This also we do not know. Sir Robert was a weary and baffled Premier. He did not know how to let go. Once even his faltering hand was off, who was to succeed him? There were three men to consider.
The man's work was done. He knew it. Much of it had been nobly done. He knew that the nation was sure of this. And he now understands that even with the failures and the weaknesses of his administration, both as Conservative and Unionist Premier, we cordially concede to this high mediocrity a place in our critical affairs only second to the credit that he gained in England and in Europe as the head of a nation that had gloriously fought and magnificently won—in the war.
Canada never had as great and noble a servant, who failed so conspicuously on personal grounds to be the nation's master. But there were elements in the patriotic servant-hood of R. L. Borden, higher than the political masteries of more brilliant men.
A POLITICAL SOLAR SYSTEM
RT. HON. SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Fifty years from now some Canadian Drinkwater, charmed by the eloquent perspectives of time, may write an "Abraham Lincoln" string of personal scenes from the lives of Wilfrid Laurier and John A. Macdonald. The narrative will thus begin in the very year that the story of Lincoln ends, and it will carry on down just fifty years in our national history to the time when Wilfrid Laurier, passionate student of the Civil War, reached the end of his climax in the affairs of Canada and the Empire. But the poet who does this must be inspired; because no young country at that period of time in the world had had two such remarkable men as contemporaries, and political foes, and lucky is the nation which at any period has such a man as Laurier.
Outwardly Laurier's political career was complex where Macdonald's was simple. John A. was as great a Canadian as Laurier; but in the simpler times in which he lived he had less cause to be puzzled by the web of fate and of political cross-currents at home and abroad, even though he was immensely more baffled by politicians and party emergencies.
Laurier swung in a great romantic orbit of political sentiment, vaster than that of any other statesman we ever had. For the fifteen years up till about 1906, he seemed like the greatest man ever born a citizen of Canada. Before that period he was a romance. After it he was a national hallucination. The last three years of his life he was a tragedy.
Yet the tragedy kept on smiling. Half a century of smiles. We never had a statesman who could smile so potently. Never one with such mellifluous music in his voice, such easy grace in his style, such a cardinal's hauteur when he wanted to be alone, and such a fascinating urbanity when he wanted to impress a company, a caucus or a crowd. The Romist whom Orangemen admired, the Frenchman who made an intellectual hobby of British democracy, the poetic statesman who read Dickens and re-read in two languages Uncle Tom's Cabin and sometimes played the flute, and the Premier of a bilingual country who had a passion for the study of the war which emancipated the negro, was the kaleidoscopic enigma of Canadian public life.
Laurier was nearly all things to all men. He was sometimes many things to himself. He idolized himself and laughed at himself. He venerated British institutions and passionately loved Quebec. He came to his flowering period in a party of Free Trade and went to seed in a party committed to a species of protection. He spoke English as fluently as Bach wrote fugues, and with more passion and beauty of utterance than any of our English-Canadian orators. One moment he could be as debonair as Beau Brummel, the next as forbidding and repellent as a modern Caesar. He was consistently the best-dressed public man in Canada. A misfitting coat to him was as grievous as a misplaced verb in a peroration. He superficially loved many things. Life was to him, even apart from politics, a gracious delight. He knew how to pose, to feign affability and to be sincere. With more culture Laurier would have been the most exquisite dilettante of his age. But he cared little for poetry in verse, not much for fine music, had small taste for objets d'art or the precious in anything. His greatest affection was in his home, his greatest charm in fine manners, his master passion in speech, and in managing Cabinets to win elections for the party which to him meant a greater and more inspiring Canada. We have had better debaters; but never a man except himself who in the House could make a sort of grand music out of an apologetic oration on National Transcontinental grades.