Several works by MacCulloch were engraved by William Miller and William Forrest, and a volume of photographs from his landscapes, with an excellent biographical notice of the artist by Alexander Fraser, R.S.A., was published in Edinburgh in 1872.
Several works by MacCulloch were engraved by William Miller and William Forrest, and a volume of photographs from his landscapes, with an excellent biographical notice of the artist by Alexander Fraser, R.S.A., was published in Edinburgh in 1872.
McCULLOCH, HUGH(1808-1895), American financier, was born at Kennebunk, Maine, on the 7th of December 1808. He was educated at Bowdoin College, studied law in Boston, and in 1833 began practice at Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was cashier and manager of the Fort Wayne branch of the old state bank of Indiana from 1835 to 1857, and president of the new state bank from 1857 to 1863. Notwithstanding his opposition to the National Banking Act of 1862, he was selected by Secretary Chase as comptroller of the currency in 1863 to put the new system into operation. His work was so successful that he was appointed secretary of the treasury by President Lincoln in 1865, and was continued in office by President Johnson until the close of his administration in 1869. In his first annual report, issued on the 4th of December 1865, he strongly urged the retirement of the legal tenders or greenbacks as a preliminary to the resumption of specie payments. In accordance with this suggestion an act was passed, on the 12th of March 1866, authorizing the retirement of not more than $10,000,000 in six months and not more than $4,000,000 per month thereafter, but it met with strong opposition and was repealed on the 4th of February 1868, after only $48,000,000 had been retired. He was much disappointed by the decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the legal tenders (12 Wallace 457). Soon after the close of his term of office McCulloch went to England, and spent six years (1870-1876) as a member of the banking firm of Jay Cooke, McCulloch & Co. From October 1884 until the close of President Arthur’s term of office in March 1885 he was again secretary of the treasury. He died at his home near Washington, D.C., on the 24th of May 1895.
The chief authority for the life of McCulloch is his own book,Men and Measures of Half a Century(New York, 1888).
The chief authority for the life of McCulloch is his own book,Men and Measures of Half a Century(New York, 1888).
M‘CULLOCH, SIR JAMES(1819-1893), Australian statesman, was born in Glasgow. He entered the house of Dennistoun Brothers, became a partner, and went to Melbourne to open a branch. In 1854, shortly after his arrival in Victoria, he was appointed a nominee member of the Legislative Council, and in the first Legislative Assembly under the new constitution was returned for the electorate of the Wimmera. In 1857 he was appointed minister of trade and customs in the second ministry of Haines, which lasted till 1858, and subsequently he became treasurer in the Nicholson administration, which held office from October 1859 to November 1860. In June 1862 the third O’Shanassy ministry was defeated by a combination between a section of its supporters led by M‘Culloch and the opposition proper under Heales, and M‘Culloch became premier and chief secretary. Hitherto he had been regarded as a supporter of the landed, squatting and importing interests, but the coalition ministry introduced a number of measures which at the time were regarded by the propertied classes in the colony as revolutionary. In addition to passing a Land Bill, which extended the principle of free selection and deferred payments, the ministry announced their intention of reducing the duties on the export of gold and the import duties upon tea and sugar, and of supplying the deficiency by the imposition of duties ranging from 5 to 10% upon a number of articles which entered into competition with the local industries, thus introducing protection. The mercantile community took alarm at the proposal, and at the general election of 1864 the ministerial policy was warmly opposed. But a majority was returned in its favour, and a new tariff was carried through the popular branch of the legislature. There was no probability of its being assented to by the Council, which, under the constitution, had the power of rejecting, although it could not amend, any money Bill. The government therefore decided upon tacking the tariff to the Appropriation Bill, and compelling the Council either to agree to the new fiscal proposals or to refuse to pay the public creditors and the civil servants. The Council accepted the challenge, and rejected the Appropriation Bill. But M‘Culloch and his colleagues would not give way. They continued to collect the new duties under the authority of the Assembly, and took advantage of a clause in the Audit Act which directed the governor to sign the necessary warrants for the payment of any sum awarded by verdicts in the supreme court in favour of persons who had sued the government. M‘Culloch borrowed £40,000 from the London Chartered Bank, of which he was a director, to meet pressing payments, and the bank at his instigation sued the government for the amount of the advance. The attorney-general at once accepted judgment, and the governor, who had placed himself unreservedly in the hands of his ministers, signed the necessary warrant, and the Treasury repaid to the bank the amount of its advance, plus interest and costs. In the next session the tariff was again sent up to the Council, which promptly rejected it,whereupon the ministry dissolved the assembly and appealed to the country. The result of the general election was to increase M‘Culloch’s majority, and the tariff was again sent to the Council, only to be again rejected. M‘Culloch resigned, but no member of the opposition was willing to form a ministry, and he resumed office. Eventually a conference between the two houses was held, and the Council passed the tariff, after a few modifications in it had been agreed to by the Assembly. Just at the moment that peace was restored, the governor, Sir Charles Darling, was recalled by the home government, on the ground that he had displayed partisanship by assisting M‘Culloch’s government and their majority in the Assembly to coerce the Council. In order to show their gratitude to the dismissed governor, the Assembly decided to grant a sum of £20,000 to Lady Darling. The home government intimated that Sir Charles Darling must retire from the Colonial service if this gift were accepted by his wife, but M‘Culloch included the money in the annual Appropriation Bill, with the result that it was rejected by the Council. The new governor, Viscount Canterbury, was less complaisant than his predecessor, but after an unsuccessful attempt to obtain other advisers, he agreed to recommend the Council to pass the Appropriation Bill with the £20,000 grant included. The Upper House declined to adopt this course, and again rejected the Bill. A long and bitter struggle between the two Chambers ended in another general election in 1868, which still further increased the ministerial majority; but Lord Canterbury, in obedience to instructions from the colonial office, declined to do anything to facilitate the passage of the Darling grant. M‘Culloch resigned, and after protracted negotiations Sir Charles Sladen formed from the minority in the Assembly a ministry which only lasted two months. The deadlock seemed likely to become more stringent than ever, when a communication was received from Sir Charles Darling, that neither he nor his wife could receive anything like a donation from the people of Victoria. The attempt to pass the grant was therefore abandoned, and in July 1868 M‘Culloch resumed office with different colleagues, but resigned in the following year, when he was knighted. He formed a third ministry in 1870. During this third administration he passed a measure through both Houses which secured a life annuity of £1000 per annum to Lady Darling. Additional taxation being necessary, Sir James M‘Culloch was urged by his protectionist supporters to increase the import duties, but he refused, and proposed to provide for the deficit by levying a tax upon town, suburban and country property. This proposal was defeated in the Assembly; Sir James resigned in June 1871, and was appointed agent-general for Victoria in London. He held that appointment till 1873, was created K.C.M.G. in 1874, returned to the colony the same year, and in 1875 formed his fourth and last ministry, which kept power till May 1877, when his party was defeated at the general election. During his eighteen months of office he had to encounter a persistent opposition from Berry and his followers, who systematically obstructed the business of the Assembly, on the ground that the acting-governor, Sir William Stawell, had improperly refused a dissolution. Sir James M‘Culloch, to counteract this obstruction, invented the closure, which was afterwards introduced with some modifications into the house of commons. After his defeat in 1877 Sir James retired from public life and returned to England, where he died on the 30th of January 1893 at Ewell, Surrey. He was twice married—first, in 1841, to Susan, daughter of the Rev. James Renwick, of Muirton, Scotland; secondly, in 1867, to Margaret, daughter of William Inglis, of Walflat, Dumbartonshire. He left the house of Dennistoun Brothers in 1862, and founded a new firm at Melbourne in conjunction with Leishman, Inglis & Co. of London, under the title of M‘Culloch, Sellars & Co. He held several important commercial positions, and was president of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce.
(G. C. L.)
MACCULLOCH, JOHN(1773-1835), Scottish geologist, descended from the Maccullochs of Nether Ardwell in Galloway, was born in Guernsey, on the 6th of October 1773, his mother being a native of that island. Having displayed remarkable powers as a boy, he was sent to study medicine in the university of Edinburgh, where he qualified as M.D. in 1793, and then entered the army as assistant surgeon. Attaching himself to the artillery, he became chemist to the board of ordnance (1803). He still continued, however, to practise for a time as a physician, and during the years 1807-1811 he resided at Blackheath. In 1811 he communicated his first papers to the Geological Society. They were devoted to an elucidation of the geological structure of Guernsey, of the Channel Islands, and of Heligoland. The evidence they afforded of his capacity, and the fact that he already had received a scientific appointment, probably led to his being selected in the same year to make some geological and mineralogical investigations in Scotland. He was asked to report upon stones adapted for use in powder-mills, upon the suitability of the chief Scottish mountains for a repetition of the pendulum experiments previously conducted by Maskelyne and Playfair at Schiehallion, and on the deviations of the plumb-line along the meridian of the Trigonometrical Survey. In the course of the explorations necessary for the purposes of these reports he made extensive observations on the geology and mineralogy of Scotland. He formed also a collection of the mineral productions and rocks of that country, which he presented to the Geological Society in 1814. In that year he was appointed geologist to the Trigonometrical Survey; and in 1816-1817 he was president of the Geological Society. Comparatively little had been done in the investigation of Scottish geology, and finding the field so full of promise, he devoted himself to its cultivation with great ardour. One of his most important labours was the examination of the whole range of islands along the west of Scotland, at that time not easily visited, and presenting many obstacles to a scientific explorer. The results of this survey appeared (1819) in the form of hisDescription of the Western Islands of Scotland, including the Isle of Man(2 vols. 8vo, with an atlas of plates in 4to), which forms one of the classical treatises on British geology. He was elected F.R.S. in 1820. He continued to write papers, chiefly on the rocks and minerals of Scotland, and had at last gathered so large an amount of information that the government was prevailed upon in the year 1826 to employ him in the preparation of a geological map of Scotland. From that date up to the time of his death he returned each summer to Scotland and traversed every district of the kingdom, inserting the geological features upon Arrowsmith’s map, the only one then available for his purpose. He completed the field-work in 1832, and in 1834 his map and memoir were ready for publication, but these were not issued until 1836, the year after he died. Among his other works the following may be mentioned:A Geological Classification of Rocks with Descriptive Synopses of the Species and Varieties, comprising the Elements of Practical Geology(1821);The Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, in a series of letters to Sir Walter Scott (4 vols. 1824);A System of Geology, with a Theory of the Earth and an Examination of its Connexion with the Sacred Records(2 vols. 1831). During a visit to Cornwall he was killed by being dragged along in the wheel of his carriage, on the 21st of August 1835.
