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Title: Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Volume II)
Author: Skelton, Oscar Douglas (1878-1941)
Illustrator: Julien, Henri [Octave-Henri] (1852-1908)
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: 2 July 2010
Date last updated: 2 July 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #563

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

This file was produced from images generously made available
by the Internet Archive/American Libraries




[Illustration: WILFRID LAURIER
Prime Minister of Canada, 1896-1911
(1907)]


LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
SIR WILFRID LAURIER

BY
OSCAR DOUGLAS SKELTON


ILLUSTRATED WITH
PHOTOGRAPHS


VOLUME II



S. B. GUNDY
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
TORONTO
1921



Copyright, 1921, by
The Century Co.


CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                                 PAGE

    X The First Laurier Ministry                           3

   XI The Flood Tide of Imperialism                       59

  XII The United States: 1896-1903                       119

 XIII The Master of the Administration                   161

  XIV Schools and Scandals                               220

   XV Nation and Empire                                  284

  XVI Reciprocity                                        346

 XVII In the Shades of Opposition                        384

XVIII The Great War                                      426

  XIX The Closing Years                                  491

      Appendix                                           556

      Index                                              559



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Wilfrid Laurier                                _Frontispiece_

                                                      FACING
                                                       PAGE

Group of Ministers                                        32

Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and his Colonial Premiers          64

A Pilgrimage to Hawarden                                  80

Group of Ministers                                       128

Cartoon by Henri Julien                                  192

Henri Julien's "By-Town Coons"                           208

Group of Ministers                                       256

Lady Laurier                                             272

Laurier's Last Imperial Conference                       304

Campaigning in Western Ontario                           352

Campaigning in Quebec                                    368

Sir Robert Borden                                        400

Mr. Laurier's Home in Arthabaska                         432

Mr. Laurier's Law Office in Arthabaska                   432

Their Golden Wedding Day                                 528

Sir Wilfrid Laurier                                      544




LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR
WILFRID LAURIER




CHAPTER X

THE FIRST LAURIER MINISTRY

     Speeding the Parting Guest--Forming the Ministry--The
     Laurier-Greenway Settlement--An Episcopal Challenge--An
     Appeal to Rome--The Beginning of Prosperity--The
     Opening of the West--The British Preference.

After eighteen years' wandering in the wilderness of opposition, for
half the time under Wilfrid Laurier's leadership, the Liberal party
had come to power. For fifteen years, the longest unbroken stretch of
authority in the country's annals, Mr. Laurier was destined to remain
prime minister of Canada. They were to be years crowded with
opportunity and with responsibility, a testing-time sufficient to
search out every strength and every weakness of the leader or of his
administration. It was Mr. Laurier's fortune, and Canada's, that he
was to be in control of the country's affairs at the most creative and
formative period in its history, in the years when the Dominion was
attaining at once industrial maturity and national status.

In June, 1896, these things lay hidden in the future. The immediate
question was, when would the defeated ministry resign? Since
Mackenzie's resignation in 1878, it had been accepted doctrine that in
the event of a decisive defeat a ministry would not await the
assembling of parliament and a formal vote of want of confidence, but
would resign at once. Sir Charles Tupper made no undue haste in
retiring. It was necessary to wind up the work of the departments. It
was still more necessary to use the vanishing powers of appointment to
reward past service and to buttress future positions. A long list of
new senators, judges, Queen's Counsel, revising officers,
inland-revenue collectors, was drawn up and presented to the
governor-general, Lord Aberdeen, for his formal approval. Lord
Aberdeen hesitated to sanction the more important nominations. As the
last parliament had voted supplies only until June 30, and as Sir
Charles Tupper had not formed his government until after parliament
had prorogued, "the acts of the present administration," the
governor-general held, "are in an unusual degree provisional." The
Senate, after twenty-four years of Conservative and five of Liberal
appointments, was overwhelmingly Conservative, and to fill all the
remaining vacancies with Sir Charles's nominees would not only keep
the scales loaded against the new government for many a year, but
would embarrass it seriously at the very outset, blocking Sir Oliver
Mowat's accession to the cabinet. The Bench, again, would be
overwhelmingly Conservative. On this ground the governor-general,
using the discretion the constitution gave him, finally declined to
accept his advisers' advice. Sir Charles, after a vigorous protest
against this "unwarranted invasion of responsible government," and an
endeavour to buttress up his position by appeals to Todd's authority
and Mackenzie's example, treated the governor-general's refusal to
sign the appointments as an indication of want of confidence; on July
8 he resigned the seals of office, but he never forgave the speeding
of the parting guest. The next day Lord Aberdeen called upon Mr.
Laurier to form a new administration.

It was not a difficult task to find sufficient cabinet timber. The
difficulty was rather an embarrassment of riches. There were many
potential ministers, and few portfolios,--fewer, alas, than might have
been, had not Liberals in the unrecking days of opposition denounced
as extravagant the creation of every new department.[1] There were
many interests to weigh.

[Footnote 1: Replying some time later to a Liberal member, James
McMullen, who had in opposition been a stern critic of government
expenditure, counting every year the silver spoons in Rideau Hall, and
who now queried the establishment of ministers of Customs and of
Inland Revenue of full cabinet rank, Sir Wilfrid wrote:

"I know, my dear McMullen, that you have always taken a very strong
view on this subject. You have always been of the opinion that the
number of cabinet ministers ought to be reduced. You know that this is
a subject as to which I could not agree with you. I have always holden
to the view that to govern effectively a country like Canada with a
population spread over such a very large territory, and with the
necessity of giving cabinet representation to all sections, no prime
minister could undertake to reduce the cabinet. . . . Supposing you
were to drop one cabinet minister, that would be an economy of $7,000,
but if the reduction was from the province of Ontario, I do not
believe that the people of Ontario would be satisfied. The comparison
is often made between Canada and the United States in this respect.
The United States has only seven cabinet ministers, but you must
remember that these ministers have no legislative duties; they can
give all their time to the administration of their departments.

"I have given this question very ample consideration, and as I am
responsible for the guidance of the party in these matters, I think I
can claim that our friends generally should give way to my own
judgment in this instance, the amount involved after all not being
very considerable."]

Mr. Laurier had to hold the balance fairly between his own
parliamentary followers and the men in the provincial administrations,
between the old Liberal war horses and the eleventh-hour converts,
between past service and future capacity, between debating skill and
executive power, between province and province and between section and
section, alloting Quebec its English-speaking Protestant minister and
Ontario its Irish Catholic minister. But the range of choice had been
closely narrowed before the election, and it was only necessary now to
make some last-moment shifts because of election fatalities or
personal idiosyncracies. By July 13 all the new ministers but three
had been sworn in.

Mr. Laurier, profiting by the experience of Mackenzie and of
Macdonald, determined not to take charge of a department. That would
have meant that either, as in Mackenzie's day, the work of policy
shaping and party guiding or, as in Macdonald's day, the work of the
department would often go undone. As President of the Council, he
would be free to give to all the tasks of the government the general
supervision he had planned.

For the important portfolios of Justice, Finance, and Railways, Mr.
Laurier turned to the provinces. Sir Oliver Mowat, appointed to the
senatorial vacancy which Sir Charles Tupper had sought to prempt,
became Minister of Justice. Thirty-three years before, young Oliver
Mowat had joined the short-lived Sandfield Macdonald-Dorion ministry
as Postmaster-General. It was a strange turn of the wheel that brought
him back to the central government after a generation's work in other
fields, and stranger still the lot which gave him charge of the
department against which he had waged so many persistent and so many
successful constitutional battles. Though he no longer had the force
or the interest in affairs which had marked his prime, Sir Oliver was
still full of sage counsel. In the cabinet, his half-century's
experience and his shrewd knowledge of men helped a dozen strong
ministers of individual ways and training to become a team; while to
the Scotch Presbyterian voters, his presence in the ministry was
unimpeachable proof of its thorough soundness and respectability.
William Stevens Fielding, for twenty years a Halifax newspaper man,
for another ten premier and unquestioned master in his native
province, gave up his Nova Scotia post to become Minister of Finance.
In central and western Canada he was not well known, but it was not
long before his caution and efficiency in administration and his
hard-hitting power in debate had given him a foremost place in
parliament and in party council. Andrew George Blair, premier of New
Brunswick, who had been equally at home in Liberal and in coalition
ministries, was a more uncertain quantity, shrewd, undoubtedly
experienced in all the ways and wiles of the most efficient school of
politics (New Brunswick) in America, and as a Maritime-province man,
he was thoroughly familiar with the traffic and patronage
potentialities of the Intercolonial, now assigned to his charge as
Minister of Railways and Canals. From the West it was understood that
a member of the Manitoba administration might be chosen to take charge
of the Department of the Interior, but for the time the post was left
unfilled.

From his Quebec followers in parliament, Mr. Laurier chose three men
for portfolios. Israel Tarte, defeated in Beauharnois, but elected
later by acclamation in St. Johns-Iberville, took charge of the
largest spending department, Public Works, the department which he had
assailed and exposed in his Langevin charges. Henri Joly de
Lotbinire, member-elect for Portneuf, premier of Quebec for a brief
space after the Letellier coup d'tat, leader of the provincial
Liberals until Mercier's union with the Castors in the Riel days, a
Protestant who had won the confidence of a Catholic province, a
seigneur who embodied the finest traditions of courtesy and honour of
his order, a man for whom Wilfrid Laurier had profound respect and
natural sympathy, became Controller of Inland Revenue. Sydney Fisher,
one of the few men of leisure in Canadian politics, who had followed
his university training by public service in politics and in
progressive farming in the Eastern Townships, was now back in
parliament after a term's absence spent largely in the political
organization of Quebec. Though labelled by his critics "gentleman
farmer," he was still a farmer, and immensely better fitted for his
new post as Minister of Agriculture than the lawyers and doctors and
brewers and near-farmers who had preceded him. Two members joined the
cabinet without portfolio: C. A. Geoffrion, a leader of the Montreal
bar, and professor of civil law in McGill, fellow office-bearer with
Wilfrid Laurier thirty years before in L'Institut Canadien, brother of
the Felix Geoffrion who had been his colleague in Mackenzie's
ministry, and son-in-law of Antoine Aim Dorion, and R. R. Dobell,
head of the well-known Quebec lumbering firm, who had been half
detached from the Conservative party by the McGreevy scandals, and had
fully accepted the Liberal platform on the trade and school issues in
the late election. Charles Fitzpatrick, another citizen of old Quebec
who had won fame as counsel for Riel in 1885, and for Mercier and for
McGreevy and Connolly in later days, and had held a seat in the
provincial house from 1890, when he had declined a post in the De
Boucherville Conservative ministry, until 1896, took the
Solicitor-Generalship, which by custom formed part of the ministry but
not of the inner cabinet where general policy was determined.

Among Ontario members of the federal party, Sir Richard Cartwright
stood foremost in service and repute. It had been assumed by many that
upon a Liberal victory he would return to his old post of Finance. But
he had made many enemies. Though it was not true, as rumour ran, that
a deputation of bankers had protested to Laurier against his
reappointment, in the eyes of the business world he was identified,
rightly or wrongly, with a policy of doctrinaire and ruthless free
trade. In determining to offer the portfolio of Finance to Fielding
rather than to Cartwright, Laurier was influenced not so much by the
desire to reassure the business world as by his conviction that for
this most important of all the ministry's tasks, the tried
administrative capacity and balanced judgment and the younger years of
William Fielding were the qualities most needed. Mr. Fielding's
acceptance was contingent on Sir Richard's assent. To Sir Richard the
post of Minister of Trade and Commerce was offered. He took the post,
and gave loyal service to the country and to the party for many a
year, but never again with the old joy and confidence in combat, and
never with complete confidence in all his colleagues. William Mulock,
Toronto lawyer and York farmer, known at election times as "Farmer
Bill," the most vigorous and able of the Ontario group, a good
fighter, a good hater, of dominating will and high ambition, became
Postmaster-General. Richard W. Scott, member of Assembly and Commons
and Senate since 1857, and famed as the maker of the Act of 1863 which
firmly established Upper Canada's separate schools, and of the Act of
1878 which gave counties local option to prohibit the retail sale of
liquor, was chosen Secretary of State. William Paterson, a successful
manufacturer who had coined the cry which had done much service, "Has
the N. P. made _you_ rich?" a speaker of stentorian power, slashing in
debate, but too kindly ever to leave a smarting wound, became
Controller of Customs. His post, like Sir Henri Joly's, was not of
cabinet rank, representing, as it did, Thompson's experiment in
under-secretaryship, but at the first session both were made full
ministerial and cabinet positions.

From the Maritime provinces, besides Fielding and Blair, two ministers
were chosen. Louis H. Davies, lawyer, bank president, premier in the
Island, member at Ottawa since 1882, had been for many sessions the
foremost Maritime Liberal, and so predestined for the portfolio of
Marine and Fisheries. Frederick Borden, doctor, banker, militia
surgeon, had held a seat in every parliament but one since 1874, and
by his long interest in military matters had qualified for new honours
as Minister of Militia and Defence.

When all the posts were filled, there were seventeen ministers,
including two without portfolio, or one ministerial place for every
seven Liberal members. Even so, many men of outstanding ability and
service could not be included. Of the Quebec members, many were young,
and were yet to earn their spurs. From Ontario there were men of
experience and personality, John Charlton, James Sutherland, James
Lister, George E. Casey, George Landerkin, M. C. Cameron, John
Macmillan, W. C. Edwards, Thomas Bain, who continued to give effective
service as whips or private members. James D. Edgar, one of the most
aggressive of the Ontario delegation, was elected Speaker of the
Commons. One expected name was missing,--that of David Mills. His long
service, his rank as the senior Ontario member and his mastery of
constitutional issues, had marked him out for cabinet rank again. But
he had been defeated in his old riding. It would have been possible to
find a seat for him in the Senate, as was done for Sir Oliver, or in
the Commons, as was done for William Paterson, who also had gone down
in his home constituency, if Mills had been deemed indispensable. As
it was, assurance was given of a cabinet post later; and when in
November, 1897, Oliver Mowat resigned to become Lieutenant-Governor of
Ontario, David Mills was appointed Minister of Justice. Perhaps more
serious, for the party's future, was the inability to find cabinet
place for Dr. Benjamin Russell or for D. C. Fraser, of the Nova Scotia
contingent. One very interesting experiment was blocked by death.
D'Alton McCarthy, to whom in earlier days the French tongue and the
Catholic religion had been anathema, had in time so broadened and
mellowed that he came to look forward with pride to serving under a
French-speaking and Catholic premier. It had just been arranged, in
1898, that he should enter the Laurier government, as Minister of
Justice, when his death, resulting from a runaway accident, ended an
alliance which might have had a material bearing on the future of
Liberalism in Ontario.[2]

[Footnote 2: D'Alton McCarthy at Owen Sound, April 30, 1896: "I am no
longer a Tory; I was kicked out of the party. I am not a Liberal, for
they will not let me in. I stand, however, to do right, and I do not
care a straw whether I have to oppose Grit or Tory.... I want to see
that government voted out. I would be well pleased to see Mr. Laurier
come in. Any change must be for the better. No change can be for the
worse. If the Liberal party goes in, and I think it will, I shall do
what lies in my power to keep them straight as I did the
Conservatives."]

As it was, the ministry was an extraordinarily able one,--none so
strong before or since. In individuality, in varied ability, in
administrative capacity, in constructive vision, in internal unity and
in integrity, it could safely challenge comparison. Time was to dull
the edge of zeal, to emphasize differences, to sap moral resistance,
in more than one case, but that was in the twilight hour; the morning
was full of high promise.

    *    *    *    *    *

The cabinet's first task was to settle the Manitoba school question.
Until this was done, there could be no peace, no opportunity for
constructive work. The eleventh-hour negotiations between Ottawa and
Winnipeg and the result of the elections had made clear the bounds
within which agreements must be sought. It was clear that a federal
remedial law was out of the question except as an absolutely last
resort; that relief for the minority must come by provincial
legislation; that the province would not consider for a moment the
re-establishment of separate schools, but that there was a possibility
of securing provision for separate religious teaching and similar
adjustments within the framework of the existing system. Preliminary
discussions with Mr. Greenway and Mr. Sifton indicated the possibility
of agreement, and accordingly it was considered unnecessary to appoint
the commission of inquiry suggested when the two governments stood
apart.

In August, after some preliminary correspondence, Messrs. Sifton,
Watson and Cameron, of the Manitoba government, came to Ottawa, and
there threshed out the solution with a sub-committee of the cabinet.
It became apparent that the three points upon which concession might
be made were: separate religious exercises, a teacher of the
minority's faith, and the use of the French language in the schools.
To reach agreement upon details, as for example, whether the minimum
attendance essential to secure the first two privileges should be
sixty, as the province proposed, or a smaller number, and to debate
the possibility of further concessions as to text-books, teachers'
licenses, and administration, weeks of consideration were required. It
was not until the middle of November that a settlement was effected.

In the meantime the question had arisen as to how far the minority
could be brought into the agreement. It was desirable to secure their
assent to an agreement made in their behalf; yet it was plain that so
far as their ecclesiastical spokesmen were concerned they would not
formally assent to anything short of the impossible. Whether consulted
or not consulted, they would make trouble. One of the leading
representatives of the minority, Mr. Prendergast, who had resigned his
post in the Greenway cabinet when the measures of 1890 were passed,
was consulted, and agreed that the compromise proposed was the best
attainable. Through Israel Tarte, Mgr. Langevin was sounded, with
results less happy than the sanguine Minister of Public Works
foretold:

(_Israel Tarte to Wilfrid Laurier--Translation_)

Winnipeg, 8 November, 1896.

My Dear Mr. Laurier:

      . . . This is how things stand: Archbishop Langevin
      stands firm for the right to organize Catholic school
      districts. In other words, he demands the
      re-establishment of separate schools, which, as you
      know, is out of the question. I have not shown him the
      agreement, for I believe that he would immediately
      have taken advantage of it to raise a row. The priests
      who surround him are fanatical and full of prejudice.
      The Archbishop, however, seems to me to be coming back
      to a more moderate position, and I do not think he
      will make a disturbance. Our relations have been very
      cordial. I have tried to learn his views and to pacify
      him, by making him realize more clearly the
      unfortunate side of the present situation for
      Catholics. In fact, half the French schools are closed
      and about 1500 French-Canadian children are to-day
      without instruction.

      Prendergast and the most intelligent among the
      French-Canadians will support our arrangement. I
      enclose an interview prepared by Mr. Prendergast which
      should be given to the press the day of the
      publication of the agreement--not before.

      A long habit of absolute submission to the clergy has
      made my mission here very difficult. Everyone is
      scared. Further, we have no support in the Catholic
      press of Manitoba, and our friends are left to the
      mercy of the "Manitoba" and of the "North-West
      Review," which is edited by Father Drummond and is
      extremely violent. . . .

      In brief, the position is this: The French Liberals,
      guided by Prendergast, will support us, and within a
      year at latest, practically the whole community will
      have accepted the situation effected by the present
      agreement.

Mr. Tarte found it necessary also to keep an eye on the provincial
ministers. He writes the next day:

      I have just telegraphed you not to adopt any
      order-in-council regarding the Manitoba schools until
      I return. I hope you will adopt my suggestion. It is
      in fact essential to the success of the work of
      conciliation which we have undertaken and which above
      everything calls for good faith. If the proposed
      amendments are put into effect in a spirit of
      friendship and good will, all will go well. If, on the
      contrary, they are enforced in a niggardly spirit,
      nothing good will come of them. I have met all the
      ministers, including Mr. Greenway, and they seem to me
      to realize the necessity of understanding and
      conciliatory action.

      There is no reason why the Federal government should
      express satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Let the
      legislature adopt the proposed amendments; let them be
      put in force. If, as I have no doubt, the Catholics
      express themselves as satisfied, the last word will
      have been said. But it would be extremely imprudent to
      tie ourselves now, and thereby to give our adversaries
      in parliament ground for attack. Our rle hitherto has
      been to act as _amici curi_. Let us stick to that.
      This is the position which I have taken with the
      Catholics here. I have promised them to continue our
      good offices in the application of the law. . . .
      Sifton will ask you for an order-in-council approving
      the settlement. Let him wait, telling him that it will
      not be advisable to do anything before my return. . . .

The settlement embodied three concessions. First, religious teaching
was to be carried on between half-past three and four o'clock, by any
Christian clergyman or his deputy, when authorized by a resolution of
the local board of trustees or requested by the parents of ten
children in a rural or twenty-five in an urban school. Different days
or different rooms might be allotted different denominations; no
children were to attend unless at the parents' desire. Secondly, at
least one duly certificated Roman Catholic teacher was to be employed
in urban schools, where the average attendance reached forty and in
village and rural schools where it reached twenty-five, if required by
parents' petition; similarly, non-Roman Catholic teachers were to be
employed when requested by a non-Catholic minority. Thirdly, "when
ten of the pupils in any school speak the French language or any
language other than English, as their native language, the teaching of
such pupils shall be conducted in French, or such other language, and
English upon the bilingual system." The provincial government also
agreed that fair Catholic representation in advisory council,
inspectorships and examining boards would be kept in mind in the
administration of the act. In essence, the agreement left the system
of public schools intact, but secured for the minority distinct
religious teaching, and, where numbers warranted, teachers of their
own faith and the maintenance of the French tongue. The language
clause was framed in general terms by the provincial authorities in
order to make it apply to the German Mennonites as well as to the
French Catholics.

The question at once arose,--how had the settlement been effected?
Which side had given way? Had the Manitoba government played politics
and made concessions to Wilfrid Laurier which it had refused to
Mackenzie Bowell? Had the Laurier government accepted for the minority
less than the Bowell government would have secured for them? The fact
was that the terms, as was inevitable, were a compromise, but a
compromise consistent with the essential principles of both parties to
the negotiation. The Manitoba government was doubtless readier to
negotiate with a Liberal than with a Conservative government, and with
exponents of sunny ways than with the wielders of "big sticks." Yet
it had adhered to its essential position, refusing to agree either to
the restoration of a Catholic school system wholly separate and
independent in organization, as the Remedial Bill had provided, or to
the establishment, as the Dickey proposals involved, of a system
within a system, the segregation of Catholic children, in towns and
cities, in separate school buildings or rooms, for secular as well as
religious purposes. This agreed, it had assented to all the other
concessions for which the Dickey delegation had stood out, and which
others now proposed. The Laurier government believed that the
agreement was of more real value to the minority than any which could
previously have been secured. The Remedial Bill would have been
unworkable; the Dickey proposals in part were equally impracticable,
while in important details they fell short of what was now secured.
Definite religious teaching in the tenets of the Roman Catholic or any
other faith was made possible in the only way compatible with unity in
secular instruction, by optional instruction at the close of the day.
The representation in practice, though not by statute, of Roman
Catholics on administrative bodies, and an understanding as to
text-books, were common ground. The provision for a Roman Catholic
teacher was a modification of one of the Dickey proposals. The new
agreement went beyond the Dickey proposals in providing that Roman
Catholic children might in all cases be exempted from the standard
religious exercises. It added the provision, arising, curiously
enough, out of an amendment to the Remedial Bill moved by D'Alton
McCarthy himself, for instruction in French.

The announcement of the settlement, on November 19, met very wide
approval. Mr. Prendergast, in the interview to which Mr. Tarte refers,
pointed out that fifty-one Catholic schools were closed, some since
one, some since two, some since four years; that twenty-five others
had come under the Public Schools Act, with its standardized religious
instruction; and that of the thirty-two schools supported by private
contributions as parish schools, half would have to be abandoned or
turned into public schools within a year; the new agreement, while not
all that could be desired, was worth a fair and honest trial; much
would depend upon the spirit of its administration. The Anglican
archbishop of Rupert's Land, an upholder of denominational teaching,
agreed the settlement was the best that could be made. Dr. Bryce,
Isaac Campbell, R. T. Riley and other leading Winnipeggers endorsed
it. In Ontario, D'Alton McCarthy and E. F. Clarke spoke for the
Conservative opponents of the Remedial Bill in approving it as a
reasonable and satisfactory compromise: "Laurier has kept faith," Mr.
Clarke declared. "La Patrie" welcomed the passing of evil days. From
East to West the overwhelming opinion was approval of a settlement
reasonably fair in itself and likely to ensure peace at last.

But approval was far from unanimous. As usual, extremes met. The Grand
Orange Lodge of Manitoba denounced the settlement as a betrayal of
the national schools, an insidious recognition of denominational
pretensions. Senator Bernier and A. C. LaRivire, leaders of the
French-Canadian Conservatives of Manitoba, at a mass meeting in St.
Boniface attacked it as a wholesale and disgraceful surrender of the
minority's rights; no settlement could be accepted which had not
previously been approved by the archbishop. Father Cherrier, of St.
Boniface, declared that the Church was not content with half an hour
for God. Archbishop Langevin sounded a call to arms: "I tell you there
will be a revolt in Quebec which will ring throughout Canada and these
men who to-day are triumphant will be cast down. The settlement is a
farce. The fight has only begun." The next week he opened ten parish
schools. In the far East, Archbishop O'Brien, whose flock enjoyed
privileges much less extensive, attacked "the cynical injustice ... of
this feeble compact of unscrupulous expediency." In Quebec, Archbishop
Begin, in a circular letter, declared:

      No bishop wants nor can approve the so-called
      settlement of the Manitoba school question, which, in
      a word, is based upon the indefensible abandonment of
      the best established and most sacred rights of the
      Catholic minority. His Grace the Archbishop of St.
      Boniface has sounded an immediate and energetic
      protest against this agreement; in so doing he has
      done nothing but fulfil his duty as a shepherd and
      followed the directions of the Holy See. He could not
      but defend his flock.

"La Semaine Religieuse," the official organ of the Archbishop of
Montreal, voiced the prevailing ecclesiastical opinion:

      The Manitoba school question is not settled; it merely
      enters a new phase.... In Manitoba, Catholics and
      French-Canadians are not beggars nor strangers, to be
      content with crumbs. We will demand the Catholic
      school, school districts, books, teachers, and
      exemption from taxes. All constitutional and legal
      means of defence will be used before consenting to the
      rising generation being led into religious and
      national apostasy. There is no danger of His Eminence
      the Holy Father assenting: the signal for retreat will
      never come from Rome.

To one bishop of moderate views Mr. Laurier addressed a reasoned
defence of the settlement:

(_Translation_)

30 November, 1896.

      Monseigneur:

      . . . Your Grace may perhaps tell me that these
      concessions do not go far enough. Was it possible to
      secure more? That is the first point to determine.

      In the first place, I must meet the objection so often
      urged, that it is not a question of knowing whether it
      was possible to secure more: "the constitution as
      interpreted by the Judicial Committee of the Privy
      Council declared that the Catholics had the right to
      the complete re-establishment of separate schools." I
      submit that on this point there is complete
      misunderstanding, and I believe this will be easy to
      demonstrate.

      . . . The text of the judgment authorises merely an
      amendment to the existing law, and not the abrogation
      of that law. It is clear that separate schools could
      not have been re-established without as a preliminary
      repealing the Act of 1890, of which the express
      purpose was to put an end to the system of
      denominational schools. The text of the judgment
      states explicitly that in order to remedy the
      grievance of which Catholics complained it was not
      essential to give them back all the rights which had
      been taken away from them, but simply to add to the
      existing law provisions sufficient to protect the
      conscience of Catholics.

      . . . But that is not all. Even supposing that the
      judgment of the Privy Council had declared that
      Catholics were entitled to the restoration of separate
      schools, was it possible to attain this result by a
      federal law? . . . Three things are indispensable in
      what is understood by separate schools: 1 exemption
      from public school taxes; 2 a distinct school
      organization; 3 a proportionate share in the
      appropriations voted by the legislature for education.
      These three conditions were found in the remedial
      order, but as your Grace knows, they were not found in
      the bill. The bill did not ensure a cent from the
      public grants for education. What was the reason for
      this retreat? Why after having declared in 1895 that
      separate were, like public schools, entitled to a
      grant from the provincial treasury, did the same
      government leave the separate schools which it
      pretended to re-establish without this grant? The
      reason given by Mr. Dickey, the Minister of Justice,
      was that there were very serious doubts as to the
      power of the federal parliament to appropriate the
      moneys of a provincial legislature. In other words,
      the Bowell government did not recognize this power as
      existing in the federal government.

      Even assuming that the government had this nominal
      power, I submit to your Grace that in the state of
      opinion, in face of the steadily growing feeling in
      favour of provincial autonomy, there is not now and
      there never will be any government strong enough to
      induce parliament to lay violent hands on the treasury
      of a province. . . .

      . . . Now, to pretend to re-establish separate schools
      without a public grant, would be simply a fraud.

      This being the situation, I submit to your Grace that
      the concessions offered by the government of Manitoba
      will be infinitely more effective than the so-called
      remedial bill could ever have been, if it had become
      law.

      As amended, the Manitoba law will give, not separate
      schools n name--for that matter they were called
      public schools before 1890--but an equivalent which I
      believe acceptable. It will give us Catholic schools,
      taught by Catholic teachers, in all the districts
      where the number of Catholic pupils is forty in the
      city and twenty-five in the country, and these schools
      will be aided by the government like all other public
      schools. Further, the law as amended will provide
      Catholic teaching for Catholic pupils in schools where
      the teachers are not Catholics, at certain fixed
      hours.

      So much for the amendments to the law. The questions
      of control and administration remain. I have
      undertaken to deal with them also, and have secured
      from the Manitoba government an undertaking to grant
      Catholics fair representation in the educational
      staff, the inspectors and the examining boards. With
      this representation, if good understanding and harmony
      are re-established, as I hope, and if the agreement
      which has been effected is carried out in the loyal
      and broad spirit which has been promised, the
      Catholics can easily reach a good understanding with
      the majority as to the qualification of teachers and
      the school curriculum.

      I am ready to admit that the concessions made by the
      government of Manitoba do not include all that the
      Catholics looked for, but to seek to re-establish
      separate schools by federal intervention and to carry
      things through by main force, is a task which six
      years of agitation, of struggle, of bitterness, seem
      to me to have rendered impossible. Without dwelling on
      this point, I ask your Grace to consider the situation
      of the country, taking into account its races, its
      creeds, the inevitable passions, and the nobler
      sentiments which make provincial autonomy the
      foundation of our political system, and I believe that
      your Grace will come to the same conclusion as myself.

      Religious teaching should be re-established in the
      schools. On this point, there is no doubt. I do not
      believe that it can be re-established by a federal
      law, and I am sure that it can be by mutual
      concessions, to which the provincial legislature will
      give its sanction.

      Even admitting that it might be possible to obtain
      from the existing parliament, or from another to be
      elected by the people, a law completely restoring
      separate schools, which would be better, such a law
      administered by a hostile government, or a law less
      perfect, but passed by the provincial legislature
      itself, and administered by a government which, from
      being hostile, had become friendly?

      The proverb, dictated by popular common sense, that
      the worst agreement is better than the best law-suit,
      may be applied with as much force to political as to
      private affairs. It seems to me on every ground that
      in this case more than ever conciliation will be more
      effective than compulsion.

      I have presented to you briefly, Monseigneur, the
      considerations which, as it seems to me, determine
      this burning question.

      My colleague, M. Tarte, with the same end in view has
      at my request visited his Grace of St. Boniface. His
      mission has not been successful.

      . . . I do not ask your Grace to express satisfaction
      with the proposed arrangement. I simply ask you to
      consider whether it will not be better to give the
      arrangement a loyal trial.

      I could not ask his Grace of St. Boniface to renounce
      the rights which he believes are guaranteed by the
      constitution, but there is ground for hoping that a
      trial of the new rgime of conciliation will give him
      the most complete satisfaction, reserving the right to
      renew the struggle, to break the truce, if these hopes
      prove baseless.

      I ask your Grace to consider that in our system of
      government there are two principles perpetually in
      antagonism--the principle of centralization and the
      principle of provincial autonomy. Do you not think, as
      I do, that the safety of Confederation, the interests
      particularly of the province of Quebec, lie in the
      firm maintenance of provincial autonomy? Not that
      federal intervention should never be exercised, but
      only as a last resort, when every other means has been
      exhausted, and when all hope of conciliation and of
      understanding with the provincial authorities has been
      found vain. . . .

      Accept, Monseigneur, etc.

      W. L.

While some members of the episcopacy were convinced of the soundness
of Mr. Laurier's contention, others continued to denounce him and all
his works. The months that followed brought not calm, but rising
storm. It was not surprising that to men of ultramontane views or
uncompromising temper, the situation was not acceptable. Firmly
persuaded of the right and duty of the Church to direct the political
actions of Catholic voters and legislators, convinced that an
intolerable wrong had been done their co-religionists in Manitoba and
that the constitution provided a complete remedy, if only statesmen
had the will to use it, surprised and angered by the disregard of
their edicts shown by the electors of Quebec, they determined to use
every means to reassert their authority and crush all opposition. A
reign of ecclesiastical terror began, particularly in the archdiocese
of Quebec, in the east of the province. Armand Tessier, editor of a
Liberal journal, "Le Protecteur du Saguenay," was called to the
episcopal palace of Chicoutimi, given his choice between making an
abject apology for publishing articles questioning the right of the
bishops to intervene in politics and having his newspaper put under
the ban; he signed the apology. The leading Liberal journal of the
province, "L'Electeur," of Quebec, still edited by the Ernest Pacaud
of the Baie de Chaleurs episode, was not given this choice. Despite
the fact that in earlier days, when Mercier was in his prime, Pacaud
had received the blessing of the Pope to the third generation,
"L'Electeur" was banned by bell, book and candle. In a pastoral
signed by Archbishop Begin of Quebec, Bishop Laflche of Three Rivers,
Bishop Gravel of Nicolet, Bishop Blais of Rimouski, and Bishop
Labrecque of Chicoutimi, and read in every church in the archdiocese
in the last week of December, "L'Electeur" was condemned for its
denial of the episcopal right of intervention in politics, its
"abusive, fallacious and insulting" comments on the action of certain
bishops during the elections, its reprinting of the David pamphlet,
and particularly, for an article published in November, which denied
the bishops the right to decide what amount of religious instruction
should be given in schools or to forbid children to attend mixed
schools; all Catholics were therefore "forbidden formally and under
pain of grievous error and refusal of the sacraments, to read the
journal, 'L'Electeur,' to subscribe for it, to collaborate with it, to
sell it, or to encourage it in any way whatsoever." Pacaud evaded the
issue: that day "L'Electeur" ceased to appear, and next day "Le
Soleil" was issued from the same press. Again, when Mr. L. O. David, a
lifelong and intimate friend of Mr. Laurier, published a pamphlet,
"The Canadian Clergy, their Mission and their Work," in which, after a
solemn profession of his Catholic faith, he criticized the policy of
the episcopate from the days of their opposition to the Patriotes of
'37 down to their arbitrary stand on the school question, the five
bishops of eastern Quebec sent it post haste to Rome, charging that it
was undermining their authority at a moment when the Church had need
of all its power. Early in January, Mgr. Begin was able to announce
in a circular letter that the offending pamphlet had been condemned by
the Sacred Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius, that "each and
every believer is held, under pain of grave disobedience to the Holy
See, to destroy this book, or remit it to his confessor, who will do
so," and that the author had, like a good Christian, submitted without
reserve to this decree.

This high assertion of episcopal authority was a challenge not merely
to the Liberal party but to the self-respect of individuals and the
liberty of the State. How was it to be met in its political hearings?
There were some Liberals who wished to bow before the storm, and await
whatever crumbs of future favour the clergy might give. In counties
where there were not a score of Protestants, where the parish was the
community, it was not easy to face a condemnation which virtually
meant ostracism, a barring of social intercourse and of public
service.[3] On the other hand, there were some old Rouges who were
more than ready to take up the challenge and to fight to a finish.
Ex-Mayor Beaugrand of Montreal declared in his journal, "La Patrie,"
that Quebec was the Spain of America; the episcopal attack was the
beginning of a struggle to the death between the hierarchy and the
government; no compromise was possible, and if "L'Electeur" was too
cowardly or too poor to continue the struggle others would do so for
it: "We have had our victories of June 23, as our fathers had the
victories of St. Denis, St. Charles, St. Eustache, in spite of the
threats of the religious authorities. I fight not for myself but for
poltroons who do not dare to raise their heads."

[Footnote 3: Speaking in parliament in March, 1897, Mr. Tarte
declared: "In the diocese of Chicoutimi there is not one Roman
Catholic who goes to confession without being asked if he is a
subscriber to my sons' paper, 'La Patrie'. . . . If the answer is in
the affirmative the man is told that he has to send back the paper or
that he will be refused the sacraments of the Church. . . . My
honourable friends of Protestant persuasion may not understand fully
the meaning of those words. A man to whom the sacraments are refused
is a man who cannot be buried in consecrated ground. He is a disgraced
man before his countrymen and cannot live among them. Practically he
is a doomed man."]

Laurier faced the crisis squarely. He would not submit, and he would
not be led into a war against the Church. Once more, as twenty years
earlier, he determined to uphold the right of Catholics to be at once
free citizens and faithful sons of the Church. In parliament, before
the public, and at Rome itself, this was the policy he and his
colleagues had already pursued, and it was the policy they determined
to continue.

In parliament there was surprisingly little discussion of the issue.
The government urged its followers not to taunt the losers, and to
give the parties concerned in the settlement an opportunity to work it
out in quiet. On occasion, however, their position was made clear
beyond question. Israel Tarte put it with his usual frankness and
lucidity in a debate in March, 1897:

      Some of our honourable friends opposite do not seem to
      realize the currents of public opinion. The days are
      gone by when the people of Quebec could be deceived
      and treated as my honourable friends opposite would
      wish them to be treated. I say that more progress in
      the ideas of liberty and freedom has been made in the
      province of Quebec in the past ten years than in any
      other province of the Dominion. When I started out
      from my parents' farm I entertained then and
      entertained later many of the doctrines now held by
      many of my Roman Catholic friends in the clergy, and
      it is on that account I forgive them many things. Sir,
      the Roman Catholic clergy of the province of Quebec is
      composed of good men, of moral men, there is not a
      more moral body of men than the priests of the
      province of Quebec, but I am bound to add at the same
      time that those men have been brought up, as it were,
      within closed walls, and some of them have become the
      unwilling tools of such men as those who sit on the
      opposite side of the House.

The Conservatives were quite as reluctant to make the settlement a
party issue. The Conservative survivors from Quebec still demanded
"justice, not a sham," and taunted the Liberal members who had signed
the bishops' pledge, but the Conservatives from other provinces washed
their hands of the whole question. The bishops had not delivered the
goods in the last election; why worry further? Sir Charles Tupper
frankly refused to pull any more episcopal chestnuts out of the fire;
while denying that he had made any compact with the bishops of Quebec,
he admitted he had naturally expected more support than he had
received:

      I am free to confess that I entirely overrated the
      importance of this question. . . . I find there has
      not been that deep importance attached to this
      question by a very large part of that denomination
      that I had previously supposed. I make this admission
      frankly to the House, and I cannot but feel that it is
      not unlikely that it will be much more difficult in
      the future than it was in the past . . . to induce
      gentlemen to sacrifice their own judgment to some
      extent, and the feelings of their constituents to some
      extent, to maintain a policy which when subjected to
      the test of actual experience, is not found to have
      the importance attached to it that was previously
      supposed. . . . I am glad to know that the
      responsibility rests no longer on my shoulders, but
      upon those of the gentleman who is now the First
      Minister of the Crown.

In Quebec, the Liberals stood to their guns. They pressed to a
successful conclusion their protest against the election of Dr.
Marcotte in Champlain, on the ground of undue influence of curs who
had declared it a mortal sin to vote for a Liberal. When in a
by-election in Bonaventure in March, 1897, Mgr. Blais asked both
candidates to sign a pledge to vote in the House against the
Laurier-Greenway settlement or any other settlement not approved by
the bishops, and to forbid their fellow-campaigners "to speak one
single word in favour of the Laurier-Greenway settlement or of giving
it a trial," the Conservative candidate agreed, but the Liberal
candidate, Mr. J. F. Guite, flatly refused: he would like to see still
better terms for his compatriots, but must use his own judgment as to
the best means: "I am a Catholic, and in all questions of faith and
morals I am ready to accept without restriction the decisions of the
Church. In all political questions I claim the freedom enjoyed by
every British subject. . . . I cannot before God and my conscience
renounce the freedom of exercising my privilege as a member, to the
best of my judgment." He was elected by double the previous Liberal
majority,--though possibly the prospect of government railway
extension through the country had some influence on the result.

At the height of the crisis Mr. Laurier made his own position clear.
At a banquet held by the Club National in Montreal, on December 30, a
few days after "L'Electeur" had been banned, he defended the school
settlement as the best practicable solution, and then, in terms which
revealed the strain and tension of the hour, referred to the clerical
crusade:

      I have devoted my career to the realization of an
      idea. I have taken the work of Confederation where I
      found it when I entered political life, and determined
      to give it my life. Nothing will deter me from
      continuing to the end in my task of preserving at all
      cost our civil liberty. Nothing will prevent me from
      continuing my efforts to preserve that state of
      society conquered by our fathers at the price of so
      many years and so much blood. It may be that the
      result of my efforts will be the Tarpeian Rock, but if
      that be the case, I will fall without murmur or
      recrimination or complaint, certain that from my tomb
      will rise the immortal idea for which I have always
      fought. . . .

      It is to you, my young friends, that I particularly
      address myself. You are at the outset of your career.
      Let me give you a word of good counsel. During your
      career you will have to suffer many things which will
      appear to you as supreme injustice. Let me say to you
      that you should never allow your religious convictions
      to be affected by the acts of men. Your convictions
      are immortal. Their foundation is eternal. Let your
      convictions be always calm, serene and superior to the
      inevitable trials of life. Show to the world that
      Catholicism is compatible with the exercise of liberty
      in its highest acceptation; show that the Catholics of
      the country will render to God what is God's, to Csar
      what is Csar's.

While defending himself resolutely from attack, Laurier was strongly
opposed to any counter campaign. He wanted no anti-clerical movement
of the European model. With some difficulty he restrained the ardour
of Mr. Beaugrand and his fellow-stalwarts, some of whom were in close
touch with affairs on the Continent and were quite ready to follow
Continental Liberalism in its attitude to the Church. In 1897, as in
1877, Wilfrid Laurier interpreted Liberalism otherwise. In a letter to
Mr. Beaugrand he refers to the difficulties he met in making his
policy prevail:

_Wilfrid Laurier to H. Beaugrand_.--(_Translation_)

Ottawa, February 8, 1897.

      My Dear Beaugrand:

      . . . Let me say how much I thank you for all you say
      in your letter. I cannot adequately express to you how
      deeply I was touched by the interview I had with you.
      Between such friends as we are, there cannot be a
      break, though there may be differences. I am a
      Liberal, like yourself, but we do not belong to the
      same school. I am a disciple of Lacordaire. I regret
      that on one or two occasions I expressed my
      disagreement with you in terms much too strong. Now
      that we have frankly threshed the matter out, our old
      friendship will only be the better for it.

      I am pleased to see that the sale of "La Patrie" has
      gone off well,[4] and that, now that you are freed of
      the press of business you are going to be able to give
      your health all the attention that it requires. . . .

[Footnote 4: To a group of Liberals, with Mr. Tarte's sons in charge.]

But it was not enough to take this stand before his countrymen. It had
become essential to take it in Rome as well. It was necessary to
appeal from those who spoke in the name of Rome to Rome itself, to ask
the head of their church whether Catholicism involved a loss of
political independence, to avert by timely information action from
Rome supporting the aggressive bishops in their stand. A steady stream
of ecclesiastical visitors from Canada had presented at Rome their
side of the case; the laity had not been heard. Immediately after the
general elections, therefore, a group of Quebec Liberals determined to
state their case. Abb Proulx of St. Lin des Laurentides, who had
supported the Liberals on the school issue, and Chevalier Drolet, who
had been a member of the crusader band of Zouaves who had rallied to
the defence of the papacy nearly thirty years before, were despatched
to Rome. A semi-private letter from Mr. Laurier to M. L'Abb Proulx
provided his credentials:

(_Translation_)

Ottawa, 9 September, 1896.

      My dear M. Proulx:

      The attitude taken during the recent elections by Mgr.
      Laflche and some other members of the episcopate,
      was, in my opinion, a great mistake. It seems to me
      certain that this violent intervention of the
      ecclesiastical authorities in the electoral arena
      cannot but have harmful consequences for the position
      that Catholics hold in the Confederation, and that it
      is equally likely to trouble the consciences of the
      faithful.

      It may seem unseemly on my part to speak thus. I
      persist, however, in believing that the attitude which
      my political friends and I have taken in the question
      which was then submitted to the electors was much more
      in conformity with the ideas frequently expressed by
      his Holiness Leo XIII than the attitude of Mgr.
      Laflche and of those who acted with him.

      It is not, I think, presumptuous to believe that if
      the question is submitted to the pontifical
      authorities at Rome, we may expect a statement of
      doctrine which would have the effect of bringing
      regrettable abuses to an end, maintaining peace and
      harmony in our country and reassuring the consciences
      of Catholics.

      As you are about to sail for Rome, you will render a
      great service to the Catholics of this country who
      unfortunately have incurred the disfavour of certain
      members of the episcopate, because of their political
      opinions and for no other reason, if you would state
      their case and represent to the pontifical authorities
      that all they seek in this country is to exercise
      their duties as citizens in accord with the recognized
      principles of the British Constitution, principles
      recognized equally by his Holiness Leo XIII.

[Illustration: Sir Oliver Mowat]

Sir Richard Cartwright

Sir William Mulock

William S. Fielding

Andrew G. Blair

Henri Joly de Lotbinire

Israel Tarte

William Paterson

Sir Louis Davies

GROUP OF MINISTERS]

In a more personal letter of the same date Mr. Laurier gave further
suggestions for guidance:

(_Translation_)

      I am sending you herewith a private letter not
      intended for publicity, but which may however be shown
      as a credential. Mr. Drolet will leave shortly for
      Rome. My colleagues in the House of Commons are
      sending him as their advocate and interpreter to state
      their case officially before the pontifical
      authorities. I would like you to keep in touch with
      him, in order to inform him as to all useful steps
      that should be taken to attain the end in view.

      In a short time I shall send you a memorandum relative
      to the settlement of the school question, but the
      first thing to do is to make the pontifical
      authorities understand that we are Catholics and that
      we wish to remain Catholics but that in a
      constitutional country such as ours the attitude taken
      by Mgr. Laflche and certain other members of the
      episcopate, if approved at Rome, would place us in a
      position of inferiority such that a Catholic could
      never become prime minister nor even form part of a
      government like the Canadian, in which Protestants
      are necessarily in a majority, since the Protestants
      are in a majority in the country.

      I must repeat to you also what I have said already,
      that while disapproving the conduct of members of the
      episcopacy, to which I have just referred, it is not
      the intention of any of us to expose them to the
      slightest humiliation. If you consider it advisable
      that a delegate should be appointed for Canada, you
      will please inform me. I need not say to you that the
      selection of such a delegate would be of very great
      importance.

      Accept my best wishes for your voyage.

The two envoys made their way to Rome, finding "half ecclesiastical
Canada there before us or on the way." In Rome, progress was slow. The
affairs of all the ends of the earth met there; rules of etiquette and
audience were stiff; there were so many personages to see. "The
impossibility of making rapid progress," writes Mr. Drolet, "often the
necessity of making no progress at all, with the Congregations, with
this Black monde, jealous, oh so jealous, meddling, old, old above
all." In moments of despair he was prepared to believe Zola's "Rome"
not wholly false. It was not easy to convince Rome that Bishops were
in error and laymen right. The bishops had long had the ear of
Cardinal and Congregation. Had not the Queen in Council commanded that
separate schools be restored? Had not Protestant Tupper tried to
restore them and had not Catholic Laurier resisted? Was not this
Laurier a bad Catholic, a Free Mason?[5] And perhaps the good Mr.
Drolet was not the most tactful of envoys, unduly suspicious and
belligerent, laying emphasis on his long dossier containing two
hundred charges of intimidation against this bishop and that cur,
rather than on the danger of the recoil to the Church itself. "The old
gentleman is rather a light weight," wrote a critic, "a kind of
Monsieur Tartaran, who got on the wrong track from the first and among
the wrong set."

[Footnote 5: Replying to a letter of Mr. Drolet, recounting on
unimpeachable authority a statement to this effect made in high places
by one of the Canadian bishops then in Rome, Mr. Laurier made this
unusually full confession of faith:

"Ottawa, 15 December, 1896.

      ". . . The settlement which we have obtained from the
      government of Manitoba satisfies every sensible man in
      Canada, but the clergy of the province of Quebec will
      not pardon us for what it calls their check of last
      summer. They want revenge at all costs, and unless the
      Holy See intervenes in time, we are threatened with a
      religious war whose consequences alarm me. But we
      cannot draw back. Certain members of the clergy are
      blind: if their way of thinking is to prevail, not
      only will we have a war of religion, but thousands
      upon thousands of good Catholics will be brought to
      hold religion responsible for the faults and excesses
      of its ministers. That must be avoided at all costs. .
      . .

      "I have read with regret the remarks which Mgr. N.
      made about me, in the Vatican itself. I am astonished,
      even though I have come to expect all manner of
      attacks. However, I would never have believed there
      was so much malice in the heart of a certain set. My
      dear Drolet, you have known me for well on to forty
      years; you know that I have never paraded my religious
      convictions, but that they exist; I can appreciate
      to-day how much influence they have over me, when I
      say that they have not been shaken by the attacks of
      those whose mission it is to preach Christian charity.

      "Whatever comes, 'il faut marcher droit son chemin.'
      That was your old Pontifical Zouave motto; it is mine
      to-day. We must keep the straight road. I see clearly
      and distinctly the goal. I do not know whether we can
      reach it, but I am full of hope and courage.

      "It is a singular thing, that these violent acts, this
      ignorance of conditions in our own country, this war
      to which we are going to be exposed, far from
      estranging me from the Church, draws me closer to it.
      I feel how superior religion is to all that often is
      done in the name of religion.

      "W. L."

It is conceivable that, knowing the chevalier's impulsive diplomacy,
Mr. Laurier was not altogether surprised to hear that he had read this
letter to all the high ecclesiastical authorities he met, one of whom
declared in ecstasy, "Why, your Mr. Laurier is the only Christian in
Canada!"]

He fared somewhat better when he turned from Cardinal Ledochowski,
head of the Propaganda, and thus the champion of the bishops under his
charge, to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Rampolla.

Whatever the reason, progress was slow. It became necessary to take
more direct and more effective steps. It was decided to make a formal
and collective statement of the case, to send other representatives to
Rome, and to press for the appointment of an apostolic delegate. These
conclusions were not reached without debate. Tarte opposed Laurier's
suggestion of a joint petition to his Holiness, as likely to be
twisted or misconstrued by Protestants, but when Laurier made it clear
that it was not the political question, not the settlement of the
school issue, but the conflict within the Catholic Church in Canada
that the Pope was to be asked to consider, he became an ardent
supporter of the plan. Forty-five members of the Commons and the
Senate, Wilfrid Laurier's name leading, signed a petition and
protest.[6] There was also some question as to the coming of a papal
legate. True, the visit of Cardinal Satolli to the United States in
1892, and the visit of Mgr. Conroy to Canada in 1876 had brought peace
and liberty, but much depended on the man. An Ontario bishop foresaw
Protestant denunciations of Papal interference, and feared "that a
delegate sent from Rome or France who, being prepossessed, as all
Continental ecclesiastics are, with the idea that Liberalism in
politics is synonymous with infidelity, could not grasp the idea that
Liberalism here bore no relation to what is known by that name on the
Continent." Yet the risk seemed worth running. The new envoys were
Charles Fitzpatrick and Charles Russell, son of Lord Russell of
Killowen, whose family spent the winters in Rome. Fortified by a
strong statement from Edward Blake, counsel for the minority, that the
Judicial Committee could not, and did not, command the restoration of
the schools as they were before 1890, and that the terms of the
Laurier-Greenway settlement were more advantageous to the Catholic
minority than any remedial bill which it was in the power of the
parliament of Canada to force on the province of Manitoba, and with
letters from Cardinal Vaughan and the Duke of Norfolk, the envoys went
to Rome. At once progress was rapid. Mr. Russell's wit and knowledge
of Anglo-Roman politics opened many doors. Mr. Fitzpatrick's piety was
"the wonder and the awe of Rome." With the Secretary of State,
Cardinal Rampolla, with all the other cardinals who were likely to be
consulted, Cardinals Vannutelli, Vicenti, Jacobini, Ferratta,
Ledochowski, Gotti, and Mazella,--of whom only Mgr. Ledochowski
refused a fair hearing, all the others impressing the visitors as "men
of strong intelligence and judgment who were anxious to learn the
truth,"--with Mgr. Merry del Val, the Pope's companion and attendant,
and finally in an audience with His Holiness himself, the case was
urged. It was necessary to make it clear not merely that the judgment
of the Privy Council had no mandatory effect, but that Canada was not,
as seemed to be assumed in Rome, a predominantly Catholic country, and
that not all the bishops, but only six out of twenty-nine had
committed themselves to the war against the Liberal party. The promise
to make full inquiry through a special commission of cardinals was
readily given. The appointment of an apostolic delegate, Mgr. Merry
del Val, followed a few weeks later.

[Footnote 6: TO HIS HOLINESS LEO XIII:

      "Most Holy Father,--We, the undersigned, members of the Senate
      and members of the House of Commons of Canada, and representing
      therein the Liberal party, present ourselves before your
      Holiness as respectful and devoted children of Holy Church, to
      complain of the existence of a state of things which, if allowed
      to continue, might be extremely dangerous to the constitutional
      liberties of this country, as well as to the interests of the
      Church itself.

     "Your Holiness has already been made aware of the
     conduct and attitude of certain prelates and of certain
     members of the secular clergy who, during the general
     elections in this country, in the month of June last,
     intervened in a violent manner in restraint of
     electoral freedom, taking sides openly for the
     Conservative party against the Liberal party, and going
     so far as to declare guilty of grievous sin those of
     the electors who would vote for the candidates of the
     Liberal party.

     "Sincerely attached to the institutions of our country,
     which insure to us Catholics the most complete liberty,
     we respectfully represent to your Holiness that these
     democratic institutions under which we live and for
     which your Holiness has many times expressed sentiments
     of admiration and confidence, can only exist under
     perfect electoral freedom.

     "Far be it from us to refuse to the clergy the
     plenitude of civil and political rights. The priest is
     a citizen, and we would not, for a single instant,
     deprive him of the right of expressing his opinion on
     any matter submitted to the electorate; but when the
     exercise of that right develops into violence, and when
     that violence, in the name of religion, goes to the
     extent of making a grievous sin out of a purely
     political act, there is an abuse of authority of which
     the consequences cannot but be fatal, not only to
     constitutional liberty, but to religion itself.

     "If, in a country such as ours, with a population
     consisting of persons of various creeds and wherein the
     Protestant denominations are in the majority, Catholics
     did not enjoy, in all matters relating to legislation,
     the same political freedom as their Protestant
     fellow-countrymen, they would _ipso facto_ be placed in
     a position of inferiority, which would prevent them
     from taking the legitimate part which they are entitled
     to take in the government of the country, with the
     possibility, moreover, of conflicts between the various
     groups of the population which history shows to be very
     fraught with danger.

     "Then again, an active and violent intervention of the
     clergy in the domain of political questions submitted
     to the people must, of necessity, produce against the
     great mass of the Catholic population a degree of
     irritation manifestly prejudicial to that respect which
     religion and its ministers should ever inspire and
     command.

     "Some twenty years ago, his Holiness Pius the IX, your
     illustrious and lamented predecessor on the Pontifical
     Throne, acting through the Sacred Congregation of the
     Propaganda, deemed it his duty to put a stop to certain
     abuses of a similar character, and forbade the
     intervention of the clergy in politics. This
     prohibition was generally respected so long as his
     Eminence Cardinal Taschereau was able to guide the
     Church in Canada, but since old age and infirmities
     have paralyzed his guiding hand, the abuses to which
     your illustrious predecessor had put a stop, have begun
     again, and threaten once more to create trouble among
     us and to compromise, not only Catholic interests in
     this country, but the peace and harmony which should
     exist between the various elements of our population.

     "Again affirming our absolute devotion to the faith of
     our fathers and to the Church of which you are the
     Supreme Head; affirming our respect and attachment for
     the person of your Holiness, our attachment to the
     interests of our country and to the Crown of Great
     Britain, its gis and protector, we beg that your
     Holiness will renew in our behalf the most wise
     prescriptions and prohibitions of your predecessor;
     protect the consciences of the Catholic electors, and
     thus secure peace in our country by the union of
     religion and liberty,-- a union which your Holiness has
     many times extolled in those immortal encyclicals whose
     precious teachings we desire in all things to follow;
     and, lastly, grant to the children of the Church, now
     addressing your Holiness, the Apostolic Benediction.

     "Ottawa, October, 1896."]

Mgr. Raphael Merry del Val was then only thirty-two, but he had
already made his mark in Europe. In the household of his father, a
Spanish nobleman of Irish descent who was ambassador in turn to
London, to Brussels and to Rome; in schools in England and in
Brussels; in the Papal Court, where he soon became confidential
chamberlain, Mgr. Merry del Val proved his ability and his judgment.
His striking presence,--"the most truly prince-like man, I ever met,"
Mr. Laurier afterward termed him, his searching but kindly eye, his
polished but somewhat reserved address, his mastery of European
tongues, his shrewdness, thoroughness, and, above all, the complete
confidence he inspired, made him a diplomat predestined to success.
He arrived in Canada late in March; in the next few months he met the
bishops and many of the clergy of Quebec and Ontario, and leading
Catholic and Protestant laymen. It did not take long for him to
realize how dangerous a policy Mgr. Laflche and his friends had been
pursuing. Archbishop Walsh and the majority of the Ontario bishops
strongly confirmed his reading of the situation. Not least, the
instant friendship and confidence which developed between Mgr. Merry
del Val and Mr. Laurier contributed to a firm understanding. He issued
no mandement, made no public rebuke, but gradually agitation ceased,
and Mgr. Merry del Val returned to Rome.

After hearing the apostolic delegate's report, and after consulting
further with members of the Canadian episcopacy, including the new
Archbishop of Montreal, Mgr. Paul Bruchesi, the Pope issued an
encyclical, given at Rome on December 8, 1897, and read in Canadian
pulpits a month later. The encyclical noted with regret the obstacles
which had been placed in the way of the Church's efforts in a country
which owed to it the first glimpse of Christianity and civilization,
and emphasized the importance of morals in education, and the
necessity of grounding morals in religion. The bishops had therefore
been right in protesting against the Manitoba law, which struck a blow
at Catholic education; the laity should have sunk differences of party
and stood united for justice. True, something had recently been done
to alleviate the grievances; no doubt these efforts had been inspired
by laudable intentions and a love of equity, but the fact remained
that "the law which has been enacted for the purpose of reparation is
defective, imperfect, insufficient." The concessions stopped far short
of justice; they might not be carried out effectively, when local
circumstances changed. Complete justice must be sought. However, there
was room for difference of opinion as to the best tactics to follow;
"let no one therefore lose sight of the rules of moderation, of
meekness and of brotherly charity." Meanwhile, "until it shall be
granted them to obtain the full triumph of all their claims, let them
not refuse partial satisfaction. Wherever the law or the situation or
the friendly disposition of individuals offer them some means of
lessening the evil, and of better averting its dangers, it is
altogether becoming and useful that they make use of these means and
draw from them the utmost possible advantage." The greatest care
should be taken to improve the quality of teachers and the scope of
the work of the schools; the Catholic schools should rival the most
flourishing in methods and efficiency: "from the standpoint of
intellectual culture and the progress of civilization there is nothing
but what is great and noble in the plan conceived by the Canadian
provinces of developing public instruction, of raising its standards
constantly, and making it something higher and ever more perfect;
there is no kind of study, no advance in human knowledge, which cannot
be made to harmonize with Catholic doctrine."

In this moderate and enlightened utterance, both sections of opinion
within the Church in Canada found ground for satisfaction, but the
general effect was distinctly in support of the moderates' position.
The Laurier-Greenway settlement had been pronounced imperfect and
inadequate as a final settlement, but its acceptance as an instalment
of justice had been commended, moderation and a recognition of the
good-will of its framers enjoined, and emphasis laid on the quality of
instruction to be given in the schools. Nothing further could have
been expected in a public statement, and Mr. Laurier and his Quebec
friends had not desired more. The school question was by no means yet
ended, but the ecclesiastical war was halted, and the political
tension eased. Once again, as a score of years before, the firmness
and moderation of Wilfrid Laurier and the Catholic Liberals of Quebec,
and the sagacity and fairness of the highest authorities in the
Church, had averted a struggle which would have involved both Church
and country in difficulty and disaster.

The failure of the crusade was made evident when in the spring of
1897, the time came for the provincial elections in Quebec. The
Conservative government of Hon. E. J. Flynn, who had become premier
when Mr. Taillon had entered the Tupper administration, absolutely
declined to make the school question an issue in the local contest.
The prestige of Laurier's name and the rout of the Conservatives in
the federal contest gave an overwhelming victory to the Liberal
leader, Felix Gabriel Marchand, a man lacking the oratorical gifts
and the personal magnetism of many of his predecessors but shrewd and
solid, trusted of all men, and firmly progressive in his policies.
When, however, Mr. Marchand endeavoured to put educational reform in
the forefront of his legislative programme, and to reverse the policy
adopted twenty years before, which had taken control of the schools
from a government department and entrusted it wholly to denominational
committees, Catholic and Protestant, he found himself blocked. The
truce was held to bind both parties. The Archbishop of Montreal, Mgr.
Paul Bruchesi, who kept in close touch with Wilfrid Laurier, soon
proved that sunny ways and personal pressure would go further than the
storms and the thunderbolts of the doughty old warrior of Three
Rivers.

    *    *    *    *    *

The settlement of the Manitoba school controversy made it possible to
concentrate attention upon policies of economic development. For years
the country had marked time. The depression which had set in with the
"nineties" had not yet passed. The prices of farm products were low,
farms hard to sell and burdened with mortgages. Railways, banks,
wholesale houses, retailers had to scratch hard for custom. Factories
stimulated by the N. P. found the home market too small and sought
remedy in combines and selling agreements. Foreign trade advanced
slowly and uncertainly. Few immigrants came and fewer remained; the
exodus of the native-born to the United States bled the country
white. Homestead entries in the West had fallen to four thousand a
year in the early "nineties," and to eighteen hundred in 1896; in that
year only five hundred and seventy Canadians had sufficient faith in
their own country to seek a Western homestead. West of Lake Superior
there were only some three hundred thousand people, one-third of them
Indians. "The trails from Manitoba to the States," declared a Western
Conservative newspaper, "were worn bare and brown by the wagon wheels
of departing settlers."

The causes of this economic stagnation were not wholly Canadian.
World-wide factors had played a part. World peace and rapid
railway-building had opened vast areas of new lands to settlement,--the
western United States, Argentina, Australia, Russia,--and had flung
their products on a falling market. Canada's severe and testing
climate, exaggerated in foreign repute, and perhaps her subordinate
colonial status, had played a part in deterring settlers. But there
were other causes more readily removed: a protective tariff which
sought to isolate and make self-sufficient a population too sparse and
scattered for the experiment; racial and religious bickerings (for
which both parties had a share of responsibility) draining and
distracting energy; and a government weak and divided in cabinet
council and permeated with dry-rot in the general administration.

The turn of the tide after 1896 was of course not due solely to the
change of government. World-wide forces played a part in revival as in
depression. The filling up of other new lands, the growth of urban as
against rural population, the rapid increase in the world's gold
supply, raised prices of all goods and particularly of farm products.
Within Canada, again, forces beyond the government's control made for
betterment. Most notable were the development of the gold-copper and
silver-lead ores of Southern British Columbia (the prospector, it is
true, being helped by the building of the Canadian Pacific), and
particularly the discovery of fabulously rich placer-mines in the
Klondike in 1896 and the stampede from all corners of the world which
followed in 1897 and 1898. Perhaps less wealth was taken out of the
ground than was put in, but these discoveries at least primed the pump
of prosperity, and arrested the world's attention long enough to make
evident the more enduring wealth that lay beyond.

Yet the new government were not merely "flies on the wheel," as Sir
Richard Cartwright had once rashly rated the Mackenzie cabinet during
the depression of the seventies. They had confidence in Canada and in
themselves, energy, constructive vision. The policies they developed
in the next few years were real and indispensable factors in the new
prosperity. They did not create the opportunity; they did seize it
when it offered. The immigration policy, the land policy, the railway
policy, the tariff and fiscal policy of the Laurier administration
were essential elements in making Canada what Mr. Laurier was soon to
term it, in a quotation now as hackneyed as "Hamlet,"--"the country
of the twentieth century."

The land and immigration policy of the administration was developed by
its youngest and sole Western member, Clifford Sifton. He had entered
the government as Minister of the Interior, in November, 1896, as soon
as agreement had been reached between Ottawa and Winnipeg on the
school question, securing election for Brandon by acclamation. He knew
the West; he was ambitious for himself and for his country; his shrewd
insight, his administrative capacity, his power of quick decision,
were qualities rare at Ottawa. In dealing with the public lands of the
prairie provinces, the chief action taken was to end at once, as
Liberal policy had long demanded, the lavish grants of land to
railways. Before 1896 some fifty-six million acres had been voted and
some thirty-two million acres earned as railway subsidy; after 1896,
not an acre was voted. Homestead regulations were eased and
simplified. Then a campaign for settlers began, unparalleled in Canada
or elsewhere. From Continental Europe the Doukhobor and the Ruthenian
were brought or welcomed, filling Western wastes but creating
difficult problems of social or national harmony. From the United
States came the immigrants most immediately helpful in themselves,
farmers as most were, with no little capital, skilled in the ways of
Western land, and most effective in advertising to the rest of the
world the fact that Canada had now more to offer the settler than any
other country. Advertisements in six thousand weekly newspapers in the
United States, agents and sub-agents stationed in every likely centre,
exhibits at autumn fairs and free excursions for pressmen and farmer
delegates, ready aid in land-seeking and home-shifting, soon set going
a migration that rejoiced Canada, puzzled the States and aroused
Europe. From seven hundred in 1897 the settlers from the South rose to
fifteen thousand in 1900,--and one hundred thousand in 1911. Then Mr.
Sifton turned to the United Kingdom, the schools, the press, the
patriots who wanted Britons kept within the Empire; the British tide
mounted more slowly, but soon surpassed the Continental and American
movements,--thirty thousand in 1904, a hundred and twenty thousand in
1911. The exodus to the more dazzling city opportunities of the United
States, the return to Europe of the men who had not found gold lying
in the streets of their New Jerusalem, continued, but were far
outbalanced by the incoming tide. Homestead entries leaped to seven
thousand eight hundred by 1900, twenty-two thousand by 1902, and
forty-one thousand by 1906.

In Canada, it had become accepted doctrine that the State should not
merely aid settlement, but should aid in developing the means of
communication. No great new railway was built in these early years;
the country was still growing up to the Canadian Pacific. Three minor
and supplementary projects were given aid. In the East the government,
in 1897, sought to extend the Intercolonial, by lease and purchase,
from the wayside village of Pointe Levi to the natural terminus at
Montreal; the details of Mr. Blair's plan were open to criticism, but
some such policy was an obvious business necessity. In the West, the
discovery of coal, copper, gold, silver, and lead in southern British
Columbia and Alberta, called for railway service, and none the less so
when "Jim" Hill thrust a spur of the Great Northern up into the
boundary country. General opinion favoured an independent road, but in
1897 the government concluded the most feasible policy was to seek an
extension of the Canadian Pacific. A subsidy of eleven thousand
dollars a mile was voted to its Crow's Nest Pass branch, from
Lethbridge to Nelson; in return, freight rates on the main line were
cut substantially, and one-fifth of the coal lands granted
improvidently by the British Columbia government were transferred to
the Dominion. Western hostility to the Canadian Pacific, Eastern
suspicion of Toronto capitalists interested alike in Crow's Nest coal
and in the Toronto "Globe," the foremost advocate of extension, led to
wide criticism, but the bargain was carried through. A third project,
brought forward in 1898 for the building of a railway from the Stikine
River to Teslin Lake, and thus giving access to the Klondike through
Canadian territory instead of through the Alaskan panhandle, involved
a grant of twenty-five thousand acres of Yukon lands per mile to the
enterprising contracting firm of Mackenzie and Mann, now first coming
into public fame. In the light of Eldorado visions, the land grant
seemed extravagant, and the Senate felt sufficient public backing to
throw out the government's measure. The completion of the St. Lawrence
canal system to a fourteen-foot level was less controversial, and the
abolition of all canal tolls was welcomed on all sides, not least in
the Maritime provinces where it furnished a precedent for demands for
low rates on government railways. The Post-Office Department, hitherto
inefficient and a source of large deficits, was transformed under the
management of William Mulock, one of the strongest administrators in
the cabinet; a great improvement in service and a reduction of postal
rates by one-third were justified by increased business and steadily
rising surpluses.

As regards state aid to production, little had been done directly for
the fisherman, the lumberman or the miner. Fishing-grounds had been
conserved by close seasons, restocking, protection against outside
poachers; now, instruction in curing and packing, and later
cold-storage and fast-shipping facilities were added. The lumberman
and the miner had shared the benefits of railway facilities and the
two-edged gift of tariff protection; now fresh efforts were made to
open foreign markets and to lessen tariff burdens on mine and mill
machinery. The farmer had been aided by experimental farms; now, under
Sydney Fisher's direction, the work of experiment and instruction was
greatly widened, and, with the co-operation of the Saunders, James
Robertson and J. A. Ruddick, the Eastern farmer was aided in that
shift from wheat and barley to cheese and bacon which has transformed
Canadian agriculture.

One great field of state aid to production remained, and that the most
controversial. The use of the tariff to stimulate and protect
industry, particularly manufacturing, had been the most distinctive of
Conservative policies for nearly twenty years. What was the Liberal
policy to be? In the Ottawa convention in 1893, in repeated speeches,
notably during Mr. Laurier's Western tour in 1894, and in open letters
exchanged on the eve of the general election between Mr. Laurier and a
Toronto manufacturer, George H. Bertram,--a grandson of his old friend
of New Glasgow days, John Murray,--the policy of the Liberals had been
declared. They denounced protection, urged the reduction of the tariff
to bear lightly on the necessaries of life and "to promote freer trade
with the whole world, particularly with Great Britain and the United
States," reiterated the demand for "a fair and liberal reciprocity
treaty with the United States," and set as their goal "a tariff for
revenue only." There was a distinct revival of low-tariff sentiment in
the "nineties," following the failure of protection to protect, and on
this current even an "incidental protectionist" like Mr. Laurier was
once swept on to prophesy that "free trade as they have it in England"
would be Canada's ultimate goal, while Mr. Davies denounced protection
as bondage, robbery, a system accursed of God and man. Yet Mr. Laurier
made it plain, particularly in the Bertram correspondence, that change
must be gradual; there would be no tariff revolution; one advantage of
a tariff primarily for revenue, would be its stability.

The first step of the new administration created confidence. Instead
of meeting protected manufacturers secretly in "Red Parlours," the
government appointed a committee--Sir Richard Cartwright, Mr.
Fielding, and Mr. Paterson--to hear in public all who had views to
present. Sittings were held in the leading centres; not many others
but manufacturers gave evidence, but their demands were made in the
open.

Mr. Fielding brought down his first budget in April, 1897, in a speech
which revealed his power of lucid statement and readiness in debate.
It was a modest budget, as budgets go nowadays. In the first twenty
years of Confederation, the ordinary expenditure had grown threefold,
from the original thirteen millions, and then for ten years had stood
stationary. Mr. Fielding forecast for 1897-98 an ordinary expenditure
of $39,000,000, and a total outlay of $45,000,000.[7] To raise this
amount, it was still customary to rely almost wholly on tariff and
excise duties. Mr. Fielding stiffened the excise duties on spirits and
tobacco, but the main interest lay in the customs changes. The tariff
revision was substantial and comprehensive. Important additions were
made to the free list, notably corn, fence wire, binder twine, cream
separators, mining machinery; reductions were made in sugar, flour,
farm implements, and coal-oil. The schedules were simplified and
specific duties largely changed to ad valorem. Power was taken to
abolish duties on goods produced by trusts or combines. The duties on
iron and steel were lowered, but in compensation the bounties on
pig-iron, puddled iron bars and steel billets were increased, and made
to apply to iron manufactured in Canada from foreign ore. Most
important, the principle of a maximum and minimum tariff, with special
reference to Great Britain, was introduced.

[Footnote 7: In 1910-11, the last year under Mr. Fielding's direction,
the ordinary expenditure was $88,000,000 and the total $123,000,000;
in 1920-21, the ordinary expenditure was $362,000,000 and the total,
$533,000,000.]

The first Fielding budget was a masterly achievement. It was a careful
and informed endeavour to harmonize and reduce the tariff. It was not
wholly consistent: the increase of the iron and steel bounties and the
retention of the duty on coal, in face of Mr. Laurier's declaration
after the election that raw materials such as coal and iron would be
free, revealed the pressure of Nova Scotia interests. It left the
tariff still protectionist; and while Sir Charles Tupper declared that
the tariff would ruin and paralyze the industries of the country, and
the columns of the Montreal "Gazette" were filled with announcements
from manufacturers that their mills would be forced to close, Mr.
Foster insisted that "the Liberal party has embalmed the principle of
protection in the tariff" and that "there is to-day, in this
parliament, as between the two sides, practically no difference upon
the expediency of the principle of protection as the guiding principle
of our fiscal system." John Ross Robertson, a sturdy independent
Conservative who had broken from his party on the school question, but
was a confirmed protectionist, gave a middle view when he declared
that while the Liberals might be considered half-seas-over on the way
to protection, he feared their gradual attack as the most dangerous
strategy and could not fully trust them even if they did steal the
Opposition's clothes: "the Opposition is the mother of protection and
loves the policy for its own sake; the government is a sort of nurse
that takes protection and suckles it in order to earn a living for its
party." Yet the weight of contemporary opinion and later experience
have stamped the Fielding tariff as a sound and moderate revision.

As a first practical step toward freer trade it could not well have
been bettered. Unfortunately, it was also, save for extensions of the
British preference, and the attempt in 1911 to secure reciprocity with
the United States, to be a last step.

The feature of the new budget which had most political importance and
popular appeal was the adoption of a minimum and maximum tariff, with
the purpose of restricting the minimum tariff mainly to British wares.
Imperialists seeking a counter-cry to unrestricted reciprocity,
Conservatives trying to reconcile protection with imperialism, had
urged reciprocal tariff preference between Great Britain and the
colonies, but so long as Britain cleaved to free trade, any such
proposals were an idle dream. In 1892, the Liberal party had
unanimously voted for a resolution moved by Louis Davies, demanding
that as Britain already admitted Canadian products duty-free, Canada
should reduce her duties on goods mainly imported from Britain.
D'Alton McCarthy and his Equal Rights League had urged a minimum and
maximum tariff, the minimum rates for Britain, the British colonies
and other countries prepared to give fair terms. But any policy of
tariff discrimination was barred by the existence of British treaties
binding on Canada and conferring on foreign countries Rights to equal
treatment. These treaties were survivals from colonialism. In early
days Britain had made colonial tariffs and bound the colonies by her
treaties. Slowly the larger colonies, with Canada leading, had been
emerging from this subordinate status. Galt and Macdonald had made it
clear that Canada could and would make her own tariffs. In
treaty-making, negative freedom for the future had been attained in
1878 when the Colonial Office had agreed to make colonial adherence to
British commercial treaties optional; a beginning in positive freedom
had come with the inclusion of Canadian with British plenipotentiaries
in drafting trade treaties affecting Canada. But the old treaties
survived. Some, as with France or Argentina, entitled these powers to
any tariff privilege accorded any other foreign power. The treaties
concluded with Belgium in 1862 and the German _Zollverein_ in 1865
were still more burdensome, as they called for the granting of any
tariff privilege accorded even to British goods. Repeated requests
from Canada, in 1881, 1890, 1891, had failed to induce the British
government, which admitted the impolicy of the latter treaties, to
denounce them and so face the prospect of a tariff war for no certain
return.

The new government determined to satisfy imperial sentiment and keep
its lower tariff pledges by granting a tariff reduction on the
exports of Britain and other low-tariff countries. If the treaties
stood in the way, they would first try to get round them, and if that
failed, to break them down. The Fielding tariff provided that a
reduction of one-eighth, to be increased a year later to one-fourth,
should be granted on imports from "any country" which admitted the
products of Canada on terms equally favourable. It was expected that
as a matter of fact Great Britain and New South Wales would be the
only countries which could so qualify. Sir Charles Tupper at once
denounced the proposal as futile, the device of blundering amateurs:
the act would be disallowed in Britain; Germany would demand its
rights; the government could not play fast and loose with solemn
imperial obligations. That the position taken by the government was
legally precarious was obvious, but, as Sir Richard Cartwright
declared in answer, "we were not born yesterday."

The position taken by the Laurier government is best summarized in a
memorandum of council in May, sent in response to a request from the
Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain. It was contended that the
Belgian and German treaties did not apply to Canada, since by 1859 the
old province of Canada had been taken out of the category of the
colonies referred to in those treaties by A. T. Galt's declaration of
tariff independence; that in any case, while "Canada had undoubtedly
been actuated by the fact that the mother country was the only nation
in a position to enjoy the advantages to be reaped from the minimum
tariff,"[8] yet it was also true that the offer was made to the whole
world, no favour was extended to any special country, and if Belgium
or Germany could not share, the fault lay with them, since at any
moment they could qualify simply by complying with the conditions; if,
however, a different view of the effect of the treaty bonds was taken
by the British authorities, it would be necessary to ask that "the
treaties be denounced in so far as Canada is concerned."

[Footnote 8: A sentence inserted in the draft memorandum, in Mr.
Laurier's hand.]

Whatever doubts there might be as to the legal soundness of the
government's arguments, there were none as to the popularity of its
policy alike in Canada and in Great Britain. In Canada, it was
welcomed by free or freer traders as a first step toward Britain's
policy, and by imperialists as a return for British protection and a
pledge of closer unity. In the mother country, Lord Farrer and the
Cobden Club hailed it as an advance on Canada's part toward free trade
while Sir Howard Vincent, the veteran Fair Trader, hoped it marked the
beginning of inter-imperial preferences and the commercial federation
of the Empire. The London correspondent of the "New York Times" fairly
summarized British opinion when he declared:

      For the first time in my experience, England and the
      English are regarding Canadians and the Dominion with
      affectionate enthusiasm. . . . The spirit of
      preference for the Mother Country appeals to the
      imagination here. This change will make Mr. Laurier,
      when he comes here in June, far and away the most
      conspicuous and popular of all the visiting premiers
      of the Empire.

The government had done all that could be done in Canada. The next
step must be taken in London. When in June, 1897, Mr. Laurier sailed
for England to take part in the Jubilee demonstrations, his first task
was to ensure that in one way or another the preference should stand,
and that the "rash and amateur" policy of the government in acting
first and consulting later should be justified.




CHAPTER XI

THE FLOOD TIDE OF IMPERIALISM

      The New Imperialism--From Disraeli to
      Chamberlain--Imperial Sentiment in Canada--Laurier's
      Imperialist Trend--The Jubilee Pageants--An Unwelcome
      Title--Laurier and the British Public--The Colonial
      Conference--The Denunciation of the Treaties--A
      Pilgrimage to Hawarden--Canada and France--Imperial
      Military Organization--Boer and Briton--Agitation in
      Canada--Canadian Contingent--Laurier and
      Tupper--Laurier and Bourassa--The Elections of 1900.

When Wilfrid Laurier sailed for England on June 5, 1897, a new stage
in Canada's development had begun. For thirty years Canada had been
preoccupied with her internal tasks of railway-building and
settler-planting, and except for line-fence disputes with her great
neighbour, had taken little part in world affairs. Now, with a fair
measure of unity and consolidation attained at home, and with
prosperity giving new confidence to her own people and new importance
in the eyes of the outer world, the Dominion entered upon that unknown
way which was to bring her sons in the next twenty years to the
battle-fields of Flanders and the council chambers of Geneva. For the
first part of this way, Canada was to follow closely in the wake of
Britain, under the flag of imperialism. The next three years were to
witness the flood-tide of imperial sentiment. In the gorgeous pageants
of the Jubilee year, in the business discussions of the Colonial
Conference, and in their sequel in participation in the Boer War,
Canada seemed to the world to have committed herself indefinitely to
the laudation and support of the new imperialism which was dominating
the policy of Britain.

The new imperialist movement was not peculiar to Britain or to Canada.
The whole white world was well in the grip of a passion for expansion,
an absorption in _welt-politik_, a scramble for prestige and profit,
which was to sweep it on to bankruptcy and chaos. The hopes of world
peace and economic harmony men had entertained in the brief interlude
of sanity in the sixties, had been shattered and laughed to scorn.
National rivalry was yearly growing more intense. The spirit of
nationalism drove subject peoples to seek freedom, defeated states to
regain their lost provinces, and free and successful nations to find
fresh fields for the pride and energy developed in their struggle.
Nationalism went to seed in imperialism. It offered a sanction for
protectionism at home and economic exploitation abroad. It provided a
stimulus to the growth of armaments, needed to protect each state from
its neighbours, and confirming in their growth military castes and
armament cliques; the dominance Germany enjoyed in Europe after the
victory of its efficient military machine over Austria and France, the
weight which her invincible navy gave Britain in the councils of the
world, stirred emulation. The consolidation of the great states of
Europe, attained after centuries of struggle, set them free to join in
the scramble for overseas possessions in which for a century Britain
had had no competitor. In Africa and Asia and the isles of the
sea--with America barred by the Monroe Doctrine--great states and some
of the small made haste to stake out fields for exploitation. In the
crowded years since 1880 Germany had appropriated a million miles,
Portugal and Belgium, or her monarch, each nearly as much, and France
more than all three, while Russia rolled remorselessly across Asiatic
plains, and even the United States was soon to enter on its career of
Philippine expansion and Caribbean imperialism.

