LOOKING TO WASHINGTON
Canada and the States--The fisheries dispute--Political
union--Commercial union--Unrestricted reciprocity--Jesuits'
estates--Unrestricted reciprocity
For desperate ills, desperate remedies. It is little wonder that
policies looking to revolutionary change in political or commercial
relations now came to take strong hold on the public mind. To many it
appeared that the experiment in Canadian nationality had failed. Why
not, then, frankly admit the failure and seek full political
incorporation with either of the great centres of the English-speaking
people, of whose political prestige and commercial success there was no
question? Annexation to the United States, Imperial Federation, with a
central parliament in the United Kingdom, each found a small but
earnest company of supporters. Or, if the mass of the people shrank
from one and held the other an impracticable dream, why not seek the
closest possible commercial tie with either nation? Thus Commercial
Union, or a _zollverein_ between Canada and the United {102} States,
and Imperial Preferential Trade, or a _zollverein_ between Canada and
the United Kingdom and the other parts of the British Empire, came into
discussion. What British and American conditions and opinion met these
Canadian movements, and what changes were made in the programmes first
urged, may next be reviewed. Canadian relations with the United States
will be noted first.
In the decade from 1886 to 1896, when the Venezuela episode opened a
valve for the steam to blow off, the relations between Canada and the
United States were continuously at high tension. It was an era of
friction and pinpricks, of bluster and retaliation. The United States
was not in a conciliatory mood. It was growing in wealth and numbers
and power, in unprecedented ways. Its people were one and all
intensely proud of their country and satisfied with themselves. The
muckraker had not yet lifted his voice in the land. The millionaire
was still an object of pride and emulation, _Exhibit A_ in the display
of American superiority over all creation. No foreign danger
threatened, no foreign responsibility restrained the provincial
swagger. In short, the United States was 'feeling its oats.'
{103}
Towards Great Britain it was specially prone to take an aggressive
attitude. Still fresh was the memory of 1776 and 1812, fed by
text-book rhetoric and thrown into relief by the absence of other foes.
Still rankled the hostility of the official classes of Great Britain
during the Civil War and Tory attacks upon American manners and
American democracy. Irish-Americans in millions cherished a natural if
sometimes foolishly directed hatred against the country that had
misgoverned Erin and made it lose half its people. The rejection of
Home Rule by the House of Commons in 1886, confirmed by the results of
the general elections which followed, intensified this feeling.
Canada, the nearest British territory, had to bear much of this
ill-will, though she had no share of responsibility for its creation,
just as she had borne the brunt of invasion in wars which were none of
her making.
There were, however, other sources of trouble for which Canada was more
directly responsible. She had followed the example of the United
States in setting up a high tariff wall. Inevitably the adoption of
protection by both countries led to friction. The spirit of which it
was born and which in turn it {104} nourished, the belief that one
country found its gain in another's loss, made for jealousy, and the
rankling sense on Canada's part that her policy had not succeeded made
the feeling the sorer.
But the immediate occasion of the most serious difficulty was the
revival of the northeastern fisheries dispute. The century-long
conflict as to the privileges of American fishermen in Canadian and
Newfoundland waters, under the Treaty of 1783 and the Convention of
1818, had been set at rest during the era of Reciprocity (1854-66) by
opening Canadian fishing-grounds to Americans, practically in return
for free admission of Canadian natural products to the United States.
Then once more, by the Treaty of Washington in 1871, access to the
inshore fisheries was bartered for free admission of fish and fish-oil
plus a money compensation to be determined by a commission. The
commission met at Halifax in 1877, Sir A. T. Galt representing Canada,
and the award was set at $5,500,000 for the twelve years during which
the treaty was to last. The United States condemned the award with
much heat, and took occasion to abrogate the clause of the treaty on
the earliest date for which notice could be given, July 1, 1885. {105}
For that season the fishing privileges were extended, but with the next
year the whole dispute revived. The Canadian authorities insisted on
restricting American fishermen rigidly to the letter of treaty
privileges as Canada interpreted them. American fishing vessels were
not only barred from fishing within the three-mile limit but were
forbidden to enter a Canadian port to ship cargoes or for any other
purpose, save for shelter, wood, water, or repairs. Several American
boats were seized and condemned; and Canadian fishery cruisers
patrolled the coasts, incessantly active. A storm of genuine if not
informed indignation broke out in the United States. The action of the
Canadian authorities was denounced as unneighbourly and their
insistence on the letter of ancient treaties as pettifogging; and, with
more justice, it was declared that the Canadian Government used the
fishing privileges as a lever, or rather a club, to force the opening
of the United States markets to all Canadian products.