In penning an obituary notice, C. Lyell in 1836 (Proc. Geol. Soc.ii. 357) acknowledged “with gratitude” that he had “received more instruction from Macculloch’s labours in geology than from those of any living writer.”
In penning an obituary notice, C. Lyell in 1836 (Proc. Geol. Soc.ii. 357) acknowledged “with gratitude” that he had “received more instruction from Macculloch’s labours in geology than from those of any living writer.”
M‘CULLOCH, JOHN RAMSAY(1789-1864), British economist and statistician, was born on the 1st of March 1789 at Whithorn in Wigtownshire. His family belonged to the class of “statesmen,” or small landed proprietors. He was for some time employed at Edinburgh as a clerk in the office of a writer to the signet. But, theScotsmannewspaper having been established at the beginning of 1817, M‘Culloch sent a contribution to the fourth number, the merit of which was at once recognized; he soon became connected with the management of the paper, and during 1818 and 1819 acted as editor. Most of his articles related to questions of political economy, and he delivered lectures in Edinburgh on that science. He now also began to write on subjects of the same class in theEdinburgh Review,his first contribution being an article on Ricardo’sPrinciples of Political Economyin 1818. Within the next few years he gave both public lectures and private instruction in London on political economy. In 1823 he was chosen to fill the lectureship established by subscription in honour of the memory of Ricardo. A movement was set on foot in 1825 by Jeffrey and others to induce the government to found in the university of Edinburgh a chair of political economy, separate from that of moral philosophy, the intention being to obtain the appointment for M‘Culloch. This project fell to the ground; but in 1828 he was made professor of political economy in London University. He then fixed his residence permanently in London, where he continued his literary work, being now one of the regular writers in theEdinburgh Review. In 1838 he was appointed comptroller of the stationery office; the duties of this position, which he held till his death, he discharged with conscientious fidelity, and introduced important reforms in the management of the department. Sir Robert Peel, in recognition of the services he had rendered to political science, conferred on him a literary pension of £200 per annum. He was elected a foreign associate of the Institute of France (Académie des sciences morales et politiques). He died in London, after a short illness, on the 11th of November 1864, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. To his personal character and social qualities very favourable testimony was borne by those who knew him best. In general politics he always remained a Whig pure and simple; though he was in intimate relations with James Mill and his circle, he never shared the Radical opinions of that group.
M‘Culloch cannot be regarded as an original thinker on political economy. He did not contribute any new ideas to that science, or introduce any noteworthy correction of the views, either as to method or doctrine, generally accepted by the dominant school of his day. But the work he did must be pronounced, in relation to the wants of his time, a very valuable one. His name will probably be less permanently associated with anything he has written on economic science, strictly so called, than with his great statistical and other compilations. HisDictionary of Commerce and Commercial Navigation(1832) and hisStatistical Account of the British Empire(1837) remain imposing monuments of his extensive and varied knowledge and his indefatigable industry. Another useful work of reference, also the fruit of wide erudition and much labour, is hisLiterature of Political Economy(1845). Though weak on the side of the foreign literature of the science, it is very valuable as a critical and biographical guide to British writers.
M‘Culloch cannot be regarded as an original thinker on political economy. He did not contribute any new ideas to that science, or introduce any noteworthy correction of the views, either as to method or doctrine, generally accepted by the dominant school of his day. But the work he did must be pronounced, in relation to the wants of his time, a very valuable one. His name will probably be less permanently associated with anything he has written on economic science, strictly so called, than with his great statistical and other compilations. HisDictionary of Commerce and Commercial Navigation(1832) and hisStatistical Account of the British Empire(1837) remain imposing monuments of his extensive and varied knowledge and his indefatigable industry. Another useful work of reference, also the fruit of wide erudition and much labour, is hisLiterature of Political Economy(1845). Though weak on the side of the foreign literature of the science, it is very valuable as a critical and biographical guide to British writers.