It is not surprising that Britain shared in this movement. She entered
it more slowly; satiated with world-wide possessions, experienced in
the drawbacks and delusions of empire, checked by vigorous and
independent criticism at home, her statesmen never annexed more than
their next neighbour's lands, a trifle, in these fifteen years, of
some two and a half million miles, ranging from Nigeria to New Guinea.
But steadily, as African hinterlands overlapped and states crowded
together, as competition in the world's markets grew keener and
British trade failed to advance, as the jostling of newer rivals, the
preaching of professor and poet dervishes of Anglo-Saxondom, the
Seeleys and the Kiplings, left their mark, the British people were
stirred to a more aggressive and more conscious share in the race. The
decline and defeat of the Liberal party and Liberal opinions was one
manifestation of the new tendency; it had been the Liberal policy of
granting self-government which had held the white empire together,
but Liberalism had little in common with this new expansion in
tropical lands and among subject peoples. Still more significant was
the decision of Joseph Chamberlain, the most forceful character in
British politics, on the formation of the new Unionist government of
Lord Salisbury in 1895, to choose the hitherto secondary and routine
post of Secretary of the Colonies.

As Disraeli had typified the imperialism against which Gladstone had
fought, the imperialism which strutted in European council chambers
and Indian pageants and cared little for kinsmen overseas or markets
for surplus goods, so Chamberlain personified the newer imperialism,
with its emphasis on the sublime virtues of the Anglo-Saxon, its
reviving interest in the Englishman overseas, its assumption of a
mission toward the darker races, and its keenness for new markets. Mr.
Chamberlain's imperialism was narrowly racial; there was no room in
his empire for Frenchmen or Dutchmen save as they were transformed
into Englishmen, while the lesser breeds of Africa and Asia must
accept the rule of their trustees for all time: he glorified the
Anglo-Saxon race,--"that proud, persistent, self-asserting and
resolute stock," he declared in Toronto in 1887 on his way to the
fisheries arbitration at Washington, "that no change of climate or
condition can alter, and which is infallibly destined to be the
predominating force in the future history and civilization of the
world. . . . I am an Englishman. I refuse to make any distinction
between the interests of Englishmen in England, in Canada, and in the
United States." His other dominating conviction was the need of
securing markets overseas if England was to hold her place and her
prosperity. In Birmingham in 1894 he insisted,

      For these reasons, I would never lose the hold which
      we now have over our great Indian dependency, by far
      the greatest and most valuable of all the customers we
      have or ever shall have in this country. For the same
      reasons I approve of the continued occupation of
      Egypt; and for the same reasons I have urged upon the
      government and upon previous governments the necessity
      for using every legitimate opportunity to extend our
      influence and control in that great African continent
      which is now being opened up to civilization and to
      commerce; and lastly, it is for the same reasons that
      I hold that our navy should be strengthened until its
      supremacy is so assured that we cannot be shaken in
      any of the possessions which we hold or may hold
      hereafter.

Such was the frank and arrogant gospel which was now to be pushed with
all the vigour of the successful Birmingham merchant and all the
adroitness of the most skilful politician in Britain.

In Canada it seemed that the new imperialism was to find full
acceptance and justification. The desire for closer imperial unity had
greatly strengthened during the nineties. Among English-speaking
Canadians pride of race was strong, pride in the unchallenged might of
England's navy, pride in the valour and efficiency of her army, pride
in the justice and firmness which had marked her foreign policy, pride
in the honour and capacity of her Gladstones and Salisburys. The long
reign of Queen Victoria had furnished imperial sentiment a
rallying-point; her domestic virtues, her sorrows, her womanly
sympathies, the reflected glories of the Victorian era, and, perhaps
not least, the linking of her name with the happiest holiday of all
the year, the climax day of springtime, had given her portrait the
post of honour in hundreds of thousands of Canadian homes; distance,
and the dazzling light that surrounds a throne, had concealed her
weaknesses, her persistent and futile efforts to restore the personal
control of the sovereign, her jingoism, her dynastic and pro-German
view of European politics, and had left the legend of perfection
unquestioned. A natural resentment against the aggressive and
unneighbourly policy of the United States had strengthened imperial
feeling; traditions of the sufferings and the heroism of the United
Empire Loyalists were still fresh in many minds, there were still
Canadians who were fighting the battles of 1812, and the Venezuela
message of Secretary Olney and the prohibitive Dingly tariff played
into their hands. Not least important, was the effect of reviving
prosperity and confidence, in making Canadians feel they must take a
more active and independent part in the world, and must cease to be a
colony. It was really a spirit of nationalism that was stirring, but
for a time it took the channel of imperialism. Imperial partnership
might be a permanent ideal, or it might be only a step toward
nationhood, but in any case it represented a distinct advance over
colonialism.

[Illustration: MR. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN AND HIS COLONIAL PREMIERS The
Chamberlain Conception of Empire Colonial Office, June, 1897]

As the imperialism of these days was distinctly racial, it was not
surprising that the French-Canadian population did not enter into it
with enthusiasm. It has already been observed that the politicians
foremost in advocacy of imperial federation were foremost also in the
attempt to anglicize Canada, to narrow the use of the French
tongue,--the McCarthys, the McNeills, the Tyrwhitts, the Wallaces.[9]
To expect active enthusiasm for an Anglo-Saxon empire was absurd. Here
and there a French-Canadian public man, notably Israel Tarte, had
joined the Imperial Federation League, but the great body stood aloof.
With their own mother country, France, they had little contact;
immigration had ceased two centuries before, the France of revolutions
and anti-clericalism was not the France of old, and the Church had
combined with the British government to cut off intercourse with this
dangerous land. French-Canadians could not escape from passive
colonialism by the road that was being taken by the English-speaking
Canadians, and the way of nationalism was not yet open. These oldest
sons of Canada could not become Anglo-Saxon, they did not want to
become French, they were not encouraged to become Canadian, and so
they remained for the present _Qubecquois_ and _Canadiens_.

Mr. Laurier's attitude toward the issue showed a significant
development in these years. His earlier ideal had been an independent
Canada. That was "the polar star of our destiny." Nationhood followed
on colonialism as manhood after childhood. Only in an independent
Canada could the full equality of the two races be attained which was
indispensable for lasting unity.

[Footnote 9: See page 392.]

Now he displayed much more sympathy with the imperialist solution. He
had the orator's susceptibility to the sentiment about him. The vision
of a French-Canadian standing in the mother of parliaments at
Westminster appealed to his imagination. He was deluged with advice
from Ontario friends, editors, preachers, politicians, who felt
strongly the inspiration or the expediency of imperial unity; Quebec
was not vocal. He was deeply anxious to meet Ontario more than
half-way, to understand and interpret its sentiments, to review and
sacrifice any personal convictions which were not vital and which
might stand in the way of harmony. He had a profound admiration for
the standards of English public life and for the principles of English
liberalism. For the time it seemed to him, as to many other Canadians,
that perhaps the share in world affairs which young Canada demanded,
might sooner come through some form of limited imperial partnership
than through a precarious and burdensome independence. For the
present, then, to tack northeasterly rather than point for the polar
star.

The Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne had
been royally celebrated in 1887, but it had been distinctly an affair
for the British Isles. In the new temper of the time it was natural
that the Diamond Jubilee should be made an imperial festival, a
stock-taking and display to the world of the Empire's resources. The
premiers of all the colonies were invited to take part in the
ceremonies and to discuss in conference with the Colonial Secretary
problems of empire, defence and trade and organization. Contingents
of soldiers from every colony and dependency were asked to share with
British troops the honours of the Jubilee march. Every premier
accepted and every colony enthusiastically sent forward its
contingent.

Mr. Laurier, who was accompanied by Mme. Laurier, sailed for England
on the fifth of June. He looked forward keenly to the experiences of
the coming weeks. It was a curious fact that though now in his
fifty-sixth year, and for twenty years in public life, he had never
before crossed the ocean. The work of his profession, the demands of
political campaigns, the attractions of a restful village home, a
dislike for travelling, particularly on the ocean, had kept him from
any first-hand knowledge of British or French men and affairs. Now
that occasion demanded he purposed to probe the experience to the
full.

The weeks in Britain were crowded and memorable. A lavish and kindly
hospitality filled the visitor's days and nights. "I am not sure
whether the British Empire needs a new constitution," Mr. Laurier
wrote to a Canadian friend, "but I am certain that every Jubilee guest
will need one." Dinners and luncheons, balls and receptions, Windsor
Castle and Buckingham Palace, Cordwainers' and Fishmongers' banquets,
Empire Trade League and National Liberal Club, Dublin and Derry,
Edinburgh and Glasgow, the Mansion House and Lincoln's Inn, the
gallery of the House of Commons and the naval review at Spithead,
garden-parties and country-house week-ends, endless addresses to give
and endless addresses to receive, D. C. L.'s from Oxford and LL. D.'s
from Cambridge ("_Laurea donandus apollinari_" as Dr. Sandys, Public
Orator, pardonably punned from his Horace), brought the guests into
close if fleeting touch with English life, or at least the England of
the governing classes; the other England shouted in the streets or sat
down to the dinners which the Princess of Wales provided for "three
hundred thousand of my poor."

The Jubilee pageant was a moving and memorable scene. The princes and
potentates in scarlet and gold, the magnificent Life Guards and Her
Majesty's Prussian Dragoons, the troops from every corner of the
Empire,--Maori, Dyak, Haussa, and Sikh, following Canadian,
Australian, and Afrikander,--the vast, good-humoured, cheering crowds
in the streets, the genuine and warm-hearted enthusiasm that greeted
the central figure, the Queen, whose message that morning had been
marked with the simplicity of deep emotion,--"From my heart I thank my
beloved people; may God bless them,"--all impressed the beholder with
the might and vigour of England, the range and the unity of her
empire, the greatness that had been and that yet would be. In the long
procession the popular favour singled out Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
Followed by the Canadian contingent, the troopers of the
governor-general's Body Guards and the Royal North-West Mounted Police
in their scarlet jackets, the Toronto Grenadiers with their long
busbies and the Royal Canadian Highlanders in bearskins and kilts, Sir
Wilfrid was recognized by the thronging crowds, and next to the Queen
herself carried off the honours of the day.

"Sir Wilfrid Laurier": Mr. Laurier no more. On the day before the
Jubilee pageant it had been officially announced that Her Majesty had
been pleased to bestow the honour of Knight Grand Cross in the Most
Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George upon the Canadian
premier as the representative figure among the colonial visitors. Two
years earlier, when a heckler at a political speech in the town of
Renfrew had inadvertently called him "Sir Wilfrid" he had checked him
sharply: "Not Sir Wilfrid; plain Mr. Laurier; I am a democrat to the
hilt." Now this democrat to the hilt rejoiced his Conservative critics
and the whole tribe of those who take joy in human frailty and
inconsistency by accepting knighthood. In some sorrowing Grit quarters
in Canada it became necessary to explain that the chief had taken the
honour only after earnest pressure from the Queen, and Tory
caricaturists pictured Victoria on bended knee beseeching Wilfrid to
accept. The truth was less picturesque but not widely different. The
honour had come unsought and unwished. Wilfrid Laurier was frequently
called an aristocrat by men who thought that democracy meant
mediocrity and vulgarity. He was sufficiently an aristocrat to doubt
whether a knighthood could add honour. Earlier in the year he had
explicitly and emphatically declined an offer of knighthood, in spite
of the urgings of Sir Oliver Mowat, who set greater store on such
things. But now the offer came in embarrassing guise. It had been
planned by Lord Aberdeen and Sir Donald Smith, who was himself about
to be induced to accept a peerage. Sir Donald informed Mr. Laurier of
the proposal shortly after he reached England. Mr. Laurier strongly
objected, insisted he must decline. Sir Donald, and later Mr.
Chamberlain, declared that his refusal would disarrange the whole
Jubilee-honours scheme, that no other premier could be considered
representative, and that it would be discourteous to the Queen to
decline an offer which had already received her approval, and had
already been intimated to the public. Irritated by what he considered
officiousness on Smith's part, but not wishing to mar the harmony of
the Jubilee week by a refusal, Mr. Laurier assented. He had not even
the usual excuse, for Mme. Laurier had no desire to be Her Ladyship.

Not merely in the Jubilee pageants, but on every occasion Sir Wilfrid
was the central colonial figure. He stood for Canada, his
fellow-premiers stood for a single Australasian or South African
colony. The preferential tariff offer had warmed all hearts. The
presence of a French-Canadian as a ruler of the greatest British
colony touched the imagination. Not least, his own striking
appearance, his dignity and courtesy of bearing, his eloquence, of a
more glowing and fervid kind than English audiences were wont to hear,
and, it must be added, more extended in scope than English
after-dinner speeches were wont to be, aroused an overshadowing
interest which must at times have somewhat piqued his ten colonial
comrades. "For the first time on record," declared the London "Daily
Mail" in a burst of extreme condescension, "a politician of our New
World has been recognized as the equal of the great men of the Old
Country."

In his public addresses Sir Wilfrid emphasized three themes,--that the
Empire had endured because based on liberty, that with the growth of
the colonies some change in imperial organization, possibly through
representation in a central parliament or council, would become
essential, and that the Canadian offer of a preference did not call
for any preference in return, any abandonment of Britain's free-trade
policy.

To drive home the lesson that the concession of self-government alone
had saved the Empire, Sir Wilfrid had only to point to the contrast
between the rebel Canada of 1837 and the loyal Canada of 1897. The
Irish press was quick to apply the moral, but Sir Wilfrid himself,
though keenly sympathetic to Irish Home Rule, was careful to avoid on
this occasion any direct reference to a question on which British
parties were bitterly divided. As to the future, his utterances were
less clear. On more than one occasion he took a definite stand in
favour of some form of federation. In his first address, given at
Liverpool, he referred to Macaulay's forecast of the traveller from
New Zealand gazing at the broken arch of London Bridge, and continued:

      Those melancholy forebodings have not been realized.
      The traveller from New Zealand we have here to-day. He
      is here to-day among us, not to gaze upon a spectacle
      of ruin and desolation but to be a witness in his own
      person to a development of British power to the
      extent of which the imaginative Macaulay could never
      have dreamt. And the time may come when a New
      Zealander may stand at the gate of Westminster Palace
      asking for New Zealand's admission into that historic
      hall which, having been the Cradle of Liberty . .
      .[Loud cheers in which the remainder of the sentence
      was inaudible.]

Later, before the National Liberal Club, he declared that, "it would
be the proudest moment of my life if I could see a Canadian of French
descent affirming the principles of freedom in the parliament of Great
Britain," and, before the members of the Colonial party in a Commons
committee room, observed that the national sentiment was growing
stronger every day, and would demand expression in representation in
the imperial parliament or in some grand national council or federal
legislative body representative of the Empire as an organized entity.
Yet in these very speeches, and in other phrases he emphasized the
national phase: "Colonies are born to become nations. . . . Canada is
a nation. . . . Canada is free and freedom is its nationality. . . .
Canada is practically independent; in a few years the earth will be
encircled by a series of independent nations, recognizing, however,
the suzerainty of England. . . . The first place in our hearts is
filled by Canada." Addressing the Canada Club, he made it clear that
it was only in the future that constitutional change was desirable;
that for the present Canada was satisfied. The fact doubtless was that
conflicting ideas were struggling for expression and that the formulas
of imperial federation were usually readiest to hand. A New York
journal surmised that Sir Donald Smith's champagne had been
responsible for Mr. Laurier's imperialist utterances; in reality it
was to a more subtle and intoxicating vintage that something of the
credit was to be given,--the pride of imperial might, the applause of
tumultuous crowds, the hospitality of famous men and gracious women.

For all the growing activity of the Fair Traders and Mr. Chamberlain's
coquetting with an imperial _Zollverein_, Britain was still a
free-trade nation. Mr. Laurier kept that basic fact in mind in both
his public and his private campaign for the denunciation of the
treaties. "The colonies who desired closer commercial relations with
Great Britain," he declared at Manchester, "had no idea that this
country should abandon free trade; free trade had done too much for
England to make a return to protection necessary." The Canadian
government, he told a Liverpool audience, had given the preference to
Britain out of gratitude, and in the belief that trade begat trade;
they had no wish to disturb in any way the system of free trade that
had done so much for England. But if the treaties were held to apply,
what then? Then "either Canada will have to retreat or England will
have to advance." When the Cobden Club, guardian of the ark of Free
Trade, presented him with its gold medal for "distinguished services
to the cause of international free trade," he replied, on this
occasion after the denunciation of the treaties, in still sturdier
free-trade tones:

      I was a free trader before I came to England. I am
      still more a free trader having seen what free trade
      has done for England. It is true the dream of Cobden
      has not been realized. You have what is sometimes
      termed one-sided free trade. It is true that it is
      one-sided, but the advantage is not for those nations
      that have not adopted free trade. . . . In Canada we
      have had the protective system, and we have to deal
      with it gradually and carefully. The only reform of a
      permanent character we have achieved is this, that no
      duty shall be levied simply for protection, but for
      revenue. Further than that we cannot go at this
      moment, but the principle is laid down upon which
      larger measures can proceed. . . . There are parties
      who hope to maintain the British Empire upon lines of
      restricted trade. If the British Empire is to be
      maintained it can only be upon the most absolute
      freedom, political and commercial. . . . The more the
      Empire is free, the stronger it will be. The day will
      never come, I hope, when the great principle of
      freedom which prevails in this country, which England
      has promulgated all through the world, especially
      through her colonies,--freedom of thought, freedom in
      religion, civil freedom, and freedom of trade,--the
      day will never come when this great principle shall
      decline.

Little did either the Cobden Club or Canada's prime minister dream
that in six short years Britain would be swept by a campaign to
overthrow freedom of trade, or that, looking backward from that
vantage-point, the Canadian preference would be recognized as being
not the first step toward Canada's adoption of free trade so much as
the first step toward Britain's adoption of protection.

From festivity and feasting the premiers turned to the more serious
business of the summer. The premiers of all the self-governing
colonies met Mr. Chamberlain in private conference. It was the third
of the informal meetings which were eventually to develop into the
Imperial Conference. In 1887, at the suggestion of the Imperial
Federation League, Lord Salisbury had agreed to summon a conference in
London of representatives of all the colonies, Crown and
self-governing. At the conference Lord Salisbury referred to the three
lines along which progress might be made in what seemed the prevalent
ideal of making over the British Empire on the German model: a
political federation like Germany's was out of the question for the
moment; a Zollverein was probably not yet feasible, but a
_Kriegsverein_ was practicable and essential. Little progress was made
in either direction, though the Australian colonies promised a
contribution for the support of a British squadron in Australian
waters; the Canadian representatives, Sir Alexander Campbell, then
Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, and Mr. Sandford Fleming, held aloof
from the discussion of defence, urging only a state-aided Pacific
cable. Seven years later a second conference had been held at Ottawa
wherein the chief issue was the development of intercolonial trade.
Now a further stage in the shaping of this new organ of the Empire was
taken. Only the self-governing colonies were represented, and they
were represented by their premiers: government spoke to
government.[10] Mr. Chamberlain, who presided, laid the emphasis on
the first of Lord Salisbury's three paths: a federal council which
could speak authoritatively and without further reference to local
parliaments should be established. But Mr. Reid would have none of
such an inroad upon colonial autonomy and Sir Wilfrid, while prepared
to consider such a solution some indefinite years ahead, was not
prepared to endorse any immediate change; only Mr. Seddon and Sir
Edward Braddon lent any support. As to a _Zollverein_, private
discussion had already made plain the difficulty in the way of
inducing Great Britain to put a protective tariff on foreign goods or
Canada to abolish completely her tariff on British goods, so that Mr.
Chamberlain did not now press this solution. All the representatives
joined in recommending the denunciation of the treaties. As to a
_Kriegsverein_, it was agreed, with Mr. Kingston dissenting, that the
Australian naval subsidy should be renewed, but the statement of the
First Lord of the Admiralty that they would be very glad to open up
similar negotiations with Canada brought no response from Sir Wilfrid,
who had already stated in public his dissent from any scheme of naval
expenditure for the present. The chief outward result of the five
meetings was a resolution approving the periodical holding of similar
conferences in the future; the most important outcome, some beginning
toward an understanding, on all sides, of the personal factors and the
local twists in imperial problems.

[Footnote 10: The premiers present were: Canada, Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid
Laurier; New South Wales, Rt. Hon. G. H. Reid; Victoria, Rt. Hon. Sir
George Turner; Queensland, Rt. Hon. Hugh M. Nelson; South Australia,
Rt. Hon. C. C. Kingston; Western Australia, Rt. Hon. Sir John Forrest;
Tasmania, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Braddon; New Zealand, Rt. Hon. R. J.
Seddon; Cape Colony, Rt. Hon. Sir J. Gordon Sprigg; Natal, Rt. Hon.
Harry Escombe; Newfoundland, Rt. Hon. Sir William Whiteway.]

It was not until after the conference was ended that the British
government announced its decision as to the treaties. The law officers
of the Crown had reported that under the treaties Belgium and Germany
were undoubtedly entitled to the minimum tariff. If, then, Canada was
not to retreat, Britain had to advance. On July 30 it was announced
that the government had given the year's notice required for the
ending of the treaties. On this very day, as the irony of fate would
have it, Sir Charles Tupper, who had just arrived in England, gave an
interview in which, after declaring with some reason that "the idea
proclaimed by Sir Wilfrid Laurier of a great imperial parliament is
hopelessly behind the times, and could not succeed," had gone on to
denounce the course of the Laurier ministry as "a declaration of
independence, an insult rather than a compliment, an absurd scheme."
Now the Canadian policy had won. British governments who would not
commit themselves on a hypothetical question had met an actual
situation; free traders who would not denounce the treaties to permit
Canada to grant lower tariff rates in return for a preference from
Britain, welcomed a preference given gratuitously. The tactics of the
Canadian government in making its decision without consulting the
imperial government, the policy of Sir Wilfrid in refraining from
demanding what in any case could not have been secured, tariff favours
in return, were more than justified by the outcome.[11] "A great
triumph for Laurier" was substantially the heading next day in every
newspaper in Great Britain.

[Footnote 11: In accordance with the opinion of the law officers, the
Canadian government applied the minimum tariff on goods from Belgium,
Germany, France, Spain, the Argentine, and other most favoured nations
for the rest of the year. The next budget repealed the reciprocal
tariff and established, as from August 1, 1898, a straight British
preferential tariff, granting a reduction of one-fourth of customs
duties on wares from the United Kingdom and certain of the low tariff
British colonies.]

Before leaving England Sir Wilfrid made a pilgrimage to Hawarden to
pay his tribute to the man who for him and for tens of thousands
overseas was the living embodiment of liberalism. He was accompanied
by Mr. Seddon and by Mr. Reid, as well as by Sir Louis Davies, who had
come to England on departmental business. They had a long and animated
conversation with Mr. Gladstone. No incident in the whole year gave to
Sir Wilfrid such genuine pleasure or such lasting memories. When, a
year later, Mr. Gladstone died, that July afternoon gave an added
touch of feeling to the words Sir Wilfrid spoke in the Canadian House
of Commons, certainly not least among all the tributes paid to the
memory of the English statesman who had done more than any other to
make England honoured overseas.[12]

[Footnote 12: May 26, 1898: ". . . It is no exaggeration to say that
he has raised the standard of civilization. . . . Indeed, since the
days of Napoleon no man has lived whose name has travelled so far and
so wide over the surface of the earth; no man has lived whose name
alone so deeply moved the hearts of so many millions of men. This last
half-century in which we live has produced many able and strong men
who in different walks of life have attracted the attention of the
world at large, but of the men who have illustrated this age, it seems
to me that in the eyes of posterity four will outlive and outshine all
others: Cavour, Lincoln, Bismarck, and Gladstone. . . . Mr. Gladstone
undoubtedly excelled every one of these men. He had in his person a
combination of varied powers of the human intellect rarely to be found
in one single individual. He had the imaginative fancy, the poetic
conception of things, in which Count Cavour was deficient. He had the
aptitude for business, the financial ability which Lincoln never
exhibited. He had the lofty impulses and generous inspirations which
Prince Bismarck always discarded even if he did not treat them with
scorn. . . .

"He ennobled the common realities of life. . . . May I be permitted
without any impropriety to recall that it was my privilege to
experience and to appreciate that courtesy made up of dignity and
grace which was famous all over the world but of which no one could
have an appropriate opinion unless he had been a recipient of it. . .
.

"In a character so complex and diversified, one may be asked, what was
the dominant feature, what was the supreme quality, the one
characteristic which marked the nature of the man? Was it his
incomparable genius for finance? Was it his splendid oratorical
powers? Was it his marvellous fecundity of mind? In my estimation it
was not any one of these things. Great as they were, there was one
still more marked, and if I have to give my own impression I would say
that the one trait which was dominant in his nature, which marked the
man more distinctly than any other, was his intense humanity, his
paramount sense of right, his abhorrence of injustice, wrong, and
oppression wherever to be found or in whatever shape they might show
themselves. Injustice, wrong, oppression, acted upon him as it were
mechanically, aroused every fiber of his being, and from that moment
to the repairing of the injury, the undoing of the wrong, the
destruction of the oppression, he gave his mind, his heart, his soul,
his whole life with an energy, with an intensity, with a vigour,
paralleled in no man unless it be the first Napoleon."]

Canada had two mother countries. Sir Wilfrid was eager to see the land
of his own ancestors. France--that is, the Paris of the Quai d'Orsay
and the journals--was not so eager to see M. Laurier. The relations
between Britain and France were strained; regret over Egypt, rivalry
over the Soudan, had put Paris in no mood to read with pleasure of
this son of New France praising the England that had taken away the
first empire of France and was now barring the way in her effort to
create a second. It was a difficult situation, but Sir Wilfrid met it
frankly. In an interview with President Faure, and in two public
addresses, he repeated in Paris the assurances of fidelity to British
connection he had given in London, and at the same time revealed a
sympathy with France which deeply moved his hearers. Incidentally, his
French of Quebec seemed to pass without question in Paris; in fact,
he found occasion to correct a Parisian usage:

      Separated from France, we have never forgotten the
      honour of our origin; separated from France, we have
      always treasured its culture; separated from France,
      if we have lost our share of its glories, we have made
      a conquest always dear to French hearts. . . . In
      passing through this city, beautiful beyond all
      cities, I have noted upon many a public building the
      proud device that the armies of the Republic carried
      through Europe,--Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
      Very well; all that there is of worth, of greatness,
      of generosity in that device, we have to-day in
      Canada: that is our conquest. We have liberty,
      absolute, complete, more complete--pardon my national
      pride for the affirmation I am making--more complete
      than in any country whatsoever in the world; liberty
      for our religion, with its worship, its ceremonies,
      its prayers, its costumes; liberty for our language,
      which is the official language as English is; liberty
      for all the institutions that our ancestors brought
      from France, and which we regard as a sacred heritage.
      Equality is ours. What other proof of it could I give
      you than this? In this country, where the majority is
      of English descent and of the Protestant religion, the
      last general elections have brought to power a man of
      French descent and Catholic religion, who has always
      strongly affirmed his race and his religion.
      Fraternity is ours. There is with us no domination of
      one race over another. . . .

      If, in becoming subjects of the British Crown, we have
      been able to keep our ancient rights and even acquire
      new ones, upon the other hand we have undertaken
      obligations, which, descended as we are from a
      chivalrous race, we recognize in full and hold
      ourselves in honour bound to proclaim. May I be
      allowed a personal reference? I am told that here in
      France there are people surprised at the attachment
      which I feel for the Crown of England and which I do
      not conceal. Here that is called _loyalisme_. (For my
      part, may I say in passing, I do not like that newly
      coined expression, _loyalisme_: I much prefer to keep
      to the good old French word _loyaut_.) And
      certainly, if there is anything that the story of
      France has taught me to regard as an attribute of the
      French race, it is loyalty, it is the heart's
      memories. I recall, gentlemen, those fine lines which
      Victor Hugo applied to himself, as explaining the
      inspiration of his life:


          Fidle au double sang qu'ont vers dans ma veine,
          Mon pre vieux soldat, ma mre vendenne.

That double fidelity to ideas and aspirations quite distinct,
is our glory in Canada. We are faithful to the great nation
which gave us life, we are faithful to the great nation which
has given us liberty.

[Illustration: A PILGRIMAGE TO HAWARDEN
Louis H. Davies  William Ewart Gladstone  Richard Seddon
Wilfrid Laurier  George H. Reid]

Sir Wilfrid touched on many themes, from the hope that the close
friendship that had united France and England in the Crimea would
revive, to a prosaic presentation of the possibilities of trade in
timber, pulp, and tanning extracts. He made it clear that it was by
emphasizing the new nationality they had in common that the two races
in Canada were finding unity: "The strength of our race has been not
to follow a policy of race. . . . I share fully the opinion of M.
LaFontaine, that isolation is always an error and that for us
particularly, isolation would have meant sinking in the quicksands of
inferiority." Particularly noteworthy was the shade of difference, of
qualification, in his reference to Canada's future; in a speech, in
English, before the British Chamber of Commerce in Paris, while he
still used the formula of imperial representation, his thought was
clarifying, and he now emphasized a necessity for preserving
legislative autonomy which in reality put parliamentary federation out
of question:

     I am profoundly attached to British institutions. . . .
     At the present moment our relations with the mother
     country suit us absolutely. We are satisfied with our
     position. We are in fact a nation, virtually
     independent. It is, however, manifest that these
     relations cannot permanently remain what they are. A
     day will come, in a future more or less distant, when
     by the mere fact of our growth in numbers, the colonial
     tie, light and tenuous though it be, will become heavy
     because it will no longer correspond to our national
     aspirations. When that state of affairs arrives, it is
     evident that the colonial connection must become more
     intimate or it must break completely. The solution will
     lie mainly in the hands of England. It may be that this
     solution will be found in the great principle of
     imperial representation. The colonies of France are
     represented in her parliament. Our situation is very
     different. We have not merely local autonomy, but the
     most complete legislative independence. If, as the
     price of imperial representation, we had to renounce
     our autonomy, our legislative independence, we would
     have none of it. If imperial representation is to be
     the solution, it can be only as the complement and not
     as the negation of that which exists to-day.

More tentative, too, was his favourite dream of a French-Canadian in
Westminister, which followed:

      Permit me, gentlemen, to add, that if the dream of
      imperial representation is to be realized, I should
      regard it as a glorious day when Canada would be
      represented in the historic halls of the Commons of
      England by a French-Canadian, who would bring into
      those new surroundings, along with frank loyalty to
      British institutions, the logical spirit, the ardour
      of feeling, the lively imagination, the artistic
      instinct, the poetic conception of affairs, which from
      all time has characterized the French genius.

Sir Wilfrid left Paris in better mood than he had found it. The ribbon
of the Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour was added to his G. C. M.
G. and his Cobden Club medal. In personal discussions with French
public men, with M. Faure, M. Cochery, M. Hanotaux, M. Paul
Leroy-Beaulieu, M. Jules Siegfried, M. Nisard, he took occasion to
urge that good understanding between France and England which was not
merely essential for the peace of the world but, what was to a
Canadian of more direct concern, essential for the preservation of
racial good-will and national unity in Canada. Then, wearied of
speech-making and public addresses, with Lady Laurier he spent a few
quiet days in country rest, paying a visit to the home of his
ancestors in Charente. From France, they went on to Switzerland, and
from Switzerland to Rome, where, accompanied by Mr. Charles Russell,
they had an hour's cordial interview with His Holiness. Then France
again, a brief visit to Ireland,--Dublin, Galway, and Derry,--and home
to Canada.

When Sir Wilfrid reached Canada in August, he found a country that for
the moment knew no party. Never before and never again was public
opinion so united in his favour. There had been Opposition criticism
because of his failure to demand preference for preference, but
discussion had shown that this criticism was based on a misreading
alike of English politics and of human nature. His striking
achievement in ending the treaties, the leading part he had taken in
all the summer's affairs, the new interest in Canada which his visit
had awakened in Europe, the felicitous expression he had given of
Canada's homage to the Queen and her attachment to Britain, made
friends and opponents join to do him honour. In public and political
banquets in Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto, approval of his course and
pride in his success were given warm and spontaneous expression. His
attitude on imperial relations was widely endorsed in English-speaking
Canada; Quebec gave little heed. If anything, it was not sufficiently
imperialistic for Canada's prevailing mood. Some Toronto newspapers
growled at his references to Canada's being a nation; religious
journals, the "Witness," the "Westminster," the "Christian Guardian,"
in their fervent protestations that imperial unity was the goal and
imperial federation or defence contributions the way, made it even
clearer than the comments of the secular press how the tide was
running.

It was two years before the sequel to the Jubilee festivities followed
in Canada's participation in an imperial war. On the surface, there
was little fresh development of imperial interest or organization.
Abroad, the relations with the United States which culminated in the
sittings of the Joint High Commission, narrated in the following
chapter; at home, the development of the Klondike and of charges
against the Yukon administration, the growth of immigration and
prosperity, the holding of a plebiscite upon prohibition of import,
manufacture, or sale of intoxicating liquors, carried by a slight
majority but held of no effect because of the small vote and Quebec's
overwhelming opposition, engrossed attention. Yet signs were not
wanting that Mr. Chamberlain purposed to push his programme in Canada
as well as in other quarters of the Empire. Canada had outdone Britain
itself in its expression of imperial sentiment; it would be folly not
to seek to translate sentiment into action, to fill out and cash blank
cheques given over so lavishly. Mr. Chamberlain was not content to
wait on Providence, nor wholly content with the trend of Sir Wilfrid
Laurier's thinking. While protesting in public that any step toward
closer unity must come from the colonies, he neglected no opportunity
of preparing the ground.

In the summer of 1898 a new governor-general and a new commander of
the Canadian militia were appointed. Lord Aberdeen had been
governor-general for five years; he had shown himself a well-meaning,
public-spirited official, and Lady Aberdeen's organizing power and
interest in social work had given an enduring stimulus to many women's
activities. But he was a Liberal, not inclined to press his own views
except in an interregnum such as followed the defeat of the Tupper
ministry or on some innocuous subject such as civil-service reform; he
would not serve Mr. Chamberlain's purpose; on May 13, 1898, he was
informed that his "resignation" would be announced in the London press
next day. In his place the Colonial Secretary chose a man more after
his own heart. The Earl of Minto had not been known to the public save
as a soldier; he had seen service under Lord Roberts in Afghanistan,
had been military secretary to Lord Lansdowne during his
governor-generalship of Canada from 1883 to 1885, and General
Middleton's chief of staff in the Riel rebellion. But those who knew
him were aware that he was a man of shrewd common sense, of serious
purpose, strong will, and, not least, imperial enthusiasm, admirably
fitted to carry through a Colonial Office programme with firmness and
tact. Major-General Hutton, who was selected to succeed General
Gascoigne as general officer commanding the militia about the same
time, was also a man of strong views on colonial participation in
imperial defence, and, as time was to show, not hesitant in urging
them.[13]

[Footnote 13: Sir Wilfrid's conversational comment on the
governor-generals he had known may be noted here:

"The Canadian governor-general long ago ceased to determine policy,
but he is by no means, or need not be, the mere figurehead the public
imagine. He has the privilege of advising his advisers, and if he is a
man of sense and experience, his advice is often taken. Much of his
time may be consumed in laying corner-stones and listening to boring
addresses, but corner-stones must be laid, and people like a touch of
colour and ceremony in life; some men, particularly mayors, even like
making formal addresses to governor-generals or any one else who may
be compelled to listen.

"Lord Dufferin was in many ways an ideal governor-general for the
early stages of the Dominion. His touch of the blarney gave us the
good conceit of ourselves needed to help us through our first awkward
hobbledehoy years. He had tact and a quick shrewdness that carried him
far. He was prone to magnify his office and incidentally Dufferin. He
was always speaking to the galleries. He had no special oratorical
gift, but a pleasing literary gracefulness. His fellow-Irishman, Lord
Lansdowne, was a man of another mould, a strong mind, of clear-cut
judgment, distinctly our ablest governor. Lord Stanley was an affable
gentleman, no more, but Lady Stanley was an able and witty woman; she
did not seek the lime-light, content to shine in the family circle.
The warm heart and unresting energy of the Aberdeens are not forgotten
in Canada. Lord Minto had much sound sense, a stronger man than was
thought. When he came to Canada first, he was absolutely untrained in
constitutional practice, knew little but horses and soldiering, but he
took his duties to heart, and became an effective governor, if
sometimes very stiff. Lord Grey took his duties still more seriously,
but scattered his efforts. The Duke of Connaught, the last governor in
my day, was the rigidly trained and repressed constitutional monarch,
correct and aloof, knowing nothing of Canadian political affairs and
caring less; he might well have taken occasion to give a hint to Sir
Robert Borden about his dismissals of office-holders."]

Half-way round the world, the conflict was brewing which was to give
occasion for testing the new forces. In South Africa the relations of
Boer and Briton were daily becoming more strained. To the memories of
past racial conflicts, galling British memories of Majuba, sullen Boer
memories of treks ever northward to escape British domination, there
was added the strife between a primitive pastoral people and a
cosmopolitan host of gold-seekers. The Outlander had just ground for
complaint: the Transvaal administration was unprogressive, corruption
was undoubtedly rife in the little oligarchy which surrounded Paul
Kruger at Pretoria, particularly among the imported Hollanders, and
the fourteen-year franchise shut the newcomers out from a share in the
government of the country in which they were fast becoming a majority.
Yet the grievances were not so serious as they were represented by the
unscrupulous subsidized press of Johannesburg and Cape Town; the
Orange Free State, perhaps the best-governed small state in the world,
showed what the Boer could do under favouring circumstances; the
corruption which existed was hardly sufficient to warrant the Canada
of Pacific scandals and McGreevy lootings going Sir Galahading across
the world to redress it; and the burgher's fear of being swamped in
his own country by a transitory swarm of aliens was not hard to
understand. A peaceful way out was not beyond hope; the progressive
party among the Transvaalers, led by men like Fraser, Joubert, Botha,
was gaining ground against the reactionary forces. Time and good-will
would have brought reform. But time and good-will were lacking. In
the new imperial temper of Britain and the British in South Africa,
the Boer had to be taught his place, and that soon, the map of Africa
must be painted red from the Cape to Cairo; on the other side, the
stubbornness and slimness of Oom Paul, the conviction among many
back-veldt Boers that the victors of Majuba could once more sweep the
_rooincks_ from the field and give all South Africa to their kindred,
were serious obstacles to peace. The reckless Jameson raid, the warm
greeting given his imperial heroes in London, the whitewashing of
Rhodes by a House of Commons committee,--with Edward Blake vigorously
dissenting from the policy of hushing-up adopted by both Front
Benches,--the press campaign, the Prussian stiffness of the proconsul,
Sir Alfred Milner, revealed the new aggressiveness of British policy.
When in the spring of 1899 the British authorities concentrated on the
reform of the franchise as the fundamental concession which would
ensure other grievances being righted, the Kruger government after
much hesitation and wriggling and hair-splitting gave way and accepted
substantially what Chamberlain had demanded. But at once the ground of
controversy shifted to the vague issue of British supremacy in South
Africa, now held to be threatened by Boer plots; new demands were made
or foreshadowed, reckless "squeezed-sponge" speeches hurled from
Highbury, the anti-jingo British general on the spot, who insisted
that South Africa needed rest, not a surgical operation, recalled, and
fresh troops ordered to Africa. The Transvaal and Free State Boer
refused the advice of his Cape Colony cousins to make further
concessions. He was convinced that Chamberlain would be content with
nothing short of a humiliating surrender and permanent control, and
that his country was doomed unless he fought. On October 9 Kruger
launched his ultimatum, demanding arbitration and withdrawal of
British troops, or war. On October 12 the Boers fired the first shot.

Canadians, absorbed in their own affairs, had given little heed to the
rumblings of war until a few weeks before the outbreak. Of the few who
were in touch with the situation, some sympathized with the British
policy; others, including men so divergent in view as Goldwin Smith
and Principal Grant, until the issue of the ultimatum, had questioned
Mr. Chamberlain's tactics. But the great mass of citizens knew little
and believed much. They believed that Britain was fighting to free the
Outlander from intolerable tyranny. When neutral opinion the world
over condemned British policy, Mr. Balfour urged in its defence that
the colonies had endorsed it. True, but that approval, so far as
Canada was concerned, was not so much an independent and informed
judgment on the merits of the issue as an indication of the efficiency
of the anti-Boer press service, and still more an expression of trust
in British statesmen and in British policy in the past.

Sir Wilfrid had made no special study of the situation. He had
followed the development of the crisis in the press despatches, with
what care the demands of his own duties would permit. He had no small
measure of sympathy with the South African Dutch in their resistance
to the inroads of British settlement and German-Jewish finance, but
believed that with reasonableness a solution could be found in a
confederation of South Africa under the Crown. The consideration which
turned him strongly against the Boers in the immediate crisis was
their denial of the franchise; like many another Liberal, Sir Wilfrid
was influenced by Mr. Chamberlain's clever tactics in clothing
imperialist policies in radical formulas.

When war became certain, offers of individual or company service and
demands for the despatch of a Canadian contingent rapidly developed.
The crisis had precipitated imperial sentiment. The desire to repay
British protection in the past, to rival the United States, which had
just had a more or less glorious little war with Spain, and those
Australasian colonies which had already offered contingents; the
wide-spread feeling that with increasing strength and prosperity the
Dominion should take a more active part in imperial and world affairs;
the spirit of adventure and professional military zeal, called for
action. Newspaper appeals, particularly on the part of the Montreal
"Star," fanned the flames. Sir Charles Tupper, newly returned from
England, put himself at the head of the movement for Canadian
participation.

The movement was powerfully stimulated by the British authorities and
their agents in Canada. Lord Minto in the spring of 1899 had conveyed
to Sir Wilfrid inquiries from Mr. Chamberlain and the War Office as to
the interpretation of the Militia Act:

      Can the imperial military authorities accept paragraph
      79 as sufficiently binding on Canada to justify them
      in reckoning _officially_ upon the availability of
      Canadian troops outside the Dominion in case of war
      with a European power? . . . I am inclined to draw a
      distinct line between the official calling out by the
      Queen of Canadian troops for foreign service [i.e.
      outside the American continent], and the offer of
      Canadian troops by the Dominion, which I feel certain
      would be enthusiastically made if the Empire were
      threatened,--the latter would, however, be a
      sentimental offer, which could not be considered with
      purely business calculations.

To which Sir Wilfrid replied that the decisive point was not whether
the theatre of war was at home or abroad, but whether the action was
for the defence of Canada. Again, on July 19, in a letter frank and
enthusiastic to the point of navet, the governor-general had written
urging an offer of immediate material assistance in South Africa, an
offer which would definitely commit the Dominion to participation in
imperial wars:

      The acceptance of the proposal would be a proof to the
      world that the component parts of the Empire, however
      scattered, are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder
      to support imperial interests. In this particular
      crisis a demonstration of such strength would be
      invaluable, but its effects would, I think, reach far
      beyond the difficulty of to-day; it would signify the
      acceptance of a principle which I believe would tend
      not only enormously to strengthen the Empire
      generally, but which would also consolidate the
      individual strength, credit, and security of each of
      the offspring of the Mother Country. . . . It is a
      principle which appears to me fraught with great
      possibilities, and personally, as an old friend of
      Canada, nothing would please me more than seeing her
      first in accepting it. But as I have said to you
      already, it is all-important that any such offer as
      that under consideration should be spontaneous and not
      merely the result of a desire to meet the hopes
      expressed at home.

A fortnight later, on July 31, the activities of an agent of the South
African League resulted in the House of Commons passing unanimously a
resolution, moved by Sir Wilfrid and seconded by Mr. Foster,
expressing sympathy with the efforts of Her Majesty's government to
obtain justice for the British subjects in the Transvaal. Sir Wilfrid
declared:

      The object to be sought is that we should extend to
      our fellow-countrymen in South Africa the right-hand
      of good-fellowship, that we should assure them that
      our heart is with them and that in our judgment they
      are in the right; the object would be to assure the
      imperial authorities, who have taken in hand the cause
      of the Uitlanders, that on that question we are at one
      with them and that they are also in the right; and
      perhaps the effect might be also that this mark of
      sympathy, of universal sympathy, extending from
      continent to continent and encircling the globe might
      cause wiser and more humane counsels to prevail in the
      Transvaal and possibly avert the awful arbitrament of
      war.

Lord Minto, in acknowledging the resolutions, expressed his personal
regret that "an offer of material assistance" had not been made
instead, though he added:

      . . . There has been no question of England asking for
      troops and no expression of opinion in any way that
      she could deem herself justified in expecting such
      assistance; I know, however, privately, as I told you,
      that if any request was made by Canada to send a
      force to serve with H. M.'s troops, the authorities at
      home would welcome such a request. . . . You know my
      own views but I quite recognize the serious
      considerations connected with such an offer.

Meanwhile, General Hutton's activities in attempting to frame policy
and shape opinion, and conflict of views on matters of administrative
detail, had brought about very strained relations with the Minister of
Militia, which Lord Minto had sought in vain to ease. No narrow
conception of his office, therefore, prevented him from discussing
with militia officers detailed proposals for a Canadian contingent.

On October 3, the "Canadian Military Gazette," an unofficial
publication, announced that in case of war the Canadian government
would offer a force from the militia for service, and gave its
composition in detail. War had not yet broken out and despatches from
London and the Cape held out some hopes that it might still be
averted. In an interview the same day with the Ottawa correspondent of
the "Globe," Sir Wilfrid denied the rumour as "a pure invention." He
made it clear that under the Militia Act the volunteers might be sent
to a foreign land to fight, provided Canada was menaced. In the case
of the South African Republic there was no menace; "Though we may be
willing to contribute troops, I do not see how we can do so." Nothing
could be done without a grant from parliament. "There is no doubt," he
continued, "as to the attitude of the government on all questions that
mean menace to British interests, but in this present case our
limitations are very clearly defined. And so it is that we have not
offered a Canadian contingent to the home authorities. The Militia
Department duly transmitted individual offers to the Imperial
Government."

On the same day Mr. Chamberlain took a hand in the game by a cable to
Lord Minto, which was not received until two days later.[14] In this
message, whether from haste or design, Mr. Chamberlain, if he did not
accept an offer which had not been made, at least assumed that
government action would be forthcoming. No further action was taken
for some days. In forwarding the despatch, Lord Minto observed:

      So far as I know there has been no offer to raise
      troops in Canada except that of Colonel Hughes, and
      the question is whether the Canadian government will
      itself officially offer troops or whether it will
      allow individuals to raise them as

      volunteers on their own responsibility. . . . Up to
      the present this [a government offer] has not been
      thought advisable, and you know my views about it, but
      it may be better to reconsider the question rather
      than to allow an irresponsible call for volunteers. I
      can not think it advisable that Colonel Hughes should
      be allowed to raise an expedition on his own
      responsibility representing Canada. . . . I think it
      would be best that any definite action should stand
      over till you can see me on your return from Chicago.

[Footnote 14: "Secretary of State for War and Commander-in-Chief
desire to express high appreciation of signal exhibition of patriotic
spirit of people of Canada shown by offers to serve in South Africa,
and to furnish following information to assist organization of force
offered into units suitable for military requirements. Firstly, units
should consist of about 125 men; secondly, may be infantry, mounted
infantry, or cavalry; in view of numbers already available, infantry
most, cavalry least, serviceable; thirdly, all should be armed with
.303 rifles or carbines, which can be supplied by Imperial Government
if necessary; fourthly, all must provide own equipment, and mounted
troops own horses; fifthly, not more than one captain and three
subalterns each unit. Whole force may be commanded by officer not
higher than major. In considering numbers which can be employed,
Secretary of State for War, guided by nature of offers, by desire that
each Colony should be fairly represented, and limits necessary if
force is to be fully utilised by available staff as integral portion
of Imperial forces, would gladly accept four units. Conditions as
follows: Troops to be disembarked at port of landing South Africa
fully equipped at cost of Colonial Government or volunteers. From date
of disembarkation Imperial Government will provide pay at Imperial
rates, supplies and ammunition, and will defray expenses of transport
back to Canada, and pay wound pensions and compassionate allowances at
Imperial rates. Troops to embark not later than 31st October,
proceeding direct to Cape Town for orders. Inform accordingly all who
have offered to raise volunteers."]

In accordance with an arrangement of long standing, Sir Wilfrid had
left on October 7 to attend an international gathering in Chicago. At
the dedication of the new federal buildings, President McKinley, the
Vice-President of Mexico, and the Prime Minister of Canada had been
invited to officiate. Sir Wilfrid had planned to use the occasion to
make a plea for better relations and at the same time to explain why
Canada could not give way on its Alaska boundary stand. While his
addresses were effective and warmly welcomed, the event was
overshadowed by the news from Africa and from home, and he hastened to
return to Ottawa.

Sir Wilfrid found a divided country and a divided cabinet. In
English-speaking Canada, the war contagion was spreading with the
approaching certainty of conflict and the excitement of war
preparations overseas. The Opposition, with high imperial patriotism
and thirst for office mingled in varying proportions, attacked the
government for delay and began to appeal to anti-French-Canadian
sentiment. In Quebec, active enthusiasm was almost wholly lacking. The
French-Canadian did not share the racial sympathy of his compatriots,
and had more appreciation of the difficulties of a non-English people
surrounded by English folk. "La Patrie," Mr. Tarte's organ, took its
stand on the British principle, no taxation without representation; no
share in Britain's wars without a share in Britain's councils. "La
Presse," the leading independent journal, emphasized very clearly the
fundamental difference which determined the attitude of
French-Canadians to imperial affairs, and which it took
English-Canadians many a year to understand. "We French-Canadians
belong to one country, Canada; Canada is for us the whole world; but
the English-Canadians have two countries, one here and one across the
sea."

The cabinet had to consider the situation more carefully than
irresponsible individuals. Granting that Britain's cause was just, was
aid necessary? It was assuredly no life-and-death struggle,--merely,
in the eyes of British statesmen themselves, a "promenade to
Pretoria"; "Punch" was picturing the Boers as clumsy louts falling
over their own rifles; as that fervent imperialist, Alexander McNeill,
had declared in the House in July, it was hardly necessary "to render
assistance to a hundred-ton hammer to crush a hazlenut." Canada had
never taken part in any of Britain's "little wars" overseas; Macdonald
had declined in 1885 to raise a contingent for the Soudan campaign.
Had the government power to act without the consent of parliament?
What would be the effect on racial feeling of action? of non-action?
Weighing all these considerations in two days' council debate, a
compromise was finally reached. The government would not send a
contingent, but it would equip and transport volunteers up to one
thousand men, organized as proposed in Mr. Chamberlain's cable. The
order in council ran:

      The Prime Minister, in view of the well-known desire
      of a great many Canadians who are ready to take
      service under such conditions, is of opinion that the
      moderate expenditure which would thus be involved for
      the equipment and transportation of such volunteers
      may readily be undertaken by the Government of Canada
      without summoning Parliament, especially as such an
      expenditure under such circumstances, cannot be
      regarded as a departure from the well-known principles
      of constitutional government and colonial practice,
      nor construed as a precedent for future action.

A few days later this action was referred to officially as the
despatch of a contingent.

The prime minister had never faced a more difficult situation. His
handling of it was criticized by both extremes--by one side for delay
and half-heartedness, by the other for sending a contingent at all.
More impartial critics, in the light of after events, urged that he
should have anticipated the situation and prepared a definite stand.
It is true the government lost something of the temporary kudos that
attends decisive and spectacular action and suffered the disparagement
that attaches to all compromise, but it gained in retrospect in the
judgment of all who realized what great issues were at stake. Until
the last moment it was not certain that the emergency would arise.
Sir Wilfrid was not himself given to enthusiasm, and he did not like
to be stampeded by the enthusiasm of others.[15] Before committing
Canada to a new policy which might carry her in far and unseen paths
it was indispensable to await a clear and overwhelming popular demand.
Sir Wilfrid's belief, albeit conventional, in the justice of the cause
and his imperial sympathies, were balanced by his dislike of war and
all that it entailed. It was another factor that turned the scale. For
him the essential question was not aid to England, for both the public
and the British cabinet had made it clear that it was not aid but a
binding precedent that was wanted. In that case the question became,
what would be the effect on the cause nearest his heart, national and
racial unity? Concluding that with English-speaking Canada blazing in
its demand for action and French-speaking Canada lukewarm or silent in
its hesitancy, action would best advance that unity, he took the stand
he did.

[Footnote 15: His cautious attitude is well revealed in a speech in
Bowmanville, on October 17, replying to the criticism that the
government had not done enough: "My only answer to that is this: We as
a government and especially I as the head of the government have in
all these matters to think and go slowly and to act formally and with
due consideration. For my part, so long as I have the honour to occupy
my present post, you shall never see me carried away by passion or
prejudice or even enthusiasm. I have to think and consider. I have to
look to the right and the wrong. I have to see what will be the effect
of any action that we take."]

In the country, the decision was substantially accepted. Conservative
critics, with some non-party support, continued to rail against the
decision not to bear the full cost of the contingent. In Quebec, the
careful phrasing of the offer brought acquiescence; the Liberal
members hastened to announce their support of the government's policy.
The chief exception, Mr. Henri Bourassa, grandson of Papineau and
member for Labelle, who resigned in protest, was more ominous for the
future than influential in the present. Mr. Tarte repeated directly,
in a correspondence with a former colleague in the Imperial Federation
League, Mr. Castell Hopkins, his contention against "being called upon
to raise troops and to pay money without having any right of
representation in imperial councils," but nothing followed more
serious than the burning of Mr. Tarte in effigy in sundry places. But
criticism soon was overborne by the rush of preparation and the news
from the front.

In some few quarters criticism was directed not so much against the
Canadian government as against the British government for forcing its
hand. Mr. Tarte voiced this plainly: "It is all very well to say that
the people of Canada or of other colonies have made this time a
voluntary offer. In point of fact the Secretary of State for the
Colonies has sent a circular to all the colonies, the meaning of which
is an invitation to send troops." Lord Minto resented this charge,
virtuously, because technically no demand had been made; uneasily,
because beyond question in fact pressure had been put: "I have always
carefully explained to you," he now wrote Sir Wilfrid in a delightful
phrase, "that any offer from Canada must be spontaneous." There did
not appear to be much ground for complaint. Mr. Chamberlain was only
doing his duty as he saw it in trying to commit the colonies
permanently to the support of British policy and British arms. If any
Canadians had doubts whether that was well for Canada, it was for them
to show the same energy and the same single eye to their own country's
interests. "Mr. Chamberlain and others," declared a clear-sighted
contemporary, "are not academical imperialists, but rather practical
men, who use means as well as frame policies. . . . English
imperialists have been working for years to bring about imperial
co-operation in defence; they did not stop working just when they had
the chance to accomplish something signal."[16] No pressure from Mr.
Chamberlain or from Lord Minto would have had any effect had not
Canadian sentiment met them half-way. With some reason, they
considered that they were merely providing an opportunity for the
practical expression of a sentiment and a purpose deeply rooted and
often proclaimed.

[Footnote 16: W. Sanford Evans, "The Canadian Contingents and Canadian
Imperialism," 1901, p. 60.]

Once the decision was made, no time was lost in recruiting and
despatching, on October 30, a battalion of some 1,150, all ranks,
under Lieutenant-Colonel Otter. In accordance with public opinion,
which was strongly shared by the governor-general and the Minister of
Militia, it was arranged, after consultation with the War Office, that
the Canadian troops should form a permanent unit, instead of being
attached to various British regiments. A week after it had sailed,
the government offered a second contingent: the success of the Boers
in forcing the fighting on British territory, the evidence of their
skill in marksmanship and entrenching, made it clear the war was to be
a serious affair and hardened the determination to see it through. Not
until the "black week" of mid-December, when Gatacre was ambushed at
Stromberg and Methuen's men mowed down at Magersfontein and Buller
repulsed at Tugela River, was the offer accepted: the second
contingent consisted of four squadrons of mounted troops and three
batteries of artillery. With a gesture worthy of a feudal seigneur or
a railway magnate, Lord Strathcona bore the cost of raising the six
hundred mounted rifles known as Strathcona's Horse; other forces,
mounted rifles and constabulary recruits, were enlisted through the
Department of Militia but at the cost of the British government. All
told, some 7,300 Canadians sailed to South Africa, of whom one-third
were in the official contingents. In addition, the government raised a
battalion to garrison Halifax and relieve the Leinsters for active
service. The total direct outlay of the Dominion was some $2,800,000.
The contingents were enlisted for a year; once the back of the Boer
resistance seemed broken, the men were unwilling to prolong their
service.

The Canadian people shared with their British kinsmen the weeks of
doubt and dazed surprise that followed Boer victory and British
surrenders, the new hope that came with the sending of Lord Roberts
and Lord Kitchener to take command, the relief that greeted the
raising of the siege of Kimberley and Ladysmith and Mafeking, and the
wild delirium that marked the capture of Pretoria. They had their
special pride and their special sorrow: pride in the showing their men
made in many a skirmish from Sunnyside to Mafeking and Hart's River,
and particularly in the post of honour Canadians held in the capture
of Cronje at Paardeberg, the turning point of the war, and sorrow in
the lists of casualties that were the price of victory. Perhaps the
politic compliments of English statesmen, the kindly references of
Lord Roberts, and the warm eulogies of Canadian correspondents--who
proved themselves as efficient as their fighting kin--tended to put
their achievement somewhat out of perspective. Anticipating a day when
rles would be reversed, American observers asserted that Canada
seemed to think she had won the war: "'Are the Canadians present?'
asks Lord Roberts before every battle. 'Then let the advance begin,'"
was the summary of a Buffalo paragrapher. But if there was warm pride
and intense interest, there was little boasting.

The Canadian government had no share in the direction of the war. It
did not shape policy; it did not control strategy. Its work ended when
the contingents were landed in Cape Town. Canada's rle was distinctly
that of supporting the mother country. The Conservatives who attacked
the government for not doing more did not suggest any share in policy
but merely an undertaking to repay the full cost of the Canadian
contingents. Incidentally this meant that Canada had little direct
share in the controversies which soon were waging in the country where
the responsibility did lie, the charges of blundering incompetency and
the counter charges of treason, the recriminations over concentration
camps and "methods of barbarism," the disputes as to the terms of
peace. In Canada the discussion over the war was more limited in range
but more fundamental in character. The question of Canada's external
policy, of her place in the Empire, had now been raised by a concrete
issue, and in parliament and in the general elections which followed
debate was vigorous if not always to the point.

When parliament met in February for its fifth session, each party was
preparing its fighting ground for the coming contest. The session was
long-drawn-out and bitterly personal and partisan. The only new
legislation of importance was the budget measure increasing the
preference on British goods from 25 per cent. to 33-1/3 per cent.,
with Conservative attacks upon the government for not demanding from
Britain a preference in return. The war overshadowed all other issues.
The government was attacked for doing too little and for doing too
much. Israel Tarte faced almost daily assaults because of his own
utterances and "La Patrie's" editorials. Echoes of student riots or
newspaper controversies were reflected in discussions in the House
which frequently rose to fever heat. For a quarter-hour, despite the
speaker's efforts, Messrs. Foster, Wallace, and McMullen experimented
in how often one could call one's opponent "liar" and "blackguard"
without infringing the niceties of parliamentary debate. Sir Wilfrid
himself was stung into condemnation of the "vile sheets," the "reptile
press" that were traducing him. All in all, it was an interesting
proof of how war, in Mr. Foster's phrase, "lifted the country to a
higher plane with broader ideals and a renovated life."

Sir Charles Tupper attacked the government, and Sir Wilfrid in
particular, for doing too little and doing that little late. It had
done nothing until forced by the public opinion it had tried and
failed to form; it had been niggardly when at last it had acted; out
of the fulness of its prosperity Canada could afford to take the
honourable, the self-respecting course, and meet the full cost of her
contingents. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, one of Sir Charles' lieutenants
added, "had been first in the Jubilee parades, and last in the test of
action."

In reply, Sir Wilfrid showed conclusively that the same financial
policy, in accordance with the request of the British government, had
been followed by all the colonies. Instead of defending Tarte he
attacked Tupper, quoting his strong condemnation of imperial
federation and imperial war outlays before this present sharp curve.
No time had been lost, once the die was cast. Sir Charles had called
him lukewarm:

      Sir, I have no hesitation in admitting that I was not
      enthusiastic for that war or for any war. I have no
      sympathy for that mad, noisy, dull-witted and
      short-sighted throng who clamour for war, who shouted
      "On to Pretoria," who complacently prophesied that
      General Buller would eat his Christmas dinner in the
      capital of the Transvaal. War is the greatest calamity
      that can befall a nation.

He was not prepared to go to war automatically. Canada was ready to
aid Britain in any life-and-death struggle, but not in every secondary
war:

      Whilst I cannot admit that Canada should take part in
      all the wars of Great Britain, neither am I prepared
      to say that she should not take part in any war at all
      . . . I claim for Canada this, that in future she
      shall be at liberty to act or not act, to interfere or
      not interfere, to do just as she pleases.

While the war might perhaps have postponed or made impossible the one
solution which he believed would solve South Africa's
problems,--confederation,--he still hoped that after the war,
confederation of all the English and Dutch communities would come.

It was nearly six weeks later when Mr. Bourassa made the main attack
from the other base. In these weeks temper had been rising both in the
House and out; the student riots in Montreal, though exaggerated by
rumour, had been serious enough to reveal the abyss of racial passion
toward which the country was drifting. The tenseness of feeling and
prevailing hostility did not prevent Mr. Bourassa from making fully
and coolly an analysis of Canada's position, in a brilliant, closely
reasoned, provocative speech. Canada was threatened with ceaseless
wars and unbearable burdens; her farmers and workmen would one day be
crushed like the peasantry and workmen of Europe. Why had Canada taken
part in this war? Because it was just? Let British Liberals answer.
Because it was necessary? Necessary to aid forty million people to
crush four hundred thousand? Because public opinion demanded? Every
French-Canadian newspaper, Rouge and Bleu, had been opposed; was
parliament to abdicate in favour of yellow journals? The action of
other British colonies? Their action had been misrepresented; the
cable news had been manipulated to make it appear they had all eagerly
offered men; it took months for the mails to reveal that in several
Australasian parliaments action had been closely fought and in one
case carried only by the Speaker's vote. It was said no precedent had
been created: "the accomplished fact is the precedent," as Mr.
Chamberlain had made clear in his "insolent reply" to the order in
council.

In reply, Sir Wilfrid, after citing some rather dubious precedents for
action without parliamentary sanction, rested the case on the demand
of public opinion: "Public opinion has many ways of expressing itself.
There is not only the press, there is what is heard in the street and
in private conversation, and what one can feel in the air." But Mr.
Bourassa had considered it weak to be guided by public opinion; true,
"if public opinion were to ask something against one's honour or one's
sense of right or one's sense of dignity"; not so, if it demands what
is right and honourable. He differed with Mr. Bourassa as to the right
of the war; England never had fought in a more just cause; Kruger's
refusal of the franchise was intolerable. They had not been forced to
act by Downing Street: "What we did we did of our own free will. . .
. My honourable friend says the consequence will be that we shall be
called upon to take part in other wars. I have only this to answer,
that if it should be the will of the people of Canada at any future
period to take part in any war of England, the people of Canada will
have to have their own way." He agreed with Mr. Bourassa that if it
were to be admitted that Canada should take part in all Britain's
wars, it would be necessary to make new constitutional terms; they
would have to say to Britain, "If you want us to help you, call us to
your councils." But that contingency had not arisen.

The heart of Sir Wilfrid's defence of his action lay in his reference
to the threatened cleavage of race:

      I put this question to my honourable friend. What
      would be the condition of this country to-day if we
      had refused to obey the voice of public opinion? It is
      only too true that if we had refused our imperative
      duty, the most dangerous agitation would have arisen,
      an agitation which, according to all human
      probability, would have ended in a cleavage in the
      population of this country upon racial lines. A
      greater calamity could never take place in Canada. My
      honourable friend knows as well as any man in this
      House that if there is anything to which I have given
      my political life, it is to try to promote unity,
      harmony and amity between the diverse elements of this
      country.

In the same spirit, but positive rather than negative, was his closing
appeal:

      My honourable friend reads the consequences of this
      action in sending out a military contingent to South
      Africa. Let me tell you from the bottom of my heart
      that my heart is full of the hopes I entertain of the
      beneficial results which will accrue from that
      action. When our young volunteers sailed from our
      shores to join the British army in South Africa, great
      were our expectations that they would display on those
      distant battle-fields the same courage which had been
      displayed by their fathers when fighting against one
      another in the last century. Again, in many breasts
      there was a fugitive sense of uneasiness at the
      thought that the first facing of musketry by raw
      recruits is always a severe trial. But when the
      telegraph brought us the news that such was the good
      impression made by our volunteers that the
      Commander-in-Chief had placed them in the post of
      honour, in the first rank, to share the danger with
      that famous corps, the Gordon Highlanders; when we
      heard that they had justified fully the confidence
      placed in them, that they had charged like veterans,
      that their conduct was heroic and had won for them the
      encomiums of the Commander-in-Chief and the unstinted
      admiration of their comrades, who had faced death upon
      a hundred battle-fields in all parts of the world--is
      there a man whose bosom did not swell with pride--the
      pride of pure patriotism, the pride of consciousness
      of our rising strength, the pride of consciousness
      that that day it had been revealed to the world that a
      new power had arisen in the West?

      Nor is that all. The work of union and harmony between
      the chief races of this country is not yet complete.
      We know by the unfortunate occurrences that took place
      only last week that there is much to do in that way.
      But there is no bond of union so strong as the bond
      created by common dangers faced in common. To-day
      there are men in South Africa representing the two
      branches of the Canadian family, fighting side by side
      for the honour of Canada. Already some of them have
      fallen, giving to their country the last full measure
      of devotion. Their remains have been laid in the same
      grave, there to rest to the end of time in that last
      fraternal embrace. Can we not hope--I ask my
      honourable friend himself--that in that grave shall be
      buried the last vestiges of our former antagonism? If
      such shall be the result, if we can indulge that
      hope, if we can believe that in that grave shall be
      buried the former contentions, the sending of the
      contingents would be the greatest service ever
      rendered to Canada since Confederation.

Nine Quebec members, five Liberal and four Conservative, supported Mr.
Bourassa.

Sir Wilfrid had refused to commit himself to any permanent policy or
doctrinaire position. The debates had developed three distinct
attitudes toward the Empire among his compatriots. There were those,
like the distinguished Bleu veteran, T. C. Casgrain, who were grateful
for British protection and for the liberties accorded Roman Catholics,
and were prepared to continue the colonial connection indefinitely,
giving moderate aid when Britain desired. There were those, like
Dominique Monet, who looked forward to clear-cut independence, and
wanted neither colonial passivity nor imperial entanglements. There
were those, like Mr. Tarte, who still looked forward to some form of
political imperial federation, but opposed in the meantime any support
of military policies they had no responsibility for shaping. To none
of these positions did Sir Wilfrid commit himself; only one situation
could be met at a time; in every situation, how best to conserve
Canadian unity must be the determining motive.

A year later, Mr. Bourassa returned to the fray, and once more gave
Sir Wilfrid occasion to set out his own views more comprehensively
than in the day-to-day discussion. On March 12, 1901, Mr. Bourassa
moved a resolution in the House requesting His Majesty's government to
conclude an honourable peace in South Africa on a basis of
independence, and declaring against any further despatch of
contingents from Canada. It was not, he declared, solely for the
British government to advise His Majesty, particularly when Canadian
blood and money had been spent in a war not of our making. The
Chamberlains of to-day, seeking power and profit out of aggression,
had little in common with the men of the past who had made England
great. Quebec had been and still was a unit against the war, and
elsewhere in Canada the wave of jingoism was receding. It was time for
Canada to make her position clear. In reply, Sir Wilfrid noted with
surprise that the man who had been opposed to sending troops was so
ready to send advice. It was unnecessary to discuss the question of
sending further troops, for the war was over, except for guerilla
efforts. As to the proposal to restore the two republics to
independence, that was now too late: "These men [Kruger and Steyn]
appealed to the God of battles, and the God of battles has pronounced
against them. They invaded British territory, their territory was
invaded in turn, and it was annexed to the British domain in
consequence of the terrible logic of war." He went on to review the
Boer policy, condemning the merciless taxation and the refusal of
franchise privileges in the Transvaal. Not Chamberlain but Kruger was
responsible for the war. To his mind the strongest evidence of that
crucial fact was the criticism of the Boer policy contained in the
published letters of Sir Henry de Villiers, Chief Justice of Cape
Colony, to President Steyn.[17] He concluded:

      The problem of South Africa is this,--that you have in
      that country two races, so linked and so intermingled
      that it is not possible to separate them. These two
      races must be governed by the same power and the same
      authority, and that power has either to be the power
      of England or the power of the Dutch. It has either to
      be the liberal and enlightened civilization of England
      to-day or the old bigoted and narrow civilization of
      the Dutch of two hundred years ago. Let Mr. Bourassa
      forget for a moment that he and I are British
      subjects, and in the name of civilization, in the name
      of humanity, I ask him, which is the power to govern
      in that distant land? . . . There is but one future
      for the Dutch. They have been conquered, but I pledge
      my reputation and my name as a British subject that if
      they have lost their independence they have not lost
      their freedom. There is but one future for South
      Africa, and that future is a grand confederation on
      the pattern of the Canadian confederation. It is a
      federation in which Cape Colony and Natal and the
      Orange Free State and the Transvaal and Rhodesia shall
      be united together under a federal constititution,
      under the British flag, and under the sovereignty of
      England. Mr. Bourassa will agree with me that when
      they have the British flag over South Africa they
      shall have that which has been found everywhere during
      the last sixty years under the British flag--liberty
      for all, equality for all, justice and civil rights
      for English and for Dutch alike. For these reasons I
      have to ask the House that they shall not agree to
      this motion but shall vote it down.

[Footnote 17: Sir Wilfrid, in the early stages of the conflict, had
been influenced in his opposition to Kruger's position by the
knowledge that Chief Justice de Villiers, whom he had met and come to
regard very highly in London during the Jubilee, was a strong critic
of Kruger's conservatism and had publicly and privately--as
intercepted letters afterward showed--urged the Boers to yield to the
British demands. He was, therefore, the more impressed, as was Lord
Minto, by letters of the Chief Justice giving another angle:

13 May, 1901.

     ". . . I quite agree with you that President Kruger
     ought to have displayed more liberality toward the
     newcomers but I fear that the exaggerated and distorted
     accounts which have been sent over of Boer oppression
     have affected your judgment in the same way as they
     have affected the judgment of the great majority of the
     British people. 'The policy,' you say, 'of admitting
     settlers simply to make helots of them, is
     intolerable.' I have traveled a good deal over the
     world and have nowhere seen a more flourishing people
     than these so-called 'helots' were before the war. They
     looked with utter contempt upon the President and his
     people, and I quite agree with Lionel Philips that the
     great majority of them did not 'care a fig' for the
     franchise. Be that as it may, the President did induce
     the _Volkerand_ to pass a law conferring the franchise
     on outlanders after seven years' residence. That law
     was somewhat clogged by undesirable conditions, but
     before the negotiations were closed the President
     consented to a proposal which had been made by Mr.
     Chamberlain himself that the law should be submitted to
     a joint commission for amendment. The answer he
     received was that the offer now came too late and that
     the British government would formulate their own
     demands. Meanwhile troops were being moved from all
     directions toward the Transvaal. Thirteen eventful days
     passed during which both Presidents implored of the
     British government to state their demands for
     consideration. No answer came and in a fit of frenzy,
     which I for my part would not wish to excuse, Kruger
     issued his arrogant ultimatum. But can any one doubt
     that the issue was forced upon the Transvaal
     government? The information before them was such as to
     convince them that their independence was aimed at.
     Chamberlain of course did not wish for war if he could
     attain his objects without war, but those objects were
     utterly inconsistent with the continued independence of
     the state. No British Colony enjoying responsible
     government would have borne with the interference with
     its internal affairs to which this nominally
     independent state was being subjected. The negotiations
     should be read by the light of the historical events
     which preceded them and if so read I cannot understand
     how any impartial person, with any sense of justice or
     fairness, can support Chamberlain's action. The chief
     argument that I now find adduced on the British side is
     that the unpreparedness of Great Britain shows how
     little its rulers wished for war. The real fact,
     however, is that the government believed itself to be
     prepared and never expected that it would require more
     than 20 or 30 thousand men to promenade to Pretoria and
     reduce the Boers to subjection. Believe me, dear Sir
     Wilfrid, that a supreme tragedy is being enacted in
     South Africa. The British people, who deplored the fate
     of Dreyfus, are unjustly accusing and punishing a whole
     people. Their minds have been poisoned by a venal press
     and by lies which have been sown broadcast over the
     land at the bidding of a capitalist clique which owes
     all its wealth to the liberal gold-mining laws of the
     republic. Up to the commencement of the war Her Majesty
     had no more loyal or law-abiding subjects than the
     Dutch of the Cape but their sense of loyalty and of
     affection for the Empire has been completely destroyed
     by the unjust attack upon the liberties of a
     neighbouring people to whom they are related by the
     closest ties of kinship. The abuse heaped upon the
     Dutch since the war by the English press has tended
     still further to alienate them. . . .

     "You suggest in your letter that I should try to
     influence the leaders of the republics to put an end to
     a needless war. Even if I were in South Africa there
     would of course be no means of communicating with the
     enemy. Knowing, myself, the benefits of British rule, I
     should be very glad if I could induce the Boers to
     submit and cordially accept such rule. But with these
     people the preservation of their independence is a
     sacred mission. It may be a foolish sentiment but I
     cannot help respecting it. To us it may seem foolish
     and indeed wicked to prolong a war which can have only
     one issue, but to them submission, especially after the
     declarations of the British government, probably
     appears to be nothing short of a crime."]

The resolution was defeated by a vote of 144 to 3.

Before this second debate, the general elections, in which the war was
fought over at the polls, had been held in November, 1900. Canada's
prosperity, the question of a free or a bargained British preference,
the administrative record of the government, were all in debate, but
in Ontario and Quebec the war issue was dominant. The campaign was
intensely personal. The apparent victory of British arms had eased the
tension somewhat, but racial appeals were still temptingly easy.
Undoubtedly English-speaking extremists had been responsible at first
for the rise of racial bitterness, greeting wholly legitimate
arguments on the merits of the war and Canada's participation with
shouts of disloyalty and threats, in the words of the Toronto "News,"
that British Canadians would find means, through the ballot-box or
otherwise of "emancipating themselves from the dominance of an
inferior people that peculiar circumstances have placed in authority
in the Dominion." But Quebec extremists also had their share of
responsibility, picturing all Ontario as made up of such fanatics, and
urging French-Canadians to stand solidly behind a French and Catholic
premier. A curious twist in the campaign came with Sir Charles
Tupper's endeavour to prove to Quebec that Sir Wilfrid was the real
imperialist, and that he himself had chief credit for smashing the
Imperial Federation League. "Sir Wilfrid Laurier is too English for
me," Tupper declared in a speech at Quebec. While it was true that a
strong nationalist, such as Sir Charles was, might with some
consistency oppose imperial centralization and at the same time urge
an active part in an imperial war as an evidence of growth to the
responsibilities of nationhood, yet the double attack and the appeal
to the prejudices of both sections was a hard position to defend to
fair-minded men.

During the session a severe illness of Mr. Tarte had made it
impossible for him to carry on his duties; to secure a change of
climate and lighter work he undertook to act as Canadian commissioner
at the Paris Exposition of 1900. Yet not even with the ocean
intervening could Israel Tarte keep out of politics and of trouble;
speeches in Paris, which grew by the time they reached Canada, roused
Ontario by their criticism of British policy and Quebec by their
advocacy of imperial federation. In correspondence with him Sir
Wilfrid reflected the campaign:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Israel Tarte.--Translation_)

      Ottawa, April 6, 1900

      My Dear Tarte:

      . . . Here things are going well. Fielding's budget
      speech, as you may have gathered from the echoes which
      reached you, was a very great success. The financial
      situation is excellent, and it was presented with the
      clearness and the nervous force which characterize
      Fielding. The Opposition do not know which foot to put
      forward, and are trying to make protection and the
      preferential tariff march abreast. It is a task too
      great for them and too great for anybody else.

      I am sending you the speech that Sir Charles Tupper
      made at Quebec, with the obvious purpose of catching
      our province. You will see that the outstanding
      feature of the new programme is to identify us, at any
      cost, with imperial federation. I cabled you yesterday
      on this subject, and you will understand better now
      the purpose of my cable. Imperial federation, at the
      present time, is not a practical question, and there
      is no use in our playing our adversaries' game. All
      that we have to do is to set things precisely as they
      are before the public of our province and to see that
      the attention of the electorate is not turned from
      serious things to be affrighted by chimeras. . . .

In referring to incorrect interviews in "Le Matin," and the Montreal
"Star's" inaccurate translation of what he had really said to "Le
Journal"--opinions "which are true and are not impolitic"--Mr. Tarte
showed himself gifted with prophecy, or perhaps only a good memory:

      Bear in mind that I am not complaining of anything. I
      have been in journalism too long to be hurt. Only, it
      is annoying for me to think that perhaps the Liberal
      party is being hurt by all these attacks directed
      against me. And yet, how great a man I would become,
      in the Tory press, if I were to leave your cabinet
      to-morrow!

Sir Wilfrid replies:

(_Translation_)

      Ottawa, April 30, 1900 . . . A word now as to the
      evolution that Tupper is trying to go through in the
      province of Quebec. It is not being done at all in the
      way you assume. The campaign in Quebec is not against
      military imperialism but against parliamentary
      imperialism. Many of your speeches and a few of mine
      are the fodder they are throwing to our province. I do
      not, however, believe that the movement will be
      serious; so far, it is not. It may produce a certain
      alarm, but the position in which Tupper has placed
      himself is a false one. It has been very well analyzed
      by Tardivel in "La Verit." Tardivel does not love us;
      me especially he handles without gloves, but he makes
      very clear the distinction that exists between what he
      calls parliamentary imperialism, which, for that
      matter, he declares impossible, unrealizable, and the
      military imperialism of Tupper, which he regards as a
      reality.

      . . . Nothing is more dangerous, in my opinion, than
      the reporters. They take a thought on the wing and
      develop it in the direction of their own opinion. I
      fancy that something of the kind is what happened with
      you and the "Le Matin" reporter.

(_Israel Tarte to Wilfrid Laurier.--Translation_)

      Paris, May 7, 1900

      My Dear Sir Wilfrid:

      Although I have enough here to keep me busy, I will
      not conceal from you the fact that I am beginning to
      be bored. Either one is in politics or one isn't; that
      becomes more and more clear to me. If I were to leave
      the cabinet to-morrow, my interest would turn in other
      directions. But so long as I am a minister, I shall
      worry about my department and my party whenever I am
      not in the thick of the fight.

      Sir Charles Tupper's _volte-face_ has completed his
      discredit in London. Your government is very popular
      in England, but less so on the Continent, and
      especially in France. At a reception the other day at
      the Department of Commerce, M. Delcass accosted me
      with the remark: "Ah, you have been giving a
      preference of 33% to England." I replied that we are
      very rich, and that we are always pleased to grant
      favours to countries that admit our products free.

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Israel Tarte.--Translation_)

     Ottawa, May 20, 1900 The session is now distinctly in
     our favour. The Opposition played a last card on the
     unfortunate West Huron and Brockville affairs [charges
     of by-election corrupt practices]. We have got around
     the difficulty by granting a commission which will not
     merely concern itself with Brockville and with West
     Huron, that is to say with our peccadillos, but will
     look into the peccadillos of our adversaries. They will
     inquire into all the affairs of this kind whether on
     the Conservative or on the Liberal side, which have
     adorned the political history of Ontario for some years
     past. Our policy on the matter was a surprise to the
     Opposition; I believe it was a happy inspiration. I
     expect that a few of our friends, fortunately not in
     high places, will be more or less sprayed, but our
     adversaries should suffer more than we as the result of
     the inquiry. However that may be, the system in vogue
     in Ontario is deplorable; it must be ended. For my
     part, I am ready to put an end to it, even if that
     involves exposing ourselves to blows. That is the only
     honourable means of extricating ourselves from a
     deplorable situation in which we have been involved by
     contemptible jobbers.

Despite the vigorous Opposition assault, the elections resulted in a
distinct gain for the government. In Ontario it lost fourteen seats;
the larger cities and the constituencies in which in 1896 the strong
Protestant vote had gone against the Tupper cabinet, now swung back.
Quebec, largely for the reverse of the reasons that brought loss in
Ontario, voted nearly solidly Liberal, the Conservatives retaining
only seven seats out of sixty-five. The Maritime provinces were not
carried away by racial cries as much as either of the larger
provinces,--"Imperialism is a local issue," one Maritime politician
had parodied--and the West, thankful for the new prosperity, went
strongly government. Sir Charles Tupper, Mr. Foster, and Hugh John
Macdonald, who had given up his Manitoba premiership to aid them, were
all defeated. The government was given a new lease of life.




CHAPTER XII

THE UNITED STATES: 1896-1903

     Colony and Republic--A policy of Friendship--The
     Dingley Tariff--The Joint High Commission--Success and
     Failure--The Alaska Boundary--Negotiations for
     Settlement--Arbitration and Arbitrators--A Diplomatic
     Decision--Canadian Protests--Laurier and the
     Treaty-Making Power.


In the Laurier government's early years, as in its last years, the
relations of Canada with the United States were a constant
preoccupation. They presented a double difficulty. One was the
question of status,--the question how far, if at all, a colony could
have dealings with a foreign country. The other was the difficulty of
the specific issues, the boundary controversies which from time to
time threatened the peace of the continent.

The question of status complicated every issue. The course of
transition from colony to nation was slow and uneven, and the control
of foreign affairs was its last stage. In its participation in the
South African War, Canada had made its first venture into overseas
foreign affairs. With its own continent, its relations were of much
longer and more intimate standing, so much so that many Canadians then
as later failed to recognize in these familiar line-fence disputes
with its neighbour the very controversies which were the staple of
diplomacy in older lands. Canada, it was held, had no voice in
foreign affairs: foreign affairs meant the pomp and circumstance of
formal diplomacy, the gold and lace of ambassadors, bristling cannon
along the border. There was a measure of justification in this failure
to see that Canada was in fact dealing every day with "foreign
affairs," since her political intercourse with the United States was
for the most part indirect, filtered through British agencies. Miss
Ottawa had a voice, but etiquette forbade her speaking to Mr.
Washington except through Papa London. Yet slowly this convention was
giving way. Canadian representatives had come to share in British
negotiations with the United States on Canadian issues, first as
subordinate purveyors of information, later as full if minority
plenipotentiaries of the Crown. Sir Charles Tupper's masterful
insistence had even threatened to short-circuit the triangular
intercourse, Ottawa-London-Washington. Now a further advance was to be
effected.