President Cleveland sought a friendly solution by the appointment of a
joint commission. Congress, more bellicose, passed unanimously (1887)
a Retaliatory Act, empowering the president, if satisfied that American
vessels {106} were illegally or vexatiously harassed or restricted, to
close the ports and waters of the United States against the vessels and
products of any part of British North America. The president declined
to fire this blunderbuss, and arranged for the commission on which
Joseph Chamberlain, Sir Lionel Sackville-West, and Sir Charles Tupper
were the British representatives. The draft treaty which the
commission framed failed to pass the United States Senate, but a _modus
vivendi_ was arranged permitting American vessels port privileges upon
payment of a licence fee. This, together with more considerate conduct
on both sides, eased the tension.
Once Congress had taken the drastic step of threatening complete
non-intercourse With Canada, a reaction set in, and many Americans
began to consider whether some more pacific and thoroughgoing solution
could not be found. Two were suggested, political union and commercial
union.
The political union of the two democracies of the continent has always
found advocates. In the United States many believed it was 'manifest
destiny' that some day the Stars and Stripes should float from Panama
to the Pole. At times Canadians here and there {107} had echoed this
belief. It seemed to them better to be annexed at one stroke than to
be annexed piecemeal by exodus, at the rate of fifty or a hundred
thousand Canadians a year. In St John and Halifax, in Montreal and
Toronto, and on the Detroit border, a few voices now called for this
remedy, which promised to give commercial prosperity and political
security instead of commercial depression and sectional, racial, and
religious strife. Yet they remained voices crying in the wilderness.
As in 1849, when men of high rank in the Conservative party--notably
three,[1] who are known in history as colleagues of Sir John Macdonald
and one of them as prime minister of Canada--had joined with Quebec
_Rouges_ in prescribing the same remedy for Canada's ills, so now, in
the late eighties, the deep instinct of the overwhelming mass of the
people revolted from a step which meant renouncing the memories of the
past and the hopes of the future. Imperial and national sentiment both
fought against it. It was in vain that Goldwin Smith gave his life to
the cause, preaching the example of the union between Scotland and
England. It {108} was in vain that British statesmen had shown
themselves not averse to the idea. In 1869, when Senator Sumner
proposed the cession of Canada in settlement of the _Alabama_ claims,
and Hamilton Fish, the American secretary of state, declared to the
British ambassador that 'our claims were too large to be settled
pecuniarily and sounded him about Canada,' the ambassador had replied
that 'England did not wish to keep Canada, but could not part with it
without the consent of the population.'[2] Wanted or not, the people
of Canada had determined to stay in the Empire; and did stay until
different counsels reigned in London. Even in cold-blooded and
objective logic, Canada's refusal to merge her destinies with the
Republic could be justified as best for the world, in that it made
possible in North America two experiments in democracy; possible, too,
the transformation of the British Empire into the most remarkable and
hopeful of political combinations. But it was not such reasoned logic
that prompted Canadians. They were moved by deeper instincts,
prejudices, passions, hopes, loyalties. And in face of their
practically solid opposition the solution of the 'Canadian Question'
had to {109} be sought elsewhere than in political union with the
United States.
