ng influence began to be felt in the House of Commons, which
gradually affected the whole tone of political life in Canada, until
the old-time bitterness of party strife in a large measure passed away.

About a month before Sir John Macdonald died Mr Laurier came to his
office in the House of Commons to discuss some question of adjournment.
When he had gone, the chief said to me, 'Nice chap that. If I were
twenty years younger, he'd be my colleague.' {162} 'Perhaps he may be
yet, sir,' I remarked. Sir John shook his head. 'Too old,' said he,
'too old,' and passed into the inner room.

I must not omit an amusing incident which happened in the autumn of
1888. During the summer of that year Honore Mercier, the Liberal prime
minister of Quebec, had called upon Sir John at the Inch Arran hotel at
Dalhousie, New Brunswick. It was the first time they had met, and
Mercier, who showed a disposition to be friendly, asked Sir John if he
would give him an interview with himself and his colleagues at Ottawa
in order to discuss some financial questions outstanding between the
Dominion and the province. Sir John promised to do so, and when he
returned to town fixed a day for the meeting. In the preceding July
the Quebec legislature had passed the once famous Jesuits' Estates Act.
This Act was then before Sir John's Cabinet and he was under strong
pressure to disallow it. While Sir John had no love for Mercier or his
Government, and while he thought the preamble of the Jesuits' Estates
Act, with its ostentatious references to the Pope, highly
objectionable, he had no doubt that the Act was wholly within the
competence of the {163} Quebec legislature and was not a subject for
disallowance. Obviously Quebec could do what it liked with its own
money. Sir John was having much trouble at the time with several of
the provincial legislatures, which were showing a disposition to
encroach upon the federal domain. It was necessary that he should walk
warily, lest he should put himself in the wrong by interfering with
legislation clearly within the power of provincial legislatures. He
was persuaded that the obnoxious phrases in the preamble of the
Jesuits' Estates Act had been inserted with the express object of
tempting him to an arbitrary and unjust exercise of power which would
react disastrously upon him, not only in Quebec, but also in Ontario,
Manitoba, and elsewhere. It was all too palpable, and, as he used to
say, 'in vain i