Hincks [wrote Sir John to his friend Rose in January 1872] is as suggestive as ever in financial matters, but his rashness (always, as you know, the defect of his character) seems to increase with his years, {86} and, strange to say, he is quite a stranger to the popular opinion of Canada as it is. His Canada is the Canada of 1850. For all that he is a worthy good fellow and has been successful in finance. Upon the whole, I am inclined to view the taking up of Sir Francis Hincks in 1869 as one of Sir John Macdonald's very few mistakes. I do not go as far as to say he would have done better to have chosen Sir Richard Cartwright, who was only thirty-three years of age at the time, and who, as the president of the Commercial Bank, which had failed only two years before, was just then an impossibility.[8] Moreover, to be quite just to Sir Richard Cartwright, I must say that I have never seen evidence to satisfy me that he expected to succeed Sir John Rose. There is nothing in his letters preserved by Sir John Macdonald to establish this. They disclose his opposition to Hincks, but he nowhere says that he wanted {87} the position for himself. It is true that in the heat of debate Sir John more than once implied something of the kind, and I am not aware that Sir Richard ever denied the allegation, though it is quite possible he may have done so. There is little doubt, however, that the selection of Sir Francis Hincks caused Sir Richard Cartwright to abandon Sir John Macdonald. He did not leave all at once. As late as the campaign which preceded the general elections of 1872 he called himself an 'Independent,' and the _Globe_ contemptuously classed him, in respect of certain votes he had given in parliament which happened to be distasteful to Brown, as 'a Tory and a corruptionist.' But from 1870 his name not infrequently appears in the division list of the House of Commons among the Opposition.