The specific issues which faced the Laurier government in its
relations with the United States were many. Along a three-thousand-mile
boundary there was ample room for differences. In the mood that had
marked public opinion during the years that had passed, the assured
self-sufficiency of the United States, the indifference of Great
Britain, the petulant suspicion of Canada,--these differences had
hardened into antagonisms. Not a single old issue had been finally
settled, and new ones were constantly rising. The question of the
rights of United States fishermen in Canada's Atlantic waters had
been met in 1888 by a modus vivendi, but the Canadian fishermen still
sought a permanent settlement on the basis of free fishing for free
fish. The rights of Canadian sealers in Bering Sea had been upheld by
a court of arbitration in 1893, but the five-year experiment in
restricted pelagic sealing then effected was drawing near its close
and chaos loomed again. The reciprocal privilege of transporting goods
across the frontier in bond to seaport, or to another part of the
country of origin, rested on no firm treaty basis. The desire of
United States ship-building plants on the Great Lakes to share in
building the new navy had led to demands for revising the Rush-Bagot
gentleman's agreement of 1817, limiting armament in boundary waters.
The congressmen who had enacted, and the De Barrys who had
administered, the Alien Labour Law barring the incoming of workmen
under contract had created in Canada a demand for repeal or
retaliation. The discovery of gold in the Klondike was soon to give
new urgency to the settlement of the last undetermined boundary, along
the panhandle strip of Alaska through which Canada had to seek access
to its own hinterland. Liberal policy in the past and threatening
United States developments in the present, gave a new angle to the
eternal trade and tariff issue. All told, no lack of difficulties, or
opportunities.

The temper of the time was unfortunately not favourable for a frank
and friendly settlement. In the United States, the unrecking,
provincial assurance of a people unprecedentedly successful,
isolated, flag-worshipping, the anti-British twist which history and
the Irish vote had naturally given its diplomacy, and the division of
treaty-making power between the Executive and the Senate, made
negotiation thorny and ratification a gamble. As to trade, the irony
of fate was bringing the Democratic low-tariff rgime to an end just
when the Liberal low-tariff regime was beginning; the new President,
William McKinley, was the chief apostle of high protection, and a
swinging tariff had been the foremost Republican campaign plank. In
Canada, public opinion was little more auspicious. All the old
anti-Americanism born of U. E. L. and 1812 traditions and of uneasy
jealousy of its neighbour's worldly prosperity had flamed into new
fire. The McKinley tariff, with its prohibitive rates upon Canadian
farm products, had roused antagonism, but it was the Venezuela
episode, Olney's "the fiat of the United States is law," and "any
permanent union between a European and an American state unnatural and
inexpedient," and Cleveland's ultimatum,--and that in spite of, or
because of, the certainty that if war came Canada would be the
battle-field, that hardened Canadian opinion. The opening of the
British market for Canadian dairy and bacon products and the new
prosperity that followed the development of the West were giving an
assurance and self-reliance which made it possible for Canada to be
haughty in her turn.

The cabinet shared in some degree this attitude of resentment and
growing indifference, but its leading members were strongly convinced
of the need of clearing away all possible sources of friction. Sir
Richard Cartwright was especially insistent. For many years he had
given to international affairs more study than any other member of the
House. He had been able to rise above the prejudices of the moment and
had become one of the earliest and most persistent advocates of an
alliance of all the English-speaking peoples as the soundest basis for
the peace of the world. To Mr. Laurier this ideal did not make so
strong a sentimental appeal, and its achievement seemed to him beyond
the range of practical politics in his generation, but he was equally
determined to make every effort consistent with the country's
interests and its honour to end the era of pin-pricks and
misunderstanding. At one of the first meetings of the cabinet he had
declared that the establishment of close and friendly relations with
the United States must be a cardinal feature of Canadian policy, and
that whatever the United States authorities might do, the Canadian
government must not cater to prejudices. As a means to this end, he
insisted that Canada must more and more take negotiations with
Washington into her own hands. In London in 1897 he made this clear to
Mr. Chamberlain, who acquiesced.

From the point of view of the Canadian government, the question of
trade policy required first consideration. The presidential elections
of November, 1896, had made it clear that Washington would be strongly
protectionist, but it was desirable to learn the extent and details of
the pending tariff changes. There was no Canadian minister at
Washington, and it was not desirable to invoke the aid of the British
minister, Sir Julian Pauncefote, until a more formal stage in any
possible negotiations should be reached. At this juncture, Mr. John
Charlton, who had been born in the United States and still had close
business relations across the border, offered his services to visit
Washington and sound Mr. Dingley, the chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee, and other friends in Congress. Mr. Laurier agreed,
impressing the need of making it clear that he had no official
standing, a warning which it was soon necessary to emphasize:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to John Charlton_)

      Ottawa, January 18, 1897

      My Dear Charlton:

      There is a report current in all the newspapers that
      you have been sent to Washington on an official
      mission. I depend on you to contradict this report
      yourself. In the correspondence exchanged between us,
      you remember that you told me that it was absolutely
      useless to send anybody on an official mission to
      Washington until the new Administration had been
      installed in office. This seemed to me perfectly
      reasonable, and my colleagues shared in the same
      opinion. But while it was inadvisable to send a
      Commission to Washington, it is quite proper that as
      many prominent Canadians as possible should visit
      Washington and come in touch with the leaders of the
      Republic. In that connection it is therefore quite
      advisable that you should go, but I wish you would be
      careful to let it be known that you came simply as a
      citizen of Canada, and in no other capacity. I wish
      also that you would utilize your stay there to obtain
      information and for nothing else....

      We must hold our hands free to deal in any direction
      which the interests of Canada may demand, and whilst
      for my part I am strongly impressed with the view
      that our relations with our neighbours should be
      friendly, at the same time I am equally strong in the
      opinion that we may have to take the American
      tariff--if conceived in hostility to Canada--and make
      it the Canadian tariff.

Mr. Charlton, after a conference with Sir Julian Pauncefote,
interviewed official Washington. The retiring Secretary of State,
Richard Olney, was very friendly and regretted that the Democratic
administration was not to have the opportunity it would have desired
of framing a reciprocity agreement with Canada. Mr. Sherman, who was
to be the new secretary, was equally friendly but more vague.[18] It
was soon apparent that the high protectionists were in the saddle. The
Dingley tariff, passed during the special session in the spring and
summer of 1897, proved to be the most extreme measure in American
annals, out-McKinleying even the McKinley tariff. It was therefore not
surprising that the first Liberal budget, instead of proposing
reciprocity with the United States as would have been the policy of a
Liberal government five years earlier, made the preference to British
and low-tariff countries its central feature.

[Footnote 18: Mr. Charlton found Mr. Edward Farrer also in Washington
on a mission of inquiry. After observing the need of publicity to
dispel the ignorance of Canadian affairs prevalent in the United
States, he continued. "In this connection I may say that Mr. Edward
Farrer is in a position to render us very important services, and is
doing so at the present time. While it would not be prudent or
judicious in my opinion to associate Farrer publicly with any work in
connection with negotiations, or for you to hold direct public
communication with him to any considerable extent, yet it is well, I
imagine, to let him know that his services are appreciated, and that
the value of the service he is capable of rendering is thoroughly
understood. I find he stands well with newspaper men in Washington,
and is intimately acquainted with the leading newspaper correspondents
in that city. He also has wide acquaintance with American public men,
and I think that he is disposed to use his influence loyally for the
benefit of Canada, and that he has given up the idea of persisting in
the presentation and urging of his political union sentiments."]

The first step toward a more formal discussion of the situation came
from Washington. The five-year restriction on pelagic sealing was
drawing to a close, and the United States government was anxious to
renew and extend the agreement. Mr. Davies, who had discussed the
question with the Foreign and Colonial offices in London during the
summer, and Sir Wilfrid, accompanied by the experts who had been
studying the case, visited Washington in November. Out of the
discussion there emerged a proposal to refer not merely the sealing
but all outstanding questions to a joint commission for settlement.
Four months later, in May, 1898, Mr. Davies, with Sir Julian, met
General Foster and Mr. Kasson of the State Department and drew up a
protocol for the organization and terms of reference of the
commission.

Despite the frankness and courtesy of the welcome given by President
McKinley and the officers of the State Department, Sir Wilfrid was not
sanguine of the outcome. "We have had a warm welcome and some cool
proposals," he wrote a friend in Canada. "I confess," he wrote in
July, "that I have very serious doubts as to any practical results to
be expected from the Commission." Yet these doubts did not lessen the
endeavour to form the strongest possible commission, and to press the
opportunity to the utmost. As representing Her Majesty, Lord
Herschell, the British Lord Chancellor, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir
Richard Cartwright, Mr. Louis Davies and Mr. John Charlton, of Canada,
and Sir James Winter of Newfoundland, were appointed, while Senator
Fairbanks, Senator Gray, and Mr. Dingley, with General Foster, Mr. J.
A. Kasson, and Mr. T. J. Coolidge of the State Department, were named
for the United States. Sir Wilfrid had grave doubts as to the
advisability of taking a personal part in negotiations which might
involve months of absence, but the importance of the issues and his
desire to obtain a first-hand knowledge of Washington men and ways,
guided his decision. It was significant of President McKinley's
friendliness that he had expressed the personal wish that Sir Wilfrid
might find it possible to take part. Significant, also, of the
changing place of Canada in the Empire was the fact that while on the
Joint High Commission of 1871 there had been four British and one
Canadian member--though, it is true, the dominant issue was then a
British one--and in 1887 two British and one Canadian, proportions
were now reversed.

The commission met first in Quebec--another recognition of
equality--from August 23 until October 10, 1898, and later in
Washington, from November 9, 1898, until February 20, 1899. Despite
conflicting duties and the illness and later the death of Mr. Dingley,
it made good progress. The atmosphere at Washington had moderated.
"There is no doubt," Sir Wilfrid wrote in November, "that there is a
new and general good-will observable here." During the Spanish-American
War (April to August, 1898), the United States had suddenly realized
that Continental Europe was not merely in sympathy with Spain but
bitterly and dangerously antagonistic to this audacious and aggressive
republic, and further, that Great Britain was genuinely anxious to be
a friend. After the war, embarked upon a policy of imperialist
expansion, with hostages given to fortune in the Pacific and the
Caribbean, Washington found its old policy of isolation and cheerful
disdain of all foreign powers somewhat harder to maintain. The common
sharing of the White Man's Burden and the common ideals of life and
policy drew the United States and Great Britain closer together, so
the Anglo-Saxon version ran. "The old pirate and the young pirate are
joining forces for moral support," was a Washington diplomat's version
to Sir Wilfrid. Alike in London and in Washington the personal factors
made for friendship; Lord Salisbury and John Hay, who became Secretary
of State in September, 1898, were friends and were both convinced that
Anglo-American friendship was essential for the peace of the world.
Canada, considered as yet merely an adjunct to Britain, shared in the
new favour as it had shared in the disfavour of other days. Even so,
this new friendliness had its limits. The State Department was quite
prepared to take advantage of its friend's greater eagerness to be a
friend. What was more, Congress and the general public had not shifted
as far as the diplomats whose eyes were in the ends of the earth.
Senators were still jealous of their treaty-making powers, and still
suspicious of British wiles. "One dubious consolation," wrote Sir
Wilfrid, "is that if the Senate sometimes irritates us, it irritates
the Secretary of State still more." And again: "I reminded the Senator
[Mr. Fairbanks?] of the Canadian saying that the Senate's power of
ratifying or rejecting treaties which the Executive has negotiated
gives the United States the same advantage as a horse-trader who has
the privilege of going back on his bargain if his wife doesn't like
the nag when she sees it. He replied, 'Why cannot European powers take
a wife?' Perhaps their secrets are not such as may safely be risked to
a wife."

[Illustration: Rodolphe Lemieux

Sir Clifford Sifton

Sir Frederick Borden

David Mills

Sydney Fisher

Sir Richard Scott

Sir Charles Fitzpatrick

William Templeman

Hon. M. E. Bernier

GROUP OF MINISTERS]

The relations of the members of the commission were frank and
friendly. Sir Wilfrid found his United States colleagues
straightforward if stiff negotiators. Mr. Dingley, who had been
somewhat of a bogey, he found to be honestly anxious for an equitable
settlement. His chief complaint was that they were tied and hampered
by local interests: "The Commission is bounded on the east by
Gloucester cod and on the west by Indiana lambs, no, sometimes on the
west by Seattle lions." It may be recalled that Mr. Hay, considering
Canada merely a local subdivision in the British Empire, had somewhat
the same complaint of localism to make of Sir Wilfrid.[19] One
comforting feature was the ability and zeal displayed by Lord
Herschell in advancing Canadian interests. His activity drew from Mr.
Hay petulant complaints to London and from Sir Wilfrid warm testimony
in private and in public: "He was not only a great judge, he was not
only a great statesman, he was not only a clever diplomat, but he was
as true a friend of Canada as ever crossed the Atlantic. ... He fought
for Canada not only with enthusiasm but with conviction and
devotion."[20] When, at the close of the negotiations, Lord Herschell
met with an accident in Washington which resulted shortly in his
death, his fellow commissioners felt the loss as a personal blow.

[Footnote 19: To Joseph A. Choate, April 28, 1899: "You are by this
time probably aware of the great difficulties that surround the
arrangement of any controversy in which Canada is concerned. The
Dominion politicians care little for English interests. Their minds
are completely occupied with their own party and factional disputes,
and Sir Wilfrid Laurier is far more afraid of Sir Charles Tupper than
he is of Lord Salisbury and President McKinley combined; while the
habit of referring everything from the Foreign Office to the Colonial,
followed by a consultation of the Canadian authorities by the Minister
of the Colonies, produces interminable friction and delay." W. R.
Thayer, "The Life and Letters of John Hay," II, 205.]

[Footnote 20: House of Commons, March 31, 1899. The Canadian
Commissioners found one instance of local interests in their own body.
One of the most controverted tariff questions was a long-standing
lumber war, the United States admitting Canadian logs free but taxing
its lumber, Canada replying with an export duty on logs, the United
States rejoining with an extra tax on lumber equal to the export duty.
Then Ontario, in 1897, took a hand, its Liberal government forced in
its growing weakness to accede to the Conservative proposal of
compelling licenses on Crown land timber-limits to manufacture in
Ontario. Mr. Charlton, who had told Sir Wilfrid on his appointment
that they could only do their best, "believing that a Higher Power
will shape events," and who incidentally was a large exporter of logs
from Ontario to Michigan, decided to take a hand himself in shaping
events, carrying on an indiscreet newspaper campaign which led Mr. Hay
to protest that he was making the irreconcilables in his own camp more
irreconcilable, and even seeking, without the knowledge of his
colleagues, to have the British government intervene against the
Ontario law. Sir Wilfrid lost little time in bringing these activities
to an end.]

The extent of the agreement reached may be indicated by two letters,
from Sir Wilfrid to Principal Grant, with whom he was in constant
touch, and from Senator Fairbanks to Sir Wilfrid at a later date:

      Ottawa, 27 February, 1899

      Dear Principal Grant:

      There has been a great deal of misconception as to the
      character of the negotiations at Washington. The
      impression was that we were struggling with might and
      main to obtain a wide measure of reciprocity. The
      reverse is the truth. We struggled to obtain
      reciprocity in lumber, because the condition of things
      in so far as lumber is concerned is acute and may
      become worse. I may say, however, that in this we made
      no progress whatever. We also endeavoured to obtain a
      fair measure of reciprocity in minerals, in which we
      were altogether successful; in quarry products, in
      which we were also quite successful; and in a few
      agricultural products in which we had some partial
      success. On the whole, with reference to the
      reciprocity question, I am quite satisfied with the
      progress which we made, barring the sole article of
      lumber, and we can at any moment make a very fair
      treaty.

      Our chief efforts, however, were directed to three
      subjects: the Atlantic fisheries, the Pacific seal
      fisheries, and the Alaska boundary.

      With regard to the Atlantic fisheries, we made no
      progress whatever. Concerning the Pacific seal
      fisheries, we would have obtained a very valuable
      treaty. Efforts have been made, as you know, to
      discredit our action on this subject as implying a
      surrender of national rights. As to this, the seal
      fishermen are the best judges, and we kept ourselves,
      at every step, in close contact with them. I have no
      hesitation to say that the arrangement that we would
      have made, and with which they were satisfied, would
      have been acceptable to the whole country and would
      have shown that we made no surrender.

      The stumbling-block was the Alaska boundary. In this,
      our American fellow Commissioners were at first and
      almost to the last disposed to come to a reasonable
      compromise. I may tell you confidentially that the
      compromise was that they gave us Pyramid Harbour on
      the Lynn Canal with everything but the official
      sovereignty in name; in other words, the arrangement
      which we had practically concluded was that we should
      have Pyramid Harbour under our jurisdiction, our laws
      and our administration, but that if, at any moment, we
      chose no longer to occupy it, it would revert to the
      United States. This arrangement provoked such a storm
      in the Pacific states that our fellow Commissioners
      withdrew their consent. There was nothing left but to
      arbitrate. We wanted to arbitrate upon the terms of
      the Venezuela treaty. This they would not consent to.
      There was nothing else to do but to stop then and
      there. They offered to go on with the other subjects
      referred to us, but this we declined to do, and
      insisted, before we proceeded with the other articles,
      that they should either settle the boundary question
      by agreement or by reference to arbitration.

      There is the position. But whether we meet again or
      not, I see no reason not to press forward the three
      subjects to which you call my attention [the Pacific
      cable, river and ocean transportation, the
      Newfoundland French shore dispute]. I differ from you
      only on one point. I do not think that Canada should
      share in the compensation to be paid to France for the
      relinquishment of her treaty rights in Newfoundland.
      On this question, I think that the burden ought to be
      taken up by the Imperial government. The first point
      is to get the French to relinquish their treaty
      rights. I rather fear that Chamberlain has not
      facilitated this most desirable object by his recent
      speeches. Those speeches of his have considerably
      rubbed the pride of the French, and perhaps, in
      consequence, for a few years, they may turn a deaf ear
      to any suggestion of a compromise.

      I fully agree with you that the chief problem is the
      problem of transportation, but I go further than you
      do. I do not want to give up the project of the fast
      Atlantic service. We can and ought to have the most
      popular route for tourists. In addition to that, while
      I agree with you that the harbours of Quebec and
      Montreal must be equipped, the one thing on which I
      have now set my heart is winter navigation of the St.
      Lawrence to Quebec. This is a subject which I have had
      in mind for years, and I have been constantly
      investigating it. I am now very near to be absolutely
      satisfied that it is perfectly feasible, and I propose
      to have the experiment made next summer. On the whole,
      you will see that there is very little difference
      between you and me. The present opportunity must not
      be lost, and Canada must undertake an immense step
      forward. It can be done.

      Believe me, dear Principal Grant, with great respect,

      Yours very sincerely,

      Wilfrid Laurier.

(_Senator Fairbanks to Wilfrid Laurier_)

      Indianapolis, July 18, 1901

      ... It may be well briefly to review the progress made
      by the Commission in the determination of the
      questions submitted to it. There were twelve principal
      questions embraced in the protocol of May, 1898. Most
      of them were vexatious and of long standing. Many of
      them had been the source of friction and annoyance to
      the two governments for many years. The Commission
      devoted much time and serious consideration to and
      practically reached conclusions as to most of them. I
      will refer to them briefly in the order of their
      submission:

      1. Bering Sea seal fisheries: substantially solved.

      2. Other fisheries: good promise of ultimate
      adjustment as to coast fisheries; Great Lakes
      regulations substantially agreed upon.

      4 and 5. Bonding privileges: agreement reached except
      as to traffic passing from points in the United States
      through Canada to other points in the United States.

      6. Alien labor laws: agreement reached and articles
      drafted.

      7. Mining rights: agreement reached and articles
      drafted.

      8. Reciprocity in trade: tentative agreement, though
      satisfactory conclusion not probable on many articles,
      chiefly lumber and farm products, on which Canadians
      urged very considerable concessions.

      9. Naval vessels on the Lakes: amply considered and
      conclusion reached.

      10. Frontier definition and marking: substantially
      agreed.

      11. Conveyance of prisoners through other country's
      territory: agreement reached and article outlined.

      12. Reciprocity in wrecking and salvage: agreement
      reached and article drafted.

      I have omitted until the present, mention of article
      number--

      3. "Provisions for the delimitation and establishment
      of the Alaska-Canadian Boundary by legal and
      scientific experts, if the Commission shall so decide,
      or otherwise."

      This article, as we are well aware, is unsettled, and
      by the action of the Commission was remitted to the
      two governments for their further consideration,
      pending which the Commission adjourned. . . .

The Alaska boundary dispute, which the commission proved unable to
solve, was the last in the long series of controversies over the
determination of the boundary between Canada and the United States.
The vagueness of early maps and the looseness of diplomats' phrasing
as usual gave ground for difference in treaty interpretation, and as
usual national pride, touched to the quick by any suggestion of giving
up the sacred soil over which the sacred flag had floated, or should
have floated, made cool settlement difficult. In 1825 Britain and
Russia had concluded a treaty delimiting the boundaries of their
territories in North-West America; Canada had succeeded to Britain's
claims and the United States to Russia's. From time to time minor
incidents urged the necessity of a definite interpretation and
demarcation, but settlers were few and governments busy, and matters
drifted till the Klondike discoveries compelled action.

Through what channel was the boundary to run from Prince of Wales
Island to the mainland? What line was the boundary thence to follow?
The crest of the mountains parallel to the coast, and, if so, which
mountains, or--the alternative provided in the treaty when these
mountains should prove more than ten leagues distant from the ocean--a
line parallel to the sinuosities of the coast and never more than ten
leagues distant? Canada contended that mountains did exist near the
coast and that a line drawn along their crests would leave well within
Canadian territory many deep inlets, and especially Lynn Inlet, from
which access to the Yukon was chiefly sought. The United States
insisted that the coast strip or _lisire_ was meant to be a solid
barrier, and that the boundary, whether following mountains or the
ten-league line, must run around the head of every inlet and shut
Canada out of any harbour along the coast. The Canadian case was weak
in that for seventy years the assumption of Russia and the United
States that the _lisire_ was unbroken had gone virtually
unchallenged, and British maps as well as Russian and American had
shown the boundary running around the heads of the inlets.[21] It was
well arguable as regards the intention shown in the long-drawn-out
negotiations preceding the treaty. It was very strong on the basis of
the final wording of the treaty itself. It was unanswerable on the
ground of relative need, but this was not commonly recognized as a
basis of international adjustments. Meanwhile, the United States was
largely in possession.

[Footnote 21: British and Canadian statesmen had frequently pressed
for demarcation, but save for an informal reference by Dr. Dawson in
1886, had not claimed the inlets. "We found ourselves hampered to the
most extreme degree," declared Sir Richard Cartwright in the House
(March 22, 1899), "by the extraordinary apathy and indifference which
the government of Canada for the period of eighteen years from 1878 to
1896 had manifested in regard to this question." As to the government
of the 1873-78 period, Sir Richard made no comment. It is plain, in
Mr. Christopher Robinson's words, that "until the completion of the
Canadian Pacific, Canada knew more of Egypt than she did of British
Columbia itself." The one protest which the Canadian government had
attempted to make, and which, if made, would greatly have strengthened
its position, had been foozled by the British ambassador at
Washington. In 1889 Sir John Macdonald raised a definite protest
against the occupation of territory bordering on the Lynn Canal, but
in view of the fact "that the Foreign Office disapproves of
communication from Ottawa to Washington direct," he asked Tupper to
ask Salisbury to instruct the British minister to convey the protest
to the State Department; Sir Lionel Sackville-West, writing from a
comfortable summer hotel veranda, informed Mr. Bayard that some
Canadians had raised some objection to some action of Americans about
a charter somewhere in the Alaska region, whereto Mr. Bayard had
naturally replied it was not so, and the matter ended.]

In the discussion in the commission, the Canadian members sought first
to secure a compromise, generally, by linking this with other
questions on which the United States wished concessions, and
specifically, by proposing to acknowledge the right of the United
States to the settled harbours on Lynn Inlet, Dyea, and Skagway, if
the United States would acknowledge that Pyramid Harbour was Canadian.
The United States commissioners made light of the whole Canadian claim
as a case trumped up in view of the Klondike discoveries, but through
various preliminary stages they advanced to a proposal to grant to
Canada for fifty years the full use, but not the sovereignty, of
Pyramid Harbour and a strip of land behind it; later, they qualified
this proposal by insisting that for purposes of the coasting trade the
harbour must be counted a part of the United States,--and thus barred
to vessels trading from Canadian ports; then, as Sir Wilfrid's letter
to Dr. Grant indicates, a storm of protest from Seattle and Tacoma,
which flourished on the Yukon trade, forced the abandonment of this
reasonable and friendly plan. Failing agreement, the Canadian
delegates urged arbitration of the whole boundary, on the Venezuela
basis, by a tribunal of three members, one to be selected by the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, one by the President of the
United States, and the third co-optated or otherwise chosen, with
power to consider occupation and other equities as well as the wording
of the treaty. The United States delegates were strongly opposed to
arbitrating what they insisted was indubitably and for seventy years
unquestioned American territory. In view, however, of their own
insistence on arbitration in Venezuela, they were compelled to make
some concession, but still endeavoured to avert any chance of losing.
They accordingly proposed a tribunal of six impartial jurists of
repute, three appointed by each party, and a regulation that in any
case any tide-water towns or settlements then under United States
jurisdiction should so remain. The Canadian commissioners declined a
proposal which might mean dead-lock and would in any case guarantee
the United States the most important matters in question. The United
States declined to accept a European umpire; Canada, "in view of the
policy long maintained and recently reasserted by the government of
the United States toward the other countries on the American
continents," declined a South American umpire. Neither side would give
way, and the commission was forced to adjourn without a solution.

Failure to agree on the Alaskan question involved suspension of action
on the other issues. The United States members urged concluding what
could be settled, but, for the reasons clearly expressed in a
memorandum by Lord Herschell, the Canadians could not agree.[22] The
commission never met again, but its efforts were not in vain. The
tentative conclusions it had reached were, at a later period, embodied
in separate treaties and for the most part ratified.

[Footnote 22: "We have not suggested that unless every one of the
questions submitted to the Commission can be settled none of them
should be, but it appears to us that the Alaska boundary is the one of
all others which it is most important to have settled if good
relations are to be maintained between Great Britain and the United
States. The nature of the difference is such that from circumstances
which may arise at any moment, and which are too obvious to need
statement, acute controversy and even the risk of conflict may arise.
Moreover, it is a question which there will be no better chance of
settling at a future time than there is now, and one which, in our
opinion may be settled without difficulty by nations acting in a
friendly spirit. On other points we are to make concessions with a
view to avoid friction and differences in the future. We are willing
to do so, but we cannot feel it reasonable that we should be required
to take such a course, if this far greater cause of danger is to
remain in existence when in our opinion it might quite well be
removed."]

For over four years the Alaska question hung fire. It had been agreed
that the discussion would be continued through the regular diplomatic
channels. For these four years, in a constant exchange of despatches
from London to Washington, with subsidiary consultations between
London and Ottawa, the effort was made to find common ground. Besides
the professional diplomats, amateurs tried their hand; Mr. Farrer had
frequent interviews with Mr. Hay and leading senators, and George W.
Smalley, the Washington correspondent of the London "Times," in 1902,
carried a message from Sir Wilfrid to the President and Mr. Hay.
Neither professional nor amateur found the task easy. In 1899 the Boer
War broke out, reviving popular hostility to Britain in the United
States, and in September, 1901, the assassination of William McKinley
brought Theodore Roosevelt and his incalculable impetuosity into the
equation.

The anxiety of the United States to secure control of an Isthmian
canal, and, as a means to this end, to secure the revocation of the
Bulwer-Clayton treaty giving Britain joint rights with the United
States in any Isthmian undertaking, seemed to offer an opportunity.
Why not barter concessions in Central America for concessions in
Alaska? Here was an opportunity to test the value of the imperial
connection, the diplomatic resources of a far-flung Empire. Lord
Lansdowne agreed, and sought to make a bargain, but without success.
The Bulwer-Clayton treaty was replaced by the Hay-Pauncefote treaty,
the United States was given a free hand in Central America, but no
concession was secured in return. As published despatches had made it
evident that Lord Lansdowne at one stage had favoured this policy, it
was assumed in Canada that the failure to press the opportunity was
due to the Laurier government's remissness. In a debate in the House
in March, 1902, Mr. Robert Borden and Mr. W. F. Maclean strongly
condemned the government for its laxity and neglect of Canadian
interests in failing to urge that the United States should give as
well as take. Sir Wilfrid said no word in reply, but the fact was that
the responsibility did not rest on his shoulders. In February, 1900,
when the first Hay-Pauncefote treaty was under consideration, the
Colonial Office was informed that in deference to the strongly
expressed views of the imperial government that in the interests of
the Empire, Her Majesty's government should agree to sign the
convention modifying the Bulwer-Clayton treaty at once, and realizing
the gravity of those views, the Canadian government would not continue
to press the objections to such action contained in their order in
council of April 4 previous, but they would still express the hope
that Her Majesty's government would strongly urge upon the United
States government the considerations there indicated. Probably those
observers were right who asserted that with the loss of prestige and
the growth of Continental enmity entailed by the Boer War, the British
government could not well press any view hard.

In 1901 a modus-vivendi boundary was effected for the Dalton trail, in
the Lynn Inlet region. With this breathing-spell secured, Mr. Hay
prepared in May, 1901, drafts of two treaties, one to provide for
arbitration on the boundary issue, and the other to settle all the
remaining questions except trade reciprocity and the Atlantic
fisheries. The Canadian government took the stand that all the latter
questions should be referred to the commission; as to the draft of the
boundary treaty, the provision for an even number of arbitrators
prevented finality, and the questions were so framed as to involve
surrender of the Canadian claim on important points; the government
therefore respectfully but unequivocally declined assent to the
treaties, particularly as no concession had been made to balance the
Bulwer-Clayton concession. In February, 1902, the British government
endorsed and transmitted these objections. Then suddenly opposition
arose from another quarter. President McKinley had left the
negotiations wholly in Mr. Hay's hands, but President Roosevelt had a
policy and a will of his own in foreign as in home affairs. Through
the official channels it was reported that Mr. Hay was despondent,
that the President was being pressed by Pacific coast interests and by
sympathizers with the Boer Republic, and that he had expressed his
determined opposition to arbitrating the unquestionable rights of the
United States, since arbitration almost certainly involved compromise;
and that at most he would consent to appointing a tribunal merely to
record a reasoned opinion. Through semi-official British channels it
was reported that Canada must give up all claim to the sea-coast, in
which case she might be granted some small concession at the Portland
Canal end of the frontier; that the President and Mr. Hay were being
attacked for their British proclivities and that the sooner Canada
came to terms the better. Through unofficial channels the same
difficulties were noted; Mr. Farrer reported:

      The Republicans under any circumstances would hesitate
      to draw the Democratic fire by granting arbitration,
      and as matters stand it would be suicidal to do so
      before the fall congressional elections. . . . A good
      many of the leaders are favourable to arbitration: the
      trouble is they are afraid of the rank and file and of
      the people at large, who are half disposed to suspect
      that Mr. Hay is too pliant so far as England is
      concerned. He himself feels that this suspicion is in
      the air and is rather nervous about it.

Finally, in the winter of 1902-03, agreement was reached. The
elections and the Boer War were over. Mr. Hay had committed himself to
arbitration and strove honourably and tenaciously to carry his point.
In December, Sir Wilfrid, who had been convalescing at Hot Springs,
Virginia, after a severe illness, by request had an interview with Mr.
Hay and Mr. Roosevelt. Finally, the President was won over. At the
last moment the negotiations were nearly broken off by Britain's
sudden flirtation with Germany in the joint debt-collecting expedition
against Venezuela. Mr. Farrer reported in January, 1903:

      Much bitterness has been created in Washington against
      England by the Anglo-German expedition against
      Venezuela. I am told on high authority that the
      President has indulged in some very plain speaking to
      Sir Michael Herbert and that Sir Michael, whose wife
      is an American, has been warning Lord Lansdowne all
      along that an explosion of popular opinion may occur
      at any time which might hurry the President into rash
      action. I had a talk with Senator Cullom, chairman of
      the Foreign Affairs Committee, and he frankly said
      that while he should like to accommodate you, he was
      afraid that the Venezuela affair had for the moment
      pretty well undermined the good understanding between
      the United States and England.

Lord Lansdowne's frank reversal of his Venezuela policy cleared the
air, and the treaty deferring the boundary to arbitration was
submitted to the Senate, and eventually ratified.

From the Canadian point of view, the treaty was a distinct improvement
over the earlier drafts. The whole boundary line was included; the
questions as now framed were not question-begging; the decision of the
tribunal was to be final; there was no reservation of territory to the
United States whatever the decision. The one drawback was the
composition of the tribunal,--six "impartial jurists of repute," three
appointed by each party. In the opinion of the government, this meant
that no decision could be reached unless one member cast his vote with
the other side, and it did not seem highly probable that one of the
United States members would choose this rle; if there was dead-lock,
the United States remained in possession of the most important
territory. Yet it was apparent that no better terms were to be had.
The tribunal was to be a judicial body to interpret the treaty, not a
conference of diplomats to strike a bargain. The treaty provided that
the members should "consider judicially the questions submitted to
them" and that each "should first subscribe an oath that he would
impartially consider the arguments and evidence presented." The
British ambassador foreshadowed agreement upon three or at least two
justices of the Supreme Court ("who are here all regarded as Csar's
wives") and the Chief Justice of England, a judge of the British High
Court, and a Canadian Supreme Court judge. Under these conditions, the
Canadian government expressed its acceptance of the proposal.

Hopes were high for a fair and final settlement, when on February 13
it was unofficially and on March 6 officially announced from
Washington that the United States members of the tribunal were to be
Secretary Root, Senator Lodge, and Senator Turner. All were lawyers of
eminence, men of outstanding capacity, honourable men, but to term
them "impartial" was a wrench to the English language. Secretary Root
had been a member of the cabinet which had defended the American case;
Senator Lodge had publicly denounced the Canadian contention as a
"baseless and manufactured claim"; Senator Turner, who had formerly
been a member of a state supreme court, represented the state of
Washington, which throve on the toll of Yukon trade, and had himself
in the Senate debate opposed any arbitration. It was not surprising
that public and government opinion coincided with that of the Brooklyn
"Eagle," that there was as much chance of convincing a tribunal so
constituted of the soundness of the Canadian case as there was of "a
thaw in Hades." On February 18 the British government inquired whether
the Canadian government had any comments to make. The Canadian
government strongly protested to London, and was considering, so
London was notified, whether in the changed situation it should
withdraw from further participation; the British government agreed it
was awkward, but could not be helped; perhaps British members could be
chosen to match. Without waiting for a definite reply from Canada, the
British government exchanged formal ratification of the treaty. When
the cabinet expressed displeasure at being thus flouted by London as
well as by Washington, the Colonial Office blandly replied that no
discourtesy had been intended but that the British government had
conceived itself bound by its announcement in the Speech from the
Throne on February 17 that the treaty would be ratified,--that is, by
an announcement which had been made a day before the Colonial Office
had gone through the form of asking if the Canadian Government had any
opinion to offer.

The failure of the United States government to carry out the
understanding as to the members of the tribunal was not due to Mr.
Hay. In letters to Sir Wilfrid, Sir Michael Herbert, after stating how
sore [sorry?] he himself was over the selection, reported that Mr. Hay
had been overruled by the President, "who has got his back up," and
that Messrs. Lodge and Turner had not been appointed until after the
justices of the Supreme Court had all been invited and had all
declined on the ground that it would be incompatible with their
position to sit on a diplomatic and political tribunal. Mr. Charlton,
who was then in Washington, urged in defence of the President the
fact that it was not until the reluctance of the Senate to ratify the
treaty had become apparent, that Mr. Roosevelt, anxious to have the
matter settled, but more in touch with political realities than Mr.
Hay, came to an understanding with the leaders of the Senate as to the
composition of the tribunal. The appointment of Senator Lodge and
Senator Turner was therefore the price of any treaty. This was true,
but not the whole truth. Mr. Roosevelt was himself as determined as
any hostile senator to prevent any risk of losing an inch of the
United States claim. He had agreed to arbitration merely "to enable
Great Britain to save her face," but if not by the letter of the
treaty, then by the composition of the court, he was determined to
guard against such a contingency. A further evidence of his attitude
was given in a blustering letter which was conveyed to the notice of
the British government during the summer through a United States
Supreme Court judge, apparently persuaded for once to accept a
"diplomatic and political" errand.[23] So far as the actual decision
of the tribunal was concerned, it is doubtful whether the change in
the personnel of the court made any material difference. Experience
does not show that judges, however fair in the handling of details of
evidence, are any more immune than other mortals from the national or
social prejudices which unconsciously shape interpretation. But Mr.
Roosevelt's action did exasperate Canadian public opinion, and it did
make frank and confident international dealing by so much the more
difficult in future.

[Footnote 23: The letter ran, in part:

      "'. . . The claim of the Canadians for access to deep
      water along any part of the Alaskan coast is just
      exactly as indefensible as if they should now suddenly
      claim the island of Nantucket.

      "'I believe that no three men in the United States
      could be found who would be more anxious than our own
      delegates to do justice to the British claim on all
      points where there is even a color of right on the
      British side. But the objection raised by certain
      Canadian authorities to Lodge, Root, and Turner, and
      especially to Lodge and Root, was that they had
      committed themselves on the general proposition. No
      man in public life in any position of prominence could
      have possibly avoided committing himself on the
      proposition, any more than Mr. Chamberlain could avoid
      committing himself on the question of the ownership of
      the Orkneys if some Scandinavian country suddenly
      claimed them. If this claim embodied other points as
      to which there was legitimate doubt, I believe Mr.
      Chamberlain would act fairly and squarely in deciding
      the matter; but if he appointed a commission to settle
      up all these questions, I certainly should not expect
      him to appoint three men, if he could find them, who
      believed that as to the Orkneys the question was an
      open one. . . . I wish to make one last effort to
      bring about an agreement through the Commission which
      will enable the people of both countries to say that
      the result represents the feeling of the
      representatives of both countries. But if there is a
      disagreement, I wish it distinctly understood, not
      only that there will be no arbitration of the matter,
      but that in my message to Congress I shall take a
      position which will prevent any possibility of
      arbitration hereafter; a position . . . which will
      render it necessary for Congress to give me the
      authority to run the line as we claim it, by our own
      people, without any further regard to the attitude of
      England and Canada. If I paid attention to mere
      abstract rights, that is the position I ought to take
      anyhow. I have not taken it because I wish to exhaust
      every effort to have the affair settled peacefully and
      with due regard to England's honor.'

      "What passed through the minds of the British
      Ministers when they heard, confidentially, the
      President's decision, is not reported. Possibly, they
      realized that the claims which the Canadians had
      pushed for the past five years were only a bluff;
      assuredly they knew that Mr. Roosevelt meant what he
      said, and it was no secret that he had already sent
      troops to Alaska; at all events, they appointed as
      England's representative Lord Alverstone, who, as it
      turned out, supported the American
      contention."--Thayer, "Life of John Hay," 11. 209.]

There was no room for choice in accepting the treaty as a settled
fact, but there was room for choice in the character of the British
appointments. The Canadian government declined to accept the hint of
the Colonial Office, and adhered to the intention to appoint impartial
jurists. The suggestion that Lord Alverstone, the Lord Chief Justice
of England, should be named, was accepted, but instead of one the
government nominated two Canadians for the other posts, Mr. Justice
Armour of the Canadian Supreme Court, and Sir Louis Jett, then
Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec and formerly puisne judge of the Supreme
Court of Quebec. On the death of Justice Armour in London, Mr. A. B.
Aylesworth, a leader of the Ontario bar who had declined a Supreme
Court judgeship, and who was in England at the time, was nominated in
his stead. Mr. Clifford Sifton acted as British agent, assisted by Mr.
Joseph Pope and W. F. King, with Edward Blake, and later Sir Edward
Carson, with Sir R. B. Finlay, S. A. Rowlatt, John A. Simon of the
English bar, and Christopher Robinson, F. C. Wade, Aim Geoffrion and
L. P. Duff of Canada, as counsel. Hon. John W. Foster was appointed
United States agent, with Messrs. Dickinson, Watson, Taylor and
Anderson as counsel.

During the summer, case and counter case were exchanged. In September
and October the oral argument followed. The case was admirably handled
on both sides, alike in the preparation of the briefs and in the oral
presentation. Yet, throughout, the Canadian members could not escape
the feeling that the decision was settled before the case was argued.
It was not merely that the London correspondents of United States
newspapers were forecasting that Lord Alverstone would hold against
Canada; the wish might have been considered father to that thought.
But in London society, at dinners and in clubs, they found the same
opinion everywhere prevalent. How far this feeling was due to the
circulation of Mr. Roosevelt's letter is not clear. As to Lord
Alverstone himself, his Canadian colleagues, while finding him perfect
in courtesy, quick in argument, fair in attitude, also realized that
he considered himself an umpire between two contending delegations;
the frequent consultations which took place among the three United
States members to decide upon their course had no counterpart on the
other side. On October 8 Sir Wilfrid received a cable from a member of
the Canadian delegation:

      I think that Chief Justice intends joining Americans
      deciding in such a way as to defeat us on every point.
      We all think that Chief Justice's intentions are
      unjustifiable and due to predetermination to avoid
      trouble with United States. Jett and Aylesworth are
      much exasperated and considering withdrawing from
      Commission.

Sir Wilfrid replied:

      Our Commissioners must not withdraw. If they cannot
      get our full rights let them put up fight for our
      contention on Portland Canal which is beyond doubt:
      that point must be decided in Canada's favour. If we
      are thrown over by Chief Justice, he will give the
      last blow to British diplomacy in Canada. He should be
      plainly told this by our Commissioners.

On October 17 and October 20 the members of the tribunal recorded
their decision. By a majority of four to two, Lord Alverstone voting
with the United States representatives, it was decided, in brief,
that the boundary should run around the heads of the inlets and give
the United States an unbroken _lisire_, that certain mountains marked
"S" upon a map should be considered those meant by the treaty to form
the boundary, and that the Portland Canal, which was to form the
southern limit of the strip, should be taken to be the channel running
north of Pearse and Wales and through Tongass Passage south of Sitklan
and Kannaghunut islands, the former islands thus falling to Canada and
the latter to the United States.

The question most important in itself was the question of the inlets.
Here the decision went against Canada, but no one questioned its
fairness, if they still doubted its validity. The opinions given in
support of the Canadian contention by Sir Louis and especially by Mr.
Aylesworth were powerful arguments, but the opinion filed by the three
United States members was also strong, closely-reasoned and effective,
and Lord Alverstone's separate memorandum, if less exhaustive, also an
able judgment. A Canadian, reading the evidence and the decisions on
this point to-day, may well consider still that the Canadian
interpretation of the treaty was sounder, certainly that the
allegation that it was a mere bluff was preposterous, and yet may also
admit that the opposite case was equally strong and that impartial men
might well consider it stronger. The treaty, in brief, was ambiguous
and lent itself to more than one interpretation.

The other decisions were much less important in themselves, but they
became important because of the evidence they presented that a
diplomatic and not a judicial decision had been arranged. As to the
"S" mountains, the line was clearly a compromise. The United States
had contended that no mountains such as contemplated in the treaty
existed and that the ten-league line should therefore be followed. The
decision on this point admitted that the Canadian contention was
correct, but deprived Canada of any advantage by proceeding to select
mountains in many cases well inland and beyond the inlet heads. Not a
word of explanation as to why these rather than other mountains were
chosen was vouchsafed by any of the majority, and the contention of
Sir Louis that the mountains nearest the coast and not others farther
inland should be selected was unanswerable. Lord Alverstone's only
reply was that he had had to fight hard to get even this line; true,
but none the less thereby a compromise line.

But it was the decision with regard to the four islands in or about
Portland Canal (or Channel) which most aroused controversy. The United
States had contended that the Portland Canal of its discoverer,
Vancouver, and of the negotiators, was the body of water to the south
of all four islands, which would therefore form part of Alaska; the
British had claimed that the Portland Canal ran north of all four.
Lord Alverstone stated during the proceedings that he considered the
British case unanswerable, and would prepare the opinion. On October
12 he read to the tribunal a memorandum upholding that contention, in
which his Canadian colleagues concurred. On the morning of October
17, when the tribunal had assembled but before the vote was taken, Mr.
Root, Mr. Lodge and Lord Alverstone at different times retired from
the cabinet room together. Then, on putting the question to vote,
instead of asking whether Portland Canal ran north or south, Lord
Alverstone, as chairman, asked first, whether it ran north or south of
Pearse and Wales, to which all six answered north, and then, whether
it ran north or south of Sitklan and Kannaghunut, to which they
answered south, four to two. Until that moment, Lord Alverstone's
Canadian colleagues had had no faintest suggestion that he had changed
his mind. Some days later Lord Alverstone filed as his judgment a
document which was later shown by Mr. J. S. Ewart, in what has been
considered a classic work of legal reconstruction, to be simply the
original judgment, slightly and illogically revised and still
containing passages wholly inconsistent with the amended conclusion.
The United States members also filed an opinion which, after stating
fairly the reasons which led them to award Pearse and Wales to Canada,
tapered into exceeding thin and scarcely serious arguments for
awarding the other islands to the United States: in sum, that
Vancouver might have been looking up Tongass Passage when he named the
channel beyond Portland Canal, wherefore T. P. was P. C, and that had
they themselves done the naming, they would have considered T. P.
better entitled to the name.

Mr. Aylesworth and Sir Louis Jett refused to sign the award. In
their judgments they attacked the majority's award as unjudicial. The
majority finding as to the islands, declared Sir Louis, was "totally
unsupported either by argument or authority and it was, moreover,
illogical." Mr. Aylesworth denounced it as "nothing less than a
grotesque travesty of justice," "no decision upon judicial principles"
but "a mere compromise dividing the field between the two
contestants." In a letter in the "Times," they stated, for the
immediate information of their countrymen, their reasons for dissent.

The storm of protest that followed in Canada was vigorous,
wide-spread, and sustained beyond anything in the country's annals.
"Canada again offered as a sacrifice on the altar of Anglo-American
friendship," was the theme of a hundred journals. The uncritical
assumption which prevailed in most quarters that the Canadian case was
much stronger than it actually was, an exaggerated estimate of the
strategic value of the islands awarded the United States, as
commanding the probable terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific, the
belief, only partially founded, that in previous boundary disputes the
United States had been presented by British diplomats with great areas
of Canadian soil, and particularly the circumstances of the
appointment of the United States judges and the summer's rumours of
Lord Alverstone's defection, swelled the chorus. Naturally President
Roosevelt's joyous shout, "It is the greatest _diplomatic_ victory of
our time," did not help matters. Not that it was against the jurists
chosen by the President of the United States that the Canadian cry
was raised. It was not the petulant complaint of a poor loser. It was
the just anger of the man who considered himself the victim of a
confidence game. Upon Lord Alverstone's head there descended a stream
of epithets, and the stock of British statesmen fell far below par.
Men began to talk of independence as less dangerous than imperial
connection. When Mr. Aylesworth returned, had he given the word, an
agitation that might have carried far would have been begun. But Mr.
Aylesworth wanted no agitation; at a banquet in Toronto early in
November, while reiterating his view of the award, he spoke of his
pride and pleasure in British connection; "_Civis Romanus sum_," was
now bettered by Macdonald's "British subjects we were born, British
subjects we will die." "Had he told the whole story," declared the
Toronto "Globe" next day, "such a fire would have been kindled as
neither imperialistic exhortation nor trade preferences would soon put
out. That Mr. Aylesworth understood is plainly the secret of his
restraint and moderation."

Parliament was about to adjourn after a long and lively railway
session, when the decisions were rendered. On the last day, October
23, a short but significant debate was held. At that time few details
of what had occurred were available. Mr. Bourassa, who raised the
question, defended Lord Alverstone, contending that Canada had no case
as to the inlets; the island verdict, however, was plainly diplomatic;
Canada could not expect more from British connection. Mr. Robert
Borden attacked Sir Wilfrid in a robustly Canadian speech, because he
had not linked up the Alaska boundary and the Isthmian canal, because
he had accepted an even number of commissioners after previous
protests, because he did not appoint three Canadians, and particularly
because he did not insist on the findings being subject to
ratification by the Canadian parliament.

Sir Wilfrid declared the outcome was a deep disappointment to him. As
to the inlets, while there was much to be said on both sides, he had
thought, after reading both cases, Canada had the better; but as to
the islands, the judgment was simply inexplicable. When he had agreed
to the suggestion that the Lord Chief Justice should be appointed, he
had believed him fair and sound, and would continue in this faith
until he had an opportunity to read his reasoned judgment in full. The
treaty was good, better than any previous draft. The United States
appointments, however, transformed the situation. The government had
protested, but the treaty was ratified over their protest. Then he
continued, in an outburst of unusual vigour:

      What were we to do? I have often regretted, Mr.
      Speaker, and never more than on the present occasion,
      that we are living beside a great neighbour who I
      believe I can say without being deemed unfriendly to
      them, are very grasping in their national actions, and
      who are determined on every occasion to get the best
      in any agreement which they make. I have often
      regretted also that while they are a great and
      powerful nation, we are only a small colony, a growing
      colony, but still a colony. I have often regretted
      also that we have not in our own hands the
      treaty-making power which would enable us to dispose
      of our own affairs. But in this matter we are dealing
      with a position that was forced upon us--we have not
      the treaty-making power. I am sorry to say that the
      whole correspondence which we have had upon this
      question since 1896 has not yet been placed before
      parliament. I am sorry not only that we have not the
      treaty-making power, but that we are not in such an
      independent position that it is in my power to place
      before parliament the whole of the correspondence as
      it passed between the Canadian government and the
      British government. But we shall have that
      correspondence and it will be placed before parliament
      at the next session,--the whole of it, no matter what
      protest may come from abroad, we shall have the whole
      of it, and then this country may know exactly what has
      taken place and what share of responsibility must rest
      upon each of the parties concerned in this matter. But
      we have no such power. Our hands are tied to a large
      extent, owing to the fact of our connection--which has
      its benefits, but which has also its
      disadvantages--the fact of our connection with the
      mother country making us not free agents and obliging
      us to deal with questions affecting ourselves through
      the instrumentality of British ambassadors. . . . The
      difficulty as I conceive it is not there [with Lord
      Alverstone]. The difficulty as I conceive it to be, is
      that so long as Canada remains a dependency of the
      British Crown the present powers that we have are not
      sufficient for the maintenance of our rights. It is
      important that we should ask the British parliament
      for more extensive powers so that if ever we have to
      deal with matters of a similar nature again, we shall
      deal with them in our own way, in our own fashion,
      according to the best light that we have.

When the full facts arrived, Sir Wilfrid expressed his opinion frankly
to Lord Alverstone in correspondence. Lord Alverstone began by sending
on October 29 a lengthy defence of his stand. Sir Wilfrid replied,
acknowledging Lord Alverstone's good intentions, but insisting that
"the reasons which you have given in support of your conclusions
cannot be reconciled with such a judicial interpretation of the Treaty
of 1825 as was imposed upon and expected from the Commission"; and
again, that "the decision rendered in regard to Portland Channel
cannot be supported on judicial grounds." "The consideration," he
continued, referring to the Chief Justice's letter, "that the two
islands of Sitklan and Kannaghanut have no value whatever either
strategic or otherwise is not a judicial consideration and has simply
to be set aside." Lord Alverstone replied: "I desire to state most
emphatically that the decisions, whether they were right or wrong,
were judicial and founded on no other considerations. I alone am
responsible for them, and while I fully recognize your right to hold
the opinion that they were wrong, and to express that opinion, you
must forgive me pointing out that you are not entitled to suggest that
I acted on other than judicial grounds, be the decisions right or
wrong." But curiously, he went on, in reply to Sir Wilfrid's last
remark, to illustrate his interpretation of a judicial decision: "I
wholly dissent from this view. I am clearly of opinion that in
determining judicially the questions submitted to the Tribunal . . .
it was our duty to take into consideration the value and importance to
the parties negotiating of all parts of the territory to which the
Treaty applied."

Not all Lord Alverstone's public or private protests could meet the
indictment. The conferences with the United States commissioners, the
failure to discuss with his Canadian colleagues his change of heart,
the framing of the Portland Channel question to permit the answer
agreed upon, the evidence of his own amended judgment, the failure of
the majority to offer any reasoned argument for either the island or
the "S"-mountain finding, were conclusive. It might be that "that was
the only way there could be any award." That was a matter for
diplomats, not for judges, to decide. There was no question of his
motives. It was simply that he had conceived himself as umpire, not
judge, charged with securing an agreement at any cost. It was absurd
to charge that his verdict was a deliberate betrayal; in part it was a
judicial finding, in part an illustration of the subtle and
unconscious effect of a social and political atmosphere in shaping
men's opinion of what is expedient and just. Granting that the
position of an arbitrator representing his own country in an
international dispute was ambiguous, that he was in point of fact
considered sometimes a judge, sometimes an advocate or diplomat, the
difficulty remained. A judge would presumably seek a judicial finding,
not a political compromise; a diplomat would presumably consult his
diplomatic colleagues.

It was urged in Lord Alverstone's behalf, by men who admitted that his
action was diplomatic, that the diplomacy was sound, since the whole
Alaskan strip was not worth a war between Great Britain and the United
States. True, but even assuming that a stiffer adherence to what he
himself considered just would not have forced the United States
commissioners to grant the point, a failure to agree, followed by the
publication of the deliberate judgments, would not have meant war.
Canada, which had never involved Britain in war with the United States
on her own behalf, and had been involved in a war of Britain's was
quite as near and quite as aware of the danger and quite as eager to
avert it as Lord Alverstone. The Canadian government would not have
dreamed of pressing insistence to the point of war, but neither were
they prepared to make all the concessions for the sake of peace, or to
yield to an argument or a bluff which might with equal force be urged
in every difference between the two countries and compel surrender
before discussion began.

The Alaska _lisire_ was never again so important. With the decline
soon after of the Yukon gold-fields, access through its ports became
of less moment. Dyea and Skagway soon became as dead as Tyre and
Sidon. The controversy was of significance more for its incidental
effects, the occasion it gave for bringing Canadian and United States
public men into intimate contact, its effect in demonstrating that the
national current in Canadian opinion would not necessarily run
thereafter in the same channel as the imperial; and the impulse it
gave to independent control of foreign affairs.

Sir Wilfrid did not carry out the threat of his October speech. After
discussion, he did not press for publication of the correspondence;
there were, it was agreed, some comments which it might be as well for
international and imperial amity not to make public. As for the
treaty-making powers, no immediate and formal demand was made.
Nothing was more foreign to Sir Wilfrid's ruling bias than to urge any
policy on general and theoretical grounds; not until a concrete issue
arose would the demand for wider powers be renewed. When the occasion
did arise, in the Waterways treaty with the United States, in the
trade conventions with European powers, in the immigration
negotiations with Japan, Canada's control over foreign relations was
to be quietly, un-dogmatically but surely and steadily advanced.




CHAPTER XIII

THE MASTER OF THE ADMINISTRATION

      Laurier as Leader--His Objectivity and Freedom from
      Resentment--Three Challengers--Israel Tarte--A Lively
      Past--Quebec and Ontario Critics--Tarte's Campaign for
      Protection--Laurier Acts--Andrew Blair--Railway
      Rivalry and Railway Policy--Attempts at
      Co-operation--The Grand Trunk Pacific--Blair's
      Opposition--Lord Dundonald and the
      Militia--Indiscretion and Dismissal--The Montreal
      Railway Plot--Its Failure--The Elections of 1904.


In the Laurier government's second term of office three men put to the
test the question who was to be master. Supported by powerful forces
in the country, they raised within the cabinet or within the outer
administration, the banner of defiance. Israel Tarte, backed by the
embattled manufacturers, challenged Wilfrid Laurier on the issue of
protection. Andrew Blair, backed by railway promoters and ambitious
newspaper magnates, challenged him on the transcontinental railway
policy. Lord Dundonald, with all the force of imperialist sentiment
and militia zeal behind him, raised the question whether the cabinet
or military officers were to be supreme in determining the country's
policy. When the smoke had cleared away, there was no longer room for
question.

One challenge proved serious. His health, sustained by unceasing care,
broke down during his visit to Europe in 1902. In the following
session, he concluded that it would not be possible to go on, and
wrote out his resignation for Council. He was persuaded to withhold
it, and found reprieve.

When Wilfrid Laurier had first taken the reins of office, there were
many who doubted, even after his nine years of party leadership,
whether he would be more than the titular head of the government. They
did not think it possible that a man so courteous could show himself
firm when firmness was called for. Could a leader who had made his
fame by his oratory develop the qualities needed to control a ministry
and to guide a distracted country through difficult days? The men
nearest him in parliament had little doubt, and to many observers
outside its walls his skilful handling of the school issue had given
the answer. For the others, his first months in power completed the
demonstration. A leader in office, with power to bind and to loose,
has in any case a surer seat than a leader in opposition, with only
hope and disappointment to divide. It was not long until the critics
had shifted their attack, and begun to complain of Laurier's masterful
and self-willed ways.

The Laurier administration contained many men of strong will who had
for years been autocrats in their own fields. Yet from first to last
the prime minister was first in fact as in form. His authority was
more than once challenged; on one occasion he was forced to compromise
after a public announcement of his policy, but to the end he remained
the one indispensable man in the government.

As prime minister, Sir Wilfrid was not a hard task-master. He did not
intervene in the details of the administration of his colleagues. He
believed in giving every minister wide latitude and large
responsibility. A Whig by conviction, he was not eager to govern
overmuch, and this theoretical leaning was reinforced by the quality
of his temperament. He had little of Blake's devouring and
constructive interest in detail. "I'm a lazy dog," he was accustomed
to say to his friends in his last years. The saying did not do justice
to himself even in the days of failing health, much less in the years
of unrelenting effort he had given to party and to country in his
prime. He gave conscientious and punctilious care to every question
that came before him as minister; day and night he sat patiently
through endless debates. But it was true that he was not deeply and
vitally interested in more than a few questions, and that in this
indifference there was rooted a certain indolence and easy-going
trust. He would often defer dealing with a rising question or
disciplining a colleague whose public policy or private conduct called
for a check, until a crisis forced action. Unfailingly and
scrupulously honourable in his own dealings with men and women, he was
tolerant of other men's failings when they did not directly affect the
State.

Nor was he hasty and arbitrary in determining general policy. In
cabinet councils he never played the dictator. Each minister in turn
would state his point of view on this side and on that, while he
himself sat silent or with only a guiding or inquiring word, until
every opinion had been set out, when he would sum up the discussion,
with rarely erring faculty for getting to the heart of the issue, and
give his conclusions as to the course to follow. Men came to criticize
him for opportunism, and it was true that he was an opportunist as to
means; on principles he would not compromise an inch. Perhaps no more
significant judgment has been passed upon his methods than the words
uttered in scornful criticism by a Nationalist leader in whose
vocabulary there was no such word as half-a-loaf: "He will ask this
minister and that his view, and then he gives his own; he never asks
what is ideally best, but merely what is the best that will work." But
once his opinion was formed, it was not easily shaken. He never came
rashly to a conclusion, but neither, once decided, would he allow his
firmness of action to be hampered by vain doubts and reconsiderings.

In the controversies inside and outside the party in which he became
involved, Wilfrid Laurier retained the extraordinary objectivity that
had marked his judgment and his conduct from early years. Differences
of opinion could not disturb his serenity of spirit or his
impartiality of judgment. Personal prejudice played little part in
shaping his course. He never cherished resentment against a foe who
attacked or a friend who failed him. When one in his household who was
a much better Laurierite than he was himself would express in good
round terms condemnation of some scheming opponent or some faithless
friend, he was always ready to say a word in defence. It was not that
he did not feel criticism, for he was a sensitive man, but he was
genuinely charitable and sympathetic in his interpretation of the
motives of others, and he had schooled himself to bear serenely the
misinterpretation of his own motives by other men. The practice of
authority, the burden of responsibility, the disillusionment of
experience, gave a greater wariness to his wary eye, a greater
firmness to his firm features, a deeper inscrutability to his
inscrutable face. Yet to his intimates he remained the simple,
unaffected, kindly friend of the days before power had brought its
opportunities and its tasks.

The first challenge to Wilfrid Laurier's authority came from his old
school-fellow, Joseph Israel Tarte. Mr. Tarte was not merely the most
vivacious and spectacular member of the ministry; he was one of the
most remarkable personalities in Canadian political life. A thin,
wiry, dapper little man, a bundle of nerves, always on the verge of a
complete breakdown in health, he had the restless energy and the
reckless courage of a score of physically stronger men. He was never
so ill that a taunt would not rouse him from a sick-bed to combat. He
loved a fight; he lived for excitement and the applause of the
galleries; he delighted in intrigue and in the making and unmaking of
ministers and reputations. Keen and nimble of wit, volatile in temper,
frank to the point of indiscretion, imperturbable in defeat, he was
feared by his enemies and still more by his friends. Notary by
profession, he found scope for his qualities in the business of
journalism and the game of politics.

As editor of "Le Canadien" in Quebec and of "Le Cultivateur" in
Montreal, he had become one of the powers and institutions of his
province. Journalism in Quebec had this in common with the journalism
of France, that views counted more than news, literary style more than
dry facts, personalities often more than party and government, and
patronage more than advertising. Israel Tarte's trenchant pen and his
knowledge of the innermost secrets of current politics made him a
master in this art. While he had a power of fiery oratory, he was
never as successful on the platform as in his editor's chair; on the
platform he was often carried to reckless lengths by his own
imagination and the applause of his hearers, but with pen in hand he
was as shrewd and cool as the surgeon with his knife.

In the game that politics appeared to him, Israel Tarte had played
many parts. Never in Canadian politics has even a contractor or a
railway promoter made so many and so sharp curves; "chameleon,"
"weather-cock," were the standard epithets of whoever happened to be
his enemies of the moment. At St. Lin in 1874 he had been a
Conservative of the Cartier school, leaning to Gallicanism and
launching editorial broadsides against "Le Nouveau-Monde." In Quebec
in 1875 he was ultramontane, programmist, out-Veuilloting Veuillot,
swearing by Mgr. Bourget and Mgr. Laflche, "every day offering up
hecatombs of Liberals, Gallicans, Free Masons in the columns of 'Le
Canadien.'" Then he turned upon the ultramontanes of his province, but
still held to Rome: "Mon toile c'est Rome; ma boussole, c'est le
Saint-Sige," and then when the Jesuits' Estates question arose, Rome
itself lost favour. He denounced Messieurs Sncal and Dansereau as a
shameless and befouling clique, and then in 1883 he made a visit to
Paris in their company and came back _sncaleux_. He denounced
Chapleau as corrupt, faithless, disloyal, incapable of friendship, and
then became his intimate friend. In 1880 he worked with Langevin to
unhorse Chapleau; in 1890 he worked with Chapleau to expose Langevin.
He put his flag at half-mast when Riel was hanged and next week
defended the hanging. He attacked Laurier as a man without principle,
without conviction, without patriotism, without ideals, but with a
certain astuteness and ability to hide his lack of principles, and
then he became Laurier's lieutenant in Quebec. He was against Mercier;
for him; against him; for him again. He accepted McGreevy's money to
support "Le Canadien" and later coolly exposed McGreevy and the
hoodling from which these very funds had been drawn. It was not
surprising that such a career exposed him in his turn to merciless
fire, as when Thomas Chapais, son-in-law of Sir Hector, in "Le
Courrier du Canada," in 1896, depicted Joseph Israel as "renegade . .
. sophist . . . dragging after him, like a galley-slave, the long
chain of his treasons, his shameful recantations, his covetousness,
now glutted, now balked; burning with desire for men's esteem in spite
of his past, and raging within under the cruel prick of the scorn with
which he feels himself covered even by those who make use of him." To
all which Mr. Tarte would jauntily reply that the man who never
changed his mind never used his mind.

When in 1891 Mr. Tarte began to print his _petits papiers_, and became
for the first time a Canadian figure, he was doubtless more concerned
to drive Sir Hector Langevin out of the Conservative party than to
leave it himself. But a political quarrel is easier to start than to
stop, and soon Sir John Thompson was able to "wish Mr. Laurier joy of
his black Tarte and his yellow Martin." Mr. Tarte adopted the Liberal
policy on the tariff and on the school question, and in 1896 threw
himself vigorously into organizing western Quebec. The portfolio of
Public Works was his reward.

Few men knew Israel Tarte better than Wilfrid Laurier. Few men had
less sympathy with his indulgence in personalities and his cynical and
sudden changes of front. Mr. Laurier was warned that he too would be
betrayed: "who has drunk will drink; who has betrayed will betray."
Yet he insisted on giving his old enemy a foremost place in the
cabinet. Like Honor Mercier, he "never asked whence a man had come
but whither he was going"; he was anxious to win over those men of the
old Cartier school who were truly Liberal-Conservatives; he knew that
Mr. Tarte was personally honest; he wanted a vigorous fighter; he
believed that office would be a better cement than opposition, and, at
bottom, he had no little personal liking and esteem for the old
schoolmate whose path had crossed his own so often.

The old stalwarts in the Liberal ranks in Quebec could not regard the
matter so philosophically. On principle, the men in the Montreal
district questioned, as usual, the promotion of any men from the
Quebec district, while the Quebeckers could not forget old feuds and
aching wounds. Uncompromising Radicals wanted no Conservatives of the
school of Cartier or of any other. Either Raymond Prfontaine or Dr.
Beausoleil or M. E. Bernier could easily have suggested one better
choice. But when not only Tarte but all his friends were seen to be in
favour, and particularly when it was rumoured that Sir Adolphe
Chapleau was to be given a renewal of his term as lieutenant-governor,
for his neutrality in the 1896 election, the dissatisfaction broke
into open revolt. Franois Langelier, member, minister,
_btonnier-gnral_, Dean of the Law Faculty in Laval, who had fought
for the party and for freedom of speech against heavy odds, and who,
it was claimed, had himself been promised the lieutenant-governorship
in a letter from Mr. Laurier in July, 1896, publicly denounced the
Tarte ascendancy in the following December: "I am sorry to see the
Tartes, Dansereaus, DeCelles, Drolets, Patersons, Chapleaus, and
others of that ilk discussing the party's affairs; they were
Conservatives yesterday and they are Conservatives still, while we old
Liberals are in the dark. . . . A coalition with Chapleau is under
way." When from attacking Tarte and Chapleau, Franois Langelier's
younger brother, Charles, formerly minister in the Mercier government,
went on in the following autumn to attack the prime minister in
public, and to write him privately to complain of the ostracism of
the Langelier family and the folly of rewarding treason by honouring
Chapleau, Sir Wilfrid took the position sufficiently indicated in the
following letter to Charles Langelier:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Charles Langelier.--Translation_)

      Ottawa, October 25, 1897

      My dear Charles:

      . . . . Let me say first that I am far from finding
      anything to criticize in the remarks that you have
      made in opposition to the idea of giving Chapleau a
      second term. I appreciate the motive which prompts
      you, and I appreciate equally the reasoning by which
      you support your case. I regret that you did not write
      me this letter a month ago, or our relations would not
      have taken the turn they have. . . .

      What I have to complain of in your conduct is that you
      did not see fit to write me . . . but instead did your
      best to stir up public opinion and arouse discontent
      among my constituents. I am the chief of the party and
      I bear the responsibility. I am far from pretending to
      infallibility, and I am ready, on every occasion, to
      receive the advice and counsel, and even the
      remonstrances of my friends. I do not say that I will
      always conform to their way of thinking, but I do
      assert stoutly that I will always be happy to receive
      their remonstrances and their counsel and advice, and
      that I will not make up my own mind until after I have
      weighed all their representations with care. . . .

      I regret quite as much as you do the differences I
      have had with Franois. It is true that I did not take
      him into the cabinet in July, 1896, but I do not think
      that the fault was mine. You must be hunting
      grievances and ready to create them when you write me
      that "he was discarded from the ministry, by means of
      intrigues as to which I have my suspicions, and Mr.
      Dobell, who a day before had called himself a
      Conservative, became a minister." I never understood
      that Franois wished to be a minister without
      portfolio. What I have understood since the formation
      of the cabinet was that he wished to be a minister
      with portfolio, probably in the place of Sir Henri
      Joly, but as he had told me before that time of his
      desire to go on the bench, I thought he would not
      object to waiting for an opening. I was wrong, and I
      must bear the responsibility. I regret more than any
      one that Franois did not confide to me, before the
      elections, any intention he may have had to stay in
      politics. In the only communication that I had with
      him on this subject he declared to me positively that
      he intended to withdraw. No one has more esteem than I
      for Franois, no one recognizes more fully than I do
      the great services he has rendered the party.

With Franois Langelier appointed judge of the Superior Court in
1898,--and knighted in 1907 and made Lieutenant-governor in 1911,--and
with Charles appointed sheriff of Quebec in 1901, the storm died down
in that quarter,[24] though there remained many another Quebec
Liberal, and particularly Raymond Prfontaine of Montreal,
unreconciled to the Tarte rgime. On the positive side, the policy of
conciliating the old Cartier wing of Conservatism had only a temporary
success. As to Sir Adolphe Chapleau, the relations were close and
friendly. Sir Adolphe never found it hard to prefer a Liberal to a
Castor. His attitude is indicated in a letter of this period:

(_Sir Adolphe Chapleau to Wilfrid Laurier.--Translation_)


      Montreal, February 21, 1897

      My Dear Laurier:

      I am going to communicate to-day to your colleague,
      Mr. Tarte, the information I have gathered as to the
      position in Quebec. I do not think that the newspapers
      are correct in forecasting a hostile declaration on
      the part of the episcopate; the bishops realize now
      that a movement is impossible, even in the House of
      Commons, and the clear-cut declaration which will, I
      hope, be made by the Quebec cabinet as soon as the
      proclamation is issued for the general provincial
      elections, will give a finishing stroke, in excluding
      federal questions entirely from the electoral
      programme of the government of Quebec.

      The election in St. Boniface has surprised no one and
      will, I think, have no result other than to quiet
      temper by the satisfaction it will give to the _amour
      propre_ of the Archbishop of St. Boniface. If the
      result of the provincial elections is what I expect,
      not to say what I am preparing, I believe that the
      Manitoba school question will soon become, from the
      political point of view, a thing of the past, which
      the moderation, tolerance and good-will of your
      friends in Manitoba may lead the people to forget
      before they are once more called upon to choose new
      representatives in the Commons. We have seen many of
      these burning questions cool down and settle
      themselves merely by the passing of time and by the
      oblivion into which the rapidity of modern life hurls
      everything. The "Castors," in the battle of June 23,
      lost their head and their tail; their teeth and claws
      are worn down; even breath is failing for their cries
      and their movements, and I hope that before the date
      of the Queen's Jubilee we shall be able to say that
      this race of rodents is extinct and figures henceforth
      only in catalogues of extinct species.

[Footnote 24: Mr. Tarte writes November 21, 1898: "Then there is the
'kicking' of Pacaud. M. Langelier 'a kick,' he has been named judge;
M. Choquette 'a kick,' he has been named judge; Pacaud is wondering
why he should not arrive somewhere 'en kickant.' Be assured that is
the frame of mind dominant in the district of Quebec." To which Sir
Wilfrid replies: "It was good tactics to put Langelier on the bench;
it was good tactics to do the same for Choquette; the best tactics for
us to use toward Pacaud would be to give him a newspaper rival. His
claims do not lack justice . . . but if he uses that tone and makes
war on us, there will be no alternative."]

And later, in April:

      I have asked Dansereau to tell you that if my witness
      to the Ablegate can be of service in the cause of
      conciliation, I shall consider it a duty to give it to
      him.

The appointment of Sir Adolphe to a second term was considered, but
finally rejected. Other arrangements were under discussion when his
death in 1898, at the age of fifty-eight, ended his ambitions of this
world. Others of his school remained, of whom the most influential was
Arthur Dansereau, another schoolmate of L'Assomption, and for many a
year the most influential Conservative journalist in the Montreal
district. Appointed postmaster of Montreal by the Conservatives, he
had still continued to take a hand in politics, and had joined
Chapleau in the new orientation. In 1899 this situation was suddenly
disturbed by William Mulock, who, knowing nothing of Dansereau in his
rle as a political power behind the scenes, and knowing only that he
was a very careless and inefficient head of the most important
post-office in Canada, summarily dismissed him. Sir Wilfrid at once
insisted on a reversal: appoint an assistant with more business
capacity, enlist Dansereau's own interest, but do not dismiss him out
of hand. Dansereau's pride was salved, but the incident set him
thinking once more of journalism, and journalism of a Conservative
trend. In Montreal, the chief French-Canadian newspaper, "La Presse,"
owned by M. Berthiaume, for many years Conservative with independent
leanings, had latterly been independent with Liberal leanings; now the
situation was changing again. "La Patrie," founded by an
uncompromising Radical, M. Beaugrand, had been purchased in 1897,
mainly by Liberal party funds, and was then put under the control of
Mr. Tarte's two sons: it was filling the Liberal field. The old
Conservative organ "La Minerve," now that the stream of patronage had
been diverted, could not make ends meet, and was about to disappear.
Naturally, the owner of "La Presse" found it expedient to lean toward
Conservatism, and its old editor felt again the call of the chair.
Writing to Sir Wilfrid at Washington, Mr. Tarte explained the
situation:

(_Israel Tarte to Wilfrid Laurier.--Translation_)

      Ottawa, February 7, 1899 . . . Here is the situation
      as I understand it. "La Minerve," which Nantel,
      Leblanc and others have taken over, is at its last
      shift. It cannot last much longer. Nantel, who has
      lost twenty thousand in "Le Monde," "Le Canadien" and
      "La Minerve," has made arrangements with Berthiaume
      and Dansereau by which he goes in with "La Presse."
      This settled, Berthiaume's task is to prevent the
      establishment of another Conservative journal. Taking
      Dansereau as editor-in-chief, he circulates the rumour
      that "La Presse" will be independent, which means that
      if Sir Charles, Beaubien and others establish a
      journal, he will fight them. While these rumours are
      being circulated in the street, negotiations are going
      on with Sir Charles Tupper. In other words, if no
      other Conservative journal is founded, it will be
      because "La Presse" has given guaranties to the
      Conservative party.

      "La Patrie" is beginning to cut very seriously into
      the circulation of "La Presse." This rivalry is
      causing intense worry to Berthiaume, who, in the past,
      has been master of the field, and has imposed his
      terms on the Conservative party before every general
      election, and on the City Council.

And again, a day later:

      The Dansereau incident causes me more chagrin than
      alarm. . . . I do not blame Mulock, with whom I have
      always been and am still on the best of terms. The
      radical element in Quebec has forced us to treat
      Chapleau as if he had been a common valet. We have
      refused him even the respite which we gave to the
      Lieutenant-Governor of the smallest of our provinces,
      who had always been our opponent. And now the man who,
      with me, exercised the greatest influence over
      Chapleau, is dismissed--for that is the meaning of his
      leave of absence--without you or me being informed. I
      repeat I have more chagrin than fear. In my day I have
      not feared many things or many men. But I have always
      tried, in politics as elsewhere, to cherish gratitude.

To which Sir Wilfrid replied:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Israel Tarte.--Translation_)

      Washington, February 11, 1899 . . . I agree with you
      that Mulock was too precipitate with regard to
      Dansereau, but he retrieved that initial error with
      much address and _savoir vivre_. . . . In brief, it
      was not he who provoked Dansereau's dismissal, but
      Dansereau himself. . . .

      I am convinced from the correspondence I have had with
      Dansereau that he is not going into "La Presse" with
      the purpose of combatting us. But this result is
      inevitable. He will be led on by a word, an act,
      steadily and step by step into a path first of
      friendly criticism but which will end in open
      hostility. All that will go on unconsciously and it
      will only be when the rupture is irreparable that it
      will be perceived. What I regret in all this, is that
      we are going to lose in all probability, certainly in
      great part, all the sanest and most reasonable element
      in the school of Cartier, which was on the point of
      joining definitely with us. . . .

      All that you say of the radical school and of the
      difficulties it caused us in the autumn of 1897 has
      nothing to do with the situation which now presents
      itself. If Chapleau had lived, it would have been easy
      enough to prove our gratitude, I believe, for what he
      did for us, and I know that the proposition of a post
      on the International Commission would have been
      acceptable to him. As to Dansereau, he has nothing to
      complain of in our conduct, and the fact is that he
      has not complained. More, I am sure that it is still
      possible to induce him to go along with us openly and
      squarely, but this subject would be too long to
      discuss here and must await my return to Ottawa.

But it was not long until Mr. Tarte's critics in Quebec were forgotten
in the storm raised by his critics in Ontario. During the South
African War, Israel Tarte was the heaviest electoral liability the
Liberals carried in English-speaking Canada. In his stand on the
sending of the contingents he had shown immensely more courage, more
sense of constitutional order and of national self-respect than the
mobs that howled at him, and in cooler times his position came to be
appreciated, but at the moment it cost the party many votes. His
utterances in Paris and in London in 1900 were impromptu indiscretions
more difficult to defend, and very serviceable to his enemies. "Shall
Tarte rule?" was the Conservative war-cry in Ontario in 1900.

With the government returned for a second term and old issues were
forgotten in the rush of unaccustomed prosperity, Mr. Tarte began to
expand in new directions. His duties as Minister of Public Works took
him from end to end of the Dominion, and turned his thoughts to
economic programmes. The tide of immigration had brought to Canada
new prosperity and new confidence; the tariff attitude of the United
States had quickened the spirit of economic nationalism, and traffic
congestion was stimulating programmes of canal- and railway-building.
Mr. Tarte constituted himself the chief apostle of a new gospel of
transportation and tariff: "Outbuild the Americans in canals,
harbours, ships; build a tariff wall as high as Dingley's," became the
burden of his speeches. A tariff fight or any other fight appealed to
his pugnacity; to promise lavish harbour facilities to cheering
audiences in every lake or ocean town, or to let it be gathered that
only the short-sighted and small-minded parsimony of his colleagues
prevented a definite promise, was a labour of love.

For a time, this programme raised no serious difficulty. Colleagues
complained that Mr. Tarte was encroaching on their departmental
preserves or affecting to determine the policy of the whole cabinet on
important issues, but after all, Israel Tarte was Israel Tarte, and a
certain amount of effervescence was inevitable. In the summer of 1902
the situation became more critical. The prime minister was overseas,
attending the Colonial Conference in London and interviewing French
ministers in Paris. Alarming newspaper reports began to be published
of his illness and obvious fatigue. Private reports intimated that the
illness was more serious. As a matter of fact, it proved to be touch
and go.

To Israel Tarte the news, from a private and reliable source, of Sir
Wilfrid's illness, doubtless brought regret, but it also spelled
opportunity. Here was a situation made to the hand of an adroit and
ambitious politician. If Sir Wilfrid was forced by ill-health to
retire, upon whom would his mantle fall? Mr. Fielding had been
considered by the public the natural successor, but that was by no
means inevitable. Mr. Tarte felt that he himself held the winning
cards. Quebec was his, writhing and grumbling it might be, but with
opposition beaten down, Ontario could be made his. It might not like
his imperial views, but in the long run pocket would come before
principles; make himself the champion of high protection, and his
political heresies would be forgotten. Accordingly Mr. Tarte speeded
up his protectionist campaign. We must have a strong tariff, he told
the cheering Canadian Manufacturers' Association at its annual banquet
in August. At Bowmanville he declared that if he were really the
"Master of the Administration," as the Conservatives loved to call
him, he "would take the tariff item by item and adjust it so as to
save to Canada the profit of the exportation of her resources and
build up a nation here." At Toronto in September he pictured the
benefits of a protected home market to farmers, and urged following
the United States' example; in Montreal he repeated "my belief and the
belief of the Manufacturers' Association in higher protection." In the
same month he began a royal progress, investigating cotton-mills,
woollen-mills, boot and shoe factories, receiving municipal addresses,
and replying in vigorous protectionist appeals. "From the first of
September to the autumn equinox," declared "Le Soleil," "we count over
one hundred speeches, one hundred harangues, one hundred
pronunciamientos, every one as incoherent as the rest. . . . Sweating,
puffing, panting, he did not merely run, he flew, he whirled, from
North Bay to Essex,--for Ontario was the key to success."[25]

Naturally, this audacious campaign did not go unrebuked. Mr. Sifton
announced in an interview that any attempt to revive the "discredited
Tory policy" of high protection would meet with the strenuous
opposition of every Liberal elected west of Lake Superior." The
Toronto "Globe," the "Manitoba Free Press," the Halifax "Chronicle,"
"Le Soleil," the Montreal "Herald" and the "Witness," defended the
tariff as a fair and reasonable adjustment and insisted that it was
not for Mr. Tarte to speak the mind of the cabinet or of the party: to
which Mr. Tarte replied in a telegram to the editor of the "Witness":
"May I ask you to state in your paper that I will be in the Liberal
party long after you are dead and buried? If your views on the fiscal
policy of the country were known to be those of the party, we would be
defeated at the next general elections by the same overwhelming
majority that the same views received in 1878."

[Footnote 25: January 27, 1903.]

October came, and Sir Wilfrid. He had been kept informed how things
were going, and lost no time in acting. He reached Quebec on the
morning of October 18 and Ottawa late that night. Next day he called
on Mr. Tarte, and the following morning had a second interview. Sir
Wilfrid did not temporize; he considered Mr. Tarte's course
unpardonable and demanded his resignation. On October 20 Mr. Tarte
placed a letter of resignation in his hands:

(_Israel Tarte to Wilfrid Laurier_)

      Toronto, 20 October, 1902

      My Dear Sir Wilfrid:

      I feel it is my duty to place my resignation in your
      hands, and to ask you to be good enough to have it
      accepted by His Excellency the Governor-General. . . .

      You told me that my utterances are causing you
      trouble. I have no right and no desire to be a source
      of embarrassment to you or to the party with which I
      have been connected since 1892.

