The morning call., 1891-05-29
SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD.

A dispatch states that Sir John A. Mac
donald is lying at the point of death. 1t
will be hoped by others besides his personal
friends that the report is exaggerated and
that he may recover. He is rs years old,
in full vigor of body and mind, and may
have many years of life and work before
him yet. But, again, he may have run his
course.
He emigrated TO Canada from Glasgow,
a raw, Scotch boy, some siXty-fve years
ago, and settled at the town of Kingston,
Ontario, where after a common-SchoOl edit
cation, he was admitted to the bar. He was
% when be was elected a Member of Par
lament for Kingston. His triumph was a
great day for the Conservative party. As
he stood on a balcony, in Highland kits,
and haTangued his supporters on the glory
of the British flag and the advantages Of
the British connection, they felt that they
had got a leader, and he realized that he
had found a policy. Ever since then he has
either been at the head of the Government
in Canada or at the head Of an opposition
party, which was reasonably sure of over
throwing the Government on the first i'm
pact he has been the most prominent man
in the colony for fOrty-seven years.
Not that he has been the ableSt. Far
superior to him in all that constitutes states
manship were Sir Francis Hincks, Baldwin.
Lafontaine, Tache. in the past, and Goodwin
Smith and his allies in our day. But Mac
donald had gagged the average Canadian
mind to a nicely, and he knew exactly what
would please his people. He knew that
everything every question of local or tenn
porary importance in the colonial mind was
a fierce antipathy to the United States and
American institutions On that he traded.
BE so contrived as to place the Liberals in
an attitude of seeming friendship Tor Ameri-
cans and fellOw-feeling for American ideas,
and then he crushed them with charges of
disloyalty. The Scotch and English settlers
were carried away by his appeals to stand
by the old flag, and voted him into power
over and over again, because to them he
typifed loyalty to the Queen, as opposed to
coquetTy with the Great Republic.
Upon the Scotch, who constitute power
full section of the Canadian people, his hold
could never be shaken. He was bone of
their bone, blood of their blood, and was not
above wearing the kilt, but with infinite
dexterity he maintained throughout his ca
reer a close alliance with the French Cana
dams of the eastern part Of the Dominion.
II he stood by the kirk in his own province
the Bishops of Quebec knew that he could
be relied upon to protect the mass from as
sault by the unbelieyer,
Once, in the course of his long career he
was rejected by the constituency which had
so faithfully stood by him, but he was not
discouraged. He removed to Victoria, B. c.,
and in the Parliament to which he was at
once elected he caused a laugh when the
Speaker recognized him as "the gentleman
from British Columbia" His stay on the
Pacific was short Ottawa could not spare
him. As the author of the British North
American act, and the only Canadian who
figured at the Geneva Conference, he filed
too large a place to be relegated to an OBJ
scure corner of the Dominion.
He seems to be the only man who can hold
together the discordant elements which 90
to make up the Conservative party. For a
time the party would probably die with him.
1t would be succeeded by a party which
realized that Canada's affinity is with the
nation that is eOterminous with it from
ocean to ocean, and not with nation 5000
miles away on the other side Of the Allan
tic; a party which learned its politics in
modern schools and not in the days when
the capacity of mankind for self-gOvernment
was doubted in well-in formed circles.