Commercial union, or a _zollverein_ between Canada and the United
States, involved absolute free trade between the two countries, common
excise rates, a common customs tariff on the seaboard, and the pooling
and dividing according to population of the revenue. This was not a
new proposal; it had been suggested time and again in both countries,
from its advocacy by Ira Gould of Montreal in 1852 down to its advocacy
by Wharton Barker of Philadelphia--a strong opponent of reciprocity--in
1886. But now, for the first time, the conjuncture of political and
economic conditions on both sides of the line ensured it serious
attention; and, for the first time, in Erastus Wiman, one of the many
Canadians who had won fortune in the United States, the movement found
an enthusiastic and unflagging leader. In 1887 Congressman Butterworth
introduced a bill providing for free entrance of all Canadian products
into the United States whenever Canada permitted the free entrance of
all American products, and received a notable measure of support. In
Ontario, under the leadership of Erastus Wiman and Goldwin Smith and
Valencay {110} Fuller, the latter a leading stock breeder, the movement
won remarkably quick and widespread recognition: in a few months it had
been endorsed by over forty Farmers' Institutes and rejected by only
three. Much of this success was due to the powerful and persistent
advocacy of leading Toronto and Montreal newspapers. Needless to say,
the movement met with instant and vigorous opposition from the majority
of the manufacturers and from the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The movement had begun entirely outside the ordinary party lines, but
its strength soon compelled the party leaders to take a stand for or
against it. Neither party endorsed it, though both went far towards
it. The Conservatives had long been in favour of a measure of free
trade with the United States. The National Policy had been adopted
partly in the hope that 'reciprocity in tariffs' would compel the
United States to assent to 'reciprocity in trade,' and many who, like
Goldwin Smith, had voted for protection in 1878, now called upon the
Government to follow its own logic. But commercial union, with its
discrimination against Great Britain and its joint tariffs made at
Washington, did not appeal to Sir John Macdonald and his {111}
following. They were, however, prepared to go far. More than half the
time of the Fisheries Commission of 1887, which sat for three months,
was spent on tariff matters; and Sir Charles Tupper made the most
thoroughgoing offer of free trade with the United States ever made by
any Canadian Government--'an unrestricted offer of reciprocity.'
Congress, however, would not consent to discuss trade under pressure of
fishery threats, and no terms were made.
The Liberal party was equally uncertain as to its policy. It was much
more strongly in favour of freer trade than its opponents, and being in
opposition, would be more likely to take up a policy opposed to the
_status quo_. Sir Richard Cartwright in October 1887 came out clearly
in favour of commercial union. What of the new leader of the party?
Mr Laurier's first public address after his election to the leadership
was given at Somerset, Quebec, in August 1887. After reviewing the
deplorable discontent which pervaded the Dominion, due mainly to the
Government's policy, he referred to the trade issue. The restriction
policy practised for a decade had led to a reaction, he declared,
'which has not stopped within moderate {112} bounds; on the contrary,
it has gone to extremes, and at this very hour the great majority of
the farmers of Ontario are clamoring for commercial union with the
United States.... For my part, I am not ready to declare that
commercial union is an acceptable idea.' The root of the commercial
union movement, he continued, was the desire for reciprocity with the
United States in some form, and to that policy the Liberal party had
always been, and still remained, favourable.
In the following session the Liberal party made clear its position on
the question. It definitely rejected by a large majority the proposal
for commercial union. Adopting a suggestion of Mr J. D. Edgar, it
advocated reopening negotiations with Washington to secure full and
unrestricted reciprocity of trade. Under this policy, if carried to
its full extent, all the products of each country would enter the other
free, but each would continue in control of its own tariff, and the
customhouses along the border would also remain. Sir Richard
Cartwright opened the debate with a vivid summary of the backward and
distracted condition of Canada, and of the commercial advantages of
free access to the large, wealthy, and convenient market to the south.
{113} He concluded with a strong appeal to Canada to act as a link
between Great Britain and the United States, and thus secure for the
mother country the ally she needed in her dangerous isolation. Mr
Laurier followed some days later. He emphasized the need of wider
markets, of a population of consumers that would permit large-scaled
industry to develop, and contended that any manufacturing industries
which deserved to survive would thrive in the larger field. The same
terms could not be offered England, for England had not a tariff in
which to make reciprocal reductions. Canada would not always be a
colony; what she wanted, however, was not political independence, but
commercial independence. The opponents of the proposal had appealed to
the country's fears; he appealed to its courage, and exhorted all to
press onward till the goal should be reached.
In parliament the discussion led to little result. The Government took
its stand against unrestricted reciprocity, on the ground that it would
kill infant manufacturing industries and lead to political absorption
in the Republic, and the division followed party lines. Meanwhile in
the country interest slackened, for the time. In the presidential
{114} campaign of 1888 the Republicans, by a narrow margin, won on a
high-tariff platform, so that reciprocity seemed out of the question.
In Canada itself a new issue had arisen. Once more race and religion
set Quebec and Ontario in fierce antagonism.
The Jesuits, or members of the Society of Jesus, do not now for the
first time appear in the history of Canada. In the days of New France
they had been its most intrepid explorers, its most undaunted
missionaries. 'Not a cape was turned, not a river was entered,'
declares Bancroft, 'but a Jesuit led the way.' With splendid heroism
they suffered for the greater glory of God the unspeakable horrors of
Indian torture and martyrdom. But in the Old World their abounding
zeal often led them into conflict with the civil authorities, and they
became unpopular, alike in Catholic and in Protestant countries. So it
happened that 'for the peace of the Church' the Pope suppressed the
Society in 1773, and it remained dormant for forty years. After the
Conquest of Canada it was decreed that the Jesuits then in the country
should be permitted to remain and die there, but that they must not add
to their {115} numbers, and that their estates should be confiscated to
the Crown. Lord Amherst, the British commander-in-chief, made an
unsuccessful attempt to have these estates granted to himself; but in
the Crown's possession they remained, and fell to the province of
Quebec at Confederation. This settlement had never been accepted. The
bishops contended that the Jesuits' estates should have been returned
to the Church, and the Jesuits, who had come back to Canada in 1842,
asserted their own rights to their ancient lands. Thus the thorny
question as to what disposition should be made of these lands baffled
the provincial authorities until 1888, when Honore Mercier, himself a
pupil of the Jesuits, and now a most aggressively faithful son of the
Church, grappled with the problem, and passed an act embodying a
compromise which had been found acceptable by all parties concerned.
The sum of $400,000 was to be paid in satisfaction of all claims, to be
divided among the Jesuits, the Church authorities, and Laval
University, in proportions to be determined by the Pope. At the same
time $60,000 was voted to Protestant schools to satisfy their demands.
In Quebec the measure was accepted with little discussion. All the
Protestant members {116} in the legislature voted for it. But in
Ontario the heather was soon on fire. It was not merely that the
dispossessed Jesuits, whom some Protestants regarded as the very symbol
and quintessence of clerical intrigue, were thus compensated by the
state, but that the sanction of the Pope had been invoked to give
effect to an act of a British legislature. The Protestant war-chiefs,
D'Alton M'Carthy, Colonel O'Brien, and John Charlton, took up the
tomahawk, and called on the Dominion Government to disallow the act.
But Sir John Macdonald declined to intervene. A resolution in the
House of Commons calling for disallowance was defeated by 188 to 13,
the minority being chiefly Conservatives from Ontario.
In opposing the resolution Mr Laurier congratulated the Government on
its tardy conversion from the vicious doctrine of centralization. The
revolt of its followers from Ontario was the inevitable retribution due
to a party which had pandered to religious prejudices in both
provinces--due to 'that party with a rigid Protestant face turning
towards the west and a devout Catholic face turning towards the east';
and which at the same time had proclaimed the right to disallow any
provincial {117} act. He did not, however, base his position solely on
the plea of provincial rights. In itself the legislation was just and
expedient, a reasonable compromise between seriously conflicting
claims. Nor would he listen to those who called upon the Liberals to
emulate the Liberals of continental Europe in their anti-clerical
campaigns. He preferred to take tolerant Britain as his model rather
than intolerant France or Germany. Once more he declared, as he had
declared in Quebec twelve years before, that he was a Liberal of the
English school, not of the French.
