P. B. Waite ~ , .· : . I .. 1·. SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD: THE MAN i· . I ,: . l TUESDAY, JuLY 13, 1886. The scene, the CPR station at Winnipeg with a lusty crowd: many Tories, some Liberals, and not a few curious bystanders. Tumults of cheering as a man of 70, still tall, began to address them. During the lull in the enthusiasm a young man near the front audibly observed to a friend beside him, "Seedy-looking old beggar, isn't he?'"11 . t The seedy-looking old beggar was Sir John A. Macdonald. He was Premier of the Province of Canada only from 1857 to 58 - despite what might appear to the contrary - but he played a considerable role in Canadian politics before Confederation, and afterward he was Prime Minister from 1867 until 1891 except for the five years between 1873 and 1878. John A. Mac­ donald was born in 1815 - the year of Waterloo - and was brought up in and around Kingston from about 1820 on. He had his share of hard knocks, and this was no bad introduction to the world of politics then as now. A lawyer by the time he was 21, he was elected to the Assembly of the Province of Canada at 29, was a Minister of the Crown at 32. He had talent, persuasive­ ness, and what, for want of a better term, one might call address. He was tall - rangy one could call him - with an easy, negligent air, and in 1867 with black-gray curly hair, and no particular penchant for beard or whiskers. One suspects either that he might not have looked so well - he was certainly no beauty anyway - or that he could not grow them satisfactorily. In any case he always eschewed them. He had a prominent nose, which seemed to become more so as he got older and as it acquired ripeness from years of whisky - perhaps that is just an impression one takes from J. W . Bengough's cartoons in Grip - in short he was an unusual, droll, agreeable man, who seemed to have a certain innate sure-footedness amid the , I · ..:· ' •There are no footnotes for this article. All quotations are accurate and taken mainly from the Macdonald Papers, the Pope Papers, and the Thomprnn Papers in the Public Archives of Canada, and from the Alexander Campbell Papers and the T. C. Patteson Papers in the Archives of Ontario. 1 . · ~r I I J ' .. 144 THE DALHOUSIE REVIEW vicissitudes of the world around him, and who seemed to possess a strong un­ willingness to be more, or other, than he appeared to be. He had one trait familiar enough to those with experience of Celts - a temper, which when loosed could be damaging to all concerned, including himself. But as the years went on he became better and better at keeping it in hand, or perhaps, at disciplining it to be used in short flashes as needed. Basically he was a patient man; only when the nerve of his Celtic pride was touched did he flare up, and time sometimes desensitizes that nerve. In 1881~ Alexander Campbell, who had by ·then known him for forty years, told him, "You have a patience which I never saw equalled." This was not new: on the contrary, it was old and familiar. , .:: Patience. The world was not made in a day, or in two days. And the world is not changed overnight. Macdonald could never have been a true Reformer: he felt that changes do not really change things as they really are. One may reform this, or reform that, but human nature will always find holes in a system: work around it, through it, under it, somehow. No human device could block the basic iniquities of human nature. Not that human nature was goo<l or bad. You had to take men as they were. Don't expect anything from them; don't count on love, or loyalty, or honesty. Be grateful when you en­ counter love, loyalty, or honesty, but don't be surprised or mortified if you don't find them. This was no cynicism, although some alleged it to be; it was a strong-grained realism. "There is no gratitude to be expected from the public", Macdonald wrote Stephen in 1888, "I have found that out years ago." And there was no reason to be bitter about it. It was the way the world was. "A good carpenter," he told T. C. Patteson in 1874, "can work with indifferent tools." So, he went on, stop attacking Cumberland {the Managing Director of the Northern Railway); at least don't attack him more than you can help. "We may want to use him hereafter." ,·., That sounds unscrupulous. Perhaps it was. But it is part of something else about Macdonald: he was always willing to forgive and forget. Unlike some of his celebrated Highland forebears, he did not nurse grudges. Life was too short. Oh, no doubt it was hard to work with Brown in June, 1864, in the Great Coalition, after all the bitternesses that had passed between them in the 1850s: but work Macdonald did. "A public man", he told Chapleau in 1885, "can have no resentments." Chapleau would have been a better man if he had listened; but then, no doubt, he would not have been Chapleau. One of Mac­ donald's favourite sayings, when something unfortunate but irreparable had SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD: THE MAN 145 happened, was: "It's done. There's no use crying over spilt milk." iorget, and go on. So he had little stomach for recriminations. The Conservatives who left the fold on the Equal Rights issue after the Jesuits' Estates crisis of 1888 were to be cheerfully accepted back if they would come back or if he could get them back. "Leave the whole question of Equal Rights alone," he wrote W. B. Scarth in 1890. "There were a great many good Conservatives entrapped by that: cry who will be all right at election time. There is no use reminding them of their mistake. It might, such is the perversity of human nature, have the effect of making them stick to their cry." Don't be hard on people. Macdonald would have agreed with Lincoln's advice to his generals on the treatment of the local population upon the surrender of Richmond in 1865: "I'd let 'em down easy. Let 'em down easy." John Thompson sailed into McCarthy in a speech in the Commons in 1889 over the Equal Rights agitation that McCarthy was spreading, and attacked him all the more bitterly since McCarthy had been a favourite political son of the old man's, and had turned renegade. Thompson made a brilliant, savage speech. Macdonald wrote to a friend, "Thompson was too good, and walked into McCarthy too hard. 'Ginger', as Queen Elizabeth said to Raleigh, 'makes men witty but it keeps them poor.' " Macdonald had an increa ~ing dislike of bad tempers and petulance. About Van Horne, who was full of snap and ginger, Macdonald said, "The world will continue to go round despite these little displays." I The world went on. And it would continue to do so after the Van Hornes, the George Browns, and the John A. Macdonalds, and all the rest, had gone from the stage. And doubtless the world would be none the worse for it. Mac­ donald's own feelings on the death of a colleague were not the loss to the country, or the things that might have been done had the colleague lived. It was all less public and more personal than that. He liked Norquay of Manitoba despite the trouble Norquay had got him into, and despite his frank recognition that any Norquay government was a bad government; he loved J. H. Pope, whose rough exterior concealed so warm and vital a human being; he would miss Thomas White, whom he loved like a son: death was sad not only because it changed one's world and the world of one's friends, but because it took away something glowing from one's own life. Friends were cultivated by Macdonald because he liked them, not because he used them or he needed them. Of course he did use them, and use friendship, and use his popularity; he never forgot that popularity was power: but his liking for human beings was genuine. And . ...: 146 TIIE DALHOUSIE REVIEW it is not too much to say that he often liked men as much for their bad qualities as for their good. He had respect for, and the respect of, some of the Governors-General he worked with, none more than for Lord Lansdowne (1883-1888), whom he used to regale with amusing accounts of Canadian Politics long after Lansdowne had gone to India. From Simla, June 23, 1889, Lansdowne wrote in frank appreciation, "[Reading your letter J I fancied myself back in my study at Ottawa, listening to your confidences as to House of Commons prospects, and difficulties, unsmpected by the outside world, within the Cabinet." As to Cabinets, Macdonald was famous, or notorious. Surely few Canadian politicians could have kept such a congeries of personalities and Powers together, and it was widely recognized in the later years of Macdonald's life that when he went the Conservative party would not be long in following. Arthur Lower described it once as "Driving a six-horse team". There were more horses than that, but the difficulties are obvious. - How Macdonald actually managed his Cabinet meetings must now be nearly a closed book, but there are hints here and there.