John A (14 page)

Macdonald's reference to his being without a partner derived from his difficulties with Alexander Campbell.

Macdonald's constant absences, and the fact that he sometimes dipped into the firm's funds to cover his political expenses, had made Campbell
more and more dissatisfied with their partnership arrangement. Their bank account was overdrawn, and the firm was eighteen hundred pounds in debt. Campbell wrote him crossly, “Your absence from home and your necessities have been I think the
main
although not by any means the only cause of the annoyances that have arisen.” In reply, Macdonald assured him, “I think I have hit on the
only
mode by which we can prevent inextricable confusion.” He offered a new arrangement of a fifty-fifty split of all revenues, including those from the Commercial Bank, and the assurance that, “when in Kingston, Macdonald to attend to business.” Campbell initially accepted the arrangement. He wrote reassuringly to Macdonald that he was “anxious that your political career should not be cut short at this point.” Later, Campbell changed his mind. Their partnership was dissolved in September 1849, with Macdonald buying back Campbell's share for £1,250. Macdonald engaged other partners, but never again one as competent as Campbell. Yet despite their business breakup, Macdonald and Campbell maintained their close political partnership.

Alexander Campbell, Macdonald's first law partner, later his political Mr. Fix-It and then a cabinet minister. No one worked more closely with Macdonald for a longer period, but they were never real friends.

In the meantime, Macdonald found himself increasingly pinched for money. “I am more than usually
tight
now,” he wrote to a friend, reminding him of a debt of “five pounds for books, besides some interest.” In a later letter to another friend he used the expressive phrase “I haven't got a shilling to jingle on a tombstone.”

Given all the costs Macdonald was covering—Isabella and her servants, his mother, his unmarried sisters, his own expenses—it was no surprise that he should be financially strapped. But he ought not to have been as short of revenues as he in fact was. As a member of the legislature, he'd made useful new business contacts in addition to the networks he'd already developed in Kingston and Montreal, and extended across the Atlantic to
England. His political responsibilities were a major distraction, but the root cause of his money problems was that he simply wasn't a very good businessman. A friend and fellow Conservative, the Hamilton businessman Isaac Buchanan, once wrote in affectionate censoriousness, “I would not have supposed it possible that a man of so much intellect and general versatility could on this one matter [finance] be such a child.” No doubt he was exasperated as well as amused by Macdonald's overconfidence in his financial capabilities, as when he wrote to Buchanan, who was himself highly successful, “I thoroughly understand that business and can invest without chance or risk of loss.” In truth, Macdonald never applied himself consistently to the task. There was something of his father in him: he was much the smarter and the more purposeful, but in financial matters he too was dreamy and, in the end, not at all as interested in making money as in spending it.

By this time, Macdonald had undergone one other major change in his circumstances. In the election held early in 1848, he won easily in Kingston, but the Conservatives were voted out of office and lost half their members.
^*41
A new Reform government took office, run jointly by Baldwin and LaFontaine. Macdonald and his colleagues were beached on the Opposition benches.

For a time, there was a real possibility that Macdonald would never get back to the government side of the chamber, or even to the chamber itself. In August 1849 the Kingston
Chronicle
ran a story
that he had made up his mind to resign, and it went on to speculate about possible successors. Two days later the anonymous author of a letter to the newspaper called on fellow Conservatives to persuade Macdonald to stay. Throughout his long career, Macdonald regularly mused out loud about resigning, and sometimes specifically threatened to do so. Most times he did this to discipline his supporters or to vent his own frustrations. On this occasion, he may well have meant it. Campbell, in a letter written to him several years later, referred to these times: “You will remember that throughout your long and apparently hopeless opposition [1848 to 1854] I always deprecated your retiring from parliament, as you often threatened to do.” A threat made to someone as close to him as Campbell was almost certainly a serious one; it's entirely possible that Campbell leaked the information to the
Chronicle
to head him off—as it turned out, successfully.

