retrieved his reputation. In 1839, he entered the imperial privy council, and shortly afterwards became governor of Jamaica. Here, it is said, he won golden opinions, but we are told by his biographer, whose aim seems to have been to cover him with glory, that during his rule there "some outbreaks occurred, but they were speedily crushed and their instigators punished, some capitally." This was not, it will be frankly admitted, an indifferent training for a man who looked upon refractory reformers as he did upon rebellious negroes. Added to this, during his long contact with the wiles and treachery of oriental craft, he had grown incurably suspicious, and would trust any man who differed from himself as he would "an adder fanged." He came to Canada and to his amazement found a system of responsible government which did not need a governor, and, as some of the advisers of the Crown, men who had given sympathy or aid to rebellion. He was disgusted, too, with the manners of his councillors, who approached him with a brusqueness and familiarity that was revolting to a ruler of nabobs. With the cunning of a Nana Sahib, he sent out his confidential secretary, who wormed out of the ministers over their wine their opinions on the powers of the governor. The truth is, Sir Charles was like a captain who in a storm and amidst the breakers sets himself down for the first time to learn navigation. He knew nothing about the governing of a colony under responsible government: few governors in those days did. It was not the men who had sat in cabinets and saw how people are ruled under constitutional forms, that they sent out, but some one who had ridden mustangs great distances, or coerced Hindoos or negroes with the strong arm of the autocrat.

When Sir Charles learnt the opinion of ministers about his prerogative, he became incensed. He saw that his prerogative was in danger, and the point of prerogative to him was the point of honour. And how high with him was the point. which he regarded the point of honour will appear from his

exploit with the walking stick. Then began the system of wily and treacherous diplomacy which he had learned in the East. With utter disregard for constitutional decency, he outraged the privacy of his cabinet, and took the opponents of the ministry into his confidence. Day after day he planned and set snares for his own ministers. A close friend of his, who knew his ways and wrote his biography, thus glories in the governor's shame: "He saw that the feet of the council were on the wire, and he skilfully concealed the gun." Many an appointment was then made that the ministry knew nothing about till they read it in the public prints of their opponents. It was galling to be treated as ciphers by the head of the government to feel that the position of adviser was only a mockery; but it was unbearable to hear the sneers of opponents who were the real advisers of the governor. The ministry resigned, and one wonders how they could have lived down contempt so long. For nine months now there was no ministry save Dominick Daly, the "perpetual secretary," who as a politician had been all his life at once "everything and nothing.” This political merman assisted the Dictator till a provisional ministry was formed, after which, in a whirlwind both parties rushed to the polls.

It was at this crisis that Mr. John A. Macdonald, with his udgment much ripened, emerged from his law office, and began the stormy career of a politician.

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THO

CHAPTER III.

FROM THE BAR TO THE HUSTINGS.

HOSE who enjoyed the confidence of Mr. Macdonald say that after his defence of Shoultz, his aim was to win a still more prominent place in his profession. As we have already seen, his defence of the Pole gave him more than a local reputation; it was, as his friends used to say, " a feather in his cap" of which a veteran member of the bar might have been proud; and persons coming to Kingston with difficult cases from distant points thereafter inquired for "the young lawyer who defended the Pole, Von Shoultz." These were the days of exclusiveness and snobbery, when it was almost as difficult to approach the august person of a Dodson or a Fogg as the Sleeping Beauty overhung with alarum bells and guarded by fiery dragons. There was a population of over half a million, and the immigration tide poured constantly upon us from the mother countries through the summer, but among this influx came few educated persons, and but rarely a member of the learned professions; so that the doctor and the lawyer were not in proportion to the population, were much sought after, and hence garrisoned round with importance. But no client, however poor, came out of Mr. Macdonald's office complaining of snobbery; rather telling of the courteous and gentlemanly young lawyer, "quick as a flash," who understood his case better than the client himself before he had "half told it." In those days, more than at the present time, which produces lawyers and stump orators "not singly but in battalions," when a young man discovered brilliant talents, or the power, by his eloquence, to carry his hearers, his friends invariably said,

"We must send him to the House." We are told that in many a case which Mr. Macdonald pleaded, even strangers in the Courts, not knowing the young lawyer, but observing his grasp of principles, the ease with which he led up all his arguments, and the power he had of compelling juries to take, by sympathy as well as by reason, his view of the case, were heard to exclaim, "the House is the place for him."

Standing by the ocean as the dark storm-clouds gather over it and the tempest breaks, a man with poetry in his soul feels his spirit exalted and impelled to sing as nature in no other mood can move him: and so, too, looking upon the political stormclouds gather and darken the sky, if a man have a yearning for the ways of public life, it must be quickened as it can be at no other time. At the date of which we write the air was full of the sounds of political strife, and the clouds deepened grew more ominous. We cannot wonder if the situation quickened the desires of the young barrister, or if we heard him say, as he glanced through his office window out upon the political scene, where men wrestled and many won prizes for whose abilities he could have no feeling but contempt:

and

66 Yes, yonder in that stormy sky
I see my star of destiny."

But it was not known now, nor for some years afterwards, that he looked to a political career. During the elections for the first parliament under the Union the strife was high and confusion general. One day, sitting among friends in his office, Mr. Macdonald said, "If I were only prepared now I should try for the Legislature," and then added, "but it does no harm to wait." The removal of the theatre of politics to his own city, in 1841, gave impulse to his yearnings for political life; and thereafter he began to equip himself for the sphere in which he longed to move. But he did not, like too many empty young men of our own day, go noising through the country to attract the people's notice; he did not, indeed, woo the con

stituency at all, but decided to have the constituency woo him. During the time Parliament sat at Kingston he made the acquaintance of leading public men, and long before it was known that his eye was turned to the paths which they themselves were treading, they prized the friendship and respected the opinions of the young barrister, Macdonald. He attended much to the debates of the House, and many a keen and judicious piece in criticism those who sat with him in the gallery heard fall from his lips. Though he devoted much time to his profession, and was always to be found in his office and ready to take up a case, he was profoundly engaged in preparing himself for his ideal sphere. While most of those who knew him thought his ambitions bent towards legal distinctions only, he was acquiring that knowledge of constitutional, political and parliamentary history, which so early in his public career gave weight to his opinions and standing to himself.

In 1843, in an evil hour, as we have already seen, came over to Canada Sir Charles Metcalfe. The rebellion clouds had rolled away, and the province set out once more, it was hoped, in the ways of political peace; but the new governorgeneral had no sooner begun to make "his growl heard at the council board" than the political heavens began to grow dark again. Rumours of dissension between the governor and his council began to be whispered abroad, and it was not made a secret that Sir Charles despised and distrusted his council, and had thrown himself into the arms of the Family Compact. We can fancy the feeling among the tribes of animals known as the Seven Sleepers when the genial warmth of spring visits them in their icy abodes: with some such thrill the tories, lying politically dormant, must have received the news that Sir Charles had come to an open rupture with his "rebel advisers" and now sought the confidence and advice of "loyal men."

At this time Kingston was not enamored of her late member, and it was plain that an opportunity was arriving for