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Title: Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Volume I)
Author: Skelton, Oscar Douglas (1878-1941)
Date of first publication: 1921
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: S. B. Gundy;
   Oxford University Press, 1921
   (first edition)
Date first posted: 15 January 2009
Date last updated: 15 January 2009
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #236

This ebook was produced by: David T. Jones, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

SIR WILFRID LAURIER

BY

OSCAR DOUGLAS SKELTON

ILLUSTRATED WITH
PHOTOGRAPHS

VOLUME I

S. B. GUNDY

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

TORONTO

1921

[Illustration: WILFRID LAURIER
At twenty-eight]


Copyright, 1921, by
THE CENTURY CO.


TO

MY MOTHER




PREFACE

Some time before his death, Sir Wilfrid Laurier placed in my hands all
his papers, covering the period to the close of his term of office.
After his death, Lady Laurier gave access to the later papers. These
papers included all the documents of public interest which he had
accumulated, with the exception of a few boxes of letters lost in the
burning of the Parliament Buildings during the war.

It will be noted that few letters have been reprinted in the early as
compared with the late years of Sir Wilfrid's life. There is a
striking difference, in the character of the correspondence of the
middle and of the last years. During his years of office, when
business pressed and when men came across a continent at a prime
minister's nod, the letters, though abundant, are nearly always brief
and rarely of general interest. In the years of comparative leisure,
when a leader in opposition had to go to men, or write them, and
particularly when emotions were stirred, the letters are longer and
freer. Sir Wilfrid's caution and his remarkable memory lessened the
extent to which he committed himself on paper. He never wrote a letter
when he could hold a conversation, and he never filed a document when
he could store the fact in his memory: fortunately, his secretaries
saw to the filing. So far as is known, he never wrote a line in a
diary in his life. He was not given to introspection; he lived in his
day's work.

The writer is deeply indebted to friends of Sir Wilfrid and of his own
who have read these pages in proof. They are given to the public with
the hope that they may provide his countrymen with the material for a
fuller understanding of one who was not only a moving orator, a
skilled parliamentarian, a courageous party leader, and a faithful
servant of his country, but who was the finest and simplest gentleman,
the noblest and most unselfish man, it has ever been my good fortune
to know.
                                                  O. D. SKELTON.

  _Kingston, Canada,_
     _October_, 1921.


CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                              PAGE

   I THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN                           3

  II THE POLITICAL SCENE                               45

 III FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT                        105

  IV THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION                     157

   V UNDER A NEW LEADER                               218

  VI RAIL AND RIEL                                    260

 VII LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY                      332

VIII MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED                          350

  IX THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION               424



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Wilfrid Laurier                              _Frontispiece_

                                                    FACING
                                                     PAGE
Carolus Laurier                                        20

River Achigan and St. Lin                              28

The Village School, St. Lin                            32

L'Assomption College                                   32

Wilfrid Laurier                                        40

Mlle. Zoë Lafontaine                                   48

A Street in L'Assomption                               64

The Hills of Arthabaska                                64

Louis Joseph Papineau                                  80

Cardinal Taschereau                                   128

Bishop Bourget                                        128

Bishop Laflèche                                       128

Alexander Mackenzie                                   160

Edward Blake                                          224

Four Quebec Leaders                                   240

Builders of the Canadian Pacific                      272

Wilfrid Laurier                                       336

Sir John A. Macdonald                                 416

Four Conservative Prime Ministers                     464



LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR
WILFRID LAURIER




CHAPTER I

THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN

     The Peopling of New France--An Outpost of the Faith--A
     Soldier of France--The Laurier Stock--The Habitant--New
     France and British Policy--Charles Laurier,
     Inventor--Carolus and Marcelle Laurier--Birth of
     Wilfrid Laurier--Boyhood in St. Lin--An English
     Schooling--L'Assomption College--Student at Law--Early
     Partnerships--The Eastern Townships--A Happy Marriage.


Wilfrid Laurier was born at St. Lin, a little village on the
Laurentian plain north of Montreal, on November 20, 1841. Exactly two
hundred years earlier his first Canadian ancestor had fared forth from
Normandy, a member of the little band of pioneers who had undertaken
to plant an outpost of France and the Faith on the Iroquois-harried
island of Montreal. For eight generations his forefathers took their
part in the unending task of subduing the Laurentian wilderness.
Striking deep roots in Canadian soil, shaping and shaped by the new
ways and new interests of the colony, they worked, like thousands of
their compatriots, for the most part in obscurity and silence. Then at
last the sound and sturdy stock found expression. We cannot
understand Wilfrid Laurier, his character, temperament, viewpoint, his
problems, limitations, achievements, unless we bear in mind those two
centuries of life and work in the Canada which had become his
kinsmen's only home.

France had entered late into the race for overseas possessions. The
wars of religion, entanglements in Europe, court intrigues, had
occupied the whole interest of her rulers. When at last, in the
seventeenth century, with a measure of unity attained at home, France
had brief leisure to dream of New-World empire, there seemed little
place left in the sun. Spaniards and Portuguese, English and Dutch,
were staking out the lands of sun and gold. French adventurers found a
footing in India and Florida and Brazil, but for the most part they
followed the track of Breton fishermen to the fogs and furs of the St.
Lawrence. In 1608, a year after the London Company had founded, in the
marshes of Jamestown, the first enduring English settlement in the
South, Champlain founded, on the rock of Quebec, the first enduring
French settlement in the North. For all Champlain's courage and
persistence, it grew but slowly. The weary and perilous voyage in
crude and comfortless craft barred all but the most courageous or the
most despairing. There was no gold to lure. The fur-trade was
monopolized by the trading companies to which in turn kingly favour
inclined. It was a task of years to clear an opening in the dense
forests, and the little settlement planted in a vast fertile continent
was long dependent for food and stores on the yearly ships from
France. The Iroquois lurked at the gate. Winter and scurvy and brandy
played havoc with men who would not learn the country's ways. If New
France was to become more than a fur-trader's post, some other power
was needed to drive or draw men forth.

That power was religion. In the English settlements to the south, it
was religion more than any other factor that impelled men to leave the
land of their birth and seek homes overseas. Men who could not find in
England freedom to worship as their conscience dictated, or power to
make others worship as they themselves pleased--Puritans, Quakers,
Roman Catholics, and, in Long Parliament days, Episcopalians--formed
the backbone of the settlements on the Atlantic coast, and gave the
young colonies their fateful bias toward self-government.

In New France it was not the discontent of a religious minority that
sent men and women overseas. This solution of France's colonizing
problem had been definitely rejected. France, like England, had its
dissenters: there were in Europe no more resolute or enterprising men,
no better stuff for the building of a new state, than the Huguenots.
But they were not allowed to find an outlet in America, under the flag
of France. For years advisers of the court, lay and cleric, urged that
New France should be saved from the evil of a divided faith which had
brought old France to the verge of ruin, and that the simplest way to
avoid conflict was to bar the Huguenot. Insistent pressure and the
flaring out again of Huguenot revolt, brought Richelieu to yield, and
in the charter granted the Hundred Associates trading company, in
1627, all Huguenots and foreigners were forbidden to enter the colony.
The discontented minority who might have emigrated to New France and
who eventually were exiled from France to build up her rivals, were
not allowed to grapple with the task. The contented majority for whom
the colony was reserved had little wish to go.

Yet in another way than in the English colonies religion was destined
to provide the impelling force. There were among the Catholics of
France men and women of burning zeal, who felt a call to bring the
Indians to Christ. While English settlers with their families were
flocking to New England and Virginia, seeking to better themselves
both here and hereafter, in New France martyr priests and devoted nuns
were facing endless perils and privations in the hope of winning
savage souls. There are no more glorious pages in the annals of
missions than those which record the womanly tenderness and practical
efficiency of Jeanne Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys and Mère Marie de
l'Incarnation, or the devotion of Franciscan and Jesuit fathers, Le
Caron and Dablon, Lalemant and Brébeuf, Le Jeune and Massé and Jogues,
following the shifting, shiftless Montagnais through filth and famine,
labouring patient years in the great Huron villages of what is now
western Ontario, or braving the Iroquois in their innermost
strongholds, only too often crowning a life of service by martyrdom
under the scalping-knife or at the stake.

The reports or _Relations_ in which each year the Jesuits recorded
their efforts, fired the imagination of pious men and women throughout
France. Not least they stirred one extraordinary group of men and
women, in whom mystic piety, hard-headed grasp of practical affairs
and unquestioning courage were strangely mingled, to a resolve to
plant the Cross far toward the heart of the new land. Jerôme le Royer
de la Dauversière, tax-gatherer of Anjou; Jean Jacques Olier, Paris
abbé and later founder of the Order of St. Sulpice; Pierre Chevrier,
Baron de Fancamp; Mme. de Bullion, as pious as she was rich; Mlle.
Jeanne Mance, honoured of all Canadian nurses who have followed in her
footsteps, and Paul de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve, Christian
gentleman, whose simple faith had withstood contact with soldiers and
with heretics, were only the more notable of the associates who thus
came together to found the Society of Our Lady of Montreal. Their aim
was to found a mission outpost on the island of Montreal, which lay at
the junction of the two great Indian waterways, the St. Lawrence and
the Ottawa, and was famed through all North America as a rendezvous.
Here priests were to minister to the spiritual needs of such savages
as could be made to halt and heed; nursing sisters were to care for
the sick and the aged, and teaching sisters to instruct the young.
Funds were raised, a grant of the island secured, soldier colonists
selected, and three small vessels equipped. In the summer of 1641 the
expedition reached Quebec. Here they found little backing for their
rash venture. Governor and Jesuit sought to dissuade them from
inevitable and useless sacrifice; it was unwise to scatter forces when
the whole white population of Canada was less than three hundred; the
island of Montreal was straight in the track of the Iroquois hordes
who every year swept up the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa in their
relentless hunting of men. But Maisonneuve insisted that to Montreal
he would go "if every tree on the island were to be changed to an
Iroquois," and in the following spring the undaunted little band took
possession.

Among the soldier colonists who followed Maisonneuve there was found
Wilfrid Laurier's first known Canadian ancestor.[1] Augustin Hébert
was a native of the Norman town of Caen, the birthplace of William the
Conqueror. Four years after his coming he married a girl of twenty,
Adrienne Du Vivier, daughter of Antoine Du Vivier and Catherine
Journé, originally from Carbony, in the province of Laon. Four
children were born to them, Paule, Jeanne, Léger, and Ignace. Paule,
who died in infancy, was sponsored by M. de Maisonneuve and Mlle.
Mance. In August, 1651, Augustin Hébert died of wounds received in an
engagement with the Iroquois. Three years later his widow married
Robert Le Cavelier. M. de Maisonneuve granted them forty arpents of
land near the fort, on condition that the land might be resumed if
needed for building, that Adrienne Du Vivier renounced her dowry and
her rights in the estate of her first husband, and that they would
undertake to bring up the three surviving children of Hébert until
they attained their twelfth year.[2]

[Footnote 1: List of the first colonists of Montreal, as given by M.
l'Abbé Verreau, in "Trans. Royal Society of Canada," 1882, p. 99:

1642: May to August

1. M. de Maisonneuve
2. Le Père Poncet
3. M. de Puiseau
4. Mlle. Mance
5. Mme. de la Peltrie
6. Mlle. Catherin Barré
7. Jean Gorry
8. Jean Robelin
9. _Augustin Hébert_
10. Antoin Damiens
11. Jean Caillot
12. Pierre Laimery
13. Nicolas Gode and family]

[Footnote 2: L'Abbé Dejordy: La Famille Hébert-Lambert, p. 1.]

The vision of Indians flocking peaceably from all the St. Lawrence
valley to hear the gospel message faded before the stern reality of
Iroquois attack. The Five Nations had vowed to destroy the whole
French colony, and particularly the outpost at Montreal. They were
then at the height of their power. An unusual capacity for political
organization, a shrewd mastery of diplomacy, a grasp of military
strategy, a persistence as rare among Indians as their ruthlessness
was common, and, not least, ample stores of firearms sold by
recklessly profiteering Dutch traders from New Netherlands made the
Iroquois the most formidable of all Indian peoples, unquestioned lords
from Maine to the Mississippi and from Hudson Bay to Tennessee.
Hurons, Neutrals, Eries, Andastes, in turn were exterminated. Only
their French foes withstood them. For twenty-seven years (1640-67) the
war continued, with only two brief breathing spells. Now great bands
of warriors attacked in force; now single braves lurked for days in
ambush to catch a Frenchman unawares. The builders of this New
Jerusalem, as of the Jerusalem of old, worked in the fields with
their weapons by their side. "Not a month of this summer passed," a
chronicler recorded, "but the book of the dead was marked in letters
of red by the hand of the Iroquois." Maisonneuve and his comrades
fought hard, worked hard, prayed hard, and against all chance the
little colony survived. Rarely had they strength to take the
offensive. One breathing spell came when in 1660 Adam Dollard and his
immortal sixteen young comrades, all but two in their twenties, after
making their wills, their peace with their Maker, and their last
farewells, struck up the Ottawa to meet the oncoming Iroquois, and at
the Rapids of the Long Sault, Canada's more glorious Thermopylæ,
fought for eight days and nights against seven hundred frantic foes,
until arms, water, strength but never courage failed, and one by one
the little band had fallen by musket or tomahawk or at the stake.

Exploits such as Dollard's checked the Iroquois, but only a great
accession of force to the colonists could subdue them. Fortunately
help was at hand. The rulers of France had at last both the will and
the power to aid. The young king, Louis XIV, and his great minister,
Colbert, were for the moment keenly alive to the possibilities of
colonial strength. The Hundred Associates, the trading company which
for a generation had misruled New France, lost its charter, and in
1663 the colony came virtually under the king's direct control. Jean
Talon, intendant or business manager of the colony, came out to play
Colbert's part on the smaller stage. Soldiers and settlers streamed in
for a decade, and the Marquis de Tracy, at the head of large French
and Canadian forces, laid waste the Iroquois country and brought peace
for a score of years.

One of the soldiers in Tracy's crack force, the regiment of
Carignan-Salières, raised by the Prince de Carignan in Savoy, tried
and hardened in campaigns against the Turk, and brought to Canada
under Sieur de Salières, was François Cottineau, _dit_ Champlaurier,
the first of the Laurier name in Canada. François Cottineau was born
in 1641 at St.-Cloud, near Rochefoucauld, in what was then the
province of Angoumois and is now the department of Charente, son, as
the records say, of Jean Cottineau, vine-grower, and Jeanne Dupuy. In
that day, when family names were still in the making, doubtless some
ancestral field of _lauriers_ or oleanders had given a sept of the
Cottineaus the additional surname which in time was to become their
only one.

The coming of Talon and Tracy assured the permanence of the colony.
The little settlement on the island of Montreal shared in the brief
outburst of vigour and support. Its religious purpose was not
forgotten. Priests of the Order of St. Sulpice took spiritual charge
and temporal lordship of the island, not without a bitter feud with
the Jesuits which did not soon die. Mlle. Mance still gave to the
Hotel Dieu her skill and judgment, and Marguerite Bourgeoys continued
the work of teaching which the Congregation de Notre Dame has carried
on to this day. But gradually the advantages of the island port for
trade, and the rich farming possibilities of the volcanic island soil,
led to growth in other directions which soon overshadowed the
original activities of the associates of Our Lady of Montreal.
Montreal, like all New France, had ceased to be merely a fur-traders'
counter and a missionaries' base of operations; it had become for all
time a land of settlers and of homes.

For a few brief years the State took unwonted care to stimulate the
growth of New France. Officers and men of the Carignan-Salières
regiment were induced to settle, Roman-wise, on the imperilled
borders, though it is to be feared that more of them turned _coureurs
de bois_, roaming far in the Western wilderness, than remained to till
the soil of the Richelieu seigniories. Ship after ship of settlers
came, and thrifty efforts were made to save the men of France for
cannon fodder in Europe by encouraging early marriage in the colony
itself. Hundreds of girls were brought from the old land, and married
out of hand to soldier and settler. The quick to wed were rewarded and
the tardy punished. The State provided dowries of money or supplies,
while in anticipation of Honoré Mercier, Louis XIV offered a pension
of three hundred livres to all Canadians who had ten children living
and four hundred for families of twelve--girls who had entered any
religious order not being counted. Fathers were fined if their sons
were not married at twenty or their daughters at sixteen, and
marriageable bachelors were forbidden to set out hunting unless they
undertook to marry within a fortnight of the arrival of the next
matrimonial ship from France.[3] Not even a Colbert could ensure that
such drastic and paternal interference would be permanent, but
pressure of Church and State and frontier conditions long made
marriage at an early age a feature of New France.

[Footnote 3: Colbert summed up the policy succinctly in a despatch to
Talon in 1668: "I beg you to commend it to the consideration of the
whole people that their well-being, their subsistence, and all that
most nearly concerns them, depend on a general resolution, never to be
broken, to marry youths at eighteen or nineteen years, and girls at
fourteen or fifteen; in countries where everybody labors, and in
Canada in particular, there is food for all, and abundance can never
come to them except through abundance of men.... It would be well to
double the taxes and duties of bachelors who do not marry at that age
... and as regards those who seem to have utterly forsworn marriage it
would be expedient to increase their taxes, to deprive them of all
honors and even to attach to them some mark of infamy.... Even though
the kingdom of France be as populous as any country in the world, it
is certain that it would be difficult to maintain large armies and at
the same time to send great numbers of settlers to distant lands....
It is then ... chiefly to increase from marriage that we must look for
the growth of the colony."]

This rapid marrying and the steady pushing back of the frontier which
went with it, are brought out clearly in the annals of the Hébert and
the Cottineau-Laurier families. Thanks to the care with which the
parish registers were kept by the church authorities, and the tireless
industry with which historians from Abbé Tanguay to M. Massicotte have
delved into the records, and thanks also to the fact that immigration
from France ceased early, making it possible to trace all the present
families to the early stocks, we can follow the branching of these, as
of countless other families of New France, without a break through the
generations.

Jeanne Hébert, the only surviving daughter of Augustin Hébert and
Adrienne Du Vivier, was married in Montreal in 1660, to Jacques
Millot, son of Gabriel Millot and Julienne Phelippot; the bride was in
her fourteenth year, but the husband, doubtless a newcomer, in his
twenty-eighth. They did not quite earn the King's pension, for though
they had ten children, not more than seven were living at one time. It
was the eldest of these ten children, Madeleine Millot, who in 1677 in
her fifteenth year, was married to the soldier of Carignan-Salières,
François Cottineau, _dit_ Champlaurier, then approaching thirty-six.

Marriages in those days might be made early, but they were not
contracted lightly. The marriage contract of François Cottineau and
Madeleine Millot, which is still preserved, reveals with what a
multitude of witnesses--kinsmen, neighbours, old regimental
officers--the solemn undertaking was made, and with what thrifty and
cautious care the future family finances were detailed and guarded.[4]

When the eldest of the four children of François Cottineau-Laurier,
fittingly named Jean Baptiste, was married at twenty-six to Catherine
Lamoureux, a girl of sixteen, youngest but one of a family of eleven,
it was not at Montreal but at St. François in Ile Jésus, to the
northeastward, that the marriage was performed. That even Colbert
could not mould the people to his will is made clear by the fact that
the two daughters of François Cottineau-Laurier did not marry until
one was twenty-nine and the other was twenty-four. Jean Baptiste made
his home at Lachenaie, across the river from St. François, but at
first in the same parish. Here his quiverful of children were
born--Jean Baptiste, Marie Catherine, Marie, Agathe, Jacques, Rose,
Thérèse, Joseph, Pierre, Marie Anne, and Véronique.

[Footnote 4: See Appendix I.]

Here it was, in 1742, that Jacques, his second son, at twenty-six,
married Agathe Rochon, aged twenty-one, and here for three generations
more the family took root.

In every parish from Tadoussac to Montreal the same story of early and
fruitful marriage and of steady widening of the bounds of settlement
is to be told. All along the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu the
habitants were clearing their deep narrow holdings, winning an acre or
two a year from the dense forest. Facing the river-road, the
steep-roofed whitewashed houses of logs or field stone, a furlong
apart, soon gave the river bank the air of an unending village street.
Fur-trader and explorer, missionary and soldier, ventured far into the
unknown West; while the English colonists were still clinging to the
coast or breaking through the Appalachian barrier, the sons of New
France were blazing trails from Texas to Hudson Bay and from the
Atlantic to the foothills of the Rockies. Yet the great bulk of the
population remained in the St. Lawrence valley, and in that community
farming more and more became the mainstay.

Farming methods were crude, but the soil was rich and the habitant
hard-working. Save in a rare famine year, he had in his fields
abundance of wheat and oats, of corn and rye and the indispensable
peas, and of fish and game and wild fruits in the river and forest at
his door. Home-brewed ale and, later, home-grown and home-cured _tabac
canadien_ helped to pass the long winter nights. Every household was
self-sufficient and self-contained. The habitant picked up something
of many a trade, and developed a versatility which marks his
descendants to this day. From the iron-tipped wooden plough, the
wooden harrow and shovel and rake, to the spinning-wheel that stood
beside the great open fire-place, the many-colored rug, the homespun
linens and _étoffe du pays_, the wooden dishes, the deerskin moccasin,
the knitted tasselled toque and the gay sash, all were his own and his
family's handiwork.

The habitant had found comfort. He had not yet found full freedom,
though the independent strain in his blood and the democracy of the
frontier ensured him much greater liberty than is usually recognized,
and there was always the safety-valve of escape to the lawless life of
the _coureur de bois_. In the wider affairs of the colony he had
little voice. King and governor and intendant made his laws, with some
slight aid from a nominated council; yet his taxes were light, and if
he did not make the laws, neither did they greatly circumscribe his
daily life. The seigneur counted for more in his eyes than the king,
but had only a shadow of the authority wielded by feudal lords in
France: the farmer proudly insisted that he was _habitant_, not
_censitaire_. The Church came closest. The missionary aims of the
founders of the colony, the unwearied devotion of the Church's
servants, the outstanding ability of some of its servants, notably
Bishop Laval--America's first prohibitionist--and the barring of
heretics, gave the Church sweeping and for a time unquestioned and
ungrudged authority. After Colbert came to office, and throughout the
French régime, the State increasingly asserted its power, controlling
the Church in matters of tithes, the founding of new orders or
communities, appeals from ecclesiastical courts, and many issues of
policy, but the Church remained the dominant social influence in the
colony.

Already New France had taken on a life and colour of its own.
Governors and merchants and soldiers might come and go, but the ways
of the colony were little changed. The striking and significant
feature of these later years is the cessation of contact with France
through immigration. The outburst of colonizing energy under Colbert
proved brief. Louis XIV and Louis XV were seeking glory on European
battle-fields, and could spare no men for the wilderness. Daring
projects of American empire were staked out, but the men needed to
hold and develop the vast arc from Montreal to New Orleans did not
come. In the seventy years up to 1680 the colony had received at most
three thousand immigrants from France; in the eighty years that
followed, an incredibly small number came--a number which a
distinguished authority, M. Benjamin Sulte, has put as low as one
thousand all told. Through all this period France had more than twice
the population of the British Isles, but did not send one settler to
the New World for the twenty that Britain and Ireland urged and forced
to go. In forty years half the Presbyterian population of Ulster
sought refuge in the American colonies from British industrial and
religious oppression; German, Dutch, Swiss settlers poured in during
the eighteenth century by tens of thousands. The numbers of Ulstermen
and of Germans coming to the English colonies in a single year
exceeded the number of French settlers who crossed the Atlantic in the
century and a half from the beginning to the end of the French régime.
Of the four or five hundred thousand Huguenots exiled from France more
came to the English colonies than Catholic France could spare for her
own New-World plantations, and the names of Bowdoin, Faneuil, Revere,
Bayard, Jay, Maury, Marion, and many another bear witness of their
quality. For all the rapid multiplying of the original stock in New
France, it continued to be outnumbered by the English colonies twenty
to one.

For New France this cessation of new settlement and the limitation of
growth to the natural increase of population, meant isolation and the
development of a distinctive, homogeneous community. With each year
that passed the men of New France knew less of any country other than
the land of their birth. For old France it meant defeat in the
struggle for colonial empire, defeat which might be postponed by the
bravery and resource of individual leaders, by the firm military
organization of the people of New France, and by the disunion of the
English colonies, but which could not be averted.

The French régime came to an end a century and a half after Champlain
had raised the flag of France on the rock of Quebec. The new rulers
were faced at once by the most serious difficulty that had yet beset
any colonizing power. Here were nearly eighty thousand Frenchmen and
Catholics, firmly rooted in the soil, with ways of life and thought
fixed by generations of tradition. What was to be the attitude of
their English and Protestant rulers? On the answer to that question
hung the future of Canada, and the answer, or rather the answers, that
were given shaped the problems and the tasks that in after days faced
Wilfrid Laurier and his contemporaries and that in changing forms will
face the Canadians of to-morrow.

The solution first adopted was what might have been expected in a time
when the right of self-determination had not even become a paper
phrase. It was simply to turn New France into another New England, to
swamp the old inhabitants by immigration from the colonies to the
south and to make over their laws, land tenure, and religion on
English models. No little progress had been made in this attempt when
the shadow of the American Revolution and the sympathy of soldier
governors for the old autocratic régime and for the French-Canadian
people about them brought a fateful change in policy. British
statesmen determined to build up on the St. Lawrence a bulwark against
democracy and a base of operations against the Southern colonies in
case of war, by confirming the habitant in his laws, the seigneur in
his dues, the priest in his authority. To keep the colony British, the
government now sought to prevent it becoming English. The Quebec Act,
the "sacred charter" of French-speaking Canada, embodied this new
policy. A measure of success followed. Then the unexpected result of
the American Revolution in exiling to the St. Lawrence and the St.
John tens of thousands of English-speaking settlers made it
impossible to keep Canada wholly French, and the hatred for democracy
and for all things French which developed during the wars with
Napoleon made Englishmen unwilling to let French-speaking Canada rule
itself.

The lesson which the statesmen in control in Britain learned from the
two revolutions, the American and the French, was not the need of
making terms with democracy, but the need of nipping democracy in the
bud. Elective assemblies were conceded the people of Lower or
French-speaking Canada, and Upper Canada, the newer English-speaking
settlements to the west, as they had previously been granted to the
old colony of Nova Scotia and the Loyalist settlement of New
Brunswick, but beyond this British governments would not go. An
all-guiding Colonial Office, a governor who really governed, an
appointed, and but for the grace of God an hereditary, upper house
which could always block the popular assembly, little cliques of a
governing caste in control of administration, a church established and
endowed to teach the people respect for authority, long barred the
advance of self-government. Then the tide of democracy surging through
the world, the constitutional campaigns of Baldwin and Papineau and
Howe, the bullets of Mackenzie's and Chenier's men, the abandonment by
Britain itself of the protectionist ideal of a self-contained empire,
forced reform. This is not the place to repeat the familiar story of
that early struggle for self-government. Later it will be necessary to
consider what were the results of the half-century of British policy
and Canadian development, on the political and party situation, the
unity of the provinces, the relations of Church and State, the
sentiment of French-Canadian nationalism, the evolution of the
colonial status, and the other issues which faced Wilfrid Laurier and
his fellow-countrymen as they came to manhood.

[Illustration: CAROLUS LAURIER
Father of Wilfrid Laurier]

While these affairs of state were in the balance, generation after
generation of Lauriers were hewing their way through the Northern
woods. It was in 1742 in the parish of Lachenaie that Jacques, second
son of Jean Baptiste Laurier and Catherine Lamoureux, married Agathe
Rochon. Charles Laurier, fourth of Jacques's five children, was a boy
of eleven when the battles of the Plains of Abraham and of Ste. Foye
were fought. In the year of the Quebec Act he married Marie Marguerite
Parant, or Parent. Of their four children, only two, Charles and
Toussaint, grew to manhood. With Charles Laurier the younger the
capacity of the stock began to reveal itself and the environment to
take the shape required to fit his grandson, Wilfrid Laurier, for the
part he was to play in his country's life.

Charles Laurier, the grandfather of Wilfrid Laurier, was a man of
unusual mental capacity and force of character. His interests and
ambitions extended beyond the narrow range of habitant life. Not
content with the scanty education available in the parish school, he
mastered mathematics and land-surveying. He surveyed a great part of
the old seigniory of Lachenaie, originally granted to Sieur de
Repentigny in 1647, and later divided, the western half, two leagues
along the river and six leagues deep, falling in 1794 into the hands
of Peter Pangman, "Bastonnais" or New Englander, famed for his
exploits as fighter and fur-trader in the far North-West.

Charles Laurier had an ingenious and practical turn, which is
evidenced by the fact that he was the first man in Upper or Lower
Canada to obtain a patent for an invention. In 1822 he invented what
he termed a _loch terrestre_, or "land log." The Quebec "Gazette" of
June 24, 1822, noted that an ingenious machine to be attached to the
wheel of a carriage for measuring the distance traversed had been
exhibited that month in Quebec, and that it was the invention of Mr.
Charles de Laurier, _dit_ Cottineau, who intended to seek a patent
from the legislature next session. A letter in the "Gazette" a few
days later from Charles Laurier himself dealt at length with the
device. He explained that the "land log" recorded automatically the
number of revolutions of the carriage-wheel to which it was attached,
the dials indicating in leagues and decimal fractions of a league the
distance traversed. In a carriage to which this instrument had been
attached, one could almost make a survey of a province while driving,
provided one had a good compass.

In the summer of 1823 M. Laurier determined to put his suggestion into
practice. He attached the instrument to the dashboard of a calèche,
with five dials indicating respectively tens of leagues, units,
tenths, hundredths, and thousandths. He drove from Lachenaie to
Quebec city, recording the distance as 54 and 487/1000 leagues. The
legislative assembly, after calling Joseph Bouchette, the
surveyor-general of the province, and E. D. Wells, a Quebec
watchmaker, as expert witnesses, decided to grant the patent. It was
not until 1826, by which time five other patents had been registered,
that the formalities were completed, the fees paid and the patent
obtained. In the same year, 1826, we find him asking the Assembly for
assistance in making experiments in measuring distances on water and
recording the course of a vessel at sea. No aid was granted, and
apparently nothing further came of the project.

In 1805 Charles Laurier married Marie Thérèse Cusson. To his son
Charles, or Carolus, who was born in 1815, he gave a forest farm at
St. Lin, on the river Achigan, some fifteen miles northeast of
Lachenaie. Here the son followed in his father's footsteps, surveying
and farming by turns, and here in 1840, when Carolus had been married
some six years, Charles and his wife came to spend the rest of their
days in a joint household.

The strong common sense of the elder Laurier, his frankness and his
sturdy emphasis on independence are brought out clearly in the
_étrennes_ or New Year's blessing sent to Carolus in 1836:

     (_Translation_)

     NEW YEAR'S BLESSING OF CAROLUS LAURIER

     January 1st, 1836

     MY DEAR SON:

     For New Year's blessing I am going to give you some
     advice, and I hope that you will not scorn it, as you
     are now the head of a household, a substantial
     villager, and consequently a member of society.

     Now in order to be a good member of society, you must
     be independent. Besides independence, many rules of
     conduct are understood, but that is the root of them
     all. Independence does not always mean riches! It means
     prudence, foresight in business so that you are not
     taken unawares and forced to yield or compromise with
     anyone. You must judge your own business, watch over
     everything that goes on in your house, in a word, over
     all that may help or hinder your interests.

     You must subdue the flesh. That is to say, work
     reasonably, prudently and faithfully. A man of bodily
     activity may earn, without any exaggeration, 25 or 50
     dollars a year more than an indolent man would. That
     may make an increase in his fortune of from 13 to 26
     thousand francs at the end of 30 years.

     Finally, my son, you are your own master; do as you
     please; I give you no commands. But if you wish to
     achieve independence, pray God to direct your thoughts
     and your work. It is spiritual and bodily activity
     which leads to independence: the indolent man is always
     in need. This precept may be of service to your wife
     and to everyone.

                              CHARLES LAURIER,
                                Your affectionate father.

The same Polonian prudence is evident in another New Year's letter,
written this time to his daughter-in-law, in anticipation of the two
households being joined:

     NEW YEAR'S BLESSING OF MARCELLE MARTINEAU, WIFE OF CAROLUS LAURIER

     (_Translation_)

     January First, 1840.

     DEAR MADAM:

     As we intend to be joined together next year and for
     the rest of our days, unless we are greatly
     disappointed, God grant that we may live on good terms
     with one another. It is to Him that we must pray for
     this. Be resolute and patient. If we take care, both of
     us, not to be embittered against one another, we shall
     be able to live together happily, for it will be less
     costly to keep house for two families joined together
     than separated, as regards both household tasks and
     expense. If we have the good fortune to agree, we shall
     be happier together than apart. That is why we must
     fortify ourselves beforehand with prudence and patience
     and resignation. When we fear some misfortune, it is
     very seldom that it comes to us. Be wise and prudent.

                              CHARLES LAURIER.

Carolus Laurier had not the rugged individuality or the practical
interests of his father, but he had his own full share of capacity.
His keen wit, his genial comradeship, his generous sympathy, his
strong, handsome figure, made him a welcome guest through all the
French and Scotch settlements of the north country. He was more
interested in political affairs than his father had been, and a strong
supporter of the Liberal or "Patriot" demand for self-government. It
was an index of his progressiveness that he was the first in the
countryside to discard the flail for a modern threshing-machine.

It was to his mother that Wilfrid Laurier always felt he owed most.
Marie Marcelle Martineau was born in L'Assomption in 1815. Her first
Canadian ancestor was Mathurin Martineau, who emigrated to Canada from
the same part of France as Jean Cottineau, about 1687; from this
Martineau stock came the poet Louis Fréchette, who counted himself a
Scotch cousin of Wilfrid Laurier. On her mother's side--Scholastique
or Colette Desmarais--Marcel Martineau had the blood of Acadian exiles
in her veins. In 1834, when each was nineteen, Carolus Laurier and
Marcelle Martineau were married at L'Assomption. Marcelle Laurier was
a woman of fine mind and calm strength, with an interest in literature
and an appreciation of beauty in nature unusual in her place and time.
She was passionately fond of pictures, though there was little
opportunity to gratify her longing, and had a very good natural talent
for drawing. In the home she made in St. Lin there was an intellectual
interest and a grace and distinction of life which were to leave a
lasting impress on the son who came to her in her twenty-seventh year.

In 1841 Carolus Laurier proudly recorded the following entry in his
papers:

     (_Translation_)

     To-day, the twenty-second day of the month of November,
     in the year of Our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and
     forty-one, was baptised in the church of St. Lin, by
     Messire G. Chabot, curé for the said parish, Henri
     Charles Wilfrid, born the twentieth day of the present
     month, of the lawful marriage of Carolus Laurier,
     gentleman, land-surveyor, and Marie Marcelle
     Martinault. His godfather is Sieur Louis Charles
     Beaumont, Esq., gentleman, of Lechenaie; his godmother
     is Marie Zoé Laurier, wife of Sieur L. C. Beaumont.

On January 23, 1844, he records the birth and baptism that day of
Marie Honorine Malvina Laurier.

Marcelle Martineau was not fated to be with her children long. She
died in March, 1848, in her thirty-fifth year. But in the seven years
of her son's life with her, she had so knit herself into his being
that the proud and tender memory of her never faded from his deeply
impressionable mind. A second blow came with the death, when barely
eleven, of the sister who had grown very dear to him.

Carolus Laurier soon took a second wife, Adeline Ethier. By this
marriage there were five children: Ubalde, who became a physician and
died at Arthabaska in 1898; Charlemagne, for many years a merchant at
St. Lin, and member for the county of L'Assomption in the House of
Commons from 1900 until his death in 1907; Henri, prothonotary at
Arthabaska, who died in 1906, and Carolus and Doctorée (Mme.
Lamarche), both of whom survived their half-brother.

Adeline Laurier proved a very kindly and capable mother to all her
flock. Her hold on the elder boy's warm affections, and incidentally
her husband's light-hearted outlook on life, are brought out in a
letter which Carolus wrote to a niece of his wife, many years after:

     (_Translation_)

     St. Lin, March 19, 1886.

     I am almost certain to get well in spite of my
     seventy-one years, and I embarked on the seventy-second
     the day before yesterday, while the Irish were holding
     their procession in the streets of Montreal, and as
     that day is the day of their patron saint and their
     national festival, and as I came into the world 71
     years ago, I think that is the reason why, when I was a
     widower, 5 or 6 old Irish damsels from New Glasgow used
     to come to mass at St. Lin every Sunday and my seat was
     always full of them. But the moment I married your
     aunt, pst! their devotion was at an end, and I found
     myself rid of these old girls, and my seat and the rest
     of the church likewise.

     ... That did not prevent me keeping my health and being
     very happy with your aunt, and my children too, for I
     am certain that Wilfrid loves his stepmother just as if
     she was his own mother. I always remember that at the
     age of eleven, when he came home from school, he would
     go and sit on his stepmother's lap to eat his bread and
     jam or bread and sugar, with his arms round her neck,
     and that he would put his "piece" on his knees and wipe
     his mouth with his handkerchief and kiss her over and
     over, and then pick up his "piece," eat a few mouthfuls
     and begin to kiss her again....

                              CAROLUS L.

St. Lin in the early fifties was a prosperous frontier village. Twenty
miles to the north the blue Laurentians set a barrier to further
expansion. The village itself was the centre of a broad, fertile,
slightly rolling plain, still covered for the most part with the
maples and elms, the pine and spruce, of the primitive forest. Its
great stone church towered high above the houses that lined the two
straggling streets. The river Achigan, on which it lay, turned the
wheels of the grist-mills on its banks, floated down the logs from the
upper reaches, and, not least, provided fishing and swimming-holes for
boys' delight. It was a quiet, pleasant home, well devised to give its
children happiness in youth, strength in manhood, and serene memories
in old age. Young Laurier shared in the usual children's games, though
an old companion recalls that many a time when the boys would call,
"Wilfrid, come, we are ready for a race," the answer from the boy bent
over a book would be, "Just a minute," and again, "A minute more." He
particularly delighted in wandering through the woods, sometimes with
gun on his shoulder for rabbit or partridge, but more often with no
other purpose than to search out bird and plant and tree. His sharp
eyes and retentive memory gave him an intimate and abiding knowledge
of wood life of which few but his closest friends in later days were
aware.

[Illustration: RIVER ACHIGAN AND ST. LIN
"The Old Swimming Hole"]

The boy's early schooling was given partly by his mother and partly in
the parish school of St. Lin. Under the French régime a fair measure
of elementary schooling had been provided, mainly by the religious
orders, but with diversion of endowments to other ends and disputes
between Church and State as to control, progress after 1763 had been
slow. It was not until 1841 that an adequate system came into force.
In the school in St. Lin, which is still standing, though no longer
used as a school, the children of the late forties learned their
catechism and the three R's. For the majority, no further training was
possible. For the few who were destined for the Church, the bar or
medicine, the classical college followed. In young Laurier's case a
novel departure was taken.

Some seven miles west of St. Lin, on the Achigan, lay the village of
New Glasgow. It had been settled about 1820, chiefly by Scottish
Presbyterians belonging to various British regiments. Carolus Laurier
in his work as a surveyor had made many friends in New Glasgow, and
had come to realize the value of knowledge not only of English speech
but of the way of life and thought of his English-speaking countrymen.
He accordingly determined to send Wilfrid, at the age of eleven, to
the school in New Glasgow for two years. Arrangements were made to
have him stay with the Kirks, an Irish Catholic family, but when the
time came illness in the Kirk household prevented, and it was
necessary to seek a lodging elsewhere. One of Carolus's most intimate
friends was John Murray, clerk of the court and owner of the leading
village store. Mrs. Murray took in the boy and for some months he was
one of the family. The Murrays, Presbyterians of the old stock, held
family worship every night. Wilfrid was told that if he desired he
would be excused from attending, but he expressed the wish to take
part, and night after night learned never-forgotten lessons of how men
and women of another faith sought God. When Mrs. Kirk recovered, he
went to her for the remainder of his two years in New Glasgow, but he
was still in and out of the Murrays' every day, and many a time helped
behind the counter in the store. The place he found in the life of the
Kirks may be gathered from a passing remark in a letter from his
father forty years later: "Nancy Kirk writes that her father is now
over a hundred and beginning to wander in his mind: 'he does not see
us at all, but talks of Wilfrid and of Ireland.'"

The school in New Glasgow was open to all creeds and was attended by
both boys and girls. It was taught by a succession of unconventional
schoolmasters, for the most part old soldiers. The work of the first
year in New Glasgow, 1852-53, came to an abrupt end with the sudden
departure of the master in April. A man of much greater parts, Sandy
Maclean, took his place the following year. He had read widely, and
was never so happy as when he was quoting English poetry by the hour.
With a stiff glass of Scotch within easy reach on his desk, and the
tawse still more prominent, he drew on the alert and spurred on the
laggards. His young pupil from St. Lin often recalled in after years
with warm good-will the name of the man who first opened to him a
vision of the great treasures of English letters.

The two years spent in New Glasgow were of priceless worth in the turn
they gave to young Laurier's interests. It was much that he learned
the English tongue, in home and school and playground. It was more
that he came unconsciously to know and appreciate the way of looking
at life of his English-speaking countrymen, and particularly to
understand that many roads lead to heaven. It was an admirable
preparation for the work which in later years was to be nearest to his
heart, the endeavour to make the two races in Canada understand each
other and work harmoniously together for their common country. Carolus
Laurier set an example which French-speaking and English-speaking
Canadians alike might still follow with profit to their children and
their country.

New Glasgow was only an interlude. Carolus Laurier had determined to
give his son as good a training as his means would allow. That meant
first a long course in a secondary school, followed by professional
study for law, medicine or the Church, the three fields then open to
an ambitious youth. Secondary education in Lower Canada was relatively
much more advanced than primary; the need of adequate training for the
leaders of the community had been recognized earlier than the need or
possibility of adequate training for all. The _petit séminaire_ at
Quebec and the Sulpicians' college at Montreal had trained the men
who led their people in the constitutional struggles following 1791.
Secondary schools or colleges, modelled largely on the French colleges
and lycées, had early been established in the more accessible centres,
in 1804 at Nicolet, in 1812 at St. Hyacinthe, in 1824 at Ste. Thérèse,
in 1827 at Ste. Anne de la Pocatière, and in 1832 at L'Assomption. All
were maintained and controlled by the Church.

In September, 1854, Wilfrid Laurier entered the college at
L'Assomption in the town of the same name, on L'Assomption River
twenty miles east of St. Lin. Here for seven years he followed the
regular course, covering what in English-speaking Canada would be
taken up in high school and the first years of college. The chief
emphasis was laid on Latin; the good fathers succeeded not merely in
grinding into their pupils a thorough knowledge of moods and tenses,
but in giving them an appreciation of the masterpieces of Roman
literature. Many a time in later years when leaving for a brief
holiday Mr. Laurier would slip into his bag a volume of Horace or
Catullus or an oration of Cicero, and, what is less usual, would read
it. French literature was given the next place in their studies, the
literature, needless to say, of the grand age, of Bossuet and Racine
and Corneille, not the writings of the men of revolutionary and
post-revolutionary days, from Voltaire to Hugo and Béranger. Briefer
courses in Greek, English, mathematics, philosophy, geography and
history completed the seven years' studies. It was a training of
obvious limitations, but in the hands of good teachers such as the
fathers at L'Assomption were, it gave men destined for the learned
professions an excellent mental discipline, a mastery of speech and
style, and a sympathetic understanding of the life and culture of men
of other lands and times.

[Illustration: THE VILLAGE SCHOOL, ST. LIN]

[Illustration: L'ASSOMPTION COLLEGE]

The school discipline at L'Assomption was strict. The boys rose at
5:30, and every hour had its task or was set aside for meal-time or
play-time. The college had not then built a refectory, and the
students, though rooming in the college buildings, scattered through
the town for their meals. Every Sunday, garbed in blue and black coat,
collegian's cap, and blue sash, all attended the parish church; on
week-days only the sash was worn. Once a week, on Thursday afternoons,
there came a welcome half-holiday excursion to the country, usually to
a woods belonging to the college a few miles away.[5] These excursions
young Laurier enjoyed to the full, but he was not able to take much
part in the more strenuous games of his comrades. The weakness which
was to beset his early manhood was already developing, and violent
exercise had been forbidden. His recreation took other forms. The
literary part of the course, the glories of Roman and French and
English literature, made a deep appeal to him. He took his full share
in the warm and dogmatic discussions in which groups of the keener
youngsters settled the problems of life and politics raised by their
reading or echoed from the world outside. Sometimes a nearer glimpse
was given of the activities of that outer world. Assize courts were
held twice a year, and when election-time came round, joint debates
between the rival candidates at the church door after Sunday mass or
from improvised street platforms on a week-day evening were unalloyed
delight. More than once he broke bounds to drink in the fiery
eloquence of advocate or politician, well content to purchase a
stimulating hour with the punishment that followed.

[Footnote 5: During the celebration, in 1883, of the fiftieth
anniversary of the founding of L'Assomption, Mr. Laurier recalled to
his friends, young and old, the part this holiday had held in their
student life:

     (_Translation_)

     "In my time, we began to think of the next
     holiday--when do you think? At the end of the holiday.
     All week, our main preoccupation was as to whether it
     would be fine next Thursday. All week, we studied the
     heavens with as much care and more anxiety than the
     Vennors of to-day. On Wednesday evening if the weather
     was fine, prayers were held in the open air on the
     ballground. Our prayers mounted straight to heaven.
     Invariably we ended by a canticle to her whom we called
     the patron saint of scholars. What we sang was that
     sweet canticle of which each stanza ends with the words
     so very appropriate to the thought which was filling
     our minds for the morrow: 'Grant us a good day.' Ah,
     with what confidence, with what ardour, our invocations
     rose to heaven! Even those who had no voice found one
     for the occasion. Next day our prayers had been
     granted: the weather was fine. The flag, messenger of
     good tidings, floated gaily at the top of the May-pole:
     it was 'the long holiday'; we were going to the woods.
     And I ask you, my old fellow-students, is there a
     single one of us who is not rejoicing that to-morrow
     will be 'the long holiday' and that we are going to the
     woods?"]

Wilfrid Laurier had come to L'Assomption with a strong leaning toward
Liberalism. His father's freely spoken views, discussions of his
elders overheard in St. Lin and New Glasgow, echoes of the eloquence
of the great tribune Papineau, the reading of the history of Canada
which Garneau had written to belie Durham's charge that
French-speaking Canada had no literature, had awakened political
interest and given him the bent which his own temperament and his
later reading confirmed. If the seed had not been vital and deeply
planted, his Liberalism could scarcely have survived the Conservative
atmosphere of L'Assomption. When the French-Canadian majority which
had fought solidly for self-government divided, once self-government
was attained, into Liberals and Conservatives, the great mass of the
clergy, as will be noted later, took the Conservative turning. The
college authorities and the great majority of his fellow-students
looked with more than suspicion on his political heresies. When a
debating society which young Laurier had helped to organize ventured
on still more dangerous ground, taking up the highly contentious theme
over which historians have shed quarts of ink: "Resolved, that in the
interests of Canada the French kings should have permitted the
Huguenots to settle here," and when the student from St. Lin took the
affirmative and pressed his points home, the scandalized _préfet
d'études_ intervened, and there was no more debating at L'Assomption.
Yet these differences were not serious. The relations between teachers
and pupils were very friendly. Young Laurier was soon recognized as
the most promising student of his time, and it was with pride that the
authorities and his fellows chose him to make the orations or read the
addresses on state occasions.

Students of all political tendencies and of none were graduated from
L'Assomption. It was the alma mater, though in the days before the
rise of parties (1835-42), of the giant Rouge tribune, Joseph Papin,
_le gros canon du parti démocratique_, who is still commemorated in
the college halls, with laudable impartiality, as _vir statura, voce
et dialectica potens_, and of Léon Simeon Morin (1841-48), his
brilliant Conservative opponent, who shot like a fiery meteor across
the political sky of Canada. Louis A. Jetté, founder of the Parti
National which sought to reconcile Liberalism and the Church, and
later an eminent judge, left L'Assomption the year before Wilfrid
Laurier entered. Arthur Dansereau, for many years the leading
Conservative journalist in Quebec, was a year his junior, while in his
last year there entered a young lad from Lanoraie whose path was to
cross his many a time in the future, the stormy petrel of Quebec
politics, J. Israel Tarte.

The seven years soon passed and the momentous day of graduation came.
Of the twenty-three members of his class (the 22nd "course") only nine
completed the seven years. The interests of the class were well
divided. Of the later career of three, two of whom went to the Western
States, no record is available. Of the other twenty, three became
barristers (avocats) and three notaries, these six providing the three
who won legislative honours; four became priests, four doctors, and
three farmers, two entered business, and one died while at school.

Wilfrid Laurier's ambitions had long been turned toward law, and when
he left L'Assomption at the age of nineteen it was with the purpose of
beginning immediately to study for the bar. The leading law school of
Canada was then the Faculty of Law at McGill University. It had a
strong staff of judges and of barristers in active practice, and the
offices of the city gave ample opportunity for training in the routine
of law. The law faculty of Laval University, Montreal, it may be
noted, was not established until 1878.

To Montreal, then, Wilfrid Laurier journeyed in the fall of 1861, with
high hopes but some foreboding as to what life in a large city would
mean. He found a place in the office of Rodolphe Laflamme, one of the
leaders of the Montreal bar and a very aggressive Rouge or advanced
Liberal. The salary paid, though small, was a very welcome supplement
to the funds his father had been able to advance.

The three-year course, which led to the degree of Bachelor of Civil
Law, covered not only the basic systems of our jurisprudence, the
civil law of Rome and the common law of England, but the developments
which custom and legislators and code-makers had brought about in
English-speaking and French-speaking Canada. The lectures were given
in English or French, according to the mother tongue of the speaker.
Mr. Laurier, with his New Glasgow training and his later reading, had
no great difficulty in following the English lectures. He had more
trouble at first in understanding the Latin phrases in the lectures on
Roman law delivered by Justice Torrance, for at that time the English
pronunciation of Latin was almost the universal rule among
English-speaking scholars. Hon. J. J. C. Abbott, dean of the faculty,
and destined thirty years later to become in a party emergency Prime
Minister of Canada, was a sound and authoritative teacher of
commercial law. Rodolphe Laflamme taught customary law and the law of
real estate, and Hon. Wm. Badgeley and E. C. Carter criminal law.
Throughout, Wilfrid Laurier ranked high in his work, though for the
comfort of those students who gather instances of men succeeding in
examinations and failing in the sterner tests of life, it may be noted
that the one man who ranked higher was never heard of again. In his
first and again in his third year, he stood second in general
proficiency, and at graduation was first in the thesis required of all
candidates for the degree. He was accordingly chosen to give the
valedictory. It is not customary to find in student valedictories
mature and original contributions to the philosophy of life. The
address given on this occasion had its share of the rhetoric of youth,
but it was a really notable utterance. The young valedictorian
sketched a picture, somewhat idealized perhaps, of the lawyer's place
in the nation's life, forecasting in more than one particular the
principles which were to guide his own public career. The duty and the
opportunity of the lawyer to maintain private right, to uphold
constitutional liberty, and to work for the harmony of the two races
in Canada, were strongly emphasized in vigorous and glowing phrase.

Valedictories butter no parsnips. No time could be lost in seeking to
make a living. Mr. Laurier was admitted to the bar of Quebec in 1864,
and in October of that year began practice in Montreal as a member of
the firm of Laurier, Archambault and Désaulniers. All three partners
were keen and ambitious, but the city seemed well satisfied with the
old established firms, and clients were few. Finding difficulty in
tiding over the months of waiting, the partners dissolved in April,
1865. Mr. Laurier then formed a partnership with Médéric Lanctot.
Lanctot was a fiery and brilliant speaker, of unbounded energy and
audacity, but poorly ballasted with judgment and fated for all his
lavish endowment to wreck his career. The partners were curiously
assorted--the older man eager, passionate, fond of lively company,
ready to debate any question in heaven above or earth beneath; the
younger, reserved, retiring, firmly rooted in his convictions but calm
and balanced in their defence. Lanctot was absorbed in politics,
writing, speaking, organizing petitions against Cartier's
Confederation policy. Laurier was left to carry on most of the work of
the office. Their rooms were the meeting place of an eager group of
young lawyers, burning with opinion or phrases on the political issues
of the day, and in Quebec fashion turning lightly from law to
journalism. Ill-health and his reserve and moderation of temper kept
Mr. Laurier from taking an active part in their discussions, but
friendships were formed and opinions shaped which counted for much in
after years.

The question of his health was in fact now giving him serious concern.
Throat and lung trouble had developed, accompanied by serious
hemorrhages. Many of his friends felt that a quiet country town would
give a better fighting chance than a crowded city. Antoine Dorion, his
most valued friend, and the Liberal leader in Canada East,[6] advised
him to open a law office in the growing village of L'Avenir, in the
Eastern Townships, and to combine with the law the editing of the
weekly newspaper, "Le Défricheur," which Dorion's younger brother,
Eric, had founded and managed until his death in 1866. Mr. Laurier
felt that the advice was sound, and in November, 1866, he left
Montreal for the little backwoods village. A brief residence convinced
him that in spite of its optimistic name L'Avenir had no future, and
accordingly he moved his newspaper and his law office to
Victoriaville, thirty miles further east. While Victoriaville, as the
railway centre of the district, became in time the chief business
town, Mr. Laurier concluded that his law practice would flourish more
securely in the judicial centre or, _chef lieu_ of the district, St.
Christophe, or, as it was later termed, Arthabaskaville, and early in
1867 he opened his office in the picturesque little town which was to
be his home for the next thirty years.[7]

[Footnote 6: The two provinces of Lower Canada and Upper Canada
nominally became one after 1841, but the old names lingered in popular
usage, and the corresponding division into Canada East and Canada West
held a measure of official sanction until at Confederation the present
names of Quebec and Ontario were substituted.]

[Footnote 7: On the eve of his departure for Arthabaska, "Le Pays"
records a banquet given by his Montreal friends at the Hotel St. Louis
in his honour. The gathering was notable, the toasts many and all duly
honoured. Among the friends recorded as present were Edmond Angers, L.
O. David, J. A. Chapleau, C. A. Geoffrion, G. Doutre, L. A. Jetté,
Médéric Lanctot, T. R. Laflamme, Charles Marcil, F. X. Rainville, and
J. C. Robidoux.]

One further personal episode, and that the most important of his
career, remains to be chronicled before surveying the beginnings of
his public interests and activities in Montreal and the Townships.

[Illustration: WILFRID LAURIER
At twenty-four]

When Wilfrid Laurier first came to Montreal he knew little of the city
or its people--his only memory of it a child's awe-struck vision of
endless houses and endless people, glimpsed from a crowded seat in a
carriole, a dozen winters before. Neighbours in St. Lin reminded him
of a close friend of his mother, Mme. Gauthier, whose husband had been
the village doctor in Marcelle Laurier's short married life. Dr.
Gauthier was now practising in Montreal. The young student went to
their home, and lived with them two of his five Montreal years.

Both Dr. and Mme. Gauthier were much interested in music and both were
hospitably inclined. They kept open house for a wide circle of young
people of like tastes. In this group Wilfrid Laurier took his place,
but it was within the house that he found his absorbing interest. Mme.
Lafontaine and her daughter Zoë were also living at the Gauthiers'.
Not many months had passed before the vivacious charm, the piquant
blending of deep kindliness and straight-spoken frankness, the wit and
judgment, and the musical gifts of Mlle. Lafontaine had completely
captured young Laurier's heart. Nor was it long until Mlle. Lafontaine
had come to feel that this quiet young man of reserved but assured
power, of strikingly handsome figure, of unfailing courtesy to all
about him, who had already an air of distinction and a touch of the
_grand seigneur_ which made all eyes follow him, was the centre of
her world. But he was as yet only a student at law, and she was
earning her living as a teacher of music. Marriage seemed out of the
question for long years. Then came the increasing grip of illness on
his frail body, and the removal to Arthabaskaville without any
definite understanding between them.[8]

[Footnote 8: To this period naturally belong Mr. Laurier's few lapses
into poetry, of which the following unpublished verses are typical:

     LE TEMPS

     Comme l'onde qui fuit de rivage en rivage, Sans
     suspendre jamais son cours sur nulle plage, Tels
     poussés du destin qui nous tient enchaînés Nos jours
     fuient du berceau vers la tombe entraînés.

     Le Temps marche toujours d'une aile infatigable; Il
     n'est point de repos pour sa main redoutable; Elle va,
     détriusant, bâtissant tour à tour, Pour bâtir et
     détruire encore un autre jour.

     Si quelqu' éclair de joie illumine ma vie, En vain je
     crie au Temps, en vain je le supplie De ralentir
     l'essor de son vol destructeur, De me laisser jouir
     d'un instant de bonheur.

     Comme un gladiateur dans la cité romaine, Aux cent
     mille bravos du peuple dans l'arène, Etreint son ennemi
     de son bras de géant, L'étouffe et, plein d'orgueil, le
     rejette sanglant,

     Tel le Temps me saisit dans le sein de ma joie; Il
     m'entraîne avec lui, comme l'aigle sa proie; Il
     m'abandonne enfin; sa main me laisse aller, Pour me
     reprendre, et puis, me laisser retomber.

     January 5, 1863.

     A UN PAPILLON

     Doux petit papillon, à peine dans la nuit Commence de
     briller ma lampe solitaire, Comme le plomb fatal, qui
     vers le but s'enfuit, Tu tombes palpitant sur la pâle
     lumière.

     Et chaque fois pourtant tes pures ailes d'or A la
     flamme brulante ont laissé des parcelles: Quel atroce
     plaisir peut t'amener encore Y chercher aujourd'hui des
     tortures nouvelles?

     Comme toi, papillon, jadis naif enfant, A gravir du
     succès l'inaccessible cîme, J'ai versé sans profit le
     meilleur de mon sang, Et de ma folle ardeur suis
     retombé victime.

     May, 1867.]

Separation and time did not weaken affection, but neither did they
remove the barriers. There were weeks of doubt when Mr. Laurier was
convinced that his days were numbered and that he could not fairly ask
any girl to share them. Then would come days of hope and
determination, and in his letters he would insist that he could and
would recover. In the meantime other suitors were pressing, and
particularly a physician in good practice and good circumstances in
Montreal. Prudence, friends urged that it was quixotic to refuse this
suitor because of an interest in a struggling country lawyer, with a
most uncertain lease of life. The pressure won. The engagement of
Mlle. Lafontaine and her Montreal suitor was announced. Then ten days
before the marriage was to have taken place, Fate, in the cheery
person of Dr. Gauthier, intervened. He telegraphed Mr. Laurier to come
to Montreal at once on important business. He came, saw, conquered.
The young couple determined to heed their own hearts and their own
half-believed hopes. In reality Mlle. Lafontaine did not believe that
their married life would be longer than a year or two, but if she
could make her husband's life happier and easier for that time, she
was prepared to make the venture. Action followed quickly. A special
dispensation was secured, and at eight o'clock that evening, May 13,
1868, Wilfrid Laurier and Zoë Lafontaine were married. As he had to
appear in court in Arthabaskaville next morning, he left at ten the
same evening, returning three days later to take Mme. Laurier back to
their new home. They had challenged fortune, and fortune yielded to
their faith. Soon the shadows lifted, and they entered on fifty years
of rare happiness and close communion. That was for the future to
disclose, but already in marrying Mlle. Lafontaine, Wilfrid Laurier
had achieved half his career.




CHAPTER II

THE POLITICAL SCENE

     The Union Era--_The Reshaping of Parties:_ Responsible
     Government--Bédard and Papineau--Papineau and
     LaFontaine--The Rise of the Rouges--The
     Liberal-Conservatives--Parties at Confederation--_The
     Rise of Nationalism:_ A Conflict of Races--Laurier on
     Durham--The Failure of Durham's Policy--Barriers to
     National Unity--Laurier and Confederation--_Church and
     State:_ The Church under Two Regimes--The Rouges and
     Rome--The Passing of L'Avenir--The Institute
     Controversy--Laurier and Le Défricheur.


In the Canada of the sixties a young man's fancies lightly turned to
thoughts of politics. Public life dominated the interest of the
general public and stirred the ambition of the abler individuals in
far greater measure than is true in these days when business makes a
rival appeal. Particularly in Lower Canada, a political career was the
normal objective, or at least the visioned hope, of the majority of
the young men of education and capacity.

From boyhood days Wilfrid Laurier had been keenly interested in public
affairs. His student apprenticeship and his first years of practice in
Montreal gave an opportunity for forming political connections and
taking a part in public controversies which strongly confirmed his
early leanings. Now, as editor of the chief democratic journal of the
Eastern Townships, he was a chartered guide of public opinion. His law
practice brought him into close contact with all parts of the
district, and before five years had passed he was marked as the
destined standard-bearer of the Liberals of the county.

Wilfrid Laurier was born in the year that Upper and Lower Canada were
yoked together in uneasy fellowship. He had just begun the practice of
law at Arthabaskaville when the union of the two Canadas was dissolved
and the wider federation of all the mainland provinces was achieved.
It was in the Canada of the Union era that the stage was set and the
players trained for the comedies and the tragedies, the melodrama and
the vaudeville, of Confederation politics.

The stage was not a large one. The province of Canada was just
emerging from its years of pioneer struggles and backwoods isolation.
Its two million people seemed to count for little in the work of the
world. Neither Britain nor France nor the United States gave them more
than a passing thought. Even with the other provinces of British North
America they had little contact: no road or railway bound them. Until
well on in the Union period, each section had closer relations with
the adjoining states than with its sister provinces--Upper Canada with
"York" State, Lower Canada with New Hampshire and Vermont, and the
Maritime provinces with Maine and Massachusetts.

Yet if it was not large, the provincial stage witnessed its full share
of the dramatic motives and movements of political life. Here
experiments were worked out in the organization of government and of
parties, in the relation of race with race, in the connection between
Church and State, and in the linking of colony and empire, which
deeply influenced the development of the future Dominion and were not
without interest to the world beyond.

In the words of Mr. Laurier, in an unpublished fragment of a work he
long planned to write, had fate given him leisure,--the political
history of Canada under the Union,--

      A new era began with the Union. In this new era there
      was found nothing of that which had given the past its
      attraction, neither the great feats of arms to save
      the native soil from invasion, nor the intrepid
      journeys of the explorers led on and on by an
      unquenchable thirst for the unknown, nor the journeys,
      more intrepid still, of the missionaries everywhere
      marking with their blood the path for the explorers.
      The very parliamentary battles on which henceforth the
      attention of the nation was to be concentrated no
      longer bore the striking impress which had been
      stamped on the parliamentary struggles after the
      Conquest by the prestige of those who took part in
      them, the greatness of the cause which was defended,
      and the bloody catastrophe which was their outcome.

      Colourless these pages may be, but they are not
      barren. They recall an epoch which, in spite of
      failures, was on the whole fruitful, in which the
      patriot's eye may follow with legitimate pride the
      calm, powerful and salutary influence of free
      institutions.[9]

The tasks of government and the scope and organization of parties had
been greatly modified by the union of Upper and Lower Canada in 1841.
The Union Act brought together two communities of deeply varying ways
and traditions, communities which for fifty years had had their
separate governments and their local parties. The mere union of the
two provinces would have made it necessary to shift the bases of
political activity, but union further brought in its train
responsible government, and responsible government involved as an
essential condition the existence of political parties more definite
and coherent than had hitherto existed in the Canadas.

[Footnote 9: Translation.]

The insistence of the Reformers of Upper Canada and the Patriotes of
Lower Canada, through years of struggle, upon a greater share in their
own governing, and the shock of the rebellion of 1837, had compelled
British statesmen to recognize at last that concessions must be made.
Under Durham's guidance, they had come to see that the concession
should take the form which Robert Baldwin, the leader of the Upper
Canada Reformers, had long demanded--the grant, in some measure, of
responsible government. Responsible government meant in essence that
the administration of the country should be entrusted to the leaders
of the dominant party in parliament, rather than, as in the past, to
the governor and the bureaucrats whom he appointed. But how could such
freedom, even with the restrictions with which in early years the
concession was hedged about, be granted to a colony like Lower Canada,
where the majority would inevitably be composed of French-Canadians?
English statesmen could bring themselves, with difficulty, to admit
the need of self-government for the colonists of English speech and
traditions in Upper Canada, but to propose the same policy for a
colony alien in blood and tongue and sympathy appeared to them beyond
discussion. Only by uniting the provinces, to assure an
English-speaking majority, could the experiment be risked. Nor was the
Union only negatively directed against French-Canadian aspirations.
Its framers hoped to make Union a positive means of anglicizing French
Canada, of bringing the habitant to realize the folly of isolation in
a continent of English speech. How they fared in this endeavor will be
noted later.

[Illustration: MLLE. ZOË LAFONTAINE]

The primary task of the forties was the winning and consolidation of
responsible government. Governor after governor and tenant after
tenant of Downing Street sought to set narrow bounds to the concession
that had been found unavoidable, but in vain. Robert Baldwin, "the man
of one idea," and Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine, leader, in Papineau's
enforced absence, of the Lower Canada Liberals, stood firm in their
insistence that complete control of the domestic affairs of the
province must be conceded to a body of ministers responsible to
parliament and chosen from its dominant parties. Sydenham fought their
demands, but by making himself the leader of a party majority in the
Assembly played into the hands of those who insisted that party
majorities should rule. Bagot, less assertive in temper, made some
concessions of intention and more through the accident of illness.
Metcalfe, sent out by the Colonial Office as the last bulwark of
authority, breasted the tide with success for a year or two, but at
last was compelled to recognize his failure. Elgin, the last of the
governors of the forties, gave formal recognition of the victory of
the upholders of self-government by summoning LaFontaine and Baldwin
to form the ministry of 1848.

On this question of responsible government, the conclusions of Mr.
Laurier, embodied in the same pregnant fragment, are of particular
interest because of his early relations with the Rouges and the
exponents of the Papineau tradition, and his own long experience of
the working of the system:

      Thus Lord Durham's idea had been realized, but its
      realization had only been gradual. The theory of Lord
      John Russell continued to be the theory of Lord
      Sydenham, of Sir Charles Metcalfe and of the Colonial
      Office, until Lord Elgin, who to the generous spirit
      of Lord Durham added a capacity perhaps more solid,
      grasped the great reformer's idea and applied it with
      as much freedom as he himself would have done.

      If, to the England of 1840, the idea of the
      responsibility of ministers appeared incompatible with
      the colonial status, the colony was more advanced on
      this point than the mother country.

      In Upper Canada a large group, more important even for
      talent than for numbers, had long been demanding the
      responsibility of ministers to the Assembly. The men
      of this party had found in Lord Durham's report the
      expression of the ideas which they had long been
      professing. They had voted without hesitation for the
      proposal for union, because they had hoped that Lord
      Durham's report would be acted upon in its entirety.
      Nevertheless, it was not in Upper Canada, nor in the
      British population [of Lower Canada] that the idea of
      ministerial responsibility as applied to the
      government of the colonies had seen the light for the
      first time. The man who was the first to affirm the
      principle of ministerial responsibility in the
      government of the colonies was Joseph Bédard, and that
      as early as 1809. Nevertheless, this weighty
      suggestion had not been followed up. A few years
      later, Bédard had withdrawn from the arena and Mr.
      Papineau had entered it. The policy enunciated by
      Bédard had been set aside, to give place to another
      much bolder. In all the long struggles that Mr.
      Papineau carried on with the government, he does not
      seem ever to have dreamed that the concession of
      constitutional government might be a sufficient reform
      and that he himself might become the minister in
      control. All his efforts were unceasingly directed
      toward establishing the supremacy of the Assembly over
      the executive power, and toward making the executive
      power the executor of the will of the Assembly. Under
      a constitutional monarchy, it is true, the ministry
      exists only with the consent of the elective branch,
      but in reality, it is the ministry that dominates the
      Assembly. The Assembly has numbers and strength, but
      it allows itself to be led and dominated until the
      time when, changing its mind, it resumes its power
      only to let itself be dominated once more by others.
      This system is doubtless not the perfect ideal that a
      thinker might dream of, nevertheless it is the system,
      of all invented by man, which has taken away least of
      individual liberty. This is not the system that Mr.
      Papineau sought. Mr. Papineau seemed to conceive a
      state of things in which in point of fact the Assembly
      would be sovereign, and in which the Administration's
      sole duty would be to carry out its decrees.
      Everything was subordinated to secure this result, and
      certainly, if it had been secured, it would have been
      good enough. Yet Mr. Papineau's thought went much
      farther still. In the debates on the 92 resolutions,
      he allows us to see clearly his republican ideals: "It
      is the obvious destiny of the continent, and since a
      change must be made in our constitution, is it a crime
      to make it with this conjecture in view?" The man who
      used such words could have only one end in view:
      independence.

Responsible government meant party government. Only through party
organization could there be assured a stable and united majority to
back the ministry in power, and a definite opposition to criticize
that ministry and stand prepared to provide an alternative
administration. And yet the very winning of responsible government,
and the union of the provinces which was bound up with it, made it
extremely difficult to find or keep stable and effective political
parties.

The weakness and instability of parties in this period had two roots.
One was the union of the provinces, a union which brought together
extremely diverse elements and yet was not sufficiently complete to
merge and fuse them. Union made it necessary to organize a majority
not in one section alone but in the whole province, and to organize it
out of parties which hitherto had had little contact or little in
common. At the same time the incomplete and semi-federal character of
the union prevented the complete assimilation which the smooth working
of the party machinery demanded. From the beginning there had been a
recognition of continuing separateness in the provision that each
section of the province, irrespective of population, should be given
half the number of representatives in the legislature. As time went
on, this separateness was confirmed by the practice of passing laws
applying only to one section, by holding the sessions of parliament
alternately in Quebec and in Toronto, by the inclusion in the cabinet
of both an Attorney-General West and an Attorney-General East, and by
the custom of a double-barrelled leadership, two "premiers,"
LaFontaine-Baldwin, Macdonald-Cartier, Brown-Dorion. It was inevitable
under such circumstances that any union of parties from Canada East
and Canada West should be, not a complete merging, but only a
coalition of more or less stability.

The other source of party weakness lay in the breaking up of the
existing parties in each section because of the achievement of old
aims or the emergence of new issues. The Tory parties, the defenders
of the established order, were broken up by defeat, by the steady
destruction of one after another of the planks in the platform upon
which they had stood and fought. The control of colonial affairs by
the mother country, the authority within the province of the governor
and his preordained advisers, the active share in legislation of the
narrow, nominated legislative council, the endowment of a state church
in Upper Canada by the grant of vast areas of crown lands, the
maintenance in Lower Canada of that survival of medieval feudalism,
seignoirial tenure, these and other principles of the old ascendancy
parties went by the board in the late forties and early fifties. To
their opponents victory proved almost as disintegrating as defeat. The
Reformers in Upper Canada, the Patriote or Canadien or Liberal party
in Lower Canada, had within their ranks diverse elements which only
opposition to a common foe could hold together. Once victory, or an
instalment of victory, was won, these latent differences became
apparent. The moderate men who were content to abide in a half-way
house and the radicals who were eager to push on to the end of the
vanishing road, now parted company. The experience gained in actual
administration brought out differences of temperament and interest.
New economic issues, canal and railway projects, tax and tariff
questions, forced new alignments. The outcome was curiously parallel
to the reorganization of parties which was going on at the same time
in Great Britain. In both cases, Tories were mellowing into
Conservatives and the victorious opposition breaking up into Whigs and
Radicals, or into moderate Liberals and Clear Grits or Rouges.

In Canada West, Robert Baldwin was the leader and the best
representative of the moderate Reformers. Scrupulously fair, sturdily
independent, he was prepared to fight without rest or truce for the
right as he saw it, but equally prepared to find the right on most
political and economic issues midway between the extreme positions. He
fought until he had achieved responsible government, but he was
unwilling to use the new powers to secure all the sweeping changes his
more impatient followers demanded. The malcontents were led at first
by Dr. Rolph and William Lyon Mackenzie, of the left wing of the old
Reform party, but later they drew to themselves new men like William
McDougall, disappointed Tories like Malcolm Cameron, and latest and
greatest, George Brown, a powerful journalist and tribune, newly come
from Scotland. The Clear Grits, as these uncompromising stalwarts came
to be known, were, in the first place, more democratic than the
Baldwin Reformers, insisting on a widely extended suffrage, vote by
ballot, and the abolition of property qualifications for members.
Unlike Baldwin, who looked wholly to England for his political
inspiration, most of them (Brown excepted) were inclined to find the
United States the last word in democracy, and particularly when
disillusioned by discovering that even Liberals when in office could
be arbitrary and high-handed, they sought to lessen the power of
governments by extending the elective principle, proposing to elect
not merely the legislative council or upper house, but the governor
and the chief administrative officials. A third point of difference
lay in their more sweeping insistence on Canadian autonomy. A still
more marked characteristic was their strong anti-clerical bias, which
first found vent in their opposition to the endowment and
establishment of the Church of England, but later, under George
Brown's vigorous impulse, turned chiefly into suspicion and
denunciation of Roman Catholic intrigue and domination of the province
by "priest-ridden French-Canadians."

In Canada East, the causes of the split in the Liberal ranks were in
part strikingly alike and in part significantly different. Louis
Hippolyte LaFontaine, who stood head and shoulders above all his
Canadian contemporaries in capacity, was, like Baldwin, emphatically a
Whig rather than a Radical. A member of the old Legislative Assembly
of Lower Canada in his twenties, he had ardently supported Papineau's
strongest demands, but had opposed any resort to arms, and on the
failure of the rebellion, his compatriots turned unanimously to his
prudent and sober leadership. Massive in intellect, cold and judicial
in temperament, thorough and untiring in his habits of work,
Napoleonic in physique--the story ran that on his visit to Paris, the
guards at the Invalides, in great excitement, presented arms to their
resurrected emperor, not greatly displeasing the Canadian visitor
thereby--LaFontaine dominated the political scene throughout the
forties. But hardly had he taken power, in 1848, when a rift in the
party appeared, and steadily widened until in disdain of factional
quarrelling he retired from political life in 1851, at the age of
forty-four.

The group which chafed under LaFontaine's leadership, which later
formed a distinct party called by themselves the Democrats and by
their enemies the Rouges, and which eventually became under Laurier
the Quebec wing of the Canadian Liberal party, was a strange product
of many personal and social factors. Its first leader and
rallying-centre was the old tribune, Louis Joseph Papineau. Returning
to Canada in 1847 after a ten-years' exile, he had entered parliament
the following year. Intercourse in Paris with republican and socialist
circles had strengthened his democratic tendencies, though altering
little his views on the economic ordering of society--to the last he
remained the seigneur.[10] After a lifetime of uncompromising
opposition and criticism, he found it difficult to accept the irksome
responsibilities of a party in office; after a lifetime as
unquestioned dictator of his people, he could not bend his proud
spirit to accept the leadership of his former lieutenant. Doctrinaire,
unchanging in the changing times, conscious of his powers and of his
rectitude, he set himself from the first in violent opposition to the
opportunist and conservative measures and tactics of LaFontaine, and
never modified his position until his retirement from active politics
in 1854. Around him there gathered a group of fiery young Montrealers,
who have never had their like in Canadian politics for sheer ability,
crusading zeal, and reckless frankness--Antoine Aimé Dorion, Eric
Dorion, Charles Laberge, Louis Labrèche-Viger, Joseph Papin, Rodolphe
Laflamme, Joseph Doutre, Charles Daoust, P. R. LaFrenaye, and scores
of others destined to play an active part in professional or public
life. They were all in their early twenties. Nearly all the leaders
among them were lawyers or journalists, not too burdened with clients
or commissions to be unable to give their time to set the world right.
They had their full share of youth's heady impatience with the
hesitations and compromises of the middle years, the indifference and
conservatism of old age.[11] They were temporarily elated by the
sweeping success they had scored, on the platform and the streets,
with argument and the clubs which often took the place of argument in
those days of open polling and organized political rioting, in
assisting to carry to victory the Liberal or LaFontaine candidates in
Montreal in the general election of 1847. More enduringly they kindled
to the call of the surging forces of democracy and nationalism in
Europe, sympathizing deeply with the generous aims of the revolution
against the accepted order which swept that continent in the memorable
year of 1848. Canada was far geographically and farther mentally from
the France of Louis Blanc and Ledru-Rollin, but the vigorous flame
leaped the ocean and even bridged for a moment the gulf between the
old France which had gone through three revolutions and the New France
which still clung to seventeenth-century ways.

[Footnote 10: The influences to which Papineau was subjected in Paris
are indicated in the notice contained in the last issue of "L'Avenir,"
January 21, 1852, on the death, at twenty-one, of his son, Philippe
Gustave Papineau: "With what eagerness he would tell us of his first
impressions of life in Paris! At the feet of Béranger or Lamennais he
had heard a language at the time unintelligible, but which had left
indelible impressions on his memory. Good old Béranger he had seen,
bent by age, at play under the trees of the garden, and going about
harnessed to a little child's wagon. Intercourse with men like
Béranger, Lamennais, Louis Blanc and other leaders of the republican
party, who expressed freely among friends the opinions which were at
the time suppressed on the platform and in the press, had helped to
form in this young and impressionable heart the tendencies which
family tradition had already stamped there."]

[Footnote 11: "In our century, he who keeps the middle path is
shattered, he who does not go forward is crushed; it is the divine law
of progress which decrees it so."--"L'Avenir," Nov. 22, 1848.]

The issues they urged were partly nationalist, partly democratic. When
LaFontaine abandoned the demand for the repeal of the Union with Upper
Canada which had been forced upon the French-Canadians, Papineau and
his young Rouges took up the cry. When repeal appeared impossible,
they called for at least the representation in parliament that Lower
Canada's population warranted. Democracy of the French and American
patterns, with fixed term of parliament and sessions, universal
suffrage and elective officials; decentralization of political power
and judicial activities; demands foreshadowing the recall, and
safeguarding the independence of parliament by forbidding members to
accept office within a year of occupying a seat in the House; freer
trade, economical administration, the development of agriculture, the
widest possible expansion of education; the abolition of all class and
ecclesiastical privilege--the seigneur's dues, the priest's tithes,
the Protestant Clergy Reserves,--were the other more important planks
in their platform. A little later they joined the disappointed Tories
in urging annexation to the United States, though in a few years this
demand faded from their banners.[12] Altogether a programme well
calculated _pour épater les bourgeois_.

The eager, reforming spirit of these democratic youths found more than
one expression. The first outlet was the famous "Institut Canadien"
founded in December, 1844, as a means of mutual education. The
institute provided for its members a library and reading-room, public
lectures, and an open forum for debates.[13] It met a need which
hitherto had been wholly neglected, and exercised wide influence in
Montreal and in other centres where similar institutes were soon
established, until a long and bitter struggle with the Church brought
dissension and defeat. A club modelled on the latest Parisian
political organizations, Le Club National et Démocratique, had a much
shorter career. To reach the general public they took over, in
January, 1848, a struggling weekly, "L'Avenir," which another group,
more interested in literature than in politics, had established a few
months earlier. With Eric Dorion as editor, and Labrèche-Viger,
Doutre, Durandan, Daoust, Laflamme, V. P. W. Dorion and Papin
collaborating, "L'Avenir" had a brilliant if brief career, tilting
fearlessly against every personage and every institution which stood
in the path of young democracy, and if not converting the community as
rapidly as had been hoped, at least giving its editors the joy of work
and sacrifice and free expression. When, in January, 1852, scanty
finances and the solid opposition of the clergy forced "L'Avenir" to
discontinue, its place as the organ of the democratic Liberals was
taken by the more sober and conventional "Le Pays," under the
editorship of Louis Labrèche-Viger and L. A. Dessaulles. Finally, a
political party took shape, and found representation in parliament.
In the election of 1851, five Rouges were returned, and in 1854 nearly
twenty. After Papineau retired, A. A. Dorion became their leader.

