Joseph Tasse, Lord Beaconsfield and Sir John A. Macdonald: A Personal and Political Parallel (Montreal, 1891).

• Author: Dutil, Patrice
• Position: Book review

Joseph Tasse, Lord Beaconsfield and Sir John A. Macdonald: A Personal and Political Parallel (Montreal, 1891) Translated from the original in French by James Penny. Edited by Michel W. Pharand, School of Policy Studies, Queen's University and McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015, 85 p.

This is a welcome addition to the small production of books published in this year of Sir John A. Macdonald's 200th anniversary. Michel W. Pharand, the long-time director of the Disraeli project at Queen's University, brings together both the original version of Tasse's pamphlet, first published in 1880, as well as the translation produced by James Penny in 1891. Pharand brings a rigorous scholar's attention to the original text and the translation and alerts the reader to his numerous corrections. He also provides an admirably complete set of notes to establish context as well as enlightening explanations.

The revival of Joseph Tasse's study of two giants of the epoch gives today's readers an appreciation of how Macdonald was seen in his own day, although Tasse was hardly an objective observer. Born in what is today Laval, Tasse had trained as a lawyer but had no taste for its practice. He worked as a journalist until he was offered a job as translator in the House of Commons in 1872. Tasse also took on an ambitious literary project, a massive two-volume work entitled Les Canadiens de I'ouest which appeared a few years later.

When Tasse decided he had had enough of translating the words of politicians he sought the Conservative nomination for the riding of Ottawa and was elected in Macdonald's 1878 landslide victory. He was a 32-year-old member of caucus when he wrote this tract.

Ever the journalist at heart, Tasse knew a good story when he saw one. Macdonald was in London in the late summer of 1879 and was invited by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) to visit him at Hughenden Manor, his country estate some 50 kilometres west of London. On September 1, 1879, Macdonald travelled to the splendid mansion in Buckinghamshire and spent the evening in animated conversation with his British...