writer, and most of the ablest papers that issued from the horse guards during his service there were understood to be from his pen (cf. Wellington Correspondence, viii. 53). Macdonald was made C.B. 4 June 1815, K.C.B. in 1827, G.C.B. in 1847. He was appointed colonel of the 67th foot, of Barossa fame, in 1828, and colonel of the 42nd royal highlanders 15 March 1844. He died at his residence, Bruton Street, London, 28 March 1850, and was buried at Kensal Green. A brother, Lieutenant-general Alexander Macdonald, C.B., royal artillery, died in 1854. Macdonald married a daughter of Charles Graham of Williamsfield, Jamaica, by whom he left issue.
[Hart's Army Lists; Nav. and Mil. Gazette, 30 March 1850, pp. 199–200; Anderson's Scottish Nation, ii. 726.]
MACDONALD, JOHN, D.D. (1818–1889), Scottish catholic prelate, son of William Macdonald and Harriet Fraser his wife, was born at Strathglass, Inverness-shire, on 2 July 1818. From 1830 to 1837 he was at the Scots seminary at Ratisbon. In 1887 he entered the Scots Coll at Rome. In 1840 he returned to Scotland, and in the following year he was ordained priest. He served in several missions, and 1856 to 1868 he was chaplain to Lord Lovat at Eskdale in Lower Strathglass. In November 1868 he was appointed coadjutor to Dr. James Francis Kyle [q. v.], vicar-apostolic of the northern district of Scotland. He was consecrated at Aberdeen 24 Feb. 1869 by the title of Bishop of Nicopolis. As Bishop Kyle died on the day previous to this consecration, Macdonald succeeded immediately to the vicariate. In 1875, when the catholic hierarchy was re-established in Scotland by Leo XIII, he was translated to the restored diocese of Aberdeen. He died at Aberdeen on 4 Feb. 1889.
[Brady's Episcopal Succession. iii. 415; Times, 5 Feb. 1889. p. 6.; Catholic Directory, 1892, p. 62; Tablet, 9 Feb. 1859, p. 221. 16 Feb. 252.]
MACDONALD, Sir JOHN ALEXANDER (1815–1891), the organiser of the dominion of Canada, was born in George Street, Glasgow, on 11 Jan. 1815. His father was Hugh Macdonald, who came from Dornoch in Sutherlandshire, and who removed with all his family in 1820 to Canada, and settled at Kingston. At the age of ten Macdonald was placed at the Royal Grammar School in Kingston, and is said to have distinguished himself there in mathematics, but not in classics. When he was about fifteen his father apprenticed him in a lawyer's office, and he spent six years in the study of law. Before he was twenty-one he came up for admission to the bar, and he used afterwards to tell jocularly how he persuaded his father that he was of full age, although he was some months short of it. He was admitted to the bar in 1836, and began practice at Kingston. At the close of 1838 he made a great local reputation by his ingenious though unsuccessful defence of one Shoultz, an American Pole, who had invaded Canada at the head of a rabble during the ‘Papineau-Mackenzie Rebellion.’ For the next six years Macdonald's office was one of the busiest and most prosperous in Canada.
In 1844 Macdonald was elected member for Kingston to the House of Assembly. The house had been created in 1841 as part of a scheme of self-government which should unite the two Canadas, Upper and Lower, now called respectively Ontario and Quebec; and although the latter province far exceeded the former in population, both sent up an equal number of representatives, a fruitful source of discontent to the French dwellers in the lower province. In 1844 the conservatives held office, and Macdonald was returned in their interest. His conservatism was at the time of an uncompromising type. In one of his earliest speeches he denounced a measure for the abolition of primogeniture, on the ground that such a proposal ought not to be introduced in Canada, for the very reason that it was adopted in the United States, and that it violated the laws of political economy. Macdonald very quickly aroused attention in the house by his vehement energy, combined with remarkable powers of self-restraint. In 1847, when he was only thirty-two, Mr. Draper, the prime minister, conferred on him the cabinet position of receiver-general, and soon transferred him to that of commissioner for crown lands, the most important position in the public service. While holding this office Macdonald effected some memorable reforms, but the general election in the autumn of 1848 drove him and his fellow-conservatives from power. By his activity during the fierce electoral struggle, and by the gallantry with which he met defeat, Macdonald made himself the foremost man in his party. During the six years (1848–54) that the reformers remained in power [see Hincks, Sir Francis] Macdonald (who again represented Kingston) proved the moving spirit of the conservatives, although they were nominally led by Sir Allan MacNab [q. v.], a violent, old-fashioned tory. MacNab soon became jealous of Macdonald's influence, but Macdonald conducted himself with loyalty and tact in his relations with his party, while he lost no opportunity