McCULLOUGH, JOHN EDWARD(1837-1885), American actor, was born in Coleraine, Ireland, on the 2nd of November 1837. He went to America at the age of sixteen, and made his first appearance on the stage at the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia, in 1857. In support of Edwin Forrest and Edwin Booth he played second rôles in Shakespearian and other tragedies, and Forrest left him by will all his prompt books. Virginius was his greatest success, although even in this part and as Othello he was coldly received in England (1881). In 1884 he broke down physically and mentally, and he died in an asylum at Philadelphia on the 8th of November 1885.
MACCUNN, HAMISH(1868- ), Scottish musical composer, was born at Greenock, the son of a shipowner, and was educated at the Royal College of Music. His first success was with the overtureLand of the Mountain and Floodin 1887 at the Crystal Palace, and this was followed by other compositions, with a characteristic Scottish colouring. From 1888 to 1894 he was a professor at the Royal College of Music, and this latter year saw both his marriage to a daughter of John Pettie, R.A., and the production of his operaJeanie Deansat Edinburgh. He was for some years conductor to the Carl Rosa Opera company, and subsequently to other companies. His operaDiarmidwas produced at Covent Garden in 1897, and his other music includes cantatas, overtures, part-songs, instrumental pieces, and songs, all markedly Scottish in type.
MACDONALD, FLORA(1722-1790), Jacobite heroine, was the daughter of Ranald Macdonald of Milton in the island of South Uist in the Hebrides, and his wife Marion the daughter of Angus Macdonald, minister of South Uist. Her father died when she was a child, and her mother was abducted and married by Hugh Macdonald of Armadale. She was brought up under the care of the chief of her clan, Macdonald of Clanranald, and was partly educated in Edinburgh. In June 1746 she was living in Benbecula in the Hebrides when Prince Charles Edward (q.v.) took refuge there after the battle of Culloden. The prince’s companion, Captain O’Neill, sought her help. The island was held for the government by the local militia, but the secret sympathies of the Macdonalds were with the Jacobite cause. After some hesitation Flora promised to help. At a later period she told the duke of Cumberland, son of George III. and commander-in-chief in Scotland, that she acted from charity and would have helped him also if he had been defeated and in distress, a statement which need not be accepted as quite literally true. The commander of the militia in the island, a Macdonald, who was probably admitted into the secret, gave her a pass to the mainland for herself, a manservant, an Irish spinning maid, Betty Burke, and a boat’s crew of six men. The prince was disguised as Betty Burke. After a first repulse at Waternish, the party landed at Portree. The prince was hidden in a cave while Flora Macdonald found help for him in the neighbourhood, and was finally able to escape. He had left Benbecula on the 27th of June. The talk of the boatmen brought suspicion on Flora Macdonald, and she was arrested and brought to London. After a short imprisonment in the Tower, she was allowed to live outside of it, under the guard of a “messenger” or gaoler. When the Act of Indemnity was passed in 1747 she was left at liberty. Her courage and loyalty had gained her general sympathy, which was increased by her good manners and gentle character. Dr Johnson, who saw her in 1773, describes her as “a woman of soft features, gentle manners and elegant presence.” In 1750 she married Allen Macdonald of Kingsburgh, and in 1773 they emigrated to America. In the War of Independence he served the British government and was taken prisoner. In 1779 his wife returned home in a merchant ship which was attacked by a privateer. She refused to leave the deck during the action, and was wounded in the arm. She died on the 5th of March 1790. There is a statue to her memory in Inverness. Flora Macdonald had a large family of sons, who mostly entered the army or navy, and two daughters.
See A. C. Ewald,Life and Times of Prince Charles Edward(1886). The so-calledAutobiographyof Flora Macdonald, published by her grand-daughter F. F. Walde (1870) is of small value.
See A. C. Ewald,Life and Times of Prince Charles Edward(1886). The so-calledAutobiographyof Flora Macdonald, published by her grand-daughter F. F. Walde (1870) is of small value.
MACDONALD, GEORGE(1824-1905), Scottish novelist and poet, was born at Huntly, Aberdeenshire. His father, a farmer, was one of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, and a direct descendant of one of the families that suffered in the massacre. Macdonald’s youth was passed in his native town, under the immediate influence of the Congregational Church, and in an atmosphere strongly impregnated with Calvinism. He took his degree at Aberdeen University, and migrated thence to London, studying at Highbury College for the Congregational ministry. In 1850 he was appointed pastor of Trinity Congregational Church, Arundel, and, after resigning his cure there, was engaged in ministerial work in Manchester. His health, however, was unequal to the strain, and after a short sojourn in Algiers he settled in London and adopted the profession of literature. In 1856 he published his first book,Within and Without, a dramatic poem; following it in 1857 with a volume ofPoems, and in 1858 by the delightful “faerie romance”Phantastes. His first conspicuous success was achieved in 1862 withDavid Elginbrod, the forerunner of a number of popular novels, which includeAlec Forbes of Howglen(1865),Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood(1866),Robert Falconer(1868),Malcolm(1875),The Marquis of Lossie(1877), andDonal Grant(1883). He was for a time editor ofGood Words for the Young, and lectured successfully in America in 1872-1873. He wrote admirable stories for the young, and published some volumes of sermons. In 1877 he was given a civil list pension. He died on the 18th of September 1905.