      My views on the tariff are well known to you. I have
      on several occasions stated them publicly in your
      presence, and discussed them often privately with you.

      Entertaining the opinion that the interests of the
      Canadian people make it our duty to revise, without
      delay, the tariff of 1897, with the view of giving a
      more adequate protection to our industries, to our
      farming community, to our workingmen, I cannot
      possibly remain silent.

      I prefer my freedom of action and of speech, under the
      circumstances, even to the great honour of being your
      colleague.

      Before severing my official relations with you, allow
      me to express my sincerest hope that you will soon be
      restored to your health of former days.

      You would greatly oblige me by conveying to my
      colleagues my best wishes for their welfare and their
      happiness. My personal relations with most of them,
      have been of a pleasant and cordial nature. I hope
      they will continue to be the same in future.

      Believe me, my dear Sir Wilfrid,

      Very sincerely yours,

      J. Israel Tarte.

In a personal note, Sir Wilfrid replied: "I thank you for your good
wishes; and you may be certain that I regret very sincerely that our
official relations are ending in this manner, but the separation was
inevitable." In a formal reply he gave his reasons for his course:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Israel Tarte_)

      Ottawa, 21 October, 1902

      My Dear Tarte:

      After having seen you on Sunday last and having
      expressed to you my well-settled opinion upon the
      consequences of your recent attitude, my first duty
      was to wait upon His Excellency the Governor-General
      to inform him that I was obliged to demand the
      resignation of your portfolio.

      After having seen His Excellency, I had to acquaint my
      colleagues of the interview which I had had with you.

      In accepting your resignation, it is well to emphasize
      the points of difference between us.

      During my absence in Europe, without any communication
      with me, and without any previous understanding with
      your colleagues, you began an active campaign in
      favour of an immediate revision of the tariff in the
      direction of high protection.

      I regret having been obliged to observe to you that
      this attitude on your part constitutes a self-evident
      violation of your duty towards the government of which
      you were a member.

      I repeat to you here what I told you on Sunday: I do
      not wish to discuss, at this moment, the economic
      theory of which you have made yourself the champion.
      This question, however important it might be, is
      subordinate to one still more important.

      If you had reached the conclusion that the interest of
      the country demanded without delay, an increase of the
      custom duties, the first thing for you to do as a
      member of the government, before addressing your views
      to the public, would have been to place them before
      your colleagues, with the object of obtaining that
      unanimous action of the cabinet which is the very
      foundation of responsible government.

      If you had not been able to obtain from your
      colleagues their assent to the course which you
      recommended, you would have been obliged then either
      to accept their own views or to sever your connection
      with them, and then for the first time would you have
      been free to place your views before the public.

      Such was the very simple course which was binding upon
      you; but to remain a member of the government, and, at
      the same time, to advocate a policy which has not yet
      been adopted by the government, was an impediment to
      the proper working of our constitutional system, and
      implies a disregard for that loyalty which all those
      who are members of the same administration owe to each
      other and have a right to expect from each other.

      I thank you for the good wishes which you express for
      the improvement of my health, and I will make it my
      duty to convey to your old colleagues those that you
      formulate for their welfare and their happiness.

A sequel to this exchange may be appended:

(_Israel Tarte to Wilfrid Laurier.--Translation_)

      Montreal, January 26, 1903

      My Dear Sir Wilfrid:

      . . . I am convinced that a good majority of the
      Liberal party in the Province of Ontario is in favour
      of protection. You say that I am wrong. We have
      reached what in English is called "the parting of the
      ways." One or other of us is mistaken. My firm
      conviction is that it is you who are wrong. Questions
      of fact are in the end the easiest to decide.

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Israel Tarte.--Translation_)

      Ottawa, January 27, 1903

      My Dear Tarte:

      I have just received your letter of yesterday. You
      forget that Ontario is not the only province in
      Confederation, and you forgot equally that it is not
      good politics to try to force the hand of the
      government. You have thought good to make yourself the
      champion of protection _ outrance_. I have no more to
      say on that point, as we have exhausted it. But I
      believe more firmly than ever that in your own
      interest and in the interest of the party, you were a
      thousand times wrong. There is no more reason now than
      there was three months ago for us to launch out into a
      new policy when nothing has happened to warrant a
      different orientation from that we have followed
      hitherto. It is not, as you contend, merely a question
      of fact; it is also a question of seasonableness. The
      question of the tariff is in good shape, if no one
      seeks to force the issue.

The incident was closed. Israel Tarte went out and Raymond Prfontaine
came in. Sadly Mr. Tarte realized how much he had owed to his
pedestal. The realization had been driven home the first day. Leaving
Ottawa on October 19, he had gone to Toronto to attend a banquet given
in the National Club the following day to Colonel Denison, president
of the British Empire League, of which he was himself a member. Men
were there who had cheered and backed him in his recent crusade, and
they cheered him now when he arose, until his frank words, "I am not
here as a member of the Dominion government. Am I a member of the
Dominion cabinet? Being a minister is a very temporary occupation,"
explained the situation. Then the cheering broke and died away and if
Israel Tarte as he gazed about him had never been cynical before, he
must have been cynical then as he saw how suddenly men lost interest
when he could no longer serve their cause. Not all, for he could make
and keep warm friends. The manufacturers, keen to support him when it
was thought the whole cabinet might be induced or bludgeoned into a
pledge of higher protection, cooled when it was found he stood alone;
they waited for a more promising season.

Mr. Tarte went back to journalism, becoming political director of "La
Patrie." When a group of leading Liberals, Senator Bique, Senator
Dandurand, Victor Geoffrion, M. P., and Lomer Gouin, M. L. A.,
requested him to return "La Patrie" for a financial consideration, to
the Liberal party which had developed it, Mr. Tarte replied loftily
that his pen was not for sale; that "La Patrie" had originally been
founded by a few friends who were not represented among those who now
approached him; that he was now its political director but had no
financial interest, and that he wished them joy if they founded a new
organ, to be, like other organs, "purchased, nourished and gorged."
Mr. Tarte remained in control and "Le Canada" was established by the
Liberal party with Godefroi Langlois as editor. In the next few months
he drifted steadily back to his old camp; before the year was over he
was contesting F. D. Monk's claim to the Conservative leadership in
Quebec, and early in 1904 Mr. Monk felt himself forced to retire. Sir
Wilfrid remained friendly, though no longer intimate. When Mr.
Prfontaine had an elaborate brochure prepared, raking up all Israel
Tarte's past, Sir Wilfrid, despite the fact that Mr. Tarte was
criticizing the party vigorously, requested its suppression. He would
not fight any man with personalities, least of all one who had been a
friend.

    *    *    *    *    *

The second challenge to Wilfrid Laurier's authority came from his
Minister of Railways. Andrew George Blair had not the picturesque
personality nor the acrobatic record of Israel Tarte, but he knew as
much as any man in Canada of the seamy side of politics. Entering the
New Brunswick legislature in 1878 as a Liberal in a hopelessly
Conservative house, he succeeded in becoming leader of the Opposition
in 1882 and premier after the general elections a year later. For
thirteen years he gave New Brunswick cautiously progressive
administration. A capable man of business, a plain and somewhat prosy
speaker, his chief power lay in his capacity for silence. In the
federal cabinet, the importance of transportation questions made his
position pivotal.

The opening of the West, with the inpouring of settlers, the shipping
out of grain, the quickening of Eastern industries and not least the
growth of national confidence it involved, gave fresh urgency and a
new angle to canal and railway development: railways to open up new
areas of plain and prairie, railways to develop the unknown mining and
forest treasures of northern Ontario and Quebec, railways to carry the
wheat of the West to Eastern ports, canals and river and harbour
betterments to funnel this traffic to the sea, railways to bind the
country together, railways to give fat contracts to promoters and
merchants, railways to keep the price of real estate soaring, railways
to wind through the constituencies of as many M. P.'s as conceivable,
were once again demanded. After 1902, "railways are our politics"
became true once more.

The transportation policy of the Laurier government was in many
respects progressive and efficient. In establishing an independent
railway commission of wide powers to control rates and service, in
bringing to an end the practice of granting huge areas of Western land
as subsidy, and compelling the companies to which land had already
been granted to choose and patent their allotment instead of holding,
as before, a blanket-mortgage on vast areas, and by extending the
Intercolonial to Montreal and doing something to improve its
administration, the government lived up to its promises and the
country's needs. The problem of ensuring that Canada should have the
new roads it needed to serve its new estates, and not more than it
needed, was more involved, and the government's success in handling it
then and now a matter of more controversy.

In dealing with this problem the government was not working in a
vacuum. Its ends and its means were largely predetermined. The
political end of welding into one a country which geography had made
many, called for new links between East and West, roads far to the
north to give breadth as well as length to Canada, roads that would
carry Canadian goods to Canadian ports. The economic ends, a network
of railways spreading settlers through the prairie West, roads to
develop the unknown north of Ontario and Quebec, roads to bridge the
gap between Western wheat-fields and Eastern factories, were equally
matters of general agreement. Of the means which might serve these
ends, the Canadian Pacific was ruled out by the public's fear of
monopoly and the hesitancy in new enterprise which had marked the road
since the early nineties; the Canadian Northern had not yet fully
revealed its ambitions and its potentialities, and the Intercolonial
or any other government agency was barred by the distrust of state
operation on the part of the majority in the Cabinet. There remained
the Grand Trunk, a well-established system serving an excellent
territory, long water-logged and under absentee control, but now,
under Charles M. Hays, taking a fresh lease of life.

The Grand Trunk in 1902 had determined to seek its share of Western
traffic. It had already some share in this traffic; a branch from
Toronto to North Bay tapped the main line of the Canadian Pacific and
served as the link with Ontario towns. But this connection was
secondary and precarious; the new management was convinced that the
Grand Trunk must build its own feeders in the prairies and its own
bridge across the Lake Superior wilderness if it was to share in the
growing fortunes of the West or even hold its own. Accordingly in
November, 1902, George A. Cox, a Liberal senator and successful
business man, C. M. Hays and William Wainwright, vice-president of the
Grand Trunk, petitioned the government to grant a cash subsidy of six
thousand dollars and a land subsidy of five thousand acres, per mile,
with tax exemptions, for the construction of a road of twenty-five
hundred miles running from North Bay to the Pacific coast. The
proposal was not acceptable. The government had determined to make no
more land grants to railways; the Grand Trunk plan did not provide for
the development of the Hudson Bay basin; it would mean that the
existing Atlantic terminus of the Grand Trunk,--Portland,--or one of
the southern New England ports toward which Hays was feeling, rather
than a Canadian port, would be built up by the traffic of the Canadian
West. Negotiations continued, resulting in the summer of 1903 in an
agreement upon a project which included the essential features of both
the government's and the Grand Trunk's programmes. A new
transcontinental was to be built running from Moncton in New Brunswick
through Quebec city, and the timber-lands and clay belt of northern
Quebec and Ontario, to Winnipeg and thence through Edmonton to the
Pacific. The western half from Winnipeg to the coast was to be built
by a new company, the Grand Trunk Pacific, aided by a partial
government guarantee of bonds; the eastern half, known as the National
Transcontinental, was to be built by the government through a
commission, and leased for 3 per cent. of its cost by the Grand Trunk
Pacific.

It was known that negotiations were under way, but before any official
announcement had been made the public were startled by the resignation
of Mr. Blair because of dissent from the government's policy. The G.
T. P. agreement had been accepted by the cabinet, Mr. Blair alone
dissenting, and endorsed in a party caucus, before the resignation was
definitely tendered and accepted. On July 16 the correspondence
exchanged between Mr. Blair and the prime minister was made public and
explanations offered in the House.

There were specific differences of policy between Mr. Blair and his
colleagues. Every member of the cabinet had a railway policy, and the
Minister of Railways could not be behind. During the winter of
1902-03, he had declared himself in favour of an immediate extension
of the Intercolonial to Georgian Bay, linking up by water in summer
with the Canadian Northern, and the gradual building of a new
government-owned road from Quebec to a Winnipeg junction point and
perhaps eventually through to the Pacific. He was opposed to the
Moncton extension, opposed to immediate construction of the
Quebec-Winnipeg section, and opposed, not so much to entrusting the
enterprise to any private company as to entrusting it to the Grand
Trunk. While in favour of state construction, he was not committed to
state operation, holding open the alternative of lease to any private
company. While his colleagues were prepared to enter partnership with
the Grand Trunk, Mr. Blair preferred to link up with the Canadian
Northern. Still more fundamental as a cause of the break was the lack
of complete confidence. Mr. Blair declared to Sir Wilfrid in his
letter of resignation:

      The Grand Trunk proposition had been made to you, and
      you had consulted with other ministers and these
      ministers had met Mr. Hays on several occasions, as I
      am advised, with your knowledge and approval, long
      before you made me aware that negotiations or
      discussions on this subject had been entered upon or
      were being prosecuted. . . . I reconciled myself to
      the very obvious slight which had been cast upon me on
      the ground that probably your knowledge of my views on
      the general question did not encourage you to expect I
      would look with much favour upon, or render much
      assistance toward carrying out, the object you had in
      view.

Certainly this ignoring of the Minister of Railways in framing a
railway policy required an explanation, but the explanation was not
the one Mr. Blair supplied. The reason for thus ignoring him in the
earlier stages and the ultimate reason for the retirement was simply
that in view of the character and ambitions of some of the men who had
made Mr. Blair their friend, Sir Wilfrid was not prepared to confide
to him the power to determine the general question of policy, or the
privilege of allotting or guiding any contract that might require to
be let. He was determined that there would be no second Pacific
scandal.

No more serious blow could have been inflicted upon the government
than the resignation of the Minister of Railways a fortnight before
its railway policy was to be submitted to the House. Yet there could
be no drawing back, and on July 30 Sir Wilfrid laid the plan before
parliament.

That a transcontinental road should be built, Sir Wilfrid declared,
all were agreed; agreed further that it must be wholly on Canadian
soil. But that it should be built immediately not all were agreed:

      To those who urge upon us the policy of to-morrow and
      to-morrow and to-morrow, to those who tell us, wait,
      wait, wait; to those who advise us to pause, to
      consider, to reflect, to calculate and to inquire, our
      answer is: No, this is not a time for deliberation,
      this is a time for action. The flood-tide is upon us
      that leads on to fortune; if we let it pass it may
      never recur again. If we let it pass, the voyage of
      our national life, bright as it is to-day, will be
      bound in shallows. We cannot wait because time does
      not wait; we cannot wait, because in these days of
      wonderful development, time lost is doubly lost; we
      cannot wait, because at this moment there is a
      transformation going on in the conditions of our
      national life which it would be a folly to ignore and
      a crime to overlook; we cannot wait because the
      prairies of the North-West, which for countless ages
      have been roamed over by wild herds of the bison or by
      the scarcely less wild tribes of red men, are now
      invaded from all sides by the white race. They came
      last year one hundred thousand strong and still they
      come in still greater numbers. Already they are at
      work opening the long-dormant soil; already they are
      at work sowing, harvesting and reaping. . . . We
      consider that it is the duty of all who sit within
      these walls by the will of the people to provide
      immediate means whereby the products of those new
      settlers may find an exit to the ocean at the least
      possible cost and whereby likewise a market may be
      found in this new region for those who toil in the
      forests, in the fields, in the mines, in the shops of
      the older provinces. Such is our duty; it is immediate
      and imperative. It is not of to-morrow but of this
      day, of this hour and of this minute. Heaven grant
      that it is not already too late; Heaven grant that,
      while we tarry and dispute, the trade of Canada is not
      deviated to other channels and that an ever-vigilant
      competitor does not take to himself the trade that
      properly belongs to those who acknowledge Canada as
      their native or their adopted land.

With this somewhat perfervid beginning, indicating the strain of
expected criticism not only from the Opposition but from his former
colleague, Sir Wilfrid proceeded in more matter-of-fact terms to
analyze in detail the terms of the contract, and to meet objections.
It was charged that the Moncton-Quebec line paralleled the
Intercolonial: it must be remembered that the route of the
Intercolonial had been determined by military, not by commercial
considerations, that the new route would be a hundred miles shorter
and from thirty to seventy miles distant, with a mountain range
intervening. The short line built by the C. P. R. through Maine to St.
John could not serve: it might at any time be rendered useless by a
denial of the bonding privilege; only a week before, Mr. Andrew
Carnegie, in a letter to the London "Times," had threatened this
withdrawal if the policy of inter-imperial preference in trade was
continued and extended. That menace could not be borne; a commercial
route wholly within Canadian territory to Canadian seaports must be
secured: "I have found that the best and most effective way to
maintain friendship with our American neighbours is to be absolutely
independent of them." It was urged the cost would be prohibitive: the
cost would not be more than seven years' interest on the mountain
section and seven years' rental on the eastern section,--$13,000,000,
or a single year's surplus; for the rest, "We give our credit and
nothing else." It was urged that little was known of the wilderness
through which the government was calmly proposing to build a standard
road: not so, as detailed and authoritative reports on the climate,
resources and topography of this new Northern empire made abundantly
clear. Why should not the country itself build and operate the whole
road if it was to be so profitable? Could any government or any
government commission develop the elasticity, the wide range of
subsidiary enterprises, from steamships to hotels, and the
arrangements with shippers under foreign flags, essential for the
success of such an enterprise? "I am well aware," he concluded, "that
this plan may scare the timid and frighten the irresolute, but, sir, I
may claim that every man who has in his bosom a stout Canadian heart
will welcome it as worthy of this young nation, for whom a heavy task
has no terrors, which has the strength to face grave duties and grave
responsibilities."

The debate thus launched was long and animated. Mr. Borden made a
detailed and effective criticism, but his alternative policy, though
commendably cautious in some respects, was too incomplete and too
patchwork a programme to strike the imagination; at a later stage he
came out flatly for a government-owned transcontinental road. Mr.
Blair insisted that "not time but Cox cannot wait." Every cabinet
minister, Mr. Fielding, Mr. Sifton, Sir William Mulock, who had had a
deciding part in shaping the new policy, Sir Richard Cartwright, Mr.
Fisher, Mr. Fitzpatrick, defended the proposals strongly. It was the
end of September before the Commons passed the measure, and the end of
October before the Senate approved, in both cases substantially on a
party vote.

In the country, the complexity of the project at first stood in the
way of acceptance, but very soon its sweep and comprehensiveness
touched the interests of great numbers and the imagination of many
more. The country wanted new roads and felt it could afford them.
Weaknesses were found in the government's plan, but no feasible
alternative was steadily urged in its stead. The policy which time has
shown should have been followed--a union of the Grand Trunk, with its
wide-reaching connections and terminals in the East, and the Canadian
Northern, with its well-planned prairie feeders, with government aid
to bridge the gap--was not then so obvious. Sir Wilfrid had the
insight to realize that this would be the wisest plan. He brought Mr.
Hays and Mr. Mackenzie together in his office in the attempt to find a
basis of union or co-operation. Sir Charles Rivers-Wilson, chairman of
the Grand Trunk, and Mr. Hays held conferences with Messrs. Mackenzie
and Mann of the Canadian Northern in 1902 and 1903, looking to this
end, but in vain. The old road, proud of its four hundred millions of
debt, despised the upstart; the new, conscious of towering ambitions
and of local influence and knowledge, underrated the old. Common
ground could not be found voluntarily, and neither government nor
Opposition could see far enough into the extravagant rivalry and
duplications, the subsidies, guaranties, lobbying of the future to
urge compulsion.

[Illustration:  _H. Julien: Lib. Beauchemin_

CARTOON BY HENRI JULIEN

After a Visit to Paris]

The Laurier ministry felt that in the G. T. P. project they had a
policy which would ensure triumph in the coming elections. Before the
winter of 1903-04 was over, their calculations were rudely disturbed
by the failure of the Grand Trunk to finance the project on the
government's terms. Plans for an immediate election were stayed and
another session summoned. Some members of the cabinet urged that the
Grand Trunk connection should be dropped and the road built throughout
by the state, but the contrary opinion prevailed. Amendments were
effected, lightening the load both for the Grand Trunk and for the
Grand Trunk Pacific, notably by removing the fixed limit beyond which
the government's guaranty of 75 per cent. of the funds necessary to
build the mountain section was not to go. Debate was vigorous but
changed few views. Mr. Blair was no longer counted in the ranks of the
critics; toward the close of 1903 he had accepted the chairmanship of
the first Board of Railway Commissioners appointed under the act he
himself had sponsored, and seemed to have bidden farewell to politics
and controversy. An echo of the dispute of the previous session came
with lavish quotations by Mr. Borden from a private memorandum which
Mr. Blair had circulated among the members of the cabinet in December,
1902, which had now fallen into other hands by means which were not
explained. The halt in the negotiations, at first welcomed by the
Opposition as evidence that "the bubble had burst," soon reacted in
the government's favour. Blessings brightened as they took their
flight, and a wide-spread demand for immediate action followed the
fear that the project was to come to an end.

    *    *    *    *    *

Before the general elections were held, a third challenger had joined
Mr. Tarte and Mr. Blair. Lord Dundonald's attack was directed not so
much against Sir Wilfrid or even his cabinet, as against the principle
of civilian control and of complete Canadian home rule in military
matters, but it was upon the prime minister that the brunt fell.

While Canada had step by step taken over the control and organization
of her own defence on land, and the British regiments stationed in
Canada, save in Halifax and Esquimalt, had long since departed, it was
still the law and the practice that the general officer commanding the
Canadian militia should be an imperial soldier. This practice made it
possible to secure men of greater professional experience than were
available in Canada, but it was proving incompatible with the new
national aspirations. While the G. O. C. was unquestionably
subordinate to the Minister of Militia, as British commanders were
subordinate to the Secretary for War, the fact that he was still a
British officer, possessed of the old ideas of imperial supremacy and
latterly chosen by the British War Office to advance its policy of
centralizing the military resources of the Empire, made it difficult
for a man of strong will to accept his constitutional limitations.

After General Hutton's recall, General O'Grady-Haly had held the post
two years without serious friction. After an Englishman and an
Irishman, a Scotchman was next appointed. Major-General the Earl of
Dundonald, twelfth of his name, came of a famous fighting family. He
had no little of the spirit of his grandfather the admiral, daring,
resourceful, imprudent. His cavalry work in South Africa and his share
in the relief of Ladysmith, had commended him to soldiers, and his
frankness, his adaptability, and his keenness in his task soon won
wide popularity in Canada. He did much good work, studying the
situation carefully and endeavouring to adapt his theories to the
needs of a pioneer country without militarist neighbours. The
government accepted a large part of his recommendations, as of his
predecessor's; largely owing to the experiences of the Boer War, the
expenditures for militia purposes had tripled between 1896 and 1904,
and the efficiency, while still far from satisfactory, had much
increased. Even so, friction soon developed. Lord Dundonald was
impatient of what he considered the slow progress, and inclined to
place the responsibility not so much upon Canadian conditions and
public sentiment as upon the ministry which for the time represented
the country. The government did not share his views as to the
proportion that military preparations should bear in the country's
activities, and in particular his plans for large capital outlays,
including fortifications upon the United States border. The impatience
frequently felt by the military commander against civilian and
inexpert control was intensified by Lord Dundonald's own temperament,
the advice of some militia and imperial officers, and particularly by
the inherent anomalies of his dual post as a British officer and a
Canadian official.

More than once during the two years of Lord Dundonald's service
friction arose between the Minister of Militia and the G.O.C.
Belleville and St. Catharines regimental squabbles, an unauthorized
visit of Lord Dundonald to Port Simpson followed by speeches on the
Alaska boundary award, gave cause for difference. Then came the
revision in 1904 of the Militia Act, permitting the appointment of a
Canadian militia officer as G.O.C., empowering the government to
appoint a militia council which, with a chief of staff, might take in
time the place of the G.O.C., and restricting the power to call out
the militia for active service in time of war, whether in or outside
of Canada, to service for the defence of Canada. The act met little
criticism in the House and less in the country, but the rejection of
Lord Dundonald's advice on various clauses nettled him further, and
was undoubtedly the main reason for his outburst. The episode which
finally brought an explosion was the action of Mr. Fisher, while
acting Minister of Militia, in scratching the name of an active Tory
politician in his own Eastern Townships bailiwick from the list of
officers of a new regiment of dragoons. Speaking at a military banquet
in Montreal, on June 4, Lord Dundonald denounced this "gross instance
of political interference," this "extraordinary lack of etiquette,"
and added: "Lack of etiquette affects me little; I have been two years
in Ottawa, gentlemen. It is not on personal grounds that I inform you
of this, but on national grounds. I feel, gentlemen, anxious,
profoundly anxious, that the militia of Canada may be kept free from
party politics."

This outburst was followed by a prompt inquiry by the Minister of
Militia as to whether the newspaper reports were correct, and on this
being admitted, by a vigorous debate in the House on June 10. Mr.
Fisher insisted that he had not cancelled Dr. Pickel's appointment for
partisan reasons, but in order to defeat a partisan movement, the
attempt on the part of the Baker family--his chief political opponents
in the Townships--"to turn that squadron, if not the whole regiment,
into a political Tory organization." Sir Frederick Borden confirmed
his colleague's statements. Colonel Hughes read a memorandum which
Lord Dundonald had sent him in his own defence. Mr. Borden eulogized
Lord Dundonald. Sir Wilfrid, in a brief speech, admitted the good
motives of the G.O.C. but questioned his discretion; the cabinet was
not obliged to accept his recommendations. "We are not accustomed to
being dragooned in this country; Lord Dundonald, with all the respect
I have for him, must learn that this is a responsible government." In
passing, he referred to Lord Dundonald as "a foreigner,--no, a
stranger,"--_tranger_ in both cases in French.[26]

[Footnote 26: "Lord Dundonald in his position is charged with the
organization of the militia, but must take counsel here when
organizing a regiment. He is a foreigner,--no. . . ."

Some Hon. Members. "No, no."

Sir Wilfrid Laurier. "I had withdrawn the expression before honourable
gentlemen interrupted. He is not a foreigner but he is a stranger."

Some Hon. Members. "No."

Sir Wilfrid Laurier. "Yes, he does not know the people of the Eastern
Townships, where these light dragoons are to be enlisted. I doubt if
he was ever in the town of Sweetsburg or in the county of Brome or the
county of Missisquoi."

Sir Wilfrid's mastery of English was complete, in readiness and
felicity of phrase, though when ill or fatigued the English word came
to him less easily than the French. To the end, his pronunciation of
English was frequently distinctly French in the placing of accent.

It was a habit of his when debate in the House was tedious to snap his
fingers and bid a page bring a large English dictionary from the
Library, and then to sit absorbed for an hour running his long finger
down column after column of words.]

Lord Minto, whose term as governor-general was expiring, had continued
to take a very direct and personal interest in military affairs. He
had deprecated the passing of the Militia Bill, because the minister
had declined to include various clauses suggested by the British War
Office and to await further suggestions. Now his sympathies were
warmly with Dundonald, but in his five years of office he had come to
appreciate better both his prime minister and his own constitutional
limitations. On June 9, Sir Wilfrid had apprised him of Lord
Dundonald's "unpardonable indiscretion," which if confirmed would
probably mean that "his usefulness will be gone." The governor-general
agreed at once that Lord Dundonald's utterance was indefensible, but
he was inclined to shift the issue to what he held to be the still
less defensible conduct of Mr. Fisher. When the cabinet decided to
take drastic action and dismiss the G.O.C. from his post, Sir Wilfrid
sought the governor-general's signature for the order in council.[27]
Lord Minto declined to sign without time for reflection. During the
day Major Maude, his military secretary, and a group of Conservative
politicians urged the governor-general to withhold his signature, and
thus to force the resignation of the ministry and an appeal to the
country which would put the "disloyalists" in their place. Feeling was
running high, pressure was keen and insistent, and Lord Minto's own
convictions ran with it. He endeavoured to induce Sir Wilfrid to
abandon or postpone the dismissal; Sir Wilfrid declined to alter the
order in council and declared that if necessary the government would
go to the country on the issue. Finally, Lord Minto acquiesced, but
while signing the order he put on record his own dissent. Lord
Dundonald was relieved of his command that night.

[Footnote 27: The order, after defending Mr. Fisher's action,
continued: "Even if Mr. Fisher's action had been as erroneously
stated, there would still have been no justification for the course
pursued by Lord Dundonald. Lord Dundonald is an officer of the
Canadian Government, a high officer, it is true, but still an officer
of the Government, subject to all the limitations which are usually
imposed upon public officials in regard to the action of their
superior officers. For an official to make a public attack upon
Ministers of the Government under which he serves is a proceeding so
totally at variance with the principles which must necessarily obtain
in the administration of military as well as civil affairs that it
cannot with propriety be overlooked. It is impossible to do otherwise
than characterize the speech of Lord Dundonald as a grave act of
indiscretion and insubordinance."]

Lord Dundonald's outburst and the government's vigorous action were
followed by a lively controversy. Twice during June the question was
debated in the House. Sir Wilfrid made the issue one between military
and civil power: "so long as there is a Liberal government in Canada
the civil power shall rule the military." He denounced the bitter
personal attack which unscrupulous newspapers in Ontario were making
upon him for his reference to Lord Dundonald as a "foreigner" or
"stranger," and made a statement of his own standards in controversy
which shamed his critics.[28] Outside parliament a vigorous effort was
made to turn the incident to the government's hurt, and particularly
to rouse the voters of Scottish blood to resent the dismissal of the
distinguished Scot. Mass-meetings were held in Toronto, Ottawa and
Montreal. Lord Dundonald gave interviews and speeches dealing with
"the difficulty between myself and the Government of Canada," in which
he declared that he had been balked in his plans throughout, and that
Canadians were living in a fool's paradise as regards military
preparedness. "Keep both hands on the Union Jack," he repeatedly told
the crowds. There was some question of his contesting a seat in the
coming elections, but eventually prudence or a hint from Britain
prevailed, and he left Canada late in July.

[Footnote 28: "Sir, I have been told that my meaning was contemplated,
was offensive and insulting. I have been in this House for many years,
I have seen some of the veterans of former combats pass away, I have
been engaged in combats with some of them, I have fought a good many
hard struggles, but I am not conscious in all the years of my life, in
all the struggles in which I have been engaged with gentlemen on the
other side of the House, I am not conscious that I ever deliberately
used an offensive word toward any man or toward any class. I never
sought a fight, but I was never afraid of a fight. Whenever I had to
fight, I think it will be admitted by friend and foe that I always
fought with fair weapons. I have been told to-day on the floor of this
House twice, that when I used the word 'foreigner,' there was in my
heart a sinister motive, there was in my heart a feeling which found
expression. Sir, I have only this to say: I disdain to make reply to
such an insinuation. If sixty years of what I believe to be, after
all, an honourable life, a life which has certainly been one of loyal
devotion to British institutions, is not a sufficient answer to such
an insinuation, I will not attempt to make an answer."]

Mr. Tarte, who "held Quebec in the hollow of his hand," Mr. Blair, who
had ruled New Brunswick unchallenged for nearly a score of years, Lord
Dundonald, with all the prestige of an honoured name and, it was
hoped, the clannishness of the Scot to back him, had one by one
measured strength and one by one departed. What would be the
cumulative effect of these incidents in the general elections which
were to be held on November 3? It soon became clear that the Dundonald
episode, whatever the sensation it created for the moment, would have
little electoral effect, and that without the manufacturers Mr. Tarte
would count little in Ontario, and, against Sir Wilfrid, little in
Quebec. But Mr. Blair, or the powerful forces which approved Mr.
Blair's stand, was not so easily ignored. The Grand Trunk Pacific was
the outstanding issue of the campaign, and while its magnificent
promises of benefit to every section of the Dominion were certain to
rally wide support, it was also clear that rival railways and
disappointed promoters, as well as many disinterested doubters of the
soundness of the plan, could be counted on to oppose.

The discussion in the country on the railway issue followed much the
lines taken in parliament. It was behind the scenes that the real
interest of the campaign developed. During the autumn an extraordinary
conspiracy against the government and its railway policy was hatched
in Montreal, which for sheer melodrama and sheer fatuity has never
been equalled in Canada. The moving spirits were David Russell, a
well-to-do promoter of St. John and Montreal, and J. N. Greenshields,
a Liberal lawyer of Montreal who was solicitor for Mackenzie and Mann.
Hugh Graham, the proprietor of the Montreal "Star," which then had the
largest circulation of any English newspaper in Canada, and who, after
some preliminary coquetting with the Liberals in 1896, had fought them
then by every means, and fought them again in 1900, with ill success
but with what consolation could be derived from the memory of having
done more than any other agency to stampede and discredit the
government in connection with the South African War, was also
involved. A fourth figure was Arthur Dansereau; Sir Wilfrid had
foreseen the possibility of a gradual weakening of "La Presse's"
support, but he had never dreamed of the sudden blow that was now in
preparation. The plan, in brief, was to defeat the government by the
purchase of important Liberal or independent newspapers, by a scandal
campaign against members of the cabinet, by buying off Liberal
candidates in Quebec, and by inducing Mr. Blair to take the stump
against his former chief. The purpose, so far at least as Russell and
Greenshields were concerned, was to secure control of the new
government in order to unload bankrupt railways upon it and to secure
fat contracts for government railway construction; other railway
interests of more permanent character would also be served.

The plot began well. Mr. Russell secured control of the St. John
"Telegraph," a Liberal newspaper which had been Mr. Blair's special
organ, and of the St. John "Evening Times." In October, "La Presse,"
the chief French-Canadian newspaper, with the largest circulation of
any newspaper in Canada, and which was still continuing its policy of
independence with a friendly leaning toward Sir Wilfrid, was acquired
from its owner, Hon. Treffle Berthiaume, for a sum slightly over one
million dollars. Rumours of the transfer at once leaked out, only to
meet vigorous denial. Early in October, a very elaborate public dinner
was tendered Hon. Mr. Pugsley, Attorney-General in the New Brunswick
cabinet, organized by Messrs. Russell and Greenshields, and presided
over by Mr. Blair, avowedly as a forerunner of Mr. Pugsley's entrance
into a federal cabinet, the existing--or some other. Then on October
18 a message from Mr. Blair appeared in the "Telegraph": "I authorize
the announcement that I have resigned my position as Chairman of the
Railway Commission and have notified the premier that beyond
reaffirming my strong objection to the Grand Trunk Pacific scheme, I
have no present intention of re-entering political life." The
"Telegraph," on Mr. Russell's authority, announced two days later that
Mr. Blair would take the stump against the government. Mr. Blair
himself informed his fellow-commissioners that he was about to accept
much more profitable employment.

Mr. Blair's announcement, following the Pugsley banquet, and the
newspaper purchases, created a national sensation. It was evident
that an audacious and aggressive movement was on foot. Both Liberals
and Conservatives waited for the next development. But day after day
passed and nothing happened. Mr. Blair did not take the stump. "La
Presse" did not materially change its tone. Mr. Pugsley did not
contest a seat. No more newspapers were bought. No scandal charges
were launched. Somehow the bomb had failed to go off. Sir Wilfrid had
taken a hand with "La Presse," informing its managers that if it
changed its policy he would expose the sale of the chief
French-Canadian journal to a group of English-speaking speculators,
and denounce it throughout the province. He had an interview with Mr.
Blair, but, contrary to rumours, did not seek to bring any pressure as
to his future course. David Russell had induced Mr. Blair to resign,
by inducements which were never made public, but which must have been
weighty to lead to the abandonment of the most desirable post in the
gift of the government; a cog slipped in the further negotiations; Mr.
Blair did not receive the important appointment he anticipated, and he
did not say a word in the campaign. Mr. Borden, who had evidently been
counted upon to implement some of the wild promises given, flatly and
vigorously declined to have anything to do with the conspirators; in a
significant statement issued on October 24, he gave a warning that the
Conservative party would not regard campaign subscriptions as giving
any claim to consideration in matters of policy, and that if any
subscriptions had been given in other spirit they would be returned on
application. Before election day had come it was plain that the
amateur and leaky conspirators had over-reached themselves, and that
the net result of the incident was to confirm confidence in the leader
whose unquestioned honour and integrity and straightforwardness
afforded a refreshing contrast to the fatuous and tortuous plottings
on which a corner of the curtain had been raised.

After the election, more light was given, but some aspects remained
shrouded in mystery. "Le Nationaliste" of Montreal, which had first
announced the "La Presse" deal, the Toronto "World," in a startling
article which mingled fact and rumour, and the Toronto "Globe," in a
series of reports by a special Montreal correspondent, laid bare some
of the incidents. Mr. Blair denied that he had been paid or promised
any sum for his resignation; Mr. Russell insisted that he had merely
been looking for good business investments; "La Presse" proclaimed
itself "the organ of the people"; the "Star," making no denial of the
charges, suggested, quite safely, that either the government or the
Opposition should make full inquiry. The Opposition wanted no
publicity for a conspiracy in which they were cast for the rle of
tool. The government, as victors, were prepared to forgive. More
accurately speaking, Sir Wilfrid, as usual, was more concerned with
making certain that the weapons would not be turned against him in
future than with seeking vengeance for the attempts that had failed.
As to "La Presse," a further transfer, or rather a reshuffling among
the new owners, followed in January, 1905. In contrast with the
amateur leakiness of the October transactions, these later endeavours
to save what could be saved out of the wreck of failure were carried
on with extraordinary care, with elaborately casual suggestions of
desire for conciliation conveyed through third parties, correspondence
in the third person, and with cryptogrammatic references to Sir
Wilfrid as "Roberts" and Mr. Greenshields as "Peters" and so on;
eventually the new owners undertook to keep "La Presse" independent
but "giving Sir Wilfrid Laurier a generous support." The trend of the
negotiations and their conclusion are sufficiently indicated by two
brief documents:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Hugh Graham_)


Ottawa, January 12, 1905.

Dear Mr. Graham:

I would much prefer to deal with that whole matter on the lines which
you suggested in our interview of Tuesday, the 10th, or even on those
of your letter of the same date. Such a course would be much more in
accordance with my own inclination. It is, however, preferable that
the business part of the question should be disposed of in more
tangible and concrete form. I have therefore asked a friend of mine
who was approached by D. M. to take charge of this subject. I have no
doubt that D. M. will confer with you. For my part, I will agree with
what my friend accepts. When this part of the difficulty has been
removed, the rest will be easily disposed of. You already know my
views.

Yours very truly, Wilfrid Laurier.


[Illustration: Sir Richard Scott]

Hon. J. Israel Tarte

Hon. W. S. Fielding

Sir Frederick Borden

Hon. A. G. Blair

Sir Charles Fitzpatrick

Sir Wilfrid Laurier

Hon. Sydney Fisher

Sir L. H. Davies

Hon. Clifford Sifton

Sir William Mulock

Hon. C. A. Geoffrion

 _H. Julien: Lib. Beauchemin_

HENRI JULIEN'S "BY-TOWN COONS"]



St. James Club, Montreal, January 18, 1905.

It is distinctly understood as a condition of procuring the consent of
the holder of the majority of the stock of La Presse Company to sell
to us, that the paper "La Presse" is not to be a Tory organ, that it
is to be independent, and that it is to give Sir Wilfrid Laurier a
generous support.

Mackenzie, Mann & Co. [Signed] Wm. Mackenzie, President. D. D. Mann,
Vice-President.

Shortly before this time Mr. Edward Farrer had investigated the
conspiracy; his interim report to Sir Wilfrid may suffice to make
clear the ramifications of the plan, and incidentally Mr. Farrer's
reportorial powers:

      The Montreal conspiracy to overthrow the Government
      appears to have been formed early in September.
      Messrs. Greenshields, Dansereau, and Russell were the
      moving spirits from the first. . . .

      [_After referring to sundry stock-market speculations,
      in some of which Mr. Blair was interested on joint
      account with Mr. Russell, Mr. Farrer continues_:]

      From all that I can gather from inside sources Mr.
      Hugh Graham of the "Star" and Mr. Greenshields were
      the first to get together. Greenshields then brought
      in Russell and Dansereau. Graham on his part brought
      in the Canadian Pacific, Mackenzie and Mann, and the
      Forgets. The project which was developed bit by bit
      finally took this shape:--

      "A." To defeat the Government and hang up the Grand
      Trunk Pacific scheme.

      "B." To make Mr. Blair Minister of Railways under
      Borden.

      "C." To lease the Intercolonial to the C.P.R.

      "D." To bring about the purchase by the Government of
      the Canadian Northern lines west of Lake Superior at a
      good figure.

      "E." To purchase from Russell and Greenshields
      derelict railways in the Maritime provinces, such as
      the Caraquet and Temiscouata, on which Russell had
      options, and make them part and parcel of the
      Intercolonial.

      "F." Also to purchase through them the Dominion
      Atlantic Railway in Nova Scotia and the South Shore
      Railway of Nova Scotia now being built between
      Yarmouth and Halifax by Mackenzie and Mann.

      "G." To extend the South Shore from Halifax eastward
      to connect with the Cape Breton extension, the road
      built a few years ago by Dr. Seward Webb, and now
      controlled by Mackenzie and Mann.

      "H." In short, all the independent lines in the
      Maritime provinces were to be bought by the
      Government, either through Russell and Greenshields,
      or Mackenzie and Mann, and annexed to the
      Intercolonial which was to be leased in whole or in
      part to the Canadian Pacific.

      "I." As said above, the Grand Trunk Pacific project
      was to be suspended indefinitely on the ground that
      the surveys did not warrant the construction of the
      line, the country traversed being too poor, while
      construction in some places between Quebec and Moncton
      would be impracticable. . . .

      The means that were to be adopted were as follows:--

      "A." Russell was to get Mr. Blair to resign and take
      the stump against the Government.

      "B." "La Presse" newspaper was to be purchased and
      turned against the Government.

      "C." Shortly before nomination day scandals were to be
      sprung against the Government in the Tory press. The
      chief scandal affected Mr. X. . . .

      "D." Immediately after the publication of these
      scandals a number of Liberal candidates in the
      Province of Quebec, who were to have been bribed in
      advance, were to retire. This part of the business was
      suggested by Greenshields and Dansereau. They said
      they could induce at least twenty Liberal candidates
      to retire on nomination day on account of the
      scandals just mentioned. For this service they would
      require $250,000 or something over $10,000 for each
      Member. In a memo to Graham on the subject
      Greenshields said that he could bring influence to
      bear on Mr. Z. to get him to resign from the Cabinet
      at the same time. He did not suggest that Mr. Z. was
      to be bought like the twenty members, but merely that
      he could be got to resign because of his ill-health,
      his dislike of Senator Choquette, and for other
      "private reasons."

      This programme, it must be allowed, reads like the
      programme of a parcel of lunatics. Nevertheless,
      stripped of detail, it is precisely what was proposed.
      All sorts of minor suggestions reached Graham from
      Greenshields, Dansereau and Russell. . . . They were
      drawing fresh agreements, or making fresh suggestions
      of a wild character to Graham. Graham himself is
      cool-headed enough in his own business, but in
      politics he is excitable, almost hysterical, and can
      be made to believe anything that promises to bring the
      Conservative party into power.

      In due course Russell got Mr. Blair to withdraw, and
      to send a telegram "reaffirming his hostility to the
      Grand Trunk Pacific." Blair's friends say that while
      he undoubtedly wired the Premier his resignation, he
      did not of his own volition use the words just quoted,
      that they were inserted in the telegram furnished to
      the newspapers by Russell. They allege, in short, that
      Blair's telegram to the Premier was merely an
      announcement of his resignation to the Premier,
      whereas the telegram as furnished by Russell to the
      newspaper correspondents made Blair "reaffirm my
      hostility," etc.

      I have nothing to say on this point. In fact I have
      not been able as yet to devote any attention to the
      part Mr. Blair played in the conspiracy.

      "La Presse" was purchased according to the programme.
      Dansereau was employed to manipulate Berthiaume. They
      met at the concert of the Garde Rpublicaine in the
      Arena on the night of October 11, and went from there
      to Greenshields' house, where they remained until six
      o'clock in the morning of the twelfth. Russell and
      Mr. A. J. Brown, of Hall, Cross & Co., lawyers, were
      also present together with Mr. Beaudin, lawyer for
      Berthiaume. A draft agreement for the purchase of the
      paper had been prepared in advance by Brown. A good
      deal of liquor was consumed during the night.
      Berthiaume says he had not drunk liquor before for a
      long time, that two or three glasses of champagne
      overpowered him and that his mind was a perfect blank
      when he signed the contract about five in the morning.
      He signed it, he says, because Dansereau told him that
      everything was all right. In the draft contract made
      by Brown, no provision was made for Dansereau. It was
      not until the party had assembled at Greenshields'
      house that a separate clause was drawn--drawn on a
      separate sheet of paper--whereby Russell covenanted to
      pay Dansereau $1,000 per month for ten years, whether
      he worked for "La Presse" or whether he did not. It
      would appear that the drafting of this special clause
      satisfied Dansereau, as well it might, and thereupon
      he told Berthiaume to sign. But the story told by
      Berthiaume, that his mind was a blank, that he
      imagined Russell and Greenshields were acting for Sir
      Wilfrid Laurier in purchasing "La Presse," and so on,
      is ridiculous and false on its face. The sum of
      $10,000 was paid to Berthiaume that morning, when he
      signed the contract. A further sum of $240,000 was
      paid to him later on when a clean copy of the contract
      had been prepared with the Dansereau provision
      inserted. Berthiaume was sober then and must have
      known when he read the contract that Sir Wilfrid
      Laurier was not the purchaser, but, on the contrary,
      that the paper was falling into the hands of persons
      hostile to Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

      Immediately after this, Russell and Greenshields,
      through Godin, Business Manager of "La Presse," caused
      that paper to abandon its attacks on the Forget
      interests, and to lean in its news columns,
      particularly in its reports of political meetings,
      towards Mr. Borden and the Conservative Party.
      Articles reflecting on the Grand Trunk Pacific project
      were sent by A. J. Brown, who seems to have acted for
      Greenshields, to Godin for insertion in "La Presse,"
      but these and other attempts to turn the paper against
      the Government were frustrated by the action of Mr.
      Thos. Cot, Managing Editor of the newspaper.
      Greenshields and Russell attempted to buy up Cot in
      the same way, but he refused to have anything to do
      with them unless it could be shown to his satisfaction
      that the paper was to remain as before, that is,
      independent in politics with a friendly feeling for
      Sir Wilfrid Laurier. During one of Cot's visits to
      Greenshields, whom he met at Russell's room at the
      Windsor Hotel, Cot was told by Greenshields that Mr.
      Melville of Boston had been selected as the person who
      should instruct "La Presse" as to the course it should
      take relative to railway and other matters. Cot saw
      Melville in the room at the time, and recognized him
      as one of the promoters of the Great Northern Railway
      of Canada in which Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann have an
      interest. Melville is also mixed up with Mackenzie and
      Mann in the Chateauguay and Northern Railway.
      Berthiaume told Cot more than once that Mackenzie and
      Mann were the chief parties if not the sole parties
      for whom Greenshields and Russell were acting.

      The contract of purchase of "La Presse" I have not as
      yet been able to obtain. I am able, however, to say
      that over and above the Dansereau clause it contained
      some curious provisions. Thus Berthiaume bound himself
      to deny in the paper that "La Presse" had been sold;
      he was to make it appear that the paper had merely
      passed into the hands of a new company composed of old
      friends and that he (Berthiaume) was still in control.
      In order further to hide the transaction Russell
      furnished Dansereau with a letter, dated October 12
      (the day the paper was purchased by Russell and
      Greenshields).

      This letter was to enable Dansereau to say that the
      policy of the paper was not to be changed, not at any
      rate until after the elections. . . .

      By the contract with Berthiaume, Russell and
      Greenshields, having paid the $250,000 in the two sums
      mentioned, were to assume absolute control of "La
      Presse" newspaper on and after Nov. 12. Before the
      elections took place they shipped Dansereau to France
      in company of a friend. Dansereau had given out, had
      indeed stated in "La Presse" itself, that he was about
      to go to France to act as agent for a French syndicate
      in New York. This was untrue. Russell bought him his
      ticket for France via New York, gave him $500 in cash
      and a draft for $2,500 more, with a letter granting
      him leave of absence from "La Presse" until the end of
      the year.

      One of the strangest features of this strange
      transaction is the purchase of "La Presse." A
      newspaper property is wholly unlike any other form of
      property. Its value rests on its circulation, that is
      to say, on the sentimental attachment of its
      clientele. If that attachment is weakened or destroyed
      in consequence of the property passing into hands
      objectionable to its readers, the value is at once
      greatly impaired and may easily be wiped out
      altogether. One can hardly imagine how Greenshields
      and Russell, still less how Graham, Forget and the
      rest, could have supposed that "La Presse" could be
      bought and sold in this cold-blooded fashion and
      transferred to the control of persons hostile to Sir
      Wilfrid Laurier and his Administration, without
      putting the property in grave jeopardy. Obviously a
      statement by Sir Wilfrid setting forth the bargain and
      sale would at once rob the paper of all its Liberal
      readers, besides weakening the attachment of its
      independent readers. In this way the value of the
      paper could be reduced by fully one-half in the
      twinkling of an eye. Russell and Greenshields possibly
      did not realize this danger, but Graham must have done
      so. . . .

      Where did the money come from? The $10,000 and the
      $240,000 paid to Berthiaume for "La Presse" came
      through the ---- Bank, of which all the directors are
      Tories. . . . The best information I can obtain from
      the Bank is to this effect: The $250,000 was furnished
      to the Bank by a credit from New York, from the Morton
      Trust Co. The conspirators were not obliged to make a
      second payment until six months from October 12, 1904.
      They had agreed to pay for "La Presse" $250,000 in
      cash on the signing of the deed of purchase and
      $450,000 in six months. They had further obligated
      themselves to assume the debts of "La Presse"
      consisting of a mortgage on the building of over
      $200,000, an indebtedness to the Canada Paper Co. of
      $112,000, and some other small liabilities. But they
      had so arranged matters that, had the Laurier
      Government been defeated, they would have paid the
      $450,000 within a month of the installation of Mr.
      Borden, and at the same time would have redeemed the
      mortgage on "La Presse" building and the debt to the
      Canada Paper Co., besides which they were to pay in
      $100,000 as working capital for the newspaper and to
      improve its news service and circulation by every
      available means. This, it will be seen, presupposed
      the possession of a very large sum of ready money. . .
      .

      That Mackenzie constantly visited Graham is beyond
      doubt. He also saw Greenshields at the latter's office
      on Notre Dame Street on a Sunday evening at 8 o'clock
      immediately on his return from a distant
      journey--possibly on his arrival from Europe--as he
      was staying at the time at the Windsor with a lot of
      baggage without being registered. There is the best
      authority for saying that on the occasion of this
      visit to Greenshields he left with Greenshields a
      large envelope containing securities, designation and
      amounts not known. While he was conversing with
      Greenshields a person described as a stout man with
      red hair and wearing blue glasses was waiting for him
      in the hall. The only person whom this description
      fits is Mr. Lukes, the accountant for Mackenzie and
      Mann. It is not often that one comes across such a
      description--red hair and blue glasses--and certainly
      Lukes is the only person answering to that description
      who travels with Mackenzie; indeed, he is possibly the
      only man in Canada to whom the description would
      apply.

      The statement obtained from an official of the ----
      Bank that the funds were pooled in New York seems to
      be well founded. An investigation in New York has
      already been set on foot with the object of
      ascertaining, if possible, how much was contributed
      by each of the interested parties. Greenshields,
      Russell and Dansereau made several visits to New York
      during the progress of the conspiracy, stopping at the
      Manhattan Hotel. On November 8 last, information was
      obtained from Russell's office in the Windsor that a
      meeting of the conspirators was to be held in New York
      forthwith to determine what was to be done with "La
      Presse" newspaper, and to discuss other matters, now
      that the plot had failed. On Thursday night, November
      10, Greenshields started for New York. Mr. Carrington,
      Chief of the Montreal Branch of the Thiel Detective
      Agency, was employed to go to New York and watch
      events. He was told nothing regarding the facts of the
      case, but merely instructed to watch the persons with
      whom Greenshields might communicate. His report is
      appended herewith. . . . Such in brief are the facts
      furnished by the detective. They go to confirm what
      has been ascertained from other sources.

      The unearthing of a plot of these dimensions is
      necessarily a slow and difficult task. Every effort is
      being made to get complete details. Meanwhile this
      interim report shows that the conspiracy was probably
      a more formidable one than any of us at first
      supposed.

In the election campaign, Sir Wilfrid, in spite of growing fatigue,
did not spare himself in Ontario and Quebec. His fortnight's tour
through Ontario in October was a triumphal procession. At public
meetings in Hamilton, Guelph, Toronto, Chatham, Wingham, Uxbridge,
Orillia, Peterborough, Cornwall, Carleton Place, Alexandria, and in
many an improvised word from the train platform, Sir Wilfrid defended
the record of the past and urged the new railway policy as the
assurance of continued prosperity. The welcome he received was
enthusiastic and whole-hearted. Toronto accorded him what many
observers considered the most striking demonstration in its history:
"You cheer me," he told a Toronto audience later, "but you do not vote
for me." There was no question of the pride that Canadians,
irrespective of party, felt in the leader under whom Canada had
attained a new place in the world, a new prosperity, and a higher
level of political life. Among thousands of party followers, the
blending of dignity and distinction with frank and unfeigned
kindliness and friendliness in his bearing, his remarkable memory for
old friends' faces, the twinkle in his eye as he made a friendly
thrust at some of his companions in the informal receptions that
followed every meeting, quickened pride to what was not far from
adoration. In Montreal, Three Rivers, Valleyfield, Farnham, Sherbrooke
and Quebec the same story was told. No one had any question after his
Quebec tour that his native province would not merely cheer but vote
for Laurier. East and West he was forced to leave wholly to his
lieutenants, particularly Mr. Fielding in Nova Scotia and Mr. Sifton
in the West.

The result of the polling on November 3 was yet another overwhelming
Liberal victory. The majority in the House increased by eleven, nearly
doubling the majority of 1896. The most notable changes occurred in
the East and the West. The ten additional seats accorded the West in
redistribution had in effect all fallen to the government, British
Columbia going solidly and the prairies predominantly Liberal. The
decline in the representation of the Maritime provinces, four seats,
had virtually been deducted from the Conservative column. While New
Brunswick was slightly Liberal and the Island distinctly Conservative,
the surprise of the election was the clean sweep made in Nova Scotia,
with eighteen Liberals and not one Conservative returned, even Mr.
Borden failing to retain his seat. Quebec gave the Opposition four
seats more than in 1900, and Ontario seven seats fewer. Toronto
remained solidly Conservative, and St. John followed Mr. Blair into
opposition, but Halifax, Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa, Kingston, London,
Winnipeg, Victoria and Vancouver made it clear that the cities were
predominantly with the government. It had a majority of over forty in
Quebec and of over thirty, omitting Quebec altogether. The margin in
the popular vote was much less than in the House, conspicuously so in
Nova Scotia.[29]

The unquestioned prosperity of the country, the glowing prospects
opened up by the construction of a new transcontinental, the prestige
and popularity of Sir Wilfrid, the strength of his colleagues, and the
lack of any comparable group of leaders on the other side had given
the Liberal party its third opportunity. The government's policies had
received the emphatic endorsement of the country. Incidentally, the
departure of the Minister of Public Works, the Minister of Railways
and the G. O. C., had evidently had little permanent and general
effect. The Master of the Administration had met all challenges.

[Footnote 29:            FEDERAL ELECTIONS, 1904

                                  Seats
                          Liberal     Conservative

Prince Edward Island         1            3
Nova Scotia                 18            0
New Brunswick                7            6
Quebec                      54           11
Ontario                     38           48
Manitoba                     7            3
North West Territories       7            3
British Columbia             7            0
Yukon                        0            1
                          ----         ----
                           139           75]




CHAPTER XIV

SCHOOLS AND SCANDALS

      At the Height of Power--Decline of the
      Administration--The North-West School Question--A
      Crisis and a Compromise--The Crisis Passes--The Lord's
      Day Act--Sharretti and Shearer--Changes in the
      Cabinet--Provincial Party Fortunes--Parliamentary
      Standards and Administrative Records--Personal Charges
      and Counter Charges--The Patronage System--The Award
      of Titles--Laurier Refuses Peerage--Cleaning
      House---The Elections of 1908.


In the election of 1904 the Laurier administration reached the height
of its power. From 1896 to 1904 it had steadily advanced in
parliamentary majority and popular prestige. From 1904 to 1911 it
marked time or went backward. In great measure the decline was
inevitable. The country was prosperous, the administration
progressive, its leader pre-eminent, but the swing of the pendulum
could not be averted. After eight years of active government, touching
the interests of classes and communities from Atlantic to Pacific,
grievances and discontent began to accumulate: the memory of benefits
faded and the memory of hurts remained. Some slackening of energy in
the administration, some carelessness in party organization and
neglect of the never-ending work of popular education in the
principles of the party, some growth of personal demoralization and
departmental corruption, gradually sapped strength and confidence.

The decline of the administration did not at once involve a decline in
the power of its leader. Sir Wilfrid Laurier had now become an
institution of the country. In the eyes of Canadians and of outsiders
alike he was the embodiment, if he was not the maker, of the new
position Canada held in the world. He stood head and shoulders above
all other men in public life. The subtle note of distinction in all he
said or did, in all he was, the blending of reserve and of friendly
interest which fascinated and gripped the men who came in personal
contact with him, the adroitness in handling a tangled situation, the
prestige of nearly thirty years in high place, made him an
incomparable leader. He was more indispensable to his party in 1911
than he had been in 1896. But this very strength of his was the
party's weakness. It was becoming too much a one-man party. Neither in
parliament nor in the party organization were sufficient new recruits
being enrolled and trained. And one man's smile could not hold a party
together indefinitely from Halifax to Vancouver.

The Liberal party was going through the same evolution as its
predecessor in power. The Conservative administration had held and
tightened its grip on the country from 1878 to 1887; it declined
rapidly from 1887 to 1896. Sir John Macdonald had grown in authority
and indispensableness as his party had weakened, and with his death
the party had disintegrated. History was not to repeat itself exactly.
The demoralization of the Liberal party did not go to the lengths
suffered by the Conservatives. Laurier held power for a longer
unbroken stretch than his great rival, and was destined to remain for
a further term at the head of a strong Opposition. Yet as Sir Wilfrid
looked back to the career of his predecessor, as he often did, some
premonition of coming fates, some memory of the fickleness of the
electorate, must time and again have flitted through his mind.[30]

In the Dominion's tenth parliament, which met for the first time in
January, 1905, this decline seemed far in the future. The government
was sustained in the first test of the session by a vote of 93 to 47.
The Grand Trunk Pacific and the National Transcontinental were well
under way, the stream of immigration was still mounting fast, and the
prosperity which had come in with the Laurier rgime was still
unclouded. The prospect of any shift in public opinion seemed remote.

[Footnote 30: Sir Wilfrid could face this outlook unflinchingly for
himself, and equally for others, as this letter to a witness Liberal
member who had lost his convention, owing, he claimed, to wire-pulling
and the family influence of his rival, and who proposed to run as an
independent:

(_Translation_)

Ottawa, Sept. 18, 1909

     "My dear X: "I have just received your letter. I must
     express my regret in having to tell you frankly that I
     do not at all agree with you: I know the county well
     enough personally to be informed exactly on the
     situation.

     "You forget that you, and I as well, are no longer as
     young as we used to be when we campaigned together. The
     young are coming up and taking the place of the old
     fellows. That is what has happened to you in your
     county, and that is what will happen to me before long
     in Canada. Let us submit with good grace to the
     inevitable.

     "The convention was like all other conventions. Your
     friends could have been there as well as L.'s, and if
     they were not, it is because they do not exist or
     because they have less zeal than L.'s partisans. In
     either case the decision of the convention settles the
     point. It is impossible to maintain a party without
     discipline. I hope that you will recognize this
     voluntarily."]

It was the very success of the Laurier administration in opening up
the West which led incidentally to its first serious check. The growth
of population in the Western territories made it necessary to advance
them to provincehood, and the framing of provincial constitutions
raised once more the issue of separate schools. The Manitoba school
question had broken one government; the North-West school question
threatened for a time to break its successor.

The Western Territories which had been purchased by the Dominion from
the Hudson's Bay Company had for a generation been evolving from
dependence to equality. In the beginning, with only a handful of white
men scattered over a vast wilderness, it was plainly necessary to rule
the territories from Ottawa as the Western areas of the United States
had in the beginning been ruled from Washington. Riel and his Red
River comrades compelled the grant of home rule and the founding of
the province of Manitoba earlier than had been planned. The
territories farther west acquired self-government step by step as they
acquired population and local confidence. A council of outsiders, a
lieutenant-governor with a resident but nominated council, in the
Chartering Act of 1875, the addition, as provided in that charter, of
elected members in 1881, and the substitution of an elective assembly
in 1888, the practical control of the executive in 1891 and the full
control in 1897, were the chief stages in the evolution of responsible
government, as Frederick Haultain, Frank Oliver and James H. Ross were
the chief figures in the achievement. Now the building of the Canadian
Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the Sifton immigration
policy were doubling and trebling the population in five years, and
leading to demands for complete provincehood. The Territories had a
parliament and a premier, but they could not borrow money, they could
not charter railways, they could not administer criminal justice.
These powers and the formal status they now sought. And just as in the
United States where the dividing line in the older states ran on
geographic and economic lines, the admission of new territories
involved a contest between North and South as to whether the new
states were to be bond or free, so in Canada, where the dividing lines
in the older provinces were lines of race and creed, the admission of
new territories involved Eastern quarrels as to whether the new
territories were to have national or denominational schools.

During the election of 1904 Sir Wilfrid announced that in accordance
with the repeated requests of the people of the North-West, he would,
if returned to power, introduce a measure providing for autonomy.[31]

[Footnote 31: In the summer of 1904, the Toronto "News" and a few
other Ontario newspapers declared that the concession of provincehood
was being deferred until after the elections because the hierarchy was
demanding separate schools. Writing to a former Ontario supporter, who
in 1905 was one of the leading figures in the attack upon the
Autonomy Bills, Sir Wilfrid made his position clear:

Ottawa, June 7, 1904 . . . "Why, in the name of patriotism, attempt to
resurrect the now dormant separate school question? Why, when we have
profound peace, attempt to prejudge public opinion? The school
question will come up again all too soon. It will come in a very
different form from what it was in 1896, but with the same bitter
passions on both sides, and again it will be my lot to fight
extremists and to place and maintain the question where it has been
placed by the British North America Act. It is not my intention here
and now to argue with you. . . . Let me tell you that I see my way
clear before me. My policy is all made up in my mind. I will go into
the struggle with no misgivings as to its soundness and with no
apprehension as to the results.

"In the meantime I would only ask you to remember that Confederation
was a compromise, and that for the great object of bringing together
the disjointed provinces, George Brown made great sacrifices of
private opinion. Let me also ask you to remember that the work of
effecting the union, is far from complete. The work must be continued
in the same spirit in which it was conceived, and I certainly indulge
the hope that you and I will always find it easy to stand on that
ground."]

After the election, Mr. Haultain, the Conservative premier of the
Territories, and Mr. Bulyea, his Liberal Commissioner of Public
Works,--party lines had not yet been drawn in the territorial
government,--came to Ottawa and urged their case. The federal
government was represented by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir William Mulock,
Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mr. Scott. Mr. Sifton, who naturally would have
taken a leading part in these negotiations and in the drafting of the
resultant measures, was absent in the South, on account, it was
stated, of ill-health.

On February 21, 1905, Sir Wilfrid Laurier introduced the Autonomy
Bills, providing for the establishment of the provinces of Alberta and
Saskatchewan. All but the last step in the development of the
Territories had been taken: "The metal has been in the crucible and
all we have to do now is to put the stamp of Canadian nationality upon
it." Four questions presented some difficulty: the number of
provinces, the ownership of the public lands, the financial terms, and
the educational provision. The territory was too large for a single
province, and the diversity of climate, soil and resources warranted
division; it had been decided to create two provinces with the
dividing line running north and south. As to the public lands, the
bills would continue federal ownership, in accordance with Canadian
tradition, United States precedent and the need of linking land policy
with immigration policy. The financial terms would be generous,
providing an initial subsidy of over one million for each province.
The exemption from taxation promised the Canadian Pacific by the
Macdonald government, unwise and oppressive though it was, must be
continued: faith must be kept.

There remained the school question. Past experience and recent
rumblings had shown the dangers that lay in this question; it must be
approached with care, in the light of history, in the spirit of
tolerance through which Confederation had been achieved. Protection
for minority rights had been an essential feature of that compact:
George Brown, lifelong opponent of separate schools, had agreed to
guarantee their preservation in the constitution as an indispensable
condition to any union. When, in 1875, Alexander Mackenzie introduced
a measure for the government of the Territories, it made no mention of
separate schools, but Edward Blake, warned by the New Brunswick
controversy of the dangers of vagueness or omission, urged that some
general principle should be laid down; settlers should know beforehand
to what conditions they were going; as the general character of the
population would be like that of Ontario, a school system like
Ontario's should be provided. Mr. Mackenzie agreed, a clause was
inserted, and passed unanimously by the House. In the Senate it had
met some objection,--notably from Mr. Brown, on the ground that if now
introduced, separate schools would be established for all time,--but
had been passed by a large majority of both parties. To-day, the
government proposed to continue this tradition. The bills provided
that the minority should have the right to establish their own schools
and to share in public funds, as was the law to-day. He concluded with
an unexpected defence of religious teaching in schools and a
comparison between Canadianand United States school and social
conditions:

      In everything that I have said I have refrained from
      saying a single word upon the abstract principle of
      separate schools. I approach the question upon another
      and broader ground, I approach the question not from
      the standpoint of separate schools, I approach it upon
      the higher ground of Canadian duty and Canadian
      patriotism. Having obtained the consent of the
      minority to this form of government, having obtained
      their consent to the giving up of their valued
      privileges, and their position of strength, are we to
      tell them, now that Confederation is established, that
      the principle upon which they consented to this
      arrangement is to be laid aside and that we are to
      ride roughshod over them? I do not think that is a
      proposition which will be maintained in this House,
      nor do I believe it is the intention of the House. I
      offer at this moment no opinion at all upon separate
      schools as an abstract proposition, but I have no
      hesitation in saying that if I were to speak my mind
      upon separate schools, I would say that I never could
      understand what objection there could be to a system
      of schools wherein, after secular matters have been
      attended to, the tenets of the religion of Christ,
      even with the divisions which exist among his
      followers, are allowed to be taught. We live in a
      country where in the seven provinces that constitute
      our nation, either by the will or by the tolerance of
      the people, in every school, Christian morals and
      Christian dogmas are taught to the youth of the
      country. We live by the side of a nation, a great
      nation, a nation for which I have the greatest
      admiration, but whose example I would not take in
      everything, in whose schools, for fear that Christian
      dogmas in which all do not believe might be taught,
      Christian morals are not taught. When I compare these
      two countries, when I compare Canada with the United
      States, when I compare the status of the two nations,
      when I think upon their future, when I observe the
      social condition of civil society in each of them and
      when I observe in this country of ours, a total
      absence of lynchings and an almost total absence of
      divorces and murders, for my part, I thank Heaven that
      we are living in a country where the young children of
      the land are taught Christian morals and Christian
      dogmas. Either the American system is right or the
      Canadian system is right. For my part I say this and I
      say it without hesitation. Time will show that we are
      in the right and in this instance as in many others, I
      have an abiding faith in the institutions of my own
      country.

Sir Wilfrid had anticipated criticism. He was not prepared for the
outburst of denunciation that followed. Mr. Borden was mild, and
expressed the hope that the school question would not be made a party
issue. In the West itself, there was little excitement; the new
measures were welcomed, even if not in all respects conceding all that
had been hoped. Mr. Haultain launched a vigorous attack, demanding a
single province, provincial ownership of public lands and no
restriction on the province's control of education, but it did not
come until three weeks later, as an appendix to the Eastern agitation.
It was in Ontario, as might have been anticipated, that the chief
outcry arose. Orange lodges denounced the measure as reactionary,
iniquitous, insidious, vicious. Dr. Carman, General Superintendent of
the Methodist Church, termed it mad, monstrous, hideous and
oppressive, and Goldwin Smith, who retained little of his Protestant
faith save a rooted distrust of ecclesiastics, declared it bound the
new provinces for ever to maintain and propagate the Roman Catholic
religion. Presbyteries, Baptist conventions, ministerial associations
demanded its withdrawal. The Toronto "News," now owned by Mr. J. W.
Flavelle and edited by the former helmsman of the "Globe," Mr. J. S.
Willison, vied with the Toronto "Telegram" in bitter attack upon this
"endowment of clerical privilege," this "fastening the dead hand of
denominational control" upon the young provinces.

Of more immediate concern was the criticism from within the ranks of
the party. The "Globe" voiced much Ontario dissent in its insistence
that while the federal parliament might set up separate schools in a
territory, it had no power to perpetuate them in a province: the
Liberal principle of provincial rights must be maintained and the
educational clause unflinchingly opposed. But it was within the
cabinet that the serious difficulty developed. Mr. Sifton had been in
touch with the prime minister by correspondence, and the draft bills
were in harmony with his wishes and in some clauses drawn at his
suggestion. He had not, however, seen the proposed educational
clauses, and had not expected that the bills would be introduced
before his return. Now he hurried back to Ottawa, and expressed his
dissent in an interview with the prime minister. Sir Wilfrid gathered
that the difference was one of words and assumed that it could be
adjusted; he was surprised on February 27 to receive Mr. Sifton's
resignation from the cabinet. Two days later the resignation was
announced in the House, Mr. Sifton stating that he dissented from
certain principles set forth in Sir Wilfrid's speech and from the
specific provisions made in the educational clauses. At the same time
it became known that Mr. Fielding, who had been absent in Europe
during the negotiations, was out of sympathy with these provisions,
and might follow Mr. Sifton's example. Rumours that the Western and
Nova Scotia members would take the same stand filled the air. There
was no question that the government was faced with a serious crisis.

Sir Wilfrid was at a loss to understand the attack upon the bills. He
had no doubt as to the constitutional power and duty of parliament:
the Imperial Act of 1871 gave parliament power to frame a
constitution for new Western provinces; the compact of Confederation
was to apply to all provinces, to protect all minorities; parliament,
while bound to apply Section 93 of the British North America Act in
spirit, was free to vary it in detail to meet local conditions, as the
precedent of Manitoba and the countless variations in the
constitutions of the other provinces made clear. It was nonsense to
say that education was a matter falling wholly to the provinces; the
very section which gave this power to the provinces limited it by
restrictions in the interest of the minority, whether Protestant or
Catholic. Provincial rights must be protected, but equally so minority
rights, and the rights of Catholic minorities equally with those of
Protestant minorities. Minority rights conferred by action of
parliament itself and made the basis of policy and of settlement for
thirty years were fully as much entitled to protection by parliament
as rights conferred by local action. He was particularly surprised by
the criticism within the Liberal ranks, since the bills were merely
continuing a compromise introduced by Alexander Mackenzie and Edward
Blake. The bills safeguarded the existing system, which was
essentially a system of national schools with very moderate provision
for separate religious teaching, and was accepted in the West with
practically no dissent on the part of Protestants.

At an early stage in the controversy, Sir Wilfrid's position was
expressed clearly in a letter to an old friend, the editor of the
Montreal "Witness," militant champion of Protestantism, but none the
less fair and tolerant:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to J. R. Dougall._)

Ottawa, March 4, 1905.

Dear Mr. Dougall:

     The "Witness" has always been so generous to me that
     you must not be surprised if I attach to its criticism
     a greater weight than to that of any other paper.

     Will you permit me therefore to place before you the
     views which have influenced me in the education clauses
     of the bills for the admission of the new Provinces of
     Alberta and Saskatchewan into the Dominion?

     I need not remind you that upon many questions,
     Confederation was a compromise. It is doubtful if
     Confederation could have been established without
     important sacrifices of opinion on many points.

     The education clause of the B. N. A. Act was the most
     remarkable of all and in that clause George Brown, who
     was a most determined opponent of separate schools,
     agreed not only to admit the system in his own
     province, but to make its continuance part of the
     constitution. Nor is this all, but a similar provision
     was made for the minority of any province which might
     enter the Dominion with a system of separate schools.
     Can you doubt that if the provinces of Alberta and
     Saskatchewan had been admitted into the Dominion in
     1867 instead of 1905, they would have received the same
     treatment as was given to Ontario and Quebec? I do not
     think that this can be denied.

     The proposition in the bill is to give the minority the
     guarantee of the continuance of their system of schools
     as they would have had it in 1867.

     I am well aware that the idea of having schools
     partaking of ecclesiastical domination is repugnant to
     the spirit of our age. Even such an objection could not
     hold against the spirit of the constitution, but I
     truly believe the true character of the

     schools in the North-West Territories is not known;
     under the name of separate schools, they are really
     national.

     The law of the North-West Territories subjects separate
     schools to the following conditions:

     1. All teachers must hold their diplomas from the Board
     of Public Instruction.

     2. All schools must be examined and controlled by
     Inspectors appointed by the Board of Public
     Instruction.

     3. All books used therein must be the books approved by
     the Board of Public Instruction.

     4. The tuition of the pupils must be in the English
     language. This secular instruction is absolutely under
     the control of the provincial authorities. The only
     privilege in religious matters is that at 3:30 p. m.,
     such religious instruction can be given to the pupils
     as is thought advisable by the trustees of the schools.

     Do you not believe that children so instructed can make
     good Canadians? Why, then, refuse to do for this
     minority what has been done for the minority of Quebec
     and the minority of Ontario? If this be refused, the
     minority of the North-West Territories will smart under
     a sense of wrong and injustice. They will believe that
     the public faith of the country is violated against
     them and to their prejudice, and who will pronounce
     their complaint unfounded?

     For my part, I feel very strongly that it is essential,
     as essential now as it was in 1867, to make all parties
     feel sure that under our British constitution, in our
     Confederation, the first duty is to keep faith with all
     classes in the very manner which was set down as the
     basis of our Dominion. If this is not the idea that
     ought to guide us in this matter, I confess that I made
     an error, but if it is, you will agree with me that I
     am following the right course.

     Believe me, as ever, dear Mr. Dougall,

     Yours very sincerely,

     [Signed.] Wilfrid Laurier.

He denied any inconsistency between his stand in 1896 and his stand
in 1905. On both occasions he supported the right of the minority to
religious teaching; his opposition in 1896 had been to the method of
safeguarding this right. He was not overriding any local action. The
degree of separation in the North-West schools was even less than in
the Manitoba schools under the Laurier-Greenway agreement. On both
occasions he had opposed intolerance, then the intolerance of Roman
Catholic ecclesiastics who would deny freedom of thought to their
co-religionists, now the intolerance of Protestants who were willing
to accept privileges for a Protestant minority in Quebec, privileges
always honourably preserved, but who were unwilling to carry out their
share of the compromise when a Catholic minority was involved. He
sympathized with the ideals of those who urged the need of national
schools to hold together a country of many diverse origins and creeds,
but he could not agree that in the schools or out national unity
involved a drab and compulsory uniformity. For the most part, he had
changed his front but not his base. Not wholly so: there was
undoubtedly in his present stand a more lively sympathy with the
minority's position than in 1896, born of growing conservatism, or of
the irritation at Ontario's insistence, as in the South African War,
that Quebec must provide all the sacrifices on the altar of
harmony.[32]

[Footnote 32: In a letter to a Regina friend, written on March 14 and
made public during the provincial election in 1905, Mr. Walter Scott,
after referring to the "almost unpardonable bungling" over the affair,
and expressing the belief that a compromise could be effected,
commented on this phase of the situation:

"It was impossible to evade the issue. To leave the subject wholly
within the provincial control was bound to be objected to by Roman
Catholics because they were bound to look then to very quickly see the
last vestige of their Separate Schools disappear. Laurier had induced
Quebec to swallow twice,--in 1896 and again in 1899 over the South
African business. Neither Manitoba nor Ontario thanked him very
emphatically on either occasion. In the present case the hierarchy
would have too much reason behind their contention. I don't for a
moment think that the case for the Separate School is legally or
constitutionally binding, but morally the case is pretty strong and in
my view it would simply be going beyond all reason to expect Laurier
to induce Quebec to swallow a third time with the weight of the moral
argument so strongly against him.

"I do not believe that Laurier or any other member of the cabinet
beyond Scott and Fitzpatrick thought other than that Section 16 of the
bill simply provided to continue existing conditions. We North-West
members advised this provision and we were told that our advice would
be followed. Laurier's speech indicated nothing further to me ...
Sifton's analysing acumen quickly picked out the meaning of the clause
which without question would remove the separate schools from public
regulation."]

There were two points where exception could legitimately be taken. It
was undoubtedly a mistake to introduce the bill before consulting Mr.
Sifton as to the educational clause. In the clause itself there was an
undesirable ambiguity. Under the federal Act of 1875, empowering the
majority of the ratepayers in any district to establish such schools
as they thought fit and the minority therein to establish Protestant
or Roman Catholic separate schools, local ordinances had been passed,
establishing dual or denominational schools much as in Quebec or
Manitoba, with complete ecclesiastical control of the separate
schools, in finance, inspection, teaching and text-books. Then in
1892, as a consequence of the agitation in Manitoba, the Territorial
Assembly had passed other ordinances, limiting the right to establish
separate schools to those sections in which the Catholics were in a
minority, and limiting religious teaching in all schools to an
optional half-hour at closing; later ordinances and regulations
provided for uniform teachers' qualifications, curriculum and
inspection in all schools, public or separate. Sir John Thompson had
questioned the validity of these ordinances, but as the time for
disallowing an earlier instalment of the changes had been permitted to
go by, he did not disallow them. In 1901 the law was further
consolidated. It had been Sir Wilfrid's understanding that the school
system which was to be maintained was the system de facto, but under
the clause which Mr. Fitzpatrick had drafted, repeating verbatim the
words of the Act of 1875, there was some ground for believing that the
minority could claim the re-establishment of the out-and-out
denominational schools which had at first existed. In the later debate
on the question, able constitutional lawyers expressed the most widely
varying opinions as to the possible effect of the original Clause 16.
It was certainly desirable that the new act should provide a
settlement, not a litigation.

It is not likely that either pique at not being consulted or doubt as
to the scope of the clause would of themselves have led Mr. Sifton to
resign. Sir Wilfrid had made it clear in their interview that if there
was ambiguity, it could be cleared up. The personal antagonism between
Mr. Sifton and Mr. Fitzpatrick, and the personal attacks which were
being made or prepared against Mr. Sifton from other quarters
doubtless had their part in his decision. The Autonomy Bill gave an
opportunity to withdraw with kudos.

Nearly a month of private discussions followed. Sir Wilfrid was moved
at times to seek to carry through the bill as it stood rather than
make even nominal concessions; and again he considered offering his
resignation as leader. Mr. Sifton's resignation did not facilitate an
amendment; it added fresh complications by arousing personal
antagonisms and by making any amendment appear an unwilling result of
pressure rather than a voluntary attempt to make the real meaning
clearer. Eventually an agreement was effected. A new clause was
drafted, stipulating that the minority rights to be safeguarded were
those arising out of the ordinances of 1901. In explaining the new
clause on the second reading, Sir Wilfrid, after emphasizing the fact
that the original minority clause had been introduced at the instance
and in the interest of the Protestant minority of Quebec, declared
that in view of the changes made in 1892 and 1901, to enact Section 93
or the original clause of the Autonomy Bill would create confusion and
litigation: "We therefore thought it was preferable to have the law
made absolutely certain and in order to do that we have incorporated
the ordinances under which the law as it is to-day, has been
established. It may be disappointing to some but we believe that on
the whole it is preferable to have a clear understanding."[33]

[Footnote 33:

1. North-West Territories Act, 1875

When, and so soon as any system of taxation shall be adopted in any
district or portion of the North-West Territories the Lieutenant-Governor,
by and with the consent of the Council or Assembly, as the case may
be, shall pass all necessary Ordinances in respect to education; but
it shall therein be always provided, that a majority of the ratepayers
of any district or portion of the North-West Territories, or any
lesser portion or subdivision thereof, by whatever name the same may
be known, may establish such schools therein, as they may think fit,
and make the necessary assessment and collection of rates therefor;
and further, that the minority of the ratepayers therein, whether
Protestant or Roman Catholic, may establish separate schools therein,
and that, in such latter case, the ratepayers establishing such
Protestant or Roman Catholic separate schools shall be liable only to
assessment of such rates as they may impose upon themselves in respect
thereof.

2. Original Clause 16 in the Autonomy Bills.

1. The provisions of Section 93 of the British North America Act,
1867, shall apply to the said Province as if, at the date upon which
this Act comes into force, the territory comprised therein were
already a province, the expression "the Union" in the said section
being taken to mean the said date.

2. Subject to the provisions of the said Section 93 and in continuance
of the principle heretofore sanctioned under the North-West
Territories Act it is enacted that the Legislature of the said
Province shall pass all necessary laws in respect of education and
that it shall therein always be provided (a) that a majority of the
ratepayers of any district or portion of the said Province or of any
less portion or subdivision thereof, by whatever name it is known, may
establish such schools therein as they think fit, and make the
necessary assessments and collection of rates therefor, and (b) that
the minority of the ratepayers therein, whether Protestant or Roman
Catholic, may establish Separate Schools therein, and make the
necessary assessment and collection of rates therefor, and (c) that in
such case the ratepayers establishing such Protestant or Roman
Catholic Separate Schools shall be liable only to assessment or such
rates as they impose upon themselves with respect thereto.

3. In the appropriation of public moneys by the Legislature in aid of
education and in the distribution of any moneys paid to the Government
of the said Province arising from the school fund established by "The
Dominion Lands Act" there shall be no discrimination between the
Public Schools and the Separate Schools, and such moneys shall be
applied to the support of the Public and Separate Schools in equitable
shares of proportion.

3. Clause 16 as Amended

Section 93 of the British North America Act, 1867, shall apply to the
said Province, with the substitution for paragraph 1 of the said
Section 93 of the following paragraph.

(1) Nothing in any such law shall prejudicially affect any right or
privilege with respect to Separate Schools which any class of persons
have at the date of the passing of this Act, under the terms of
Chapters 29 and 30 of the Ordinances of the North-West Territories
passed in the year 1901 or with respect to religious instruction in
any Public or Separate School as provided for in the said Ordinances.

(2) In the appropriation by the Legislature or distribution by the
Government of the Province of any moneys for the support of schools
organized and carried on in accordance with the said Chapter 29 or any
Act passed in amendment thereof, or in substitution therefor, there
shall be no discrimination against schools of any class described in
the said Chapter 29.

