Sir Alexander Campbell was from youth intimately connected with Sir John Macdonald--as a fellow-citizen of Kingston, as law student and subsequently as partner in a legal firm, as a colleague for many years in the government of the old province of Canada and afterwards in that of the Dominion. Yet the two were never kindred spirits. Sir Alexander Campbell was a Tory aristocrat, a veritable grand seigneur, of dignified bearing {150} and courtly mien. He made an excellent minister of Justice, but he lacked that _bonhomie_ which so endeared Sir John Macdonald to the multitude. I do not think that Sir John's pre-eminence in that direction ever gave Sir Alexander much concern. My impression is that he regarded the multitude as an assemblage of more or less uninteresting persons, necessary only at election times; and if Sir John could succeed in obtaining their votes, he was quite welcome to any incidental advantages that he might extract from the process. It was alleged by Sir Richard Cartwright that in the year 1864 a movement was started in the Conservative party with the object of supplanting Macdonald and putting Campbell in his place, and that Sir John never forgave Campbell for his part in this affair. Something of the kind was talked about at the date mentioned, but the movement proved a complete fiasco, and it is not at all clear that Campbell was a consenting party to it. I doubt too the correctness of Sir Richard's inference, for, leaving the 1864 incident out of account, there never was the slightest political division between the two men. At the time of the Pacific Scandal, Campbell behaved exceedingly {151} well to his chief. Yet, speaking of the period within my own knowledge--that is to say, during the last ten years of Macdonald's life--while ever externally friends, the two in their personal relations were antipathetic. This may in part be ascribed to Campbell's dignified love of ease and disinclination to join in the rough-and-tumble of party politics. When elections were to be fought (I speak only of my own time) Campbell, if he did not find that he had business elsewhere, was disposed to look on in a patronizing sort of way. He seldom took off his coat or even his gloves in the fight, but he always turned up when the victory was won. Sir John resented this. Yet assuredly Campbell had some merits, or Macdonald would not have kept him in successive Cabinets. Sir Alexander was an ideal leader of the Senate, and this qualification alone rendered him of much value. He was, moreover, _par excellence_ the aristocrat of the Cabinet, and such a type of public man is rare in Canada.