Timothy D. Anderson
Department of Political Science
University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
“The Pragmatism of Sir John A Macdonald”
Prepared for the Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference
Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario, Canada
May 2014
***Please do not quote from this paper without permission of the author***
1 Introduction
One fascinating difference between American and Canadian political science is the treatment of
their national founding. In the United States, there is no shortage of scholarship on the Founding
Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist and AntiFederalist debates over the Constitution, and the statesmanship of the Founders. Moreover, there
is much serious research on the quality of the political theory present in these moments.
Academics like Ralph Rossum, Herbert Storing, and others show that the Founding Fathers were
sympathetic to political ideas. The Canadian approach has been different. With few exceptions,
professional historians and political scientists have treated the Fathers of Confederation as
lawyers, politicians, and men of self-interest; they were not original political thinkers like their
cousins in the United States. The editors of Canada’s Founding Debates provide the best
summary view of the academic landscape when they write that the Fathers are seen as
pragmatists (Ajzenstat et al. 1999, 1).
In one sense, we have an intuition about the word “pragmatism”: the practice of doing what
needs to be done or what will work best regardless of one’s own held beliefs. I might believe that
it is wrong to be distrustful of people and therefore wish to leave my front door unlocked at
night. The pragmatic response to that would be that it may be a shame to have to lock your door,
but people do steal, and unless you want your property stolen, you better lock your door. In a
second sense, pragmatism is also a genuine philosophical approach. Pragmatism, in short, is a
stance towards truth and knowledge that demands that our ideas have practical value—if an idea
has no way of making itself real in the world or makes no difference to the way I experience my
life, then that idea cannot be said to be true. Moreover, pragmatists believe that their stance
towards truth, although it seems new, stems back centuries to ancients like Aristotle. Although
some Canadian scholars have interpreted the Fathers simply as the first type of pragmatist, the
second type has been ignored.
Now, the earlier-mentioned Canada’s Founding Debates provides for us a sound reason to
reconsider interpreting the Fathers as pragmatists in that first sense. The editors show with rigour
that the Fathers frequently made use of political theory, formulated ideas that corresponded with
those in the pages of famous theoretical texts, and drew inspiration from philosophers like John
Locke, Publius, and John Stuart Mill. While it may be a comfortable narrative to see the Fathers
as realistic dealmakers looking to better their own lives, the editors demonstrate the profoundly
theoretical character that vivified the legislative debates over Confederation.
In a paper this short, it would be impossible to consider all or even many of the Fathers’ ideas to
test whether they were indeed mere pragmatists or men of ideas. As such, I have decided to
select one Father of Confederation and inquire into this political thought and actions. Now, no
Father has ever had as much scholarly ink spilled on him as someone like George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin, but the one with the most is almost certainly Sir John A
Macdonald. As Canada’s chief Father of Confederation, the man first appointed prime minister
of Canada, the driving force behind the Confederation project, and the person seen as British
North America’s “irreplaceable man” (Gwyn 2008, 308), Macdonald stands in a rather
uncontroversial way as a suitable Father of Confederation to select.
2 I begin the paper by discussing what Canadian scholars have said about Macdonald’s
relationship to ideas, namely, that there exists a conflict between those who believe Macdonald
was cool towards them and those who argue that Macdonald made real use of political theory. As
such, I want to pursue an argument that provides the possibility of bridging this divide in seeing
whether interpreting Macdonald was a pragmatist in the philosophical sense helps—such a
position would enable us to retain the insights of scholars who thought Macdonald rejected
abstract thinking and those from scholars who demonstrate that Sir John did indeed employ ideas
drawn from political thought. Consequentially, I consider what pragmatism is as a philosophical
approach to truth, particularly according to William James. Then, I investigate, through content
analysis, Macdonald’s view of federal union and the hanging of Louis Riel as two important
moments that do demonstrate a pragmatic attitude. Thus, the thesis of this paper is that there is
prima facie evidence to suggest that Macdonald anticipated and embraced elements of pragmatic
philosophy.
Macdonald Scholarship
According to some Canadian scholars, Sir John was either indifferent towards political theory or
used it strategically. This fits nicely within the motif identified by the Debates editors that the
Fathers of Confederation did not genuinely think about politics. According to others, he treated
political ideas seriously. As such, the literature suggests a significant rift on this point. In this
section, I discuss this scholarship and show that the case evidence does not demonstrate that
either side is categorically correct. Therefore, we are forced to conclude that several professional
historians and political scientists are flat wrong by picking one side, or, that there must be a
different way to interpret this literature. I will suggest just such a reinterpretation.