[Footnote 12: OUR POLITICAL CREED

                                              L'Avenir, Jan. 4, 1850.

Education as wide-spread as possible.

Agricultural improvement: establishment of model farms.

Colonization of waste lands available for the poorer classes.

Free navigation of the St. Lawrence.

Free trade as far as possible.

Judicial reform; decentralization of the judiciary; codification of
laws.

Postal reform; free circulation of newspapers.

Less extravagant administration of the government than at present;
reduction of salaries in all branches of the public service and of the
number of employees.

Municipal organization based on the parish; decentralization of power.

Elective institutions everywhere--elective governor, elective
legislative council, elective magistrates; all the heads of public
departments made elective.

Electoral reform based on population.

Universal suffrage.

Eligibility for office dependent on the confidence of the people.

Summoning and length of parliamentary sessions fixed by law.

Every representative of the people forbidden by a special law to
accept any renumerative office from the Crown during the exercise of
his mandate and for one year after its expiry.

Abolition of seigniorial tenure.

Abolition of the tithing system.

Abolition of Protestant Clergy Reserves.

Abolition of the system of state pensions.

Abolition of the privileges of lawyers, and liberty granted every man
to defend his own cause.

Equal rights, equal justice for all citizens.

The repeal of the Union.

Finally and above all; Independence of Canada and its annexation to
the United States.]

[Footnote 13: "A rallying point for the young men of Montreal, an
arena of competition, where every young man making his entry into the
world could come and be inspired with pure patriotism, improve his
mind by making use of the advantages of a common library, and become
accustomed to speaking by taking part in the debating open to all
sorts and conditions of men."--"L'Annuaire de l'Institut," 1852.]

The situation presented by the union of the two provinces, the
break-up of the old parties and the rise of new groups, afforded an
admirable opportunity to a master strategist. In each section of the
province there was found a centre party of moderate Liberals, with a
radical and a conservative wing in each case. Early in the fifties
George Brown believed it would be possible to unite all the Upper
Canada factions on a platform of resistance to French-Canadian and
priestly domination, but a greater strategist than Brown was at work.
John A. Macdonald, realizing the essentially conservative character of
the French-Canadians, sought to form a coalition of the moderate
Liberals in both provinces with what was left of the Conservative or
Tory parties. Joining forces with George Etienne Cartier, the most
vigorous personality among the Lower Canada members, he succeeded in
forming an enduring coalition which eventually fused into a coherent
party. In Upper Canada it retained for the next two generations a name
which betokened its origin, the Liberal-Conservative party, but in
Lower Canada "Liberal" faded out of name and policy, and this wing was
frankly known as the Conservative party, or, in contrast to the
"Rouges," as the "Bleus."

Perforce the radical parties in the two sections of the province, thus
left in opposition, stood together. They shared in common many
tendencies in political and economic policy, but during the Union
period they never united as closely as their rivals. It is perhaps
easier for defenders of the _status quo_ to hold together enduringly
than for reformers who differ as to what corner of the old structure
should be overturned first. In any case, the fact that the demand for
doing away with Lower Canada's equality of representation in
parliament and opposition to "French and priestly domination" soon
became the chief planks in the platform of Brown and the Upper Canada
Reformers, made it very difficult for a Lower Canada party to work
with them and impossible for it, if it did, to attain a majority in
its own section.

For ten years after its formation in 1854, the Liberal-Conservative
party retained power, except for two brief intervals. Yet as the years
advanced, its margin of power vanished. Brown had not been able to
unite the parties of Upper Canada under his own leadership, but he
came near to uniting the electors of Upper Canada. The Reformers won
seat after seat in the West, leaving Macdonald in a hopeless minority
in his own section, more and more dependent upon the solid cohorts
which followed his colleague, Cartier. At last the two parties, and,
what was more serious, the two sections of the province, stood
deadlocked. Neither could attain a secure or adequate majority, and
the personal bitterness and intrigue, the wide-spread corruption, and
the naked sectional controversy which resulted, made a change
imperative. The Union experiment had, indeed, greatly improved the
situation that existed in 1837, thanks to the solvent power of
liberty, but it had not secured complete success. The relations
between the colony and the mother country and between the two races
in Canada itself had bettered, but neither the harmonizing of East and
West nor the stability of parties which were essential for its success
had been attained. A real federation, which would give each section
control of the matters most closely affecting it and yet retain common
action in affairs of common interest, became inevitable.

The issue of Confederation had not originally been a party matter. Its
first effective advocate had been one of the Liberal-Conservative
leaders, A. T. Galt, but Macdonald himself always opposed a wider
union except on the unattainable and unworkable basis of legislative
or organic union, and voted against a federation motion a few hours
before the fall of his government in 1864 opened his eyes to the need
of changed tactics, if the province was to be saved from futile
wrangling and his government kept in power. On the other hand, the
Rouges, who had been the first party to propose, in 1856, a solution
of the difficulties of the time by making Canada a federation of two
distinct provinces, opposed a union of all the British North American
provinces in which Lower Canada would be overwhelmed. The outcome of
the forcing of the Confederation issue, so far as party fortunes were
concerned, was a further strengthening of the Liberal-Conservative
ranks. Brown and the majority of his followers joined Macdonald,
Cartier and Galt in a coalition to carry Confederation, while the
Rouges, with a few Canada West Reformers such as Malcolm Cameron and
Sandfield Macdonald, and a few Conservatives such as Hillyard Cameron
in the West and Christopher Dunkin in the East, took up the same
attitude of opposition which Joseph Howe maintained with more support
in Nova Scotia. The coalition did not prove lasting; before
Confederation was enacted Brown was out of the cabinet in which he
found himself far from master, and though a few Liberal leaders from
each province joined forces with Macdonald, they carried with them
little popular support and soon faded into the Conservative party.
Confederation began with a Conservative or Liberal-Conservative
government firmly entrenched in the administration not only of the new
Dominion, but of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, into which the
old province of Canada had been divided.

It was not, then, from any desire to float with the tide that Wilfrid
Laurier became an active member of the Liberal or Rouge party of
Canada East. Nor was it from any temperamental sympathy with the
extreme views and tendencies which had marked that party at its
beginning. Laurier, like Dorion, was ever more of the Whig than of the
Radical, moderate, judicial, respectful of precedent, aware of the
difficulty of effecting sudden reforms that would be lasting. Yet
Dorion and Laurier were in turn leaders of this most aggressively
democratic party. The paradox is only seeming. Both men joined the
party in their teens, when they had their share of youth's boundless
hopes and sweeping judgments, and both in later years guided their
followers into more moderate ways. And particularly when Wilfrid
Laurier became a member, the party had thrown overboard most of its
youthful indiscretions--though kind friends always insisted on
endeavouring to restore the abandoned political baggage. They had
ceased to attack the priest's tithe or to call for annual parliaments
or elective governors, and the annexationist sympathies they had
shared with Montreal Tories had faded away under the influence of the
prosperity reciprocity helped to ensure, and observation of the
troubles which slavery and the struggle as to States' rights were
bringing upon the republic. But there remained a solid core of
doctrine with which Laurier, like Dorion, was deeply and vehemently in
sympathy. A passion for individual freedom and constitutional liberty,
an abiding faith in the power of the people to work out their own
salvation, were the moving forces of their political activity
throughout the careers of both men, and made it inevitable that they
would align themselves with the party which, whatever its vagaries,
did stand clearly for the fundamentals of liberalism.

[Illustration: A STREET IN L'ASSOMPTION]

[Illustration: THE HILLS OF ARTHABASKA]

    *    *    *    *    *

Political ideals, forms of government, parties and party traditions,
were not the only political inheritance which Confederated Canada
received from the Canada of the Union era. The racial issue, the
problem of contending nationalities, was an inescapable heritage,
shaping and conditioning political activity at every turn. Canada had
its full share of the nineteenth-century surge of racial and
nationalist feeling, and of the problems of adjustment which it
involved.

The fundamental fact in the political life of Canada was the existence
side by side of two peoples differing in creed, in speech, in blood
and in all the traditions that make up national consciousness. With
the Conquest, as has been seen, Britain's first policy was that of
out-and-out assimilation. The policy might have succeeded. In the
eighteenth century the fires of nationalism had not begun to flare.
The ordained leaders of the people had largely returned to France. The
habitant had little love and less regret for the corrupt and
oppressive administration which had marked the last years of the
French régime. A substantial measure of success was attained in the
first dozen years of British rule, in breaking down the allegiance of
the people to the laws, the seigniorial ordering of society, and,
according to Masères, even to the Church and the other institutions
which sheltered and preserved racial consciousness. But suddenly the
old policy was reversed, and Carleton's plan of confirming and
isolating French-Canadian nationalism as a barrier against the tide of
democracy and rebellion setting in from the south was put into force.

After the Revolution, the situation changed once more, and with it
changed British policy. The old colonies had now seceded; there was no
further occasion to shape a policy for their retention. The St.
Lawrence valley, resigned under Carleton's plan as a permanent home
for French-speaking colonists, now became, with Nova Scotia, the only
outlet on the continent for English-speaking citizens who wished to
remain under the British flag. Loyalists from the United States, and,
later, British immigrants from overseas, poured in by tens of
thousands, and forced the granting of a measure of self-government.
The British government was still prepared to stand by the bargain
made with the French-Canadians in the Quebec Act, their Magna Charta,
and when the Constitutional Act was passed in 1791 Grenville
magnanimously and modestly affirmed the intention to "continue to the
French inhabitants the enjoyment of those civil and religious rights
which have been secured to them by the capitulation of the Province,
or have since been granted by the liberal and enlightened spirit of
the British Government." But soon a change came. The memory of 1774
gradually faded, the English-speaking minority in Lower Canada became
more insistent, and above all, the wars with Napoleon made France and
democracy anathema in England. When the French-Canadian
representatives in the Assembly, quickly learning the possibilities of
their half-measure of liberty, demanded full self-government, they
were met with blank refusal. After years of petition and inquiry and
debate, British statesmanship could rise no further than the imperious
insistence of Russell in 1837, backed by an almost unanimous
parliament, that neither responsible government nor an elective
legislative council could be permitted in a colony, and his action in
authorizing the governor to take needed funds out of the provincial
treasury without the Assembly's consent. Rebellion followed; the
Assembly was suspended; a second rebellion broke out, again to be put
down.

Writing in the calm retrospect of two generations later, Mr. Laurier
thus summed up the struggle:

      The struggle thus begun continued throughout the fifty
      years that the constitution of 1791 endured. Pitt had
      expressed the hope that the majority would govern.
      During the fifty years that the constitution of 1791
      was in force, the real government of the country was
      exercised by the English minority in despite of the
      French majority. During the fifty years of the
      constitution of 1791, the Assembly struggled and
      struggled in vain to secure the most elementary powers
      of a representative body. The right to choose its
      president freely was vigorously contested; the right
      to protect its independence was long disputed; the
      right to control public expenditure was constantly
      refused. Each claim that it made, each remonstrance
      against an abuse, each insistence on an unrecognized
      right, each assertion of a principle which had been
      violated, was the occasion, in the body of the
      Assembly, of bitter struggles with the minority,
      followed by violent conflicts with the oligarchy. As
      soon as the decision of the Assembly was rejected by
      the Council, the session would be suddenly prorogued
      in the dissenting chamber, by the governor, acting at
      the instigation of his officials.

      The struggles of the Assembly each day extended
      farther among the different sections of the people.

      The inhabitants of the Anglo-Saxon race, who
      everywhere else would have taken the initiative in the
      reforms demanded by the Assembly, formed an alliance
      with the oligarchy, which became closer each day. They
      persuaded themselves, and each day were more
      convinced, that the principles insisted upon by the
      Assembly hid so many thoughts of treason. Their
      anxious devotion to the Crown made them believe that
      the least authority conceded to the Assembly would be
      employed by it to further the independence of the
      colony. They did not suspect that by fear of
      rebellion, they themselves were provoking rebellion.

      All the men of Anglo-Saxon birth in the province
      formed before long a compact group, from the governor
      to the least of the sailors whom the hazards of an
      adventurous life had brought to the port of Quebec.

      National feeling was equally stirred up among the
      French population. The cause of the Assembly became
      the cause of the entire race. The principles that it
      affirmed, the rights that it insisted upon, the whole
      race affirmed and insisted upon with an emotion that
      was at the same time enthusiasm and anger. These
      principles and these rights were in fact synonymous
      with the preservation of the French race.

      Scorn, hostility and hate developed, deepened, became
      ever more and more intense; conflicts between the
      Assembly and the Executive grew more and more
      frequent, and each conflict was reflected with an
      ever-increasing intensity in each element of the
      population. When rebellion broke out, although there
      were found Canadians on the side of the English and
      English among the Canadians, the rebellion was the
      explosion of racial hate.

The rebellion forced attention and a measure of concession to the
demand for self-government. It did not advance the cause of
French-Canadian nationalism. On the contrary, advantage was taken of
the suspension of the Assembly and the discrediting of the Patriote
cause to revert once more fully and frankly to the policy of
anglicizing the whole province. The more extreme leaders of the
English minority called for the permanent disenfranchisement of the
French-Canadians. Lord Durham was equally insistent as to the end, if
somewhat more moderate as to the means. There could be no peace, he
insisted, while the two nationalities stood opposed. There could be no
question that in the long run the progressive, enterprising, numerous
English-speaking people would dominate all North America, and that the
French-Canadian people, hopelessly inferior in wealth and culture and
numbers, "a people with no history and no literature," would be
absorbed, to their own good. Therefore, the sooner the better. It must
"be the first and steady purpose of the British government to
establish an English population, with English laws and language, in
this Province, and to trust its government to none but a decidedly
English legislature"; the "nationality of the French-Canadians" must
be "obliterated."[14]

Mr. Laurier condemns Durham's policy and defends his character;
incidentally he explains, in a passage remarkable equally for its
insight and its detachment, the influence of the struggle of the
French-Canadians to preserve their nationality, upon their material
fortunes:

      The man who used this harsh language was not an enemy
      of the race whose annihilation he thus advised.
      Neither was he one of those unbending spirits who
      reckon human life and all that may make it precious as
      of small account, when the attaining of a desired
      result is at stake. The name of Lord Durham has always
      been held in execration among French-Canadians since
      the day when the sentence he had delivered upon their
      national existence was made known. They believed then
      that Her Majesty's High Commissioner was
      narrow-minded, and that he had sacrificed the
      sentiments of justice to race prejudice. This
      impression, caused by the painful emotion that the
      publication of his report produced, has not been
      removed. Nothing, however, is further opposed to the
      truth; impartial history must give a different
      verdict. Lord Durham was generous, a man of supremely
      liberal spirit. A disciple of Fox, he had like him an
      innate sympathy for the cause of the weak and the
      oppressed. He had been one of the champions of the
      emancipation of the Catholics. He had been one of the
      authors of electoral reform, and had striven for its
      accomplishment rather with the passion of an apostle
      than the calm resolution of a statesman. He was one of
      the most ardent in that ardent school of reformers
      who, after the Napoleonic wars, undertook to root out
      of the soil of old England the laws of privilege and
      caste, and to put within reach of the poorest classes,
      the benefits of civilization and liberty.

      It may seem strange that a man of these opinions
      should in cold blood have counselled the annihilation
      among a whole people of all that it held most dear.
      Lord Durham himself has given the explanation, by
      setting forth deductions which events have fortunately
      disproved, but whose logic at the time it seemed
      hardly possible to dispute. To his mind it was
      impossible that the two races could live in harmony on
      the same soil. Until one or the other should have
      disappeared, all hope of peace was an illusion, and
      since either one or the other had to disappear, the
      lot had to fall on the weaker, on the French race.
      Lord Durham devoted the greater part of his report to
      discussing this question, which he examined from every
      angle, and which he solved precisely, fundamentally,
      like a problem in mathematics. If he advised the
      British government not to hesitate to sacrifice the
      French race, it was not out of hostility to that race,
      of which he spoke in sympathetic terms; it was because
      such was the fatal decree of necessity.

      Lord Durham indicated the means with no less
      precision: namely, to overwhelm the French population
      in an English majority. But as the population of
      British origin was less numerous than the French
      population, within the limits of Lower Canada, the
      quickest and most effective policy was to join the
      province of Upper Canada and that of Lower Canada
      under the same government, and by uniting the total
      number of the British population of Upper Canada with
      the British minority of Lower Canada, to form in the
      united Canada a majority of the English element
      against the French element.

      As to the effect of this form of government on the
      French population, he considered that it would
      facilitate the realization of the homicidal idea he
      set forth as indispensable to the peace of the colony.
      He calculated that the French race would be reduced to
      powerlessness by "the vigorous arm of a popular
      legislature"; that everything that constituted its
      autonomy would disappear slowly but surely, simply by
      the force of the majority, unless it itself entered
      resolutely on the path of absorption in order to have
      its legitimate part in the new state of things. At
      bottom, Lord Durham's policy did not differ from the
      policy of the oligarchy. It differed only in means. He
      did not propose to molest the French race or to take
      away its autonomy by force. He did not propose to take
      away its political rights. He proposed to place it in
      a position numerically inferior and to make the
      exercise of its political rights of no avail. His plan
      was to have it governed legally by a majority just as
      it had previously been governed illegally by a
      minority, to substitute legal tyranny for illegal
      tyranny, and to force the French-Canadians, if they
      wished to escape from it, to renounce their national
      character.

      There is nothing in Lord Durham's report to show that
      he ever, even once, dreamed what cruelty his policy
      involved. Rather, this idea which to us appears cruel,
      reveals his philanthropic character. Taking his stand
      on purely utilitarian grounds, he persuaded himself
      that the obvious interests of the French race demanded
      its extinction. It is not extermination that he
      advises, it is progressive, systematic absorption of
      one element into another. In remaining what it is, the
      French race must become more and more isolated on the
      American continent, and consequently fall into a state
      of material and moral inferiority; absorbed into the
      British element, it takes its place in the
      advancement, the wealth, the high degree of
      civilization that the numerical preponderance of this
      great race assures it on the continent.

      These considerations, in the eyes of a humanitarian
      like Lord Durham might appear decisive, but could a
      patriot like Lord Durham forget how they would wound
      the self-respect of a proud people?

      The reflection that the preservation of the national
      individuality of the French-Canadians exposed them to
      being out-distanced perhaps did not lack truth.

      It cannot be denied that the French-Canadians, in the
      preservation of their national existence, have
      absorbed a fund of activity, energy, and force, which
      the rival races, free from this preoccupation, have
      utilized for their material advancement. But such was
      the pride of the French people that they wished to
      remain what they were. Since the Conquest every other
      consideration had been subordinated to this. They had
      pride in their origin, in their traditions, history,
      and individuality, and the efforts, the struggles and
      the sacrifices that this sentiment had cost them
      should have been sufficient to inspire in a generous
      soul, a higher thought than regard simply for their
      material existence.

      But Lord Durham, although a friend of liberty, did not
      realize its full power.

[Footnote 14: Durham's prescription erred, but his diagnosis was
acute. In a secret and confidential despatch to Lord Glenelg on August
9, 1838, recently deposited in the Canadian Archives, he is frank in
his discussion of the real issues behind the constitutional struggle
and the rebellion: "The truth is that, with exceptions which tend to
prove the rule, all the British are on one side and all the Canadians
are on the other.... It appears upon a careful review of the political
struggle between those who have termed themselves the loyal party and
the popular party, that the subject of dissension has been, not the
connection with England, nor the form of the constitution, nor any of
the political abuses which have affected all classes of the people,
but simply such institutions, laws and customs as are of French
origin, which the British have sought to overthrow and the Canadians
have struggled to preserve.... The consequent rebellion, although
precipitated by the British from an instinctive sense of the danger of
allowing the Canadians full time for preparation, could not, perhaps,
have been avoided.... Their [the British inhabitants'] main object ...
has been ... to substitute, in short, for Canadian institutions, laws
and practices, others of a British character. In this pursuit they
have necessarily disregarded the implied, not to say precise,
engagement of England, to respect the peculiar institutions of French
Canada."]

Sydenham and his backers in London and Canada, blind as Durham himself
to the powers of resistance inherent in nationalism, tried to carry
this policy into force. Union was enacted to give an English-speaking
majority in the new province. All official electoral and parliamentary
proceedings were to be in English. Though Lower Canada far outnumbered
Upper Canada, it was given only the same number of representatives in
the provincial assembly. When the elections were held, Sydenham
exhausted all the efforts of official pressure, corruption and
violence to prevent the French-Canadian electorate securing a fair
proportion of the seats assigned to Lower Canada, and endeavoured to
ignore altogether such French-Canadian members as were elected. Mr.
Laurier declares:

      It was the imposition of the will of the stronger--the
      _voe victis_. The French race had to disappear; it
      must be gradually swallowed up, buried in quicksand,
      without commotion, without violence, but by the
      regular, normal, inflexible, irresistible action of an
      external and ever-increasing majority.

      The French-Canadians made vain appeals to the
      generosity, to the justice of the mother country. At
      the same time they tried all the constitutional
      methods that the suspension of the constitution left
      at their disposal: protests, petitions, resolutions
      adopted in public assemblies. These useless appeals,
      which remained unanswered, finally exasperated the
      people. Perhaps never had the British domination been
      more detested than at this time. The bloody vengeance
      visited upon the insurgents, the countrysides laid
      waste by fire, the pitiless executions, the
      deportations by the hundred, did not show so much
      cruelty, in the eyes of the vanquished, helpless
      people, as the cold-blooded determination to take away
      from it the national character that was its whole
      pride.

The programme of Durham and Sydenham and their backers in the
English-speaking minority, on its racial side, proved a complete
failure:

      Union and liberty produced all the good that Lord
      Durham expected, without realizing the evil that he
      had foreseen in it.

      The new institutions were found to be broad enough for
      the two races who had been enemies to live and grow
      together without fusion and without friction.

The French-Canadian people, disheartened for the moment, soon rallied.
Under LaFontaine they found a determined and skilful leader. Their
representatives in parliament held together, for the first few years,
in a solid block. The efforts of governors and ministers to detach a
few of their leading men proved unavailing; any individual who stood
out from his people committed political suicide. Soon these tactics
forced concessions in a parliament of divided parties. In 1844 a
unanimous resolution passed the Assembly advocating the recognition of
French as an official language, and four years later the British
parliament assented. The year 1849 saw the establishment in office of
a strong administration with a French-Canadian premier, and the
passing of a measure to recompense those who had suffered loss in the
rebellion, barring only men convicted in court of open rebellion. The
English-speaking minority protested vigorously, the more irresponsible
element burning the parliament buildings and stoning the
governor-general for assenting to such a measure, the more substantial
leaders turning to annexation, determined, as Durham had prophesied,
to remain "English, at the expense, if necessary, of not being
British." But the protest was in vain: the policy of ascendancy and of
anglicization had failed.

At this point a divergence appeared in the ranks of the
French-Canadians. Papineau wished to undo the wrong of coerced union,
to revert to the isolation of the Lower Canada of his earlier days.
LaFontaine abandoned the demand for repeal of the Union and insisted
that the legitimate aspirations of French-Canadians could be satisfied
under the existing constitution: the Union must be judged not by the
purposes of its founders but by the achievements of those who
actually administered it. The Rouges' adoption of Papineau's
insistence on an extreme and isolated nationalism was curiously
tempered by the actual co-operation with the English-speaking Tories
of Montreal and the Eastern Townships, and by the potential relations
with the English-speaking people across the border, which their
temporary conversion to the policy of annexation involved. It was
significant that after the rise of the annexation movement "L'Avenir"
dropped from its programme the clause which had previously headed the
list, _Canadien-français avant tout_.

The alliance of Baldwin and LaFontaine and later of Macdonald and
Cartier, and the common interest in railway development and general
economic expansion counted for much in bringing the two races
together. Yet there remained two seemingly insuperable obstacles to
harmony--the system of government and the colonial status.

So long as every detail regarding either section of the province had
to be dealt with by a house containing an equal number of
representatives from the other section, friction, and cries of
unwarranted interference, of "French domination" or of "English
tyranny" were certain to arise. Only by a federal solution could the
most contentious issues be assigned to local legislatures and united
action still secured in matters of joint concern.

So long, again, as Canada remained a subordinate and dependent colony,
it was hopeless to expect any solution of the racial issue. The
people as yet considered themselves English, Irish, Scotch, French, or
at most "Canadien" or French-Canadian, not Canadians. The
English-speaking peoples in Canada, by their kinship with the dominant
power overseas, were in a different political position from their
French-speaking compatriots. To the majority of the English-speaking
peoples the old country was still "home." This was not true in the
case of the French-Canadians. They were longer rooted in the soil.
Even under the French régime, it has been seen, fresh immigration was
extraordinarily scanty. After the Conquest immigration from France
ceased wholly. The ties were not year by year renewed. Still more
effective in breaking off all connection was the growth of
revolutionary and anti-clerical sentiment in France. The revolution of
'93 had created a great gulf between old France and New France. The
Canadian clergy sought to keep their flock free from the slightest
contact with a people who scorned all legitimate authority or bowed to
upstart dictators. The British government and the Roman Catholic
Church, each for its own ends, did their best for generations to hold
Canada aloof, and it was not surprising that they succeeded. Such
sympathy with France as survived was naturally more common in radical
than in conservative circles, but except in the outburst of democratic
fervour of the late forties, when Papineau linked Paris and Montreal
together, here also it was a weak and transient force.[15] The
habitant had ceased to be French; he had not become English; he was
_Canadien_.

[Footnote 15: The viewpoint of the young Rouges in their halcyon days
is brought out in this eloquent apostrophe of V. P. W. Dorion at a
banquet given to the collaborators of "L'Avenir," August 26, 1848, in
proposing the toast, _le peuple Canadien_: "... France, our ungrateful
mother, yet whom we always love in spite of the wrong she has done us,
because it is she who cared for us in our childhood, it is from her we
drew the strength needed to cross the ocean of difficulties which
beset our childhood's path, it is she who fed us with the bread of wit
and civilization, who taught us to pray God according to our holy and
beautiful religion, who taught us to lisp the beloved tongue our
fathers bequeathed to us and which we hold dearer than life."]

When Wilfrid Laurier entered politics, the issue of nationalism had
again been brought to the front by the discussion of Confederation.
His Rouge friends were opposing Confederation on the ground that it
would mean the overwhelming of the French-Canadians in an
English-speaking mass--and on other grounds, of which not the least
important was that their political rivals were supporting it. Durham
had failed to obliterate French-Canadian nationality by uniting
another province with Lower Canada; now Brown and Macdonald and
Cartier and Galt were proposing the experiment of uniting five
English-speaking provinces with the one French-speaking section.
Cartier and his friends, on the other hand, insisted that by restoring
a separate legislature to Lower Canada, a legislature which would have
control over all the matters of intimate concern, they were immensely
strengthening the French-Canadian position. Laurier did not at first
disassociate himself from these sectional views. In "Le Défricheur" he
echoed the criticism, which had no small measure of truth, that Brown
desired Confederation as a means of lessening French-Canadian power,
and that the Conservatives, facing defeat in 1864, had conceded his
demand as the price of retaining office. Lower Canada had no more
interest in Nova Scotia than in Australia; the only tie that bound
them was subjection to the common colonial yoke. Confederation would
prove the tomb of the French race.

It was not long before his views had widened. The influence of his
early associations in New Glasgow, the intercourse with the Scotch and
English settlers in the Townships, his constant browsing in the
classics of English Liberalism, kindled his sympathies with his
English-speaking compatriots. His sympathy with his own people never
lessened, but he came to see that their future lay not in isolation,
nor, for that matter, in assimilation, but in full and frank
partnership with their fellow-Canadians.

Unlike Howe, Dorion and Laurier accepted Confederation, once
accomplished, as an established fact. Very early Wilfrid Laurier came
to see the possibilities it involved of solving the racial problem.
From the outset of his parliamentary career, two principles guided his
conduct in the endeavour which was always nearest his heart, to
achieve union and harmony for all Canada. The first was to adhere
faithfully to the guarantees of the federation compact, to refrain
from federal interference with provincial affairs, to respect the
safeguards thrown around the rights and privileges of the minorities
within each province. The other was to develop a common unhyphenated
Canadian nationality, in which the older loyalties would be fused and
blended, not compelling any man to forget the land of his fathers, but
bringing all to put first the land of their sons. To quote one last
word from his survey of the Union period:

      The sentiment of nationality was thus made secure. The
      ideal of each race was henceforth the progress of the
      common country, and the supreme pride of both, to
      proclaim themselves above all Canadian.

In the early years of Wilfrid Laurier's career, a third issue divided
interest with the reorganization of parties and the conflict of
nationalities. The question of the relations of Church and State had
its roots both in local conditions and in the European struggle
between liberalism and ultramontism. In nineteenth-century Europe no
country escaped violent controversy on this issue. In Canada, the
close connection between Church and State which had existed from the
beginning of the French régime, and the complications introduced by
the sudden change of control at the Conquest, made the issue one of
vital importance during both the Union and the Confederation period.
There was no question with which Wilfrid Laurier was more intimately
concerned from his first to his last day in public life, and none on
which he impressed more enduringly the stamp alike of his courage and
of his moderation.

Upper Canada was fortunate in solving the most serious of its
ecclesiastical conflicts relatively early. With the first organization
of the province there had begun the endeavour to establish and endow
the Church of England as a safeguard for faith and morals and a
buttress of state authority. The proposals met with little
opposition so long as the Anglicans formed the great majority of the
population. With the coming in large numbers of Presbyterian,
Methodist, Baptist and Roman Catholic settlers, the inevitable
conflict began. The claims of the Church of England to receive as
endowment vast areas of Clergy Reserves or Crown Lands, to monopolize
the performance of the marriage ceremony, and to control university
education, were fought with vigour and eventual success. The winning
of self-government, and the growth of the dissentient denominations to
an overwhelming majority in their turn, led to the speedy triumph of
the forces which opposed any union of Church and State. The
appropriation in 1854 of the unallotted Clergy Reserves for
educational purposes marked the end of the dream of church
establishment. The question revived in a new form with the setting up
of Roman Catholic separate or denominational schools. For twenty years
the controversy waged. The provincial Acts of 1855 and 1863 accorded
the Roman Catholics the right to establish separate schools,
controlled by local boards of their own faith, subject to the
supervision of the provincial department of education as to
curriculum, teachers' qualifications, and administration, and
maintained by provincial grants and by local assessments on their
supporters, who were exempted from taxes for maintenance of public
schools. These concessions were bitterly fought by George Brown and
his cohorts, but after 1863 the principle was definitely recognized
and the issue of Church and State, while never wholly quiescent,
receded into the background.

[Illustration: LOUIS JOSEPH PAPINEAU
Tribune of Lower Canada (1832)]

Lower Canada could not so easily escape its difficulties. The
difference in religion between the vast majority of its people and the
people not only of the United Kingdom but of the greater part of
British North America, the breaking of relations with France, the
continuance and eventually the closer welding of relations with Rome
and the consequent echoing of the controversies which divided Catholic
Europe, all made a situation full of difficulty for the statesman and
often for the private citizen.

Under the French régime the Church was a potent force. It could not be
otherwise in a colony which for many a year was mainly a mission
station and in which religious zeal throughout supplied a great part
of the driving power. The Church provided and controlled school and
hospital and refuge. It built up great territorial endowments: by the
end of the French régime the Church owned the same proportion of the
granted land of New France as of the land of old France--one-fourth of
the whole. The bishop shared control with governor and intendant. Mgr.
Laval made and unmade governors and exalted the authority of Rome at
the expense of that of the court of France. Yet in the later years its
political if not its social power declined. The missionary motive
faded. Frontenac fought bishop and Jesuit, rightly and wrongly, with
success and with failure, but always with vigour, and after his day
the superior power of the state authorities was scarcely questioned.
The ecclesiastical law of France and the Gallican liberties, setting
bounds to papal intervention in the affairs of the national church,
held sway in the colony, though the great Gallican charter of 1682 was
never formally registered in New France.

Then came the conquest of Canada by a power militantly Protestant. The
overthrow of the Roman Catholic Church appeared inevitable. The
British authorities, it is true, promised freedom of worship, but with
the saving qualification, "as far as the laws of Great Britain
permit." While permitting the people to worship at what altar they
pleased, they endeavoured in every way to subordinate the Church to
the State's authority, to refuse formal recognition to the bishop, to
reserve to the King the right of nominating parish priests, to break
up the male clerical orders--particularly the Society of Jesus, which
the Pope himself suppressed in 1773--to require permission from the
governor before entering such order, to bar all but native Canadians
from ecclesiastical office, and to throw open the churches for
Anglican as well as for Catholic use. The Church of England was to
take its place as the established body, as fast as governor and
schoolmaster and parson could bring the people to the new way of
thinking.

The policy proved an utter failure. Before two generations had passed,
the Catholic Church in Canada had not only struck off the new shackles
imposed on its freedom of action but had become more independent and
more powerful under the British than it had been under the French
régime.

One reason for the failure was that the policy was pressed only
intermittently. With more persistence and fitter tools it might have
won a measure of success. Masères witnesses that in the first dozen
years the paying of tithes to the clergy fell rapidly into disuse. But
policy wavered, and the Protestant clergymen sent out were too few and
too weak to make any impression. The people cleaved to their ancient
faith, and their clergy became every year a greater power in the land.

The strength of the Church under alien rule had more than one source.
First came the consideration that heretic rulers could not exercise
the control over the Church which His Most Christian Majesty had
exercised without running counter to every racial and religious
conviction; when a French king disciplined a bishop it was a mere
family quarrel; if an English king used half his sternness, the
heather was afire. The Church, again, in the absence of other leaders,
became the rallying-centre of nationalism, sheltering the people
against the attempts made to assimilate them, and gaining strength
from the people's enduring gratitude.

But it was not merely with the people that the Church gained
influence. It speedily came to terms with the government. The British
authorities, once convinced that their own church could not prevail,
were prepared to avail themselves of the power which did exist as an
even more stable bulwark. The leaders of the Church met them half-way.
A king was a king; '93 created a gulf between old France and New
France; the priesthood after 1763 became almost wholly native-born,
and its national sentiment not French but French-Canadian. "Mgr.
Briand," declared Mgr. Plessis, his successor in the bishopric of
Quebec, in 1790, "had hardly seen the British arms placed over the
gates of our city, before he perceived that God had transferred to
England the dominion of the country; that with the change of
possessors our duties had changed their direction ... and that
religion itself might gain by the change of government." In one
emergency after another, when British rule was threatened by external
attack or internal revolt, the Church gave its support to the throne,
gave it gladly but not for naught. There was no vulgar bargaining
between the honourable gentlemen who represented the King and the
distinguished prelates who served the Church, but the safeguarding of
British interests and the recognition of the Church's claims
synchronized. In 1774 the Quebec Act confirmed the Church's power to
levy tithes; in 1775 bishop and priest exhorted their flocks to stand
by the government and flee the wiles of the invading Bastonnais.
During the war between Britain and France, revolutionary and
anti-clerical France, British victories were celebrated by Te Deums in
the cathedral at Quebec and the ban against the admission of French
priests was raised. In the war of 1812 Mgr. Plessis issued vigorous
pastorals calling on the people to fight for their old country and
their new flag; after the war his right to official recognition as
Bishop of Quebec and to a seat on the Legislative Council was
recognized and his stipend from the British government increased to
£1000 a year. Before the rebellion of 1837 Bishop Lartigue of
Montreal issued a solemn mandement, quoting all that St. Peter and St.
Paul had to say about fearing God and honouring the King and being
subjected to the higher powers, and all that Gregory XVI had recently
added "in condemnation of those who by schemes of sedition and revolt
endeavour to shake allegiance to Princes and hurl them from their
thrones"; the Act of Union of 1841 struck hard at the political and
nationalist claims of the French-Canadians, but left the Church
untouched.

The Church had now secured complete freedom. Not only was its worship
untrammelled but its hierarchy was recognized, its property, except
for the Jesuits' Estates, conserved, and its right of tithe given the
force of law. The Fifth Council of the Church in 1850 formally
proclaimed this freedom: "We rejoice to make the solemn declaration
that in no country is the Church freer than in Canada," while the
Archbishop of Quebec, Mgr. Baillargeon, a little later declared, "We
know no country where religion enjoys so great liberty and exercises a
wider influence." Nor was its power merely legal and external. It held
sway in the hearts of the people. Its teachings comforted them in
distress, its ceremonies kindled their imagination, and its pastors
were their most trusted friends and counsellors.

Until after Union was effected there had been practically no
dissension within the Church itself. After the Union, and particularly
after the winning of responsible government, controversy was frequent
and vigorous. Two wings of opinion fought for the mastery. The
struggle took many forms--controversies among the leaders of the
Church themselves, conflicts between a section of the clergy and a
small but active section of the laity, and finally, the warring of
political parties. Many of these controversies concern directly only
the student of ecclesiastical history, but others had a wider range,
and have become part of the history of the country, as they were part
of the lives of its political chieftains.

The achievement of self-government itself hastened the rise of public
controversy. Now that the freedom alike of the people and of the
Church had been securely attained, there was less risk of internal
dissension jeopardizing common ends. The triumph of democracy
involved, further, a change of venue. When power lay with the governor
and his circle, it was with the governor and his circle that bishops
and vicars-general carried on their negotiations. When power came to
rest with the people, the Church, in the New as in the Old World,
naturally became vitally interested in the schools and the press that
formed the electors' opinions, and in the parties and the elections
through which their opinions found expression.

The personal factor was important. Men of a new temper came to power,
or power and freedom brought out qualities hitherto repressed. The
tradition of leaders such as Mgr. Briand, Mgr. Plessis, Mgr. Hubert,
firm in upholding the rights of their church, untiring in advancing
its interests, but ruling their own people with easy rein and broadly
tolerant toward those of other faiths, was continued by Mgr.
Baillargeon, Archbishop of Quebec from 1867 to 1870, and his
successor, Mgr. Taschereau, as well as the greater number of their
colleagues. In Montreal the Sulpicians, the chief religious order, and
in Quebec, Laval University and the Seminary, maintained the same
tradition. But Mgr. Bourget, Bishop of Montreal from 1841 to 1876, and
Mgr. Laflèche, his younger colleague in Three Rivers, were men of
another mould, fiery crusaders, intolerant of difference, impatient of
resistance, prepared to fight to the end rather than yield one jot or
tittle of their authority or permit any slightest growth of
independence among their flocks.

In still greater measure, the controversies which developed were
manifestations of the world-wide conflict between authority and
liberalism which had continued without ceasing since the French
Revolution, or echoes of its European phases. It was not until after
Confederation that the full effect of these European developments was
felt in Canada, but during the Union period their bearing was shown
both in party conflict and in private controversy. Improvements in
travel and communication brought the isolated provinces on the St.
Lawrence within the range of European influence, at the same time that
the changes which have been surveyed within the country itself had
prepared a freer field for the exercise of the new tendencies.

There had been in pre-Union days little attempt from within the ranks
of the Church to question either its doctrines or its authority.
Journals such as "Le Canadien" and "Le Libéral" which had made
cautious steps in this direction had found little support and proved
unable to withstand the solid opposition of the clergy. Papineau, it
was true, had early imbibed the doctrines of eighteenth-century deism,
but he never sought to weaken the faith of his countrymen and showed
deep respect for the customs and the leaders of the Church. Toward the
end of the separate existence of Lower Canada, he and those behind him
were feeling their way to question the Church's control over
education. "Le Canadien" in 1835 had criticized the training given in
the colleges under ecclesiastical direction, as inadequate and
impractical, failing to equip the French-Canadian to compete with his
English-speaking rivals in business affairs, and had proposed that the
Jesuits' Estates, confiscated by the Crown at the Conquest, should be
utilized to establish under state control an education of more ample
and practical scope. In the following year Papineau proposed in the
assembly that the Jesuits' Estates be handed over by the imperial
authorities for educational purposes: "These estates," he continued,
"were granted exclusively for Catholics, for a French and Catholic
posterity; from reasons of expediency and of justice, we are agreed
that henceforth they should be available for the inhabitants of all
races and all creeds, and, to avert jealousies, that theological
studies should be excluded." The constitutional crisis soon drove
these proposals from the stage, but they undoubtedly had a share,
which has not been adequately recognized, in determining the hostile
attitude of the clergy to the radical reformers and to the rebellion
into which they drifted or were driven. During the rebellion, more
than one group of Patriotes issued manifestos protesting against the
intervention of the clergy in political affairs and demanding that
they should remain neutral in the conflict.[16]

The publication, in 1845-58, of the work which still remains the
outstanding contribution of French-speaking Canada to scholarship and
literature, F. X. Garneau's "Histoire du Canada," not only stimulated
a new intellectual interest among the young men of the forties, but
gave their interest a questioning bias by its mingling of frank
criticism with sincere appreciation in its record of the work of the
Church. The return of Papineau from his years of exile in the France
where the revolution of 1848 was incubating provided a personal link
with the radicalism of the Seine. The new spirit found expression, as
has been indicated previously, in the intellectual activities of
L'Institut Canadien, the party organization of the Democrats or
Rouges, and in the columns of "L'Avenir."[17]

The editors of "L'Avenir" declared in their opening manifesto that as
Democrats by conviction and French-Canadians by birth, they were
pained to think "that the electric currents of democracy which are
to-day giving new vigour to the civilized world, might be dissipated
without effect here, for want of finding a conducting wire to the
countries of the New World." It was mainly the literary heresies of
Hugo and Lamartine and the political aspirations of the Democrats and
Republicans of the Left which found entry by this route. Few
references at first were made to religious affairs. Then in March,
1849, came word of the dethronement of the Pope as temporal sovereign
and the proclamation of a short-lived republic in Rome. "L'Avenir"
could not restrain its "enthusiasm over this glorious event," making
it clear, however, that it was the fall of the Pope as king that was
hailed, and that his spiritual authority was in no way weakened or
attacked. Father Chiniquy, the apostle of temperance, fated later to
desert the church of his fathers, took up the cudgels in defence of
the temporal power, at first in good-tempered regret, later in strong
denunciation. "L'Avenir" replied that long before the editorial on the
fall of the temporal power, a notable part of the clergy had been
waging war upon it purely because of opposition to its political
views; that it respected the clergy and was profoundly grateful for
their services to education, but that they should confine themselves
to the sphere of morals and religion; that when they ventured into
politics it had always been to oppose democracy, and to support
constituted authority. Later it cited the similar treatment meted out
to Thomas D'Arcy McGee when in his New York journal, "The Nation," he
had also ventured to criticize the temporal power. Letters in its
columns, signed and unsigned, attacked churchly creeds and priestly
conduct. In January, 1850, 'L'Avenir" began to question the tithes
which the law authorized the clergy to levy, and added both "abolition
of the tithing system" and "abolition of the Protestant Clergy
Reserves" to its formal programme: "a poorer clergy would be a better
clergy."

[Footnote 16: Cf. "La Minerve," 30 Oct., 13 Nov., 16 Nov., 1837.]

[Footnote 17: "It was in 1848 that the group of men imbued with the
false and perverse principles termed 'the principles of '89,' appeared
as a party in Canada, and it was at this time that, believing
themselves strong enough to propagate and establish their doctrines
and errors in our country, they founded the newspaper 'L'Avenir.'"
Memoir of Mgr. Laflèche, 1881: cited in Savaëte, "Vers l'Abîme," ii.
217.]

In November, 1849, "L'Avenir" proudly declared that it had survived
"the most formidable, the best organized, the most powerful
persecution which could exist in Canada, the persecution of the
majority of the Catholic clergy"; that after a war to the death it
counted more adherents and more subscribers than ever; that it could
not be crushed as "Le Canadien" had been twenty years and "Le Libéral"
a dozen years before; "Thank Heaven, those times are gone, the reign
of persecutors draws to its end in America, and 'L'Avenir' will
survive its paid detractors as it will the various privileged orders
which have an interest in extinguishing the light in order to keep our
people in darkness and ignorance." The rejoicing was premature; on
January 21, 1852, Eric Dorion was forced to announce, in bitterly
disappointed but still courageous and uncompromising terms, that
subscribers had fallen away and the journal could not continue.
Clearly Quebec had little sympathy for a critic of the Church. "Le
Pays," which took the place of "L'Avenir" as the Rouge organ in
Montreal, refrained from any attack on church creed or practice,
confining itself to occasional protests against incursions of priests
into politics, against "the crime of erecting the altar side by side
with the hustings." "Le National," of Quebec, followed the same
discreet path. The journals of wider influence, the leading
Conservative organ, "La Minerve," and Cauchon's "Le Journal de
Québec," were vigorously clerical in sympathies. The influence of '48
had faded. Not the Seine, but the Tiber, was to flow into the St.
Lawrence.

The Rouge group in the House of Assembly in the fifties incurred the
hostility of the clergy by their attitude on two questions--the powers
of religious communities and the control of the schools. Nearly every
session witnessed a contest over the incorporation of some
ecclesiastical order or institution. The Clear Grits opposed
incorporation on any terms; the Rouges usually supported the main
proposals, but joined in questioning the right of such communities to
hold in perpetuity lands of unlimited value.[18] Of more importance
was the school question. The Rouges, after initiating and carrying to
a successful conclusion their demands for the abolition of the
seigniorial system and the establishment of an elective upper house,
turned to the betterment of education as their main policy. They
called for free elementary schools, liberally sustained by the
provincial government, uniform in type, progressive in curriculum, and
open to all children irrespective of religious belief. Papin's motion
in 1855 summed up this policy: "To establish throughout the province a
general and uniform system of free elementary education, maintained
wholly at the cost of the State by means of a special fund created for
that purpose; to make it possible to carry on this system in a just
and effective manner, it will be necessary that all schools thus
established should be open without discrimination to all children of
school age, without exposing any, by the character of the teaching
given, to having their religious beliefs or opinions assailed or
injured in any manner." In presenting his motion this young Rouge
declared: There can be no established religion, and if so, the state
cannot in any fashion grant money for the teaching of any religious
faith. The system of education in force hitherto has been far from
satisfactory. What we need is a general system applicable to all
sections of the province, which will bring about the disappearance of
the prejudices of Catholics and Protestants alike. This was not
practical politics in 1855: even in Upper Canada there were few
supporters of uniform and free, to say nothing of secular, education.
Action followed the other trend, of confirming and extending
denominational control, where desired, and the Rouge demands were very
soon consigned to the legislative lumber-room.

[Footnote 18: "The Hon. M. de Boucherville understood perfectly the
aim of the clergy in bringing some religious community here every
year, when again and again he opposed in the House the granting of
acts of incorporation to these communities. He realized how dangerous
to the cause of liberty the accumulation of property in the hands of
the clergy is, and his is the merit of having uttered the first cry of
warning in parliament." Article in "L'Avenir," Jan. 18, 1850.]

The criticisms of "L'Avenir" and the school and corporations programme
of the Rouge party concerned the Church as a whole, and they could not
complain if the overwhelming body of the clergy opposed their
conduct. In the case of the Institut Canadien, however, the
aggression came from the other side; the quarrel was a more limited
and personal affair, and the attitude of the chief figure in the
controversy, Bishop Bourget, was very far from being endorsed by all
his episcopal colleagues.

The Institut Canadien, it has been seen, was a literary club,
organized in Montreal in 1844 for the purpose of providing the library
and reading-room facilities which were conspicuously lacking in
French-speaking Canada, and a forum for discussion and debate. It met
with instant and enthusiastic success. Similar institutes were
organized throughout the province; that was the day, it will be
remembered, when Mechanics' Institutes, public libraries, and popular
lectures and lyceum courses were coming into popularity in
English-speaking America. But their success was not long unclouded.
The same group of young Montrealers who edited "L'Avenir" and
organized the Rouge party led the debates and controlled the library
and reading-room of the parent institute. It was not surprising that a
section of the clergy came to look upon the institute with a very
critical eye. The first hint of trouble came in 1850. Father Paul
Chiniquy demanded that journals which opposed the Pope's temporal
power, and particularly "The Witness" and a French Protestant and
proselytizing paper, "Le Semeur," should be excluded from the
reading-room; others sought to bar from membership all but
French-Canadians. Both proposals were rejected, but a few members
seceded, and rival Instituts Nationaux were established throughout
the province in the next two years under clerical auspices. Again, in
1852, when the Montreal institute sought to rent a building owned by
the Seminary, permission was declined unless the offending newspapers
were barred and the bishop's censorship of the library accepted. These
terms were declined. The Quebec Institut Canadien proved more
amenable; in 1852 it voted to exclude "L'Avenir"; a motion was made in
the Montreal institute to retaliate in coin by excluding the
ultra-clerical "Journal de Québec," but the proposal was
overwhelmingly rejected as inconsistent with the liberty of discussion
which was the issue at stake. The question smouldered until in 1858
the action of Bishop Bourget in condemning the institute for
harbouring in its library dangerous and immoral books fanned it into
flame. A section of the institute's members proposed to bow to his
wishes by appointing a committee to ban all books to which objection
was made. After a stormy debate, a declaration was adopted by a vote
of 110 to 88 to the effect that the institute's library did not
contain and never had contained a single immoral book; and that it had
always been and still was capable of judging of the morality of its
library and of conducting its administration without the intervention
of outside influences. The minority at once seceded. Mgr. Bourget
issued a pastoral condemning the majority for assuming to judge of the
morality of their books, and for asserting that books which were on
the Index Expurgatorius were not immoral. Unless they rescinded their
action, no good Catholic could continue to belong to the institute,
and its members became liable to excommunication.

When Wilfrid Laurier came to Montreal in 1860, the bishop and the
institute were still at swords' points. The young student was not
deterred by the fear of episcopal lightnings from joining the
institute and taking an active part in its debates and its
administration. He became a vice-president in 1865, and again the
following year, retiring from office only on the eve of his departure
for L'Avenir.[19]

[Footnote 19: Officers of L'Institut Canadien. May to November, 1866:

President: J. Emery-Coderre
First Vice-President: Wilfrid Laurier
Second Vice-President: C. Alphonse Geoffrion
Recording Secretary: Alphonse Lusignan
Assistant Recording-Secretary: Zotique Labrecque
Corresponding Secretary: Gonzalve Doutre
Treasurer: Peter Henry
Librarian: Nephthali Durand
Assistant Librarian: Godefroi Papineau]

In October, 1863, the institute endeavoured to heal the breach. On the
motion of Dr. Coderre, a committee consisting of himself and of
Messrs. Dessaulles, Laurier and Joseph Doutre was appointed to
"consider means of settling the difficulties which have arisen between
His Grace the Bishop of Montreal and the Institute." This committee
secured an interview with Mgr. Bourget. They were received with
cordial courtesy and unyielding opposition; nothing but complete
submission would avail. Later Dr. Coderre and M. Dessaulles waited
upon His Grace, and left with him a catalogue of the library, asking
him to indicate those books which he considered undesirable for
general reading, undertaking to set these aside under lock and key, to
be given to Catholic members of the institute only upon authorization
of the president of the executive committee. Mgr. Bourget took the
catalogue. Six months passed without response. Then M. Dessaulles
sought an interview once more, only to be informed that while
dangerous books had been found in the list, it was not considered that
it would serve any useful purpose to indicate them. In March, 1864, in
further token of the desire to avoid offense, the institute adopted a
resolution declaring

      That the constitution of the Institut Canadien, while
      it does not take into consideration the religious
      creed of any of its members, does not thereby imply
      the denial of any truth or religious authority, and
      allows the personal responsibilities and duties of its
      members as regards their relation with established
      modes of worship to be maintained without
      interference; that in order to set religious liberty
      as admitted in this institution above conflict of any
      sort and to protect it from any unpleasantness, it is
      essential to avoid carefully touching on or discussing
      any question which might wound the religious
      susceptibilities of any of the members of this
      society; in consequence it would be desirable that no
      reading or discussion should be capable of giving rise
      to any complaint in this respect.

In November, 1865, seventeen members of the institute decided to
appeal to Cæsar. A petition was drawn up and despatched to the Sacred
Congregation of the Index protesting against Bishop Bourget's
condemnation, and asking for an answer to this question: "May a
Catholic, without rendering himself liable to ecclesiastical censures,
belong to a literary association some of whose members are
Protestants, and which possesses books condemned by the Index, but
which are neither obscene nor immoral?" His Grace, who was not one to
rest quiet under attack, carried his case to Rome in person. When
Wilfrid Laurier left Montreal and the institute late in 1866, no
decision had come from His Holiness.

Meanwhile the institute continued its course. In 1867 we find the Rev.
John Cordner declaring in an address before the institute that it
represented the Gallican ideal in its breadth and independence, as
against the exclusiveness and domineering spirit of Ultramontanism. In
the same year Hon. L. J. Papineau made one of his last public
appearances before the institute, praising it for its defence of the
right of free inquiry, endorsing the principles of '76 and '89,
calling on young men of whatever creed or race to take part in the
work of the institute, and assuring it the support of all enlightened
citizens in its struggle against "these enemies of reason and of
thought." A year later, two addresses were given which were still less
acceptable. Horace Greeley came from New York in December, 1868, to
tell his hearers that "for the man who is genuinely liberal in this
century in which we live, there is but one country, the world; one
religion, charity; one patriotism, to civilize and do good to all the
family of mankind; for adversaries, tyranny, ignorance, superstition,
and, in short, everything which oppresses or degrades." On the same
night, Dessaulles urged the need of tolerance, sympathy, respect for
the rights of others; insisted that in a country of mixed religions
there could be no harm in men of mature mind, who belonged to
different churches, meeting on common ground in the pursuit of
literature and of science; cited many good Catholic writers who
preached the same doctrine, and attacked "the reactionaries who
thirsted to stifle liberty of thought and to keep grown men in
dishonouring tutelage." True, he continued, their library contained
books which were upon the Index, but what university or parliamentary
library did not contain more, since works of Hallam and Michelet, of
Agassiz and Cuvier, of Cousin and Royer-Collard, of Chateaubriand and
Lamartine, of Pascal and Montaigne, of Hugo and Goethe were on the
prohibited list? All these addresses were published in the "Annuaire"
or "Handbook" for 1868.

At last, in 1869, Rome spoke. The question submitted by the members of
the institute in 1865 was not answered, but the "Annuaire" of 1868 was
made the ground for condemnation. The Congregation of the Holy Office
condemned as pernicious the doctrines taught in the "Annuaire," and
forbade the faithful to belong to the institute so long as it taught
such doctrines. A decree of the Congregation of the Index forbade any
to publish, read or possess the "Annuaire." Bishop Bourget, in a
pastoral letter sent from Rome, added the warning that if any person
persisted in adhering to the institute or keeping the "Annuaire" in
his possession, he would be deprived of the sacraments, "même à
l'article de la mort." The institute met in September, 1869, and
declared: "1. That the Institut Canadien, founded solely for literary
and scientific purposes, teaches no doctrine of any kind, and
carefully excludes all teaching of pernicious doctrines; 2. That the
Catholic members of the Institut Canadien, having learned of the
condemnation of the 'Annuaire' of 1868, by a decree of Rome's
authority, declare that they submit purely and simply to this decree."
Bishop Bourget was not content with this submission, which he declared
was hypocritical and inadequate: "This act of submission forms part of
the report of the committee unanimously approved by the members of the
institute, in which there is set forth a resolution heretofore kept
secret, establishing the principle of religious toleration, which was
the chief ground for the condemnation of the institute." In face of
such frank and implacable hostility, the institute dwindled away;
prudence led the weak-kneed to resign and death in time carried away
the stiff-necked.

The death in 1869 of one of the enduring members, Joseph Guibord,
printer by trade, a man of upright character and a lifelong faithful
Catholic, brought about the final stage in the long struggle. A priest
had refused to give him the last rites of the Church unless he would
withdraw; he declined, and died suddenly shortly afterwards. The curé
in charge of the cemetery of Côte des Neiges therefore refused to
grant his body ecclesiastical burial or to admit it within consecrated
ground. His friends took up the challenge. While Joseph Guibord's body
lay in a vault, Joseph Doutre and Rodolphe Laflamme, on behalf of the
widow, appealed to the courts, carried the case to the Privy Council
of England, and secured a decision in 1874 that under the
ecclesiastical law of New France, which had never recognized the
authority of the decrees of the Congregation of the Index, Guibord did
not lie under any valid censure which could warrant his exclusion from
Christian burial. In September, 1875, Guibord's body was carried to
the cemetery, only to be met by barred gates and angry mobs. Two
months later, under military escort, and with injunctions from the
clergy to the people to refrain from all resistance, Guibord was
buried without religious rites in the consecrated ground, side by side
with his wife, and the grave protected by cement and iron. Yet here
again Bishop Bourget had the last word, formally proclaiming the
ground in which the stubborn printer lay, interdicted and
unconsecrated. One point was yielded; to no other member were the
rites of the Church refused.

The passions roused by this unfortunate affair made the continuance of
the institute impossible. Steadily the membership fell away, the books
and journals were transferred to the Fraser Institute, a free public
library, and the institute became but a name. Mgr. Bourget had
triumphed.

Mr. Laurier had had no part in the later developments of the struggle,
and had regretted the open cleavage and the bitter recriminations of
the closing scenes. Yet he never regretted that he had stood for
freedom in the days of his own membership in the institute. There
have been few men in public life so little given to cherishing a
grudge. A singular temperamental tolerance, resting in part on kindly
sympathy, in part on a cynical refusal to expect too much from human
nature, and an abiding understanding of the folly of vendettas in a
political game wherein the adversaries of to-day might be the allies
of to-morrow, made him ever slow in condemnation. But fifty years
after he had ceased to be a member of the Institut Canadien, at the
mention of Mgr. Bourget's name his long mobile upper lip would
tighten, and his kindly eye grow stern as he voiced his judgment of
the prelate whose interpretation of Christianity and their common
Catholic faith differed so widely from his own.

Even after his removal from Montreal, Mr. Laurier met his share of
episcopal censure. In leaving the diocese of Mgr. Bourget to go to the
diocese of Mgr. Laflèche, he found he had exchanged the frying-pan for
the fire. In addition to his law practice, he had undertaken to edit
the weekly newspaper, "Le Défricheur," which Eric Dorion had founded
to further his work of constructive colonization in the Eastern
Townships. So far as the few copies of "Le Défricheur" which are still
extant reveal, the new editor had little to say of the Church, if much
of his political opponents. But in the rising temper of the
ultramontane group it mattered little whether the provocation was
little or great. Mgr. Laflèche put the journal under the ban. Curé
after curé advised his parishioners to give up their subscriptions.
Parishioner after parishioner declined to take the paper from the
post, or shamefacedly sought the office and declared that as he feared
to oppose his wife, who feared to oppose the curé, he would have to
give it up. In six months "Le Défricheur" had gone the way of many a
Liberal paper in Quebec before and after. Years later, when Mr.
Laurier was on intimate terms with Father Suzor, the curé at
Arthabaskaville, he asked what excuse there had been for crushing his
effort. "Oh, we felt you were growing too powerful," was the reply.
"And did you not consider that you were depriving an honest man of his
livelihood, destroying the investment into which I had put all I could
find or borrow?" A shrug, and the comforting suggestion that such
temporal considerations were of little weight, were all the
satisfaction Mr. Laurier could secure. It was not probable that in any
case, with his law practice growing, he could have long continued to
act as editor, but that did not lessen the weight of the blow at the
time.




CHAPTER   III

FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT

     Clients, Friends, and Books--Election to the
     Legislature--A Maiden Speech--Clerical Hostility--The
     European Background--The Catholic Programme of
     1871--The Parti National Diversion--The Utramontane
     Campaign in Quebec--The Appeal to the Courts--The
     Appeal to Rome--The Appeal to the Public--Laurier on
     Political Liberalism--The Victory of Moderation.


For thirty years Wilfrid Laurier made his home in the village of
Arthabaskaville, or Arthabaska, as it was later sensibly abbreviated.
The early years of his life in the Townships were years of quiet
happiness, of successful work and pleasant leisure. Country air and
the skilful care of the local physician, Dr. Poisson, soon brought
back a measure of strength. Mr. Laurier's health never ceased to be a
matter of concern. He was well past middle age before any insurance
company would risk a policy on his life. Only an ordered and
abstemious way of living kept the shadow averted.

On coming first to Arthabaska, Mr. Laurier formed a partnership with
Mr. Crepeau, which proved of brief duration. He then joined forces
with Mr. Edouard Richard, who is best known as the historian of the
Acadians. When Mr. Richard was elected as member in the federal house
for Megantic, and took up his residence in that constituency, Mr.
Laurier, in 1874, asked Joseph Lavergne to join him. The partnership
proved both enduring and congenial, ending only when Mr. Lavergne,
who had been member for Drummond-Arthabaska from 1887 to 1897, went on
the bench in the latter year. Joseph Lavergne, it may be noted, was
followed as member for the county by his brother Louis, whose
appointment as senator in 1910 gave occasion for the fateful
by-election of Drummond-Arthabaska.

The practice flourished. Both in the judicial seat and on circuit the
services of young Laurier were greatly in demand. It was a litigious
neighbourhood, and the partners frequently had more difficulty in
inducing their clients to settle their disputes out of court than in
finding suits to plead. The cases were not of great moment, a family
quarrel over a will, a neighbour's line-fence dispute, a damage suit
against a railway, but whether little or much was at stake, Mr.
Laurier greatly enjoyed the grappling of minds, and the jousting in
the courtroom. Fees were not high: it was ten years before his income
rose to two thousand a year, and the largest income he ever enjoyed
while in practice was five thousand; but in Arthabaska, and in the
seventies and eighties, five thousand, or even two, was wealth
unquestioned.

Law did not absorb all Mr. Laurier's time or interest. For a time he
returned to journalism, acting as editor of "Le Journal d'Arthabaska,"
founded in 1872 by his friend Ernest Pacaud, later editor of the
leading Liberal newspaper in Quebec, "L'Electeur." Even with this
fresh duty, there was leisure for living in Arthabaska, and both the
desire and the means to live. Although the town had only some three
thousand people, it was a literary and artistic centre of no little
moment. A community that produced jovial wits like his brother lawyer,
Louis Edouard Pacaud, such poets as Adolphe Poisson and musicians as
Romeo Poisson, and, later, sculptors like Philippe Hébert and painters
like Suzor Coté, was vigorously alive: the great cities had not yet
drained the countryside. An evening passed in talk and song or in a
rubber of whist in such company was not soon forgotten. The woods and
the hills about lured to many a quiet ramble, or to a hunt for
partridge. The local militia offered another outlet. Mr. Laurier
became ensign in 1868. His company was called out for service during
the Fenian Raid of 1870, though it did not have an opportunity to
share in the brief skirmishes on the Townships' borders.

But it was in his library that Mr. Laurier passed his happiest hours.
He read widely in the literature and history of his own country and of
the two countries from which Canada drew its inspiration. Garneau and
Crémazie, Bossuet and Molière, Hugo and Lamartine, Burke and Sheridan
and Fox, Macaulay and Bright, Shakespeare and Burns, Newman and
Lamennais, were the companions of his evening hours. His father's
connection with the seigniory of Peter Pangman, the North-West
fur-trader, drew his interest to the Western field, and his shelves
soon held many prized narratives of travel or fur-company feuds beyond
the Great Lakes. The life and writings of Lincoln were another special
interest. He had escaped being carried away by the enthusiasm for the
South which marked official circles and the larger cities in Canada
during the Civil War, when Southern refugees swarmed in Montreal, and
plotted border raids. He had pierced below caricature and calumny to
the rugged strength of the Union leader, and held in highest honour
his homespun wit, his shrewd judgment, his magnanimous patience. More
than one shelf of his library was set apart for Lincolniana.

Writing in 1876 to James Young of Galt, Mr. Laurier refers to some of
his reading in English history:

      I am just finishing "Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay."
      Have you read it? It is a fine book. I greatly admired
      Macaulay as a writer and a public man, but I am
      delighted with the private man. I have immediately,
      upon finishing reading the "Life of Macaulay," begun
      to read anew his history, and am now concluding the
      fourth volume. The history of England has for a
      foreigner like myself a charm which, I am sure, it has
      not for one accustomed from his infancy to English
      ideas and traditions. As you follow in Macaulay's
      pages that constant struggle between liberty and
      despotism and the slow and steady progress and at last
      complete triumph of liberty, the student of French
      history is struck with amazement. This is the reason
      why I admire you so much, you Anglo-Saxons.

It was a little more than four years after Wilfrid Laurier had begun
to practise in Arthabaska that the way opened into political life. The
first provincial legislature had been dissolved, and the general
elections for the new house were to be held in June and July, 1871.
The counties of Drummond and Arthabaska had been represented for the
previous four years by a Conservative, Edward Hemming, a Drummondville
barrister. The Liberals of the two counties urged Mr. Laurier to
contest the seat. Though deeply interested in politics, and with a
full share of a somewhat fastidious ambition, he hesitated on account
of the precarious state of his health. Finally he undertook the
contest, and though a series of painful hemorrhages hampered his
campaign, the popularity he had built up among both the
French-speaking and the English-speaking Canadians, and particularly
the Scots, of the constituency, stood him in good stead. While the
Liberals throughout the province returned only a third of the house,
Mr. Laurier was triumphantly elected for Drummond-Arthabaska, by over
one thousand majority.

In one of the few letters of this period which have been preserved,
addressed to a class-mate of L'Assomption days, shortly after his
victory, Mr. Laurier reveals a youthful impulsiveness and vagueness of
ambition which disappeared or at least failed to come to the surface
in later years:

      _Wilfrid Laurier to Oscar Archambault_.—-(_Translation_)

                                    Arthabaska, July 23, 1871.

      MY DEAR OSCAR:

      How can I thank you for your good letter! Of all the
      many congratulations which have come to me, it is
      yours, and yours alone, that I looked for. Yours, I
      knew, would come from a friendly heart. My own heart
      leaped when I saw your writing and read the post-mark,
      "L'Assomption." At that word, my whole life, our whole
      life in college, our life as students, a whole world,
      passed before my eyes like a flash. In an instant I
      surveyed ten years of my life. How many memories, how
      many happenings, how many intimate thoughts, how many
      anxieties, how many hopes buried by the hand of time,
      surged up in my heart again as freshly as ten years
      ago. I said to myself then with what joy I would
      throw to the winds my deputy's seat if I could find
      myself back in that blessed time.

      Yes, my friend, I am now a member of Parliament. I
      have scored a triumph, a real triumph; I have beaten
      the government, the gold of the government, the
      eloquence of the ministers; I have been carried
      through the portals with nothing to help me but
      popular sympathy. Yet, once more, I would sacrifice
      all that to find myself back at nineteen with my
      poverty, but with my hopes, with my illusions, with
      your friendship. There is in the depths of my heart an
      enduring regret which the hand of time does not
      efface; regret that we have not been able to realize
      the dreams of our youth, that we have not been able to
      carry on beyond the threshold of life that union of
      our career which we had planned so long. How many
      times do I find these thoughts in my head, these
      regrets in my heart; I say to myself: what's the use,
      what's the use of regretting what cannot be helped,
      what's the use of complaining of the implacable edicts
      of destiny, and yet the very instant afterward I find
      myself again dallying with the same thoughts, the same
      regrets.

      Assuredly I ought to be perfectly happy. It would rest
      only with myself to be happy and I would be were it
      not for this regret. I do not know what you think
      about it, but for me it is a sorrow at every moment.

      Like you, I regret that you have not been able to make
      your entrance into political life this year. We would
      have come together, we would have been able to work
      together, we would have tasted again something of the
      great days of yore. So far as this goes, however, that
      opportunity is not lost, it is merely postponed. At
      the next elections your turn will come; you will carry
      by assault that fine county of Assomption of Papin's
      which now lets itself be hypnotized by a wretched
      coterie. I know that that will be a hard struggle to
      fight, but the goal is worthy of your striving.

      As for me, I have not the ambitious ideas with which
      you credit me. I am entering political life without
      any preconceived ideas, without seeking any personal
      advantage, I might say without desire, or, if I have
      any desire, it is that of making my ideas triumph. We
      are, it is true, in an era of transition, and there is
      a fair field for any one who will take the trouble to
      strike out his own path. I shall not take the trouble,
      even if I should raise against myself every prejudice
      in the Province of Quebec. My decision, however, has
      not yet been taken or my line of conduct decided.
      There was a time when I felt tremendously ambitious,
      but age has dissipated these dreams of adolescence; I
      am turning into a positivist.

      Adieu, my dear Oscar, or rather au revoir. I suppose
      that I shall see you at Quebec this winter during the
      session. Accept my regards and those of my wife and
      please remember me to your family whose many
      kindnesses to me will never vanish from my memory.

                              Your friend,
                                  W. LAURIER.

The Assembly met in Quebec, early in November. Its legislative tasks
were not arduous. The provincial legislatures were still groping to
ascertain the share of the field of activity which had fallen to them
when the federal system was adopted in 1867. The Conservative
administration in power was not aggressive. At its head since 1867 had
been Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau. A precocious youth, a poet of fair
workmanship, author of a novel of French Canada which all praised and
few read, a glowing and somewhat flowery orator, M. Chauveau had been
Superintendent of Education for Canada East for the twelve years
preceding Confederation. When in 1867 Hon. J. E. Cauchon, the
hard-hitting veteran of Union politics, failed to form a cabinet
because of the unwillingness of Christopher Dunkin to serve under him,
M. Chauveau was summoned to form the first provincial administration.
His cabinet comprised Gédéon Ouimet, J. O. Beaubien, Charles Boucher
de Boucherville, Louis Archambault, George Irvine, and Christopher
Dunkin, best known to fame as the most searching critic of
Confederation, who was succeeded after 1869 by J. G. Robertson.
Outside the cabinet, and aside from the three federal ministers,
Cartier, Langevin and Robitaille, who also held seats in the
provincial house, the ablest man on the government side was
Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau. The ranks of the Opposition were thin, and
the men of outstanding capacity and experience among them few. Henri
Joly de Lotbinière, Luther Hamilton Holton, and Télesphore Fournier,
all of whom held seats both at Ottawa and at Quebec, were men of
first-rate capacity.

In this Assembly Mr. Laurier was not long in making his mark. His
conspicuous success in the general election had drawn wide attention.
His maiden speech, on the Reply to the Address, more than justified
expectations. It was acclaimed with enthusiasm by his colleagues, and
frankly recognized by his opponents in the House and in the press as
marking the rise of a new force in provincial politics.

Mr. Laurier, as a member of the Opposition, was in duty bound to find
the situation of the province less hopeful than the ministerial
speakers had painted it. Yet he did not paint it wholly black. On the
political and social side there was much to be thankful for.
"Certainly," he declared, "the fact is one of which we can be justly
proud, that so many different faces and so many opposite creeds
should find themselves gathered in this little corner of earth, and
that our constitution should prove broad enough to leave them all
plenty of elbow room, without friction or danger of collision, and
with the fullest latitude to each to speak its own tongue, practise
its own religion, retain its own customs and enjoy its equal share of
liberty and of the light of the sun." He found two outstanding
omissions in the government's programme so far as political questions
were concerned. It had failed to bring in a bill to do away with the
pernicious system of spreading elections out over weeks or months,
thus permitting the government of the day to issue writs first for the
seats it considered safe and to concentrate its influence later on the
seats it considered in danger. It had failed, in spite of the
premier's long study of educational affairs, to propose any
improvements in the school system of the province.

But the government's greatest weakness, Mr. Laurier continued, was its
failure on the industrial side, its unreadiness to grapple with the
serious economic problems, the backward state of agriculture, the
stagnation of industry, the steady outward flow of the young men and
women of the province to the United States. With all the great
resources of which so much was heard, the people were in the position
of Tantalus, starving in sight of a sumptuous table. Doubtless the
ministry were not alone responsible for this bleeding of the country's
strength. Yet they might have sought to build up a national industry,
to remove the humiliating confession that after three centuries the
country was still unable to supply its own wants, to go back if need
be to Papineau's policy: "We should buy nothing from the metropolis."
The government should seek to bring in industrial immigrants, master
mechanics and small capitalists, the master miners of Wales and the
north of England, the mechanics of Alsace, the weavers of Flanders and
the artisans of Germany, rather than endeavour to recruit solely
agricultural immigration. The agricultural population of Quebec, he
acutely insisted, would never be increased from outside: "Our climate
is too severe and the development of our lands too costly and
difficult. The children of the soil will not be deterred by these
obstacles, but the stranger will simply pass through our territory and
locate on the rich prairies of the West." The French-Canadians
themselves should take on a more industrial character. "We are
surrounded," he declared, "by a strong and vigorous race who are
endowed with a devouring activity and have taken possession of the
entire universe as their field of labour. As a French-Canadian, Sir, I
am pained to see my people eternally excelled by our fellow-countrymen
of British origin. We must frankly acknowledge that down to the
present we have been left behind in the race. We can admit this and
admit it without shame, because the fact is explained by purely
political reasons which denote no inferiority on our part. After the
Conquest, the French-Canadians, desirous of maintaining their national
inheritance intact, fell back upon themselves, and kept up no
relations with the outside world. The immediate result of this policy
was to keep them strangers to the reforms which were constantly
taking place beyond their boundaries, and fatally to shut them up
within the narrow circle of their own old views. On the other hand,
the new blood which was poured into the colony came from the most
advanced country under the sun in point of trade and industry. They
brought with them the civilization of their native land and their
strength was ceaselessly renewed by a steady current of immigration,
which added not only to their numbers but to their stock of
information and their ideas."

Mr. Laurier's maiden speech doubtless had its share of party rhetoric
and of an Opposition member's licensed criticism. Yet it was in matter
a distinct achievement for a man of thirty, broad in its sweep and
markedly free from partisan recriminations, while the grace and
persuasiveness of his manner held high promise. The steady drain of
Quebeckers to the industrial towns of the Eastern States to which he
called attention was a serious loss. In a vivid passage in a speech
the following session, discussing some restrictions introduced by the
government on the settlement of the Crown lands of the province, Mr.
Laurier pictured fifty thousand sturdy Canadians filing in slow and
unbroken column past the minister, on their way into exile in the
Republic, crying Roman-wise, _Ave, migraturi te salutant_.

It was, however, in the debate in 1871 on the abolition of dual
representation that Mr. Laurier most clearly showed his strength. The
constitutional issues involved were then as ever more congenial to
him than economic questions: his training as a lawyer, his reading in
the classics of French radicalism and English liberalism, and his
position as a member of a minority relying on constitutional
guarantees for the preservation of its rights, gave a leading place in
his thinking to considerations of justice and of the legality in which
justice was assumed to be enshrined.

The system of dual representation, by which the same men could hold
seats both in the federal parliament and in the legislature of their
province, had not been made a positive feature of the Confederation
scheme. It had developed because no law forbade it, and because of the
dearth of men of first-rate calibre. Each party was keen to be
represented by its strongest men both at the federal and at the
provincial capital. Sir John Macdonald, with his theoretical
preference for a legislative rather than a federal union of the
Dominion, and his practical desire to have his hand on the provincial
machine, was particularly determined in support of the dual system. It
had its strong features, raising the level of capacity in the local
legislatures, and in some cases conducing to harmony between federal
and provincial policy. Yet there were still stronger grounds of
objection on principle, and in spite of the short sessions which were
then the rule, the practical inconvenience of adjusting the meetings
of parliament and of legislature every year in such a way as to avoid
conflict was increasingly felt.

In discussing the general question of constitutional limitations, Mr.
Laurier gave interesting evidence of the influence on his thought of
the social-contract doctrines of the older radical individualist
tradition:

      When a people accept a constitution, they make the
      sacrifice of a portion of their liberty, a generous
      sacrifice by which each gives up something belonging
      to himself individually for the benefit and security
      of the whole. When a people accept a constitution they
      trace out themselves the circle which they assign to
      their liberties; they say to themselves, in a sense:
      This space belongs to me; here I can speak, think,
      act; I owe no account of my words, my thoughts, my
      acts to any one except to my own conscience and to
      God; but as regards society, here its domain begins
      and mine ends, and I shall not go further. Still, like
      all human works, constitutions are not perfect. New
      horizons, which were not before perceived, are
      constantly opening up, and unsuspected abuses are
      discovered. It is then the duty of the legislature to
      step in and enlarge or contract, according to needs
      and circumstances, the circle within which the
      institutions of the country move.

Passing to the specific issue, he showed convincingly that dual
representation led to practical inconvenience and inconsistency of
policy, and particularly that it tended to confuse federal and
provincial issues and subordinate provincial to federal policy. For
Quebec the system was particularly dangerous: "With the single
mandate, Quebec is Quebec; with the double mandate, it becomes merely
an appendix to Ottawa."

The motion to abolish dual representation was defeated by a small
margin on this occasion; it was carried the next session, only to be
rejected in the legislative council. In the meantime the province of
Ontario had abolished the system in 1872. In 1873 the Dominion
parliament made the prohibition general by providing that members of
any provincial legislature should be ineligible for the federal house.

Mr. Laurier spoke rarely, but always with effect. The Quebec
correspondent of the chief French Liberal newspaper, "Le Pays,"
summing up the session of 1872, declared that "Mr. Laurier has
definitely carried off the sceptre of eloquence in the Legislative
Assembly; I cannot, however, help reproaching him for not taking part
often enough in the debates." Even "Le Nouveau Monde," the
ultra-clerical organ, generously bore tribute to the grace of his
style and his insistence on going back to first principles--though
unfortunately those principles were Liberal if not Socialist.

    *    *    *    *    *

In the first ten years of Wilfrid Laurier's public career, the
outstanding issue with which he had to deal was the hostility of a
vigorous and aggressive section of the Quebec clergy to the party of
which he was one of the responsible leaders. It has been seen that in
the twenty years before Confederation the Rouge party and its
journalistic spokesmen had, not without reason, found themselves in
the black books of the clergy, and that with much less reason Bishop
Bourget and his abettors had waged war upon the young men grouped in
l'Institut Canadien who had dared to maintain the liberty of inquiry
and discussion. In the dozen years that followed, the storm, instead
of abating, grew more violent. The area of conflict widened, occupying
the whole provincial stage, and the connection with the
contemporaneous movements in Europe became still more marked than in
the Union period.

One factor in the situation was that the aggressively ultramontane
wing of the Church in Quebec had grown more powerful. Mgr. Bourget and
Mgr. Laflèche were now older and more firmly established in their
seats, with wills which had become no less firm with years of
exercised authority. Around them, and particularly in Montreal, there
gathered the men of what Mgr. Bourget termed the New School,
journalists like the editors of the "Nouveau Monde" and the
"Franc-Parleur," pamphleteers like Alphonse Villeneuve, and preachers
like Abbé Pelletier and Father Braün, a newly come Jesuit. In the
archbishop's palace, in the Seminary of St. Sulpice and in Laval
University at Quebec, another temper and other views of how the
Church's interest could best be served prevailed, but the fighting,
uncompromising, unrecking minority daily gained ascendancy.