Both as preacher and as lecturer on literary topics George Macdonald’s sincerity and moral enthusiasm exercised greatinfluence upon thoughtful minds. His verse is homely and direct, and marked by religious fervour and simplicity. As a portrayer of Scottish peasant-life in fiction he was the precursor of a large school, which has benefited by his example and surpassed its original leader in popularity. The religious tone of his novels is relieved by tolerance and a broad spirit of humour, and the simpler emotions of humble life are sympathetically treated.
MACDONALD, SIR HECTOR ARCHIBALD(1852-1903), British soldier, was born of humble parentage at Muir of Allan-Grange, Ross-shire, Scotland, in 1852. As a boy he was employed in a draper’s shop at Dingwall, but in 1870 he enlisted in the 92nd (Gordon) Highlanders. He rose rapidly through the non-commissioned ranks, and had already been a colour-sergeant for some years when, in the Afghan War of 1879, he distinguished himself in the presence of the enemy so much as to be promoted to commissioned rank, his advancement being equally acceptable to his brother officers and popular with the rank and file. As a subaltern he served in the first Boer War of 1880-81, and at Majuba, where he was made prisoner, his bravery was so conspicuous that General Joubert gave him back his sword. In 1885 he served under Sir Evelyn Wood in the reorganization of the Egyptian army, and he took part in the Nile Expedition of that year. In 1888 he became a regimental captain in the British service, but continued to serve in the Egyptian army, being particularly occupied with the training of the Sudanese battalions. In 1889 he received the D.S.O. for his conduct at Toski and in 1891, after the action at Tokar, he was promoted substantive major. In 1896 he commanded a brigade of the Egyptian army in the Dongola Expedition, and during the following campaigns he distinguished himself in every engagement, above all in the final battle of Omdurman (1898) at the crisis of which Macdonald’s Sudanese brigade, manœuvring as a unit with the coolness and precision of the parade ground, repulsed the most determined attack of the Mahdists. After this great service Macdonald’s name became famous in England and Scotland, the popular sobriquet of “Fighting Mac” testifying the interest aroused in the public mind by his career and his soldierly personality. He was promoted colonel in the army and appointed an aide-de-camp to the queen, and in 1899 he was promoted major-general and appointed to a command in India. In December 1899 he was called to South Africa to command the Highland Brigade, which had just suffered very heavily and had lost its commander, Major-General A. G. Wauchope, in the battle of Magersfontein. He commanded the brigade throughout Lord Roberts’s Paardeberg, Bloemfontein and Pretoria operations, and in 1901 he was made a K.C.B. In 1902 he was appointed to command the troops in Ceylon, but early in the following year (March 25, 1903) he committed suicide in Paris. A memorial to this brilliant soldier, in the form of a tower 100 ft. high, was erected at Dingwall and completed in 1907.
MACDONALD, JACQUES ÉTIENNE JOSEPH ALEXANDRE(1765-1840), duke of Taranto and marshal of France, was born at Sedan on the 17th of November 1765. His father came of an old Jacobite family, which had followed James II. to France, and was a near relative of the celebrated Flora Macdonald. In 1785 Macdonald joined the legion raised to support the revolutionary party in Holland against the Prussians, and after it was disbanded he received a commission in the regiment of Dillon. On the breaking out of the Revolution, the regiment of Dillon remained eminently loyal, with the exception of Macdonald, who was in love with Mlle Jacob, whose father was enthusiastic for the doctrines of the Revolution. Directly after his marriage he was appointed aide-de-camp to General Dumouriez. He distinguished himself at Jemmapes, and was promoted colonel in 1793. He refused to desert to the Austrians with Dumouriez, and as a reward was made general of brigade, and appointed to command the leading brigade in Pichegru’s invasion of Holland. His knowledge of the country proved most useful, and he was instrumental in the capture of the Dutch fleet by French hussars. In 1797, having been made general of division, he served first in the army of the Rhine and then in that of Italy. When he reached Italy, the peace of Campo Formio had been signed, and Bonaparte had returned to France; but, under the direction of Berthier, Macdonald first occupied Rome, of which he was made governor, and then in conjunction with Championnet he defeated General Mack, and revolutionized the kingdom of Naples under the title of the Parthenopaean Republic. When Suvarov invaded northern Italy, and was winning back the conquests of Bonaparte, Macdonald collected all the troops in the peninsula and moved northwards. With but 30,000 men he attacked, at the Trebbia, Suvarov with 50,000, and after three days’ fighting, during which he held the Russians at bay, and gave time for Moreau to come up, he retired in good order to Genoa. After this gallant behaviour he was made governor of Versailles, and acquiesced, if he did not co-operate, in the events of the 18th Brumaire. In 1800 he received the command of the army in Switzerland which was to maintain the communications between