SIR JOHN MACDONALD.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 25, 20 June 1891, Page 81

SIR JOHN MACDONALD.

ITH the decease of Sir John Macdonald, the Premier of Canada, there has passed away } one of the half-a-dozen commanding personalities of the world. England has her • Grand Old Man ’ in Gladstone, Germany hers in Bismarck, and outside Europe the two sections of the British race in Canada and Australia had, till recently, three in the persons of Sir John Macdonald, Sir Henry Parkes, and Sir George Grey. In all these we see men who may be regarded as representative, that is, as the highest outcome of their peculiar surroundings. Sir John Macdonald died two weeks ago. He was the eldest son of Mr Hugh Macdonald, who emigrated from Sutherlar.dshire, Scotland, to Ontario, Canada. Sir John Macdonald was born in Glasgow eighty years since, but received his education in Canada. He was Premier of Canada 'in 1858, and the first Premier of the Dominion on its formation in 1867. In 1872 he was appointed by the Queen a member of the Privy Council. In instinct Sir John Macdonald was an Imperial Englishman, and all his efforts during later life, including the projection of the Canadian Pacific Kailway, have been directed to the retention of the Canadian Dominion within the Britsh Empire. At the present crisis in Canada the loss of his influence will be seriously felt, but he has left an example which it is to be hoped will have the effect of educing a successor equal to the task of assuming the mantle he has left behind. From the following vivid description of Sir John Macdonald, as be appeared in the Canadian Legislature, can be gathered the notion of how strong and admirable a man he was. ‘ He is now seventy-five years of age, but increasing years appear only to rejuvenate instead of to weigh him down. His friends and enemies note with different feelings that every session he resumes his duties in the House with a fresh stock of youthfulness and energy. His head is somewhat of the oblong type, and his features are generous and irregular. His nose is large and prominent, rather Hebraic in shape ; his lips thin and firm ; and his chin is of that delicate narrowness, square withal, which at once denotes the man born a leader among men, with the firmness and resoluteness of purpose necessary to command He is clean shaven after the manner of the old school politicians, and his hair, though it has receded from off a noble forehead, wrinkled with the cares of statecraft, grows in luxuriant profusion around the sides and back of his head. He is tall and erect, and bears himself with something of military alertness. In his dress he is most scrupulous. He generally wears a black diagonal morning coat and vest, and a collar of the Gladstone shape. Sometimes, however, he appears in a tailless and jaunty Bohemian velvet coat ; but there is one peculiarity of his dress which he seldom varies ; he has a penchant for bright-red London ties, and except when in evening dress, rarely wears any other hue. Several people have endeavoured to discover the secret of Sir John’s London tie-maker, but in vain; the genius remains an interesting incognito. He is very epigram matic and witty, and some of his brief retorts and asides have the infection and brilliancy of Sheridan, and make more impression than a speech of four hours’ laboured argument. It is not, however, his utterances in the House, nor the wonderful administrative ability of which he is possessed, that enable him to exercise such an immense and almost unprecedented influence in the political life of the country, but his marvellous personal magnetism, which reconciles hundreds of conflicting interests and prejudices, and moulds all to his purpose. Mr Gladstone is the only other political leader in the world whose power approaches that of Sir John.’