4: The Days of Trial
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The federation of the four provinces was an excellent
achievement, but it was only a beginning on the long, hard road
to nationhood. The Fathers of Confederation had set their goal
and had proclaimed their faith. It remained for the next
generation to seek to make their vision a reality. It was still
necessary to make the Dominion actual by bringing in all the
lands from sea to sea. And when, on paper, Canada covered half a
continent, union had yet to be given body and substance by
railway building and continuous settlement. The task of welding
two races and many scattered provinces into a single people would
call for all the statesmanship and prudence the country had to
give. To chart the relations between the federal and the
provincial authorities, which had so nearly brought to shipwreck
the federal experiment of Canada's great neighbor, was like
navigating an unknown sea. And what was to be the attitude of the
new Dominion, half nation, half colony, to the mother country and
to the republic to the south, no one could yet foretell.
The first problem which faced the Dominion was the organization
of the new machinery of government. It was necessary to choose a
federal Administration to guide the Parliament which was soon to
meet at Ottawa, the capital of the old Canada since 1858 and now
accepted as the capital of the larger Canada. It was necessary
also to establish provincial Governments in Canada West,
henceforth known as Ontario and in Canada East, or Quebec. The
provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were to retain their
existing provincial Governments.
There was no doubt as to whom the Governor General, Lord Monck,
should call to form the first federal Administration. Macdonald
had proved himself easily the greatest leader of men the four
provinces had produced. The entrance of two new provinces into
the union, with all the possibilities of new party groupings and
new personal alliances it involved, created a situation in which
he had no rival. His great antagonist, Brown, passed off the
parliamentary stage. When he proposed a coalition to carry
through federation, Brown had recognized that he was sacrificing
his chief political asset, the discontent of Canada West. But he
was too true a patriot to hesitate a moment on that score, and in
any case he was sufficiently confident of his own abilities to
believe that he could hold his own in a fresh field. In this
expectation he was deceived. No man among his contemporaries
surpassed him in sheer ability, in fearless honesty, in vigor of
debate, but he lacked Macdonald's genial and supple art of
managing men. And with broad questions of state policy for the
moment out of the way, it was capacity in managing men that was
to count in determining success. Never afterward did Brown take
an active part in parliamentary life, though still a power in the
land through his newspaper, the Toronto "Globe", which was
regarded as the Scotch Presbyterian's second Bible. Of the other
leaders of old Canada, Cartier with failing health was losing his
vigor and losing also the prestige with his party which his solid
Canada East majority had given him; Galt soon retired to private
business, with occasional incursions into diplomacy; and McGee
fell a victim in 1868 to a Fenian assassin. From the Maritime
Provinces the ablest recruit was Tupper, the most dogged fighter
in Canadian parliamentary annals and a lifelong sworn ally of
Macdonald.
It was at first uncertain what the grouping of parties would be.
Macdonald naturally wished to retain the coalition which assured
him unquestioned mastery, and the popular desire to give
Confederation a good start also favored such a course. In his
first Cabinet, formed with infinite difficulty, with provinces,
parties, religions, races, all to consider in filling a limited
number of posts, Macdonald included six Liberal ministers out of
thirteen, three from Ontario, and three from the Maritime
Provinces. Yet if an Opposition had not existed, it would have
been necessary to create one in order to work the parliamentary
machine. The attempt to keep the coalition together did not long
succeed. On the eve of the first federal election the Ontario
Reformers in convention decided to oppose the Government, even
though it contained three of their former leaders. In the
contest, held in August and September, 1867, Macdonald triumphed
in every province except Nova Scotia but faced a growing
Opposition party. Under the virtual leadership of Alexander
Mackenzie, fragments of parties from the four provinces were
united into a single Liberal group. In a few years the majority
of the Liberal rank and file were back in the fold, and the
Liberal members in the Cabinet had become frankly Conservative.
Coalition had faded away.
Within six years after Confederation the whole northern half of
the continent had been absorbed by Canada. The four original
provinces comprised only one-tenth of the area of the present
Dominion, some 377,000 square miles as against 3,730,000 today.
The most easterly of the provinces, little Prince Edward Island,
had drawn back in 1865, content in isolation. Eight years later
this province entered the fold. Hard times and a glimpse of the
financial strength of the new federation had wrought a change of
heart. The solution of the century-old problem of the island,
absentee landlordism, threatened to strain the finances of the
province; and men began to look to Ottawa for relief. A railway
crisis turned their thoughts in the same direction. The
provincial authorities had recently arranged for the building of
a narrow-gauge road from one end of the island to the other. It
was agreed that the contractors should be paid 5000 pounds a mile
in provincial debentures, but without any stipulation as to the
total length, so that the builders caused the railway to meander
and zigzag freely in search of lower grades or long paying
stretches. In 1873, which was everywhere a year of black
depression, it was found that these debentures, which were
pledged by the contractors to a local bank for advances, could
not be sold except at a heavy loss. The directors of the bank
were influential in the Government of the province. It was not
surprising, therefore, that the government soon opened
negotiations with Ottawa. The Dominion authorities offered
generous terms, financing the land purchase scheme, and taking
over the railway. Some of the islanders made bitter charges, but
the Legislature confirmed the agreement, and on July 1, 1873,
Prince Edward Island entered Confederation.
While Prince Edward Island was deciding to come in, Nova Scotia
was straining every nerve to get out. There was no question that
Nova Scotia had been brought into the union against its will. The
provincial Legislature in 1866, it is true, backed Tupper. But
the people backed Howe, who thereupon went to London to protest
against the inclusion of Nova Scotia without consulting the
electors, but he was not heeded. The passing of the Act only
redoubled the agitation. In the provincial election of 1867, the
anti-Confederates carried thirty-six out of thirty-eight seats.
In the federal election Tupper was the only union candidate
returned in nineteen seats contested. A second delegation was
sent to London to demand repeal. Tupper crossed the ocean to
counter this effort and was successful. Then he sought out Howe,
urged that further agitation was useless and could only bring
anarchy or, what both counted worse, a movement for annexation to
the United States, and pressed him to use his influence to allay
the storm. Howe gave way; unfortunately for his own fame, he went
further and accepted a seat in the federal Cabinet. Many of his
old followers kept up the fight, but others decided to make a
bargain with necessity. Macdonald agreed to give the province
"better terms," and the Dominion assumed a larger part of its
debt. The bitterness aroused by Tupper's high-handed procedure
lingered for many a day; but before the first Parliament was
over, repeal had ceased to be a practical issue.
Union could never be real so long as leagues of barren, unbroken
wilderness separated the maritime from the central provinces.
Free intercourse, ties of trade, knowledge which would sweep away
prejudice, could not come until a railway had spanned this
wilderness. In the fifties plans had been made for a main trunk
line to run from Halifax to the Detroit River. This ambitious
scheme proved too great for the resources of the separate
provinces, but sections of the road were built in each province.
As a condition of Confederation, the Dominion Government
undertook to fill in the long gaps. Surveys were begun
immediately; and by 1876, under the direction of Sandford
Fleming, an engineer of eminence, the Intercolonial Railway was
completed. It never succeeded in making ends meet financially,
but it did make ends meet politically. In great measure it
achieved the purpose of national solidification for which it was
mainly designed.
Meanwhile the bounds of the Dominion were being pushed westward
to the Pacific. The old province of Canada, as the heir of New
France, had vague claims to the western plains, but the Hudson's
Bay Company was in possession. The Dominion decided to buy out
its rights and agreed, in 1869, to pay the Company 300,000 pounds
for the transfer of its lands and exclusive privileges, the
Company to retain its trading posts and two sections in every
township. So far all went well. But the Canadian Government, new
to the tasks of empire and not as efficient in administration as
it should have been, overlooked the necessity of consulting the
wishes and the prejudices of the men on the spot. It was not
merely land and buffalo herds which were being transferred but
also sovereignty over a people.
In the valley of the Red River there were some twelve thousand
metis, or half-breeds, descendants of Indian mothers and French
or Scottish fathers. The Dominion authorities intended to give
them a large share in their own government but neglected to
arrange for a formal conference. The metis were left to gather
their impression of the character and intentions of the new
rulers from indiscreet and sometimes overbearing surveyors and
land seekers. In 1869, under the leadership of Louis Riel, the
one man of education in the settlement, able but vain and
unbalanced, and with the Hudson's Bay officials looking on
unconcerned, the metis decided to oppose being made "the colony
of a colony." The Governor sent out from Ottawa was refused
entrance, and a provisional Government under Riel assumed
control. The Ottawa authorities first tried persuasion and sent a
commission of three, Donald A. Smith (afterwards Lord
Strathcona), Colonel de Salaberry, and Vicar General Thibault.
Smith was gradually restoring unity and order, when the act of
Riel in shooting Thomas Scott, an Ontario settler and a member of
the powerful Orange order, set passions flaring. Mgr. Tache, the
Catholic bishop of the diocese, on his return aided in quieting
the metis. Delegates were sent by the Provisional Government to
Ottawa, and, though not officially recognized, they influenced
the terms of settlement. An expedition under Colonel Wolseley
marched through the wilderness north of Lake Superior only to
find that Riel and his lieutenants had fled. By the Manitoba Act
the Red River country was admitted to Confederation as a
self-governing province, under the name of Manitoba, while the
country west to the Rockies was given territorial status. The
Indian tribes were handled with tact and justice, but though for
the time the danger of armed resistance had passed, the embers of
discontent were not wholly quenched.
The extension of Canadian sovereignty beyond the Rockies came
about in quieter fashion. After Mackenzie had shown the way,
Simon Fraser and David Thompson and other agents of the NorthWest
Company took up the work of exploration and fur trading. With the
union of the two rival companies in 1821, the Hudson's Bay
Company became the sole authority on the Pacific coast. Settlers
straggled in slowly until, in the late fifties, the discovery of
rich placer gold on the Fraser and later in the Cariboo brought
tens of thousands of miners from Australia and California, only
to drift away again almost as quickly when the sands began to
fail.
Local governments had been established both in Vancouver Island
and on the mainland. They were joined in a single province in
1866. One of the first acts of the new Legislature was to seek
consolidation with the Dominion. Inspired by an enthusiastic
Englishman, Alfred Waddington, who had dreamed for years of a
transcontinental railway, the province stipulated that within ten
years Canada should complete a road from the Pacific to a
junction with the railways of the East. These terms were
considered presumptuous on the part of a little settlement of ten
or fifteen thousand whites; but Macdonald had faith in the
resources of Canada and in what the morrow would bring forth. The
bargain was made; and British Columbia entered the Confederation
on July 1, 1871.
East and West were now staked out. Only the Far North remained
outside the bounds of the Dominion and this was soon acquired. In
1879 the British Government transferred to Canada all its rights
and claims over the islands in the Arctic Archipelago and all
other British territory in North America save Newfoundland and
its strip of Labrador. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from
the forty-ninth parallel to the North Pole, now all was Canadian
soil.
Confederation brought new powers and new responsibilities and
thrust Canada into the field of foreign affairs. It was with slow
and groping steps that the Dominion advanced along this new path.
Then—as now—for Canada foreign relations meant first and
foremost relations with her great neighbor to the south. The
likelihood of war had passed. The need for closer trade relations
remained. When the Reciprocity Treaty was brought to an end, on
March 17, 1866, Canada at first refrained from raising her tariff
walls. "The provinces," as George Brown declared in 1874,
"assumed that there were matters existing in 1865-66 to trouble
the spirit of American statesmen for the moment, and they waited
patiently for the sober second thought which was very long in
coming, but in the meantime Canada played a good neighbor's part,
and incidentally served her own ends, by continuing to grant the
United States most of the privileges which had been given under
the treaty free navigation and free goods, and, subject to a
license fee, access to the fisheries."
It was over these fisheries that friction first developed.(1)
Canadian statesmen were determined to prevent poaching on the
inshore fisheries, both because poaching was poaching and because
they considered the fishery privileges the best makeweight in
trade negotiations with the United States. At first American
vessels were admitted on payment of a license fee; but when, on
the increase of the fee, many vessels tried to fish inshore
without permission, the license system was abolished, and in 1870
a fleet of revenue cruisers began to police the coast waters.
American fishermen chafed at exclusion from waters they had come
to consider almost their own, and there were many cases of
seizure and of angry charge and countercharge. President Grant,
in his message to Congress in 1870, denounced the policy of the
Canadian authorities as arbitrary and provocative. Other issues
between the two countries were outstanding as well. Canada had a
claim against the United States for not preventing the Fenian
Raids of 1866; and the United States had a much bigger bill
against Great Britain for neglect in permitting the escape of the
Alabama. Some settlement of these disputed matters was necessary;
and it was largely through the activities of a Canadian banker
and politician, Sir John Rose, that an agreement was reached to
submit all the issues to a joint commission.
Macdonald was offered and accepted with misgivings a post as one
of the five British Commissioners. He pressed the traditional
Canadian policy of offering fishery for trade privileges but
found no backing in this or other matters from his British
colleagues, and he met only unyielding opposition from the
American Commissioners. He fell back, under protest, on a
settlement of narrower scope, which permitted reciprocity in
navigation and bonding privileges, free admission of Canadian and
Newfoundland fish to United States markets and of American
fishermen to Canadian and Newfoundland waters, and which provided
for a subsidiary commission to fix the amount to be paid by the
United States for the surplus advantage thus received. The Fenian
Raids claims were not even considered, and Macdonald was angered
by this indifference on the part of his British colleagues. "They
seem to have only one thing in their minds, " he reported
privately to Ottawa, "that is, to go home to England with a
treaty in their pocket, settling everything, no matter at what
cost to Canada." Yet when the time came for the Canadian
Parliament to decide whether to ratify the fishery clauses of the
Treaty of Washington in which the conclusions of the commission
were embodied, Macdonald, in spite of the unpopularity of the
bargain in Canada, "urged Parliament" to accept the treaty,
accept it with all its imperfections, to accept it for the sake
of peace and for the sake of the great Empire of which we form a
part." The treaty was ratified in 1871 by all the powers
concerned; and the stimulus to the peaceful settlement of
international disputes given by the Geneva Tribunal which
followed(2) justified the subordination of Canada's specific
interests.
A change in party now followed in Canada, but the new Government
under Alexander Mackenzie "was as fully committed as the
Government of Sir John Macdonald to the policy of bartering
fishery for trade advantage. Canada therefore proposed that
instead of carrying out the provisions for a money settlement,
the whole question should be reopened. The Administration at
Washington was sympathetic. George Brown was appointed along with
the British Ambassador, Sir Edward Thornton, to open
negotiations. Under Brown's energetic leadership a settlement of
all outstanding issues was drafted in 1874, which permitted
freedom of trade in natural and in most manufactured products for
twenty-one years, and settled fishery, coasting trade,
navigation, and minor boundary issues. But diplomats proposed,
and the United States Senate disposed. Protectionist feeling was
strong at Washington, and the currency problem absorbing, and
hence this broad and statesmanlike essay in neighborliness could
not secure an hour's attention. This plan having failed, the
Canadian Government fell back on the letter of the treaty. A
Commission which consisted of the Honorable E. H. Kellogg
representing the United States, Sir Alexander T. Galt
representing Canada, and the Belgian Minister to Washington, M.
Delfosse, as chairman, awarded Canada and Newfoundland $5,500,000
as the excess value of the fisheries for the ten years the
arrangement was to run. The award was denounced in the United
States as absurdly excessive; but a sense of honor and the
knowledge that millions of dollars from the Alabama award were
still in the Treasury moved the Senate finally to acquiesce,
though only for the ten-year term fixed by treaty. In Canada the
award was received with delight as a signal proof that when left
to themselves Canadians could hold their own. The prevailing view
was well summed up in a letter from Mackenzie to the Canadian
representative on the Halifax commission, written shortly before
the decision: "I am glad you still have hopes of a fair verdict.
I am doubly anxious to have it, first, because we are entitled to
it and need the dollars, and, second, because it will be the
first Canadian diplomatic triumph, and will justify me in
insisting that we know our neighbors and our own business better
than any Englishmen."
Mackenzie's insistence that Canada must take a larger share in
the control of her foreign affairs was too advanced a stand for
many of his more conservative countrymen. For others, he did not
go far enough. The early seventies saw the rise of a short-lived
movement in favor of Canadian independence. To many independence
from England seemed the logical sequel to Confederation; and the
rapid expansion of Canadian territory over half a continent
stimulated national pride and national self-consciousness Opinion
in England regarding Canadian independence was still more
outspoken. There imperialism was at its lowest ebb. With scarcely
an exception, English politicians, from Bright to Disraeli, were
hostile or indifferent to connection with the colonies, which had
now ceased to be a trade asset and had clearly become a military
liability.
But no concrete problem arose to make the matter a political
issue. In England a growing uneasiness over the protectionist
policies and the colonial ambitions of her European rivals were
soon to revive imperial sentiment. In Canada the ties of
affection for the old land, as well as the inertia fostered by
long years of colonial dependence, kept the independence movement
from spreading far. For the time the rising national spirit found
expression in economic rather than political channels. The
protectionist movement which a few years later swept all Canada
before it owed much of its strength to its claim to be the
national policy.
But it was not imperial or foreign relations that dominated
public interest in the seventies. Domestic politics were
intensely absorbing and bitterly contested. Within five years
there came about two sudden and sweeping reversals of power.
Parties and Cabinets which had seemed firmly entrenched were
dramatically overthrown by sudden changes in the personal factors
and in the issues of the day. In the summer of 1872 the second
general election for the Dominion was held. The Opposition had
now gained in strength. The Government had ceased to be in any
real sense a coalition, and most of the old Liberal rank and file
were back in the party camp. They had found a vigorous leader in
Alexander Mackenzie.
Mackenzie had come to Canada from Scotland in 1842 as a lad of
twenty. He worked at his trade as a stonemason, educated himself
by wide reading and constant debating, became a successful
contractor and, after Confederation, had proved himself one of
the most aggressive and uncompromising champions of Upper Canada
Liberalism. In the first Dominion Parliament he tacitly came to
be regarded as the leader of all the groups opposed to the
Macdonald Administration. He was at the same time active in the
Ontario Legislature since, for the first five years of
Confederation, no law forbade membership in both federal and
provincial Parliaments, and the short sessions of that blessed
time made such double service feasible. Here he was aided by two
other men of outstanding ability, Edward Blake and Oliver Mowat.
Blake, the son of a well-to-do Irishman who had been active in
the fight for responsible government, became Premier of Ontario
in 1871 but retired in 1872 when a law abolishing dual
representation made it necessary for him to choose between
Toronto and Ottawa. His place was taken by Mowat, who for a
quarter of a century gave the province thrifty, honest, and
conservatively progressive government.
In spite of the growing forces opposed to him Macdonald triumphed
once more in the election of 1872. Ontario fell away, but Quebec
and the Maritime Provinces stood true. A Conservative majority of
thirty or forty seemed to assure Macdonald another five-year
lease of power. Yet within a year the Pacific Scandal had driven
him from office and overwhelmed him in disgrace.
The Pacific Scandal occurred in connection with the financing of
the railway which the Dominion Government had promised British
Columbia, when that province entered Confederation in 1871, would
be built through to the Pacific coast within ten years. The
bargain was good politics but poor business. It was a rash
undertaking for a people of three and a half millions, with a
national revenue of less than twenty million dollars, to pledge
itself to build a railway through the rocky wilderness north of
Lake Superior, through the trackless plains and prairies of the
middle west, and across the mountain ranges that barred the
coast. Yet Macdonald had sufficient faith in the country, in
himself, and in the happy accidents of time—a confidence that
won him the nickname of "Old Tomorrow"—to give the pledge. Then
came the question of ways and means. At first the Government
planned to build the road. On second thoughts, however, it
decided to follow the example set by the United States in the
construction of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific, and to
entrust the work to a private company liberally subsidized with
land and cash. Two companies were organized with a view to
securing the contract, one a Montreal company under Sir Hugh
Allan, the foremost Canadian man of business and the head of the
Allan steamship fleet, and the other a Toronto company under D.
L. Macpherson, who had been concerned in the building of the
Grand Trunk. Their rivalry was intense. After the election of
1872 a strong compromise company was formed, with Allan at the
head, and to this company the contract was awarded.
When Parliament met in 1872, a Liberal member, L. S. Huntington,
made the charge that Allan had really been acting on behalf of
certain American capitalists and that he had made lavish
contributions to the Government campaign fund in the recent
election. In the course of the summer these charges were fully
substantiated. Allan was proved by his own correspondence, stolen
from his solicitor's office, to have spent over $350,000, largely
advanced by his American allies, in buying the favor of
newspapers and politicians. Nearly half of this amount had been
contributed to the Conservative campaign fund, with the knowledge
and at the instance of Cartier and Macdonald. Macdonald, while
unable to disprove the charges, urged that there was no
connection between the contributions and the granting of the
charter. But his defense was not heeded. A wave of indignation
swept the country; his own supporters in Parliament fell away;
and in November, 1873, he resigned. Mackenzie, who was summoned
to form a new Ministry, dissolved Parliament and was sustained by
a majority of two to one.
Mackenzie gave the country honest and efficient administration.
Among his most important achievements were the reform of
elections by the introduction of the secret ballot and the
requirement that elections should be held on a single day instead
of being spread over weeks, a measure of local option in
controlling the liquor traffic, and the establishment of a
Canadian Supreme Court and the Royal Military College—the
Canadian West Point. But fate and his own limitations were
against him. He was too absorbed in the details of administration
to have time for the work of a party leader. In his policy of
constructing the Canadian Pacific as a government road, after
Allan had resigned his charter, he manifested a caution and a
slowness that brought British Columbia to the verge of secession.
But it was chiefly the world-wide depression that began in his
first year of office, 1873, which proved his undoing. Trade was
stagnant, bankruptcies multiplied, and acute suffering occurred
among the poor in the larger cities. Mackenzie had no solution to
offer except patience and economy; and the Opposition were freer
to frame an enticing policy. The country was turning toward a
high tariff as the solution of its ills. Protection had not
hitherto been a party issue in Canada, and it was still uncertain
which party would take it up. Finally Mackenzie, who was an
ardent free trader, and the Nova Scotia wing of his party
triumphed over the protectionists in their own ranks and made a
low tariff the party platform. Macdonald, who had been prepared
to take up free trade if Mackenzie adopted protection, now boldly
urged the high tariff panacea. The promise of work and wages for
all, the appeal to national spirit made by the arguments of
self-sufficiency and fully rounded development, the desire to
retaliate against the United States, which was still deaf to any
plea for more liberal trade relations, swept the country. The
Conservative minority of over sixty was converted into a still
greater majority in the general election of 1878, and the leader
whom all men five years before had considered doomed, returned to
power, never to lose it while life lasted.
The first task of the new Government, in which Tupper was
Macdonald's chief supporter, was to carry out its high tariff
pledges. "Tell us how much protection you want, gentlemen," said
Macdonald to a group of Ontario manufacturers, "and we'll give
you what you need." In the new tariff needs were rated almost as
high as wants. Particularly on textiles, sugar, and iron and
steel products, duties were raised far beyond the old levels and
stimulated investment just as the world-wide depression which had
lasted since 1873 passed away. Canada shared in the recovery and
gave the credit to the well-advertised political patent medicine
taken just before the turn for the better came. For years the
National Policy or "N.P.," as its supporters termed it, had all
the vogue of a popular tonic.
The next task of the Government was to carry through in earnest
the building of the railway to the Pacific. For over a year
Macdonald persisted in Mackenzie's policy of government
construction but with the same slow and unsatisfactory results.
Then an opportunity came to enlist the services of a private
syndicate. Four Canadians, Donald A. Smith, a former Hudson's Bay
Company factor, George Stephen, a leading merchant and banker of
Montreal, James J. Hill and Norman W. Kittson, owners of a small
line of boats on the Red River, had joined forces to revive a
bankrupt Minnesota railway.(3) They had succeeded beyond all
parallel, and the reconstructed road, which later developed into
the Great Northern, made them all rich overnight. This success
whetted their appetite for further western railway building and
further millions of rich western acres in subsidies. They met
Macdonald and Tupper half way. By the bargain completed in 1881
the Canadian Pacific Railway Company undertook to build and
operate the road from the Ottawa Valley to the Pacific coast, in
return for the gift of the completed portions of the road (on
which the Government spent over $37,000,000), a subsidy of
$25,000,000 in cash, 25,000,000 selected acres of prairie land,
exemption from taxes, exemption from regulation of rates until
ten per cent was earned, and a promise on the part of the
Dominion to charter no western lines connecting with the United
States for twenty years. The terms were lavish and were fiercely
denounced by the Opposition, now under the leadership of Edward
Blake. But the people were too eager for railway expansion to
criticize the terms. The Government was returned to power in 1882
and the contract held.
The new company was rich in potential resources but weak in
available cash. Neither in New York nor in London could purse
strings be loosened for the purpose of building a road through
what the world considered a barren and Arctic wilderness. But in
the faith and vision of the president, George Stephen, and the
ruthless energy of the general manager, William Van Horne,
American born and trained, the Canadian Pacific had priceless
assets. Aided in critical times by further government loans, they
carried the project through, and by 1886, five years before the
time fixed by their contract, trains were running from Montreal
to Port Moody, opposite Vancouver.
A sudden burst of prosperity followed the building of the road.
Settlers poured into the West by tens of thousands, eastern
investors promoted colonization companies, land values soared,
and speculation gave a fillip to every line of trade. The middle
eighties were years of achievement, of prosperity, and of
confident hope. Then prosperity fled as quickly as it had come.
The West failed to hold its settlers. Farm and factory found
neither markets nor profits. The country was bled white by
emigration. Parliamentary contest and racial feud threatened the
hard-won unity. Canada was passing through its darkest hours.
During this period, political friction was incessant. Canada was
striving to solve in the eighties the difficult question which
besets all federations—the limits between federal and provincial
power. Ontario was the chief champion of provincial rights. The
struggle was intensified by the fact that a Liberal Government
reigned at Toronto and a Conservative Government at Ottawa, as
well as by the keen personal rivalry between Mowat and Macdonald.
In nearly every constitutional duel Mowat triumphed. The accepted
range of the legislative power of the provinces was widened by
the decisions of the courts, particularly of the highest court of
appeal, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England.
The successful resistance of Ontario and Manitoba to Macdonald's
attempt to disallow provincial laws proved this power, though
conferred by the Constitution, to be an unwieldy weapon. By the
middle nineties the veto had been virtually abandoned.
More serious than these political differences was the racial feud
that followed the second Riel Rebellion. For a second time the
Canadian Government failed to show the foresight and the sympathy
required in dealing with an isolated and backward people. The
valley of the Saskatchewan, far northwest of the Red River, was
the scene of the new difficulty. Here thousands of metis, or
French half-breeds, had settled. The passing of the buffalo,
which had been their chief subsistence, and the arrival of
settlers from the East caused them intense alarm. They pressed
the Government for certain grants of land and for the retention
of the old French custom of surveying the land along the river
front in deep narrow strips, rather than according to the
chessboard pattern taken over by Canada from the United States.
Red tape, indifference, procrastination, rather than any illwill,
delayed the redress of the grievances of the half-breeds. In
despair they called Louis Riel back from his exile in Montana.
With his arrival the agitation acquired a new and dangerous
force. Claiming to be the prophet of a new religion, he put
himself at the head of his people and, in the spring of 1885,
raised the flag of revolt. His military adviser, Gabriel Dumont,
an old buffalo hunter, was a natural-born general, and the
half-breeds were good shots and brave fighters. An expedition of
Canadian volunteers was rushed west, and the rebellion was put
down quickly, but not without some hard fighting and gallant
strokes and counterstrokes.
The racial passions roused by this conflict, however, did not
pass so quickly. The fate to be meted out to Riel was the burning
question. Ontario saw in him the murderer of Scott and an
ambitious plotter who had twice stirred up armed rebellion.
Quebec saw in him a man of French blood, persecuted because he
had stood up manfully for the undoubted rights of his kinsmen.
Today experts agree that Riel was insane and should have been
spared the gallows on this if on no other account. But at the
moment the plea of insanity was rejected. The Government made up
for its laxity before the rebellion by severity after it; and in
November, 1885, Riel was sent to the scaffold. Bitterness rankled
in many a French-Canadian heart for long years after; and in
Ontario, where the Orange order was strongly entrenched, a
faction threatened "to smash Confederation into its original
fragments" rather than submit to "French domination."
Racial and religious passions, once aroused, soon found new fuel
to feed upon. Honore Mercier, a brilliant but unscrupulous leader
who had ridden to power in the province of Quebec on the Riel
issue, roused Protestant ire by restoring estates which had been
confiscated at the conquest in 1763 to the Jesuits and other
Roman Catholic authorities, in proportions which the act provided
were to be determined by "Our Holy Father the Pope." In Ontario
restrictions began to be imposed on the freedom of
French-Canadian communities on the border to make French the sole
or dominant tongue in the schoolroom. A little later the
controversy was echoed in Manitoba in the repeal by a determined
Protestant majority of the denominational school privileges
hitherto enjoyed by the Roman Catholic minority.
Economic discontent was widespread. It was a time of low and
falling prices. Farmers found the American market barred, the
British market flooded, the home market stagnant. The factories
stimulated by the "N. P." lacked the growing market they had
hoped for. In the West climatic conditions not yet understood,
the monopoly of the Canadian Pacific, and the competition of the
States to the south, which still had millions of acres of free
land, brought settlement to a standstill. From all parts of
Canada the "exodus" to the United States continued until by 1890
there were in that country more than one-third as many people of
Canadian birth or descent as in Canada itself.
It was not surprising that in these extremities men were prepared
to make trial of drastic remedies. Nor was it surprising that it
was beyond the borders of Canada itself that they sought the
unity and the prosperity they had not found at home. Many looked
to Washington, some for unrestricted trade, a few for political
union. Others looked to London, hoping for a revival of the old
imperial tariff preferences or for some closer political union
which would bring commercial advantages in its train.
The decade from 1885 to 1895 stands out in the record of the
relations of the English-speaking peoples as a time of constant
friction, of petty pin pricks, of bluster and retaliation. The
United States was not in a neighborly mood. The memories of 1776,
of 1812, and of 1861 had been kept green by exuberant comment in
school textbooks and by "spread-eagle" oratory. The absence of
any other rivalry concentrated American opposition on Great
Britain, and isolation from Old World interests encouraged a
provincial lack of responsibility. The sins of England in Ireland
had been kept to the fore by the agitation of Parnell and Davitt
and Dillon; and the failure of Home Rule measures, twice in this
decade, stirred Irish-American antagonism. The accession to power
of Lord Salisbury, reputed to hold the United States in contempt,
and later the foolish indiscretion of Sir Lionel Sackville-West,
British Ambassador at Washington, in intervening in a guileless
way in the presidential election of 1888, did as much to nourish
ill-will in the United States as the dominance of Blaine and
other politicians who cultivated the gentle art of twisting the
tail of the British lion.
Protection, with the attitude of economic warfare which it
involved and bred, was then at its height. Much of this hostility
was directed against Canada, as the nearest British territory.
The Dominion, on its part, while persistently seeking closer
trade relations, sometimes sought this end in unwise ways. Many
good people in Canada were still fighting the War of 1812. The
desire to use the inshore fishery privileges as a lever to force
tariff reductions led to a rigid and literal enforcement of
Canadian rights and claims which provoked widespread anger in New
England. The policy of discrimination in canal tolls in favor of
Canadian as against United States ports was none the less
irritating because it was a retort in kind. And when United
States customs officials levied a tax on the tin cans containing
fish free by treaty, Canadian officials had retaliated by taxing
the baskets containing duty-free peaches.
The most important specific issue was once more the northeastern
fisheries. As a result of notice given by the United States the
fisheries clauses of the Treaty of Washington ceased to operate
on July 1, 1885. Canada, for the sake of peace, admitted American
fishing vessels for the rest of that season, though Canadian fish
at once became dutiable. No further grace was given. The Canadian
authorities rigidly enforced the rules barring inshore fishing,
and in addition denied port privileges to deep-sea fishing
vessels and forbade American boats to enter Canadian ports for
the purpose of trans-shipping crews, purchasing bait, or shipping
fish in bond to the United States. Every time a Canadian fishery
cruiser and a Gloucester skipper had a difference of opinion as
to the exact whereabouts of the three-mile limit, the press of
both countries echoed the conflict. Congress in 1887 empowered
the President to retaliate by excluding Canadian vessels and
goods from American ports. Happily this power was not used.
Cleveland and Secretary of State Bayard were genuinely anxious to
have the issue settled. A joint commission drew up a
well-considered plan, but in the face of a presidential election
the Senate gave it short shrift. Fortunately, however, a modus
vivendi was arranged by which American vessels were admitted to
port privileges on payment of a license. Healing time, a
healthful lack of publicity, changing fishing methods, and
Canada's abandonment of her old policy of using fishing
privileges as a makeweight, gradually eased the friction.
Yet if it was not the fishing question, there was sure to be some
other issue—bonding privileges, Canadian Pacific interloping in
western rail hauls, tariff rates, or canal tolls-to disturb the
peace. Why not seek a remedy once for all, men now began to ask,
by ending the unnatural separation between the halves of the
continent which God and geography had joined and history and
perverse politicians had kept asunder?
The political union of Canada and the United States has always
found advocates. In the United States a large proportion, perhaps
a majority, of the people have until recently considered that the
absorption of Canada into the Republic was its manifest destiny,
though there has been little concerted effort to hasten fate. In
Canada such course of action has found much less backing. United
Empire Loyalist traditions, the ties with Britain constantly
renewed by immigration, the dim stirrings of national sentiment,
resentment against the trade policy of the United States, have
all helped to turn popular sentiment into other channels. Only at
two periods, in 1849, and forty years later, has there been any
active movement for annexation.
In the late eighties, as in the late forties, commercial
depression and racial strife prepared the soil for the seed of
annexation. The chief sower in the later period was a brilliant
Oxford don, Goldwin Smith, whose sympathy with the cause of the
North had brought him to the United States. In 1871, after a
brief residence at Cornell, he made his home in Toronto, with
high hopes of stimulating the intellectual life and molding the
political future of the colony. He so far forsook the strait
"Manchester School" of his upbringing as to support Macdonald's
campaign for protection in 1878. But that was the limit of his
adaptability. To the end he remained out of touch with Canadian
feeling. His campaign for annexation, or for the reunion of the
English-speaking peoples on this continent, as he preferred to
call it, was able and persistent but moved only a narrow circle
of readers. It was in vain that he offered the example of
Scotland's prosperity after her union with her southern neighbor,
or insisted that Canada was cut into four distinct and unrelated
sections each of which could find its natural complement only in
the territory to the south. Here and there an editor or a minor
politician lent some support to his views, but the great mass of
the people strongly condemned the movement. There was to be no
going back to the parting of the ways: the continent north of
Mexico was henceforth to witness two experiments in democracy,
not one unwieldy venture.
Commercial union was a half-way measure which found more favor. A
North American customs union had been supported by such public
men as Stephen A. Douglas, Horace Greeley, and William H. Seward,
by official investigators such as Taylor, Derby, and Larned, and
by committees of the House of Representatives in 1862, 1876,
1880, and 1884. In Canada it had been endorsed before
Confederation by Isaac Buchanan, the father of the protection
movement, and by Luther Holton and John Young. Now for the first
time it became a practical question. Erastus Wiman, a Canadian
who had found fortune in the United States, began in 1887 a
vigorous campaign in its favor both in Congress and among the
Canadian public. Goldwin Smith lent his dubious aid, leading
Toronto and Montreal newspapers joined the movement, and Ontario
farmers' organizations swung to its support. But the agitation
proved abortive owing to the triumph of high protection in the
presidential election of 1888; and in Canada the red herring of
the Jesuits' Estates controversy was drawn across the trail.
Yet the question would not down. The political parties were
compelled to define their attitude. The Liberals had been
defeated once more in the election of 1887, where the continuance
of the National Policy and of aid to the Canadian Pacific had
been the issue. Their leader, Edward Blake, had retired
disheartened. His place had been taken by a young Quebec
lieutenant, Wilfrid Laurier, who had won fame by his courageous
resistance to clerical aggression in his own province and by his
indictment of the Macdonald Government in the Riel issue. A
veteran Ontario Liberal, Sir Richard Cartwright, urged the
adoption of commercial union as the party policy. Laurier would
not go so far, and the policy of unrestricted reciprocity was
made the official programme in 1888. Commercial union had
involved not only absolute free trade between Canada and the
United States but common excise rates, a common tariff against
the rest of the world, and the division of customs and excise
revenues in some agreed proportion. Unrestricted reciprocity
would mean free trade between the two countries, but with each
left free to levy what rates it pleased on the products of other
countries.
When in 1891 the time came round once more for a general
election, it was apparent that reciprocity in some form would be
the dominant issue. Though the Republicans were in power in the
United States and though they had more than fulfilled their high
tariff pledges in the McKinley Act, which hit Canadian farm
products particularly hard, there was some chance of terms being
made. Reciprocity, as a form of tariff bargaining, really fits in
better with protection than with free trade, and Blaine,
Harrison's Secretary of State, was committed to a policy of trade
treaties and trade bargaining. In Canada the demand for the
United States market had grown with increasing depression. The
Liberals, with their policy of unrestricted reciprocity, seemed
destined to reap the advantage of this rising tide of feeling.
Then suddenly, on the eve of the election, Sir John Macdonald
sought to cut the ground from under the feet of his opponents by
the announcement that in the course of a discussion of
Newfoundland matters the United States had taken the initiative
in suggesting to Canada a settlement of all outstanding
difficulties, fisheries, coasting trade, and , on the basis of a
renewal and extension of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. This
policy promised to meet all legitimate economic needs of the
country and at the same time avoid the political dangers of the
more sweeping policy. Its force was somewhat weakened by the
denials of Secretary Blaine that he had taken the initiative or
made any definite promises. As the election drew near and
revelations of the annexationist aims of some supporters of the
wider trade policy were made, the Government made the loyalty cry
its strong card. "The old man, the old flag, and the old policy,"
saved the day. In Ontario and Quebec the two parties were evenly
divided, but the West and the Maritime Provinces, the "shreds and
patches of Confederation," as Sir Richard Cartwright, too ironic
and vitriolic in his speech for political success, termed them,
gave the Government a working majority, which was increased in
by-elections.
Again in power, the Government made a formal attempt to carry out
its pledges. Two pilgrimages were made to Washington, but the
negotiators were too far apart to come to terms. With the triumph
of the Democrats in 1899. and the lowering of the tariff on farm
products which followed, there came a temporary improvement in
trade relations. But the tariff reaction and the silver issue
brought back the Republicans and led to that climax in
agricultural protection, the Dingley Act of 1897, which killed
among Canadians all reciprocity longings and compelled them to
look to themselves for salvation. Although Canadians were anxious
for trade relations, they were not willing to be bludgeoned into
accepting one-sided terms. The settlement of the Bering Sea
dispute in 1898 by a board of arbitration, which ruled against
the claims of the United States but suggested a restriction of
pelagic sealing by agreement, removed one source of friction.
Hardly was that out of the way when Cleveland's Venezuela message
brought Great Britain and the United States once more to the
verge of war. In such a war Canadians knew they would be the
chief sufferers, but in 1895, as in 1862, they did not flinch and
stood ready to support the mother country in any outcome. The
Venezuela episode stirred Canadian feeling deeply, revived
interest in imperialism, and ended the last lingering remnants of
any sentiment for annexation. As King Edward I was termed "the
hammer of the Scots," so McKinley and Cleveland became "the
hammer of the Canadians," welding them into unity.
While most Canadians were ceasing to look to Washington for
relief, an increasing number were looking once more to London.
The revival of imperial sentiment which began in the early
eighties, seemed to promise new and greater possibilities for the
colonies overseas. Political union in the form of imperial
federation and commercial union through reciprocal tariff
preferences were urged in turn as the cure for all Canada's ills.
Neither solution was adopted. The movement greatly influenced the
actual trend of affairs, but there was to be no mere turning back
to the days of the old empire.
The period of laissez faire in imperial matters, of Little
Englandism, drew to a close in the early eighties. Once more men
began to value empire, to seek to annex new territory overseas,
and to bind closer the existing possessions. The world was
passing through a reaction destined to lead to the earth-shaking
catastrophe of 1914. The ideals of peace and free trade preached
and to some degree practiced in the fifties and sixties were
passing under an eclipse. In Europe the swing to free trade had
halted, and nation after nation was becoming aggressively
protectionist. The triumph of Prussia in the War of 1870 revived
and intensified military rivalry and military preparations on the
part of all the powers of Europe. A new scramble for colonies and
possessions overseas began, with the late comers nervously eager
to make up for time lost. In this reaction Britain shared.
Protection raised its head again in England; only by tariffs and
tariff bargaining, the Fair Traders insisted, could the country
hold its own. Odds and ends of territory overseas were annexed
and a new value was attached to the existing colonies. The
possibility of obtaining from them military support and trade
privileges, the desirability of returning to the old ideal of a
self-contained and centralized empire, appealed now to
influential groups. This goal might be attained by different
paths. From the United Kingdom came the policy of imperial
federation and from the colonies the policy of preferential trade
as means to this end.
In 1884 the Imperial Federation League was organized in London
with important men of both parties in its ranks. It urged the
setting up in London of a new Parliament, in which the United
Kingdom and all the colonies where white men predominated would
be represented according to population. This Parliament would
have power to frame policies, to make laws, and to levy taxes for
the whole Empire. To the colonist it offered an opportunity to
share in the control of foreign affairs; to the Englishman it
offered the support of colonies fast growing to power and the
assurance of one harmonious policy for all the Empire. Both in
Britain and overseas the movement received wide support and
seemed for a time likely to sweep all before it. Then a halt
came.
Imperial federation had been brought forward a generation too
late to succeed. The Empire had been developing upon lines which
could not be made to conform to the plans for centralized
parliamentary control. It was not possible to go back to the
parting of the ways. Slowly, unconsciously, unevenly, yet
steadily, the colonies had been ceasing to be dependencies and
had been becoming nations. With Canada in the vanguard they had
been taking over one power after another which had formerly been
wielded by the Government of the United Kingdom. It was not
likely that they would relinquish these powers or that
self-governing colonies would consent to be subordinated to a
Parliament in London in which each would have only a fragmentary
representation.
The policy of imperial cooperation which began to take shape
during this period sought to reconcile the existing desire for
continuing the connection with the mother country with the
growing sense of national independence. This policy involved two
different courses of action: first, the colonies must assert and
secure complete self-government on terms of equality with the
United Kingdom; second, they must unite as partners or allies in
carrying out common tasks and policies and in building up
machinery for mutual consultation and harmonious action.
It was chiefly in matters of trade and tariffs that progress was
made in the direction of self-government. Galt had asserted in
1859 Canada's right to make her own tariffs, and Macdonald twenty
years later had carried still further the policy of levying
duties upon English as well as foreign goods. That economic point
was therefore settled, but it was a slower matter to secure
control of treaty-making powers. When Galt and Huntington urged
this right in 1871 and when Blake and Mackenzie pressed it ten
years later, Macdonald opposed such a demand as equivalent to an
effort for independence. Yet he himself was compelled to change
his conservative attitude. After 1877 Canada ceased to be bound
by commercial treaties made by the United Kingdom, unless it
expressly desired to be included. In 1879 Galt was sent to Europe
to negotiate Canadian trade agreements with France and Spain; and
in the next decade Tupper carried negotiations with France to a
successful conclusion, though the treaty was formally concluded
between France and Britain. By 1891 the Canadian Parliament could
assert with truth that "the self-governing colonies are
recognized as possessing the right to define their respective
fiscal relations to all countries." But Canada as yet took no
step toward assuming a share in her own naval defense, though the
Australasian colonies made a beginning, along colonial rather
than national lines, by making a money contribution to the
British navy.
The second task confronting the policy of imperial cooperation
was a harder one. For a partnership between colony and mother
country there were no precedents. Centralized empires there had
been; colonies there had been which had grown into independent
states; but there was no instance of an empire ceasing to be an
empire, of colonies becoming self-governing states and then
turning to closer and cooperative union with one another and with
the mother country.
Along this unblazed trail two important advances were made. The
initiative in the first came from Canada. In 1880 a High
Commissioner was appointed to represent Canada in London. The
appointment of Sir Alexander Galt and the policy which it
involved were significant. The Governor-General had ceased to be
a real power; he was becoming the representative not of the
British Government but of the King; and, like the King, he
governed by the advice of the responsible ministers in the land
where he resided. His place as the link between the Government of
Canada and the Government of Britain was now taken in part by the
High Commissioner. The relationship of Canada to the United
Kingdom was becoming one of equality not of subordination.
The initiative in the second step came from Britain, though
Canada's leaders gave the movement its final direction. Imperial
federationists urged Lord Salisbury to summon a conference of the
colonies to discuss the question they had at heart. Salisbury
doubted the wisdom of such a policy but agreed in 1887 to call a
conference to discuss matters of trade and defense. Every
self-governing colony sent representatives to this first Colonial
Conference; but little immediate fruit came of its sessions. In
1894 a second Conference was held at Ottawa, mainly to discuss
intercolonial preferential trade. Only a beginning had been made,
but already the Conferences were coming to be regarded as
meetings of independent governments and not, as the
federationists had hoped, the germ of a single dominating new
government. The Imperial Federation League began to realize that
it was making little progress and dissolved in 1893.
Preferential trade was the alternative path to imperial
federation. Macdonald had urged it in 1879 when he found British
resentment strong against his new tariff. Again, ten years later,
when reciprocity with the United States was finding favor in
Canada, imperialists urged the counterclaims of a policy of
imperial reciprocity, of special tariff privileges to other parts
of the Empire. The stumbling-block in the way of such a policy
was England's adherence to free trade. For the protectionist
colonies preference would mean only a reduction of an existing
tariff. For the United Kingdom, however, it would mean a complete
reversal of fiscal policy and the abandonment of free trade for
protection in order to make discrimination possible. Few
Englishmen believed such a reversal possible, though every trade
depression revived talk of "fair trade" or tariffs for bargaining
purposes. A further obstacle to preferential trade lay in the
existence of treaties with Belgium and Germany, concluded in the
sixties, assuring them all tariff privileges granted by any
British colony to Great Britain or to sister colonies. In 1892
the Liberal Opposition in Canada indicated the line upon which
action was eventually to be taken by urging a resolution in favor
of granting an immediate and unconditional preference on British
goods as a step toward freer trade and in the interest of the
Canadian consumer.
Little came of looking either to London or to Washington. Until
the middle nineties Canada remained commercially stagnant and
politically distracted. Then came a change of heart and a change
of policy. The Dominion realized at last that it must work out
its own salvation.
In March, 1891, Sir John Macdonald was returned to office for the
sixth time since Confederation, but he was not destined to enjoy
power long. The winter campaign had been too much for his
weakened constitution, and he died on June 6, 1891. No man had
been more hated by his political opponents, no man more loved by
his political followers. Today the hatred has long since died,
and the memory of Sir John Macdonald has become the common pride
of Canadians of every party, race, and creed. He had done much to
lower the level of Canadian politics; but this fault was forgiven
when men remembered his unfailing courage and confidence, his
constructive vision and fertility of resource, his deep and
unquestioned devotion to his country.
The Conservative party had with difficulty survived the last
election. Deprived of the leader who for so long had been half
its force, the party could not long delay its break-up. No one
could be found to fill Macdonald's place. The helm was taken in
turn by J. J. C. Abbott, "the confidential family lawyer of the
party," by Sir John Thompson, solid and efficient though lacking
in imagination, and by Sir Mackenzie Bowell, an Ontario veteran.
Abbott was forced to resign because of ill health; Thompson died
in office; and Bowell was forced out by a revolt within the
party. Sir Charles Tupper, then High Commissioner in London, was
summoned to take up the difficult task. But it proved too great
for even his fighting energy. The party was divided. Gross
corruption in the awarding of public contracts had been brought
to light. The farmers were demanding a lower tariff. The leader
of the Opposition was proving to have all the astuteness and the
mastery of his party which had marked Macdonald and a courage in
his convictions which promised well. Defeat seemed inevitable
unless a new issue which had invaded federal politics, the
Manitoba school question, should prove more dangerous to the
Opposition than to the forces of the Government.
The Manitoba school question was an echo of the racial and
religious strife which followed the execution of Riel and in
which the Jesuits' Estates controversy was an episode. In the
early days of the province, when it was still uncertain which
religion would be dominant among the settlers, a system of
state-aided denominational schools had been established. In 1890
the Manitoba Government swept this system away and replaced it by
a single system of non-sectarian and state-supported schools
which were practically the same as the old Protestant schools.
Any Roman Catholic who did not wish to send his children to such
a school was thus compelled to pay for the maintenance of a
parochial school as well as to pay taxes for the public schools.
A provision of the Confederation Act, inserted at the wish of the
Protestant minority in Quebec, safeguarded the educational
privileges of religious minorities. A somewhat similar clause had
been inserted in the Manitoba Act of 1870. To this protection the
Manitoba minority now appealed. The courts held that the province
had the right to pass the law but also that the Dominion
Government had the constitutional right to pass remedial
legislation restoring in some measure the privileges taken away.
The issue was thus forced into federal politics.
A curious situation then developed. The leader of the Government,
Sir Mackenzie Bowell, was a prominent Orangeman. The leader of
the Opposition, Wilfrid Laurier, was a Roman Catholic. The
Government, after a vain attempt to induce the province to amend
its measure, decided to pass a remedial act compelling it to
restore to the Roman Catholics their rights. The policy of the
Opposition leader was awaited with keen expectancy. Strong
pressure was brought upon Laurier by the Roman Catholic hierarchy
of Quebec. Most men expected a temporizing compromise. Yet the
leader of the Opposition came out strongly and flatly against the
Government's measure. He agreed that a wrong had been done but
insisted that compulsion could not right it and promised that, if
in power, he would follow the path of conciliation. At once all
the wrath of the hierarchy was unloosed upon him, and all its
influence was thrown to the support of the Government. Yet when
the Liberals blocked the Remedial Bill by obstructing debate
until the term of Parliament expired, and forced an election on
this issue in the summer of 1896, Quebec gave a big majority to
Laurier, while Manitoba stood behind the party which had tried to
coerce it. The country over, the Liberals had gained a decisive
majority. The day of new leaders and a new policy had dawned at
last.
________
(1) See The Path of Empire.
(2) See The Path of Empire
(3) See The Railroad Builders, by John Moody (in The Chronicles
of America).
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