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 constituency 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, assuredly 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.