Free John A by Richard J. Gwyn

money.
    The professions of law and politics are joined at the hip. They always have been: in particular, lawyers are practised in the arts of debating and oratory, two political skills of immense esteem in the nineteenth century. Of the eleven prime ministers back to Louis St. Laurent just over a half-century ago, all but three (Lester Pearson, Joe Clark, and Stephen Harper) have been lawyers. Lawyers are good at spotting loopholes in legislation and regulations, and at attitudinizing—projecting shock and disbelief—at the arguments of their opponents. Lawyers who leave politics can return more easily to their practices than can members of almost any other profession; there are more, andbetter, post-politics prospects for lawyers, from the bench to boards of public enterprises to commissions of inquiry.
    Two pieces of evidence suggest that short-term practical considerations were indeed Macdonald’s purpose. When asked why he had stood as a candidate, Macdonald answered, “To fill a gap. There seemed no one else available, so I was pitched on.” Many years later, his minister of justice of that time, Sir John Thompson, asked Macdonald if it was proper for a friend to run for Parliament for only a single term. Macdonald replied bluntly, “Those are the terms on which I came into public life.” In this strictly private conversation, he had no reason to dissemble.
    As further evidence that Macdonald’s motivation for entering public life was more to make money than to make a name for himself, not a single companion or friend, nor any member of the family, ever claimed to have heard him say during his early years that he planned to become a great man. By contrast, his closest contemporary British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, proclaimed uninhibitedly, “I love fame. I love reputation,” while Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who comes closest to Macdonald in his hold on the Canadian imagination, wrote in a journal he kept as a youth, “I must become a great man…a future head of state or a well-known diplomat or an eminent lawyer.”
    It’s thus entirely possible that Macdonald initially saw politics as an opportunity to gain a quick under-standing of government and to accumulate contacts that he could then deploy on behalf of old and new clients. Only later, as he realized how good he was at it, would politics become his life, fame his spur, and power his addiction.

    John A. Macdonald as a young man—alert, active and, as so often, very clearly amused.
    As always with Macdonald, little is certain. He prepared himself with the focused rigour of someone girding for a marathon, not a sprint. Once elected, he set out systematically to turn Kingston into a political citadel from which he could sally out knowing he had a secure base to retreat to. And, of course, once in, Macdonald stayed on, and on and on.

    The call came in the spring of 1844. A group of leading Kingston citizens asked him to run in the election that was coming due. They asked him to stand as a Conservative—he being conservative by nature, Kingston being Loyalist, and all those worthy types looking for someone sound and sensible to represent them. Macdonald agreed to their request and then told them exactly what they wanted to hear: that all politics is local—today it’s a cliché, but at the time it came to Macdonald instinctually. *21 He promised he would address “the settlement of the back township district, hitherto so utterly neglected, and to press for the construction of the long projected plank road to Perth and Ottawa.” He also said that he intended to get things done in the way they themselves would do it—by being practical: “In a young country like Canada,” he declared, “I am of the opinion that it is of more consequence to endeavour to develop its resources and improve its physical advantages than to waste the time of the legislatureand the money of the