Historian Richard Gwyn writes of Macdonald that he preferred to be a man of deeds instead of
words (2008, 275). He argues that Macdonald did not have “intellectual epiphanies,” and seemed
to abjure philosophical reflection (Gwyn 2008, 277). In part, Gwyn sees this stemming from Sir
John’s Scottish heritage, since Scots tend to reject “intellectualizing and attitudinalizing (sic)” in
favour of getting the job done, with a marginal respect for ideas (2008, 295).1 Furthermore, he
builds off other scholars like Peter Waite and T.W.L. MacDermot whose research concluded that
Macdonald seemed to have “no political ideas at all” (2008, 295). On Gwyn’s account, Sir John
was a politician focused on results, not questions of what is right or just.
Indeed, Waite did interpret Macdonald in this manner. He described Macdonald as a polite,
“genuine,” and engaged leader; he would often respond to letters from Canadians with notes he
wrote himself and had a knack for remembering peoples’ names and facts about them (1975, 811). However, he stated that Macdonald was aware that these character traits were ones that
made him popular and appreciated “that popularity was power” (1975, 10). In defining what Sir
John was as a person, Waite asserted that he was a lawyer, a land speculator, an administrator,
and a politician—in so doing he encouraged the reader to see Macdonald as professional and a
man of business (1975, 16-19).
1
I am inclined to think that Scottish philosophers like David Hume, Adam Smith, and the whole Scottish
Enlightenment call into question the truth of this claim.
3 When it came to ideas, Waite wrote that Macdonald pushed back against “abstract notions of
what government ought to be,” in favour of more “motions in parliament” (2008, 22). Further,
Sir John is understood as one who disliked “narrow-minded” politics as well as “closed political
and philosophical systems” (Waite 1975, 22). Instead, politics ought to be an open game, free of
“strident convictions” and resentment (Waite 1975, 22). Instead, Sir John would pick up
theoretical arguments in order to use them as just a strategy; he used them “detachedly, like a
chess player making a deliberate move to forestall, or to provoke, a response” (Waite 1975, 22).
And when it came to new and exciting ideas, Macdonald consistently held those at a distance
because he was attentive to the difficulties that these ideas would have in “practical application”
(Waite 1975, 23). Sir John balked at “gusts of popular enthusiasm,” since society is uneasily
changed and human nature is fixed towards self-interest—often, hasty change spurned from new
ideas “might only change the appearances of things, not the reality [, a]nd Macdonald was after
realities” (Waite 1975, 23-24). In short, we see that Waite’s portrait of Macdonald is of a
practical man who resisted political ideas except when they could be deployed for his cause.
Now the fact of the matter is that Gwyn and Waite draw their conclusions in part from the things
Macdonald actually said. Sir John wrote that “it is of more consequence to endeavor to develop
[Canada’s] resources and improve its physical advantages than to waste the time of the
Legislature, and the money of the people, in fruitless discussions on abstract and theoretical
questions of government” (qtd. in Waite 1975, 22). Essentially, what Macdonald posited here
was that abstract thinking about the “good” or the “best regime” is not the best use of legislators’
time. He does not say that political ideas are useless, but that endless discussions about them can
be. Instead, a better allocation of time and resources would be spent debating policies that
directly affect the country, such as trade and commerce. To be sure, this quotation coupled with
research from scholars like Gwyn and Waite suggest that Macdonald was cool towards political
ideas. He did not hate them, he did not ignore them, but he was skeptical about how useful they
could be.
This notion of Macdonald as a skeptic of political ideas has been challenged by other academics.
Rod Preece writes that Sir John A. practiced at type of “political wisdom” that demonstrated his
knowledge of right and wrong (1984, 459). He states that Macdonald lived at a time when
idealism, Marxism, and utilitarianism affected the intellectual landscape, and thus it would not be
reasonable to aver, as MacDermot or Waite do, that Macdonald had no theoretical criteria for
selecting courses of action (Preece 1984, 459-60). Specifically, Preece points to empiricism and
anti-abstractionism to understand Sir John (1984, 460 et seq.). He upbraids scholars who
mistakenly suggest that someone needs to have a unique theory of politics in order to be
considered a political thinker; not everyone is a Sieyès or a Lenin (1984, 460-461). Although
Macdonald disliked intellectual abstraction, Preece claims that the same may be said for Aristotle
and Cicero who each believed that allowing abstract ideas to govern a political society was
dangerous—nevertheless, we would err in not calling these figures “men of ideas” (1984, 462).
