Alexander Mackenzie, the prime minister, like his predecessor, was a Scotsman by birth. Like Sir John Macdonald, too, he had emigrated to Canada at an early age and had settled first at Kingston, subsequently removing to Sarnia. In 1861 he entered parliament as member for Lambton, and took rank from the first as a strong and effective debater on the side of the Opposition. In office he proved a capable administrator of unimpeachable integrity, with a remarkable capacity for labour. It could not be said of him, however, that he possessed the essential qualities of a leader. Not only was he destitute of that mysterious personal attribute known as 'magnetism,' but he was disposed to be arbitrary and dictatorial. His political supporters respected and perhaps feared him, but it cannot be said that he was popular among them.
Goldwin Smith was once driving a newly arrived English friend through the streets of Toronto at the time Mackenzie was in the zenith of his power. When passing Mackenzie's house he remarked the fact. 'And who is Mr Mackenzie?' inquired the friend. 'Mr Mackenzie,' replied Goldwin Smith, 'was a stonemason; he is a stonemason still.'
This, of course, was not fair. Mackenzie, despite his narrowness, rigidity, faults of manner, and perhaps of temper, was an able man. No fairer was Goldwin Smith's cynical observation that the alliance between Macdonald and Brown in 1864 was 'as brief and perfidious as a harlot's love'; but nobody—at any rate, no Canadian public man—ever looked for fairness from Goldwin Smith, whose idea of independence seemed to consist of being alternately unjust to each side. Both sayings, however, are extremely clever, and both had sufficient truth about them to give point at once to the author's malevolence and to his wit.
A man of very different mould from that of the Liberal leader was his nominal follower Edward Blake, one of the rarest minds that have adorned the bar of Canada or of any other country. Blake was not merely a great equity lawyer; he was, as well, a distinguished authority on the principles of government. Viewed as intellectual performances, his speeches in the Canadian House of Commons have never been surpassed. But to his great gifts were joined great weaknesses, among which may be set down an abnormal sensitiveness. He was peculiarly susceptible to the daily annoyances which beset a public man. So marked was this infirmity that men without a tithe of his ability, but with a better adjusted nervous system, would sometimes presume to torment him just for the fun of the thing. While he was minister of Justice, political exigencies compelled Mackenzie to take into his Cabinet a man who, by reason of his unsavoury political record, was eminently distasteful to Blake. This man knew perfectly well that the great lawyer was not proud of the association, but being as thick-skinned as Blake was sensitive, he rather enjoyed his colleague's discomfort. He was known to go into Blake's office on a short winter's afternoon, and, standing with his back to the fire in a free and easy attitude as though perfectly at home, to say, 'Well, mon cher collègue' (here Blake would visibly writhe, to the equally apparent delight of the intruder), 'I have called for you to come for a walk with me.' 'My good sir,' Blake would tartly reply, 'I have work here that will keep me for the next two hours.' 'But it will be dark then,' objected the caller. 'Well, my good sir,' was the retort, 'we can walk in the dark, I suppose'—which Blake would naturally much prefer. Edward Blake's outward bearing was cold and unsympathetic. He was often repellent to those desiring to be his friends. Intimates he appeared to have none: he would not allow people to be intimate with him. He would hardly even, when leader of the Opposition, accept the co-operation of his supporters or allow them a share in his labours. So exacting was his standard that he felt no one would do the work as well as himself, and any one who proffered assistance was likely to get a snub for his pains. Whenever he spoke in the House of Commons, he so exhausted his subject that there was nothing left for his followers to say—an impolitic course for a leader. Yet it was impossible, such is the compelling power of genius, to withhold admiration for that lonely and impressive figure whose external bearing spoke so plainly of the intellectual force within. I had the honour of only a slight personal acquaintance with Blake, yet I never recall his memory without a tinge of sadness that so gifted a man should not have accomplished more in the way of constructive statesmanship. Before the age of forty he was prime minister of Ontario, but within a twelvemonth he gave it up to devote his attention to federal politics. When the Liberal party succeeded to power in 1873, men thought that Blake's opportunity had at last arrived, and it was learned with surprise that he had not taken a portfolio in the new Administration. He had, however, a seat in the Cabinet, but this he resigned within three months. In 1875 he re-entered the Cabinet as minister of Justice. But, beyond writing a few masterly dispatches on the pardoning power and obtaining certain modifications in the governor-general's instructions in that regard, he does not appear to have accomplished much during his tenure of office. The bill establishing the Supreme Court, passed about this time, was the work primarily of Sir John Macdonald, and was piloted through the House of Commons by Telesphore Fournier, Blake's immediate predecessor in the department of Justice. Early in 1878 Blake again left the Cabinet, and he was not even in the country during the elections of that year which overwhelmed his late colleagues. He became leader of the Opposition after the retirement of Mackenzie in 1880, but resigned the post after his failure to carry the elections of 1887. He afterwards went to Great Britain, and became a Nationalist member from Ireland of the House of Commons. For fifteen years his great talents lay obscured at Westminster in the shadows of Parnell and Redmond. Broken in health, he finally returned to his native country; but it was only to die.
But if Blake's mind was not of the constructive order, his critical and analytical faculties were highly developed. Always effective, often trenchant, sometimes cruel, his powers of sarcasm and invective were unrivalled. Once, when a former minister of Inland Revenue, not remarkable for his knowledge of the affairs of his department, had proposed a resolution to the effect that a barrel should no longer be considered a measure of capacity, Blake offered an amendment to the effect that 'in future the office of Cabinet minister be no longer considered a measure of capacity!' Again, in one of his orations against the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he prefaced a minute and exhaustive narration of events connected with the enterprise in these words: 'Mr Speaker, on the first of April—a fitting day—in the year 1871, ...' That was his estimate of the project as late as the early eighties.
During Blake's period of office an old and faithful official of his department, who rather prided himself upon his discrimination in the use of words, wrote on a file of papers, 'Referred to the Minister for his instructions.' When this came before Blake, he wrote underneath the memorandum: 'My officers do not refer matters to me; they submit them.—E.B.' It is due to Blake to say that, when leaving the department, he called for this file and expunged these words with his own hand.
Sometimes, however, he was in lighter vein, and, indeed, I have known him to betray a transient gleam of humour. One day a letter, the envelope addressed to Blake, was left at 'Earnscliffe,' Macdonald's Ottawa residence. The letter inside, however, as appeared later, was addressed to Sir John Macdonald. Ignorant, of course, of this fact, Macdonald sent it to Blake, who returned it with this note:
COBOURG, June 28th, 1889.
MY DEAR SIR,—Thanks for the mysterious package, which, however, I return, perceiving that in this, as in some other cases, if I have a better title to the shell, you have the better title to the oyster.