IN OPPOSITION, 1878-1887
The party leadership--Tariff and railway--Dominion and province--The
second Riel rebellion
In the general election of September 1878 the Liberal party suffered
not merely defeat but utter and overwhelming rout, as unexpected and
disastrous as a tropical earthquake. Only five years before, Mackenzie
had been swept into power on a wave of moral indignation. The
Conservative leaders had appeared hopelessly discredited, and the rank
and file dispirited. Now a wave of economic despair swept the Liberals
out of power. Their majority of two to one in 1873 was reversed by a
Conservative majority of over two to one in 1878. The defeat was not
local: every province except New Brunswick went against Mackenzie.
Edward Blake, Richard Cartwright, Alfred G. Jones, and other stalwarts
lost their seats, and though Sir John Macdonald suffered the same fate
in Kingston, and though seats were soon found for the fallen leaders,
the blow greatly damaged the prestige of the Liberal party.
{54}
Mackenzie was stunned. To the last he had been confident of victory.
In spite of the warnings of Charlton, Cartwright, Laurier, and others,
he had underestimated the impression which the campaign for protection,
with its lavish promises of work and prosperity for all, made even in
old Liberal strongholds. He could not believe that the people of
Canada would take up the heresies and fallacies which the people of
Great Britain had discarded a generation earlier. He would not believe
that they were prepared to send back to power men found guilty of
corruption only five years before. For these illusions he paid the
penalty, in bitter regrets, in loss of touch with the party, in broken
health, and at last, in April 1880, in resignation of the leadership.
Alexander Mackenzie had deserved well of Canada and of his party; but,
apparently, both wanted more than the dauntless courage and the
unyielding and stainless honour which were all he had to give them.
There was only one possible successor. Edward Blake had for many years
been the choice of a large section of the party in Ontario, and he now
became leader by unanimous vote. The new chief was a man of great
intellectual capacity, of constructive {55} vision, of untiring
thoroughness and industry. He stood easily at the head of the bar in
Canada. His short term of office as prime minister of Ontario had
given proof of political sagacity and administrative power. He, if any
one, it seemed, could retrieve the shattered fortunes of the Liberal
party.
Mr Laurier's position as first lieutenant for Quebec was now
unquestioned. It was not a wholly enviable post. The Liberal
representation from Quebec had fallen to twenty. There were few able
men in the ranks. The Dorions were gone. Soon to go too were Holton
and Huntington, the English leaders who formed the connecting link
between the Liberals of Ontario and the French-speaking Liberals of
Quebec. In the Eastern Townships John Henry Pope, that shrewdest and
most pugnacious of Conservative politicians, was perfecting the
organization which later made him the uncrowned king of several
counties. True, Sir George Cartier, who for nearly forty years had
dominated Quebec politics, was gone, but Langevin, his successor in the
Conservative party, though not a strong man himself, had the clergy
behind him; and Chapleau, who entered federal politics in 1882, brought
a fiery eloquence to his party's aid. It was {56} clear that the young
Liberal leader would have no easy task in winning his province.
Yet he was not content with provincial aims. Each year saw him more
widely recognized as a man not of Quebec merely but of all Canada. The
issues which arose in these trying years were such as to test to the
utmost men's power to rise above local and sectional prejudices and see
Canada's interest steadily and see it whole. Mr Laurier did not speak
often in these early years, but when he did speak it was with
increasing power and recognition. And in the councils of his party the
soundness of his judgment became more fully appreciated as each of the
great issues of the eighties developed.
The chief of these issues were: the Tariff, the Pacific Railway,
Provincial Rights, and the troubles which arose out of the second Riel
Rebellion. These may now be summarily reviewed.
Victorious on the issue of protection, the Government more than lived
up to its promises in the first tariffs framed. 'Tell us how much
protection you want,' Sir John Macdonald had promised the
manufacturers, 'and we shall give you what you need.' And whether it
{57} was cotton or sugar or furniture, needs and wants were judged to
lie not far apart. Purely revenue duties on goods that continued to
come in freely, purely protective duties on goods which were
practically shut out, and duties which served both ends in some degree,
all were advanced.
The Liberals, _ex officio_, that is, being out of office, opposed these
increases one and all. Neither Blake nor Laurier, however, was an
out-and-out free-trader like Mackenzie. Mackenzie had received his
point of view from his British upbringing; his colleagues had been
brought up on a continent where protection ruled. Blake, after a
session or two, seemed content to accept the country's verdict and
criticized chiefly the details of the N.P., as the National Policy of
Protection to Native Industries was affectionately called by its
supporters. Laurier, while admitting that in theory it was possible to
aid infant industries by tariff pap, criticized the indiscriminate and
excessive rates of the new tariff, and the unfair burden it imposed
upon the poorer citizens by its high specific rates on cheap goods.
But in 1880, after a night of seven years, prosperity dawned in
America. The revival of business in the United States {58} proved as
contagious in Canada as had been its slackening in the early seventies.