the armies of Germany and of Italy. He carried out his orders to the letter, and at last, in the winter of 1800-1, he was ordered to march over the Splügen Pass. This achievement is fully described by Mathieu Dumas, who was chief of his staff, and is at least as noteworthy as Bonaparte’s famous passage of the St Bernard before Marengo, though followed by no such successful battle. On his return to Paris Macdonald married the widow of General Joubert, and was appointed French plenipotentiary in Denmark. Returning in 1805 he associated himself with Moreau and incurred the dislike of Napoleon, who did not include him in his first creation of marshals. Till 1809 he remained without employment, but in that year Napoleon gave him the command of a corps and the duties of military adviser to the young prince Eugène Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy. He led the army from Italy till its junction with Napoleon, and at Wagram commanded the celebrated column of attack which broke the Austrian centre and won the victory. Napoleon made him marshal of France on the field of battle, and presently created him duke of Taranto. In 1810 he served in Spain, and in 1812 he commanded the left wing of the grand army for the invasion of Russia. In 1813, after sharing in the battles of Lützen and Bautzen, he was ordered to invade Silesia, where Blücher defeated him with great loss at the Katzbach (seeNapoleonic Campaigns). After the terrible battle of Leipzig he was ordered with Prince Poniatowski to cover the evacuation of Leipzig; after the blowing up of the bridge, he managed to swim the Elster, while Poniatowski was drowned. During the defensive campaign of 1814 Macdonald again distinguished himself; he was one of the marshals sent by Napoleon to take his abdication in favour of his son to Paris. When all were deserting their old master, Macdonald remained faithful to him. He was directed by Napoleon to give in his adherence to the new régime, and was presented by him with the sabre of Murad Bey for his fidelity. At the Restoration he was made a peer of France and knight grand cross of the order of St Louis; he remained faithful to the new order of things during the Hundred Days. In 1815 he became chancellor of the Legion of Honour (a post he held till 1831), in 1816 major-general of the royal bodyguard, and he took a great part in the discussions in the House of Peers, voting consistently as a moderate Liberal. In 1823 he married Mlle de Bourgony, by whom he had a son, Alexander, who succeeded on his death in 1840 as duke of Taranto. From 1830 his life was spent in retirement at his country place Courcelles-le-Roi (Seine et Oise), where he died on the 7th of September 1840.
Macdonald had none of that military genius which distinguished Davout, Masséna and Lannes, nor of that military science conspicuous in Marmont and St Cyr, but nevertheless his campaign in Switzerland gives him a rank far superior to such mere generals of division as Oudinot and Dupont. This capacity for independent command made Napoleon, in spite of his defeats at the Trebbia and the Katzbach, trust him with large commands till the end of his career. As a man, hischaracter cannot be spoken of too highly; no stain of cruelty or faithlessness rests on him.
Macdonald was especially fortunate in the accounts of his military exploits, Mathieu Dumas and Ségur having been on his staff in Switzerland. See Dumas,Événements militaires; and Ségur’s rare tract,Lettre sur la campagne du Général Macdonald dans les Grisons en 1800 et 1801(1802), andÉloge(1842). His memoirs were published in 1892 (Eng. trans.,Recollections of Marshal Macdonald), but are brief and wanting in balance.
Macdonald was especially fortunate in the accounts of his military exploits, Mathieu Dumas and Ségur having been on his staff in Switzerland. See Dumas,Événements militaires; and Ségur’s rare tract,Lettre sur la campagne du Général Macdonald dans les Grisons en 1800 et 1801(1802), andÉloge(1842). His memoirs were published in 1892 (Eng. trans.,Recollections of Marshal Macdonald), but are brief and wanting in balance.
MACDONALD, SIR JOHN ALEXANDER(1815-1891), first premier of the dominion of Canada, was born in Glasgow on the 11th of January 1815, the third child of Hugh Macdonald (d. 1841), a native of Sutherlandshire. The family emigrated to Canada in 1820, settling first at Kingston, Ontario. At the age of fifteen Macdonald entered a law office; he was called to the bar in 1836, and began practice in Kingston, with immediate success. Macdonald entered upon his active career at a critical period in the history of Canada, and the circumstances of the time were calculated to stimulate political thought. It was the year before the rebellion of 1837; the condition of the whole country was very unsettled; and it seemed well-nigh impossible to reconcile differences arising from racial and political antagonisms. During the rebellion young Macdonald volunteered for active service, but his military career never went farther than drilling and marching. The mission of Lord Durham; the publication of his famous report; the union of the two Canadas; the administrations of Lord Sydenham, Sir Charles Bagot, and Sir Charles Metcalfe, filled the years immediately succeeding 1837 with intense political interest, and in their results have profoundly influenced the constitution of the British Empire.
