he entered parliament as member for
Lambton, and took rank from the first as a strong and effective debater
on the side of the Opposition. In office he proved a capable
administrator of unimpeachable integrity, with a remarkable capacity
for labour. It could not be said of him, however, that he possessed
the essential qualities of a leader. Not only was he destitute of that
mysterious personal attribute known as 'magnetism,' but he was disposed
to be arbitrary and dictatorial. His political supporters respected
and perhaps feared him, but it cannot be said that he was popular among
them.

Goldwin Smith was once driving a newly arrived English friend through
the streets of Toronto at the time Mackenzie was in the zenith of his
power. When passing Mackenzie's house he remarked the fact. 'And who
is Mr Mackenzie?' inquired the {104} friend. 'Mr Mackenzie,' replied
Goldwin Smith, 'was a stonemason; _he is a stonemason still_.'

This, of course, was not fair. Mackenzie, despite his narrowness,
rigidity, faults of manner, and perhaps of temper, was an able man. No
fairer was Goldwin Smith's cynical observation that the alliance
between Macdonald and Brown in 1864 was 'as brief and perfidious as a
harlot's love'; but nobody--at any rate, no Canadian public man--ever
looked for fairness from Goldwin Smith, whose idea of independence
seemed to consist of being alternately unjust to each side. Both
sayings, however, are extremely clever, and both had sufficient truth
about them to give point at once to the author's malevolence and to his
wit.

A man of very different mould from that of the Liberal leader was his
nominal follower Edward Blake, one of the rarest minds that have
adorned the bar of Canada or of any other country. Blake was not
merely a great equity lawyer; he was, as well, a distinguished
authority on the principles of government. Viewed as intellectual
performances, his speeches in the Canadian House of Commons have never
been surpassed. But to his great {105} gifts were joined great
weaknesses, among which may be set down an abnormal sensitiveness. He
was peculiarly susceptible to the daily annoyances which beset a public
man. So marked was this infirmity that men without a tithe of his
ability, but with a better adjusted nervous system, would sometimes
presume to torment him just for the fun of the thing. While he was
minister of Justice, political exigencies compelled Mackenzie to take
into h