Macdonald's political letters during this period provide indirect evidence that he was serious about quitting. Almost always, they brim with mischievousness, energy and guile, such as when he recommends arguments that candidates could use on the stump and then dismisses his own concoctions as “bunkum arguments.” But most of the political observations he made to correspondents through the late forties and early fifties are bland and routine. Their tone was that of someone disengaged from what he was doing.

In the end, despite the vacillations, Macdonald decided to remain a full-time politician. Somehow, along with his work, he would juggle both his family responsibilities and his financial obligations. He described his political strategy as playing “the long game.” He was resilient, tenacious, indefatigable. As he said in one speech, “If I don't carry a thing this year, I will next.” His favourite phrase for minimizing setbacks and miscalculations was the old saying “There's no use crying over spilt milk.”

So he continued to play the long game. Macdonald remained an active local member, lobbying for legislation to benefit home-town institutions such as Queen's University, Regiopolis College and the Kingston Hospital. His reward was a repeat victory in the 1851 election, his third in a row, not only for himself but this time also for three other Conservative candidates in the surrounding Mid land District. He had earned, now, not just a local but a regional base. That the Reformers continued their hold on power, and the Conservatives did poorly elsewhere, only increased his stature.

At this same time, he began gathering around him one of the most useful of all political assets—a stable of close friends who would be reliable, long-term allies. Campbell functioned as Macdonald's local campaign manager and as a general “fixer” throughout Upper Canada, recruiting candidates, handling election funds, distributing patronage to pro-Conservative newspapers. Another member of Macdonald's Kingston mafia was Henry Smith, a fellow lawyer who had helped him found Kingston's Cataraqui Club “for the discussion (under proper restrictions) of the various subjects which ought to interest society.” They were so close that Macdonald asked Smith to intervene for him in an “affair of honour” arising from a nasty exchange in the House with an opposing member—an episode that could have led to a duel between them.

The most important member of the network that Macdonald was building systematically was a fellow Scot, John Rose. After earning a degree at the University of Edinburgh, he had immigrated to Montreal in 1836. There, Rose quickly became one of city's leading corporate lawyers; later he moved to London,
England, where he became an insider in financial and political circles, serving on two royal commissions, and, as a friend of the Prince of Wales, a society leader. Although fascinated by the political game, Rose was only twice, briefly, an active politician in Canada, as a junior minister in 1857 and, for two years, as Macdonald's first post-Confederation finance minister. They respected each other's intelligence and enjoyed flouting convention; once, while young, they crossed the border and pretended to be strolling entertainers, Rose as a bear and Macdonald playing some instrument. Mac donald's secretary, Joseph Pope, reckoned that of all his intimates, “personally, he was most attracted to Rose.”

John Rose, a highly successful Montreal lawyer who became a substantial financial and social figure in London. He and Macdonald were exceptionally close, intellectually as well as personally.

Ogle Gowan was another important member of the network, though in a very different way: with him came votes. Gowan was the grand master of the Orange Lodge. In hindsight, those Orangemen are seen today as anti-Catholic and anti-French fanatics. Many were. Many, though, joined only for the business and social contacts the lodge provided. Gowan himself was a moderate. He forged an alliance with Irish Catholics in Upper Canada and lost his position when hard-liners decided he had “sold out to the Pope.” It was only after Gowan's defeat as grand master that the organization took on its full anti-French colour. He and Macdonald became friends in the mid-1840s when they were working together to replace Family Compact Tories with moderate Conservatives, largely because the old Tories looked down on
Orangemen as not respectable. Nevertheless, Macdonald always held Gowan at a certain distance and never gave him the high-level government posts he sought. Their friendship ended in 1862 when Gowan was charged with the rape of a serving girl: although he was acquitted, his political career was ended. Macdonald's last contact with Gowan was to appoint him to the minor post of inspector of money orders in the post office.