Preece also responds to the charge implied by Waite when he insisted that Macdonald was
inconsistent with his political ideas—he would take up any idea he needed if it could advance
him politically. As Preece shows, intellectual variation cannot disqualify someone as a genuine
thinker (1984, 462). He presents Adam Smith as an example. Smith was a staunch defender of
4 the “invisible hand” that directs free markets, but he also sympathized with government
protection for new industries and government control of sectors where competition was hard to
create (1984, 462-3). Human beings are imperfect and susceptible to contradiction at times, even
brilliant men like Smith; just because one can find intellectual inconsistencies in one’s ideas does
not mean that person is a charlatan.
There is, of course, further evidence that Macdonald did appreciate political ideas. During the
early stages of the Red River Uprising, Sir John wrote to Governor MacDougall—the man set to
become the Lieutenant General of the territory—regarding the anarchy that was about to be
present after the Hudson’s Bay Company abandoned governing the land and before the Canadian
state could assume full control. Seeing that a provisional government had been struck,
Macdonald wrote that “[n]o matter how the anarchy is produced, it is quite open to the law of ex
necessiate for the protection of life and property, and such a government [the provisional one]
has certain sovereign rights by jus gentium …” (Creighton 1998, 51). Sir John thought that if
there were no legitimate government for a period at Red River, the residents of the colony could,
by right, institute one of their own for the sake of protecting life and property.
This perspective demonstrates an intimate knowledge of John Locke’s argument about the rights
of men to create a new government for the sake of self-preservation. He wrote that when men
find themselves in the anarchic state of nature and find life too unbearable therein, that they may
institute a government to preserve their lives, liberties, and property (2008, bk. VII, sect. 95, 3301). Moreover, Locke argued that this new government, empowered by the majority of the people,
may “act and conclude” as it saw fit (2008, bk. VII, sect. 95, 331). Like Locke, Macdonald
believed that men without a government have the right to create one to preserve their lives and
property; he even uses the same words as Locke. Further, Macdonald claimed, like Locke, that
the new government would have sovereign rights to act. This passage demonstrates Sir John as a
political administrator operating out of a Lockean framework, not a mere politician trying to just
get things done. He understood and respected the theory of the state that enables men without a
government to institute one of their own choosing.
Furthermore, the editors of the Debates claim that Macdonald’s opinions on the Senate also
demonstrate his use of political ideas. They cite a speech of Sir John’s where he contended that
senators ought to spring from the people but not have an elected mandate from the people (1999,
81). In that way, the Senate would be more than a rubberstamp for the Commons, but less than a
body which could create political deadlock (1999, 80). Senators would deliberate on legislation
that comes from the popular body in such a way that they could improve bills with patient
consideration, but never act in such a way that would violate the “wishes of the people” (1999,
80). In brief, senators would be buffers between the raw interests of the people and the law. For
this to happen, senators not only need to come from the people, they also need to fraternize with
the people; when a parliamentary session ends, senators would return home to their districts and
live among their fellow citizens (1999, 82).
Macdonald’s thoughts on the Senate reflect an appreciation for both Publius’ and Locke’s
political thought. Publius wrote that the Senate ought to be composed of citizens who gain the
trust of the people, but would not earn that trust through direct popular election (2006, 300).
Instead, these citizens would be drawn from the people of the various states and selected via
5 appointment of the state legislatures (Publius 2006, 300). As such, they believed that the Senate
would serve to stabilize the government and prevent the sort of political chaos that only
advantages the rich at the expense of the people (2006, 304; Ajzenstat et al. 1999, 83). Like
Publius, Macdonald wanted senators to have a connection to the people without direct election.
Further, as Publius thought, an unelected but responsible upper chamber would provide political
stability. These ideas, coupled with the fact that Macdonald brought with him to the Quebec
Conference books written by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton—the principal writers of
Publius’ Federalist Papers—suggests Macdonald took the ideas of these political theorists
seriously.
Moreover, Macdonald’s comments show a further appreciation of Locke. Following the insight
by the editors of the Debates (1999, 82), Locke contended that a legislative body should have
representatives that serve for a time, but then after a designated period “return into the ordinary
state of subjects” (2008, bk. XIII, sect. 154, 370). The editors write that this means that, in
Locke’s opinion, liberal democracies ought not to have permanent governors, so that when
legislators go home, they live amongst the people according to the same laws as everyone else
(1999, 82). Therefore, grounded in popular experience, it is unlikely that lawmakers will veer far
beyond the people’s will since they will hear from their fellow citizens if the laws are unpleasant
and will recognize that fact themselves when they are back home (cf. Ajzenstat et al. 1999, 82).
