a severe
exercise of presence of mind to remember that there had been a City
banquet from which the apparition must be coming, and rapidly to arrive
by a process of exhaustion at the knowledge that this twin brother of
that Lord Beaconsfield whom shortly before I had seen in the sick room,
which he was not to leave, must be the Prime Minister of Canada.[4]

At an evening reception in London, Sir John, who was standing a little
apart, saw a lady attract another's attention, saying in an earnest
whisper, 'You say you have never seen Lord Beaconsfield. There he is,'
pointing to Sir John.

Sir John Macdonald's underlying and controlling thought was ever for
the British Empire. That Canada should exist separate {177} and apart
from England was a contingency he never contemplated. The bare mention
of such a possibility always evoked his strongest condemnation as being
fatal to the realization of a united Empire, which was the dominant
aspiration of his life.[5] To see Canada, Australia, and South Africa
united by ties of loyalty, affection, and material interest; to see
them ranged round the mother country as a protection and a defence--to
see the dear land of England secure, to see her strong in every quarter
of the globe, mistress of the seas, 'with the waves rolling about her
feet, {178} happy in her children and her children blessed in
her'--such was Sir John Macdonald's dearest wish. As his devoted wife
has most truly written of him:

Through all the fever, the struggles, the battles, hopes and fears,
disappointments and successes, joys and sorrows, anxieties and rewards
of those long busy years, this fixed idea of an united Empire was his
guiding star and inspiration. I, who can speak with something like
authority on this point, declare that I do not think any man's mind
could be more fully possessed {179} of an overwhelming strong principle
than was this man's mind of this principle. It was the 'Empire' and
'England's precedent' always, in things great and small--from the
pattern of a ceremony, or the spelling of a word, to the shaping of
laws and the modelling of a constitution. With a courage at once
fierce and gentle, generally in the face of tremendous opposition,
often against dangerous odds, he carried measure after measure in the
Canadian Parliament, each measure a stone in the edifice of empire
which he so passionately believed in and was so proud to help build and
rear.[6]

A parliamentary f