The activity of this school was the more intense because Confederation
seemed to have left them a free field. In Quebec as in the other
provinces there had been set up a provincial government to which were
assigned education and the local matters in which the Church was
chiefly concerned. No longer was it necessary to run the gauntlet of a
vigilant and biased Clear Grit group from Upper Canada when matters
ecclesiastical were brought before the House. In Quebec the people
were four-fifths Catholic, and on this fact the ultramontane wing
based its hopes of moulding the province to its will.

But more effective than any other factor was the influence of the Old
World conflict. The Canadian movement was not merely parallel with the
European, but in issues and inspiration, party labels and party cries,
it was directly and closely shaped by it.

In Catholic Europe, and particularly in France, a struggle had waged
for centuries between opposing tendencies, which before 1789 were
usually termed Gallican and ultramontane and after 1789 liberal and
ultramontane, though the shades of opinion were too multiform and
shifting for any single labels to qualify them aright. The Gallican
sought to build up an independent national church, demanding
administrative authority for the king, and, usually, doctrinal
authority for church councils, as against the claims of the papacy.
The ultramontane, looking "beyond the mountains" to Rome, insisted
that the one Holy Catholic Church must be ruled as a unity, that the
Pope as its head and God's vice-regent not only was supreme in
spiritual affairs, but was entitled, because of the inherent
superiority of spiritual power over temporal, to control all temporal
affairs, and they were not few, in which moral or spiritual issues
could be said to be involved. The Gallican on the whole had the better
of the dispute, until the French Revolution seemed likely to end it by
completing the destruction alike of national church and papal power.
The national churches, undermined by the rationalist questioning of
the age of Voltaire and weakened by the worldliness of the higher
clergy, appeared destined to crumble under the attacks of the
revolutionary spirit which accepted no institution however ancient
and no claim that could not justify itself at the bar of reason. The
papacy, with its Italian possessions invaded and seized, and the Popes
themselves exiled and prisoners, had fallen to its lowest ebb of
power.

Yet the tide speedily turned. The nineteenth century witnessed no more
remarkable development than the steady revival of the Roman Catholic
Church and the still more rapid growth of the ultramontane spirit
within the Church. The people, when admitted to power, proved to be
much more religious than the sceptical aristocrats of the old régime.
In the softer lights of romanticism, faiths revived which had wilted
under the harsh noonday glare of rationalism. Kings and nobles and
capitalists, seeking to build up bulwarks against tumultuous change,
turned to the most ancient and unchanging seat of authority in Europe.
But the new religious zeal, for all the efforts of Bourbon and
Hapsburg kings, could not be put back into the old bottles of
Gallicanism. The clergy in France had ceased to be a separate estate
of the realm; the episcopate had ceased to be made up of scions of
ancient families, bound by training and territorial possessions to the
political interests of their kingdom. All the men of vitality in the
reviving Church preferred to be the religious servants of the Vicar of
Christ rather than the civil servants of a Bourbon king.

What was to be the attitude of the ancient power thus revived to the
new power unloosed by the Revolution? Could the Church accept the
principles of '89 and '93, inscribe "Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity" on its banners, and make terms with Liberalism and the
states in which Liberalism was in control? Continental Liberalism,
with its emphasis on the individual, had assumed a state founded on
the free contract of individual men, had asserted the right to freedom
of thought, of speech, and of organization--and then had often
inconsistently refused the Church freedom to act and organize as it
willed. The Church had held that political societies were not man-made
but ordained of Heaven, and that individual reason and individual
claims must be subordinated to the authority in Church and State which
God himself had set up.

There were many ardent spirits in France, Lamennais, Lacordaire and
Montalembert foremost among them, who believed it would be possible to
bring the Church and Liberalism to terms, and to develop a Catholic
Liberalism which would meet the needs of the new day.[20] They
besought the Pope to place himself at the head of a purified Liberal
movement in Europe, and to base Catholicism firmly once more on the
will and the devotion of the multitudes. In revolt against the policy
which made the Church merely an instrument of state policy, they
turned to Rome for freedom from royal shackles; urging freedom for
themselves, they were prepared to extend it to others. Fighting
Gallican kings and ministers, they sought to be at once ultramontane
and liberal, ultramontane from religious conviction and liberal from
political expediency. "Men tremble before Liberalism," Lamennais had
declared; "make it Catholic, and society will be born again." "There
are two Liberalisms," he wrote in "L'Avenir" in 1830, "the old and the
new: the old, heir to the doctrines of eighteenth century philosophy,
breathes only religious intolerance and oppression, but the new
liberalism, which will in time overcome the old, is only concerned, as
regards religion, with demanding the separation of Church and State, a
separation which is necessary for the liberty of the Church."
"Understand clearly, my Catholic brethren," Lacordaire had added: "if
you wish liberty for yourselves, you must wish it for all men and for
every land. If you demand it for yourselves alone, it will never be
given you. Grant it where you are masters in order that it may be
given you where you are slaves." And the Bishop of Orleans, Mgr.
Dupanloup, had been equally clear-cut: "These liberties so dear to
those who accuse us of not loving them, we proclaim and we invoke, for
ourselves as well as for others. We accept, we invoke, the principles
and the liberties proclaimed in '89."

[Footnote 20: "I am a disciple of Lacordaire," wrote Mr. Laurier in
1897, replying to a fellow-Liberal who took the uncompromising
anti-clerical Liberalism of Continental Europe as his model.]

Catholic Liberalism fought in vain. The Liberals of the straiter sect
would not make peace, continuing to attack the doctrines of the Church
and too suspicious of its power to grant it the unrestricted liberty
of teaching and organization that was demanded. Liberal or
constitutional politicians, particularly in central Europe, insisted
that the Church had no rights save what the state conferred, and that
the religious affairs of a nation should be regulated by the Minister
of Worship as foreign affairs were regulated by the Foreign
Secretary. Nor was Rome more ready to accept a compromise. Liberalism
had too much to say about the rights of man, and too little about duty
to God; it erred in endeavouring to found society upon the shifting
sands of individual compact, instead of upon the rock of divine
ordinance applied and interpreted by the Church and its earthly head;
Liberalism was only Gallicanism transformed for the worse, kingless as
well as godless; liberty was not for all times and places, for while
truth must always be given liberty, the right to do wrong or think
wrong could not be claimed. Time and time again the decision was given
against Catholic Liberalism. In 1832 Gregory XVI issued his famous
Encyclical, "Mirari vos," condemning the policy of its leaders,
particularly of Lamennais, and repudiating "the absurd and erroneous
maxim that liberty of conscience must be assured and guaranteed to
all." In 1864, Pius IX, who had been hailed as liberal in his early
days, but had become more conservative after having been driven from
Rome in the revolution of 1848, issued the Syllabus, containing a list
of "the principal errors of our time," including notably the advocacy
of separation of Church and State, and of the necessity of reconciling
the Church and modern Liberalism. Finally in 1869, the great Vatican
Council, attended by over seven hundred bishops and prelates from
every Catholic people under the sun, after much debate and wide
difference of opinion, voted overwhelmingly to accept the doctrine of
papal infallibility on questions of faith and morals.

Ultramontanism had triumphed, triumphed so completely that leaders of
the Church thereafter denied that it was merely one current of action
and opinion, and insisted that it was synonymous with any permissible
interpretation of Roman Catholicism itself. Yet if accepted within the
Church, the tendencies of which the proclamation of papal
infallibility was the crowning achievement were not accepted by
European statesmen. Austria annulled the Concordat, Prussia launched
out upon its Kulturkampf, and in France the war between clerical and
anti-clerical parties grew ever more bitter until it led, many years
later, to the disestablishment of the Church and the expulsion of the
religious orders. The day after the decree was issued, war broke out
between France and Prussia, Napoleon withdrew the troops which had
garrisoned the Papal States, and the temporal power of the Pope
collapsed in the very year that his spiritual authority reached
transcendent heights.

In Canada as elsewhere the Church authorities were divided in opinion
as to the doctrinal soundness or the practical expediency of the
Syllabus and the definition of papal infallibility. In Quebec,
Archbishop Baillargeon circulated among his clergy the famous letter
in which Bishop Dupanloup, on the eve of departing for the Council,
had vigorously and minutely called in question both the soundness and
opportuneness of the doctrine. But the men of the newer school, led by
Bishop Bourget, gave hearty support to the ultramontane movement, and
were encouraged by its success to assert a wider influence in state
affairs and to take a stronger line against their more moderate
brethren within the Church itself.

A remarkable episode, making dramatically clear the closer bonds that
now united Quebec and Rome, was the organization in 1867 and the two
years following of companies of Papal Zouaves for the defence of the
Pope's temporal realms. So strong was the conviction that the whole
future of religion and the Church were imperilled, that hundreds of
young crusaders, fêted and garlanded by sympathetic friends and
blessed by Bishop Bourget in a glowing pastoral, crossed the seas from
this land that had seemed to know little and care less for Old World
quarrels, prepared to fight side by side with papal guards against the
forces that were striving to make Italy a single nation, with Rome as
its centre and crown.

At home, the new spirit was manifested in many onslaughts against the
men of moderate views. The Seminary of St. Sulpice in Montreal, and
Laval University in Quebec, with the archbishop as its patron, were
vigorously attacked in the sixties and seventies. Mgr. Bourget was
Bishop of Montreal, but the Seminary, as seigneur in receipt of rents
and _lods et ventes_, and as curé, in receipt of tithes, secured the
chief revenues accruing within the diocese. The main issue at stake
was the right of the bishop to subdivide the old single parish of
Montreal, hitherto in charge of the Seminary; a subsidiary question
was as to whether he could establish the new parishes without the
consent of the majority of the parishioners concerned, and the formal
approval of the State. Sir George Cartier and "La Minerve" stoutly
championed the Seminary; in "Le Nouveau Monde," established in 1864
under his direct control, Mgr. Bourget found vigorous newspaper
support. Against Laval University, again, charges of Gallican and
Liberal leanings were freely brought. Even old political friends were
not spared. The hostility of Mgr. Bourget contributed heavily to
Cartier's defeat in the general election of 1872. At his death a year
later the "Nouveau Monde" very frankly exposed his fault: "The epoch
of Mr. Cartier's greatest power was also the epoch when the errors
which were to prove fatal developed. Thinking himself invincible, he
forgot the source whence he derived his strength.... The attempt in
which he persisted with so great perseverance to defeat the projects
of his Bishop and procure the annulment of canonical decrees by the
civil tribunals, destroyed the confidence of the Catholics and brought
on the ruin of the colossus."

Not content with indirect control, the ultramontane school determined
in 1871 to enter the political field openly and aggressively. Early in
that year a group of editors and lawyers, all deep-dyed Conservatives,
and all, in their own words, "belonging heart and soul to the
ultramontane school," gathered in Montreal to consider how best to
advance their cause. The group included F. X. A. Trudel, a prominent
member of the Legislative Assembly, A. B. Routhier, and other lawyers,
and the leading ultramontane editors, Alphonse Desjardins of
"L'Ordre," Magloire Macleod of the "Journal des Trois-Rivières," M.
Renault of the "Courrier du Canada," and C. Beausoleil, the editor,
and Canon Lamarche, the censor, of "Le Nouveau Monde." They decided,
after recalling the effective work Louis Veuillot had done in France
by his uncompromising stand, to launch a movement for organizing a
Catholic party, or rather for purging the Conservative party of the
anti-clerical elements which were creeping in. A manifesto embodying
their views was drawn by M. Routhier, revised by Mgr. Laflèche,
approved by Mgr. Bourget, and published first in the "Journal des
Trois-Rivières" on April 20, 1871.

The "Catholic Programme," as the manifesto was termed, was devised to
guide aright the Catholic voters in the approaching provincial
elections. Taking as its starting-point a pastoral of Mgr. Laflèche
exhorting the people to choose legislators who would safeguard the
interests of the Church, the "Programme" declared that since the
separation of Church and State was an absurd and impious doctrine, and
legislators would therefore have to do with matters ecclesiastical, it
was essential for Catholics to choose men who gave full and unreserved
adhesion to the religious, political and social doctrines of their
church. Protestants, of course, would have the same liberty. This
involved, as a rule, the support of the Conservative party, as the
only one offering valid guarantees for the interests of religion, but
the support should not be blind. Only those candidates should be
chosen who would agree to modify the laws of the province in regard to
education, marriage, the erection of parishes and other matters, in
the way demanded by the Bishops. In detail, this meant: "1° If the
contest is between two Conservatives, it goes without saying that we
shall support the one who accepts the platform we have just outlined;
2° If, on the contrary, it is between a Conservative of any shade
whatever and an adept of the Liberal school, our sympathies will be
given actively to the former; 3° If the only candidates who come
forward in a constituency are both Liberals or oppositionists, we must
choose whichever will agree to our terms; 4° Finally, in the event
that the contest lies between a Conservative who rejects our programme
and an opportunist of any brand who accepts it, the position would be
more delicate. To vote for the former would be to contradict the
doctrine we have just expounded; to vote for the latter would be to
imperil the Conservative party, which we wish to see strong. What
decision should we make as between these two dangers? In this case we
should advise Catholic electors to abstain from voting."

[Illustration: CARDINAL TASCHEREAU]

[Illustration: BISHOP BOURGET]

[Illustration: BISHOP LAFLÈCHE]

This extraordinary document was republished and supported by the
"Nouveau Monde," the "Franc Parleur," the "Ordre," the "Courrier du
Canada," the "Union des Cantons de l'Est," and the "Pionnier de
Sherbrooke." Several members of the Assembly hastened to proclaim
their adhesion. But "La Minerve" and the erstwhile clerical "Journal
de Québec" flatly and vigorously denounced the manifesto as an
insufferable affront. More significant still was the publication of a
letter, on April 26, from Archbishop Taschereau, stating that he knew
of the document only through the newspapers and that it therefore lay
under the grave disability of having been drawn up wholly without any
participation by the episcopacy; no member of the clergy was
authorized to exceed the limits laid down by the Fourth Council of
Quebec. This disavowal did not deter the two episcopal champions of
ultramontanism. Both issued pastorals approving its doctrines, and
stated publicly and explicitly that they endorsed the Programme, Mgr.
Bourget adding that he considered it the surest safeguard for a truly
Conservative party.

When the provincial elections of 1871, in which Wilfrid Laurier was
returned for Drummond-Arthabaska, were over, the Liberals found
themselves once more in a small minority. A group of moderate Liberals
determined to make a fresh start and blot out the tradition of
anti-clericalism which barred their path to power. Under the
leadership of Louis A. Jetté, a Montreal barrister, the endeavour was
made to reorganize the Liberal party as the Parti National. The new
label was accepted, though without enthusiasm, by the old Rouges, and
fresh recruits were gathered in circles friendly to the clergy. The
Parti National stood for Canada first and last, had a leaning toward
protection, and expressed the friendliest feelings toward the clergy,
though still solicitous to prevent their robes being soiled in the
mire of politics. A new journal, "Le National," was established in
Montreal to voice its views, and the "Bien Public" of the same city,
and "L'Electeur" and "L'Evènement" of Quebec, gave it general
support.[21]

The effects of the new tactics were seen in the increased Liberal
representation in the federal elections of 1872, and particularly in
the defeat of the veteran Cartier himself by Jetté in Montreal East.
In the latter election there was open alliance between the Parti
National and the Ultramontanes against their common foe. But the
reconciliation did not prove lasting. The great bulk of the clergy
looked upon this sudden repentance as merely a ruse, and the fighting
clans among the old Rouges were uneasy in their unwonted company.
Gradually the transformation was reversed, the former chieftains again
took control, and the Parti National faded into the Liberal party once
more. When the Liberal party came to power in Ottawa after the
exposure of the Pacific scandal, it was the old Rouge leaders,
Letellier, Fournier, Laflamme, Geoffrion, who were taken into the
cabinet, not the Jettés. The appointment of Cauchon was the only
concession made to the new allies.

[Footnote 21: "... We are a national party because, before all, we are
attached to our nation, and because we have pledged our unswerving
loyalty to Canada above the whole world: Canada against the world....
'Le National' will be a political and non-religious paper, but, as the
special organ of the Catholic population, and in conformity with the
opinions of the directors of the journal, when occasion arises, we
shall concur with Catholic opinion, and we repudiate in advance
anything which may inadvertently be overlooked in the hasty editing of
a daily paper, in order to protest our entire devotion and our filial
obedience to the Church."--Opening manifesto of "Le National," April
24, 1872.]

Writing in July 1874 to James Young, an Ontario member whom he had met
at Ottawa, Mr. Laurier explains the situation:

      The _Nouveau Monde_ party have been clamorous to have
      Jetté installed in office. You want to know the
      reason. Here it is. The _Nouveau Monde_ party are not
      Liberals: they are of the worst class of
      Conservatives--they are Ultramontanes. That party
      have been instrumental in making Cartier what he was
      amongst us. They took him when he was nothing, and for
      years fought all his battles. They approved of
      everything he said or did, they represented him as a
      pillar of the altar, and they poured the blessings of
      the Church over all his scandals. Cartier, as long as
      he was weak and needy, humiliated his despotic nature
      to them, and was in their hands a pliant tool. But
      when, after Confederation, he found himself supported
      by an overwhelming majority, he gave free vent to his
      own haughty nature. He did nothing against them, it is
      true, but he treated them as inferiors, and no longer
      submissively kissed their hands: that was enough to
      alienate their affections. He did still more: he gave
      them to understand very freely that he was the master,
      that he could rule and would rule without them.

      The Ultramontanes were incensed with rage, but what
      could they do? Cartier knew perfectly what he was
      about. They had too long proclaimed him a little
      saint, to brand him now as a heretic or an enemy of
      the Church. Cartier knew perfectly well that they
      would not dare to undo their own work.

      They then adopted a new tactics. (Is this English, by
      the way?) They made a movement forward in the
      doctrine. Cartier was yet a good man, but he could be
      better. He had too much of the Liberal ideas in him;
      though he had been a servant of the Church, he had not
      in him the true spirit of the Church in all its
      purity.

      Our friend Jetté, who is clever, and has always been
      known as a moderate Liberal, adopted this new
      programme. In return, he was adopted both by the
      Ultramontanes, on account of his avowed principles,
      and by the Liberals, on account of his supposed
      tendencies. Since then, Jetté has always acted with
      us, and in the same time, has always been careful to
      keep on good terms with the Ultramontanes. And this is
      the reason why they have been so zealous to get him a
      seat in the Cabinet. They want to have there a
      representative of their own principles.

The Parti National diversion had failed to avert the wrath of the
ultramontane crusaders. More convinced than ever that even moderate
Liberals were incorrigible, they renewed their endeavour to place
submissive politicians in control of the local government.
Developments in the provincial field soon provided an opportunity. The
Conservative government of Gédéon Ouimet, who had succeeded Chauveau
as premier in 1873, was forced to resign in September, 1874, as the
result of charges of administrative corruption--the Tanneries or
"land-swap" scandal. The Ouimet cabinet had consisted mainly of the
Cartier wing of the Conservative party. Charles de Boucherville, who
formed the new administration, was one of the leading lay adherents of
the Programme. When the general provincial elections followed in July,
1875, the whole weight of the ultramontane wing of the clergy was
thrown to their support. The Liberals were nearly annihilated. Their
leader, Henri Joly de Lotbinière, who was a Protestant, offered to
resign on the ground that his religion was a handicap to his party,
but his supporters in the House denied that the ultramontanes could be
any more hostile to a Protestant than to a Catholic Liberal, and
insisted on his retaining his post.

The activities of the majority in the new legislature soon justified
its ultramontane backers. In the first session three significant acts
were passed. One was designed to prevent a second Guibord appeal to
the courts; it declared the right of the ecclesiastical authorities to
designate the place in the cemetery where each individual was to be
buried, and provided that if according to the canonical rules and in
the opinion of the bishop any deceased person could not be buried in
consecrated ground with liturgical prayers, he should receive civil
burial in ground adjoining the cemetery. A second law gave civil
confirmation to the action of Bishop Bourget in dividing the parish of
Montreal; a marginal note, later explained away as an inexact
expression of a compiler, declared that "decrees of our Holy Father
the Pope are binding." Most important was the establishment of
education upon a wholly denominational basis, and the restriction of
state control by making the superintendent a civil servant instead of
a cabinet member as formerly. Control of Catholic education was given
to a committee consisting of the bishops and an equal number of
appointed laymen, the bishops, however, alone enjoying the right to be
represented by proxy. Control of Protestant schools was confided as
fully and freely to a Protestant committee. It was urged that it was
desirable to remove education from politics, and that the freedom
given the Protestant minority was a proof of liberality and tolerance,
but the fact remained that the measure was a concession to the element
which opposed state control over education and other matters declared
to be within the Church's sphere.

The next concerted action was the issuing of a joint pastoral on the
political situation. The Council of Bishops had on several occasions
issued advice on political issues to clergy and laity; the Second
Council, of 1858, urged the clergy to be neutral in political issues
where religion was not involved; the Third, in 1863, condemned secret
societies and the plague of evil newspapers; the Fourth, in 1868,
criticized the assertion that religion had nothing to do with
politics, and the Fifth, in 1873, attacked, but in brief and vague
terms, that false serpent Catholic Liberalism and asserted that the
Church was independent of the State and superior to it. Now in
September, 1875, Archbishop Taschereau was induced to join the other
bishops of the province in issuing a joint letter, designed, as the
letter stated, "to shut the mouths of those who, to sanction their
false doctrines, find pretexts for escaping the teachings of their own
bishop by invoking the authority of other bishops which unfortunately
they abuse, deceiving the good people."

The joint pastoral of September, 1875, was mainly a warning against
Catholic Liberalism--that subtle error, that serpent that crept into
Eden, that most bitter and most dangerous enemy of the Church.
"Distrust above all," the letter ran, "that liberalism which wishes to
cover itself with the fine name of 'catholic' in order to accomplish
more surely its criminal mission. You will recognize it easily from
the description which the Sovereign Pontiff has often given of it: 1°
The endeavour to subordinate the Church to the State; 2° incessant
attempts to break the bonds which unite the children of the Church
with one another and with their clergy; 3° the monstrous alliance of
truth with error, under the pretext of reconciling all things and
avoiding conflicts; 4° finally, the illusion, or at times the
hypocrisy, which conceals a boundless pride under the mask of religion
and of fine assurances of submission to the Church.... No one,
therefore, may in future with good conscience be permitted to remain a
Catholic Liberal." As to the activity of the clergy in politics, they
had the same rights as other citizens, and further, as representing
the Church might and should intervene in moral issues or questions
affecting the liberty or independence of the Church. An individual
candidate may be a menace, or a whole party may be so considered, not
only because of its own programme and antecedents but because of the
programme and private antecedents of its leaders and its journals. In
such case the Church must speak, the priest "may declare with
authority that to vote in such a way is a sin, and exposes the doer to
the censures of the Church." If any priest errs in applying these
principles, the remedy lies in the tribunals of the Church, not, as
had been hinted, in haling the priest before the civil courts. A
circular to the clergy, accompanying the pastoral, warned the priests
not to intervene too freely and to consult their bishop before acting
in unusual circumstances. If accused of undue influence before a civil
court, they should deny its competence, but if condemned should suffer
persecution in patience. In a pastoral letter of February, 1876,
Bishop Bourget explained how the layman could carry out this advice:
let each say this in his heart, "I hear my curé, my curé hears the
Bishop, the Bishop hears the Pope, and the Pope hears our Lord Jesus
Christ."

The pastoral was taken as a fresh declaration of war on the Liberal
party. True, no party was specifically named, but, as Mgr. Laflèche
declared, "it would not be strictly true to say that the letter did
not condemn the Liberal party." The clerical press, and when
by-elections afforded an opportunity, the majority of the clergy,
dotted the i's and crossed the t's. In January, 1876, two federal
by-elections were held in Quebec constituencies. In Charlevoix, M.
Tremblay, a good Catholic all his life, was the Liberal candidate. His
opponent was Hector Langevin, who had been tarred by the Pacific
scandal, but was still an aspirant for Cartier's mantle. Langevin
announced that he presented himself after consulting the clergy of the
district and with their full and hearty support, though Mr. Tremblay
was able to produce two dissenting curés. Priest after priest
denounced Liberalism, invoked the horrors of the French Revolution and
the Paris Commune, pictured the contest as one between the Pope and
Garibaldi, and warned his hearers of how they would feel on their
death-bed, or still worse, if carried away by sudden death, if they
had voted for a party condemned by the Church. Some curés stated
explicitly that to vote for the Liberals was to commit a mortal sin,
and such phrases as "subtle serpent," "false Christs," "yawning
abyss," heightened many a discourse. In Chambly, one curé, M.
Lussier, after consulting Mgr. Bourget, declared that no Catholic
could be a moderate Liberal: moderate meant liar. The crusade had its
effect, and in both constituencies the Liberal candidates were
decisively defeated.

The policy of clerical intervention reached its climax in the pastoral
of 1875, and the elections of that and the following year. Many were
intimidated by the reign of terror that prevailed, but others were
roused to a resistance which compelled a halt.

The ultramontane campaign had not been without its effect on the
Protestant minority in Quebec. Its leaders were divided between
acquiescing in a situation in which they themselves were accorded full
liberty, and protesting against the inroads on the liberty of their
fellow-citizens. In December, 1875, Huntington took occasion in a
by-election speech in Argenteuil to denounce the English-speaking
Protestants for giving ultramontanism its chance by their blind
support of the Conservative party, and to call upon them to support
the French Liberals in the common cause of freedom. Holton at once
raised the question in Parliament, denouncing this "offensive attack"
and asking whether it had the sanction of the cabinet of which
Huntington was a member. Mackenzie replied by expressing his regret at
Huntington's remarks, and his disapproval of raising religious issues
in politics; Huntington, while making it clear that he spoke only as a
private citizen of his province, declared that the opinions he had
expressed were his opinions still. On the other side of politics, Sir
A. T. Galt took the same stand as Huntington in speeches and pamphlets
unfolding "the dangers of ultramontanism," but his
fellow-Conservative, Thomas White, insisted that Protestants, who had
been fairly treated themselves, should not interfere in the family
quarrels of the majority, and Macdonald characteristically urged that
the best policy was "to use the priests for the next election but be
ready to fight them in the Dominion parliament," and insisted that,
though their arrogance was hard to bear, it could be borne when it was
remembered that "ultramontanism depends on the life of two old men,
the Pope and Bishop Bourget." Prudence prevailed in both political
camps, so far as the English-speaking Protestants were concerned, and
the French Catholics were left to work out their own salvation.

The seriousness of the situation faced by Quebec Liberals may well be
gauged by a valedictory address of one of the foremost journalists of
the day. Mr. L. O. David, editor of the "Bien Public," was a man not
only of standing and ability but of unquestioned moderation in all
affairs, and friendly to the Church, of which he was a faithful son;
he had been one of the minority which seceded from l'Institut Canadien
in 1858, and had taken an active part in endeavouring to live down the
Rouge tradition by the establishment of the Parti National. Yet he
found his journal banned in parish after parish, and in May, 1876,
announced his retirement. "The later pastorals of the Bishop of
Montreal," he declared, "and the interpretation which had been put
upon them by a number of priests, and certain facts which I need not
mention, have finally convinced me that the profession of politics has
become intolerable in this country to anyone who has more independence
of character than of purse. In the name of religion, we have seen
destruction fall upon the political careers of sincere and earnest men
whose religious convictions have never been questioned. The clergy
cannot pretend that they have reason to fear the Liberals on account
of their past, for they had absolved them of their past in 1872. The
Reform party having done nothing since then against the clergy and
religion, the religious war now being waged against it is
unjustifiable.... The pastoral letters of the Bishop of Montreal,
which were nothing more than articles of the 'Nouveau Monde' converted
into mandements, are incomprehensible. They have stirred prejudices,
encouraged bad faith, and excited a certain number of priests who
needed to be restrained. There are parishes where since then the
pulpit has become nothing but a tribune for the most violent political
harangues. It would appear that there is no longer but one crime in
the world, but one mortal sin, that of voting for a Reform candidate,
of receiving a Reform journal which questions the infallibility of Sir
John and Mr. Langevin.... A Catholic people will support such abuses
long; they will even shut their eyes not to see them in order that
their faith may not suffer, but as abuses rapidly accumulate when they
are not controlled, the day arrives when they become intolerable and
then indifference toward religion and hatred toward the priest produce
revolution."

Mr. Laurier, writing to a friend in December, 1875, in regard to
rumours of his approaching accession to the cabinet, makes equally
clear the tension of the situation: "My name has been put forward, but
I never made a step towards it. To speak the truth, I do not desire an
appointment to an official position at present. But the press, which
in this province is in the hands of young men, calls loud for me. The
men of more mature age desire to have Cauchon in. The fact is, that
Cauchon has all the qualities of the position, but he is so thoroughly
unprincipled and so deeply stained with the jobberies of the old
régime that his appointment would perhaps be more an injury than a
benefit to our cause. As to myself personally, I have the bones and
sinew of the Liberal party. They push me ahead, and would have me to
take a more active part in politics than I have done hitherto. I,
however, feel very reluctant to do it. I am at present quiet and
happy. The moment I accept office, I will go into it actively and
earnestly, and from that moment my quietness and happiness will be
gone. It will be a war with the clergy, a war of every day, of every
moment.... Political strifes are bitter enough in your province, but
you have no idea of what it is with us.... Whenever I shall be in
office, I intend to go seriously into it, and I will be denounced as
Anti-Christ. You may laugh at that, but it is no laughing matter to
us."

Relief from this intolerable situation came from various quarters.
Appeal was made to the civil courts, and the courts set bounds to
clerical intervention. Appeal was made to Rome, and the higher
authorities of the Church ordained restraint. The Liberals themselves,
through Wilfrid Laurier, made a declaration of their principles which
it was not possible for any reasonable opponent to attack or any
weak-kneed friend to renounce.

The advisability of taking legal action to halt clerical intervention
in elections had been discussed in Liberal quarters for some years.
The suggestion had come from the action of an Irish court, in 1872, in
declaring a Galway election void because of the undue influence
exercised by the clergy on behalf of the successful candidate. The
Dominion law against undue influence in elections was based on the
British statute. Yet the moderate men who were in control of the
party's policy hesitated to take such a step. It would be charged that
they were trying to deprive the priest of the elementary right of
every citizen to have opinions and to urge them upon one's fellows.
Even friends would contend that clerical intervention, however biased
and uninformed, should be met by discussion, not by an appeal to
law--as Liberals were to conclude when, many years later, in the
closing rather than the opening days of Wilfrid Laurier's career,
hundreds of Protestant preachers throughout Canada were stampeded and
manipulated into a grossly biased and uninformed pulpit attack upon
the Liberal party and its leader. But the Charlevoix outburst
determined a courageous group to take up the challenge. Appeal was at
first made to the archbishop, but afterwards withdrawn, and in July,
1876, François Langelier, member of a leading Liberal family of
Quebec, and professor of Civil Law in Laval, brought action in the
civil court at Murray Bay. The fact of intervention and its effect in
changing votes were clearly proved. Israel Tarte, who had been
Langevin's election agent, conducted his case, browbeating witnesses
in court and pillorying them afterwards in his newspaper, "Le
Canadien." The judge was A. B. Routhier, formerly Langevin's
right-hand man in politics, and the drafter of the Catholic Programme.
He dismissed the petition, denying that British precedents applied in
Canada under the differing relations of Church and State, and taking
high ultramontane ground as to the immunity of the clergy from state
question or control for their actions on a moral issue, such as voting
must be when properly considered. The case was at once appealed to the
Supreme Court of Canada, where the unanimous decision was rendered
that undue influence had been exercised and the election was declared
void. Mr. Justice Ritchie declared that the clergyman, like the
layman, had free and full liberty to advise and persuade, but no
right, in the pulpit or out, to threaten or compel a voter to do
otherwise than as he freely willed. Mr. Justice Taschereau, a brother
of the archbishop, in delivering the main judgment of the court,
brushed aside the claim of ecclesiastical immunity, found proof of
"undue influence of the worst kind, inasmuch as these threats and
these declarations fell from the lips of priests speaking from the
pulpit in the name of religion, and were addressed to persons
ill-instructed and generally well-disposed to follow the counsel of
their curés." In a decision rendered shortly before this appeal, three
judges of the Superior Court of Quebec, Messrs. Casault, McGuire and
McCord, annulled the election held in the provincial constituency of
Bonaventure, where two curés had threatened to refuse the sacraments
to Liberal voters, and disqualified the candidate on the ground that
"these fraudulent manoeuvres were practised with his knowledge and
consent." Shortly after, the by-election of Chambly was voided.

The intervention of the law, external and formal in its working, could
not go to the root of the matter. Of more enduring importance was the
change of ecclesiastical policy, or rather, the assertion of authority
by the tolerant and far-seeing elements within the Church. Mgr.
Taschereau, realizing the danger of an open rupture and the
introduction into Canada of a real anti-clerical movement, such as the
ultramontane editors were always seeing in their nightmares, issued in
May, 1876, a pastoral on the Church in politics which took much more
moderate ground. The pastoral set forth the high importance of the
elector's task, warned against perjury, violence, and bribery, urged
calm and careful inquiry into the merits of rival candidates and their
ability to conserve the people's interests, spiritual as well as
temporal, denied any intention under present circumstances of urging
the electors to vote for this or that party and suggested that all
join in a solemn mass to ensure guidance: this, and no more. True, the
archbishop declared that his new pastoral neither revoked nor
superseded the joint letter of 1875, but the outburst of indignation
from certain other bishops, and their action in sending Mgr. Laflèche
and Canon Lamarche hotfoot to Rome to protest were illuminating.

It was, however, with Rome itself that the last word lay. It was to
Rome that Bishop Langevin's demand for the dismissal of Judge Casault
from his chair at Laval, because of his judgment in the Bonaventure
election, was carried; Rome upheld the professor against the bishop.
It was to Rome that Conservatives appealed in 1876 when they wished to
learn whether in a Montreal election it was permissible to vote for a
candidate who was a Free Mason, seeing that the other candidate was
worse (i. e., a Liberal), and Rome replied it was permissible. It was
to Rome that the bitter and interminable disputes between Montreal and
Quebec over the university question were appealed, and finally it was
to Rome that in 1876 a group of Quebec Liberals, headed by Cauchon,
appealed for inquiry and decision on the charges brought by their
ultramontane opponents. The fact that an appeal should be carried to
Rome at all made it clear how far ultramontanism had triumphed over
the old Gallican spirit, even among the Liberals, but if it was to
decide in any case on the ecclesiastical issues involved, it was well
that the views of both parties to the controversy should be before
it.

At Rome Pius IX was still Pontiff, but his years were evidently
numbered, and it was an open secret that pressure was being brought to
bear to ensure that his successor should be more in harmony with
democratic tendencies. It was decided to send Mgr. Conroy, Bishop of
Ardagh, in Ireland, as Ablegate to investigate the situation in
Canada. He spent several months in diligent and unobtrusive inquiry,
heard all sides, and came to the conclusion that a halt must be
called. The bishops met in consistory in October, 1877, and issued a
new pastoral, declaring that while the joint letter contained the true
doctrine on the constitution and rights of the Church, and Liberal
Catholics were still anathema, yet it was not to be assumed that any
political party was condemned. The forces of moderation and tolerance
had won.

While the attitude of the Church was still undetermined, Wilfrid
Laurier came forward to perform one of the greatest services of his
career. His speech on political Liberalism, delivered before an
immense audience on the invitation of the Club Canadien of Quebec, on
June 26, 1877, was essentially a manifesto of the Liberal party on the
question of the relation of religion and politics. Mr. Laurier was
about to assume the leadership of the Liberal party in Quebec: three
months later he entered the Mackenzie cabinet. In his address at
Quebec he stated his policy and his terms. At once the issue was
clarified, the path of moderation and of progress marked out, and a
great step taken toward the just and permanent settlement of an issue
which had threatened to divide a whole people into warring and
irreconcilable factions.

Without preface, Mr. Laurier at once set forth the purpose of his
address. It was to define the ideas and principles of Liberalism, in
order to remove the prejudices and the opposition of those who
believed that Liberalism meant heresy in faith and revolution in
politics. All the charges made against the Liberal party could be
crystallized in two propositions--that Liberalism was a heresy
condemned by the head of the Church, and that a Catholic could not be
a Liberal. It was true that Catholic Liberalism had been condemned,
but what had that to do with political Liberalism? What would be the
consequence of accepting the contention that no French-Canadian
Catholic could be a Liberal? Either Catholics must abstain from any
share in political life, or must bind themselves hand and foot to the
Conservative party, must endure "the ignominy of being regarded by the
other members of the Canadian family composing the Conservative party
as tools and slaves."

What was the meaning of Liberalism and Conservatism? At bottom the
distinction was a matter of temperament; some men, in Macaulay's
phrase, were drawn by the charm of habit and others by the charm of
novelty. There was no moral superiority in either tendency. The
Conservative might do good in defending old and tried institutions, or
much evil in maintaining intolerable abuses; the Liberal might be a
benefactor in overthrowing these abuses or a scourge in laying rash
hands on hallowed institutions. Then Mr. Laurier continued:

      For my part, as I have already said, I am a Liberal. I
      am one of those who think that everywhere, in human
      things, there are abuses to be reformed, new horizons
      to be opened up, and new forces to be developed.
      Moreover, Liberalism seems to me in all respects
      superior to the other principle. The principle of
      Liberalism is inherent in the very essence of our
      nature, in that desire for happiness with which we are
      all born into the world, which pursues us throughout
      life, and which is never completely gratified on this
      side of the grave. Our souls are immortal, but our
      means are limited. We constantly strive toward an
      ideal which we never attain. We dream of good, but we
      never realize the best. We only reach the goal we have
      set for ourselves, to discover new horizons opening
      up, which we had not before even suspected. We rush on
      toward them and those horizons, explored in their
      turn, reveal to us others which lead us on ever
      further and further. And thus it will be as long as
      man is what he is, as long as the immortal soul
      inhabits a mortal body; his desires will be always
      vaster than his means and his actions will never rise
      to the height of his conceptions. He is the real
      Sisyphus of the fable; his work, always finished, must
      always be begun again. This condition of our nature is
      precisely that which makes the greatness of man, for
      it condemns him irrevocably to movement, to progress;
      our means are limited, but our nature is perfectible
      and we have the infinite for our arena. Thus there is
      always room for the perfecting of our nature and for
      the attainment by a larger number of an easier way of
      life. This, in my eyes, is what constitutes the
      superiority of Liberalism.

Abuses, Mr. Laurier continued, were bound to creep into every body
politic, and institutions which at the beginning were useful become
intolerable because everything around them had changed, as in the
instance of seigneurial tenure. Men were always found to defend these
abuses to the bitter end, until they had provoked revolution. "More
revolutions have been caused by Conservative obstinacy than by
Liberal exaggeration ...; wherever there is compression, there will be
explosion, violence and ruin; ... I hate revolution and detest all
attempts to win the triumph of opinions by violence, but I am less
inclined to throw the responsibility on those who make them than on
those who provoke them by their blind obstinacy."

The Liberal party of England had known how to reform abuse before
discontent fermented into revolution: the Liberals of the Continent
had not been so wise:

      What is grander than the history of the great English
      Liberal party during the present century? On its
      threshold looms up the figure of Fox, the wise, the
      generous Fox, defending the cause of the oppressed,
      wherever there were oppressed to be defended. A little
      later comes O'Connell, claiming and securing for his
      co-religionists the rights and privileges of British
      subjects. He is helped in this work by all the
      Liberals of the three kingdoms, Grey, Brougham,
      Russell, Jeffrey and a host of others. Then came, one
      after the other, the abolition of the rule of the
      landed oligarchy, the repeal of the corn laws, the
      extension of the suffrage to the working classes, and
      lastly, to crown the whole, the disestablishment of
      the Church of England as the state religion in
      Ireland.... Members of the Club Canadien, Liberals of
      the province of Quebec, there are our models, there
      are our principles, there is our party!

      It is true that there is in Europe, in France, in
      Italy and in Germany a class of men who give
      themselves the title of Liberals, but who have nothing
      of the Liberal about them but the name, and who are
      the most dangerous of men. They are not Liberals; they
      are revolutionaries; in their principles they are so
      extravagant that they aim at nothing less than the
      destruction of modern society. With these men we have
      nothing in common, but it is the tactics of our
      adversaries always to identify us with them.

Mr. Laurier proceeded to review the history of the Canadian political
parties. Up to 1848, all French-Canadians had belonged to the one
Liberal party. Then, in the conflict between LaFontaine and Papineau,
divergence had begun. A group of young men of great talent and greater
impetuosity, disappointed at having come upon the scene too late to
stake their heads in 1837, first followed, then outmarched Papineau.
They founded "L'Avenir," and issued a programme beginning with
election of justices of the peace and ending with annexation to the
United States which would have meant a complete revolution in the
province. Their exaggerations were not surprising; in Canada, the
memory of the vengeance exacted for the rebellion and the lack of
faith of the Colonial Office stirred discontent, while from Europe
there came great soul-disturbing blasts of revolution. The only excuse
for these Liberals was their youth: the oldest of them was not more
than twenty-two. Hardly had they taken two steps when they recognized
their error, but the harm was done:

      The clergy, alarmed at these proceedings, which
      reminded them of the revolutionaries of Europe, at
      once declared merciless war on the new party. The
      English population, friendly to liberty, but equally
      friendly to the maintenance of order, also ranged
      themselves against the new party. During twenty-five
      years that party has remained in opposition, though to
      it belongs the honour of having taken the initiative
      in all the reforms accomplished in that period. It was
      in vain that it demanded and obtained judicial
      decentralization; it was in vain that it was the first
      to give an impetus to the work of colonization; it was
      not credited with these wise reforms. It was in vain
      that those children, now grown into men, disavowed the
      rashness of their youth; it was in vain that the
      Conservative party made mistake after mistake; the
      generation of the Liberals of 1848 had almost entirely
      disappeared from the political scene ere the dawn of a
      new day began to break for the Liberal party. Since
      that time the party has received new accessions,
      calmer and more thoughtful ideas have prevailed in it,
      and as for the old programme, nothing whatever remains
      of its social part, while of the political part there
      remain only the principles of the English Liberals.

In the meantime, a fraction of the Liberals had united with the Tories
of Upper Canada, to form the Liberal-Conservative party. Of late years
its leaders had sought to transform it into an ultramontane or
Catholic party. They understood neither their country nor their time;
all their ideas were modelled on those of the reactionaries of France.
Their chief aim was to degrade religion to the level of a political
party:

      In our adversaries' party it is the custom to accuse
      us, Liberals, of irreligion. I am not here to parade
      my religious sentiments, but I declare that I have too
      much respect for the faith in which I was born ever to
      use it as the basis of a political organization. You
      wish to organize a Catholic party ... to organize all
      the Catholics into one party, without other bond,
      without other basis, than a common religion. Have you
      not reflected that by that very fact you will organize
      the Protestant population as a single party, and then,
      instead of the peace and harmony now prevailing
      between the different elements of the Canadian people,
      you throw open the door to war, a war of religion, the
      most terrible of all wars?...

      Our adversaries further reproach us ... with denying
      to the Church the freedom to which it is entitled.
      They reproach us with seeking to silence the
      administrative body of the Church, and to prevent it
      from teaching the people their duties as citizens and
      electors. They reproach us with wanting to hinder the
      clergy from sharing in politics and to relegate them
      to the sacristy. In the name of the Liberal party and
      of Liberal principles, I repel this assertion. I
      maintain that there is not one Canadian Liberal who
      wants to prevent the clergy from taking part in
      political affairs if they wish to do so.

      In the name of what principle should the friends of
      liberty seek to deny to the priest the right to take
      part in political affairs? In the name of what
      principle should the friends of liberty seek to deny
      to the priest the right to have and to express
      political opinions, the right to approve or disapprove
      public men and their acts, and to instruct the people
      in what he believes to be their duty? In the name of
      what principle should he not have the right to say
      that if I am elected religion will be endangered, when
      I have the right to say that if my adversary is
      elected, the state will be endangered?... No, let the
      priest speak and preach as he thinks best; such is his
      right, and no Canadian Liberal will dispute that
      right.... Every one has the right not only to express
      his opinion, but to influence, if he can, by the
      expression of his opinion, the opinion of his
      fellow-citizens. This right exists for all, and there
      can be no reason why the priest should be deprived of
      it. I am here to speak my whole mind, and I may add
      that I am far from finding opportune the intervention
      of the clergy in the domain of politics, as it has
      been exercised for some years. I believe, on the
      contrary, that from the standpoint of the respect due
      his character, the priest has everything to lose by
      meddling in the ordinary questions of politics: still,
      his right to do so is indisputable, and if he thinks
      proper to use it, our duty, as Liberals, is to
      guarantee it to him against all denial.

      This right, however, is not unlimited. We have no
      absolute rights among us. The rights of each man, in
      our state of society, end precisely where they
      encroach upon the rights of others.

      The right of interference in politics ends where it
      would encroach upon the elector's independence....

      The constitution of the country rests on the freely
      expressed will of every elector.... It is perfectly
      legitimate to alter the elector's opinion by argument
      and all other means of persuasion, but never by
      intimidation. As a matter of fact, persuasion changes
      the elector's conviction; intimidation does not.... If
      the opinion expressed by the majority of the electors
      is not their real opinion, but an opinion snatched
      from them by fraud, by threats or by corruption, the
      constitution is violated, you have not government by
      the majority but government by the minority....

      I am not one of those who parade themselves as friends
      and champions of the clergy. However, I say this: like
      the most of my young fellow-countrymen, I have been
      educated by priests and among young men who have
      become priests. I flatter myself that I have among
      them some sincere friends, and to them at least I can
      and do say: Consider whether there is under the sun a
      country happier than our own; consider whether there
      is under the sun a country where the Catholic Church
      is freer or more privileged than it is here. Why then
      should you, by claiming rights incompatible with our
      state of society, expose this country to agitations of
      which the consequences are impossible to foresee? But
      I address myself also to all my fellow-countrymen
      without distinction, and to them I say: We are a free
      and happy people, and we are so owing to the liberal
      institutions by which we are governed, institutions
      which we owe to the exertions of our forefathers and
      the wisdom of the mother country. The policy of the
      Liberal party is to protect these institutions, to
      defend and extend them, and, under their sway, to
      develop the latent resources of our country. That is
      the policy of the Liberal party: it has no other.

At last Liberalism had found the interpreter it sorely needed. Rising
completely above the level of partisan personalities and
recriminations, frank in its recognition of past errors, moderate in
its full and ready recognition of the place and rights of the clergy,
firm in its insistence that these rights ended where intimidation
began, inspiring in its assertion of the eternal and unchanging
principles of freedom, sustained in its lofty eloquence, Mr.
Laurier's luminous and persuasive speech marked a new era in the long
controversy. Resistance to intolerance was given a firm foundation in
the unceasing strivings of man for full and free expression, and a
guiding chart in the experience and achievements of English
Liberalism.

Opposition was not at once disarmed by Mr. Laurier's calm analysis of
the situation, nor by the verdict of the papal legate. The
ultramontane organs, while admitting the moderation of his exposition
of political Liberalism, insisted that Mr. Laurier was still
endeavouring to set bounds to the rights and activities of the Church
and presuming to set himself above his bishops. So when the results of
Mgr. Conroy's mission were announced, Mr. Tarte's journal, "Le
Canadien," lamented that "concession had followed upon concession,
outrage upon outrage," and the "Journal de Trois-Rivières," that "the
year 1877 may be designated as the epoch of concessions and cowardice,
the epoch of the triumph of Catholic Liberalism." Whereupon Mr.
Laurier, in an editorial in the "Journal d'Arthabaska" (January 24,
1878), entitled "_Les Tartuffes de la Presse_," paid his respects to
them once more. For many years, he wrote, these Conservative organs
had cloaked themselves in the mantle of religion and sheltered
themselves behind the screen of the clergy. It was a clever play, for
the Canadian loved nothing in the world so much as his religion and
his clergy, and to identify the cause of Conservatism and of the
Church was to damn the Liberal party to insignificance. These editors
took "Louis Veuillot as their model, and not possessing his talents,
at least were able to imitate his excesses of speech and his bombastic
style. The decalogue was revised, corrected, and considerably extended
by these gentlemen.... They posed as theologians, twisted the sense of
pastorals and mandements, and, with these documents in their hands,
like the Pharisee in the Gospel, they pointed at us with the finger of
scorn and demanded our exile and excommunication. The Church, that
good mother, allowed these wretched _enfants terribles_ to have their
way, but as impunity gave them courage, our high and mighty
ultramontanes set themselves to smashing the whole shop.... At last
the attention of the Holy See was drawn upon these men and their
outpourings. Wishing to bring to an end so deplorable a state of
affairs, our Holy Father sent his legate, Mgr. Conroy.... Now Rome has
spoken. But what of our high and mighty ultramontanes, 'Le Canadien'
and 'Le Journal de Trois-Rivières'?... And these are the submissive
children of the Church! Pouah! What Tartuffes!"

The struggle had not ended, but a lull had come in the fighting and
high and safe ground had been occupied and consolidated. Not again for
a score of years was the question of Church and State thrust into the
foreground. The attitude of Wilfrid Laurier and his fellow-Liberals of
Quebec had been effective in averting the danger alike of unbridled
assertion of ultramontane pretensions and of the outburst of an
anti-clerical campaign. The demands for the recognition of the
supremacy of the Church over the State, for the repeal of the statutes
prohibiting undue intervention in elections, so far as they applied to
the clergy, for the granting of civil immunity to ecclesiastics, and
for the still more complete control of the schools by the Church,
failed to find assent: ultramontanism reached its climax in 1876. Nor
did the reaction in the form of anti-clericalism make much headway. It
was only a month before Wilfrid Laurier's speech in the capital of New
France that the leader of the Liberalism of Old France, M. Gambetta,
had uttered his famous cry to action: "_Le cléricalisme, c'est
l'ennemi_." If the Catholic Church in Canada was spared the long and
bitter onslaught which was to be its fate for the next generation in
France, it was owing not only to the wisdom of some of its own leaders
but to the sanity and courage of its laymen who sought, and not in
vain, to reconcile faith and freedom.




CHAPTER IV

THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION

     Laurier at Ottawa--The Forming of the Mackenzie
     Government--The Conservative Leadership--The Liberal
     Leadership--Mackenzie and the Old Guard--Blake and
     Canada First--Unsettling Rivalry--Shifting Quebec
     Lieutenants--The Riel Agitation--Laurier's First
     Speech--Railway-building and Tariff-making--Weakening
     of the Government--Laurier Enters the
     Cabinet--Electoral Defeat and Victory--The Overthrow of
     the Administration.


In these issues, it was as leader of Quebec Liberalism that Wilfrid
Laurier spoke. The issues might have national consequences, they might
be treated in a national spirit, but the stage was provincial. Like
every other Canadian politician of that day, Wilfrid Laurier had to
make his mark in provincial affairs before entering national politics.
Canada was still merely a formal bracket, a grouping of the provinces
in which lay the real springs of life and the vital traditions of
politics. For a time the two fields overlapped. Well before the end of
his conflict with ultramontanism in Quebec, Wilfrid Laurier had begun
to take his part in the more varied struggles of federal politics.

His success in the provincial legislature had early led to demands
that he should go to the federal house, where the Liberal contingent
from Quebec sadly needed strengthening. Ottawa was farther from
Arthabaska than Quebec, and the federal sessions were slightly longer,
covering two or even three months--blessed contrast with the six- and
eight-month sessions of later days--but these considerations did not
weigh heavily against the wider opportunities of the Dominion field.
He became the Liberal candidate for the federal constituency of
Drummond-Arthabaska in the general election of 1874, and was returned
by a majority of 238.

The political situation at Ottawa had suddenly been transformed. After
Confederation, Sir John Macdonald seemed assured of an indefinite
lease of power. Though a late convert to the federation project, he
had rendered invaluable service in carrying it through, and had reaped
from its success more popular prestige and political strength than any
of his rivals. For five years he proved invincible. Then shortly after
the general election of 1872 had returned the Conservatives again to
power, though with lessened strength, a storm arose from an unexpected
quarter and swept the government from office. One of the Liberal
leaders, Lucius Huntington, brought before parliament charges of gross
corruption in connection with the granting to Hugh Allan of Montreal,
and his associates, the charter for the construction of the railway
which was to be built to the Pacific coast in fulfilment of the terms
under which the far Western province of British Columbia entered
Confederation in 1871. The charges were flatly denied, but after a
stormy controversy they were proved to the hilt. Allan had expended
vast sums in securing the support of newspapers and the lesser
politicians, particularly in Quebec, and in contributions to the
campaign funds of the Conservative party in the election of 1872.
Macdonald and Cartier had themselves demanded and received large
contributions for election purposes. Macdonald in vain insisted that
there was no connection between the contributions and the granting of
the charter. A wave of public indignation swept the country. Many of
his own followers, notably Donald A. Smith of Hudson's Bay fame,
deserted him. In November, 1873, he resigned, and the Liberal leader,
Alexander Mackenzie, was called upon to form a ministry.[22] Two
months later the new premier went to the country and came back with a
majority of sixty behind him.

The Liberal party triumphed in 1874 because of its opponents' weakness
rather than because of its own strength. It came to power at a
critical time. The panic of 1873 and the five years of depression that
followed, the inherited promise to build a railway to the Pacific, the
aftermath of the rising on the Red River, would in any case have
proved difficult tasks to handle. With a party which had not been
fused into unity, with the federal leadership distracted by the
rivalry of Blake and Mackenzie, and with the Quebec lieutenants
shifting with kaleidoscopic quickness, it was not surprising that the
first term of the Mackenzie government proved its last.

[Footnote 22: The Mackenzie ministry was formed on Nov. 7, 1873, as follows:

Alexander Mackenzie (Ontario), Prime Minister and Minister of Public Works
Antoine A. Dorion (Quebec), Minister of Justice
Albert J. Smith (New Brunswick), Minister of Marine and Fisheries
Lue Letellier de Saint Just (Quebec), Minister of Agriculture
Richard J. Cartwright (Ontario), Minister of Finance
David Laird (P. E. I.), Minister of the Interior
Isaac Burpee (New Brunswick), Minister of Customs
David Christie (Ontario), Secretary of State
Télesphore Fournier (Quebec), Minister of Inland Revenue
Donald A. Macdonald (Ontario), Postmaster-General
Thomas Coffin (Nova Scotia), Receiver-General
William Ross (Nova Scotia), Minister of Militia and Defence
Edward Blake (Ontario), Minister without Portfolio
Richard W. Scott (Ontario), Minister without Portfolio
Lucius Huntington (Quebec, January, 1874), President of Privy Council]

For a quarter-century after Confederation, as for many years before
it, the Conservative party of Canada followed a single leader. Never
in Canada's history, and rarely in the annals of any other country has
any man dominated a great political party through so long a term as
John A. Macdonald. His leadership was not wholly unquestioned. At
times, severe illness, at others, inattention to duties, and again the
seemingly hopeless load of obloquy and discredit following the
revelations of the Pacific scandal, threatened his hold. Yet never for
long. Macdonald's infinite patience and resource, his uncanny
knowledge of men and the motives that moved them, his grip on the
popular imagination not less for his human failings than for his
statesman's virtues, the mistakes of his opponents or the weakness of
his rivals, brought the party humbly and gratefully back to the
incomparable leader. He was primarily an Ontario man, and each of the
other provinces had its own leader, Cartier or Langevin, Tupper,
Tilley, but the system of dual premiership which had marked the Union
disappeared under Confederation and the prime minister was really
first. As year after year went by, and "John A." still reigned, his
luck became legendary and his prestige invincible.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER MACKENZIE
Prime Minister of Canada, 1873-1878]

The Liberal party had not such good fortune. It had not one chief
but many. Leader after leader took up the task of vanquishing Sir
John, and leader after leader laid it down again. Brown, Mackenzie,
Blake in turn failed or found success but momentary, and Laurier won
through to power only after his great rival had passed from the scene.
All were men of outstanding personal force, of unquestioned sincerity
and devotion to their country's good, endowed with many of the
qualities that stir a people's and a party's loyalty. Brown and Blake
and Laurier had broad constructive vision and a statesmanlike grasp of
the wider issues of politics, and if Brown did not wholly despise the
arts of the practical politician, Mackenzie and Blake as well as their
successor scorned corruption and fought it whether in the ranks in
front or in the ranks behind them.

In so far as the Conservatives owed their victories to the people's
belief that they were more national-minded, more positive and
optimistic in their policies, whether of trade development or of
railway-building, there might be room for dispute but none for
despair. In so far as they owed their fortune to a greater readiness
to grant or to promise favours to an individual or a class at public
cost, or to gerrymander a riding or a province, it was not surprising
that many observers grew doubtful of democracy. There is more than the
loser's disappointment in Mackenzie's word to a friend a few days
after his defeat in 1878: "The recent verdict has shaken my confidence
in the general soundness of public opinion and has given cause to fear
that an upright administration of public affairs will not be
appreciated by the mass of the people. If political criminals and
political chicanery are to be preferred to such a course as we
pursued, the outlook is an alarming one." Whichever of these factors
is held the more weighty, there was a third of undoubled force--the
constant and disturbing shift in leadership.

The Liberal party entered the Dominion field under a heavy disability.
Their opponent was in power, possessed of the honey-pots of patronage;
they had nothing to offer but the stern task of opposition which for
years to come must be its own reward. True, when the project of
Confederation was adopted, Macdonald had been steadily losing his grip
on his party as well as on himself, and the government formed to carry
the project through was a coalition in which the Liberals had a
fair-sized share. But the coalition, and later the opportunity of
patching up alliances with men from the new provinces, gave the master
strategist of Canadian politics a new lease of life. Brown, with all
his downright and domineering force, could not hold his own in the
administration against his shrewd and supple rival; bitterly
disappointed, he shook the dust of the cabinet from his feet, and the
Liberal tinge soon faded out of the coalition.

From the parties which had existed in the Canadas, Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick, the Conservatives were able to build a single Dominion
party, controlled by a single leader, cemented by office, and
supported by the general desire that the administration in power
should be given a fair opportunity to prove itself in the new task.
Out of the fragments that remained, in the Maritime provinces based on
the unstable foundation of hostility to the high-handed tactics by
which Confederation had been effected, in Quebec still overwhelmed by
Cartier and the clergy, in Ontario divided by the seductions of
coalition, a new Liberal Opposition was formed more slowly. It was not
clear who should lead this party. In the Maritime provinces Tilley had
followed Tupper in swearing a lifelong alliance with Sir John, and the
older champion of Liberalism, Howe, would not enter Dominion politics
for the time, and when he did enter, took an uneasy seat in the
government fold. In Quebec Holton and Dorion were of leadership
quality, but they preferred not to undertake the task, both on
personal grounds and because of their belief that the leader should
come from Ontario, then the home of militant Liberalism and the
province which provided the strongest contingent to the party, both in
numbers and in capacity. It was to Ontario, then, that the Liberal
party looked for its leader. The chief difficulty was that Ontario
offered not one but many leaders.

Throughout the Union period, George Brown had dominated the Liberal
party of Canada West. A fiery and uncompromising Covenanter, fierce in
assault upon sectional or religious or racial or class privilege,
constructive on occasion, as in his insistence upon the acquisition of
the North-West and his championing of Confederation, hard-hitting in
parliamentary debate, a whirlwind force in country campaigning, a
shrewd and tireless organizer, Brown had many qualities of a great
party leader. But he was too impatient and too sure not only of the
superiority of his own powers but of the rightness of his own opinions
to be able to keep a parliamentary following contented and in line.
His uncompromising bluntness wounded many a possible ally, and his
unmeasured criticisms of the French-Canadian clergy and people made it
hopeless for himself or for a party which he led to find substantial
support in the East: "I am a governmental impossibility," he once
avowed. A serious illness in 1862 robbed him of much of his vigour.
His entrance into a coalition cabinet, even to carry Confederation,
hurt him in some quarters and his resignation before the task was
fully achieved, in others. When personal defeat came in the general
elections of 1867, George Brown determined to retire from parliament.
But he did not retire from politics. He was still a power behind the
scenes, and through the unparalleled ascendancy in Ontario journalism
of the Toronto "Globe," edited first by himself and later by his
brother Gordon, he continued, if in lessening degree, to form and
drive the public opinion of the province.

Alexander Mackenzie had brought his Scotch Radicalism and his dour
downrightness to Canada in 1842, a year before George Brown arrived
similarly freighted. But where Brown, trained to journalism, plunged
at once into politics, Mackenzie, every whit as keen, had first to
earn a living in occupations which offered less scope. He had left
school at thirteen, herded and ploughed on Scottish farms, and turned
stone-cutter before emigrating to Canada as a lad of twenty. When John
A. Macdonald was building up his law practice in Kingston and
representing that city in the provincial parliament, and Oliver Mowat
and Alexander Campbell, one-time students in Macdonald's office, were
beginning practice, in the same town Alexander Mackenzie was dressing
or laying stone for the doorway of St. Mary's Cathedral or the
Martello tower at Fort Henry, or the walls of the City Hall, attending
the local temperance society, joining in the worship of the Baptist
Church, or debating hotly with his fellow workmen the iniquity of the
Clergy Reserves or Governor Metcalf's last stand for high toryism.
Pushing farther west, in Sarnia he became in turn a prosperous
contractor, an editor strong alike on principles and on personalities,
and then in 1861 member for Lambton in the provincial parliament. He
declined to walk into Macdonald's coalition parlour, was elected a
member of the first Dominion and of the second provincial parliament,
joined Blake in 1871 in overturning the government which Sir John had
set up in Ontario under his clansman and former foe, John Sandfield
Macdonald, became provincial treasurer under Blake as premier, and in
1872, when the abolition of dual representation forced both Blake and
himself to choose between Toronto and Ottawa, decided for the federal
field, but not until he had joined Blake in setting Oliver Mowat
firmly on the provincial throne that pawky chieftain was to occupy for
a quarter-century.

Edward Blake came by other ways to power. His father, William Hume
Blake, a member of a distinguished Irish family, had come to Canada in
1832, with a colony of kinsmen and neighbours who had combined to
charter a vessel. Finding a backwoods clearing far from corresponding
to his dreams of a forest estate, the elder Blake turned city man and
barrister, fought on the Liberal side in the struggle for responsible
government, entered the Baldwin-LaFontaine cabinet in 1848, swept the
House on a memorable occasion by his fierce exposure of Tory claims to
a superior loyalty, was prevented by the Speaker's intervention from
fighting a duel with John A. Macdonald, became the first Chancellor of
Upper Canada, and made the name of Blake a mark of honour by his high
interpretation of the judge's calling. Edward Blake, born in 1833 on
his father's clearing, went through the University of Toronto with
high honours, was called to the bar in 1859, rose to unquestioned
leadership of the equity bar almost at a stroke, became a member of
both the federal and the provincial parliaments in 1867, and premier
of Ontario four years later. After a year of office, he resigned the
premiership to Mowat, and chose a federal career.

Mackenzie and Blake both entered public life possessed of a deeply
rooted and almost hereditary Liberalism. In nearly every other respect
of training, as of temperament, they were poles apart. Mackenzie had
the self-taught man's unevenness as well as his intensity; Blake's
leisurely training had given him a wider culture but less driving
force. Both had extraordinary memories, but Mackenzie's was vertical,
furnishing him with a store of fact and precedent as to the
achievements of the good men and the lapses of the sinners through
many a year of party warfare, while Blake's was horizontal, enabling
him to survey with his mind's eye every present angle and every
minutest detail of the most complicated issue. Mackenzie was the best
debater in parliament, "a grand man on his legs," as Laurier used to
say, going straight for his antagonist's weakest point with unerring
keenness and unsparing stroke; Blake was its most masterful and
overwhelming logician, surveying every phase of the case, fitting
argument into argument and heaping up demonstration upon demonstration
until his opponent sank crushed under the weight, or until the members
were lost in mazes of detail; rarely, when deeply moved, passion added
a force and fire to his words that burned up resistance. Mackenzie was
an admirable partisan, absolutely clean, scrupulous and fair, but also
absolutely convinced of the deep sinfulness of his opponents and the
high righteousness of his own cause; Blake was too independent and
original a man to wear any party's harness easily, and too
self-absorbed for team-play. Mackenzie delighted in the fray, and
never counted the odds; Blake was made for victory rather than for the
fighting that brought victory. Mackenzie's nature was transparently
simple; Blake was reserved, moody, the most complex and baffling
character in Canada's political history. The one had the strength and
the weakness of clear-cut edges; the other, of vague horizons and
margins of indefinable suggestion.

Mr. Goldwin Smith, with that thoroughgoing snobbery of which none but
the Radical conscious of the condescension involved in consorting with
other Radicals is capable, once remarked, in a phrase curiously
reminiscent of that other Oxford don who snubbed the hopes of "Mr.
Jude Pawley, stone-mason," that Mackenzie had been bred a stone-mason
and that as premier a stone mason he remained. Bigger men than Smith
saw in all Mackenzie's political achievements the same honest
efficiency, the same plummet-straight workmanship that marked his
masonry. There is on record a letter of Mackenzie to George Brown,
written in 1872, which sets forth in sincere, honourable and pathetic
words his sense of his own deficiencies and of Blake's strong
qualities: "I know too well my own deficiencies as a political leader
to wonder at other people seeing them as well. The want of early
advantages was but ill compensated for by an anxious-enough effort to
acquire such in the midst of a laborious life, deeply furrowed by
domestic trials, and it has left me but ill-fitted to grapple with
questions and circumstances constantly coming up in Parliament. I am
quite aware of the advantages possessed by a leader of men, of high
mental culture and having ample means, especially when joined to
intellectual power and personal excellence. Therefore I do not wonder
at, or complain of, those who see in others possessing such, greater
fitness for the work required of them than myself."

The call for Blake as leader was not only a recognition of his high
abilities, it was an expression of the new spirit in Canadian
politics--or, more strictly speaking, in the Canadian phase of Ontario
politics, for as yet even men who thought nationally thought and
worked by provinces. To many men, and particularly young men,
Confederation had opened up new horizons. Canada was no longer a
backwoods province, it was a half-continent far on the road to
nation-hood, rich in opportunities which promised it high place in the
world and threw on its people corresponding responsibilities. A new
pride and confidence glowed in many an ardent mind. Colonial
dependence gave way to national aspiration. This was the note that
Thomas D'Arcy McGee had struck in urging Confederation. Brown might
see in Confederation a means of solving political deadlock and
securing "rep. by pop."; Macdonald, a new lease of power for himself
and a new source of strength for his country; Galt might catch a
glimpse of what the opening of the West would mean to the East and
devote himself to working out a sound financial basis for the new
Dominion, but it was McGee above all who quickened the hope of a new
unity and a new reliance. "There is a name I would fain approach with
befitting reverence," wrote William A. Foster in the manifesto of the
"Canada First" movement in 1871, "for it casts athwart memory the
shadow of all those qualities that man admires in man. It tells of one
in whom the generous enthusiasm of youth was but mellowed by the
experience of cultured manhood, of one who lavished the warm love of
an Irish heart on the land of his birth, yet gave a loyal and true
affection to the land of his adoption; who strove with all the power
of genius to convert the stagnant pool of politics into a stream of
living water; who dared to be national in the face of provincial
selfishness and impartially liberal in the teeth of sectarian strife;
who from Halifax to Sandwich sowed broadcast the seeds of a higher
national life, and with persuasive eloquence drew us closer together
as a people, pointing out to each what was good in the other,
wreathing our sympathies and blending our hopes; yes, one who breathed
into our New Dominion the spirit of a proud self-reliance and first
taught Canadians to respect themselves. Was it a wonder that a cry of
agony rang throughout the land when murder foul and most unnatural
drank the life-blood of Thomas D'Arcy McGee?"

National spirit brought discontent with party spirit. In the years
before Confederation, political life had been degenerating into
personal vendettas; parties were becoming fighting clans, public life
a succession of bitter feuds. Shrieking personalities were the staple
of discussion in parliament and in press. A Liberal had come to mean a
man who feared and hated John A. Macdonald; a Conservative, a man who
scorned and hated George Brown. Now, so many an ardent young man
dreamed, the time had come to sweep away all these unrealities, to
build afresh parties based on ideas, parties which could appeal to
every province alike and not seek to impose on the new provinces the
discredited leaders and labels of the old, parties that would be
constructive and would stand for "Canada First."

This new nationalism found most significant expression in the writings
and activities of a group which centred in Toronto, with W. H. Howland
and W. A. Foster as their leaders. The Canadian National Association,
in which in 1874 the more active members found definite grouping,
adopted as its main planks consolidation of the Empire and a voice in
treaties affecting Canada; closer trade and eventually political
relations with the British West Indies; income franchise, the secret
ballot, compulsory voting and minority representation; the
reorganization of the Senate and abolition of property qualifications
for members of the House of Commons; free homesteads; an improved
militia system under command of trained Dominion officers, and the
imposition of duties for revenue, so adjusted as to afford every
possible encouragement to native industry. There was no little
vagueness and uncertainty as to the channels in which the new
nationalism was to flow. Some leaned toward economic independence
through protection. Of those who emphasized political activities, some
urged complete separation from Britain, others sought through imperial
federation the voice in foreign affairs Canada as a mere colony was
denied, while others were content, without any formal change, to have
the interests of Canada kept first and her government confided to men,
whether native-born or Canadians by choice, who were Canadians through
and through. In "The Nation," a weekly founded in 1874, they possessed
a journal which for its brief two years of existence maintained the
highest standards of independent and informed literary and political
comment in the record of the Canadian press.

Distinct from these youthful crusaders, who stood ostentatiously aloof
from both the old parties, there was a wing of the Liberal party with
much the same ends in view, but believing that a reorganized
Liberalism was the best means to that end. Men like David Mills, the
"philosopher of Bothwell," and Thomas Moss, a brilliant young Toronto
lawyer who entered the House in 1873, and who moved the Address on the
occasion that Wilfrid Laurier seconded it, were keen to broaden the
issues of party contest. Other Liberals, notably John Cameron, editor
of the London "Advertiser," the "Globe's" most notable rival, chafed
at the domination of the Browns, and balked at following Mackenzie
because he was considered an echo of George Brown.

To men of these varied shades of thinking, Edward Blake appeared to be
the leader predestined to guide Canada out of the bogs of partisanship
and colonialism. He was a man of outstanding capacity and scrupulous
integrity. He was a Liberal who could be liberal to new ideas and old
opponents. Not least, he was a Canadian born and bred, determined to
assert for his country a more distinctive place in the world's
affairs.

In the first Confederation parliament the Opposition had not chosen a
leader. The different provincial groups had not yet fused into one.
Dorion continued to lead the Quebec wing, while Smith and Jones
marshalled the Maritime contingents. Blake was a member of the Ontario
group, but as he was serving his first years of parliamentary
apprenticeship, he was not yet in the running. Mackenzie, with six
years of parliamentary experience and many more of party service, came
to the front among the Ontario Reformers when Brown retired and
McDougall joined Macdonald. He soon made his place as virtual leader
of the whole party, simply because unflagging industry and interest
and unsparing criticism of every Government weakness put him at the
front of the fray.

In the Dominion elections of 1872 Mackenzie had charge of the Ontario
campaign. He fought hard, and no small measure of the success which
was won in that province was due to his campaigning. Throughout the
contest Blake was absent in Europe, seeking to restore the health
which overwork at the bar had impaired. Immediately upon the opening
of parliament Mackenzie raised the question of a formal choice of
leader. An Ontario committee, Mackenzie, Blake, W. B. Richards, Joseph
Rymal, and James Young, and a Quebec committee, Dorion, Holton,
Letellier, Huntington and John Young,--the Maritime members taking no
concerted part,--unanimously agreed that one leader should be chosen
and that he should come from Ontario. Blake was their first choice,
but though Mackenzie pressed, he declined, on the ground that it was
not he who had borne the burden and heat of the electoral and
parliamentary struggles. Mackenzie was then urged to accept, declined
at first, in view of the general recognition of Blake's great
potential powers, but at last agreed.

After eight months' service as leader of the Opposition, Mackenzie was
summoned, in November, 1873, to form a ministry, after the Pacific
scandal had forced the retirement of Macdonald. With much difficulty
Blake was induced to enter the cabinet. He would not, however,
undertake any administrative tasks, and became a minister without
portfolio, an expedient then unprecedented in Canadian practice, but
supported by two British instances; even so, he informed his
constituents that it might not be possible for him to continue
permanently in the government. His presence in the administration,
however tentative, undoubtedly strengthened it in the general
elections which followed in January and February, 1874. No sooner were
the elections completed and a strong majority for the government
assured than Blake resigned. He declared that his legal
responsibilities would not permit him to continue in office, even
without departmental duties, and recalled the intimations he had given
during the election. His critics declined to accept this explanation
at face value. Conservative editors insisted that his resignation made
evident a want of confidence in Mackenzie's policy. Macdonald, in his
place in the House, criticized the transaction as an instance of
selling under false pretences: the administration had gone to the
country as a Mackenzie-Blake government, it owed much of the support
it received to the character and repute of the member for South Bruce;
it had sold by sample, and one of the strongest claims for the cabinet
cloth was that it contained a strong fibre all the way from Bruce,
that would stand sun, wind or rain; now, that fibre was withdrawn
before delivery, and the people were saying, "We have had palmed off
upon us the same old _brown_ stuff."

In October, 1874, Blake delivered a speech to a Liberal county
convention at Aurora, which raised the hopes of the progressive wing
and the ire of the standpatters. After developing the issues on which
he was in agreement with the whole party, endorsing the efficient and
economical administration of Mowat in Ontario, and urging the
construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway with a view to the
expansion of settlement on the prairies rather than to the immediate
fulfilment of the rash undertaking to pierce British Columbia's "sea
of mountains," he then proceeded to suggest new fields to explore.
Compulsory voting, based on the recognition of the franchise as a
sacred trust; extension of the suffrage, then limited to property
owners, by adding farmers' sons and income schedules; representation
of minorities by some modification of the Hare system, and reform of
the Senate were all urged with reasoned force. Some change in imperial
relations was imperative: "Matters cannot drift much longer as they
have drifted hitherto. The Treaty of Washington produced a very
profound impression throughout this country. It produced a feeling
that at no distant period the people of Canada would desire that they
should have some greater share of control than they now have in the
management of foreign affairs.... This is a state of things of which
you have no right to complain, because so long as you do not choose to
undertake the responsibilities and burdens which attach to some share
of control in these affairs, you cannot fully claim the rights and
privileges of free-born Britons in such matters.... The time will come
when that national spirit which has been spoken of will be truly felt
among us, when we shall realize that we are four millions of Britons
who are not free."

Blake recognized that he was departing from the usual path set for the
leaders of a party when in power. "I know," he concluded, "that I have
made a rather disturbing speech, but I am not afraid of that. Not much
good can be done without disturbing something or somebody. I may be
said also to have made an imprudent speech; at least that might be
said if I were one of those who aspire to lead their fellow-countrymen
as ministers. It is the function of a minister to say nothing that can
be caught hold of, nothing in advance of the public opinion of the
day, and to catch the current of that opinion when it has gathered
strength, and crystallize it in Acts of Parliament. That is the
function of a Liberal minister. The function of a Tory minister is to
wait until he is absolutely forced to swallow his own opinions. It may
be permitted to one who prefers to be a private in the advance-guard
of the army of freedom to a commanding place in the main body, to run
the risk of promulgating what may be a political heresy to-day and may
perhaps become a political creed to-morrow."

That the suggestions thus freely thrown out were disturbing to the old
guard was sufficiently indicated by the fact that the "Globe," though
publishing the speeches of lesser lights delivered later in the
proceedings, held over Blake's speech until an editorial counterblast
could be prepared. In a series of editorials Blake's Canadian Pacific
policy was endorsed, and a tribute paid to his vigour and
independence, but there agreement ended. Senate reform was premature,
compulsory voting a fad, the revision of imperial relations an
academic issue: Canada was suffering from no injustice, conscious of
no hampering and degrading influence exerted by her colonial status.
Throughout the winter the discussion continued. The "Globe's"
criticism was nominally directed against the Canada First group, and
particularly against Goldwin Smith, the Oxford professor who had
recently, after a temporary sojourn in Cornell, made Toronto his home,
and who was a particularly shining and vulnerable mark because of his
well-known belief that Canada must find her future in union with the
United States as Scotland had found her opportunity in union with
England. The "Globe" poured scorn upon the "sucking politicians," "the
Canada First mischievous little snakes in the grass," "the diseased
self-consciousness and absurd pretensions of these praters of
Nationalism," and upon their programme, of which "every plank was
calculated to inspire sensible men with wonder if not with ridicule
and contempt," and the whole likened to Milton's "asinine feast of sow
thistles and brambles." The Toronto "Mail," the leading Conservative
organ, gave no more sympathy; the Canada First group were "beardless
boys," and their proposals "the innocent work of bumptious lads who
have not cut their eye-teeth in politics." But the "Globe" was the
more fierce and pertinacious, for it was its camp that was threatened;
"it is the shades, not the colours that fight," as the French proverb
has it.

The Blake wing of the Liberal party, finding the necessity of having a
daily newspaper of their way of thinking in Toronto, established in
January, 1875, the "Liberal," edited by John Cameron of the London
"Advertiser." From the beginning the friction between the two guides
of Liberalism was apparent, but it flamed out when the test issue of
Senate reform was urged. In March, David Mills succeeded in having a
resolution in favour of an elective Senate passed by the Commons by a
vote of 77 to 74. Mackenzie as well as Blake, Holton, Huntington and
three-fourths of the Liberals supported Mills; the others joined the
Conservatives in opposition; Laurier was not present. The "Globe," not
less incensed because George Brown had only the year before been
appointed to the Senate, at once fell upon the proposal as a senseless
tearing up of the constitution by the roots to see if it was growing;
the people wanted to let well enough alone, wanted sound
administration, not constitution-mongering and change for change's
sake. It sneered at Mills as a meagrely educated school-teacher whose
limited success did not entitle him to speak disparagingly of the men
of substance and standing who constituted the Senate, and scolded
those Liberals who would interfere with the "beneficial movement" by
which, as Conservative senators died off, Liberals took their place.
The "Liberal" retorted that the "Globe's" criticism proved the need
for a real Liberal newspaper. The "Globe" had once done good service
to party and country by its outspoken advocacy of reform; to-day it
was an exponent of dyed-in-the-wool Toryism, entitled to its own
views, but not entitled to dictate to the party: "In the days that are
now past and so long as the 'Liberal' lives shall never come again,
the 'Globe' hounded down with vindictive bitterness and without
permission of self-defence every Reformer who differed in opinion from
it; ... it may as well understand that the day has passed when it can
decide by its mere _ipse dixit_ who shall and who shall not be leaders
and members of the Liberal party."

Suddenly these controversies ceased. In May, 1875, after a last
display of independence in opposing Mackenzie's concession to British
Columbia in the matter of the Pacific railway, Edward Blake re-entered
the Mackenzie cabinet, taking the portfolio of Justice. His supporters
were uncertain whether his action was a triumph or a defeat, whether
it meant that he had concluded he could best revive the party from
within, or whether he had concluded to abandon his efforts
altogether. It did not mean immediate harmony. The "Globe," though
welcoming the return of an able minister, intimated the hope that the
Council Chamber would bring a sense of responsibility which would
lessen his tendency to raise disturbing abstract propositions, and
found in his first speech as minister, "evidence that Mr. Blake can
sink the doctrinaire in the public servant." It continued its flings
at the few young and excitable Liberals who had tried but in vain to
feel keenly about this and that, at their fancy grievances and their
programmes which never had come home to the business and bosoms of
men. The "Liberal" ceased publication, but the influence of the Blake
wing was seen in the retirement shortly afterward of Gordon Brown from
the editorship of the "Globe," and the appointment of John Cameron in
his stead.

