Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/562

 resigned; and Tupper succeeded him as prime minister of Canada. Since the death of Sir John Macdonald (1891) the conservative party had disintegrated, political and personal differences being rife. On Tupper's accession to power he found the federal government committed to a bill restoring to the Roman Catholic minority in Manitoba certain privileges which had been taken away by the provincial government. He was therefore opposed both by the advocates of provincial rights, and by the extreme Protestants, while he failed to win the French Roman Catholics of Quebec, who pinned their faith on Sir Wilfrid Laurier [q.v.], the liberal leader, in spite of the exhortations of their bishops. Parliament dissolved by efflux of time before the remedial bill could be forced through, and on 23 June 1896 the conservatives were defeated in a general election. The defeat was not due to Tupper, who ‘fought with amazing freshness and with indomitable courage … We could almost see the restoration of party unity proceed under his hand’ [J. S. Willison, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, ii, 255].

After his defeat, but before his resignation, Tupper filled a large number of important offices with his political supporters. These appointments the governor-general, the Earl of Aberdeen, refused to ratify. Tupper had on his side constitutional precedent, but the general sympathy of the country was with the governor-general. In opposition Tupper led his party with vigour until the general election of 1900, after his defeat in which he retired into private life, though still from time to time intervening in Canadian and imperial affairs with public letters and articles. In 1909 he settled at Bexley Heath, in Kent, where he died 30 October 1915.

Tupper was perhaps the most fearless and constructive statesman whom Canada has produced. He gave free education to Nova Scotia. Without him the Canadian Dominion could not have been formed. Without him Sir John Macdonald would almost certainly not have pulled through the lean years of opposition from 1873 to 1878. Without him Canada would almost certainly have had neither a ‘national policy’ nor the Canadian Pacific Railway. He had great executive ability, and untiring energy and fluency. The chief defects of which he was accused were a tendency to nepotism, and a willingness to use public money and public contracts as bribes to constituencies in need of railways and other public works.

Tupper was of middle height, broad-shouldered, with an alert and vigorous frame, capable of great exertion and endurance. His face was ruddy and leonine, with heavy masses of hair, which remained black till very late in his life. Many portraits and photographs of him are easily accessible. In religion he was at first a Baptist, but later became a member of the Anglican Church. In 1879 he was created K.C.M.G.; in 1886 G.C.M.G.; in 1888 a baronet of the United Kingdom; and in 1908 a privy councillor. Though from about 1863 he gave up the active practice of medicine he always retained his interest in it, and on the foundation of the Canadian Medical Association in 1867 was elected its first president.

Tupper married in 1846 Frances Amelia, daughter of Silas H. Morse, of Amherst, Nova Scotia; she died in 1912. They had three sons and one daughter; the second son, Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, was from 1882 to 1904 a member of the Dominion parliament, and from 1888 to 1896 a member of the Canadian Cabinet.

 TURNER, (1832–1916), anatomist, teacher, and academic administrator, was born at Lancaster 7 January 1832. His father, also William Turner, an upholsterer and cabinet-maker, died in 1837, and the boy, with a younger brother who only lived to the age of fourteen, was left to the care of the widowed mother (née Margaret Aldren) in straitened circumstances. He was educated at a private school, which he left at the age of fifteen to be apprenticed to a local general practitioner, Dr. Christopher Johnston. In 1850, with the leave of his employer, he was freed from his apprenticeship, and allowed to complete his training in London at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. There he studied assiduously under Sir James Paget [q.v.] and other teachers, preparing himself at the same time for matriculation in London University. In 1852 he passed this examination, taking the first prize in chemistry and the second place in botany. In May 1853 he gained a scholarship at St. Bartholomew's in anatomy, physiology, and chemistry, and in the following month he obtained his diploma, after the oral examination which in those days was the only test of the 536