r
own there is your immediate return and vigorous action. It may be
necessary that you should, even if only for a time, return to the
Cabinet. M'Lelan, I know, would readily make way for you. Now, the
responsibility on you is very great, for should any disaster arise
because of your not coming out, the whole blame will be thrown upon you.

I see that Anglin is now starring it in Nova Scotia. I send you an
extract from a condensed report of his remarks which appeared in the
Montreal _Gazette_. This is a taking programme for the Maritime
Provinces and has to be met, and no one can do it but yourself. But
enough of Dominion politics.

I cannot in conclusion too strongly press upon you the absolute
necessity of your {158} coming out at once, and do not like to
contemplate the evil consequences of your declining to do so.

I shall cable you the time for holding our election the moment it is
settled.

That the general elections of 1887 were fought with exceeding
bitterness may be inferred from a paragraph in a leading Canadian
newspaper of the day:

Now W. M. Tweed [the criminal 'boss' in New York] was an abler
scoundrel than is Sir John Macdonald. He was more courageous, if
possible more unscrupulous, and more crafty, and he had himself, as he
thought, impregnably entrenched. Yet in a few short months he was in a
prison cell deserted and despised by all who had lived upon his
wickedness--and there he died.

This of course is a mere exhibition of partisan rage and spite. It
contains no single word or phrase in the smallest degree applicable to
Sir John Macdonald, who, far from being dishonest, was ever
scrupulously fair and just in all his dealings, both public and
private. This, I am persuaded, is now well {159} understood. What is
not so well known is that he disliked extravagance of any kind. He
was, it is true, a man of bold conceptions, and when convinced that a
large policy was in the interest of the country, he never hesitated at
its cost. Thus he purchased the North-West, built the Canadian Pacific
Railway, and spent millions on canals. But in the ordinary course of
affairs he was prudent, even economical, and as careful of public money
as of his own. At the close of a long life he spoke of the very modest
competence he had provided for his family as having been 'painfully and
laboriously saved.'

If Sir John's critic, quoted above, meant to convey the idea that in
1887 Sir John thought