Outvoted in parliament, the champions of militant Protestantism found
strong support in the country. An Equal Rights Association was formed
to resist the danger of Catholic domination which many believed
imminent. It had less influence in the politics of the Dominion than
in the politics of Ontario, where Oliver Mowat was solemnly accused of
having conspired with Honore Mercier to raise the Jesuits to power. It
contained many able and sincere men, yet its influence soon ceased. By
1894 its place was taken by the Protestant Protective Association, or
P.P.A., a boycotting organization imported from the United States,
which had a deservedly short {118} life. But, while the fires burned
low in the East, the torch had been passed on to the far West--from
D'Alton M'Carthy to Joseph Martin. Of the conflagration which ensued
we shall learn in a later chapter.
Men will sometimes pray, or may try to prevent others from praying as
they list; but they must always eat. The pendulum of public interest
swung back to trade relations with the United States. Depression still
pervaded farming and manufacturing centres alike, though the
abandonment of the policy of federal coercion had lessened political
discontent. The return of the Republicans to power in 1888, it has
been seen, appeared to put freer trade relations out of the question.
The M'Kinley tariff of 1890 slammed the door in Canada's face, for in
order to delude the American farmer into believing that protection was
in his interest, this tariff imposed high and often prohibitive duties
on farm products.
Should Canada retaliate, or make still another effort at a reasonable
arrangement with its unneighbourly neighbour? The possibility of
adjustment was not as remote as might have seemed probable. After all,
reciprocity is as much a protective as a {119} free-trade doctrine,
since, as usually interpreted, it implies that the reduction in duties
is a detriment to the country making it, only to be balanced by the
greater privilege secured at the expense of the other's home market.
James G. Blaine, secretary of state in President Harrison's Cabinet,
was strongly in favour of reciprocity, particularly with Latin-American
countries. In the same session which saw the passing of the M'Kinley
Act, the House of Representatives agreed to the Hitt resolution,
providing that whenever it should be certified that Canada was ready to
negotiate for a complete or partial removal of all duties, the
president should appoint three commissioners to meet the Canadian
representatives, and report their findings.
This was the position of affairs when, early in 1891, Sir John
Macdonald suddenly decided to dissolve parliament, in spite of an
explicit promise to the contrary made a short time before. With the
dissolution came an adroit attempt to cut the ground from under the
feet of the Liberal party. It was asserted that, on the initiative of
the United States, negotiations had been undertaken to settle all
outstanding disputes, and to renew the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854,
'with the modifications {120} required by the altered circumstances of
both countries and with the extensions deemed by the Commission to be
in the interests of Canada and the United States.' This announcement
greatly strengthened the Government's position. Since the United
States had taken the initiative there was likelihood of a successful
outcome. Many who favoured reciprocity but felt doubtful as to the
political outcome of the more sweeping proposals of the Opposition were
thus led to favour the Government.
The announcement proved too audacious. Secretary Blaine indignantly
denied that the United States had initiated the negotiations, and Sir
Charles Tupper so admitted after the elections. Mr Blaine further made
it plain that no treaty confined to natural products would be
entertained. In the face of this statement the Government executed
another sharp turn, and appealed to anti-American sentiment and
protected interests, denouncing vigorously the Opposition's policy as
sure to lead to ruin, annexation, and--the climax--direct taxation.
Sir John Macdonald issued a skilful address to the electors, and the
cry of 'the old flag, the old man, and the old policy' appealed to
noble feelings and to deplorable prejudice alike.
{121}
In his address to the Canadian people Mr Laurier arraigned the National
Policy for its utter failure to bring the prosperity so lavishly
promised. Reciprocal freedom of trade with the United States would
give the larger market which had become indispensable. The commercial
advantages of such a plan were so clear that they were not disputed, it
was attacked entirely on other grounds. The charge that it would
involve discrimination against Great Britain could not have much weight
in the mouths of men whose object was to prevent the importation of
English manufactures. If it did involve discrimination, if the
interests of Canada and the motherland clashed, he would stand by his
native land. But that discrimination was involved he did not admit.