(3) Where the expression "by law" is employed in paragraph 3 of the
said Section 93 it shall be held to mean the law as set out in the
said Chapters 29 and 30, and where the expression "at the Union" is
employed in the said paragraph 3, it shall be held to mean the date at
which this Act comes into force.]

In parliament, the amendment reunited the party. Mr. Sifton emphasized
the difference between the original clause and the amendment, as the
difference between a system of complete ecclesiastical control and a
system with secular control of secular teaching, and ecclesiastical
provision of religious teaching after hours. He could not forbear from
remarking that "when my honourable friend, the Minister of Justice,
employed a draughtsman to draught this clause with instructions to
maintain only the existing state of affairs in the North-West
Territories, the draughtsman either wholly misunderstood his
instructions or possessed a most remarkable faculty for covering
things which were not covered by his instructions." He was prepared to
accept the new version, as it retained the essential principles of a
national school system and removed "the taint of ecclesiasticism." Mr.
Fielding, while declaring that he did not like the principle of
separate schools, added that there was something to be said in these
lax days for religious instruction in the schools; the system in the
North-West was virtually a national system, and certainly there was
not enough to which objection could be taken to warrant a governmental
crisis and a consequent struggle on religious lines. Sir William
Mulock emphasized the variations in provincial constitutions which
made it impossible to apply Section 93 automatically, as Mr. Haultain
himself had proposed. Mr. Bourassa broadly defended the tolerance and
the patriotism of the French-Canadian and insisted that if the people
of Quebec were sometimes provincialists, it was because outside their
province the French-Canadian was denied liberty, equality, full
respect; Mr. Fitzpatrick, declaring that he himself had drawn the
original section, "with my own hand, line by line, clause by clause,
word by word," defended it as simply a continuation of the policy laid
down in 1875, and explained the privileges guaranteed under the new
clause as the right of a minority, Protestant or Roman Catholic, in an
existing public-school district, to a separate building and a separate
trustee-board which would choose the teacher, and the right, common to
Protestants and Roman Catholics, and to public and separate schools
alike, to half an hour's religious instruction. Mr. Borden made an
able and acute analysis of the constitutional issue, and Mr. Foster a
slashing attack on the government's inconsistencies. A number of their
followers, Mr. Herbert Ames, Mr. Pringle, and Mr. Bergeron, defended
the government's policy; Mr. Monk, urging the need of positive
enactment to safeguard and make clear the meagre privileges left to
the minority, and protesting against the tendency to imitate the drab
uniformity of the United States, concluded by attacking the myth that
the voter in Quebec was to any greater degree under clerical influence
than his fellow-Canadians: "if the parish priests of my county were to
unite to seek my election, I would lose my deposit." Throughout, the
debate was of a very high order, moderate in tone, acutely reasoned,
often eloquent, distinctly superior to the discussion of press and
platform. It was no surprise that the second reading was carried on
May 3, by a vote of 140 to 59. One Liberal, Mr. L. G. McCarthy, voted
against it, and thirteen Conservatives, of whom ten were from Quebec,
voted for it: the government had a majority of twenty outside Quebec
and a majority of fourteen excluding all Catholic members.

Outside of parliament, the critics were less ready to accept the
compromise. From the Toronto "News" and the Winnipeg "Tribune" to the
"Christian Guardian," the "Presbyterian" and the "Canadian Baptist,"
the cry was still for complete exclusion of any reference to the
schools. The "Globe," now under the editorial control of the Rev. J.
A. Macdonald, accepted the compromise reluctantly and uncertainly; the
influence of Hon. G. W. Ross and of Mr. John A. Ewan made for
acceptance, but the new editor was a man of strong impulses, and the
"Globe" consequently followed a somewhat zigzag course. A few
Conservative journals, such as the Montreal "Gazette" and "Star,"
approved the government's course. Fresh fuel was thrown on the fire
by an effort of Mr. Robert Rogers, of the Manitoba government, to
implicate the government in an indiscreet attempt by the new Papal
Delegate, Mgr. Sbarretti, to induce Manitoba to restore Catholic
school privileges as the price of the extension of her boundaries to
Hudson Bay. Sir Wilfrid at once declared that if Mgr. Sbarretti had
made any such proposals he had done so wholly of his own motion, and
without any shade of authority or knowledge on the part of the federal
government.

It soon became clear that there was no wide-spread popular revolt in
the English-speaking provinces, and that the critics, though not
without influence, could not inspire a crusade. Protestant opinion
could be stirred as ever, but in the absence of any strong complaints
from the West itself, the fire soon burned out. It was difficult to
keep passion at white heat over the teaching of the Roman Catholic
catechism from half-past three to four o'clock. In two hotly contested
by-elections in Ontario--London and North Oxford--the Autonomy Bills
were made the issue. The success of the Liberals in both seats, with
an increased majority in London and a decreased majority in Oxford,
was variously interpreted, but at least it showed that no tidal wave
of opinion was rising against the government.

In the West itself, where Toronto prophets had foretold a rebellion,
the electors, particularly after the modification of Clause 16, showed
a disappointing calm. When Frank Oliver, the most characteristic
old-timer in public life, was appointed Minister of the Interior in
Mr. Sifton's place, he was returned for Edmonton by acclamation on
April 25. It was not easy to oppose a minister in a by-election, and
particularly a minister with Frank Oliver's personal hold on his
constituents, but all the explanations left something still to
explain. Then followed the election of the new provincial
legislatures. In September, Mr. A. E. Forget was installed as
lieutenant-governor of the new province of Saskatchewan and Mr. Bulyea
in Alberta. Mr. Bulyea, on his own discretion, called upon A. C.
Rutherford, a Liberal member of the Territorial Assembly, to form a
government in Alberta, while R. B. Bennett was chosen leader of the
Conservative Opposition. Walter Scott, a Liberal member at Ottawa of
much promise, for whom Sir Wilfrid had a very warm affection, was
summoned in Saskatchewan, and Mr. Haultain, who, but for his active
hostility to the Autonomy Bills, would have been the natural choice,
organized a Provincial Rights party in opposition.[34] In the contests
which followed late in the year, the Liberals had the advantage of
government prestige and official favour, but this was counteracted by
Mr. Haultain's personal popularity and by the compromising support
which Archbishop Langevin, who in April had vigorously denounced the
amendment as "a consecration of robbery," "a sacrifice once more to
sectarian fanaticism," now tendered to Mr. Scott by calling upon all
Saskatchewan Catholics to vote for him. The result was an overwhelming
Liberal victory, 16 seats to 8 in Saskatchewan and 23 to 2 in Alberta.
Clearly, the West was contented.[35]

[Footnote 34: In a letter to Mr. Bulyea Sir Wilfrid stated the reasons
for passing over Mr. Haultain, and, in consequence, for suggesting
that Mr. Bulyea himself should take the Lieutenant-governorship of the
other province rather than oppose his old friend:

     "Ottawa, 25 July, 1905 ". . . At the outset, I had
     indulged the hope of an easy solution, a solution that
     seemed so natural as not even to suggest the
     possibility of another and different one.

     "When you and Haultain came to Ottawa, in the early
     part of January last, I thought, and indeed every one
     thought, that as soon as the two provinces came into
     existence, the then existing government of the
     Territories would naturally become the government of
     Saskatchewan.

     "The attitude of Haultain has made this, in my
     judgment, an impossibility. When in the early part of
     the struggle which followed the introduction of the
     bills, Haultain went out of his way to openly take
     sides with the Opposition, I am free to admit that I
     was keenly disappointed but even then I did not come to
     the conclusion that the breach was irreparable. When,
     however, he threw himself into the contests of London
     and North Oxford and especially when he announced his
     intention of carrying on the provincial elections on
     the avowed policy of destroying the school system of
     which, some weeks before, he had said that if he were a
     dictator, he would not change a single disposition of
     it, he left us no alternative, but to accept the
     declaration of war.

     "I realize that such a condition of things must be
     particularly painful and embarrassing to you. On the
     one hand I know full well that you never approved
     Haultain's course. On the other hand, the ties of
     friendship which have grown between you and him,
     resulting from long association in the same
     administration, would make it a most invidious task for
     you, to have to oppose him and to fight, with all the
     firmness which a political contest means in this
     country, and especially such a contest as is involved
     in the policy of which he has declared himself the
     champion. . . .

     "I have thought it therefore my duty to place at your
     disposal, one of the two Lieutenant-governorships, that
     is to say the Lieutenant-governorship of Alberta as the
     other is already filled. . . ."]

[Footnote 35: (_George H. Bulyea to Wilfrid Laurier_)

     "Edmonton, Dec. twenty-six, 1905 "The elections of
     Alberta and Saskatchewan are over and I think that you
     will admit that my judgment in both cases has not been
     very much at sea. In this province there were no
     complications, and the result was a clean sweep for the
     Liberals. . . .

     "As I told you before, I thought the question of
     sympathy for Haultain would be a serious factor; there
     is no question that this was more serious than his
     policy as to schools, and unfortunately, quite a number
     of our Liberal friends refused to withdraw their
     support from him. Toward the end of the campaign,
     however, this was more or less forgotten, and had no
     further complications arisen, Scott would probably have
     carried 21 out of the 25 seats. Our friend at St.
     Boniface, however, in his mistaken zeal, issued the
     memorandum which, unfortunately, became public. It was
     absolutely unnecessary, as Haultain had alienated the
     Catholic vote, and the distorted use and colouring that
     was given to this document by Haultain and his friends
     had a most disastrous effect on the non-Catholic vote.
     I have very little hesitation in saying that had
     Haultain's manifesto been issued a week or ten days
     sooner, Scott could not have carried the province.
     However, it is not for the purpose of referring to this
     question that I take the liberty of writing you. You
     are no doubt aware in a general way, of the attitude of
     the C. P. R. in both provinces. In the constituencies
     of Banff, Calgary and Gleichen in this province, the C.
     P. R. had practically charge of the campaign and every
     influence they could use, fair or unfair, was brought
     to bear on the Liberals.

     "Mr. Whyte issued instructions that his officials were
     not to interfere, and I may say I believe Mr. Whyte was
     sincere and that these instructions were issued in good
     faith. However, it made no difference to the officials,
     and when Mr. Cushing at Calgary protested to Mr. D.
     about his interference, after said instructions had
     been issued, D. practically told him that he did not
     care a ---- for Whyte, that he took his instructions
     from some one higher than he was.

     "The influence of the C. P. R. can be felt, also, in
     every point in Saskatchewan province where they had a
     pull. They voted all their officials and most of their
     men, particularly their section-gangs all over the
     southern portions of the province. . . . They have
     shown their hand, and, I think, if I might presume to
     offer you this advice, I would make it war to the knife
     from this out. . . . My suggestion would be to take the
     revised version of the golden rule: 'to do unto others
     as they would do to you, and do it first.' . . ."

(_Wilfrid Laurier to G. E. Bulyea_)

     "Ottawa, 1 January, 1906 . . . "The result both in
     Alberta and Saskatchewan is quite satisfactory. I am
     not, however, without anxiety for the future on account
     of the unfortunate action of the Archbishop. The bad
     impression which was created by his unwarranted
     interference may still be revived at any moment as it
     may give Haultain and his friends a permanent
     opportunity of holding before the public the scare of
     clerical interference. This is a constant danger and
     similar breaks can always be expected from this
     impetuous man. Our friends in the West, however, should
     know by this time that he is no friend of ours and must
     be closely allied with Haultain as with the Manitoba
     Tories, either in Dominion or Provincial politics.

     "The suggestions which you make with regard to the C.
     P. R. are certainly worthy of consideration, and I am
     sure there is no mistake in believing that they have
     tried a double game, protesting their innocence at this
     end, and working with all their might at the other. . . ."]

The crisis had evaporated. Manitoba's schools had troubled Canadian
politics for seven years, the North-West schools for seven months. Sir
Wilfrid had his acts through, the principle of accepting the
Confederation compromise accepted, and his majority, and, save for Mr.
Sifton, his cabinet intact. Yet the result had been to shake his
position not a little. No explanation could fully explain. Critics
contended that if he had intended to re-establish denominational
schools of the earlier type, then for the first time he had been
forced to retire from a position which he had deliberately taken; and
if he had merely meant to continue the existing schools, this should
have been made clear beyond question. In Ontario and in some measure
in the other English-speaking provinces, the suspicion had been
planted that he was under the thumb of the hierarchy, and though thus
far the harvest had disappointed the industrious sowers, they had
hopes of better days. Equally important, the extremists in Quebec were
given an opportunity which they did not neglect. Mr. Bourassa, who had
voiced no dissent from the amendment in the House, held a great mass
meeting in Montreal in April, and found ardent support for his
uncompromising defence of separate schools and his denunciation of the
amendment as a sacrifice of the minority's rights, a ratification of
the "unjust, illegal and oppressive territorial ordinances." It was
the first time in ten years that a critic of Sir Wilfrid had found a
popular following in Quebec. The Nationalist movement had begun.[36]

[Footnote 36: (_Wilfrid Laurier to Hon, J. P. B.
Casgrain.--Translation)_

"Ottawa, April 20, 1905

     "My Dear Senator: "I am not as optimistic as you are. I
     believe that I shall pull through this difficulty, but
     I am not sure that I shall pull through, as you
     suggest, Stronger that at the beginning. Matters are
     going not too badly at the moment in the
     English-speaking provinces. I believe that there is in
     fact a distinct reaction in our favour. But our friend
     Bourassa had begun, in Quebec, a campaign which may
     well cause us some trouble...."]

A year later religious differences once more disturbed, but in a minor
degree, the course of legislation. For some years a vigourous
agitation had been carried on, particularly by the Lord's Day
Alliance, for more effective legal protection of Sunday as a day of
rest. Slackening religious faith, Continental immigrants, United
States Sunday newspapers, the speeding up of industry, golf and
country clubs, were making inroads upon the quiet Sabbath of earlier
days. A recent Privy Council decision had thrown doubt upon the power
of the provinces to legislate comprehensively in a field covered in
some measure by the federal control over criminal law. The cabinet
agreed to introduce federal legislation, and after full consideration
had been given in committee, a bill was drafted. The measure broadly
forbade working for gain on Sunday; there were many exemptions in
favour of transportation and other public services; and provincial
laws present and to come were validated, but even so the provisions
were strict enough to run counter to many industrial and
transportation interests as well as to the social convictions of many
communities. In Quebec, where Sunday, after mass was over, had long
been regarded as a day for political tournaments, family visiting and
friendly games, the feeling was strong. Mr. Tarte, in one of his last
utterances, attacked the bill as a retrograde and autocratic invasion
of the liberty of the individual, while Mr. Bourassa denied that any
man who tried to force such iniquitous legislation down the throats of
the people could call himself a Liberal; Archbishop Bruchesi, on the
other hand, joined the majority of the Protestant clergy in warm
support. Sir Wilfrid defended the measure as not merely in accord with
the religious convictions of the vast majority of the people, but
essential to protect the working-man from the persistent encroachments
of industry upon his day of rest. When Mr. Bourassa attacked the
government for capitulating weakly to agitators and lobbyists, and
particularly to Rev. Dr. Shearer, the general secretary of the Lord's
Day Alliance, and thereby putting a premium not merely on agitation
but on "hypocrisy, drunkenness, idleness and the vices that develop in
any country where the attempt is made to make people virtuous by law,
instead of relying on the individual conscience and the moral quality
of the Church," Sir Wilfrid adroitly turned the attack to his own
advantage. It enabled him to take up his favorite rle of the
moderate man attacked by the extremists. "Last year the cry was
Sbarretti; this year it is Shearer." The measure passed the House
without substantial variation, but it was modified by a Senate
amendment, later accepted by the House, making prosecutions depend on
the initiative of the attorney-general of the province concerned;
eventually Quebec and British Columbia contracted themselves out. Even
so, the Presbyterian General Assembly the year following was able to
endorse the measure as "the best piece of Lord's Day legislation ever
passed by any parliament."

The legislative achievement of the third Laurier parliament was not
limited to autonomy and Lord's Day acts. The tariff was revised in
1907, with the addition of intermediate or negotiating tariff rates
half-way between the general and the British preference rates. A Civil
Service Commission was established to control the inside or Ottawa
service. The Election Act was revised to make more stringent the
enactments against corruption, and incidentally to prevent hostile
local Tory governments abusing the good Liberal principle of accepting
the provincial franchise lists for federal elections: a warmly debated
measure, which, as Sir Wilfrid frankly stated, "reduced itself to
this, that you gentlemen on the other side of the House do not want to
go before the country on electoral lists prepared by your opponents
and we, on this side of the House, do not care to go to the country on
electoral lists prepared by our opponents." The Railway Commission
was reorganized, and telegraph and telephone companies brought under
its jurisdiction. Fresh ground was broken by the establishment, under
Sir Richard Cartwright's guidance, of a system of government old-age
annuities, on a voluntary basis, and by the passing of a measure for
compulsory investigation into labour disputes in public utilities,
framed by Mr. Lemieux and his young deputy-minister, Mr. Mackenzie
King.

It was not, however, in legislation, nor in the determination of
foreign and imperial policy that the political interest of this period
centered. The changes in the personnel of the federal government and
in the provincial situation, and particularly the charges of
maladministration and corruption brought against the Laurier
government, were of much greater political moment.

Time had transformed the Laurier cabinet of 1896. Many of the original
stalwarts had departed; others had lost their earlier zeal; new men
had come and gone, and younger lieutenants were taking their place.

From the Maritime provinces, only Mr. Fielding and Sir Frederick
Borden remained. Sir Louis Davies had gone to the Supreme Court in
1902; Mr. Blair had retired a year later, and Henry R. Emmerson, who
had given up his New Brunswick premiership to take his place, resigned
in 1907. The New Brunswick post in the cabinet, after much jockeying,
had fallen to Mr. William Pugsley, Attorney-General in the Tweedie
cabinet which had succeeded Mr. Emmerson, and premier for a brief
space until a seat in the Commons and the portfolio of Public Works
fell to him in 1907. Mr. Fielding's skilful and prudent handling of
the country's finances, and his moderation, judgment and probity in
all relations, had steadily strengthened his position in the House and
in the country. Sir Frederick Borden had proved an effective
administrator of militia affairs, but had of late been under fire on
grounds of personal conduct. Mr. Pugsley, shrewd, suave, resourceful,
a relentless fighter on occasion, brought with him all the experience
and all the feuds of a lifetime of New Brunswick politics.

In Quebec, only Sir Wilfrid and Sydney Fisher remained of the original
six ministers. Mr. Geoffrion had died in 1899 and Mr. Dobell in 1902;
Sir Henri Joly had gone to Government House in Victoria in 1900, and
Mr. Tarte had read, or rather spoken, himself out in 1902. Mr.
Fitzpatrick, after six years in the junior legal post and four in the
senior, had taken the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court in 1906.
Nor had the second generation of ministers had a longer life; M. E.
Bernier had gone on the Railway Commission after four years, Henry
Carroll had held the Solicitor-Generalship for only two years, and
Raymond Prfontaine's stormy career was cut short by death in 1905.
But the Quebec delegation was strong, and the younger men who took
their place added strength and distinction to the government,--Rodolphe
Lemieux as Solicitor-General in 1904 and Postmaster-General and
Minister of Labour two years later, Jacques Bureau as his successor
in the Solicitor-Generalship, Louis P. Brodeur, as Minister of Inland
Revenue in 1904 and of Marine and Fisheries in 1906, and Henri S.
Bland at a slightly later period. The Ontario representation had not
fared so well.[37] Sir Richard Cartwright, Sir Richard Scott and
William Paterson still held their posts, but none of these veterans
was now able to take the active part in parliamentary debate or party
organization of the days of old, though Sir Richard, who had retired
to the Senate in 1904, was still potent in council and an alert critic
of all doubtful expenditure. Sir Oliver Mowat had rounded off his
career by a six year term in Government House and David Mills, by a
seat in the Supreme Court. The severest blow came with the retirement
of Sir William Mulock, who was not only an unusually effective
administrator, but was strong with the general public, and able to
rally the old Reformers. Impaired health compelled him in 1905 to take
a less onerous position on the Ontario bench. James Sutherland and
Charles Hyman in turn filled a term, which ill-health made brief, as
minister without portfolio and Minister of Public Works. Fresh
strength came when A. B. Aylesworth agreed to give up his flourishing
legal practice to enter federal politics; Postmaster-General in 1905
and Minister of Justice a year later, his intellectual vigour and
distinct individuality proved invaluable assets. The Ontario
delegation was still further strengthened in 1907 by the appointment
of George P. Graham, who had succeeded George W. Ross as Liberal
leader in Ontario, and had proved his quality in that difficult post,
as Minister of Railways in 1907, and of Charles Murphy, a vigorous and
outspoken Ottawa barrister, with a fresh viewpoint, to succeed Sir
Richard Scott, on the eve of the 1908 elections. From the West, which
had had one representative in the nineties, and two after 1902, Frank
Oliver had succeeded Clifford Sifton, and William Templeman had given
British Columbia its first full cabinet post.

[Footnote 37: The discontent within the party as to the Ontario
leadership may be gathered from a public interview of one of the
whips, George D. Grant, early in 1906: "We Ontario Liberal members are
very much dissatisfied. We feel great regret on account of Sir William
Mulock's retirement; he has held the confidence of the Liberals of the
old school. The only members of the cabinet from Ontario in whom we
have confidence are Aylesworth and Hyman."

Early in 1908 the Toronto Reform Association voiced a similar
complaint to Sir Wilfrid: "The Liberal party in the province is in an
extremely apathetic and comatose condition. The old Liberals are
becoming discouraged and disinterested and the leaders of the party in
the province are not putting their claims before the people in such a
way as to hold their own with the young men. . . . We appreciate fully
the great services and sacrifices rendered the party by the senior
Ontario representatives in your Cabinet, but notwithstanding these, at
the present time, age and physical disabilities prevent some of your
ministers from taking such a part in the coming campaign as a Cabinet
Minister is expected to take."]

The situation in the provinces had changed. That this affected federal
fortunes was plain; in what way, was matter for dispute. A party
victory in a provincial contest encouraged the party workers, ensured
the local government's moral or other support, and had its influence
on those who wished to swim with the tide. Yet there were observers
who contended that there was a political law of compensation, whether
due to the different adjustment of pendulum swing in the federal and
in the provincial timepieces, or to the desire of independent
electors to hold the balance even, which gave the party in opposition
in the province a better chance in the federal contest. There was some
ground for this interpretation in the political history of Ontario and
the Maritime-provinces, but on the whole experience told against it.
Certainly the Liberal leaders at Ottawa found little consolation in
the growing power of the Conservative party in the provinces.

Five out of the nine provinces were still Liberal. In Nova Scotia,
George H. Murray still led invincibly the administration he had
organized on Mr. Fielding's retirement in 1896, and in 1908, a year of
elections, Francis Haszard continued, though with a reduced majority,
the Liberal tenure in Prince Edward Island which had begun in 1891. In
Quebec, after Mr. Marchand's death in 1900, Simon Napoleon Parent had
succeeded to the premiership and an overwhelming Liberal majority.
Four years later, when the premier dissolved the Assembly suddenly the
day after the Liberal victory in the Dominion, the Conservative's in
protest officially abstained from the contest; during the elections
and in the new Assembly a bitter contest between two wings of Liberals
took place, and Premier Parent gave way in 1905 to Lomer Gouin. The
new premier continued the reform of administrative methods, begun by
Mr. Marchand, which soon made Quebec the best instead of the worst
administered province in the Dominion; the Conservative party was able
to offer little resistance in 1908, though the new Nationalist group
gave some trouble. In the West, the Rutherford government still held
control of power in Alberta, and Premier Scott had secured a new lease
of power in Saskatchewan in the election of August, 1908.

Elsewhere the prospect for the Liberal party was less encouraging. In
New Brunswick, where Mr. Blair had been followed by a rapid succession
of Liberal or faintly coalition premiers,--James Mitchell, Henry
Emmerson, L. J. Tweedie, William Pugsley, Clifford Robinson,--the end
of a twenty-five-year Liberal rgime came with the decisive victory of
Douglas Hazen, the Conservative leader, early in 1908. In Ontario,
after Oliver Mowat's retirement, Arthur Sturgis Hardy and George W.
Ross in turn endeavoured to carry on, but despite their ability and
the quality of the new men they gathered around them in the cabinet,
the fight was a losing one. After thirty-two years' unbroken power,
the electors were prepared to listen to the cry, "It is time for a
change," and the more so since in the last years of Liberal
government, when numbers were desperately close, disreputable machine
methods gained the ascendancy. The Ross government was swept out of
power in January, 1905, and in June, 1908 a Conservative victory with
86 seats to 19 made it clear that Sir James Whitney's progressive
administration assured him in turn of a long vista of office. In
Manitoba, the Greenway government had gone down to defeat in 1900, and
though the Roblin government was fast building up a reputation as the
most shamelessly and colossally corrupt administration in provincial
record, it was still able to secure or to count a majority of the
voters. In British Columbia, after a period of chaos in which Joseph
Martin played a spectacular part, the non-party basis of government,
with its instability and constant personal intrigue, was abandoned,
and a frankly Conservative government under Richard McBride held power
from 1903. The provincial swing was distinctly toward the Conservative
camp.

It was not, however, the indirect influence of Conservative gains in
the provinces that the Laurier government had to fear so much as the
attacks made upon its own conduct of public affairs. Its
administration of the country's business was constantly and vigorously
under fire in this period. The sessions of 1906, 1907 and 1908 were
largely scandal sessions, and the general election that followed was a
scandals election. The government was attacked as wasteful,
demoralized, corrupt, false to all the principles and promises of the
sanctimonious Liberalism of Opposition days. The government forces
retorted in kind. If half what each side alleged of the other was
true, Canadian public life had sunk below the depths it had reached in
the nineties. How much fire was behind the campaign smoke?

So far as the conduct of parliament itself was concerned--or at least
of the Commons, for the Senate changed not--there was no question that
the years had brought a marked and welcome raising of standards.

[Illustration: Sir Allen Aylesworth

William Pugsley

George P. Graham

W. L. Mackenzie King

Louis P. Brodeur

Frank Oliver

Charles Murphy

Henri Bland

Jacques Bureau

GROUP OF MINISTERS]

The amenities of debate were better observed, personalities were less
extreme, the possibility that the other side of the House might not
all be imbeciles or scoundrels more freely recognized. At times when a
long session had frayed men's nerves or the discussion of scandal
charges had come close home, there were outbursts which did the House
little credit, but they were fewer than of old, and rarely shared in
by the front benches. How much of the change was due to the lessening
use of whiskey, how much to the guidance of a notable succession of
Speakers, J. D. Edgar, Thomas Bain, Louis Brodeur, N. A. Belcourt, R.
F. Sutherland, and later, Charles Marcil, it would be difficult to
assess. There was no doubt that it was in very large part due to the
character and example of the leader of the House. His dignity and
courtesy pervaded the whole Commons; the standards of a great
gentleman became part of the traditions of parliament. The influence
of Mr. Borden, always fair and always more interested in principles
than in personalities, made strongly in the same direction.

As regards administration, a stock-taking did not reveal such steady
progress. There was much to set to the government's credit. It had
shown an energy and a competence in many fields in refreshing contrast
to earlier days. In the administration of the Treasury, in immigration
and settlement, in agriculture, in the post-office, and in less degree
in the public works, the country had received progressive and careful
service.

The work of the Railway Commission had given stability and fairness to
transportation. Yet there was also another side. There was an
uncomfortable amount of inefficiency, of waste, and of misuse of
public funds. Some of the abuses were due to individual wrong-doing,
from which any corporation might suffer. Some were due to broader
causes, particularly to the effect of party organization and methods
on the country's business.

Who shall muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn? It was difficult
to prevent occasional officials, high and low, from making use of
their opportunities for illicit gain, and yet so far as came to light,
there was not any substantial degree of peculation within the
administration. Extensive petty graft was found in the Marine and
Fisheries Department, upon investigation by a commission in 1907, due
in part to the wasteful and careless methods in force in that
department in the past dozen years, and partly, so the Liberals
replied, to mistaken leniency in permitting practically all the old
Conservative office-holders to retain their posts. Wholesale graft was
charged in the affairs of the Interior Department under Mr. Sifton's
rgime; timber and grazing leases that yielded rich profits to the
concessionaires, sales of land to colonization companies at unduly low
rates, a contract with the North Atlantic Trading Company, a group of
European shipping agents, for bonussing immigrants, kept secret
because of Continental laws against emigration propaganda, were all
charged to be devices for enriching men on the inside. The North
Atlantic contract was never proved to be other than what it purported,
and the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company's operations were shown to
have brought settlement and prosperity to a wilderness. There was
ground, however, for the charge that in some timber and grazing
contracts, if there had not been collusion, there had been neglect of
the country's interests. The Liberal tactics were to deny any
wrong-doing, to dig up old Conservative deals, and to attack prominent
members of the Opposition, particularly Messrs. Foster, Fowler,
Bennett, and Lefurgey, for abuses of private trust or for securing
secret information from railway magnates as a basis for speculation in
Western lands. An investigation into life insurance conditions by a
royal commission in 1906-07, following upon the revelations made by
the Hughes inquiry in New York, revealed much waste, instances of
indefensible manipulation in some of the smaller companies, and a
dangerous interlocking between trustee and private interests in some
of the larger, and provided the basis for substantial improvements in
insurance legislation the following session. By many Conservatives,
however, the chief purpose of the inquiry was charged to be the
discrediting of Mr. Foster for his handling of the funds of a
fraternal society and its subsidiary trust company. The debates on the
question in 1906 and 1907 were prolonged, the attack pointed, Mr.
Foster's defence vigorous and circumstantial.

It was not merely the eighth commandment but the seventh that was
claimed to have been broken by Liberal ministers and by Conservative
members. During a debate in February, 1907, on these charges, Mr. G.
W. Fowler, Conservative member for Kings, New Brunswick, jumped to his
feet and threatened reprisals:

      I want this House and the Right Honourable the First
      Minister and the government to understand that if
      matters in connection with my private business are to
      be discussed in this House, I shall take an
      opportunity to discuss the private character of
      members of the Administration and members on that
      side; . . . I shall call a spade a spade and when I
      speak of the indisposition of an honourable minister
      which keeps him out of the House, I shall tell exactly
      what it was and how it was brought on. . . . I shall
      discuss the character of honourable members opposite,
      whether they be ministers or private members and their
      connection with wine, women and graft.

Mr. Fowler carried the matter no further, but Mr. Bourassa, professing
to voice an outraged public opinion and to be anxious to defend the
honour of the House, repeatedly urged investigation into these and the
other charges; he himself had no evidence, but the rumours were thick
and strong; there should be no saw-off; the prime minister should
intervene as Mr. Gladstone had done in the case of Sir Charles Dilke.
Sir Wilfrid, in reply, on March 26, refused to pay heed to
"insinuations and the tittle-tattle of the street": "The House of
Commons has never either in this country or in the mother country
ordered an investigation except upon a charge which the man against
whom it is levelled can face and to which he can give an answer." The
insurance inquiry was complete; it did not require to be repeated.
Mr. Bourassa had referred to certain gossip and had declared that if
he had the proof he would bring it: "if he has not the proof, why does
he mention it at all? The rumours which have been floating in the air
at last fell into the gutter, and the honourable gentleman gropes in
the gutter and brings those rumours into the House." There had been
rumours about an absent minister: "Last fall, a certain rumour came to
me, and I spoke to a mutual friend who is now in this House and hears
my words, and I said to him: I have been a friend of Hyman for many
years; you are still more a friend of his than I am . . . ; go to him
and tell him he must let me know what truth there is in this." Then
and afterward his colleague had sent direct and circumstantial denial.
Mr. Gladstone had advised Parnell's friends to compel his withdrawal
from public life; but when? When his offences had been revealed in
court, when they were no longer a private affair but a public scandal.
It was not his duty to act as a detective: when facts as to other men
were brought to his knowledge he would act as he had done in Hyman's
case. Let direct and responsible charges be made and the freest and
fullest investigation would be given. The debate ended, and the
discussion was continued in the Calgary "Eye-Opener." A week later one
minister resigned and fought an unsuccessful libel suit. A second had
already retired. A third fought the charges and retained Sir Wilfrid's
confidence and his seat.

It was not a pleasant episode. Undoubtedly in some quarters power and
prosperity were relaxing moral standards, or at least encouraging men
to flaunt their personal misconduct in public. The wave of speculation
which was sweeping over the whole country, and particularly the
opportunities for getting rich quick in Western real estate, had
affected the whole country; the city banker, the village storekeeper,
the Western farmer, each had his flier, and members of parliament were
not immune. The lime-light on the political stage revealed the
misdoings of public men, but whenever a corner of the curtain which
concealed private business was lifted, it was found that graft and
turned heads were not confined to politicians. It was the seamy side
of prosperity, part of the price the country paid for the sudden
development of the unexploited wealth of half a continent.
Fortunately, the infection did not wholly pervade either public or
private life, and after the first intoxication there came a sober
return to simpler ways. In other cases the criticism was the outcome,
rather, of rising public standards. Thirty years earlier, it would
have caused little comment had a minister appeared, drunk, in the
House, much less out of it. Sir Wilfrid was blamed for not intervening
earlier as regards the personal charges against his colleagues. He did
intervene whenever definite statements reached him, and after 1908
this phase of politics troubled the country little.[38]

[Footnote 38: Sometimes grace was given, as in the following unique
documents, drawn up in Sir Wilfrid's handwriting, and signed by the
erring minister:

(1) "I hereby tender you my resignation as member of your
administration and Minister of ----, and ask you to place the same in
the hands of His Excellency.". . . Ottawa, ----, (signature).

(2) "I hereby pledge my word to Sir Wilfrid Laurier that I will never
again taste wine, beer, or any other kind of intoxicating liquors, in
token of which engagement, I place in Sir W. L.'s hand my resignation
as member of the cabinet and minister of ----, with the date blank,
leaving it to him to fill the blank and act upon it, should I fail in
my promise."

Alas for human promises--a year later Sir Wilfrid filled in the blank.

It was perhaps as a result of the confusion caused by the two
favourite lines of attack by Conservative statesmen that a Simcoe
County farmer, a staunch old Grit, declared that he had not been
surprised to hear about some of the ministers, but he was really
shocked by Wilfrid Laurier's goings on with that Italian hussy, Mary
del Val: a story which Sir Wilfrid much enjoyed.]

Sir Wilfrid's position may be gathered from a letter to one of the
guardians of the Liberal conscience, Senator McMullen:

Quebec, 28 July, 1908

My Dear McMullen:

      I have your letter of the 25th instant. I never knew
      anything of the charge made by Boyce until it was
      brought in the House. I admit that it has a look upon
      it which I do not like at all, but before making up my
      mind I shall wait until Sifton has had an opportunity
      of giving his version of it.

      Boyce could and should have preferred that charge when
      Sifton was in the House and as Sifton was Minister at
      the time the transaction took place and is primarily
      responsible for it, it seems to me Boyce should have
      given notice of his intention to bring the matter up,
      so as to give Sifton an opportunity of meeting the
      charge. Whatever may be Sifton's faults he is no
      coward, and he has denied the personal charge made
      against him, it seems to me only reasonable and fair
      to suspend judgment.

      Moreover, let me tell you frankly that in this matter
      you take a very unfair and unjust position toward the
      government. You say that once the impression gets
      abroad that corruption exists in the ranks of any
      government, it is sure to end disastrously. I do not
      dispute that by any means, but is it fair, reasonable
      or just to apply it to the present government? If
      Sifton were still in office, in view of the charge
      which is made against him, I could understand your
      construction, but as he is no longer a member of the
      Government I do not see how we can reasonably be made
      to suffer for an offence which took place seven years
      ago. If the offence were such as you represent it and
      if Sifton were still in the Government, I would be
      bound to ask him an explanation, and if the
      explanation were not satisfactory, the responsibility
      would be on the Government either to keep him or to
      force him out.

      I know that we are weak in the Province of Ontario and
      one of the causes of our weakness there is that our
      friends are prone to believe everything bad of us
      without preliminary investigation and to hold us
      responsible even for things which it is not in our
      power to remedy. . . .

      Allow me to say in conclusion that there is in your
      letter a pessimistic tone which ought not to exist.
      Governments are born to die, but I do not think that
      we have yet come to our end and certainly we can win
      again and win easily, if our friends will not be
      stampeded by the attacks of the Tories. The Tories are
      very virtuous when they are in opposition; when they
      are in office they can swallow anything without
      wincing.

These charges and counter charges had to do with individual and more
or less incidental wrong-doing. More serious were the charges of
wrong-doing in the interest of the party, of fraud or waste or
inefficiency declared to be inherent in the party system, as that
system had developed in Canada in recent years. Electoral corruption,
the waste, unfairness and demoralization of the patronage system, the
sinister aspects of campaign funds, were made the ground of vigorous
indictments of the Laurier administration, and of _tu quoque_ replies.
The methods adopted to secure a victory at the polls, the sources of
the aid required, the patronage and privileges given in return, were
widely debated.

That democracy involved the party system, no man with practical
experience questioned. That it involved the two-party system seemed a
just deduction from the last half-century of Canadian politics. With
political power divided among a million voters, how were half a
million plus one to be induced to act together? The leader's personal
prestige, the instinct of loyalty, of hero worship, would go far.
Thousands of electors cheered and voted not for the Liberal party but
for Wilfrid Laurier, as thousands had cheered and voted for John A.
Macdonald before him; "Follow my White Plume," Sir Wilfrid called not
in vain to young Quebec, as age silvered his black locks. Party spirit
was strong, the group prejudice, the combative instinct which shared
with the larger loyalty of national patriotism a good side and a bad,
an unquestioning cleaving to the flag of Grit or Tory under which one
had chanced to be born, a readiness to stand by one's party, right or
wrong. Principles moved a few, disinterested convictions on one's own
side, rooted prejudices on the other. With judicious stimulus or from
the accident of events the interest, or what was considered the
interest, of a religious body or an economic class or a local
community could be rallied, and with skill and the favouring distances
of a continent, opposing groups could sometimes be induced to support
the one party. The policy of state aid to industry inevitably brought
the parties into close touch with every large and organized economic
group; the transition from aid in the country's interest to aid in the
party's interest was easy. Parties could give or promise tariff or
bounty privileges to manufacturers, railway extensions to a
mining-camp or a prairie settlement, a post-office or an armory or a
harbour wherever it would do the most good. The Laurier government
made less political use of the tariff than its predecessors; the
manufacturers at best were neutral, and the new publicity of tariff
hearings was a marked advance on the old Red Parlour days. Public
works were used more freely, for money was more abundant, and it came
easily, extracted painlessly in tariff dues. A hostile constituency
could not ask for more than "cold justice," and members unblushingly
recited the wharves and custom-houses and bridges they had secured for
their constituents. "I obtained two years ago $174,500 as government
subsidy for your railroad, and this year nearly $100,000; $90,000 for
the construction of the dam; $7,500 for ice-breakers, $3,000 for an
iron bridge; in all, I have obtained for the two counties more than
$375,000. Does that count for nothing?" was one candidate's account of
his stewardship, while another calculated that his string equalled
$125 per head of the voting population. Sometimes this wholesale
bribery with the people's own money shredded into retail bribery, as
where in the 1908 election a defeated candidate reported meeting on
election day the free and independent voters on their way to the
polls, each hauling his share, three logs for the new breakwater.

To drive home these arguments, to instil true principles, to rouse the
indifferent, to convert the hesitating, to stiffen the backsliding, to
counteract the machinations of the enemy, all the resources of press
and platform and poster were called into action. Of late years there
had been less political discussion between elections. Members met
their constituents in single or in joint debate less often than of
old. The newspapers gave less of their space to politics, more to
business, sport, society and personal news. A more concentrated and
strenuous campaign at election times, increased reliance on
organization, head-lines and posters and cartoons which he who ran
might read, a shriller note in all the contest, became inevitable.

There remained the hopelessly indifferent and the hopefully corrupt.
Manhood suffrage had increased their numbers, the single-member
constituency maintained their importance, the gerrymander increased
it. A few score of purchased votes (retail) would turn many a riding.
For this situation the Liberals had a share of responsibility. They
had championed manhood suffrage, and they still believed that in the
long run their faith would be justified. They had not taken any
definite step toward proportional representation. Sir Richard
Cartwright, with Mr. Monk, warmly urged it, but tradition was too
strong for them; Sir Wilfrid had come sufficiently to their view to
declare that if in power, he would ask its consideration at the next
redistribution. They had, however, done away with the gerrymander; the
redistribution of seats in 1903 had been the fairest since
Confederation, effected by a committee representing both parties. The
extent to which bribery prevailed varied from constituency to
constituency. It was probably less than a generation earlier, despite
a greater floating vote. A few close constituencies, such as London,
where a party fight was a family vendetta and men were ready to go
great lengths for victory, were badly demoralized. Sometimes teams
were hired or cattle bought at high prices where five dollar bills
would not be taken: in one constituency a hotel keeper kept open house
for all comers and sent in the bills to the two candidates on the
basis of the votes finally polled for each; boxes of whiskey labelled
"Choice Tomatoes" did duty for the Conservatives in Colchester, and
also for the Liberals in campaign retort.

A newer phase of electoral corruption was the manipulation of the
ballot. The hiring of bogus deputy returning officers in West Elgin;
the spoiling of ballots by thumb-nail pencil crosses in North Grey; in
the Sault, the voyage of the _Minnie M._ with a boat-load of
personators, sworn, to save their consciences, on specially provided
bogus Bibles; the resort in West Hastings to boxes with secret
compartments to switch the ballots as desired;[39] aroused the public
more than bribery. Practically all these and similar incidents took
place in Ontario, which was frequently too busy saving the souls of
the other eight provinces to have time for its own; though it was long
experience of Quebec that had led Israel Tarte to declare that
"elections are not won by prayers." The bulk of the offences lay at
the door of the provincial Liberal party, which had permitted the most
brazen machine in Canadian annals to take control of its electoral
affairs. The federal organization was relatively free from these gross
abuses, but not wholly, and federal offices sometimes rewarded
provincial offenders.

[Footnote 39: The importer of these boxes, which were labelled
"Beehives," was asked at a little country station by a Hornerite
preacher for a contribution to the church funds; in his nervousness he
handed over twenty dollars, whereupon the preacher declared to the
bystanders that he must return immediate thanks: looking about, he
chose the "beehives" to kneel on, and prayed the Lord to bless the
good and generous brother in his work.]

For all these efforts, the work of canvassing and organization, the
work of honest persuasion, the work of loud propaganda and lowly
whispers, the work of the briber and ballot-box stuffer, workers and
payers were required. Many men worked for loyalty, for principle; many
worked for office or for glory; many took the cash and let the credit
go. Some newspapers gave free and independent support; others had to
be sustained by government printing or advertising;[40] others were
maintained directly out of party funds. As business outweighed
politics, there came a gratifying increase in newspaper independence,
but in many cases a journal became independent of party only to become
dependent upon advertisers, or the organ of railway or corporation
interests. Payers, too, were needed; there were men who subscribed to
local or central campaign funds as they would to their church funds,
without hope of gain in this world, and there were others who
subscribed to one or both parties on a business basis, expecting
thousands per cent. profit.

[Footnote 40: Yet the printing would never go round. To a prominent
member who complained he had never been able to secure any contracts
for his paper, Sir Wilfrid replied: "I am not surprised that you
cannot get any printing from the departments; I have never been able
to get any for a paper in which I take an interest in Quebec."]

The sequel was the patronage system. If workers and subscribers would
not work and pay for loyalty or principle or class or community
interest, they must be rewarded by direct individual gain. Seats in
the Commons, judgeships, senatorships, knighthoods, clerkships at
Ottawa, jobs as postmasters, excise officers, customs landing waiters,
immigration inspectors, must be filled and where possible filled by
the faithful. Supplies must be bought from firms on the patronage
list. Subsidy-hunters, contract-seekers, found the way smoother if
they had subscribed to campaign funds.

The distribution of patronage was the most important single function
of the government. Sir Wilfrid frequently repeated the story of
Lincoln, asked during a crisis in the Civil War whether it was a
change in the army command or complications with foreign powers that
wrinkled his forehead, and replying, "No, it is that confounded
postmastership at Brownsville, Ohio." No other subject bulked so large
in correspondence; no other purpose brought so many visitors to
Ottawa. It meant endless bombardment of ministers, ceaseless efforts
to secure a word from the friend of a friend of the premier, bitter
disappointment for the ninety and nine who were turned away. While the
members of the cabinet from each province usually determined the
appointments which could be localized, all the more important came to
Sir Wilfrid before decision, and to him the prayers of most of the
seekers were turned. Some of his supporters tried to save themselves
trouble for the moment by recommending to him each candidate in turn;
in reply to a protest, one such practitioner navely replied: "True, I
recommended both C. and D. It was C. I really wished considered. D. is
one of a class of people who hound my office, ask me for letters of
recommendation, exalt their services or the services of their friends,
whom they often bring along, and offer themselves to put the letter in
the post-box. What am I to do?"[41]

[Footnote 41: It was in a similar situation that a former master
dispenser of patronage, Sir Charles Tupper, had devised an ingenious
plan. Sir William Van Horne complained to Sir Charles that he was
sending a preposterous number of recommendations for passes on the
Canadian Pacific. "True," Sir Charles replied, "but it is difficult to
decline what people consider costs me nothing. Hereafter, when I send
you a letter recommending a pass, and sign it 'Yours truly,' throw it
into the waste-basket; when I sign it 'Yours sincerely,' please give
it consideration; but when I sign it 'Yours very sincerely," you
simply must not refuse it." "And," added Sir William, "after that,
every blessed letter from Tupper asking for a pass was signed, 'Yours
very sincerely.'"]

Some men worked through their friends, some applied direct.
Particularly in applying for the higher posts, it was _comme il faut_
to make it clear that it was only the insistence of the general public
that had overcome the candidate's reluctance: "It has been
represented to me that the Liberals of Ontario with whom the name of
Z. is a household word would be much gratified if I were appointed to
Government House," or "My friends insist that my tact and diplomatic
talents would find suitable scope in the High Commissionership." For
the Senate, the orthodox grounds were being "the only one left of the
old guard who stood so loyally to their colours in the dark days of
the eighties when there was no silver lining," or having "run six
elections and paid all my expenses out of my own pocket." A Roman
Catholic bishop would write to note that all the last five
appointments, formerly held by his co-religionists, had gone to
Protestants, or a layman would argue that because the last holder was
a Catholic so should the next be, or that as the last holder was a
Protestant, it was a Catholic's turn; a Methodist friend would write
to point out that there were only two Methodist county judges out of
eighty, and a Presbyterian to complain that the percentage of
Presbyterian senators was falling. It was a Quebec follower who wrote
Sir Wilfrid shortly after the elections of 1896: "If anyone had told
me when I was fighting the battles of Liberalism in my county,
striving without fear of attack or hope of favour to advance the cause
of the people, determined that no designing cleric and no corrupt
politician would be allowed to shackle our noble country,--if anyone
had told me that six months after you took office, I would still be
without a job, I would not have believed him." It was an eastern
Ontario seeker who wrote: "To think that after naming my only son
William Lyon Mackenzie, I am still denied any post by a government
that calls itself Liberal." Acquaintance in youth; descent from two
United Empire Loyalist great grandfathers; having seventeen living
children, one named Wilfrid, and this in Ontario; being the daughter
of a Conservative minister and the mother of ten potential Liberal
voters; finding that "if poverty is not a crime, it is very
inconvenient," were typical grounds set forth in the appeals which
poured in upon the prime minister.

[Illustration: LADY LAURIER]

Posts were limited and many of the applicants were obviously unsuited
for any post whatever. Sir Wilfrid rarely, if ever, made a promise
until he was sure he could carry it out. To the great majority of his
correspondents it was necessary to say "no"; to some, future
consideration could be assured. Yet he found time to give individual
attention to every request that reached him, and to return a fitting
answer. To a pompous member of an old family who was graciously
prepared to honour the party and the country by accepting a high post,
the reply was curt and deflating; to an illiterate old Cape Breton
fisherman who had voted Liberal all his life and had not received even
any road work, and now wished to be relieved of his (municipal) taxes
of eight dollars, the reply was warm and sympathetic. To a young
lawyer who sought a government berth he gave not only refusal but the
advice to stick to his calling and force success by his own
endeavours. Some appeals which had no claim upon the country had a
claim upon his personal sympathy. Out of their own purse he and Lady
Laurier eased the last years of old friends, and provided the training
that an ambitious boy or a girl with musical gifts had hoped for in
vain.

It should not be assumed that the appointment never sought the man or
that importunity greatly counted. That the higher appointments should
be restricted to members of the party in power, whether Liberal or
Conservative, might be deplored as unduly narrowing the range of
choice, but within this field public merit as well as party service
was carefully weighed. In connection with judicial appointments, Sir
Wilfrid's correspondence, particularly with his Ministers of Justice,
reveals a frank and deliberate sifting and an insistence on
professional attainments and personal qualities, for which credit was
not always given. Sometimes offers of senatorships or knighthoods were
declined: writing to a colleague of Sir Wilfrid, a generous Liberal
backer explained his reasons:

      I am not ambitious. I am for "the house with the
      narrow gate which I take to be too little for pomp to
      enter at." Any interest I take in political affairs
      is, I am sure you will believe me, unselfish. There is
      no one, however, who benefits more by good times than
      I do, and I am not of the foolish ones who can
      remember the years from 1890-96 and then from 1896 to
      the present, without coming to the conclusion that the
      vital interests of Canada are bound up in Sir
      Wilfrid's government. I can see the sacrifices made by
      yourself and confrres; the strenuous life you are
      forced to lead, and the very many pleasures of which
      you deprive yourself. I would be ignoble indeed if in
      the face of this I did not with pleasure make my
      little effort toward lengthening the period of power
      of the best government Canada ever had or is likely to
      have.

Not often, however, did a wife write one day to urge the appointment
of her husband to the Senate, and the husband write the next day to
urge the selection of a fellow-townsman.

The letter just quoted sets forth a side of the question too often
ignored by critics of public men. Public life was an engrossing
occupation. Few men could do justice even to a private member's task
and to their own affairs. With the growing complexity of the task of
government, the session lengthened to cover the greater part of the
year: in the parliament of 1873-78, the average length of a session
was 72 days; in 1891-96 it was 116, and in 1904-08, 178 days. For the
minister, office meant prestige, power, and to some, relative
prosperity, but at the end there often came defeat and a vain
endeavour to pick up the threads of a broken professional career. It
was this consideration which led the government in 1905, along with an
increase in sessional indemnities from $1500 to $2500, to propose and
carry a pension for all cabinet ministers, past and future, who had
held office for five years. The public outcry led a year later to the
repeal of the pension provision. An innovation which time has
sanctioned was the establishment of a salary for the leader of the
Opposition, who is as busy and as essential an officer of government
as any member of the cabinet; despite criticism the experiment was
continued. It was a recognition of the same fact that led friends of
Sir Wilfrid to subscribe a fund, to which no one in business relations
with the government was allowed to contribute, to recompense him for
his sacrifices and assure him peace of mind in his declining years.

Of all patronage questions, none gave more difficulty than the award
of titles. The uncertain division of authority between the Canadian
cabinet, the governor-general and the British cabinet, the conflict
and interaction of radical principles, social ambitions, and
imperialist propaganda, made the recommendations a ticklish matter. It
was one of the few points in which the governor-general retained an
independent initiative, and differences of opinion, particularly with
Lord Minto, were frequent, though not acute. Few titles were given to
men who had not done the country some service, but the influence of
the growing spate of knights and peers in building up class barriers
and reinforcing social snobbery, and their frank use by the imperial
authorities to encourage public men to support imperialist views,
counteracted, in the eyes of many Liberals, any value they might have
as stimulating public service. Men like Mr. Fielding declined
proffered honours, but others moved earth and heaven to get them. The
usual alibi was that "this sort of thing does not appeal to me but my
wife thinks it would be fitting." Or the wife would write: "We really
care nothing personally about it ourselves, but naturally do not wish
not to be appreciated or humiliated before our world." A member of
the Bench would declare that "as you know, I am not anxious for a
title; I would rather remain as I am," but if one must be accepted,
why merely a K. C. M. G. when an Australian in a parallel post
receives a G. C. M. G.? The rapid demoralization of an old guard
Liberal is revealed in a series of letters beginning in March with a
flat refusal to accept a title, agreeing in April to accept it as an
incident of the new official position if the prime minister insists,
going on in September to speak of the "surprise and annoyance
occasioned by the invidious withholding of the honours that were so
generally known to have been suggested," insisting on January 4 that
"it will be necessary for you to take some decided notice of the
Colonial Office's ignoring your recommendations . . . ; that title has
come to be a fixed idea in my mind and a curious sense of injury
rankles in my breast about it," and ending happily on May 25 with
grateful thanks.

Sir Wilfrid did not propose to abolish all titles. Sir Richard
Cartwright urged that ministerial responsibility should be
increasingly observed in this last survival of prerogative. Sir
Wilfrid was dubious, preferring to assume no responsibility, but steps
were taken in the direction Sir Richard advised. The Governor-general
still took the initiative in preparing the lists, and the prime
minister would make objections or additional suggestions. Sir Wilfrid
did endeavour to limit the number. A letter to a colleague in 1901
gives his view of the inexpediency of too many titles in the cabinet:
his colleague's reply was, "If two titles in the cabinet are too many,
one is too many."

Ottawa, 31 August, 1901

My Dear X:

      In view of the approaching visit of the Duke of York,
      I have had to discuss with Lord Minto, the question of
      honours to be distributed by him. I consider it my
      duty to inform you that His Excellency not only
      suggested but strongly pressed that your name should
      be on the list. It is also my duty--though not such a
      pleasant one--to tell you frankly that this I opposed.

      I do not know what are the views which you hold on the
      subject of accepting honours. I do not remember that I
      ever discussed this with you. It is, however, quite
      obvious to me, that the granting of a decoration or
      title under such circumstances would be very
      gratifying to your family, and that for that reason,
      if for no other, it might have proved acceptable to
      you.

      I may also add that in my own estimation, there is no
      one--I make no exception--who is more entitled than
      yourself to recognition of any kind either from the
      Crown or from the people. And yet, as I told you
      above, I strongly objected to the suggestion of Lord
      Minto, that your name should go on the list.

      This I did for political reasons, which I am sure, are
      not new to you. I have not changed my own view that
      the acceptance of honours by a public man in the
      active and daily struggles of political life, is a
      mistake. I further believe that we have enough titles
      in the Cabinet already.

      I am very much in earnest about all this.

      Some one, if not yourself, might perhaps tell me, that
      I did not apply this rule to my own self; but to this
      statement I absolutely demur. The title which I now
      wear, was thrust on me, without any previous
      communication to me, and against my protest that it
      was a political mistake. I was then so situated that
      it would have been at the moment, a greater political
      mistake to have refused, for it would have been most
      ungracious, in the enthusiasm of the Jubilee, to meet
      by a denial the public announcement of the Queen's
      favour. Notwithstanding my course at the time could
      not have been else. I have often had occasion to
      realize that this conferring of a title on me--which
      was the result of the mistaken kindness to me of Lord
      Aberdeen and Lord Strathcona--was a serious political
      error, and I have never ceased to regret it.

      From all this I have made up my mind, that at present
      we have enough titles in the Cabinet. If your views on
      this point do not agree with mine, I sincerely hope,
      that with your unvarying friendship to me, you will
      sacrifice them for my sake.

Sir Wilfrid, it may be added, twice declined to accept a peerage. It
was strongly pressed upon him by Lord Minto, but on personal and
political grounds he resolutely declined to consider it.

Lord Minto thus refers to the first of these occasions:

(_Lord Minto to Wilfrid Laurier_)

London, 23 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, July 27, '02.

      My Dear Sir Wilfrid:

      I hope that though you refused the peerage which I
      know was offered to you, I may all the same be allowed
      to offer you my sincerest congratulations on the
      honour. I felt sure from what you often said to me,
      that you would refuse it, and I can fully appreciate
      your reasons for doing so, but all the same, as a
      friend, I cannot keep to myself the congratulations on
      the distinction which all your friends would have
      enthusiastically rendered to you and Lady Laurier if
      you had seen your way to accept. At the same time, I
      hope the day is a very long way off when after having
      fought and won the battles of public life you may
      feel at liberty to accept any of the distinctions you
      have so splendidly gained. . . .

      As regards our list of honours, I am surprised at the
      omissions, which you also will have noticed. . . . If
      I had been told only a certain number of C. M. G.s
      were to be given for Canada, I could have understood
      it: but I had no such information, and no comment was
      made on the names submitted. Those who have received
      the C. M. G. have been selected from the list I sent
      in without any communication with me. I am going to
      the Colonial Office this morning to see if I can get
      any explanation, and believe me

      Yours very truly, [Signed.] Minto.

The danger of electoral and administrative corruption and the
unfortunate results of the patronage system called for immediate
action. The Laurier government took energetic and constructive steps
to ensure reform. Ministers resigned and peculating civil servants
were dismissed. In 1907 all patronage lists for purchasing supplies in
all the departments were abolished, and patronage was further
restricted by the appointment of a permanent Civil Service Commission,
with Adam Shortt and M. G. Larochelle in charge, to apply the merit
system to the inside service. An order in council provided that timber
licenses were to be granted only by public auction after survey and
advertisement. Mr. Aylesworth's Election Act of the same year forbade
corporations to contribute to campaign funds, required publicity of
contributions, and set heavy penalties for ballot tampering,--an
evidence at least of good intentions. A dangerous corner had been
turned.

In the general elections, which were held on October 26, 1908, the
Conservative party was much more aggressive than in 1904. Mr. Borden
attacked the government's scandal record and emphasized clean
administration and public ownership as his constructive planks. In
view of the disclosures of 1904, it was interesting to note that a
quarrel between Mr. Borden and Mr. Hugh Graham as to the 1904 election
fund led the "Star" to take a neutral stand, while the St. John
"Times" and "Telegraph" once more passed to Liberal hands, with Mr.
Russell accommodatingly assisting. Another feature was the issue of a
pamphlet--"The Duty of the Hour"--by the "Orange Sentinel," urging all
Orangemen to strike a blow against clerical ascendancy by voting
against the Laurier candidates; it was circulated by the Conservatives
where it would do most good, and reprinted and circulated by the
Liberals where it would do most harm. The Liberals defended Mr. Sifton
by attacking Mr. Foster, and relied on prosperity and progress. "Let
Laurier finish his work," was the keynote of their campaign.

Sir Wilfrid once more took an active part in the campaigning. As in
1904, he confined his efforts to Quebec and Ontario. In seven open-air
meetings in western Ontario he spoke to 50,000 people; not all could
hear, for his voice, while still silvery and mellow, could not carry
as of old. He touched the personal chord, as at Sorel: "Not many years
now remain to me. The snows of winter have taken the place of spring,
but however I may show the ravages of time, my heart still remains
young," and at Montreal: "One task finished but calls to a new task.
As Cecil Rhodes said, 'So much done, yet so much to be done.' I have
things in my thoughts and if God grants me life there are many, many
things which I would undertake to do, but unhappily the years are
piling on my head and this is probably the last time that I shall
appeal to my fellow-countrymen of Canada." He met the charges of
wrong-doing: "There have been abuses. . . . There was a Judas among
the twelve apostles, there may well be one or several black sheep in
our flock, but if there are . . . it is for us and not for the
Conservatives to rid ourselves of them." The government stood on its
achievement: "We have been twelve years in office and these years will
be remembered in the history of Canada. In them Canada has been lifted
from the humble position of a colony to that of a nation. In 1896
Canada was a mere colony, hardly known in the United States or Europe.
In 1908 Canada has become a star to which is directed the gaze of the
civilized world. That is what we have done."

For the fourth time polling day brought decisive victory. The
completed returns gave a Liberal majority of forty-seven, as against
sixty-two in 1904. Ontario and Quebec showed no change in the total,
though there were many shifts in individual constituencies, and the
popular majority in Quebec was small; Nova Scotia was more
Conservative, and New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island more Liberal;
Manitoba and British Columbia decidedly Conservative, and the
mid-West provinces firmly Liberal.[42] Six provinces gave the
government a majority; outside Quebec, it held a majority of four.

[Footnote 42:

                     General Election Results, 1908
                       Liberals   Conservatives
    Nova Scotia          12             6
    New Brunswick        11             2
    Prince Edward Island  3             1
    Quebec               54            11
    Ontario              37            49
    Manitoba              2             8
    Saskatchewan          9             1
    Alberta               4             3
    British Columbia      1             6
    Yukon                 1             0
                        ----          ----
                        134            87]




CHAPTER XV

NATION AND EMPIRE

      National and Imperial Currents--The Imperialist
      Campaign--Laurier and Colonial Nationalism--The
      Colonial Conference of 1902--Chamberlain's
      Disappointment--His Tariff Policy--The Conference of
      1907--Laurier and Botha--The Rise of Quebec
      Nationalism--Henri Bourassa--The Naval Panic of
      1909--The Canadian Navy Resolution--Imperialist and
      Nationalist Dissent--The Campaign in Quebec--The
      Drummond-Arthabaska Election--The 1911 Conference.


With the ending of the Boer War, the broad question of Canada's
national status and particularly its relation to the British Empire,
had ceased to hold a leading place in public discussion and party
programmes. With the entrance of the rivalry of Britain and Germany
for control of the sea upon an acute stage, it became once more a
warmly debated issue. During the years that intervened, Mr.
Chamberlain's tariff campaign, the recurring Colonial Conferences, and
the activity of propaganda groups had given occasion for debate and
decision, but opinion, though rapidly developing, was still in the
making, and no minor issue could precipitate a definite and
nation-wide conviction.

The currents of sentiment continued to run much in the same channels
as before, but with varying intensity. Imperialism was still in the
ascendant. The desire for a closer union of the Empire and for the
assumption on Canada's part of a greater share in the control and the
responsibilities of a unified imperial policy, was wide-spread and
vigorously expressed. The world was still in an imperialist mood,
still being swept on toward the precipice of war by the rivalries of
national egotism and trade interests, and no part of the British
Empire could wholly escape. Pride of race was strong in
English-speaking Canada. School and press emphasized the British
tradition. The rapid immigration from the British Isles, of which a
disproportionate share went to the cities, renewed and invigorated the
affection for the mother country. The flood of British capital pouring
in for investment in railways, lands, government bonds, influenced
sentiment, unconsciously with some, directly and crudely with others.
Sympathy with British Liberal or Labour movements, the dazzling
glitter of royal and aristocratic circles, appealed in one or other
quarter. Resentment against United States aggression or indifference
urged in the same direction. Canada might be weaker than the Republic,
but the Empire was stronger.

Yet at the same time, national sentiment was attaining a new scope and
a new power. Every year that passed increased the background of
national memories and national consciousness. Prosperity gave new
confidence and assertiveness. The attention paid to Canada by the
world outside was reflected in a new pride which may not always have
observed proportion, but was none the less a reality for that. The
opening of the West and the industrial development of the East
brought about an intermingling of the people which in some measure
broke down provincial barriers and developed Canadian feeling. Even
participation in the Boer War had made for national more than for
imperial sentiment. A popularly exaggerated idea of the achievements
of the Canadian contingents, friction in Africa with imperial officers
and loss of confidence in the War Office and the staff, the feeling
that the slate had been cleaned of a large part of any debt due to
Britain for protection, quickened the consciousness of Canada as a
distinct national entity.

Nor had the old passive colonialism by any means disappeared. Inertia,
fear of the unknown, the force of old traditions, made many reluctant
to consider any change. Canada was getting on very well as she was:
why assume any greater share of responsibility and risk either as an
integral part of a centralized Empire or as a distinct nation within
the Empire? Imperial duties, national responsibilities, meant a share
in Europe's military madness. The ranks of those who took this
position consciously were reinforced by the hosts of the indifferent,
the vast proportion of the people who had no clear-cut convictions or
active sentiments impelling them in any direction.

These tendencies were not embodied in distinct and organized
movements. There was an active group of conscious and convinced
imperialists, there was the beginning of the formulation of a
nationalist creed, but for the most part the tendencies still hung in
solution. The great majority of citizens wore no label. A few broad
distinctions of sympathy were apparent. English-speaking Canada leaned
more to the imperialist or the national solution, Quebec more to the
colonial. The city was much more imperialist than the country, and
particularly keener on the military side of empire; with the growing
concentration of population and industry and power in a few large
centres, and the greater facilities for organization and publicity
that the city offered, the city counted for more in the nation's
councils than the deeper currents of opinion warranted.

Canada was not left to work out its own conclusions unaided. The
outstanding feature of these years was the vigorous and persistent
endeavour of official and unofficial circles in Britain to reorganize
the Empire, to centralize authority and reinforce the power and
prestige of Britain by the definite and bound support of her overseas
possessions. Practical statesmen from Joseph Chamberlain to Lord
Milner, theoretic propagandists from the British Empire League to the
Round Table group, enthusiastic admirals from Colomb to Beresford, did
all in their power to bring the colonies more closely within the
imperial orbit. A unified British Empire, strengthened by mutual ties
of trade and defence, directing its vast unused resources by a single
will, keeping the world's peace and any unattached trifles in the way
of territory, carrying on its mission as Heaven's chief deputy, would,
they believed, benefit the colonies as well as Britain, and harmonize
with the loyal aspirations Canada and Australasia had been voicing of
late years. The need was urgent. Britain was losing her supremacy,
rivals were aggressive, the colonies were coming to parting ways. Now
or never was the Empire's hour.

The centralizing movement took three chief forms, of which now one,
now another was emphasized. Political centralization, the
establishment of some central parliament or imperial council or
cabinet, was urged persistently. Military centralization, the
contribution by the colonies of men and money for imperial fleets and
armies, at the disposal of the British government or some new joint
authority, was another path to the same goal. Economic centralization,
the cementing of the Empire by trade and tariff privileges, found less
universal but more aggressive support.

It was Wilfrid Laurier's fortune to hold a strategic and determining
post in the settlement of this issue. As the prime minister of the
colony to which population, prosperity, central position and priority
in the working out of responsible government gave pre-eminence, as the
senior and seemingly permanent prime minister of the Empire, outruling
the Salisburys, Balfours, Campbell-Bannermans, the Chamberlains, the
Bartons, Deakins, Watsons, the Seddons and the Jamesons, he held a
unique place in imperial counsel. As the representative of the
non-English-speaking peoples of the white Empire, he typified a
problem which the racial Imperialist had to solve or abandon his
endeavour. As a Canadian, heir to eight generations of Canadian
pioneers, student of the long struggle for self-government, builder of
the new Canada that was achieving its own distinct place in the world,
he was the natural exponent of colonial nationalism. As Wilfrid
Laurier the man, master of rhetoric but wary of enthusiasm, shrewd,
tenacious, he was not likely to be moved from a deliberate position by
the nod of a statesman or the smile of a duchess.

In forming his policy on imperial relations, Sir Wilfrid did not
follow solely his individual preference. As leader of a party and
ruler of a country of many shades of view, he had always to keep in
touch with the central body of opinion. More important than personal
preferences was the need of preserving national unity, or preventing a
division on racial lines. His constant effort was to find a policy and
a formula which would keep the country not only moving in what he
considered the right direction, but moving abreast. As a responsible
administrator, he was more concerned in settling concrete problems
than in framing abstract theories of empire. His formulas were never
very formal. He was the despair alike of Mr. Henri Bourassa and of Mr.
Lionel Curtis, who called for precise and comprehensive and neatly
labelled programmes. Whether or not he could have been positive and
constructive, it is a fact that his most important work in this field
was negative, the blocking of the plans of the advocates of
centralization, who suffered from no shortage of theories. It is an
opinion, but an opinion strengthened by the experiences of later
years, that this work, negative though it may have been, was the work
his day demanded, an essential stage in the development of Canadian
nationality.

Writing in 1911 to a correspondent who reported the criticism of an
imperialist friend that Canada and the Empire were "drifting," Sir
Wilfrid replied:

      Your crusading friend considers that in imperial
      matters we are drifting. Drifting is a
      question-begging word. It may be that we are without a
      course and without a pilot, or it may be merely that
      your friend does not greatly like our course nor
      greatly trust the pilot. There has been some tacking,
      there have been unexpected tides and currents, but we
      are making, in my opinion, rapid and definite
      progress. At least as we look back upon it, the course
      seems steady. We are making for a harbour which was
      not the harbour I foresaw twenty-five years ago, but
      it is a good harbour. It will not be the end. Exactly
      what the next course will be I cannot tell, but I
      think I know the general bearing, and I am content.

In his first year in office, and in the festivals of the Jubilee, it
has been seen, Sir Wilfrid frequently used words which made the
supporters of imperial federation count him a convert. His desire to
meet Ontario at least half-way, the lack of any other formula than
that of the federationist to express the policy of imperial
connection, the influence upon his own sentiments of the imperial
surge of the time and of United States hostility, undoubtedly carried
him for a time in this direction. But not for long. The
responsibilities of office soon made it clear that in any scheme of
parliamentary federation Canada would give up more power than she
would gain. Experiment broadened new paths of independent action. The
cold douche of the South African War quickened a realization of the
dangers of imperialist perorations. The stolid resistance of Quebec
to that adventure in imperialism warned him of the danger of too great
concession to Ontario sentiment, or what passed for Ontario sentiment.
The federation tack soon ended.

The conception of Canada's status which Sir Wilfrid developed in his
later years of office was that of a nation within the Empire. He
became convinced that it was possible to reconcile what was sanest and
most practicable in the ideals of independence and of imperialism.
Canada might attain virtual independence, secure control of her own
destinies at home and abroad, and yet retain allegiance to a common
sovereign. As for the Empire, its strength and its only hope of
permanence lay in the freedom of the component parts; centralization
would prove unwieldy and provoke revolt. The conception was not new
with him; he did not give it its most definite or detailed or
thoroughgoing exposition; it was a natural, though by no means an
inevitable, outcome of broad forces of interest and sentiment, and of
the trend of events by which he, like his contemporaries, was
affected. Yet he was the first responsible statesman to seize and hold
fast to this idea, and it was his flexible yet tenacious advocacy that
made it in the end the accepted theory of Empire. He approached the
question in his own distinctive fashion. He would not draw up any
elaborate theory or programme; he could meet only one problem at a
time, and only when occasion compelled. He disliked sudden changes.
His mind lacked what some would term the constructive, some, the
doctrinaire bent. He was a responsible politician, working out each
day's task as it came. He was anxious, again, to find a policy which
would unite and express the dominant currents of Canadian opinion. Not
merely obvious party interests, but his master passion for
reconciliation and unity urged such a policy, and the compromise of
nationhood within the Empire appeared to afford this basis. At the
same time he was desirous of keeping the country from being
irrevocably committed as long as might be. This conception might suit
to-day and not suit to-morrow. It might break down on some unforeseen
application. How it could be worked out to the full, particularly in
the field of defence and foreign affairs, he was by no means sure, and
would therefore take one slow step at a time. He did not believe that
this nicely balanced compromise would prove an eternal solution. That
Canada's eventual goal would be independence, remained his conviction.
But that was not for his time, and sufficient for the day was the
principle thereof.

The first occasion for testing and recording the shift of opinion came
with the Colonial Conference of 1902. It had been agreed in 1897 that
it was "desirable to hold periodical conferences of representatives of
the Colonies and Great Britain for the discussion of matters of common
interest." The stubborn length of the war in South Africa prevented an
early meeting. Then with peace assured and with the coronation of
Edward VII to provide the pageant background, Mr. Chamberlain invited
the premiers of the Empire to attend a conference in June and July,
1902. An agenda was prepared, toward which Canada made no
suggestions, though New Zealand and the Commonwealth had many to
offer. In acknowledging the proposals, the Canadian government
declared that it did not consider any useful result would come from
discussions of political change or of imperial defence. The reply gave
Mr. Borden opportunity for a cautious and non-committal criticism and
a request for a statement of the government's policy. Sir Wilfrid in
reply emphasized reciprocal preferential trade as the subject in which
Canada was chiefly interested. As to defence, he and his colleagues
felt no useful purpose could be served by discussing it:

      If it be intended simply to discuss what part Canada
      is prepared to take in her own defence, what share of
      the burden must fall upon us as being responsible for
      the safety of the land in which we were born, and to
      which we owe our allegiance, in which all our hopes
      and affections are centred, certainly we are always
      prepared to discuss that subject. Nor do I believe
      that we need any prompting on that subject, or that
      our attention should be specially called to it. . . .
      There is a school abroad, there is a school in England
      and in Canada, a school which is perhaps represented
      on the floor of this parliament, a school which wants
      to bring Canada into the vortex of militarism which is
      the curse and the blight of Europe. I am not prepared
      to endorse any such policy.

The Conference began in London on June 30. The sudden illness of the
King delayed both coronation and Conference, and it was mid-August
before the last meeting was held. Mr. Chamberlain was himself in
charge, with Lord Selborne and Mr. Brodrick representing the Admiralty
and the War Office. Sir Edmund Barton came as premier of a
confederated Australia, with Sir John Forrest as Minister of Defence.
Richard Seddon of New Zealand, Sir Gordon Sprigg of the Cape, Sir
Albert Hime of Natal and Sir Robert Bond of Newfoundland spoke for the
smaller colonies. From Canada came Sir Wilfrid Laurier, along with Mr.
Fielding, Sir Frederick Borden, Sir William Mulock and William
Paterson.

Mr. Chamberlain made it clear that a great step forward in imperial
organization was expected from the Conference. The blank cheques of
imperial enthusiasm and colonial loyalty were to be filled out and
cashed. "I cannot conceal from myself," he declared in the opening
address, "that very great anticipations have been formed as to the
results which may accrue from our meeting." The establishment of an
imperial council, a definite pledge of naval and military
contributions from every colony, some approach to union in trade, were
the ends toward which the Colonial Secretary was working.

The political federation of the Empire, Mr. Chamberlain declared, was
within the limits of possibility. He would prefer the demand to come
from the colonies. Quoting, out of its context,[43] Sir Wilfrid's
phrase, "If you want our aid, call us to your councils," he expressed
Britain's willingness to grant the colonies a share in the policy of
the Empire proportionate to the share of the burdens they assumed.
"The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of his fate": it was
time that her children should assist in supporting the burden. Such a
voice in policy might come through representation in the British House
of Commons or the Lords; he himself preferred "a real Council of the
Empire to which all questions of imperial interest might be referred."
This council might at first be advisory, but in time should be given
executive and perhaps legislative functions. Or, as he had elsewhere
defined it, this central council would develop into "a new government
with large powers of taxation and legislation over countries separated
by thousands of miles."

[Footnote 43: See page 107]

Mr. Chamberlain's appeal awakened no response. Not even ardent
imperialists like Richard Seddon were anxious to set up at that moment
a body superior to their own parliaments. The only action as to
political machinery taken by the Conference was in the contrary
direction; a resolution providing that the Conference itself should
meet at intervals not exceeding four years expressed the desire to
keep in touch with all parts of the Empire, but to do so through a
meeting of governments responsible to their own peoples, not through a
new body exercising direct control over the whole.

As to trade, Mr. Chamberlain had expressed sympathy with the proposal
of free trade within the Empire. True, no colony had endorsed that
policy; the counter policy of a colonial preference on British goods
had been adopted by Canada alone, and the value of the Canadian
preference, or of any preferential rates which though lower than rates
on foreign goods were still prohibitive, he held doubtful. Here again
there was little concurrence. The imperial Zollverein found no
friends. The Canadian members energetically combatted Mr.
Chamberlain's disparagement of the preference, demonstrating that it
had arrested the decline in British trade and given it new life.
Greater preference would be given in return for corresponding
concessions in the British market; the Canadians were prepared to make
definite proposals. A resolution affirmed the impracticability of
imperial free trade, approved the principle of a preference on British
goods, and recommended reciprocal preference to colonial products "by
exemption from or reduction of duties now or hereafter imposed."

But it was on defence that the discussion centred. Since the last
Conference, Britain had been at war on the Indian frontier, in the
Soudan, and in South Africa. The desire for colonial aid in bearing
the burden was strong. Either imperial policy must be curtailed or
imperial burden bearers extended. British authorities assumed without
question that by participating in the South African War the colonies
had committed themselves to a share in all future wars, and that it
merely remained to secure a formal recognition of this duty and a
definite agreement as to details. Lord Selborne lectured the
Conference on the strategic heresies of local defence and the
necessity of "a single navy under one control," pointed out that
Britain spent fifteen shillings per head for naval defence to
Australia's tenpence and Canada's nothing, and urged contributions of
both money and men to the Admiralty, preferably in squadrons of the
imperial navy assigned but not tied to local waters. Mr. Brodrick
declared Britain needed a large striking force, ready for instant
service abroad, trained to compare with European troops, and proposed
that each colony should set aside one-fourth of its militia for
intensive training, pledged to go overseas whenever their government
proffered assistance to the imperial forces.

The appeal met a measure of response, but little wool for much cry.
The Commonwealth premier was persuaded to promise a renewal and
extension of the Australian contribution to the British navy,
reluctantly, knowing, as time proved, that he would find it difficult
to carry his parliament with him. The smaller colonies all agreed to
give unconditional money grants or aid to local naval reserves. The
Canadian representatives declined to make any offer of assistance,
though they stated they were contemplating the establishment of a
local naval force. The suggestion of military contingents earmarked
for overseas wars met with favour from the smaller and more dependent
colonies, but Canada and Australia would have none of it: "To
establish a special force," they declared in a joint memorandum, "set
apart for general imperial service, and practically under the absolute
control of the imperial government, was objectionable in principle, as
derogating from the powers of self-government enjoyed by them, and
would be calculated to impede the general improvement in training and
organization of their defence forces."

The outcome of the Conference was an intense disappointment to Mr.
Chamberlain. In Sir Wilfrid Laurier he had met a man of equal
firmness, equally adroit in argument and tactics, and better informed
in the lessons of the Empire's past and in the realities of colonial
interests and opinion. In a long interview he frankly voiced his
surprise. He could not understand how Canada and Australia failed to
see that strength and safety lay in union, or how they could
consistently with self-respect decline to bear a fair share of
imperial burdens. Sir Wilfrid was equally frank in reply. He was
surprised at Mr. Chamberlain's surprise. The secret of the Empire's
strength, he insisted, lay in local diversity and freedom. Canada was
prepared to bear her just burdens, but according to her own conception
of her interest and duty. When the safety of Britain or the whole
Empire was challenged, Canada would not stint aid, but what Mr.
Chamberlain termed the Empire's interest and the Empire's policy, were
in most cases Great Britain's interest and Great Britain's policy.
Britain was always thinking of war and of the extension and
strengthening of her domain. Canada had a greater domain than she
could develop in a century. Canada was far from European quarrels, and
a uniquely close neighbour to the United States. She was impelled by
the newness of the country and by the lack of natural unity to spend
vast sums on internal development, on her land-ways, as Britain by her
position was called upon to spend vast sums to keep open her sea-ways.
Mr. Chamberlain, still a Little Englander in his imperialism, would
not agree. He considered all English-speaking Canadians, Australians,
and Afrikanders, as Englishmen living overseas, and expected French
and Dutch to be made over into more Englishmen. He made no concealment
of his belief that Sir Wilfrid was a very imperfectly assimilated
Englishman, and that his reluctance was due to his French blood.
Accordingly Sir Wilfrid suggested that he should have a private
interview with his English-speaking colleagues. Mr. Chamberlain jumped
at the proposal. A dinner was arranged and a long discussion followed.
To his surprise, the Colonial Secretary found that these four men of
the chosen race, Anglo-Saxons all, two of Nova Scotia and two of
Ontario birth and breeding, took substantially the same stand as the
son of Quebec. Mulock and Borden talked particularly straight from the
shoulder. They were loyal to the King, they desired to retain Canada's
connection with the Empire, but they were Canadians. Like Mr.
Chamberlain himself, they believed that the Empire began at home.[44]

[Footnote 44: "A visit to England," Sir Wilfrid observed one day, "is
in many ways a pleasure, even if it involves an uncomfortable voyage
for a poor sailor. The throb of the world's affairs in London, the
stimulus of contact with men of high and disciplined capacity, the
comfort of town and country life in a land cushioned with tradition,
where leisure is an art and hospitality a science, makes a deep
appeal. Yet it was always a strain. The endless round of dinners and
receptions would wear down a body stronger than mine, but there was
more than that. Along with much genuine and spontaneous kindliness one
felt the incessant and unrelenting organization of an imperialist
campaign. We were looked upon not so much as individual men but
abstractly as Colonial statesmen, to be impressed and hobbled. The
Englishman is as businesslike in his politics, particularly his
external politics, as in business, even if he covers his
purposefulness with an air of polite indifference. Once convinced that
the colonies were worth keeping, he bent to the work of drawing them
closer within the orbit of London with marvellous skill and
persistence. In this campaign, which no one could appreciate until he
had been in the thick of it, social pressure is the subtlest and most
effective force. In 1897 and 1902 it was Mr. Chamberlain's personal
insistence that was strongest, but in 1907 and after, society pressure
was the chief force. It is hard to stand up against the flattery of a
gracious duchess. Weak men's heads are turned in an evening, and there
are few who can resist long. We were dined and wined by royalty and
aristocracy and plutocracy and always the talk was of Empire, Empire,
Empire. I said to Deakin in 1907, that this was one reason why we
could not have a parliament or council in London: we can talk cabinet
to cabinet, but cannot send Canadians or Australians as permanent
residents to London, to debate and act on their own discretion.
Fortunately, there were some good friends who seemed to like us for
ourselves, not least the children. . . .

"Chamberlain was the first English statesman whom we came to know
intimately. I was much impressed by his force and directness. He was
ambitious, but not for himself alone. Unfortunately our views often
clashed. There was little serious discussion in the Colonial
Conference of 1897, which was a mere curtain-raiser. The debates were
academic; we did not come to sufficiently close quarters to bring out
the cleavage of opinions. But in 1902 a dead set was made to take
advantage of the supposed wave of imperial enthusiasm following the
Boer War. Chamberlain was the head and front of the campaign. He
pushed his own plan of an Imperial Council, and backed Brodrick and
Selborne in their schemes of imperial defence. He handled the
discussion skilfully; when it was apparent refusal was coming, he
headed off Selborne and Brodrick and took up the questions later in
private conference."]

