of an earl.' Later that evening, as we went to the station to take our train, Sir John said, 'Did you observe what I told you? That's why Dizzy in _Lothair_ called him a social parasite. Strange that so brilliant a man, who needs no advent.i.tious aids, should manifest such a weakness.'

In the autumn of 1886 Sir John Macdonald, accompanied by four of his colleagues--Chapleau, White, Thompson, and Foster--made a tour of the province of Ontario, towards the close of which he wrote thus to Sir Charles Tupper:

I am on my way back to Ottawa after a successful tour in Western Ontario. We have made a very good impression, and I think will hold our own in the Province. {157} We have, however, lost nearly the whole of the Catholic vote by the course of the _Mail_, and this course has had a prejudicial effect not only in Ontario but throughout the Dominion, and has therefore introduced a great element of uncertainty in a good many const.i.tuencies.

In Nova Scotia the outlook is bad, and the only hope of our holding our own there is your immediate return and vigorous action. It may be necessary that you should, even if only for a time, return to the Cabinet. M'Lelan, I know, would readily make way for you. Now, the responsibility on you is very great, for should any disaster arise because of your not coming out, the whole blame will be thrown upon you.

I see that Anglin is now starring it in Nova Scotia. I send you an extract from a condensed report of his remarks which appeared in the Montreal _Gazette_. This is a taking programme for the Maritime Provinces and has to be met, and no one can do it but yourself. But enough of Dominion politics.

I cannot in conclusion too strongly press upon you the absolute necessity of your {158} coming out at once, and do not like to contemplate the evil consequences of your declining to do so.

I shall cable you the time for holding our election the moment it is settled.

That the general elections of 1887 were fought with exceeding bitterness may be inferred from a paragraph in a leading Canadian newspaper of the day:

Now W. M. Tweed [the criminal 'boss' in New York] was an abler scoundrel than is Sir John Macdonald. He was more courageous, if possible more unscrupulous, and more crafty, and he had himself, as he thought, impregnably entrenched. Yet in a few short months he was in a prison cell deserted and despised by all who had lived upon his wickedness--and there he died.

This of course is a mere exhibition of partisan rage and spite. It contains no single word or phrase in the smallest degree applicable to Sir John Macdonald, who, far from being dishonest, was ever scrupulously fair and just in all his dealings, both public and private. This, I am persuaded, is now well {159} understood. What is not so well known is that he disliked extravagance of any kind. He was, it is true, a man of bold conceptions, and when convinced that a large policy was in the interest of the country, he never hesitated at its cost. Thus he purchased the North-West, built the Canadian Pacific Railway, and spent millions on ca.n.a.ls. But in the ordinary course of affairs he was prudent, even economical, and as careful of public money as of his own. At the close of a long life he spoke of the very modest competence he had provided for his family as having been 'painfully and laboriously saved.'

If Sir John's critic, quoted above, meant to convey the idea that in 1887 Sir John thought himself firmly entrenched in power, he was far from the mark. For Sir John went into the elections of 1887 believing that he would be defeated. The Riel movement in the province of Quebec had a.s.sumed formidable proportions, and the fatuous course of former Conservative allies, Dalton M'Carthy and the _Mail_ newspaper, in raising an anti-French and anti-Catholic cry threatened disaster in Ontario. The friendly provincial Government in Quebec had been overthrown in October 1886, and in the following {160} December Oliver Mowat, in the hope of strengthening the hands of Blake, then leading the Ottawa Opposition, suddenly dissolved the Ontario legislature.

Mowat was successful in his own appeal. But, strange to say, the local triumph probably injured rather than aided Blake. At least such was Sir John's opinion. He held that his att.i.tude on the Home Rule question had alienated a goodly proportion of the Irish vote which usually went with him, and that these people, having taken the edge off their resentment by voting Liberal in the provincial elections, felt free to return to their political allegiance when the Dominion elections came on two months later. This sounds far-fetched, but it was the opinion of a man who had been studying political elections in Ontario all his long life. At any rate, Sir John Macdonald carried fifty-four out of ninety-two seats in Ontario; and Edward Blake was so discouraged by the result that on the meeting of the new parliament he resigned the leadership of the Opposition in favour of Mr Laurier.