It was not essential to assimilate the Canadian to the American tariff:
'Should the concessions demanded from the people of Canada involve
consequences injurious to their sense of honour or duty, either to
themselves or to the motherland, the people of Canada would not have
reciprocity at such a price.' Direct taxation might be averted by
retrenchment and revision of custom schedules. The charge that
unrestricted reciprocity would lead to annexation was an unworthy
appeal to {122} passion and prejudice, and, if it meant anything, meant
that it would 'make the people so prosperous that, not satisfied with a
commercial alliance, they would forthwith vote for political absorption
in the American Republic.'
The Government's appeal to the flag was greatly aided by some letters
and pamphlets of Mr Farrer and Congressman Hitt and other leaders in
the commercial union movement, which were made public and which gave
colour to the cry that unrestricted reciprocity was only a first step
towards annexation. It was in vain that Oliver Mowat and Alexander
Mackenzie, the latter now soon to pass from the scene, voiced the
deep-lying sentiments of the Liberal party in favour of British
connection, and indignantly denied that it was at stake in the
reciprocity issue. Sir John Macdonald's last appeal rallied many a
wandering follower on grounds of personal loyalty, the campaign funds
of the party were great beyond precedent, and the railway and
manufacturing and banking interests of the country outweighed and
outmanoeuvred the farmers. The Government was returned by a majority
of thirty. In Ontario it had only four seats to the good and had a
minority {123} of the popular vote, while in Quebec the Liberals at
last secured a bare majority. The other provinces, however, stood by
the party in power, and gave the Government another lease of life for
five years.
The smoke of battle had not cleared when a remarkable letter from
Edward Blake, the late leader of the Liberal party, was published. It
was a curiously inconclusive document. It began with a scathing
indictment of the Conservative policy and its outcome: 'Its real
tendency has been towards disintegration and annexation.... It has
left us with a smaller population, a scanty immigration, and a
North-West empty still; with enormous additions to our public debt and
yearly charge, an extravagant system of expenditure and an unjust
tariff, with restricted markets whether to buy or to sell.... It has
left us with lowered standards of public virtue and a death-like apathy
in public opinion, with racial, religious, and provincial animosities
rather inflamed than soothed.... It has left us with our hands tied,
our future compromised.' A preference in the English market was out of
the question. Unrestricted free trade with the United States would
bring prosperity, give men, money, and {124} markets. Yet it would
involve assimilation of tariffs and thus become identical with
commercial union. 'Political Union,' he added in a cryptic postscript,
'though becoming our probable, is by no means our ideal, or as yet our
inevitable, future.'
Mr Blake had persistently withheld his aid and advice from the leaders
of the party since his resignation. His action now was resented as a
stab in the back, and the implication that the Liberal policy was
identical with commercial union was stoutly denied. If, as Mr Laurier
had made clear in his electoral address, negotiations proved that
reciprocal arrangements could not be made except on such terms, they
would not be made at all. Yet the letter had undoubted force, and
materially aided the Government in the by-elections.
The Government formally carried out its undertaking to open
negotiations with the United States. Sir Charles Tupper, Sir John
Thompson, and George E. Foster went to Washington and conferred with
Secretary Blaine. But the negotiators were too far apart to come to
terms, and the proposals were not seriously pressed. Later, when the
tide of reaction brought the Democrats back to power in 1892, the
Conservatives made no {125} attempt to renew negotiations; and later
still, when the Liberals came to power in Canada, the Republicans were
back in office on a platform of sky-high protection.
Meanwhile, the increase of exports of farm products to Great Britain
promised the larger markets sought, and made admission to the United
States of less pressing importance. When, in 1893, the Liberal party
met in national convention at Ottawa, limited reciprocity, 'including a
well-considered list of manufactured articles,' was endorsed, but it
was subordinated as part of a general demand for a lower tariff, now
again prominent in the party programme.
[1] Sir Alexander T. Galt, Sir John Rose, and Sir John Abbott.
[2] _Memoir of Sumner_, vol. iv, p. 409.
{126}