Inasmuch as Macdonald’s senators spring from the people and need to fraternize with the people
between parliamentary sessions, it is obvious that Macdonald had read Locke’s thoughts on the
role and necessary life experience for legislators in democratic polities.
The scholarship on Macdonald and ideas seem to conflict. On one hand, academics write that Sir
John was hesitant and cold towards ideas; when he did use them, they were for self-interested
strategy. On the other hand, scholars show that Macdonald had a genuine understanding of
political ideas and employed them. There was no self-interested strategy for Macdonald to write
to MacDougall about the right of self-government—it would have been easier for the Canadian
state to deny that right than affirm it! There was no self-interested strategy in proposing a senate
filled with legislators that needed to experience life among the people; Sir John never sat in the
Senate and never appeared to want that life from the evidence. Instead, these scholars lead us to
conclude that Sir John cared about, had studied, and used political theory.
I am therefore left with three options. I could affirm the first set of scholars, I could affirm the
second set, or I could propose an alternative interpretation that integrates both approaches. Since
both sets of scholars do hinge their research on hard evidence, it would be hard to dismiss them
entirely. Instead, the middle path available is that of philosophical pragmatism. It may be that in
interpreting Sir John in this way, it will satisfy the researchers who show Macdonald’s suspicion
towards ideas and those who show he genuinely appreciated them. How and why that makes
sense first requires an exposition of what I understand pragmatism to be.
Pragmatism
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “pragmatic” as being “matter-of-fact, practical, [and]
down to earth” (2014, def. 5). Indeed, this is likely what we mean when we say that someone is a
6 pragmatist, viz. someone who thinks and acts practically rather than based off ideological zeal.
But within the philosophical context, pragmatism means a good deal more. It is a tradition, like
empiricism or rationalism, interested in the nature of truth, knowledge, and metaphysics.
Traditional pragmatism finds its roots in the early writings of the American scientist C.S. Peirce,
but it would be the American psychologist and scholar William James who popularized and
concretized it. While there are many branches of pragmatism and many scholars who argue for it
like Peirce, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty, my focus is on James’s work since he was the first
thinker to formalize pragmatism and he lived during a period of time that overlapped with
Macdonald’s life. In short, what interests me here is whether the traditional form of pragmatism
can help us interpret Macdonald’s thoughts and ideas, and to do so, I limit the scope of this
inquiry to the work of William James.
James (1842-1910) was an important and influential American philosopher. His real claim to
fame was that the father of psychology in the Anglo-American world after publishing The
Principles of Psychology in 1890. Beyond this monumental contribution, he published a text on
the nature of human belief in The Will to Believe in 1897, and a book that investigated the
relationship of the human mind and religious faith with The Varieties of Human Religious
Experience in 1902. Towards the end of his career, James became fascinated by some of the
work of his friend and Harvard colleague, C.S. Peirce, on a different way to think about truth and
knowledge: pragmatism. In 1907, a series of lectures given by James were published that
systematized and codified for the first time what the pragmatic approach was. Although Peirce,
one may say, inaugurated the process, pragmatism does not find itself as a coherent system of
thought until it met James’s craftsmanship.
The pragmatic method, for James, is a way of settling, once and for all, philosophic disputes.
Following Peirce, he wrote that clear thoughts about an object depend upon the practical,
conceivable effects we have of that object (2011b, 198-9). When it comes to thinking about
something, we understand it best when we consider its practical manifestations in the world.
And, for James, it is remarkable how many disputes that have raged for eons melt away when
considered as such (2011b, 200). Debates that do not consist of practical differences are not
really live debates, and therefore immaterial because it does not matter whether one side or the
other is correct. This is because there is “no difference” that does not make itself real
somewhere in our experience (James 2011b, 200). In other words, there “is no difference in
abstract truth that doesn’t express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct
consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen”
(James 2011b, 200). A dispute that has no practical effect in the world is a dispute not worth
thinking about any further (James 2011b, 198).
Clearly, then, pragmatism is an empiricist approach to truth, but one that James saw as both
“more radical” and “less objectionable” (2011b, 200). A pragmatist despises abstraction, firm
principles, “closed systems,” and “verbal solutions” to problems, whereas they love “facts,”
“actions,” and “power” (James 2011b, 200). Unlike other academics and thinkers who hang their
entire inquiries on things like God or reason, the pragmatist works to bring out the “practical
cash-value” of those sorts of ideas as they matter in one’s experience (James 2011b, 201).