Meeting a few weeks after peace had been signed in Pretoria, the
members of the Conference had the fate of South Africa distinctly in
mind. No formal discussion was raised, but Sir Wilfrid took advantage
of the opportunity to urge a policy of faith and conciliation. He had
been reluctant to intervene while the war was still in progress, and
he was careful now to avoid any semblance of official pressure. Yet he
was so deeply convinced that only through the confederation of South
Africa and the speedy granting of self-government could peace come and
British policy find justification, that he repeatedly emphasized this
policy not only to Mr. Chamberlain but to other public men.

The summer months were crowded with banquets, the conferring of the
freedom of cities, public receptions and country-house week-end
parties. In his public addresses Sir Wilfrid emphasized the same
notes. At the Constitutional Club, "The British Empire was founded and
must be maintained by the arts of peace more than by the arts of war";
at the Guildhall, "The British Empire is a charter of freedom, united,
prosperous; there is no need of organic changes; it would be a fatal
mistake to force events"; in Edinburgh, "Cecil Rhodes's one serious
mistake was his impatience"; at the National Liberal Club, "The
devolution of legislative power has been the bond of union of the
British Empire." The long and exhausting summer, following a wearing
session, brought a breakdown in health, and the treatment followed in
Paris, where Lady Laurier and Sir Wilfrid had gone from London,
accentuated the trouble. It was a much shaken man who returned in
October to find Israel Tarte in possession of the quarter-deck. On the
subject of the Conference, Canadian opinion showed marked diversity.
Conservative newspapers criticized Sir Wilfrid's negative attitude.
Premier Roblin declared a golden opportunity had been thrown away;
Principal Peterson reported that the impression in England was that
the Canadian delegates had gone with the intent of putting a drag on
the Conference and had succeeded. Yet there was no general
disapproval. There was a considerable measure of support, and no
little indifference. The country was more interested in Tarte than in
Chamberlain, in box-cars than in battle-ships. Right or wrong,
Canada's mood was one of reaction from the heady imperialism of the
Boer War and Laurier was guiding and interpreting its new mood.

When in Paris, Sir Wilfrid found opportunity for a quiet but momentous
stroke of diplomacy. The Boer War had greatly embittered French
feeling against Britain. In two long discussions with President
Loubet, Laurier deplored this drift and urged the need of a close
friendship as the basis of European peace. Three years later, at
Raymond Prfontaine's funeral services, the President publicly
acknowledged that in bringing him to feel this need, no influence had
been so great as Wilfrid Laurier's. Laurier had thus no small share in
effecting the entente cordiale between Canada's two mother countries.

The Conference of 1902 convinced Mr. Chamberlain that the political
and the military paths to his goal would give slow progress. He
therefore turned to the pathway of trade, along which there had been
some greater willingness to walk together. The launching of his
imperial preferential trade campaign in 1903 was a direct result of
the check in the Colonial Conference of 1902. Let Britain adopt a
customs tariff, useful incidentally to protect her own industries and
to give bargaining leverage with other powers, and let her grant
preferential rates on colonial products in return for concessions on
her manufactures, and the British Empire would become self-contained,
self-sufficient, bound indissolubly by the ties of common interest;
political and military union would follow.

The sudden announcement of this revolutionary change of course, the
dramatic campaign in which Mr. Chamberlain appealed to his countrymen,
the imperial motive of the policy, and the glittering possibilities of
a preference in the world's greatest market, won Mr. Chamberlain
instant and warm support in Canada. The Liberal leaders were, however,
careful to make it clear that while they would be ready to grant
reciprocal concessions, they considered that it was for Britain
herself to decide whether or not she wanted to set up a protective
tariff, and that in any agreement each country must hold itself free
to change or withdraw. From the Conservative leaders and press a
warmer support was given and in 1903 Mr. Foster, for the time without
a seat in the Commons, vigorously seconded Mr. Chamberlain in a
platform campaign in England. Then as discussion made clear the
difficulty of reconciling business and sentiment, reconciling
protection for the local producer, reciprocity with foreign countries
and preference for the colonies; as the free-trade forces rallied and
the fight developed on party lines; as Canadian Liberals realized that
a preference on Canadian wheat meant a dearer loaf for England's poor
and Canadian Conservatives saw that English manufacturers expected a
free field in Canada in return, the enthusiasm lessened. Few in Canada
were prepared to accept the return to the old colonial system which
was in Mr. Chamberlain's mind, a stereotyping of the existing
undeveloped industrial organization, with Canada permanently a grower
of wheat and hewer of pulpwood to exchange for British manufactures.
Canadian manufacturers expressed general sympathy but made it clear,
first, that it was only in the goods that Canada could not manufacture
that any real reduction in duty could be granted, and later, that they
"were not prepared to admit that there was any article that could not
at some point in Canada, and in time, be successfully manufactured."

As the Chamberlain tariff campaign was a sequel to the 1902
Conference, the Conference of 1907 was a sequel to the tariff
campaign. British supporters of Mr. Chamberlain were anxious to have
the collective and formal backing of the colonies as evidence of the
imperial necessity of their policy. A second question which it was
hoped would be discussed was the creation of an Imperial Council in
place of the Conference; supporters of the Conservative government and
the Liberal Imperialist Asquith-Haldane group both urged this change
and co-operated in a semi-official inquiry made by Sir Frederick
Pollock in Canada in 1905 as to its possibility. In April, Mr.
Lyttleton, who had succeeded Mr. Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary,
formally proposed the establishment of such a Council, with the same
personnel as the Conference, and with a permanent commission for study
of referred questions attached: it would not be well to define at
first the constitution of the Council; British history showed the
wisdom of allowing such institutions to develop in accord with need.
The proposal was welcomed by Australia, New Zealand, Natal and the
Cape, but decisively rejected by Canada. Any change in the title or
status of the Colonial Conference, declared the Canadian ministers,
should originate from that body itself. A conference was an informal
body, possessing no power of binding action; the term "council"
indicated "a formal assembly, possessing an advisory and deliberative
character, and in conjunction with the word imperial, suggested a
permanent institution which, endowed with a continuous life, might
eventually come to be regarded as an encroachment upon the full
measure of autonomous legislative and administrative power now enjoyed
by all the self-governing colonies." Following this discussion came
the British general elections, resulting in the overwhelming victory
of the Liberals, and the repudiation of the Chamberlain proposals.

[Illustration: LAURIER'S LAST IMPERIAL CONFERENCE The
Laurier-Botha-Asquith Conception of Empire

General Louis Botha

Sir Wilfrid Laurier

H. H. Asquith

Sir Joseph Ward

Doris Harcourt

Barbara Harcourt

Anthony Asquith

Olivia Harcourt

Nuneham Park, June, 1911]

When the fifth Colonial Conference assembled in London in April, 1907,
it was clear in advance that the British government would block any
preferential tariff proposals and the Canadian government would block
the other path, the Imperial Council. The Conference therefore did not
change views, but merely registered them. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the
only member who had taken part in 1897 and 1902, was accompanied by
Sir Frederick Borden and Mr. Brodeur, who spoke only on questions
affecting their departments. Mr. Deakin, Sir Joseph Ward, Dr. Jameson,
Mr. Moor and General Botha came from below the line, and Sir Robert
Bond from Newfoundland. The United Kingdom was represented by the Earl
of Elgin, the new Liberal Secretary for the Colonies, with Sir Henry
Campbell Bannerman, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Haldane, Mr. Churchill, Mr.
Lloyd George and other ministers appearing on occasion.

The Conference was marked by oratorical fireworks and keen debate,
passionate imperial appeals from Mr. Deakin and Dr. Jameson, resolute
affirmations of the British government's policy of "banging, barring
and bolting the door" on imperial preference, a quiet word from Louis
Botha, brief but decided statements from Sir Wilfrid Laurier. As to
political organization, Sir Wilfrid maintained his opposition to a
council, chartered hopefully for indefinite expansion cabinet- or
parliament-wards. Accordingly, the project was dropped. A resolution
was adopted providing that the Conference was hereafter to be termed
"Imperial"; it was to consider questions as "between His Majesty's
Government and His Governments of the self-governing Dominions beyond
the Seas"; it was to be composed of the prime ministers of His
Majesty's governments. The resolution was notable for the formal
recognition of the Dominion as opposed to the colonial status, and of
the equality of His Majesty's several governments: "We are all His
Majesty's governments," Sir Wilfrid maintained. Instead of setting up
a new authority in London, the Conference had therefore set its seal
on the independent but co-operating authority of the Dominions.[45]
The Empire was to be not one, but many.

[Footnote 45: (_Wilfrid Laurier to Senator Bique._--_Translation_)

"London, July, 1907.

"My Dear Bique:

     "I have just received your letter, and hasten to convey
     to you my very sincere thanks. I dreaded very much the
     voyage to England and the work that awaited me there. I
     believe, however, that all has gone well, and even in
     England the appearance is that the attitude which I
     have taken meets, not with general, but with a fairly
     general, approval.

     "As to the principal point, the question of the
     creation of an Imperial Council, there is undoubtedly
     disappointment in certain quarters, but the more the
     question is discussed the clearer it will become that
     the conclusion that we reached finally was the only
     possible one under the circumstances, and even from the
     political standpoint. The original proposal which was
     submitted to us and which received the support of
     several members of the Conference, was, in my opinion,
     a grave error, pregnant, it may be, with the most
     deplorable consequences. . . ."]

On the tariff question, Sir Wilfrid said little; he agreed in
principle with Mr. Deakin's eloquent advocacy of imperial preference,
but did not wish to interfere in British politics; as a compromise, he
proposed and carried the re-adoption of the 1902 resolutions, the
United Kingdom in part dissenting. In naval defence, Australia now
stood for an Australian navy instead of a cash contribution; the
Admiralty was prepared to accept contributions "not in cash but in
kind," but Canada stood where she had stood in 1902.

The Conference was memorable for the presence of Louis Botha, five
years previously leader of Britain's enemy in the field, now premier
of a British colony and a member of confidential councils. The British
Liberal government, which had insisted on granting full responsible
government to the Transvaal in face of outcries from all the
professional imperialists, felt that his presence justified their
faith in freedom as a stronger bond than trade or tariffs. Between
General Botha and Sir Wilfrid Laurier a close friendship sprang up
which lasted to the end. Some common feeling of aloofness from their
Anglo-Saxon colleagues may have brought them together, but it was
common principles on imperial policy and personal liking that held
them friends. Wilfrid Laurier's friendship, counsel and example played
no small part in aiding Louis Botha to choose and to follow the path
of racial appeasement and of imperial co-operation.[46]

[Footnote 46: To a Montreal author who had sent him the proofs of an
article, he wrote, in November, 1907:

     "Your article is very well written; there are many
     things in it which I sincerely admire, but since you
     have been kind enough to submit me the paper you will
     permit me to take exception to some of your views and
     expressions. I would specially call your attention to
     this sentence: 'We are not fooled by Mr. Botha's, "We
     love England," any more than we are fooled by Mrs.
     Parnell's, "Union of Hearts."' I think you do a grave
     injustice to a brave man, who, before the war, was
     opposed to the policy of Kruger, and whose views would
     have averted the war if followed by this old and
     narrow-minded peasant, and who now, having made his
     peace with England, is satisfied to live a free man
     under British institutions. Your sentence implies that
     General Botha is playing the hypocrite. For this you
     have absolutely no reasons that you could show and you
     base your opinion simply upon the suspicions which have
     been expressed from time to time, and even now, ever
     since responsible government was given to the
     Transvaal. In my opinion the action of the British
     government in giving freedom to the Transvaal was a
     bold, manly act, as well as statesmanship of the
     highest kind, and its loyal acceptance by General Botha
     and those who were lately engaged in the war with him
     is equally honourable."]

On his return to Canada it was plain that the prime minister's course
met a wide measure of approval, or, to be more exact, no notable
degree of disapproval. The Liberal press supported his stand
throughout, and no small number of Conservative journals joined Sir
Charles Tupper in commendation. There was some vigorous criticism of
what was termed an unworthy and sponging attitude on the naval
question, but his critics admitted that as yet there was no general
public support for their cause. It was significant that in the
general elections which followed, the leader of the official
Opposition had not a word to say on imperial issues. There was much
discussion and much difference of opinion on imperial affairs, but
there was not yet in English-speaking Canada a sufficient popular
interest or a sufficient cleavage on any specific imperial issue to
warrant either party making it an election cry.

Not so with French-speaking Canada. In Quebec, imperialism was
becoming a campaign issue. While ardent apostles of a unified Empire
in London or Toronto were accusing Sir Wilfrid of being a "wet
blanket" on the Conference, a blocker of all imperial advance, a
parochial and tribal leader who could not see beyond Quebec, still
more unmeasured critics in Quebec were condemning him for his weak
surrender to Protestant fanaticism at home and to English jingoism
abroad, his sacrifice of Canadian interests in London and of
French-Canadian interests at Ottawa.

For ten years there had been no effective opposition to Laurier in
Quebec. In giving up the fight in 1905, a Montreal Conservative organ,
"Le Journal", pictured the party's prospects as gloomy and without
sign of betterment. The old leaders lingered, but they could make no
headway. Yet criticism from some quarter was inevitable; if an
Opposition had not existed it would have been necessary to invent it.
It arose of itself, with both general and individual factors in its
shaping.

The Nationaliste party, or rather the Nationaliste movement, embodied
certain convictions and prejudices which were widely diffused in
Quebec. It was emphatically anti-imperialist, opposed to any share in
Britain's wars and any entanglement in Britain's policy. This
hostility to imperialism had both a nationalist and a colonialist
side. There were men in the movement who took a passively colonialist
attitude, prepared to accept a permanent subordination in return for
British protection and exemption from a share in foreign wars. There
were others who took a distinctly nationalist stand, prepared to
undertake full responsibility for the defence of Canada, but a Canada
wholly independent and untrammelled. The movement embodied, again, the
sentiment of racial and religious separateness. With some, this
involved nothing more than the desire to preserve against the
encroachments of an English-speaking continent, the distinctive faith
and culture of New France, and was quite compatible with a willingness
to co-operate freely and fully with their English-speaking compatriots
in building up a common Canadian civilization in which the two
elements would be distinct but united. With others, it was a narrower
and more exclusive faith, a determination to withdraw within the
provincial shell, to build up an exclusive and isolated French and
Catholic community. Still a third ingredient was the old ultramontane
feeling, the determination not merely to exalt the Church above the
State and to make the clergy leaders in all national movements, but to
attempt once more to create in the political field an exclusively
Catholic party, a new Centrum.

These tendencies were not new. They had received new strength from the
sectional controversies of Canada and the imperialist campaigns of
London. The endeavour of men in English-speaking Canada, whether moved
by national zeal or by racial prejudice, to make Canada a land of one
tongue, had hardened the determination of the minority to hold fast,
and had played into the hands of local extremists. The emphasis of
imperialists upon the call of the blood, the exalting of the
Anglo-Saxon, the appeal to traditions to which only half Canada was
heir, inevitably led men of other blood and other traditions to draw
apart, to emphasize their own distinct and peculiar heritage. The
Nationalism of Quebec,[47] if not the nemesis of Chamberlain
Imperialism, was at least the outcome of the ambiguous position of a
country of two races of which one and one only was bound by kinship
and intercourse to the suzerain power.

But such forces might long have lain latent, failing leaders to evoke
and marshal them. The Nationalism of Quebec found its leaders. Perhaps
the pioneer in Nationalism as a conscious and programmed movement was
Olivar Asselin, a clever young Montreal journalist of strong
convictions as to the need of a distinctively French civilization in
America, who in 1903 founded The Canadian Nationalist League, and in
1904 became editor of a new weekly newspaper, "Le Nationaliste."

[Footnote 47: The term adopted by the leaders of the movement must be
used, even though Nationalists in Quebec as in other provinces who
took all Canada for their home, protested against the appropriation of
the word by what they considered a provincialist faction.]

But the ultimate leader, the man whose personality became identified
with the movement, was Henri Bourassa.

Mr. Bourassa was the grandson of Louis Joseph Papineau. "Having known
Mr. Papineau," declared Sir Wilfrid one day, "I can in some measure
understand Mr. Bourassa; having known Mr. Bourassa, I can in some
measure understand Mr. Papineau." He inherited no small share of the
great tribune's moving power of oratory, and no small share of his
inability to work with other men. Born in Montreal in 1868, the son of
the artist, Napoleon Bourassa, and Azelie Papineau, and educated
privately, he had spent a few years on his grandfather's seigniory of
Montebello, and had then entered parliament as a Liberal in 1896, at
the age of twenty-eight. In protest against Canada's participation in
the South African War he resigned his seat, but was returned by
acclamation. This was the beginning of the cleavage with Sir Wilfrid,
who had recognized his young follower's ability and had anticipated
for him a leading place in the ranks of the party. In 1905 the
Autonomy Bills and in 1906 the Lord's Day measure, further widened the
gulf. How far the cleavage was due to irreconcilable differences of
opinion, and how far to resentment over the refusal of the deputy
speakership, or the post of Canadian Commissioner in Paris, became in
after years a matter of acute and personal controversy. In any case
the tremendous popular success of his appeals to the crowd against the
premier's "weak betrayal of his race and his faith" encouraged
further endeavour. In 1906, when Mr. Fitzpatrick's appointment to the
Supreme Court brought on a by-election in Quebec County, Mr. Bourassa
threw his support to an independent, Lorenzo Robitaille, against the
straight Liberal candidate, Mr. Amyot, who had received Sir Wilfrid's
endorsement, and had the satisfaction of seeing his candidate win. For
a time his energies were diverted. Finding the task of sapping
Quebec's confidence in Sir Wilfrid a slow one, Mr. Bourassa turned to
the provincial field, and launched an aggressive assault upon the
Gouin government's administration of the Crown forests. He succeeded
in defeating the premier himself in a Montreal constituency in the
provincial election of 1908, and with Mr. Armand Lavergne, son of Sir
Wilfrid's old partner in Arthabaska, at his side, quite overshadowed
the mild Conservative opposition in the legislature. It did not prove
easy to make any permanent impression upon Lomer Gouin's disciplined
ranks and prudent administration, and so Mr. Bourassa's interest
turned once more to federal affairs. He had taken no part in the
federal elections of 1908, but the navy agitation of 1909 created his
opportunity.

Whatever the arena, Mr. Bourassa's acute intellect, his wide reading
on public and particularly international affairs, his personal charm
and distinction, and especially the gift of burning speech, sometimes
provocative, sometimes persuasive, always finished, more than once
bringing a hostile Ontario audience to its feet in unwonted and hearty
cheers after an hour's magic spell, made him a formidable competitor.
As the years went on, he sought a further power, by making himself the
champion of the clergy; at first, as became a grandson of Papineau,
mildly anti-clerical, he had become convinced, as his friends
declared, that the only certain means of preserving a distinct
French-Canadian nationality was to rally the people around the Church,
or, as his enemies put it, that the only certain means of exalting his
own power was to rally the younger clergy around Mr. Bourassa.

Sir Wilfrid's judgment upon Mr. Bourassa at the time of his campaign
against the Gouin government is well summarized in a letter to a
supporter of the Nationalist leader:

(_Translation_) Ottawa, November 20, 1907

My Dear Z.:

      Some time ago my attention was drawn to certain
      declarations that you made in the course of your
      campaign against the local government. Enclosed you
      will find extracts from your speeches at Iberville and
      Three Rivers which were sent to me with the suggestion
      that I ought to protest against your language. The
      silence I have maintained until now indicates well
      enough what my reply was.

      You were right in saying that I have too lofty an idea
      of the true principles of Liberalism to condemn you.
      Nevertheless, that does not mean that I approve of
      you, and still less that I approve of Bourassa, for my
      firm conviction is that you are both carrying out a
      deplorable programme. I am authorized to write to you
      of a recent conversation I had with Jacques Bureau,
      who is your friend as well as mine. Bureau really
      touched me when he reminded me that you had told him
      that you could not forget that I had done you a
      service. I quote his words literally, for I must
      confess that the slight service I was able to render
      you, if it can be called a service, is not worth
      remembering. Doubtless you allude to the fact that I
      helped to get you into X.'s office, which was the
      starting point of your brilliant career at the bar. I
      repeat, that was too slight a matter to be remembered.
      Yet I am none the less appreciative; this proves that
      you have a sense of gratitude. You even added that if
      I should ask you to break with Bourassa and give up
      the campaign you have undertaken with him, you would
      not hesitate to do so. I have never made this request,
      nor would I make it; that is a point which I leave
      absolutely to your conscience. And I flatter myself
      too--although your attitude seems to indicate the
      contrary--that on every question on which I have
      disagreed with Bourassa, your opinion has been with me
      and not with him.

      Bourassa differed with me chiefly on three questions:
      the sending of contingents to Africa, the Autonomy
      Bills for the new provinces of Alberta and
      Saskatchewan, and finally, the Lord's Day law.
      Regarding the first two questions my impression that I
      was absolutely right is stronger than ever; that if I
      had followed Bourassa's advice, I would have plunged
      the country into the most disastrous consequences. As
      regards the Lord's Day Bill, I have no difficulty in
      recognizing that Bourassa's attitude did not lack
      justice, and when I understood it completely, I had
      the bill amended in the very way he had outlined.

      No one recognizes Bourassa's talent better than I do.
      He has one capital defect: he does not know how to
      keep within bounds. It is impossible that there should
      not be differences of opinion among friends, but he
      fights his friends with the same violence as his
      enemies; he becomes intoxicated with his own words; he
      works himself up by contradiction; in the end he
      overshoots his own mark, and allows himself to be
      drawn along unconsciously from friendly criticism to
      open war.

      Just there is the origin of this bitter struggle he is
      carrying on with the provincial government, and which,
      unfortunately, you have entered in his train.

      Parties are not perfect organizations, but, after all,
      constitutional government founded on the existence of
      parties is still the best system which has been
      invented by man. It may be that there are abuses in
      the local administration, but I believe these abuses
      can be remedied by Gouin. I have confidence in him and
      I have read in the press a letter from you expressing
      the same sentiment.

      I do not know what was at the back of your mind when
      you said at Three Rivers that coming from Ottawa you
      could assure your friends who might have uneasy
      scruples that it would still be several months before
      the chief of the Liberal party would strike you with
      major excommunication. You did not have this assurance
      from me, for it is long since we have met, which I
      regret. Your business often brings you to Ottawa; do
      come and see me the next time. We shall clear up this
      affair and many others.

In 1908, it has been noted, imperial questions had no place in the
platform of either political party in Canada. In 1909, the two parties
joined in adopting a common Canadian policy on the most important
problem of imperial defence the country had yet faced. In 1910 and
1911 the brief harmony ended, and British imperialists and French
nationalists combined in the endeavour to wreck the Canadian solution.

The mad rivalries of European empires and the struggles of oppressed
and oppressing nationalities were bringing the world nearer the verge
of war. Statesmanship appeared to be bankrupt; save for the feeble
farce of the Hague and rare individual missions and mediations, the
nations appeared unable to find or unwilling to seek any solution,
other than the futile attempt of each to make itself stronger than
every other by shifting alliance and mounting armament. Between
Britain and Germany the tension grew particularly keen; Germany, no
more ambitious and no more heedless of morality than the France of
Morocco or the Italy of Tripoli, was more dangerous because more
efficient and because aiming at supremacy in Britain's own field. The
dependence of Britain upon sea power, her sea traditions and her sea
prestige, made her regard the deliberate challenge Germany had flung
down in its Navy Law of 1900 and its subsequent naval programmes with
deep uneasiness and mounting anger. When in 1909 it was announced that
Germany was so speeding up her building of dreadnoughts, the great
ships which so far outmatched all previous types as to make only
dreadnoughts count, that instead of twenty British as against thirteen
German dreadnoughts by March, 1912, there would be, according to Mr.
Asquith, twenty to seventeen, or, according to Mr. Balfour, twenty to
twenty or twenty to twenty-five, a panic swept over Britain. Germany
immediately denied the reports, but her denial was not believed. As it
happened, for once her spokesmen had told the truth; the reports of
acceleration, based on statements of a British munitions-maker, were
found to be baseless; on March 31, 1912, Germany had only nine
dreadnought battle-ships and cruisers ready, and it was April, 1914,
before her original thirteen battle-ships were completed. It was long
before this was known, and when it was known, and when the war had
come, Providence was held to have been moving in its mysterious way
to prepare Britain the better for victory in an inevitable war.[48]
The British Liberal government, which had been urged by a large
section of its followers to cut down the naval estimates, enlarged
them in March by an additional four dreadnoughts, and in July, after
the "We won't wait, we want eight" campaign of the Opposition, agreed
to lay down four more. In the March discussion, Mr. McKenna, First
Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Edward Grey, then Foreign Secretary, Mr.
Asquith and Mr. Balfour pictured the situation as a serious and
pressing crisis; not merely Britain's supremacy, but her very safety,
her existence as a nation, was at stake. In an Imperial Press
Conference organized by Mr. H. E. Brittain, and held in London in
July, no pains were lost by the British statesmen who addressed the
editors to send shivers up colonial spines by emphasizing the need of
sea supremacy and the imminent danger of its loss.

[Footnote 48: When in the debates in the Canadian House of Commons in
1910 a Liberal from the Yukon referred to the naval panic as based
largely on "the reckless lying of respectable people," he was
considered to have said one of the things that one does not say.]

The March debate in the British Commons echoed throughout the Empire.
The fact that, particularly in Canada, little attention had been paid
to the premonitory rumblings doubled the force of the shock. British
supremacy at sea had long seemed a law of nature. Now that this
supremacy was challenged and when at last the heart of the Empire
seemed in vital danger, the desire to give the aid that so often had
been promised for that emergency found immediate expression.
Particularly in Toronto and Winnipeg, in the press of both parties and
from private citizens, the demand arose for the gift of a dreadnought
to the British navy, to meet the pressing emergency and to save
Canadian self-respect. Elsewhere, the dreadnought gift and the
building of a Canadian navy, divided opinion with reluctance to take
any step that would commit Canada to a path that had no end.
Particular interest attached to an editorial in the Toronto "Globe" of
March 23, calling upon Canada "to fling the smug maxims of commercial
prudence to the winds and to do more than her share in the game of
turning Dreadnaughts from the stocks. . . . Within the next two years
the Colonies of Britain should be able to place three Dreadnaughts at
the disposal of the Motherland, and they should do it. So far as
Canada is concerned, such vessels would be under the control of the
Canadian government, but that is only another way of saying that they
would always be at the call of the Empire in every worthy cause and in
every time of danger." The "Globe" soon cooled off, but its opinion
had no little weight with the Ontario members at Ottawa.

For some years a vigorous press and organization campaign in the
English-speaking provinces had endeavoured to convince Canadians that
in leaving Britain to assume the whole burden of the Empire's naval
defence they were acting an ignoble part, inconsistent with either
imperialist or nationalist ideals. Feeling in favour of action was
growing, and now the crisis precipitated the vague sentiment. There
had been little counter-propaganda. Here and there a nationalist
critic had questioned the myth of British protection, or repeated
Cartwright's epigram that "all that Canada owed England was Christian
forgiveness," or insisted that the navy was an agency wholly of
British policy. Still more rare had been the more fundamental
criticism of the whole policy of armed rivalry; there was little
first-hand knowledge in Canada of foreign affairs, or at least of the
rivalries of European states which appropriated that title, and little
likelihood that the cure would come before the disease. Sir Wilfrid
had denounced the vortex of militarism, Sir William Mulock in 1906 had
declared that "This Canada of ours is the only country in the world
worth living in that is not burdened with great military debts. Keep
it on those lines. . . . Remember that this is the last spot of refuge
on God's green earth where men can come and not pay tribute for the
sins of their ancestors," and Senator Dandurand had taken an active
part in the inter-parliamentary peace movement, but there had been no
organized or systematic discussion. In the crisis, a few farmers'
clubs, labour unions, and university men opposed any action, but they
were in a small minority, so far as opinion was voiced at all.

Hitherto parliament had taken no action. In 1902 the Canadian
government had offered definitely to take over the control and
maintenance of the British naval stations at Halifax and Esquimalt,
but the Admiralty, anxious for contributions to a common fleet rather
than any form of localized action, had not accepted, until in 1905
the Fisher policy of concentration in British local waters made the
Canadian bases of less moment; Canada thereupon took charge. Proposals
had been considered in 1905 for the establishment of a Naval Reserve,
but nothing had been done. Nothing could be done so long as the
British government stood out for a single navy under its own control,
and the Canadian government stood for self-government in naval defence
as in every other sphere. Of late there had been signs that the
Admiralty was changing its policy, if not its opinion. Australia,
after years of trial of the contribution policy, was turning to a
local fleet. This opened the way for Canadian action. In the session
of 1909, before the British revelations, Mr. Foster gave notice of a
resolution in favour of action by Canada to protect her coast-line and
seaports. Opposition from Mr. Monk and others within his own party
prevented him for two months from bringing it up. On March 29, Mr.
Foster moved his resolution in a powerful speech which paid a warm
tribute to British policy, opposed a fixed annual contribution to the
British navy as smacking of tribute, a policy that took no roots, and
advocated a Canadian navy, with, if the premier desired, an emergency
dreadnought gift. Sir Wilfrid denied that Canada had done less than
her duty before, but with changing times duties were changing:

      We are British subjects; Canada is one of the daughter
      nations of the Empire, and we realize to the full the
      rights and obligations which are involved in that
      proud title. . . I hope that day shall never come when
      we will be drawn into the conflicts of Europe. But I
      have no hesitation in saying that the supremacy of the
      British Empire is absolutely essential, not only to
      the maintenance of the Empire but to the civilization
      of the world. I have no hesitation in saying also that
      if the day should come when the supremacy of Britain
      on the high seas will be challenged, it will be the
      duty of all the daughter nations to close around the
      old Motherland and make a rampart about her to ward
      off any attack. I hope that day will never come, but
      should it come I would deem it my duty to devote what
      might be left of my life and energy to stump the
      country and endeavour to impress upon my
      fellow-countrymen, particularly my compatriots in the
      province of Quebec, the conviction that the salvation
      of England is the salvation of our own country, that
      therein lies the guaranty of our civil and religious
      freedom and everything we value in this life.

But no panic policy should be adopted. Parliament must not be
stampeded into spectacular action inconsistent with Canada's settled
policy of increasing self-government. The government stood and would
stand by its refusal in 1902 to contribute to the British army or the
British navy. He accordingly moved a resolution in favour of a
Canadian naval service. Mr. Borden followed on much the same lines,
proposing some minor amendments in the resolution but declaring for "a
Canadian naval force of our own." A few voices were raised in
question, but the resolutions were adopted without challenge or
division.[49] There were, however, members of the cabinet who were
convinced that undue and unnecessary concessions had been made to
imperialist excitement, and that it would have sufficed both to meet
the country's needs and to block criticism from the Opposition had Mr.
Foster's coast-defence motion been accepted. In view of the discussion
in the press, the government had been expecting from Mr. Foster a much
more imperialistic speech than he actually delivered.

[Footnote 49: "This House fully recognizes the duty of the people of
Canada, as they increase in numbers and wealth, to assume in larger
measure the responsibilities in national defence.

"The House is of opinion that under the present constitutional
relations between the Mother Country and the self-governing
Dominions, the payment of regular and periodical contributions to the
Imperial treasury for naval and military purposes would not, so far as
Canada is concerned, be the most satisfactory solution of the question
of defence.

"The House will cordially approve of any necessary expenditure
designed to promote the speedy organization of a Canadian naval
service in co-operation with and in close relation to the Imperial
Navy, along the lines suggested by the Admiralty at the last Imperial
Conference, and in full sympathy with the view that the naval
supremacy of Britain is essential to the security of commerce, the
safety of the Empire and the peace of the world.

"The House expresses its firm conviction that whenever the need arises
the Canadian people will be found ready and willing to make any
sacrifice that is required to give the Imperial authorities the most
loyal and hearty co-operation in every movement for the maintenance of
the integrity and honour of the Empire."]

There followed in July a special Imperial Conference, to deal with
defence, with Sir F. W. Borden and Mr. Brodeur as Canada's
representatives. In face of the Canadian and Australian attitude, the
British government, while still insisting on the strategic superiority
of a single British navy aided by colonial contributions, admitted
that other considerations must have weight, and submitted detailed
proposals for the construction and maintenance of Dominion fleet
units.

The unwonted party calm did not long continue. How far the agreement
between the leaders of the two parties was due to a patriotic
conviction of national danger and how far to a prudent recognition of
the danger to the unity of each party if the issue entered politics,
is difficult to determine: doubtless, both motives had their part.
Whatever the motive, the experiment failed. The unity in parliament
did not reflect the real diversity of opinion in the country.
Criticism rapidly developed. It was particularly strong from the
ultra-imperialist wing of Mr. Borden's followers. Provincial
Conservative leaders pronounced for a policy of contribution to the
British navy, either as an emergency or as a permanent policy: Premier
Whitney declared that parliament had missed its opportunity; Premier
Roblin held for one great and undivided imperial fleet and denounced
the "tin-pot navy"; Robert Rogers found the resolutions "cheap and
wishy-washy"; Premier McBride would combine a Canadian navy and a
dreadnought gift; Premier Hazen, Mr. Haultain, Mr. Bennett, stood for
direct and permanent contributions. The chief Conservative city
newspapers took the same line. On the other hand, in Quebec, Mr. Monk,
Mr. Borden's first lieutenant, and every Conservative journal attacked
both Canadian navy and dreadnought contributions, and insisted that
the people should be consulted before the country was pledged to so
momentous a change of policy. Mr. Borden was in a difficult position.
There had been incipient revolts against his leadership by groups who
demanded more fire and more good old-fashioned adjectives and
tub-thumping. The naval resolutions represented his own confirmed
opinion, but evidently his party could not be brought to support them.
If he was to continue to lead, he must follow his party, and follow
it even if its two wings went in opposite directions.

In January, 1910, in the absence of Mr. Brodeur through illness, Sir
Wilfrid Laurier introduced a Naval Service Bill in accordance with the
resolutions of the previous session. It provided for the establishment
of a naval force consisting of a permanent corps, a reserve, and a
volunteer force, on the same lines as the militia, except that the
provision of the Militia Act rendering the whole male population from
seventeen to sixty years liable to service was not included; service
was to be wholly voluntary. A naval college would be established, and
a naval board set up to advise the Department of Marine. The force was
to be under the control of the Canadian government, but the
Governor-general in council might in emergency place any or all of it
at the disposal of His Majesty, subject to the immediate summoning of
parliament if not in session. For the present, five cruisers and six
destroyers would be built, at a cost in England of $11,000,000, and
would be stationed on both coasts; the annual expenditure was
estimated at $3,000,000. If possible, the ships would be built in
Canada, at a probable increased cost of one-third.

In introducing the bill, and again on the second reading, Sir Wilfrid
defended the government's policy as a timely and moderate measure, a
middle ground on which reasonable men could unite, and yet not a
neutral and colourless compromise but a logical development of
Canada's course since half a century. He rejected the solution of the
ultra-imperialists, "who carry abroad upon their foreheads imperial
phylacteries, who boldly walk into the temple and there loudly thank
the Lord that they are not like other British subjects, that they give
tithes of everything they possess, and that in them alone is to be
found the true incense of loyalty." For the present, there was no
emergency, little danger of a German war. For the future, the
government would continue to oppose schemes of centralized imperial
defence or of tribute to London. These plans were inconsistent with
Canada's interest. England was one of a circle of European states
"that are always watching one another"; Canada's present interest was
the development of her resources through public works. They were
inconsistent with Canadian sentiment: "Daughter am I in my mother's
house but mistress in mine own." Equally he rejected the do-nothing
policy: "There sit the two extremes, side by side, cheek by jowl,
blowing hot and cold. I have dealt with those who blow hot; let me try
a word now with those who blow cold. They say we have no mandate, that
our policy has never been discussed. Have they not read time and again
the memorandum submitted to the Imperial Conference of 1902? And
Canada has progressed since 1902. Did these men forget that Canada was
a country with two sea-coasts and exposed coast cities, a country with
a large ocean trade and with abounding national revenues? You might
as well tell the people of Montreal, with their half-million
population, that they do not need any police protection."

The government's policy, he continued, recognized at once the need of
taking over a share of imperial burdens, the need of proceeding on
national lines, and the need of reserving to themselves the decision
as to future policy and the rate and degree of naval development. "I
do not pretend to be an imperialist. Neither do I pretend to be an
anti-imperialist. I am a Canadian first, last and all the time. I am a
British subject by birth, by tradition, by conviction, by the
conviction that under British institutions my native land has found a
measure of security and freedom it could not have found under any
other rgime. I want to speak from that double standpoint, for our
policy is an expression of that double opinion." It had been declared
that this position was ambiguous, that his own utterances on Canada's
position in war were ambiguous. He had declared in the previous
session that "if England is at war, we are at war," and also that "if
we do have a navy, that navy will not go to war unless the parliament
of Canada chooses to send it there." The statements were not
inconsistent; there was a difference between a formal position in the
eyes of international law and an active participation in war: "If
England is at war we are at war and liable to attack. I do not say
that we shall always be attacked, neither do I say that we would take
part in all the wars of England. That is a matter that must be guided
by circumstances, upon which the Canadian parliament will have to
pronounce, and will have to decide in its own best judgment."

Mr. Lemieux, in reply to Mr. Monk, took the same stand. Canada could
not submit to taxation without representation; neither could she
forget that the maintenance of British naval supremacy was vital for
Canada, and not least for the French-Canadians whom Mr. Monk and Mr.
Bourassa were seeking to isolate, forgetful that Britain had
guaranteed and protected the rights of the minority.

The Liberal party and the Liberal press, after some temporary
stampeding, now stood solidly behind the government's policy. The
Conservatives were seemingly less fortunate in being divided into two
irreconcilable wings, but there were in this division comforting
possibilities of the very flexible and effective strategy of playing
both ends against the middle. Mr. Borden defended his own Canadian
navy position,--a permanent policy of contribution would make for
irresponsibility, friction, eventual separation,--but he made
concessions to the imperialist wing by proposing an emergency
contribution of two dreadnoughts, and to the Quebec wing by proposing
that no permanent policy should be adopted until approved by the
people. Unable to foresee that within ten years he would himself
insist upon inserting in the Anglo-Franco-American draft treaty of
alliance a clause authorizing any Dominion to exempt itself from the
alliance, and consequently from any war in which the other parties
might be involved, he attacked as preposterous the assumption that
under any circumstances Canada could be at peace or withhold her fleet
when the rest of the Empire was at war. Mr. Monk denounced the bill as
a surrender of Canada's autonomy, a victory of Chamberlainism; the
label "Canadian" on the fleet could not conceal the fact that it was a
disguised contribution to the imperial navy, a pledge of Canadian
participation in all British wars, an assumption of all the
consequences of a policy in which Canadians had little interest and
over which they had no control. Other Conservatives attacked the
government's proposals as a useless waste, a strategic heresy, a
declaration of independence, the beginning of the break-up of the
Empire, a weak concession to French-Canadian disloyalty: "one flag,
one fleet, one throne," was their ideal.

The debate ranged wide. There were many notable utterances. Never
before had Canada's relation to the Empire or her place in the world
been discussed so thoroughly in parliament. Yet there was an inability
to find common ground, or a haziness and uncertainty of view, that
prevented a very helpful or definite conclusion. The debate made
evident how imperative was the policy Sir Wilfrid advocated, of
emphasizing Canadian nationhood and at the same time seeking to
reconcile nationhood and Empire. British racialism and French
racialism, imperialist and nationaliste, were alike barriers to
Canadian unity. Only by emphasizing the common Canadianism of their
sons rather than the divergent traditions of their fathers could the
lesser loyalties be merged in a concordant faith. At the same time,
only in the compromise of "a nation within the Empire," the alliance
of independent nations under a common king, could the most vital
convictions of the majority of Canadians, for the present at least, be
reconciled. But the debate also made evident how difficult this policy
was to work out in practice, how ambiguous was Canada's international
situation, how uncertain it was where nation ended and Empire began.
Given a country divided by two great races, given the attempt to work
out a new and unprecedented experiment in political organization, and
it was not surprising, or necessary to assume an undue share of
personal blindness or ill-will, if there were wide cleavage and
constant inconsistency.

Writing to Senator Dandurand in December, 1909, Sir Wilfrid made light
of the opposition:

      We are without doubt in for a little agitation on the
      part of the Nationalists and Conservatives, who are at
      last uniting in a solid party. So far I have no
      serious apprehension. I am quite aware that our policy
      is not popular; for all that I do not think that they
      can fool the public about it. The only effect that I
      foresee is that it is going to consolidate the
      Opposition in the province of Quebec and probably
      divide it in the Dominion; I believe that on the whole
      all the sane elements will stay with us, and if so, we
      have nothing to fear.

      The clerical journals have already seized on the
      question to make a breach in our ranks. It seems to me
      that this is an obvious blunder and at the proper
      moment we must fall on them and tell them to their
      faces that this is an abuse of religion.

      As for Borden's speech, it is always easy to obtain
      Tory newspapers. One can get them here in the library.

To an Ontario friend who attacked any naval expenditure, he replied,
in November, 1909:

      I am aware that there is among the farmers no
      enthusiasm for the organization of naval defence. Your
      general ground is derived from the fact that you do
      not believe in armaments, but in this you are ahead of
      the times. Your policy in that respect may perhaps be
      appreciated in the twenty-first century, but certainly
      not at this date. This consideration, therefore,
      cannot weigh at all with me; but you put the case more
      accurately, and very accurately, when you say that in
      your opinion the severance of the political tie which
      binds us to Britain would do more to assure our safety
      than the building of warships by the score.

      In this I perfectly agree with you. If we were
      disconnected with Britain, we would have less occasion
      of conflict with Europe than we have at the present
      time; but if British connection has some
      disadvantages, in my judgment it has advantages which
      far more than outbalance the objections. No one at
      this moment thinks or would wish for a severance from
      Britain; I certainly do not. We are happy, free,
      content and prosperous as we are, and so long as the
      nation has those blessings, no one will ever think of
      changing the political conditions. We are all the same
      a nation, though under the suzerainty of Great
      Britain, and we have to assume the duties and
      responsibilities of a nation. Part of these duties is
      the keeping of some armed force, both on land and at
      sea.

      I ask you to consider this; no nation has yet existed
      without some such protection, but I want to assure you
      that I never will be found to go into what is known as
      militarism. . . .

      I would ask you further to consider this point: our
      existence as a nation is the most anomalous that has
      yet existed. We are British subjects, but we are an
      autonomous nation; we are divided into provinces, we
      are divided into races, and out of these confused
      elements the man at the head of affairs has to sail
      the ship onwards, and to do this safely it is not
      always the ideal policy from the point of view of pure
      idealism which ought to prevail, but the policy which
      can appeal on the whole to all sections of the
      community. This has been my inspiration ever since I
      assumed the leadership of the party and up to the
      present time this policy has, if it has done nothing
      else, given to the people these blessings which I have
      just mentioned: peace, harmony and prosperity.

      If you were in the position in which I am, you would
      have to think night and day of these different
      problems. I do not think that you would differ much
      from the solution which I have endeavoured to find in
      the present instance. It has been my lot to face such
      problems again and again, throughout my political
      career, and on every occasion I have had to disappoint
      scores of my friends on some point or other. In the
      Manitoba school question I imposed upon my friends
      from Quebec what was to them at that time a difficult
      problem to face. On the Autonomy Bills of Saskatchewan
      and Alberta I imposed upon my friends from Ontario
      what was to them undoubtedly a similar problem to
      face. I do not expect that the task will be as heavy
      in the present instance as it was on the two last;
      still it will be of such a character as to give me
      many troubled hours. It is some consolation to think,
      however, that it will probably be the last one.

When Senator McMullen protested that the building of a navy was wholly
unnecessary,--"For two hundred years we have been under the wing of
Great Britain and have never been molested"; better give two
dreadnoughts and end the matter,--he replied more jocularly:

      With regard to the naval question, I am shocked and
      scandalized at your attitude. I always knew you to be
      a Grit and a Reformer belonging to the party which,
      from the time of William Lyon Mackenzie, insisted that
      we should have the handling of our own affairs. We
      claim that at this stage we have reached the status of
      a nation, at least I do. All nations must have a navy
      as well as an army, but I tell you frankly that I do
      not intend the Canadian army or navy to be on a scale
      to threaten the peace of the world. . . .

      I have not missed the passage in your letter in which
      you attribute the attitude we have taken to
      representations from Quebec. I have read that in the
      Tory press, but was not prepared to see it from the
      pen of an old Grit.[50] The Tory press is doing its
      very best to create a prejudice and a cleavage between
      Quebec and the rest of the Dominion. This is not new;
      it is as old as the history of Canada under British
      rule. It has failed before and will fail again.

When the Naval Service Bill was carried, after the defeat of Mr.
Borden's compromise amendment and Mr. Monk's proposal of a referendum,
the issue was far from settled. In the English-speaking provinces
discussion lessened with the apparent easing of the tension in
England, where the bills for the dreadnoughts were being presented in
Mr. Lloyd George's land-tax budget, and with the diversion afforded by
a revival of the tariff and reciprocity issue. But in Quebec the fight
had only begun. Quebec's dominant instinct was to abstain from any
naval action, and it was its view that had been discarded. Nor was Mr.
Bourassa prepared to forego so splendid an opportunity. With Mr. Monk
speaking for the old Conservative party, and with many new recruits to
Nationalism, Mr. Bourassa began in January a vigorous and effective
campaign.

[Footnote 50: It was a favourite device of Laurier, in letter and in
campaign speaking, especially in Ontario, to stir party loyalty by
these fighting words, linking his opponents with Family Compact days,
and stirring his followers to emulate the stern unbending Grits of
old. How his eyes would twinkle as he rolled out the r's!]

A Nationalist daily "Le Devoir," was established at Montreal, with Mr.
Bourassa as director.

A striking feature of the agitation was the success of the appeal to
the old ultramontane spirit. The sins of Laurier as to western schools
were heaped up on his sins of slavery to Chamberlain. Castorism found
a new champion in Mr. Bourassa. The younger clergy and the college
students flocked to his standard. "Le Devoir," very ably written, was
blessed by a thousand volunteer clerical workers, and set at least on
a level with the catechism. A Catholic party was once again in the
making. Writing in October, 1910, a colleague of Sir Wilfrid declared:
"How wild that speech of Bourassa's at Notre Dame! May one cease to be
tactful at this point and say that their lordships the Quebec bishops
do not seem aware that this _furiosus_ is leading them to the
precipice. They want a Catholic Centre and a Windthorst, in a country
where liberty and tolerance are the foundation of all our
institutions!" And another colleague, a little earlier: "I pointed out
to his Grace that the crusade now in progress in Quebec must either
result in the formation of a Catholic party or end in smoke. If the
latter were to be the result, then the rest of the community might
well be content to wait, but if a Catholic party were formed, then he
might be assured that all the rest of Canada would be arrayed against
it, and the resulting injury to the Catholic Church in Canada would be
irreparable. This prospect was disposed of by a shrug of the
shoulders."

On a hundred platforms the naval policy was attacked as the beginning
of the end of peace and good fortune in Canada. Sir Wilfrid was
denounced as a false leader who had abused the confidence of his
compatriots, had led them step by step to betrayal for the glitter of
another English decoration, had plunged Canada into the vortex of
militarism. Now Canadians would be involved in every British war; if a
navy existed, the demand that it be used would be irresistible. It
would not be used in Canada's quarrels, but in Britain's, used to
uphold policies in whose shaping Canadians would have no slightest
part; "slaves," as Mr. Monk declared, "of the English electors." There
was no German peril, declared Mr. Bourassa, and if there was, England
had brought it on herself. "If we are expected to shoulder all the
liabilities of nationhood," asked Mr. Asselin, "why should we continue
to drag the fetters of colonialism?" Particularly was it insisted that
the inevitable next step would be conscription. It was futile to
assert that naval service would be voluntary; if Canada became
implicated in a European war, declared Mr. Monk, Mr. Bourassa and a
score of their followers, the next step would be to make service
compulsory, to drag the habitant to service on shipboard and in bloody
fields.

The assault did not go unanswered. "Le Canada" and "Le Soleil," "La
Presse" and "La Patrie," Mr. Lemieux and Dr. Bland, Gustave Boyer and
J. P. Turcotte, defended the government's action as in the interest of
Canada and as a return to England for the protection given the rights
of the minority in Quebec. But it became evident that the Nationalist
campaign was making deep inroads into the Liberal party. The
Eucharist Congress, a great world-wide gathering of ecclesiastical
dignitaries, which met in Montreal in September, 1910, was made the
occasion of an endeavour to place the Nationalist movement and its
leaders on a lofty pinnacle. All of Laurier's power over his
compatriots would be required to stem the tide. Accordingly, upon his
return from a long tour through the West, where he had been finding
the farmers insurgent against the tariff, he arranged to speak at a
great gathering in Montreal on October 10. Sir Wilfrid made play with
the divisions of the Conservatives, the attacks from Ontario and the
West because a Canadian navy meant separation, the attacks from Quebec
because it meant jingoism, entanglement in Britain's wars. He hated
war, but Canada must defend her far-flung territories. The
government's naval policy did not involve a surrender to British
centralizing demands, it was the logical continuance of the policy of
resisting those demands which he had maintained steadily since 1902:

      At that Conference the Secretary for War demanded a
      contribution of troops. At the same time the Secretary
      of State demanded that the same Dominions should
      contribute a sum of money annually for the maintenance
      of an imperial fleet. There, indeed, was the entrance
      to militarism. But the Canadian ministers who were at
      London--and I was one of them--opposed this demand of
      the imperial government in a categorical refusal, a
      refusal respectful in form, but absolute in meaning.
      But we did more than that; we placed before the
      Conference our own policy, which we intended to
      follow. We declared our intention to sustain the
      obligation incumbent upon all nations of defending
      their own territory; that we had already organized a
      Militia and that we were equally ready to undertake
      our naval defence; but that we would at all times
      follow and maintain the principle of our local
      autonomy. However, here is the Naval Law and I defy
      contradiction when I say that this law is in complete
      accord with the policy of 1902 as defined by us, as
      approved by Messrs. Monk and Bourassa. Now, I have
      simply to call your attention to two things provided
      by this Naval Law. It simply decrees that the
      government of Canada should organize another naval
      service, and that this service should remain entirely
      under the control of the government of Canada. Outside
      of this there is not a single word which would give to
      Great Britain that which she demanded in 1902,--the
      organization of a war service to be put at the
      disposition of the War Office,--not one word.

In a vigorous passage Sir Wilfrid paid his respects to the new-old
Castor:

      This violent section--you know it--comprises the
      Pharisee end of Canadian Catholicism; those who have
      constituted themselves the defenders of a religion
      which no one attacked; those who handled the
      holy-water sprinkler as though it were a club; those
      who have arrogated to themselves the monopoly of
      orthodoxy; those who excommunicate right and left all
      whose stature is a little greater than theirs; those
      who seem to have only hatred and envy for their motive
      and instinct; those who insulted Cardinal Taschereau
      when he was alive and who, now that he is dead, attack
      his memory; those who made Chapleau's life bitter;
      those, originally, whom the people with their
      picturesque language designated under the name of
      Castors.

Three days after this address, Louis Lavergne, brother of Sir
Wilfrid's former law partner, member for Drummond-Arthabaska, was
appointed to the Senate. The by-election which followed gave the
Nationalists their chance. The odds appeared against them. The riding
had been strongly Liberal since 1887. It was Sir Wilfrid's old
constituency and his summer home. Nowhere in Quebec would his personal
prestige count for more. As a matter of fact, local circumstances were
not favourable to the Liberals, as there had been serious factional
disputes for some years. The onslaught was made. A Nationalist farmer,
Arthur Gilbert, was nominated against the official Liberal candidate,
J. E. Perrault. Nationalist orators swarmed into the field. Mr. Monk
foretold bankruptcy as the end. Mr. Bourassa laid stress on
conscription, declaring as in Montreal that "a day will come when
draft officers will be scouring the country and compelling young men
to enlist either in the navy or in the army, to go to foreign lands
and fight the battles of Great Britain, to co-operate with Downing
Street in the oppression of weak countries, and to maintain at the
price of their blood, the supremacy of the British flag in Asia or
Africa." Mr. Alfred Svigny: "What has England done for you? You must
protest against helping England in her wars; unless you do,
conscription will come next." Mr. Tancrde Marsil: "I come from a
parish where the church still bears the mark of British bullets." Mr.
Lavergne: "It is England which is indebted to us, and not we who are
indebted to England." Mr. Blondin: "The only liberties we have won are
those we won by force, and to-day England tries to dominate its
colonies as Imperial Rome once did." The canvassers on the side roads
had still less restraint: fifty thousand fathers of families would be
sent to Asia to fight English battles, or let sink at sea; "those who
disembowelled your fathers on the Plains of Abraham are asking you
to-day to go and get killed for them." Particularly effective was the
trick of sending men in uniform to take a census of the country
houses: "Have you a husband?" the women were asked. "How many sons?
What ages?" "Why? Merely to have the lists ready when the Laurier
Naval Act goes into force." The Liberals meanwhile were not idle.
Jacques Bureau, Ernest Lapointe, Dr. Bland, C. A. Gauvreau, L. J.
Gauthier, Senator Lavergne and a score of other members met their
opponents in warm debate. But the issue was evidently "For Laurier, or
against the navy?"

On November 3, the polling in this most important by-election in
Canada's history gave a Nationalist majority of 207. The impossible
had happened. The grip of Laurier on Quebec had been shaken. The
Liberals were dumbfounded, the Nationalists hysterical. Conservatives
outside Quebec were dubious as patriots, jubilant as partisans; the
chief whip telegraphed congratulations to Mr. Monk on his "great fight
and success"; Mr. Borden declared that chickens were coming home to
roost. In the following session, Sir Wilfrid thus referred to the
election:

      Well, sir, at this moment I have only to say that
      history teaches us that there are defeats which are
      more honourable than victories. The gentlemen on the
      other side of this House are welcome to all the
      comfort they can get out of the Drummond-Arthabaska
      election. . . . That election was won by a combination
      of what is left, or what was left, of the once-great
      Conservative party in the province of Quebec and
      certain young reactionaries who were brought up in
      Liberal principles but for whom, as it turned out,
      Liberal principles were too broad and too generous.
      The election was won by appeals so desperate that when
      the smoke of battle had cleared away the public
      conscience was aroused to shame and indignation.

Here and there men came to realize a little more clearly the
difficulties Wilfrid Laurier had had to face, and here and there an
imperialist halted when he saw his shadow.

Before the general elections in 1911, the holding of an Imperial
Conference, the last in which Laurier was to share, gave opportunity
for registering the recent developments in imperial opinion and
policy. The conference in 1911 met in accordance with the agreement
for periodic gatherings effected in 1907. It was chiefly notable for
the concerted attempt made by British imperialists of the Round Table
group, acting through Sir Joseph Ward of New Zealand, to secure the
adoption of some plan of parliamentary federation for the Empire. Sir
Joseph had submitted in advance a proposal for an Imperial Council of
State advisory to the British government. In the Conference he went
the whole road, urging the creation of an imperial parliament, with
power chiefly over foreign policy and defence. Sir Joseph was
evidently extremely hazy as to what foreign affairs comprised, and as
to the limitations on the existing powers of the Dominions which would
be involved in his plan. His schemes met short shrift. "The proposal
seems to me to be utterly impracticable," declared Laurier for Canada.
"It is not a practical scheme; our present system of responsible
government has not broken down," declared Fisher for Australia. "The
creation of some body with centralized authority over the whole Empire
would be a step entirely antagonistic to the policy of Great Britain
which has been so successful in the past, and which has undoubtedly
made the Empire what it is to-day," declared Botha for South Africa,
now federated in the Union. "Any scheme of representation--no matter
what you call it, parliament or council--of the overseas Dominions
must give them so very small a representation, that it would be
practically of no value," declared Morris for Newfoundland. "We
cannot, with the traditions and history of the British Empire behind
us, either from the point of view of the United Kingdom, or from the
point of view of our self-governing Dominions, assent for a moment to
proposals which are so fatal to the very fundamental conditions on
which our Empire has been built up and carried on," declared Asquith
for Britain. Mr. Asquith went on to declare that the authority of the
government of the United Kingdom in foreign policy could not be
shared; this was afterwards taken to mean, could not be shared with
the Dominions, and was much criticized therefor; but clearly Mr.
Asquith meant authority could not be divided between the cabinet and
the irresponsible council or super-parliament Sir Joseph proposed. He
saw clearly that the policy of the United Kingdom must be determined
by a government responsible to the parliament of Britain. Laurier
simply adopted the same position, applying it to Canada: the policy of
Canada must be determined by a government responsible to the
parliament of Canada. Between these responsible governments matters of
common concern would have to be determined by conference and
negotiation.

The verdict of the prime ministers was decisive. Imperial
parliamentary federation had received its quietus.[51]

[Footnote 51: Sir Wilfrid observed one day: "Of colonial statesmen,
the South-Africans left the strongest impression. There is no man I am
prouder to call my friend than Louis Botha. His massive strength and
simple honor, his unquestioning devotion to duty, his utter lack of
thought of self, his moderation and close grip on fact, carried South
Africa through desperate straits. He has high abilities, but it was
his character, his calm sincerity, that rallied men to him. Smuts has
not his force, but he has sympathy, vision a well-thought-out
philosophy of life, that make him a sounder guide than most of the
European public men I knew.

"The Australians for the most part were a disappointment, distinctly
inferior to the Afrikanders. Perhaps it was their remoteness, perhaps
their racial unity, that gave them a parochial insularity, a lack of
perspective in world affairs. Barton was the ablest, but lethargic.
Deakin was a very likable man, of brilliant endowments, a splendid
orator, with much fire and force. He was open-minded to new ideas;
perhaps too much so, as he seemed unable to hold any steady course.
Hughes appears to be a cross between Churchill and Lloyd George.
Seddon, New Zealand's 'King Dick,' was a powerful leader of men, a man
of much rugged force and shrewdness, but a ward politician rather than
a statesman. Sir Joseph Ward was given prominence in 1911 through the
exigencies of imperialist politics. At each imperial conference some
colonial leader was put forward by the imperialists to champion their
cause. In 1897 it was obvious that they looked to me to act the
bell-wether, but I fear they were disappointed. In 1902 it was Seddon;
in 1907, Deakin; in 1911, Ward. He had not Deakin's ability or
Seddon's force. His London friends stuffed him for his conference
speeches; he came each day with a carefully typewritten speech, but
when once off that, he was at sea."]

The Conference was notable for a less decisive discussion of another
phase of the problem of the control of foreign affairs. The British
government had shared in drawing up and had signed the new code of
maritime international law embodied in the Declaration of London. The
Australian representatives objected on general principles because the
Dominion had not been consulted in advance and took specific exception
to the new proposals listing foodstuffs as conditional contraband and
sanctioning the destruction of neutral vessels. Mr. Fisher insisted
that hereafter the British government should consult the Dominions
before committing them by treaties binding the whole Empire. To many,
this stand seemed consistent with the principle of colonial
nationalism. Not so to Laurier. He saw at once that giving advice
meant a pledge to back that advice; he did not wish to sacrifice
Canada's real and growing freedom of action in order to gain a minor
and entangling share in determining British policy. "We may give
advice if our advice is sought," he replied to Mr. Fisher, "but if
your advice is sought, or if you tender it, I do not think the United
Kingdom can undertake to carry out that advice unless you are prepared
to back that advice with all your strength, and take part in the war,
and insist upon having the rules carried out according to the manner
in which you think the war should be carried out. We have taken the
position in Canada that we do not think we are bound to take part in
every war." Mr. Fisher assumed that there was and must continue to be
one foreign policy for the Empire, and that to have a voice in their
own destinies the Dominions must seek first to advise, and later to
co-operate with Britain in shaping this policy. To Sir Wilfrid this
centralization of policy was no more acceptable than centralization of
parliaments; one would, if accepted, in time involve the other. Canada
had already, as he pointed out, secured control of the greater part
of the field of foreign policy concerned with commercial affairs. He
anticipated that she could steadily extend this independent control
over the whole field, effecting agreements with the other nations of
the Empire by negotiation and understanding; in the meantime he
preferred that Canada's control over her foreign policy should be
incomplete rather than that she should accept an illusory share in
Britain's foreign policy. He agreed to a compromise amendment,
introduced by Mr. Fisher, requesting that future Hague conventions
should be submitted to the Dominions before being signed and that so
far as possible and when time permitted the same course should be
followed in the case of other international agreements affecting the
Dominions. Then, to illustrate Canada's steady expansion in control of
foreign policy on her own lines, he secured an undertaking that
negotiations would be opened to release any Dominion which desired
from the operation of any of the old most-favoured-nation treaties
between the United Kingdom and foreign powers. Canada had already
secured the right to negotiate her own future treaties; in. 1897,
Laurier had secured the denunciation of the most galling of the old
treaties, which barred a preference to Britain or other low-tariff
countries; now in 1911 he urged the abolition so far as Canada was
concerned, of the remaining old treaties, which impeded tariff
negotiations with the United States.

The Conference of 1911 set the seal on the principle of alliance
between equals and the method of negotiation, as the principle and
method of Empire. The Wilfrid Laurier who in 1897 had dreamed of a
parliament of Empire gathering in Westminster, with a son of New
France among its members, had by 1911 played a decisive part in
turning development into a contrary channel. The British Empire was
not to be one, whether empire or commonwealth; it was to be a league
of free nations. Much yet remained to be done in working out this
conception; it doubtless was not an eternal solution, but it was the
path and the goal of his own day. Laurier had carried forward the
policy of Macdonald, the policy of Blake, who had declared in 1900:

      For many years I for my part have looked to
      conference, to delegation, to correspondence, to
      negotiation, to quasi-diplomatic methods, subject
      always to the action of free parliaments here and
      elsewhere, as the only feasible way of working the
      quasi-federal union between the Empire and the sister
      nations of Canada and Australia. A quarter of a
      century past 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. We have too long and too
      extensively gone on the lines of separate action here
      and elsewhere to go back now.

Or in his own words in 1908, in a Tercentenary address at Quebec,
given in the presence of the then Prince of Wales:

      We are reaching the day when our Canadian parliament
      will claim coequal rights with the British parliament,
      and when the only ties binding us together will be a
      common flag and a common Crown.




CHAPTER XVI

RECIPROCITY

      Canada and Foreign Powers--The Far East--Imperial
      Responsibilities--Tariff Bargainings--Closer Relations
      with the United States--Fisheries and Waterways--The
      Payne-Aldrich Tariff Negotiations--President Taft
      Proposes Reciprocity--The Negotiations--Washington
      Accepts--Opposition in Canada--The Economic
      Argument--The Political Bogey--The
      Conservative-Nationalist Alliance--Defeat of the
      Government.


Canada's steady advance toward nationhood, the transformation of the
British Empire into a Britannic Alliance, was apparent not only in the
relations between Canada and Britain but in the relations between
Canada and foreign powers. In the navy issue, Canada was called upon
to decide how far she would take part in what were predominantly
Britain's foreign affairs. In trade and immigration and fishery
disputes, she had to decide how far and how she would decide her own
foreign affairs. As in the case of most countries, her own foreign
affairs were chiefly economic and were chiefly with her nearest
neighbour. A bargain as to tariff rates, a dispute as to fishery or
irrigation rights in boundary waters, a protest against the barring of
Chinese or Japanese immigrants, gave repeated occasion for practice in
diplomacy.

As need demanded, Canada slowly acquired the machinery for negotiation
with foreign powers. In 1909, following the example of Australia, the
Laurier government established a Department of External Affairs,
under Charles Murphy, as Secretary of State, and with a deputy
minister, Mr. Joseph Pope, to give the permanent element desired. "The
foreign affairs with which Canada has to deal," Sir Wilfrid declared,
"are becoming of such absorbing moment as to necessitate special
machinery." No step was taken toward permanent and distinct diplomatic
representation abroad. When an old Liberal proposal for the
appointment of a Canadian minister or attach at Washington was
revived in 1909, the prime minister declared that so long as James
Bryce was British ambassador Canada needed no special minister; later,
conditions might change. For special diplomatic tasks, cabinet
ministers or private citizens were accredited with varying formality.
To negotiate a formal treaty with France, concluded in the King's
name, Mr. Fielding and Mr. Brodeur were appointed plenipotentiaries by
the British government, along with the British ambassador in Paris,
whose nominal part was confined to sharing in signing the completed
treaty. To negotiate much more important trade agreements with the
United States, direct and informal conference between the Ottawa and
Washington cabinets sufficed. Mr. Lemieux undertook a special mission
to Japan, and Mr. King to India. In the tariff negotiations with
European powers in 1909 and 1910, the consuls-general of the powers
concerned exercised quasi-diplomatic powers, and the agreements were
embodied in conventions, assumed to be less formal and less the
prerogative of sovereignty than treaties, and hence within the power
of Canada to conclude without even the formal participation of a
British plenipotentiary. In the Italian agreement the parties were
declared to be "the Royal Consul of Italy for Canada, representing the
Government of the Kingdom of Italy, and the Minister of Finance of
Canada, representing His Excellency the Governor-General acting in
conjunction with the King's Privy Council for Canada." Abroad, a
Canadian consular service took shape with the appointment of trade
commissioners in the more important countries.

As a Pacific power, Canada shared with the United States and Australia
the difficulties involved in the possession of vast unpeopled lands to
which the crowded hosts of Asia looked with longing. Neighbourhood to
the United States gave British Columbia, and particularly its
workingmen and small traders, the gospel of exclusion. Membership in
the British Empire made doubly delicate any policy of barring
immigrants from Britain's ally, Japan. Sir Wilfrid, while convinced
that Asiatic immigration must be rigorously restricted, was
scrupulously careful to avoid compromising imperial interests by an
extreme policy or offensive means. In the election of 1908 he
sacrificed British Columbia's seats rather than compete with Mr.
Borden in concessions to the exclusionists. The federal veto power was
used to prevent British Columbia passing measures of exclusion or
discrimination on its own account. When in 1900 the head tax on
Chinese immigrants was revised, it was urged that a similar tax should
be imposed on Japanese. The government rejected the suggestion,
preferring to have numbers restricted by voluntary action on the part
of the Japanese government. In 1900 and in the half-dozen years
following this assurance was repeatedly given through the Japanese
consul-general, and the restriction was effectively enforced. When, in
1905, the Dominion determined to adhere to the commercial treaty which
Britain had made with Japan in 1894-95, the Colonial Secretary raised
the question of imposing restrictions on Japanese immigrants by some
such law as Natal had enacted, but the Canadian government declined to
make the reservation, preferring to save Japan's pride by trusting to
her to continue to enforce the limitation. On this understanding the
convention was ratified by the Canadian parliament in January, 1907.
Advantage was taken of the government's scruple. Japanese employment
associations and Canadian corporations stimulated a swiftly rising
tide of labourers, coming in some measure directly from Japan, but
mainly through Hawaii. In 1906, three thousand, in 1907, seven
thousand came, and the ideal of a White Canada seemed in peril. In
September, 1907, a Vancouver mob, led by Seattle agitators, invaded
the Chinese and Japanese quarters, doing much damage until the
Japanese turned on their attackers and held rioters and police alike
at bay. The government at once expressed to Japan its deep regret, and
took steps to repair the breach in the dike. Rodolphe Lemieux hastened
to Tokio. His diplomacy, backed by the efforts of the British
ambassador, won a brilliant success. The Japanese government gave a
written assurance that it would restrict direct emigration to Canada,
adopted satisfactory regulations to that end, prohibited the
emigration of contract labourers, and suppressed the emigration
company involved. Japanese immigrants fell to a few hundred a year.
Japan's pride and Canada's racial integrity alike were saved.

In the case of China there was no complication of alliance and no
menace of military power. A head tax of fifty dollars on all Chinese
immigrants except officials, merchants, and scholars had been imposed
in 1885; in 1901 the tax had been raised to one hundred dollars and in
1904 to four hundred dollars. British Columbia employers of Chinese
servants soon were clear as to the incidence of the tax. China made no
protest, but the Laurier government itself concluded that it was not
consistent with international comity to subject any people to this
humiliating levy. When it left office, it had well under way a project
for giving to China, as to Japan, the immediate responsibility for
keeping the flow of its people within agreed limits.

Britain had made two treaties with Japan. The different position of
Canada under the two treaties illustrated the distinction between the
commercial and the military phases of foreign policy. Canadian
insistence for thirty years had won the recognition of the right of
the Dominions to accept or to decline a share in any commercial treaty
made by the mother country with a foreign state. Canada accepted
Britain's commercial treaty with Japan of her own volition, and faced
independently the consequences, but throughout gave as close thought
to Britain's interests as to her own. When Lord Lansdowne negotiated a
treaty of military alliance with Japan, in 1902, it was held to bind
the whole Empire; in political issues the old conception of the Empire
as a single and undivided unit gave way to reality more slowly than in
trade issues. When in 1911 the renewal of the treaty was discussed at
the Imperial Conference, the exemption of any Dominion from its
effects was still unthinkable; all that Sir Wilfrid and his Dominion
colleagues could effect was the inclusion of a clause designed to make
the treaty inapplicable in case of war between Japan and the United
States.

The Hindu tide first reached large proportions in 1907. It raised
still more difficult questions. What did the British Empire mean if a
British subject could not enter other British lands? Had the Empire
really been one, it would have broken under the strain; it being many,
a flexible alliance, the danger was in a measure averted, the
responsibility shifted from the Britain which ruled India to the
Dominion which Britain did not rule. Following its consistent policy
on Oriental immigration, the Canadian government sought to induce the
government of India to adopt the necessary restraints itself. The
government of India did not at that time consider it advisable to
follow this advice; a later viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, came to realize
more fully its value. But the government of India, and the India
Office in London, were much gratified at the considerateness of the
policy which Canada thereupon adopted, herself, to avert the influx. A
general clause was inserted in the Immigration Act, barring immigrants
who did not come from the country of origin by continuous voyage;
while not naming India, it applied to India, as there was no line of
steamships plying directly between Indian and Canadian ports. Further,
an order in council was passed requiring all Oriental immigrants,
except from countries with which special agreements existed, to prove
possession of two hundred dollars before being permitted to land.[52]

[Footnote 52: Early in 1914 the leaders of the Hindu nationalist
movement, apparently with some German aid, determined to break this
barrier or at least cause some friction in the attempt. A Japanese
ship was chartered to carry four hundred Sikhs, largely former British
soldiers, from Shanghai to Vancouver. Under the direct-voyage and
two-hundred-dollar rules, as well as a 1913 regulation suspending all
immigration of labourers owing to business depression, the Borden
government held them ineligible to land, but found difficulty in
enforcing deportation until H. M. C. S. _Rainbow_ brought its guns to
bear. By a strange irony, this nucleus of the new Canadian navy was
first used to prevent British subjects from landing on British soil.
On their return to India, the deported Sikhs broke into violent riots
leading to a notable loss of life.]

The negotiations for the settlement of this delicate issue were
entrusted to Mr. Mackenzie King. He was sent to London in 1908 to
interview Lord Morley, then Secretary of State for India, and a year
later, when visiting the East as one of the delegates to the Shanghai
International Opium Commission, he was commissioned to proceed to
Calcutta and discuss the matter at first hand. The success of the
mission is sufficiently indicated in letters exchanged between Lord
Minto, then Governor-General of India, and Sir Wilfrid. It may be
added that a formal expression of appreciation from the government of
India, "cordially endorsed" by Lord Morley and Lord Crewe, the
Colonial Secretary, followed later.

[Illustration: CAMPAIGNING IN WESTERN ONTARIO (1908)]

(_Lord Minto to Wilfrid Laurier_)

      Government House Calcutta 1st March, 1909.

      My Dear Sir Wilfrid:

      I was very glad to renew my acquaintance with Mr.
      Mackenzie King and I hope you will think the results
      of his visit to India in every way satisfactory.

      Mr. King conferred with a member of my Council who
      deals specially with emigration questions and he has
      no doubt informed you of the result of their
      discussions. The view we hold here is that measures
      taken in Canada, prohibiting immigration except by
      continuous journey on through tickets and requiring
      the immigrant to produce two hundred dollars, are
      likely to prove effectual in putting a stop to the
      immigration of Indian labourers. We have published the
      conditions imposed by Canada widely in India, with the
      result that immigration has ceased altogether, and we
      consider there is practically no chance of its being
      re-opened.

      Mr. King wishes to ascertain our general attitude
      towards the whole question of this emigration to
      British Columbia. As you are aware, we have all along
      said that any restrictions that might be required must
      be put on by you. We have never in India taken steps
      to control the movements of British Indians outside
      the country, except in the case of labourers under
      indenture. It would be difficult for the government of
      India to depart from this policy, especially at the
      present juncture, so that action on our part was out
      of the question. But we raised no objections to the
      methods adopted by Canada, and we have not any
      intention of raising any question regarding them.

      We propose telling the Secretary of State for India
      the result of Mr. King's visit, and we shall take the
      opportunity of expressing to him our appreciation of
      the manner in which your government has treated the
      whole of this difficult business. You have all along
      kept in view the position that faces us here, and
      avoided anything that might look like invidious action
      against British Indians. And a solution has been
      found, which we believe will be a lasting one, without
      involving us in any of the troublesome controversies
      which have arisen out of Indian emigration to some
      other places. We are grateful to you for the attitude
      that you have maintained throughout the discussions,
      and our formal acknowledgment will, I hope, reach you
      in due course.

      Believe me, My dear Sir Wilfrid,
                     Yours very truly,
                                Minto.


(_Wilfrid Laurier to Lord Minto_)

      Ottawa, April 13, 1909.

      My dear Lord Minto:

      I received in due time your favour of the 1st of
      March. I thank you very heartily for it.

      Mackenzie King is doing excellent work and I believe
      that he has quite a political future before him. The
      Hindu question has been very troublesome in British
      Columbia for some time, but thanks to the excellent
      dispositions taken by your administration, things are
      now easy. You remember the trouble we had with the
      Chinese immigration when you were in Canada. Strange
      to say, the Hindu and all people coming from India,
      are looked upon by our people in British Columbia with
      still more disfavour than the Chinese. They seem to be
      less adaptable to our ways and manners than all the
      other Oriental races that come to us.

      Will you allow me to take this opportunity to offer
      you my very sincere congratulations for the success of
      your administration in India? You have had your share
      of troubles, but you seem to have overcome them all
      most successfully. . . .

The whole episode afforded an illuminating illustration of Laurier's
imperial policy. He would not enter into dangerous and entangling new
imperial commitments, but he would faithfully and punctiliously
perform the obligations of the existing bonds. While noisy
imperialists in Australia and elsewhere were taking steps or
advocating policies which deeply embarrassed British rule in India,
Wilfrid Laurier quietly, and at whatever cost of local losses, sought
a course of action which, while fully conserving Canadian interests,
would not involve complications for the imperial authorities.

With European powers, Canada had increasing contact. Political and
military matters were filtered through British diplomacy. Immigration
raised no vital question, as no discrimination was enforced against
any European people. Trade and tariff were the questions at issue. The
rapid growth in Canada's foreign trade, complications introduced by
the preference to Britain, the adoption of a bargaining tariff
schedule, and shifts in Canada's general tariff policy, led to
important negotiations with France, Germany, Italy, and other
Continental states.

The tariff policy established by the Laurier government in its first
years of office did not undergo any basic alteration until the closing
act. The tariff had been reduced; it had been made more logical and
consistent; it had been tempered by the British preference; it had
been made more distinctly a tariff for revenue; it had been revised in
the light of public hearings, not in the darkness of Red-Parlour
caucuses, but it remained a national-policy tariff still. The bounties
on iron and steel had been renewed and widely extended. The minimum
British preference rates on woollens were increased in 1904 in
response to protests from Canadian mills, and in 1906-07 the uniform
horizontal reduction of one-third was replaced by a specific
preference varying with every item. A stringent Patent Act, the
adoption of an arbitrary valuation basis on certain agricultural
implements, and the revision in 1907 of the postal agreement of 1875
with the United States, in order to lessen the sale of United States
magazines in Canada and incidentally the circulation of their
advertisements of United States products, supplemented the more direct
measures of protection. In 1904 Mr. Fielding introduced the
anti-dumping clause, providing for special penalty duties on goods
sold for export to Canada at substantially less than the prices
prevailing in the country of origin, which in later years was imitated
by many other countries. It was an ingenious device to meet the
complaints of Canadian manufacturers against deliberate, crippling but
temporary dumping of a foreign surplus in the Canadian market, while
avoiding the enactment of permanent duties of the height required to
meet emergency conditions.

Up to the year 1906, it may fairly be said that the Liberal party was
becoming steadily more protectionist and forgetful of the freer trade
ideals of Opposition days. The transformation was not difficult to
understand. The United States had remained definitely protectionist;
and even the United Kingdom, the one great citadel of free trade,
seemed to be capitulating. In Canada itself the only other political
party was still more protectionist. The manufacturers were organized
and persistent, the consumers scattered and helpless. The cities were
growing faster than the country, making the weight of protectionist,
city-concentrating sentiment cumulative. The Maritime provinces, with
the growth of iron and steel industries, began to share in the
largesse and the advocacy of protection. Immigration was bringing the
expanding markets which made protection in a small population
endurable. The country was prosperous: why change?

After 1905 or 1906, other factors entered. The unexpected vitality and
triumph of free trade in the United Kingdom, the disfavour into which
muck-raking was bringing every capitalist and corporation in the
United States, had their effect in stimulating Canadian opposition to
manufacturers' demands. The farmers of Ontario and the West began to
organize; the Grange in Ontario, the Grain-Growers' Associations in
Saskatchewan and Manitoba, gave the consumer a voice at last. The
effect was soon visible. When in June, 1904, Mr. Fielding announced
the government's intention to revise the tariff, he forecast maximum
and minimum schedules, the minimum, corresponding to the existing
general tariff, for low-tariff countries, and the maximum, materially
higher, for countries with a hostile tariff policy. But during the
perambulations of the new tariff commission, Messrs. Fielding,
Paterson, and Brodeur, in 1906 and 1907, farmers' organization after
farmers' organization gave evidence of prices and profits, dug up old
Liberal speeches, and demanded reduction. No more was heard of a
maximum tariff, directed against the United States. When the revision
came in 1907, a dual-schedule tariff, or, including the British
preference and the surtax, a four-tier array, was established. But
instead of the existing rates being made the minimum, and higher
retaliatory rates set for the maximum, the existing tariff was made
the maximum and a new intermediate schedule for bargain purposes
established half-way between the British preference and the general
rates. The Liberal party was returning to 1896.

The first important test of Canada's more positive and independent
control of commercial relations with European countries came in the
tariff war with Germany. Angered by Canada's refusal to accord her the
same rates as Great Britain, and not without reason unable to
understand how Canada was free to make its independent tariff
agreements and yet the Empire was to be considered a unit, Germany in
1899 made her general instead of her conventional or minimum rates
applicable to Canadian goods. The Dominion, after protesting in vain,
in 1903 imposed a surtax of one-third on German imports. Germany
suffered most. Her exports, which were highly specialized, were cut in
two; Canadian exports to Germany continued to grow, though mainly in
commodities on the free list or on which the conventional and the
general rates were the same. Then the prospect of Canadian negotiation
with other European powers and a further handicap upon her wares made
Germany draw in her horns. On the initiative of the German government,
and through the consul-general in Canada, negotiations were resumed.
In February, 1910, an agreement was reached by which Canada granted
Germany its general--not its intermediate--rates, while Germany in
return conceded its minimum rates on Canada's most important dutiable
exports.

With his bargaining schedule ready, Mr. Fielding turned first to
France. A new treaty was negotiated in 1907, much more comprehensive
than the agreement effected by Sir Charles Tupper in 1894, but the
opposition of French protectionists prevented its ratification until
1910. France was given the intermediate rates on her specialties, and
in a few cases rates below the existing British preference schedule,
which in turn was correspondingly reduced. Canadian live stock, meats,
dairy products, fish, pulp and lumber, furniture, boots and shoes, and
agricultural implements were among the more important Canadian
products given the French minimum rates. In 1910 a somewhat similar
but less extensive agreement was made with Italy by convention, and
the benefits of the intermediate tariff were extended to Belgium and
the Netherlands in recognition of the lowness of their general customs
rates.

Canada, for all the growing intercourse with Asia and with Europe,
remained an American power. The isolation of the United States and
Canada from other lands, their common border for three thousand miles,
the wide measure of identity in pioneer traditions, in social
customs, in business methods, in tongue and creed, made Canada's
relations with the republic incomparably more close and more important
than with all other powers. The responsibility that came of the United
States' greater share in world affairs, the recognition of the wide
measure of identity of ideals and of interest between the
English-speaking peoples, the ethnic consciousness which was being
created in the predominant Anglo-Saxon element by the stubborn refusal
of other racial strains in the republic to be "assimilated," and not
least the new respect for Canada that followed on her rapid growth and
her luring a million settlers over the border in a dozen years, was
making the attitude of the people of the United States much friendlier
than of old. Canada's prosperity and her independence went far to cure
the sensitive and querulous note in her earlier dealings. The presence
of James Bryce at Washington aided not a little in smoothing any
difficulties that arose.

It is easy to exaggerate the part that statesmen played in determining
the relations of two countries so bound together. Premier and
President had their parts, and played them in full footlight glare,
but perhaps the final shaping came from hundreds of thousands of
humbler and more unconscious diplomats. The young Prince Edward Island
fisher lad seeking fame and fortune in Boston, the habitant's daughter
finding a place in a Lowell mill, the Iowa farmer selling his
two-hundred-dollar-an-acre land and buying Saskatchewan prairie at
twenty, the Pittsburgher rejoicing in the trout of a New Ontario
stream and the Toronto matron joining in the Easter parade on Fifth
Avenue or the Boardwalk, the Massachusetts manufacturer opening a
branch in Hamilton, the Canadian railway seeking a terminus in Boston
or Chicago, the baseball hero or the movie actress worshipped by the
youngsters of a united continent, the journal circulating on both
sides of the border, the international trade union,--these and
countless other unprofessional representatives built up the
relationships, prejudices, friendships, which were the stuff that
foreign affairs were made of. Still, the statesmen had their part. At
the least they expressed, in some measure they guided, public opinion.

In this more favouring atmosphere many of the long-standing issues of
Anglo-American diplomacy found ready settlement. Draft agreements of
the Joint High Commission were signed and sealed. The last bit of
undetermined boundary, in Passamaquoddy Bay, was referred to a
commission. In the North Pacific, Canada agreed to abandon pelagic
sealing in return for a fair proportion of the catch on the United
States, Russian, and Japanese rookeries. Immensely more significant
was the settlement of the North Atlantic Fisheries difficulty. Since
the adoption of the _modus vivendi_ in 1888, the question had
slumbered until the attempt of Newfoundland in 1905 to prevent foreign
fishing-vessels from securing bait or supplies from the island had
once more threatened conflict. In 1909 Mr. Bryce and Mr. Root signed a
treaty for the reference of the whole century-old dispute to the
newly constituted Hague Tribunal. The question was really much more
complicated, much more dangerous and much more important than the
Alaska boundary dispute, but fortunately there had been some advance
in Anglo-American relations and in international good sense since
1903, and the conduct and outcome of the arbitration were wholly
creditable to every party concerned. The Tribunal was constituted at
The Hague in June, 1910, consisting of Dr. Lammasch of Austria, Dr.
Lohman of Holland, Dr. Drago of Argentina, Justice Gray of the United
States Circuit Court of Appeals, and Sir Charles Fitzpatrick of the
Canadian Supreme Court. Sir Allen Aylesworth was agent for Great
Britain, Newfoundland, and Canada, with Sir W. S. Robson, Sir Robert
Finlay, Sir Edward Morris, Donald Morrison, Sir James Winter, John S.
Ewart, George F. Shepley, Sir Erle Richards, A. F. Peterson, W. N.
Tilley, Raymond Asquith, Geoffrey Laurence, and Hamar Greenwood as
council, while Chandler P. Anderson was agent for the United States,
with Elihu Root, George Turner, Samuel Elder, C. B. Warren, James
Brown Scott, Robert Lansing and Otis Cartwright as counsel. Dr.
Lammasch rightly declared at the first session: "Perhaps no question
of such gravity and involving such complications has ever been
submitted to arbitration." But the terms of reference had been
carefully and fairly framed; the tribunal consisted of impartial
jurists; the case was thoroughly prepared and exhaustively argued, and
there was no justice of the United States Supreme Court journeying to
London with a Rooseveltian Big Stick in his baggage. The result was a
masterly, exhaustive and practical decision, absolutely unanimous save
for a dissent on one point by the Argentine member. It was gratifying
that on every important phase the Canadian contention was sustained,
but still more welcome were the evidences of friendliness and of an
honourable desire on both sides to ensure a strictly fair and legal
decision.

More important than any of these settlements of old and weary issues
was the constructive provision for new boundary difficulties. The
creation of a permanent Joint High Commission, with three Canadian and
three United States members, to deal primarily with disputes as to
boundary waters, whether as to navigation, power, irrigation, or
fisheries was due to three men, Wilfrid Laurier, Elihu Root, and
George C. Gibbons. Mr. Bryce and Sir Allen Aylesworth took an active
part in the drafting, and every clause and every line was gone over
again and again by the whole cabinet. In its explicit recognition of
Canada's international status, in the optional provision for reference
to the commission of any subject whatever in dispute between the two
countries, in the permanent character of the joint body, and, not
least, in the adoption for the first time in international practice of
the far-reaching provision that individual citizens of either country
might present their cases direct, without the State acting as
intermediary, the experiment was a distinctive North American
contribution toward a sane international polity. "We are setting up a
Hague Tribunal for North America," Mr. Root rightly commented.

None of these questions became a political issue. That rle, as usual,
was reserved for trade and tariff. The tariff still held a dominant
place in the politics of both countries. No other question could
affect so many pockets, prejudices, traditions. Its importance may
have been absurdly exaggerated, but that did not alter the fact that
tariffs still made and unmade governments. In four successive
elections, 1896, 1900, 1904, 1908, the higher-tariff party had been
returned to power in the United States. In four successive elections,
1896, 1900, 1904, 1908, the lower-tariff party had been returned to
power in Canada. In 1897 the Republicans had produced the Dingley
tariff, and then had rested content. In 1897 the Liberals had enacted
the Fielding tariff, and had since made little change. Now after a
dozen years the tariffs were again in the melting-pot.

In the 1908 election, the Republicans had promised a thoroughgoing
revision of the tariff. As to whether the revision should be upward or
downward, there had been some judicious haziness, but the Old Guard in
charge of the party's fortunes had no uncertainty. The Payne-Aldrich
tariff, enacted in 1909, was distinctly and aggressively
protectionist. In the United States, the tariff speedily proved
unexpectedly and decidedly unpopular. City consumers wanting lower
living costs, manufacturers wanting foreign markets, newspapers
wanting cheaper pulp, the raw material of literature, insurgents
wanting to insurge, denounced this Bourbon product. Abroad, it
threatened complications. For the first time Congress had adopted a
two-schedule tariff with minimum rates intended as normal, and
prohibitive maximum rates of an additional twenty-five per cent. ad
valorem for bargaining, or rather for bludgeoning. The President was
directed to apply the maximum rates, after March 31, 1910, to imports
from any country which in any way unduly discriminated in its own
tariff against the United States. It was an abandonment of the
traditional United States principle of concession for concession in
favour of the European principle of penalties for discrimination.
Formerly the United States had insisted that if Brazil, for example,
wanted the special tariff rates accorded Argentina, there must be
equality between the concessions which Brazil and Argentina gave on
United States goods; now, it insisted that Brazil must give the same
rates it gave on Argentina's goods: it had adopted the European
interpretation of the most-favoured-nation clause, plus a club.

Thus armed, Washington sought and secured concessions from France,
Germany, Austria, Portugal, Brazil. Soon only Canada remained
obdurate. The United States tacitly admitted that the special rates
Canada granted on British imports did not constitute an undue
discrimination, but it contended that the concessions recently made to
France and other European countries would make inevitable the
application of the penalty clause, unless equivalent concessions were
accorded. To Canada, this position appeared preposterous. The United
States was demanding for nothing concessions for which France had
given value. Canada was prepared, in accordance with the traditional
policy of the United States itself, to grant the United States special
concessions when it matched the concessions France had made. Early in
1910 President Taft sent Professor Emery and Mr. C. M. Pepper to
Ottawa to confer with Sir Wilfrid and Mr. Fielding. In March he
arranged a conference with Mr. Fielding in Albany, and later Mr.
Fielding and Mr. Graham went to Washington. The President assured the
Canadian representatives that nothing was further from his desire or
the desire of his people than a tariff war with Canada, but that the
Payne-Aldrich Act left him no option in insisting upon concessions.
Fortunately, it did give him power to decide what concessions would be
considered adequate. A compromise was worked out at the last moment by
which each country saved its face. Canada granted to the United States
its intermediate tariff rates on thirteen minor articles from
photographs to prunes, which the President accepted as equivalent to
the special rates given France. Then the Canadian parliament
immediately made these lower rates part of its general tariff; the
United States ended where it had begun, its goods subject in every
item to the general, not to any special, tariff rates. A phantom
concession had been made to remove an invented grievance, and peace
reigned again on the Ottawa and the Potomac.

Peace, but not quiescence. From the verge of an unpremeditated tariff
war Washington turned to a deliberate search for fiscal friendliness.
Public opinion had pronounced strongly against the bludgeoning tactics
of Congress and a strong Republican seat in Massachusettes had gone
Democratic on a platform of Reciprocity a week before the March
negotiations were completed. President Taft awoke to the fact that he
had antagonized the progressive movement within his own party by
sanctioning a profiteer's tariff. An amateur diplomat, Dr. J. A.
Macdonald, editor of the Toronto "Globe," impressed upon him the
opportunity of snatching credit out of embarrassment and of
establishing, once for all, close and friendly relations between the
two democracies of North America. In a message to the Canadian people,
President Taft declared: "I am profoundly convinced that these two
countries, touching each other for more than three thousand miles,
have common interests in trade and require special arrangements in
legislation and administration which are not involved in the relations
of the United States with countries beyond the seas."

On the initiative of Mr. Taft, negotiations for a wider agreement were
begun in Ottawa in October, 1910, and concluded in Washington in
January, 1911. Diplomatic forms were discarded, the discussion was
brief and businesslike, the atmosphere friendly. The Canadian
representatives, Mr. Fielding and Mr. Paterson, to their surprise
found the United States prepared to go much farther than they had
expected or were themselves ready to agree. A proposal of complete
free trade was made, but could not be considered. The Canadian
representatives were no longer willing to offer free fishing for free
fish and they insisted that any agreement should take effect by
simultaneous legislative action, which either country would be free to
modify at any time, rather than by a binding and inflexible treaty. It
was also made clear that any reduction given to imports from the
United States would, if need be, be extended automatically to British
imports. With these points settled, rapid progress was made in
drafting a broad measure of reciprocity. The chief products of the
farm, the forest, the mine, the fishery, were put on the free list or
the duties substantially reduced. The duties were also lowered on a
limited list of manufactured articles, in most cases to the level of
the intermediate tariff. A reduction in the duty on wood-pulp and
paper was made contingent upon the removal of the export restrictions
imposed by individual provinces, the Canadian government declining to
bring any pressure to bear upon them. In essence, the agreement
provided for the admission to the United States of all Canadian staple
natural products free, or at low duty, while in turn Canada conceded
little beyond the reductions already made to other countries under the
intermediate or conventional tariff.

The governments had agreed; what of the legislatures? The United
States Senate had proved the graveyard of many a promising trade
agreement. Mr. Taft faced strong opposition from his own party, and
from the interests threatened with new competition.

[Illustration: CAMPAIGNING IN QUEBEC (1911)]

The New England fisherman, the Montana sheep-raiser, the Dakota
grain-grower, and the Washington lumberman joined the dyed-in-the-wool
protectionists in blocking the bill. It was necessary to call a
special session of Congress in April. Mr. Taft's influence, Democratic
support, and a Washington July sun melted the Senate's obduracy and by
the end of July the measure had passed both houses of Congress and
received the signature of the President. Washington had done its part.
What of Ottawa? Neither Sir Wilfrid nor any member of his cabinet had
had any fear or doubt of the outcome. The government had achieved what
every previous administration had tried in vain to win. It had reached
the goal which had been the professed aim of both political parties in
Canada for half a century. It had secured an agreement which opened a
market in the United States for Canadian natural products without
giving the Canadian manufacturer any legitimate and substantial ground
for complaint. It had provided that in no case would there be
discrimination against Britain. That Canada would not welcome this
triumph of diplomacy seemed incredible.

When, on Janaury 26, Mr. Fielding laid the agreement before
parliament, if the government benches were jubilant, the Opposition
was stunned. The bargain was better than they had imagined possible.
It was strictly in harmony with their own traditions. Western
Conservative members could not be restrained from applauding. Outside
the House, Conservative newspapers like the Toronto "News" and the
Ottawa "Journal" expressed approval. But suddenly the mood changed.
Mild assent changed to question, question to criticism, and criticism
to a storm of denunciation and fierce attack. Party spirit and party
hopes had rallied, lines of attack had opened, a chance of victory had
gleamed. What was more to the point, the industrial and financial and
railway interests had taken alarm and determined to fight the
agreement with every resource in their power. Manufacturers, though
for the most part untouched, feared the thin edge of the wedge.
Railway magnates dreaded breaks in their long east and west hauls.
Bankers, intimately linked by their directorates and their loans with
both manufacturer and railway, threw their weight into the same scale.
The word went forth, in Sir William Van Horne's frank phrase, "to bust
the damned thing." The Opposition attacked it in parliament, blocked
estimates, and compelled the government to adjourn until after the
Imperial Conference. Ten days after the House reassembled, on July 29,
the government accepted the Opposition's challenge, dissolved the
parliament, and appealed to million-headed Csar.

In the seven-weeks campaign that followed, the Conservatives were
emphatically on the aggressive. Down to fighting weight after fifteen
years of hungry opposition, inspired by a genuine alarm for the
national or imperial interests they considered were involved, or by a
lively confidence in the powers of the great interests which were
giving them support, they fought with vigour and without restraint.
The Liberals had lost their fighting edge, principles had been dulled
by compromise, party organization worn out and never repaired. They
had come to trust too much to campaign funds, and now they faced an
issue where their opponents could cover their million with three. In
the press, in spite of the vigorous campaign of the Toronto "Globe"
and "Star," the "Manitoba Free Press," and the Halifax "Chronicle,"
they could not match the audacity and confidence of their opponents,
particularly the "Montreal Star" and the Toronto "News."

While Mr. Borden, in spite of a mutiny in March, remained the leader
of the party, the real campaign manager was Clifford Sifton.[53] After
his resignation from the cabinet, Mr. Sifton had remained a member of
the House and of the Liberal party. He had been in charge of the
Western campaign in 1908, with not very striking results, barely
saving his own seat in Brandon. In this campaign it was his
administration of the Interior that was chiefly under fire, and he was
considered by many Liberals as more of a liability than an asset.[54]
Now he decided to break with the party.

[Footnote 53: "Mr. Sifton," Sir Wilfrid remarked one day, "was the
master mind in parliament. He could discern the current political
tendencies, put his finger on the popular pulse, better than any other
man in my experience. His executive capacity was extraordinary; but
not more so than his secretiveness. He never told his whole mind even
to his closest intimates. I could not fathom the reason for his
attitude on reciprocity."]

[Footnote 54: "During my ten years of editorship of the 'Globe' the
Hon. Clifford Sifton, and what the Conservatives called Siftonism, was
absolutely the heaviest and most irksome burden we had to carry.
Knowing for years, as we did, that he had carried a knife in his boot
for members of the government, it was no surprise, but rather an
infinite relief when he joined the ranks of Borden and Bourassa."--J.
A. Macdonald at Paris, Ont., Sept. 19, 1911.]

Sir Wilfrid sent for him when he heard he was going to oppose
reciprocity. "Why?" "Because I do not believe in it." "You did once."
"Yes, but conditions have changed." "No, it is you who have changed.
Your opposition is personal; what is it?" Whatever the reason,
patriotic alarm, or a desire for an amenable government, Mr. Sifton
threw himself whole-heartedly into the anti-reciprocity campaign. It
was Clifford Sifton, aided by Zebulon Lash, the confidential lawyer of
Mackenzie and Mann, who organized the Revolt of the Eighteen, a
carefully staged and very effective repudiation of reciprocity by
eighteen residents of Toronto, all eminent in the world of finance,
and all attached or semi-detached Liberals, and it was Clifford Sifton
who organized the no-popery cry on the back concessions of Ontario.

To attack the agreement on its economic side was difficult, but the
attack was made. The strongest appeal was the cry of "Let well enough
alone," the pithy advice from the tombstone, "I was well, I would be
better, here I am." Canada, after years of looking to Washington, had
determined to work out her own salvation, and had succeeded beyond her
dreams. Why risk this prosperity, why disturb the whole national basis
of the business that had been built up? Laurier prosperity thus proved
its own undoing. Much play was made of the precarious basis of the
bargain; after Canadian industry had been adjusted to the new market,
Congress could, at a moment's notice, abrogate the agreement, and
leave the Canadian producers stranded. The manufacturer was not hit
now, but his turn would come. The farmer, the miner, the lumberman,
might think they would gain, but that hope was illusory: the United
States itself was a great exporter of farm and mine and forest
products; the Canadian truck-farmer and fruit-grower would lose their
early market; the dozen countries with the most-favoured-nation
treaties could pour in their products; preference in the British
market would be barred.

The advocates of the agreement contended that the government that had
given Canada unparalleled prosperity could be trusted to maintain and
develop it. The prosperity of the manufacturer was a preposterous and
callous ground for denying the farmer and the miner, who had been much
less fortunate, their chance of permanent prosperity: let the farmer
have his turn. To the manufacturer, who would reject a certain gain to
the farmer out of fear of a hypothetical future risk to himself, Mr.
Fielding gave prophetic answer: "If, perchance, the manufacturers in
their great power should unite in opposing and possibly condemning or
even defeating this great measure, then there will rise up in the
Western country a storm-cloud no bigger than a man's hand, and the end
will be a change in the fiscal policy of the country which the
manufacturers will find much greater than anything they conceived of."
The United States market for natural products, while not as
indispensable as a generation earlier, was potentially the richest in
the world, and was offered on fair and generous terms. The United
States was rapidly becoming an industrial country; if it exported
Durum wheat, it needed No. 1 Hard; if Pennsylvania had coal to spare
for Ontario, Massachusetts needed Nova Scotia's and Oregon British
Columbia's coal. At the least, the United States offered an enormous
extension of the "home" market the protectionist glorified. The
most-favoured-nation treaties, if need be, could be revised. As for a
preference in Britain, that was still possible; British
tariff-reformers intended to use the tariff as a basis for retaliation
or for reciprocity with foreign countries, as well as for concessions
to the colonies; was Canada to be denied a like freedom?

It was, however, not to economic, but to political motives that the
opponents of reciprocity made their chief appeal. As in 1891, national
existence and imperial connection were held to be jeopardized by "the
treason that barters our birthright for the gold of the Kings of the
South." National unity was at stake. Only by rail and tariff had
Canada been welded into one; with the tariff wall broken and the
railway traffic running north and south, the Dominion would break into
its original fragments, each attached to the adjoining section of the
republic. New York and Boston, Chicago and Minneapolis would become
centres for Canadian interest. Where the treasure was, there would be
the heart also. Imperial connection could not stand the strain.
Inevitably, Canada would be drawn into political as well as commercial
union with her dominating neighbour. "It is her own soul that Canada
risks to-day," Rudyard Kipling cabled. These arguments were
illustrated and driven home by rash prophecies of annexation by
advocates of reciprocity in the United States. "We are preparing to
annex Canada," the Speaker of the House, Champ Clark, had declared,
and, more seriously, "I am for the bill because I hope to see the day
when the American flag will float on every square foot of the British
North American possessions clear to the North Pole." Lesser
politicians and obscure journals were quoted to the same deadly
effect. It was in vain that President Taft and Secretary Knox at once
denied with vigour any thought of political union. A reference by Mr.
Taft himself, to Canada's being at "the parting of the ways," was
twisted out of its obvious meaning. When, after the elections, he made
public an extraordinary letter he had written to Mr. Roosevelt while
the pact was pending, pointing out that its effect would be to make
Canada a mere "adjunct" of the United States, the sinister
interpretation seemed to many to be posthumously confirmed, but Sir
Wilfrid Laurier discounted it as "a borrowing of shallow rhetoric from
Canadian jingoes."

This campaign did not go unanswered. It was not commercial union but
limited reciprocity that was in question. National sentiment was now
too strong to be in danger. True, there were annexationists in the
United States, but few as compared with earlier days, and in any case
it was the people of Canada, not cross-roads politicians to the south,
who would settle that matter. Reciprocity in 1854 had killed
annexation sentiment. If mounting imports from the United States in
the past decade had not brought annexation, how could mounting exports
bring it? How could the Canadian banker with reserves in Wall Street,
the director seeking terminals in Chicago, the manufacturer joining in
an international merger, ordain for their fellow-citizens "no truck
nor trade with the Yankees"? If Mr. Kipling could sell his poetry for
hundreds of thousands of American dollars without injuring the perfect
bloom of his patented patriotism, could not a Saskatchewan homesteader
sell a beef or a load of wheat without selling his country and his
soul with it? But the answers were made in vain. For all the close
business and social intermingling of recent years, there was still in
Canada a deep-rooted political distrust of the great republic. There
were men still fighting the battle of Lundy's Lane; there were more
who had not forgotten the arrogance of the Olney doctrine and the
Venezuela message. For fifty years, with rare intervals, the United
States had shown itself unneighbourly in its public acts, and
particularly in its tariff policy. It was not possible to wipe out
these memories by a single generous gesture. Canadian human nature
found it difficult to resist retaliating on the United States in kind
for many a rejection of its trade advances. It might hurt the Dominion
more than it hurt the Republic, but the country was prosperous and
could afford the luxury,--particularly as it was the farmers who
would pay. Ontario Jeshurun, having waxed fat, kicked.

To divert the farmer from the opening doors of trade, it was not
enough to wave the flag: the red herring of sectarian suspicion must
be drawn across his path. Up and down the concession roads and the
side-lines of Ontario the whispering campaign against a French and
Roman Catholic premier was pushed with vigour. The appearance of the
Speaker of the House and a Supreme Court Justice, both in their robes
of office, in the Eucharistic Congress of the previous year, (though
wholly of their own motion), and the allegation that the newly issued
Ne-Temere decree meant that in Quebec the Roman Catholic Church had
assumed the right to annul mixed marriages, were utilized to the full.

Nor was Quebec neglected. Here reciprocity was a minor issue; the navy
and the Nationalists held the field. To defeat the government, ultras
and antis joined hands. Mr. Bourassa, who was not himself a candidate,
at first supported reciprocity as a boon to Canada and a blow to
Chamberlainism, then declared it a very minor issue, and ended with
direct attack. The Conservative campaign manager circulated "Le
Devoir" throughout the province. Some twenty-eight candidates were
nominated as Nationalist or as Conservatives with Nationalist support.
In New Ontario, where the French-Canadian vote was a factor, two
Conservative candidates sent for Mr. Bourassa and promised to support
his naval policy. From end to end of Quebec the cry was raised that
the Laurier navy meant conscription,--"and neither Laurier nor
Borden," added Mr. Bourassa, "has a son of his own." The Conservative
leaders carefully played into the hands of Mr. Bourassa and of Mr.
Monk, who was in charge of a distinct Autonomist organization. Mr.
Borden issued his first manifesto to the country on the day parliament
was dissolved,--and Conservative and Nationalist newspapers in Quebec
pointed out that there was in it not one word about the navy. He
issued his second manifesto in August; this time he did speak of the
naval question, but it was not to propose contribution to the British
navy but to attack the Laurier naval plans as costly, inefficient and
likely to "result in time of war in the useless sacrifice of many
lives,"--and again Quebec Conservatives and Nationalists dotted the
i's and crossed the t's of this timely and restrained utterance.

Into the campaign, for all his seventy years, Sir Wilfrid threw
himself with energy. In four weeks he addressed over fifty meetings in
the five Eastern provinces, and particularly in Ontario and Quebec. He
had no illusions as to the uphill fight which faced him. Borden and
Bourassa had enthusiasm and prejudice on their side, which his policy
could no longer arouse. In Quebec it was often apparent that Laurier
had the people's respect, but Bourassa had stirred their emotions. In
Ontario the cheers were subdued and many old friends were absent. But
his courage never faltered. At Simcoe he declared Sir John Macdonald
was the Moses of Reciprocity who failed to reach the Promised Land;
"I am the Joshua who will lead the people to their goal." He warned
the manufacturers: "On Thursday I will beat them and on Friday I will
protect their just interests," but, again: "The manufacturers must
understand that there are men who are not as magnanimous as we are,
and forces will be aroused which it will be impossible for me to
control. . . . They are preparing for themselves a rod which will some
day fall across their own shoulders." He made light of annexation
talk: "If it be true that President Taft said that Canada is at the
parting of the ways, I would say to President Taft that he does not
know what he is talking about. I would say, we are prepared to meet
you in business, but if you want to talk politics keep to your own
side of the line and we will keep to ours."

As for the Bourassa-Borden-Monk-Sifton alliance, "what a salad!" Mr.
Monk was the oil, Mr. Bourassa the vinegar, and Mr. Borden had to eat
the dose. "A vote for Bourassa is a vote for Borden."[55] "The day
when England's supremacy on the sea is destroyed," he told a Three
Rivers audience, "your national and religious privileges will be
endangered. And where is the French-Canadian who will say, 'No, I will
not participate in that war'?" Yet it would be wholly for each man to
decide for himself: the charge that conscription would follow was a
monstrous and baseless lie. In St. John he ended a strong address with
the appeal:

      I am branded in Quebec as a traitor to the French, and
      in Ontario as a traitor to the English. In Quebec I am
      branded as a Jingo, and in Ontario as a Separatist. In
      Quebec I am attacked as an Imperialist, and in Ontario
      as an anti-Imperialist. I am neither. I am a Canadian.
      Canada has been the inspiration of my life. I have had
      before me as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of
      cloud by day a policy of true Canadianism, of
      moderation, of conciliation. I have followed it
      consistently since 1896, and I now appeal with
      confidence to the whole Canadian people to uphold me
      in this policy of sound Canadianism which makes for
      the greatness of our country and of the Empire.

[Footnote 55: In Ontario, it is interesting to note, the Liberal
slogan was precisely the reverse: "A vote for Borden is a vote for
Bourassa."]

The appeal was in vain. The night of September 21 brought an
astounding Conservative victory. The Liberal popular majority of
25,000 in 1908 had been converted into a minority of 47,000. The
majority in the House had been precisely reversed, 133 Liberals to 85
Conservatives, and 3 Independents, in 1908; 133 Conservatives and
Nationalists to 88 Liberals in 1911. Minister after minister had
fallen, Mr. Fielding and Sir Frederick Borden in the Maritimes, Sydney
Fisher in Quebec, George Graham, Mackenzie King, and William Paterson
in Ontario, William Templeman in British Columbia. In Ontario the
Conservative victory had been beyond precedent,--72 seats to 14. In
Quebec the Liberal majority had fallen from 43 to 11: there were 27
Conservatives and Nationalists to 38 Liberals. The central prairie
provinces had gone strongly Liberal, but Manitoba and British Columbia
nearly balanced them. Outside of Ontario, the Liberals had a majority
both in seats and in the popular vote, and had Quebec stood where it
had in 1908, Ontario's adverse vote would have been balanced. But
things were as they were, and the Laurier rgime was ended.

The Liberal party had been in power for fifteen years. They had been
years of unparalleled achievement. Canada held a new place in the
world's regard. Canadian nationhood had advanced a long stage. The
West had come into its own. The flow of immigration had been immensely
stimulated; the ebbing of Canadians southward had been halted. The
stagnation and decay of the nineties had vanished. A highly developed
and integrated industry was being built up. A new confidence marked
individual and community life. But even from the standpoint of the
Liberal party and its veteran leader, it was not wholly a misfortune
that a change had come. Half a generation of power had slackened
energy and attracted parasites. It was immensely better that the
Liberals should fall in the endeavour to carry through a fundamental
Liberal policy than that they should die ingloriously of dry-rot like
the federal Conservatives in the nineties and the Ontario Liberals ten
years afterward. It was well, too, that many an elector had
deliberately set aside the possibilities of private gain in order to
safeguard the national interests which he felt were imperilled. There
were other aspects not so defensible. It was not well that an
honourable sentiment could be so easily manipulated and traded upon;
it was not well that powerful financial and railway interests--doubtless
with much mixed motive, for honest and warm convictions here as
elsewhere varied cold-blooded seeking of personal gain--should be
able by lavish expenditure or raging, tearing propaganda to stampede
unthinking thousands. It was not well that the endeavour to work out a
moderate and middle policy in imperial and international affairs, a
policy which would prevent a cleavage on racial lines, should be
halted by extremist assaults. Nor was it well, even from the
standpoint of the victors in this fray, that the city and the
city-centred powers should have so flagrantly and blindly subordinated
the country's interest. The farmer had had his first lesson.

On one aspect of the contest, Sir Wilfrid touched in a letter to a
stalwart and independent Prince Edward Islander:

      Ottawa, October 5, 1911.

      It is the province of Ontario which has defeated us.
      Our losses elsewhere were not very serious and would
      simply have reduced our majority, but Ontario went
      solid against us. It is becoming more and more
      manifest to me that it was not reciprocity that was
      turned down, but a Catholic premier. All the
      information which comes to me from that province makes
      this quite evident.

      Accept my very best thanks for your kind letter.

To the 1891 unrestricted-reciprocity election there had been a
disturbing postscript in the message of Edward Blake. Now to the 1911
restricted-reciprocity election there was another postscript, another
message from the old leader, which comforted instead of disturbing his
successor. Mr. Blake had returned to Canada a short time before,
broken down in health. A member of his family wrote Sir Wilfrid on
Sept. 22:

      Mr. Blake expressed entire approval of your
      reciprocity campaign. This morning the nurse told him
      of the election and he said slowly: "I am sorry for
      Laurier. He is a fine fellow and I always liked him."
      That is a voice almost from the grave, as I fear we
      must consider it, the voice of one along with whom you
      fought many hard battles. Mrs. Blake wishes me to send
      you her love (that was the word she used) and to say
      how real are her regrets but, at the same time, how
      glad she is that you will have a period of comparative
      rest.




CHAPTER XVII

IN THE SHADES OF OPPOSITION

      Resignation of the Laurier Government--The New
      Ministry--Laurier as Opposition Leader--The Navy Issue
      Again--Laurier Opposes Contribution--The
      Closure--Defeat of the Naval Bill--Business
      Depression--The Railway Crisis--The Government and the
      Canadian Northern.


The verdict of September 21 may have been wise or it may have been
unwise, but there was no room to doubt its emphasis. It was not easy
to hand over the reins of power. Fifteen years of office with a
prosperous country and a reasonably united party, had made authority a
habit. The sting of defeat, apprehensions roused by the tactics and
the propaganda of the campaign, the certainty that possesses every
government that its successors cannot rise to its level, regret for
uncompleted tasks, were far from offset by the weariness long years of
strain had brought. Yet there was nothing to do but to accept the
fortunes of war. After winding up routine business, and without
attempting to make any eleventh-hour appointments, the Laurier
administration resigned on the sixth of October.

His Majesty's Government had become His Majesty's Opposition. The
Liberal party had been seriously weakened, particularly in Ontario and
the Maritime provinces. Sir Allen Aylesworth had been compelled, by a
growing and limiting deafness, to retire. Messrs. Fielding, Graham,
Paterson, King, Templeman, had been overwhelmed by the electoral
landslide, though a seat was soon found for Mr. Graham through the
resignation of an Ontario Liberal member. Charles Murphy was the only
minister who succeeded in holding an Ontario riding, but in F. F.
Pardee, A. H. Clarke, A. B. McCoig, D. C. Ross, there was the nucleus
of a strong Ontario group. Quebec had been least affected. Rodolphe
Lemieux, Henri Bland, Jacques Bureau, Ernest Lapointe, had all
returned, and in J. A. Robb, and young men who embodied the promise of
old names--Papineaus, Pacauds--the House had received a vigorous
reinforcement. William Pugsley and Frank Carvell upheld New
Brunswick's traditions, and A. K. Maclean, D. D. Mackenzie, J. H.
Sinclair, and G. W. Kyte answered for Nova Scotia's Liberalism. The
West was particularly rich in promise, with W. M. Martin, W. E.
Knowles, Frank Oliver, W. A. Buchanan, and Michael Clark standing for
the prairie progressivism which was soon to become a distinct factor
in public life.

The defeat of his government faced Sir Wilfrid Laurier sharply with
the question of his continued leadership. It had been his intention,
if returned to power, to retire in favour of a younger man within a
year or two. He was now in his seventieth year. He had spent forty
years in legislative halls, thirty-eight of them in the House of
Commons. Not a man of the two hundred who sat in the Commons when he
entered was beside him now. He was the last of his generation in
active public life. The assiduous care of Lady Laurier, and his own
temperance and control of wasting emotions had guarded him from
serious illness, but he had little of the robust energy and the
reserves of force needed for the unremitting campaigning and
organizing and the vigilant criticism of an Opposition leader's lot.
He had other dreams for his last years, the quiet of his study, the
friendship of old comrades and happy youngsters, the writing of a life
of Antoine Aim Dorion or a history of Canada since Confederation. Yet
he did not wish to give up the fight in the instant of defeat. There
were able and vigorous lieutenants to aid in the party's work. He was
frankly fond of power and fond of the game of politics. He agreed, in
his objective, dispassionate way, that there was in fact no other man
in the party who could take his place in holding the different wings
together and holding the country's interest. He proposed resignation
at the opening of the session, but, not wholly loth, acceded to the
loyal and unanimous desire of his followers to remain his followers
still.

On October 10, the new ministry had been announced and duly sworn. At
fifty-seven, after fifteen years in parliament and ten as leader of
his party, Robert Laird Borden was now Prime Minister of Canada. He
brought many admirable qualities to his high task. Personally upright,
clean, and fair in political tactics, a serious and diligent student
of the country's problems, a recognized constitutional authority,
endowed with no little patience and persistence, he had the respect
of all his countrymen. His party followers had more than once looked
back with longing to the magnetism of Macdonald and the aggressiveness
of Tupper, and had dallied with thoughts of the picturesque
personality of Richard McBride, the robust, downright partisanship of
Rodmond Roblin, the genial astuteness of Robert Rogers, but they had
always come back to the solid worth of Robert Borden. A certain
susceptibility to pressure was not unwelcome to his party lieutenants,
but it was to prove the side of his endowment most questioned in other
quarters in years that were to come.

In his cabinet-making, Mr. Borden, like other premiers, was limited by
his materials, his past commitments and his own character. There was
some thought of following the Laurier precedent by including the
leading Conservative provincial premiers. John D. Hazen of New
Brunswick accepted a portfolio, but Sir James Whitney, Richard McBride
and Rodmond Roblin declined. The public considered that men of
standing in the party and in the country such as Herbert Ames, T.
Chase Casgrain, Charles Magrath, Andrew Broder, and R. B. Bennett
would be included, and Henri Bourassa, Sir Hugh Graham, and Sir
William Van Horne had a place in many slates. The actual selection
brought many surprises. There were few names of outstanding
distinction. Mr. Foster gave to the government his splendid power of
aggressive debate and to the country a lonely insistence, born of the
hard times of the nineties, upon economy. The appointment of W. T.
White, a former Liberal, one of Toronto's Eighteen, a man of wide
culture and proved financial training, as Minister of Finance, was
greeted with some growls from party stalwarts, but with distinct and
increasing approval in the country. Mr. Monk, leader of the Quebec
wing, had long experience and clear-cut convictions. For the rest,
some were highly respectable, some were undoubtedly able, some were
personal friends, and some had camped for days on the door-step of the
prime minister elect.[56] One most significant feature was that every
one of the French-Canadian ministers was drawn from the Nationalist or
Autonomist camp. The naming of the Quebec members had been delegated
to Mr. Monk. Later, Mr. Bourassa and Mr. Lavergne revealed the fact
that Mr. Monk had offered them portfolios. They declined, but gave
their approval to the men who were chosen, Louis Pelletier, and Bruno
Nantel, with Mr. Blondin as Deputy Speaker. Equally significant, in
view of the later railway developments, was the obvious good fortune
of the Canadian Northern in finding so many of its close friends in
high places.

[Footnote 56: "The Montreal Star," the most violent and influential
press opponent of the Laurier government in the election, thus greeted
the new cabinet: "There were the highest hopes throughout the country
that with his huge majority Mr. Borden would feel free to give us a
government wholly unshadowed by even a question as to the character or
reputation of any of the Ministers. It would be pure hypocrisy for the
_Montreal Star_ to pretend that this has been done. . . . Sinister
influences have been granted admission to the Privy Council Chamber at
a time when they might have been rigidly excluded."]

In the year that followed, Sir Wilfrid gave himself vigorously between
sessions to the education of public opinion. In over a score of public
meetings in Quebec and Ontario and at half a dozen political banquets
and demonstrations, he defended his own policy and attacked Mr.
Borden's. He called up all his reserves of strength and threw his
old-time force into his addresses. "I am young yet in everything but
the arithmetic of years," he told a Woodstock audience. "I don't feel
ripe for heaven, and at all events I want another tussle with the
Tories." "My orders are to fight," he told a great gathering at the
Reform Club in Montreal. He attacked "the frail and puny faith" of
those who had feared to risk their loyalty in friendly intercourse
with their neighbours. "I accept the verdict, but the problem is still
there. To the prairie provinces larger markets are an indispensable
necessity. . . . We have lost our friends, power, popularity, but I
regret nothing. We have sown the seed: we shall yet see it germinate."
Mr. Foster's efforts to find markets in the West Indies while banging
and bolting and barring the open door into the United States, he
declared, was well as far as it went, but it did not go far: "The West
asked for water and Mr. Foster handed them a thimbleful; they wanted a
full meal and he gave them a peanut." He made much of the delay of his
opponents in presenting their naval policy, after their perfervid
insistence on the imminence of danger and the need of haste. "There
are those who say to us," he declared at Sherbrooke, "'Give up this
naval policy,' but no, sir, I will not give it up. So long as I lead
the Liberal party, so long will it do its duty by the nation and by
the Empire."

There were not wanting friends who urged the abandonment of
reciprocity and the movement for lower tariffs. A Toronto
manufacturer, who had supported him vigorously in the contest, wrote
now:

      It seems to me that it is our policy to let the people
      know that this issue is now dead, and in future
      whatever fiscal changes may be necessary will be made
      independently of whatever the United States may do,
      and that any future Liberal government will, as your
      government has done, foster the growth and prosperity
      of manufacturing industries, by continuing a steady
      fiscal policy which shall at all times, afford them
      reasonable protection. If the Liberal party does not
      come out in the way I suggest and announce positively
      that neither reciprocity nor the tariff will be an
      issue in the future, I am afraid that every Liberal
      to-day who is directly or indirectly interested in
      manufacturing will be driven to the other side.

Sir Wilfrid replied:

      Ottawa, October 24, 1911.

      I hasten to offer you my thanks for yours of the 21st.
      instant, just received. I am really grateful that you
      should have exposed your views to me in so open and
      frank a manner.

      I do not entirely agree with you in your summing up of
      the present situation, though there is one point upon
      which I altogether agree with you, and it is that "our
      manufactures have been organized under a system of
      protection which is to be maintained." I have made
      this declaration more than once during the last
      election. Unfortunately, the forces at work against us
      were stronger than any words of mine or of my
      colleagues and the manufacturers were convinced that
      this agreement with the United States, which in no way
      affects them, would be followed by another which
      would. In this their attitude was wrong and unfair to
      us. Whether in office or in opposition, my position
      upon this point remains the same. There might be some
      temptation to pay back in their own coin those who
      went against us, but this consideration must give way
      to the greater consideration of the needs of the
      country at large; our present system of levying the
      revenue by customs duties must be maintained.

      I do not mean, however, to say by this that the policy
      of reciprocity in natural products is dead, as you
      seem to say it is. Your summarizing of the situation,
      that all the provinces except Alberta and Saskatchewan
      were against reciprocity, is not exactly accurate,
      for, in point of fact, we carried Nova Scotia, New
      Brunswick, Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan. The
      anti-reciprocity men carried British Columbia,
      Manitoba, and Ontario, the latter by a sweeping
      majority, and Manitoba by a bare majority of the
      actual electoral vote, though a large majority of
      seats.

      In my judgment, the manufacturers made a great mistake
      in refusing to give way to the very legitimate demand
      of the farmers, especially the Western farmers who,
      being balked in their effort to get the American
      market for their products, will now work for the free
      entrance into Canada of American manufactured products
      and especially agricultural implements.

      At present there is nothing to do but to await events.
      If the Democrats carry out their policy and open their
      markets to our Canadian natural products, we shall
      never hear any more of reciprocity, but if the present
      American tariff is continued as it is now, we must be
      prepared for a serious agitation from the Western
      farmers. The danger of the situation is the
      possibility of a feeling of distrust between the West
      and the East, as outlined in the "Weyburn Herald."
      This fact has been completely overlooked by the
      Ontario electors, but it is one which must cause a
      good deal of concern to any one who has at heart the
      future of the country.

      Let me, before I close, thank you most sincerely for
      the great support which you have given us in the last
      election. Had all our friends done likewise, the
      result would have been different from what it is. I
      believe that it was not only the question of
      reciprocity which operated against us, but that the
      _Ne Temere_ decree and the Eucharistic Congress had a
      good deal to do with our downfall.

      Believe me ever, Yours very sincerely, Wilfrid
      Laurier.

Three sessions of the new parliament were held before the outbreak of
the Great War, from November, 1911, to April, 1912, from November,
1912, to June, 1913, and from January, 1914, to the following June.
They were busy sessions and, after the first, contentious sessions.
The government succeeded in enacting a very fair amount of progressive
legislation, particularly the decennial revision of the Bank Act,
provision for aiding the provinces in agricultural instruction, and a
trade agreement with the British West Indies. The boundaries of
Manitoba, and incidentally of Ontario and Quebec, were extended far
northward to Hudson Bay, with some difficulty from Nationalist members
who demanded, but without avail, that the separate school rights of
the minority in a section of Keewatin now to be incorporated in
Manitoba should be safeguarded by a special clause.

In some of its most important measures the government ran foul of the
Senate. An unbroken series of party appointments had made the upper
house overwhelmingly Liberal, and in spite of academic debates in the
House on methods of Senate reform, and of a movement within the
cabinet in 1910 which would have led in time to a moderate measure of
reform in appointment and tenure of senators, nothing had been done to
change the situation. Now the Borden government was forced to sit by
while the Senate, in the first session, rejected or imposed
unacceptable amendments upon its bills. The Senate rejected a measure
granting a federal subsidy to Ontario's government-owned railway, the
Temiskaming and Northern Ontario. It declined to sanction a permanent
tariff commission unless provision was made, in the case of all
applications for higher duties, for publicity as to numbers employed,
production, hours of labour and rates of wages, shareholders, and
dividends. It supported the Opposition's contention that a measure for
granting aid to the provinces in building highways involved dangerous
possibilities of political pressure and federal machines unless the
division among the provinces was made automatic, in proportion to
population. In the following session, it again rejected the highways
proposal, insisted that a sweeping grant of power to purchase branch
lines for the Intercolonial should be made contingent upon
ratification by parliament, and filled the cup by its attitude toward
the Naval Bill. For the moment, there was much muttering of mending or
ending the Senate, with the Conservatives championing the rights of
the people against this autocratic and unrepresentative chamber and
the Liberals defending this bulwark of the nation's interests against
hasty and partisan legislation, but soon time solved the problem in
the usual way, with the death of Liberal senators and the unvarying
appointment of Conservatives to take their place.

None of these measures was of dominating interest. It was the new
government's naval policy, its fiscal policy in face of business
depression, and its railway policy that held the centre of the
political stage. Mr. Borden's most pressing task was the shaping of a
naval policy. He had insisted in January, 1910, that the Empire faced
an emergency which might rend it asunder, that the war, the war of
construction, had already begun; "all beyond is chaos and darkness";
"immediate, vigorous, earnest action is necessary." Yet in the
election of 1911 he had been discreetly silent. In power, he was still
more cautious. "It is infinitely better to be right than to be in a
hurry," he told parliament in its first session. Month after month
went by and no policy was determined. The Naval Service Act of 1910
was not repealed, but no contracts were let for construction, and
recruiting for the cadet ships was halted. Mr. Borden stated early in
1912 that the policy of the Laurier government would not be continued,
but that no alternative policy would be determined until after
consultation with the British Admiralty and after full consideration
of the problem of securing a share in the councils of the Empire. In
the summer of 1912, accompanied by Messrs. Hazen, Doherty, and
Pelletier, he visited England and consulted the Asquith government. In
December, 1912, fifteen months after his accession to power, the
prime minister announced his policy to the Canadian parliament.

Well before the government acted, it was plain in what direction it
was tending. Factors in Canada and Great Britain were making strongly
for the abandonment of the policy of a Canadian navy and Canadian
autonomy in foreign policy, and the adoption of a policy of
contributions to the British navy, with the assumption by Canada of a
more or less real share in Britain's foreign policy. Mr. Borden's
personal opinions had been marked by the current combination of
national and imperial sentiment. Until 1910, the national tendency was
distinctly stronger. Since that time, pressure from his
ultra-imperialist lieutenants, the influence of English missioners,
the anti-American incidents of the reciprocity campaign, the imminence
of military peril, and the necessity of uniting the two wings of his
party had given the imperial tendency the upper hand. When the premier
reached England in July, he had already decided on the main lines of
his policy. "The sea defences of the Empire can best be secured by one
navy"; "we are determined to take our share in the world-wide mission
of the Empire"; "Canada does not propose to be an adjunct even of the
British Empire," were the keynotes of his first public addresses.
Before he left England he declared that "the supremacy of the seas
must be maintained by one navy . . . under one central control and
direction." The month in England, the review of the mighty fleet,
with its impressive five miles of towering battle-ships, darting
destroyers, snaky submarines, and hovering aroplanes, the visits to
the British steel works, the discussions in the Imperial Defence
Committee, the ducal banquets and royal garden parties had all tended
to confirm his decision. Finding Mr. Borden thus amenable, the
Admiralty under Mr. Winston Churchill's impetuous direction had
repented of its half-hearted conversion to the policy of Dominion
navies, and had leaped at the chance to re-establish its ideal of a
single navy under its own control. As recently as May, Mr. Churchill
had declared that

      if the main development of the last ten years has been
      the concentration of the British fleet in decisive
      theatres, it seems to me not unlikely that the main
      naval development of the next ten years will be the
      growth of effective naval forces in the great
      Dominions over seas.... The fact that our fleet has
      not only concentrated in the decisive theatre of
      European waters, but must be kept concentrated and in
      a certain sense tied to that theatre has been for some
      years creating a new situation, a new need, a new
      opportunity for the great self-governing Dominions of
      the Crown.

Yet this had apparently been an outcome of expediency rather than
conviction, as two months earlier he had stated in the House that in
the Admiralty view additions to the imperial navy were more effectual
than local navies. Now, with the senior Dominion apparently ready to
recant, Mr. Churchill seized the opportunity and for two years
strained every nerve in the endeavour to surround the Admiralty with a
humble circle of tribute-bearers from the seven seas.

In presenting his policy to parliament, Mr. Borden quoted a memorandum
prepared at his request by the Admiralty, which concluded a review of
the naval situation by the statement:

      The Prime Minister of the Dominion having inquired in
      what form any immediate aid that Canada might give
      would be most effective, we have no hesitation in
      answering, after a prolonged consideration of all the
      circumstances, that it is desirable that such aid
      should include the provision of a certain number of
      the largest and strongest ships of war which science
      can build or money supply.

Mr. Borden went on to declare that Canadians were joint trustees for
the security of a vast heritage; this heritage was now threatened. To
meet the emergency, the government asked parliament to vote
$35,000,000 to build the three most powerful battle-ships in the
world, to be incorporated in the imperial navy. A system of regular
and periodical contributions would not be a satisfactory solution of
the permanent question, and it was arranged that if in future it
should be decided to establish "a Canadian unit of the British Navy,"
the three ships could be recalled. As to the form of the permanent
naval policy, he did not commit himself, but his own drift was clear
from his statement that Canada could not build up any efficient naval
organization in a quarter or half a century, and even then it would be
a poor, weak substitute for the splendid organization of the British
Admiralty. Pending the working out of a permanent policy of defence
and the provision for a voice in the foreign policy of the Empire
which must go with any definite share in Empire burdens, it had been
arranged that all meetings of the Imperial Defence Committee would be
open to a Canadian minister stationed in London, and that "no
important step in foreign policy would be undertaken without
consultation with such a representative of Canada."

Sir Wilfrid commented briefly, expressing his pleasure at learning
that there was no real emergency in Europe, but simply the usual
tendency towards excessive armament. On the following day a Liberal
caucus decided, without a dissenting voice, to oppose the contribution
policy and to reiterate the demand for a Canadian navy on a somewhat
larger scale than contemplated in 1910. When debate was resumed on
December 12, Sir Wilfrid led the attack. He referred lightly to the
failure of Mr. Borden to adhere to the agreement of 1909, and to the
divergencies in the two wings of his party, but he did not dwell on
these points: he would confine himself to the merits of the present
proposal, and not add a word which would fan the flames that had been
kindled. Canada had a duty to face: "We have to take our share in the
defence, not only of our native shores, but of the Empire as a whole."
He could not agree with the Nationalists, who had opposed action
because of the sacrifice of Canadian interests by British diplomacy in
the past; those mistakes only proved the necessity of local control of
local interests. Nor could he agree with them in proposing to rely on
the Monroe doctrine; Cuba with its foreign policy controlled by the
United States was the answer to that suggestion. But on what lines
should action be taken? Deftly, Sir Wilfrid proceeded to make clear
how, on the evidence presented by the Admiralty itself, there was no
naval emergency in the North Sea and that its policy of North Sea
concentration made it imperative for the Dominions also to guard their
local waters:

      There was an apprehension far and wide-spread that,
      somehow, somewhere, some mysterious danger was
      threatening England. And, indeed, some went so far as
      to say that England was on her knees, begging for
      support,--an assertion which surely was more
      calculated to wound the pride of those to whom it was
      addressed than to create respect for those who uttered
      it. All these apprehensions, however, have been
      removed by the document which has been placed on the
      table of the House by my right honourable friend.
      England is always England; she bows the knee to no
      one; she asks no favour from anybody; she does not
      come here as a suppliant, still less as a mendicant;
      but, to the enquiry of our ministers, she answered:
      Here are the facts set forth in this paper; judge for
      yourselves and act as you please. This is the
      language, and it is no other than we might expect from
      English statesmen and English people.

      Sir, in other respects there is cause for rejoicing.
      This document shows that there is no emergency, that
      England is in no danger, whether imminent or
      prospective. But the document discloses a condition of
      things of which we knew, but upon which has now been
      placed the sanction of official correspondence. It
      shows that there has been going on in Europe for some
      years past a certain movement to which we cannot be
      indifferent. The armament of the great powers has
      compelled England to alter the strategic lines which
      hitherto have been essential to her security. The
      document discloses the fact that, on account of this
      increased naval armament, England, in order to
      maintain her security in her own waters, has been
      obliged to withdraw some of her naval forces from the
      distant seas. . . .

      Such is the condition; and I ask once more what is the
      remedy? In our humble judgment, the remedy is this,
      that wherever, in the distant seas or in the distant
      countries,--in Australia, Canada, or elsewhere,--a
      British ship has been removed to allow of
      concentration in European waters, that ship should be
      replaced by a ship built, maintained, equipped and
      manned by the young nation immediately concerned. If
      the young nations of the Empire take hold of the
      equipment and manning of ships to look after the
      distant seas, concentration can easily take place in
      the waters of Europe, and the British Admiralty knows
      what zones it has to defend. This is the Australian
      policy; this ought to be the Canadian policy. I insist
      once more upon what is stated in the memorandum: There
      is no emergency, there is no immediate danger, there
      is no prospective danger. If there were an emergency,
      if England were in danger--no, I will not use that
      expression; I will not say if England were in danger,
      but simply if England were on trial with one or two or
      more of the great powers of Europe, my right
      honourable friend might come and ask, not $35,000,000,
      but twice, three times, four times $35,000,000. We
      would put at the disposal of England all the resources
      of Canada; there would not be a single dissentient
      voice.

[Illustration: SIR ROBERT BORDEN Prime Minister of
Canada, 1911-1920]

      But this is not the condition with which we have to
      deal. The condition that we have to deal with to-day
      is simply what I described a moment ago. This is not
      new. The memorandum which my right honourable friend
      submitted the other day disclosed nothing which we did
      not know before. Every word that is there we knew;
      every figure we knew. I may say more: every word,
      every figure in that memorandum we discussed four
      years ago. We discussed it in the month of March,
      1909; and then we came to the conclusion, the
      unanimous conclusion, that the best method of helping
      England, of discharging our duty, was not by
      contribution, but by the creation of a Canadian navy.
      . . .

      Four years ago, my right honourable friend said we
      must and will. To-day he no longer says we must and
      will; but we on this side of the House continue to say
      we must and will. Now, sir, I ask, why is it that my
      right honourable friend and his first lieutenant, the
      leaders of the Opposition then, who to-day have the
      responsibility of office, will not go on with the
      policy so forcibly put forward by them, instead of a
      policy under which, in the language of my right
      honourable friend, there will be no preparation of the
      soil or beginning or growth of the product of defence?
      The reason, sir, is not far to seek. The reason is
      well known: there is one and only one and it is
      because this subject of imperial defence has been made
      the subject of contentious politics. It is the result
      of the alliance, the unholy alliance, which has been
      formed by the honourable gentlemen opposite. . . .

      What is this contribution that we have to-day before
      us, and upon which we are asked to vote? It is big in
      money; it is big in figures. Is it as big otherwise as
      it ought to be? I ask every honourable member of this
      House; I ask every honourable gentleman sitting there:
      You give England two or three dreadnoughts, to be paid
      for by Canada, but to be equipped, maintained and
      manned by England. Did I say manned by England? I must
      qualify that statement. In justice to my right
      honourable friend, I must qualify that statement;
      because he told us that he had secured from the
      imperial authorities the privilege of having Canadian
      officers serve on those ships. Oh, ye Tory jingoes, is
      that the amount of the sacrifice you are prepared to
      make? You are ready to furnish admirals,
      rear-admirals, commodores, captains, officers of all
      grades, plumes, feathers, and gold lace; but you leave
      it to England to supply the bone and sinews on board
      those ships. You say that these ships shall bear
      Canadian names. That will be the only thing Canadian
      about them. You hire somebody to do your work; in
      other words, you are ready to do anything except the
      fighting. Is that, sir, the true policy?

      [Some honourable members: No. No!]

      Is that the true policy? It is a hybrid policy, it is
      a cross between jingoism and nationalism. Unless I
      mistake the spirit of the Canadian people, if they are
      true to their ideals, if they are true to their own
      blood, no matter to what province they belong, they
      will not be satisfied with this hybrid policy, but
      they will insist that their contribution shall be a
      contribution of money and of men as well, as was
      provided in our resolution of 1909. . . .

      But I may be told that is not the policy recommended
      by the Admiralty to the prime minister. Sir, I deny
      that altogether. My right honourable friend did not go
      to England to consult the Admiralty about a policy. It
      is evident that when my right honourable friend went
      to England, he had abandoned the policy of a Canadian
      navy. He went to England--it is very clear from the
      last paragraph of the memorandum--to ask what they
      would accept for immediate aid. In other words, he
      went to England to ask what England would accept in
      the case of an emergency, although there was no
      emergency.

It had been said that a Canadian navy was a separatist navy. As to
that, he would not discuss every opinion he had held at twenty or even
at forty; he had learned something from observation and experience:
"Any thought of separation from Great Britain, if any such thought
exists anywhere, and I do not believe it does, would be a folly and a
crime." Canada would be at war when England was at war, but would
herself decide as to whether her forces would take part in the
conflict. The government's proposals settled nothing:

      The problem which you have to deal with is one which
      demands a permanent policy, a policy for to-day, for
      to-morrow, and for every day, so long as the armaments
      grow in Europe; and the duty which you owe to
      yourselves, to Canada, and to the Empire, is the
      enactment of a permanent policy. As regards the
      creation of a Canadian navy, you have apparently
      decided against that. In respect to contribution, does
      any one imagine that you will have only one
      contribution? Contributions must be recurring and
      again recurring, and, in the words of my honourable
      friend from North Toronto, they leave no trace behind
      them. As I understand from the speech of my honourable
      friend, he does not want to have a permanent policy on
      this subject, because he says, "Before we have a
      permanent policy we must have a voice in all questions
      of peace or war.". . .

      Whether we shall or shall not have a voice in all
      questions affecting peace and war is a very large
      proposition, and I would not, at the present time,
      pronounce finally upon it; but there are certain
      objections that present themselves at once to my mind.
      The diplomatic service of England is carried on by the
      Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and it is
      to-day in as good hands as it ever was. These
      transactions are very minute, very serious, and
      sometimes must be carried on with great secrecy. I
      understand that my right honourable friend proposes to
      the English Admiralty that there should be a
      representative of the Canadian government all the time
      in England to confer with the Secretary of State for
      Foreign Affairs on all questions on which war may
      probably arise. If this is done for Canada, it must be
      done for Australia, for New Zealand, for South Africa,
      and for Newfoundland, and I doubt very much if the
      Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs would receive
      much assistance from such a multitude of advisers.
      Supposing they do not agree, or supposing they do
      agree, how can we pretend to dictate in these matters,
      or even to take part? The Foreign Office, only last
      year, had to deal with the question of the division of
      Persia. Are we to understand that Canada and all the
      other Dominions would be invited to discuss such a
      question with the Foreign Office?

      A few years ago, the Afghan boundary question was a
      burning question with the Foreign Office. Of late
      years, it has been put in the background by the fact
      that Russia has not been in a position to be
      aggressive. But that question may be revived. Within
      the last year, when the German Emperor sent warships
      to Agadir, the Foreign Office had to take immediate
      action upon the question whether Germany should be
      allowed a footing in North Africa. Would the Dominion
      of Canada also be interested in and be consulted upon
      this question? If so, it seems to me that this is
      opening a door to consequences which must be carefully
      considered before any action is taken. I do not wish
      to condemn the view taken by the right honourable
      gentleman; I do not now approve or condemn it; the
      subject is too new. But the point upon which I appeal
      to him, and to which I ask the attention of the House,
      is this, that we cannot postpone our preparation for
      defence until this question is settled. It may take a
      long time to settle it. Therefore, let it be settled
      by itself; but, in the meantime, let our preparations
      go on.

      My right honourable friend concluded the argumentative
      part of his speech with the statement that, in
      claiming for the overseas Dominions the power to have
      a voice in all questions of peace and war, he was
      inviting the attention of the statesmen of Great
      Britain "to the real problem of imperial existence." I
      think it would be difficult for my right honourable
      friend, or any body else, to convince us that the
      existence of the British Empire rests upon so slender
      a thread. We have been accustomed to believe, and we
      will continue to believe, that it rests upon a firmer
      basis. Sir, I am not indifferent--far from it--to
      anything that concerns the unity of the British
      Empire. This agglomeration of continents under the
      British Crown has something in it which strikes the
      imagination, something which has always had, at all
      events for me, a great attraction. But I have always
      believed, and will continue to believe, that the firm
      basis of the British Empire is, next to the British
      Crown, the local autonomy of the different
      dependencies; that is to say, their working out of
      their own destinies to the central end of the Empire.
      The Crown is the great bond, the cement, which binds
      together the scattered continents over the whole
      world. The Crown is a purely sentimental bond; but
      that bond, though purely sentimental, has proven
      itself stronger than armies and navies; has shown
      itself to be equal to all occasions. I do not believe
      the Empire is in danger; I do not believe it can be
      cemented by the means suggested by my right honourable
      friend. I believe the relations of the different parts
      of the Empire to the mother country are not perfect,
      but that essentially they are perfectible. You can
      discuss problems of improvement; there is no occasion
      to discuss problems of existence.

Sir Wilfrid concluded by moving in amendment the construction of two
fleet units, to be stationed on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, under
the terms of the Naval Service Act of 1910.

With these beginnings, the debate ran long and ranged far. Government
speakers attacked the two-fleet-units policy as expensive, useless,
separatist. Why, if there was no emergency, expand a programme of
$11,000,000 in 1910 to a programme of, say, $50,000,000 in 1912? "We
pay for the policing of our towns, why not pay the greatest policeman
in the world, the British navy?" The danger from Germany was imminent
and serious. Canada owed Britain hundreds of millions for past
expenditures on her defence. Liberal speakers made light of the
emergency. Britain did not know it existed; the panic of 1909 had
passed; two general elections had been fought, not on the navy, but on
land taxes and the veto of the Lords; in the past summer Mr. Churchill
had declared that there was no cause for alarm, the government was
absolutely confident in the adequacy of its programme; Lord Crewe,
said, "We consider the security of the country is achieved" and that
"any premature building, any splash of a programme before the ships
are needed, would defeat our own ends"; Mr. Asquith, that there was
not the least occasion for panic: "There never has been a moment and
there is not now when we have not been overwhelmingly superior against
any combination which can reasonably be anticipated"; Mr. Balfour,
that "the fleets of the triple entente are not inadequate now and are
not going to be inadequate to any strain that is going to be placed
upon them"; and Mr. Bonar Law: "Do any of us really believe that there
is danger, any vital danger? I confess that I have the greatest
difficulty in believing it myself." Mr. Borden had denied that he
stood for permanent contributions, and yet all his arguments ran that
way. With no emergency, and with Mr. Borden deprecating Canada's ever
starting a navy of her own, the excuse for separating immediate from
permanent policy became a shallow pretence to meet the real
emergency--the exigencies of the Conservative-Nationalist alliance.
Canada could build ships, could sail them, could fight them; one thing
she could not do, pay tribute.

The debate differed from that of two years earlier in the greater
consideration given to the control of foreign policy. Roughly
speaking, there were three attitudes. The Nationalists, who had first
raised the question, declared that Canada should do nothing in the way
of imperial defence since she did not have any voice in imperial
policy. The Conservatives made important variations: Canada should do
nothing in the way of a permanent policy of imperial defence until she
had a voice in imperial policy. "We say," declared Mr. Borden on
February 27, "that if we are to remain an Empire we cannot have five
foreign policies and five separate navies. We say, a just voice of all
the Dominions in foreign policy and the concerns of the Empire and a
united Empire to face every peril." The Liberal position, taking shape
slowly and without complete and systematic exposition, was that Canada
should decide her own policy in imperial and foreign matters and make
and control her defence accordingly. There was no one foreign policy;
each Dominion was coming, like Great Britain, to have separate
interests, distinct relations, foreign policies of its own. To abandon
the control over its own interests in order to become involved in the
policies designed primarily to advance the interests of other parts of
the Empire was dubious wisdom. "Five foreign policies and five
separate navies," policies co-ordinated by conference of friendly
allies, was in fact the direction in which Liberal opinion was
tending. "The only voice we can have," Sir Wilfrid replied to Mr.
Borden, "must be under the control of the Canadian parliament, the
Canadian government, the Canadian people." Or, in the more explicit
words of Mr. Bland: "I do not believe that the people of this country
want to share in the foreign policy of Great Britain. . . . At this
hour of our history, when we possess the undisputed privilege of
making our own treaties, when this parliament is in the possession of
the undisputed direction of its military forces; when we have the
assurance from the British government that no question affecting our
Dominions shall be settled without the consent of the Canadian
parliament; when the time has come that our coasts are uncovered by
the withdrawal of the British squadrons and we are confronted with the
manifest duty of supplying the protection the mother country can no
longer extend to us; at this time we are told we must ascend to a
place in the temple where the destinies of Europe are decided. Canada
is to embark upon the whirlpool of European politics. This movement, I
claim, is a retrograde movement. The status of Canada is that of a
sister nation and not that of a daughter nation."

All that could be said was soon said, but the debate went on. Fresh
fire was given it by two extraordinary communications from Winston
Churchill written in January in response to requests from Mr. Borden
for ammunition. Mr. Churchill demonstrated that Canadians could not
build battle-ships, that they could not and Britain would not man
their cruisers, and that they could not maintain a navy in efficiency.
His navely frank argument for the perpetual use of British rather
than Canadian shipyards and for permanent Admiralty control--"the most
irritating document from authority in Britain since the days of Lord
North," Mr. Emmerson termed it--was followed in March by an attempt to
influence Canadian opinion and predetermine Dominion policy by
announcing an Admiralty plan for an imperial squadron of five
Dominion dreadnought cruisers, based on Gibraltar. His action
intensified national feeling in Canada and stiffened Liberal
resistance to the Borden measure. Amendment after amendment was made,
only to be voted down. Every naval commander from Noah to Nelson was
quoted and quoted again. Conservatives ceased to speak and Liberals
spoke double time. Tempers rose, interruption was frequent, the
Speaker "named" members, and still little progress was made with the
bill. Finally, the government decided to force the bill through under
closure.

On April 9, Mr. Borden moved the adoption of rules of closure. By
sharp strategy, debate on this proposal itself was limited. Sir
Wilfrid, stirred for once into indignation and hot cries of "shame!"
was prevented from moving an amendment, and the new rules of procedure
were jammed through. There was much to be said for reform in procedure
and for the right of the responsible majority to carry its measures
through, as of late years parliament in many countries had concluded,
but particularly in Sir Wilfrid Laurier's eyes the case for freedom of
debate was still stronger:

      We have heard it stated that these rules are
      antiquated. I do not admit that at all. These rules
      are not antiquated. They were not made for a day or
      for a period; they were made for the ages. It can be
      said of them, as has been said of the maxims of civil
      law which have come to us from the Roman jurists, and
      which are the basis of the civil law of most of the
      nations of Europe, that they are reason crystallized
      into writing. The maxims of the civil law have been
      applied to the relations of the people in civil life,
      and the maxims of our parliamentary procedure have
      been accepted as the basis of the transaction of
      business in all deliberative assemblies.

      Sir, these rules are to be swept away, they are to be
      ridden over roughshod; they are to be put aside, and
      we are to have the gag substituted for them. And what
      is the pretence? The pretence is that there has been
      obstruction in the House. . . . My right honourable
      friend has quoted the opinions of some friends of
      myself in favour of closure. But, sir, I also have the
      honour to belong to the great Liberal party of Canada.
      I have occupied a position of some importance in it;
      nay, I may say that for twenty years and more I have
      been entrusted with its chief command. During the
      fifteen years I was in office it sometimes happened
      that friends came to me and told me that I was not
      doing justice to myself and to the party, but that I
      should impose closure, as had been done in many other
      parliaments. Sir, I am a Liberal of the old school; I
      have been brought up in the school of Fox and of the
      old leaders of the Liberal party; and I could not
      bring myself to the point of depriving a minority in
      parliament of such a valuable weapon as it would be
      deprived of by the introduction of closure. Perhaps I
      was wrong: perhaps I was too generous. Nay, I was not;
      I would rather stand here to-day, having refused,
      during the fifteen years of my administration, to
      impose closure, and having decided to abide by the old
      rules. . . . As I have said, there are some occasions
      on which there is a cleavage between the majority and
      the minority, and then there is an easy remedy, an
      easy solution. The remedy is not closure; it is not
      the application of brute force. The remedy is an
      appeal to the people. The people, after all, are the
      judge and the jury. The people, after all, are the
      parties to pass judgment as between the government and
      the Opposition, as between the majority and the
      minority; and, Sir, the least I would have expected on
      such an occasion as this was that the government of
      the day would have adopted that remedy, and not have
      resorted to closure. . . .

      My right honourable friend stated, not to-day but the
      last time when he spoke upon that question, that the
      remedy which I suggested was absurd, because, he said,
      if upon every occasion upon which there was
      obstruction the government were obliged to go to the
      country we might every year have a general election.
      Let me tell my right honourable friend that there is
      no sense in such an objection, because obstruction
      cannot be of any avail unless it is backed up by a
      strong expression of public opinion, and unless it be
      on some most important question. If there were at any
      time in this House a political party so oblivious to
      the respect it owes to itself and to the country as to
      obstruct upon a trivial question, that party would
      lose all the confidence it might have in the country
      and any chance of ever again creating an impression
      upon the people. But, sir, there is a better reason
      than that. When we come to discuss these
      constitutional questions, these questions of public
      policy, the best authority after all is the authority
      of history. Confederation will have been in existence
      forty-six years next July, and how many times has
      there been obstruction during these last forty-five
      years? Just four times before this year. Let me recall
      them. There was obstruction in 1885, in 1896, in 1908,
      and in 1911, and after I have mentioned the causes for
      the obstruction on these several occasions, I shall
      have furnished the most complete justification for the
      attitude we have taken upon the present occasion. . . .
      The other occasion on which there was obstruction
      was in 1911. . . . We introduced the reciprocity
      measure on the twenty-sixth of January, and on the
      twenty-ninth of July we had not yet been able to
      obtain even a preliminary vote upon it. We had been
      met at every step by obstruction from the
      Conservatives, then in opposition; dilatory motions of
      every kind were made, speech after speech was
      delivered day in and day out, even in the dog days of
      summer. I did not complain; I did not whine. Two
      courses were open to me. I could have done as is done
      to-day by the prime minister; I could have introduced
      the closure and said that we must carry on the
      business of the government and that consistently with
      our dignity, we could not allow obstruction. But there
      was another course open to me and that was an appeal
      to the people; and I advised my colleagues to give
      the honourable gentlemen of the Opposition the
      opportunity of appealing to the people. We appealed to
      the people and we were defeated. Heaven is my witness
      that I would rather stand here to-day, defeated and in
      opposition by that appeal to the people, than stand
      over there in office by the power of the gag. . . .

      Let me repeat to my right honourable friend: As you
      sow, so shall you reap; as you are fair, so shall you
      meet with fairness; as you are unjust, so shall you
      meet with injustice. . . . The poison that he offers
      to us to-day will come to his own lips at some future
      day. We are in the minority; we can be gagged; we can
      be prevented from expressing our opinions; they can
      trample upon our rights; Sir, the day of reckoning
      will come, and it will come as soon as we have a
      dissolution of the present parliament.

With the closure in force, the Naval Bill received its third reading,
on a vote of 101 to 68, all the Nationalists but four and one Liberal,
Colonel Maclean, voting with the government. Even yet it had not
reached port; it had still to navigate the Senate. Government
supporters could not believe that the Senate majority would be so
unpatriotic, so reckless, so bent on suicide, as to reject the
measure. And was not Sir George Ross, leader of the Senate since Sir
Richard Cartwright's death the previous year, an Imperialist of
Imperialists? Had he not opposed reciprocity and waved the British
flag unceasingly? It was true that Sir George Ross in the eyes of many
Liberals was more responsible than any other for the weakening of the
old Ontario Liberal fibre, through his own practice and his persistent
advocacy of the policy of catering to the prejudices of imperialist
Toronto instead of fighting and educating it, but he now made amends.
The government's bill, he declared, was "empty as an exploded
cartridge, soulless as its plated sides." It sent empty ships, not
men, to fight; it made no appeal to national sentiment; it made for
cleavage, not for unity. Threats had been made that the will of the
people must prevail: very well, let the people decide. Weakened by the
illness which was to bring the end a year later, Sir George concluded
an address of strained but stirring eloquence by moving in the precise
words Mr. Borden had used in 1910, "that this House is not justified
in giving its assent to this bill until it is submitted to the
judgment of the country." Three days later the amendment was adopted
by a vote of 51 to 27, one Liberal siding with the government.

The Naval Bill was killed. There was much gnashing of teeth and threat
of vengeance, but nothing followed. For all the lightning flashes and
the booming thunder, Mr. Borden took no step towards averting the
"emergency." Sir George Ross had offered to vote the full $35,000,000
if spent on building vessels under the Act of 1910, but his offer was
not heeded. Mr. Borden himself had threatened to go to the country if
the bill was blocked, but faith in the reality of the emergency or in
the country's attitude did not prove strong enough when the test came.
In the two years that followed before war broke out, the Naval Service
Act remained on the statute-book, the training-ships were maintained
in half-hearted fashion, but no single step was taken in Canada to
provide defence at sea. Mr. Churchill, who had previously declared
that the British programme was ample and that the Canadian ships were
supplementary, now stated that the "gap would have to be filled," and
three British ships accelerated: whereupon Mr. Borden added that the
Canadian government would at some later date take these ships over.
Meanwhile Australia, realizing that there was a Pacific as well as a
North Sea and protesting against Canada's "tearing up the 1909
agreement," pressed steadily on with its own fleet, and even New
Zealand, the model colony, pronounced in favour of an
Australasian-Canadian fleet unit in the Pacific. Canadian Liberalism
and Australian Nationalism had stood firm, and the policy of
contribution had met enduring defeat.

One reason why the government was unable to arouse any substantial
agitation against the Senate's action lay in the financial depression
which had now fallen upon the country. In 1909 a Liberal member had
reported that the West was too eager about box-cars to care about
battle-ships; now West and East were too much preoccupied with
mortgages and margins to care greatly about Borden-Pelletier
dreadnoughts, or, for that matter, about Laurier fleet units. The long
swing of prosperity which had begun in 1896 and had halted only for a
moment in 1907, had now come to its end. Construction halted, credits
tightened, British funds dried up, factories slowed down, stock prices
sagged, land values collapsed, unemployment mounted. The world over,
the strain on credit imposed by Balkan wars and wars of armament, and
the reaction from the speculative activity of the past dozen years,
had forced a slowing up of trade and industry. In Canada, the crisis
was the more severe because of the heights to which speculation had
soared. There had been a very great measure of genuine and permanent
advance in the country's productive capacity, but there had also been
much premature, much misdirected, much parasitic activity. Too great a
proportion of money and energy had gone into long-time capital
expenditures, railways, municipal enterprises, and not enough into
immediate production. Subdivision prices had soared, but farm
production had fallen. Now the accounting had come.

The sudden shift in the business outlook did not become a direct
parliamentary issue, but it influenced the whole trend of public
affairs. Naturally the Liberals did not hesitate to contrast Laurier
prosperity with Borden depression. More legitimately, they criticized
the government for increasing ordinary expenditure ten to fifteen
million a year in the face of signs of falling revenue. But it was the
halt in railway-construction that chiefly entered into party debate.

An extraordinary era of railway building was approaching the end. By
1914 there were more than thirty thousand miles of road in operation,
with some eight to ten thousand more in various stages of completion:
Canada ranked fifth among the world's countries in total mileage and
easily first in mileage in proportion to population. While mileage had
grown by two-thirds since 1901, train miles had doubled, freight
carried trebled, and gross earnings more than trebled. East and West
had been bound by triple links of steel. The vast Northern hinterlands
of central Canada had been opened up. The prairies had been covered by
a network of main and branch lines. The roads had been built when
capital was abundant and cheap. So far as direct outlays were
concerned, the federal government had financed the payments out of
surplus revenue, without adding to the debt. But there was another
side now revealed. Much of the building had been without foresight,
without study, without plan. Local pressure and promoters' lobbying
had determined policy. There was much premature building, much
duplication, much unsound financing, much political corruption. No one
political party was responsible for the mistakes that were made.
Politicians were no more responsible than the public at large.
Municipalities were as sanguine in their street-railway and sidewalk
building as the Dominion in its transcontinental programmes. Bankers,
manufacturers, merchants, Western farmers, investors and speculators,
from end to end of the country, all shared the same fever, all were
trying to discount at once a generation's visioned advance.

The railway policy of both the Laurier and Borden rgimes centred
about the attempt of two railways, the Grand Trunk and the Canadian
Northern, to expand to transcontinental dimensions. Both railways
sought to achieve their aims mainly through state aid, and both failed
to provide an independent and substantial shareholder interest. The
result in both cases was a lack of responsibility in boom days, a
lack of reserve support in days of depression. Both roads were
hampered by the sharp rise in prices and construction costs, and the
growing tightness of money as their plans approached, but could not
quite reach, completion.

The Grand Trunk project was crippled, as it had been crippled for
sixty years, by absentee control: before leaving office, Sir Wilfrid
Laurier had arranged to bring in legislation requiring the Grand Trunk
and the Grand Trunk Pacific to transfer their headquarters to Canada.
It was still further hit by the death of the dominating force, Charles
M. Hays, in the _Titanic_ disaster, and by quarrels and extravagance
among his Napoleonic understudies. The cost of the construction of
both the Grand Trunk Pacific and the National Transcontinental soared
a hundred million above the estimates. No evidence was produced that
the cost of the government section was swollen by corruption; charges
of collusion with contractors made against the commissioners in
charge, in 1908, by a district engineer, Major Hodgins, were not
proved and were withdrawn, and a raking investigation by a strong
Conservative partisan and a Canadian Pacific engineer in 1912 found no
evidence of graft, though waste in unduly high standards of
construction was asserted. It could be urged that the policy of Mr.
Hays in insisting upon the lowest grades, the fewest curves, the
finest road-bed on the continent, in the expectation that lower
operating costs would more than offset higher capital charges, did not
take sufficient account of the long time required to build up full
traffic, and it was also clear that the division of responsibility
between the government and the company did not make for economy and
efficiency.

The Canadian Northern project was marked by the simplicity of all
works of genius. It was merely to have the public build a
transcontinental railway with all the usual steamship, express, hotel,
and land-company attachments, and yet to vest ownership wholly in two
promoters who put into it little but their ambition. Two Ontario boys
who had gone from school-teaching and lumbering into railway
contracting had discovered in the West their own capacities and the
country's opportunities. William Mackenzie, master planner and
financial wizard, Donald Mann, as forceful in rounding up a lobbyful
of politicians as in driving a section gang, joined by Zebulon Lash,
the subtlest framer of strictly legal clauses and financial expedients
in Canada's annals, planned and worked for a score of years and saw a
little hundred-mile Manitoba road, running from nowhere to nowhere,
all but reach by 1914 to both oceans and ten thousand miles.
Throughout, absolute ownership and control was kept in their own hands
by the most intricate and bewildering corporate financing Canada had
yet seen, the chartering of a score of separate but related companies,
the purchase or lease of a score of old companies, the organization of
trust companies, construction companies, express companies, equipment
companies, the issue of perpetual consolidated debenture stock,
income-charge convertible debenture stock, land-mortgage debentures,
first-mortgage bonds and income bonds, division bonds and terminal
bonds, secured notes and collateral notes. It was a project with more
than the usual interweaving of good and evil in conception and
execution. The planning was constructive, the strategy in the
selection of routes in the early years admirable, the service rendered
the prairie country of immense value. The financing was radically
unsound in its lack of share capital to tide over a waiting time. The
reliance upon the public treasury for guaranties, subsidies, loans,
brought into Canadian politics the most corrupting single factor in
Confederation times, apparent in campaign contributions, advance
information as to location and land deals, or free passes for members
and their families, the buying of newspapers,--the whole "long trail,"
in Mr. Bennett's phrase, "of parliamentary corruption, of lobbying, of
degradation of parliamentary institutions, of the lowering of the
morals of public life." No little of the decline of the Liberal party
from its original ideals, no little of its overthrow of 1911, no
little of the demoralization of the Borden cabinet, no little of the
Union movement in 1917, can be traced directly to the manoeuvres and
exigencies of Mackenzie and Mann or of those who saw gain in their
profit or in their emergencies.

Aside from the initial failure to compel the Grand Trunk and the
Canadian Northern to unite if they wished state aid in their
transcontinental schemes,--and even in this Laurier had evidenced rare
foresight--the Liberal government's policy down to 1911 stood the
test of time. Aid through bond guaranties was given freely, but
restricted to the Western country, where new roads were needed and
were immediately revenue-producing. Then on the eve of the 1911
election came a guaranty to the central link in the transcontinental
plan, the road from Port Arthur to Montreal, voted casually by the
government forces, questioned perfunctorily by the Opposition, passed
without a division and with an eye on campaign chests. The Laurier
government, however, did decline to have any share in the still more
unnecessary and more extravagant extension through British Columbia to
the coast. On coming to power the Borden government proved still more
generous than its predecessor. It granted a cash subsidy to the
British Columbia extension, to which the McBride government had
already voted lavish and reckless millions. In 1913 it voted a cash
subsidy of $15,640,000 on the distinct understanding that this would
make it possible to complete the road, and in return for the transfer
of $7,000,000 of the company's stock. The stock was simply run off the
engraver's plates, and next session a demand came for a loan of
$45,000,000 as a positively final appeal.

The crisis in the fortunes of the Canadian Northern led to a crisis in
the fortunes of the Borden government. The government hesitated to
grant further aid in the face of falling revenues, broken promises,
and public suspicion. Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann--for
the last seal of success had now been set upon them--camped at
Ottawa; the bankers with millions tied up in loans against unsold
securities, the supply companies with notes unpaid, the
sub-contractors with unmet claims, the lesser federal politicians with
favours in their pockets, the provincial premiers anxious to avert
their own guaranties coming home to roost, strongly backed their
demands. There was some question of the Canadian Pacific coming to the
rescue, but its price was too high. Finally the government yielded.
Mr. Arthur Meighen, a young Western lawyer, whose high gift of keen
analysis and untiring industry, backed by a judicious mingling of
party usefulness and open independence, had brought him into the
ministry as solicitor-general a year before, drew up and defended,
with hard and sure power, in caucus and in parliament, a measure of
relief. In return for a guarantee of $45,000,000, the government was
to take a mortgage on company assets and receive an additional
$33,000,000 of the common stock of the parent company, set therewith
at $100,000,000.

On May 13, 1914, the prime minister moved the adoption of the
resolutions. The road could not be left half-finished; it could not be
allowed to go into liquidation; the promoters had not received any
profit or compensation for their years of service other than the
common stock; if the assistance given failed to complete the road,
provision was made for summary seizure. Sir Wilfrid followed. He
declared that he had long believed that Canada required three
transcontinental railways, and believed so still. He had favoured aid
to Mackenzie and Mann projects down to the ill-conceived British
Columbia section. He agreed that the enterprise could not be allowed
to fail, yet he could not agree to the proposed resolutions. They gave
no assurance that past liabilities or future needs would be met. The
subsidiary companies were not amalgamated. The security was illusory:
"Does any one on the other side of the House believe that a mortgage
on top of that mortgage for three hundred and twelve million dollars
is worth a great deal to Canada? Why, if we undertook to execute our
rights under that mortgage we ourselves would simply have to provide
for the payment of this three hundred and twelve million dollars. That
is the consequence of the mortgage we are taking now and it is the
clearest part of it." Why take forty per cent. of the stock? "My right
honourable friend says that we are to go into partnership with Messrs.
Mackenzie and Mann and the Canadian Northern Railway. . . . That being
so, is it unreasonable to ask that in that partnership we should be
the leading and not the junior partner?" He concluded:

      I said a moment ago, and I repeat, that this
      enterprise must go on. It has been conceived for the
      benefit of the Canadian people. We require this
      railway. My right honourable friend said we would not
      let it go into liquidation. It must not go into
      liquidation, but we should have the control of it.
      Since we must go into partnership with the Canadian
      Northern Railway, let us see that we are the master,
      not the servant. Let the agreement be modified; let
      the resolution be modified. But, sir, as they stand at
      the present time, they are not conceived for the
      benefit of the Canadian people; they are conceived
      altogether for the benefit of the firm of Mackenzie
      and Mann and of the Canadian Northern Railway Company.
      Sir, we have no objection to helping them. We have
      helped them in the past. I for my part have been an
      admirer of their energy and enterprise. I have not
      much in common with them; I cannot claim them as
      friends; but I admire energy, enterprise, and pluck
      wherever it is found. At the same time, there is this
      consideration to be borne in mind by the prime
      minister, that there are interests which are
      transcendent, and the primary of those transcendent
      interests is that of the country. I have to repeat
      that the interest of the country is not served by the
      present resolutions, and as they stand it will become
      the duty of the Opposition to oppose them from first
      to last.

