[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.
'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 passed 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.