Classical pragmatists see theories as the tools rather than the answer to questions; they are then
7 refreshingly “anti-intellectualist,” anti-rationalist, and against academic pretense (cf. James
2011b, 202).
Accordingly, pragmatism provides a new way to think about the nature of truth. In that vein,
James posited that the pragmatist would routinely ask regarding the meaning of truth of what
difference it would have in my life? How does that truth play out in my life? How would my
experience of the world change based on the identification of a particular truth compared to those
possessed with falsehood? “What, in short, is the truth’s cash-value in experiential terms?”
(James 2011a, 216-7). For James, ideas are true when they can be “corroborated,” “verified,” and
“validated” in our experiences, whereas false ideas cannot (2011a, 217). It really is a simple and
elegant conception of truth: truth makes itself practically known to me, and if it does not or
cannot, then whatever it is, it is not true. Truth then is not a property of an idea, but instead,
“[t]ruth happens to an idea”—ideas are made true through our experience, they are not merely
true by definition (James 2011a, 217). For James, ideas are true because they are useful; an idea
or an object that has absolutely no practical use in my life has not become true for me (2011a,
218).
Of course, James conceded that true ideas are not always actively confronting me. We have them
lodged in our memory, or in reference books, or tucked away for times when they are necessary
(2011a, 218). Whether the French word for flower (“fleur”) is masculine or feminine might be
meaningless to me because I do not speak that language, but it is a question of truth for me if I
learn it one day and has been for others that speak the language. I can always look it up, but until
such time that I need to, it is not really a true concept within my experience.
James clarified this point by comparing our system of truth with a system of credit. Most ideas
we hold pass undoubted and unquestioned, just as most times no one questions the veracity of
the money we pull from our wallets (James 2011a, 220). However, should someone put one of
your ideas to the test, an idea you hold to be true, there has to be some practical way to validate it
or otherwise it “collapses” into meaninglessness, just as a bank note does someone challenges
what it represents and finds there is no tangible thing it stands in for (James 2011a, 220).2 “We
trade on each other’s truths,” knowing that at some point someone did have to defend and prove
concretely the rightness of whatever true idea we possess, and the fact that such things have
happened are the tent-poles that keep our system of truth standing upright (James 2011a, 220).
Although this approach to truth and philosophy seems startling, James said that pragmatism, at
least as a methodology, has existed for millennia. He wrote that Aristotle, John Locke, George
Berkeley, and David Hume all used the test of practical difference in their investigations (2011b,
200). This makes some intuitive sense inasmuch as Aristotle’s virtue ethics rested on good and
consistent practice, Locke’s right to rebellion stood upon the experiences of tyranny by the
people, Berkeley’s point that pain is a sensation that is experienced as an idea rather than through
sight and sound, and Hume’s criticism of cause-and-effect in that one cannot actually see
causality itself. In James’s opinion, although pragmatism is a further philosophical alternative, it
is an approach that stretches throughout philosophical history—particularly empiricist and
English thought.
2
Perhaps James’s insight was correct in the fact that our money today is not tied to something like gold or silver,
and we have seen many financial crises in part because of this.
8 In short, pragmatism is a theoretical approach that judges truth and ideas based exclusively on
their practical value in one’s own experience. Debates that cannot admit this are not serious
disputes about truth and ought to be dropped. Instead, the things we hold to be true must be
verifiable and testable, otherwise when someone challenges our ideas, we have no way to back
up our claims if we cannot provide tangible proof. And while this philosophical mindset seems
quite modern and jarring, it finds its roots in many great minds of the past.
Macdonald & Pragmatism: Federal Union & the Hanging of Riel
If indeed Macdonald anticipated the pragmatism, we should be able to locate a couple examples
of this, especially in important moments if the conclusion that he was a pragmatist is going to be
of any consequence. If it were the case that the only instances of pragmatism in Macdonald’s life
arose in inconsequential political decisions or private journal entries that never made it into
public life, there would be no reason to care. But, I think that we can find at least two critical
moments in Canadian politics where Macdonald’s thoughts and decisions do demonstrate
pragmatic thinking: the idea that Canada ought to be a federal union, and the decision to hang
Louis Riel for treason.
