At an evening reception in London, Sir John, who was standing a little apart, saw a lady attract another's attention, saying in an earnest whisper, 'You say you have never seen Lord Beaconsfield. There he is,' pointing to Sir John. Sir John Macdonald's underlying and controlling thought was ever for the British Empire. That Canada should exist separate {177} and apart from England was a contingency he never contemplated. The bare mention of such a possibility always evoked his strongest condemnation as being fatal to the realization of a united Empire, which was the dominant aspiration of his life.[5] To see Canada, Australia, and South Africa united by ties of loyalty, affection, and material interest; to see them ranged round the mother country as a protection and a defence--to see the dear land of England secure, to see her strong in every quarter of the globe, mistress of the seas, 'with the waves rolling about her feet, {178} happy in her children and her children blessed in her'--such was Sir John Macdonald's dearest wish. As his devoted wife has most truly written of him: Through all the fever, the struggles, the battles, hopes and fears, disappointments and successes, joys and sorrows, anxieties and rewards of those long busy years, this fixed idea of an united Empire was his guiding star and inspiration. I, who can speak with something like authority on this point, declare that I do not think any man's mind could be more fully possessed {179} of an overwhelming strong principle than was this man's mind of this principle. It was the 'Empire' and 'England's precedent' always, in things great and small--from the pattern of a ceremony, or the spelling of a word, to the shaping of laws and the modelling of a constitution. With a courage at once fierce and gentle, generally in the face of tremendous opposition, often against dangerous odds, he carried measure after measure in the Canadian Parliament, each measure a stone in the edifice of empire which he so passionately believed in and was so proud to help build and rear.[6] A parliamentary federation of the Empire he considered impracticable. He did not believe that the people of Canada--or of any other dependency of Great Britain--would ever consent to be taxed by a central body sitting outside its borders, nor did he relish the idea that the mother of parliaments at Westminster should be subordinated to any federal legislature, no matter how dignified and important it might be. He believed in allowing Canada's relations with the mother {180} country to remain as they are. To use his own words, spoken within a year or so of his death: