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.* 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.
* See "The Path of Empire".
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* justified the
subordination of Canada's specific interests.
* See "The Path of Empire"
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.* 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.
* See "The Railroad Builders", by John Moody (in "The
Chronicles of America").
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 anew policy had
dawned at last.