A brief comment on the methodology used in this section. In order to draw out conclusions about
the nature of Macdonald’s pragmatism from the literature, I employ qualitative content analysis
as Klaus Krippendorf (2004) lays it out. Specifically within that broad subject, I use “rhetorical
analysis” in focusing on how messages get expressed, the sorts of arguments used, and the
effects of that message when discussing “federal union” (2004, 16). Additionally, I engage in
“social constructivist analysis” in trying to make sense of the reality Macdonald faced in terms of
the language being used and the way facts gets “constructed” when I consider the hanging of
Riel (2004, 16). In each instance, my content analysis relies on a careful reading of primary and
secondary texts in order to interpret Macdonald’s thoughts and decisions so that I can inquire
into whether pragmatism seems latent therein.
The fact of a country being a unitary state or a federation is important. It affects how many levels
of government that a citizen has, how the various numerated powers of the state are going to be
divided, and the degree to which regionalism will play in the polity. In other words, the form and
nature of a country’s political infrastructure depends on whether it is unitary or federal.
This reality mattered a great deal to the Fathers, and especially to Macdonald. He understood that
in Confederation the country had to get the balance right between power for the central
government and respect for divers regions in British North America. Although he would have
preferred in a perfect world to have a legislative union—a unitary state with one central
government—he only wanted it as far as it was “practicable” (1999, 279). He felt that this form
would, ideally, give the country a most “vigorous” and the “strongest system of government”
(1999, 279). However, he then said immediately “on looking at the subject” of the British
colonies in North America after the Confederation conferences, “such a system was very
impracticable” (1999, 279). French Canadians would not assent to legislative union because of
their different language, nationality, religion, and legal institutions; they desired to preserve these
9 specialties (1999, 279). Furthermore, people of the Maritime colonies, even though they shared a
common tongue and “system of law” with Upper Canadians, also sought to preserve their
regional individuality and identities as separate political units (1999, 279-80). Therefore, the
only options available were to insist on legislative union and abandon the entire project, or to
accept a system of federal union for the colonies (1999, 280). Macdonald would then argue for
the latter.
Since federal union was the only viable option, Macdonald wanted one where reserve powers
rested in the hands of the central government rather than the provinces. The reason for this was
not intellectual preference or abstraction, but because he observed in the United States what
happened when the subunits retained non-enumerated powers (1999, 282-3). America contained
multiple sovereigns and had to deal directly with “states rights”; consequentially, much of the
cause of the US Civil War can be explained, according to Sir John, by these facts (1999, 282).
By granting the reserve powers to the central government, Canada can avoid “that great source of
weakness which has been the cause of the disruption of the United States” and avoid “all conflict
of jurisdiction and authority” if the powers were arranged in the way he proposed (1999, 283).
While issues that directly pertain to local concerns would belong to the provinces, matters of
“general character, not specially and exclusively reserved for the local governments” would
belong to Ottawa (1999, 283).
I think this reflection on government by Macdonald demonstrates a pragmatic mind. First,
Macdonald says that maybe in a perfect world legislative union is best, but he only wants it if it
can be practiced. And, because experience shows him that it cannot, he gives up on that notion in
favour of a federal union that is indeed plausible. Following James, the pragmatist is going to
take up and pursue opinions whose consequences apply somehow in practice. Macdonald knows
that a debate over the merits of legislative union has no value because whether he can persuade
people of that system’s merits, it cannot be translated whatsoever into practice. In other words,
that debate has no practical “cash-value” in the world. As Waite noted about Sir John, he was
interested in realities and practical applications, not ephemeral debates or pursuing radical ideas.
Instead, because a federal union did seem practicable, he shifted the discussion towards what
form of federation Canada should adopt, viz. one where the reserve powers rest with the states or
one where those powers belong to the central government. This debate, in James’s terms, is
useful because the truth or value of each side of the argument can be “validated” and
“corroborated” practically. Macdonald points to the arrangement of powers in the United States,
not because he feels it was philosophically mistaken, but because the practice of depositing
reserve powers in the subunits led to civil war. As such, it makes a practical difference in the
lives of the citizens where reserve powers rest, since they may be faced with unrest if they are
misplaced. In other words, Macdonald’s discussion of union takes a question that makes no
practical difference in experience—legislative or federal—and transforms it into a discussion
over whether it is true that giving the central or local governments the reserve powers is better.
The tone and structure of this discussion strongly intimates an anticipation of pragmatism.
