some
impatience at too much rocking. As a student at the University, as a
law student at Osgoode, as a barrister, as reporter on the _Telegram_,
as an employee in the Toronto Assessment Department, he had always a
sort of mathematical regard for the diligence that makes a man fit to
stand before kings, and the sensation of a superbly pigeon-holed mind.

By heredity Sir Thomas was labelled a Liberal, and at the time of the
Taft-Fielding reciprocity junta he sat on the edge of his political bed
pulling the court-plaster off. Next morning, without a single new grey
hair in his head, he found himself a Conservative. The Liberal regime
of shipping in people and booming up speculative towns on the prairies
was a good thing for any Trust. But when the Government began to
barter its preserve for another lease of life, Mr. White decided that
it was time for a change. When he quit the National Trust to take on a
trust for a nation he was a new-born Conservative, and in the eyes of
the new Premier a lovely child. And as Finance Minister in a Tory
Government he became the real author of Coalition.

Mr. White took into the Finance Department the atmosphere and the
technique of the fiduciary corporation. Hence he was never able to
read himself into the life of the country, never became more than a
superficial master of its political forces, never rallied men about him
in a great effort to save anything but a financial situation, and never
lost a superb sense of himself. The fact that without ever having been
elected to Parliament or Legislature, or even a County Council, he
could walk into what is usually regarded as the most important
department of administration in any country, is a proof that government
as big business was more important to him than politics as experience.

The average portfolio is handed to a politician, not because he knows
anything about the matter in hand, but because he is a good politician,
a big enough man to represent some electoral area, and may be left to
learn his public job after he gets it. Such is democracy. White was a
tyro in politics and public administration. But he did know finance.
When Laurier picked editor Fielding from Nova Scotia to look after the
Budget he chose a good deal of a genius. Mr. Fielding was a master of
tariffs and of inspiring fiscal speeches outside the House. He had
almost a Gladstonian faculty for making statistics scintillate with
human interest. He had mad