Comparing the lives of leaders for historical and political instruction goes back to Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans. Christopher Moore describes several “fathers of the confederation” and makes the comparison with present day participants in the constitutional process by implication only. His readers, he correctly assumes, are familiar enough with the events of Meech Lake and Charlottetown to supply the second part of the equation for themselves.

Moore takes issue with those who think that current leaders are wholly superior to their predecessors and have nothing to learn from them. His thesis is that the 19th-century makers of confederation worked with constitutional machinery similar to ours, but they operated it differently. Useful lessons, therefore, lie in exploring the difference.

Moore’s characters range from John A. Macdonald to the lesser-known George Brown, editor and publisher of The Globe, who in the 1860s led a crusading regional party named Reform. Moore’s other regional representatives include Charles Tupper of Nova Scotia, Edward Whelan of Prince Edward Island, George-Étienne Cartier of Quebec, and Leonard Tilley of New Brunswick.

The English political thinkers whose effect on the Canadian process Moore traces are also both famous and obscure – Edmund Burke and Walter Bagehot, editor of The Economist and author of the influential The English Constitution. Moore’s method of rendering these theorists as life-like as their followers is indicated by his chapter titles such as “Ned Whelan and Edmund Burke on the Ramparts of Quebec.”

A skilled portraitist, Moore (whose Louisbourg Portraits won the Governor General’s Award) leavens the descriptions of ideological and tactical wrangles with fascinating personal foibles. The details of these are often culled from the writings of the female relatives who were privy to the politicians’ meetings and who were astute observers of the social scene. It is not surprising to learn that one of the chief exponents of what we would call “family values” was an irreligious adulterer. It is clear that – to reverse Moore’s main thesis – the journalistic machinery of the day was different from ours, but the improprieties of the politicians were the same.