Cartier and Macdonald
No review of Cartier's career, however summary, would be complete without some reference to the alliance that existed between him and that other great Canadian statesman, Sir John A. Macdonald, an alliance which was for a long period a most important factor in the public life of Canada. In his great painting "The Fathers of Confederation," the artist Harris most appropriately places Macdonald and Cartier conspicuously in the centre of the group, and the names of those two great statesmen must forever be linked in connection with that epoch making measure.
Macdonald and Cartier began their public careers within a few years of each other, Macdonald being first returned to Parliament in 1844, while Cartier became a member in 1848. The two men first became closely associated as members of the same Government, the MacNab-Taché Ministry, formed in 1855, in which ministry Macdonald held the portfolio of Attorney-General for Upper Canada while Cartier was Provincial Secretary, the first public office he held. From that time until the day of Cartier's death, the association between the two men remained practically unbroken. Their alliance, as has been well said, was based on equal consideration for the rightful claims of both nationalities.
Each of the two men had qualities not possessed by the other. Macdonald had a magnetic personality, he was a consummate tactician, an incomparable leader of men. He had that genius which enables its possessor to seize and make the most of an opportunity. He had that quality so indispensable in a great leader of gaining the loyal and devoted support of men of widely different characters and temperaments. Macdonald in short combined the grasp of a statesman with the arts of a politician. Cartier excelled as an administrator, he was a tireless and indefatigable worker who never spared himself and who expected others to follow his example. He studied and analyzed all subjects which he had to handle to the very bottom, and when he came to discuss them he had a complete mastery of all the details. He was strong, nay, even dogmatic, in his convictions; once his mind was made up he pursued the path he had marked out for himself with persistent determination, heedless of all obstacles in his way. To his followers his word was law, and he exacted from them an unswerving obedience. His energy was prodigious: he deserved the designation given to him by Gladstone when that great statesman said that Cartier was "un homme qui semble être légion",—a man who was a legion in himself. Cartier's was essentially a strong and determined character.
It was of course impossible that men of such different temperaments as Macdonald and Cartier and representing often such divergent interests, should not have their differences sometimes, but whatever differences they may have had never interfered with the high personal esteem and regard they entertained for each other.
At a great banquet given in his honor by the Bar of Toronto on February 8th, 1866, Macdonald took occasion to pay a warm and generous tribute to his French-Canadian colleague who was one of the guests of honor.
"I wish to say," declared Macdonald, "that Hon. Mr. Cartier has a right to share in the honors which I am receiving to-night, because I have never made an appeal to him or to the Lower Canadians in vain. There is not in the whole of Canada a heart more devoted to his friends. If I have succeeded in introducing the institutions of Great Britain, it is due in great part, to my friend, who has never permitted under his administration that the bonds which attach us to England should be weakened."
Cartier was equally generous in appreciation of his great colleague. Speaking at a banquet tendered Macdonald by the citizens of Kingston on September 6th, 1866, Cartier said:
"Kingston is indeed a favored city, for it has for its representative a statesman who has never yet been surpassed in Canada, and who probably never will be in the future. I have had the happiness of being associated with the member for Kingston in my public career, and of having formed with him an alliance which has already lasted longer than all alliances of this kind in Canada. The success which we have obtained together has been due to the fact that we have repelled all sectional feelings and sought what might benefit Canada as a whole."
That was the keynote of the Cartier-Macdonald alliance, the subordination of all sectional and racial feeling to the welfare of Canada as a whole. Cartier throughout his long public career was essentially a peacemaker, who always strove to promote a better feeling between the two races. A striking testimony to the success of his efforts in that direction was given on one occasion in Parliament when Mr. Benjamin, a leading Ontario member, declared: "I cannot refrain from acknowledging that Mr. Cartier has done more to unite the two races and to re-establish harmony between them, than any other member of the House."
Well shall it always be for the Dominion, if its public men, no matter to what political party they may belong, always adhere to the sane and true principles upon which the Macdonald-Cartier alliance was based—mutual toleration and good-will, respect for the rights of all, the co-operation of races, the safeguarding of Canada's autonomy, and the development of Canadian nationality. The Macdonald-Cartier alliance in fact symbolized that union which should always exist between English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians. And why should there not be union? What matters it whether we speak different languages or worship at different altars, if we always remember that we are all Canadians, mutually interested in the welfare and aggrandizement of our common country. That was the spirit which actuated both Cartier and Macdonald during their long association, and it will be well if such a spirit always prevails in the Dominion. It is only, in fact, upon such a basis that the permanence of Confederation, of which Macdonald and Cartier were the principal architects, can be assured.