The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin

a firm political dividing line, making it harder for “loose fish” to switch parties — although one Quebec senator jumped to the Liberals, complaining at Macdonald’s inability to speak French. However, Western demands for inclusion in the system, coupled with the overwhelming financial needs of the railway, forced representatives of the older provinces into defensive blocks: at crucial moments, Macdonald was held to ransom by his own supporters. In many respects, he remained the Ontario leader, dealing with other provinces through allies rather than subordinates. As late as 1878, Macdonald had never visited New Brunswick, and he did not travel west of Lake Huron until 1886. Negotiations to recruit the Halifax lawyer John Thompson to Cabinet in 1885 were conducted through his Nova Scotian colleagues. The prime minister’s first direct approach began: “I am of course aware that you have been asked to join our ministry.” Careful negotiations were required to secure the “cordial assent” of existing ministers to the appointment of Thomas White in 1885 — necessary, Macdonald assured him, because the fifty-four-year-old White would “be a Minister long after I am off the stage.” Sadly, White died of overwork three years later. Above all, Macdonald had no control over Quebec, where his lieutenant, Hector Langevin, was constantly undermined by party rivals.

      The “Old Man” preferred to work with associates he had known for years: it took seven years for any MP from the 1878 intake to make it into Cabinet. Initially, he based his team on two stalwarts, Tilley as finance minister to launch the National Policy, Tupper to drive the Pacific Railway project. But Tilley was exhausted by 1885, while from 1883 Tupper preferred the post of High Commissioner in London, although he remained semi-involved in domestic politics. David Macpherson had helped rear Macdonald’s son during Isabella’s illness in 1856: Macdonald put him in charge of the West in 1883. The prime minister was deeply attached to John Henry Pope, the loyal, gruff Anglo-Quebecker who once dismissed three Cabinet colleagues as “smaller than the little end of nothing.” Macdonald first met him in 1849; they had been parliamentary colleagues since 1857. When “John Henry” (who was not related to the prime minister’s secretary, “Joe” Pope) worked himself to death in 1889, Macdonald broke down making the announcement to the Commons.

      Macdonald liked to disguise his age by wearing light-coloured suits.

      Ministerial talent was thin among MPs. Thompson was imported because there was an “equality of unfitness” among Nova Scotian Conservative backbenchers. In 1880, Macdonald decided to placate New Brunswick politician John Costigan, by promoting his son, a post office clerk in Winnipeg. “We can’t make him a Cabinet minister (which he wants) & must help the son.” In fact, Costigan gained his objective in 1882, although an alcohol problem limited his usefulness. Both Costigan and another Irish Catholic, Frank Smith, threatened resignation over patronage issues, and Macdonald dared not call their bluff. He had blocked one of Tupper’s appointments in 1879, and for two years his Nova Scotian colleague refused to speak to him. Appointed a minister in 1882, Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau proved greedy for patronage. Macdonald felt that he was “comparatively harmless” inside Cabinet, a theory shattered during the 1887 election when Chapleau threatened to bolt the campaign unless given exclusive control over government appointments in the Montreal area. The prime minister surrendered. When Pope’s death vacated the Railways portfolio, with its massive patronage, Chapleau was “crazy to get it.” Macdonald dared not offend the Quebecker by appointing a rival, so he took the job himself — an absurd addition to the workload of a seventy-four-year-old prime minister. Macdonald tried to persuade one of his ablest Ontario supporters to join the Cabinet: D’Alton McCarthy was a fine debater and effective campaigner. But McCarthy refused to leave his lucrative law practice for what Macdonald admitted was “the thankless & inglorious position of a Canadian Minister.” The appointment, in 1888, of the thirty-two-year-old Charles Hibbert Tupper was a gesture to his father, whose faults he energetically magnified. The prime minister returned one of his importunate letters with the scribbled advice: “skin your own skunks.” Even Sir John A. Macdonald had difficulty managing this disparate team. As the years passed, it became steadily harder to imagine anybody replacing him.

      Macdonald offered simple advice to these who feared that the 1879 tariff would make imported foodstuffs more expensive: “use no American flour … but eat Canadian flour, on which there was no tax.” He invariably linked the tariff to the construction of the transcontinental railway: when Western settlers complained that Canadian goods were more expensive, he sarcastically offered them “the glorious privilege” of importing American manufactures duty-free — so long as they could be transported by toboggan. Linking tariff and railway made political sense in Canada, but it caused problems in Britain. The Pacific Railway needed British investment capital, but British manufacturers objected to Canadian import duties — after all, their taxes paid for the navy that defended Canada. Hence Macdonald visited Britain in 1879 and 1880, defending the National Policy to politicians and angry businessmen.

      Crossing the Atlantic in 1879 enabled Macdonald to accept membership of Britain’s Privy Council, a political Hall of Fame dating from the sixteenth century. The distinction had been offered after the Treaty of Washington, but with a hint not to collect it until the Pacific Scandal died down. Sworn in by Queen Victoria, Macdonald became the first “Right Honourable” colonist in the overseas Empire. Britain’s veteran prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, invited “the Canadian chief” to an overnight stopover at his country house. Disraeli found his visitor “gentlemanlike, agreeable, and very intelligent, a considerable man,” noting with approval “no Yankeeisms” in his speech, “except a little sing-song occasionally at the end of a sentence.” Soon after, Macdonald assured Disraeli of Canada’s “pleasurable excitement” at actually being mentioned in one of his speeches.

      This cloying sentiment disguised a nationalist agenda. Macdonald dismissed people who argued for Canadian independence as “fools”: standing alone, the Dominion would be overwhelmed by the Americans. But he wanted to move towards partnership with Britain. He talked freely with a British royal commission on defence issues in 1880, predicting that Canada would raise its own small army to share imperial responsibilities, although his insistence upon strict confidentiality kept his evidence secret for seventy years. Macdonald also persuaded the reluctant British government to accept an official Canadian representative in London: he urged the title “Resident Minister” but the imperial authorities preferred the vaguer term “High Commissioner” — an office held first by Galt and then by Tupper. But Macdonald made no commitment to shed Canadian blood in imperial wars: when Britain entangled itself in Sudan in 1885, he flatly refused to help.

      As in 1872, the government wished the Pacific Railway to be built by a heavily-subsidized private company. In 1880, Macdonald chose a syndicate headed by Montreal banker George Stephen. At first, this seemed an odd choice, for Stephen was running a north-south railway linking Winnipeg to the United States — while Macdonald’s aim was an all-Canadian, east-west route. However, Stephen had profited from his Minnesota project through selling railroad land grants to settlers, and he saw the potential of similarly developing the Canadian West. Stephen came to depend upon Macdonald’s personal support, further obligating the prime minister to stay in office. Relations with Stephen’s business partner, Donald Smith, were less easy: Smith had deserted the government in 1873 and, five years later, Macdonald had denounced him as “the biggest liar I ever met!” But Macdonald believed that politicians “cannot afford to be governed by any feeling of irritation and annoyance,” and eventually the two men buried their hatchet. The Canadian Pacific Railway company (CPR) was launched in 1880, with a promised subsidy of $25 million and twenty-five million acres (10.11 million hectares) of land.

      By 1880, Canada was likely to build some form of railway to the Pacific. Even the unenthusiastic Liberal government, with its pessimistic, piecemeal policy, had constructed one section from Lake Superior towards Manitoba, and another in mainland British Columbia. As Macdonald commented, since Mackenzie had built “two ends of a railway, we must finish the middle.” But he was determined that the line must also run north of Lake Superior, giving central Canada a direct link to the prairies. If the transcontinental railway began at Thunder Bay, it would be accessible by Great Lakes shipping only in summer. “But for you,” Stephen wrote Macdonald in 1884, the railway