For two years Blake served as Minister of Justice. The post was
particularly congenial in that it gave scope for his mastery of
constitutional principles and his policy of extending Canada's
national powers. In a series of controversies with the Colonial
Office, Blake stood firmly for carrying the principles of responsible
government to their logical conclusion. He protested vigorously
against a revision of the governor-general's instructions to conform
with those designed for Crown colonies, making the governor-general
once more what he had long ceased to be, a member of the working
executive, and authorizing him to act independently of his advisers.
He pressed for the abandonment of the instructions requiring the
governor-general to reserve for the consideration of the British
government bills on certain subjects enacted by the Canadian
parliament. He contended that the prerogative of pardon should be
exercised by the governor-general, as in the case of other powers, on
ministerial advice. He insisted that the power of disallowing
provincial statutes was vested by the British North America Act in the
governor-general in Council, that is, the cabinet, not in the
governor-general acting on his own discretion or under London advice.
In each and all he won his point, and contributed materially to the
recognition of Canada's national status. In all these measures he had
the warm support of Mackenzie, though when it came to discussions of a
more sweeping change in imperial relations, Mackenzie had little
sympathy with Blake's tentative acceptance of imperial federation.

In June, 1877, once more on the ground of ill-health, Blake resigned
his portfolio and took the nominal post of President of the Council.
Six months later, he retired from the cabinet altogether. Mackenzie
repeatedly offered to make way for him. "From the first," he wrote in
1877, "I was more willing to serve than to reign, and would even now
be gladly relieved from a position the toils of which no man can
appreciate who has not had the experience. I pressed Mr. Blake in
November, 1874, to take the lead, and last winter I again urged him to
do so, and this summer I offered to go out altogether, or serve under
him, as he might deem best in the general interest." But Blake would
neither consent to displace Mackenzie nor rest content as his
follower.

It was not merely in the party as a whole that difficulties of
leadership arose. The Quebec wing of the party had troubles of its
own. While Mr. Laurier shared in the interest in the Blake-Mackenzie
duel, he was more immediately concerned in the leadership of the
Liberal contingent from his own province.

Quebec was the government's weakest quarter. The tidal wave of
repudiation of the Macdonald government had increased the Quebec
Liberal representation from 27 out of 65 to 33, but leaders were
lacking and the allegiance of several of the rank and file uncertain.
Antoine Aimé Dorion, for twenty years the Rouge chieftain and the
leader of the Quebec bar, was retiring from politics. He had
established a reputation beyond cavil for integrity and single-minded
devotion to the country's interest, and carried weight not only in
Quebec but throughout the Dominion. Yet his heart was not in the game
of politics; he could never throw himself into the battles of the
hustings or take delight in parliamentary intrigues with the
whole-hearted abandon of his opponent, Cartier. Twenty years of public
life had left him not only poor but heavily in debt, and the wishes of
his family weighed heavily against the demands of his party. Six
months after taking office in the Mackenzie cabinet, and a year after
death had carried Cartier off the scene, Antoine Dorion resigned to
become Chief Justice of Quebec.

His colleague, Letellier de Saint-Just, was a man of average ability,
and of much more than average determination and sense of dignity; he
had won a place by his persistent fighting of the Rouge battles in
eastern Quebec since 1851, and was destined after he too resigned in
1876 in order to take the lieutenant-governorship of Quebec, to become
the occasion of a famous constitutional crisis. Télesphore Fournier,
who held in turn the portfolios of Inland Revenue, Justice and the
Post-Office, was a man of greater capacity, who for years had carried
on a vigorous but hopeless fight in the Quebec district against
Conservative and clerical, only winning his way to the Commons when
too firmly set in his ways to be able to repeat in the House the
success he had won at the bar. Fournier resigned in 1875 to become a
member of the Canadian Supreme Court which he had taken the leading
part in establishing. Dorion's place was taken by Felix Geoffrion, who
proved a very good administrator, and when a serious illness forced
him to resign in 1876, Rodolphe Laflamme, Mr. Laurier's one-time
preceptor in the law, and another uncompromising Rouge champion,
succeeded, only to meet Fournier's difficulty of adjusting himself to
the ways of parliament. Letellier's post as Minister of Agriculture
was taken by C. A. P. Pelletier, an urbane gentleman who found his
place at the same time in the Senate. When Fournier retired,
Mackenzie, hard put for a successor, made a choice difficult to
reconcile with his own character and his party's traditions. For
thirty years Joseph Cauchon had been active in public life, vigorous
in parliamentary debate, and in his newspaper, "Le Journal de Québec,"
as slashing, aggressive and powerful as George Brown himself. He had
been an uncompromising Conservative and a thoroughgoing upholder of
clerical claims until shortly after Confederation, when disappointed
ambition and quarrels over railway projects set him adrift from his
old friends. He was a man of unquestioned force, and still a power
with the clergy. Mackenzie's action in offering him a cabinet seat
might have been defended had it not been for his reputation for
corruption. A parliamentary inquiry in 1872 had branded him as
secretly interested in government contracts with the Beauport Asylum
while himself a member of the provincial legislature. Sir John
Macdonald might have appointed him, and the Opposition could not have
shouted "robbery and corruption" louder than they were already and
always doing, but for God-fearing, broad-phylacteried Liberals, and
particularly a man so personally upright and so impatient of dishonour
as Mackenzie, the appointment was a fatal blunder. It was with relief
that many Liberals saw Cauchon accept the lieutenant-governorship of
Manitoba in 1877, and make way for Wilfrid Laurier.

These kaleidoscopic and unsettling changes, the appointment of member
after member to the cabinet only to leave it for a safer and more
profitable billet, and the unfortunate selection of Cauchon, prevented
the Liberal party from building up a strong position in
French-speaking Quebec. Nor was the position wholly satisfactory with
regard to the leadership of the English-speaking Liberals of the
province. Luther Holton, who had entered politics after making a
comfortable fortune out of the building of a section of the Grand
Trunk Railway, had for many years been the Liberals' financial expert,
and a man of weight and judgment in the party councils. Yet the claims
of Huntington, who had launched the Pacific charges which had driven
the Conservatives from office, could not be denied. Holton continued
to give Mackenzie support that was unswervingly loyal, but not as
effective as if he had been within the cabinet, while Huntington's
somewhat easy-going ways lessened the contribution his independent
turn of mind and vigorous power of debate might otherwise have made.

Writing in the summer of 1874 to James Young, Mr. Laurier comments on
the party situation in his own province:

     I am now busy with courts and judges and have been so
     ever since the close of the session. I argued a case
     some time ago, in the Court of Appeal, before the new
     Chief Justice, Dorion. He is an admirable judge, but as
     you truly say, his absence greatly weakens the cabinet.

     We, the Lower Canada Reformers, claim that we have
     acted like patriots in this matter: we have
     unhesitatingly sacrificed our party to our province.
     Dorion's appointment to the bench is an irretrievable
     loss to our party, but it is an incalculable advantage
     to our province. The bench of the province, for many
     years past, has been every day more and more sinking
     into contempt and scorn. Dorion was the very man to
     raise it up again to its former position. His accession
     to the high office of Chief Justice has been hailed by
     all classes and creeds in Lower Canada.

     But to us as a party, it is a loss which cannot be made
     up. We have no man in Quebec who can lead the party.
     Fournier is not that one; Letellier still less. The man
     who will come nearest to the point is Geoffrion.
     Geoffrion has many good qualities: he is clever,
     shrewd, smooth, and understands human nature
     thoroughly. Were there more in him of the speaker or
     the thinker, he would make a consummate leader. Such as
     he is, he will be our leader, and it is well that it
     should be so. He will perhaps not do as much for the
     fame of the party as one would desire, but he will do
     more for rooting the party in the people than any other
     one could do.

Writing to the same correspondent in October, 1876, Mr. Laurier refers
to the situation as it had developed in the two years intervening:

     First let me give you the information you ask. As to
     myself, I am perfectly well. My health, which has
     always been delicate, is getting decidedly better and
     better. I hope to see the day when I shall be as fat
     and rosy as my friend Mousseau.

     I wish I could speak as cheerfully of the political
     situation in this province. But the plain, unvarnished
     truth is that our party is going to the dogs in Quebec.
     I am fully convinced that the next elections will make
     a terrible sweep in our ranks. ... Now, you ask me,
     what is the cause of our going down? The cause is not
     uniform all through the province. In the cities, the
     protection cry is hurting us; there can be no doubt of
     it, especially in Montreal.... The great cause of our
     weakness is the old everlasting one: the hostility of
     the priests.... But there is another cause which,
     within the ranks of the Liberal party itself, is doing
     us more harm than clerical hostility. Our government is
     sorely disappointing our friends. Notwithstanding
     priestly tyranny, the Liberal party, so long as it was
     in opposition, could and did count upon a vigorous
     minority. It was composed of men at once enthusiastic
     and disinterested. When the Conservatives were turned
     out, the expectations of our people were at once raised
     to a high pitch. They expected, they were sure, that
     the new government would at once enter upon a career of
     reforms, and that the abuses which had grown up under
     Conservative rule would be crushed down. I am free to
     admit that amongst the illiterate class, many of these
     expectations were absurd, and that what in their eyes
     were abuses were administrative necessities. However,
     the fact is there, we have done nothing. Except the
     creation of the Supreme Court, we have not passed a law
     of any importance, and the idea of the Supreme Court is
     not ours. I certainly admire the great qualities of
     Mackenzie, but he has no zest to carry a party on. His
     policy is at once cautious and honest, but it is not
     progressive.

     After all, I am French, and you will perhaps think that
     my French nature unconsciously makes me long for a
     little bit of revolutionary excitement, but I do not
     believe so. We must give something to public opinion,
     or we die. Our adversaries can and do prey upon
     prejudices; they keep their people together by a
     constant appeal to prejudices. While we were in
     opposition, we always had schemes and devices to
     discuss and suggest, but now we do nothing, and the
     reproach which I often hear amongst the Rouges is this:
     what difference is there between this and the late
     government? Still the Rouges will not go over to the
     other side; that is quite certain, but they will not
     fight. And it seems to me that even in Ontario, in the
     great centre of Reform and Liberalism, reform and
     liberalism are not in the ascendancy.

     With us, however, it is still worse. You have strong
     men in the cabinet, but we are weak. I of course except
     Huntington, of whom I think a great deal. I except also
     poor Geoffrion, though he is perhaps forever lost. I
     refer to the other two. I refer to them without any
     comment, because you know them. I should, however,
     judge that you do not know them, since you believe that
     they will think of retiring. As to Cauchon, he never
     will think of going out as long as he will not have
     brought the government into some dirty and disgraceful
     scrape. It is of no use to speculate who will be their
     successor. A more appropriate question would be, who
     shall be tall David's [David Laird's] successor? Will
     it be yourself, or Mills or John McDonald? The gods
     keep their secret, as yet, but two things which are
     now known give me unbounded pleasure: the next man will
     be an Ontario man and he will be an up and down
     Grit....

Aside from difficulties as to leadership, and in Quebec the hostile
attitude of an important section of the clergy, the Liberal party in
the seventies faced three serious issues, the Riel agitation, the
demand of the West for the speedy construction of the Pacific railway,
and the world-wide trade depression which brought a revival of
protectionism in its wake.

The Riel agitation was an unfortunate aftermath of Canada's bungling
in handling its first difficult task of national expansion. The
development of the American West had long directed attention to the
possibilities of the vast British territory to the northward, under
the control of the Hudson's Bay Company. For years before
Confederation Brown and McDougall had urgently demanded that Canada
should acquire this heritage, to which the enterprise of
French-Canadian explorers under the old regime gave the province some
legal claim. With the enlarged resources and the new national
aspirations that Confederation brought, the dream of westward
expansion became real. Within four years after 1867, the bounds of the
Dominion had been extended to the Pacific, and its territory
multiplied eightfold.

When, in 1870-71, the Dominion government provided for the entry of
British Columbia into the federation, the negotiations were conducted
with the representatives of the Pacific colony's ten thousand white
settlers on a footing of equality, and generous, even extravagant
terms, including the promise to build a railway through trackless
wastes to the Pacific within ten years, were offered. When, two years
earlier, the same government had sought to bring the vast territory
between the Great Lakes and the Rockies under its sway, it paid no
heed to the wishes of the twelve thousand whites and half-breeds
gathered in the valley of the Red River. Negotiations were carried on
with the British government and the governors of the Hudson's Bay
Company; money was paid to extinguish the company's rights, but no
step was taken to discuss with the people of the country the terms
under which they and their lands were to be transferred to a new
allegiance.

The situation was one that needed care. With the authority of the
Hudson's Bay Company steadily slipping from its grasp, and its
representatives on the spot convinced that the financial magnates in
London had sacrificed the working partners, and therefore unwilling to
exert themselves to aid the establishment of the new régime; with half
the community made up of French half-breeds, used to the free life of
voyageur, buffalo-hunter or transport-driver, and apprehensive of a
flood of alien and disdainful immigrants unsettling their old ways of
life; with thousands of Scottish half-breeds, less unruly, but dubious
also of newcomers; with a Canadian colony already in the settlement,
urging for years annexation to Canada, and some of its members
foolishly boasting how the backward elements would have to make way
when the tide of progressive Canadian settlers poured in; with priests
like Father Ritchot in full and active sympathy with the fears and
hopes of their parishionres; with Minnesota traders and professional
Fenian raiders across the border anxious to swing the settlement into
the American orbit, it was imperative to take steps to ensure the Red
River settlement a voice in its own future governing. No such steps
were taken, and the action of the Canadian government in starting
surveys in half-breed settlements before the transfer, and the greedy
staking out of lands by members of official missions gave positive
ground for alarm.

Out of this friction and muddle conflict rapidly developed. Many men
played a part in the succession of blunders and misunderstandings
which marked the interregnum between the rule of the company and the
rule of Canada. Joseph Howe, long leader of Nova Scotia's fight
against being coerced into Confederation, now won over to acquiescence
and a seat in the cabinet, with special charge of the Western
Territories, paid a flying visit to Red River in the fall of 1869, and
whether merely through declining to take sides with the Canadian
faction or because, in McDougall's words, of "seditious talk and
bibulous fraternization with rebels," undoubtedly encouraged
resistance. William McDougall, appointed lieutenant-governor of the
territory he had done more than any other man to keep before the mind
of Canada, reached Pembina before the formal transfer of the territory
to the Dominion, only to be blocked at the border by a French
half-breed band, and there held, fuming and fretting, issuing
unwarranted proclamations and rashly seeking to rouse the English
settlers against the "rebels," until, disavowed and embittered, he
was forced to return to Ottawa. Governor McTavish, of the Hudson's Bay
Company, ill, resentful of the change, convinced that annexation to
the United States was inevitable, supinely bowed to the insurgents'
every demand. Louis Riel, a native of the settlement, educated at
Montreal for the priesthood but drawn by his wayward temper and
heterodox views into other paths, now made himself the champion of the
half-breeds' cause, broke up the surveyors' operations, blocked
McDougall's entry, seized, without resistance, Fort Garry and the
company stores, and set up a provisional government. "Abandoned by our
own government, which had sold its title to this country," he
declared, they must refuse to accept "a governor whom Canada, an
English colony like ourselves, ignoring our aspirations and our
existence as a people, forgetting the rights of nations and our rights
as British subjects, sought to impose upon us without consulting or
even notifying us." William O'Donoghue, a student for the priesthood,
of strong Fenian leanings, plotting annexation, and Ambroise Lepine, a
half-breed of herculean build and more moderation of temper, backed
Riel.

The government at Ottawa, awakened by this unexpected resistance, took
a conciliatory attitude, sending commissioners, in turn Colonel de
Salaberry, Vicar-General Thibault, Donald A. Smith and Bishop Taché,
hastily summoned from Rome to shepherd his wandering flock, to explain
their benevolent intentions, and agreeing to receive delegates from
the settlement. Meanwhile Riel's authority had been challenged by a
group of Canadians who fortified the house of their leader, Dr.
Schultz, and later by a badly organized band of English settlers. Both
movements failed. The second was particularly unfortunate, coming just
when the great majority of the old settlers, English as well as
French, had come together in a convention to support the demand for
terms, and when Donald A. Smith's extremely cautious diplomacy had
undermined Riel's authority. The challenge and its failure increased
Riel's prestige and, what was more ominous, inflamed his erratic
temper. To strike a lesson home he haled one of the prisoners before a
court martial and after a farcical trial had him brutally shot. It was
a fateful blunder. The blood of Thomas Scott called for vengeance.
Ontario insisted that no truce or terms could be made with murderers;
Quebec, that the execution was a political act, not to be held against
individuals. The cabinet at Ottawa tried to follow a double course. To
meet Ontario's demands it sent an armed expedition under Colonel
Wolseley to enforce order. To satisfy Quebec, it discussed terms with
the delegates from the North-West, Judge Black, Father Ritchot and A.
H. Scott, and agreed to grant the community the status of a province,
the half-breeds generous holdings of land or scrip, and the Church its
schools. By the fall of 1870 all was quiet on the Red River.

Peace did not so soon follow in eastern Canada. Here was ample tinder
to relight the fires of sectarian and racial controversy. Ontario saw
only that an Ontario man, and an Orangeman at that, had been brutally
murdered at the command of a French Catholic "rebel." Quebec saw only
a struggle for the assertion of just rights against scornful neglect,
in which the execution by constituted authority of a troublesome
prisoner was an unfortunate but minor incident. Nor was this all.
Below the individual issues and the specific incidents of the conflict
there waged a clash of wills as to the national future of the West.
Ontario, aware of its superior enterprise, eager to find an outlet for
home-seekers to rival the Western States, and deeply suspicious of
French and Catholic Quebec, looked for the building up of new Ontarios
in the vast prairies. Quebec, disappointed at finding its position
under Confederation less influential than had been hoped, proudly
mindful that it was daring French-Canadian explorers who had opened up
the Western country, and anxious to stem the tide of habitant
migration to New England mills, equally naturally hoped that a
French-Canadian province would arise in the West to redress the
balance.

The specific issue was the punishment of those responsible for the
death of Scott. For years this question bedeviled Canadian politics.
Both parties sought to turn to political account the passions it
raised and both found that it was easier to arouse passion than to
allay it. The Liberals of Ontario, themselves carried away by the
popular indignation against Riel, or unable to resist the temptation
to turn the normally Conservative Orange vote against the government,
denounced Macdonald for trafficking with treason, and even so
cautious and judicial a man as Edward Blake, on becoming premier of
Ontario in 1871, carried a resolution through the local house offering
a reward of $5,000 for the arrest of any or all of the slayers of
Scott. The Liberals of Quebec, equally pleased to be able for once to
have popular prejudice on their side, attacked the government for not
granting unconditional amnesty for all the incidents in a conflict for
which that government was itself mainly to blame. Macdonald was still
more adroit at this double game, exclaiming to an Ontario audience,
"Where is Riel? God knows: I wish I could lay my hands on him," at the
very time that his agents were paying Riel and Lepine secret service
money to induce them to keep out of the country and avert the crisis
their arrest would bring. After the fall of the Macdonald government
had transferred to Mackenzie the responsibility for pardoning the
offenders--the responsibility for taking action against them lay with
the provincial government--the Conservative forces in Ontario and
Quebec were free to follow the tactics of their opponents in attacking
from diametrically opposite directions. The Maritime provinces were
throughout little concerned in what was virtually a Quebec-Ontario
duel, and in Manitoba itself, where the races were evenly balanced,
politicians walked much more warily than in the provinces where one
could safely bluster to sympathetic majorities.

Controversy raged as to whether an amnesty for offences before the
territory was formally incorporated lay within the jurisdiction of the
imperial or of the Canadian government, and as to whether it had been
explicitly or implicitly promised. It was urged that Bishop Taché,
when sent as the federal government's commissioner, had been
authorized to promise amnesty, but it was replied that the execution
of Scott did not occur until after Mgr. Taché had left Ottawa, though
before he reached Fort Garry. It was urged that on a later visit to
Ottawa, Mgr. Taché had been assured pardon for all offenders by the
governor-general and by Cartier, then acting premier; and while there
was some misunderstanding as to these interviews, it was proved that
Cartier at least had given strong assurances. The reception of the
delegates from the settlement was held to constitute a recognition of
the provisional government, though in reply Macdonald insisted the
delegates were not from Riel but from the Convention. Riel's
retirement in 1872 from the electoral contest in the Manitoba
constituency of Provencher to make way for Cartier, defeated in
Montreal, was another incident difficult to explain away. Finally, the
action of Lieutenant-Governor Archibald, McDougall's successor, in
asking and receiving the aid of Riel and Lepine in repelling a
threatened Fenian invasion of Manitoba in 1871, was held to wipe out
all old scores.

Two incidents brought the issue to a head. In 1873, after long
obstruction by those in authority, warrants were issued for the arrest
of Riel and Lepine, who had returned to Red River. Riel escaped;
Lepine stood his trial, and in November, 1874, was condemned to death.
Earlier in the year, Riel, who had been elected for Provencher after
Cartier's death, made his way east, and when parliament opened in
March, crossed the river from Hull, presented himself at the office of
the Clerk of the House, took the oath, signed the roll and walked out
before the astounded clerk realized who stood before him. Then after a
canny but unsuccessful attempt to collect his mileage, Riel
disappeared. On April 15 Mackenzie Bowell, a leading Ontario
Conservative and Orange Grand Master, seconded by Dr. Schultz, now
member for Lisgar, moved the expulsion of Riel as a fugitive from
justice. Luther Holton, seconded by Malcolm Cameron, moved an
amendment to suspend proceedings pending the report of the committee
lately appointed to inquire into the claim that a full amnesty had
been promised or implied by the late government or its
representatives. J. A. Mousseau and L. F. Baby, Quebec Conservatives,
moved as an amendment to the amendment that an address be issued for a
full and immediate amnesty.

The issue thus raised cut across party lines. Members of the cabinet
took opposite sides. Ontario and Quebec lined up in more clear-cut
opposition than on any other vote in parliament before that day. Only
one Ontario member voted against the motion for Riel's expulsion,
which was carried by 123 to 68; Holton's amendment was lost by 76 to
117, and Mousseau's, which was supported only by Quebec Conservatives,
by 27 to 164.

Mr. Laurier had made his first speech in the House of Commons on the
day of Riel's hurried visit, seconding, in French, the address in
reply to the Speech from the Throne. He decided to take part in the
Riel debate, and to speak in English, in order to make his position
clear to the majority of the House. "I must apologize to the House,"
he began, "for using a language with which I am only imperfectly
acquainted; really, I should claim a complete amnesty, because I know
only too surely that in the course of the few remarks I wish to make,
I shall frequently murder the Queen's English."

The greater part of the speech was devoted to the question whether in
presuming to act in a judicial capacity, the House had observed the
rules of judicial proof. No evidence had been formally offered that an
indictment had been laid against the member for Provencher or a true
bill returned against him. It had, indeed, been shown that a bench
warrant had been issued, but where was the proof that he was
contumacious, that the sheriff had tried to execute the warrant and
had failed? In the leading British precedent, Saddlier's case, the
necessity for complying strictly with all the requirements of legal
procedure had been fully recognized. Mr. Laurier continued:

     It will be argued, perhaps, that the reasons which I
     advance are pure legal subtleties. Name them as you
     please, technical expressions, legal subtleties, it
     matters little; for my part, I say that these technical
     reasons, these legal subtleties, are the guarantees of
     British liberty. Thanks to these technical expressions,
     these legal subtleties, no person on British soil can
     he arbitrarily deprived of what belongs to him. There
     was a time when the procedure was much simpler than it
     is to-day, when the will alone of one man was
     sufficient to deprive another of his liberty, his
     property, his honour and all that makes life dear. But
     since the days of the Great Charter, never has it been
     possible on British soil to rob a man of his liberty,
     his property or his honour except under the safeguard
     of what has been termed in this debate technical
     expressions and legal subtleties....

     But there is more than all this. The member for
     Provencher has always asserted that the old
     administration had promised him an amnesty for all the
     acts in which he had taken part in Manitoba prior to
     the admission of that province into the Confederation.
     He has reiterated that assertion twenty times, perhaps.
     Called upon over and over again to declare what there
     was in this alleged promise of amnesty, to state simply
     yes or no, it has never been willing to say yes or no.
     I regard this obstinate silence of the old
     administration as an absolute confirmation of the
     pretensions of Mr. Riel and his friends; it is a case
     of silence giving consent.

     Well, if this be the case, if the member for Provencher
     was promised an amnesty for all the acts which he may
     have committed in Manitoba while at the head of the
     provincial government, is it surprising that he should
     not want to submit to those who now wish to drag him
     before the courts for those same acts? Is he not
     warranted in so acting? Is he not right in so doing in
     order that the promise of amnesty made to him in the
     Queen's name may be carried out?

     No, sir, as long as this question of the amnesty has
     not been cleared up, I for one shall never declare that
     this man is a fugitive from his country's justice.
     Moreover, this question will be soon elucidated, as no
     later than last week we named a committee to enquire
     into it. This committee is sitting at this moment and
     the House, in my opinion, would do not only a culpable
     but an illogical and inconsistent act, if it came to
     any decision affecting this question from near or far
     until it has received the report of the committee....

After making it clear that he would vote against the amendment for an
immediate amnesty on the same ground, he continued:

     I am in favour of the amnesty for two reasons. The
     first is that given last night by the honourable member
     for South Ontario [Mr. Cameron], that the Canadian
     government received the delegates of Mr. Riel's
     government and treated with him as one power treats
     with another power.... I am in favour of the amnesty
     for still another reason--because all the acts with
     which Mr. Riel is charged are purely political acts. It
     was said here yesterday that the execution of Scott was
     a crime; granted, but it was a political act. Mr. Riel
     in signing the warrant for Scott's execution did
     nothing but give effect to the sentence of a court.
     However illegal may have been that court, however
     iniquitous may have been the sentence rendered by that
     court, the fact alone that it was rendered by a court
     and that that court existed _de facto_ was sufficient
     to impart an exclusively political character to the
     execution.

     It has been said that Mr. Riel was only a rebel. How is
     it possible to use such language? What act of rebellion
     did he commit? Did he ever raise any other standard
     than the national flag? Did he ever proclaim any other
     authority than the sovereign authority of the Queen?
     No, never. His whole crime and the crime of his friends
     was that they wanted to be treated like British
     subjects and not to be bartered away like common
     cattle. If that be an act of rebellion, where is the
     one amongst us who if he had happened to have been with
     them would not have been rebels as they were? Taken all
     in all, I would regard the events at Red River in
     1869-70 as constituting a glorious page in our history,
     if unfortunately they had not been stained with the
     blood of Thomas Scott. But such is the state of human
     nature and of all that is human: good and evil are
     constantly intermingled; the most glorious cause is not
     free from impurity and the vilest may have its noble
     side.

The speech could not turn the House from its purpose, nor satisfy the
extremists in either province, but its forceful logic and its pointed
phrase established Mr. Laurier's reputation in the new field as firmly
as earlier at Quebec. A different angle is presented in a very frank
letter written in September, 1874, to his friend Young:

     We in the province of Quebec feel rather anxious about
     this amnesty question. It is not that we have any
     sympathy for those whom this amnesty is intended to
     cover. They are not now, nor ever shall be, whatever we
     may do for them, our friends or allies. But when we
     were fighting the old enemy, and making a weapon of
     everything at our hand, we took this Riel question and
     kindled the enthusiasm of the people for him and his
     friends, in order to damage the old Administration, who
     were doing nothing for his relief. On the other hand,
     at the same time you were working the other way in your
     province, pitching into the government for not bringing
     to justice these same men. So the duplicity of the
     government and its double game were a two-edged weapon
     in our and your hands.

     We can now admit that both in Ontario and Quebec we
     have been imprudent in intensifying the feelings of the
     people as we have done. But without recriminating on
     the past, we have to look squarely at the situation.

     There is but one solution. Either we must yield to you,
     or you must yield to us. Either we must bring the
     accused to trial or must grant an amnesty.

     You might say that we should yield, because you are the
     strongest. I do not believe so; you must adopt our
     policy, because it is the more liberal policy, and
     because it must some day be finally adopted; its
     adoption is only a question of time. Since, therefore,
     we must come to it some day, better to make up our mind
     at once and act accordingly.

     What I would suggest would be the following: that the
     Ontario legislature be called early this fall, that the
     local elections should be brought early next winter,
     say in January, and that the federal parliament be
     called only when they are over. If this plan were
     adopted, the ministry would not be fettered by the
     coming local elections during the session. It would be
     left to act according to the best interests of the
     country and the party, and if it had to countenance any
     unpopular measure, we would have four years before us
     to work away the bad feeling. Perhaps you do not think
     much of this amnesty question in Ontario, but to us
     here it is of the greatest importance.

It may have been only a coincidence; but it is worth noting that the
Ontario legislature was called that fall, in November, that the
Ontario elections were brought on in January, and that the federal
house was called in February.

The question continued to trouble parliament for three years longer.
Early in 1875 the governor-general, Lord Dufferin, acting on his own
responsibility, commuted Lepine's death-sentence to two years'
imprisonment. The government, while doubtless not unwilling to be
freed from the thorny task of itself advising action, could not on
constitutional grounds recognize the claim of the governor-general to
independent authority, and in 1878 Blake succeeded in establishing his
contention that the prerogative of pardoning, like other prerogatives
of the Crown, was to be exercised by the governor-general on the
advice of his responsible ministers. In February, 1875, Mackenzie, on
the ground that the government was committed by the actions of its
predecessor and of the provincial authorities, moved a full amnesty to
all persons concerned in the North-West troubles, saving only Riel,
Lepine and O'Donoghue; Riel and Lepine were to be amnestied after
five years' banishment, but O'Donoghue, who had participated in the
Fenian Raid of 1871, was excluded. At the same time, on Mackenzie's
motion, Riel, who had been re-elected for Provencher, was adjudged an
outlaw for felony, on the basis of a sentence passed by the Chief
Justice of Manitoba, and his seat vacated. This solution was approved
by all parties except the Quebec Conservatives, who demanded immediate
and complete amnesty.

In supporting the government's course, Mr. Laurier insisted that the
question could not be settled unless settled in a spirit of leniency:
"History has proved to us that there has never been peace or harmony
in any country until a free pardon has been given for all offences of
this kind." It was not a question to be decided according to race or
religion; all had their preferences, but must not be carried away by
them. Members of parliament were representatives of the Canadian
people, to give justice to whom it was due, without bias or favour. He
believed that a full amnesty should have been granted, but as the
imperial government had advised otherwise, there was nothing to be
said. This solution had the further advantage of being a compromise
between Ontario and Quebec; it should have the effect of burying the
past in oblivion and promoting a sentiment of mutual self-respect
between the two great provinces of the Dominion. And so, for the time,
Riel passed off the political scene.

Long before the controversies over the incidents in Canada's
assumption of sovereignty in the West had ended, the question of
developing this vast heritage had become pressing. Development meant
first and foremost railway-building. The Macdonald government had
agreed in 1871, as a condition of the entrance of British Columbia
into Confederation, to begin in two years and complete in ten, the
construction of a railway to the Pacific coast. There were strong
national reasons for hastening to make the West one and make it
Canadian, but none the less it was a rash undertaking. Canada then
held fewer than four million people, of whom only one hundred
thousand, chiefly Indians, lived west of the Great Lakes. Between old
Ontario and the prairies there stretched for nearly a thousand miles a
rocky and forest-clad Northern wilderness. On the Pacific coast, a
"sea of mountains" threatened to make the work of surveying slow and
the work of construction costly. It was not surprising that difficulty
was experienced in carrying the agreement through parliament, and
still greater difficulty in carrying it into effect. When the
Macdonald government left office in 1873, construction had not been
begun, and the collapse of the company headed by Allan, to which a
charter and a large subsidy had been granted, as a result both of
political exposures and money-market indifference, compelled a fresh
start by the new administration.

Mackenzie was a man of cautious temperament. Times were hard, and
after the collapse of the Northern Pacific and other American roads in
1873, money was not easy to borrow for a wilderness project. Most
people in the East believed the original agreement with British
Columbia a rash and unnecessary concession. The question of the best
route to follow required long investigation and much debate. He
therefore announced a policy of thorough survey and gradual
construction, connecting the Red River settlement with United States
lines, beginning building in British Columbia, and utilizing the water
stretches--the Great Lakes, the river system from Lake Superior to the
Red River, and the Saskatchewan system beyond. Then, as settlement
progressed and funds permitted, the gaps could be filled in.
Preferably the work should be done by a private company, liberally
bonused; this failing, by the government itself.

Mackenzie's policy had much to commend it, given the formidable
character of the task, the slender financial resources of the country,
and the hard times that afflicted all the world in the seventies. But
it did not make a strong appeal to popular imagination, nor give
sufficient weight to the national considerations which called for
welding East and West together as speedily as could be done if the
hardly won unity of the map was ever to become a reality. "The opening
by us first of a North Pacific Railroad," a naïvely frank United
States Senate Committee had declared in 1869, "seals the destiny of
the British possessions west of the 91st meridian; they will become so
Americanized in interests and feelings that they will be in effect
severed from the new Dominion, and the question of their annexation
will be but a question of time." The settlers or speculators in the
West protested against compromise or delay with a vehemence inversely
in proportion to their numbers. An adverse party majority in the
Senate blocked one promising solution. When, therefore, the Mackenzie
government left office in 1878, though elaborate surveys had been
effected and construction begun in east, west, and centre, and the Red
River practically linked with the roads to the south, there was a
general feeling that the administration had not scored success in its
handling of the railway question.

The fiscal issue was still more thorny. The Mackenzie government was
unfortunate in taking office just when the whole continent was
entering upon a period of prolonged and disastrous depression, and in
leaving office just on the eve of the return of prosperity. In the
United States, reaction from the outburst of speculation and
railway-building which had followed the close of the Civil War and the
rapid opening of the West, and in Europe, reaction from the hectic
prosperity of the Franco-Prussian War period, had brought sharp
financial crisis and enervating industrial depression. Canada could
not escape. Exports and imports declined. Bankruptcies and
soup-kitchens multiplied. The federal revenue, derived mainly from
duties on imports, declined. A demand that soon became irresistible
arose for a higher tariff, to fill the treasury chests and protect
home industry from being made a "slaughter-market."

Hitherto the tariff had not been a party issue. The example of the
United States had stirred up many eager advocates of protection, but
they were found in both parties. The Liberals, in so far as they had
been influenced by the traditions of English Liberalism, were the more
inclined to free trade, but politicians of both parties had preferred
to find safety in the compromise of "tariff for revenue with
incidental protection." Now a more clear-cut position was demanded.
The industrial depression converted many to desperate remedies. The
financial stringency, in spite of all that Mackenzie and his Finance
Minister, Richard Cartwright, could do in the way of economies,
demanded new sources of revenue. The failure of the United States
Senate to pass a wide and statesmanlike treaty of reciprocity which
George Brown had negotiated on behalf of the Mackenzie government in
1874, quickened the demand for retaliation, for "reciprocity of trade
or reciprocity of tariffs." The national sentiment stirred by
Confederation, which at first had urged many toward political
independence, now was diverted into industrial channels and gave
protection the guise of a "national policy" as well as an individual
benefit. It was significant that the "Canada First" group in Toronto,
and the Parti National into which the Liberals of Quebec had been for
a short time transformed, leaned strongly toward protection.

The issue came to a head in 1876. In the preceding year the government
had increased the main fifteen per cent schedules of the tariff by two
and a half per cent. Now the question was whether it should accede to
the protectionists' demands and raise the rates another two and a
half per cent. It seemed probable that the increase would be made.
Cartwright favoured it; Liberal members from industrial centres
insisted upon it; the "Globe" forecast it as certain. Then at the last
moment, under pressure from a deputation of Maritime-province members
who protested against any further increase in the cost of goods they
consumed but did not produce, Mackenzie, not unwilling to be urged in
the direction whither his own convictions led, decided against any
change. The astounded Conservative leaders, who had been prepared to
take the opposite tack, floundered for a few hours, and then swung
round to a demand for protection, or rather a "readjustment" of the
tariff.

Mr. Laurier's position was not an easy one. His Quebec opponents cast
up to him the protectionist tendencies of the Parti National in 1871.
Mr. Masson quoted abundantly from his speech on the address in the
Quebec legislature--"the most significant, the best and the most
eloquent speech of all." Mr. Laurier frankly admitted the charge. "I
do not deny that I have been a protectionist, which I am still, but I
am a moderate protectionist and the honourable member [M. Masson] is
an extreme protectionist." It was not a party issue. True, in England
the Liberal party had stood for freedom of trade, but the
Conservatives had accepted the same policy. "We find the Liberal party
of France divided. While Thiers is an intense protectionist, Gambetta
and Say are both free traders. The Conservatives of France, and the
great body of Conservatives of Lower Canada, do not trouble
themselves about anything except saving their own souls and cursing
the souls of other people. In the United States the Liberal party is
intensely protectionist and the Conservative or Democratic party free
trade.... In our own country the Liberal party is far from being a
unit on this subject. We have consistent and lifelong Liberals on both
sides. As to the Conservatives, I am not aware that until very
recently the party had a policy on the question; at least their
leaders never avowed any. It is true from what we have seen in the
House that the great mass of the party seems to be protectionist, but
it is equally true they have only within two or three days come to
adopt that policy openly, probably in justification of the well-known
saying that a political party, like a fish, is moved by its tail."

While free trade was probably the ultimate goal of most countries,
still "protection," Mr. Laurier continued, "is a matter of necessity
for a young nation, in order that it may attain the full development
of its own resources.... If I were in Britain I would avow free trade,
but I am a Canadian born and resident, and I think that we require
protection. But to what extent do we need it?... I consider that the
present tariff affords sufficient protection.... The depression is not
particular to this country, but is universal and affects highly
protected as well as free-trade countries. Then will it be pretended
that an increase in the tariff will restore prosperity?"

The government was sustained by a large majority in the House, but
its position in the country steadily grew weaker. Instead of the
improvement in trade on which the government had counted, they had to
face a succession of bad harvests in 1876, 1877 and 1878. It was true
that Canada could do little to restore prosperity so long as the
United States and Europe were depressed, but when Cartwright frankly
admitted that ministers were but "flies upon the wheel," the cry for
more vigorous action and for men more optimistic in their promises
grew stronger in every province.

The legislative programme of the Mackenzie government was far from
negligible. It introduced voting by ballot, ended the pernicious
system by which elections were spread over weeks or months, passed a
strong Corrupt Practices Act, and transferred the settlement of
controverted elections from parliament to the courts. It established
the Canadian Supreme Court, the Royal Military College and the
North-West Mounted Police. It passed the Scott Act, providing for
local county option in prohibiting the sale of intoxicants. Its
administrative record was strong and clean. Yet fortune was against
it. Honest administration could not satisfy a country calling for a
stronger stimulant. The very virtues of the administration told
against it. Mackenzie had taken upon himself the heavy duties of
Minister of Public Works, a department which then included railways.
He "kept the thieves away from the Treasury with a shot-gun," but he
broke down his own health and neglected his duties as party leader.

Wilfrid Laurier joined the administration when it was already
drifting to defeat. His eloquence and his character had marked him out
for the leadership of the Liberals of his province, and his famous
speech at Quebec, in June, 1877, on Political Liberalism, in which he
defined in words as moderate as they were fearless the attitude of the
party to the Church, had confirmed his outstanding position. On
October 8, 1877, the day that Joseph Cauchon left the cabinet to
become Lieutenant-governor of Manitoba, Wilfrid Laurier entered it as
Minister of Inland Revenue. He had adhered to his statement to
Mackenzie that he would not join the cabinet so long as Cauchon
remained a member.[23]

The announcement of Mr. Laurier's accession to the cabinet was greeted
with enthusiasm by his own party, and, with few exceptions, with
unusually considerate expressions of personal respect from his
opponents. His acceptance of office made it necessary to present
himself for re-election. His majority in Drummond-Arthabaska at the
general election had been substantial, his personal popularity had
continued to increase, and the honour of being represented by a member
of the cabinet might be expected to appeal to the electors. Yet it was
realized it would be an uphill fight. The tide was running against the
government, and the Opposition were determined at all costs to
administer a final blow by the defeat of the newest minister.

[Footnote 23: "We took him pretty soiled; we send him back a little
cleaner." Laurier in speech at L'Avenir, "LA MINERVE," Oct. 11, 1877.]

Both parties were well organized for the fray. Mr. Laurier was
seconded by a brilliant band of speakers, François Langelier, Louis
Fréchette, Honoré Mercier, Hector Fabre, Charles Devlin and Ernest
Pacaud, while his opponent, M. Bourbeau, himself of little
distinction, had the support of the leading Conservative speakers of
the province, J. A. Chapleau, L. F. R. Masson, J. J. Curran, and
Thomas White, with Israel Tarte directing the campaign. But it was not
in the public oratory of the Whites and the Chapleaus that Mr.
Laurier's opponents put their main trust. Drummond-Arthabaska was the
county which witnessed, a generation later, the famous whispering
campaign on the naval issue. In 1877, the same tactics were freely
used in the back concessions. The religious attitude of the Liberals
was strongly attacked: the Rouges were declared to be under the
censure of the Pope, friends of the apostate Chiniquy, allies of the
excommunicated Guibord, rebels against the authority of the bishops.
It was announced that Mr. Laurier had become "a minister"--a
Protestant clergyman. Another ingenious canvasser declared that none
of his children had been baptized, which was strictly true, as no
children had ever blessed his home. An extraordinary individual named
Thibault, a Montreal attorney, with "a baggage of blather, bluff and
billingsgate," seems from the epithets hurled at him by the Liberal
organ in the county to have been particularly effective. Possessed of
a very flexible grandmother, who was born in whatever parish he was
visiting--a few weeks later, in a campaign among the Acadians of Nova
Scotia, declared to be a daughter of Evangeline--the familiar friend
of bishops, whose carriages stood every day at his door; the
instructor of priests, who throughout the world were trained on his
treatises; flourishing a telegram of approval which he announced he
had just received from the Pope; builder of hospitals, convents,
colleges; an orator famed throughout Canada, the United States, the
Indies and Senegambia, the mild and modest Thibault proved a thorn in
the flesh to the Liberals. Not even Thibault marked the lowest depths.
The Liberals charged that money was flowing like water, and though the
charges were denied and countered, they were later fully sustained.

One incident in the campaign it always gave Mr. Laurier much pleasure
to recall. A good supporter of his listened attentively one Sunday to
a sermon in which his curé denounced Liberal Catholics. On the Monday
he sought out the curé and asked whether it would be possible for a
good Catholic to vote for a Liberal. "No: impossible," was the reply.
Next Sunday, the curé, more discreet, exhorted his flock to vote
according to their conscience. "But," the query followed, "my
conscience tells me to vote for Mr. Laurier; and yet you say if I vote
for a Liberal it will be a sin. I think I must not vote at all." The
third Sunday brought a sermon denouncing political indifference, and
insisting that it was the duty of good citizens to vote and not leave
the suffrage to the uninformed and evil-minded. "My curé," responded
the puzzled voter next morning, "I cannot vote for Mr. Laurier, for
you tell me that if I vote for a Liberal I shall be damned; I cannot
vote for Mr. Bourbeau, for you tell me that if I do not follow my
conscience I shall be damned; I cannot vote for neither, for you tell
me that if I do not vote at all I shall be damned. Since I must be
damned anyway, I'll be damned for doing what I like. I am going to
vote for Mr. Laurier."

The election was held on October 27. The result is thus stated in the
next issue of the "Journal d'Arthabaska": "Mr. Laurier is beaten by 29
votes. We have gone through the figures twenty times, before we could
credit them. The thing was perfectly impossible; we would not believe
it. Yet such is the fact, and it is with a feeling of profound
humiliation that we announce it." The defeat was a serious blow to the
government and to the new minister, repudiated in his home riding on
the threshold of his career. True, next year, when the case came to
trial, Mr. Bourbeau admitted that his agents had committed bribery,
and the election was annulled; true, in the general election that
followed, the Conservatives of Drummond-Arthabaska offered Mr. Laurier
an acclamation; but that did not repair the damage done.

It might have been expected that the young minister would be crushed
by the blow. To be accorded the rare honour of entry into the federal
cabinet in his thirty-sixth year, with scarce six years of
parliamentary experience behind him, and then to have the cup dashed
from his lips, to be flouted by his own constituents, to be rejected
in favour of an obscure and harmless local rival, was a catastrophe
which might well have brought disturbance, if not despair, to his
mind. Yet he faced the outlook with a smile, without a word of
recrimination or regret. In that hour of defeat he revealed the power
that was to be the outstanding mark of his future career. It was a
power which had its root in mind and heart, in a philosophic fatalism
and in a courage that never feared odds. He had early schooled himself
not to expect too much from life, not to be carried away by success or
cast down by defeat, to watch the players and the scenes on life's
stage with an objective calm and a recognition of the touch of
inevitableness in all they said and did. A personal courage which
never failed reinforced his philosophy, and the self-control which
made his face an imperturbable mask concealed from the world any
chagrin or regret. His distant cousin and later fellow-member of
parliament, the poet Louis Fréchette, thus in later years recorded the
day:

     A reverse does not disturb him any more than success
     exalts him. He receives it with the same smile. His
     defeat in 1877 was a terrible body blow, an unexpected,
     it might be a fatal reverse. I was with him that
     evening, along with other friends. We felt overwhelmed.
     Yet his good humour never varied by a hair's-breadth
     from his habitual calm, and his hand did not shake with
     the slightest quiver as he raised his glass to the
     toast of better days. I ask myself if, as with the
     debits and credits of a ledger, good fortune and ill
     fortune are not entered in due order as a necessary
     part of the whole account, in the calculations of that
     soul so profoundly philosophical in temper.[24]

[Footnote 24: "Les Hommes du Jour; Wilfrid Laurier," p. 14.]

It was impossible to accept the verdict as final. Mr. Laurier had an
interview with Mr. Mackenzie in Montreal. Several Liberal members at
once offered to resign in Mr. Laurier's favour. It was determined to
accept the offer of Hon. Isidore Thibaudeau, member for Quebec East.
The nominations were held on November 7, Mr. Laurier's opponent being
a former member, Adolphe Tourangeau. Both sides threw themselves into
a contest which has become legendary in the annals of Quebec politics
for its fierce rivalry and wild humour. Mr. Laurier fought with a
vigour that aroused his party's enthusiasm. The ineffable Thibault
took a part in the campaign which was excessive even for his vanity.
There are still current in Quebec verses of the songs that were sung
to drown poor Thibault's harangue. "The glory of a blagueur of this
sort," declared the "Journal d'Arthabaska," "is always ephemeral; the
public may be deceived once, but rarely twice. The success of the
Conservatives in Arthabaska had gone to the heads of Thibault and his
friends. Confident from this success, the clowns have tried to exhibit
their bear in the heart of Quebec, but the people have mocked both the
bear and the bear-leaders:

     Thibault est à l'eau,
       Dondain,
     Thibault est noyé
       Dondé.

Instead of chasing him and beating him as the Conservatives would have
done, they contented themselves with greeting him with songs." When
the polls closed on November 28, the new minister was found to be
elected by a majority of 315. "I have unfurled the Liberal standard
above the ancient citadel of Quebec," the victor announced, "and
there I will keep it waving." For over forty years it waved in old
Quebec, and the names of Laurier and Quebec East were not divided.

The outburst of joy in ministerial circles was evidence of their
tension and their fears. From Quebec to Ottawa the journey was marked
by torch-light processions, bonfires, massed bands, and speeches of
glowing triumph. In Quebec East itself, in Arthabaska, in Montreal,
thousands assembled to greet him. But when Ottawa was reached, Ottawa,
not yet blasé and cynical from over-much knowledge of politics behind
the scenes, turned out in cheering multitudes with brass bands,
hundreds of carriages and six hundred torch-bearers in procession.

One victory could not save a party. The government decided to go to
the country in September, 1878. Some members of the cabinet, including
Cartwright, thought it would have been better to appeal in June,
before the tide reached its height; other Ontario Liberals, like John
Charlton, urged postponement to give time for a campaign of education
and for something to turn up. Mackenzie was confident. The government
had given an honest and efficient administration; the ills from which
the country suffered were beyond the power of any government to cure;
surely Ontario at least would not return to the arch-corruptionists it
had spewed forth four short years before. Laurier was quite of the
contrary view. Yet, believing the government doomed, he fought none
the less vigorously, speaking for the first time in Ontario as well as
in Quebec constituencies.

The outcome exceeded the worst fear of the government and the highest
hopes of the Opposition. The Conservatives swept every province except
New Brunswick. From a minority of sixty they had leaped to a majority
of sixty-eight. Lavish promises proved more seductive than honest
deeds. The Liberals entered on a twenty-year pilgrimage in the deserts
of opposition.[25]

[Footnote 25:                       GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS


                          1872               1874               1878

                      Lib-   Con-      Lib-     Con-       Lib-    Con-
                     erals   serva-   erals     serva-    erals    serva-
                             tives              tives              tives

Ontario               5O      38        64        24        29       59

Quebec                27      38        33        32        20       45

Nova Scotia           10      11        17         4         7       14

New Brunswick          9       7        11         5        11        5

Prince Edward Island  ..      ..         6         0         1        5

Manitoba               1       3         2         2         1        3

British Columbia       0       6         0         6         0        6
                      __     ___       ___        __        __       __
                      97     103       133        73        69      137    ]




CHAPTER V

UNDER A NEW LEADER

     The Retirement of Mackenzie--Blake Becomes
     Leader--Laurier on his Fellow-Leaders--The Working of
     Federalism--Letellier Affair--Macdonald and
     Mowat--Quebec Provincial Politics--Laurier and The Den
     of Forty Thieves--Canadian Pacific Contract--Hiving the
     Grits--The General Election of 1882.


The overthrow of the Mackenzie government gave new urgency to the
question of the leadership of the Liberal party. Mackenzie had
committed the crime of being defeated. Many were ready to lay the
blame for the party's failure upon his unbending rigidity, his lack of
conciliatory manners, his over-caution. As a matter of fact, Mackenzie
had been prepared, in 1876, to compromise on the tariff issue to the
extent of a slight increase in the general rates, for additional
revenue, with any protective effects that might be incidental, but had
been prevented by the opposition of the Maritime Liberals. He had been
anxious, when he saw the tide going against him, to bring on the
elections in June instead of September; Cartwright, Mills, Burpee,
Jones, as well as Laurier and Huntington, urged the same course, but
some Quebec and Maritime members were not ready and against his better
judgment Mackenzie had yielded. Yet when all allowance was made, it
was clear that he had not kept in touch with the country, too absorbed
in the administrative work of the heaviest department to have
adequate leisure for party leadership or general guidance of policy.
Laurier had come back after his speaking tour in Ontario convinced
that the government was going to be defeated, but Mackenzie scouted
his forecast and insisted to the last that they would have a sweeping
majority.

Blake had taken no part in the election. He had been absent in Europe
while Mackenzie was straining every nerve to combat the influences of
commercial depression and the lavish promises of protectionist
soothsayers. He had stood for Bruce, but had been defeated. For one
session he was absent from Ottawa. Then the resignation of the member
of the West Durham opened a way, and in October, 1879, he was once
more returned to parliament.

During the week after the election Mackenzie had announced to several
friends his intention to resign and to let the members choose a leader
who might be more successful. But as the year went on and his fighting
spirit revived, he had thought better of it, and no resignation was
offered. When the second session came, with Blake once again in his
seat, there was still no hint of withdrawal. Through the whole session
Mackenzie did not once summon a caucus of the party, an omission
unprecedented for many years. The death of Holton and Brown during the
session robbed him of two of his closest personal and political
friends,--Holton dying in March, and Brown, shot by a drunken
discharged printer in the same month, lingering on in pain until May.
Still the lonely and austere leader gave no sign.

Discontent mounted, until finally the chairman of the caucus, "Joe"
Rymal, called a meeting on his own initiative. A resolution was
passed, asking Mackenzie to consider the question of the leadership.
Five of his late colleagues, Cartwright, Burpee, Smith, Pelletier, and
Laurier, were asked to put the matter before him. Laurier was ill, and
not present at the caucus. Smith, Burpee, and Cartwright called at his
rooms at the Russell House and asked him to go with them to
Mackenzie's office. He could not go that day. Next morning the five
went to Mackenzie's room in the Commons. Pelletier did not enter. The
others greeted Mackenzie, then stood ill at ease. Burpee mentioned
that the party had held a caucus. "Yes, I heard about that," was
Mackenzie's gruff response. A pause followed; then Pelletier entered.
Mackenzie turned to him: "Pelletier, is not this simply a conspiracy
of Mills and Rymal to put Blake in?" "No, Mr. Mackenzie," Pelletier
stammered, "we thought that in your state of health--" "There is
nothing the matter with my health. It is all a conspiracy of a few
men." Then another pause, more lengthy and more painful. At last,
seeing the older men mute, Laurier spoke out: "As a sincere friend of
yours, Mr. Mackenzie, I must tell you that it is not so: there is a
general movement. We have been defeated; you have been defeated; it is
only human nature that a defeated army should seek another general.
There is not a man who has not high regard for your services, but
there is a general feeling--" "Very well," Mackenzie broke in, "if
that is so, I shall very soon cease to lead the Liberal party."

Late that night, just as the House was about to adjourn at two
o'clock, Mr. Mackenzie rose: "I desire to say a word or two with
regard to my personal relations to the House. I yesterday determined
to withdraw from my position as leader of the Opposition, and from
this time forth I will speak and act for no person but myself." That
was all. For twelve years more Mackenzie sat on the Liberal benches,
slowly worn down by a fatal paralytic malady, taking less and less
part in the proceedings of the House, until in his last sessions he
appeared a mere ghost of the fighter he once had been. With grim lips
he saw his successors come and go; with mellowing comprehension he
watched Macdonald manage men; and then, in 1892, a year after his
great rival, he passed from the scene.[26]

[Footnote 26: It may be of interest here to note Laurier's comments,
long years afterward, on his fellow-leaders. These judgments, and
those noted in later chapters, were given to the writer, in casual and
unpremeditated but never unconsidered conversation. They were coloured
by no bias or passion; Laurier's power of objective judgment was as
marked as his tolerance, a tolerance which had its roots as much in
the cynicism born of a varied experience of men as in his native
kindliness and sympathy:

     "Cartwright was the most finished speaker in the House
     in my time, and a very effective debater. Mackenzie
     knocked his opponent down; Cartwright ran his through
     with keen rapier thrust, and usually turned the sword
     in the wound. He was a master of classic eloquence, and
     it was a pleasure, at least on our side, to listen to
     the fluent, precise, faultless English of his most
     impromptu utterance. Blake was perhaps a more
     omnivorous reader, but Cartwright was distinctly the
     most lettered man in the House. His mordant wit set his
     opponents writhing, and did not always spare his
     technical friends. His duels with Tupper, who was a
     better hand at the bludgeon, were particularly
     interesting, though the exchange of personalities was
     more intense than I had been used to in Quebec. He was
     a good Liberal, at least a good Grit, after he left
     the Tory fold, but I often felt that he would have been
     more at home in the old unreformed House of Commons in
     England, or in the diplomatic service. No man among us
     paid so much heed to international affairs, and to the
     international aspect of Canadian questions, and few had
     as far vision.

     "Alexander Mackenzie was straight and solid as his own
     masonry. He was more characteristically Scotch than his
     fellow-countryman Sir John, who had a suppleness more
     Southern. The Scotch Presbyterians who have stood for
     democracy for generations, and who were the backbone of
     Upper Canada Liberalism, never had a more upright and
     more downright representative than Mackenzie, if he did
     happen to be a Scotch Baptist; the Baptists themselves
     usually had the root of the matter in them. He was a
     thoroughgoing party man. Not that he would for an
     instant countenance any tricky or underhanded
     'practical' politics; he was too unswervingly honest
     for that, and too deeply convinced that time and the
     Lord would be on the side of the righteous. But he was
     certain that the Tories had inherited most of Adam's
     original sin, and he usually had the facts at his
     fingers' ends to prove it. We never had a better
     debater in the House; a grand man on his legs, we used
     to call him. There was no one who could stand up under
     his sledge-hammer blows. He knew his facts, he knew his
     men, he had a firm grip on principle and an
     inexhaustible fund of indignation, a mind that thought
     straight and could turn quick. He made an excellent
     administrator of a department. It was his misfortune
     that he was called to face other tasks for which he was
     not so well fitted, and that he was contrasted with the
     more brilliant and unfathomed qualities of Blake. He
     had not the imagination nor the breadth of view
     required to lead a party and a country; and he gave to
     the details of a department the time that should have
     gone to planning and overseeing the general conduct of
     the administration. But it would be well if we had more
     Mackenzies in public life to-day.

     "Blake was the most powerful intellectual force in
     Canadian political history. He had an extraordinary
     mental organization, a grasp that covered the whole and
     searched out each smallest detail. He was first and
     foremost the great advocate, a tremendous dialectician,
     analyzing and cross analyzing to the last point, major
     points and minor points, utterly exhaustive. But he was
     no mere man of words. He would have proved Canada's
     most constructive statesman had he held office. Why did
     he never reach the place his genius warranted and all
     men exported? I do not know whether the reason lay more
     in the country, in his party, or with Blake himself.
     You must remember that he took hold after a crushing
     defeat, and held the party leadership seven years.
     Seven years was not a long time in Canadian party
     warfare, and most of our opposition Jacobs have had to
     serve more than seven years in bondage. Patience was
     needed, but Blake was never patient. He was not the man
     to fight uphill battles. He was proud, and expected men
     to come to him; sensitive, for he lacked humour;
     honourable and earnest, and saw charlatans and men
     steeped in corruption holding high place in public
     life. Public life in the eighties was not a calling
     where thin-skinned men throve. The kindliest of men to
     his intimates, he wore the sensitive man's mask of
     indifference to the public. Ill-health and a nervous
     temperament unfitted him for the drudgery and
     disappointments of politics. He was moody and nervous
     when things were not going well. Yet without any of the
     lesser arts, he cast a spell over every man in
     parliament. We felt in the presence of genius, and
     would have been proud to serve to the end, had he not
     drawn himself aloof.]

Edward Blake became the leader of the Liberal party in the Dominion in
May, 1880. Wilfred Laurier had been recognized as the leader of the
Quebec wing of the party since his entrance into the Mackenzie cabinet
in October, 1877. The years that followed, until the general election
of 1887, seated the Conservatives firmly in power for the third time
in succession, brought to Blake bitter disappointment, loss of hope,
and loss of interest, and gave to Laurier the opportunity of
developing from a provincial to a national position.

Blake led the Liberal party for seven years and through two general
elections. He and his followers were filled with hope and enthusiasm
when the pilgrimage began; he was wearied of politics and politicians
when it ended. Important issues arose on which he and his party had
taken an emphatic stand, but the country was not persuaded that a
change of government was needed. The Fates, his own temperament, the
adroitness of his opponent, the renewal of dissensions in the Liberal
ranks, the influence of protected manufacturers and the loading of the
dice in electoral redistribution were to prove too much even for
Blake's great powers to overcome.

Throughout these years Laurier was a loyal and effective lieutenant.
He did not speak often: his contributions to Hansard do not make one
page for twenty of his leader's. Yet he took his part in every
first-class issue, shared in the protracted struggles which marked the
fourth and fifth parliaments of Canada, and in increasing measure came
before the public to defend his party's policy. His share in debate
varied with the issue. On such a question as the financial relations
of the government with the Canadian Pacific, Laurier had little to
say; Blake had made that issue absorbingly his own and in any case,
while possessed of no small share of business shrewdness, Laurier was
never interested and never at home in the intricacies of high finance.
On constitutional questions, the powers and privileges of a
lieutenant-governor or the encroachment of the federal authority upon
local rights, and on political questions, a uniform federal franchise
or a gerrymandering of Ontario, Laurier's firm grasp of principles and
direct interest in the political fray forced him to the front. But it
was only when an issue arose in which principle was touched with
passion, an issue that involved the pride and prejudice of race, that
went to the heart of the problem of the relation of English-speaking
and French-speaking Canadians--Riel's revolt and its aftermath--that
Laurier was fully roused and took a foremost part.

Partly because the constitution of the Dominion was still in the
gristle, partly because of the unusually close connection between
federal and local politics which marked these years, questions of the
scope and limit of federal or provincial powers were in the foreground
throughout the period.

[Illustration: EDWARD BLAKE
Leader of the Liberal Party, 1880-87]

In a federal state it was inevitable that difficulties should arise as
to the bounds and shifts of power. There had been few models to guide
the fathers of Confederation in their task. In the great republic
which was the foremost exemplar of federalism, difficulties had arisen
so serious that only the sword could cut the knot. Canada had sought
to avoid some of the weaknesses the experience of the United States
made clear, but in so doing had sailed into uncharted waters.

Macdonald, it has been observed, was opposed to the union of the
provinces upon a federal basis, literally until the hour of the
decision which made it feasible. His plan of a single parliament for
all Canada would have made Confederation impossible, since there was
not a ghost of a likelihood that Quebec or the provinces by the sea
would make the sacrifice of local freedom this involved. Time has made
it clear that if established, in a country soon to cover half a
continent and with the widest diversity of ways, of needs and
opportunities, legislative union would have proved stifling and
unworkable. Yet his influence and the influence of those who shared
his dread of States' rights tendencies resulted in the adoption of
many expedients devised to strengthen the hands of the central
authorities. The central government was given wide specified powers
and made the residuary legatee; it could appoint and dismiss the
lieutenant-governors who were the formal heads of the provincial
governments, veto the laws of provincial legislatures, appoint the
judges of the higher provincial courts, and with substantial
subsidies soothe the provinces into content.

For twenty years after Confederation, and particularly in the second
decade, the scope and workability of this constitution were constantly
put to the test. In large measures the solution was worked out by
fine-spun constitutional arguments and lengthy court decisions, which
might be of far-reaching import but did not, as Brown would say, come
home to the business and bosoms of men. When, however, the personal
aspect was involved, as in the long duel between Mowat and Macdonald,
or when party fortunes were at stake, as in Letellier's _Coup d'état_,
or when vital economic issues underlay the constitutional wrangles, as
in Manitoba's fight against the disallowance of her measures
chartering competitors to the Canadian Pacific, then lawyers' tomes
provided welcome ammunition to hurl at opponents and constitutional
formulas became party war-cries.

There was no uncertainty as to party attitude on the issue. The
Conservatives, as champions of authority and incidentally as the party
in control of the central government, exalted national unity and
federal power. The Liberals, champions of freedom, heirs of the groups
which had opposed Confederation, and incidentally as the party in
power in the foremost province, stood steadily for provincial rights.
Laurier gave this policy whole-hearted support. He had much of the
Whig respect for balanced powers. He believed that a wide measure of
local autonomy was essential in order to develop responsibility, to
avert friction and to ensure the confidence and good-will essential
for enduring unity. Only by adhering faithfully to the principle and
promise of a federal union could Confederation avoid the rock on which
Union had foundered.

It was typical of Macdonald that his first scheme for undermining
provincial autonomy was through personal control. He succeeded in
having installed in Toronto as well as in Quebec a government closely
in sympathy with the Ottawa administration. The practice of double
mandates greatly facilitated this means of control. Macdonald himself
did not hold seats in both the federal and the local house, but he
seriously contemplated entering the Ontario house to keep "a check on
the powers that be in Toronto." Laurier, in his first session in the
Quebec legislature, had summed up pithily the objection from the
provincial point of view: "With the single mandate, Quebec is Quebec;
with the double mandate, it becomes only an appendix to Ottawa." The
practice of double representation was prohibited in 1872, and though
close relations continued to exist between federal and provincial
party leaders, the loss of this direct means of enforcing uniformity
and the inevitability that some at least of the provincial governments
would always be of a different political complexion from the federal,
forced Macdonald to seek more permanent means of control.

The Letellier case raised the next question, the part the
lieutenant-governors of the provinces were to play. Were they to be
agents of Ottawa, responsible to the federal cabinet for their
conduct, or constitutional kinglets, sheltered by the assumption of
all responsibility by provincial ministers? It was not Ottawa that
first forced this issue, but Quebec. Luc Letellier de Saint-Just had
given up his post as Minister of Agriculture in the Mackenzie cabinet
in 1876 to become Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec. His coming added to
the tensity of a difficult political situation. The De Boucherville
ministry, representing the extreme Tory and ultramontane wing of the
Bleus, was beset by dissension in the ranks of its own party and by
the disintegrating influence of railway lobbyists and speculative
rings. Now it was called upon to face for the first time since
Confederation a situation under which the formal head of the
provincial administration was a man who for many years had been a
vigorous and unrelenting foe of all that his ministers stood for. The
personal factor accentuated the difficulty. Ever since entering
political life in 1850, as a man of thirty, Letellier had been
fighting Conservative and clerical influence in eastern Quebec. His
electoral struggles, legendary for their bitterness and persistence,
had intensified his stubborn convictions, and made it difficult for
him to act King Log. A man of imposing figure and address, proud,
insistent on the dignity of his position, rather indolent between
outbursts of political campaigning or deer-hunting, Letellier would
not be easily managed. Nor were his ministers the men to manage him.
Charles Boucher de Boucherville, the premier, was a man of
unquestioned probity and honour, but at the opposite pole of political
opinion, and of a dignity more at ease, as resting on the
consciousness of many generations of seigniorial eminence, though no
less insistent. His attorney-general, A. R. Angers, the real power in
the cabinet, had made his way rapidly by energy and ability, but his
domineering temper had not made him popular.

Beginning with doubtless sincere expressions of desire to work in
harmony, Letellier and his ministers were soon at outs. No one
outstanding issue developed. Petty slights and misunderstandings--now
Angers furious because of being given too low a place at a state
dinner, now Letellier piqued because formal proclamations had been
issued without his signature being authorized--prepared the way for
deadlock over the cabinet's plans for building the North Shore Railway
between Quebec and Montreal. The growing extravagance of
administration, the wide-spread public suspicion of intrigue and
corruption on the part of some of the government's supporters in
connection with the railway, and the Quebeckers' traditional hostility
to the direct taxation to which low finances had forced the
administration, were stirring public opinion and providing an
atmosphere in which the lieutenant-governor's hostility throve apace.
On March 2, 1878, after some brief interchanges, Letellier informed
the premier, in terms which amounted to a dismissal, that he would not
sanction the North Shore Bill. De Boucherville at once resigned.
Letellier sent for Joly, as leader of the Opposition, to form a new
government, and granted a dissolution. The elections were bitter. The
Conservatives denounced Letellier's tyranny and proclaimed themselves
champions of responsible government; the Liberals attacked the railway
rings and Angers _le taxeur_, and assumed responsibility for
Letellier's noble action. When they went to the country, the Liberals
had barely half as many members as their opponents: the elections
raised them to equality. With difficulty and many shifts, Joly
weathered the first weeks of the session on a precarious majority of
one, which was, however, increased steadily but slowly in
by-elections.

Then the contest shifted to Ottawa. In the spring session of 1878
Macdonald moved a vote of censure on Letellier. The Liberals, though
unaware in advance of Letellier's intention to dismiss his ministers,
and convinced that he erred in not letting events take their course
and giving the De Boucherville cabinet enough rope to hang itself,
opposed and defeated the vote of censure, insisting that the matter
was one for the people of Quebec to determine at the pending
provincial election. Next session saw the Conservatives in power at
Ottawa and Joly in power, or at least in office, at Quebec. Macdonald
hesitated to take further action in face of the endorsement of Joly by
the people, but the Quebec Bleus demanded their pound of flesh.
Mousseau moved Macdonald's resolution of the previous session.
Mackenzie opposed any attempt to go behind the Quebec electors and
insisted that if action were taken, it should be on the initiative of
the governor-general's responsible advisers.

Laurier had made a cautious defence of Letellier's coup in the
previous session. Now he took the lead in opposing Mousseau's motion.
He declared that in refusing to pass the same resolution a year
before, the majority had not expressed any opinion upon Letellier's
course, but had merely affirmed it was a matter for the people of the
province. Now the people had spoken, and had upheld his action. ("No,
no.") "What are you here for if you say no? If your course had been
supported by the people, you would not seek at the hands of this House
the vengeance which you are now seeking." Why seek to override the
judgment of the province concerned, by the votes of members from other
provinces in whose campaign Letellier had never been an issue?
Letellier had committed no crime; he had exercised a right which he
had the abstract power to exercise: "It is said that the exercise of
it was unwise, but in the estimation of the people of Quebec, that
unwise act saved the country." Letellier's act had since been covered
by ministerial responsibility. The Dominion should not interfere.
Granted that the House had a right to interfere in provincial matters
in some cases, where could the line be drawn? The same rule should be
applied to administrative as to legislative acts.

     The doctrine is now settled that the power of
     disallowing provincial laws is to be confined to those
     cases only where provincial legislatures may have
     stepped beyond their jurisdiction into prohibited
     ground; that this power is to be exercised only for the
     protection of imperial or federal rights which may have
     been invaded by provincial legislatures, but never to
     afford relief to any section of the community which may
     deem itself aggrieved by that legislation. Interference
     in such cases would be a violation of the federal
     principle, and in all such cases the aggrieved portion
     of the community must seek and can find its relief in
     the application of the principle of responsible
     government.

For the members from the province of Quebec, he concluded, to urge
federal intervention was to put in jeopardy the independence of their
province merely to snatch a party triumph.

The Bleus had their motion of censure, passed on a straight party
vote, by 136 to 51. Next they demanded Letellier's head. The
governor-general, the Marquis of Lorne, had a fellow-feeling for
lieutenant-governors, and was extremely reluctant to sanction
Letellier's dismissal after Joly had assumed responsibility and been
sustained by the people. Macdonald himself had little enthusiasm for
the task, but the Bleus would brook no delay. Macdonald offered his
half-hearted recommendation of dismissal; the marquis demurred, and
believed that he should seek instructions from the British government
before establishing an important precedent. The government was in a
quandary; should they yield, or should they resign? Macdonald decided
to yield, but with ill-grace; his statement to the Commons gave the
impression that the governor-general's action had not the assent of
the cabinet. The Bleus were furious, hooted their leader in the House,
stormed in caucus, threatened a vote of non-confidence, but fell into
line. The British authorities advised the governor-general to follow
the recommendations of his cabinet on this as on other matters.
Letellier's dismissal followed, and De Boucherville was avenged.

In the attempt to hold a lieutenant-governor personally responsible to
the federal government rather than allow him shelter behind the
responsibility of the provincial ministry, Macdonald had acted with
some reluctance. Into the conflicts with Ontario which followed he
threw himself with a vigour and tenacity rooted in strong personal
feeling. In great measure the conflicts as to constitutional rights
were merely the cover for personal rivalry and party jockeying. In
Ottawa John A. Macdonald was now supreme; in Toronto, Oliver Mowat.
They had been friends in youth, Mowat studying law in Macdonald's
Kingston office, but in the intensely personal atmosphere of Union
politics they had become bitter enemies. We have a glimpse of their
relations, and incidentally of the amenities of parliamentary life in
the sixties, in a scene in the House in April, 1861,--Macdonald
accusing Mowat of inconsistency, Mowat declaring the attack false and
unwarranted, and Macdonald crossing the floor of the House, shaking
his fist in Mowat's face, and shouting, "You damned pup, I'll slap
your chops for you." When Mowat retired to the bench, hostilities
slumbered, but when he stepped down to take control of the provincial
administration in 1872, and particularly when in face of Conservative
victory on federal issues, he strengthened his grip on Ontario, the
rivalry became acute. It was a well-matched struggle. Macdonald had
nearly forty years of parliamentary experience behind him, a mastery
of every trick of the trade, a shrewd knowledge of men, and a hold on
the public imagination that no other man could hope to equal. Mowat
was fully as shrewd, a sounder lawyer, and with a firmer grip on
himself; his deep and genuine piety--even on a trip to Paris and Italy
he is found hunting out three Presbyterian or at least evangelical
services a Sunday in byways and over grocery shops--won him support in
many quarters, and the rooted confidence that his piety would not
hamper his political tactics in an emergency prevented it proving a
handicap in other quarters. A Liberal by conviction and a Tory by
temperament, he was well equipped to give his province honest and
cautiously progressive government.

Macdonald's first line of attack was to seek to limit the physical
bounds of Mowat's domain. The western and northern boundaries of
Ontario had never been definitely drawn. Before Confederation, the
province of Canada, heir to New France, had claimed all the Western
lands that the daring of French explorers and fur-traders had staked
out: it was to be one of the ironies of history that in the very lands
that came to Ontario on the strength of these French-Canadian
exploits, later generations of politicians were to seek to limit the
French tongue by making assent to restrictive school regulations a
condition of the grant of northern Ontario homesteads. After
Confederation, the Dominion, as successor to the Hudson's Bay
Company, claimed for itself every acre southward and eastward that the
company had ever asserted lordship over. The issue hung on the
interpretation of a medley of treaties, statutes, executive acts. In
Mackenzie's time the Dominion and Ontario agreed to submit the issue
to arbitration; but when the arbitrators decided in favour of the
province, Macdonald, again in office, refused to accept the award. He
adroitly involved Manitoba in the dispute by having an act passed
granting it the greater part of the territory in dispute, and
encouraged demands from Quebec that the balance of provincial power
should not be disturbed by a huge addition to Ontario's domains.

In the session of 1882 the dispute came before the House of Commons.
There was much parade of technical interpretation, and Laurier in
rising, after listening to many disquisitions on the difference
between "north" and "northward," quoted the appeal of the Marquis of
Torcy to Bolingbroke during the negotiation of the Treaty of Utrecht:
"In the name of God, sir, order your plenipotentiaries to be less
excellent grammarians." He urged that the acceptance of the award was
an obligation of honour, and that it was a judicial finding and not a
compromise. Then, turning to the Quebec Conservatives who were
opposing the award, he declared:

     In speaking thus I know perfectly well that I shall be
     violently attacked in my own province by the members of
     the Conservative party. ["Hear, hear!"]. I see that I
     have not mistaken the prejudices of my honourable
     friends opposite. I know their prejudices too well not
     to know in advance what their argument will be: I know
     that it will be an appeal to the baser prejudices of my
     fellow-countrymen. But, sir, I have too much respect
     for the sense of justice of my countrymen to fear the
     effect of those appeals.... I have no hesitation in
     saying 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,
     I do not grudge to Ontario the extent of territory
     declared hers under this award. The eternal principles
     of justice are far more important than thousands of
     millions of acres of land. Let us adhere to those
     principles of justice, and in so doing we will have the
     surest foundation for securing justice on every
     occasion.

The boundary dispute and its sequels dragged through another
parliament, but meanwhile other phases of the same broad issue had
developed. Throughout the eighties a series of legal battles was
fought between the Dominion and the Ontario governments to determine
the limits of the legislative powers assigned each authority by the
British North America Act. One case[27] had arisen under the Mackenzie
régime, and Mowat had made good his contention that the government of
the province and not of the Dominion represented the Crown in taking
possession of escheated estates. More important in its practical
bearings was the confirmation of the power of the province to impose
conditions for carrying on business upon companies whether
incorporated by the Dominion, by a foreign or British government, or
by the province itself.[28] But it was only when the question of the
control of the liquor traffic was touched that popular and party
interest was aroused. In 1876 the Ontario legislature had adopted the
Crooks Act, stiffening the conditions under which licenses for the
retailing of liquors could be granted, and giving the licensing power
to boards of commissioners appointed by the provincial government for
each municipality. Liberals praised the Crooks Act as a progressive
measure of temperance reform; Conservatives damned it as an attempt to
build up a political machine through the patronage and the power
conferred upon the government. Macdonald decided to intervene. In the
federal campaign of 1882 he declared that if he carried the country,
as he would do, he would "tell Mr. Mowat, that little tyrant" who had
"attempted to control public opinion by getting hold of every office
from that of a Division Court bailiff to a tavern-keeper," that he
would get a bill passed at Ottawa returning to the municipalities the
power taken from them by the License Act.

[Footnote 27: In re Mercer.]

[Footnote 28: Citizens' Insurance Company vs. Parsons.]

Macdonald had still another shot in his locker,--the federal power of
disallowing provincial statutes. The British North America Act had
given the governor-general the same power of disallowing provincial
statutes which the Queen enjoyed of disallowing federal statutes.
Macdonald had early realized that if the governor-general's advisers
should be "States' rights men, who would look more to sectional than
to general interests," this power might be little used, and
accordingly in January, 1869, he had suggested to the
governor-general, Lord Monck, the advisability of seeking instructions
from the Colonial Office empowering him to act in case of disallowance
or reservation, independently or under British instructions.[29] The
correspondence between Monck and Grenville which followed led to the
issuing of instructions to refer such measures to England for advice.
When Blake became Minister of Justice, he made short work of this
arrangement, insisting and in the end securing that in this as other
connections, the "governor-general" could only mean the
governor-general in council, acting on the advice of his ministers. It
still remained to determine how the federal ministers would exercise
their powers. It was at first assumed that the veto power would be
used only in case a provincial act infringed federal or imperial
interests or was plainly unconstitutional. But in 1881 Macdonald
extended its scope. The Ontario legislature had intervened in a
lumbermen's dispute by passing an act giving the holders of limits
up-stream the right to use slides constructed in a non-navigable
stream by a limit-holder lower down, on payment of certain tolls. The
up-stream lumberman, Caldwell, happened to be a Liberal; the
down-stream man, McLaren, a Conservative. On the ground that the
provincial measure involved taking property without adequate
compensation, the Dominion government promptly disallowed it. Mowat
had it passed again, and once more Macdonald had it disallowed. The
Liberal Opposition at Ottawa raised a debate on the question,
vigorously supporting Mowat's stand, and here for the time the matter
rested.

[Footnote 29: Pope's "Memoirs of Sir John A. Macdonald." II. 297.]

As has already been noted, the prominence of the constitutional issue
was due in no small measure to the close connection between provincial
and federal politics and politicians. The Dominion was not yet a
distinct entity; it was merely a loose grouping of provinces.
Canadians, when they did not call themselves Englishmen or Irishmen or
Scotchmen or Frenchmen, were apt to think as Quebeckers or Nova
Scotians or Ontario men. It was in the provincial arena that all the
leading federal politicians had first to prove their mettle. While the
double mandate had been abolished, the personal ties between the
leaders at Ottawa and the leaders at Toronto or Quebec, surviving from
pre-Confederation days, were still strong. This provincial trend was
strengthened by the dominance at Ottawa of the two central provinces;
the Maritime provinces seemed to be isolated and apart, and the
Western lands had not yet come to a power which would compel a
widening of Ottawa horizons.

The relations between Blake and Mowat were close and friendly, but
Ontario political affairs were becoming too stabilized to offer much
room for aid or intervention. In 1875 and again in 1879 Mowat had been
confirmed in the seat to which Blake and Brown had called him in 1872.
The new leader of the Opposition William Ralph Meredith, had put
himself in a difficult position by trying to defend the
anti-provincial policy of his fellow-Conservatives at Ottawa. With
this issue, with economical and progressive administration, and with
the possibilities of patronage well employed, Mowat had little
difficulty in holding his own, without more than the normal assistance
from his party friends in the House of Commons.

