tain's latter years. Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper became a
Cabinet minister at thirty-two, the same age as that at which the
youthful John A. Macdonald had entered the Cabinet of Draper, forty-one
years before. During the years in which the younger Tupper held the
office of minister of Marine and Fisheries he made an enviable record
as an efficient and courageous administrator. I fancy Sir John used
sometimes to think that he was perhaps more particular about the
administration of patronage in his own department than in those of his
colleagues. One day, shortly after Mr Tupper (as he was then) had
become a minister, he sent a letter from some applicant for office over
to Sir John with the request that if possible he would do something for
the writer. Sir John took the letter, folded it, endorsed it, 'Dear
Charlie, skin your own skunks. Yours always, J. A. M.D.,' and sent it
back to the new minister; as much as to say, 'Now that you have a
department of your own, look after these people yourself.'

Mr John Costigan was a member of Sir John Macdonald's Cabinet from 1882
till 1891. {154} Shortly after the appearance of my _Memoirs of Sir
John Macdonald_, Mr Costigan publicly stated that I had made a mistake
in saying that Macdonald had not been in favour of Home Rule for
Ireland. Goldwin Smith declared, indeed, that Sir John Macdonald had
no settled convictions upon Home Rule, but was ever ready to propitiate
the Irish vote by any sacrifice of principle that might be required.
That Sir John reduced the original Home Rule resolutions before the
Dominion parliament in 1882 and 1886 to mere expressions of contingent
hope, such (to use Goldwin Smith's own words) 'as any Unionist might
have subscribed,'[2] and that Macdonald voted against Mr Curran's
substantive resolution in favour of Home Rule in 1887, when he could
not modify it, was as well known to Goldwin Smith as to Mr Costigan.
In addition, Goldwin Smith possessed indubitable evidence, at first
hand, of Sir John Macdonald's sentiments on the subject of Home Rule.
During the political campaign of 1886-87 Goldwin Smith said some hard
things of Sir John and the Conservative party. He was at the same time
attacking Gladstone very bitterly on his Home Rule policy. Some {155}
weeks after the Canadian elections were over, Sir John Macdonald
visited Toronto, and stayed at the Queen's Hotel. Among the visitors
on the day of his arrival was Goldwin Smith, who, as he enter