Macdonald made his first acquaintance with public business as an alderman of Kingston. In 1844 Sir Charles Metcalfe, in his contest with the Reform party led by Baldwin and Lafontaine, appealed to the electors, and Macdonald was elected to the provincial assembly as Conservative member for Kingston. A sentence in his first address to the electors strikes the dominant note of his public career: “I therefore need scarcely state my firm belief that the prosperity of Canada depends upon its permanent connexion with the mother country, and that I shall resist to the utmost any attempt (from whatever quarter it may come) which may tend to weaken that union.” He took his seat on the 28th of November as a supporter of the Draper government. During the first three or four years he spoke little, but devoted himself with assiduity to mastering parliamentary forms and the business of the house. His capacity soon attracted attention, and in 1847 he was made receiver-general with a seat in the executive council, an office soon exchanged for the more important one of commissioner of Crown-lands. Although the government of which he thus became a member held office for only ten months, being placed in a hopeless minority on making an appeal to the country, Macdonald from this time forward took a position of constantly increasing weight in his party.
One of the first acts of the Reform government which succeeded that of which Macdonald was a member was to pass the Rebellion Losses Bill, made famous in colonial history by the fact that it brought to a crucial test the principle of responsible government. The assent of Lord Elgin to the bill provoked in Montreal a riot which ended in the burning of the houses of parliament, and so great was the indignation of the hitherto ultra-loyal Conservative party that many of its most prominent members signed a document favouring annexation to the United States; Macdonald on the other hand took steps, in conjunction with others, to form a British-American league, having for its object the confederation of all the provinces, the strengthening of the connexion with the mother country, and the adoption of a national commercial policy. He remained in opposition from 1848 till 1854, holding together under difficult circumstances an unpopular party with which he was not entirely in sympathy. The two great political issues of the time were the secularization of the clergy reserves in Ontario, and the abolition of seigniorial tenure in Quebec. Both of these reforms Macdonald long opposed, but when successive elections had proved that they were supported by public opinion, he brought about a coalition of Conservatives and moderate reformers for the purpose of carrying them.
Out of this coalition was gradually developed the Liberal-conservative party, of which until his death Macdonald continued to be the most considerable figure, and which for more than forty years largely moulded the history of Canada. From 1854 to 1857 he was attorney-general of Upper Canada, and then, on the retirement of Colonel Taché, he became prime minister. This first coalition had now accomplished its temporary purpose, but so closely were parties divided at this period, that the defeat and reinstatement of governments followed each other in rapid succession.
The experiment of applying responsible government on party lines to the two Canadian provinces at last seemed to have come to a deadlock. Two general elections and the defeat of four ministries within three years had done nothing to solve the difficulties of the situation. At this critical period a proposal was made for a coalition of parties in order to carry out a broad scheme of British-American confederation. The immediate proposal is said to have come from George Brown; the large political idea had long been advocated by Macdonald and Alexander Galt in Upper Canada—by Joseph Howe and others in the maritime provinces. The close of the American Civil War, the Fenian raids across the American border, and the dangers incident to the international situation, gave a decisive impulse to the movement. Macdonald, at the head of a representative delegation from Ontario and Quebec, met the public men of the maritime provinces in conference at Charlottetown in 1864, and the outline of confederation then agreed upon was filled out in detail at a conference held at Quebec soon afterwards. The actual framing of the British North America Act, into which the resolutions of these two conferences were consolidated, was carried out at the Westminster Palace Hotel in London, during December 1866 and January 1867, by delegates from all the provinces working in co-operation with the law officers of the Crown, under the presidency of Lord Carnarvon, then secretary of state for the colonies. Macdonald took the leading part in all these discussions, and he thus naturally became the first premier of the Dominion. He was made a K.C.B. in recognition of his services to the empire.
The difficulties of organizing the new Dominion, the questions arising from diverse claims and the various conditions of the country, called for infinite tact and resource on the part of the premier. Federal rights were to be safeguarded against the provincial governments, always jealous of their privileges. The people of Nova Scotia in particular, dissatisfied with the way in which their province had been drawn into the Union, maintained a fierce opposition to the Ottawa government, until their leader, Joseph Howe, fearing an armed rising, came to an agreement with Macdonald and accepted a seat in his cabinet. The establishment of a supreme court also occupied the attention of Sir John, who had a strong sense of the necessity of maintaining the purity and dignity of the judicial office. The act creating this court was finally passed during the administration of Alexander Mackenzie. The pledge made at confederation with regard to the building of the Intercolonial railway to connect the maritime provinces with those of the St Lawrence was fulfilled. The North-West Territories were secured as a part of confederated Canada by the purchase of the rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the establishment of Manitoba as a province in 1870. Canada’s interests were protected during the negotiations which ended in the treaty of Washington in 1871, and in which Sir John took a leading part as one of the British delegates. In this year British Columbia entered the confederation, one of the provisions of union being that a transcontinental railroad should be built within ten years. This was declared by the opposition to be impossible. It was possible only to a leader of indomitable will. Charges of bribery against the government in connexion with the contract for the building of this line led to the resignation of the cabinet in 1874, and for four years Sir John was in opposition. But he was by no means inactive. Duringthe summer of 1876 he travelled through Ontario addressing the people on the subject of a commercial system looking to the protection of native industries. This was the celebrated “National Policy,” which had been in his thoughts as long ago as the formation of the British-American League in 1850. The government of Alexander Mackenzie refused to consider a protection policy, and determined to adhere to Free Trade, with a tariff for revenue only. On these strongly defined issues the two parties appealed to the people in 1878. The Liberal party was almost swept away, and Sir John, on his return to power, put his policy into effect with a thoroughness that commanded the admiration even of his opponents, who, after long resistance, adopted it on their accession to office in 1896. He also undertook the immediate construction of the Canadian Pacific railway, which had been postponed by the former government. The line was begun late in 1880, and finished in November 1885—an achievement which Sir John ranked among his greatest triumphs. “The faith of Sir John,” says one of his biographers, “did more to build the road than the money of Mount-Stephen.”