In Quebec, matters were far otherwise. The two parties were divided;
the question of leadership was unsettled; cabinets came and went with
rapidity. In the fifteen years that followed 1872 Ontario had one
premier, Quebec eight. In 1879, on the defeat of the Joly government,
J. A. Chapleau, perhaps Quebec's most moving orator, had formed a Bleu
ministry. After three years of easy-going administration, Chapleau
endeavoured to replenish the empty treasury by the sale of the North
Shore Railway, the western section to the Canadian Pacific and the
eastern to a Sénécal-McGreevy syndicate. The sale was fought hard, not
only by the Liberals but by the rigid ultramontane section of his own
party, under De Boucherville and Beaubien. To bring peace, Chapleau
resigned, exchanging posts with J. A. Mousseau, secretary of state in
the federal government, but Mousseau was little more successful than
Chapleau in conciliating the De Boucherville or "Castor" wing. Nor
were the Liberals sufficiently united to take full advantage of these
dissensions. While Joly continued as leader, the most aggressive force
in the party was a young ex-Conservative lawyer, Honoré Mercier, an
astute tactician, a hard fighter, and a speaker of torrential powers.
Mercier coquetted with Chapleau and Mousseau, who were prepared to
consider a coalition with moderate opponents to save themselves from
their Castor friends. Joly strongly opposed coalition and the new
Liberal organ in Montreal, "La Patrie," under the editorship of M.
Beaugrand, attacked Mercier as being willing to sell the party's
interests for private gain. At the opening of the 1883 session, Joly
resigned and Mercier was elected in his stead, but with the distinct
understanding there should be no coalition.

[Illustration: Sir Antoine Aimé Dorion]

[Illustration: Sir Hector Langevin]

[Illustration: Sir J. A. Chapleau]

[Illustration: Honoré Mercier

FOUR QUEBEC LEADERS]

In these provincial controversies, Laurier leaned to Joly and the old
Rouge traditions. He was on friendly but hardly on intimate terms with
Mercier, and, though sympathetic with Chapleau, disliked the men
Chapleau had about him. In 1882 he became involved in a lively
controversy. He had been, along with Honoré Mercier and C. A.
Langelier, an active collaborator in a new Liberal journal,
"L'Electeur," founded in Quebec city in July, 1880, under the
editorship, first, of François Langelier, and later of Ernest Pacaud.
The group in control were young and aggressive, full of the joy of
combat, but they were also shrewd; within seven years "L'Electeur" had
undergone fifty libel suits and had never once been condemned. Now an
editorial contributed by Mr. Laurier gave rise to one of the most
sensational libel suits in the annals of Quebec. The editorial,
entitled "The Den of the Forty Thieves,"[30] made a scathing
indictment of L. A. Sénécal, a contractor and boss, high in Bleu
circles,--Chapleau, Sénécal, and a Montreal journalist, Dansereau,
forming what was familiarly known as the Holy Trinity. When suit was
brought Mr. Laurier avowed authorship and was promptly put on trial.
His counsel pleaded justification; the jury disagreed, with ten for
acquittal and two for conviction, but the ventilation of Bleu secrets
had been thorough.

[Footnote 30: The Den of the Forty Thieves: "L'Electeur," April 20,
1881. "This den of the Forty Thieves, which it was thought existed
only in the land of legend, is really in existence here among us. It
is not, as might be believed, in the heart of a forest, protected by
inaccessible rocks, guarded by armed sentinels. The robbers who seek
refuge in it are not obscure bandits, hidden by day, prowling by
night. On the contrary, they flaunt their shamelessness in the full
light of day; they strut through the streets, they drink at the public
bars, the smoke of their cigars is found on every hand. Moreover,
these robbers are not any Tom, Dick, and Harry; robbers though they
are, they have been entrusted with a glorious task, the task of
restoring the finances of the province of Quebec. This den of robbers
is the Administration of the Northern Railway, and the name of the
chief of the band is Louis Adelard Sénécal....

"The administration of the Northern Railway to-day is robbery erected
into a system. Let no one protest; the word we use does not indicate
any violence of language or any irritation of temper. We are merely
calling things by their name. When the public contracts on the railway
are awarded without competition and in return for a money
consideration; when in every undertaking carried on a percentage is
levied by the management; when the supplies used on the road are paid
for at exorbitant prices, and the ordinary commercial profits are
shared, in more or less equal parts between the buyer and seller; when
every friend of the government travels free on the road; if this is
not robbery erected into a system, what then is it? We speak with
knowledge. We know that with the very money drawn from the Northern
Railway, M. Sénécal has subsidized lavishly certain newspapers...."]

In the federal arena the tariff continued an important issue. The
government lost no time in carrying out the mandate given it in the
elections of 1878. "Tell us what you want," Macdonald told the
manufacturers, "and we will give you what you need." For textiles,
furniture, boots and shoes, sugar, foodstuffs, and iron and steel
products from pig-iron to farm implements, wants and needs were held
to be not far apart. The budgets of 1879 and succeeding years brought
marked tariff increase, accompanied by a general substitution of
specific or compound for _ad-valorem_ rates. At the same time the long
depression which had shadowed the whole continent came to an end.
Trade revived in the United States, giving a fillip to industry in its
Northern neighbour. The building of the Canadian Pacific and other
roads created a lively demand for men and goods and credit. Soon
Canada had passed from soup-kitchens and bankruptcies to rising
factory chimneys and feverish speculation. Naturally, the general
public gave credit for the improvement in industrial health to the
widely advertised patent medicine which had just been taken. They were
prepared to give the N. P. a glowing testimonial.

Even had the chances of the attack on the N. P. seemed fair, Blake
would have been reluctant to make the tariff the foremost issue. He
had no small sympathy with protection on its national side, and was
prepared to give it a fair trial, while criticizing its chief
excrescences. With this attitude Laurier agreed. He had shared in the
desire of the Parti National to give infant industries a chance, and
at this period he differed from the out-and-out protectionists more in
questions of degree and application than in questions of principle.
The party policy was defined most fully during the session of 1882.
The Opposition assault was directed almost wholly against specific
tariff schedules. Laurier moved the abolition of the duty designed to
force the use of Nova Scotia coal in Ontario and the duty designed to
force the use of Ontario wheat and flour in Nova Scotia. Paterson of
Brant attacked the sugar monopoly. Anglin criticized the duties on
cottons and woolens as discriminating against the poor. Burpee of St.
John showed that the duties on pig- and bar- and sheet-iron were
hampering the manufacturers to whom these wares were raw materials.
One and all, these proposals were voted down, but the Opposition had
prepared its fighting ground for the coming election.

But it was neither fiscal nor constitutional questions which bulked
largest in the work of the fourth parliament. Could Canada be made one
by building a tariff wall around it? Could Canada be made one by
exalting the powers of the central government? There was yet another
question to solve: could Canada be made one by building a railway from
coast to coast?

The outstanding federal issue in the early eighties, the issue which
Blake made most distinctively and most vigorously his own, was the
construction and financing of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The
weaknesses of the government's bargain provided the main staple of
Liberal attack; the eventual success of the project, the government's
overwhelming retort. This dominance of a transportation question in
the country's politics was neither unprecedented nor surprising.
"Consult the annals of Canada for the past fifty years at random, and
whatever party may be in power, what do you find?" asked a brilliant
Canadian whose premature death was a calamity to his country. "The
government is building a railway, buying a railway, selling a
railway, or blocking a railway."[31]

Railways have counted greatly in the making of Canada and in the party
struggles which have reflected the clashing interests at stake. In
every new country the railway is indispensable in opening lands to
settlement and markets to settlers, and nowhere more than in Canada,
with its vast distances, and the seal set by winter on its waterways.
But in Canada it has been not merely tonnage and homestead entries
that have been at stake, but the very nation's existence. The Dominion
was not a natural unity: for thousands of miles but a fringe of
settlement a hundred or fewer miles deep along the American border,
cut in four by the jutting northward of Maine, the thrust of the
Laurentian plateau southward to the Great Lakes and the barriers of
the Selkirks and the Rockies, it could never have been made one or
kept one unless by the railway. So it was that when in the fifties the
Grand Trunk bound the two Canadas, for all their incompatibility of
temperament, together beyond possibility of divorce; and when in the
seventies the Intercolonial united East and Centre, and justified its
builders by making ends meet politically if it could not make ends
meet financially, and when in the eighties the Canadian Pacific bound
East and West and gave reality to the map's pictured unity, the making
of railways not only made and unmade governments in the Dominion, but
had a share in the making of a people,--and in more than one way
their unmaking.

[Footnote 31: Paul Lamarche: "Conférence à la Bibliothèque Saint
Sulpice." Montreal, 1917.]

A way from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond had been the dream
of many a daring explorer and fur-trader in Canada's beginnings. The
search for the North-West Passage had lured brave English seamen to
shipwreck and death on the islands of the North. It was in the search
for "La Chine" that La Salle traced the Mississippi to the sea. La
Verendrye pushed westward almost within sight of the Rockies, and
Mackenzie to the shores of the Pacific, but the paths they blazed took
months to follow, in canoe and on foot, with packhorse and Red River
cart. The coming of the railway gave a new turn to men's visions, and
the pamphleteer and the promoter built many a transcontinental road on
paper. It was not until the prospect of bringing all British North
America within the Canadian federation emphasized the need, and the
achievement of the United States in building the Union Pacific in the
sixties pointed the way, that the question entered practical politics.

Within six years after Confederation the Dominion had staked out the
lands from sea to sea for its own and multiplied its original area
tenfold. First the central territories had been acquired from the
Hudson's Bay Company, and then in 1871 the Pacific coast colony
entered the union. Canadian statesmen were eager to have an outlet to
the Western ocean, and apprehensive of a movement which found backing
both inside and outside British Columbia to bring the whole coast
from Alaska to California under the Stars and Stripes. The ten
thousand white settlers in the new province therefore set their terms
high, urging first and foremost the immediate building of a
transcontinental railway. It was an audacious demand. The engineering
difficulties were great; for hundreds of miles the road would have to
run through territory where no white man had ever passed. Canada had
not yet four million people; the United States had not built across
the continent until it had over thirty million. Yet Macdonald accepted
the terms, agreeing to begin in two years and complete in ten a road
connecting the Pacific Ocean with the railway systems of Ontario and
Quebec. He felt strongly the national issues at stake and the
confidence that "something would turn up" which gave him his sobriquet
of "Old To-morrow" enabled him to discount the difficulties ahead.

The Pacific railway question entered federal politics in 1871 and
never left it for a score of years. The Opposition attacked the
undertaking to complete a transcontinental road in ten years as
extravagant and impossible; the government defended it with mental
reservations. The selection of a route roused local rivalries which
found political expression. The eagerness of railway promoters to
secure the fortunes which American experience had shown could be
reaped from extravagant land subsidies and dummy construction
companies led to the most audacious campaign of electoral and
legislative corruption in Canada's annals up to that time: the
revelation in 1872 of the extent to which Macdonald, Cartier, and
Langevin had drawn upon the leader of the chief Pacific syndicate, Sir
Hugh Allan, for campaign funds, drove the government out and brought
Mackenzie in. In the lean years of world-wide depression that
followed, Mackenzie's cautious policy of piecemeal construction as
finance and settlement warranted brought British Columbia to the verge
of secession. On his return to power in 1878, Macdonald continued the
policy of government construction with the same reluctance and the
same leisureliness which had marked Mackenzie's régime, until in 1880
the revival of prosperity and speculation reawakened private interest
and the opportune appearance of a new syndicate made possible a change
of policy.

A group of Canadian and ex-Canadian business men--James J. Hill,
Norman Kittson, Donald A. Smith, George Stephen, and R. B. Angus--had
found in the lavish land grants and the discouragement of the Dutch
bondholders of a thrice-looted Minnesota railway, an opportunity for a
daring stroke. They had secured the road for a tithe of its value, and
from the outset had reaped immense returns. Their road, the St. Paul,
Minneapolis, and Manitoba, ran to the Manitoba boundary, where it
connected with a Pacific branch built by the Mackenzie government from
Winnipeg south. Its owners were therefore in a strategic position to
undertake construction in Canada. They were flushed with success, and
possessed of wealth or prospects of wealth beyond Canadian compare.
Naturally their thoughts turned to the possibilities of the newer
North-West. The Canadian government, eager to abandon state
construction, met them half-way. "Catch them while their pockets are
full," was the advice given Macdonald by his shrewd Eastern Townships
lieutenant, John Henry Pope. Negotiations were begun in Ottawa in the
spring of 1880 and continued in London during the summer. The attempt
to enlist British and Continental capital in the scheme met little
success, though the inclusion of a few London, Paris, and Berlin names
enabled Sir John on his return to Canada to announce that he had "made
a good arrangement with a number of capitalists, not alone in England,
but in Germany, France, the United States, and Canada ... a
combination of forces which will not only be sufficient to build the
road, but will have additional influence to turn the great current of
German emigration from the States to Canada" (cheers). As a matter of
fact, the burden of the construction of the road was to fall almost
wholly on the Canadian investor and the Canadian taxpayer.

In October, 1880, a formal agreement was reached between the
government and a syndicate consisting of George Stephen, Duncan
McIntyre, John S. Kennedy, Richard B. Angus, James J. Hill, Morton
Rose and Company, and Kohn, Reinach and Company. In December the
contract was submitted to parliament and its terms given to the
public. In return for the building and operating of a road running
through Canadian territory from Lake Nipissing to the Pacific,
involving some nineteen hundred miles of new construction, the
syndicate was to receive a subsidy of $25,000,000 in cash, 25,000,000
acres of selected lands in the fertile belt, mainly in alternate
sections within twenty-four miles of the railway, and the seven
hundred miles of road then under construction by the government. They
were promised exemption from import duties on construction materials,
from taxes on land for twenty years after the patents were issued, and
on stock and other property forever, and from regulation of rates
until ten per cent. was earned on the capital. They were guaranteed
also against competition from United States roads in the West; for
twenty years the Dominion was to charter "no line of railway south of
the Canadian Pacific, except such lines as shall run southwest or to
the westward of southwest, or to be within fifteen miles of latitude
49°." The road was to be completed by 1891.

No sooner were the terms of the contract announced than Blake and the
Opposition launched an attack upon it in full force. That opportunity
should have been given for competitive offers from other sources under
the new conditions; that the government was virtually building the
road and then presenting it free to the syndicate; that the financial
expenditure involved would ruin the country; that there was no
certainty that the syndicate could or would supply the capital
required for immediate expenditure and ultimate operation; that the
blanket choice of land and the exemption from taxation and
particularly the monopoly of construction for twenty years would
hamper and discourage settlement, were the main counts in their
indictment. A vigorous press and platform campaign was carried on
during the Christmas recess. A rival company was organized by
prominent capitalists of Liberal leanings, including Sir William
Howland, William Hendrie, A. R. McMaster, A. T. Wood, Allan Gilmour,
George A. Cox, P. Larkin, James McLaren, John Walker, John Carruthers,
and Alexander Gibson. It submitted an offer to build the road for a
smaller subsidy, to waive the exemption and monopoly clauses, and to
give the government the "privilege" of postponing the Lake Superior
and mountain sections. When parliament met in January, Blake moved a
six-page omnibus amendment and exposed every weakness of the contract
to galling and overwhelming fire, while his followers in turn offered
some twenty-four specific amendments as his share in the comprehensive
campaign of his leader.

In a speech made in the House in December, 1880, Mr. Laurier attacked
the extravagant terms of the syndicate bargain as the inevitable
outcome of the government's rash policy in promising the immediate
completion of the road. If the road were built gradually, as the real
necessities of the country required, there would be no need to
alienate to the syndicate vast areas of land which would better be
reserved for homestead grants: "Perhaps if that system were followed
there might in a few years be fewer millionaires in this country, but
there would be a much greater number of happy and contented homes."
The company would be the landlord of the North-West, a monopoly with
power to dominate the settlers either through its ownership of land
or its control of the rates on their products. The company's exemption
from taxation would retard competition and cripple the development of
local governments. While "a Canadian Pacific railway must be built on
Canadian soil," the construction of the link north of Lake Superior
might well be postponed for some years. It was a delusion to imagine
that a contract such as this would end the government's obligations;
it merely added new inconveniences and new dangers.

Neither in the country nor in the House did the efforts of the
Opposition avail. The government had definitely committed itself
before parliament met, and its large majority backed it without
flinching. The public was more impressed than deterred by the sums
involved. There was general distrust of state construction. Before the
organization of the syndicate no alternative and feasible method had
been suggested. Stephen and his associates were men of standing and
tried capacity. The money-bags of London, Paris, Berlin, and New York
were thought to be open to them. The benefits to the country from an
energetic policy of construction were immediate; the ills the
Opposition stressed were of to-morrow. The people welcomed a policy
which was courageous and spectacular. For all the desire for economy
in the abstract, a proposal to spend tens of millions of the country's
and other peoples' money on railway projects and to create a wide
demand for goods and labour of every kind proved immensely popular;
henceforth that lesson was to be so clear that every politician who
ran could read it.

The government's new policy had many strong features which the passing
of time has only emphasized. Both parties and the country as a whole
favoured private construction and operation. No government department
of that day or this could have shown the energy and fertility of
resource, made the necessary extensions and connections not only in
eastern Canada but in the United States, undertaken the many
subsidiary enterprises and assumed the initiative in seeking and
building traffic which marked the operations of the Canadian Pacific.
Probably the government was right, again, in deciding to give the
contract to the Stephen rather than to the Howland syndicate. The
offer of the latter group was far from being the sham the government
forces charged, and its members were hard-headed and energetic men who
had made a success of large enterprises. Yet they were not first in
the field, and it is difficult to imagine that they would have shown
more courage or persistence or carried out their obligations more
honourably than the men to whom the task was given. The public aid
granted was large, but large aid was needed to induce investors to
face the risks not only of building through unknown wildernesses but
of operating a road for which little assured traffic was in sight. The
country assumed a heavy burden, but the national issues at stake, the
necessity of unifying the far-flung Dominion, justified no small
sacrifices.

Yet time has also brought out more clearly the weaknesses charged
against the contract. The exemption from taxation threw undue burdens
on straggling settlers, and the monopoly clause, inserted to attract
English investors, who, in Van Horne's phrase, hated a monopoly at
home as they hated the devil but looked with favour, born of
experience of the working of competitive railways, on monopoly abroad,
did not attract capital and did deter and hamper settlers. The land
bonus failed to produce capital when capital was needed most, though
it doubtless facilitated the raising of funds in later days. The
private capital put into the road was not adequate, and in consequence
the company was compelled to go to the government for aid again and
again.

Unfortunately but inevitably the Canadian Pacific project became a
party question. It is the function of an Opposition to oppose, a
course which often leads to factious quibbling but usually ensures
responsible and guarded action. Smarting under electoral defeat,
mindful of the earlier overthrow of the government on a railway issue,
honestly convinced of the danger and extravagance of the new
proposals, the Liberals launched a strong attack on the whole policy.
Not content with assailing the weak points of the contract, they were
led into taking a position of hostility to the whole project. The
complicated financial questions involved gave Blake's critical powers
a congenial task. The government forces, convinced of the essential
soundness of the policy, with equal lack of discrimination felt called
upon to defend every line and comma of the bargain. The action of the
Canadian Pacific in entering territory in eastern Canada which the
Grand Trunk had long considered its private preserve, and the bitter
quarrels that followed between the two roads, would in any event have
been reflected in politics. The result was that for three general
elections railway issues were always prominent and more than once
decisive.

Once the contract was ratified by parliament, no time was lost in
grappling with the task ahead. A remarkable organization was built up.
George Stephen, with his indomitable persistence and unfailing faith;
R. B. Angus with his financial experience and shrewd judgment; James
J. Hill, until in 1882 divergence of interests between the St. Paul
and the new road led him to retire, and William C. Van Horne, whose
tireless driving force and freshness of resource marked him as one of
the great railway men and one of the outstanding personalities of his
time, were chiefly responsible for the efficiency and the success
which the road achieved. Donald A. Smith's name had not appeared in
the directorate until 1882; it had been only two years before the
formation of the syndicate that Macdonald, who never forgave Smith for
casting what proved to be the deciding vote in turning him out of
office on the Pacific scandal, and Tupper, who vigorously backed his
chief, had exchanged with Smith hot and bitter words, in a fugue of
"coward," "liar," "traitor," which fills six staccato pages of
Hansard, ending with Macdonald's shout, "That fellow Smith is the
biggest liar I ever met"; a little time was necessary to permit the
wrath of the two Highlanders to cool to the point where they could
see how their interests ran. After 1882 Smith, though a member of the
executive, took little part in the management; it was not until the
road was a success and an imperial asset which might serve as a basis
for an imperial title that he took any interest in it, half persuaded
by the chance that he drove the last spike, into believing, as the
public believed, that he had driven most of the earlier spikes.

For the first three years the company concentrated on the plain and
prairie sections, while the government completed the unfinished
portions of the seven hundred miles it had under way, including the
line from Fort William, on Lake Superior, to Winnipeg, and the Pacific
coast section from Port Moody eastward to Kamloops. After Van Horne
took hold, remarkable progress was made in construction. A time
schedule was prepared and rigidly observed; track-layers and
bridge-gangs followed hard on the grader's heels; week after week two
and even three miles of track were laid every day. By December, 1882,
the end of steel was 965 miles from Winnipeg and only four miles short
of the summit of the Rockies.

The building of the prairie section was accompanied by the usual wave
of speculation and seeming prosperity. The railway itself called for
men, tools, supplies, in endless procession. Into the West tens of
thousands of settlers and speculators poured, first by St. Paul and
later through Fort William, staking out homesteads, filing pre-emption
sections or buying Winnipeg or Brandon town lots to unload on the
tenderfoot following. In Ontario, those who did not go west bought
town lots or sold farm machinery or organized colonization companies
to buy and people the land the government offered for a dollar an
acre. In 1882 sixty thousand settlers swarmed into Manitoba, and
nearly three million acres were entered by homesteading, pre-emption,
or sale.

It was in this atmosphere that the general election of 1882 was
fought. It was a C. P. R. election, as 1878 had been a N. P. election.
The Liberal leaders found it difficult to get a hearing. It was
useless to question the financial strength of a company which was
setting new world records for rapidity of construction. It was wasted
breath to attack the government's lavish terms before men who were
pocketing real or paper profits from the activities those grants had
caused or primed. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company itself was not,
so far as was known, a participant in the campaign, but its seemingly
assured success was an overwhelming argument in support of the
administration. The Liberals had attacked both the N. P. and the C. P.
R., and at this stage the success of both appeared to vindicate
Macdonald's policy.

Before appealing to the country, the government made assurance doubly
sure by a measure which the Liberals denounced as a colossal
gerrymander. The decennial census of 1881 had shown numerous shifts in
the balance of population and rendered necessary a redistribution of
seats in the federal parliament. The opportunity was improved to the
full in the Redistribution Bill. The bill dealt almost exclusively
with Ontario and Manitoba, the only provinces where the ratio of
population to that of the pivotal province, Quebec, had materially
changed. Under cover of granting Ontario four additional
representatives, the boundaries of fifty electoral divisions were
redrawn, with complete disregard of county boundaries or consistent
principles. There was no question that the purpose was, in Macdonald's
phrase, "to hive the Grits," and to snatch for the party in power an
unfair advantage at the polls. Blake riddled the inconsistencies and
denounced the injustice of the project, but the majority paid no heed.
The gerrymander was forced through. Macdonald had won; Blake had lost.
What was more serious, parliament and the country had lost: for many a
year the level of political life in Canada was lowered by this triumph
of unscrupulous partisanship.

The general elections were held on June 20, 1882. Neither Blake nor
Laurier had any expectation of winning, but they hoped that the
government's majority would be cut. The result left the parties
virtually as they were. The government once more carried two seats to
one, with a majority in every province except Prince Edward Island and
Manitoba. Quebec continued to be the chief Conservative stronghold,
returning three Conservatives to one Liberal, whereas in Ontario the
popular vote was evenly divided, though the gerrymander gave the
government three seats to two.[32] None of the government leaders were
defeated; among the Liberals, Cartwright, Mills, Huntington, Anglin,
Smith, Jones, Laird, and Laflamme had fallen. Mr. Laurier was
re-elected by a safe but decreased majority in Quebec East. The
country was too prosperous to seek a change. Manufacturers,
shareholders in Northwest colonization companies, dealers in railway
supplies, wished to let well enough alone. As for the Canadian
Pacific, the country wanted the road, and did not care to read the
fine print in the contract. Depression had killed the Mackenzie
government; prosperity gave the Macdonald government a new lease of
life.

[Footnote 32:

                             1878                       1882
___________________________________________________________________
                 Conservatives  Liberals    Conservatives  Liberals

Prince Edward Island   5           1              4           2

Nova Scotia           14           7             15           6

New Brunswick          5          11             10           6

Quebec                45          20             48          17

Ontario               59          29             54          38

Manitoba               3           1              2           3

British Columbia       6           0              6           0
__________________________________________________________________
Total                137          69            139          72       ]




CHAPTER VI

RAIL AND RIEL

     Blake, the Orange Order, and Home Rule--The Canadian
     Pacific in Difficulties--The Strike of the Bleus--The
     Crisis Surmounted--The Prairie in Transition--The
     Half-Breed Grievances--Riel's Career--The Storm
     Breaks--The Hanging of Riel--The Parliamentary
     Debate--The Issue in Ontario and Quebec--Saskatchewan
     Muskets--Laurier's Indictment--Before Ontario
     Audiences--The Aftermath.


The parliament which met in February, 1883, and was dissolved in
January, 1887, was the fifth since Confederation, the fourth under
Macdonald's premiership, the second with Blake leading the Opposition.
In its four sessions the tariff counted little; for the earlier years
the Canadian Pacific dominated discussion, and at the close the
Franchise Act and the Riel rebellion.

Macdonald changed but did not strengthen his cabinet. Sir Charles
Tupper succeeded Sir A. T. Galt as Canadian High Commissioner in
London, endeavouring at the same time to hold his post as Minister of
Railways. He was keen to try his hand at the diplomatic tasks opening
up in Britain and the Continent, but did not wish to be side-tracked
at home, and so for two years he shuttled back and forth across the
Atlantic. John Carling, John Costigan, Frank Smith, and A. W. McLelan
were the new men, with J. A. Chapleau in J. A. Mousseau's stead.

After his first disappointment at the size of the government's
majority, Blake was heartened by the rise of issues which gave the
scope and promise he desired. The intricacies of the financing of the
Canadian Pacific particularly appealed to him, and he made himself
master of the situation. The only drawback to his interest was that he
was so much the master that nothing was left for his lieutenants but
to repeat some of the countless points he had made. Not until the
franchise debate toward the parliament's end was a satisfactory
division of labour arranged and full use made of the abundant capacity
in the ranks behind him. Outside of the House, Blake carried on an
active and persistent campaign. Now or never, he believed, the
government must be overthrown.

Laurier continued to divide his time between his law practice, his
library, and the House. Arthabaska still gave a pleasant home and a
comfortable practice; he found time in 1882 to perform the onerous
duties of mayor. In the House he took part in the debates rarely, and
only on the major issues. Outside he spoke frequently, mainly in
Quebec. He joined Blake in a speaking tour through the Eastern
Townships in the summer of 1883 and Cartwright in Montreal later. At
Mercier banquets, at St. Jean-Baptiste celebrations, at the Club
National's annual dinner, he discussed politics and public life with a
power of detachment, of seeing woods as well as the trees, of
scrupulous fairness combined with vigorous condemnation, which gave
him a place apart in the life of Quebec.

The provincial situation gave ground for reasoned hope. In Quebec, the
bitter fight between the Chapleau and the Castor wings of the
Conservatives and the indefatigable assaults of Mercier were
undermining the government's position. To the older Liberals, more
attached to principles than to office, it was, however, not wholly
satisfactory to see the way to a Liberal victory being paved by an
alliance between Mercier and the most irreconcilable among the
Castors. A reorganization of the government under Dr. J. J. Ross, gave
somewhat more weight to the Castor wing, but did not wholly heal the
breach.

In Ontario, Mowat was again victorious in the general elections of
1883, though with a reduced majority. Mowat forced the fighting on the
provincial-rights issue, called a Liberal convention which proclaimed
undying resistance to jealous premiers and jealous Bleus, fought the
boundary case and its sequel through in the courts, won out on the
control of liquor-licensing, and wore out Macdonald's resistance by
passing again and again his Rivers and Streams Bill. Handicapped by
the unpopular side in these repeated controversies, Meredith sought to
change the ground. Each party accused the other of angling for the
Irish Catholic vote. Certainly the relations between Mowat and
Archbishop Lynch were extremely cordial and the influence of the
palace was thrown to the Liberal side. On the other hand, a frank if
not flagrant bid for support was made by the Conservative forces,
seemingly not without Meredith's knowledge, by the issue on the eve of
the 1883 election of a pamphlet, "Facts for the Irish Electors,"
declaring that the Conservative party had been "the faithful sentinel
of our interests," and that Mowat had always been an enemy and
Meredith a friend. After the election the Opposition swung around and
struck for the ultra-Protestant vote. Was not Archbishop Lynch Oliver
Mowat's father confessor? Had not the government submitted the "Ross
Bible," a collection of Scripture readings for public schools,
prepared under the direction of the Minister of Education, George W.
Ross, to Archbishop Lynch, who had suggested the substitution of
"which" for "who" in the Lord's Prayer, and did not all Protestants,
in the words of a fervent orator, stand for "the Bible, the whole
damned Bible"? Had not the same sinister influence resulted in the
exclusion of Scott's "Marmion" from the school curriculum because of
its assumed reflections on the Church? Meredith himself did not relish
"riding George Brown's old Protestant horse," but many of his
followers had no such scruple.

In the federal house a somewhat parallel situation arose. By accident
or by design Blake took a stand on two questions, Irish Home Rule and
the incorporation of the Orange Order, which was calculated to win the
sympathies of the Catholic and particularly the Irish Catholic voter.
Macdonald's power had rested for many a year on the votes of Catholic
Quebec; there could have been no complaint had Blake deliberately
sought a similar support in other provinces. Yet, so far as that
subtle mind may be understood, it seems clear that Blake's stand was
taken because of deep and sincere conviction.

The Loyal Orange Association, which had grown up in Ulster as a secret
society seeking to perpetuate "the glorious, pious, and immortal
memory of the great and good King William who saved us from popery,
slavery, knavery, brass money and wooden shoes," and incidentally to
maintain Protestant ascendancy, was stronger in Canada than in any
other country outside Ireland itself. Particularly in Ontario, it was
overwhelmingly Conservative in sympathies. The leaders of the order,
therefore, were not unmindful of the embarrassment which might be
caused a Grit government when in 1873 they pressed in the Ontario
house for incorporation. The bills were passed by a slight majority
and with a divided cabinet, but Mowat had them reserved for the
governor-general's pleasure, only to have Macdonald decline to take
any such responsibility and to send them back to Toronto. In the
following session Mowat introduced and passed a general measure
whereunder any benevolent society might find incorporation, but the
Orangemen pressed again and again for more direct recognition. Then in
1883, with much division of opinion, they sought in the Dominion house
a general incorporating act which would give them standing and the
right to hold property in every province. The government induced its
sponsors to drop the bill, but it came up again in 1884. Blake was not
content to give a silent vote. Speaking appropriately on March 17, he
declared that the matter was wholly for the provinces, that no secret
society should be given state recognition and that the Orange order
was merely a disguised branch of the Tory party. The measure was
thrown out by the Liberal and Quebec vote, and not again brought
forward. Blake was lectured, pamphleted, attacked from all quarters,
but he held to his position.

On the Home Rule issue, Blake felt still more keenly. A Protestant of
Protestants, evangelical in all his traditions and surroundings,
great-grandson of a man who had been killed fighting the insurgents of
'98, he had yet been brought by his study of Irish history to an
intense and abiding sympathy with Irish aspirations and a vigorous
condemnation of the arrogance and stupidity of English policy. Now
that Parnell and Gladstone were making Home Rule a fighting issue, he
and the great majority of men of Southern Irish descent in Canada felt
that Canada should have a word to say in the settlement. They met with
stubborn opposition. Ulstermen were numerous and well organized; the
memories of Fenian plots and Fenian Raid fiascoes were strong in
Canada; besides, if Canada claimed the right of self-government, why
not permit the United Kingdom to enjoy the same privilege? When in
1882 John Costigan, Macdonald's leading Irish-Catholic supporter,
introduced in the Commons a resolution advocating Home Rule, Blake
supported it vigorously, and condemned Costigan for his weakness in
consenting to water down his original resolution to meet Macdonald's
objections. When Lord Kimberley, Secretary for the Colonies, snubbed
the Canadian parliament frigidly for its presumption, Blake declined
to be snubbed by a Kimberley, and returned to the charge. In 1886 he
raised the question in a powerful speech, and once more put the
Canadian parliament on record.

But these were only side issues. In the new parliament, the Canadian
Pacific continued to be the foremost question. The going was now
becoming harder for the railway and incidentally for the government.
It had been comparatively easy to build a road through the prairie,
and though the plains to the west presented some engineering
difficulties, and it was necessary to transport supplies long
distances, the obstacles hitherto had been in no way unprecedented.
But now the company was facing the mountain and Lake Superior
sections. Its engineers had to find a way through the seemingly
hopeless tangle of mountain peaks in the Selkirk range which faced the
Kicking Horse Pass, to carve a track down the cañons of the Columbia
and to guard the line against the threatened avalanche of mountain
snows. North of Lake Superior they had to bridge a way over swamp and
muskeg so voracious that to-day in one muskeg area seven layers of
Canadian Pacific rails are buried, one below the other, and to blast a
way through miles of Laurentian rock so massive and unyielding that it
was necessary to build a dynamite factory on the spot and to spend
half to three-quarters of a million a mile on more than one stretch of
road.

At the same time the promise of rapid settlement and development of
the West faded away. Frost and drought fell on the land and settlers
who had not yet learned the ways of the country reaped little for
their pains. The Manitoba boom collapsed, homesteaders abandoned their
holdings, mushroom cities fell away again into prairie, colonization
companies were wound up and Eastern speculators saw their profits
shrivel to nothingness. Homestead entries, which reached 7,500 in
1882, fell to one-half that number in 1883, and one-fourth in 1885.
Later, the North-West rebellion, the discontent produced by monopoly
railway rates and the high price of farm implements, the counter
attractions of Minnesota and Dakota and the adverse propaganda of
rival railways deterred settlement. Not for a score of years was the
West to come into its own and justify the faith of those who had urged
and those who had shared in its development. With construction tasks
ahead which would call for tremendous outlay and with the West and
Western lands condemned by the sudden slackening of settlement, the
Canadian Pacific in 1883 faced a series of financial crises which all
but brought it to bankruptcy.

The company's situation was made more difficult by the necessity of
acquiring feeders and connections, particularly in the East. It was
realized from the beginning that so long as the Canadian Pacific
remained a single-track road which began in the wilderness near Lake
Nipissing and ended on the untenanted Pacific it was not likely to
secure paying traffic. The management therefore sought to build or buy
or lease branches in the thickly settled territories of the East
which soon equalled in mileage the whole main line. The greater part
of this expansion was effected through leases or the organization of
subsidiary companies, involving no great drain on the treasury of the
parent road. Yet some mortgaging of the company's funds was involved,
and what was perhaps more serious, the Grand Trunk was roused by this
invasion of its preserves to assail its young rival at home and block
it in the money markets across the sea.

The financing of the Canadian Pacific presented several unique
features. The country contributed the major part of the funds required
for construction. It presented the company with a clear gift of seven
hundred miles of road, which cost the government over $35,000,000 to
survey and build but undoubtedly was worth much less to the company.
It granted a cash subsidy of $25,000,000, paid as earned, a larger
proportion being assigned per mile to the mountain and Lake Superior
sections than to the plains. It granted a land subsidy of 25,000,000
acres of selected land. The land was not immediately available; the
competition of the free homestead land alongside, and the campaign of
depreciation carried on by the Grand Trunk offset the energetic
endeavours of the company to find settlers and a market for its
holdings. Bonds issued on the security of the land grant met little
greater response. By 1885 some $11,000,000 had been secured from this
source.

The amount of private capital invested during construction was less
than the promoters expected and less than the interests of both the
company and the country required. The millions of English, French, and
German capitalists proved a mirage, and the original nucleus of the
syndicate, the St. Paul group, found themselves compelled to shoulder
a greater part of the burden than they had foreseen. In seeking
capital, to an extent unprecedented in railway history they relied
upon the sale of shares, and avoided the issuing of bonds. This policy
was adopted deliberately as a result of close study of the fate of
many United States roads which had found themselves hopelessly
waterlogged by excessive bond issues, and had been forced by
foreclosure out of the original shareholders' hands. If it succeeded,
fixed charges would be kept low until earning power was well
developed. Whether or not it could succeed was more doubtful: to
market the stock at a price which would bring into the treasury funds
comparable to what could have been secured by the sale of bonds was no
easy task. The first issues of stock were marketed at a heavy
discount. Of the $100,000,000 authorized, the first $5,000,000 was
subscribed by the syndicate at par, and the next $10,000,000 at 25;
$50,000,000 additional was sold privately or through American bankers
at prices netting about 50; from the $65,000,000 stock issued during
the construction period about $31,000,000 came into the treasury. It
was partly with the intention of making the stock attractive that the
company paid interest on it, water and all, from the beginning. The
Railway Act permitted the payment of interest during construction, but
not to exceed six per cent. on the actual investment.

Toward the close of 1883 the company seemed to have reached the end of
its tether. Funds were badly needed, and investors were coy. To meet
this situation, the executive, fortified by the advice of New York and
London financiers, adopted the precarious policy of using current
funds to secure future dividends and thus render the stock more
attractive to prudent purchasers. They undertook to purchase from the
Dominion government a guaranty of a three per cent. dividend for ten
years on the stock already issued, by depositing $16,000,000, the cost
of such a terminable annuity calculated at four per cent. Over half of
this sum was deposited in cash, and security given for the early
payment of the balance. A similar provision was to be made on the sale
of any part of the remaining $35,000,000 of unissued stock. This
dividend might be supplemented from any current surplus available, but
for ten years shareholders would be assured at least of their three
per cent.

The policy was of doubtful expediency at the best. It meant locking up
for dividends funds that were urgently needed for construction. It was
not calculated to reassure investors as to the earnings of the road
once the ten-year guaranty expired. It was open to serious criticism
from the point of view of the people who were advancing the main share
of the funds. What would have been the outcome of the guaranty policy,
had it been persistently followed, is matter for conjecture. Scarcely
had the arrangement been made when the smash of the Northern Pacific
sent all Western railway stocks down in sympathy, and Canadian Pacific
sold lower than before the guaranty. Clearly, rescue would not come
from the general investing public.

In this emergency the Canadian members of the syndicate gave of their
cash and credit to the utmost. Stephen and Smith pledged their St.
Paul and other stocks in Montreal and New York to make advances to the
road, but to no lasting purpose. There seemed only one recourse
left,--the silent partner who had sunk so much in the road that
perchance he could not refuse to advance the remainder. They
determined to ask the government for a loan of $22,500,000. Twenty-odd
million, it must be remembered, meant infinitely more in the frugal
eighties than it meant in later years when heady prosperity and
particularly unsettling war and rash inflation had changed all
standards. In the eighties it meant nearly a whole year's revenue of
the federal government.

Late in the winter of 1883 Stephen, Angus, McIntyre, Van Horne, and
the C. P. R. solicitor, J. J. C. Abbott, went down to Ottawa to seek
to convince Sir John of their and the country's necessity.[33] They
drove out at night to Earnscliffe, and put their case before him,
making it plain that every other resource had been exhausted and that
the sum they asked was the least required to see them through.
Macdonald heard them patiently, but gave no comfort: "Gentlemen, I
need not detain you long. You might as well ask for the planet
Jupiter. I would not give you the millions you ask, and if I did the
cabinet would not agree, and if they did it would smash the party.
Now, gentlemen, I did not have much sleep last night, and I should
like to get to bed. I am sorry, but there is no use discussing the
question further." They tried to argue the matter, but he would not
listen. Somewhat apprehensive, from the beginning, of the greatness of
the country's risk, sharing in the reaction that had come with the
slackening of settlement and the bankruptcy of Western roads, not
convinced that this application would be the last, fully aware of the
opening a further loan would give an eager Opposition, Macdonald felt
the time had come to call a halt. He bowed the petitioners out and
went to bed.

[Footnote 33: The writer is indebted to the late Sir William Van Horne
for the details of this incident.]

Blue and dejected and silent, Stephen and his associates drove back to
town, to wait for the four-o'clock morning train to Montreal. They
decided to spend the hours that intervened at the old Bank of Montreal
cottage. Here John Henry Pope, who was acting Minister of Railways
during Tupper's absence in England, had rooms. They found him lying on
a couch, reading, with a strong habitant cigar in his mouth and a
glass of whiskey at his side. He turned over, offered cigars, put his
feet up on a chair, and questioned, "Well, what's up?" Stephen told
him briefly, while McIntyre danced about excitedly. Pope listened,
got up slowly, lighted another cigar, put on his old otter cap and
shaggy coat, called a carriage--it was then after one o'clock--and
departed, with the words, "Wait till I get back." An hour and a half
later he returned, entered without a word, kicked off his rubbers,
hung up cap and coat, poured out another glass of whiskey, and lighted
a cigar, all with deliberation and an impassive face, while his
visitors waited, with their hearts in their mouths, for the fateful
word. "Well, boys," he broke the silence at last, "he'll do it. Stay
over till to-morrow." Pope had roused Macdonald out of bed and put the
case before him with the intimacy of an old friend and the
effectiveness of a shrewd party counsellor. "The day the Canadian
Pacific busts," he summed it up, "the Conservative party busts the day
after."

[Illustration: George Stephen
Later Lord Mount Stephen
First President]

[Illustration: Richard B. Angus
Vice-President]

[Illustration: Sir William C. Van Horne
General Manager and later President]

[Illustration: Donald Smith
Later Lord Strathcona
Director]

BUILDERS OF THE CANADIAN PACIFIC

The deputation saw Sir John and his colleagues the next morning.
Macdonald was grouchy; Alexander Campbell opposed any further aid;
Tilley, the Minister of Finance, wanted to take the road over. Pope
fought it through in council, and the agreement was made. It still
remained to convince the party. For this no half-hearted convictions
would suffice. Tupper was cabled to return from England. He approved
the cabinet's decision, and stormed it through caucus, appealing to
the members as party men, whose fortunes were bound up with the road's
success, and as Canadians, who could not allow a great national
enterprise to fail within sight of completion. To give the appearance
of a _quid pro quo_, the company was to agree to complete the
transcontinental line by May 1, 1886, five years in advance of the
time provided in the contract. The majority appeared to be convinced,
but danger was not yet over. The Quebec Bleus determined to take
advantage of the government's straits to force through another railway
deal which had hitherto hung fire. The Conservative administration in
Quebec was in financial difficulties, as a result of extravagance and
jobbery. It had put itself in funds once by the sale of the provincial
North Shore Railway, from Quebec to Montreal and Ottawa, to a local
syndicate and eventually to the Canadian Pacific. The policy announced
by the Dominion government in 1882 of subsidizing new roads which
though wholly within one province might be considered of general
advantage seemed to open a way for further relief. The provincial
government and the Bleu members at Ottawa demanded that this policy be
made retroactive so far as the North Shore line was concerned. The
cabinet had refused. Now the Bleus had the government at their mercy.
They withdrew from the House during the debates on the Pacific
resolutions, meeting in conference by themselves, while M. Mousseau
and his colleagues in the provincial administration came to Ottawa to
join in presenting the ultimatum. Finally, Macdonald capitulated and
the strike was called off. The government's majority was safe, and the
Opposition, if it could not be answered, was at least outvoted.

When the resolution granting the province of Quebec $2,394,000, "in
consideration of their having constructed the railway from Quebec to
Ottawa ... a work of national and not merely provincial utility," was
before the House, Blake moved and Laurier seconded an amendment
deprecating singling out Quebec for such aid when other provinces had
equally devoted large sums to building roads of national utility.
Laurier particularly warned the members from Quebec against the danger
of coercive action:

     It is always a fault on the part of a minority in any
     legislative assembly to throw obstacles in the way of a
     government in order to force them to act against their
     will.... All questions coming before this House should
     be decided according to justice, equity and fairness.
     If the Pacific resolutions were just and reasonable, it
     was their duty to adopt them; if they were unjust and
     unreasonable, it was their duty to object to them.
     There is in the Dominion no body of men who should
     always be so careful to adhere to principles of justice
     as the Quebec contingent in this House, which must
     always be in a minority.

For this stand, Laurier was warmly attacked in the province of Quebec,
but he held a great open-air meeting in the Champ de Mars, in Quebec
city, and was triumphantly endorsed by his constituents; his old
school friend and later political antagonist, Israel Tarte, editor of
the chief Quebec Conservative organ, "Le Canadien," who was for the
moment at outs with his party, joined in his defence.

The Pacific crisis had passed for the moment, but soon it reappeared.
The loan was quickly exhausted in rapid and costly construction. The
government, as security for the advance, had taken a mortgage not
only on the main line but on all the company's interests in the
Eastern branch lines, their unsold stock, and their land grant. When
further funds were needed, it was found impossible to borrow or to
sell stock with a blanket mortgage covering every asset of the road.
Once more in the winter of 1884-85, the directors approached the
government. They had been forced at last to abandon their policy of
relying on stock rather than on bond issues. They requested that the
unissued $35,000,000 stock in the government's hands be cancelled,
that an equal amount of five per cent. first-mortgage bonds be issued,
and that the government should accept a portion of this issue as its
security, leaving the balance free for disposal in open market. The
government refused any further aid or variation. Early in January Van
Horne met Pope: "Why not put us out of our misery? Let us go off into
some corner and bust?" Pope replied that the government was too much
afraid of what Louis Riel and his half-breed followers in the
North-West might do, to undertake any further entanglements. They
feared a dangerous outbreak in the spring. Riel's emissaries were out
stirring up the Indian tribes. When the grass grew, the Indians would
move. Three thousand men could cope with them at the start; later it
might take two years and fifty thousand men. "I wish your C. P. R. was
through." Van Horne had had experience in military transportation
during the Civil War. "When could your regiments be ready?" "The first
or second week in March." Van Horne told Pope and later the council
that he could get regiments through from Kingston or Quebec to
Qu'Appelle on the Saskatchewan in ten days. The members of council did
not credit him. "Has any one a better plan?" asked Macdonald. None
had, and Van Horne was told to prepare. There was a stretch of two
hundred and fifty miles between Dog Lake and Nipigon, which did not
seem passable; in half of it no tracks were laid, and where rails
were, rolling-stock was lacking. Yet six days after the first troops,
the batteries from Kingston and Quebec, had left Ottawa, on March 28,
they were in Winnipeg and could have been in Qu'Appelle in seven. When
the troops reached the first gap of forty miles they were bundled into
sleighs and driven along the tote-roads through the woods. Then came a
stretch of ninety miles with rails laid but only three locomotives and
forty flat-cars. The sleighs and teams were loaded on the cars and the
whole outfit carried through the bitterly cold Lake Superior snows.
Then a trackless gap, then a flat-car stretch, and so on to the end.
In more than one place rails had been laid down over the snow and ice.
Camps and provisions had been supplied along the way. It was a triumph
of energy and organization. In 1870 it had taken Wolseley and his men
more than two months to reach Fort Garry; had the same delay occurred
in 1885, and assuming also that the government had persisted in its
supine neglect of the grievances which gave Riel his opportunity, the
half-breed rebellion and the Indian rising would have proved
infinitely more dangerous and destructive. Why, knowing the danger,
the government took no effective steps to check it in advance, is
another question.

The national service thus conspicuously rendered by the Canadian
Pacific made the government more amenable to its requests and the
Opposition less vigorous in its resistance. Van Horne even suggested
that the Canadian Pacific ought to erect a monument to Louis Riel. The
government agreed to cancel the $35,000,000 stock and authorized the
issue of a similar amount of bonds. For the thirty millions which were
due it from the company, including the 1884 loan and the balance due
on the 1883 guaranty agreement, it was arranged to accept $20,000,000
first-mortgage bonds, and the unsold twenty million acres of the land
grant as full security. Of the $15,000,000 bonds thus available for
sale, the company was to deposit $8,000,000 as security for a
temporary one-year loan of $5,000,000.

Yet the company was not yet out of the woods. The Opposition must
register its criticisms and point to the confirmation of its earlier
prophecies, while the government was not prepared to carry through the
necessary legislation until the success of other measures was assured.

All that could be said against the government's policy, in this and
previous years, was said in an extraordinarily comprehensive and
powerful speech by Blake, which was said to have taken seven weeks to
prepare and seven hours to deliver. Replying to Pope and Chapleau, who
had moved the government resolutions, Blake asked why they had
neglected to refer to the acquisition by the Canadian Pacific of the
Laurentian road, in which Mr. Chapleau's friends were interested, or
the International, equally close to Mr. Pope; scored the lack of
detailed information in the company's financial reports, the use of
company funds to sustain artificially the stock of the Canada
North-West Land Company, and the bargain, on terms not revealed, with
a construction company in which the railway directors were interested;
attacked the policy of rapid and reckless construction, increasing
cost, scattering settlement, and stimulating speculation; insisted
that the company's difficulties were due to its own peculiar financial
policies; calculated the aid given by the government, in cash subsidy,
loans, and the proceeds of lands or land bonds sold, omitting
completed government road and unsold lands, to the close of 1884, at
$60,000,000, and the cost up to that time of the construction and
equipment of the main line at only $58,000,000; declared that the
$37,000,000 raised by the company from private sources had gone half
into Eastern expansion and connections and half into paying or
securing dividends; calculated that up to February, 1886, the company
would have paid out in dividends or set aside to pay future dividends
$24,500,000, which was exactly the sum invested, excluding the last
pending issue of $10,000,000 stock, disposed of for half its par
value, so that "in substance the proceeds of the stock are divided
among the stockholders; we are to raise money to build the road, and
the country is to pay tolls for all time to meet the dividends on the
stock so divided"; and concluded by demanding that the company,
instead of seeking $15,000,000 fresh money, should take back the
$14,000,000 left in the government's hands for dividends, and put it
into the building of the road.

D'Alton McCarthy, in the only other speech in the debate which was at
all comparable to Blake's in force and keenness, replied that the
expenditure on Eastern branches was indispensable and rightly
considered a part of the original plan; that the money paid out or set
aside for dividends as yet was only $20,000,000 and that some
$7,000,000 of this was furnished by the government and set aside as a
charge against the road; that the guaranty arrangement, while
extraordinary, was made in good faith and on expert advice as the only
feasible way of securing further funds; and that the money thus set
aside had been entrusted by the government to the Bank of Montreal for
the payment of dividends, that shares had been sold on the strength of
this agreement, and that the money could not be withdrawn without
repudiation and breaking of faith.

It was, however, not the Opposition's argument but the government's
delays that worried the company. Though the government had a majority
of nearly two to one in the Commons, they were not finding it easy to
jam through the long and contentious programme of legislation they had
prepared. The session was the longest in Canadian annals, lasting from
January 29 to July 20. Aside from the North-West rebellion and the
Canadian Pacific issue, other questions proved contentious,
prohibition of liquor traffic, civil-service reform, subsidies to
minor railways, and particularly the Franchise Bill, devised to
substitute in federal elections a uniform federal property franchise,
based on lists prepared by federal agents, for the provincial
franchise, based on lists prepared by provincial and, incidentally,
Liberal, agencies. Seven-hour speeches, an unbroken three-days'
sitting, and ninety-three divisions of the House, were features of the
contest.

To no one did the session appear so long as to the directors of the
Canadian Pacific. Macdonald insisted that the railway legislation
would not be passed until the Franchise Bill was out of the way; he
would not risk the postponement of a measure on which he had so set
his heart, and considered it good tactics to compel all other seekers
of legislation to use their influence to clear the way. The middle of
July came, and the railway was in hard straits. Its credit and the
credit of its backers had again been stretched to the breaking point.
The credit of its friends had been utilized; Frank Smith, who besides
being a cabinet minister in Ottawa was a wholesale merchant in
Toronto, had given credit for essential supplies beyond the point of
safety. A payment of four hundred thousand dollars had to be made
before three o'clock on July 11, to a creditor who declined to accept
any renewal. The Canadian Pacific, which in later days could borrow at
will by the hundred million, could not meet this claim. Its directors
faced a receivership and loss of control. At twelve o'clock the bill
passed and the road was saved. Stephen went to London, and without
difficulty floated the $15,000,000 bonds through the Barings. The
$5,000,000 borrowed from the government was returned without being
used, the company incidentally finding almost as much difficulty in
giving it back as in securing it, since Mackenzie Bowell, who was
acting premier during Sir John's absence in England, could not
understand a railway paying back a loan ahead of time, and suspected a
trap.

On November 7, 1885, the last spike in the main line was driven. A
train carrying Smith, Van Horne, and Sandford Fleming had come through
from Montreal to Craigellachie, in Eagle Pass in the Gold Range, where
eastward and westward track-layers were to meet. Van Horne had
determined there would be no ceremonious speeches or driving of golden
spikes. Less than two years before, the Northern Pacific had
celebrated its completion by organizing an excursion, at a cost of a
third of a million, to take part in driving a last golden spike, and
as the train laden with investors and brokers and champagne passed
through what seemed to the watchers from the car windows the
hopelessly arid deserts of Montana, on a scorching summer day, the
guests had one by one slipped out at passing stations to use their
free telegram blanks to order their stock unloaded; and scarcely had
the golden spike been driven when the road was bankrupt. But Smith
would drive a spike, if an iron one, and Van Horne gave him his way.
The train passed on to Port Moody, crossing the continent in exactly
five days.

To the general public, the great task was over. To the men in control,
it was only beginning. Ballast had to be laid, wooden trestles filled
with earth or replaced with stone or steel, curves straightened,
grades lessened, rolling-stock increased, and terminals built or
extended. What was more difficult, traffic had to be built up. For a
thousand miles the road ran through mountain range and rocky waste.
Even in plains and prairie, settlement had gone little way: when the
Canadian Pacific began construction, the white settlers in the belt of
twenty miles on each side of the line between Portage la Prairie and
Kamloops, some twelve hundred miles, could be counted on the fingers
of one hand. To find business the company capitalized its scenery,
carried buffalo bones while waiting for wheat, pushed its Ontario and
Quebec extensions, developed traffic at both United States ends of the
line, sought settlers in England, aided industries at strategic
points, organized a loyal and efficient staff, and by unremitting
effort met operating expenses, paid a dividend, and accumulated a
surplus every year from the beginning. The company's obligations to
the government were promptly met. In March, 1886, the cash advanced
upon the security of the $20,000,000 bonds was repaid, and for the
balance of the indebtedness the government agreed to take back some
six million acres of the land grant at $1.50 per acre. By the
following year the company was in uncontrolled possession of its
property, and the prophecies of repudiation confounded.

The Canadian Pacific was not a vital issue in the general election of
1887. The road was built; the loans had been repaid. What would be its
measure of eventual success, whether the prophecies of monopoly and
stagnation would come true, were matters for future accounting. Issues
that appealed more to the average voter had arisen. And yet the
Canadian Pacific was not out of politics, as the election of 1891 was
to make clear.

    *    *    *    *    *

Now in the middle eighties the sudden flare of armed rebellion and
bloody conflict drove all thought of abstruse constitutional disputes
and tariff or railway issues from men's minds. The insurrection of the
French-Canadian half-breeds on the banks of the Saskatchewan in 1885
put the newly cemented unity of the Dominion to a perilous test. And
hardly had the hasty levies of Canadian volunteers restored order in
the West, when in the East a yet severer strain came with the outburst
once more of the sectional and racial and religious strife which
Confederation had sought to allay.

Canada had had its share of the difficulties that face a colonizing
people in contact with a less advanced civilization. In dealing with
the Indian tribes who held the land when the white man came, no small
success had been attained. The British government had set a splendid
example of just and considerate treatment, and Canadian governments
fully maintained that policy. The country was spared the countless
breaches of faith which marked the dealings of the United States with
its Indian wards, and spared the wars and massacres which followed as
retribution. But in dealing with the half-breeds of the Western plains
the Canadian government displayed neither understanding nor diligence,
and the penalty was paid in the disturbances on the Red River in 1870
and on the Saskatchewan in 1885.

When the Dominion took over from the Hudson's Bay Company the vast
Western empire which had long been held as a hunting-preserve,
Canadians hastened to enter the promised land. Local administrations
were set up, roads and railways built, lands surveyed, homestead
policies adopted. It was recognized that the land was not wholly
masterless. Tens of thousands of Indians, Cree and Blackfoot, Piegan
and Sarcee, Chipewyan and Ojibway, still roamed the plains. Treaties
were made to extinguish the Indian title, granting the Indians in
return ample reserves and moderate annuities. So far, so good, but
equal care was not taken to help the half-breed adjust himself to the
new conditions. The half-breed descendants of the French or Scotch or
more rarely English hunters and traders of early days and the Indian
women with whom they mated, formed communities distinct alike from
Indian and from white. They manned the canoes, drove the Red River
carts, hunted the buffalo, and gathered the furs for company and
private trader, and in more ways than one linked the peoples from
which they were sprung. A simple people, of few needs, reckless and
light-hearted, they were none too well prepared for the new way of
life that came with the opening of the West to settlement. It was not
merely new governors and irksome laws, but a change in the economic
basis of the community that came upon them; reckless hunting and the
activities of American traders brought the endless herds of buffalo to
an end, and the railway brought a flood of settlers into the plains.
The old free days were over.

For such a people the shift from a nomadic hunting life to a settled
agricultural one would have involved difficulties at best. The
bungling and dilatoriness of the new governing authority doubled the
difficulty. On the Red River the failure of the Canadian government to
realize that the wilderness they were taking over held thousands of
men with hopes and fears and pride of their own, men who were not
content to be transferred to newcomers like herds of cattle, led to
resistance which the Canadian government--in which at the time no
shred of legal right to the Red River territory was vested--humorously
termed "a rebellion." The government mended its ways, conceded the
community immediate self-government, and gave liberal land grants to
the old settlers; only the echoes of Riel's fatal blunder in the
execution of Scott disturbed the further development of the Red River
country. But the transition was not yet completed. Thousands of
half-breeds, irked by the closer settlement or fleeced of their
land-scrip by the greed of speculators and their own improvidence, had
drifted away, some south of the border, but the greater number further
west, settling along the far-winding banks of the Saskatchewan. Even
here, as for the Boers in earlier days trekking further and further
from the seats of authority, isolation did not last long; government
land-agents and surveyors, mounted police and magistrates, came north
as the advance guard of the great wave of settlement that was expected
with the completion of the Canadian Pacific.

For a second time the problem of adjustment arose and for a second
time it was bungled. The half-breeds on the Saskatchewan sought
certain privileges. They asked for patents for the lands on which they
had squatted before the surveyor came. They asked that the river-lot
system of surveying should be adopted in their settlements rather than
the rectangular; they had staked out their land according to the
custom in force on the Red River, and on the St. Lawrence and the
Richelieu for centuries before, in long narrow strips, twenty or forty
chains wide and a few miles deep, sometimes with pasture-land running
two miles further back, a system which strung all the households close
together along the sociable river street; and now the government's
surveyors were applying the American system of rectangular sections
and townships, perfectly logical and geometrically exact, but taking
no heed of the lie of the country, or the social instincts of the
settlers. They demanded, also, that every half-breed should be granted
scrip for a quarter-section of land or thereabouts, in extinguishment
of the Indian title; in Manitoba it had been agreed that the
half-breeds, while entitled, like white men, to earn a homestead by
fulfilling settlement duties, should, in virtue of their Indian blood,
receive a free grant of a few acres of land in the many-million-acred
country to which their ancestors had the claim of first occupation.

The requests were just and reasonable. There was no valid ground for
refusal or delay in granting patents. The river-lot method of survey,
while not without its drawbacks, in itself and as a part of a wide
system, had a clear balance of convenience in its favour. The demand
for scrip was more controversial. It might be held illogical, as the
government contended, for the half-breeds to claim both the white
man's homestead and the Indian's free grant, but the homestead was
given on fulfilling settlement duties and the free grant on claims of
blood; the Manitoba precedent could not be set aside, and in any case
the area involved was but a speck on the map in comparison with the
vast domains available and out of which tens of millions of acres were
being carved for railway-builders and colonization companies. It might
be urged that the granting of scrip would prove of no lasting benefit
either to the half-breed or to the country; in Manitoba the
half-breeds, like the Canadian volunteers of 1870 to whom similar
grants had been made, had for the most part sold their claims for a
few dollars or gallons of whiskey to speculators who thereupon held
choice lands out of use and forced real settlers to go far from town
and railway. There was no doubt, further, that speculators in the
Saskatchewan country, and particularly in Prince Albert, were egging
the half-breeds on, with very definite designs upon their scrip. Yet
this did not lessen the force of the half-breeds' claim, and, had the
government willed, ways could have been found to prevent the
alienation of the land for a time.

Beginning in the last years of the Mackenzie régime, and increasing in
urgency with the imminence of the rush of settlers from the East, the
half-breeds pressed their claims. Petition after petition was sent to
Ottawa; money was scraped together to send a deputation to the same
far tribune; local officials and even the North-West Council, a
nominated body of little more than advisory powers, urged compliance.
Sometimes a little was done; the Scotch half-breeds at Prince Albert
were given their river-lot surveys, but this only emphasized still
more the grievance of the French half-breeds at St. Laurent. Often
much was promised, only to be forgotten. Time and again the
authorities undertook to give the matter their most careful
consideration. Then the petitions were pigeonholed and the Métis
waited in vain. The petitioners were few and far away; they had no
votes, no representation in parliament. From 1878 to 1883 the Ministry
of the Interior, to which was confided the oversight of the Western
territories, was in the hands of Sir John Macdonald, never interested
in the details of administration, trustful, as his nickname of "Old
To-morrow" indicated, in the healing power of procrastination, and so
little interested in the West that until 1886 he never set foot in the
domain which had so long been under his charge. From 1883 to 1885 the
ministry fell to Sir David Macpherson, an easy-going retired
capitalist, more interested in the dignity than the duties of his
post. And while Ottawa slumbered, the Métis watched the rising of the
tide of settlement and nursed their grievances.

The prairie was dry as tinder, but had not fate sent the spark the
blaze might never have come. It was not the first time nor the last
that ministers had lacked energy and sympathetic vision. Without the
coming of Louis Riel, they and the country with them might have
escaped the penalty. But unfortunately Riel had come.

Louis Riel was born in the Red River country in October, 1844. He had
little Indian blood in his veins, but that little was enough to make
him at home with his half-breed kindred. His father, Jean-Louis Riel,
had come from Berthier in Quebec a few years before; on his father's
side, Jean-Louis traced his descent through four generations of
Canadian-born, back to a Reilly from Ireland and back of that again to
a Reilson from Scandinavia; his mother--Louis Riel's grandmother--was
a Montagnais Indian. Jean-Louis married Julie Lagimodière, the
daughter of the first white woman to settle in the West; the mother,
Marie Anne Gaboury, had come from the Three Rivers country in 1807
with her coureur-de-bois husband, Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière, narrowly
escaping death by storm on the lakes and death by poison at the hands
of a squaw with whom Jean-Baptiste had lived before going east, and
had survived countless perils and hardships through a life of nearly a
hundred years. Jean-Louis, married to the daughter Julie, in turn
hunter, student for the priesthood, farmer and miller, became a
leading figure in the Red River community and led the Métis in 1849 in
resisting and smashing the claim of the Hudson's Bay Company to a
monopoly of the trade in furs.

Louis Riel the younger early showed a precocious talent which drew the
attention of Mgr. Taché. On his suggestion, a wealthy lady of
Terrebonne, Quebec, Mme. Masson, had him sent to the College of
Montreal in 1858, with a view to training for the priesthood. Riel's
training ended abruptly in 1864. His father had died, leaving him head
of a family of nine. More important, he had developed erratic traits
which convinced Mgr. Taché of his unfitness for the service of the
Church, dreaming wild dreams of a religious mission he was destined to
perform, demanding from Montreal acquaintances $10,000 to carry out
his crusade, urging his feeble-minded old mother to sell her effects
to aid him, and then, after she had journeyed four hundred miles by
ox-cart to meet him, writing her that a new mission required him to
remain in Montreal. After three years' aimless drifting in Montreal
and the Western States, this "spoiled priest" or stickit minister came
back to his father's farm at St. Vital.

The unrest prevalent in the settlement over the coming transfer of
control from the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada, and the high-handed
attitude of some of the Canadian party in Red River gave Riel his
opportunity. His own faith in his destiny, the ascendancy which his
half-learning, his mystic faith, his aggressive audacity, and his
knowledge of Métis ways gave him over his fellows, soon made him
dominant in the community. The claims he championed were reasonable in
the main, and Riel would have held a place as one of the minor
prophets of liberty in Canada had it not been for the execution of
Scott. Resistance always irritated and inflamed him and disturbed the
precarious balance of his mind; like General Dyer of Amritsar, he
could not endure the thought of being despised and laughed at for his
weakness, and determined to teach a lesson to the minority which had
challenged his control. It fell to Thomas Scott to play the victim.
Scott, an Ontario pioneer, had served, none too peaceably, in a
Dominion surveyor's party, had joined in the attempt of the Portage la
Prairie settlers to overthrow Riel, and, when it failed, had been
confined with his fellows in cold and crowded quarters in Port Garry.
A taunting word singled him out for disfavour, and after a farcical
trial, without proof of the flimsy allegations brought against him,
without defence, Scott was condemned for treason to the provisional
government and next day, in spite of protest and intercession, met
death at the hands of a firing-squad.

Scott was executed on March 4, 1870. On February 24, 1875, Riel was
declared an outlaw. Through the intervening years Riel was the centre
of a political storm. He had fled from Fort Garry a quarter-hour
before Wolseley's troops arrived in August, 1870, sought refuge for a
year south of the border, placed his Métis followers at Governor
Archibald's disposal to fight the Fenian raid of 1871, accepted
Macdonald's direct and indirect bribes of $4,000 to leave the country
till the elections of 1872 were over, escaped arrest a year later
under a warrant for the murder of Scott, secured election unopposed to
the House of Commons in 1874, and even appeared for an audacious
moment in the House at Ottawa. Then came the general amnesty, with the
provision that the pardon was to extend to Riel and Lepine only after
five years' banishment.

Riel's banishment was brief. He spent a short period in the United
States, undergoing confinement for a part of this time in a private
asylum maintained by Major Edmond Mallet in Washington. But he was
soon back in Canada, where the sympathy of the people of Quebec and
the willingness of the Ottawa authorities to let slumbering dogs lie
assured him safety. For three years his presence in the province was
an open secret. Early in 1876 he entered a Montreal church and noisily
interrupted mass, insisting that as he was superior to any of the
dignitaries present he should be allowed to conduct the service. He
was arrested and on the certificate of two doctors immured in Longue
Pointe asylum, near Montreal, under the name of Louis David. His
outbursts of violence proved too much for the sisters who conducted
the asylum, and under the name of La-Rochelle, he was transferred to
Beauport asylum, near Quebec. From these headquarters, during his
lucid intervals, he sallied forth from time to time, travelling by the
underground route from parish to parish.

It was during this period that Mr. Laurier had his first and last
interview with Louis Riel. One Sunday he was invited by the curé of a
neighbouring village to come over for dinner, to meet an interesting
guest. Mr. Laurier was surprised on entering the study to find himself
face to face with the man whom he had helped to vote into temporary
exile. He was much impressed by the vigour and daimonic personality of
the Métis leader, and found him surprisingly fluent and, on the whole,
well informed, on American and European politics. When, however,
religion was touched upon, Riel's deep-set eyes lit up, and he
launched into an excited and jumbled harangue, boasting vaguely of the
great mission for the further revelation of God's will which a
heavenly vision had urged him to undertake. From that day Laurier
never had any question as to Riel's insanity, though he had as yet no
surmise of the lengths to which this fatal twist was once more to
drive him in the West.

Riel was discharged from Beauport in January, 1878. He returned to the
United States, carried himself so strangely on the streets of
Washington that he was taken in charge by the police, spent some
months in Dr. Mallet's sanatorium, went west to Minnesota, and thence
to a Métis colony at Sun River, Montana, where he opened a school,
became the leader of the community, stirred up his fellows to resist
paying customs duty, took it upon himself to hold an unauthorized poll
during a local election, and in consequence found himself for a brief
sojourn within the walls of Fort Benton. Later he became an American
citizen, married a Métis woman with much Cree blood, and settled down
as a teacher in a little industrial school maintained by a Jesuit
father at St. Peter's Mission, in Montana. In the summer of 1883 he
paid a visit to Red River, where he met his cousin and former
co-worker, Napoleon Nault, a Métis trader, and possibly laid the lines
for the invitation to return to Canada. A little later he seems to
have made a visit to Quebec to consult eminent theologians as to his
mission, and to have received little comfort.

It was to this strangely equipped leader that the half-breeds of the
Saskatchewan turned when their grievances found no redress. Early in
the summer of 1884 James Isbester, Moïse Ouellette, Michel Dumas, and
Gabriel Dumont journeyed the seven hundred miles to Montana, and
begged Riel to return to their aid. After some demur, he agreed,
observing that he had claims of his own to press against the
government. Making his headquarters at Batoche, on the South
Saskatchewan, Riel began his agitation, quietly, and received much
support not merely from the French and English half-breeds, but from
English settlers who were feeling the pinch of drought and frost, of
railway monopoly and tariff exactions, and welcomed any expression of
discontent that might force Ottawa to deal with the problems of the
West. But as winter came on, Riel began to talk wildly, to hold
meetings in secret, and to flout the authority of the priests with
whom he had at first been in close harmony. At the same time he threw
out hints, which did not reach those in authority, that if the
government would again pay him a sum to leave the country, say
$100,000, or $35,000 or perhaps only $10,000 the half-breed question
could be settled: "I am the half-breed question."

The government was repeatedly informed of the storm that was brewing;
government officials, local newspapers, missionaries, settlers, urged
consideration.[34] But Ottawa could not be roused from its lethargy.
In 1883 Blake moved for papers on the half-breeds' grievances, but
none were brought down for two years; in 1884 Cameron called for a
committee of investigation, but the reply was given that there was
nothing to investigate. True, the time-honoured method of silencing
agitation by giving office to the agitators was adopted: Louis
Schmidt, secretary of the committee which had invited Riel, was made
an assistant land-agent, and of the delegates, Isbester was offered
and Dumas accepted a post as Indian farm instructor, while Gabriel
Dumont received a ferry license; it was not surprising that Riel
thought his silence worth at least ten thousand. In January, 1885,
further, authority was taken to appoint a commission to enumerate the
half-breeds, but the government still insisted that the claim to the
same treatment accorded the Manitoba half-breeds could not be
conceded; in February approval was telegraphed of a report on
half-breed claims at St. Laurent, made months before. Steps were taken
to strengthen the North-West Mounted Police and to ascertain the
possibility of carrying troops from eastern Canada over the
uncompleted Canadian Pacific tracks in case of an outbreak, but to
take effective and comprehensive action to avert the outbreak was
beyond Ottawa's capacity or its will. On the very day that Duck Lake
was fought, Macdonald reiterated his opposition to the Métis demand
for scrip. Ten days later the policy was reversed, and instructions
were given to issue the scrip so long denied. But a concession at that
late date could only condemn the previous refusal; it could not avert
the consequences.

[Footnote 34: Charles Mair of Prince Albert, an Ontario pioneer who
had been a vigorous supporter of the Canada party in Red River in
1869, made four pilgrimages to Ottawa to seek to rouse the government
to action. Failing, in April, 1884, to receive a hearing, he returned
to Prince Albert and brought his family back to Ontario to escape the
threatened rising; a final appeal in December was equally futile. Of
the April attempt Lieut.-Col. George T. Denison has written: "When he
returned to Toronto from Ottawa he told me 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.]

In March, 1885, the storm broke. Irritated by the government's
continued neglect and roused to action by Riel's hypnotic eloquence,
the half-breeds of St. Laurent drifted into rebellion. A rumour spread
by Lawrence Clark, a former Hudson's Bay Chief Factor, of the approach
of a force of police to arrest Riel and his followers made the
hesitating throw in their lot with the reckless. A provisional
government was established with Riel as president and Gabriel Dumont
as military chief. The rebels seized stores and occupied the
government post at Duck Lake; a party of police and volunteers sent
out under Major Crozier to protect the post encountered a half-breed
force and in the fight that followed, in which the police seem to
have fired the first shot, twelve of Crozier's men, including a nephew
of Edward Blake, were killed and the rest forced to retreat. The news
of the Duck Lake disaster called all Canada to arms. Two thousand
troops were raised in the West, and over three thousand, including
small artillery units from the permanent corps, were rushed from the
East, the gaps in the Canadian Pacific being covered by marching or in
sleighs along rough tote-roads.

There were three centres of disturbance: Batoche, on the South
Saskatchewan, where five hundred half-breeds rallied round Riel and
Dumont; Battleford, on the North Saskatchewan, where an Indian chief,
Poundmaker, responded to the Métis call, and the Fort Pitt country, on
the same river, between Edmonton and Battleford, where another chief,
Big Bear, was gathering his braves. The total number of half-breeds
and Indians in the field never greatly exceeded a thousand, but there
were tens of thousands of Indians on the plains with whom fighting was
a deep-rooted habit, and Métis settlements along the river in more or
less sympathy with their brothers of St. Laurent. The Canadian Pacific
ran parallel to these centres and about two hundred miles south. From
this railway base, three columns were thrown north. Their rapid
advance prevented the insurrection from becoming general, but it was
no easy task to suppress the forces already in the field. Dumont,
practised in buffalo-hunting, a born leader of men, with an excellent
eye for country, was fully a match for his antagonists in capacity,
but numbers, artillery, and the dash and courage of the Canadian
volunteers broke down all resistance. After an indecisive engagement
at Fish Creek in April, Batoche was carried by storm on May 12.
Further west, Battleford and Edmonton had been relieved, but isolated
settlers had been forced to flee in terror or had been taken captive
by looting Indian bands; at Frog Lake, near Fort Pitt, five men,
including two Catholic priests, had been murdered by members of Big
Bear's tribe. After the fall of Batoche, the Indian movement
collapsed, and by June all was quiet again on the Saskatchewan.

Riel was the prophet rather than the captain of the movement. His
assurance drove the Métis into action, but once the conflict had
begun, Dumont took the lead. Charges of personal cowardice were in
fact made against Riel later, but were disproved by the burden of the
evidence. He was a man of deeply religious instincts, and in the first
weeks of his visit he had been on good terms with the Catholic
missionaries in the North, one of whom, Father André, had been
instrumental in securing his return from Montana. But during the
winter their suspicion of his revolutionary bias and his growing
heterodoxy brought a cooling, and the priests, meeting in council,
agreed that he could not be allowed to continue his religious duties.
Once the die was cast, Riel devoted himself as much to building up a
new church suited to the Métis needs as to defending the new state. He
induced the great majority of his followers to renounce allegiance to
the Roman Catholic Church--"_La vieille romaine est cassée, le pape
est tombé,_"--danced and shouted on the altar steps in the church of
Saint Antoine, proclaimed himself a prophet sent to achieve a
reformation long overdue, and denied the divinity of Jesus and the
doctrine of the real presence; how could Jesus, who was six and a half
feet tall, be in a little wafer? His council or exovidat--he insisted
that they were merely "of the flock," assuming no authority but
voicing the people's will--took their ecclesiastical duties seriously.
Alternating with resolutions as to the disposition and duties of their
little force, motions to assign a gun to Pierre, a horse to Maxime, or
a cow to Napoleon, or decisions to send a scout to Qu'Appelle or
letters to a Cree chief, the papers of the council reveal many
decisions on religious matters. Now it is merely a resolution to take
a church to serve as school or an exhortation to Father Vegreville or
to Father Fourmond to hold himself neutral; now it is a declaration
that "the Exovidat of the French-Canadian Métis believes firmly that
hell will not last forever, that the doctrine of everlasting future
punishment is contrary to Divine Mercy as well as to the charity of
our Saviour Jesus Christ," or a resolution "that the Lord's Day be put
back to the seventh day of the week,"--carried with nine ayes and
three nays. Riel had the honour, unique since time began, of being
proclaimed prophet by order in council: "Moved by M. Boucher, seconded
by M. Tourond, That the Canadian half-breed Exovidat acknowledges
Louis 'David' Riel as a prophet in the service of Jesus Christ ... as
a prophet, the humble imitator in many things of St. John the
Baptist,"--carried by nine ayes, M. Ouellette not voting. Or again,
after a controversy with Father Vegreville, it is moved "that if God
so wills, if He has so decided in His eternal designs, we desire
nothing better than to be His priests and to constitute, if such is
His desire and His holy will, the new religious ministry of Jesus
Christ; and we at once establish the living Catholic Apostolic and
vital church of the new world." A fragment from the minutes of March
25 records that it was "proposed by M. Boucher, seconded by M. Pierre
Henry, that the Commandments of God be the laws of the provisional
government, that we recognize the right of Mr. Louis 'David' Riel to
direct the priests; that the Archbishop Ignace Bourget be recognized
from this day as the Pope of the new world, and the members of the
Council ..." As became a prophet, Riel saw visions and heard voices,
and each morning recounted what he had seen and heard.[35]

[Footnote 35: Riel's diary presents an extraordinary jumble of
acuteness and of rambling nonsense: ".... The Spirit of God said to
me, 'The enemy has gone to Prince Albert.' I prayed saying, 'Deign to
make me know who is that enemy.' He answered, 'Charlie Larence.' The
Spirit of God has shown me the place where I should be wounded, the
highest joint of the ring finger. He pointed out to me which joint it
was on his own finger...." "Do you know some one called Charlie
Larence? He wants to drink five gallons in the name of the movement.
The Spirit of God has made me understand that we must bind the
prisoners. I have seen Gabriel Dumont; he was afflicted, ashamed; he
did not look at me, he looked at his empty table. But Gabriel Dumont
is blessed, his faith will not totter. He is fired by the grace of
God.... My ideas are just, well weighed, well defined; mourning is not
in my thoughts. My ideas are level with my gun; my gun is standing. It
is the invisible power of God which keeps my gun erect. Oh, my God,
give me grace to establish the day of your rest, to bring back in
honour the Sabbath day as it was fixed by the Holy Spirit in the
person of Moses, your servant." ... "While I was praying, the Spirit
of God showed me, in the south branch, a small vessel in which there
were two or three men, one of whom had a red tongue.... I have seen
the giant. He comes. He is hideous. He is Goliath.... He loses his own
body and all his people. There is left to him nothing but the head. He
is not willing to humble himself. He has his head cut off."]

After the storming of Batoche, Dumont made good his escape to the
United States. To Riel General Middleton sent a message stating that
he was ready to receive him and his council and to protect him until
their case had been decided upon by the government; three days after
the fight, scouts came upon Riel, who surrendered.

The rapid collapse of the insurrection brought a surge of relief over
all Canada, apprehensive, with the memory of Custer and Sitting Bull
still fresh, of the horrors of an Indian rising. With relief there
came, particularly from Ontario, a stern demand for the punishment of
the guilty leaders. Riel was brought to trial at Regina before a
stipendiary magistrate and an English-speaking jury of six men. The
Crown was represented by Christopher Robinson, B. B. Osler, R. W.
Burbidge, D. L. Scott, and T. C. Casgrain; and the prisoner by F. X.
Lemieux, Charles Fitzpatrick, J. N. Greenshields, and T. C. Johnston.
The Crown urged Riel's responsibility for the outbreak and the loss of
life that had followed, his attempt to incite the Indians to war, his
offers to sell out his comrades. Counsel for Riel took exception to
the jurisdiction of the court, demanded, in vain, opportunity to
consult the papers of Riel seized at Batoche, and rested their case
mainly on the plea of insanity,--a plea which Riel vigorously
repudiated in his own address to the jury. The jury brought in a
verdict of guilty, with a recommendation to mercy; the magistrate
sentenced Riel to be hanged on September 18. The Court of Queen's
Bench in Manitoba confirmed the jurisdiction of the court, and the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, on petition, declined leave
to appeal. After the cabinet had come to its decision to let the
sentence stand, a commission of three doctors, all in the government's
employ and none specialists in mental diseases, was sent to
investigate Riel's sanity; they reported in substance that he was
subject to delusions on political and religious subjects, but that
they considered him responsible for his actions. After three
reprieves, Riel, who had recanted his religious heresies and faced his
end with calm courage, was hanged in the yard of the mounted-police
barracks, November 16. Eighteen of his half-breed followers were
sentenced to terms of imprisonment of from one to seven years, while
later in November eight of the Indians convicted of the murders at
Frog Lake and elsewhere, Wandering Spirit, Little Bear, Iron Body,
Ikta, Bad Arrow, Round the Sky, Man without Blood and Miserable Man,
paid the penalty on the gallows.

Riel was dead, but for many a month his ghost walked the stage of
Canadian politics. Ontario had called for punishment, Quebec for
pardon, and passion mounted on both sides until it threatened to break
Confederation into fragments.

Parliament was early called upon to face the issue. While the
rebellion was in progress, there was unanimous backing of the
government in its suppression. Once it had collapsed and Riel lay in
the Regina gaol, Blake, in the beginning of July, moved a vote of
censure on the government for the "grave neglect, delay, and
mismanagement" which had marked its handling of North-West affairs. In
a long and powerful speech, Blake analyzed and marshalled the evidence
gleaned from the papers which had tardily been submitted to the House,
and framed an overwhelming indictment against the administration.
Macdonald replied. He accused Blake of preparing a brief for Riel,
denied that the grievances of the Métis were serious, charged the
Opposition with neglect in the years between 1873 and 1878, and laid
the blame on white speculators in Prince Albert. He did not even yet
believe that the grant of scrip was just or expedient; he had yielded
for the sake of peace: "Well, for God's sake let them have the scrip;
they will either drink it or waste it or sell it, but let us have
peace."

Laurier rose to second Blake's resolution of censure. He dealt first
with Macdonald's contention that the insurgents had no grievances but
were simply the dupes of Riel. In a passage characteristic of his
measured eloquence and of his habit of illuminating the present by
light from the past, he declared:

     I can illustrate what I am now saying, that no man,
     however powerful, can exercise such influence as is
     attributed to Louis Riel, by a page from our own
     history. 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 unblemished character, of
     pure, disinterested patriotism, for years and 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, or even 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 assaulted it, showed
     all its defects, deficiencies and dangers, and yet he
     could not raise 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 at the mere sound of
     Mr. Papineau's voice would have gladly courted death on
     battle-field or scaffold, then stood silent and
     unresponsive, though he asked 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 them true and
     loyal subjects, which they have been ever since. And
     now to tell us that Louis Riel, simply by his
     influence, could bring these 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. The honourable gentleman tells us
     that the people of the Saskatchewan River have no
     wrongs; this is but a continuation of the system which
     has been followed all along with regard to this people.
     They have been denied their just rights, and now they
     are slandered by the same men whose unjust course
     towards them drove them to the unfortunate proceedings
     they have adopted since. This I do charge upon the
     government; that they have for years and years ignored
     the just claims of the half-breeds of the Saskatchewan,
     that for years and years these people have been
     petitioning the government and always in vain. I say
     they have been treated by this government with an
     indifference amounting to undisguised contempt, that
     they have been goaded into the unfortunate course they
     have adopted, and if this rebellion be a crime, I say
     the responsibility for that crime weighs as much upon
     the men who, by their conduct, have caused the
     rebellion, as upon those who engaged in it.

The government, he continued, was doubly open to censure, since the
troubles of 1869 had given it warning of the danger of neglect. If now
millions of dollars had been expended and some of the most precious
blood of Canada shed, the reason was the ostrich policy of the
government in denying the existence of grievances. In consenting after
the rebellion had broken out to grant the half-breeds their scrip, the
government had condemned itself. Petitions, assemblies, delegations,
even the sending for Riel, had not stirred the government out of its
lethargy, but the bullets of Duck Lake had brought at once what six
years of prayers could not bring: "Justice loses most of its value
when it is tardily and grudgingly conceded. Even last night the
honourable gentleman would not say that in so doing ... he recognized
their rights; he simply said that he would do it and did it for the
sake of peace. For the sake of peace, when we were in the midst of
war! for the sake of peace, when insurgents were in the field and
blood had been shed!" The government was seeking to shelter itself
behind the anger against Riel. It would not do to rouse prejudices in
this matter: there were prejudices in this country of many kinds:

     We are not yet so built up a nation as to forget our
     respective origins, and I say frankly that the people
     of my own province, who have a community of origin with
     the insurgents, sympathize with them, just as the
     sympathies of the people of Ontario who are of a
     different origin would go altogether in the other
     direction. I am of French origin, and I confess that if
     I were to act only from the blood that runs in my
     veins, it would carry me strongly in favour of these
     people, but above all I claim to be in favour of what
     is just and right and fair.... Let justice be done and
     let the consequences fall upon the guilty ones, whether
     on the head of Louis Riel or on the shoulders of the
     government.... There is in connection with this matter
     another point which I have not heard referred to, but
     which seems to be in the minds of a good many people.
     It is not expressed, but I think the feeling permeates
     the very atmosphere, not only of this House, but of the
     whole of this country. I have not heard it stated, but
     it is in the minds of many that if these men have
     rebelled, it is because they are, to a certain extent,
     of French origin. The First Minister stated yesterday
     that Gabriel Dumont and his friends are and always were
     rebels. It is not to my knowledge that Dumont or any
     one of those who took up arms on the Saskatchewan any
     more than on the Red River ever had the thought of
     rebelling against the authority of Her Majesty. It was
     not against Her Majesty the Queen; they rebelled
     against the tyranny of the Canadian government.... This
     I say, and I say it coming from a province where less
     than fifty years ago every man of the race to which I
     belong was a rebel and where to-day every man of that
     race is a true and loyal subject, as true and loyal as
     any that breathes--I say give them justice, give them
     freedom, give them their rights, treat them as for the
     last forty years you have treated the people of Lower
     Canada, and by and by throughout those territories you
     will have contentment, peace and harmony, where to-day
     discord, hatred and war are ruining the land.

The resolution of censure was defeated on a party vote, but that did
not check the storm of discussion beyond the walls of parliament.
After the trial and condemnation of Riel, the question shifted from
the responsibility of the government to the advisability of pardon for
the rebel leader. It was a question that stirred sectional and party
animosity to the depths, though there was by no means a united or a
consistent voice in either section or either party.

From Ontario the first insistent cry had been for punishment. Riel was
twice guilty of the black crime of treason. He had attempted to bring
on the horrors of an Indian rising. He had occasioned the death of
scores of Canadian men and women. No plea could lessen the enormity of
that offence. The grievances of the Métis could not excuse rebellion.
And in the minds of many, more serious even than the lives lost in
battle was the unforgivable, cold-blooded murder of Thomas Scott. Yet
as the summer passed, the voice of clemency began to be heard,
distorted though it was by partisan manoeuvring. The Toronto "Mail,"
the leading government organ in Ontario, which admitted after Blake's
July speech that the government had been guilty of "gross and
inexcusable negligence," admitted to its columns forceful pleas for
pardon on the ground of national policy and of Riel's insanity;
editorially, it prepared opinion for either decision on the cabinet's
part. The Toronto "Globe" while insisting that the government was
equally guilty, had at first joined in the demand for punishment. "No
one who has read the evidence," it declared in August, "can doubt that
Riel richly deserves death." But as the weeks went on, the cooling of
passion and the fuller recognition of extenuating circumstances
brought a growing leaning toward amnesty, even if the old Adam of
partisanship could not resist the temptation at times to interpret the
assumed leaning of the government in the same direction as a weak
concession to the French Bleus who were holding the pistol to Sir
John's ear. Only in the Loyal Orange lodges was there no weakening;
one brother served notice that "if the government allows Rome to step
in and reprieve this arch-traitor, the Conservative party can no
longer count on our services," and the "Orange Sentinel" in October
insisted that "the blood of Thomas Scott yet cries aloud for justice."

In Quebec, while the rebellion had been denounced, there was deep
sympathy with the Métis claims, and a growing sympathy with the rebel
leader. Public subscriptions provided for Riel's defence at the trial,
and after the sentence, press and platform demands for his pardon
grew more insistent. The government was at least as guilty as Riel;
his insanity was notorious, genuine; no civilized people now put to
death the leader of an unsuccessful revolt. And in any case, sane or
insane, right or wrong, Riel and the people he had championed were
kinsmen, children of the Quebec that had sent its daring pioneers to
the prairies and the rivers of the West long years before. It was in
vain that every priest on the Saskatchewan wrote publicly and
privately denouncing Riel as the arch-enemy of the Church,
anti-Christ, the hand behind the massacre of Father Marchand and
Father Fafard at Frog Lake. It was in vain that the extravagant
laudation of Riel was attacked as a slur on the real heroes of French
Canada, daring leaders like Cartier and Champlain, Maisonneuve and
Dollard, Montcalm and Lévis, de Salaberry and Chénier, sainted
apostles like Laval and Brébeuf, Marguerite Bourgeoys, and Jeanne
Mance. The movement grew. There was much that was deplorable in the
Quebec as in the Ontario agitation, much of ignorance and fanaticism
and blind racial jealousy, much pandering by politicians to local
passion, but just as the Ontario demand had as one of its main roots a
growing national sense, a lofty determination to make Canada one and
make it strong, so the Quebec campaign had its nobler side, its
sympathy with the poor and dispossessed, its readiness to respond to
the cry of kinsmen in distress. Riel's grave faults were no more to
the point than the distorted limbs or wayward habits of a son in the
eyes of his mother.

So vital a movement could not but raise questions of party attitude.
Rouge newspapers like "La Patrie" joined with Castor journals like
"L'Etendard" to threaten the government with vengeance if it
sacrificed Riel to Orange hatred. But it was not merely from the
Opposition that these demands came. The controversy gave a new angle
and a new channel to the jealousy and rivalry which marked the
relations of the federal Bleu leaders. Between elections, Langevin, a
supple and experienced tactician, though not a man of force, Chapleau,
the most moving platform orator of his day, save perhaps the more
tempestuous Mercier, and Caron, a skilful manager of election
campaigns, fought a bitter and unrelenting triangular contest for
leadership of the Quebec contingent in the Conservative party. The
fact that Chapleau and his chief newspaper supporter, "La Minerve,"
condemned Riel, was another reason why Langevin and his organ, "Le
Monde," should demand pardon. Langevin gave his friends to understand
that either through executive pardon or a medical finding of insanity,
Riel would escape the gallows, and "Le Monde" outshouted its
contemporaries in praise of Riel and anathemas upon his opponents.
Even "La Minerve" was forced to shift its position and, while
contending that petitions, not criticisms, should be directed to the
government, promised that the Bleus would do more for Riel than his
Rouge champions.

The government itself therefore contributed largely to the agitation
in Quebec and to the belief that Riel would never be executed. When at
last after much balancing of opinion--balancing of votes, its critics
charged--the majority in the cabinet decided that Riel must swing, the
news was received in Quebec, first with incredulity, then with the
stupor of a national calamity, and then with a universal cry of anger
that shook not merely the government but the nation to its
foundations. The strength of the feeling that pervaded the whole
province that fateful November may be gauged from an editorial the day
after the hanging, from the staunchest defender of the government in
the province, a journal which for months had derided Riel's claim to
sympathy, "La Minerve":

     Why is it that Riel, the fugitive rebel of 1870, the
     inmate of the asylums of Saint-Jean and Beauport, the
     author of the late rebellion, the insulter of the
     bishops and priests of his church, the instigator of
     the Indian rising and the man responsible for the
     massacre of Frog Lake, the wretched rebel hiding among
     the women and children while his men were giving
     themselves up to death at Batoche, why is it that this
     traitor, this apostate, this madman, for that and
     nothing but that is what Riel has been, holds so great
     a place in the public mind?... What is the mysterious
     force which creates this movement, which lets loose the
     tempest that threatens to overturn in its course
     reputations, prestige, power? It is a thing at once
     petty and great, fickle and determined, tender and
     cruel. It is the wounding of the national self-esteem.
     Riel will leave no trace in the memories of men by the
     work he has done, the ideas he has given forth, the
     doctrines he has preached, and yet his name marks a
     deep furrow in the political soil of our young country.
     The reason is that the hand that placed the gallows
     rope about his neck wounded a whole people. It is
     because the cry of justice, calling for his death in
     the name of the law, has been drowned by the cry of
     fanaticism calling for revenge. That is why the death
     of this criminal takes on the proportions of a national
     calamity.

To every man in public life, and not least to Wilfrid Laurier, the
crisis brought a challenge. He was not a man easily stirred by popular
cries. His instincts were all on the side of order and constitutional
procedure. He desired, as few men of the day desired, the close union
of the two races of Canada. Yet in the Canada of that day, Canadianism
pure and unhyphenated was still an aspiration, and if the practical
alternative was merely to be English-Canadian, Laurier would prefer to
be French-Canadian. He had little sympathy with Riel, much with the
Métis whose cause Riel had championed so blunderingly. His anger
burned deep against the government's bungling and neglect, and the
ill-concealed scorn for all that was French-Canadian which marked the
noisier elements in Ontario awoke resentment even in his balanced
mind. When the unbelievable news came that the government had let Riel
go to the scaffold, it seemed to him for a brief moment that the hopes
of his youth were doomed to disappointment, that racial harmony was a
mirage, and that nothing remained but for each section to make itself
strong and independent.

Quebec's anger found expression in countless meetings of protest, in
editorials and pamphlets and petitions, but the most striking
manifestation was the great meeting held in Montreal, in the Champ de
Mars, on the Sunday following the hanging. Never in Montreal's history
had there been a gathering to compare to it. Forty thousand people
crowded about the three platforms which had been erected, and cheered
every one of the thirty speakers to the echo. Party lines seemed to
have disappeared; Mercier and Desjardins, Robidoux and Beaubien,
Turcotte and Trudel, Beausoleil and Bergeron, Poirier and Tarte, Rouge
and Bleu, voiced the indignation of a united people. Laurier spoke
with the rest. Henceforth there would be in Quebec neither Liberals
nor Conservatives; the government's callous policy had broken down
party lines. The half-breeds had been the victims of extortion and
neglect and contempt, they had been driven to revolt. "Had I been born
on the banks of the Saskatchewan," he was reported as declaring in a
sentence that for ten years every Tory editor in Canada kept standing
in type, "I would myself have shouldered a musket to fight against the
neglect of governments and the shameless greed of speculators."

Throughout the winter the agitation flamed. Many wild and foolish
words were spoken, Riel was painted a hero, a martyr, a saint, and the
members of the government, particularly the Bleu leaders, hanged in
effigy. The Quebec Liberals joined forces with the dissentient
Conservatives, including a number of Castors; many of them had
previously been ready to come to terms with the Chapleau wing of the
Bleus, and even to accept Chapleau as leader, but Chapleau had
declined the advances, and carried on a courageous fight against the
government's critics. He did not fight alone. The English Liberals of
Quebec discountenanced the agitation; Henri Joly and W. J. Watts
resigned their seats in the local house in witness of their
disapproval. The dignitaries of the Church threw all their weight into
the same scale. Mgr. Fabre, Mgr. Gravel, Mgr. Moreau, Mgr. Langevin,
and Mgr. Cameron in Nova Scotia, issued mandements pointing out the
sin of revolution, denouncing disrespect to constituted authority,
warning against the danger of irreverence and anarchy, and reminding
their flocks that after all it was to the bishops, not to the
journalists, that the Holy Spirit had confided the task of guiding the
Church and its members.

Laurier shouldered no more muskets. He remained firm in his
indignation against the government's laxness before the rebellion and
its sternness after, but he had no sympathy with those who heaped
personal abuse on every _pendard_ and exalted Riel to a martyr's seat.
He could not support the policy to which the provincial Liberal
leaders were committed, of attempting to form a Parti National, a
union of all French-Canadians, for he had long ago realized and
pointed out to his compatriots the folly of such isolation.[36] He
took no more part in public demonstrations, but prepared to take the
government to task in the House.

[Footnote 36: "The Huntington Gleaner," the chief mouthpiece of the
Protestant Liberals of the Eastern Townships, while not surprised at
Mercier's action, declared that Laurier's Champ de Mars speech
contradicted all that had been known of his policy and attitude.]

Quebec's outburst had been followed by a still more extraordinary if
more limited crusade in Ontario. Fearing that the government had lost
Quebec, and seeking to restore the balance by creating a solid
Ontario, Conservative organs, and particularly the "Mail," broke into
furious attacks upon "French-Canadian domination," which made
"L'Etendard" seem a moderate and reasonable sheet, and far
outdistanced George Brown at his worst. Quebec had demanded that no
criminal must be punished if French blood ran in his veins; it sought
to impose its arrogant will on all Canada. The answer must be plain.
"Let us solemnly assure them again," declared the "Mail" on November
23, "that rather than submit to such a yoke, Ontario would smash
Confederation into its original fragments, preferring that the dream
of a united Canada should be shattered forever." And again, two days
later: "As Britons we believe the conquest will have to be fought over
again. Lower Canada may depend upon it there will be no treaty of
1763. The victors will not capitulate next time.... But the
French-Canadian people will lose everything. The wreck of their
fortunes and their happiness would be swift, complete and
irremediable." And the "Orange Sentinel": "Must it be said that the
rights and liberties of the English people in this English colony
depend upon a foreign race?... The day is near when an appeal to arms
will be heard in all parts of Canada. Then certainly our soldiers,
benefiting by the lessons of the past, will have to complete in this
country the work they began in the North-West."

Ontario Liberals were divided. The majority, both of the leaders and
of the rank and file, believed the execution was justified, but a
large minority attacked it. Partisanship played as obvious a part in
their manoeuvring as in the backing and filling of the ministers and
their supporters; some of the Liberal newspapers which condemned the
government for hanging Riel would have condemned it as strongly for
pardoning him. A Conservative speaker, J. C. Rykert, amused himself by
collecting specimens of inconsistency and sharp curves; the classic
instance was that of the Port Hope "Guide" which before the execution
declared, "It has come to a pretty pass indeed when a red-handed rebel
can thus snap his fingers at the law," and after, "It has come to a
pretty pass indeed that in the noon-tide glare of the nineteenth
century political offenders must suffer death if they dare to assert
their just rights." Yet there was more in the protest than partisan
manoeuvring. For months before the hanging opinion had been turning
steadily toward clemency, toward a clearer recognition not only of the
government's complicity but of Riel's irresponsibility. Until the last
moment it was not believed that the sentence would be enforced. The
revelation of the effect upon Quebec completed the proof of the
national inexpediency of the government's decision.

Blake had been absent in England from the end of August until the end
of December. His attitude was awaited with keen interest. In his first
public address in London, Ontario, in January, he declared that he
did not desire a party conflict over the Regina tragedy:

     I do not propose to construct a party platform out of
     the Regina scaffold.... I believe we cannot, if we
     would, make of this a party question. After full
     reflection, I do not entertain that desire, but were it
     otherwise, I doubt that the result could be
     accomplished.... I entertain the impression that with
     us as with the Tories there are differences of opinion
     in the ranks not likely to be composed, and which I at
     any rate shall make no endeavour to control to a party
     end.

While going on to rebuke some of the extreme outbursts from Quebec,
and remaining of the opinion that the execution of Riel neither should
nor could be made a strictly party question, Blake was none the less
determined to express his individual views and to arraign the
government in the measured and serious words the crisis demanded. He
was, in fact, prepared to go further than his Quebec lieutenant. In a
consultation in Ottawa shortly after the London speech, Laurier urged
that, as before, the guilt of the government, not the punishment of
Riel, should be the question to keep in the foreground, but Blake was
prepared, if need be, to change the emphasis.

The House opened the end of February. Realizing that a debate was
inevitable, the government manoeuvred to secure the most favourable
fighting ground. One of its Quebec supporters, Philippe Landry of
Montmagny, who had condemned the execution, undertook to move a
resolution "that this House feels it its duty to express its deep
regret that the sentence of death passed upon Louis Riel, convicted
of high treason, was allowed to be carried into execution." The
moment his speech, condemning the government in moderate phrases, was
concluded, Langevin took the floor, and after a very brief and formal
defence, declared that "in order that there may be no
misunderstanding, no false issues or side issues, and that we may have
a direct vote," he would move the previous question. This prevented
the offering of any further amendment, and compelled the Liberals to
debate and vote upon the question of Riel's punishment, on which they
were divided, rather than to offer an amendment, on which they would
have united, condemning the government for its whole North-West
policy. It was an adroit manoeuvre, and though M. Landry denied
collusion, his protests carried little credence.

The debate was long and bitter. Macdonald did not speak, nor any of
the Ontario Liberals who opposed the motion, but every angle of
opinion was abundantly presented. A second government follower,
Colonel Amyot, supported Landry; Royal of Provencher, Riel's former
friend, insisted that the Liberals were worse than the government.
Malcolm Cameron condemned the "corrupt, incompetent, and imbecile"
ministry for casting dice over the body of Riel and finally yielding
to Orange pressure. Curran defended with _tu quoques_, Rykert produced
his scrap-book, François Langelier reviewed Langevin's devious policy,
and Pierre Béchard, an old Rouge of moderate but firm convictions,
reviewed the policy adopted elsewhere toward unsuccessful rebellion.

It was late on the night of March 16 when M. Béchard concluded. The
government put no one up to answer him. The Speaker began to ask
whether the question should be put, when Laurier rose. The empty house
filled quickly. For two hours it listened, breathless; at more than
one tense moment, not a sound was heard but the speaker's ringing
voice and the ticking of the clock.

Laurier wasted no words. At the outset he accused the government of
judicial murder. In his province the execution had been universally
condemned, as the sacrifice of a life not to inexorable justice but to
bitter passion and revenge. He denounced as a vile calumny the
"Mail's" contention that French-Canadians opposed the punishment of
any criminal of French blood. The press of the whole world had
condemned that act. Doubtless kinship added keenness to conviction: "I
cheerfully admit and I will plead guilty to that weakness, if weakness
it be, that if an injustice be committed against a fellow-being, the
blow will fall deeper into my heart if it should fall upon one of my
kith and kin." He denied absolutely any sympathy with the suicidal
policy of forming a purely French-Canadian party. In concise and lucid
review he indicted the government for its years of neglect, not to be
atoned for by eleventh-hour repentance: "At last justice was coming to
them. In ten days, from the twenty-sixth of March to the sixth of
April, the government had altered their policy and had given what they
had refused for years. What was the cause? The bullets of Duck Lake,
the rebellion in the North-West...."

     I appeal now to any friend of liberty in this House; I
     appeal not only to the Liberals who sit beside me, but
     to any man who has a British heart in his breast, and I
     ask, when subjects of Her Majesty have been petitioning
     for years for their rights, and these rights have not
     only been ignored, but have been denied, and when these
     men take their lives in their hands and rebel, will any
     one in this House say that these men, when they got
     their rights, should not have saved their heads as
     well, and that the criminals, if criminals there were
     in this rebellion, are not those who fought and bled
     and died, but the men who sit on these Treasury
     benches? Sir, rebellion is always an evil, it is always
     an offence against the positive law of a nation; it is
     not always a moral crime. The Minister of Militia in
     the week that preceded the execution of Riel declared:
     "I hate all rebels; I have no sympathy, good, bad or
     indifferent, with rebellion." Sir, what is hateful ...
     is not rebellion but the despotism which induces that
     rebellion; what is hateful are not rebels but the men,
     who, having the enjoyment of power, do not discharge
     the duties of power; they are the men who, having the
     power to redress wrongs, refuse to listen to the
     petitions that are sent to them; they are the men who,
     when they are asked for a loaf, give a stone....
     Though, Mr. Speaker; these men were in the wrong;
     though the rebellion had to be put down; though it was
     the duty of the Canadian government to assert its
     authority and vindicate the law, still, I ask any
     friend of liberty, is there not a feeling rising in his
     heart, stronger than all reasoning to the contrary,
     that those men were excusable?

     Such were, Mr. Speaker, my sentiments. I spoke them
     elsewhere. I have had, since that time, occasion to
     realize that I have greatly shocked Tory editors and
     Tory members. Sir, I know what Tory loyalty is. Tories
     have always been famous for being loyal so long as it
     was profitable to be so.... Sir, I will not receive
     any lectures on loyalty from men with such a record. I
     am a British subject, and I value the proud title as
     much as any one in this House. But if it is expected of
     me that I shall allow fellow-countrymen, unfriended,
     undefended, unprotected, and unrepresented in this
     House, to be trampled under foot by this government, I
     say that is not what I understand by loyalty, I would
     call that slavery....

     Sir, I am not of those who look upon Louis Riel as a
     hero. Nature had endowed him with many brilliant
     qualities, but nature denied him that supreme quality
     without which all other qualities, however brilliant,
     are of no avail. Nature denied him a well-balanced
     mind. At his worst he was a subject fit for an asylum;
     at his best he was a religious and political
     monomaniac. But he was not a bad man--I do not believe
     at least that he was the bad man he has been
     represented to be in a certain press. But that he was
     insane appears to me beyond the possibility of
     controversy. When the reports first came here last
     spring and in the early summer of his doings and
     sayings in the North-West, when we heard that he was to
     depose the Pope and establish an American Pope, those
     who did not know him believed he was an impostor, but
     those who knew him knew at once what was the matter. In
     the province of Quebec there was not an instant's
     hesitation about it. Almost every man in that province
     knew that he had been several times confined in
     asylums, and therefore it was manifest to the people of
     Quebec that he had fallen into one of those misfortunes
     with which he was afflicted. When his counsel were
     engaged and commenced to prepare his trial, they saw at
     once that if justice to him and only justice was to be
     done, their plea should be a plea of insanity.

Laurier went on to impugn the fairness of the trial: the request of
Riel's counsel for delay, for witnesses, were granted only in part;
the requests for Riel's papers were refused. The medical commission
sent to Regina was a shameful sham. Riel's secretary, William
Jackson, was acquitted as insane; why, the people of Lower Canada
demanded, was a different measure meted out to the man of French
blood? "Jackson is free to-day, Riel is in his grave."

Then followed a reference to old wounds:

     The death of Scott is the cause of the death of Riel
     to-day. Why, if the honourable gentleman thinks that
     the death of Scott was a crime, did he not punish Riel
     at the time? 1870, '71, '72, '73, almost four years
     passed away, and yet the government, knowing such a
     crime as it has been represented here had been
     committed, never took any step to have the crime
     punished. What was their reason? The reason was that
     the government had promised to condone the offence; the
     reason was that the government was not willing to let
     that man come to trial but on the contrary actually
     supplied him with money to induce him to leave the
     country. Sir, I ask any man on the other side of the
     House, if this offence was punishable then, why was it
     not punished then, and if it was not punishable then,
     why is it punished now?... This issue of the death of
     Thomas Scott has long been buried, and now it is raised
     by whom? It is raised by members opposite,--the last
     men who should ever speak of it. Sir, we are a new
     nation, we are attempting to unite the different
     conflicting elements which we have into a nation. Shall
     we ever succeed if the bond of union is to be revenge?

The example of the United States after the Civil War should have been
followed. Time had proved that General Grant, who stood for pardon,
was a "truer patriot, a truer statesman than Andrew Johnston, who
urged a trial for treason."

     You see the result to-day. Scarcely twenty years have
     passed away since that rebellion, the most terrible
     that ever shook a civilized nation, was put down, and
     because of the merciful course adopted by the victors,
     the two sections of that country are now more closely
     united than ever before.... But our government say they
     were desirous of giving a lesson.... Had they taken as
     much pains to do right as they have taken to punish
     wrong, they would never have had any occasion to
     convince those people that the law cannot be violated
     with impunity, because the law would never have been
     violated at all.

Then came the conclusion:

     But to-day, not to speak of those who have lost their
     lives, our prisons are full of men who, despairing ever
     to get justice by peace, sought to obtain it by war,
     who, despairing of ever being treated like freemen,
     took their lives in their hands, rather than be treated
     as slaves. They have suffered a great deal, they are
     suffering still; yet their sacrifices will not be
     without reward. Their leader is in the grave, they are
     in durance, but from their prisons they can see that
     that justice, that liberty which they sought in vain,
     and for which they fought not in vain, has at last
     dawned upon their country. Their fate well illustrates
     the truth of Byron's invocation to liberty, in the
     introduction to the 'Prisoner of Chillon':

          Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind!
          Brightest in dungeons, Liberty thou art!
          For there thy habitation is the heart--
          The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
          And when thy sons to fetters are consigned--
          To fetters and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
          Their country conquers with their martyrdom.

     Yes, their country has conquered with their martyrdom.
     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 been at
     last 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 others, to extend mercy to the one who is dead
     and to those who live.

Never had the House heard a more moving speech. Never did Laurier's
eloquence rise higher. Friend and opponent joined in rare tribute.
Thomas White, who had succeeded Senator Macpherson as Minister of the
Interior, referred next day to "a speech of which, although I differ
from him altogether, I as a Canadian am justly proud, because I think
it is a matter of common pride to us that any public man in Canada can
make on the floor of parliament such a speech as we listened to last
night," and Blake declared it "the crowning proof of French
domination; my honourable friend, not contented with having for this
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 opinion, merits this compliment, because it is the
truth, that it was the finest parliamentary speech ever pronounced in
the Parliament of Canada since Confederation."

The debate went on. Caron dwelt on Riel's Indian negotiations and
defended himself from the charge of callous participation in a Western
banquet on the day Riel was expected to hang; Mills gave an admirably
judicial review of the evidence manifesting Riel's insanity; Chapleau
declared that Laurier had met the criticism of his bold and fatal
words in the Champ de Mars by a more audacious speech in the House,
and that Blake had chivalrously but uselessly sought to support his
lieutenant by sacrificing his own convictions. But the outstanding
speeches after Laurier's were Blake's and Thompson's. Blake refrained
from further discussion of the government's North-West policy; for
five hours he piled proof upon proof of Riel's insanity and of the
weight of precedent against holding men in his situation responsible
for their acts.[37] John Thompson, who had recently left the Bench in
Nova Scotia to become Minister of Justice in the Macdonald cabinet,
replied in a speech which, if not so eloquent or weighty as Blake's,
was powerful and reasoned and made it clear that a man of first
calibre had been added to the ranks of parliament.

[Footnote 37: In considering the failure to recognize this fact,
weight must be given not merely to party and racial passion, but to
the lack of knowledge prevailing forty years ago as to the nature and
effects of insanity. To-day, no medical authority would question that
the man who was hanged at Regina was insane: "When one considers the
mass of testimony pointing to Riel's mental defect, 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.... Riel's was simply a case of
evolutional insanity, which would in the modern school no doubt be
classed as one of the paranoiac forms of dementia. The first
manifestations, as were to be expected, were observed when he was at a
critical period of his boyhood. His early associations were of such a
nature as to turn his mind to the wrongs of his people and develop the
religious fanaticism so prominent at all times in his career.
Persecution is invariably the accompaniment of the paranoiac delusion,
and nowhere have I seen such intense cases of this form of insanity
develop as on the lonely prairies of the North-West, and they have all
been of the very same type as Riel's."--Dr. C. K. Clarke,
Superintendent of Rockwood Asylum, in "Queen's Quarterly," April-June,
1905.]

The government was sustained by the largest majority of the session,
146 to 52. Seventeen Quebec supporters of the government voted
against it; twenty-three Liberals, including Mackenzie, Cartwright,
and Charlton from Ontario, Fisher from Quebec, and Watson from
Manitoba, parted from Blake and Laurier. The smart Landry-Langevin
manoeuvre had turned the issue to the hurt of the Opposition rather
than of the government. Even so, Laurier always insisted that Blake
could have saved the situation had he heeded the advice to put the
emphasis on the government's neglect rather than on Riel's insanity.

The country did not escape so easily as the Ottawa ministry. In
Ontario the "Mail's" agitation stirred old sectarian fires, and for
years to come new fuel, the North-West language issue, the Jesuits'
Estates Act, the Manitoba schools controversy, fed the flames. In
Quebec, Honoré Mercier rode the tempest to power. In the election
campaign of October, 1886, Mercier raised the same cry of provincial
autonomy which Mowat in Ontario and Fielding in Nova Scotia had found
of such avail, and, with less justification, appealed to the people's
anger against the party that had hanged Riel.[38] The Ross government,
after a vain attempt to reorganize under Hon. L. O. Taillon, resigned
in January, and Mercier formed a ministry, including two
Nationalist-Conservatives. Throughout the Dominion sectional sentiment
grew, national unity appeared a dream. The agitation for commercial
union with the United States which marked the next four years was
based as much on political as on commercial despair.

[Footnote 38: In a speech in Quebec the night before assuming the
premiership, Mercier declared: "When the murder of Louis Riel had been
consummated, when that unfortunate and unbalanced man had been hung on
the gibbet, it was assumed that the question was settled. That was a
grave mistake. The French-Canadian people felt that a deep blow had
been inflicted upon their nationality.... We took up that question
because we felt that the murder of Riel was a declaration of war upon
French-Canadian influence in Confederation, a violation of right and
of justice.... We cannot expect our English speaking fellow-citizens
to share our sentiments to the full, but throughout all Canada, there
is not a free and honest man who is not ready to join with us in
condemning the iniquities of the North-West policy."]

Laurier had repeated in the House the stand he had taken in the Champ
de Mars. He was prepared to go further, to repeat in Toronto the
charges he had made in Ottawa. Toronto newspapers dared him to
shoulder his musket in Ontario. He determined to take up the
challenge. The older Liberals attempted to dissuade him. There was,
however, a vigorous Young Men's Liberal Club in Toronto which cared
less for expediency. An invitation was sent him on behalf of the club
to speak on the North-West rebellion on December 10, in the
Horticultural Pavilion in Toronto. It was promptly accepted. The
announcement was met with renewed attacks upon Laurier and dire hints
of personal assault. The Young Liberals organized a body-guard, but
the city showed its good sense by avoiding any unusual demonstration
or interruption. After a crowded reception at the Rossin House,
Laurier faced a tremendous audience at the Pavilion. His speech was
not one of his great achievements. A theory, none too well founded,
that an Anglo-Saxon audience preferred cold logic to moving eloquence,
led him to make long citations from state documents which lessened his
effectiveness. Yet he carried his audience with him throughout, and
his closing appeal drove conviction home. A Young Liberal of those
days wrote lately:

     People endured the cold of a bleak December night in
     the topmost gallery of the pavilion, leaning in through
     lowered windows to hear the address to the end. The
     vote of thanks was moved by Edward Blake, in an address
     of half an hour, which many considered the most
     powerful public address Blake had ever given. It seemed
     as if the elder statesman had been put on his mettle by
     the triumph of his lieutenant; certainly he fully
     rivalled him in eloquence. It was a great night; those
     who went to scoff remained to cheer.

The Tory press had denounced French-Canadians as disloyal. Who were
the men who made this charge? The party which for thirty long years
had been kept in power by French-Canadian votes: "Yesterday, in order
to retain power these men pandered to the prejudices of my
fellow-countrymen in Canada. To-day, when they see that
notwithstanding all that, the votes are now escaping them, they turn
in another direction, and pander to what prejudices they suppose may
exist in this province." The charge was false. French-Canadians had
become attached to British institutions and the British connection
because they had found more freedom under the flag of St. George than
they could ever have had as subjects of France. True, they retained
their racial individuality:

     I honour and esteem English institutions, I do not
     regret that we are now subjects of the Queen instead of
     France; but may my right hand wither by my side, if the
     memories of my forefathers ever cease to be dear to my
     ears.... We are Canadians. Below the island of Montreal
     the water that comes from the north, the Ottawa, unites
     with the waters that come from the Western lakes, but
     uniting they do not mix. There they run parallel,
     separate, distinguishable, and yet are one stream,
     flowing within the same banks, the mighty St. Lawrence,
     rolling on toward the sea bearing the commerce of a
     nation upon its bosom,--a perfect image of our nation.
     We may not assimilate, we may not blend, but for all
     that we are the component parts of the same country. We
     may be French in our origin,--and I do not deny my
     origin, I pride myself on it,--we may be English or
     Scotch, or whatever it may be, but we are Canadians,
     one in aim and purpose.... As Canadians we have
     feelings in common with each other that are not shared
     by our fellow-countrymen on the other side of the
     water. As Canadians we are affected by local and
     national considerations which bind us together; we look
     back to the land of our ancestors and feel, for all
     that, no less good Canadians.

In great detail Mr. Laurier proceeded to arraign the government for
its North-West policy. He prefaced:

     In my opinion, the guilt of the rebellion does not rest
     with the miserable wretches who took up arms but rests
     altogether with the government who provoked it.... I
     bring this charge against the government, and I will
     endeavour, I think I will not fail, to prove, that the
     half-breeds were denied for long years rights and
     justice, rights which were admitted as soon as they
     were asked by bullets; I charge against them that they
     have treated the half-breeds with contempt, with
     undisguised disdain; I charge against them that they
     would not listen to their prayers; I charge against
     them that they drove them to despair, that they drove
     them to the rashness, to the madness, to the crime
     which they afterwards committed.

"When we find a government ill-treating a poor people, simply because
they are poor and ignorant," he concluded, "I say that it behooves us
to fight freely with all the means that the constitution places in our
hands."

In a series of addresses in western Ontario, in London, Stratford,
Windsor, Laurier repeated his criticism of the government. The
government press had prophesied a hostile reception; the "Mail" had
printed "_Don't_ put his head under the pump" editorials; at London
dodgers were circulated inciting an attack upon "the traitor Laurier."
But beyond a few interruptions which the speaker readily parried, no
trouble developed.

Laurier had taken in Ontario the stand he had taken in Quebec, and
Ontario had been convinced alike of his courage and of his moderation.

Riel was dead, but his deeds lived after him. Ontario and Quebec were
once more at loggerheads, with the Maritime provinces wearying of
their bickering. The old Bleu party had been shaken and Mercier
exalted, Ontario Liberalism split, Blake divided from his party,
Laurier's powers revealed.




CHAPTER VII

LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY

     The General Elections of 1887--Blake on the
     Tariff--Renewed Defeat--The Resignation of Blake--His
     Power of Leadership--Cartwright and Mills--Laurier
     Chosen Leader--Building up a Party.


For the second time since assuming the leadership of the Liberal
party, Edward Blake faced his opponents in the general election of
February, 1887. Five years had passed since the first encounter, years
of rapidly shifting issues, of party ebb and flow. Blake had no little
ground for believing that better fortune would attend the second
conflict. Not least among the signs of change was the outcome of the
provincial elections which, by a most unusual coincidence, had been
held in every section of the Dominion in the preceding year. True, the
West remained Conservative, John Norquay, the able half-breed chief of
that party, returning to power in Manitoba, and William Smith, leader
of a more or less Conservative group in British Columbia, retaining
control of the Pacific province. But the West then counted little in
numbers or prestige. The East had voted solidly Liberal. In April,
William S. Fielding had swept Nova Scotia; in June, Andrew G. Blair,
leading a coalition party of a predominantly Liberal tinge, carried
New Brunswick by a large majority; in October, Honoré Mercier turned
a small minority into a majority, and in December Oliver Mowat won
his fourth success. The omens seemed favourable, and Blake himself had
no shred of doubt as to the issue.

The government pointed with pride to the prosperity of the
country--clouded, it was true, but only for the moment--and to the
successful completion of the Canadian Pacific. To the business men who
were building up factories under the shelter of the national-policy
wall, the bogey of the blue ruin free trade would bring was once more
displayed. In Ontario the Riel issue was relied upon to lose votes for
the Opposition, while in Quebec the support of the bishops would keep
the loss anticipated by the government within narrow bounds. In
Ontario constituencies the Grits had been hived into harmlessness; the
franchise lists were now in the hands of the government's friends;
Macdonald was still able to rouse to fever heat the eager loyalty of
his myriad of personal followers; what was there to fear?

The Opposition pictured the country hurling headlong into bankruptcy
through the government's extravagance. They rang the changes on every
instance of administrative corruption and political jobbery. They held
the ministers to account not merely for the undoubted ebb in
commercial prosperity but for the rising tide of political discontent;
with Manitoba up in arms against the federal railway policy, with Nova
Scotia on the verge of secession, with Ontario and Quebec at
loggerheads, what had become of the heritage of good-will and reasoned
hope with which the Dominion had been endowed at its birth? In
Ontario the cry of provincial rights and in Quebec the North-West
issue were relied upon. And as for the personal factor, the five years
that had passed had given unquestioned proof that in intellectual
capacity, in statesmanlike grasp and breadth of vision, in unflagging
study of every rising issue, Blake stood head and shoulders above all
his contemporaries.

On one question Blake was careful to define anew his stand. He
insisted that the tariff was not an issue. Even in 1882 he had made it
clear that his objections were against details and not against the
principle of protection. Now he declared, notably in a speech at
Malvern in January, 1887, that even change in detail was less
feasible, since the enormous increase in debt and expenditure made it
necessary to raise still larger sums from customs. Free trade was
absolutely out of the question. "I have only to repeat," he asserted,
"in the most emphatic language, my declaration that there is in my
judgment no possibility of a change in that system of taxation which I
have described, the necessary effect of which is to give a large and
ample advantage to the home manufacturer over his competitor abroad."
Some reduction of duties on raw materials, some readjustment to
lighten the burden on the goods consumed by the poor, there should be,
but no sweeping change. The "Globe" dotted his i's and crossed his
t's. Tory extravagance had put low tariffs out of the question; the
tariff was not an issue in the campaign; there would be no
revolutionary changes, no factory would close its doors, no one but a
few Tory hacks would lose a day's work after the election. "After
this," it concluded, "no manufacturer has any excuse for ranging
himself in hostility to the Liberal party on account of the tariff."

Blake was not to be allowed to decide what would and what would not be
an issue. Manufacturers could not forget, or at least were not allowed
to forget, that in the past the Liberals had stood, if not for free
trade, for at any rate a lower tariff and sweeping reduction of the
most burdensome and monopolistic schedules. The Conservative press
insisted that it was to Cartwright, not to Blake, that the country
must look for light on Liberal tariff policy. Blake had sought to meet
this contention in his Malvern speech:

     Some of your adversaries presume to say that it is not
     I who am to expound the party policy on this question,
     and that you must look elsewhere for light. The general
     principles and policy of the party have been shaped
     under my lead by the concurrence of its representatives
     in parliament. What I have said and am about to say,
     you may take as authoritative to whatever extent a
     leader has authority, and so far from there being
     divergence I can assure you there is in my belief a
     general concurrence of sentiment between us, including
     Sir Richard Cartwright, whom I name only because our
     adversaries delight to represent him as holding other
     views.

On February 22 the electors rendered judgment, or at least decision.
The results were deeply disappointing to the Liberals. A gain of but
two seats in Ontario had been offset by a loss of two in Manitoba;
Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island sent six more Liberals, and
Quebec fifteen more opponents of the government, but even so
Macdonald could count on a majority of thirty. Before the first
session was over this majority had grown still higher. The bolting
Bleus from Quebec were not able to resist the lure of patronage, and
half forgiving, half forgiven, they sheepishly returned to the
government fold. Ontario gerrymanders, Quebec episcopal support,
protectionist sentiment, administrative patronage and pressure,
Macdonald's personal appeal, the division in the Opposition ranks on
the Riel and tariff issues, had proved too much once more for the
forces of Liberalism.

To Blake defeat came as a personal blow. He was angered, chagrined,
filled with doubts of democracy's capacity, doubts of his own powers
of leadership. Cartwright's unwillingness wholly to sink his views on
the fiscal question rankled. Insomnia and failing health, due in part
to overwork but more to nervous worry and ceaseless introspection,
lessened his force for the coming uphill fight. He determined to
resign the leadership, and in a circular letter, written shortly
before parliament opened, he so informed his followers.

It was not the first time Blake had resigned, much less the first he
had threatened to resign. He had submitted his resignation to caucus
at the opening of the session of 1882, but had been prevailed upon to
remain. More than once the government press had accepted his
resignation; at intervals during 1885 the "Mail" forecast his
retirement and the probable succession of Mowat to the federal
leadership. But this was only part of the game of weakening the other
party's morale, and no more certain prophecy than the "Globe's"
jaunty but rather premature remark in 1857 that "John A. is about to
retire from politics, a thoroughly used-up character." More to the
point were occasional hints thrown out by Blake himself. Replying
during the campaign to a taunt of Macdonald that he was "devoured with
ambition," he had declared that nothing would suit him better than to
return to the ranks; it was his duty to strive for victory, but if the
people gave an adverse verdict, he would for his part accept the
decision gladly and gratefully. Clearly this was the reaction of a
sensitive nature to a foolish charge, and not a considered
determination. It was hoped that he would be content with giving an
opportunity for the expression of any criticism, and once more assume
the leadership. But this time there was to be no drawing back.

[Illustration: WILFRID LAURIER
Leader of the Liberal Party, 1887
(At forty-six)]

Blake's followers recognized that he had idiosyncrasies which told
against success as a party leader. With all his absorption in politics
and his sincere sympathy with progressive measures, he had not that
lively interest in individual men which is indispensable for a leader
and particularly a leader in opposition. He stood aloof from his
fellows, austere, moody, self-centred. His high-strung nervous
temperament forced him to build up a protecting wall of personal
reserve. In debate, his comprehensive mind prevented him from
assigning a definite share of the assault to his lieutenants; in
private conference, he could not easily bend to the light word that
would ease a strain or the kindly exaggerated compliment by which
Macdonald bound his liegemen to him. That he was the iceberg his
opponents termed him, every man who knew him intimately denied with
vigour, but it was true that he moved in higher and more rarified
strata of logic than the average man could thrive in. Above all, it
was questioned whether he would for long wage a losing fight.

For all that, there was not in any responsible quarter the slightest
disposition to question his leadership. Whatever his failings, they
were regarded as but evidences of temperament, idiosyncrasies of
genius, spots upon the sun. In parliament and out, Liberals cherished
the deepest admiration for his masterful intellect, his unswerving
probity, his high sense of duty to the State. Defeat did not lessen
their confidence or their loyalty. "We knew," as Laurier afterward
affirmed, "that no man could then have broken the Tory machine." There
was no movement to seek another leader, no eager aspirant for his
mantle.

Yet it soon became clear that another leader must be sought. Blake
held firmly to his determination to retire. The parliamentary caucus
which met at the beginning of the session insisted upon re-electing
him, against his protests, but he declined to accept. Through a dull,
post-mortem session, the Opposition grappled with the task of finding
a successor.

Two men in the Ontario delegation seemed of leadership calibre, and
each was willing to undertake the task. Sir Richard Cartwright was one
of the strong individualities of the House. Grandson of a
distinguished Loyalist who had much to do with establishing both the
commerce and the public life of Upper Canada on sound foundations;
educated in Trinity College, Dublin; president in his thirties of the
Commercial Bank; elected to the legislature of united Canada as a
Conservative in 1863; gradually separated from his party by distrust
of its financial programme, personal hostility to Macdonald, and
disappointment over not being chosen to succeed Sir John Rose as
Finance Minister in 1869; a strong opponent of Macdonald's railway
policy and vigorous in denunciation of the Pacific scandal, Cartwright
had finally thrown in his lot with the Liberals and become a member of
the Mackenzie government. As Minister of Finance through a period of
world-wide depression, Cartwright was compelled by his opponents to
bear the responsibility for every closed factory and every open
soup-kitchen, and had thrust upon him a reputation for pessimism and a
rigid, doctrinaire laissez-faire attitude which was far from earned.
Yet in opposition, with evidence ever before him of political
corruption, of hand-to-mouth expediency in high places, of the
bleeding white of the country by the exodus, he undoubtedly did grow
more pessimistic and more vitriolic. A polished gentleman, a finished
debater, a master of mordant satire, widely read, with a much wider
outlook in international affairs than almost any of his
fellow-parliamentarians, Cartwright was a distinct asset in the House,
though sometimes a liability in the country. For Blake, whom he was
wont to term "Master Blake" (Blake was fifty-four in 1887, and
Cartwright fifty-two) he had little sympathy; his single-track mind
could not understand the many windings and turnings of his leader's
thought and action.

David Mills, on the contrary, was a warm and loyal follower, almost a
worshipper of Blake. Born in Kent County, Ontario, in 1831, educated
at the University of Michigan, in turn school-teacher, inspector of
schools, editor, barrister, Mills entered parliament for Bothwell in
1867 and for the last two years of the Mackenzie régime served as
Minister of the Interior. He was a solid, industrious,
straightforward, moderate man, well-read and possessed of a reflective
bent and a desire to get down to fundamentals which led Macdonald to
call him always the philosopher of Bothwell. He was unquestionably
able, but lacked Cartwright's note of distinction. While possessed of
his share of ambition, he would have been quite content to keep
Blake's seat warm for him if his leader wished at any time to return.

Yet it was to neither of these men that Blake turned. He knew that
Cartwright, though respected, was far from universally popular, and
the personal antagonism between the two men made him discount his
Ontario colleague's vigorous qualities. Mills he held made for a
lieutenant's, not a captain's place. In Laurier he recognized a born
leader. Intimate intercourse in the House and on many political tours
they had taken together had given him the measure of the man. Aside
from the personal factor, he felt that it was in Quebec that the
Liberal party's greatest opportunity lay. When Mills and Burpee went
to Blake on behalf of the parliamentary party, seeking advice as to
his successor, his reply was emphatic: "There is only one possible
choice--Laurier."

To many members of the party the suggestion came as a surprise. They
had taken Blake's leadership so much for granted that they had not
thought of any other man as more than an aide to the chief. Nor could
they now picture Laurier in his place. They had not yet realized the
iron determination that lay behind that quiet manner, the latent
strength housed in that frail body. An orator of unsurpassed force and
grace, they granted, a man of incomparable charm, of unblemished
reputation, of high and consistent aims, but a student rather than a
fighter, too quiet and retiring for the task of popular leadership,
too weak to hold together a party of many strong and assertive
personalities and break the hold of Macdonald on the country. Even
granting the personal qualities, was it expedient to set a
French-speaking Roman Catholic at the head of a party of which the
chief strength had always lain in the English-speaking provinces,
particularly when the ashes of the Riel controversy still were hot,
and Laurier's musket on exhibit in every Tory sanctum? And yet, where
was his equal?

Wilfred Laurier knew his own powers too well either to display them
before the need came or to fear that they would not suffice. Yet he
had not thought of succeeding to the leadership, and was genuinely
averse to accepting the task. On personal grounds he preferred the
quiet life he had been leading, the practice of his profession, the
constant browsing in the parliamentary library, the daily warm and
pleasant communion with chosen friends, the occasional call for a
parliamentary jousting. On party grounds, he doubted, even more than
his Ontario friends, the wisdom of choosing a man who was too good a
Catholic to suit Ontario and not submissive enough to suit Quebec. If
Blake must retire, he was convinced that Cartwright was the man to
succeed.

When Mills and Burpee reported Blake's attitude, Laurier went to his
house, urged him to reconsider, and declared that he could not himself
undertake the leadership. Aside from other personal grounds, he was
not a man of independent means, and the new post would involve a heavy
pecuniary sacrifice; but it was mainly the party reasons against the
choice of a leader from Quebec he emphasized. Blake, who was not well,
lay stretched upon a sofa, listening while Laurier talked; then
repeated his insistence that he must retire and that no other man but
Laurier could face the task. "Yes, Mr. Laurier," added Mrs. Blake, who
was present and who had evidently discussed the question many times
with her husband, "you are the only man for it."

On June 2, two months after the House met, Blake definitely resigned.
An advisory committee was named in caucus, Cartwright and Mills from
Ontario, Laurier and François Langelier from Quebec, Charles Weldon
from New Brunswick, A. G. Jones from Nova Scotia, L. H. Davies from
Prince Edward Island, and Robert Watson from Manitoba. This was only a
stop-gap measure; the choice of a leader had to be made without
further delay. On reflection, the majority of the party had come to
Blake's way of thinking. At a caucus held on June 7, the leadership
was offered to Laurier, Cartwright making the nomination and Mills
seconding it. Even yet, he hesitated, and deferred a definite answer
until the end of the session. When the session drew to a close, he was
persuaded, still against his judgment, to accept the task and to
announce his acceptance to the country. Even so, he insisted to the
caucus that he would retire if Blake's health returned. At the age of
forty-six years Wilfred Laurier became the leader of the party he was
to guide for over thirty years.

The announcement stirred much comment. The pervading note was of
good-will tempered by doubt. "L'Electeur" and "La Patrie" rejoiced
that one great Canadian had been found to succeed another, and
forecast fair fortunes for Laurier, Liberalism and Canada. The "Globe"
was more restrained in its eulogies. On June 8, commenting on a report
that Laurier had been elected leader for the session only, it declared
that "his appointment would be as judicious and generally acceptable
as any," but that it would be a grave error to make him or any other
man merely a temporary leader: Blake's return was absolutely out of
the question. A fortnight later, on the announcement of Laurier's
acceptance, the greeting was warmer: there was every reason to believe
that Laurier would justify as fully as Blake did the old maxim that
the man whom a great place seeks is the man to fill a great place
worthily: an admirable speaker, a man of courage, patriotism,
character; not yet possessed of Blake's mastery of procedure or of
business detail, but sure to develop: "he has most gallantly and
unselfishly placed himself at the disposal of his friends; every
Liberal owes him gratitude and every Conservative owes him justice and
fair play." And yet a lingering doubt is reflected in the fact that
for weeks thereafter the new leader's name never occurs in the columns
of the chief journal of the party. The "Mail" frankly and fairly
recognized the new leader's quality. A less sympathetic view was
reflected in the Toronto "World": Laurier was not the Moses to lead
the Liberals out of the wilderness; an orator, not a parliamentarian,
of little political judgment, amiable, but not the stuff of which
leaders are made. And "La Minerve," suddenly discovering the departing
leader's greatness, lamented the "replacing of a giant by a pigmy";
Laurier's election might gratify the _amour propre_ of Quebec, but it
would assure the Conservatives of twenty-five years of power: it would
be the régime of the worthy M. Joly transferred to the federal house.
Later in the year "La Minerve" somewhat less ungraciously expressed
its fear that the task would prove above his strength, and at the same
time its willingness to applaud a compatriot if he rose to his
opportunity.

Wilfrid Laurier became leader of the Liberal party in his forty-sixth
year. He had been in political life since thirty, and for all but
three years of this time in the federal parliament. Time had tested
his political qualities; it had not weakened his political interest.
His character was formed, his opinions ripened, his capacities
developed. Authority was to give a sharper edge to some of his powers,
age was to bring some disillusionment, the turns of fate were to
reveal to the public some unexpected phases of his character and
capacity, but in all essentials the Wilfrid Laurier upon whom Edward
Blake's mantle had fallen so unexpectedly in 1887 was the Wilfrid
Laurier of the next thirty years.

It was pre-eminently to his character that Wilfrid Laurier owed his
new place. The public knew him as the silver-tongued orator, his party
hailed him as a firm and skilled exponent of its principles, but it
was not his oratory, it was not his opinions, that chiefly marked him
out for power. Less consciously and obviously it was the moral
qualities of the man that won the allegiance of those who knew him
best, his courage, his self-control, his honour, his essential
kindliness. Courage was perhaps his outstanding quality. He was not
reckless; he was not regardless of the choice of the paths that led to
a goal; he was ever an opportunist as to means; he had constantly in
mind the necessity of keeping the country moving abreast, but for all
that he was unflinching and unafraid wherever he found a principle at
stake. Self-control had marked him from student days, the assurance of
power, the patience to wait, the vigilance of phrase, moderation in
criticism and attack. Honour was rooted in him. No friend ever
complained that Wilfrid Laurier had deceived or misled him; no
opponent ever charged that he had been tricked, or treated with other
than scrupulous chivalry. It was a bold man who could propose in
Laurier's presence any shady policy, and if he ventured, it was not
long until he wilted into stammering silence under the calm influence
of a noble presence. Laurier shrank from mean and ignoble things with
a repugnance that was almost physical. He was ambitious, and the
fondness for power grew with its exercise, but he was too proud to
stoop, too fastidious to make cheap bids for popularity. And yet he
was not self-centred; he did not hold himself aloof. A deep and
genuine kindliness marked all his actions; it shone in the laughing
intercourse with old friends in his home, in his warm interest in
children, in the tolerant attitude toward those who differed from him.
The perfect courtesy that marked him through all his years was no
calculated and superficial accomplishment; it was the natural outcome
of a spirit wherein friendly interest in his fellows and respect for
himself were subtly fused.[39]

[Footnote 39: Laurier's estimate of Antoine Dorion is curiously
applicable to himself; Dorion had been his boyish ideal and had
profoundly influenced his development:

     "Considered as party leader Mr. Dorion was himself, and
     could be compared with none other. In opinions no one
     could have been more democratic, but he never had
     resource to those expedients which are sometimes
     considered indispensable in democratic politics. A man
     of exquisitely courteous manners he yet repelled all
     familiarity. He never resorted to the facile method of
     courting popularity by spending himself on every side.
     He never sought to flatter vulgar passion; he never
     deviated from the path which seemed to him to be the
     path of truth. He never sought success for the love of
     success, but he fought persistently for the right as he
     saw it. He faced defeat without weakness, and when
     success came it did not take away his modesty."]

The distinction of his presence was in keeping with the distinction of
his character. Tall, slight, but with a broad pair of shoulders, of
irregular features, smooth face, pale complexion, hair jet-black, he
stood out in any company. There was about him an indefinable touch of
authority. "The three greatest French-Canadian chieftains of
democracy," his friend Senator David has noted, "Papineau, Dorion and
Laurier, were all of aristocratic appearance; their bearing, their
manners, their features, were stamped with the imprint of unusual
distinction." In friendly talk his features were in repose,
benevolent, serene; when business was on foot his wary eye sharpened
and his face became as expressionless and impenetrable as a mask.

It was as a speaker that he had first made his mark. He had now become
incomparably the first parliamentary orator, and one of the most
skilled debaters in Canada's annals. He had not Blake's range of mind,
his grasp and marshalling of intricate detail; he had not Chapleau's
brilliance and theatrical passion; he could not play on crowds with
the power and dash of Mercier; but he had distinctive qualities of his
own which gave him the mastery on the floor of parliament. He did not
speak often. When he did speak he confined himself to a few broad
points, developing them logically, calmly, persuasively. The thought
was not abstruse, the reasoning not subtle; it seemed to the hearer
plain common sense, touched with emotion, heightened with imagination,
sharpened in a clinching phrase. In debate he was wary, alert, ready
in resource, courteous but insistent, rarely giving an opponent an
opening and rarely missing the weak joint in the opponent's armour.
His clear silvery voice, his easy gesture, his twinkling eye as he
rallied an opponent, his stern features as he denounced injustice,
dominated his hearers.

Laurier had been reluctant to assume the task. Once it was assumed, he
threw himself vigorously into all its duties. He realized that it was
necessary to get in touch with the rank and file of the party as well
as with its leaders. Quebec he already knew. In the summer of 1888,
accompanied by Mme. Laurier, he made a long tour through western
Ontario, giving a number of addresses, but seeking chiefly to make the
personal acquaintance of the Liberal stalwarts in each riding. His
extempore speeches in English were not at first as fluent and finished
as he desired, but before the tour was over he had gained ease and
confidence. Everywhere his fine presence, his unaffected friendliness
and interest, his frank discussion of the country's affairs, won warm
allegiance. In the House his success was still more rapid and
complete. At the beginning of the session of 1888 he had to face the
aloofness of a number of members who had accepted his leadership
without enthusiasm, as merely a _pis aller_.[40] Their lukewarmness
was not of long duration. From the outset Laurier revealed a grasp of
policy, a courage and firmness combined with prudence, tact, and
unfailing good temper, a careful planning of parliamentary activities
together with a readiness to let his associates share the work and the
honours, a genuine individual interest in his followers, which stirred
them to eager loyalty. At the close of the session they expressed
unanimous, unqualified, and enthusiastic allegiance. The new leader
had established his right to lead.

[Footnote 40: A letter from an Ontario Liberal member, John Charlton,
forecasting a gloomy future for a party with a French Catholic leader
and with "machine politicians like J. D. Edgar" high in its councils,
which became public, illustrated this attitude.]




CHAPTER VIII

MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED

     A Canadian Stock-taking-—Political Discontent and
     Economic Stagnation-—Heroic Remedies-—Imperial
     Federation-—Annexation-—Independence-—Seeking New
     Markets-—An Imperial _Zollverein_-—Commercial Union
     with the United States—-Laurier's Attitude-—The
     Jesuits' Estates Diversion—-Macdonald and
     Mercier—-McCarthy and the Dual-Language Question-—Blake
     and the Leadership-—The Canadian Pacific again in
     Politics-—The Election of 1891-—The Old Man, the Old
     Flag, and the Old Policy-—The Blake Postcript.


When Wilfrid Laurier assumed the leadership of the Liberal party, he
found the country facing new issues and new phases of old issues. To
follow a man like Edward Blake would in any case have called for every
quality of leadership he possessed. When the situation was complicated
by the emergence of difficult and thorny problems, charged with
political dynamite and potent to sweep away old party boundaries, the
test became as searching as could well be conceived.

The ghost of Louis Riel, though not exorcised, no longer walked
nightly. Riel lay in his grave; his Métis followers had gone back to
their carts and their ploughs; the government had been put on its
trial and had escaped punishment. The storm that had swept Quebec and
Ontario died away. But when the waters of racial passion have been
stirred to their depths, they do not easily come to rest. In the
Jesuits' Estates controversy, in the demand for the abolition of
French in the schools of Ontario and the legislature of the
North-West, and later in the protracted struggle over the schools of
Manitoba, the country and its political leaders had to face the
aftermath of the storm.

Nor was it merely questions of race and creed that called for prudent
and courageous handling. The first term of Laurier's leadership and
the first general election which followed were occupied still more
absorbingly with the problem of Canada's trade and political
connection with the United Kingdom and the United States. For the
first time in the history of the Dominion, the issue of its national
future and its relationship to outside powers, particularly to the two
great English-speaking communities, became of wide and dominant
popular interest. The question was not raised by party leaders. It
grew out of the country's need, and found its first expression through
men who had played little part in politics. The character and the
ambitions of individual men had much to do with the form in which the
issue arose and the solution which it received, but they did not
create it. Given Canada's historical relations with the United
Kingdom, her geographical connection with the United States, and the
trend of her own political and industrial development after
Confederation, the rise of the issue was inevitable.

In 1887 Canada had experienced twenty years of Confederation, and
nearly ten of the national policy. What did the stock-taking show?

Confederation was to bring national unity, to create a common
Canadian sentiment which would submerge provincial prejudices, end all
hankering for union with the United States, and prepare the Dominion
for a relationship of equality with the mother country. Had this unity
developed? For the most part it was still a hope unrealized. True, the
federal solution had removed some of the more contentious questions
from the common parliament, but enough remained, or could be dragged
back, to keep sectional jealousy aflame. True, there was no little
growth of Canadian national sentiment, as the North-West rebellion
gave opportunity for proving, and even in the Maritime provinces many
men had become used to calling themselves Canadians, but it was
doubtful whether this sentiment was strong enough to enable the
Dominion to resist the separatist tendencies from within or the
attraction of greater bodies from without. There was little provincial
intercourse; in 1881, despite the building of the Intercolonial, there
were not a thousand Ontarians in the Maritime provinces and there were
actually fewer Maritime province men in Ontario than there had been in
1861. When a Nova Scotia or New Brunswick lad sought wider fields, it
was not to Toronto or Montreal he turned, but to Boston or New York.

Nova Scotia, despite increased federal subsidies which Nova Scotians
regarded as belated instalments of bare justice and Ontario grudged as
necessary bribes, was still unreconciled to having been forced into
Confederation. In May, 1886, William S. Fielding had moved a series
of resolutions in the Nova Scotia legislature, pointing out how much
the condition of the province, commercially and financially, had
changed for the worse, insisting that the objections which had been
urged against union in 1867 still applied with greater force, and
proposed secession from the Dominion, to form either a separate
province or a maritime union under the Crown. The resolutions carried
by a vote of fifteen to seven and in the elections which followed the
Fielding government was sustained by an over-*whelming majority;
curiously, a year later the Conservatives won in the federal fight,
giving Fielding a reason or excuse for going no further with his
proposals. Ontario and Quebec were rent by a more bitter quarrel than
any since the fifties, and the end was not yet. Quebec newspapers were
still railing against the intolerance which had sent a lunatic (or a
hero) to the scaffold, while in Ontario the "Mail" was threatening to
smash Confederation into its original fragments rather than submit to
French Catholic dictation. In the West, armed rebellion had broken out
among the Métis and resentment against high tariffs and railway
monopolies was running high among the English-speaking farmers. The
Manitoba farmer bore fifteen cents a bushel handicap as compared with
his Minnesota neighbour in the cost of shipping wheat to Liverpool;
local rates on coal and lumber and general merchandise were from two
to four times as high as for equal distances in the Eastern provinces,
and the West held, not climate or geography, but Macdonald and Van
Horne and the policy of artificial restriction of trade and trade
channels to blame.

At Confederation it had been hoped that a new stage and new players
would bring higher political standards. The hard reality was the
Canada of gerrymanders and Red Parlour funds, a low and stagnant level
of political methods that affected both parties and had its source in
the popular indifference that soon forgot Pacific scandals. Nor had
Canada taken the position in the Empire and among the nations of the
world that had been hoped. In Great Britain she was considered a
colony which had ceased to fulfil the natural functions of a colony
and would some day go the way of all colonies, though in some quarters
there was a reviving interest and a belief that Britain's overseas
possessions would still prove serviceable. In the United States, where
Canada had been given a thought at all, she had been considered an
Arctic fringe, at the moment merely a pawn in Britain's hands, but
destined some day to knock for admission to the Union. Latterly,
friction over the Northeastern fisheries had made her better if not
more favourably known. Elsewhere, Canada was about as well known as
Spitzbergen or Kamschatka to the outside world to-day.

In his first public address after his election to the leadership, at a
political picnic held at Somerset, in the county of Megantic, on
August 2, 1887, Laurier emphasized the failure to attain national
unity, and laid the blame at the government's door. National unity,
he insisted, must be every patriot's aim, and not least the aim of
every French-Canadian:

     French-Canadians, I ask you one thing, that, while
     remembering that I, a French-Canadian, have been
     elected leader of the Liberal party of Canada, you will
     not lose sight of the fact that the limits of our
     common country are not confined to the province of
     Quebec, but that they extend to all the territory of
     Canada, and that our country is wherever the British
     flag waves in America. I ask you to remember this in
     order to remind you that your duty is simply and above
     all to be Canadians. To be Canadians! That was the
     object of Confederation in the intention of its
     authors; the aim and end of Confederation was to bring
     the different races closer together, to soften the
     asperities of their mutual relations and to connect the
     scattered groups of British subjects.

Unfortunately this aim had not been attained:

     This was the programme twenty years ago. But are the
     divisions ended? The truth is that after twenty years'
     trial of the system, the Maritime provinces submit to
     Confederation, but do not love it. The province of
     Manitoba is in open revolt against the Dominion
     government, gentlemen, not in armed revolt, as in the
     revolt of the half-breeds, but in legal revolt. The
     province of Nova Scotia demands its separation from the
     Confederation. In fact, carry your gaze from east to
     west and from north to south and everywhere the
     prevailing feeling will be found to be one of unrest
     and uneasiness, of discontent and irritation.

     ... The fault rests with the men who have governed us,
     the fault rests with the men who, instead of governing
     according to the spirit of our institutions, have
     disregarded the principle of local liberties and local
     interests, the recognition of which is the very basis
     of our constitution.... In a country like ours, with a
     heterogeneous population,... a federative union is the
     only one that can secure civil and political
     liberty.... Legislative separation is the most powerful
     factor in national unity.... Unfortunately the
     constitution has placed in the hands of the government
     a terrible weapon which it has used, when and how it
     pleased, to assail the local liberties of the
     provinces,... the veto power, which is by far the most
     arbitrary weapon with which tyranny has ever armed a
     federal government.

If Confederation had not brought national unity or higher political
standards or a place in the world's regard, had the National Policy
given the economic benefits its sponsors had promised? The trial had
been shorter, but the evidence of failure was almost equally strong.

Protection was to assure prosperity to the manufacturer, bring home
markets to the farmer, and force the lowering of the United States
tariff wall—"a reciprocity of trade through a reciprocity of tariffs."
There had been an outburst of prosperity, with the revival of good
times the world over in 1880, and the impulse to trade that came with
the building of the Canadian Pacific and the fitting out of the
settlers and speculators who followed in its wake. But now the
reaction had come. The days of construction, with millions to fling,
were over, and the penny-counting days of operating had succeeded. Of
the settlers who had poured into the West, a great proportion proved
merely tourists; frost, drought, grasshoppers, high railway rates, low
wheat prices, the prospect of hard work, drove them east or south.
Corner lots in mushroom cities relapsed into prairie, and Eastern
shareholders in colonization companies found there was many a wait
between the prospectus and the settler. For a time protection had
encouraged the building and expansion of Eastern factories, notably in
the textile, sugar, and iron and steel industries, but with the home
market stagnant and the market of the United States still barred, this
expansion led to over-production, the closing down of the weaker
plants, and constant cries for a larger dose of the stimulant. The
farmer's home markets shared the same restriction; in the British
market, he faced the world's competition; from the United States he
was still shut out. The club of retaliation had been no more
successful than the olive branch of low tariffs in inducing the United
States to mend its ways.

The statistics of trade, railway traffic, bank deposits, revealed the
stagnation or snail-like progress of the country. But the most
convincing and most alarming evidence was furnished by the slow growth
of population at home and the swelling exodus to the United States.
Between 1851 and 1861 the province of Canada had grown over six
hundred thousand, and between 1871 and 1881 the Dominion nearly seven
hundred thousand, but between 1881 and 1891 by a bare half-million.
Between 1881 and 1891 the population of Manitoba and the North-West
grew from 120,000 to 250,000, but Dakota alone in the same period had
leaped from 135,000 to 510,000. Canadians flocked to the United
States, Maritime-province men to Boston, French-Canadians to the mill
towns of New England, Ontario men to the border cities and Dakota
farms; contrary to current belief, over half of these emigrants sought
the farm, not the city. Canada with its four million people and its
vast acres had sent more of its sons to the building of the republic
than England with its thirty millions and its crowded land. There were
virtually as many Canadian doctors, nurses, architects, bartenders,
actors, engineers, cotton-mill operatives, lumbermen, in the United
States as in Canada itself. Counting native-born, the children of two
native-born parents and half the children claiming one Canadian
parent, there were in the United States in 1890 one and a half-million
Canadians, or over one-third the home population. Never in history,
save perhaps from crowded and misgoverned Ireland, had there been such
an exodus from one country to another. "In literal fashion," declared
Sir Richard Cartwright, whose scriptures, according to Nicholas Flood
Davin, began with Exodus and ended with Lamentations, "the United
States are becoming literally flesh of our flesh and blood of our
blood. I know whole counties, I know great regions in Canada where you
cannot find one single solitary Canadian family which has not a son or
a daughter or a brother or a sister or some near and dear relative now
inhabiting the United States."

Whence could escape be found from national disunion and economic
stagnation? Desperate conditions called for drastic remedies. Canada
had failed to find salvation in her own resources. Why not merge her
political or her industrial fortunes with one or the other of the
greater English-speaking peoples? Imperial federation and imperial
preferential trade, political union and commercial union with the
United States,--all found their eager advocates.

The swing to closer relations with Great Britain came first, though it
did not in this period bulk so large. A new stage was opening in the
transformation of the British Empire. In early days the colonies had
been regarded as possessions of the mother country, markets for its
wares, sources of the raw materials required, to be defended against
other colony-hungry powers and to be controlled by British governors.
Then had come the era of emancipation. The growth of the colonies in
numbers and self-confidence had coincided with the decay in Britain of
the belief that protection at home and monopoly of colonial trade
brought profit. Britain abandoned trade monopoly and political control
together. The colonies took over a steadily increasing share of the
management of their own affairs. In Britain, most men expected the
movement would continue until complete independence was reached. But
in the colonies the force of habit, inherited loyalties, the renewal
of ties by fresh immigration, the desire for military aid, the lack of
any precipitating crisis, brought content with British connection.
Then after the Franco-Prussian War the tide turned once more. The
development of military ambitions and tariff wars on the Continent,
the entrance of European powers upon the race for overseas possessions
in which Britain had long been without a rival, revived the imperial
spirit in Britain. A movement began to avert the drift to independence
and instead to link the colonies in closer union. The new tendencies
found expression in the activities of the Imperial Federation League.
Its chief purpose was to secure from the colonies military support for
British policies. To reconcile them to this obligation, they were to
be given representation in a parliament in London to which control
over the Empire's common affairs, whatever they might be, would be
entrusted. The league was organized in London in 1884, with Hon. W. H.
Forster and Lord Rosebery as leading spirits. Branches were
established in Canada and Australia and a vigorous campaign of popular
education begun.

At first imperial federation made a strong appeal in Canada. The
desire to retain British connections was strong, and yet men were
increasingly discontented with the subordinate part which Canada still
played in external affairs. Representation in a common parliament in
London seemed to open a way out. Then, as the attempt was made to
crystallize the perorations in a working plan, difficulties which
proved insuperable came to light. How was the parliament or council to
be constituted? What of India's position? Would the colonies have to
give up old powers as well as secure new ones? Would taxation with
fractional representation prove acceptable? Many men keenly interested
in public affairs and fired with a burning pride in the memories and
achievements of the British race--Principal Grant, Colonel Denison,
D'Alton McCarthy--had faith that the questions could be answered,
given time and good-will. But no party leader, closer in touch with
realities, was convinced. Macdonald held parliamentary federation "an
idle dream"; "Canada would never consent to be taxed by a central body
sitting at London, in which she would have practically no voice."
Blake, who had been one of the first to welcome the proposal as an
outlet from colonial dependence, became convinced of its futility. "A
quarter of a century past," he declared in the British House of
Commons in 1900, "I dreamed the dream of imperial parliamentary
federation, but many years ago I came to the conclusion that we had
passed the turning that could lead to that terminus, if ever, indeed,
there was a practicable road."

While some were looking to London for salvation, others looked to
Washington. The agitation for closer political union with the older
branch of the English-speaking peoples provoked a counter-agitation
for political union with the younger branch. The chief supporter of
annexation was Goldwin Smith, an Oxford Don who, after a brief
residence in the United States, had made Toronto his home and had
undertaken the double task of developing literary standards in Canada
and of convincing the Canadian people of the opportunity that awaited
them of becoming the Scotland of North America. For a time he was a
voice crying in the wilderness. Then despair of national unity,
commercial depression, the desire to find a way out of the incessant
fishery and border conflicts with the United States, hostility to the
European entanglements which the imperialists proposed, brought
converts. There were more advocates of annexation in Canada in the
decade from 1886 to 1896 than at any other time before or since, but
even so they remained a small if vigorous minority,--considered not
merely traitorous but scarcely even respectable. British sympathies,
French-Canadian preference for the _status quo_, the nascent Canadian
spirit, antagonisms traditional since United Empire Loyalist days and
the War of 1812, proved forces too great to overcome.

It was not surprising that the constant and vigorous advocacy of the
merging of Canada's identity in British or American union provoked a
movement in favour of independence. Many Canadians had considered
Confederation only a first step toward separation. In the early
seventies Galt and McDougall had urged that only through independence
could responsibility be developed and Canada, instead of a hostage for
Britain's submissive conduct, become a link of friendship and ensurer
of peace between Britain and the United States. But the time was not
ripe, and much of the vague nationalist feeling was diverted into
economic rather than political channels when the national policy
struck out for industrial independence. Now the sentiment revived. If
a change in Canada's political status was to be made, why not take the
courageous and clear-cut solution of independence?

Laurier was never a man to raise questions before they were ripe. He
did not believe that any far-reaching change was imminent or
desirable, but he did believe that when a change came it should and
would be toward independence. Speaking on the reciprocity issue in
the House of Commons in March, 1888, he declared:

     It was our hope at one time to make this country a
     nation. It is our hope yet. ["Hear, hear!"] I hail that
     sentiment with joy, with unbounded joy, all the more
     that it is altogether unforeseen. I had expected, from
     the talk we have heard from these gentlemen on the
     other side of the House, that they expected that this
     country would forever and forever remain a colony: I
     see now that they have higher aspirations, and I give
     them credit for that. Colonies are destined to become
     nations, as it is the destiny of a child to become a
     man. No one, even on the other side, will assume that
     this country, which will some day number a larger
     population than Great Britain, is forever to remain in
     its present political relation with Great Britain. The
     time is coming when the present relations of Great
     Britain and Canada must either become closer or be
     severed altogether.... If ever and whenever Canada
     chooses, to use the language of Lord Palmerston, to
     stand by herself, the separation will take place not
     only in peace but in friendship and in love, as the son
     leaves the house of his father to become himself the
     father of a family. But this is not the question of
     to-day.

Two years later, at a banquet in the Club National at Montreal, in
celebration of Mercier's electoral victory, he rebuked a little clique
that was talking of "the creation of a French-speaking republic on the
banks of the St. Lawrence," and continued:

     When I say that I am not one of those who wish for the
     breaking up of Confederation, and favour the creation
     of little principalities in our midst, I do not mean to
     say that we should always remain a colony. On the
     contrary, the day is coming when this country will have
     to take its place among the nations of the earth, but
     I do not want to see my country's independence attained
     through the hostility of one race to the others. I do
     not want my country's independence to be conceived in
     the blood of civil war. I want my country's
     independence to be reached through the normal and
     regular progress of all the elements of its population
     toward the realization of a common aspiration.

Again in 1892, in supporting a resolution of D'Alton McCarthy in
favour of the appointment of a Canadian representative at Washington,
which the government was unwilling to accept in full, he renewed his
profession of faith in independence as the ultimate destiny of Canada:

     The honourable gentleman [Charles Tupper] said there
     was no precedent for this motion, and nothing similar
     in the history of nations. I am sure that he is right
     ... but at the same time there has been no instance in
     the history of nations of a colony occupying toward the
     mother country the position that Canada occupies toward
     Great Britain. Canada has been the first colony in the
     world to obtain the right of self-government, and the
     present motion is simply a development of the policy
     adopted fifty years ago when we claimed and obtained
     the right to govern ourselves.... The motion is
     proposed by an honourable gentleman, whose views, as to
     the future of Canada, are well known to be in favour of
     a closer relation with Great Britain than we now have.
     The motion is supported by myself, and it is known that
     I do not believe that the present condition of things
     will endure forever. The present relations between us
     and Great Britain must become either closer or looser.
     My opinion is that in the course of time the relations
     of Canada with Great Britain must cease, as the
     relations of colonies with the mother country do cease,
     by independence, just as a child becomes a man. There
     are the views I hold, not in regard to the present or
     actual policy, but as to the future of the country.

The sentiment in favour of eventual independence was strongest in the
Liberal ranks. The Liberal party had fought for and achieved
self-government in home affairs. It had urged, under Blake and
Mackenzie, Canada's claim to make her own commercial treaties. Now the
policy of complete independence found much support within its ranks.
The Young Liberals' Club in Toronto in 1889 and 1890 leaned strongly
in that direction. The "Globe" urged it repeatedly. Irritated by
failure of British support in the Atlantic fisheries dispute, the
"Globe" declared in February, 1888:

     So long as the Canadian people remain unwilling to
     assume the responsibility of independent nationality,
     so long must they expect to be despoiled by the United
     States with British consent and aid. Canada is far
     worse off in dealing with the United States than she
     would be if independent.... The truth is that the
     connection seriously embarrasses England and seriously
     embarrasses and injures Canada. So long as we insist
     upon retaining it, we cannot justly complain of
     suffering for the indulgence in a noble loyalty to a
     country five-sixths of us never saw.

Commenting on an independence speech of Malcolm Cameron, in December,
1889, it declared: "The spirit of independence is certainly moving
throughout the land.... Mr. Mowat, though deeply devoted to British
connection, stated the other day at Woodstock that he hoped a change,
if one must come, would be to independence instead of annexation."
"The colonial status," it insisted a month later, "is being rapidly
out-grown. Ultimate independence seems so reasonable a destiny for the
Dominion that very many of the older generation of Canadians unite
heartily with the young men in its advocacy."

Still more significant was the development in this period of the
conception of independence without separation, as a final goal or a
next step, the conversion of the Empire into a league of equal states
linked only by allegiance to a common Crown. Sir John Macdonald, at
Confederation, had foreshadowed the growth of the colonies into
"auxiliary kingdoms," but it was in the Liberal ranks that the idea
found its freest expression. Mr. J. D. Edgar in 1885 and Sir Richard
Cartwright in 1887 urged that the Queen was to be regarded as Queen of
Canada, and that a new equality would follow that recognition. The
"Globe" developed the idea, and alternating with expressions of
opinion in favour of unqualified independence of the older type, its
columns presented with remarkable insight and, so far as is known, for
the first time in any detail, that conception of the Empire as a
league of equal states which it has been the task of these later years
to make a reality.[41]

[Footnote 41: "Mr. Cattanach says that Canadians have no alternative
but Imperial Federation or Annexation. We have a third and better
alternative and we say that complete independence is perfectly
consistent with British connection. Let Her Majesty take the title of
Queen of Canada, let her be advised directly by her Canadian
Ministers, and Canada will be as independent as England, which is
sufficiently independent for any country, without being separated from
England, without breaking the Canadian tradition, and with perfect
satisfaction to the sentiments of all Canadians and Englishmen who are
not mainly concerned to keep this country subordinate to Downing
Street."--"Globe," Feb. 27, 1889.

"The _Globe_ has often propounded as an alternative project to
imperial federation, and a vastly better one, the abolition of the few
legislative disabilities that now pertain to the colonies, and the
formation of an international league under the Old Crown between the
Mother Country and the various sovereign powers which such an
abolition would create. Such a league, we have pointed out, while
amply satisfying all the considerations of sentiment which are urged
in favour of British connection, would at the same time save the
colonies from the imperial and European complications in which
Imperial Federation would involve us. Canada, for instance, under such
an alliance, though she might still acknowledge the sovereignty of the
Queen, could not be involved in England's quarrels without her own
consent, and this consent any nation engaged in a war with England
would be scrupulously careful to give her no reason to cease to
withhold."--"Globe," Feb. 20, 1890.]

None of these projects of political change reached the stage of
practical action. Imperial federation had behind it the most fervent
and wide-spread sentiment, but the nebulous vagueness of the schemes
of its advocates, the conflict within the movement between those who
stressed imperial defence and those who stressed imperial trade, and
the impossibility of reconciling any form of imperial centralization
with nationalist spirit, kept it still an aspiration. Annexation had
behind it alluring and immediate prospects of individual gain and
national security, but it ran hopelessly counter to deep traditions,
prejudices, loyalties, which were of the very soul of the people.
Toward independence the country moved with every increase of strength
and confidence, but as yet any formal programme of separation was
premature and won little assent. Imperial federation and annexation
neutralized each other, each saved the country from the other,
permitting all the while the growth of a national spirit which would
not seek absorption in either greater branch of the English-speaking
peoples.

The question of political status was of the morrow; the questions of
trade, markets, profits, were of the day. Reaction from the prosperity
which had gleamed in Canada since 1880 forced the issue of larger
markets to the front.

The United Kingdom did not appear to offer a new outlet. Its markets
were already free to Canada, but they were also free to the rest of
the world. There was little prospect of ousting the United States,
Russia, Australia, from their share in Britain's imports. Only if
Britain could be induced to abandon free trade, to return to her old
policy of protection with its incidental possibilities of colonial
preference, to seek once more to build up a self-contained empire,
could special favour come. Of that few had hope. In England a rare
fair-trader called for high tariffs and retaliation, but the
overwhelming voice of the country agreed with Disraeli that protection
was not only dead but damned. In Canada, the memory of old
preferential days had lingered longer; for a brief moment, in the
early days of the N. P., when English traders were throwing stones at
his industrial conservatories, Macdonald thought of urging England,
too, to build glass houses, but Disraeli's fall brought his plans to
grief. In imperial federation circles, the possibility of cementing
the Empire by customs privileges kept recurring, but the conviction
that rightly or wrongly England would stick to free trade for
generations to come, robbed the project of any practical appeal. It
was chiefly as a rhetorical alternative to closer trade relations with
the United States that imperial preference or an imperial _Zollverein_
was urged.

For it was the question of access to the markets of the United States
that dominated Canadian politics in these years. Those markets had
always bulked large on Canada's horizon. For three thousand miles her
borders marched with those of the most prosperous and rapidly
expanding country in the world. Even though many of the products of
the two countries were the same, in large part each complemented the
other and even where both had a surplus, the accidents of geography
made it more convenient for Nova Scotia to market its coal in New
England and for Pennsylvania to fill the bins of Ontario. The United
States was Canada's "natural market." But human nature was also
natural, and a leaning to protection seemed part of the inheritance
from Adam. Tariff walls had long hampered, though they could not
wholly block, the movements of trade. In the reciprocity period, from
1854 to 1866, a wide breach had been made, and natural products were
exchanged freely to mutual advantage. Then the bitterness of civil war
antagonisms had led the United States to bang, bar, and bolt the door.
Canada had done her best to open it again. Galt and Rose, Macdonald
and Brown, Grit and Tory, had gone more than half-way to meet the
United States, but had gone in vain. The United States was prosperous,
content, indifferent. Protectionist feeling was strong. Local
interests which might be prejudiced were firmly entrenched. The
division of authority between President and Congress made negotiation
difficult and ratification a gamble.

Now it appeared that an opening had come. In Canada, depression was
giving a new insistence to the longing of farmers, miners, lumbermen,
for open markets. For the first time since the Civil War, the
professedly low-tariff party in the United States held executive
power. Its manufacturers were beginning to think of finding new
outlets. Yet it was doubtful whether the United States could be
brought to accede to any limited measure of reciprocity. The more
sweeping policy of a North American _Zollverein_ might perhaps strike
the republic's imagination.

For thirty years, proposals for a North American _Zollverein_, or
commercial union, had found distinguished but sporadic backing in both
the United States and Canada. This project involved absolute free
trade between the United States and Canada, with a common tariff,
arranged by joint agreement, against the outside world, and probably a
pooling of customs dues; reciprocal free use of the fisheries might be
made an incident. The proposal had never found wide or enduring
favour. Now the time and the man had come. Erastus Wiman, a Canadian
business man who had found prosperity in New York, took the idea from
an American capitalist interested in Canadian ores, Samuel Ritchie,
and his legal adviser, Hezekiah Butterworth, then a member of
Congress. Wiman's intimate acquaintance with business conditions in
both countries, the opportunities of propaganda afforded by his
interests in commercial-credit agencies and telegraph companies, and
his organizing capacity enabled him to force the proposal to the
front. Supported or hampered by the co-operation of Goldwin Smith,
and finding a surprisingly quick response in farming and mining and
lumbering circles, Wiman carried the torch through Ontario in the
summer of 1887. Farmers' institute after farmers' institute endorsed
his proposals, and it soon became apparent that a new issue had
entered Canadian politics.

The power of the press in selecting, shaping, and forcing an issue was
never more clearly displayed in Canada than in the campaign that
followed. Ontario was the centre of the movement. For a time its
fortunes rose and fell with the attitude of the Toronto "Mail."
Founded in 1872 as a Conservative organ, "to smite the Grits under the
fifth rib every morning," as it once avowed, the "Mail" had made this
duty a pleasure. For years it had reflected the party will without
question. Then after the Riel episode it began to emphasize two
issues, commercial union with the United States and hostility to
French-Canadian and hierarchical domination, without considering too
closely how they would affect the interests of the party. In a measure
history was repeating itself. In 1849 the advocates of political union
with the United States were recruited chiefly from the Tories, who had
been hit in their pride by the rise of French-Canadian rebels to power
and in their pocket by Britain's change of fiscal policy; the
annexationists of '49 were determined to find new markets at any cost
and to remain English even if they had to cease to be British. Now the
journal which had led the attack on Quebec for its defence of Riel and
had talked of smashing Confederation into its original fragments,
found in commercial union with the United States a panacea alike for
French-Canadian domination and for business stagnation.

The "Mail's" policy was shaped in no small measure by its chief
editorial writer, Edward Farrer. Farrer was the most extraordinary
figure in Canadian journalism. A brilliant Irishman of uncertain
antecedents, educated for the priesthood but forced by growing
disbelief to forego the Church's service, he had found his destiny,
after some business adventures, in newspaper work in Canada. He
combined a keen interest in political and economic questions with
unwearied zeal in investigation and most convincing powers of
exposition. His curious flexibility, his powers of secretiveness, his
loyalty after a fashion, made him capable on occasion of editing a
morning newspaper of one political stripe and an evening newspaper of
the contrary colour, in the same city, fulminating in turn against the
futilities of his esteemed contemporary, and led in later years to his
being entrusted by politicians on both sides with commissions of
discreet inquiry without ever betraying a confidence. Yet he was a man
of real convictions of which hostility to the presumption of the
hierarchy and a belief in the inevitableness of Canada's political
union with the United States were foremost. Farrer's lucid, informing,
business-like editorials in the "Mail" were the most important factors
in the growth of commercial union sentiment in 1887.

The Toronto "Globe," still edited by John Cameron, was not the oracle
it had been in George Brown's day, but it was still a power. Its
attitude on the trade issue wavered. During the elections of 1887 it
had endorsed Blake's assurances that the tariff was out of politics.
When Wiman and the "Mail" thrust commercial union forward, the "Globe"
first rebuked its contemporary for assuming that sentimental
considerations could be ignored, then on further inquiry found that
national and imperial sentiment would be advanced rather than hampered
by commercial union.

Party leaders were less responsive to the new proposals. The
Conservative party, champions of protection and already in control of
the administration, were least inclined to any change. Yet even
Conservative leaders recognized that some concession must be made.
Tupper and Foster, faced with low-tariff sentiment in the Maritime
provinces, were more open to conviction than Macdonald or Langevin,
closely leagued with Red Parlour groups of protected manufacturers in
Ontario and Quebec. In 1887 the government, with Tupper chiefly
urging, tried the traditional policy of linking fisheries and trade
concessions. At the suggestion of Wiman, Tupper visited Washington and
conferred with Thomas F. Bayard, Cleveland's Secretary of State, thus
incidentally breaking down the diplomatic convention which made
conversation between Ottawa and Washington a leisurely triangular
process, Canadian ministers through the governor-general communicating
with the Colonial Secretary in London, who took up the matter with the
Foreign Office, which gave instructions to the British minister in
Washington, who interviewed the State Department, and then began to
wind up the coil again. Bayard displayed a statesmanlike breadth and a
grasp of the issues involved which had been rare at Washington. A
commission, consisting of Sir Lionel Sackville-West, British minister
at Washington, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, and Sir Charles Tupper,
representing the British and Canadian governments, and James B. Angell
and W. L. Putnam for the United States, met at Washington in the
summer of 1887. Tupper at once proposed a measure of trade
reciprocity, later described as "an unrestricted offer of
reciprocity," in return for such reciprocity in fishing rights as had
been enjoyed under the Treaty of Washington, but the American
commissioners declined to purchase immunity from what they deemed
hostile and unneighbourly aggression by trade concessions. A treaty
providing a fair settlement of the fisheries dispute was drafted, but
was killed by the obstinacy of the United States Senate. A _modus
vivendi_ by which Canada conceded port rights on payment of a license
fee thereupon went into force; its renewal from year to year eased the
tension. The trade issue remained.

The Liberals were expected to be more sympathetic. As the party in
opposition, new causes would make more appeal to them than to the
defenders of the _status quo_. They had also more leaning toward freer
trade. True, there were distinctly protectionist strains in the party,
particularly in the Quebec representation, and the party attitude as a
whole for twenty years had been that of moderate or incidental
protection. Yet they included, particularly among those members
closely in touch with British movements, a minority who denounced
protection as an economic fallacy and a source of political
corruption. There were many signs of a drift toward commercial union
in the Liberal ranks, when the new leader made his first official
pronouncement at Somerset.

Mr. Laurier declared that the country was discontented and
disillusioned, and he agreed that protection had not fulfilled its
glowing promises. Yet he warned his followers against precipitate
adoption of the first alternative proposed:

     The reaction has come, gentlemen; it began in the
     province of Ontario; it has not stopped within moderate
     bounds; on the contrary it has gone to extremes, and at
     this very hour, the great majority of the farmers of
     Ontario are clamouring for commercial union with the
     United States, that is to say, the suppression of all
     customs duties between the two countries.... We know
     that there is to-day in the United States a group of
     men determined upon giving us commercial union.... If I
     am asked at present for my own opinion, I may say that
     for my part I am not ready to declare that commercial
     union is an acceptable idea. I am not ready, for my
     part, to state that commercial union should be adopted
     at the present moment.

But though not prepared to endorse commercial union, Mr. Laurier was
unhesitatingly in favour of closer and friendlier trade relations with
the United States: "At the bottom of the commercial union idea, badly
defined, was the conviction of the Canadian people that any kind of
reciprocity with the people of the United States would be to the
advantage of the people of Canada." Reciprocity had always been a
Liberal goal. The government had made futile attempts to force
reciprocity by a retaliatory customs and fisheries policy. "I may
say--and it is my actual policy--that the time has come to abandon the
policy of retaliation followed thus far by the Canadian government, to
show the American people that we are brothers, and to hold out our
hands to them, with a due regard for the duties we owe to our mother
country."

As to "commercial union with Great Britain, which has been suggested
as an alternative to commercial union with the United States," he
would say the same thing, "that the project was hazy and indefinite:
certainly if it were realizable, and all our interests were protected,
I would accept a commercial treaty of that nature." A more immediate
possibility would be commercial treaties with other parts of the
Empire: what would be easier than to have a commercial treaty with the
Australian continent? "I believe that idea is good and fair and that
it will eventually triumph."

If the new leader stood aloof, some of the old lieutenants were
prepared to rush in. Sir Richard Cartwright, speaking in October at
Ingersoll, flatly declared for commercial union. No other way of
escape seemed possible. Granted, there was a risk, but it was a choice
of risks:

     I have no hesitation in saying frankly that if the
     United States are willing to deal with us on equitable
     terms the advantages to both countries, and especially
     to us, are so great that scarcely any sacrifice is too
     severe to secure them. I am as averse as any man can be
     to annexation or to resign our political independence,
     but I cannot shut my eyes to the facts. We have greatly
     misused our advantages, we have been foolish in our
     expenditures, we have no means of satisfying the just
     demands of large portions of the Dominion, except
     through such an arrangement as commercial union. In the
     present temper of Manitoba and the Maritime provinces,
     any failure or refusal to secure free trade with the
     United States is much more likely to bring about just
     such a political crisis as these parties affect to
     dread than even the very closest commercial connection
     that can be conceived.

John Charlton took the same stand. Mills showed sympathy with it.
Lesser lights followed.

In Ontario, and on a trade issue, Cartwright as yet carried more
weight in the Liberal party than Laurier. Yet the majority of the
party preferred the new leader's more cautious policy. James D. Edgar
contributed materially to this conclusion by a series of open letters
to Mr. Wiman, in which he urged that abolition of the custom-houses
along the border was not essential to ensure a very wide, even an
unrestricted measure of reciprocity; neither in 1854, nor in Brown's
treaty of 1874, which provided for a much greater range of free
commodities, were uniform tariffs on the coast or the abolition of
tariffs along the border proposed. A declaration from the
interprovincial conference which met in Quebec in the same month
definitely marked out unrestricted reciprocity rather than commercial
union as the Liberal policy. The conference, which comprised
representatives from the Liberal administrations of Ontario, Quebec,
Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, of the coalition government in
New Brunswick, and the Conservative government of Manitoba,
unanimously adopted a resolution to the effect that unrestricted
reciprocity would be of advantage to all the provinces of the
Dominion, would strengthen rather than weaken British connection, and,
with the settlement of the fisheries dispute, would ease the strain in
the relations between the mother country and the United States.

When parliament met in 1888, the trade question overshadowed all other
issues. A Liberal caucus was called, to define the party's attitude.
Commercial union had its vigorous advocates, but they were in a small
minority. The great majority were not prepared to risk the experiment
of joint tariffs. Yet the minority were strong enough to secure a very
sweeping phrasing in the reciprocity resolution which Sir Richard
Cartwright moved on March 14. He demanded no less than complete free
trade between the United States and Canada in all manufactured and
natural products of the two countries. In a powerful speech Cartwright
deplored the slow growth of Canada, demonstrated that the United
States was her natural and incomparable market, insisted that this
market could not be secured save on generous and sweeping terms of
reciprocity, and met charges of disloyalty to Britain by asserting
that Canada's chief mission was to reconcile Britain and the United
States and denying that in any case Canada owed England more than
Christian forgiveness for the blunders of her diplomats.

He was well supported. Louis H. Davies analyzed the government's
policy; John Charlton surveyed in detail the possibilities of trade
with the republic; Alfred Jones exposed the failure of protection to
build up interprovincial trade; William Paterson argued that
legitimate manufacturing interests would gain, not lose; David Mills
insisted that the failure of the N. P. after a ten-year trial called
for a change; William Mulock emphasized the importance of geography in
determining world trade and the precedent England had set of putting
her own interests first. They did not have matters their own way.
Thomas White attacked Liberal inconsistencies and stressed the revenue
difficulty; George Foster contended that the physical barriers to
Canadian unity were merely opportunities for calling forth a people's
effort; Charles Tupper insisted that the United States was not
prepared to trade on fair terms; J. A. Chapleau found Canada abounding
in prosperity, and the minor prophets drummed on disloyalty and direct
taxation.

The debate had dragged on for more than two weeks, when Mr. Laurier
took part. He declared that the National Policy had failed to force
reciprocity, had failed to build up interprovincial trade, had failed
to develop the promised home market. Modern conditions of large-scale
production made it imperative to broaden markets in order to reduce
overhead and lessen costs. If the interests of farmers and of
manufacturers clashed, he would stand by the basic and essential
industry. But their interests did not necessarily clash;
manufacturers with brains and energy would, like the farmers, gain
from the wider outlet. As to the effect upon England, while
considerations of sentiment had given him much concern; "while with
all my soul I say, let my tongue adhere to the roof of my mouth if it
were ever to speak an unkind word of England," yet this was a question
of duty not of sentiment: "if I have to choose between the duty I owe
to England and the duty I owe to my native land, I stand by my native
land.... It is quite possible that John Bull will grumble, but in his
grumbling there will be as much pride as anger, and John Bull will
feel flattered if there is an offspring of his so much like the old
gentleman that he will not lose any occasion to turn an honest penny."
He would like to be able to make a similar bargain with England, but
given England's free-trade policy, that was out of the question. It
might be that the resolution would be defeated, but the cause would go
on. Giving even to a tariff issue a touch of imagination, Laurier
concluded:

     We are to-day in the last days of a long and severe
     winter.... Nature, which is now torpid and inert, will
     awaken in a few days under the penetrating influence of
     a warmer sun, and the great river at the foot of the
     cliff on which we stand, now imprisoned in the close
     embrace of frost, will throw off her shackles and roll
     unfettered and free toward the sea. So sure as this
     will happen, I say that under the penetrating influence
     of discussion, of better feelings on both sides of the
     line, the hostility which now stains our long frontier
     will disappear, the barriers which now obstruct trade
     will be burst open, and trade will pour in along all
     the avenues from the north to the south and from the
     south to the north, free, untrammelled and no longer
     stained by the hues of hostility.

When on April 9 the debate ended, the government was sustained by its
full majority--124 to 67. But the Opposition had put its case. In the
three years before the next election it could drive it home. The river
would roll to the sea. But unfortunately for their forecasts, there
proved to be many an eddy and cross current. Before the year was out,
the good ship _Reciprocity_ was making heavy weather. In November,
1888, the United States elections brought the defeat of Cleveland and
Bayard and the triumph of a Republican party once more committed to
high protection. In Canada itself the Jesuits' Estates agitation had
diverted public interest from trade to creed. With Protestantism in
danger (and fortunately from a Liberal provincial premier),
reciprocity could be side-tracked. The "Mail" itself was at once in
full cry down the Jesuit trail, and grew lukewarm on its old gospel.
It was in vain that Goldwin Smith made light of its defection: "What
happens the tree when the bird which has lighted on a twig flies
away?" For the moment, the trade issue took a very secondary place.

The disposition of the Jesuits' Estates had been for many a year a
thorny question with which few politicians had cared to grapple. The
Society of Jesus had had a chequered career in Canada. In the early
days of New France, the courage, the unselfish devotion, the crowning
martyrdom of members of the order, and in some cases the capacity for
political manoeuvring, had given the society prestige and power and in
time wide acres, the gift of the State or of private benefactors.
During the last years of the French régime in Canada, the Jesuits
throughout the world were falling on evil days; one Catholic sovereign
after another, alarmed by their political intrigues and their growth
in wealth and assertiveness, expelled them from his dominions. When
the leading Protestant power became master of the destinies of New
France, it was therefore not surprising that proposals were made for
suppressing the order and confiscating its estates. Whether by force
of the application of the laws of England at the time of the Conquest,
or of the proclamation of the King in 1791 suppressing the order in
Canada, or by escheat after the death in 1800 of the last surviving
Canadian member, the Crown took title and control of the estates. Lord
Amherst, and after his death, his heirs, sought the estates as
recompense for military service, but in spite of sundry promises, the
grant was not made. The situation was complicated by the fact that in
1773 Pope Clement XIV had decreed the suppression of the society; it
was contended that by ecclesiastical usage and the civil law of New
France, any corporate property fell in such case to the ordinaries of
the diocese, the bishops of Quebec and Montreal. In 1831 the estates,
still segregated, were conveyed as a trust to the province of Canada
for purposes of education; with Confederation they passed to Quebec.
In the meantime, the Jesuits had come back to the scene of their early
trials and triumphs. Pius VII had raised the ban in 1814. In 1842, at
the instance of Bishop Bourget, a number of Jesuit priests came to the
diocese of Montreal; ten years later a Jesuit school, St. Mary's
College, was incorporated by the province of Canada, only seven
members opposing and twenty-five Catholic and twenty-nine Protestant
members supporting. They became a teaching order solely; a generation
later, as Sir John Macdonald noted, there was not a single parish in
Quebec that had a Jesuit as its curé. In the ecclesiastical and
political controversies of the sixties and seventies, members of the
order were Bishop Bourget's most able and most aggressive supporters.
When their position was more assured, they began to revive their
claims to the old estates, but not only did ministers of state turn a
deaf ear, Gédéon Ouimet, prime minister in 1874, protesting to Rome
that the question was closed and that the arguing of the Jesuit claims
would only stir passion and fanaticism, and all in vain, but
Archbishop Taschereau and the greater part of the ecclesiastical
authorities opposed, pressing the counter-claims of the dioceses and
of Laval University.

When Honoré Mercier became premier, a new chapter opened. Mercier had
been educated in St. Mary's College, and had a fervent sympathy with
his old teachers. His political alliance with the ultramontane wing of
the Conservatives had carried him far from the old Rouge traditions.
He did not create the issue, but neither did he run away from it. He
was honestly convinced that the Society of Jesus had moral, though no
legal rights. He found the peace of the province disturbed by the
controversy, and the title to the estates so clouded in the public
estimation that they could not be sold or leased at their proper
value. His worst enemies never accused Mercier of lack of courage, nor
of lack of astuteness. When he determined to settle the question, he
laid his plans shrewdly and pressed ahead regardless of opposition.
The first step was to reconstitute the order as a legal entity. In
1887 he introduced a bill to incorporate the Society of Jesus. Mgr.
Taschereau, now America's first cardinal, opposed the bill. The
Jesuits suggested a compromise,--to give them the right to establish
schools only in those dioceses whose bishops gave consent. Mgr. Hamel,
acting on behalf of the cardinal, agreed, but a moment later declared
that in so doing he had exceeded his mandate. But Mercier seized the
opening, accepted the amendment, and pushed the bill through: every
man, he declared, venerated Cardinal Taschereau, but that was no
reason for committing injustice, crushing the little to exalt the
great; if there were difficulties between the ecclesiastical
authorities and the Jesuits, that was for the Holy See to judge; if
the legislature granted further delay, in order to enable all the
bishops to agree, well, he had the most profound respect for the
venerable prelates, but he could not help remarking that if they
waited till all were in agreement they would wait a long time.

The next step was to reconcile the conflicting claims to the estates.
Mercier insisted that if the province was to make any payment, it
must secure a complete discharge. Protracted negotiations in Rome and
in Quebec led to a settlement which was embodied in an act which
Mercier introduced into the legislature in June, 1888. The sum of
$400,000, much below the value of the estates, was to be paid to
ecclesiastical authorities in the province, to be designated later by
the Pope, and in return a complete renunciation of any further claims
was to be given; until so validated, the settlement was not to take
effect; to compensate Protestant schools, which had received a share
of the revenue from the estates, the sum of $80,000 was to be granted
them, to be distributed by the Protestant Committee of the Council of
Instruction. The bill passed with scarcely a ripple of dissent. The
Montreal "Witness" deplored it in a moderate editorial; a Protestant
member of the legislature mildly questioned its expediency, but not a
vote was cast against it.

The calm did not long continue. Militant Protestants in Ontario could
not permit their weak-kneed brethren in Quebec to sell their
birthright for a little silver and a quiet life. The "Mail" began the
crusade: "If the British and Protestant element in Quebec will not
save itself, we must try to save it for our own sakes." Other journals
took up the cry; preachers denounced Mercier from the pulpit; Orange
lodges passed fiery resolutions; sober law journals found the Act of
Supremacy in danger; Toronto held the usual mass meetings; in Quebec
itself some Protestant opposition was roused. A cry rose for
disallowance. The Ottawa government had used its veto power to
protect the vested interests of lumbermen in Ontario and railway
corporations in the West; why not to save all Canada from papist
aggression? Was a Canadian legislature to be permitted not merely to
revive the old connection between Church and State, not merely to
select for state endowment the organization which to fervid
Protestants was the incarnation of unscrupulous perfidy and aggressive
intrigue, but to call in the Pope of Rome to validate a statute of a
British parliament, and to flourish in the preamble a statement "that
the Pope allows the Government to retain the proceeds of the Jesuits'
Estates as a special deposit to be disposed of hereafter with the
sanction of the Holy See"? After much balancing, the "Globe" joined
the hue and cry, and Ontario's demand for disallowance rang as loud as
Quebec's outcry against the hanging of Riel.

Mercier was accused of raising the issue for party gain. The charge
does not seem justified. The question was pressing; it was in the
interest of the province to have it settled; the settlement was fair
and reasonable in itself. The action of the Pope was invoked, not to
validate the statute, but to ensure that all the claimants would be
bound by the settlement and the province given a complete discharge.
In some of the documents contained in the lengthy preamble the
ecclesiastical assumptions of authority were unfortunate, but Mercier
had not accepted them. Yet he was always prepared to draw from any
situation the last ounce of political advantage it could be made to
yield, and if, by disallowing the measure, Macdonald would present him
with a valuable grievance and a solid Quebec, then federal
intervention would have a very decided silver lining.

Macdonald was as well aware of the possibilities as Mercier. His
position was not made easier by the fact that in the past he had
insistently urged and used the veto power upon provincial legislation.
He faced a divided party, or rather warring lieutenants. The Jesuits'
Estates controversy and its sequels became in large measure duels
between two aspirants for the Conservative leadership, Sir John
Thompson and D'Alton McCarthy. McCarthy, born in Dublin in 1836, had
come to Canada as a child; when he grew to manhood he became one of
the leaders of the Ontario bar and a champion of ultra-Protestantism.
A hard rider, a lavish spender, delighting in hospitality, a bold
fighter, McCarthy had in him no little of the Irish squire of Charles
Lever's day. He had entered parliament in 1876, and had been
Macdonald's chief support in the attempts to limit provincial
authority. It was not as a constitutional lawyer that he made his
place, but as a popular tribune; a powerful and incisive speaker,
master of contagious emotion, surpassed in Ontario only by Macdonald
himself in his note of distinction and personal appeal, D'Alton
McCarthy was a force to reckon with. Thompson, also of Irish
parentage, was born in Nova Scotia in 1844; quietly and inevitably he
made his way to the front, reporter, lawyer, leader of the bar,
attorney-general of the province, premier for two months, judge for
three years, and then called to Ottawa in 1885 as Minister of Justice.
The post had been offered to McCarthy, who declined it, but none the
less resented the sudden rise of this newcomer in federal politics.
Thompson made his place at once in the larger field. His habits of
concentration and of unending labour, his power of exhaustive analysis
and crystal exposition, his solid judgment and unbending integrity,
brought all men's respect. He lacked McCarthy's touch of fire; he was
outwardly cold, though on occasions breaking into passionate defence
of his own conduct or violent and unpardonable criticism of his
opponents (as when during Mercier's 1887 campaign he spoke of "the
blasphemer Mr. Mercier and the traitor Mr. Laurier"). It was not
merely in temperament the rivals differed, but in creed. Thompson was
not merely a Roman Catholic; brought up a Methodist, he had joined the
Roman Catholic Church at the age of twenty-seven, and had thereby
doubly exposed himself to sectarian suspicion. In a country where
religious prejudices were so easily aroused, a convert from
Protestantism was under a handicap which only outstanding ability and
unquestioned character could overcome.

With the reassembling of parliament in February, 1889, the controversy
came to a head. After some preliminary questionings, Colonel O'Brien
moved an address demanding disallowance of an act which violated the
principle of separation of Church and State, recognized the
usurpation of a foreign authority, and threatened the civil and
religious liberties of the people of Canada by the endowment of an
alien secret society proved guilty everywhere of intolerant and
mischievous intermeddling in state affairs. His unexpectedly able
survey of the case was reinforced by the efforts of a militant group
of Ontario members. John E. Barron made an elaborate attack on the
constitutionality of the act. Clarke Wallace devoted himself to
justifying the original confiscation of the estates: there was no
wrong to be righted. Alexander McNeill delved still deeper into
history, portraying the Jesuits as unscrupulous intriguers and
fomenters of strife in the past and unrepentant in the present. John
Charlton gave a detailed historical summary of the action of the the
British and Canadian authorities in the matter. D'Alton McCarthy
concluded with a slashing indictment of scheming Jesuits, spineless
Protestants, and calculating governments. But for all their vigour and
the thunderings of their supporters outside the walls, the advocates
of disallowance could rally only thirteen votes, all but one from
Ontario, nine Conservatives and four Liberals. The weight of logic, of
expediency, and of votes was against them. The main defence of the
government fell to Thompson, who queried the original confiscation,
denied there was any assumption now of papal authority, and defended
the competence of the provincial legislature to make any settlement it
pleased. David Mills, from the Opposition benches, strongly
reinforced Thompson's convincing handling of the historical and
constitutional phases; C. C. Colby, speaking as a Quebec Protestant,
praised the tolerance of the Catholic majority and the service of the
Catholic Church as a bulwark of Conservatism, a barrier against
anarchical assaults upon all authority; Macdonald expressed his regret
over an agitation which would divide and imperil the country, to no
avail.

Laurier's position had never been in doubt. The disallowance agitation
ran counter to every principle of his political faith. He announced
his intention of supporting the government, and congratulated
Macdonald on coming at last to a sound position on the question of
provincial rights. The agitation in the country was the result of the
government's long disregard of provincial rights, a retribution for
the Conservative party's pandering to sectional prejudice. But it was
not merely on constitutional grounds that he opposed disallowance.
Mercier's measure was a just and courageous settlement, accepted by
Catholic and Protestant alike. The Jesuits had been condemned too
recklessly; whatever their history in other lands,--and if they had
often been expelled, they had never been expelled from a free
country,--here their record had been full of honour. They had been the
pioneers of the country; every inch of the soil of Ontario was trodden
by their weary feet at least a hundred and fifty years before there
was an English settler in that province; nay, the very soil of the
province had been consecrated by their blood, shed in their attempts
to win souls to the God of Protestants and Catholics alike. Mr.
McCarthy had insisted that this was a British country and that the
people of Quebec too often forgot the Conquest. What did he mean? Mr.
Charlton had added that there should be but one race here (McCarthy:
"Hear, Hear!"). Well, what would that race be? Is it the British lion
that is to swallow the French lamb, or the French lamb that is to
swallow the British lion? There can be more than one race, but there
shall be but one nation. Scotland has not forgotten her origin, but
Scotland is British. I do not intend to forget my origin, but I am a
Canadian before anything. "Liberty," he concluded in an illuminating
phrase, "shines not only for the friends of liberty but also for the
enemies of liberty."

In the House of Commons, the attack on the Jesuits' Estates Act was
defeated by an overwhelming vote, 188 to 13. In the country, the
agitation mounted higher. An Equal Rights Association was organized in
Toronto in June, 1889, to guard against "the political encroachments
of ultramontanism." The "noble thirteen" were the heroes of an Ontario
hour. Conservative politicians, realizing too late the dangers of the
movement, sought to divert it against the Liberal administration in
Ontario. Mowat was attacked for his friendly relations with the Roman
Catholic hierarchy, and particularly for permitting the use of French
in the elementary schools of eastern Ontario, where the early
French-Canadian settlers were now being strongly reinforced by
migration from Quebec to fill the gap left by the westward and
cityward drift of the Scots of Glengarry and the English-speaking folk
of the adjoining counties. But it was in the federal arena that the
contest mainly waged, and here McCarthy, with strong clerical and lay
backing, pressed forward to new goals in his onslaught on
"French-Canadian domination," by which he meant "French-Canadian
equality." It is worth noting, as indicative of the distinctly racial
basis of the imperial-federation movement, its emphasis on British
ties of blood, that the leaders of the noble thirteen were leaders in
the imperialist movement; D'Alton McCarthy was the first president of
the Imperial Federation League in Canada, Alexander McNeill its first
vice-president, Colonel O'Brien, Colonel Tyrwhitt, and Clarke Wallace
members of the first general committee and Colonel Denison a little
later its moving spirit.

Laurier watched the rising tide of racial strife with keen
disappointment. The reconciliation of the two races, on a basis of
full and fair and equal partnership in the development of their common
country, was the object nearest his heart. The agitation was injuring
the Conservative party more than his own, but that did not cool his
anger against the fomenters of strife, nor lessen his efforts to stay
the tide. Alike in Quebec and in Ontario, he took every occasion to
break down old prejudices and emphasize their common Canadianism.

In June, 1889, at the St. Jean-Baptiste celebration in the city of
Quebec, where twenty-five thousand people had gathered to witness the
unveiling of monuments to Jacques Cartier and Brébeuf, Laurier, after
a glowing tribute to the splendid and storied city, made the burden of
his speech an appeal for a wider patriotism, a rivalry in tolerance
and generous understanding:

     We are French-Canadians, but our country is not
     confined to the territory overshadowed by the citadel
     of Quebec; our country is Canada, it is all that is
     covered by the British flag on the American
     continent.... Our fellow-countrymen are not only those
     in whose veins runs the blood of France. They are all
     those, whatever their race or whatever their language,
     whom the fortune of war, the chances of fate or their
     own choice have brought among us and who acknowledge
     the sovereignty of the British Crown.... The rights of
     my fellow-countrymen of different origins are as dear
     to me, as sacred to me, as the rights of my own
     race.... What I claim for ourselves is an equal place
     in the sun, an equal share of justice, of liberty; that
     share we have; we have it amply and what we claim for
     ourselves we are anxious to grant to others....

     I am not ignorant of the fact that there can be no
     nation without a national pride, nor am I unaware that
     in almost all cases national pride is inspired by those
     tragic events which bring suffering and tears in their
     train, but which at the same time call out all the
     forces of a nation or of a race.... Our history under
     Confederation presents none of the dramatic events
     which make us so attached to the past; it has been calm
     and consequently happy. But peace has also its glories
     and its heroes. Canada under Confederation has produced
     men of whom any nation might justly feel proud. I will
     not speak of the Canadians of French origin, as Mr.
     Langelier referred to them a moment ago, but I will
     allude to the Canadians of British origin and mention
     two as examples. The first name I shall recall is that
     of a man from whom I differ _toto caelo_, but I am too
     much a French-Canadian not to glory at all times in
     doing justice to an adversary. I refer to Sir John
     Macdonald. I will not astonish my friend, Mr. Chapais,
     whom I see among us, if I state that I do not share Sir
     John Macdonald's political opinions. I may even add
     that I condemn almost all of them, but it must be
     acknowledged that in his long career Sir John Macdonald
     has displayed such eminent qualities that he would have
     made his mark on any of the world's stages, and that
     with the single exception perhaps of Mr. Mercier, no
     one on this continent has excelled as he has in the art
     of governing men. The other name is that of a man who
     has been to me not only a friend, but more than a
     friend,--I mean Hon. Edward Blake. Some years ago,
     speaking here of Mr. Blake, I declared that in my
     opinion America did not possess his equal and Europe
     could not show his superior. That opinion has been
     confirmed by all I have since seen of Mr. Blake. I have
     enjoyed the advantage of very close relations with him,
     and have learned that his heart, soul and character are
     in keeping with his splendid intellect....

But it was not merely to Quebec he spoke. He was eager to stem the
tide of misrepresentation in Ontario. To most party men that appeared
dangerous and quixotic tactics. Why intervene in a controversy wherein
the Conservative party was the chief sufferer? Was it wise for a
Liberal leader, newly in the saddle, little known in Ontario,
suspected in many quarters because of his French and Catholic origin,
to speak unnecessarily on so delicate a question? The cautionings did
not shake Laurier's purpose. His followers were to learn that, once
leader, he meant to lead, and that popular hostility would rarely move
him when he had once taken a stand. He believed that it was good for
Canada to seek to explain away sectional misunderstandings, and that
what was good for Canada could not be harmful for the Liberal party.

Through the Young Men's Liberal Club of Toronto, arrangements were
made for a meeting in that city on September 30, 1889. Laurier faced a
large and by no means a wholly sympathetic crowd. He plunged into the
question of the hour. Canada was rent by distrust and hostility, a
distrust due in great part to the constant appeal of the Conservative
party to local prejudice. The duty of Liberals was plain: to develop
mutual respect and confidence, to resist disintegration. Certainly,
Confederation was not the last word of Canada's destiny; it was simply
a transient state, but whenever the change came it must be a step
forward, not a step backward. He opposed fantastic dreams of an
independent French-Canadian state on the St. Lawrence; equally he
opposed attempts to destroy all that French-Canadians held dear: "Men
there are amongst you to tell you that it is dangerous to
Confederation that the French language should be spoken in this great
country of ours. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am a French-Canadian; I was
brought up on the knees of a French mother, and my first recollections
are those recollections which no man ever forgets; and shall it be
denied to me, the privilege of addressing the same language to those
that are dear to me?" As for the Jesuits' Estates Act (here wild
uproar), it effected a needed settlement. The charge that the Pope's
civil supremacy was recognized was nonsense; any such attempt would
be treason and so dealt with. Should liberty be refused the Jesuits
because they might abuse it? That was not the principle of British
Liberalism; that was the doctrine of French and of German Liberals,
who fought fire with fire. If Ultramontanes in Canada conspired
against our liberties, we would fight them as we had done before. In
any case, the power of disallowance was alien to the spirit of a
federal union, a source of friction and discontent. The advocacy of
imperial federation in Conservative quarters was an evidence that even
Conservatives were not content with things as they were. He did not
believe in that device; what was wanted was an economic, not a
political reform, unrestricted free trade with the United States, the
forerunner of commercial alliance among all the English-speaking
peoples. But above all, more than prosperity they needed trust,
confidence, a better opinion one of the other.

It cannot be said that Mr. Laurier wholly converted his audience.
Honest conviction and stubborn prejudice were too strong for a single
speech, however eloquent and sincere, to overcome. Many of the older
Liberals, including the very canny premier of Ontario, were careful to
avoid any endorsement of his utterances. Yet the straightforward,
courageous, friendly appeal awoke response, and undoubtedly did much
to keep the agitation within bounds, if it did not for the moment make
the Liberal leader's own position any easier.

McCarthy returned to the fray the following session. In February,
1890, he introduced a bill to abolish the use of the French language
in the legislature and courts of the North-West territories. In 1875
the Mackenzie government had provided a framework of government for
the wildernesses between Manitoba and the Rockies, based on the
gradual replacement of an appointive council by an elective assembly
as settlement grew. The Act of 1875 permitted the use of either
English or French in the debates of Council or Assembly and in the
courts, and required the printing of all legislative records,
journals, and ordinances in both languages. Into the Territories, as
into Manitoba, there poured twenty English-speaking for one
French-speaking settler, and the privileges of the handful of
French-Canadians became of little practical moment. McCarthy attacked
them because they were within federal jurisdiction, and provided a
good starting point for a wider campaign. The sting of the motion was
found not in the tail but in the preamble: "It is expedient in the
interest of the national unity of the Dominion that there should be
community of language among the people of Canada." Such a preamble,
backed by a speech emphasizing the necessity of uniformity of language
for national unity, involved interests much more momentous than the
printing of the sessional papers at Pile-of-Bones.

The week of the debate was tense and full of unsettling rumours.
McCarthy found little direct support: none outside of the original
thirteen, but there was much finessing as to the degree of opposition
to be offered. Save for a bitter and aggressive retort from Langevin,
and an unusually vigorous and moving plea for tolerance from
Macdonald, and for McCarthy's own addresses, his closing being much
more moderate than his opening speech, the outstanding contributions
came from the Liberal side, from Mills, Mulock, Davies, from Blake,
who had made his first speech in two years a week before, and from
Laurier.

Laurier declared that were it only the use of French in the North-West
that was in question, he would be inclined to say, let the measure
pass and let us back to real work. But avowedly the present movement
was only a preliminary skirmish. In his public addresses before
parliament opened McCarthy had made clear his plan of campaign in
words which he dared not repeat in the House; he had denounced
French-Canadians as a "bastard nationality," had urged his hearers to
buckle on their armour: "This is a British country, and the sooner we
take up our French-Canadians and make them British, the less trouble
will we leave for posterity." The ban was to be extended throughout
Canada. Such a policy was folly, anti-Canadian, un-British, a national
crime. The existence of the two races was a fact, a divergence that
sometimes led to friction, but might be made a source of strength. The
difficulty could not be solved by the Tory method, by following the
fatal example of English statesmen who for seven hundred years had
attempted to make Ireland British, not by justice and generosity but
by violence and oppression, and had failed. It could be solved only by
mutual respect. The humiliation of a race or creed was a poor
foundation for national strength.

     Certainly no one can respect or admire more than I do
     the Anglo-Saxon race; I have never disguised my
     sentiments on that point, but we of French origin are
     satisfied to be what we are and we claim no more. I
     claim this for the race in which I was born that though
     it is not perhaps endowed with the same qualities as
     the Anglo-Saxon race, it is endowed with qualities as
     great; I claim for it that it is endowed with qualities
     unsurpassed in some respects; I claim for it that there
     is not to-day under the sun a more moral, more honest
     or more intellectual race, and if the honourable
     gentleman came to Lower Canada, it would be my pride to
     take him to one of those ancient parishes on the St.
     Lawrence or one of its tributaries, and show him a
     people to whom, prejudiced as he is, he could not but
     apply the words which the poet applied to those who at
     one time inhabited the Basin of Minas and the meadows
     of Grandpré:

     "Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodland,
     Darkened by shadows of earth but reflecting an image of Heaven."

Mr. McCarthy had appealed to Lord Durham's authority to support his
intolerance; a greater statesman than Durham, Robert Baldwin, and the
whole trend of Canadian history, proved the folly of force.

The amendment offered by Mr. Beausoleil, confirming the existing
arrangement, was supported by every French-speaking member in the
House except Chapleau, but received only scattering votes outside
Quebec. After much jockeying, an amendment moved by Thompson in which
Blake had collaborated, denying that uniformity of language was
expedient, but permitting the legislature of the North-West power to
determine the language question for itself so far as concerned its
own proceedings and records, was adopted by 117 to 63, the minority
consisting of the two extreme wings.

Once more the appeal to racial and sectarian prejudice had been
foiled, but the end was not yet. Already a tour of McCarthy through
Manitoba had led to the emergence of another sectarian issue, the
Manitoba school question. It did not come to a head for several years,
but it threatened the peace of the country from the beginning.

These seemingly endless bickerings made Laurier's position extremely
difficult. When pressed to take the leadership, he had stood out
because of the prejudices against a French-speaking and Roman Catholic
chief which he knew to exist in Ontario. Since his assumption of
control, the country had been rent by one bitter controversy after
another. He had not raised these issues, he had not aggravated them,
he had on the contrary striven in public and in private, among his
opponents and among his followers, to allay them. Yet the fact
remained that among the rank and file in Ontario there were not a few
who felt that at such a time the leadership of the defender of Riel
and the ally of Mercier was a handicap.

The position was rendered still more difficult by the sudden
reappearance of Edward Blake. For two sessions his voice had not been
heard in the House. Now he returned and threw himself with his old
vigour and commanding presence into the debates and the framing of
policy. Soon rumours arose that he was about to resume the leadership.
Conservative journals, as in duty bound, fanned the report. Not
without guile, Macdonald, during the North-West dual-language debate,
addressed to Blake rather than to Laurier an appeal to help in working
out a joint solution, and Blake without hesitation agreed. Here and
there a Liberal newspaper, particularly the Dundas "Banner," confessed
that it would prefer the old leader.[42]

Blake's position was quite as embarrassing as Laurier's. No matter
what his good-will and disinterested desire for the party's success,
it was not easy for a man who had for years been the unquestioned
leader and who still was rightly conscious of great powers, to take a
second place. If Macgregor sat down at all, there would be the head of
the table. It cannot be said that the relations between the old leader
and the new were cordial in these years. There had been no question of
the warm and loyal admiration of Laurier for the older man, no
question of Blake's recognition of the younger man's powers. On
virtually every issue they had stood together. That Blake had been
absolutely sincere in wishing to retire and in urging Laurier as his
permanent successor, Laurier had no doubt. Yet as time went on he was
convinced that with returning health and reviving interest in affairs
Blake had repented of his too rash withdrawal. No word passed, but
Blake's acts spoke for themselves. For three years he scarcely lifted
a hand to help the new leader or his old party. Time after time
Laurier went to him for counsel, but went in vain. As Laurier himself
summed it up later; "In the session of 1888 Blake was not in
parliament, having gone to Europe for his health; in the session of
1889 he was present but gave no aid; in the session of 1890 he gave a
little more but hindered as much as he helped." In some measure
Blake's aloofness was undoubtedly due to a wish not to embarrass the
new leader.

[Footnote 42: At a banquet in honour of Honoré Mercier, in Montreal,
July 2, a prominent Liberal, Mr. Greenshields, declared: "To-day the
Liberal party control all the provinces from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, and if they would only unite, victory would be theirs, under
whatever leader was chosen, Mr. Blake or Mr. Laurier."]

An instance of the difficulties created by the presence in the House
of two Liberal leaders may be cited. When in the session of 1890
serious charges of corruption were brought against a Conservative
member, Rykert, it was agreed at a council in which Blake, Cartwright,
Mills, and M. C. Cameron, with Laurier, took part, to move for
Rykert's expulsion. Cartwright made the motion; Blake turned to
Laurier: "I can turn my speech either way, for expulsion or for a
committee of enquiry." "But you cannot do that," Laurier replied; "it
was settled at committee." Just then Blake had to rise; he ended a
strong speech by suggesting a committee. Sir John Thompson, the
government leader, saw his chance and moved for a committee. Laurier
had to think hard; he saw it was necessary to avert a split and to
avoid humiliation for either Blake or Cartwright; he declared that
while in his judgment Rykert's guilt was clear, as Cartwright had
demonstrated, yet he had profound respect for such constitutional
authorities as Blake and Thompson, and would accept a committee.
Cartwright looked daggers at both Blake and Laurier, and next day
wrote a very wrathy letter. Laurier told Blake straightly that this
was not the way to carry on a party. "Well, it seemed the best way."
"No matter, it was not the way agreed upon in your presence: that was
the time for question."

The situation clearly could not continue. Edward Blake could not play
a secondary part in the House he long had dominated. No matter how
loyal his feelings to Laurier, it was impossible for a man of his
massive capacity, his habit of authority, his self-centredness, to
remember always that he was now lieutenant, not captain. Nor was he at
ease to see Cartwright leader for Ontario. It became clear that he
must either resume the leadership or retire from parliament. Among the
rank and file in the country, and particularly in Ontario, many would
have welcomed his return to leadership. They knew his strength, his
integrity, his moving power of speech, and he was an Ontario man born
and bred; they did not yet know Laurier. Yet in the House of Commons
there was little and rapidly lessening support for such a proposal.
Every Liberal member still reverenced Blake, still recognized his
incomparable powers of logic and of eloquence, but they had found a
leader more after their own heart. Time only strengthened their
devotion. Even had Blake desired to return, the members of the Liberal
party in the Commons would have insisted upon the new leader holding
his place.

In a letter to the "Globe" of July 3, 1890, Blake made a circumspect
denial of current rumour: "I am no more desirous to resume the
leadership than I was to assume or retain it. My only wish is that the
confidence and affection of Liberals of all shades may induce Mr.
Laurier to hold the place he so admirably fills." Yet he was not
prepared to give unqualified support to the policy on which the new
leaders of the party had determined. When the next general election
came, the hardest fought since Confederation, the Liberal party had no
aid from its old chieftain.

The general election which was held early in March, 1891, came before
it was expected. The parliament elected in 1887 did not expire until
1892. When the fourth session ended in May, 1890, it was understood
that another session would be held before dissolution. There was, in
fact, a definite pledge to this effect. The election act of 1887 had
provided for an annual revision of the voters' lists, but during the
session of 1890 the secretary of state had sought and secured
authority from parliament to omit the revision of that year on the
ground that the taking of the census in 1891 would involve
redistribution and make an earlier revision a useless expense, adding
that no election would be held before the lists were drawn up in June,
1891. The internal condition of the Conservative party made it seem in
any case prudent to defer the day of reckoning. The duel between
McCarthy and Thompson, the triangular vendetta between Langevin,
Caron, and Chapleau, warranted delay, that time might heal or patch
the breaches and fortune bring a rallying issue. But later other
arguments prevailed. The rising tide of reciprocity sentiment, the
threat of Tarte's revelations of corruption, the exigencies of the
Canadian Pacific, and his own failing health, made Sir John Macdonald
decide to face the electors in the winter of 1890-91.

Reciprocity was once more a foremost issue. Trade was still depressed
in Canada and markets sluggish. The victory of the Republicans in the
United States in 1888 had seemed to end hope of freer trade. The
measure in which they embodied their campaign pledges, the McKinley
Act of 1890, put in force the most prohibitive tariff since the Civil
War, the _reductio ad absurdum_ of protection. In order to convince
the doubting farmers that protection held favour for farm as well as
factory, the act imposed heavy duties on agricultural products.
Whether so intended or not, the high duties threatened to shut out
altogether such Canadian exports, butter, eggs, barley, hay, live
stock, as had hitherto succeeded in surmounting the tariff walls. In
many quarters the McKinley Act stirred deep resentment and killed all
desire for closer trade relations. That this did not become the
general attitude was due to signs that the Republicans had overshot
the mark. The Congressional elections of November, 1890, gave the
Democrats control of the House, on a platform of lower tariff, and
within the Republican party itself a progressive wing, under Blaine,
sought to temper protection by reciprocity, though as yet it was to
Latin America, not to Canada, they turned. Confirmed by these
indications in the belief that a reciprocal lowering of tariffs was
after all possible, and with Jesuits and French sessional papers
losing some of their red-herring power, rural Ontario and later rural
Quebec swung distinctly against the government. Macdonald's scouts
along the St. Lawrence reported that reciprocity sentiment was growing
rapidly among the farmers and advised an early appeal to the country.

Israel Tarte's revelations of the rottenness in Langevin's Department
of Public Works reinforced this view. Tarte, a Bleu of the Bleus, the
government's most vigorous and most audacious journalistic supporter
in Quebec, had long been aware of rumours and suspicions against
Langevin's administration. Now the insensate jealousy and intriguing
which marked the relations of the three Quebec leaders in the federal
cabinet, and a quarrel among the members of a favoured clique of
contractors, put the proofs of wrong-doing in his hands. He gave the
proof to Macdonald, only to meet an airy rejection. Then he began to
unfold his dossier in his journal, "Le Canadien," artistically and
efficiently, lifting only one corner of the curtain at a time, keeping
his victims in suspense, giving the impression of endless documents to
follow, and turning the spear in the wound with a deft and practised
hand. In the closing months of 1890 enough had been revealed to make
it clear that Robert McGreevy, Conservative member for Quebec West,
and for many years controller of the party's Quebec campaign chest,
had made vast sums for himself, his associates, and his party funds,
by utilizing his influence and his sources of secret information to
secure for his partners luscious and lucrative contracts from the
Department of Public Works. Langevin himself was not yet directly
implicated, but rumour was busy with his name. It was certain that at
the next session the Liberals would demand a searching investigation.
Again, prudence urged an appeal to the electors before the curtain had
been fully lifted.

Less known to the public, another factor was at work. The Canadian
Pacific Railway had not yet managed to get out of politics. When
construction was completed, and the demand for loans and subsidies
ended, a new source of dispute and political agitation had arisen. The
company insisted on a monopoly of through traffic in the West. The
contract with the syndicate bound the federal government for twenty
years not to charter any competing road between the company's main
line and the United States border and to impose a similar policy upon
any new province organized out of the Western Territories. The
government went further and endeavoured to prevent Manitoba from
chartering any competing company, though any such intention had been
explicitly disavowed in 1881. Charter after charter of the Manitoba
legislature was disallowed at Ottawa. The West rose in anger, insisted
that not its sparse numbers nor its climate but soulless monopoly was
responsible for the crushing rates on through and local traffic. The
provincial government renewed its chapters, city boards of trade,
farmers' unions, the press, and Conservative candidates denounced the
policy of disallowance, and the struggle between the two governments
reached the verge of armed conflict. Macdonald was compelled to give
way. In 1888 the Canadian Pacific agreed to surrender its privileges,
receiving in partial return a government guaranty of interest on bonds
issued on the security of the land grant. Soon afterward the Northern
Pacific crossed from Dakota into Manitoba, and, though rates did not
fall as far as had been hoped, at least the settler knew henceforth
that his ills were due to nature and geography and not to Stephen or
Macdonald. It seemed that at last the company would be neither an
issue nor a participant in an election campaign. Yet once more it was
to be involved, and from a curious angle.

The Canadian Pacific, though carrying through the all-Canadian road
north of Lake Superior, had not overlooked the advantages of a line
south of the lake through American territory. During the construction
of the main road it had built a branch from Sudbury to Sault Ste.
Marie (Ontario), which faces the peninsula jutting northeast between
Superior and Michigan. Once the main enterprise was consolidated, the
management prepared to enter this new territory, with its forest and
mining wealth and with the fertile fields of Minnesota, in which their
old friend Hill reigned supreme, beckoning them from beyond. In 1891
they acquired a controlling interest in the stock of two United
States roads, each a consolidation of many small lines, extending
westward from Sault Ste. Marie (Michigan). The Duluth South Shore and
Atlantic, as afterward completed, traversed the whole shore of the
lake from the Sault to Superior. The Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Sault
Ste. Marie connected the Sault with Minneapolis and eventually,
through extensions and purchase of other roads or controlling
interests, was to give the Canadian Pacific entry into Chicago and a
connection between Minneapolis and the Canadian border.

To complete the transaction it was necessary to float nearly
$47,000,000 of securities in London. While the roads in question were
not in Canada, and while the relations between the Canadian Pacific
and the government had ended, the directors realized that an election
in which the government would be defeated would be fatal to their
plans, particularly with an unsettled money market. Years of political
conflict had identified the railway and the Conservative party in the
public mind, so that although as a matter of fact a Liberal victory
would not have altered public policy toward the road in the slightest,
it might have jeopardized the success of the new financing.
Accordingly, in November, 1890, Stephen and Van Horne asked Macdonald
whether or not there was an election in sight. He answered, no; not
within ten or eleven months; he would go now, but no campaign funds
were in sight.

In February, 1891, Mr. Laurier and Attorney-General Longley of Nova
Scotia were travelling from Montreal to New York, where they were to
speak at a dinner given by the Board of Trade. Learning that Van Horne
was on the same train, Laurier went into his car, where they chatted
pleasantly till nearly midnight on matters far from railways or
politics. Just as he was about to leave, Laurier turned to Van Horne;
"I suppose, since you are in the secrets of the government, you can
tell when the elections will be held." "I am not in the secrets of the
government," Van Horne returned; "ask Sir John." "Well, then," Laurier
replied, "I may give you some news: parliament will be dissolved
before we return from New York."

Laurier went on to New York. He had planned to speak of the need of
closer trade relations between Canada and the United States, but
half-way through the banquet was brought to an abrupt end by the
sudden death of one of the guests, Secretary of State Windom. Van
Horne, though finding a melancholy satisfaction in the reflection that
Windom's stroke had fallen on him immediately after a speech in which
he had denounced the Canadian Pacific, had meanwhile had other matters
to think of. He had been thunderstruck by Laurier's news. That night
he could not sleep; in the morning he cabled Stephen in London.
Stephen replied that the news was incredible; Laurier was not in the
secrets of the government, and Macdonald's word had been given. Before
the day was over they learned that the report was correct, and that
Canada was soon to be in the throes of a general election. What was
still more to the point, they learned in due time that their own
necessities had been the argument that had turned the scale for
dissolution. Macdonald had spoken to John Henry Pope of his promise to
Stephen and Van Horne. Whereupon Pope replied: "That makes this just
the time to bring on the election." "How's that?" "The C. P. R. crowd
simply can't let you lose, with all they have at stake; they will have
to shell out as never before." The reasoning was irresistible.

On February 3 parliament was dissolved and the elections set for March
5. The campaign was brief, but it was the most bitterly contested
since Confederation. The Opposition fought with a keenness sharpened
by a dozen years' exclusion from power and with a hope rooted in the
growing appeal of their trade policy. The government party fought with
their backs to the wall, knowing their leader was dying, his
lieutenants at odds, and their old party discredited. Desperation and
in some cases an honest belief that the nation's or the Empire's
safety was at stake, drove them to a campaign of personal abuse and
flag-waving beyond Canadian precedent.

The government's first tactics were to cut the ground from under the
Liberals by advocating a moderate measure of reciprocity. On January
16, there appeared in the Toronto "Empire" an inspired despatch from
Ottawa stating that the Canadian government had been approached by the
United States government with a view to the development of trade
relations, and that the advice of the British government was being
sought. Thompson, in a public address on February 6, also implied that
the overtures had come from the United States. Macdonald himself,
recalling that "every measure of reciprocal trade we have got from our
neighbours has been got by the Conservatives," declared that it would
be possible to extend trade relations without infringing the national
policy. These statements made it apparent not only that the
Conservative party was prepared to negotiate a reciprocity treaty, but
that the United States government, by taking the initiative, had made
clear its readiness for a restricted measure of the Conservative type.

The announcements took the wind out of the Liberal sails. It was an
audacious move, and as disreputable as it was audacious. Secretary
Blaine at once denied that any negotiations were on foot, or that his
government would entertain any scheme for reciprocity confined to
natural products. The plain truth was that the United States had not
taken the initiative, but that Canada, intervening in trade
negotiations between the United States and Newfoundland, had formally
proposed that all the issues between Canada and the United States,
fisheries, coasting, and salvage laws, the Alaska boundary, and the
renewal of the reciprocity treaty of 1854 with modifications and
extensions, should be considered by a joint commission. Blaine's
denial forced a change in tactics. As much as possible was made of the
desirability of having any negotiations for reciprocity carried on by
safe and moderate and loyal statesmen rather than by reckless
politicians, annexationists in disguise. But for the most part the
emphasis shifted to the defence and glorification of the National
Policy, and to attacks upon the disloyalty of the Opposition. "The old
man, the old flag, and the old policy," the "Empire's" slogan, became
the party's campaign cry.

The government was not content to seek to show that absorption in the
United States would be the inevitable result of commercial union or,
what they insisted was the same thing, unrestricted reciprocity. They
tried to prove that Liberal leaders were hoping and working directly
for annexation. The charge had no basis other than the heated
imagination of self-righteous partisans, but repeated and reckless
assertion had some effect. A tinge of colour was given the charge by
the revelation of dubious intrigues by Edward Farrer. In the preceding
summer Farrer had been engaged by the "Globe" as its chief editorial
writer, Mr. John S. Willison becoming editor at about the same time.
Proofs of a pamphlet which Farrer had written while on the "Mail" and
which was being set up in a Toronto printing-shop, were stolen by a
printer and put in the hands of Macdonald. It was not a patriotic
production. Farrer outlined a policy whereby the United States might
bring Canada to sue for annexation,--tonnage taxes on Nova Scotia
fishing-vessels, suspension of the railway-bonding privilege, and so
on. Macdonald revealed the pamphlet at a great meeting in Toronto, and
charged the Liberal leaders with collusion. It was in vain that in
signed statements in the columns of the "Globe" next day Farrer
assumed the sole responsibility for the pamphlet, which he declared
had not been sent to Washington, and Mr. Willison reasserted the
"Globe's" position of self-reliant Canadianism, or that the political
leaders denied all knowledge. The fact that Farrer had been brought to
the "Globe," after his tendencies had been publicly made known,[43]
and that he was the close confidant of Sir Richard Cartwright, made
the disclosures, and the publication later of correspondence between
Wiman and Congressman Hitt, wherein Farrer was quoted as considering
"not making two bites of a cherry but going for annexation at once,"
immensely damaging to the Liberal party.

Macdonald's manifesto to the electors was adroitly phrased to make the
most of these tactics. He contrasted the steadfast adherence of the
Conservatives to the National Policy with the vacillation of the
Liberals on tariff issues, and the prosperity the country had enjoyed
since 1878 with the soup-kitchens of the preceding régime. He
brandished the awful bogey of direct taxation, necessary to meet the
gap in revenue if unrestricted reciprocity were adopted, the elector
"being called on by a Dominion tax-gatherer with a yearly demand for
$15.00 a family." Still worse, the Liberal policy would mean the
surrender of Canadian freedom, British traditions, imperial prestige.
For himself, he concluded, "A British subject I was born, a British
subject I will die. With my utmost strength, with my last breath, will
I oppose the 'veiled treason' which attempts, by sordid means and
mercenary proffers, to lure our people from their allegiance."

[Footnote 43: The situation was made more embarrassing by the fact
that only a year before, when Farrer was still the chief writer on the
rival "Mail," the "Globe" had charged him with having secretly urged a
committee of the United States Senate to block reciprocity or any
settlement of the Fisheries dispute in order to coerce Canada into
annexation, and had plumed itself upon having had "the good fortune to
discover and expose the knavish acts of this past master of
duplicity."]

Laurier's answering manifesto marked the restraint and dignity of the
man. He attacked the sudden dissolution in face of the definite pledge
of the last session, noted that in his statement Macdonald had not a
word to say of his own alleged reciprocity negotiations, and arraigned
the N. P. which had now brought to the workman half-time and lowered
wages and to the farmer steadily falling prices of land. The charge
that unrestricted reciprocity would mean discrimination against
England meant little in the mouths of men who had built tariff walls
high against English goods; he would not admit that discrimination was
involved, since assimilation of tariffs was not essential; but if the
interests of Canada and of the mother country clashed, he would stand
by his native land. Should the concessions demanded from the people of
Canada exceed what their honour or their duty, either to themselves or
their motherland, could sanction, they would not have reciprocity at
such a price, but it was preposterous to reject the proposal in
advance. Talk of veiled treason was an unworthy appeal to passion and
prejudice. Retrenchment would bridge any gaps in taxation. Economic
reform must come first; for the rest, the Liberal party stood for
adherence to the spirit of the constitution, provincial autonomy, and
good-will between all races, all creeds, and all classes in the land.

From these long-range exchanges, the party leaders came to closer
grips. Macdonald did not spare his failing strength in the depths of a
Canadian February. His lieutenants composed their quarrels; Tupper,
brought back from England, Thompson and McCarthy, Langevin and
Chapleau, Foster and Colby and Haggart, sunk their rivalries against a
common danger. The Liberals, disconcerted at first by the government's
reciprocity tactics and handicapped by the reiterated charges of
disloyalty, fought hard against their defamers. Laurier gave his
nights and days to Quebec. In Ontario, Cartwright was a host, and
Mills, Charlton, Mulock, Edgar, Landerkin, Sutherland, gave and sought
no quarter. Mowat spoke scornfully of the loyalty that trade would
endanger, and Mackenzie, now only a wraith of the past, came forward
to support his party's cause. In the Maritime provinces, there was no
federal Liberal leader to meet Tupper's sledge-hammer or Foster's
rapier thrusts. But it was not the activity of the Conservative
speakers that gave the Liberals most concern. They faced an organized
and aggressive campaign by the business interests which considered
themselves in peril. Manufacturers fearful of an open market,
wholesalers picturing New York and Chicago capturing their trade,
bankers linked with both, worked quietly and effectively in town and
city. Most effective of all the anti-reciprocity forces was the
Canadian Pacific. Van Horne, in letters to the Montreal "Witness,"
put the case against unrestricted reciprocity more forcefully than any
other critic had done. But the company's action was not confined to
argument in the public press. Whether or not the "C. P. R. crowd" did
"shell out" as liberally or rather as "Conservatively" as Pope had
prophesied, certainly all the influence of a great organization which
ramified into every corner of the Dominion, the prestige of its
directors, the votes of its employees, passes for absentee voters,
were exerted without stint. The Grand Trunk threw its influence into
the opposite scale, but it lacked the weight and force of its younger
rival.

[Illustration: SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD
Prime Minister of Canada, 1867-73, 1878-91
(1890)]

When at last the contest ended, the government was found to have been
sustained. But it had lost heavily. In Ontario and in Quebec the
Liberals had made large gains, particularly in the rural districts,
and in the two central provinces they had a majority of one. The
Maritime provinces and the West saved the day for the government.
Only, as the "Globe" declared, "in the new territories where the
voters look to the government for daily bread, in Manitoba where the
C. P. R. crushed and strangled public sentiment, and in Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick where a hungry people succumbed to the coarse and
blatant prodigality of Tupper," or, as Cartwright put it more pithily
in one of the biting phases he coined with fatal facility, only in
"the shreds and patches" of the Dominion, had the government's
desperate appeal won any success.

What was particularly significant, it was a majority secured for the
most part from the domains of the Canadian Pacific. In every
constituency but one--that of Marquette, where Robert Watson won a
six-vote victory, wholly through oversight, Van Home
declared,--through which the main line of the Canadian Pacific ran, a
Conservative was elected. The relation between business and politics
had never been displayed more clearly. The flag had been waved.
Thousands of simple Canadians had imagined that the country's national
existence and national honour were at stake, and had voted to avert
the dangers of too intimate trade connection with the United States
and the risk of diverting Canadian traffic to American railways. Now
the country was safe, Macdonald once more had his majority, and those
who had directed the puppets from behind the scenes were free to
resume their task of pouring millions of British sovereigns into
projects for the extension of Canadian roads--into the United States.

In a momentous postscript to the campaign, Edward Blake took his
farewell of Canadian politics, and turned the defeat of the party he
once had led into a rout. He was not in harmony with the new fiscal
policy of the party, not the least so because it had been adopted in
his absence and at Cartwright's instance. He had planned to speak
against it in public, when the sudden announcement of a general
election faced him with a difficult choice. Little as he trusted the
new policy of the Liberals, he was still less enamoured, after a dozen
years of observation, with the old policy of the Conservatives. The
announcement of plans for a convention of Ontario Liberals, made in
Laurier's name and at Cartwright's suggestion, without any
consultation with Blake, irritated the old leader further. He, too,
prepared his manifesto, and sent it to the Liberal convention in his
old riding of West Durham, with a covering letter announcing his
decision not to be again a candidate. The convention officers
succeeded in preventing the memorial reaching the meeting, and the
editor of the "Globe," to which a copy was sent, induced Blake to
withhold publication until Laurier could be consulted. Finally, in an
interview with Laurier immediately after his return from New York,
Blake agreed to stay his hand until after the election. The day after
the polling, the memorial, in an amended version, appeared in the
"Globe." It was an extraordinary document. It began with a scathing
indictment of the Conservative policy:

     It has left us with a small 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 and oppressive tariff ... and with unfriendly
     relations and frowning tariff walls ever more and more
     estranging us from the mighty English-speaking nation
     to the south, our neighbours and relations, with whom
     we ought to be, as it was promised that we should be,
     living in generous amity and liberal intercourse.
     Worse, far worse! 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; with a
     subservient parliament, an autocratic executive,
     debauched constituencies, and corrupted and corrupting
     classes; with lessened self-reliance and increased
     dependence on the public chest and on legislative aids,
     and possessed withal by a boastful jingo spirit far
     enough removed from true manliness, loudly proclaiming
     unreal conditions and exaggerated sentiments, while
     actual facts and genuine opinions are suppressed. It
     has left us with our hands tied, our future
     compromised, and in such a plight that, whether we
     stand or move, we must run some risks which else we
     might either have declined or encountered with greater
     promise of success.

What policy was now possible? The fiscal plan he would have preferred,
a moderate tariff with restricted reciprocity with the United States,
was no longer feasible. An imperial _Zollverein_ was beyond the realm
of practical politics. Unrestricted reciprocity was not feasible, as
distinguished from commercial union; true, a permanent and
unrestricted free trade with the United States would bring immense
material prosperity, but revenue necessities--for direct taxes were
out of the question--and the necessity of a definite adjustment of
policy would make inevitable the assimilation of tariffs and pooling
of receipts. Commercial union then, was feasible, but it would
inevitably make for political union; the community of interest, the
intermingling of population, the coming of prosperity, and the fear of
its loss, the isolation from Britain, would all drive Canada in that
direction. He concluded:

     Whatever you or I think on that head, whether we like
     or dislike, believe or disbelieve in political union,
     must we not agree that the subject is one of great
     moment, toward the practical settlement of which we
     should take no serious step without reflection, or in
     ignorance of what we are doing? Assuming that absolute
     free trade, best described as commercial union, may
     and ought to come, I believe that it can and should
     come only as an incident or at any rate as a well
     understood precursor of political union, for which
     indeed we should be able to make better terms before
     than after the surrender of our commercial
     independence. Then so believing--believing that the
     decision of the trade question involves that of the
     constitutional issue for which you are unprepared and
     with which you do not even conceive yourselves to be
     dealing--how can I properly recommend you now to decide
     on commercial union?

A weighty, an oracular utterance, but what did the oracle mean? As to
the past, it condemned Tory policy root and branch, but the past was
past. As to the present, it condemned Liberal policy as vague,
undigested, leading inevitably through commercial to political union
with the United States. Elections being fought in the present, the
manifesto proved infinitely more damaging to the Liberal than to the
Conservative cause. In the series of by-elections which followed the
unseating of members as a result of election trials, the Liberals lost
heavily, and nothing so hurt their chances as this condemnation by
their old leader. As to the future, the letter was not without
ambiguity, but it seemed to advocate political union as Canada's
eventual destiny. When the letter was so interpreted by the "Globe,"
and criticized for that reason, Blake added a note much briefer than
his original letter, but equally mysterious: "I crave space to say
that I think political union with the States, though becoming our
probable, is by no means our ideal, or as yet our inevitable future."

The West Durham letter ended Blake's connection with the Liberal
party. Cartwright never spoke to him again. Laurier, taking the break
less personally, and understanding more nearly the subtleties and
hidden workings of Blake's mind, yet could not forgive the blow. A
quarter-century later he still spoke feelingly of the letter as "a
stab in the back." Blake's objections to the Liberal policy were
strained and hypothetical: actual experience would have proved, as a
robust practical sense might have anticipated, their futility. The
letter to his mind demonstrated Blake's chief weaknesses as a party
leader--his inability to work with and through men of many and varying
minds, and his lack of political courage.

Henceforth the paths of the two men diverged. Blake entered a fresh
field, accepting an invitation from Ireland to enter the British House
of Commons in the interest of Home Rule. Here his efforts were vain:
British pride, party manoeuvres, Irish factions, blocked the path of
the solution he urged with irrefutable but unavailing logic, and
prepared the way for the tragedies of later years. He had a place of
much distinction at the bar, but in the general work of the House he
made no special mark; an Irish Nationalist member was in parliament,
not of it, and in any case disappointment had sapped his energy. He
opposed the aggressive policy which led to the South African War, but
here again he spoke in vain: the tide of imperialist reaction which
marked the nineties had not yet turned. In these later years his
friendship with Laurier revived; it never became intimate as of old,
but time brought healing to the hurts of pride and the older man took
cordial pleasure in the growth and achievement of the successor whose
full powers he had been first to discern. In his old seat, Laurier
faced calumny and defeat with courage and confidence, biding his time.




CHAPTER IX

THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION

     The Death of Sir John Macdonald--Rival Heirs and a
     Compromise--A Scandal Year--Thompson in Power--The
     Manitoba School Question--Courts and Cabinets--A
     Government in Difficulties--Laurier in Torres
     Vedras--The Nest of Traitors--The Remedial Bill and an
     Episcopal Mandate--The Six Months Hoist--The Tupper
     Ministry--The Elections of 1896--Quebec Stands by
     Laurier.


The rejoicings of the Conservative party over the victory of "the old
man, the old flag, and the old policy" had scarcely ceased when they
turned to apprehensions that the days of "the grand old man" were
numbered. Sir John Macdonald had taxed his waning strength in the
hard-fought winter struggle. When the first session of the new
parliament opened at the end of April, 1891, both leaders were
stricken with illness. Mr. Laurier soon recovered, but Sir John could
not rally. He suffered a paralytic stroke on May 29, and a week later
the end came.

Party struggles were halted in the shadow of this calamity. Canada had
lost her greatest son, the Conservatives an invincible leader, the
Liberals a foeman they could not but respect and a compatriot of whom
they could not but be proud. Mr. Laurier, who never concealed his
belief that Sir John Macdonald had been more responsible than any
other man for lowering the level of political contest in Canada and
for making his countrymen accept success as covering a multitude of
political sins, yet had a deep admiration for the loyal Canadian
spirit that guided all his policy, and an appreciation, such as only a
man of something the same qualities could attain, of the magic mastery
Macdonald wielded over men.[44] In joining Sir Hector Langevin and Mr.
Nicholas Flood Davin in paying the tribute of the House of Commons to
Sir John, Mr. Laurier's eloquence rose to heights of simple directness
and deep sincerity:

     The place of Sir John A. Macdonald in this country was
     so large and so absorbing that it is almost impossible
     to conceive that the politics of this country--the fate
     of this country--will continue without him. His loss
     overwhelms us. For my part, I say, with all truth, his
     loss overwhelms me, and that it also overwhelms this
     parliament, as if indeed one of the institutions of the
     land had given way. Sir John A. Macdonald now belongs
     to the ages, and it can be said with certainty that the
     career which has just been closed is one of the most
     remarkable careers of this century. It would be
     premature at this time to attempt to divine or
     anticipate what will be the final judgment of history
     upon him, but there were in his career and in his life
     features so prominent and so conspicuous that already
     they shine with a glory which time cannot alter. These
     characteristics appear before the House at the present
     time such as they will appear to the end in history.

     I think it can be asserted that for the supreme art of
     governing men Sir John Macdonald was gifted as few men
     in any land or in any age were gifted--gifted with the
     most high of all qualities--qualities which would have
     shone in any theatre, and which would have shone all
     the more conspicuously the larger the theatre. The fact
     that he could congregate together elements the most
     heterogeneous and blend them in one compact party, and
     to the end of his life kept them steadily under his
     hand, is perhaps altogether unprecedented. The fact
     that during all these years he maintained unimpaired,
     not only the confidence, but the devotion--the ardent
     devotion--the affection of his party, is evidence that,
     besides these higher qualities of statesmanship to
     which we were the daily witnesses, he was also endowed
     with this inner, subtle, undefinable characteristic of
     soul that wins and keeps the hearts of men.

     As to his statesmanship, it is written in the history
     of Canada. It may be said without any exaggeration
     whatever, that the life of Sir John Macdonald, from the
     date he entered parliament, is the history of Canada,
     for he was connected and associated with all the
     events, all the facts, all the developments, which
     brought Canada from the position Canada then
     occupied--the position of two small provinces, having
     nothing in common but the common allegiance, and united
     by a bond of paper, and united by nothing else--to the
     present state of development which Canada has reached.
     Although my political views compel me to say that, in
     my judgment, his actions were not always the best that
     could have been taken in the interest of Canada,
     although my conscience compels me to say that of late
     he has imputed to his opponents motives which I must
     say in my heart he has misconceived, yet, I am only too
     glad here to sink these differences, and to remember
     only the great services he has performed for his
     country--to remember that his actions displayed
     unbounded fertility of resource, a high level of
     intellectual conception, and, above all, a far-reaching
     vision beyond the event of the day, and still higher,
     permeating the whole, a broad patriotism, a devotion to
     Canada's welfare, Canada's advancement, and Canada's
     glory.