The second moment I want to consider is Macdonald’s decision vis-à-vis the hanging of Louis
Riel. I want to leave aside the question of whether Riel was actually guilty of treason or whether
the North West Rebellion was a genuine insurrection against the Crown. Macdonald did not try
10 Riel; neither did he impose the guilty verdict. Instead, the decision Sir John had to make was
whether to commute the penalty of death by hanging.
In the nineteenth century, there existed a precedent called the McNaughton Rules. In brief, they
indicated that if a person was insane at the time when a death penalty was to be carried out, the
sentence would be commuted since it would be wrong to execute a man if he is unable to
understand why he was being punished (Gwyn 2011, 463; Creighton 1998, 435). Once Riel was
convicted at Regina for treason and sentenced to die, many people, especially French Canadians,
implored Macdonald to treat Riel with this type of mercy (Gwyn 2011, 464). At the same time
many English Canadians clamoured for Riel to hang, both for his treason against the Crown and
for his earlier decision to kill Thomas Scott—a rebellious Orangeman—during the Red River
Uprising (Martin 2013, 172). Sir John was faced with a situation. If he let Riel hang, Quebeckers
would be furious; if he sent Riel to a mental institution, then “Quebec would demand his
release”; if he did not hang Riel, Ontarians would “punish” his Tories electorally (Martin 2013,
172).
The decision was made to send three doctors to Riel to determine his sanity. Now, sending the
doctors at all seemed to go against Sir John’s better judgment and had to be convinced of doing
so by the French members of his caucus (Phenix 1996, 261; Creighton 1998, 434). This attitude,
as Donald Swainson explained, derived from Macdonald’s “narrow view of the law”; Riel had
been convicted of treason and should have to “pay the full penalty and die” (qtd. in Smith &
McLeod 1989, 145). Nevertheless, Sir John sent three doctors to Regina to examine Riel, two
Englishmen and one French—the first two found Riel mentally sound, while the French
physician determined that while Riel suffered from “hallucinations on political and religious
subjects,” he appeared generally sane in other contexts (Gwyn 2011, 463).
Donald Creighton noted that it was this last report that fully convinced Macdonald that Riel was
sane enough to hang (1998, 437). Sir John’s government then re-wrote and condensed the
medical reports for public consumption, and in so doing, they “blurred” the French doctor’s
ambivalence about Riel’s complete sanity, but also removed phrases from the English doctors’
reports that would only “have given the greatest satisfaction to believers in Riel’s guilt”
(Creighton 1998, 447-448). While some scholars like Gwyn (2011, 463), Thomas Flanagan
(1996), and Ged Martin (2013, 172) argue that Macdonald’s abridgements of the reports were
tantamount to a whitewash of the affair, Creighton felt that the government simply provided the
“gist” of the reports sans “provocative language” (1998, 448).
To be sure, Sir John knew that concluding on the basis of the medical evidence that Riel was
sane enough to hang was going to play poorly in Quebec. However, in the end, he decided to
uphold the death penalty and Riel hanged. His Quebec ministers advised him that in time anger
over Riel’s death would fade away, while Macdonald himself thought that despite their ire,
Quebeckers would remain loyal to his government and “swallow the execution and stand by the
Conservative party, as it always had” (Smith & McLeod 1989, 145). Furthermore, Macdonald
thought that once the Catholics in Quebec fully learned about Riel’s “religious delusions” and
radical prophesying, this would dissipate their sympathy for the man (Martin 2013, 172).
However, it seemed that the people of Quebec held their resentment against Macdonald and the
Conservatives for a very long time.
11 I think we can interpret Macdonald here as a pragmatist. First, let us recall James’s argument that
pragmatists shy away from absolute truths—truth is something that happens to an idea.
Furthermore, we know something to be true because it makes a difference in the practical
experience of individuals; things are not abstractly true for pragmatists, rather, things are true
because they are useful to them. In these two senses, we can say Macdonald anticipated these
pragmatic insights. He did not have an absolute or “closed-minded” opinion regarding the truth
of whether Riel was sane after his conviction. To be sure, Macdonald had misgivings about
sending physicians to examine the condemned, but he decided to do it in order to find out
whether he suffered from “raging dementia” (Creighton 1998, 435). Before sending the doctors
out and receiving their reports, Macdonald had no experiential way of knowing whether Riel was
sane; the truth or falsehood of that premise would be made real only after the evidence was
gathered.