During the remaining years of his life his efforts at administration were directed mainly towards the organization and development of the great North-West. From 1878 until his death in 1891 Sir John retained his position as premier of Canada, and his history is practically that of Canada (q.v.). For forty-six years of a stormy political life he remained true to the cardinal policy that he had announced to the electors of Kingston in 1844. “A British subject I was born; a British subject I will die,” says his last political manifesto to the people of the Dominion. At his advanced age the anxiety and excitement of the contested election of 1891 proved too great. On the 29th of May he suffered a stroke of paralysis, which caused his death eight days later (June 6).
The career of Sir John Macdonald must be considered in connexion with the political history of Canada and the conditions of its government during the latter half of the 19th century. Trained in a school where the principles of responsible government were still in an embryonic state, where the adroit management of coalitions and cabals was essential to the life of a political party, and where plots and counterplots were looked upon as a regular part of the political game, he acquired a dexterity and skill in managing men that finally gave him an almost autocratic power among his political followers. But great personal qualities supplemented his political dexterity and sagacity. A strong will enabled him to overcome the passionate temper which marked his youth, and later in his career a habit of intemperance, which he at first shared with many public men of his time. He was a man of strong ambitions, but these were curbed by a shrewd foresight, which led him for a long time to submit to the nominal leadership of other and smaller men. Politics he made his business, and to this he devoted all his energies. He had the gift of living for the work in hand without feeling the distraction of other interests. He had a singular faculty for reading the minds and the motives of men, and to this insight he perhaps owed the power of adaptability (called by his opponents shiftiness) which characterized his whole career. To this power the successful guidance of the Dominion through its critical formative period must be ascribed. Few political leaders have ever had such a number of antagonistic elements to reconcile as presented themselves in the first Canadian parliament after confederation. The man who could manage to rule a congeries of jealous factions, including Irish Catholics and Orangemen, French and English anti-federationists and agitators for independence, Conservatives and Reformers, careful economists and prodigal expansionists, was manifestly a man of unusual power, superior to small prejudices, and without strong bias towards any creed or section. Such a man Macdonald proved himself to be. His personality stands out at this period as the central power in which each faction chiefly reposed trust, and under which it could join hands with the others in the service of the state. His singleness of purpose, personal independence and indomitable energy enabled him to achieve triumphs that to others seemed impossible. His methods cannot always be defended, and were explained by himself only on grounds of necessity and the character of the electorate with which he had to deal. After the “Pacific scandal” of 1874 the leader of the opposite party declared that “John A.” (as he was generally called) “has fallen, never to rise again.” Yet he not only cleared his own character from the charges laid against him, but succeeded four years later in achieving his most signal party triumph. His natural urbanity allowed him to rule without seeming to rule. When baffled in minor objects he gave way with a good-natured flexibility which brought upon him at times charges of inconsistency. Yet Canada has seen statesmen of more contracted view insist on such small points, fall, and drag down their party with them. He lived at a time when the exigencies of state seemed to require the peculiar talents which he possessed. Entering politics at the dreariest and least profitable stage in Canadian history, he took the foremost part in the movement which made of Canada a nation; he guided that nation through the nebulous stages of its existence, and left it united, strong and vigorous, a monument to his patriotic and far-sighted statesmanship. His statue adorns the squares of the principal Canadian towns. In the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral a memorial has rightly been placed to him as a statesman, not merely of Canada, but of the empire. In unveiling that memorial Lord Rosebery fitly epitomized the meaning of his life and work when he said: “We recognize only this, that Sir John Macdonald had grasped the central idea that the British Empire is the greatest secular agency for good now known to mankind; that that was the secret of his success; and that he determined to die under it, and strove that Canada should live under it.” Macdonald became a member of the Imperial Privy Council in 1879, and in 1884 he received the Grand Cross of the Bath. His first wife was his cousin, Miss Isabella Clark, who died in 1858, leaving one surviving son, the Hon. Hugh John Macdonald, at one time premier of the province of Manitoba. By his second marriage, to Miss Bernard in 1867, Macdonald left an only daughter. On his death in 1891 his widow was created Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe.