LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
THE CLIMB TO POWER.
THE life story of Laurier by Oscar D. Skelton is the official
biography of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Official biographies of public men
have their uses; they supply material for the definitive biography
which in the case of a great man is not likely to be written by one
who knew him in the flesh. An English public man, who was also a
novelist and poet, wrote:
"Ne'er of the living can the living judge,
Too blind the affection or too fresh the grudge."
The limitation is equally true in the case of one like Sir Wilfrid
Laurier who, though dead, will be a factor of moment in our politics
for at least another generation. Professor Skelton's book is
interesting and valuable, but not conclusive. The first volume is a
political history of Canada from the sixties until 1896, with
Laurier in the setting at first inconspicuously but growing to
greatness and leadership. For the fifteen years of premiership the
biographer is concerned lest Sir Wilfrid should not get the fullest
credit for whatever was achieved; while in dealing with the period
after 1911, constituting the anti-climax of Laurier's career, Mr.
Skelton is avowedly the alert and eager partisan, bound to find his
hero right and all those who disagreed with him wrong. Sir Wilfrid
Laurier is described in the preface as "the finest and simplest
gentleman, the noblest and most unselfish man it has ever been my
good fortune to know;" and the work is faithfully devoted to the
elucidation of this theme. Men may fail to be heroes to their valets
but they are more successful with their biographers. The final
appraisement of Sir Wilfrid, to be written perhaps fifty years hence
by some tolerant and impartial historian, will probably not be an
echo of Prof. Skelton's judgment. It will perhaps put Sir Wilfrid
higher than Prof. Skelton does and yet not quite so high; an abler
man but one not quite so preternaturally good; a man who had
affinities with Macchiavelli as well as with Sir Galahad.
The Laurier of the first volume is an appealing, engaging and most
attractive personality. There was about his earlier career something
romantic and compelling. In almost one rush he passed from the
comparative obscurity of a new member in 1874 to the leadership of
the French Liberals in 1877; and then he suffered a decline which
seemed to mark him as one of those political shooting stars which
blaze in the firmament for a season and then go black; like Felix
Geoffrion who, though saluted by Laurier in 1874 as the coming
leader, never made any impress upon his times. A political accident,
fortunate for him, opened the gates again to a career; and he set
his foot upon a road which took him very far.
The writer made acquaintance with Laurier in the Dominion session of
1884. He was then in his forty-third year; but in the judgment of
many his career was over. His interest in politics was, apparently,
of the slightest. He was deskmate to Blake, who carried on a
tremendous campaign that session against the government's C. P. R.
proposals. Laurier's political activities consisted chiefly of being
an acting secretary of sorts to the Liberal leader. He kept his
references in order; handed him Hansards and blue-books in turn;
summoned the pages to clear away the impedimenta and to keep the
glass of water replenished--little services which it was clear he
was glad to do for one who engaged his ardent affection and
admiration. There were memories in the house of Laurier's eloquence;
but memories only. During this session he was almost silent. The
tall, courtly figure was a familiar sight in the chamber and in the
library--particularly in the library, where he could be found every
day ensconced in some congenial alcove; but the golden voice was
silent. It was known that his friends were concerned about his
health.
LAURIER AND THE RIEL AGITATION
The "accident" which restored Laurier to public life and opened up
for him an extraordinary career was the Riel rebellion of 1885. In
the session of 1885, the rebellion being then in progress, he was
heard from to some purpose on the subject of the ill treatment of
the Saskatchewan half-breeds by the Dominion government. The
execution of Riel in the following November changed the whole course
of Canadian politics. It pulled the foundations from under the
Conservative party by destroying the position of supremacy which it
had held for a generation in the most Conservative of provinces and
condemned it to a slow decline to the ruin of to-day; and it
profoundly affected the Liberal party, giving it a new orientation
and producing the leader who was to make it the dominating force in
Canadian politics. These things were not realized at the time, but
they are clear enough in retrospect. Party policy, party discipline,
party philosophy are all determined by the way the constituent
elements of the party combine; and the shifting from the Conservative
to the Liberal party of the political weight of Quebec, not as the
result of any profound change of conviction but under the influence
of a powerful racial emotion, was bound to register itself in time
in the party outlook and morale. The current of the older tradition
ran strong for some time, but within the space of about twenty years
the party was pretty thoroughly transformed. The Liberal party of
to-day with its complete dependence upon the solid support it gets
in Quebec is the ultimate result of the forces which came into play
as the result of the hanging of Riel.
After the lapse of so many years there is no need for lack of candor
in discussing the events of 1885. To put it plainly Riel's fate
turned almost entirely upon political considerations. Which was the
less dangerous course,--to reprieve him or let him hang? The issue
was canvassed back and forth by the distracted ministry up to the
day before that fixed for the execution when a decision was reached
to let the law take its course. The feeling in Quebec in support of
the commutation was so intense and overwhelming that it was accepted
as a matter of course that Riel would be reprieved; and the news of
the contrary decision was to them, as Professor Skelton says,
"unbelievable." The actual announcement of the hanging was a match
to a powder magazine. That night there were mobs on the streets of
Montreal and Sir John Macdonald was burned in effigy in Dominion
square. On the following Sunday forty thousand people swarmed around
the hustings on Champ de Mars and heard the government denounced in
every conceivable term of verbal violence by speakers of every tinge
of political belief. This outpouring of a common indignation with
its obliteration of all the usual lines of demarcation was the
result of the "wounding of the national self-esteem" by the flouting
of the demand for leniency, as it was put by La Minerve. Mercier put
it still more strongly when he declared that "the murder of Riel
was a declaration of war upon French Canadian influence in
Confederation." A binding cement for this union of elements
ordinarily at war was sought for in the creation of the "parti
national" which a year later captured the provincial Conservative
citadel at Quebec and turned it over to Honore Mercier. This violent
racial movement raged unchecked in the provincial arena, but in the
federal field it was held in leash by Laurier. That he saw the
possibilities of the situation is not to be doubted. He took part in
the demonstration on Champ de Mars and in his speech 'made a
declaration--"Had I been born on the banks of the Saskatchewan I
myself would have shouldered a musket"--which riveted nation-wide
attention upon him. Laurier followed this by his impassioned apology
for the halfbreeds and their leader in the House of Commons, of
which deliverance Thomas White, of the assailed ministry, justly
said: "It was the finest parliamentary speech ever pronounced in the
parliament of Canada since Confederation." In the debate on the
execution of Riel all the orators of parliament took part. It was
the occasion for one of Blake's greatest efforts. Sir John Thompson,
in his reply to Blake, revealed himself to parliament and the
country as one worthy of crossing swords with the great Liberal
tribune. But they and all the other "big guns" of the Commons were
thrown into complete eclipse by Laurier's performance. It is easy to
recall after the lapse of thirty-six years the extraordinary
impression which that speech made upon the great audience which
heard it--a crowded House of Commons and the public galleries packed
to the roof.
In the early winter of 1886-7 Laurier went boldly into Ontario
where, addressing great audiences in Toronto, London and other
points, he defended his position and preferred his indictment
against the government. This was Laurier's first introduction to
Ontario, under circumstances which, while actually threatening, were
in reality auspicious. It was at once an exhibition of moral and
physical courage and a manifestation of Laurier's remarkable
qualities as a public speaker. Within a few months Laurier passed
from the comparative obscurity to which he had condemned himself by
his apparent indifference to politics to a position in public life
where he divided public attention and interest with Edward Blake and
Sir John Macdonald. When a few months later Blake, in a rare fit of
the sulks, retired to his tent, refusing to play any longer with
people who did not appreciate his abilities, Laurier succeeded to
the leadership--apparently upon the nomination of Blake, actually at
the imperious call of those inescapable forces and interests which
men call Destiny.
LEADERSHIP AND THE ROAD TO IT.
Laurier, then in his 46th year, became leader of the Liberal party
in June, 1887. It was supposedly a tentative experimental choice;
but the leadership thus begun ended only with his death in February,
1919, nearly thirty-two years later. Laurier was a French Canadian
of the ninth generation. His first Canadian ancestor, Augustin
Hebert, was one of the little band of soldier colonists who, under
the leadership of Maisonneuve founded Montreal in 1641. Hebert's
granddaughter married a soldier of the regiment Carignan-Salieres,
Francois Cotineau dit Champlaurier. The Heberts were from Normandy,
Cotineau from Savoy. From this merging of northern and southern
French strains the Canadian family of Laurier resulted; this name
was first assumed by the grandson of the soldier ancestor. The
record of the first thirty years of Wilfrid Laurier's life was
indistinguishable from that of scores of other French-Canadian
professional men. Born in the country (St. Lin, Nov. 20, 1841) of
parents in moderate circumstances; educated at one of the numerous
little country colleges; a student at law in Montreal; a young and
struggling lawyer, interested in politics and addicted upon occasion
to political journalism.--French-Canadians by the hundreds have
travelled that road. A fortunate combination of circumstances took
him out of the struggle for a place at the Montreal bar and gave
him a practice in the country combined with the editorship of a
Liberal weekly, a position which made him at once a figure of some
local prominence. Laurier's personal charm and obvious capacity for
politics marked him at once for local leadership. At the age of 30
he was sent to the Quebec legislature as representative of the
constituency of Drummond and Arthabaska; and three years later he
went to Ottawa. The rapid retirement of the Rouge leaders, Dorion
and Fournier to the bench and Letellier to the lieutenant-governorship
of Quebec, opened the way for early promotion, and in 1877
he entered the cabinet of Alex. Mackenzie and assumed at the
same time the leadership of the French Liberals. Defeated in
Drummond-Arthabaska upon seeking re-election he was taken to its
heart by Quebec East and continued to represent that constituency
for an unbroken period of forty years. He went out of office with
Mackenzie in 1878, and thereafter his career which had begun so
promisingly dwindled almost to extinction until the events already
noted called him back to the lists and opened for him the doors of
opportunity.
When Wilfrid Laurier went to Montreal in 1861 he began the study of
law in the office of Rodolphe Laflamme, a leading figure in the
Rouge political group; and he joined L'Institut Canadien already far
advanced in the struggle with the church which was later to result
in open warfare. Those two acts revealed his political affiliations
and fixed the environment in which he was to move during the plastic
twenties. Ten years had passed since a group of ardent young men,
infected with the principles and enthusiasm of 1848, of which
Papineau returning from exile in Paris was the apostle, had stormed
the constituencies of Lower Canada and had appeared in the
parliament of Canada as a radical, free-thinking, ultra-Democratic
party, bearing proudly the badge of "Rouge"; and the passage of time
was beginning to temper their views with a tinge of sobriety. The
church, however, had them all in her black books and Bishop Bourget,
that incomparable zealot and bigot, was determined to destroy them
politically and spiritually, to whip them into submission. The
struggle raged chiefly in the sixties about L'Institut Canadien,
frowned upon by the church because it had books in its library which
were banned by the Index and because it afforded a free forum for
discussion. When Confederation cut the legislative connection
between Upper and Lower Canada the church felt itself free to
proceed to extremes in the Catholic province of Quebec and embarked
upon that campaign of political proscription which ultimately
reached a point where even the Rome of Pius IX. felt it necessary to
intervene.
In this great battle for political and intellectual freedom the
young Laurier played his part manfully. He boldly joined L'Institut
Canadien, though it lay under the shadow of Bishop Bourget's
minatory pastoral; and became an active member and officer. He was
one of a committee which tried unavailingly to effect an
understanding with Bishop Bourget. When he left Montreal in 1866 he
was first vice-president of the Institute. His native caution and
prudence and his natural bent towards moderation and accommodation
enabled him to play a great and growing, though non-spectacular,
part in the struggle against the church's pretensions. As his
authority grew in the party he discouraged the excesses in theory
and speech which invited the Episcopal thunders; even in his
earliest days his radicalism was of a decidedly Whiggish type and
his political color was several shades milder than the fiery red of
Papineau, Dorion and Laflamme. Under his guidance the Rouge party
was to be transformed in outlook, mentality and convictions into
something very different indeed; but this was still far in the
future. But towards the church's pretensions to control the
political convictions of its adherents he presented an unyielding
front. On the eve of his assumption of the leadership of the French
Liberals he discussed at Quebec, June 1877, the question of the
political relations between church and state and the rights of the
individual in one of his most notable addresses. In this he
vindicated, with eloquence and courage, the right of the individual
to be both Catholic and Liberal, and challenged the policy of
clerical intimidation which had made the leaders of the church
nothing but the tools and chore-boys of Hector Langevin, the Tory
leader in the province. It may rightly be assumed that it was
something more than a coincidence that not long after the delivery
of this speech, Rome put a bit in the mouth of the champing Quebec
ecclesiastics. This remained Laurier's most solid achievement up to
the time when he was called to the leadership of the Dominion
Liberal party.
DOUBTS AND HESITATIONS
Laurier's accession to leadership caused doubt and heart-burnings
among the leaders of Ontario Liberalism. Still under the influence
of the Geo. Brown tradition of suspicion of Quebec they felt uneasy
at the transfer of the sceptre to Laurier, French by inheritance,
Catholic in religion, with a political experience derived from
dealing with the feelings, ambitions and prejudices of a province
which was to them an unknown world. Part of the doubt arose from
misconception of the qualities of Laurier. As a hard-bitten, time-worn
party fighter, with an experience going back to pre-confederation
days, said to the writer: "Laurier will never make a leader; he has
not enough of the devil in him." This meant, in the brisk terminology
of to-day, that he could not deliver the rough stuff. This doubter
and his fellows had yet to learn that the flashing rapier in the
hands of the swordsman makes a completer and far less messy job than
the bludgeon; and that there is in politics room for the delicate
art of jiu-jitsu. Further, the Ontario mind was under the sway of
that singular misconception, so common to Britishers, that a
Frenchman by temperament is gay, romantic, inconsequent, with few
reserves of will and perseverance. Whereas the good French mind is
about the coolest, clearest, least emotional instrument of the kind
that there is. The courtesy, grace, charm, literary and artistic
ability that go with it are merely accessories; they are the
feathers on the arrow that help it in its flight from the twanging
bow-cord to the bull's-eye. Laurier's mind was typically French with
something also Italianate about it, an inheritance perhaps from the
long-dead Savoyard ancestor who brought the name to this continent.
Later when Laurier had proved his quality and held firmly in his
hands the reins of power, the fatuous Ontario Liberal explained him
as that phenomenon, a man of pure French ancestry who was
spiritually an Englishman--this conclusion being drawn from the fact
that upon occasion the names of Charles James Fox and Gladstone came
trippingly from his tongue. The new relationship between the
Liberals and Laurier was entered upon with obvious hesitation on the
part of many of the former and by apparent diffidence by the latter.
It may be that the conditional acceptance and the proffered
resignation at call were tactical movements really intended by
Laurier to buttress his position as leader, as most assuredly his
frequent suggestions of a readiness or intention to retire during
the last few years of his leadership were. But, whatever the
uncertainties of the moment, they soon passed. Laurier at once
showed capacities which the Liberals had never before known in a
leader. The long story of Liberal sterility and ineffectiveness from
the middle of the last century to almost its close is the story of
the political incapacity of its successive leaders, a demonstration
of the unfitness of men with the emotional equipment of the
pamphleteer, crusader and agitator for the difficult business of
party management. The party sensed almost immediately the difference
in the quality of the new leadership; and liked it. Laurier's powers
of personal charm completed the "consolidation of his position," and
by the early nineties the Presbyterian Grits of Ontario were
swearing by him. When Blake, after two or three years of nursing his
wounds in retirement, began to think it was time to resume the
business of leading the Liberals, he found everywhere invisible
barriers blocking his return. Laurier was, he found, a different
proposition from Mackenzie; and there was nothing for it but to
return to his tent and take farewell of his constituents in that
tale of lamentations, the West Durham letter. The new regime, the
new leadership, did not bring results at once. The party experienced
a succession of unexpected and unforeseen misfortunes that almost
made Laurier superstitious. "Tell me," he wrote to his friend Henri
Beaugrand, in August, 1891, "whether there is not some fatality
pursuing our party." In the election of 1891 not even the
theatricality of Sir John Macdonald's last appeal nor the untrue
claim by the government that it was about, itself, to secure a
reciprocal trade arrangement with Washington, could have robbed the
Liberals of a triumph which seemed certain; it was the opportune
revelation, through the stealing of proofs from a printing office,
that Edward Farrer, one of the Globe editors, favored political
union with the United States, that gave victory into the hands of
the Conservatives. But their relatively narrow majority would not
have kept them in office a year in view of the death of Sir John A.
Macdonald in June, 1891, and the stunning blows given the government
by the "scandal session" of 1891, had it not been for two disasters
which overtook the Liberals: The publication of Blake's letter and
the revelation of the rascalities of the Mercier regime. Perhaps of
the two blows, that delivered by Blake was the more disastrous. The
letter was the message of an oracle. It required an interpretation
which the oracle refused to supply; and in its absence the people
regarded it as implying a belief by Blake that annexation was the
logical sequel to the Liberal policy of unrestricted reciprocity.
The result was seen in the by-election campaign of 1892 when the
Liberals lost seat after seat in Ontario, and the government
majority mounted to figures which suggested that the party, despite
the loss of Sir John, was as strong as ever. The Tories were in the
seventh heaven of delight. With the Liberals broken, humiliated and
discouraged, and a young and vigorous pilot, in the person of Sir
John Thompson, at the helm, they saw a long and happy voyage before
them. Never were appearances more illusory, for the cloud was
already in the sky from which were to come storm, tempest and
ruinous over-throw.
THE TACTICS OF VICTORY
The story of the Manitoba school question and the political struggle
which centred around it, as told by Prof. Skelton, is bald and
colorless; it gives little sense of the atmosphere of one of the
most electrical periods in our history. The sequelae of the Riel
agitation, with its stirring up of race feeling, included the Jesuit
Estates controversy in parliament, the Equal Rights movement in
Ontario, the attack upon the use of the French language in the
legislature of the Northwest Territories and the establishment of a
system of National schools in Manitoba through the repeal of the
existing school law, which had been modelled upon the Quebec law and
was intended to perpetuate the double-barrelled system in vogue in
that province. The issue created by the Manitoba legislation
projected itself at once into the federal field to the evident
consternation of the Dominion government. It parried the demand for
disallowance of the provincial statute by an engagement to defray
the cost of litigation challenging the validity of the law. When the
Privy Council, reversing the judgment of the Supreme Court, found
that the law was valid because it did not prejudicially affect
rights held prior to or at the time of union, the government was
faced with a demand that it intervene by virtue of the provisions in
the British North America act, which gave the Dominion parliament
the power to enact remedial educational legislation overriding
provincial enactments in certain circumstances. Again it took refuge
in the courts. The Supreme Court of Canada held that under the
circumstances the power to intervene did not exist; and the
government breathed easier. Again the Privy Council reversed the
judgment of the Supreme Court and held that because the Manitoba law
prejudicially affected educational privileges enjoyed by the
minority after union there was a right of intervention. The last
defence of the Dominion government against being forced to make a
decision was broken down; in the language of to-day, it was up
against it. And the man who might have saved the party by inducing
the bishops of the Catholic church to moderate their demands was
gone, for Sir John Thompson died in Windsor Castle in December,
1894, one month before the Privy Council handed down its fateful
decision. Sir John was a faithful son of the church, with an immense
influence with the clerical authorities; he was succeeded in the
premiership by Sir Mackenzie Bowell, ex-grand master of the Orange
Order. The bishops moved on Ottawa and demanded action.
There ensued a duel in tactics between the two parties, intensely
interesting in character and in its results surprising, at least for
some people. The parties to the struggle which now proceeded to
convulse Canada were the government of Manitoba, the author of the
law in question, the Roman Catholic hierarchy in their capacity of
guardians and champions of the Manitoba minority, and the two
Dominion political parties. The bishops were in deadly earnest in
attack; so was the Manitoba government in defence; but with the
others the interest was purely tactical. How best to set the sails
to catch the veering winds and blustering gusts to win the race, the
prize for which was the government of Canada? The Conservatives had
the right of initiative--did it give them the advantage? They
thought so; and so did most of the Liberal generals who were mostly
in a blue funk during the year 1895 in anticipation of the hole into
which the government was going to place them. But there was at least
one Liberal tactician who knew better.
The Conservatives decided upon a line of action which seemed to them
to have the maximum of advantage. They would go in for remedial
legislation. In the English provinces they would say that they did
this reluctantly as good, loyal, law-abiding citizens obeying the
order of the Queen delivered through the Privy Council. From their
experiences with the electors they had good reason to believe that
this buncombe would go down. But in Quebec they would pose as the
defenders of the oppressed, loyal co-operators with the bishops in
rebuking, subduing and chaining the Manitoba tyrants. Obviously they
would carry the province; if Laurier opposed their legislation they
would sweep the province and he would be left without a shred of the
particular support which was supposed to be his special contribution
to a Liberal victory. The calculation looked good to the
Conservatives; also to most of the Liberals. As one Liberal veteran
put it in 1895: "If we vote against remedial legislation we shall be
lost, hook, line and sinker." But there was one Liberal who thought
differently.
His name was J. Israel Tarte. Tarte was in office an impossibility;
power went to his head like strong wine and destroyed him. But he
was the man whose mind conceived, and whose will executed, the
Napoleonic stroke of tactics which crumpled up the Conservative army
in 1896 and put it in the hole which had been dug for the Liberals.
On the day in March, 1895, when the Dominion government issued its
truculent and imperious remedial order, Tarte said to the present
writer: "The government is in the den of lions; if only Greenway
will now shut the door." At that early day he saw with a clearness
of vision that was never afterwards clouded, the tactics that meant
victory: "Make the party policy suit the campaign in the other
provinces; leave Quebec to Laurier and me." He foresaw that the
issue in Quebec would not be made by the government nor by the
bishops; it would be whether the French-Canadians, whose imagination
and affections had already been captured by Laurier, would or would
not vote to put their great man in the chair of the prime minister
of Canada. All through the winter and spring of 1895 Tarte was
sinking test wells in Quebec public opinion with one uniform result.
The issue was Laurier. So the policy was formulated of marking time
until the government was irretrievably committed to remedial
legislation; then the Liberals as a solid body were to throw
themselves against it. So Laurier and the Liberal party retired
within the lines of Torres Vedras and bided their time.
But Tarte had no end of trouble in keeping the party to the path
marked out. The fainthearts of the other provinces could not keep
from their minds the haunting fear that the road they were marching
along led to a morass. They wanted a go-as-you please policy by
which each section of the party could make its own appeal to local
feeling. Laurier was never more indecisive than in the war councils
in which these questions of party policy were fought over. And with
good reason. His sympathy and his judgment were with Tarte but he
feared to declare himself too pronouncedly. The foundation stone of
Tarte's policy was a belief in the overwhelming potency of Laurier's
name in Quebec; Laurier was naturally somewhat reluctant to put his
own stock so high. He had not yet come to believe implicitly in his
star. Within forty-eight hours of the time when Laurier made his
speech moving the six months' hoist to the Remedial bill, a group of
Liberal sub-chiefs from the English provinces made a resolute
attempt to vary the policy determined upon. Their bright idea was
that Clarke Wallace, the seceding cabinet minister and Orange
leader, should move the six months' hoist; this would enable the
Liberals to divide, some voting for it and some against it. But the
bold idea won. With Laurier's speech of March 3, 1896, the death-blow
was given to the Conservative administration and the door to
office and power opened to the Liberals.
The campaign absolutely vindicated the tactical foresight of Tarte.
A good deal might be said about that campaign if space were
available. But one or two features of it may be noted. In the
English provinces great play was made with Father Lacombe's minatory
letter to Laurier, sent while the issue was trembling in the balance
in parliament: "If the government . . is beaten . . I inform you
with regret that the episcopacy, like one man, united with the
clergy, will rise to support those who may have fallen in defending
us." In his Reminiscences, Sir John Willison speculates as to how
this letter, so detrimental to the government in Ontario, got itself
published. Professor Skelton says boldly that it was "made public
through ecclesiastical channels." It would be interesting to know
his authority for this statement. The writer of this article says it
was published as the result of a calculated indiscretion by the
Liberal board of strategy. As it was through his agency that
publication of the letter was sought and secured, it will be agreed
that he speaks with knowledge. It does not, of course, follow that
Laurier was a party to its publication.
The campaign of 1896 was on both sides lively, violent and
unscrupulous. The Conservatives had two sets of arguments; and so
had the Liberals. Those of us who watched the campaign in Quebec at
close range know that not much was said there by the Liberals about
the high crime of coercing a province. Instead, stress was laid upon
the futility and inadequacy of the proposed remedial legislation;
upon the high probability that more could be got for the minority by
negotiation; upon the suggestion that, negotiation failing, remedial
legislation that would really accomplish something could still be
invoked. This argument, plus the magic of Laurier's personality and
Tarte's organizing genius, did the business. Futile the sniping of
the curés; vain the broadsides of the bishops; empty the thunders of
the church! Quebec went to the polls and voted for Laurier.
Elsewhere the government just about held its own despite the burden
of its remedial policy; but it was buried under the Quebec
avalanche. The Liberals took office sustained by the 33 majority
from the province which had once been the citadel of political
Conservatism.
"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings;
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures."
PART TWO. LAURIER AND EMPIRE RELATIONSHIPS
WILFRID Laurier was Prime Minister of Canada from July 9, 1896, to
October 6, 1911, fifteen years and three months, which, for the
Dominion, is a record. Sir John Macdonald was Premier of the
Dominion of Canada for over nineteen years, but this covered two
terms separated by five years of Liberal rule.
The theory of government by party is that the two parties are
complementary instruments of government; by periodic interchanges of
position they keep the administration of the country efficient and
progressive. The complete acceptance of this view would imply a
readiness upon the part of a party growing stale to facilitate the
incoming of the required alternative administration, but no such
phenomenon in politics has ever been observed. Parties, in reality,
are organized states within the state. They have their own dynasties
and hierarchies; and their reason for existence is to clothe
themselves with the powers, functions and glory of the state which
they control. Their desire is for absolute and continuing control to
which they come to think they have a prescriptive right; and they
never leave office without a sense of outrage. There never yet was a
party ejected from office which did not feel pretty much as the
Stuarts did when they lost the throne of England; the incoming
administration is invariably regarded by them in the light of
usurpers. This was very much the case with the Conservatives after
1896; and the Liberals had the same feeling after 1911, that they
had been robbed, as they deemed, of their rightful heritage. Parties
are not, as their philosophers claim, servants of the state
co-operating in its service; their real desire is the mastery of the
state and the brooking of no opposition or rivalship. Nevertheless
the people by a sure instinct compel a change in administration
every now and then; but they move so slowly that a government well
entrenched in office can usually outstay its welcome by one term of
office. The Laurier administration covering a full period of fifteen
years illustrates the operation of this political tendency. The
government came in with the good wishes of the people and for nearly
ten years went on from strength to strength, carrying out an
extensive and well-considered domestic programme; then its strength
began to wane and its vigor to relax. Its last few years were given
up to a struggle against the inevitable fate that was visibly rising
like a tide; and the great stroke of reciprocity which was attempted
in 1911 was not nearly so much a belated attempt to give effect to a
party principle as it was a desperate expedient by an ageing
administration to stave off dissolution. The Laurier government died
in 1911, not so much from the assaults of its enemies as from
hardening of its arteries and from old age. Its hour had struck in
keeping with the law of political change. Upon any reasonable survey
of the circumstances it would be held that Laurier was fortunate
beyond most party leaders in his premiership--in its length, in the
measure of public confidence which he held over so long a period, in
the affection which he inspired in his immediate following, and for
the opportunities it gave him for putting his policies into
operation.
Viewed in retrospect most of the domestic occurrences of the Laurier
regime lose their importance as the years recede; it will owe its
place in Canadian political history to one or two achievements of
note. Laurier's chief claim to an enduring personal fame will rest
less upon his domestic performances than upon the contribution he
made towards the solution of the problem of imperial relations. The
examination of his record as a party leader in the prime minister's
chair can be postponed while consideration is given to the great
services he rendered the cause of imperial and international
Liberalism as Canada's spokesman in the series of imperial
conferences held during his premiership.
Laurier, up to the moment of his accession to the Liberal
leadership, had probably given little thought to the question of
Canada's relationship to the empire. Blake knew something about the
intricacies of the question. His Aurora speech showed that as early
as 1874 he was beginning to regard critically our status of
colonialism as something which could not last; and while he was
minister of justice in the Mackenzie ministration he won two notable
victories over the centralizing tendencies of the colonial office.
But Laurier had never been brought into touch with the issue; and
when, after assuming the Liberal leadership, he found it necessary
to deal with it, he spoke what was probably the belief latent in
most of the minds of his compatriots: acceptance of colonial status
with the theoretical belief that some time, so far distant as not to
be a matter of political concern, this status would give way to one
of independence. "The day is coming," he said in Montreal in 1890,
"when this country will have to take its place among the nations of
the earth. ... I want my country's independence to be reached
through the normal and regular progress of all the elements of its
populations toward the realization of a common aspiration." Looking
forward to the issues about which it would be necessary for him to
have policies, it is not probable that he put the question of
imperial relationships very high. Certainly he had no idea that it
would be in dealing with this matter that he would reveal his
qualities at their highest and lay the surest foundation for his
fame.
In 1890 Laurier, as we have seen, believed the Canadian future was
to be that of colonialism for an indefinite period and then
independence. In 1911, the year he left office, in a letter to a
friend he said: "We are making for a harbor which was not the harbor
I foresaw twenty-five years ago, but it is a good harbor. It will
not be the end. Exactly what the course will be I cannot tell, but I
think I know the general bearing and I am content." The change in
view indicated by these words is thus expounded by Professor
Skelton: "The conception of Canada's status which Sir Wilfrid
developed in his later years of office was that of a nation within
the empire." But between the two quoted declarations there lay
twenty-one years of time, fifteen years of prime ministership and
the experiences derived from attendance at four imperial conferences
in succession--another record set by Laurier not likely ever to be
repeated.
THE IMPERIALIST DRIVE
Laurier's imperial policies were forged in the fire. He took to
London upon the occasion of each conference a fairly just
appreciation of what was politically achievable and what was not,
and there he was put to the test of refusing to be stampeded into
practicable courses. Professor Skelton records two enlightening
conversations with Laurier dealing with the difficulties in which
the colonial representatives in attendance at these gatherings found
themselves. Said Sir Wilfrid:
"One felt the incessant and unrelenting organization of an
imperialist campaign. We were looked upon, not so much as individual
men, but abstractly as colonial statesmen, to be impressed and
hobbled. The Englishman is as businesslike in his politics,
particularly his external politics, as in business, even if he
covers his purposefulness with an air of polite indifference. Once
convinced that the colonies were worth keeping, he bent to the work
of drawing them closer within the orbit of London with marvelous
skill and persistence. In this campaign, which no one could
appreciate until he had been in the thick of it, social pressure is
the subtlest and most effective force. In 1897 and 1902 it was Mr.
Chamberlain's personal insistence that was strongest, but in 1907
and after, society pressure was the chief force. It is hard to stand
up against the flattery of a gracious duchess. Weak men's heads are
turned in an evening, and there are few who can resist long. We were
dined and wined by royalty and aristocracy and plutocracy and always
the talk was of empire, empire, empire. I said to Deakin in 1907
that this was one reason why we could not have a parliament or
council in London; we can talk cabinet to cabinet, but cannot send
Canadians or Australians as permanent residents to London, to debate
and act on their own discretion."
Still more enlightening is this observation:
"Sir Joseph Ward was given prominence in 1911 through the exigencies
of imperialist politics. At each imperial conference some colonial
leader was put forward by the imperialists to champion their cause.
In 1897 it was obvious that they looked to me to act the bell-wether,
but I fear they were disappointed. In 1902 it was Seddon; in 1907,
Deakin; in 1911, Ward. He had not Deakin's ability or Seddon's
force. His London friends stuffed him for his conference speeches;
he came each day with a carefully typewritten speech, but when once
off that, he was at sea."
What was the intention of this "unrelenting imperialist campaign"?
It took many forms, wore many disguises, but in its secret purposes
it was unchangeable and unwearying. It was a conscious, determined
attempt to recover what Disraeli lamented that Great Britain had
thrown away. Twenty years after Disraeli had referred to the
colonies as "wretched millstones hung about our neck," he changed
his mind and in 1872 he made an address as to the proper relations
between the Mother Land and the colonies which is the very
corner-stone of imperialistic doctrine. His declaration was in these
words:
"Self-government, in my opinion, when it was conceded, ought to have
been conceded as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation.
It ought to have been accompanied by an imperial tariff; by
securities for the people of England for the enjoyment of the
unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as their
trustee; and by a military code which should have precisely defined
the means, and the responsibilities, by which the colonies should be
defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for
aid from the colonies themselves. It ought, further, to have been
accompanied by the institution of some representative council in the
metropolis, which would have brought the colonies into constant and
continuous relations with the home government."
From the day Disraeli uttered these words down to this present time
there has been a persistent, continuous, well-financed and
resourceful movement looking towards the establishment in London of
some kind of a central governing body--parliament, council, cabinet,
call it what you will--which will determine the foreign policies of
the British Empire and command in their support the military and
naval potentialities of all the dominions and dependencies. It fell
to Laurier to hold the pass against this movement; and this he did
for fifteen years with patience, sagacity and imperturbable firmness
against the enraged and embattled imperialists, both of England and
Canada. Laurier, in the comment quoted above, said that in 1897 the
imperialists had looked to him to act as the bell-wether. They had
good reason to be hopeful about his usefulness to them. The imperial
preference just enacted by the Canadian parliament had been hailed
both in Canada and Great Britain as a great concession to
imperialistic sentiment, whereas it was in reality an exceedingly
astute stroke of domestic politics by which the government lowered
the tariff and at the same time spiked the guns of the high
protectionists. In 1897, when Laurier first went to England, the
imperial movement was at its crescent, synchronous with the great
welling up of sentiment and reverence called forth by the Diamond
Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Strachey has a penetrating word about the
strength which Queen Victoria's "final years of apotheosis" brought
to the imperialistic movement:
"The imperialist temper of the nation invested her office with a new
significance exactly harmonizing with her own inmost proclivities.
The English policy was in the main a common-sense structure; but
there was always a corner in it where common-sense could not enter.
. . . Naturally it was in the crown that the mysticism of the
English polity was concentrated--the crown with its venerable
antiquity, its sacred associations, its imposing spectacular array.
But, for nearly two centuries, common-sense had been predominant in
the great building and the little, unexplored, inexplicable corner
had attracted small attention. Then with the rise of imperialism
there was a change. For imperialism is a faith as well as a
business; as it grew the mysticism in English public life grew with
it and simultaneously a new importance began to attach to the crown.
The need for a symbol--a symbol of England's might, of England's
worth, of England's extraordinary mystical destiny--became felt more
urgently than before. The crown was the symbol and the crown rested
upon the head of Victoria."
To be translated from the humdrum life of Ottawa to a foremost place
in the vast pageantry of the Diamond Jubilee, there to be showered
with a wealth of tactful and complimentary personal attentions was
rather too much for Laurier. The oratorical possibilities of the
occasion took him into camp; and in a succession of speeches he gave
it as his view that the most entrancing future for Canada was one in
which she should be represented in the imperial parliament sitting
in Westminster. "It would be," he told the National Liberal club,
"the proudest moment of my life if I could see a Canadian of French
descent affirming the principles of freedom in the parliament of
Great Britain." This, of course, was nothing but the abandonment of
the orator to the rhetorical possibilities of the situation. Under
the impulse of these emotions he fell an easy victim to the
conspiracy of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Strathcona (of which he later
made complaint) by which the "democrat to the hilt" (as Laurier had
proclaimed himself but a short time earlier when he had been given
prematurely the knightly title at a public function) was transmuted
into Sir Wilfrid Laurier. It was, therefore, not without apparent
reason that the imperialists thought that they had captured for
their own this new romantic and appealing figure from the premier
British dominion. But when the imperial conference met, Mr.
Chamberlain, as colonial secretary, encountered not the orator
intent on captivating his audience, but the cool, cautious statesman
thinking of the folks at home. When the proposition for the
establishment of an imperial council was made by Mr. Chamberlain it
was deftly shelved by a declaration which stated that in the view of
the colonial prime ministers "the present political relations are
generally satisfactory under existing conditions." The wording is
suggestive of Laurier, though it is not known that he drafted the
statement. The skilful suspension of the issue without meeting it
was certainly the tactics with which he met and blocked, in
succeeding conferences, all attempts by the imperialists to give
practical effect to their doctrine.
FIFTEEN YEARS OF SAYING "NO"
The role which Laurier had to play in the successive conferences was
not one agreeable to his temperament. It gave no opening for his
talent. It supplied no opportunities for the making of the kind of
speeches at which he was a master. It kept him from the centre of
the stage, a position which Sir Wilfrid Laurier had no objection to
occupying. It obliged him to courses which, in the setting in which
he found himself, must at times have seemed ungracious, and this
must have been a trial to a nature so courtly and considerate. To
the successive proposals that came before the conference, togged out
in all the gorgeous garb of Imperialism, he was unable to offer
constructive alternatives; for his political sense warned him that
it was twenty years too soon to suggest propositions embodying his
conception of the true relations of the British nations to one
another. There was nothing to do but to block all suggestions of
organic change designed to strengthen the centralizing of power and
to await the development of a national spirit in Canada to the point
where it would afford backing for a movement in the opposite
direction. So Laurier had to look pleasant and keep on saying no. To
Mr. Chamberlain's proposal in 1897 "to create a great council of the
Empire," No. To the proposal made at the same time for a Canadian
money contribution to the navy, No. To these propositions and others
of like tenor urged in 1902 by Mr. Chamberlain with all his
persuasive masterfulness, No. No naval subsidy because it "would
entail an important departure from the principle of Colonial
self-government." No special military force in the Dominion
available for service overseas because it "derogated from the powers
of self-government." To the Pollock-Lyttleton suggestion of a
Council of advice or a permanent "secretariat" for an "Imperial
Council," No, because it "might eventually come to be regarded as an
encroachment upon the full measure of autonomous, legislative and
administrative power now enjoyed by all the self-governing powers."
Sir Wilfrid's policy was not, however, wholly negative, for he was
mainly responsible for the formal change in 1907 in the character of
the periodical conferences. The earlier conferences were between the
secretary of state and representatives of "the self-governing
colonies." They were colonial conferences in fact and in name--a
fact egregiously pictured to the eye in the famous photograph of the
conference of 1897, revealing Mr. Chamberlain complacently seated,
with 15 colonial representatives grouped about him in standing
postures. In 1907 the conference became one between governments
under the formal title of imperial conference, with the prime
minister the official chairman, as primus inter pares. It was the
first exemplification of the new theory of equality.
The change of government in Great Britain in 1905 must have brought
to Sir Wilfrid a profound sense of relief; it was no longer
necessary to rest upon his armor night and day. Not that the
Imperialist drive ceased but it no longer found its starting point
and rallying place in the Colonial office. The centralists operated
from without, looking about for someone to put forward their ideas,
as in 1911 when they took possession of Sir Joseph Ward, New
Zealand's vain and ambitious Prime Minister, and induced him to
introduce their half-baked schemes into the Conference. He and they
were suppressed by universal consent, Sir Wilfrid simply lending a
hand. Sir Wilfrid's refusal at this conference to join Australia and
other Dominions in a demand that they be consulted by the British
government in matters of foreign policy seemed to many out of
harmony with the Imperial policies which he had been pursuing. Mr.
Asquith at this conference declared that Great Britain could not
share foreign policy with the Dominions; and Sir Wilfrid declared
that Canada did not want to share this responsibility with the
British government. Seemingly Sir Wilfrid thus accepted, despite his
repeated claim that Canada was a nation, a subordinate relation to
Great Britain in the field of foreign relations which is the real
test of nationhood. In fact, however, this was the crowning
manifestation of his wariness and far-sightedness. He realized in
1911 what is only now beginning to be understood by public men who
succeeded to his high office, that a method of consultation
obviously defective and carrying with it in reality no suspensory or
veto power, involves by indirection the adoption of that very
centralizing system which it had been his purpose to block. If, Sir
Wilfrid said, Dominions gave advice they must be prepared to back it
with all their strength; yet "we have taken the position in Canada
that we do not think we are bound to take part in every war." He saw
in 1911 as clearly as Lloyd George did in 1921 (as witness the
latter's statement to the House of Commons in that year on the Irish
treaty) that the policy of consultation gave the Dominions a shadowy
and unreal power; but imposed upon them a responsibility, serious
and inescapable. He thus felt himself obliged to discourage the
procedure suggested by Premier Fisher of Australia, even though, to
the superficial observer, this involved him in the contradiction of,
at the same time, exalting and depreciating the status of his
country.
LAURIER'S VIEW OF CANADA'S FUTURE
What conception was there in Laurier's mind as to the right future
for Canada? He revealed it pretty clearly on several occasions;
notably in 1908 in a tercentenary address at Quebec in the presence
of the present King, when he said: "We are reaching the day when our
parliament will claim co-equal rights with the British parliament
and when the only ties binding us together will be a common flag and
a common crown." He was equally explicit two years later when,
addressing the Ontario club in Toronto, he said: "We are under the
suzerainty of the King of England. We are his loyal subjects. We bow
the knee to him. But the King of England has no more rights over us
than are allowed him by our own Canadian parliament. If this is not
a nation, what then is a nation?" Laurier looked forward to the
complete enfranchisement of Canada as a nation under the British
Crown, with a status of complete equality with Great Britain in the
British family. A keen-witted member of the Imperial Conference of
1911, Sir John G. Findlay, Attorney-General for New Zealand, saw the
reality behind the anomalous position which Sir Wilfrid held. "I
recognized," he says, "that Canadian nationalism is beginning to
resent even the appearance--the constitutional forms--of a
sub-ordination to the Mother country." "And," he added, revealing
the clarity of his understanding, "this is not a desire for
separation." But it was not in London that the question of Imperial
relationships presented its most thorny aspect. Laurier could
maintain there a stand-pat, blocking attitude with no more
disagreeable consequences than perhaps a little social chilliness,
the symbolical "gracious duchess" showing a touch of hauteur and
disappointment. It was in the reactions of the issue upon Canadian
politics that Laurier met with his real difficulties. He could not,
by tactics of procrastination or evasion, keep the question out
of the domestic field; the era of abject, passive and unthinking
colonialism was beginning to pass; and the spirit of nationalism was
stirring the sluggish waters of Canadian politics. Sir Wilfrid had
to face the issue and make the best of it. He handled the question
with consummate adroitness and judgment; but ultimately its
complexities baffled him and the Imperialists who wanted everything
done for the Empire and the so-called "Nationalists" of Quebec, who
wanted nothing done, joined forces against him.
THE CANADIAN IMPERIALISTS
It was the Imperialists in the old country and in Canada who gave
the issue no rest; they believed, apparently with good reason, that
a little urgency was all that was needed to make Canada the very
forefront of the drive for the consolidation of the Empire. The
English-speaking Canadians were traditionally and aggressively
British. The basic population in the English provinces was United
Empire Loyalist, which absorbed and colored all later accretions
from the Motherland--an immigration which in its earlier stages was
also largely militarist following the reduction of the army
establishment upon the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. It was
inspired with a traditional hostility to the American republic. The
hereditary devotion to the British Crown, of which Victoria to the
passing generations appeared to be the permanent and unchanging
personification, threw into eclipse the corresponding sentiment in
England. English-speaking Canadians were more British than the
British; they were more loyal than the Queen. One can get an
admirable idea of the state of Ontario feeling in the addresses at
the various U.E. L. celebrations in the year 1884; in both its
resentments and its affections there was something childish and
confiding.
Imperialism, on its sentimental side, was a glorification of the
British race; it was a foreshadowing of the happy time when this
governing and triumphant people would give the world the blessing of
the pax Britannica. "We are not yet," said Ruskin in his inaugural
address, "dissolute in temper but still have the firmness to govern
and the grace to obey." In this address he preached that if England
was not to perish, "she must found colonies as fast and far as she
is able," while for the residents of these colonies "their chief
virtue is to be fidelity to their country (i.e. England) and their
first aim is to be to advance the power of England by land and sea."
Seely got rid of all problems of relationship and of status by
expanding England to take in all the colonies; the British Empire
was to become a single great state on the model of the United
States. "Here, too," he said, "is a great homogeneous people, one
in blood, language, religion and laws, but dispersed over a
boundless space." Such a conception was vastly agreeable to the more
aggressive and assertive among the English Canadians. It kindled
their imagination; from being colonists of no account in the
backwash of the world's affairs, they became integrally a part of a
great Imperial world-wide movement of expansion and domination; were
they not of what Chamberlain called "that proud, persistent,
self-asserting and resolute stock which is infallibly destined to be
the predominating force in the future history and civilization of
the world"? Moreover, it gave them a sense of their special
importance here in Canada where the population was not "homogeneous
in blood, language and religion;" it was for them, they felt, to
direct policy and to control events; to take charge and see that
developments were in keeping with suggestions from headquarters
overseas.
What these Canadian parties to the great Imperial drive thought of
Sir Wilfrid's dilatory, evasive and blocking tactics is not a matter
of surmise. Upon this point they did not practise the fine art of
reticence; and their angry expostulations are to be found in the
pages of Hansard, in the editorial pages of the Conservative press,
in the political literature of the time, in heavy condemnatory
articles which found publication through various mediums. Thus Sir
George Foster could see in Laurier's statements to the Ontario club
nothing but "foolish, even mischievous talk." "If," he added, "they
are merely for the sake of rhetorical adornment they are but
foolish. If, however, they are studied and serious they are
revolutionary." And to the extent that they could they made trouble
for Sir Wilfrid, in which labor of love they were energetically
assisted, upon occasion, by high officials from the other side of
the Atlantic. Laurier had five years of more or less continuous
struggle with Lord Minto, a combination of country squire and heavy
dragoon, who was sent to Canada as governor-general in 1898 to
forward by every means in his power the Chamberlain policies. He
busied himself at once and persistently in trying to induce the
Canadian government to commit itself formally to the policy of
supplying Canadian troops for Imperial wars. In the spring of 1899
he wanted an assurance which would justify the war office in
"reckoning officially" upon Canadian troops "in case of war with a
European power;" in July he urged an offer of troops in the event of
war in South Africa which "would be a proof that the component parts
of the Empire are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder to support
Imperial interests." With the outbreak of the South African war,
Lord Minto regarded himself less as Governor-General than as
Imperial commissioner charged with the vague and shadowy powers
which go with that office; and Sir Wilfrid had, in consequence, to
instruct him on more than one occasion that Canada was still a
self-governing country and not a military satrapy. Professor Skelton
does nothing more than barely allude to these troubles; the story,
which would be most interesting and suggestive, will perhaps never
be told. But some idea of what was afoot can be drawn from the fact
that at a public gathering in Montreal in the month of November,
1899, Lord Minto was advised and instructed by an active politician
and leading lawyer that under his powers as the representative of
Imperial authority he could order the Canadian militia to South
Africa without reference to the Canadian parliament!
Associated with Lord Minto in the applying of Imperial pressure to
the Canadian government was General Hutton, commander of the
Canadian forces. In those days this position was always filled by an
Imperial officer who was given leave of absence in order that he
might fill the position. He was thus a Canadian official, paid out
of the Canadian treasury and subject to the Canadian government; but
few of the occupants of the office were capable of appreciating this
fact. They regarded themselves as representatives of the war office
with large but undefined powers in the exercise of which they
frequently found themselves in conflict with the Canadian
government. General Hutton's interfering activities were so
objectionable that he was got rid of by a face-saving expedient; but
four years later a successor to his office, Lord Dundonald, was
formally dismissed by order-in-council for his "unpardonable
indiscretion" in publicly criticizing the acting minister of
militia. Lord Minto, unofficially advised by military officers and
opposition politicians, resisted signing the order-in-council until
it was made clear to him that the alternative would be a general
election in which the issue would be his refusal. The incident was
conclusive as to the necessity of having a Canadian at the head of
the Canadian forces--a change which was subsequently effected.
These controversies and conflicts of opinion became factors in
Canadian politics. The Conservatives sought in the general elections
of 1900 to make an issue out of the government's hesitation in
taking part in the South African war in advance of the meeting of
parliament; this, plus injudicious and provocative speeches by the
incalculable Mr. Tarte and the general indictment of Laurier as
lukewarm towards the cause of a "united Empire" weakened the
Liberals in Ontario; but this loss was easily off-set by gains
elsewhere. Again in 1904 the Dundonald issue was effective only in
Ontario which, in keeping with what appears to be an instinctive
political process, was beginning to consolidate itself as a
make-weight against the overwhelming predominance of Liberalism in
Quebec. In the 1908 elections the Imperial question was almost
quiescent in the English provinces; but it was beginning to emerge
in a different guise and with aspects distinctly threatening to
Laurier in his own province.
"COLONIALISM INGRAINED AND IMMITIGABLE"
Laurier in resisting the Chamberlain push knew that even English-Canada,
long somnolent under a colonial regime, was not in the mood
to accept the radical innovations that were being planned in
Whitehall; and he knew, still better, that his own people would be
against the programme to a man. The colonialism of the French-Canadians
was immitigable and ingrained. They had secured from the
British parliament in 1774 special immunities and privileges as the
result of Sir Guy Carleton's hallucination that given these the
French-Canadian habitant would assist the British authorities in
chastising the rebellious American colonists into submission. These
privileges, continued and embodied in the act of confederation, were
enjoyed by the French-Canadians--as they believed--by virtue of
Imperial guarantees; they held that they were safe in their
enjoyment only While there was in the last analysis British control
over Canada and while the final judgment on Canadian laws was passed
by British courts. But their colonialism, unlike that of the
English-Canadians, was of a quality that could never be transmuted into
Imperialism. The racial mysticism of that movement repelled them;
and still more they were deterred by the cost and dangers of
Imperialistic adventure. It was for England, in return for their
whole-hearted acceptance of colonial subordination, to protect them
internally against any courses by the English-Canadians which they
might choose to regard as an infringement of their privileged
position and externally against all danger of invasion or conquest.
If Sir Wilfrid had been called upon to choose only between these two
camps he could perhaps have made a choice which would not have been
ultimately a political liability. But the situation was not so
simple. There was a third factor which, alike by inclination and
political necessity, Sir Wilfrid had to take into account. This was
Canadian nationalism, in contrast with the racial nationalism of
which Mr. Bourassa was the apostle. The backing upon which Sir
Wilfrid relied at first to resist the military and naval policies of
the Imperialists was the timidity and reluctances of colonialism;
but he knew that this was at best a temporary expedient. To urgings
that Canada should assist in the upkeep of the Imperial navy by
money contributions and should also maintain special militia forces
available for service in Imperial wars overseas, Sir Wilfrid felt
that some more plausible reply than a brusque refusal was necessary;
and he met them with the contention that Canada must create military
and naval forces for her own defence which would be available for
the wars of the Empire at the discretion of the Canadian parliament.
These views put forward almost tentatively in 1902 ultimately bore
fruit in definite policies of national defence. Thus the answer to
demand for naval contribution, to which policy all the other
Dominions had subscribed, was to declare that Canada should have her
own navy; and this took form, after numerous skirmishes with
admiralty opinion, which was scandalized at the suggestion, in the
Naval Service Bill of 1910.
This course, which was thus urged upon Sir Wilfrid by events, earned
him the displeasure of both the Imperialists and the Little
Canadians. To the former Laurier's policy seemed little short of
treasonable, particularly his insistence that while Canada was at
war when England was at war the extent, if any, of Canada's
participation in such war must be determined solely by the Canadian
parliament. His own countrymen on the other hand viewed with
disquietude these first halting steps along the road of national
preparedness; might it not lead by easy gradations to that "vortex
of militarism" against which Sir Wilfrid had voiced an eloquent
warning? Where there is opinion capable of being exploited against a
government the exploiter soon appears. In Quebec, Monk,
Conservative, and the Nationalist, Bourassa, who entering Parliament
as a follower of Laurier had developed a strong antipathy to him,
were indefatigable in alarming the habitant by interpreting to him
the secret purposes of the naval service bill. It was nothing, they
claimed, but an Imperialistic device by which the Canadian youth
would be dragged from his peaceful fireside to become cannon fodder
in the Empire's wars. Meanwhile in the English provinces, the
government's policy was fiercely attacked as inadequate and verging
upon disloyalty by the Imperialists. The Conservative opposition,
after one virtuous interlude in 1909 when they showed a fleeting
desire to take a non-political and national view of this matter of
defence, could not resist the temptation to profit by the campaign
against the government's policy; and they joined shrilly in the
derisive cry of "tin pot navy." These onslaughts from opposite camps
were a factor in the elections of 1911; especially in Quebec where
twenty-seven constituencies (against eleven in 1908) elected
opponents of Laurier.
POLICIES THAT ENDURE
Sir Wilfrid fell; but his Imperial policies lived. During the
campaign the old country Imperialists had been very busy from
Rudyard Kipling down--or up--in lending aid to the forces fighting
the Liberal government; and its defeat was the occasion for much
rejoicing among them. Mr. A. Bonar Law, M. P., doubtless voiced
their views when he predicted under the incoming regime, "a real
advance towards the organic union of the Empire." All these hopes,
like many which preceded them, were short-lived; for Sir Robert
Borden, once he got his bearings, took over the Laurier policies and
widened them. In that significant fact the clue to these policies is
found. They were not personal to Laurier, owing their coolness
towards perfervid Chamberlainism to his lack of English blood as his
critics held; they were in fact national policies dictated by the
necessities of the times. To the casual student of the development
of Imperial relations for the decade following 1896, it might seem
that the Liberal conception of an Empire evolving steadily into a
league of free nations was only saved from destruction by the
fortunate circumstance that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was during those
years the representative of Canada at successive Imperial
conferences; but this would be, perhaps, to put his services too
high. Canada's public men have never failed her in the critical
times in her history when attempts were made through ignorance or
design to turn her aside from the high road to national sovereignty;
as witness Gait in 1859, Blake in his long duel with Lord Carnarvon,
Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885, when he resisted the premature demand
for a Canadian contingent for service in the Soudan, Tupper in the
early nineties when his vigorous resistance to the proposal that
Canada should pay tribute for protection had something to do with
the demise of the Imperial Federation League. Any man fit to be
premier of Canada would have taken pretty much the position that Sir
Wilfrid did. This does not in the least detract from the credit due
Laurier. The task was his and he discharged it with tact, ability,
patience and courage. For his services in holding their future open
for them every British Dominion owes the memory of Laurier a statue
in its parliament square.
PART THREE. FIFTEEN YEARS OF PREMIERSHIP
There have been prime ministers of Canada casually thrown up by the
tide of events and as casually re-engulfed; but Wilfrid Laurier was
not one of them. There may have been something accidental in his
rise to leadership, but his capture of the premiership was a solid
political achievement. The victory of June 23, 1896, crowned with
triumph the daring strategy of the campaign. But popular opinion
regarded the victory as a gift of the gods. The wheel of fortune
spinning from the hands of fate had thrown into the high office of
the premiership one about whose qualifications there was doubt even
in the secret minds of many of his supporters. He was a man of
charming manners and of gracious personality. His carriage on the
platform and the grace and finish of his speaking had fascinated the
public imagination. But what likelihood was there that these
qualities would enable him to deal adequately with the harsh
realities, the stubborn problems which he must face as premier? Most
unlikely, it was generally agreed. The Conservatives, though
profoundly chagrined at the trick fate had played upon them, looked
forward with pleasurable expectation to the revenge that would be
theirs when Laurier, political dilettante and amateur, took up the
burden that had been too great for their own Ulysses. They foresaw a
Laurier regime which for futility and brevity would take its place
in history with the ill-starred prime ministership of Mackenzie. The
average Liberal felt that the government, which would get its
driving force and executive power from someone else--identity not
yet revealed--would have in Laurier a most attractive and genial
figurehead. These illusions long persisted, though there was little
excuse for them on election night and still less a month later when
the Laurier cabinet was in being.
To be a Rouge and to be in Montreal during the three weeks following
the glorious 23rd of June was the height of felicity. After nearly
50 years of proscription and impotence in their own province, they
were triumphant and dominant. Moreover, since they had supplied the
majority which made possible the taking of office by the Liberals,
they would be triumphant and dominant as well in the Dominion field.
Among the election occurrences which they regarded as specially
providential was the defeat of Tarte in Beauharnois. If he had been
elected it might have been necessary for Laurier to do something for
him, but now that he had fallen upon the glacis of the impregnable
fortress he had elected to assail, who were they to repine over the
doings of fate? "The Moor has done his work; the Moor can go!"
Moreover, had he not been for long an inveterate Bleu? Had he not
actually been the organizer of Bleu victory when Laurier experienced
his memorable defeat in Drummond-Arthabaska in 1877? His defeat made
it possible to have a simon-pure Rouge contingent from Quebec.
While they were thus indulging in roseate day-dreams the actual
business of cabinetmaking was going forward, with Tarte at Laurier's
right hand as chief adviser from Quebec. The writer has a very clear
recollection of a long conversation which he had at that time with
Tarte. Much of it was given up to picturesque and forthright
denunciation by Tarte of the means by which he had been defeated in
Beauharnois. The mill-owners at Valleyfield, he said, had lined up
their operatives and had given them the option of voting for
Bergeron or getting out. The worth to a country of an industrial
system which makes political serfs of its workmen was vigorously
challenged in language which had little resemblance to the harangues
which led to Tarte's undoing six years later. From this he went on
to speak of Laurier's qualities and the amazing ignorance of them
shown even by his intimates of his own race. There had been much
speculation in Montreal as to who should be the new high
commissioner for Canada in London. Sir Donald A. Smith, who had been
appointed in the last weeks of Conservative rule, would be, it was
assumed, dismissed. Tarte scouted the idea that Smith would be
disturbed. Laurier was not that kind of a man. He would not dismiss
Smith; he would make friends with him. Sir Donald was a man of
affairs, and so was Laurier; they would co-operate with one another.
"These people do not understand Laurier; he has a governing mind; he
wants to do things; he has plans; he will walk the great way of life
with anyone of good intention who will join him." With much more to
the same effect. To Tarte, who was his intimate, Laurier at this
moment did not appear as one overcome with his destiny and drifting
with the tide, but as the resolute captain of the ship, who knew
where he wanted to go, had a fairly clear idea as to how to get
there, and also knew whom he wanted with him on the voyage. Later on
Tarte forgot about this.
THE MAKING OF THE GOVERNMENT
There was verification of Tarte's estimate in the job of cabinet-making
turned out by Laurier in July. In building the government the
lines of least resistance were not followed. A dozen men who deemed
themselves sure of cabinet rank found themselves overlooked; five of
fifteen portfolios went to men imported from provincial arenas
without Dominion parliamentary experience. Laurier knew the kind of
government he wanted and he provided himself with such a government
by the direct method of getting the colleagues he desired wherever
he could find them. No doubt he found plenty of employment for his
sunny ways in placating his disappointed colleagues. In time there
were consolation prizes for all, for this one a judgeship, for that
one a lieutenant-governorship, for the next a life seat in the
senate; the phalanx of fighting second-raters who had done valuable
work in opposition, reinforcing and buttressing the work of the
front benches disappeared gradually from parliament. And with those
he chose he too had his way, as witness the side-tracking of Sir
Richard Cartwright to the dignified but at the time relatively
unimportant department of trade and commerce. Between Sir Richard
and the Canadian manufacturers there was a blood feud. It was not
Sir Wilfrid's intention to make the feud his own or even to agree to
it being carried on by Sir Richard. He took for minister of finance,
W. S. Fielding, who justified his choice by successfully steering
the budget bark between Scylla and Charybdis for fourteen years in
succession before the whirlpool finally sucked him down. Where
Laurier went outside his following for colleagues he had equally
definite ends to serve.