The Canadian people gave the credit for the improvement in health to
the well-advertised patent medicine they had taken just before the
change set in; and for some years all criticisms of the N.P. were fated
to fall on deaf ears.
Then came the contract for the building of the Canadian Pacific
Railway, and the tariff question was shelved. Both parties were
committed to build the road to the coast. Both had wavered between
public and private construction. But the Macdonald Government had now
decided upon pushing the road through with all speed, regardless as to
whether current revenues sufficed to build it, while the Opposition
advocated a policy of gradual construction within the country's means,
concurrent with a close and steady settlement of the western plains.
The Government's first plan of building the road out of the proceeds of
the sale of a hundred million acres of prairie lands proved a flat
failure. Then in 1880 a contract for its construction and operation
was made with the famous Canadian Pacific Syndicate, in which the
leading figures were a group of Canadians who {59} had just reaped a
fortune out of the reconstruction of a bankrupt Minnesota
railway--George Stephen, Richard B. Angus, James J. Hill, and in the
background, Donald A. Smith.[1]
Under Blake's leadership instant and determined attack was made upon
the bargain, in parliament, in the press, and on the platform. Blake
himself moved against it a resolution of over a hundred clauses, which,
as usual, exhausted the subject and left little for his lieutenants to
say. Mr Laurier particularly criticized the large land-grant and the
exemption from taxation. Had the policy of gradual construction been
adopted, he contended, it would not have been necessary to take a leap
in the dark and give the syndicate the power of a monopoly in the
western country: 'there might have been fewer millionaires in this
country, but there would have been many more happy and contented homes.'
The Government was, however, committed, and a party majority ratified
the contract. After events justified both the policy of the Government
and, to some extent, the criticism of the Opposition. Great national
interests were at stake. Nothing short of an {60} all-Canadian railway
could bind together the far-flung Dominion. But the building of this
railway, and still more its operation, would be a task to daunt all but
the most fearless, and to those who undertook it generous terms were a
necessity. In their clear understanding and courageous grasp of the
facts, and in their persistent support of the company through all the
dark days until the railway was completed, Macdonald and Tupper and
Pope deserved well of their country. Yet it is equally clear now that
in many points the criticism of the Opposition was well founded. The
land-grant was of least value when most needed--in the early years.
The freedom of the company to select land where they pleased gave them
a mortgage on the West and power to deter possible rival roads. The
exemption from taxation of the company's lands for twenty years after
the issue of the patents, and of its capital stock and equipment for
ever, threw unfair burdens upon the straggling settlers. Still more
threatening to national unity was the monopoly clause, guaranteeing the
company for twenty years against the chartering, either by the Dominion
or by any province afterwards established, of any road enabling United
States railways to tap western traffic.
{61}
The issue was decided, as to any immediate effects, by the success of
the Conservatives in the general elections of 1882. The country wanted
the road, and as usual was not disposed to read too closely the fine
print in the contract. But the matter did not end there. Each party
had been led by attack and counterattack to take a stronger stand of
defence or opposition than was reasonable. For another ten years the
Canadian Pacific Railway remained, if not an issue in politics, itself
an active participant in politics. And its great weight thrown against
the Liberal party turned the scales more than once.
In every federal state the adjustment of the powers of the central and
of the local authorities gives occasion for much friction and
difference of opinion. In Canada this adjustment, though never-ending,
perhaps reached its climax in the eighties, when question after
question as to the rights of the provinces came up for discussion.
We are apt to forget how recent a development the modern federal state
is. Save for certain Latin-American countries, nominally federal, the
Dominion of Canada is the third oldest of such states; the United
States and {62} Switzerland alone are of longer standing. The
Austro-Hungarian Empire and the North German Federation were formed in
the same fateful year, 1867. There were, therefore, few models before
the framers of the constitution of Canada, and the marvel is that they
planned so wisely and so enduringly.
In determining what powers should be assigned to the Dominion and what
to the provinces, the Fathers of Confederation were led, by the
object-lesson which the Civil War in the United States afforded, to
give the central government more authority. To the Dominion they
assigned several fields of legislation which in the Republic fell to
the respective states; and the Dominion was made residuary legatee of
powers not specified. The central government, too, was given a right
of veto over all provincial laws and empowered to appoint the
lieutenant-governors of the provinces. Had Sir John Macdonald had his
way, centralization would have gone much further, for he would have
abolished the provincial governments entirely and set up a single
parliament for the whole country. Fortunately Cartier and Brown
prevented that unwieldy experiment from being tried.
Experience has shown that the central {63} government should have full
authority to deal with foreign affairs so far as they can be
differentiated, and should have a wide measure of control over commerce
and industry, which more and more are nation-wide in scope. But, this
secured, it has been found equally essential that the provinces should
be given wide power and responsibility. Fortunately Canada has only
nine provinces, as against forty-eight states in the United States, so
that authority is less divided here than in the Republic. In a country
covering half a continent, with great diversity of climate and
resources and industrial development, centralization of all power would
mean the neglect of local needs and the disregard of local differences.