Just as importantly, Macdonald’s decision to affirm the idea that Riel was sane resembles
pragmatism because the truth of that idea made a genuine difference in a practical sense; he
could use this idea and cash the idea out, or, in James’s terms, it was “useful.” Macdonald did
not inquire into Riel’s mental health out of curiosity, rather, he wanted to know the truth of the
question because he could use that conclusion to decide whether the man ought to hang. Based
on the “verified” and “validated” claim—two fundamental ways of determining whether
something true for pragmatists—that Riel was sane, Macdonald used that truth to ensure the
penalty was carried out.
I think another way to interpret Macdonald as a pragmatist comes from the fact he decided to let
Riel hang despite the protestations of French Canadians. As we saw, he believed that Quebeckers
were loyal to the Conservative party, and he accepted the advice from his ministers that Quebec
would not abandon him over Riel. By allowing Riel to hang, we can say that Macdonald could
have been looking for “corroboration” of that truth. If we recall, pragmatists see truth akin to a
credit system where truths usually pass without question, however, if they ever are scrutinized,
there better be something real that backs them up, otherwise everything dissolves into nothing.
By allowing Riel to hang, Sir John was determining the truth of the idea that Quebeckers would
remain loyal to the Tories by challenging that concept in doing something that was highly
unpopular there. What Sir John A. would find out was that his assumptions were wrong, and
wrong in a way that would matter to James. His pragmatists ask how would the experience of my
life differ if an idea were true compared to those who held a false view. For Macdonald and his
Conservative successors, the false belief in the continued support of Quebeckers for the party
meant that the Tories lost votes and seats in the province, plus it divided the party significantly
along linguistic lines (see Smith & McLeod 1989, 145). Macdonald and his cabinet colleagues
“traded” on each other’s assumed truths about the loyalty of Quebeckers, but when Sir John
acted in such a way that would verify the practical cash-value of those truths, they found that
they possessed counterfeit bank-notes. In short, one can say that Macdonald’s decision to send
the doctors to examine Riel, his interpretation of Riel as sane from those reports, and his decision
to uphold the death penalty despite risking the wrath of Quebeckers suggest, prima facie, an
anticipation of pragmatic thinking à la William James.
12 Conclusion
A common narrative that surrounds the Fathers of Confederation is that, unlike the American
Founders, the Fathers were not genuine thinkers. They preferred expediency and realism to the
rigours of political philosophy. However, serious research on the Confederation debates has
thrown this narrative into question. When we examine Sir John A Macdonald, the man widely
acknowledged as the most influential Father, we see that the academic literature splinters into
two camps: those who see Macdonald, like the Fathers generally, as cool towards political ideas,
and those who show that Sir John employed and appreciated political theory. In an effort to make
sense of this divide without wholly dismissing one of these two factions, I considered whether
treating Macdonald as a philosophical pragmatist may solve the issue. This would satisfy the
second set of scholars by accepting the idea that Macdonald genuinely thought about politics,
while it would make use of the first set of academic writings in investigating Macdonald’s latent
pragmatism.
I took up William James’s theory of pragmatism since it is the first genuine exposition of the
approach, and he was a thinker whose life overlapped considerably with Macdonald’s. This
philosophical option dismisses abstract theorization about truth. Pragmatists deny that any
dispute where either side being right makes no practical difference in the lives of people is a
debate about true things. Instead, true ideas need to be cashed out in our experience, and when
our notions of true concepts get challenged, we need to be able to show concretely their truth
through validation or practical corroboration. While this approach may seem radical and novel,
James averred that its basic tenets stem back to Aristotle and the British empiricists. As such,
pragmatism is something that could have been anticipated by thinkers prior to his 1907 writings.
In investigating Macdonald’s thoughts on federal union and on the hanging of Riel, there appears
sound reason to suspect Sir John anticipated pragmatism as other thinkers did in the past. His
dismissal of legislative union because of its impracticality and his desire to grant reserve powers
to the central government in a federal system emanate with the practical, verifiable demands of
the pragmatic method when it comes to true ideas. Further, Macdonald’s lack of an absolute
belief in Riel’s mental health prior to examination, his willingness to send doctors to study Riel,
his decision to conclude Riel was sane, and his move to maintain the penalty of death despite the
anger of Quebeckers gushes with the pragmatic understanding of truth as “happening” rather
than extant and the similarity of truth to a credit system. While it would be overreaching to say
that Macdonald must primarily be interpreted as a pragmatist in these moments, the case
evidence suggests that during these two important moments of political decision for Sir John, he
can certainly be interpreted as an anticipator of philosophic pragmatism. In the end, it seems that
the scholars who thought that Fathers of Confederation like Sir John were mere pragmatists were
actually somewhat right—they just happened to be right for reasons other than the ones they
thought.
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