In the words of J.S. Willison, an ideological opponent who had long observed him:
"Sir John Macdonald was neither a popular orator nor a parliamentary debater of the first order. He was, however, a profound student of character. He had humour, adaptiveness, and readiness. He could break the force of an attack with a story or an epigram. He had that mysterious quality of personal magnetism which gives to its fortunate possessors a strange and mighty power over their kind...
"It was his habit to sit with his legs crossed and his head thrown back, with a jaunty air and an alert look, except now and then when some keen debater across the floor was pressing him hard, dealing square, strong blows at 'the old man and the old policy,' with perhaps a touch of bitterness in the words, and a keen knowledge of the old man's ways revealed in the method of attack. At such time he would move uneasily as the enemy pressed him close, toss his head, bite his lips, glance angrily back upon his followers, throw some taunt to his opponents, and at last come to his feet and retort upon the adversary.
"In later years he rarely lost his complete self-control. In his angriest mood he was deliberate, and seemed as he faced his opponents to be cooly and craftily seeking for the weak spots in the indictment. He did not always meet argument with argument. He had little eloquence. He had no loftiness of speech. He never sought to cover the whole ground of an opponent's attack...
"In Parliament he rarely spoke to convince or win the Opposition. His aim there was to touch the party loyalty and rouse the party enthusiasm of his supporter. He would often turn his back upon the Liberals and address himself directly to the Ministerialists. He would strike some happy thought, some sentence full of keen sarcasm or genial ridicule, and with a shrewd look and smiling face and jaunty air, would drop the sentence with a shrug of the shoulders and a half-contemptuous gesture that always tickled his followers, and often exasperated his opponents. There he would stand with his back to the Speaker, while the Opposition chafed at the cool but skillful exaggeration of their position, and the Conservatives cheered with delight, and wagged their heads and shrugged their shoulders with sympathy with the old man's bantering humour..."
J.S. Willison, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party (1908), pp. 19-26.
