Note 19 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

'You don't, I think, give sufficient weight to the troubles and difficulties which beset the Government, and you have exaggerated our power—forgetting that we have a strong opposition and a watchful press which charge us with being mere tools of the C.P.R., and not knowing that more than once we were deserted by our own parliamentary friends in caucus, and that it was only my individual power over them that enabled us on more than one occasion to come to your relief (Sir John Macdonald to Sir George Stephen, dated August 1, 1890).