     The life of a statesman is always an arduous one, and
     very often it is an ungrateful one; more often than
     otherwise his actions do not mature until he is in his
     grave. Not so, however, in the case of Sir John
     Macdonald; his has been a singularly fortunate one. His
     reverses were few and of short duration. He was fond of
     power, and in my judgment, if I may say so, that was
     the turning point of his history. He was fond of power
     and he never made any secret of it. Many times we have
     heard him avow it on the floor of this parliament, and
     his ambition in this respect was gratified, as perhaps
     no other man's ambition ever was. In my judgment even
     the career of William Pitt can hardly compare with that
     of Sir John Macdonald in this respect, for although
     William Pitt, moving in a higher sphere, had to deal
     with problems greater than ours, yet I doubt if in the
     management of a party William Pitt had to contend with
     difficulties equal to those that Sir John Macdonald had
     to contend with. In his death too, he seems to have
     been singularly happy. Twenty years ago I was told by
     one who at that time was a close personal and political
     friend of Sir John Macdonald, that in the intimacy of
     his domestic circles he was fond of repeating that his
     end would be as the end of Lord Chatham--that he would
     be carried away from the floor of parliament to die.
     How true his vision into the future was we now know,
     for we saw him at the last, with enfeebled health and
     declining strength, struggling on the floor of
     Parliament until, the hand of fate upon him, he was
     carried to his home to die.

[Footnote 44: In private conversation many years afterwards Sir
Wilfrid observed: "Sir John Macdonald was the supreme student of human
nature. That was the secret of his power. I doubt if any man of his
century was his equal in the art of managing men. He could play on the
strength and weakness of each and all his followers at his will. That
was his chief interest. He had imagination, he had a deep and
responsible interest in Canada's welfare, but he did not usually take
long views. He was always careful to bring his vision back to the next
step. Of course, he was a master of strategy, but not in the detached
objective fashion of the bloodless chess-player or the general twenty
miles behind the trenches; it was his instinctive, sympathetic reading
of the men in the mêlée about him that made him sense the way out and
turned the game. Perhaps his chief disservice was to make his
countrymen feel that politics was not only a game but a game without
rules. He was our greatest Canadian, but he did more than any other
man to lower the level of Canadian public life.

"Macdonald was never interested in the details of administration. What
is less realized, he was not a very good speaker. The matter rarely
rose above commonplace, he stammered and repeated himself. Yet he
usually drove his point home, he had a remarkable memory and an
unfailing fund of humour; he knew precisely how to embarrass his
opponents and delight the benches behind him. In writing it was
another matter. His state papers, such as you will find in Pope's
'Memoirs,' are on a very high plane, admirable work, none better
anywhere."]

With the death of Macdonald the Conservative administration began to
fall to pieces. It was only his prestige and his power over men that
had held so many diverse elements so long together and had postponed
the decay that besets every party in power. There was no clear
certainty as to the Conservative leadership. Sir Charles Tupper had
been the strongest force in the party, but he had been shelved as high
commissioner in London and many of his old colleagues hesitated to bow
again to his masterful ways.[45] Sir Hector Langevin was the leader
of the Quebec wing of the party and the senior privy councillor, and
had long been considered by Sir John himself the logical successor,
but he was under the cloud of the Tarte charges of corruption and was
hampered by the jealousy of Chapleau and Caron. Sir John Thompson
stood head and shoulders above his colleagues in ability, solidity of
character, and integrity of purpose, but the prejudice which was felt
among Ontario Conservatives against a leader who was not only a Roman
Catholic but a convert from Protestantism made it appear inexpedient
for him to accept the tender which was made to him. D'Alton McCarthy,
long Sir John Macdonald's right hand man in Ontario, his chief adviser
in constitutional issues, and unquestionably the most effective and
most popular speaker in the Conservative ranks, was championed by many
friends. In an interview with Thompson, McCarthy insisted upon his own
claims to the leadership. But the objection to a fiery anti-Catholic
crusader was as strong as the objection to a convert from
Protestantism, and Thompson, when summoned by the governor-general,
had at least the satisfaction of recommending another name, that of
the government leader in the Senate, Hon. John Abbott. In his own
frank words before the Senate, Mr. Abbott explained how he had come to
be chosen:

     The position which I to-night have the honour to
     occupy, and which is far beyond any hopes or
     aspirations I ever had, and, I am free to confess,
     beyond any merits I have, has come to me probably very
     much in the nature of compromise. I am here very much
     because I am not particularly obnoxious to anybody,
     something like the principle on which it is reported
     some men are selected as candidates for the Presidency
     of the United States ... that they are harmless and
     have not made any enemies.

[Footnote 45: At a banquet in Halifax in February, 1896, Sir Charles
made public the following characteristic letter, written to his son,
Charles Hibbert, in 1891, from Vienna, where he was attending a postal
conference, as "evidence that the position of Prime Minister of Canada
was not the object of my ambition."

                                          "Vienna, June 4, 1891.

     "MY DEAR SON:

     "I, as you know, have always felt the deepest personal
     attachment for our great leader, Sir John A. Macdonald,
     but I myself did not know how much I loved him until on
     my arrival here last Saturday I learned that he was
     struck down by illness. The news was then reassuring
     and I attended the dinner at the Hofburg Palace with
     the Emperor and a King, at four o'clock, but refused
     the invitation of the Minister for the theatre that
     evening and all invitations since. It now seems there
     is no hope; how mysterious are the ways of Providence!
     Never in his long and useful life have his invaluable
     services been so important to Canada and to the Empire,
     and God alone knows what the consequences to both may
     be.

     "I received your telegram stating that there was a
     disposition in certain quarters that Sir John Thompson
     should succeed him, with great satisfaction and a
     strong sense of personal relief. You know I told you
     long ago, and repeated to you when last in Ottawa, that
     nothing could induce me to accept the position in case
     the Premiership became vacant. I told you that Sir John
     looked up wearily from his papers and said to me: 'I
     wish to God you were in my place,' and that I answered
     him, 'Thank God I am not.' He afterwards, well knowing
     my determination, said he thought Thompson, as matters
     now stood, was the only available man. Of course he had
     in mind the charges that were made against Langevin,
     and still pending. Had it been otherwise, and I had
     been in Parliament, I would have given him my support,
     as you well know.

     "When this terrible blow came, I naturally dreaded that
     my old colleagues and the party for whom I had done so
     much, might unite in asking me to take the leadership,
     and I felt that in that case a serious responsibility
     would rest upon me. Believing, as I do, that compliance
     would have involved a material shortening of the few
     years at the most remaining to me, you can imagine, my
     dear son, the relief with which I learned that I was
     absolved from any such responsibility and able to
     assure your dear mother that all danger was past.... I
     need not tell you how glad I will be if our mutual
     friend Thompson should be the man. His great ability,
     high legal attainments, forensic powers, and above all
     his personal character all render his choice one of
     which our party and country should be proud....

                              "Your loving father,
                                  "CHARLES TUPPER."     ]

Mr. Abbott had never taken any share in the public work of the party.
He had no liking for parliamentary debate, and he loathed and avoided
public campaigning. But he was personally popular, a man of dignity
and imperturbable courtesy; in Ottawa and Montreal he was intimately
known to the people who counted, and behind the scenes his shrewd,
cautious counsel had long stood both the Conservative party and the
Canadian Pacific Railway in good stead. The choice, if somewhat
unexpected, and certainly unsought on Mr. Abbott's part, was therefore
a logical if obviously only a temporary solution of the difficulty.
The new premier continued to lead in the Senate. In the House of
Commons Sir Hector Langevin at first remained nominally the
government spokesman, but he soon faded into retirement, and Sir John
Thompson stood out as the leader of the House and the real force in
the administration.

Mr. Abbott succeeded to a troubled heritage. The Conservative party
was plainly losing its grip on the country. The dissensions of its
leaders and the threat of further cleavage over race and religious
issues weakened its force in parliament. More serious for the moment
were the revelations of wide-spread corruption and inefficiency in the
federal administration.

The parliamentary session of 1891 was "the scandal year." Israel Tarte
had sought and won a seat in Quebec, pledged to probe to the bottom
the graft in the Public Works Department. He lost no time in making
his charges and demanding a committee of inquiry. The Committee on
Privileges and Elections began an inquiry which lasted from May until
September. It was soon made clear beyond dispute that the department
was rotten through and through; that confidential data were divulged
to contractors, tenders manipulated at their will, and bogus claims
allowed; that Thomas McGreevy was mainly instrumental in procuring
these favours for firms with which he and his brother Robert were
secretly connected; and that part of the graft went to the party's
funds. As to Sir Hector's complicity, the committee differed. The
majority report, signed by Sir John Thompson, D. Girouard, and Michael
Adams, admitted the guilt of the contractor and of McGreevy, but
cleared the minister of any knowledge or responsibility. David Mills
and L. H. Davies, in a minority report, contended that Langevin, with
whom McGreevy made his home in Ottawa, connived at and furthered the
frauds, and that his newspaper organ, "Le Monde," was largely
sustained from the proceeds. The majority report was upheld on a party
vote, D'Alton McCarthy, Colonel O'Brien, and Nicholas Flood Davin
alone voting against their party. On the motion of Sir John Thompson,
Thomas McGreevy was expelled from the House.

Nor did the charges or the probing end here. In department after
department--the Interior, the Public Works, the Printing Bureau--very
easy-going standards of honesty were shown to prevail; accommodating
clerks found cheques, bronze dogs, dinner-tables, jewels for their
wives, come their way, and merchants delivered one set of wares to
clerks' homes and sent bills for another set to the government
treasury. The Liberals were not content with small game. Members of
parliament who had sold offices for cash, ministers who were alleged
to keep damsels on the pay-roll who gave no public service, were
bitterly attacked. Not all the charges were probed, not all were
proved, but sufficient stood to shock the Canadian public, and invite
the pitying scorn of other lands.

In answer, the Conservative leaders minimized the revelations, waved
the flag, and shouted, "You're another." In August, while the Tarte
charges were still under consideration, evidence of equally scandalous
corruption in the Liberal administration of Quebec came as a godsend.
In hearings before the Railway Committee of the Senate, it was brought
out that the contractor for the Baie des Chaleurs Railway had been
paid large sums by the Quebec government for which no service was
rendered, that out of these sums he had paid Ernest Pacaud, editor of
"L'Electeur," $100,000, and that Pacaud had used a large part of this
sum to pay political debts of the provincial Liberal party. The
Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, Hon. A. R. Angers, at once appointed
Judges Jetté, Baby, and Davidson a royal commission to investigate the
charges. The illness of Judge Jetté delayed his report, but his
fellow-commissioners made an interim report on December 15, holding
that Charles Langelier, provincial secretary, and Premier Mercier,
while not consulted, had benefited by the payment by Pacaud of notes
given for political debts which they with others had endorsed. In
November, a Quebec contractor, John P. Whelan, published charges that
he had been bled by Mr. Mercier and his friends for heavy campaign
contributions out of the swollen profits of the building of the Quebec
Court House. On December 16, Governor Angers, who had been a member of
the De Boucherville ministry dismissed by Governor Letellier in 1878,
now in his turn dismissed Honoré Mercier from office and called the
same Senator De Boucherville to form a ministry. The legislature was
at once dissolved and elections set for March 8. Judge Jetté's report
exonerated Mercier from any knowledge or responsibility in the
Chaleurs affair.

To Wilfrid Laurier the Quebec revelations were a crushing blow. It was
not merely that his party was compromised and the force of the attack
on the federal government weakened, but the whole country was
besmirched, politics made to appear a game in which honesty was at a
discount, and friendships shattered. In a public meeting in Quebec in
January he attacked Governor Angers' action in dismissing the ministry
as arbitrary and unconstitutional. He added that he had not come to
defend Mr. Mercier's policy; he considered the Baie des Chaleurs
transaction in the highest degree indefensible, yet he would point out
that the charges that Mr. Mercier knew of the fraudulent division of
the proceeds or benefited thereby had not been established; he was
loath to believe them true, and trusted that Mr. Mercier and his
friends would succeed in clearing themselves.

In a letter to H. Beaugrand, the radical editor of the chief Liberal
journal in Montreal, "La Patrie," Mr. Laurier comments on the affair:

     _Wilfrid Laurier to H. Beaugrand.--(Translation)_

                              Ottawa, August 17, 1891.

     MY DEAR BEAUGRAND:

     I have just seen our friend Brodeur and am writing you
     at once. This unfortunate affair in Quebec is making us
     lose the fruit of our work here. We cannot expect now
     to make any serious breaches in the ranks of the
     majority. We shall continue to expose the scandals we
     have begun to throw light on as far as we can, and that
     done, we shall have nothing to do but close the
     session.

     The most urgent matter now is to know what attitude to
     take. My opinion would be this: It must be admitted
     that very serious accusations have been established
     before the Committee of the Senate up to a certain
     point, but the accusers, though they touch individuals,
     do not implicate Mr. Mercier's government. Moreover,
     not only is the method of investigation
     unconstitutional, but the investigation itself has no
     foundation. It is the result of sentiment so obviously
     partisan that those who are accused cannot expect to
     secure justice from such a tribunal. In fact, the
     Senate has not even authority any longer to make this
     investigation; the bill which would have given it
     jurisdiction has been withdrawn, and it is only by
     artifice that the Senate continues to sit.

     This position would be very strong, but unfortunately
     the facts revealed before the Senate have such an
     appearance that the public, at least in certain
     quarters, would hardly be disposed to accept any
     constitutional argument. It would be necessary to go on
     to say that, while taking account of the revelations
     which have been made before the Committee of the
     Senate, in consideration of the evidently partisan
     character of the inquiry, the public should wait before
     forming a definite judgment until an inquiry can be
     made before a more impartial tribunal.

     That, my dear Beaugrand, is the attitude that I would
     take in your paper. Naturally, after that we must await
     events.

     I would be glad to have your own opinion on all this,
     if you would be good enough to write me a line.

     Tell me whether there is not some fatality pursuing our
     party; it is just at the moment that we are showing up
     the full extent of the corruption of the Conservative
     party that a similar revelation comes upon ourselves.

                              Believe me as always,
                                  Yours very sincerely,
                                       WILFRID LAURIER.

By some of Mercier's friends, Laurier's attitude was considered unduly
cool and aloof. Were not both men Liberals; had not Mercier
contributed materially to the growing strength of the federal Liberal
party in Quebec; were not the party's fortunes linked with his?
Granted, but in the Liberal party there were many shades. Aside from
annoyance at the untimely revelations, there was a more permanent
divergence, rooted in differences of tactics and of temperament. Both
men were courageous fighters, both enjoyed the game of politics, but
Laurier never threw himself into the hurly-burly of political warfare
with the zest and abandon of Mercier; he was not as much at home in
the detailed organization of election campaigns and the manipulation
of personal alliances. The difference between Laurier and Mercier was
the difference between Dorion and Cartier, the difference between the
studious, austere, moderate, parliamentary leader, interested in
persons but thinking in terms of principles and constitutions, and the
burly, slashing popular leader, careless of constitutional issues,
exuberant, convivial, delighting in the managing and dominating of
men.

When polling came, the electors of Quebec pronounced against the
Mercier administration by sweeping majorities. Honoré Mercier at once
resigned his leadership and his seat. The federal Liberal party not
only lost one of its provincial buttresses, but had to suffer the
double share of obloquy which falls upon the righteous when they err;
the charges made against Langevin and the government at Ottawa came
back with interest. In the by-elections which were held in 1892,
following the unseating of members for violations of the Corrupt
Practices Act, the electors, seemingly convinced that one party was as
bad as another, and still under the influence of Blake's post-election
attack upon the Liberal trade policy, went strongly with the
government. Waverers in parliament returned to the fold. A
Conservative majority of twenty-odd mounted steadily to sixty; it
seemed that the party had once more found itself.

The session of 1892 varied scandals with gerrymanders. Mr. J. D. Edgar
charged that Sir Adolphe Caron, the postmaster-general, had been
instrumental in procuring large government subsidies for the Quebec
and Lake St. John Railway, and had milked the company to procure
election funds. He demanded an inquiry by the same committee which had
investigated the Langevin charges. Sir John Thompson refused an
inquiry on the grounds that it would involve the impossible task of
reviewing the conduct of elections in twenty-two Quebec constituencies
during several general elections. Eventually certain charges other
than those concerning elections were referred to a judicial
commission. Mr. Edgar declared that the charges submitted to the
commission were not his, and declined to take part in the
investigation; the findings were inconclusive.

The census of 1891 had revealed an astonishingly slow growth in
population the preceding ten years. A bare half-million had been
added.[46] The Liberal contention that the government's fiscal policy
had failed and that the country was being bled white by emigration to
the United States, received startling confirmation, and protection
began to lose ground. A more immediate result was the redistribution
of seats in accordance with the new population returns and the old
party exigencies. Sir John Thompson introduced a measure re-drawing
the electoral map in every province. The proposed changes were
attacked as gross gerrymandering. Mr. Laurier, going to the root of
the matter, urged that redistribution should be taken up by a
committee of both parties, as the only means of avoiding evil and the
appearance of evil. Thompson denounced the proposal as unprecedented
and impracticable, and carried the proposals through. Eleven years
later, with power as well as reason on his side, Laurier was to
perform this unprecedented and impossible task and to end--for a
time--the loading of the electoral dice.

[Footnote 46:

     1871,        3,686,000
     1881,        4,324,000
     1891,        4,829,000]

Sir John Abbott (a Queen's Birthday honour), was now finding it
impossible to retain power longer. Experience had not lessened his
distaste for ministerial life, and the illness which was to carry him
off within a year was crippling his powers. In any case his
premiership had served its purpose in enabling the party to pull
itself together and in demonstrating beyond dispute which of the many
claimants had best right to Macdonald's mantle. He resigned on
November 25, 1892.

Sir John Thompson was at once summoned to form a ministry. He
announced the new government on December 6, 1892. It contained few
surprises. Sir John remained Minister of Justice, Mr. Foster, Minister
of Finance, and Sir Charles Tupper's brilliant son, Charles Hibbert,
Minister of Marine and Fisheries. Hon. A. R. Angers exchanged his
lieutenant-governorship for Mr. Chapleau's place in the cabinet. Sir
Adolphe Caron and Alderic Ouimet, Mackenzie Bowell, John Haggart, and
John H. Costigan and others of the old guard remained. Sir Frank Smith
and Sir John Carling held cabinet place without portfolio. An
interesting innovation came through the appointment of two
comptrollers of Customs and Inland Revenue and a solicitor-general as
members of the ministry but not of the cabinet; the choice for the
former of these posts of Clarke Wallace, the head of the Orange Order
in Canada, balanced the accession to power, in the "Mail's" phrase, of
"a political confederate of the order of Father Petre."

Sir John Thompson had rightly won his place. The prejudices against
his creed had been overborne in all but a few extremist quarters. The
whole country had come to recognize his power of intellect, his
unswerving integrity, his sound Canadianism. True, his earlier
reputation for judicial impartiality had not survived the strain of
party battle; his calm exterior hid strong ambitions and intense party
feelings which sometimes burned their way through in a revealing
flash, but this revelation only strengthened him in party circles.[47]
He had little ease of manner or popular appeal, but he gave an
impression of dependable solidity which greatly comforted his
followers and won public confidence.

The most serious task which faced the new premier was the settlement
of the Manitoba school question. Already this issue had been in
federal politics for more than two years. It was fated to bedevil
public life for all the remaining years of Conservative power.

[Footnote 47: Sir Richard Cartwright was one of the men most
successful in drawing Thompson's fire. Sir Richard himself spared no
man; to quote a random instance, at a campaign meeting in Kingston,
during a by-election in January, 1892, he had greeted the local
Conservative candidate as a fitting choice--"as straightforward as Sir
John Thompson, no more likely to eat his own words than Mr. Foster, as
honest as Mr. Chapleau, as little likely to use his position to
forward his own interests as Mr. Dewdney, as moral as Haggart, as
modest as Tupper, Senior and Junior, and as loyal as J. J. C. Abbott."
A few months later, in the House of Commons, he had denounced
government boodling and patronage, judicial partiality, and public
apathy. Whereupon Thompson thanked Cartwright for another of "those
war, famine and pestilence speeches which have so often carried the
country for the government," proposed a subsidy to keep him in
parliament for the Conservative party's sake, replied to a taunt as to
defending criminals by declaring that he had never shrunk from taking
any man's case, no matter how desperate it might be, for the purpose
of saying for him what he might lawfully say for himself, but had
sometimes spurned the fee of a blatant scoundrel who denounced
everybody else in the world and was himself the most truculent savage
of them all, and ended by thanking God nature had broken the mould
when she cast Sir Richard. This descent from "the language of
Parliament to the invective of Billingsgate," as Mr. Laurier termed it
in reply, was the last touch needed to establish Sir John's right to
party leadership.]

The Manitoba school question was an echo of the storms which had raged
over Riel and the Jesuits' Estates. The torch of racial and religious
passion had been carried from the banks of the Saskatchewan to the
banks of the St. Lawrence; now eager messengers carried it once more
westward to the Red River. As might be surmised, it was not really an
educational question: rarely is the public roused to a lively interest
in the genuine problems of education. The school was merely the arena
where religious gladiators displayed their powers, an occasion for
stirring the religious convictions and religious prejudices of
thousands and of demonstrating how little either their education or
their religion had done to make them tolerant citizens.

In the modern state, where the school makes the man, the control of
the school system has been held vital to all who wish to impress their
stamp upon the rising generation, and so education enters politics. In
Canada the question had a special interest and a special difficulty.
Confederation had been a compromise, an endeavour to assure freedom to
each section of the people to follow their own bent, as well as unity
in matters of common interest. No part of the Confederation compact
was more characteristic or more indispensable in ensuring its
acceptance than the provisions which safeguarded the educational
privileges of religious minorities. In the case of New Brunswick, the
provisions had been found to be too narrowly drawn to protect the
Roman Catholic minority. They had been the basis, secure and
unquestioned, of the rights accorded the Protestant minority in
Quebec. They had ensured continued acceptance of the compromise of the
sixties according separate school rights to the Roman Catholic
minority in Ontario. Now in the case of Manitoba, child alike of
Ontario and Quebec, the clause and the people were to be given their
real testing.

In the days of the Hudson's Bay Company there had been little
provision for schooling in the Red River district. Such schools as
existed were provided by religious denominations, Anglican,
Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, with varying grants from the company.
When Manitoba entered the union and an organized government took the
place of the happy-go-lucky paternalism of the company, it became
necessary to consider the basis of a future school system. The white
and half-breed population of the province was evenly divided between
Protestant and Catholic, and while it was probable that new settlers
would come from Ontario rather than from Quebec, it was not yet
certain. It was to the interest of both parties to ensure protection
for the minority. The limitation of provincial powers as to education
in the interests of religious minorities had been a fundamental
feature of the Confederation compact. In any case the fresh and bitter
controversy over the school question in New Brunswick had made Ottawa
aware of the need of clear and definite provision in the case of the
new province. The settlers themselves had not been greatly concerned
over the question, but Father Ritchot, one of the three delegates from
the Red River, had the interests of his church very close at heart
throughout the negotiations. The result was the inclusion in the
Manitoba Act of a clause intended to safeguard denominational
schools.[48]

[Footnote 48: Clause 22, The Manitoba Act: In and for the Province
the said Legislature may exclusively make laws in relation to
education, subject and according to the following provisions:

(1). Nothing in any such law shall prejudicially affect any right or
privilege with respect to denominational schools which any class of
persons have by law or practice in the Province at the Union.

(2). An appeal shall lie to the Governor-General in Council from any
Act or decision of the Legislature of the Province, or of any
provincial authority, affecting any right or privilege of the
Protestant or Roman Catholic minority of the Queen's subjects in
relation to education.

(3). In case any such provincial law as from time to time seems to the
Governor-General in Council requisite for the due execution of the
provisions of this section is not made, or in case any decision of the
Governor-General in Council or any appeal under this section is not
duly executed by the proper Provincial authority in that behalf, then,
and in every such case, and as far only as the circumstances of each
case may require, the Parliament of Canada may make remedial laws for
the due execution of the provisions of this section, and of any
decision of the Governor-General in Council under this section.]

In its first session the provincial legislature had established a
school system modeled on that of Quebec. The lieutenant-governor in
council was empowered to appoint a board of education, composed half
of Protestant and half of Catholic members, with a superintendent of
Protestant and a superintendent of Catholic schools. The whole board
had the power to organize the schools and select the books to be used.
The provincial grant was to be divided evenly between the Protestant
and Catholic schools. An amendment in 1875 increased the board to
twenty-one members, twelve Protestants and nine Roman Catholics, and
provided for the division of the provisional grant in proportion to
the number of children of school age. The denominational character of
the system was increased by a provision in the same year to the effect
that the establishment of a school district of one denomination should
not prevent the establishment of a school district of the other
denomination in the same place.

It was soon apparent that Manitoba was to be overwhelmingly Protestant
and English-speaking. It was not surprising that from time to time
murmurs arose against a system which gave the Roman Catholic Church a
special and powerful function. In 1874 Mr. W. F. Luxton was elected to
the legislature on a platform calling for abolition of separate
schools, and resolutions were introduced to that effect in the
legislature in the two sessions following. When, however, in 1876 the
government had proposed to abolish the upper house or legislative
council, the French-speaking members, who looked upon it, with all its
faults, as a possible guardian of minority privileges against rash
change, were solemnly assured by representative English-speaking
leaders that they would not suffer if the council fell. There the
matter rested for a dozen years. In January of 1888 a momentous
election was fought in the Manitoba constituency of St. François
Xavier. The Norquay government, weakened by corruption, had been
patched up under Dr. Harrison's premiership, but it was staggering
under the criticisms and exposures of the Liberal press and Opposition
speakers. The Provincial Secretary, Joseph Burke--in spite of his name
a French-Canadian--was seeking re-election in his home constituency;
his Liberal opponent was an English-speaking Presbyterian; the
constituency was overwhelmingly French and Catholic. Wide-spread
public distrust of the administration was forcing many desertions from
the Conservative cause. As a last resort the party organizers spread
the rumour, based on Liberal criticisms of the waste involved in
printing public documents in French, that the Liberals planned to
interfere with the schools and the language of French-speaking
Catholics. To these assertions the Liberals gave the strongest and
most solemn denial. Mr. Joseph Martin, the moving spirit of the
Liberal party, with Mr. James Fisher, President of the Liberal
Provincial Association, on the platform beside him, gave positive
pledges not to interfere with these institutions. The Liberals won.
Four days later Dr. Harrison gave up the fight and Mr. Greenway was
called upon to form a new government. Before selecting his cabinet,
Mr. Greenway called upon Archbishop Taché and gave assurances that the
Catholic schools and the French language would remain inviolate and
received the endorsement of the archbishop for Mr. Prendergast as an
acceptable Catholic member of the cabinet. In the election that
followed Mr. Greenway received the support of five out of six
French-Canadian constituencies.

Thus matters stood when D'Alton McCarthy, fresh from the equal-rights
agitation in the East, carried the torch to the Western heather. He
addressed a cheering audience at Portage la Prairie, urged them "to
make this a British country in fact and in name," told them "that the
poor sleepy Protestant minority of Ontario and Quebec were at last
awake," and pointed to the separate school question in Manitoba and
the North-West and the French-school question of Ontario as local
tasks which could and should be done first before the more difficult
problems where vested interests were stronger could be settled.[49]
Mr. Joseph Martin, speaking from the same platform, intimated that
changes in both the language and the school question were under
consideration. The government, as afterward appeared, had virtually
decided to bring both systems of schools under a responsible minister,
and to establish uniform provisions for the training and testing of
teachers. It was not their purpose to abolish separate schools, but
rather to lessen the excessive measure of ecclesiastical control which
marked both Protestant and Catholic schools--in other words, to change
from the Quebec system, under which the State merely gave its blessing
and its tax-gathering machinery to the two sets of denominational
authorities which controlled the schools, to the Ontario system,
wherein the State assumed control, but with permission to Catholics or
Protestants to establish schools within the general framework, in
which special religious teaching could be provided. Mr. Martin, with
the impetuousness which marked all his actions, determined to go
further than either his colleagues or Mr. McCarthy had
proposed,--namely, to solve the religious difficulty by doing away
with all religious teaching, even of an undenominational kind. Mr.
Greenway did not conceal the fact that this programme of Mr. Martin's
was both unauthorized and unwelcome, but he had not the strength of
his impetuous lieutenant, and could not stand against the fires of
passion which had been lighted.

[Footnote 49: D'Alton McCarthy, in a speech in Ottawa in 1889 after
his return from Manitoba declared: "Do you tell me that the Equal
Rights Association had nothing to do with that question? Of course the
feeling was there; the grievance existed. Her people's minds had only
to be directed to it, and the moment attention was drawn to it, the
province of Manitoba rose as one man and said, we want no dual
language and away with separate schools as well."]

Mr. Martin prepared his bill, but soon found that he had promised more
than he could perform. Manitoba was not prepared to accept wholly
secular schools. The Protestant majority could be stirred to protest
against the unreasonable amount of an unreasonable religion taught in
the Roman Catholic schools, but not so with regard to the reasonable
amount of a reasonable religion taught in their own schools. The
protest of a chorus of Protestant divines forced Mr. Martin to drop
his secular proposal, though they did not change his convictions. The
government programme, thanks to Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Martin, was then
diverted into a proposal for abolishing the denominational schools and
setting up a single system with provision for a mild amount of
undenominational religious teaching in all the schools.

The opponents of denominational schools did not at first object to the
manner in which they were conducted. In all the years that had passed
there had been no official complaint of inefficiency, never a hint
that any improvement of Catholic or Protestant schools was to be
desired. Mr. Martin, in introducing his bill, declared that the
government's action had not been determined because they were
dissatisfied with the manner in which the affairs of the department
had been conducted, but because they were dissatisfied with the system
itself. Denominational schools meant a country divided against
itself, ecclesiastical privilege, the recognition of a state church.
To this the Roman Catholic reply, and the reply of not a few
Anglicans, was that religion was not a matter that could be kept in
one of the seven compartments of the week, a matter foreign to the
life and thought of every day, but a vital and essential factor in the
training of every child and in the study of every subject whereon men
differed in opinion; denominational schools did not mean recognition
of a state church but recognition of the rights of the parent. Many
who disliked separate schools, distrusted ecclesiastical control, and
feared national division, yet felt that they were in honour bound to
accept the system as part of the necessary compromise of
Confederation. The broad assurance of protection to minorities given
in the British North America Act itself, the assurances of men like
Brown and Mackenzie that against their will they had accepted separate
schools as a necessary and permanent part of the price paid for
nationality and for peace, the undoubted intention of the Manitoba Act
of 1870, the pledges of Conservative leaders in 1876, and the still
more solemn pledges of Liberal leaders in 1888,--these were not bonds
to be lightly broken.

As the discussion developed, the critics of separate schools attacked
incidents in their working. In a sparsely settled province like
Manitoba, with vast areas of reserved lands, it was difficult at the
best to build up a single school system; it would be impossible to
build up two efficient systems, to find support for two schools, in
the same scattered areas; nor could German Mennonite, nor Icelandic
Lutheran, nor Polish Catholic logically be denied the right which
French Catholics claimed. A single system of non-sectarian schools was
the only alternative to chaos and Babel. Nor were the Catholic schools
adequate. They had been catechism schools, their teachers poorly
trained, their pupils sent out into the world illiterate. To which the
defenders of the old system replied that the complaint as to
duplication of systems was purely hypothetical. Out of some ninety
Catholic school organizations, only four were in mixed communities too
small to support both schools effectively; a great majority lay in the
solid French-Canadian parishes along the Red River, or in the larger
towns where each flock was of large numbers. As to efficiency, granted
all was not as it should have been, but were all Protestant schools
efficient? Could any pioneer school be judged by Eastern standards?
Could not defects have been remedied and standards raised by
discussion, instead of this sudden and arrogant suppression of the
very right to exist?

Unfortunately, no attempt was made to bring about reform by consent,
to ensure increased efficiency without riding roughshod over the
minority's convictions and the majority's pledges. Between the Quebec
or Manitoba system, with its complete surrender of school control to
denominations, and the United States system of uniform and exclusive
state control, some compromise might have been found, as had
originally been contemplated, on the Ontario model, with its state
control of administration and of standards and its grant of freedom
to minorities to organize schools within this framework in which a
special religious point of view could be given. But in the mood of the
province, nothing but root-and-branch revolution would suffice. The
acts which passed the Manitoba legislature in March, 1890, abolished
all denominational control. The dual board of education was swept away
and a system of public non-sectarian schools established, supported by
local assessment upon all the taxable property within the district and
by legislative grants, and supervised by a provincial department of
education. Non-denominational religious exercises were to be
prescribed by an advisory board and held in schools, at the option of
the local trustees, before the closing-hour, any children being
privileged to withdraw at their parent's request.

The Roman Catholic minority in Manitoba had been overwhelmed by the
sudden assault upon privileges they had held safe beyond dispute. They
found themselves forced to choose between accepting schools which were
virtually continuations of the old Protestant denominational schools
or shouldering the double burden of paying their share of taxes to the
public school and the cost of maintaining parochial schools of their
own, or seeking to have the provincial legislation overthrown. They
were weak in numbers and weak in wealth, but their ecclesiastical
leaders were determined and persistent. At once the long campaign
against the school laws of 1890 was begun.

The Roman Catholic members in the legislature had fought against the
school laws, but their votes had been overwhelmed. Archbishop Taché
had appealed to the lieutenant-governor to withhold his assent, but
had appealed in vain. Three other means of redress were possible: the
federal government might disallow the act, the courts might declare it
unconstitutional, or the federal parliament might enact remedial
legislation.

Disallowance of provincial statutes was a rusty blunderbuss which the
Ottawa administration was loath to fire. It had already sought to use
it against Manitoba in the dispute over railway charters and the
recoil had been shattering. It had lately refused to use it against
Mercier's Jesuits' Estates measure; it could not use it against
Martin's school measure. Within the year allowed for the federal veto
the general election of 1891 intervened. Either to grant or to refuse
a petition for disallowance would be awkward. Mr. Chapleau entered
into negotiations with Mgr. Taché, and convinced him that the other
remedies would be more efficacious and would, if need be, be applied.
The cabinet adopted in April, 1891, the recommendation of the minister
of justice, Sir John Thompson, to let the acts take their course; if
the courts declared them _ultra vires_, the minority would be
satisfied; if not, their petition for redress could then be
considered.

Next, the courts. Had Manitoba the power to pass these measures? Not
if they affected prejudicially any privilege regarding denominational
schools which any class of persons enjoyed by law or practice in 1870.
In November, 1890, in the name of a Catholic rate-payer, of Winnipeg,
D. Barrett, application was made to Mr. Justice Killam to quash the
by-laws based upon the statutes. The application was dismissed. An
appeal was taken to the full Court of Queen's Bench, but again, with
Justice Dubuc dissenting, the statutes were upheld. Appeal was next
taken to the Supreme Court of Canada. In October, 1891, that court
unanimously held the acts _ultra vires_, substantially on the ground
that while Roman Catholics were not forbidden by the acts of 1890 to
maintain denominational schools, yet the obligation to pay taxes in
support of public schools was a very real handicap upon any such
endeavour, and therefore prejudicially affected the right. Still one
more appeal was possible. In July, 1892, the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council reversed the Supreme Court's finding: the only rights
which any class of persons held in 1870 was the right to establish and
pay for schools in accordance with their religious tenets: these
rights the Roman Catholics still enjoyed: the existence of
denominational schools did not necessarily imply immunity from
taxation for the support of other schools: if this was a hardship, not
the law but the religious convictions which made it impossible for the
minority to accept the law, were responsible. Thus the Privy Council,
in a decision which appears strained to-day: it was not the mere
existence of denominational schools that was guaranteed, but their
existence free from prejudicial impediments, such as the Supreme Court
reasonably held taxation to be; while as to the quibble about Catholic
convictions and not the Manitoba law being at fault, it was plainly
these very convictions, whether right or wrong, that the constitution
aimed to protect.

Disallowance had been refused. The endeavour to have the statutes
declared unconstitutional had failed. One resource remained,--the
appeal to the governor-general in council. Granting that no rights
which existed at the time of union had been affected, had not rights
or privileges which had been established after the union been taken
away, and did not this warrant remedial action by the federal
authorities? This was the question Sir John Thompson had promised in
1891 to consider if the court decision went against the minority. Now,
late in 1892, the minority, in petition, demanded this redress.
Ontario and Western opinion urged the government to accept the Privy
Council's opinion as final: the courts had held no grievance existed,
so why remedy it? Why open a healing wound? Thus beset, the government
decided to move, but to move warily and with an air of judicial
dignity and impartiality. "If the contention of the petitioners be
correct, that such an appeal can be sustained, the inquiry will be
rather of a judicial than a political character," declared a
subcommittee of the cabinet in December, 1892. As the event proved, it
would have been more judicious to be less judicial.

In January, 1893, the cabinet--or rather Her Majesty's Privy Council
for Canada--held a public hearing to determine whether or not they had
the right and duty to intervene. Mr. J. S. Ewart presented the
minority case; Manitoba declined to be represented. After considering
Mr. Ewart's arguments, the cabinet, instead of deciding, determined to
ask the courts to express an opinion as to whether or not they had
power to act. A stated case was prepared and argued before the Supreme
Court in October. In February, 1894, the court gave judgment. Every
one of the five judges rendered a separate decision; the diversity of
point of view and the hair-splitting refining of logic did not show
the court at its best. Two judges, Justice King and Justice Fournier,
held that both the Manitoba and the British North America Act applied;
that the privileges granted after the union were protected by these
acts, and that since these rights had undoubtedly been affected, the
federal authorities had the power and the duty to intervene. The
majority, Justices Ritchie, Gwynne, and Taschereau, by diverse paths
reached a different conclusion: only the Manitoba Act applied; in this
act the rights safeguarded by the appeal to the governor-general in
council are not explicitly stated to be those arising after the union
and must therefore be taken to be those existing at the union; the
Privy Council had held that the latter rights had not been affected
prejudicially; therefore no appeal could be. From this majority
judgment of the Supreme Court, the question was carried to the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, but before its
verdict could be received much had happened in Canada.

Many members of parliament would have been content to let the courts
wrestle with the question for the rest of their political lives. Not
all. Tarte, demanding immediate remedy of the minority's grievances,
and McCarthy, opposing any further consideration of their plea, could
both support the resolution which Tarte moved in March, 1893, in vague
terms condemning the government's policy, and more especially
attacking it for assuming to act in a judicial capacity and thus
evading ministerial responsibility. In supporting the amendment Mr.
Laurier declared that Tarte and McCarthy, who had nothing in common
but courage and convictions, naturally found themselves opposed to a
government which had neither. He showed in an admirable historical
review that the original clauses protecting minority rights had been
inserted at the demand of the Quebec Protestants, voiced through A. T.
Galt. If the Catholic majority in Quebec abolished the Protestant
separate schools, not a man in the House could deny that the federal
government should intervene. What of Manitoba? It was contended that
the Manitoba public schools were non-sectarian; it was replied they
were really the old Protestant schools thinly disguised. What were the
facts?

     If it is true ... that under the guise of public
     schools, Protestant schools are being continued, and
     that Roman Catholics are forced, under the law, to
     attend what are in reality Protestant schools, I say
     this, and let my words be heard by friend and foe, let
     them be published in the press throughout the length of
     the land, that the strongest case has been made for
     interference by this government. If that statement be
     true, though my life as a political man should be
     ended forever, what I say now I shall be prepared to
     repeat, and would repeat on every platform in Ontario,
     every platform in Manitoba, nay, every Orange lodge
     throughout the land, that the Catholic minority has
     been subjected to a most infamous tyranny.

What were the facts? Why did not the government investigate, and make
up its mind, instead of seeking the subterfuge of judicial appeals?
The prime minister had declared that the members of the council could
deal with the matter as judges, "regardless of the personal views
which Your Excellency's advisers may hold with regard to
denominational schools." "How convenient that doctrine," Mr. Laurier
continued, "which permits the advisers of His Excellency to pocket at
once their opinions and their emoluments." The government's fumbling
and delay were permitting passions to rise to fever heat and making
settlement in any direction almost impossible to carry through. The
resolution was defeated on a party vote, save for a bolt by McCarthy
and his fellow-stalwart Colonel O'Brien. Further discussion awaited
the slow passing of the test case through the courts.

Other issues divided attention. The prolonged industrial depression of
the early nineties and the persistence of racial controversies led to
wide-spread discontent with old parties and old policies, and with
Canada's political status. Party lines wavered: Ontario farmers,
suffering from low prices and organized as Patrons of Industry, on
United States granger models, went into politics, chiefly to Mowat's
hurt; Tarte joined the Liberal forces, and McCarthy, at odds with his
party on the school question and on the tariff, left the Conservative
ranks, or was read out by the "Empire," though he did not join his old
foes. The rooted faith in a protective-tariff policy faded. Stagnating
trade, the steady drain of emigration, the growth of combines, made it
appear that protection had failed to bring the promised prosperity.
The Liberals shifted the emphasis upon reciprocity to a straight
attack on high tariffs; farmers' organizations demanded radical
change; the McCarthy group insisted that protection had been given its
chance and had failed; Thompson was compelled to promise at least to
"lop the mouldering branches away," and the budget of 1894 brought
some substantial reductions of duty. Discontent found other channels.
Annexationist sentiment was more widely prevalent than ever before or
since: Ontario border towns, and not least Toronto, were honeycombed
with avowed or secret advocates of union with the United States. The
counter propaganda of imperial federation lost something of its force
when its supporters faced concrete facts, but imperial sentiment
continued to flow in other channels, notably in the demand for fiscal
preference. The holding of a colonial conference in Ottawa in the
summer of 1894, attended by representatives of the Australasian
colonies, the Cape, and Canada, as well as by an observer from
Britain, led to renewed emphasis upon tariff preference and Pacific
cables as the most practicable bonds of imperial union.

In these shifting times Mr. Laurier strove without ceasing to catch
the tide of public favour for his party. Every year after 1891 he made
a speaking tour through Ontario; in Quebec he was never given rest;
more rarely he visited the provinces by the sea. In 1894 for the first
time he went West, finding, himself, a new vision of what Canada might
be, and planting in many Western communities where hitherto it had
scarcely been respectable to be a Liberal, an enthusiasm which grew
with the years. East and West, his hold on the country strengthened.
Men and women who had read his speeches with detached interest, became
devoted admirers when they heard him face to face, and lifelong
friends with the warm hand-shake and the kindly quizzical word and the
frank and courtly smile that followed.

The culminating effort in the popular campaign of these years was the
National Liberal Convention held at Ottawa in June, 1893. Based on a
suggestion of the Toronto "Globe," this first Dominion-wide gathering
of delegates of a great party proved an extraordinary success. The
convention revealed the personal assets the party possessed in
Laurier, Mowat, Fielding. It linked up the local organizations. It
gave an opportunity of framing a fighting platform, in which the
demand for lower tariffs and reciprocity with the United States was
emphasized. It impressed the country and heartened the rank and file
of the party.

While the Liberal party was gaining in unity and confidence, the
Conservatives were again rent with doubt and dissension. They, and the
country with them, suffered a severe blow in the sudden death of Sir
John Thompson in December, 1894, while on a visit to Windsor Castle.
There was no man of his force to follow. The premiership went by
seniority to Mackenzie Bowell, government leader in the Senate, and
particularly available as a successor to a Catholic leader because of
his own position as a past Grand Master in the Orange Order. Mr.
Bowell was a politician of long if somewhat humdrum experience; he was
widely liked and respected, but he had little distinction, and lacked
the adroitness and the strength necessary to make his cabinet, nervous
and quarrelsome in the shadow of the coming crisis, work together in
loyal endeavour.

Mackenzie Bowell was scarcely in office when in January, 1895, the
finding of the Privy Council on the Manitoba minority's right of
appeal compelled the government at last to determine a policy on the
school issue. The Privy Council, in an opinion which revealed more
care and more power than its earlier judgment, reversed the Supreme
Court's finding. It was held that only the Manitoba Act applied; that
the sub-section of the Manitoba Act providing for the appeal to the
federal government was a substantive enactment, not merely a
concurrent means of protecting the rights which existed at the union;
that the rights or privileges covered by the appeal were "any rights,"
including therefore any conferred by legislation after the union; that
these latter rights had undoubtedly been affected since the minority
might now be compelled to pay a double school levy; and that
accordingly the governor-general in council had jurisdiction. Their
Lordships concluded, in a dictum which perhaps was not strictly called
for:

     The particular course to be followed must be determined
     by the authorities to whom it has been committed by the
     statute.... It is certainly not essential that the
     statutes repeated by the Act of 1890 should be
     re-enacted.... The system of education embodied in the
     acts of 1890 no doubt commends itself to, and
     adequately supplies the wants of the great majority of
     the inhabitants of the province. All legitimate grounds
     of complaint would be removed if that system were
     supplemented by provisions which would remove the
     grievance upon which the appeal is founded and were
     modified so far as might be necessary to give effect to
     these provisions.

It was now beyond doubt that the minority had a right to appeal to the
government for redress. It was for the government to decide whether it
was possible and expedient to afford a remedy, and if so, what form
the remedy should take. The majority in the cabinet had already made
up their minds: a grievance existed and a remedy must be found. But in
order to make this course more palatable to their Protestant
followers, they continued to seek to make it appear that they were
carrying out a legal duty, not a discretionary policy. To this end
they interpreted the Privy Council's opinion as a mandate, a
constitutional obligation which could not be evaded. To this end they
once more, in March, formed themselves into a court and heard Mr.
Ewart and Mr. McCarthy once more debate. On March 21, an order in
council which revealed in its imperious note the hand of its chief
draughtsman, the young Minister of Justice, was issued, couched in
stiff and legal language, reciting the Privy Council's judgment, and
declaring it essential that the province should pass legislation
supplementary to the existing system of education and restoring to the
minority the rights of which it had been deprived, at peril, as an
accompanying minute declared, of divesting itself permanently of
control over education and bringing about the establishment of an
educational system in the province which no legislative body in Canada
could alter or repeal. The minority must be given the right to
maintain Roman Catholic schools as before 1890, the right to share in
public provincial grants, and the right of exemption from payment for
the support of any other schools.

In June, the Manitoba legislature adopted a memorial drawn up by the
provincial government. The old Roman Catholic schools had been
inefficient; it was difficult at best to ensure an efficient system in
a sparsely settled country: it would be hopeless with resources
scattered among Catholic and Anglican and Mennonite schools. The
federal government should make a full and careful investigation of the
facts before coming to a conclusion. Meanwhile Manitoba could not
accept the responsibility of acting as Ottawa directed.

The government hesitated on the brink of coercion. A remedial bill
now? Next session? Next parliament? Never? Now, insisted the three
Quebec members, Angers, Ouimet, and Caron, in July, and when their
colleagues would not agree, went on strike. Angers, stiff, principled,
and not set on office, definitely resigned; Caron and Ouimet, more
pliable, after valiant interviews, and after announcements from Ouimet
that he would accept no assurances short of written pledges from each
of his colleagues, went weakly back on the promise of legislation in a
special session. No Quebec Conservative was found to take Mr. Angers'
place. Next parliament, Hibbert Tupper had earlier insisted, better
fight on a general order than a specific bill, easier face Manitoba
with a fresh than an outworn majority; but his colleagues from Quebec
would not run the chance. In dudgeon he resigned, but after a few
days' reflection returned to office. Never, insisted thirty-nine
Ontario Conservatives in a message through the whips. Next session,
the cabinet at last agreed. In their rejoinder to Manitoba they
declined to make any inquiry, suggested that provincial legislation
somewhat less stringent than outlined in the remedial order might be
accepted, and declared that if the Manitoba government failed to make
a reasonably satisfactory settlement the Dominion parliament would be
called not later than January 2, 1896, to enact a remedial law.

During these passages Mr. Laurier said little. He was taunted with
equivocation, lack of conviction, cowardice, but he could not be stung
into committing himself for or against a remedial measure before the
measure was introduced. The minority, he declared in the House in
July, undoubtedly had a right to appeal, but it was for the
government to decide whether or how to grant a remedy. He sympathized
with their desires: "I wish that the minority in Manitoba may be
allowed the privilege of teaching in their schools, to their children,
their duties to God and man as they understand those duties and as
their duties are taught to them by their church." But how was this end
to be attained? First, get the facts. From the outset the need had
been to find out the facts,--not, as the government had done, to make
it a question of law. Then use conciliation: "If that object is to be
attained it is not to be attained by imperious dictation nor by
administrative coercion. The hand must be firm and the touch must be
soft; hitherto the touch has been rude and the hand has been weak."
Courage? "My courage is not to make hasty promises and then
ignominiously to break them. My courage is to speak softly, but once I
have spoken to stand or fall by my words."

In an Ontario tour in the autumn of 1895 Mr. Laurier reiterated this
stand. In his opening speech at Morrisburg, on October 8, he was in
his happiest vein:

     I have expressed an opinion more than once upon this
     question, but I have not yet expressed the opinion
     which the ministerial press would like me to express. I
     am not responsible for that question, but I do not want
     to shirk it; I want to give you my views, but remember
     that war has to be waged in a certain way. When the
     Duke of Wellington was in Portugal, as those of you
     will remember who have read that part of the history of
     England, he withdrew at one time within the lines of
     Torres Vedras, and there for months he remained,
     watching the movements of the enemy.... Gentlemen, I am
     within the lines of Torres Vedras. I will get out of
     them when it suits me and not before.

Mr. Laurier went on to emphasize the need of investigation before
action.

     The government, instead of investigating the subject,
     proceeded to render--what shall I call it?--an order in
     council they called it, commanding Manitoba in most
     violent language to do a certain thing, to restore the
     schools or they would see the consequences. Manitoba
     answered as I suppose every man approached as the
     government of Manitoba was approached, would answer;
     Manitoba answered it by saying, "We will not be
     coerced." I ask you now, would it not have been more
     fair, more just, more equitable, more statesmanlike, at
     once to investigate the subject, and to bring the
     parties together to hear them, to have the facts
     brought out so as to see whether a case had been made
     out for interference or not? That is the position I
     have taken in the province of Quebec. That is the
     position I take in the province of Ontario. I have
     never wavered from that position.

Recalling Æsop's fable of the failure of the blustering wind as
constrated with the success of the melting sun in compelling the
traveller to take off his coat, Mr. Laurier continued:

     Well, sir, the government are very windy. They have
     blown and raged and threatened and the more they have
     raged and blown, the more that man Greenway has stuck
     to his coat. If it were in my power, I would try the
     sunny way. I would approach this man Greenway with the
     sunny way of patriotism, asking him to be just and to
     be fair, asking him to be generous to the minority, in
     order that we may have peace among all the creeds and
     races which it has pleased God to bring upon this
     corner of our common country. Do you not believe that
     there is more to be gained by appealing to the heart
     and soul of men rather than by trying to compel them to
     do a thing?

     The government is not very anxious to have my opinion
     as a rule. When they gerrymandered Canada in 1882 they
     did not consult any of the Liberals. When they passed
     the franchise act they did not consult any of the
     Liberals. But upon this question they want to consult
     me and to have my views. Here they have them. Let them
     act upon them and we will be in accord; but more than
     that I will not do. I will not say that I will support
     the policy of Sir Mackenzie Bowell until I know what
     that policy is, and then when we have it in black and
     white it will be time for me to speak upon it. Let the
     ministerial press abuse me all they can. I stand within
     the lines of Torres Vedras and I will not come out
     until I choose my time.

[llustration: Sir J. J. C. Abbott, 1891-2

Sir John Thompson, 1892-4

Sir Mackenzie Bowell, 1894-6

Sir Charles Tupper, 1896

FOUR CONSERVATIVE PRIME MINISTERS]

In December the crisis deepened. Not even Grover Cleveland's
blustering Venezuela message, deeply felt and deeply resented though
it was, could divert public interest from the Ottawa scene. The
Greenway government, fresh from a general election in which it had
been overwhelmingly sustained, definitely refused to re-establish any
form of separate schools and again proposed a commission of inquiry.
Clarke Wallace resigned from the Bowell government when it became
clear that it intended to force a drastic measure through. He resigned
on December 14. On December 15, Sir Charles Tupper cabled from London
to the prime minister an innocent suggestion that in view of important
developments in cable and steamship projects, it might be well if the
prime minister would invite him to Ottawa for conference, and Mr.
Bowell, too guileless or too proud to question, acquiesced. Then two
days after parliament met in its special and unprecedented sixth
session, on January 2, and after the Speech from the Throne sanctioned
by the whole cabinet had been delivered, the country and even hardened
parliamentarians were startled by the resignation of seven members of
the cabinet--George E. Foster, A. R. Dickey, W. H. Montague, J. G.
Haggart, W. B. Ives, J. F. Wood, and Sir C. H. Tupper. The bolters
declared, through Mr. Foster, that they did not resign because of any
difference of principle but because of loss of confidence in their
chief's capacity. In spite of this denial, it was charged that the
seven bolters--all Protestants--were opposed to proceeding further
with the Remedial Bill. The fact seemed to be that the bolters had
realized how perilous a task they faced in attempting to carry a
measure of coercion, and were unwilling to face it unless under a
leader of dogged and aggressive courage whose close association with
Sir John Macdonald and the past glories of the party would make it
possible to rekindle party loyalty and revive party discipline, or
else under a leader younger than either Bowell or Tupper. Doubtless
personal ambitions and jealousies played their accustomed part. Bowell
retorted that for months he had been living in a "nest of traitors."
He strove hard to patch up a new cabinet, but the strikers picketed
every train and every hotel where a potential minister was to be
found, and blocked his efforts. The strikers suddenly became
apprehensive that the governor-general might send for the leader of
the Opposition. For various reasons,--"seven in all," declared Dr.
Landerkin, "five loaves and two small fishes"--they agreed to return.
A truce was patched up, with the general understanding that Bowell was
to continue for the session, and that Sir Charles Tupper should then
succeed and go to the country. Sir Charles resigned his high
commissionership and became secretary of state and a little later
leader of the House of Commons; Sir Hibbert did not re-enter the
cabinet, but took the post of solicitor-general, just outside the
gate. It was an extraordinary episode: whatever hidden provocation may
have existed, the public were shocked by the indecent publicity of the
attacks on the prime minister and the party shaken by the display of
jealousy and bad judgment on the part of its leaders. A particularly
bad taste was left by a subsidiary row between Montague and Caron, in
which charges of anonymous letter-writing and treacherous intrigue
were brought against the new recruit. Out of it all, only Mackenzie
Bowell himself--perhaps no heaven-born leader, but an honourable and
straightforward gentleman--emerged with any credit.[50]

[Footnote 50: Speaking in the Senate, nine years later, in March,
1905, when another ministerial crisis was in full swing, Sir Mackenzie
Bowell, in replying to incorrect versions of the episode, made it
plain that time had not cooled his indignation. References to "Baron
Munchansen," "chicanery," "brazen treachery," "poisonous reptiles
warmed in my bosom," enlivened his statement. He declared that Mr.
Foster, supported by Mr. Haggart, holding other views as to who should
succeed, had opposed Sir Charles Tupper's return, but had later fallen
in with the plans of their fellow-conspirators, regarding the
arrangement as only temporary; that the bolters planned to go to the
country before passing a Remedial Bill, and that he made no bargain
with Sir Charles Tupper to retire at the end of the session, though he
had his mind made up as to his course of action.]

The government was doing its best to commit suicide, but it was hard
to kill. With the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the Orange Order and the
manufacturers behind it, and the memory of Macdonald still a power to
conjure with, they could have afforded to make many a blunder, had
they not had to face a leader as able in strategy as Macdonald
himself, fast attaining Macdonald's height of confidence and
affection, and standing out in clean, clear contrast with the
cabinet's display of petty intrigues and panic-stricken indecision.
Much would depend upon Laurier's tactics when the Remedial Bill was
introduced. If he accepted it, the government was safe in Ontario,
except for whatever minor inroads the McCarthyites might make, and
would receive the reward of priority and courage in Quebec. If he
compromised, or urged delay or a commission of inquiry, the impatient
certainty of partisans everywhere and the weary prayer of the
unconcerned to make an end of the troubling question might be relied
upon to ensure for him and his party the fate of the over-judicious.

The House had met on January 2. Not until five weeks later did Mr.
Dickey move the first reading of the Remedial Bill, and outline its
provisions. The bill provided for the establishment of a system of
separate schools in Manitoba, supervised by a Roman Catholic board of
education, supported by the local rates of such Catholics as did not
declare themselves public-school supporters, with exemption from
public-school local rates, and entitled to receive whatever provincial
grant the legislature might allot; the bill, while declaring such a
grant a right and privilege of the minority, would not, as the
remedial order had done, specifically command the province to make it.

Laurier heard the formal announcement with deep relief. The government
had manoeuvred itself into an impossible position. Its bill offered the
maximum of coercion against the province, with the minimum of real aid
for the minority. Without a provincial grant the rural separate
schools could not maintain their efficiency or their existence. He was
therefore free to maintain the old Liberal position of provincial
rights, "Hands off Manitoba," and when his political and
ecclesiastical foes attacked him in Quebec as a traitor to his race
and his religion, as attack they would, he could reply that the sham
relief the bill offered would not serve the minority's interest half
so well as the voluntary concessions he would secure from the Manitoba
government by his sunny ways.

The church authorities did not delay in making their position clear.
Archbishop Langevin telegraphed from St. Boniface: "_Lex applicabilis,
efficax et satisfactoria. Probo illam. Omnes episcopi et veri
Catholici approbare debeunt. Vita in lege_." In words more easily
understood by the elector, in a fiery address at Montreal he declared:
"When the hierarchy has spoken it is useless for any Catholic to say
the contrary, for if he does he is no longer a Catholic." In a letter
to "L'Evènement" the Abbé Paquet, speaking for Archbishop Begin,
declared that the Church would support and insist upon the remedial
law.[51] But much more striking than any of these utterances was the
pronouncement issued in the name of the bishops by Father Lacombe, a
pioneer Western missionary whom all men honoured. In an open letter to
Wilfrid Laurier written January 20, and made public through
ecclesiastical channels a month later, he issued the episcopal
ultimatum:

     _Hon. Wilfrid Laurier, M. P., Ottawa_.

     MY DEAR SIR:

     In this critical time for the question of the Manitoba
     schools, permit an aged missionary, to-day representing
     the bishops of your country in this cause, which
     concerns us all, permit me to appeal to your faith, to
     your patriotism and to your spirit of justice, to
     entreat you to accede to our request. It is in the name
     of our bishops, of the hierarchy and the Catholics of
     Canada, that we ask the party of which you are the very
     worthy chief, to assist us in settling this famous
     question, and to do so by voting with the government on
     the Remedial Bill. We do not ask you to vote for the
     government, but for the bill, which will render us our
     rights, the bill which will be presented to the House
     in a few days.

     I consider, or rather we all consider, that such an act
     of courage, good-will, and sincerity on your part and
     from those who follow your policy will be greatly in
     the interests of your party, especially in the general
     elections. I must tell you that we cannot accept your
     commission of enquiry on any account, and shall do our
     best to fight it.

     If, which may God not grant, you do not believe it to
     be your duty to accede to our just demands, and if the
     government, which is anxious to give us the promised
     law, is beaten and overthrown while keeping firm to the
     end of the struggle, 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.

     Please pardon the frankness which leads me to speak
     thus. Though I am not your intimate friend, still I may
     say that we have been on good terms. Always I have
     deemed you a gentleman, a respectable citizen, and a
     man well fitted to be at the head of a political party.
     May Divine Providence keep up your courage and your
     energy for the good of our common country.

         I remain, sincerely and respectfully, honoured Sir,
             Your most humble and devoted servant,
                                         A. LACOMBE, O.M.I.

[Footnote 51: "The hierarchy alone can hope to produce this union by
calling upon our legislators, and especially upon those whose
conscience it controls, to rise for a moment above the temporal
interests which animate them, to forget their political divisions,
and, taking the judgment of the Privy Council of England as their
starting point, to make it the solid basis of a truly remedial law. To
the ecclesiastical power, then, belongs the right to judge whether the
interference should take place in the form of a command or council....
And when the interference takes an imperative form, as in the case of
the Manitoba schools, only one thing remains to be done by the
faithful, and that is to obey."]

It was with this message still ringing in his ears that Wilfrid
Laurier announced the policy of his party when the debate on the
second reading of the bill began on March 3. Sir Charles Tupper had
moved the second reading in a strong speech which emphasized the
protection of minorities as the indispensable condition of
Confederation, the foundation, therefore, of all Canada's later
greatness: the legal duty laid upon parliament by the decision of the
Privy Council, and the moral obligation which honour imposed upon the
majority. Mr. Laurier rose to reply. Those who were expecting a
dexterous and evasive speech, or at least a call for a commission of
inquiry, soon had their hopes or their doubts set at rest. In one
remarkable sentence, which makes thirty lines of Hansard, but runs
limpidly and swells with growing force to its smashing end, he made
his position clear:

     Mr. Speaker, if in a debate of such moment it were not
     out of place for me to make a personal reference to
     myself,--a reference, however, which may perhaps be
     justified, not so much on account of the feelings which
     may not unnaturally be attributed to me, being of the
     race and of the creed of which I am, but still more in
     consideration of the great responsibility which has
     been placed on my shoulders by the too kind regard of
     the friends by whom I am surrounded here,--I would say
     that, in the course of my parliamentary career, during
     which it has been my duty on more than one occasion to
     take part in the discussion of those dangerous
     questions which too often have come before the
     parliament of Canada, never did I rise, sir, with a
     greater sense of security; never did I feel so strong
     in the consciousness of right, as I do now, at this
     anxious moment; when, in the name of the constitution
     so outrageously misinterpreted by the government, in
     the name of peace and harmony in this land; when in the
     name of the minority which this bill seeks or pretends
     to help, in the name of this young nation on which so
     many hopes are centred, I rise to ask this parliament
     not to proceed any further with this bill.

As the thundering cheers from his followers were hushed, Laurier went
on to give in detail the reasons for his stand. Glancing at Tupper's
rhetorical appeal to the past triumphs of Confederation, he referred
him to one page not so glorious--the page that described how Nova
Scotia had been dragooned into union:

     There was at the head of the government of Nova Scotia
     at that time a gentleman who to-day has been brought
     back from England to force this measure upon the people
     of Canada. Instead of applying himself to persuading
     his own fellow-countrymen of the grandeur of this Act
     of Confederation, he forced the project down the
     throats of the people of Nova Scotia by the brute force
     of a mechanical majority in a moribund parliament.

Tupper's action had left a bitterness "which never will entirely
disappear until it is buried in the grave of the last man of that
generation." And what of the agitations which had marked the years
since,--the dispute with Ontario over the Streams Bill, the dispute
with Manitoba over the railway charters, the dispute with Quebec over
the Jesuits' Estates law? Had not one and all of these dangerous
strains been caused by attempts "to abridge the independence of the
provincial legislature"?

The powers of control over the provinces which the constitution
assigned to the Dominion were of doubtful wisdom,--probably never to
be applied without friction and discontent. But the remedy of federal
interference is there; it must be applied, but so applied as to avoid
irritation. It is not to be applied mechanically, it must be applied
intelligently, "only after full and ample inquiry into the facts of
the case, after all means of conciliation have been exhausted, and
only as a last resort." In this case, when the Roman Catholic minority
urged its grievances, the federal government should have made inquiry,
should have searched out the facts, should have gone to Manitoba, not
to the courts. It is said inquiry, negotiation, would be of no avail.
Yet the government of Manitoba had expressed its willingness, once the
grievances were investigated, the wrongs proved, itself to give the
minority redress. The province had never been approached in the
proper way. The federal government had bungled the case from first to
last. He continued:

     There are men in this House who are against separate
     schools, but who would have no objection to the
     re-establishment of separate schools in Manitoba,
     provided they were re-established by the province of
     Manitoba itself. There are men in this House who are
     not in favour of separate schools, but who think very
     strongly that it would not be advisable to interfere
     with the legislation of Manitoba at all until all means
     of conciliation had been exhausted. Sir, in face of
     this perilous position, I maintain to-day, and I submit
     it to the consideration of gentlemen on both sides,
     that the policy of the Opposition, affirmed since many
     years, reiterated on more than one occasion, is the
     only policy which can successfully deal with this
     question--the only policy which can remedy the
     grievance of the minority, while at the same time not
     violently assaulting the right of the majority and
     thereby perhaps creating a greater wrong. This was the
     policy which, for my part, I adopted and developed the
     very first time the question came before this House,
     and upon this policy to-day I stand once more.

Then turning to the warning given him by Father Lacombe, Mr. Laurier
closed his address in a quiet, firm statement of principle which went
to the root of things:

     Sir, I cannot forget at this moment that the policy
     which I have advocated and maintained all along has not
     been favourably received in all quarters. Not many
     weeks ago I was told from high quarters in the Church
     to which I belong that unless I supported the school
     bill which was then being prepared by the government
     and which we now have before us, I would incur the
     hostility of a great and powerful body. Sir, this is
     too grave a phase of this question for me to pass over
     in silence. I have only this to say: even though I have
     threats held over me, coming, as I am told, from high
     dignitaries in the Church to which I belong, no word of
     bitterness shall ever pass my lips as against that
     Church. I respect it and I love it. Sir, I am not of
     that school which has long been dominant in France and
     other countries of continental Europe, which refuses
     ecclesiastics the right of a voice in public affairs.
     No, I am a Liberal of the English school. I believe in
     that school which has all along claimed that it is the
     privilege of all subjects, whether high or low, whether
     rich or poor, whether ecclesiastics or laymen, to
     participate in the administration of public affairs, to
     discuss, to influence, to persuade, to convince--but
     which has always denied even to the highest the right
     to dictate even to the lowest.

     I am here representing not Roman Catholics alone but
     Protestants as well, and I must give an account of my
     stewardship to all classes. Here am I, a Roman Catholic
     of French extraction, entrusted by the confidence of
     the men who sit around me with great and important
     duties under our constitutional system of government. I
     am here the acknowledged leader of a great party,
     composed of Roman Catholics and Protestants as well, as
     Protestants must be in the majority in every party in
     Canada. Am I to be told, I, occupying such a position,
     that I am to be dictated the course I am to take in
     this House, by reasons that can appeal to the
     consciences of my fellow-Catholic members, but which do
     not appeal as well to the consciences of my Protestant
     colleagues? No. So long as I have a seat in this House,
     so long as I occupy the position I do now, whenever it
     shall become my duty to take a stand upon any question
     whatever, that stand I will take not upon grounds of
     Roman Catholicism, not upon grounds of Protestantism,
     but upon grounds which can appeal to the conscience of
     all men, irrespective of their particular faith, upon
     grounds which can be occupied by all men who love
     justice, freedom and toleration.

     So far as this bill is concerned, I have given you my
     views. I know, I acknowledge, that there is in this
     government the power to interfere, there is in this
     parliament the power to interfere; but that power
     should not be exercised until all the facts bearing
     upon the case have been investigated and all means of
     conciliation exhausted. Holding these opinions, I move
     that the bill be not now read the second time but that
     it be read the second time this day six months.

Laurier's speech was not long; it was characteristically limited to
driving home a few outstanding points, but it was a speech that made
history. Its breadth and sureness, its courage and fervour, roused the
admiration and the enthusiasm of the Opposition to unusual heights.
The demand for the six-months' hoist, the most direct negative
parliamentary procedure provided, challenged the government's policy
boldly and unequivocally.

The debate continued for over a fortnight. All the debating power of
the House was brought into action. For the government, A. R. Dickey
insisted that the bill was a constitutional necessity and that if it
was not to be passed, the clause protecting minorities was waste
paper; Sir Adolphe Caron, Sir Hector Langevin, and Colonel Amyot urged
Quebec's example of tolerance and the countless pledges of public men;
Ives spoke for the Quebec Protestant minority; and, in particularly
effective speeches, Hibbert Tupper reviewed the legal and the personal
phases, George Foster the political phases, and Sir Donald Smith the
pledges given the people of Red River in 1870. For the Liberals, C. A.
Geoffrion, Louis Lavergne, François Langelier attacked the bill as
ineffective in its aid to the minority; Joseph Martin, John Charlton,
J. D. Edgar, George Casey, David Mills, the latter with some
hesitancy on constitutional points, attacked its assault on provincial
liberties and its impossibility as a permanent settlement. There was
no small measure of cross-firing, Wallace, McCarthy, and their Ontario
followers siding with the Opposition, and such Liberals as Devlin and
Beausoleil declaring they would vote for the bill. When the vote on
Mr. Laurier's six-months' hoist was taken at six o'clock of the
morning of March 20, the government was sustained by a majority of
twenty-four, a little more than half its normal margin. Eighteen
Conservatives voted against the government,--Wallace, McCarthy,
Sproule, O'Brien, McNeill, Cockburn, Henderson, Tyrwhitt, McLean,
Calvin, Hodgins, Bennett, Wilson, Stubbs, Rosamond, Carscallen and
Craig from Ontario, and Weldon from New Brunswick. Seven Liberals
voted with the government,--Angers, Beausoleil, Delisle, Devlin,
Fremont, McIsaac, and Vaillincourt. Ontario went five to three against
the bill, Quebec broke nearly even, the Maritime provinces three or
four to one for it, while from all the West only Joseph Martin's vote
went against the measure.

The second reading passed, and the committee stage was entered. But it
was already clear that the bill was doomed. The legal term of
parliament ran only one month more; it would be extraordinarily
difficult for the government to jam the bill through and pass its
estimates in that brief space, against a determined Opposition and
with its own ranks weakened. The government therefore made a belated
attempt at a compromise. Already Sir Donald Smith on his own
initiative had sounded out the Manitoba government. Now, three days
after the vote, a delegation, consisting of Hon. A. R. Dickey,
Minister of Justice, Hon. A. Desjardins, Minister of Militia, and Sir
Donald Smith, was sent by the government to Winnipeg to seek a
settlement by negotiation. Mr. Laurier was consulted; he wished the
mission well, and would interpose no obstacles to its success.
Clifford Sifton and J. D. Cameron acted for the province. The
atmosphere was not favourable; the earlier hurling of legal
thunderbolts, the government's action in pushing the bill through
committee, despite a contrary understanding; the knowledge on both
sides that the federal government could accept no settlement which the
hierarchy would not endorse, made frank discussion difficult. While an
earnest attempt was made to find common ground, and while each side
made concessions, discussion only made it clear that neither could go
far enough to meet the other.

The federal authorities would have been content to forego a distinct
system of separate schools provided that within the framework of the
public schools a wide measure of autonomy could be granted, including
provision for a separate school-house or school-room in every district
where there were twenty-five or more Roman Catholic children, Catholic
teachers, Catholic representation on the advisory board, Catholic
textbooks, and a Catholic normal school for training teachers. The
provincial representatives were willing to make concessions, in
practice, as to representation and textbooks, but they objected to the
compulsory character of the separation proposed, and the financial
burden and the lowering of efficiency it involved. They made two
counter offers: either clean-cut secularization or an agreement to
limit religious exercises to the last half-hour of the day, when any
clergyman or teacher of religion would be allowed to enter the school,
in determined order, to give religious training to the children of his
special flock. Neither offer was considered, and early in April the
conference failed.

Sir Charles Tupper was not the man to give up without further effort.
A determined attempt was made to jam the bill through. All other
business was suspended. The House sat day and night. Relays of
ministers and of back-benchers were organized to hold the fort. The
effort was in vain. Tupper met his match. The North of Ireland
insurgents in the Conservative ranks, aided by a few Ontario Liberals,
blocked progress. It was in vain that Tupper read this man and that
out of the party; that only gave a respected New Brunswick stalwart,
Richard Weldon, a chance long awaited to tell what he thought of the
whole house of Tupper. It was in vain that for a hundred hours the
House was held in session; Dr. Sproule read the Nova Scotia school
law, John Charlton read the Bible passages prescribed in Ontario
schools, Colonel Tyrwhitt went through Mark Twain and Bibaud's History
of Canada, always promising to come to the point, and barely a clause
went through. And when the government charged obstruction, the
impeachment was vigorously denied: had it not been the government
which had delayed the bill? "Whose fault was it," added Mr. Laurier,
who himself took no part in the obstruction, "that we did not meet
until January second, that we found the cabinet divided into two
factions, calling each other imbeciles and traitors, and that six
weeks of this dying session elapsed before the bill was brought down?"

On April 15 Sir Charles gave up the attempt to pass the bill. The
estimates were voted, and on April 23 the sixth session of the seventh
parliament of Canada came to a close.

In the breathing space before elections, the government went through
the promised reorganization. On May 1 Sir Charles Tupper became prime
minister in form as well as fact, and Bowell and Daly disappeared. The
Quebec section was varied, though not greatly strengthened, by the
dropping of Sir A. Caron and J. A. Ouimet, the return of A. R. Angers,
and the addition of L. O. Taillon, head of the provincial ministry,
and of J. J. Ross, whose Scotch name and French tongue bore witness to
the assimilating effect of generations of French mothers; on the
whole, with Senator Desjardins, one of the framers of the "Programme
Catholique," already in the cabinet, a distinctly ultramontane group,
well favoured by the clergy. Chapleau, influenced by his old friend
Tarte, resisted all pleas to rejoin, much to the disappointment of
Tupper, who had counted on him as the only man who could make head
against Laurier in Quebec. Less success was met in Ontario. It was in
vain that portfolios were offered to William Meredith, to B. B. Osler,
to Sir A. Kirkpatrick; Sir Charles had to be content with a solid and
respectable rank-and-filer, David Tisdale. The one appointment which
showed a touch of imagination was the selection of Sir John
Macdonald's son, Hugh John, as Minister of the Interior; it was
fervently hoped that his name and his share of his father's genial
humour and of his father's features would stand the cabinet in good
stead; "the Conservative party," it was prophesied, "will win by a
nose."

The campaign was intensely fought. It was in large part a duel between
Laurier and Tupper. Each had his strength; each was bitterly attacked
in the party strongholds. Sir Charles opened his campaign in Winnipeg
itself, and found the good hearing his courage warranted, but in Tory
Toronto he met jeers and taunts against the perpetual "I," the "I" who
had made Canada, built the party, and now would unite it again.
Laurier spoke again and again in Ontario, but the real brunt of the
battle there was left to his vigorous band of lieutenants and to the
Tory insurgents. An announcement that Sir Oliver Mowat would join the
Laurier cabinet gave the cause respectability, though the effect was
somewhat spoiled by Sir Oliver's canny reluctance to resign and take
his chances in contesting an Ontario seat.

It was in Quebec that Laurier's main fight was waged. There he faced
great odds. It was not merely that the federal and provincial
machinery were in opponents' hands, nor that the party treasury was
scant.[52] Immensely more serious was the crusade waged by the
hierarchy. They more than carried out Father Lacombe's warning. The
collective mandement read in all the churches on May 17 was, it is
true, comparatively mild and moderate in tone. It declared that while
there was no intention to side with any political party, the school
question was chiefly a religious question. No Catholic was permitted,
let him be journalist, elector, candidate, or member, to have two
codes of conduct, one for private and one for public life: "all
Catholics should vote only for candidates who will personally and
solemnly pledge themselves to vote in parliament in favour of the
legislation giving to the Catholics of Manitoba the school laws which
were recognized as theirs by the Privy Council of England."

But this mandement, which represented merely the greatest common
denominator of episcopacy, was supplemented by much more vigorous
utterances, particularly in the eastern part of the province. Mgr.
Marois, vicar-general, writing from the Archbishopric of Quebec,
dotted the i's by stating that it would be a mortal sin not to obey
the bishops, a grave and mortal fault to vote for a Laurier candidate.
Mr. Laurier's doughty old opponent, Bishop Laflèche, was more direct.
Referring to Laurier's stand in his speech of March 3 he declared:

     This is the most categorical affirmation of the
     Liberalism condemned by the Church which has ever been
     made to my knowledge in any legislative assembly of our
     country. The man who speaks thus is a rationalist
     Liberal. He formulates a doctrine entirely opposed to
     the Catholic doctrine; that is to say, that a Catholic
     is not bound to be a Catholic in his public life....
     Under the circumstances, a Catholic cannot under pain
     of sinning in a grave matter vote for the chief of a
     party who has formulated so publicly such an error.

A number of Liberal candidates signed the mandement pledge, but even
this flexible conduct availed them little; for double assurance, the
weight of the clergy was thrown to their Conservative opponents.

[Footnote 52: This lack was sufficient to deter a famous newspaper
politician who offered his support if the Liberals would raise a
campaign fund of $20,000 for the Montreal district, to match an equal
contribution from himself, and being told that their whole federal
fund was little greater, went away sorrowing over such impracticable
innocence. Unfortunately, never until twenty years later was the
Liberal party again so poor in purse.]

"Choose the bishops or Barrabas Laurier," a curé told his
parishioners. The Conservative press denounced the Liberal leader as a
traitor to his race and religion. Here and there a priest was found
who stood out against the flood; when a priest in Portneuf threatened
his flock with the fate of a neighbouring community lately buried
under a landslide, if they voted Liberal, the Liberals were able to
take them to two priests who promised to administer the last rites of
the Church if they fell ill. In Ontario, the bishops made no
pronouncement, and so in the Maritime provinces, save for John
Cameron, Bishop of Antigonish, who declared after a careful study of
the Holy Gospel and the party platforms; "I am officially in a
position to declare, and I hereby declare, that it is the plain
conscientious duty of every Catholic elector to vote for the
Conservative candidate; and this declaration no Catholic in this
diocese, be he priest or layman, has a right to dispute."

Against these powerful forces, nowhere in the whole world more
powerful than in Quebec, Wilfrid Laurier had two distinct assets. One
was Israel Tarte's organizing capacity. With all the passion of
conviction, all the coolness of cynical experience, all the
inconvenient knowledge of a former insider in Conservative ranks,
Tarte directed the campaign without a tactical error. But the much
more important asset was the pride Laurier's compatriots cherished in
Quebec's greatest son. They had come to know him well; in the previous
two years alone he had addressed between two and three hundred
meetings in Quebec. They were impressed by his distinction, moved by
his eloquence, roused by his courage. They could not believe it a
mortal sin to make a French-Canadian prime minister. They were loyal
sons of the Church, but they were also _Canadiens_, and free men.

The polling on June 23 gave the Liberals decisive victory. In Ontario
they carried forty-four seats against forty-one for the government,
seven falling to the McCarthyites and Patrons; in the Maritime
provinces they came nearly even; in the Territories and British
Columbia they broke all precedent by winning six seats out of nine.
But it was Manitoba and Quebec which afforded the chief surprise of
the election. Manitoba, much less excited during the contest than
Ontario, gave four seats out of six to the government which was
supposed to be coercing it. The province on which the government had
gambled, the province which was supposed to vote as the bishops
nodded, gave sixteen seats to Charles Tupper and the bishops and
forty-nine to Wilfrid Laurier.


Transcriber's Notes: "Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier"

1. page 3--corrected typo 'Lauirer' to 'Laurier'

2. page 129--missing quote marks added after "Pionnier de Sherbrooke.

3. page 147--corrected tpo 'irrreconcilable', removing extra 'r'

4. page 194--corrected typo 'tranferred' to 'transferred'

5. page 217--reference to a second, missing, footnote removed

6. page 243--corrected typo 'excresences' to 'excrescences'

7. page 324--added single quote marks around the poem title 'The
   Prisoner of Chillon'

8. page 347--corrected typo 'benovolent' to 'benevolent'

9. page 347--corrected typo 'abtruse' to 'abstruse'

10. page 357--typo 'Uuited' corrected to 'United'

11. page 399--added missing double quote at start of paragraph
    "Men whose lives...

12. page 436--corrected typo 'couragous' to 'courageous'

13. page 464--corrected typo 'constrasted' to 'contrasted'


[The end of _Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - Vol I_ by Oscar
Douglas Skelton]