Particularly where, as in Canada, thirty per cent of the people differ
in race and language and creed from the majority, and are concentrated
mainly in a single province, the need for local autonomy as the surest
means of harmony is abundantly clear.
It was in Quebec that the first issue as to provincial rights arose.
The Mackenzie Government in 1876 had appointed Luc Letellier de St
Just, one of their most steadfast supporters, lieutenant-governor of
that province. It was not long before political and {64} personal
antagonism strained to the breaking point the relations between the
Liberal Letellier and his Conservative ministers at Quebec. The
neglect of the premier, M. de Boucherville, to consult Letellier before
introducing some railway legislation proved the last straw, and in
March 1878 Boucherville was dismissed and Henri Joly de Lotbiniere was
called upon to form a Cabinet. This sudden rupture raised a storm of
protest in Quebec, of which the echoes soon reached Ottawa. Sir John
Macdonald, then leader of the Opposition, moved a vote of censure upon
Letellier, which was defeated on a party vote. A year later, after the
change of government at Ottawa, a Quebec ministerialist again moved in
the House of Commons the resolution of censure.
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[Illustration: VICE-REGAL CONSORTS
1. LADY MONCK
2. LADY LISGAR
3. LADY DUFFERIN
4. THE PRINCESS LOUISE
5. LADY LANSDOWNE
6. LADY STANLEY
7. LADY ABERDEEN
8. LADY MINTO
9. LADY GREY
10. THE DUCHESS OF CONNAUGHT]
======================================================================
The Liberal leaders at Ottawa were inclined to agree that Letellier had
been too sensitive about his dignity as governor, and Sir John
Macdonald on his part would have preferred to let the matter rest,
since the elections in the province had upheld Joly, had not his Quebec
supporters demanded their pound of flesh. But the constitutional issue
was clear, and on this the Liberals rested their case. It was for the
people of Quebec, they contended, to {65} decide whether or not the
lieutenant-governor had violated their liberties. If the
lieutenant-governor could find ministers with a legislative majority
behind them to uphold his action, there was nothing more to be said:
the doctrine of ministerial responsibility covered all his acts. And
this support he had found; for the Joly Government, on appealing to the
people, had turned a minority of twenty into a majority of one. 'The
people of the province of Quebec,' declared Mr Laurier in the Commons,
'who alone are interested in this question, have decided that in their
opinion, whether that be right or wrong, the act of Mr Letellier was
just and constitutional.... You say No. What are you here for if you
say No? If your policy had been supported by the people of Quebec, you
would not now be seeking vengeance at the hands of this House.' But
logic was in vain. The vote of censure carried, and Macdonald
recommended to the governor-general, the Marquis of Lorne, that
Letellier should be dismissed. Here again a nice question of
responsibility arose. First the question had been whether the
lieutenant-governor was to be guided by provincial ministers or by the
federal government which appointed him. Now the problem {66} was
whether the governor-general should be guided by his advisers in
Canada, or by the British Government which had appointed him. With the
assent of the Canadian Cabinet the question was referred to the
Colonial Office. Mackenzie's protest against this colonial-minded
appeal was in vain, but the upshot proved satisfactory to him. The
colonial secretary replied that the lieutenant-governor was undoubtedly
responsible to the governor-general for any act, and that equally
undoubtedly the governor-general must act upon the advice, in this as
in other matters, of his responsible ministers. The governor-general
suggested reconsideration, but the Macdonald Cabinet was obdurate and
Letellier was dismissed. Fortunately the precedent thus set has not
been followed. The principle is now established that a
lieutenant-governor may be dismissed only when he cannot find
provincial ministers willing and able to support him.
The later constitutional issues were chiefly disputes between the
Dominion and the province of Ontario. They were not merely differences
of opinion on abstract constitutional points. They were in large part
struggles for power and patronage between two very shrewd practical
politicians, Sir John {67} Macdonald and his one-time law-student at
Kingston, Oliver Mowat, for many years premier of Ontario.
First came a struggle as to the western boundary of Ontario. The
dividing line between the old province of Canada and the territories
purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company had never been determined
After ten years of negotiations a commission, consisting of one
representative of the Dominion and one of Ontario together with the
British ambassador at Washington, gave a unanimous award in 1878, an
award which the Dominion refused to carry into effect. Other provinces
were involved. The Dominion had presented Manitoba with much of the
territory in dispute, and the conflict as to jurisdiction between that
province and Ontario nearly led to bloodshed; while Quebec was stirred
up to protest against the enlargement of Ontario, which would make
Ontario, it was said, the preponderant power in the Dominion. Mr
Laurier inveighed against what he termed the dishonourable course of
the Dominion Government. When negotiating with the Hudson's Bay
Company for its lands, it had contended that the old province of Canada
extended far west and north, but now it took {68} precisely the
opposite stand. As for Quebec's interest, he continued: 'I do not fear
the appeal that will be made against me in my own province. This award
is binding on both parties and should be carried out in good faith.
The consideration that the great province of Ontario may be made
greater, I altogether lay aside as unfair, unfriendly, and unjust.'
The Government, however, persisted in rejecting the award, and forced
an appeal to the Privy Council, only to have Ontario's claim fully
substantiated, and the total area of the province confirmed as more
than double what Sir John Macdonald would have allowed it.
The next issue put to the test the power of the Dominion to veto
provincial laws. It was, in form, merely a dispute between two
lumbermen, M'Laren and Caldwell, as to whether the one higher up on the
stream could use, upon paying tolls, timber-slides built by the other
lower down. But, as Edward Blake declared in 1886, this was 'of all
the controversies between the Dominion and the provinces, by far the
most important from the constitutional point of view, for it involved
the principle which must regulate the use by the Dominion Government of
the power of disallowing provincial legislation.' When in 1881 a court
of {69} justice in Ontario held that the lumberman on the lower reaches
could prevent the one higher up from floating down his logs, Mowat had
an act passed providing that all persons possessed, and were thereby
declared always to have possessed, the right denied by this judgment.
This measure was at once disallowed by the Dominion Government. Then
the Privy Council upheld the contention of the Ontario Government as to
what the law had been even before the act was passed; and, when in 1884
the provincial legislature again passed the same act, the Dominion
conceded the point. Thereafter the veto power has been used only when
Dominion or Imperial interests were concerned, or when a statute was
claimed to be beyond the power of the province to pass. The wisdom or
justice of measures affecting only the local interests of the citizens
of a province has been left to the judgment of its own people to
determine.
The regulation of the liquor traffic provided the next battle-ground.
In 1876 Ontario had passed the Crooks Act, which took the power of
granting licences from the municipalities and gave it to provincial
commissioners. Two years later the Dominion parliament passed the
Scott Act, giving counties power to {70} prohibit the sale of liquor
within their limits. The constitutionality of this act was upheld in
1882 in the Russell case, and Sir John Macdonald concluded that if the
Dominion had power to pass the Scott Act, the province had not the
power to pass the Crooks Act. 'If I carry the country,' he declared at
a public meeting in 1882, 'as I will do, I will tell Mr Mowat, that
little tyrant who has attempted to control public opinion by getting
hold of every office from that of a Division Court bailiff to a
tavern-keeper, that I will get a bill passed at Ottawa returning to the
municipalities the power taken from them by the Licence Act.' At the
next session the M'Carthy Act was passed, providing, not for municipal
control, but for control by federal commissioners. Here again the
highest courts held in 1883 and 1884 that the Ontario measure was
within the power of the province, but that the M'Carthy Act was beyond
that of the Dominion. Once more 'the little tyrant' had scored!
The Dominion Franchise Act of 1885 was the last important measure which
need be noted in this connection. By the British North America Act the
Dominion was to adopt the provincial franchise lists for its elections
{71} until parliament should order otherwise. Sir John Macdonald
decided, after eighteen years' use of the provincial lists and six
half-hearted attempts to change this situation, that the Dominion
should set up its own standard, in order both to secure uniformity and
to preserve the property qualifications which Ontario and the other
provinces were throwing overboard. The Opposition contended that this
was an attack upon provincial rights. The argument was weak; there
could be no doubt of the constitutional power of the Dominion in this
matter. Better founded were the attacks of the Opposition upon
specific clauses of the measure, such as the proposal to enfranchise
Indians living upon government reserves and under government control,
and the proposal to put the revision of the lists in the hands of
partisan revising barristers rather than of judges. The
'Conservatives' proposed, but did not press the point, to give single
women the franchise, and the 'Liberals' opposed it. After months of
obstruction the proposal to enfranchise the western Indians was
dropped,[2] an appeal to {72} judges was provided for the revision of
the lists, and the income and property standards were reduced.
Inconsistently, in some provinces a variation from the general
standards was permitted. The Franchise Act of 1885 remained in force
until after the coming of the Liberals to power in 1896, when it was
repealed without regret on either side.
Suddenly the scene shifted, and, instead of the dry and bloodless court
battles of constitutional lawyers, the fire and passion of armed
rebellion and bitter racial feud held the Canadian stage. The
rebellion itself was an {73} affair of but a few brief weeks, but the
fires lighted on the Saskatchewan swept through the whole Dominion, and
for years the smoke of Duck Lake and Batoche disturbed the public life
of Canada.
Long years before the Great West was more than a name to any but a
handful in older Canada, hardy French voyageurs and Scottish
adventurers had pushed their canoes or driven their Red River carts to
the foot of the Rockies and beyond. They had mated with Indian women,
and when in 1870 the Dominion came into possession of the great hunting
preserve of the Hudson's Bay Company, many of their half-breed children
dwelt on the plains. The coming of the railway, the flocking in of
settlers, and the rapid dwindling of the vast herds of buffalo which
had provided the chief support of the half-breeds, made their nomadic
life no longer possible. The economic difficulties of making the
needed readjustment, of settling down to quiet farm activities, were
heightened by the political difficulties due to the setting up of the
new Dominion authority. Then it was on the banks of the Red River that
these half-breeds, known as Metis, had risen under the firebrand Riel
in armed revolt against the incoming regime. Now, in 1885, {74} it was
on the North and South Saskatchewan. There numerous groups of the
Metis had made their settlements. And when the Canadian authorities
came in to survey the land, to build railways, and to organize
government, these people sought to have their rights and privileges
accorded them. In Manitoba, after the insurrection of 1870, the dual
claims of the old half-breed settlers had been recognized. As part
Indian, they had been given scrip for 160 acres each, to extinguish the
Indian title to the land, and as part white men, they were each allowed
to homestead 160 acres like any other settler. The Metis in the
North-West Territories now asked for the same privileges. They wanted
also to have their holdings left as they were, long narrow strips of
land facing the river front, like the settlements on the St Lawrence,
with the houses sociably near in one long village street, rather than
to have their land cut up into rectangular, isolated farms under the
survey system which the Canadian Government had borrowed from the
United States.
The requests were reasonable. Perhaps a narrow logic could have shown
inconsistency in the demand to be considered both white and Indian at
once, but the Manitoba Act had {75} set a precedent. Only a few
thousand acres were at stake, in a boundless land where the Government
stood ready to set aside a hundred million acres for a railway. The
expediency of winning the goodwill of the half-breeds was apparent to
Canadians on the spot, especially now that the Indians, over whom the
Metis had great influence, were also becoming restless because of the
disappearance of the buffalo and the swarming in of settlers.
Yet the situation was never adequately faced. The Mackenzie
Government, in 1877, on the petition of a hundred and fifty Scottish
half-breeds at Prince Albert, agreed, where settlement had been
effected on the narrow frontage system, to conform the surveys in
harmony with this plan, and the Scottish holdings were so confirmed.
Two years later the Macdonald Government passed an act authorizing the
giving of scrip to the half-breeds of the North-West on the same terms
as it had been given to those in Manitoba. So far so good. Then came
year upon year of neglect, of clerkly procrastination, and of
half-concessions. The French half-breeds passed resolution after
resolution, sent to Ottawa petition after petition and delegation after
delegation, but in vain. The Government {76} forgot the act which it
had itself passed in 1879. Nor were the half-breeds themselves the
only petitioners. Time and again Father Andre and other missionaries
urged their claims. Some of the Government's own land agents on the
spot urged them. Charles Mair of Prince Albert, one of the first of
Ontario's settlers in the West, appeared at Ottawa four times before
the outbreak, to try to waken the Government to the seriousness of the
situation.[3] The North-West Council sent strong memorials backing the
requests of the Metis. And still, though some of the grievances were
redressed, in piecemeal fashion, no attempt was made to grapple
adequately with the difficult questions presented by the meeting {77}
of two stages of civilization, to understand the disputes, the real
wrongs, the baseless fears. When in 1883 Blake in the House of Commons
called for papers, none were brought down for two years; when in 1884
Cameron called for a committee of investigation, the reply was that
there was nothing to investigate.
What was the cause of this neglect? At bottom, the Government's
ignorance of the West. There was not in the Cabinet a man who knew its
conditions and needs. The Metis were two thousand miles away, and they
had no votes, for the North-West Territories were not then represented
at Ottawa. For five years Sir John Macdonald himself had acted as
minister of the Interior. In taking over the cares of a busy
department, added to the office of prime minister, he made the mistake
that Mackenzie had made. But while Mackenzie put in ten to fourteen
hours a day at departmental routine, at the expense of his duties as
leader, Macdonald did his work as leader at the expense of his
department. 'Old To-Morrow' solved many a problem wisely by leaving it
to time to solve, but some problems proved the more serious for every
year's delay. Late in 1883 Sir John gave up {78} the portfolio, but
his successor, Sir David Macpherson, effected little change. Late in
1885 Thomas White, an energetic and sympathetic administrator, became
minister, but the mischief was then already done.
In its defence the Government urged that no half-breed had actually
been dispossessed of his river-front claim, and that many who were
demanding scrip had already received land in Manitoba. It contended
further that the agitation of the half-breeds was fanned by white
settlers in Prince Albert, eager to speculate in scrip, and hinted
darkly at mysterious forces and personages in the background, in Canada
and elsewhere. No attempt was made, however, to prove the truth of
these latter charges or to bring the guilty to justice. Doubtless the
grievances were not so great as to justify rebellion; the less excuse,
then, for not curing what was curable. Doubtless, also, this was not
the first time nor the last that a government lacked energy or vision,
and had it not been for the other factor in the situation, Louis Riel,
no heavy penalty might have followed. But unfortunately, luck or
Nemesis, the other factor was very much to the fore.
Wearied of unending delay, the Metis looked {79} again to Riel, then
living in exile in Montana. He was the one half-breed with any measure
of book-education and knowledge of the vague world beyond the Lakes.
Early in the summer of 1884 James Isbester, Gabriel Dumont, Moise
Ouellette, and Michel Dumas trudged seven hundred miles to Montana, and
laid their case before him. He needed little urging. The call
appealed strongly to his erratic ambition. His term of banishment had
expired, and he hastened to the Saskatchewan to organize the Metis.
Still the Government did not stir, though it knew the reckless daring
of Riel and the influence he wielded. Riel at once set to work to fan
the discontent into flame. Though the English-speaking half-breeds
drew back, he soon gained remarkable ascendancy over his
French-speaking compatriots. He preached a new religion, with himself
as prophet, threatened to dethrone the Pope, and denounced the local
priests who resisted his campaign. He held meeting after meeting, drew
up an extravagant Bill of Rights, and endeavoured to enlist the support
of the Indian tribes. Still all the Government did was to send, in
January 1885, a commission to take the census of the half-breeds,
preparatory to settling their claims. Yet, {80} speaking in the House
of Commons, on March 26, 1885, Sir John Macdonald made it clear that
the half-breeds could not get both Indian scrip and white man's
homestead. On the very day that this refusal was reiterated the first
shot had been fired at Duck Lake, where a superior force of insurgents
under Riel and Dumont routed a party of Mounted Police and volunteers,
killing twelve, and seized the supplies in the government post. Open
rebellion had come for a second time.
Now at last the Government acted with energy. On the 6th of April, ten
days after Duck Lake, instructions were telegraphed from Ottawa to give
the half-breeds the scrip they had sought, and to allow occupants to
acquire title by possession. At the same time troops were hastily
mobilized and speeded west over the broken stretches of the Canadian
Pacific Railway. The young volunteers faced danger and hardship like
veterans. In spite of the skilful tactics of Riel's lieutenant,
Gabriel Dumont, a born general, the volunteers soon crushed the
half-breeds and prevented the much more serious danger of an Indian
uprising from going far.
Once the back of the revolt was broken, the storm broke out in Eastern
Canada. In one {81} way the rebellion had made for national unity.
Nova Scotia and Ontario and the West had thrilled in common suspense
and common endeavour. But this gain was much more than offset by the
bitter antagonism which developed between Ontario and Quebec, an
antagonism which for a time threatened to wreck the Dominion. The two
provinces saw different sides of the shield. Ontario saw the murderer
of Thomas Scott--an Ontario man and an Orangeman--a second time
stirring up revolt, and cried for summary punishment. Quebec saw the
grievances which had stirred the men of French blood to rebel. Riel
was tried in Regina in September, and found guilty of treason, with a
recommendation to mercy. The Queen's Bench of Manitoba confirmed the
verdict, and the Government, in spite of many protests, refused to
grant a pardon or to commute the sentence to imprisonment. On the 16th
of November 1885 Riel's chequered existence ended on the scaffold at
Regina.
Now the storm raged with renewed fury. The Liberal party all held the
Government responsible for the outbreak, but were not a unit in
condemning the execution of Riel. By clever tactics the Government
took advantage of this divergence. Early in the session {82} of 1886 a
Quebec Conservative, Auguste Philippe Landry, moved a resolution
condemning the execution. The Liberals had intended to shift the
discussion to the record of the Government, but before they could
propose an amendment, the minister of Public Works, Hector Langevin,
moved the previous question, thus barring any further motion. Forced
to vote on Landry's resolution, most of the Ontario Liberals, including
Mackenzie and Cartwright, sided with the Government; Blake and Laurier
took the other side.
The crisis brought Wilfrid Laurier to the front. Hitherto he had been
considered, especially in Ontario, as a man of brilliant promise, but
not yet of the stature of veterans like Blake and Mackenzie and
Cartwright. But now an occasion had come which summoned all his latent
powers, and henceforth his place in the first rank was unquestioned.
It was an issue peculiarly fitted to bring out his deepest feelings,
his passion for liberty and straightforward justice, his keen
realization of the need of harmony between French and English, a
harmony that must be rooted in sympathy and understanding. He had
faced a hostile Quebec, and was to face it again, in defence of the
rights of the English-speaking {83} provinces. Now he faced a hostile
Ontario, and told Toronto exactly what he told Montreal. In the great
meeting of protest which was held in the Champ de Mars in Montreal on
the Sunday after Riel's execution, Mr Laurier took a leading part, and
a year later he spoke before a great audience in Toronto and pressed
home the case against the Government--that 'the half-breeds were denied
for long years right and justice, rights which were admitted as soon as
they were asked by bullets.'
But it was in the House of Commons that he rose to the full height of
the theme and of his powers. Seconding Blake's indictment of the
Government in July 1885, and replying to Sir John Macdonald, he
analysed mercilessly the long record of neglect. Then, replying to the
contention that the grievances were petty and that Riel alone was to
blame, he made a pointed contrast:
Few men have there been anywhere who have wielded greater sway over
their fellow countrymen than did Mr Papineau at a certain time in the
history of Lower Canada, and no man ever lived who had been more
profusely endowed by nature to be the idol of a nation. A man of
commanding presence, of majestic countenance, of impassioned eloquence,
of {84} unblemished character, of pure, disinterested patriotism, for
years he held over the hearts of his fellow countrymen almost unbounded
sway, and even to this day the mention of his name will arouse
throughout the length and breadth of Lower Canada a thrill of
enthusiasm in the breasts of all, men or women, old or young. What was
the secret of that great power he held at one time? Was it simply his
eloquence, his commanding intellect, his pure patriotism? No doubt
they all contributed, but the main cause of his authority over his
fellow countrymen was this, that at that time his fellow countrymen
were an oppressed race, and he was the champion of their cause. But
when the day of relief came, the influence of Mr Papineau, however
great it might have been and however great it still remained, ceased to
be paramount. When eventually the Union Act was carried, Papineau
violently assailed it, showed all its defects, deficiencies and
dangers, and yet he could not rouse his followers and the people to
agitate for the repeal of that Act. What was the reason? The
conditions were no more the same. Imperfect as was the Union Act, it
still gave a measure of freedom and justice to the people, and men who
once at the mere sound of Mr Papineau's voice would have gladly courted
death on battle-field or scaffold, then stood silent and irresponsive,
though he asked from them nothing more than a constitutional agitation
for a repeal of the Union Act. Conditions were no more the same.
Tyranny and oppression had made rebels of the people of Lower Canada,
while justice and freedom made {85} them the true and loyal subjects
which they have been ever since. And now to tell us that Louis Riel,
simply by his influence, could bring those men from peace to war, to
tell us that they had no grievances, to tell us that they were brought
into a state of rebellion either through pure malice or through
imbecile adherence to an adventurer, is an insult to the intelligence
of the people at large, and an unjust aspersion on the people of the
Saskatchewan.
When the debate on the Landry motion came on in the following session,
Laurier and Blake again shared the honours, along with the new minister
of Justice, John S. D. Thompson, who spoke forcefully for the
Government. Mr Laurier's speech on this occasion was perhaps the
greatest of his career, and made a profound impression. He was called
upon to speak unexpectedly, late at night, through the tactics of the
Government in not putting up a speaker. Two dull speeches had nearly
emptied the House. No one rose to follow, and the speaker had asked
whether the question should be put, when Mr Laurier rose. The House
filled quickly, and for two hours he held it breathless, so that not a
sound but the orator's ringing voice and the ticking of the clock could
be heard in the chamber. When he sat down, the opinion of {86} the
House was unanimous that this was one of the rare occasions of a
parliamentary lifetime. Thomas White generously voiced the feeling of
the Government benches when he declared: 'I think it is a matter of
common pride to us that any man in Canada can make, on the floor of
parliament, such a speech as we listened to last night.' Edward Blake
declared the speech was 'the crowning proof of French domination. My
honourable friend, not content with having for a long time in his own
tongue borne away the palm of parliamentary eloquence, has invaded
ours, and in that field has pronounced a speech, which, in my humble
judgment, merits this compliment, because it is the truth, that it was
the finest parliamentary speech ever pronounced in the parliament of
Canada since Confederation.'
Blake and Laurier differed in their view of the tactics to be followed
by the Opposition. Mr Blake wished to throw the chief emphasis upon
the question of Riel's insanity, leaving aside the thorny question of
the division of responsibility. Mr Laurier wanted to go further.
While equally convinced that Riel was insane, he thought that the main
effort of the Opposition should be to divert attention from Riel's
sorry figure and concentrate it on {87} the question of the
Government's neglect. Accordingly in this speech Mr Laurier reviewed
once more the conduct of the Government, arraigning it unsparingly for
its common share in the guilt of the rebellion. He denied that the
people of Quebec were demanding that no French Canadian should be
punished, guilty or not guilty. As for Riel, who shared with the
Government the responsibility for the blood and sufferings of the
revolt, he urged, with Blake, that it was impossible to consider him
sane and accountable for his actions. 'Sir,' he declared, 'I am not
one of those who look upon Louis Riel as a hero. Nature had endowed
him with many brilliant qualities, but nature had denied him that
supreme quality without which all other qualities, however brilliant,
are of no avail. Nature had denied him a well-balanced mind. At his
worst he was a fit subject for an asylum, at his best he was a
religious and political monomaniac.' True, some of the Government's
experts had reported that, while insane on religious questions, Riel
was otherwise accountable for his actions, but other experts had held
him insane without qualification. In any event, the same experts for
the Government had declared that Riel's secretary, an {88} English
half-breed, William Jackson, was insane on religious questions, and
dazed at times, but that 'his actions were not uncontrollable'; yet
Quebec bitterly reflected that one of these men had been acquitted,
sent to an asylum and then allowed to escape, while the other was sent
to the gallows. 'Jackson is free to-day, and Riel is in his grave.'[4]
On wider grounds the Government should have stood for clemency. Who
was right in the United States after the Civil War--President Johnson,
who wished to try Lee for treason, or General Grant, who insisted that
he be not touched? Twenty years after, the unity of North and South
proves unmistakably Grant's far-seeing wisdom. 'We cannot make a
nation of this new country by shedding blood,' Mr Laurier concluded.
'Our prisons are full of men, who, despairing of getting justice by
peace, sought it by war, who, despairing of ever being treated like
freemen, {89} took their lives in their hands rather than be treated as
slaves. They have suffered greatly, they are suffering still, yet
their sacrifice will not be without reward.... They are in durance
to-day, but the rights for which they were fighting have been
acknowledged. We have not the report of the commission yet, but we
know that more than two thousand claims so long denied have at last
been granted. And more--still more: we have it in the Speech from the
Throne that at last representation is to be granted to those
Territories. This side of the House long sought, but sought in vain,
to obtain that measure of justice. It could not come then, but it came
after the war; it came as the last conquest of that insurrection. And
again I say that "their country has conquered with their martyrdom,"
and if we look at that one fact alone there was cause sufficient,
independent of all other, to extend mercy to the one who is dead and to
those who live.'
In parliament, for all the eloquence of Laurier and Blake, the
Government had its way. In the country the controversy raged in more
serious fashion. In Quebec Honore Mercier, the brilliant, tempestuous
leader of the Liberals, carried on a violent agitation, {90} and in
January 1887 rode the whirlwind into power. Wild and bitter words were
many in the contest, and they found more than an answer in Ontario,
where the leading ministerial organ, the _Mail_, declared it better to
'smash Confederation into its original fragments' rather than yield to
French dictation.
[Illustration: HONORE MERCIER From a photograph]
The general elections, held in February 1887, proved that in Ontario
the guilt of Riel was more to the fore than the misdeeds of the
Government, and the Conservatives lost only two seats. On the other
hand, the Liberals gained less in Quebec in the Dominion contest, where
the Riel question was a legitimate issue, than in the provincial
contest, where it properly had no place. The influence of the Church,
though now transferred to Mercier in provincial politics, remained on
the side of Sir John Macdonald in Dominion politics. Counting on the
Liberal side the former Conservatives who had deserted the Government,
the returns showed the province about equally divided; but after it was
seen that Sir John was again in power, several of the wanderers
returned to his fold, influenced by his personal ascendancy or by the
loaves and fishes of patronage and office.
[1] See _The Railway Builders_, chap. viii.
[2] Indians in the eastern provinces, however, were given a vote. This
gave rise to one of the most artful, yet amusingly simple,
electioneering documents on record. In the Haldimand, Ontario,
election of 1891 the Conservative candidate, Dr W. H. Montague,
afterwards minister of Agriculture, had the following circular
distributed on the Indian Reserve, with the royal coat of arms at the
top:
FOR INDIANS ONLY
To the Indians: The Queen has always loved her dear loyal subjects, the
Indians. She wants them to be good men and women, and she wants them
to live on the land that they have, and she expects in a little while,
if her great chief John A. gets into government again, to be very kind
to the Indians and to make them very happy. She wants them to go and
vote and all to vote for Dr Montague, who is the Queen's agent. He is
their friend, and by voting for him every one of the Indians will please
QUEEN VICTORIA.
Liberal (or rather Conservative) supplies of fire-water effectively
backed up this touching appeal of 'the Queen.'
[3] Mair made his last appeal but one in April 1884. Finding it
impossible to rouse the Government, he returned to Prince Albert and
brought his family back to Ontario, out of the way of the inevitable
rebellion. A final visit to Ottawa in December was equally futile. Of
the April attempt Lieut.-Colonel George T. Denison writes: 'When he
returned to Toronto from Ottawa he told me most positively that there
would be a rebellion, that the officials were absolutely indifferent
and immovable, and I could not help laughing at the picture he gave me
of Sir David Macpherson, a very large, handsome, erect man of six feet
four inches, getting up, leaving his room, and walking away down the
corridor, while Mair, a short stout man, had almost to run alongside of
him, as he made his final appeal to preserve the peace and prevent
bloodshed.'--_Soldiering in Canada_, p. 263.
[4] 'When one considers the mass of testimony pointing to Riel's mental
defect--paranoia--the undoubted history of insanity from boyhood, with
the recurring paroxysms of intense excitement, he wonders that there
could have been the slightest discussion regarding it.'--'A Critical
Study of the Case of Louis Riel,' _Queen's Quarterly_, April-July,
1905, by C. K. Clarke, M.D., Superintendent of Rockwood Asylum (now
Superintendent, Toronto General Hospital).
{91}