More uncompromising opposition came from within the ranks of the
Conservatives themselves. The crisis had stirred an independence as
unusual as it was promising for the future and futile for the present.
Mr. Herbert Ames found the Canadian Northern guilty of past offences,
but saw no alternative to the present proposals. Two other government
supporters went much farther. Mr. W. F. Nickle of Kingston gave an
incisive and clear-cut analysis of the development of the company and
the colossal aid received from federal and provincial governments,
exposed the inadequacy and inconsistency of the data upon which
parliament was asked to act, referred to Sir William Mackenzie's
attempts to browbeat him, and called for immediate government
assumption of the Canadian Northern as well as the National
Transcontinental. "I am opposed," he declared, "to going into
partnership with Mackenzie and Mann, just the same as I am opposed to
going into partnership commercially with people I do not trust. I
think they will do the government in the long run." Mr. R. B. Bennett
of Calgary drew upon his intimate knowledge of Canadian railways,
gained from a C. P. R. angle, and upon all the resources of a rich
vocabulary and a two-hundred-word-a-minute delivery to carry his
hearers up and down the Canadian Northern line, to probe the
organization of subsidiary companies, particularly the "notorious and
nefarious equipment trust," to trace the relations of the Canadian
Northern Railway, Mackenzie and Mann Company, Limited, and William
Mackenzie and Donald Mann, to attack the physical condition of the
road ("certain parts of it between Kamloops and the Fraser River that
do not slip into the river this spring will get there in the fall"),
to investigate the bogus surpluses and false accounts, to pay his
respects to the "boundless ambition" and "shameless mendicancy" of the
two promoters, the colossal but misdirected intellect of their legal
adviser, the "impertinent interruptions of this young man" who had
framed the resolutions, "the gramaphone of Mackenzie and Mann," and,
in short, to play the bull in the china shop of party expediency and
individual caution. The vigour of these two Conservative members
stiffened Liberal opposition. Demands followed for a thorough, not a
sham, analysis of the past financing and present situation of the
road; for the pledge of the great private fortunes of the promoters;
and for further squeezing or bailing out of the water in the stock.
But all opposition was in vain, the government was committed, and the
resolutions were voted early in June. The Senate, which now had been
reformed, at once approved, nearly half the Liberals voting with the
majority.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE GREAT WAR

      A Summer in Arthabaska--War in Europe--The Strain of
      the War--A United Country--Election
      Preparations--Laurier and Recruiting--Rising
      Discontent--The Decline of the Government--Quebec in
      the War--Botha and Bourassa--The Bilingual Question in
      Ontario--The Issue in Parliament--Liberal
      Divisions--Laurier's Proffered Resignation.


With the close of the third session of parliament in mid-June, Sir
Wilfrid and Lady Laurier turned to their old Arthabaska home. It had
not been possible for some years to spend a summer there, and after a
tiring session they looked forward with keen anticipation to its
friendly quiet. They spent July in the pleasant Eastern Township
village. Cradled among green hills, with white roads winding through
the valleys, the little river running shallow in the heat of an inland
summer, the great church and the substantial court buildings
dominating all the neighbourhood, Arthabaska brought back the simple
joys and the healing peace of days long gone. Sir Wilfrid enjoyed it
to the full. Walking in the deep, unstudied garden; reading some of
the new books for which time had not been found during the year, and
going back to the old ones; answering, usually in his own bold,
angular and now slightly shaking hand, the letters which came from
Canadians of all degrees; giving to a few visitors the delights of a
perfect and spontaneous hospitality; sharing in the lively game of
bridge and the livelier flow of words when old friends came with the
evening; drawing the youngsters about him in unrelenting raillery, he
was himself again.

Suddenly, over this idyllic village scene and over hundreds of equally
unrecking Canadian communities, the clouds of European war lowered
black and threatening. With the end of July it had become clear that
not merely another Balkan war but a catastrophe involving all European
civilization was imminent. When it became apparent that Britain was
likely to be involved, and that the struggle would be of life and
death, there was no difference of opinion and no hesitation in any
quarter in Canada. The war was none of Canada's making. Canada had had
no share in the rivalries and the diplomacy which had brought Europe
to this pass. Canada was no more directly concerned in the outcome
than any other New World state. Yet for Canada there was in all men's
thoughts only one course and one measure of effort. With Britain at
war, Canada was technically at war. With Britain in danger, Canada
would be emphatically at war. The government on August 1 cabled a firm
assurance of Canada's resolve "to put forth every effort and to make
every sacrifice necessary to ensure the integrity and maintain the
honour of our Empire," and asking for suggestions as to the form of an
expeditionary force. On the morning of the fourth, the Governor-general
and the leader of the Opposition returned to Ottawa. Sir Wilfrid at
once issued the following statement:

      We all hope and pray that the effort of Sir Edward
      Grey may yet be successful in persuading the nations
      of the Continent to the restoration of peace. I
      confess that the prospects are very doubtful. It is
      probable and almost certain that England will have to
      take her share in the conflict not only for the
      protection of her own interests, but for the
      protection of France and the higher civilization of
      which these two nations are to-day the noblest
      expression. The policy of the Liberal party under such
      painful circumstances is well known. I have often
      declared that if the mother country were ever in
      danger, or if danger ever threatened, Canada would
      render assistance to the fullest extent of her power.
      In view of the critical nature of the situation I have
      cancelled all my meetings. Pending such great
      questions, there should be a truce to party strife.

At half-past eight o'clock on the evening of that fateful day, the
Governor-general received a cable message from London announcing that
Britain had declared war. The four-years struggle had begun. To Europe
it was to bring the victory of the Allies, who, with all
qualifications made, fought for democracy and freedom; the victory, if
not of white over black, at least of grey. It was to bring the fall of
ancient empires, the bankruptcy of great peoples, the uprooting of the
foundations of society, and the death of tens of millions of men and
women and children from war and plague and famine. To the world in
general it was to bring the shattering of old ties of trade and
friendship, epochal shiftings of wealth and poverty, the contagion of
social unrest, the hardening of class and racial consciousness, the
surging of submerged peoples toward a dubious liberty, and the dream
of a world organization that would avert another and final lapse into
chaos and barbarism. To Canada it was to bring imperishable memories
of Saint-Julien and Vimy and the breaking of the Hindenburg line,
fifty thousand graves in France and Flanders, the heaping up of
incredible debts and obligations, the discovery of undreamed-of powers
of individual sacrifice, of community effort, of industrial expansion,
of financial endurance. To Canada it was to bring also the breaking of
political parties and the rise in their stead of class and sectional
groups, a cleavage of race and bitterness inconceivable, the seeming
crashing of the work of national harmony to which Wilfrid Laurier had
given his life.

The burden of the war and the stirring of passions good and ill that
it involved proved too great a strain for the unfinished structure of
Canadian unity. Even in time of peace the task of securing unity in
home and in external affairs had been hard and never-ending. Given a
country settled by one people, conquered by another, and still divided
between the descendants of these two great peoples; given a colony
half emerged from subordination to the conquering power across the
sea, and struggling toward full nationhood; given one and one only of
the two racial groups linked by blood and sentiment to this power
overseas which still dominated foreign policy, and in so difficult a
position, friction and sometimes fire were hardly to be avoided.
Wilfrid Laurier had striven to lessen and avert the friction; his
consistent home policy of racial equality, friendly tolerance and a
fusing pride in the new and common Canadianism, and his imperial
policy of a compromise between nationalism and imperialism, the
development of a nation within the Empire, had been directed to this
end. He and those of all parties and all sections who strove with him
had been hampered by the imperialists with their racial sympathies and
ideals and their doctrinaire and ready-made plans for making the
British Empire a real empire. He had been hampered by the Nationalists
who, in reaction from these imperialist schemes, had sought in their
turn to emphasize racial ties and to draw Quebec back within a
provincial shell. Yet he had time and tide with him, had persevered,
and seemingly with no small reward.

Now came the strain of war. A war begun on Canada's own initiative, in
the direct defence or pursuit of her own interests or supposed
interests, might have unified the country; but in this war Canada was
involved in the first place by her formal connection with Britain and
in large part urged on by the racial sympathies of half her people
with Britain. It was true that many a man who had no racial ties or
personal sympathy with Britain cherished the memory of Britain's gifts
of political liberty and of individual freedom to the world, but this
could not take the place of the warm and unrecking sympathy of race.
It was true that Canada had vital interests of her own at stake, in
that Germany's arrogant militarism was a danger to the liberty of
every free country in the world, and true that once Canada was in the
war, no matter whose fight it was at the start, the war became her
war, defeat her defeat, victory her victory. As the months and years
went on, this understanding widened and deepened, and many who had no
sympathy with the imperial relationship worked and fought for
humanity, for Canada, or for the fight's sake. Yet it was equally true
that Norway, or Chile or the United States had interests as great as
Canada's at stake, and that they did not enter the war or entered it
only when a united people had been convinced by the logic of the
submarine that their direct interests were involved. It was true,
again, that France was Britain's ally, and that it was in France and
in the defence of France that Canadians were fighting, but it was also
true that this was an incident, a happy accident; it was not sympathy
with France but the tie with Britain that took Canada into the war. It
was true that the war, unlike the war against the Boers, was a war
whose justice in the eyes of at least nine out of ten, not only in
Britain and in the Dominions but in the neutral countries, was beyond
question, but it was true also that the magnitude and duration of the
war brought a strain, brought the war into every corner, and every
relation of life, as the lesser if less righteous struggle had not
done. The path of the war was a path in which all could walk, a path
along which the call of the blood, imperialist sympathy with outraged
Belgium and bleeding France, hatred of German militarism, pride in
Canadian achievement,--all would urge the sons of Canada. But
naturally some were impelled by one motive only and some by all, and
the distance they would walk together, if the path proved long, was
matter for question.

In the first flush of excitement and enthusiasm, these difficulties
were not in view. Canada entered the war united and whole-hearted.
There was no party strife, no racial cleavage, and Wilfrid Laurier and
Robert Borden vied with each other in their appeals to all Canadians
to stand together and to stand fast beside Britain and Belgium and
France.

There was no party strife. The government's action was prompt and
effective, and the Opposition concurred in every policy. Offers of
service and of financial aid poured in upon the government from every
corner of the Dominion. Steps were taken to organize an army division
of 22,500 men; to guard the frontier and military posts against
possible attacks of German agents; to man the _Rainbow_ and the
_Niobe_ and two dubious submarines purchased in hot haste in Seattle
by Sir R. McBride, and to place them at the Admiralty's disposal; to
avert, in conjunction with the banks, a financial panic, and to issue,
in accordance with the prearranged war-book, orders in council to
regulate trade and movements of aliens. On August 18, parliament met
in special war session.

[Illustration: MR. LAURIER'S HOME IN ARTHABASKA] MR. LAURIER'S LAW
OFFICE IN ARTHABASKA]

The Speech from the Throne called for the sanction of measures already
taken and the passing of further legislation to "repel the common
danger." After the Reply to the Address had been briefly moved and
seconded, Sir Wilfrid followed:

      Speaking for those who sit around me, speaking for the
      wide constituency which we represent in this House, I
      hasten to say that to all these measures we are
      prepared to give immediate assent. If in what has
      been done or in what remains to be done there may be
      anything which in our judgment should not be done or
      should be differently done, we raise no question, we
      take no exception, we offer no criticism, and we shall
      offer no criticism so long as there is danger at the
      front. It is our duty, more pressing upon us than all
      other duties, at once, on this first day of this
      extraordinary session of the Canadian parliament, to
      let Great Britain know, and to let the friends and
      foes of Great Britain know, that there is in Canada
      but one mind and one heart, and that all Canadians
      stand behind the mother country, conscious and proud
      that she has engaged in this war, not from any selfish
      motive, for any purpose of aggrandizement, but to
      maintain untarnished the honour of her name, to fulfil
      her obligations to her allies, to maintain her treaty
      obligations, and to save civilization from the
      unbridled lust of conquest and power.

      We are British subjects, and to-day we are face to
      face with the consequences which are involved in that
      proud fact. Long we have enjoyed the benefit of our
      British citizenship; to-day it is our duty to accept
      its responsibilities and its sacrifices. We have long
      said that when Great Britain is at war we are at war;
      to-day we realize that Great Britain is at war and
      that Canada is at war also.

      England to-day is not engaged in an ordinary contest.
      The war in which she is engaged will in all
      probability--nay, in absolute certainty--stagger the
      world with its magnitude and its horror. But that war
      is for as noble a cause as ever impelled a nation to
      risk her all upon the arbitrament of the sword. That
      question is no longer at issue; the judgment of the
      world has already pronounced upon it. I speak not only
      of those nations which are engaged in this war, but of
      the neutral nations. The testimony of the ablest men
      of these nations, without dissenting voice, is that
      to-day the allied nations are fighting for freedom
      against oppression, for democracy against autocracy,
      for civilization against reversion to that state of
      barbarism in which the supreme law is the law of
      might.

      It is an additional source of pride to us that England
      did not seek this war. It is a matter of history--one
      of the noblest pages of the history of England--that
      she never drew the sword until every means had been
      exhausted to secure and to keep an honourable peace.

      If my words can be heard beyond the walls of this
      House in the province from which I come, among the men
      whose blood flows in my own veins, I should like them
      to remember that in taking their place to-day in the
      ranks of the Canadian army to fight for the cause of
      the allied nations, a double honour rests upon them.
      The very cause for which they are called upon to fight
      is to them doubly sacred.

      Sir, there is in this the inspiration and the hope
      that from this painful war the British Empire will
      emerge with a new bond of union, the pride of all its
      citizens, and a living light to all other nations.

Sir Robert Borden--the prime minister, with Mr. Foster, had accepted
knighthood in July--after a testimony to the full and instant
co-operation of the leader of the Opposition, gave an eloquent survey
of the origin of the war and a concise summary of the steps the
government considered Canada should take. In a brief four-days session
every proposal was ratified, new taxes accepted, a war appropriation
of $50,000,000 made, the suspension of gold payments and other
emergency financial measures given a statutory basis, a Canadian
Patriotic Fund incorporated, and sweeping powers of censorship,
deportation, control over trade and transport granted to the
government. There was not a word of party recrimination, not a
questioning voice. "The last four days of this session," declared Sir
George Foster, as the hour of prorogation came, "have vindicated
Canadian public life and parliamentary life for all time to come.
They have shown that it is possible for us to forget all mean and
petty things when our country and its higher liberties are at stake."

There was no racial cleavage. The crowds in Montreal on the eve of the
war were more demonstrative than the crowds in Toronto. In the House,
French-Canadian and English-Canadian stood together in backing France
and England. Even Mr. Bourassa declared in "Le Devoir" in September,
that it was "Canada's national duty to contribute according to her
resources and by fitting means of action, to the triumph and
especially to the endurance of the combined efforts of France and
England. . . . I have not written and will not write one line, one
word, to condemn the sending of Canadian troops to Europe." It is true
he added a significant qualification: "But to render this contribution
effective, Canada must begin by facing her real position resolutely,
by taking an exact account of what can and what cannot be done, and
ensure her own domestic security, before beginning or following up an
effort which she will perhaps not be able to sustain to the end."

From the outset, Sir Wilfrid's aim was to support the war, to support
the government in all policies essential for carrying on the war, to
urge upon his compatriots in Quebec a full share in the conflict, and
to seek to avert or to lessen any factors making for misunderstanding
and disunity. Every utterance in public was confined to the urgencies
of the war. The readiness of the Dominions to come to the aid of
Britain, he declared at the Toronto Exhibition in September, was not
accidental; it was due to Britain's faith in freedom; no nation but
Britain could have adopted the audacious policy which was now winning
justification in South Africa, where Louis Botha was leading her
soldiers in the field. "There can be no peace," he declared before the
Quadrennial Methodist Conference in Ottawa on September 23, "until
this imperial bully has learnt his lesson." A few days later he joined
with Rodolphe Lemieux, L. T. Marchal, Senator Belcourt, J. M. Tellier
and Dr. Arthur Mignault in urging upon the government the organization
of distinct French-Canadian regiments; "There is every probability,"
he wrote Sir Robert, "that the war will be of long duration. . . . May
I suggest that as our population is composed of various ethnic
elements, it might be well to recognize the fact and to allow the
formation of units out of these several elements. The War Office at
all times has taken advantage of the force of race sentiment in the
formation of the army. . . ." Two weeks later, he spoke with the
others mentioned and Sir Lomer Gouin and Senator Dandurand, at a
meeting in Sohmer Park in Montreal to call for recruits for this
French-Canadian regiment:

      This call addressed to our race involves a sacrifice.
      We are calling the young men in particular, and to
      you, young men, I have only one thing to say: I envy
      you.

      We are asking you for a great sacrifice, and it may be
      expected that some few of the regiment will remain
      over there, victims to their courage, but they shall
      sleep in the land of their ancestors. But we shall not
      let ourselves be influenced by such a consideration.
      When Dollard and his sixteen companions left to save
      the young colony, they knew that they would not come
      back and their courage grew with the hope of a
      triumphant death. If there are still a few drops of
      the blood of Dollard and his companions in the veins
      of the Canadians who are present at this meeting, you
      will enlist in a body, for this cause is just as
      sacred as the one for which Dollard and his companions
      gave their lives.

      This is a voluntary sacrifice. Great Britain asks
      nothing of us. She accepts with gratitude what we do
      for her, but she does not set any obligation upon us.
      Once more I repeat, Canada is a free country. If some
      Canadians were frightened by the monster of
      conscription in the past, they must now recognize that
      this monster was a myth.

And again, before the Montreal Reform Club:

      Do not forget that the fact that Britain was at war
      constituted for Canada a new condition of things,
      which imposed new duties upon the government, upon the
      Opposition and upon the whole Canadian people. The
      moment that Great Britain was at war, Canada was at
      war. This is a truth which while we were in office we
      had not only to proclaim, but for which we had to
      provide in a manner consonant with the new condition,
      a new situation created by the development of Canada,
      not as a colony, but as a nation within the British
      Empire.

      These truths were not accepted by all. It was the
      occasion of a great deal of misrepresentation; it
      contributed very much towards the defeat which we
      suffered in 1911, but for my part let me say here that
      I have no regrets.

      We are a free people, absolutely free. The charter
      under which we live has put it in our power to say
      whether we should take part in such a war or not. It
      is for the Canadian people, the Canadian parliament
      and the Canadian government alone to decide. This
      freedom is at once the glory and honour of Britain,
      which granted it, and of Canada which uses it to
      assist Britain. Freedom is the keynote of all British
      institutions. You find it from the lowest to the
      highest rung in the ladder. There is no conscription
      in Britain. There never was, there never shall be. We
      have heard it discussed by eminent authorities that
      Great Britain will be forced to follow suit and have
      recourse to conscription like France, Germany and
      Italy. Conscription is repugnant to the British
      character. The British are never inclined to go to
      war, slow always to go to war, never preparing until
      they are in it, but generally they manage to get on
      top at the end of it. There is no compulsion upon
      those dependencies of Great Britain which have reached
      the stature of dominions, such as Canada, Australia,
      New Zealand, South Africa and such Crown dependencies
      as India. They are all free to take part or not as
      they think best.

      I was asked by some one why should I support the
      government in their policy of sending men to the
      front. Why should not the Liberal party have remained
      quiet and passive and let all the worries be left to
      the government? My answer was: "I have no particular
      love for the government, but I love my country, I love
      the land of my ancestors, France. I love the land of
      liberty above all, England, and rather than that I, in
      my position of leader of the Liberal party, should
      remain passive and quiescent, I would go out of public
      life, and life together."

Party strife began to show its head in the autumn of 1914. Neither
political party could dwell for long on the heights of August. The
dissension was not serious, for there was as yet little divergence of
policy. There was some difference of opinion as to why and how Canada
had gone into the war. The Conservative view was that Canada went and
should go automatically into this as into every British war, with
perhaps in future some share in controlling British policy. The
Liberal view was that it was for Canada to determine when and how far
she would take part in Britain's wars and that in this case Canada had
freely and deliberately decided to support Britain because in this
case Britain's cause was just and her peril great. The Nationalists,
beginning to revive, agreed with the Conservatives that Canada had
been involved in the war automatically, qua British subjects, but
insisted that Canada should not in future enter such wars, or should
engage in them only so far as Canadian interests dictated. But these
differences were of more importance for the morrow than for the day.
So with the inevitable retrospective references to the naval
controversy. The Conservatives, or rather some Conservatives, insisted
that their prophecies of emergency had been fulfilled and that every
Canadian must hang his head in vain regret and shame because no
Canadian dreadnought shared the perilous patrol of the grey North Sea.
The Liberals, or some Liberals, contended that the only emergency was
that which faced the Kaiser's navy, and that the exploits of
Australia's cruiser, the _Sydney_, sister ship of Canada's unbuilt
_Bristols_, in sinking the dangerous Pacific raider the _Emden_,
revealed the need and the potentialities of Dominion navies in other
seas. But these passing controversies were mere ripples on the surface
of public preoccupation with the war, and certainly gave no ground for
party appeals to the electorate.

Yet there was an element which strove hard to plunge Canada into an
election with or without an issue or an excuse. The section of the
government forces led by Robert Rogers was eager to capitalize the
country's patriotism for party purposes, to bring on an election on
the platform of "Stand behind the Government," and thus snatch
another five-year lease of power. For a time Mr. Rogers carried the
cabinet with him. Party literature of the usual vigorous type was
prepared and circulated, and nomination and organization meetings
called. In a letter to an absent lieutenant, in October, Sir Wilfrid
noted the currents:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Frank Oliver_)

      Ottawa, October 20, 1914

      My Dear Oliver:

      I think I ought to write to you and give you what
      information I have with regard to the probability of
      an early election.

      There is no doubt whatever that last week the
      government had come to the conclusion that they would
      dissolve. This elicited very strong protests from the
      best elements of the community, so strong indeed that
      the government hastily cancelled their determination;
      but since last Saturday the madmen of the party are
      making another effort and again beseeching the Prime
      Minister who, I understand, is again wavering. From my
      latest information the cabinet is again discussing,
      and after all there is a possibility of dissolution,
      though, I believe, the chances are to the contrary.

      It is sufficient, however, that there should be a
      possibility to make us awake and lively, so as to be
      ready should the fray come. . . .

Independent opinion and the anti-machine element within the government
ranks opposed a general election, when only three of five years of
parliament's life had expired, as utterly unwarranted--"treachery," in
the words of the Montreal "Star,"--and for the time their weight
prevailed. When in November Mr. Pelletier retired to the bench and Mr.
Nantel to the Railway Board, no opposition was offered to their
successors, Mr. T. Chase Casgrain and Mr. P. E. Blondin, and six
other vacancies were filled without a contest.

The year 1915 was one of widening range and deepening intensity in the
struggle overseas, the year that Italy and Bulgaria came into the war,
Poland and Serbia were overrun, the Dardanelles vainly assaulted, the
German push to the sea halted in France and Flanders, the submarine
campaign begun and checked, and gas and high explosives employed in
tremendous quantities. It was the year of the formation of a coalition
cabinet in Britain after the munitions crisis, and of the beginnings
of compulsory service in national registration and the Derby scheme.
For Canada, it stood out as the year of Saint-Julien, where the men of
the first contingent, enormously outnumbered, with the Turcos to their
left in flight, and with clouds of choking and poisonous gases
launched against them for the first time in the war, filled the breach
and blocked the road to Calais; the year of Festubert and Givenchy and
of other incidents that thrilled the country with pride. At home,
recruiting had been vigorous and successful, the enlistment rising to
over 210,000 within the year. The community was finding outlet in the
work of the Patriotic Fund, of the Red Cross, of recruiting, of
machine-gun campaigns and in endless individual devotion. The demands
of the war were pulling business out of the slough, and Canadian
manufacturers were discovering unexpected ranges of initiative and
enterprise in their development of the munitions industry.

Political controversy became sharper, but it was not yet acute. The
renewed endeavour of the fighting wing of the government to bring on
an election forced a keener controversy and constant preparation for
the threatened contest. The government's policy gave more openings for
difference and attack. It had scored no small measure of success in
leading or transmitting the popular will. The ranks had been well
filled; a beginning had been made in munitions; the financing of the
war, first by British loans, later by loans in New York, applied to
civil purposes, and by an unprecedented domestic loan of $100,000,000
late in the year, had been well performed on the technical side. Many
mistakes had been made, but many were inevitable in the press and
improvising of the gigantic task. Some were not inevitable, and these
the Opposition dragged to light in committee probings. The patronage
lists had been revived. Bad boots had been supplied the troops; the
sister of one member of parliament had made extravagant profits in
drug supplies, another member had exacted a rake-off on bandages and
field dressings, and a third, undertaking to buy horses in the
Maritime provinces, had purchased, usually without vouchers, every
spavined, knee-sprung nag that could be stood up long enough for the
cheques to be written, including one horse lately exchanged for a duck
and two drakes and one rejected during the South African war. Mr.
Borden chided these two erring members, and made provision for a
war-purchasing commission for the future. It was bad business, and
though not serious in comparison with the government's real
achievements, it provided ammunition as controversy grew.

When the House met for its fifth session, in February, 1915, Sir
Wilfrid repeated the assurance that the Opposition would give the
government full support in their great task. That did not mean that
expenditures would be sanctioned without accounting; the success and
honour of the country were at stake. The war promised to be a long
one, a process of attrition. It was proving that "there is a greater
force than force, and that the British Empire, resting upon the basis
of freedom, is more durable than the German Empire, resting upon the
basis of blood and iron." It was not well to enter now, as the prime
minister and his colleagues had been doing in the recess, upon
discussions of altering that empire "to give the Dominions a voice in
all questions of peace and war"; those questions must be faced after
the war. "In the meantime," he continued, "for my part, I hardly
believe that any system that can be devised or that can be reduced by
legislation to any complete form applicable to the daughter nations of
the Empire, can ever have the same inspiring grandeur or the same
patriotic efficiency, as the action of the Dominions all over the
world, the voluntary spontaneous action of all those Dominions, in
lining themselves up behind England in the hour of her trial."

A month later, Sir Wilfrid opposed the new budget brought down by Mr.
White. The Opposition had been and would continue faithful to their
engagement to support the government in every step which really
advanced the common cause. That did not mean abdicating judgment,
acquiescing in what appeared errors of policy, in Canada any more than
in England, where the Unionists had lately asserted that the right of
criticism and inquiry must hold in war as in peace. The government was
carrying on this war as if it were wholly their affair, a Conservative
war:

      . . . I commend these words to the attention of the
      House. You will see that in Great Britain the
      Opposition were consulted by the government as to
      their financial proposals. This is a matter of record
      and history. I might go further than this newspaper
      goes and say that at all stages of the war, from the
      first to the present day, the Opposition have been
      kept in constant consultation by the powers that be;
      they were consulted as to military operations, and at
      every step were asked to give their advice. It was not
      so in this country. We were not consulted. If we had
      been honoured in the same way--not that I claim
      anything in that respect, but representing here a
      great party comprising almost half of the population,
      having views of their own on many of the financial
      problems which now confront us, claiming to be as
      patriotic as the other side, and claiming to have done
      their duty as amply as was in their power--I say that
      if we had been consulted, we should have been happy to
      give our views as to the policy to be pursued. I do
      not say that our views would have been accepted; but
      certainly there would have been an effort on my part
      at all events to give way on some of my own views, and
      I might have felt it right to ask the other side to
      give way on some of their views also, so that we might
      have been unanimous in policy as we have been
      unanimous in the objects which policy is to serve. But
      we were not consulted. I do not complain of this; I
      have no right to complain. But my honourable friend
      the Finance Minister has no right to complain either
      if to-day we have to take issue with him, and take
      issue sharply, upon the resolutions which he has laid
      before the House.

He proceeded to criticize the failure to take in sail, the excessive
expenditure on secondary public works, the failure of the new taxes to
make the rich man pay his due share, the increase of protection rather
than of revenue and the decrease of the British preference by the
horizontal increase in the tariff, and ended by moving an amendment
which Dr. Pugsley seconded and A. K. Maclean strongly supported. Mr.
White replied in an unusually aggressive speech: high civil
expenditures were due to inherited obligations, due to the
mismanagement and recklessness of the late government: "If obligations
were children, my Right Honourable friend is truly like George
Washington, the father of his country."

After much criticism of the inadequacy and unfairness of the new
taxes, debates on boots and profiteering contracts, and the passing of
a measure providing for the taking of soldiers' votes overseas in case
of an election, parliament prorogued on April 15. A fortnight later,
in a carefully prepared speech in Montreal, Mr. Rogers demanded a
dissolution to give the government the complete control essential for
doing full service to Canada, rather than remain "handicapped and
crippled and interfered with at every turn, tarrying and disputing
with an Opposition that . . . has declared a want of confidence in our
proposals for the carrying on of our part in this great conflict." "Is
it then any wonder," this spokesman of "a form of democracy" had
demanded earlier, "that the cry comes from every individual that one
meets and who understands the conditions, in tones louder than
thunder, demanding that this parliament be dissolved, that the rights
and liberties of the people of this Dominion be granted to them under
our form of democracy and that that form of democracy be restored to
them?" The revelations which followed from Winnipeg, where under the
form of a democracy Mr. Rogers's old associates had for years been
looting the province, explained, but did not commend his hurry. Once
again public opinion vetoed a contest. Sir Wilfrid's views were
clearly expressed in the course of an address to the Liberal Club
Federation in Toronto on May 15:

      I do not disguise that in time of peace I am a party
      man. I have been entrusted with the confidence of a
      great portion of the Liberal party for a long time
      past. We have our differences with the government of
      the day. I am anxious for the return of the party to
      which I belong because I believe we have the true
      policy for this country and not the men who are now in
      office. I speak honestly that which I believe in the
      interests of the country when I say there should be,
      there ought to be, a change of government or a
      different policy pursued, but I do not care, for my
      part, so long as the war lasts, to open the portals of
      office with that bloody key. . . .

      But I have this to say to the Prime Minister and his
      colleagues: I do not care for an election. Let the
      Prime Minister and his colleagues say that there shall
      be no election as long as the war shall go on, and I
      will pledge myself and the party that we shall stop
      all preparations and think of nothing but the war.

During the summer Sir Wilfrid was far from well. His seventy-four
years were beginning to tell. He suffered much pain and could only
with difficulty drag himself through his tasks. He insisted on keeping
an engagement, early in August, to attend a great meeting at his
birthplace; eight thousand of his compatriots gathered at St. Lin to
do him honour. "Whatever be the vicissitudes and the hazards to which
men of politics are exposed," he declared, "there is nothing dearer to
them than the corner of the earth where they were born." Going on to
deal with the war, he declared:

      I would not have my compatriots of French speech take
      an attitude different from the attitude of my
      fellow-countrymen of English speech on this question.
      England is at war because she wishes to defend the
      independence of Belgium and the integrity of the soil
      of France. Never has a nation drawn sword for a cause
      so sacred. We of French origin have a double duty to
      perform. It is true that it is not our land that is
      being ravaged, and it is not our farms that are being
      fired by the Germans, but it is the lands and the
      farms of France. It is not our cathedrals, it is not
      our churches, that the German shells demolish, but it
      is the monuments and treasures of France, and they are
      French women who are outraged and massacred.
      French-Canadians who listen to me, is there among you
      one who can remain unmoved before these acts? In
      Montreal there are to be found men who would prevent
      recruiting. I claim for my country the supreme honour
      of bearing arms in this holy cause, and if I support
      the government, it is because I have the heart to do
      my duty. . . . The fear of conscription in Canada is
      as groundless now as it was in 1911, when some of the
      people of Quebec were told that the Laurier naval
      policy involved conscription and the dragging away of
      peaceful citizens to be disembowelled in European
      conflicts.

Early in September he kept an engagement to speak at a recruiting
rally in Napanee, but the intolerable heat on the platform was too
much for him in his weakened condition, and he collapsed half-way
through his appeal. A fortnight in an Ottawa hospital and an operation
for the removal of an abscess relieved him, and by the autumn he was
once again taking up his work. He had been greatly heartened by the
countless messages that poured in to his bedside from all ends of the
country, and from political opponents as well as political friends.
The Montreal "Star," early in October, voiced the feeling of a large
element in the Conservative party:

      The recovery of Sir Wilfrid Laurier from his tedious
      experience in the hospital will be a matter for
      genuine rejoicing throughout the Dominion. Sir Wilfrid
      is a great, a potent and a striking figure in our
      public life. Even the temporary incapacity of so
      important a factor in our national affairs creates a
      feeling of uneasiness, a sense of something lacking. .
      . . Sir Wilfrid's attitude during the war has been a
      subject of especial pride to his friends and of
      comfort and satisfaction to the whole country.
      Whatever lesser men have said or done, Sir Wilfrid has
      laid aside all party feeling or manoeuvring during this
      supreme crisis in our history. He has stood squarely
      and publicly behind the government. . . . And he has
      raised his eloquent and persuasive voice, again and
      again, to assist recruiting, even at times of keen
      physical suffering on his own part. He may be said to
      have gone straight from the firing-line of the
      recruiting platform to his hospital bed.

Late in December, with much of his old-time vigour restored, Sir
Wilfrid took part, along with Sir Lomer Gouin, Rodolphe Lemieux,
Senator Dandurand, George P. Graham, Charles Marcil and Joseph Demers,
in a great meeting in the Monument National in Montreal. Liberals,
Sir Wilfrid declared, still stood for the ideals of Bright and
Gladstone and O'Connell, of Baldwin and Blake, Lafontaine and Dorion,
stood for the cause of the weak and the oppressed, for justice and
liberty and the hatred of absolutism. These ideals had guided Canadian
Liberals in peace; they guided them now in a war for justice and
liberty. In Canada, "the Imperialist wanted parliament to close its
eyes and to fight in any war; the Nationalist wanted parliament to
close its eyes and to fight in no war; we Liberals asked for nothing
more than the liberty to decide for ourselves." People in Montreal had
said that Canada should only defend her own soil; there was no merit
in that: "For a noble cause, we must do more than our duty." It was
said Canada's aid would not count in a vast struggle: well, "at
Langemarck Canadians proved that they knew not only how to fight but
how to conquer." Canada's own interests were involved: "I am not of
opinion that if Germany were to triumph in this war we should pass
under Germanic domination at once . . . , but it would mean a
prolongation, a recrudescence of the militarism that now is
devastating Europe." Germany and the United States would be left the
only two great powers and the United States would be compelled to
become as militarist as her rival. The entente cordiale had come in
Europe. It was not complete in Canada; there were many misunderstandings
and collisions: "They who have real patriotism are they who are
working for reconciliation, who are helping to sweep away the old
divisions, who are working to restore harmony among the people on a
basis acceptable to all."

With 1916, the third year of the war, the year of Verdun and the
Somme, of Brusiloff's offensive and the overrunning of Rumania, of
renewed submarine activity and the Battle of Jutland, of the adoption
of conscription in Britain and its rejection in Australia, of the
Easter rebellion in Ireland[57] and the Lloyd George-Bonar Law revolt
against Mr. Asquith, the going became harder, the strain greater,
tempers sharper. The war was lasting longer than any but a rare
prophet had foreseen. The casualties were mounting steadily. Debt was
soaring. The rising cost of living was pressing hard on the average
household, while the easy gains and the flaunted luxuries of the
profiteer made sacrifices harder to bear. The drain of two years'
enlistment and the growth of a great munitions industry were making it
hard to find recruits.

[Footnote 57: Writing to a London friend May 13, 1916, Sir Wilfrid
perceived at once the folly of the executions which followed: "What a
blunder these terrible executions have been, following the foolish
attempt at rebellion in Dublin. I could not put into words the feeling
of horror these executions inspire, and I cannot conceive a more
serious political error. That the Asquith government should display so
much severity at Dublin, while it leaves Carson in Belfast free to
preach and organize rebellion with impunity, seems to me an act of the
utmost feebleness. I know that I am judging from a distance and that
there may be circumstances which justify these barbarities, but with
the light that we have here, I do not hesitate to repeat what was said
about the execution of the Duc d'Enghien by Napoleon, 'It is worse
than a crime, it is a blunder.'"

Two months later, and writing to the same friend, he declared: "As to
John Bull, I cannot be as severe as you are. It is true that the
government of Ireland by England for the past three centuries has been
abominable. But consider the endeavours that the Liberals have been
making for a century to remedy the evil and give Ireland
self-government. Consider also that in a constitutional country like
England, reforms are always and necessarily slow. After all, this very
slowness ensures stability."]

These difficulties, these sources of friction, did not prevent a
tremendous effort, did not abate the determination to see the war
through to complete victory. They did make the public temper more
critical, the path alike of government and of Opposition more thorny,
the heat of controversy more intense.

Much of the discontent was directed against the government. For a
great part it was not fairly responsible. For much it was rightly
blamed. The conduct of the militia department did not inspire
confidence. General Sir Sam Hughes was a man of Napoleonic energy, of
an audacity that overleaped obstacles, a sturdy insistence on Canadian
rights and potentialities, a confidence that swept all before him, and
much of Canada's achievement, particularly in the mobilization of the
first contingent at Valcartier, was fairly to be set to his credit.
But his lack of judgment, his colossal egotism, his dictatorial
manners, his friendship with shady munitions speculators, aroused a
storm of criticism. Then came controversies over the value of his
prized Ross Rifle, over the questionable selection of Camp Borden as a
training site, and particularly over the Liberal revelations,
uncovering only a corner at that, of the wholesale waste and wholesale
grafting of favoured shell or fuse contractors. Conservative journals,
from the Montreal "News" with its attack upon his "spectacular
stupidity," and the Toronto "Telegram" with its jibes at his
"extravagant pomp and splendour" to the Winnipeg "Post" with its
verdict of "stark, staring mad" and the Regina "Province" with its
insistence that "he is temperamentally unfit for any position of
responsibility, and his further retention of his post is a menace to
the country and his party," were among the strongest of his critics;
at the same time he had strong friends, particularly among the rank
and file.

It was not the federal administration only that was incurring
condemnation. In provincial Conservative governments wrong-doing was
being exposed which reacted strongly against the federal party. In New
Brunswick, the premier, J. K. Flemming, had been forced to resign on
proof of corruption, but had later been accepted as the government
candidate for the federal house. In British Columbia, the McBride and
Bowser governments were assailed for reckless extravagance and wide
corruption and defeated in September after an extraordinary overturn;
"I ask Conservatives," Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper had declared, "to
drive from power this government which has disgraced the province and
which has been the servile tool of adventurers." In Manitoba, the most
colossal stealing in Canadian political history had been revealed in
an investigation of the parliament buildings' construction; the Roblin
government had fallen, and its late member and mentor, Robert Rogers,
had been involved, despite the attempt of Canadian Northern officials
to destroy confidential telegrams. Charges against Saskatchewan and
Alberta Liberals, and particularly the endeavour to make J. A. Calder
out a twin brother of Robert Rogers, while partially proved, did not
offset the impression thus produced. But more fundamental than
criticism of Sam Hughes or of Robert Rogers was the feeling that the
cabinet as a whole lacked unity and driving-power, that policy was
spasmodic, based on no co-ordinating survey of the country's needs and
capacity, and that the premier, with all his good-will, had not been
able to enforce discipline in his cabinet or ensure confidence in the
people.

When parliament met in January, 1916, it was fitting that the first
step should be the election as Speaker of Alfred Svigny, of
Nationalist fame. Characteristic, too, was the mingling of personal
banter and of a sense of the dignity and importance of parliamentary
traditions in Sir Wilfrid's greeting:

      As extremes always meet, it is fitting that Mr.
      Svigny should follow Mr. Speaker Sproule. What an
      evolution since 1911! . . . My honourable friend
      assailed without measure the navy . . . opposed every
      form of participation by Canada in the affairs of
      Great Britain. He entered this House still breathing
      heavily, threatening still. But when once in this
      House he took his seat behind the Treasury benches. .
      . . He became a repentant sinner, and I never saw a
      sinner--and I have met some sinners in my time--who
      derived as much comfort out of repentance. My
      honourable friend never did penance in sackcloth and
      ashes. He was within the rays of the ministerial sun;
      he luxuriated in the tall and fat grasses of the
      ministerial pasture. He was the recipient of some
      marked ministerial favours. I do not say this by way
      of complaining of his conversion; far be it from me to
      do so. If I have any fault to find with him it is that
      his conversion did not go far enough, because I am not
      aware that he ever, in the county of Dorchester,
      confessed his sins to his electors and begged pardon
      for having led them so far astray in 1911.

      To-day my honourable friend is to be elected by this
      House to the chief office which is in its power.
      However we may have differed from him in the past,
      the moment he assumes this chair he becomes Speaker of
      the House of Commons and entitled to all honour and
      all respect; and so far as this side of the House is
      concerned, it will be our duty, nay, it will be our
      pleasure, to do what His Majesty's Opposition always
      have done so long as I have been in this House,--we
      shall deem it our duty to give him every assistance to
      maintain the dignity and traditions of his office, and
      as well to maintain the dignities and privileges and
      rights of the House of Commons.

The temper of parliament did not long remain at this pitch. The
government had decided to heed the advice of those who deprecated an
election in war time. Yet the term of parliament would expire in the
autumn of 1916; an extension would involve an amendment to the British
North America Act, passed, as usual in the case of amendments, by the
British parliament upon the substantially unanimous petition of the
Canadian parliament. The prime minister therefore moved a year's
extension. Sir Wilfrid stated that after a party caucus in which
different opinions had been expressed, the decision had been left in
his hands. He had decided not to oppose the resolution. It was a grave
step to lay hands on the Ark of the Covenant, to amend the
constitution. He could not agree to an indefinite extension. But a
year's extension was reasonable, particularly as it would involve an
understanding that parliament was not to be dissolved prematurely,
that the constant threat of an election would cease to disturb the
country. He was prepared to support the government still in all
measures making for the successful prosecution of the war, but would
oppose it in all measures of a contrary kind: "To all wrongs, to all
frauds, we shall offer determined opposition." The war was supreme: "I
speak my whole soul and heart when I say that if Germany were to win I
would be thankful that Providence should close my eyes before I saw
the sun rising on such a day. . . . I speak again as I have spoken
always, my supreme thought will be to give all the assistance in our
power to Britain in the struggle which she has undertaken against the
common enemy of mankind."

"To all wrongs, to all frauds, we shall offer determined opposition."
The parliamentary session of 1916 was a session of exposure and
denunciation of wrong and fraud. In the purchase of shells for the
British government through a committee appointed by the Department of
Militia, there had been, along with much energy and adaptiveness, much
loose and devious management. Charges made by William Pugsley, Frank
Carvell and G. W. Kyte, of favouritism in granting contracts, of
inexcusably high profits to favoured mushroom contractors, of millions
diverted to needless middlemen, were proved in every case where full
investigation was permitted. The action of the government in seeking
to block inquiry and in acceding finally to only a limited inquiry,
did not strengthen it in the country. Four government members
supported a resolution of Sir Wilfrid demanding a full
investigation.[58] The revelations of the rake-offs of the Minister of
Militia's "adviser, counsellor and guide," J. Wesley Allison, left a
bad taste in the mouth and contributed materially to weaken the
government's position. This distrust was intensified when in the
closing hours of the session a bill was forced through, for which the
whole cabinet shared responsibility, for purchasing at an exorbitant
price the Quebec and Saguenay Railway, controlled by a party
lieutenant, Sir Rodolphe Forget. The amount involved was not large, a
mere four millions, but the whole transaction, from the chartering of
the company to the unloading upon the government, was beyond defence
and bore witness to the growing demoralization.

[Footnote 58: "I went to the Premier," declared one of these members,
Mr. Andrew Broder, "and told him that if investigation were to be
decided against, I would have to vote against him. He said that if I
voted against him it would do him more harm than if almost any other
member of the party did so. I replied that I could not alter my view,
at any time of life, that I would have to go straight to the end. I
don't believe the Premier quite realizes what is going on. He doesn't
seem to know the situation. The people know what is going on. These
are not the days of the Marlborough wars. The people of Canada are on
trial for their honesty."]

By the end of 1916, the stock of the Borden government had fallen very
low. That did not mean that the Liberal party gained in prestige all
that its opponents lost. It did gain in some measure. The charges
against the government brought a strong negative reaction in its
favour. A conference of a National Liberal Advisory Committee of some
fifty leaders of Canadian life, in Ottawa in July, gave evidence of a
reviving power to deal constructively with the new war and after-war
problems. Men looked back with regret to the firmness and sureness of
administration in Sir Wilfrid's day. Yet against him one strong count
lay.

He was a French-Canadian, and French-Canadians, it was declared, were
not doing their duty in the war. The resentment felt in other
provinces, some of it spontaneous, some of it judiciously fostered as
a means of diverting attention from the government's failures, was
turned against Wilfrid Laurier. With the increasing strain of the war,
from this time onward, the racial cleavage grew deeper, and thanks to
the ceaseless slandering of opponents and the weak-kneedness of
friends, the indiscriminate passion aroused in English-speaking
Canada, flamed to the political hurt of the man whose whole life-work
it had been to avert the situation that now arose.

There was no question that French-speaking Canadians had enlisted in
much smaller proportions than English-speaking Canadians. That this
should have been so in some measure was inevitable. Quebec was
relatively isolated from Old World interests. There was among
French-Canadians a real if usually passive loyalty to the British
Crown; there could not be anything of the personal interest of the
new-comer from the British Isles, nor of the racial sympathy of the
men of British descent and British traditions. Nor could any one who
knew the history and the sentiment of Quebec expect them to feel as
intense an interest in the fortunes of France as English-speaking
Canadians felt in the fortunes of England. Two hundred years before,
immigration from France had ceased; the Roman Catholic Church had
endeavoured to lessen contact with a land of revolution and
infidelity; the British government in early days had striven to the
same end and even as late as Fashoda sympathy with France would have
been regarded as treason. Deep sentiments could not be improvised in a
day to meet the shifts of European diplomacy and the changing
interests of countries overseas. The French-Canadian was a Canadian,
and a Canadian only, perhaps not always an all-Canada man, but
certainly none-but-Canada. Senator Dandurand put the situation
precisely when he showed that the excess in the proportion of
British-born enlistments over native English-speaking Canadians was
greater than the excess of native English-speaking over native
French-speaking enlistments; in brief, interest and enlistment varied
inversely with the length of residence and the depth of rooting in
Canada. The fundamental fact in the situation, yet a fact that was
persistently ignored, was that the war was not initially and
decisively Canada's war, but a war in which she had been involved by
her connection with Britain and in large measure impelled to greater
and greater effort by racial sympathy with Britain. That the war
became in real if secondary fashion Canada's war did not remove that
initial barrier to full and equal interest and participation. And as
the war went on, and the enlisting of the men from one's own
neighbourhood or one's own family brought in its train anxiously
awaited and precious letters from the front and busy canvassing for
patriotic funds or knitting socks or packing comforts for the
trenches, the difference in interest became cumulative.

It was unreasonable to expect the same proportion of every province or
of any other grouping to enlist. Enlistment varied not merely with
interest in the war but with many other conditions. It was as
necessary and as easy to explain the statements that the Maritime
provinces sent only half as great a proportion as the Western
provinces, or why the Anglicans enlisted a larger proportion than
Presbyterians, Presbyterians than Roman Catholics, Roman Catholics
than Methodists. The distribution of British-born immigrants, largely
men of military age, town-dwellers, manual labourers, having personal
ties to the old land, was the chief factor in these variations. Age
and sex counted: Quebec, for example, with her early marriage and
large families, had 28 per cent. of the population of the Dominion,
but only 23 per cent. of the men of military age; and the Maritimes,
with 57 per cent. as large a population as the Western provinces, had
only 30 per cent. as many men of military age. The cities again, with,
at the outset, unemployment, and unescapable recruiting appeals,
enlisted more freely than the country, drained by years of city-ward
drifting down to the barest working force. These were obvious facts,
but prejudice blinded many eyes.

To a Toronto friend, M. K. Cowan, K. C., Sir Wilfrid wrote in March,
1916:

      I come now to what you say about recruiting and the
      slackness of Quebec in that respect. On this point,
      the last word has not been said and the last bit of
      information has not been received. There are some
      factors to be taken into account in the comparison of
      recruiting between Quebec and Ontario.

      Recruiting has been chiefly confined all over Canada
      to urban population, very little in rural population.
      When we deduct from the figures in Ontario the
      British-born, the urban population, and compare only
      the figures in rural districts, the difference will
      not be very great, though I admit that the
      preponderance is in favour of Ontario.

      Before I go further let me remind you that Ontario is
      dotted with towns and cities from 5,000 to 500,000. In
      Quebec we have only one large city, Montreal, then a
      secondary city, Quebec, with not even 100,000 and the
      next three cities, St. Hyacinthe, Sherbrooke and Three
      Rivers, do not count each a population of 20,000.
      Apart from this, we have nothing but villages and a
      purely rural population.

      This is a condition of things which must be taken into
      consideration.

      Next, the great factor against recruiting has been the
      Nationalist movement, which was coddled by the
      Conservatives when we were in office, and which is
      still strong and powerful.

There were special reasons why recruiting was not particularly
successful in Quebec. The outstanding one was that the Quebec members
in the government--the Pelletiers, Blondins, Patenaudes, Nantels,
Svignys, with the exception of T. Chase Casgrain, appointed after the
war began,--had all been eager Nationalists, all hand in glove with
Bourassa in the fight against Laurier and any share in England's wars.
Now conviction or the exigencies of office brought conversion and they
did what they could to encourage enlistment. But the turn was too
sharp, the motives too open to attack. No government could have been
devised in Canada better fitted to discourage recruiting in Quebec.
Mistakes in detail which under the circumstances were more than
mistakes added to the difficulties. With the general in charge of the
Quebec districts unable to speak French, with a Methodist clergyman
appointed by the Minister of Militia as recruiting agent in Montreal,
there was colour for the suspicions of those who urged that the
government was more anxious for a campaign cry than for recruits.

There was still another factor,--Henri Bourassa. The contagion of
interest would have spread had there been no active campaign of
discouragement. Mr. Bourassa and Mr. Lavergne, through "Le Devoir" and
on the platform, from 1915 onward, resolutely opposed any
participation in Britain's wars. Few public men now stood by their
side, but their influence with the masses was undoubted. Day after day
the flood of criticism kept up. All the belligerents were equally
guilty; Allied diplomacy was hypocritical, Britain and France, Italy
and Russia, had been as high-handed in grabbing territory and as
ruthless in governing it as Germany, and even now under cover of fine
phrases about freedom and democracy they were planning in secret
treaties to divide the spoils. British statesmen frankly and rightly
put Britain's interests first; when would Canadian statesmen learn to
do the same for Canada? British connection had involved Canada in war
and would always do so. France was Britain's ally to-day: what of
yesterday when they had been foes and to-morrow when they might be so
again? There was much that was valid in Mr. Bourassa's criticism, as
the Peace of Versailles and its sequels were to prove, unpleasant
truths that had bean dodged and that must some time be faced, but for
this discussion the time had not come. The constant exaggeration, the
refusal to admit the immensely greater guilt and greater danger of
Germany's policy, the unwillingness to see that whether rightly or
wrongly, whether of her own will or at Britain's chariot wheels,
Canada was at war and must first see it through, the suspicion of all
things British that marked every comment, made the little Nationalist
group more provocative than persuasive, a red rag to ninety-nine out
of a hundred Canadians of English speech. Toward Sir Wilfrid Mr.
Bourassa was particularly vindictive, charging him time and again with
having involved Canada in this imperialist web, with betraying the
confidence of his people, with dragging the country on inevitably
toward conscription. "Sir Wilfrid Laurier is the most nefarious man in
the province of Quebec, in the whole of Canada," he shouted at a
political meeting in Ste. Eustache in September, 1916.

Of interest in this and other connections are letters exchanged late
in 1916 between Laurier and Botha: friends who differed much in
circumstance and character, but shared a common straightforwardness
and a common simple dignity; shared a common sympathy with British
ideals and a common lack of British blood, and shared as well a common
fate of violent attack and misrepresentation from extreme Nationalists
and extreme jingoes:

(_Louis Botha to Wilfrid Laurier_)

      Prime Minister's Office, Pretoria. 20th October, 1916.

      Dear Sir Wilfrid:

      It is many months since I have heard from you, and
      since our last meeting many events of great importance
      have occurred. I am writing you to-day chiefly because
      it is quite possible that we shall meet at the next
      Imperial Conference, and to express the hope that we
      shall both be delegates to that Conference. I am
      particularly anxious that you should make sure of
      attending, as the subject of closer Imperial Union is
      certain to be raised once more and on this occasion
      with far better chances of success. I do not know
      whether you have changed your views on this important
      subject since the last conference in 1912, but I
      certainly have not. I still think that the scheme
      suggested by Sir Joseph Ward on that occasion is
      impracticable and would interfere with the
      self-government rights of the Dominions. In fact, I
      have rather the idea of increasing those rights and
      making the self-governing colonies even more
      independent, while at the same time strengthening the
      Imperial connection by economic and treaty
      obligations, putting in fact the Dominions on an equal
      footing with the mother country and converting them
      into sister states rather than daughter colonies.

      It is difficult to follow the political issues in
      Canada, as the information we obtain here is so
      meagre. Still, there is one matter which has been
      receiving attention here and that is in connection
      with one Borassa. I am unable to follow his attitude
      altogether, because I know too little about it, but
      some of my political opponents are quoting him as
      shewing that their political views are identical with
      views held by a large section in other Dominions. Has
      he really a large following, and is he the mouthpiece
      of a large section of the Canadian people?

      There are some other very important points I would
      like to exchange views upon, but I have not the time
      to go into them all. There are, however, the
      resolutions taken at the Paris Economic Conference,
      resolutions which I certainly cannot concur in. They
      seem to me not only premature--for my view is that all
      energies must be concentrated on winning this terrible
      war--but also mischievous and impracticable. They take
      no count of the rights of neutrals and lose out of
      sight altogether the kaleidoscopic nature of European
      politics and the grouping and regrouping of European
      states from time to time.

      I trust to hear from you soon, and am looking forward
      to meeting you once more at some future date. My own
      personal view is that this war will continue for
      another eighteen months at least.


(_Wilfrid Laurier to Lotus Botha_) Ottawa, December 1, 1916.

      My Dear Botha:

      It was a greater pleasure than you can imagine to have
      your letter of the 20th of October.

      I have followed your career from afar as closely as I
      could, realizing that you had your large share of
      troubles, and happy and grateful that you came out of
      them with such flying colours.

      I may or may not be a member of the next Imperial
      Conference. The general elections in Canada ought
      normally to come off in the year 1917, but the result
      of an appeal to the people is always uncertain in this
      country, whatever it may be in South Africa. The
      present government are losing ground steadily, but the
      war adds very much to the uncertainties of the
      contest.

      Should I be a member of the Conference, my attitude
      will certainly be the same as it was when you and I
      met there in 1907 and 1911. The same attempt which was
      made by Sir Joseph Ward will be repeated at the next
      Conference. This is evident from the book of Lionel
      Curtis, "The Project of a Commonwealth." Such a
      project, if attempted, instead of leading to union
      would tend to separation. The only basis of union is
      that which you so well indicate in your letter,
      "making the self-governing colonies even more
      independent, while at the same time strengthening the
      Imperial connection by economic and treaty
      obligations." The basis on which the British Empire
      has grown to its present position has been autonomy,
      and any departure from autonomy would end in disaster.

      Such is your view and my view, but unfortunately
      Imperialists in England, in their eagerness, close
      their eyes to this patent fact. The last step taken by
      them in their blindness is the Paris Economic
      Conference. They do not seem to have perceived that by
      resolving that this war, when it is ended and peace
      restored, must be followed by a commercial war against
      Germany, they were putting a powerful weapon against
      what peace party there may be amongst the German
      people. It was putting in the hands of the German
      Chancellor the obvious retort which he was not slow to
      avail himself of, that Germany must go on fighting
      since even after the war the German people must have
      hostility everywhere, in economics and commerce. I
      still believe, however, that England with her abundant
      common sense will see through this fallacy.

      The relations, economic, commercial and of every
      nature, which must follow the war, will depend very
      much on the extent of the victory of the Allies. I am
      fully confident that Germany cannot win. The only
      doubt is as to the extent of our victory. The only
      problem to-day is to win the war, all thoughts should
      be to that end and to nothing else.

      You ask me about Henri Bourassa, his attitude and his
      influence. Bourassa is a man of great ability, but his
      ability is negative and destructive. He will never
      accomplish anything constructive or of benefit to any
      cause which he may espouse. He was at one time a close
      friend of mine, but we separated. His aim was to
      isolate the French population from the rest of the
      community and make them a separate body, to move
      exclusively together either against one or the other
      of the political parties. My attitude was that the
      French should move on political questions either as
      Liberal or Conservatives, and to act upon political
      lines alone upon all questions, as they might arise.
      For several years before the elections of 1911, he
      carried an active campaign against me amongst my
      French fellow-countrymen, on the ground that I was too
      British; whereas the Tories in the English-speaking
      provinces accused me of not being British enough. In
      1911, these two extreme parties, the extreme French
      and the extreme British, joined together and their
      coalition defeated the government. Bourassa has lost a
      great deal of prestige, ever since, for every argument
      which he used amongst the French people has been
      falsified by everything that has since taken place. In
      the present war he has violently and continuously
      attacked me for my attitude, and in his campaign he
      seems to be animated by an absurd and growing hatred
      of England. To me, my course has been clear from the
      beginning: the triumph of Germany would be a menace to
      freedom in every land. England has nobly taken her
      part in standing at once by Belgium and France, and I
      have constantly and cheerfully exercised what
      influence I have in this country in support of her
      cause.

      When next you go to Europe, I hope you will pass
      through Canada. You would be sure of the warmest
      welcome everywhere, and perhaps a stay of some weeks
      with us might be of some use to you, as the condition
      of things in your country and in this country is very
      similar.

To score a debating point, Mr. Bourassa, in the earlier stages of the
war, was wont not merely to denounce "taxation and war obligation
without representation," but to imply that taxation and war
obligations might be acceptable if representation were accorded. Sir
Wilfrid warned him through a letter to Senator Dandurand that he was
playing with fire, in these verbal concessions to imperialists who
might take him at his word, just as he was later to remind him, more
publicly, of the danger of playing with fire in his unsparing
denunciation of Allied policy:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Raoul Dandurand._--_Translation_)
      335 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa. January 17, 1915.

      My dear Dandurand:

      I wrote to you lately to tell you the importance I
      would attach to a heart-to-heart talk between yourself
      and Bourassa. You have remained on friendly terms with
      him and you can discuss thoroughly the political
      situation.

      In my last letter I told you that Bourassa is playing
      with fire. If he thinks that he will be able to
      extinguish it he may have a rude awakening. Does he
      believe that he can run away from the consequences
      which he will have himself called forth whenever he
      thinks that these consequences have gone far enough?
      He must have reflected upon all this.

      In his speech of Thursday last he again laboured this
      question, upon which he constantly harps. Here are his
      words ("Le Devoir" of Friday, 15th Jan.,): "And by
      effective participation we mean that Canada must share
      with the mother country, the sovereign authority which
      controls the imperial army and navy as well as
      treaties of peace and of alliance, the foreign
      relations, the government of India and of the Crown
      possessions."

      Must we understand that Bourassa is willing to bind
      Canada to all the wars of the Empire in exchange for
      the privilege, or rather the burden, of a share in the
      government of India etc., etc.?

      That privilege he will not obtain from the Asquith
      government, but from the Unionist government which
      will succeed Asquith's he will. Is this the ideal
      which he pursues? The balance of his speech seems to
      run counter to it. Then where is he leading to?

      As ever, Yours very truly, Wilfrid Laurier.

Sir Wilfrid lost no opportunity to combat the Nationalist campaign. At
the Monument National in Montreal, on June 3, 1916, he was insistent:

      This, my compatriots, is what I ask--this is the
      entente cordiale I would have us achieve by service
      together. I have followed the ideal of conscience as
      prompted by my heart. Do not let us waver from the
      right line of conduct. I am older than most of you,
      and I am more than ever convinced that there is no
      real success but that which is based and has its
      foundations on right and justice and the generous
      instincts of the human heart. Let us unite to allay
      and, please God, to extinguish the prejudices that
      pull us apart, and do our utmost like real men and
      women to bring together the two elements in our
      country. . . .

      Come, my young compatriots, with these brave young men
      who offer their services--their lives--that France may
      live, that Britain may continue her noble and generous
      rule and that heroic Belgium may be restored to her
      standing as a nation.

Again in Maisonneuve in September, to an outdoor meeting of fifteen
thousand people he repeated his urging:

      There are people who say we will not fight for
      England; will you then fight for France? I speak to
      you of French origin; if I were young like you and had
      the same health that I enjoy to-day, I would join
      those brave Canadians fighting to-day for the
      liberation of French territory. I would not have it
      said that the French-Canadians do less for the
      liberation of France than the citizens of British
      origin. For my part I want to fight for England and
      also for France. To those who do not want to fight
      either for England or for France I say: Will you fight
      for yourselves?

There was one weapon in the Nationalist armoury of particular
effectiveness,--the resentment in Quebec against Ontario's limitation
of the teaching of French in the elementary schools. There were some
two hundred thousand French-speaking inhabitants in the province which
their ancestors, first of white men, had trod, and with the overflow
from Quebec their numbers were steadily growing. In the early days of
local autonomy they had been free to teach much as they pleased, but
in the eighties, with the growth of French settlers in the counties
bordering on Quebec, the echo of McCarthy and Mercier controversies,
and the growing centralization of provincial control of education, the
demand for regulation had grown strong. Mowat and Ross had met it by a
compromise designed to ensure adequate instruction in English together
with freedom to teach French in addition. On the whole the policy had
succeeded, but the difficulties were great, scarcity of bilingual
teachers, poverty of frontier sections, cessation of attendance
half-way through the elementary schools, and in some cases a
deliberate policy of neglect of English. Friction between English- and
French-speaking Roman Catholics, particularly in Ottawa and in the
diocese of the militant Bishop of London, Dr. Fallon, complicated the
issue. An inquiry was made by Dr. Merchant in 1910, showing for the
most part honest endeavour and real progress in the teaching of
English, but inadequacy still. The Conservative government of Ontario
was pressed especially by its Orange followers to bar any language but
English from the schools. This extremity they avoided, but the famous
Regulation No. 17, of 1912, as amended in 1913, did limit the teaching
of French; as the language of instruction it could be used only where
children did not understand English and then not beyond Form 1--the
first two years of school--except by special permission of the chief
inspector; as a subject of study, it could be studied for not more
than an hour a day, "in schools where French has hitherto been a
subject of study." These limitations, though enforced with sympathy
and caution by the department, roused a storm of protest from
French-Canadians within the province and without. School boards
refused to obey; inspectors were barred out; children went on strike;
injunctions and lawsuits followed fast, and Canada was torn by faction
at the hour of greatest need of unity.

Such a situation was the Nationalist opportunity. What was the meaning
of the alliance between England and France if the language of France
was to be proscribed? What hypocrisy to prate of fighting for small
peoples when in Canada the majority was trying to ride roughshod over
the minority! The Boches of Ontario were worse than the Boches of
Prussia; the real firing line for the defence of French civilization
was in Ontario, not in France. With this ranting Sir Wilfrid had no
sympathy. No grievance in the schools of Ontario could justify failure
in the urgent duty. Yet, like most moderate men of French blood, he
did resent the arrogance of many English-speaking Canadians, their
assumption that French-Canadians were citizens of a lesser order,
their calm ignoring of the lessons of history, their unwillingness to
study the problem and the case for bilingualism. Even among moderate
men in Ontario, who joined with him in proclaiming the ideal to be,
ensure adequate knowledge of English and then wherever feasible permit
the adequate teaching of French, he found an unwillingness to face the
question whether this actually was possible under the present
regulations, and a refusal to run risks by opposing the popular mood.
Not least, he felt that at this time of stress, when it was essential
to maintain harmony and enlist the enthusiasm of all sections of the
community, the action of the Ontario government in attempting to
narrow the limits of the teaching of French was particularly
unfortunate.

Early in 1915 he wrote to Sir Lomer Gouin:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Sir Lomer Gouin._--_Translation_)
      Ottawa, January 9, 1915.

      . . . However, that is only a detail; the most
      important thing for the moment is the school question
      in Ontario. Dandurand has doubtless told you of the
      talk I have had with him. You are on extremely
      difficult ground. Undoubtedly the French-Canadians
      have a serious grievance in this province. The
      question had been settled to general satisfaction by
      the Mowat government, through the regulations framed
      by Ross, his Minister of Education. It seems to me
      that it is upon this ground that the question should
      be kept.

      On the other hand I am more than ever convinced that
      the violent agitation stirred up by our Nationalist
      friends, instead of aiding in a solution only makes
      the situation worse. That is what causes
      embarrassment; as you know, it is not the first time
      in the history of our country that a cause has been
      spoiled by the violence of those who make themselves
      its champions.

To Mr. Cowan he wrote freely:

      I notice your special reference to the bilingual
      question. It so happens that George showed me your
      letter to him before I received yours, and I told him
      that I would take the liberty of writing you at once.

      Do not commend me for what I have done, or refrained
      to do, in this matter. It has given me more concern
      than anybody else in the party, I feel quite sure. I
      have about come to the conclusion that I have lived
      too long and that my usefulness has gone. The reason
      is that I do not find in the party of to-day the same
      feeling that existed when you and I were younger than
      we are now. And this is confirmed by your statement
      that the feeling in Ontario is absolutely in favour of
      enforcing strictly Regulation 17, and "is prepared to
      oppose and slaughter any man or any party who talks of
      granting greater privileges to the French in the
      Province of Ontario."

      Will you permit me to ask you if you have taken the
      trouble ever to read Regulation 17, and to make
      yourself acquainted with its purport? I doubt it, and
      if I am wrong I am prepared to apologize. You and I
      are too old friends not to be perfectly frank with one
      another. I stand to-day, with regard to the privileges
      of the French, exactly where I did, and where you did,
      and where the whole party did in the time of Mowat:
      and this attitude was that every French child should
      receive an English education in the schools of
      Ontario, with the privilege of being also taught in
      French.

      Are you aware that Regulation 17 has completely
      revolutionized that policy? In short, Regulation 17
      provides that in all schools in Ontario where French
      was taught in the month of June, 1912, it would
      continue to be taught, but in a restricted manner;
      and, further, that in all schools where French was not
      then taught, it should not be taught at all. I stated
      above that I did not believe that you had read that
      regulation, because I am sure, at least I believe,
      that it never entered your mind that in a civilized
      country the teaching of a second language, and such a
      language as French, could be thus ruthlessly
      prohibited. If in this I am wrong, and if really
      Toryism has made such headway in the province of
      Ontario that the Grits will not stand up to the
      policy of Mowat, then, I repeat, I have lived too
      long, and my only course would be at once to step down
      and out. I stand to-day by the policy on which we
      fought so many elections in Ontario from 1885 to 1896.

      I tell you frankly that I have felt and still feel
      strongly upon this matter.

      I know that I never appealed to race prejudice in any
      form whatsoever and under any circumstances; and that
      in my province I have had to fight desperate battles
      against those who were making direct appeals to the
      prejudices of my fellow-countrymen. But, if it has
      come to this, that the language of the race to which I
      belong is proscribed, then my fellow-countrymen have a
      just cause of complaint. It is no longer prejudice,
      and their cause ought to appeal to generous-hearted
      men like my friend Mahlon Cowan.


      Ottawa, April 15, 1916.

      My dear Mahlon:

      Many thanks for your letter.

      I am afraid there is too much truth in your statement
      that the Liberal party to-day would not stand to the
      policy of Mowat, and this is the very reason which
      makes me feel to-day--even more than when I wrote
      you--that I have lived too long,-and that it is time
      for me to step down and out.

      I am aware that T. C. Casgrain, the Bishop of St.
      Hyacinthe, Armand Lavergne and other extremists are
      creating a good deal of irritation in Ontario, but it
      is under such circumstances that sane and strong men
      have to stand up.

      You are aware that I have fought those extremists all
      my life. I have no intention to relax that fight,
      whilst at the same time I shall have to fight the
      extremists at your end of the line.

      I know very well that under these circumstances the
      party must suffer. This will always be the case. It
      was the case with Gladstone, when he fought for Home
      Rule in Ireland. His course was very much impeded by
      those wild Irishmen whose mad utterances were
      gleefully accepted and made use of by Tories to fight
      him.

To Mr. Fielding, who deprecated any discussion of the issue in the
federal parliament, he made clear how much he felt the refusal of his
English-speaking compatriots to put themselves in his place:

      Ottawa, April 26, 1916.

      The subject, and the views which you present have
      given me more anxiety, I believe, than even to
      yourself or to anybody else.

      I see no other solution for it, situated as I am, than
      to step down and out, as evidently I have outlived my
      usefulness. . . .

      I believe you will acquit me from race or creed
      prejudice, but I confess to you that I believe that my
      fellow-countrymen of my own race here are unfairly and
      unjustly treated.

      Naturally, feeling that way, I am entitled to act
      accordingly. What is the remedy to be sought? I have
      steadily and absolutely opposed any attempt at
      disallowance. I do not see, however, why I should not
      make representations, as we did in the case of Home
      Rule and the New Brunswick schools in 1872 and 1875.
      If I were to remain silent under such circumstances I
      would certainly lose my own self-esteem and respect
      and, on the other hand, I know that the moderate
      action which I propose will be construed against the
      party, so long as I remain the head of it.

      I have discussed the matter with our leading friends
      in the House and suggested to them that I should
      withdraw and pass the reins to some other hands. You
      know that I have always thought that the leadership of
      the party should be in the hands of one of the
      majority. This view strongly impressed me at first,
      and I am still of the same opinion.

      My friends, however, are very earnestly, though, I
      think, very unwisely, deprecating any other course
      than my remaining in the present position.

      There the matter stands at present. I am not
      convinced. My opinion is still very strong that I
      should step down, as I feel that in the present
      emergency the attitude which I must take will be
      detrimental to the party, though we must recognize
      that Toryism has made strong headway in Ontario, and
      that the policy of Mowat is now at a discount.

To Mr. N. W. Rowell, who as leader of the Liberal Opposition in
Ontario was deeply concerned, he was more explicit:

      Ottawa, March 1, 1916.

      My dear Rowell:

      I am just as alarmed as you are about the bilingual
      situation in Ontario. To me, however, the situation is
      a very simple one. I stand where the party has always
      stood for the last forty years, and for the system of
      bilingual schools established by Mowat.

      The complaint is made, and rightly made, I believe,
      that in many schools, under that system, English was
      not taught at all and that the only language taught
      was French. This was an abuse which should not have
      been tolerated and which could be easily put an end
      to, simply by applying the regulations as made by the
      Mowat government, and insisting that every child
      should have an English education. It is the duty of
      the State, you say, [to see] that every child in the
      province receives a good English education. To this, I
      agree completely. You add that where the parents
      desire that their children should also study the
      French language, there should be no objection. To
      this, I also completely agree.

      But this is exactly what is denied by Regulation 17. I
      have looked at these regulations carefully for the
      last two days. I must say for the Department of
      Education of Ontario that they seem to be much
      confused, not only in their ideas but in their
      language. As you read the last regulations, those of
      August, 1913, the French language can be taught with
      certain restrictions in all schools where it was
      taught in the month of August, 1912, but is not to be
      taught in any other school; that is to say, that,
      henceforth, the Orange doctrine is to prevail,--that
      the English language only is to be taught in the
      schools. That seems to me absolutely tyrannical.

      Your suggestion that a commission composed of three
      men should study the situation, is a good one. . . .

      With regard to the press report that the Quebec
      legislature has authorized municipalities in Quebec to
      make contributions towards a fund to carry on
      bilingual agitation in Ontario, I believe the case is
      not stated properly. I would be much surprised if a
      man of Gouin's prudence has allowed the passing of a
      law to carry on bilingual agitation. I will look into
      the matter right away, but what I believe is that the
      legislature has authorized municipalities to assist
      French children in Ontario in obtaining a French
      education in addition to the English education, which
      they must receive under the laws of the province.


      Ottawa, April 18, 1916.

      I notice what you say about the caucus of last week,
      and your hope that if the question was considered the
      decision was against introducing a resolution. I
      cannot refrain from expressing my strong
      disappointment. If the party cannot stand up to the
      principles advocated, maintained and fought for by
      Mowat and Blake, I can only repeat to you that it is
      more than time for me to step down and out.


      Ottawa, April 28, 1916.

      May I add another word to what you may think perhaps a
      too prolonged correspondence?

      I agree with you that there were two principles for
      which Mowat stood all his life: provincial rights and
      fair treatment of minorities. In my judgment the
      latter principle, fair treatment of the minority, has
      been violated by the men now in office in Ontario. Do
      you believe otherwise?

      As to provincial rights, I adhere to the principle. I
      strongly deprecated the idea of disallowance of the
      legislation of which the minority complains. Does the
      idea of provincial rights go to the extent that it
      will not receive the complaint of a minority?

      Again and again, the Dominion parliament, on both
      sides, whilst refusing to interfere with provincial
      legislation, has made representations to legislatures
      which, in many instances, have produced most salutary
      effects and a modification of the legislation
      complained of. I go not further, and I regret
      exceedingly that even that much will not be granted by
      our friends in Ontario.


      Ottawa, May 11, 1916.

      You and I have renewed a line of cleavage which--I so
      judge from the tone of your letter just received--is
      final and beyond redemption.

      That the powers of the province should be, and indeed
      are, paramount, is not questionable, and not
      questioned.

      What I fail to appreciate is that the prayer offered
      for a reconsideration of the present regulations on
      bilingualism, should be harshly treated as an invasion
      of the rights of the province. Such a position is not
      logically and historically tenable, and here again the
      present attitude of the party at Toronto is at
      variance with the traditions laid down by the fathers.
      It is sufficient in this connection, to refer you to
      the Home Rule resolutions passed in the House of
      Commons with the approval of the whole party.

      I write with a heavy heart. The party has not
      advanced; it has sorely retrograded, abandoning
      position after position before the haughty onslaughts
      of Toryism.

      Believe me ever, my dear Rowell, with great respect,

      Yours very sincerely, Wilfred Laurier.

The question could not be kept out of federal discussion. The issue
had been created and until in some way understanding and settlement
was reached, it would prevent full national unity. On May 9, Ernest
Lapointe, himself a brilliant example of the value of bilingualism,
moved, in the language he had learned since his coming to Ottawa in
1908, a resolution that "this House . . . while fully recognizing the
principle of provincial rights and the necessity of every child being
given a thorough English education, respectfully suggests to the
Legislative Assembly of Ontario the wisdom of making it clear that the
privilege of the children of French parentage of being taught in their
mother tongue be not interfered with." Immediately, a Western Liberal,
W. E. Knowles, raised the point of order that the legislation in
question was not within the jurisdiction of the House, and was
therefore not a proper subject for debate. The Speaker on the
following day gave his opinion that there was no basis for the point
of order. Mr. W. B. Northrup, an Ontario Conservative, thereupon
appealed from the Speaker's ruling, but was supported by only eight
other members, all Western Liberals. Mr. Lapointe then presented his
resolution. The debate which followed did credit to parliament, with
Mr. Lapointe, W. F. Nickle, Paul Lamarche, Claude Macdonnell, George
Graham, and Frank Oliver,--who emphasized the need of one language in
the polyglot prairie West--making the most notable contributions.

Sir Wilfrid supported the resolution in a speech which ranks as one of
his strongest efforts, lucid, persuasive, restrained but vibrating
with emotion. "It was," wrote the correspondent of the Conservative
Toronto "World," "the greatest speech from an oratorical standpoint to
which I have ever listened. Sir Wilfrid was in splendid form and he
spoke with deep feeling. As he proceeded, his years dropped from him
like a garment, and he seemed as vigorous and resolute as a man of
thirty-five."

      I appeal, not to passion or prejudice, but to the
      sober reasoning and judgment of my fellow-countrymen
      of all origins. I discard at once all reference to
      constitutional arguments. I do not here and now bring
      within the purview of this discussion the British
      North America Act. I do not here and now invoke the
      cold letter of any positive law. Still less do I
      question the paramount power of the legislature of
      Ontario to finally pass judgment upon this question
      and record the final verdict of its people. I rise,
      Sir, not for the purpose of giving advice or
      admonition to the province of Ontario. I rise to plead
      before the people of Ontario, in behalf of his
      Majesty's subjects of French origin in that province,
      who complain that by reason of a statute passed by the
      province they have been deprived of rights in the
      matter of education which they have enjoyed themselves
      and their forefathers before them, ever since Canada
      became a possession of the British Crown. . . .

      I am of the old school of Mowat and Blake, the parent
      school of Provincial Rights. By that doctrine I stand.
      The province of Ontario, and the province of Ontario
      alone, will and shall determine for herself the
      decision. Yet is it forbidden by the code of the new
      converts to the doctrine of provincial rights that I
      stand at the bar before my fellow-countrymen of
      Ontario and make my plea? Is it forbidden that I
      respectfully present the petition of a humble servant
      of French origin? . . .

      I know there is in the province of Ontario a sense of
      irritation at the position taken by some of my
      fellow-countrymen of French blood in the province of
      Quebec, who have from the first deprecated the
      participation of Canada in the present war, and who
      have exerted their influence to attempt at least to
      prevent enlistment. Alas, it is true; it is only too
      true. It is deplorable, and, to me, as unintelligible
      as it is deplorable. It is true, alas, that there are
      in my province men of French origin who, when France
      is fighting the fight of heroism which stirs the blood
      of mankind, remain with their blood cold, who tell us:
      "No, we will not lift a finger to assist Britain in
      defending the integrity of France, but we want our
      wrongs to be righted in Ontario."

      Wrongs or no wrongs, there is a field of honour; there
      is a call of duty.

      Sir, I am not prepared to say that my
      fellow-countrymen of French origin have no rights in
      Ontario; but I am prepared to say this, and I want my
      words to be heard throughout the length and breadth of
      this land. Whether my countrymen have rights or no
      rights in Ontario, whether those rights are granted or
      denied, these considerations are no bar to the duty
      which the French-Canadians owe to themselves and to
      the honour of their race to come forward in their
      fullest numbers and take part in the great struggle
      that is going on to-day in the land of their ancestors
      for the cause of freedom, and of the civilization of
      mankind. . . .

      A journal published in the city of Toronto, edited by
      a man of great ability, an eminent writer who has
      given himself the mission of being the foremost
      advocate of a closer bond of union for the British
      Empire [Mr. J. S. Willison, of the Toronto "News"],
      has within the last ten days, inaugurated a new
      programme, the first article of which is, "One
      language and one language only." Under the present
      circumstances, this means that only one language shall
      be taught in the schools of Ontario. Sir, I wonder if
      this new theory for bringing about unity of the Empire
      is to be applied in Wales, . . . and in the Highlands
      of Scotland, or in Malta, or in Egypt, or in South
      Africa. Sir, if there is one thing which to-day stands
      to the glory of England--a feat unparalleled in the
      history of the world--it is that to-day on the
      battle-field in Flanders there are men who do not
      speak a word of English but who for England have come
      forward to fight and die. If the Britisher, when he
      went to India, to Malta, to South Africa, had
      implanted that new doctrine of "one language and one
      language only," and had suppressed the language of the
      peoples who had just passed under his dominion, do you
      believe, sir, you would have seen that great and noble
      spectacle which has astonished and is still
      astonishing the world? No, sir. It is because British
      institutions everywhere have carried freedom and
      respect for minorities that England is as strong as
      she is to-day.

      I want to appeal to the sense of justice and fair play
      of the people of Ontario, and to their appreciation
      of British institutions--no more. Even if I am
      wrong--and I hope I am not--I am sure that a frank
      understanding between the majority and the minority in
      the province of Ontario, between the two great
      elements which compose the Canadian people, may force
      a solution of this troublesome question. Every man in
      the province of Ontario, every man in this room who
      comes from the province of Ontario, whether he sits on
      that side or on this side, is determined that every
      child in the province of Ontario shall receive an
      English education. To that, sir, I give my fullest
      assent. I want every child in the province of Ontario
      to receive the benefit of an English education.
      Wherever he may go on this continent I want him to be
      able to speak the language of the great majority of
      the people on this continent. I want it, I say, not
      only because it is the law of the province, but
      because of merely utilitarian considerations. No man
      on this continent is equipped for the battle of life
      unless he has an English education. I want every child
      to have an English education.

After surveying the practice of other countries in the Empire,
emphasizing the unanimous verdict of the Imperial Educational
Conference held in London in 1911, upon the methods to be followed in
bilingual teaching, and analyzing in detail the Ontario regulations,
he continued:

      Now I come to the point where I want to speak to my
      fellow-countrymen in the province of Ontario. When I
      ask that every child of my own race should receive an
      English education, will you refuse us the privilege of
      education also in the language of our mothers and our
      fathers? That is all that I ask to-day; I ask nothing
      more than that. I simply ask you, my
      fellow-countrymen, British subjects like myself, if,
      when we say that we must have an English education,
      you will say: "You shall have an English education and
      nothing else." There are men who say that in the
      schools of Ontario and Manitoba there should be no
      other language than the English language. But, sir,
      when I ask that we should have also the benefit of a
      French education, will you refuse us that benefit? Is
      that an unnatural demand? Is that an obnoxious demand?
      Will the concession of it do harm to anybody? And will
      it be said that in the great province of Ontario there
      is a disposition to put a bar on knowledge and to
      stretch every child in the schools of Ontario upon a
      Procrustean bed and say that they shall all be
      measured alike, that no one shall have the privilege
      of a second education in a single language? I do not
      believe it; and, if we discuss this question with
      frankness, as between man and man, in my humble
      opinion, it can yet be settled by an appeal to the
      people of Ontario. I do not believe that any man will
      refuse us the benefit of a French education.

An eloquent appeal, but an appeal made in vain, both within and
outside the House. The government speakers took the stand that the
question did not concern the federal parliament, and that its
discussion would fan, rather than allay, the flames. In detail, it was
urged that the Ontario regulations were not so drastic as they were
represented, that the restrictions applied only to certain designated
schools which had not been teaching English adequately, and that the
question of teaching French in schools where it had not been taught
hitherto was not determined by Regulation 17 at all, but by the old
Regulation 15, which limited the teaching of French or German as
subjects of study to sections where the French or German language
prevailed, a regulation which had not been changed. The Ontario
Liberals, while denying the charges of fanaticism and intolerance
which had been made against Ontario outside the House, supported the
resolution as a step toward reconciliation. The Westerners opposed.
Eleven Western Liberals and one Ontario Liberal voted against the
resolution, and five Quebec Conservatives for it.

Outside the House, Conservatives attacked Laurier as a disturber of
the peace, an ally of Bourassa, the man responsible for Quebec's
slowness in recruiting, while even some friends deprecated his stand
as untimely. He felt the matter deeply. His stand, he was assured,
whether or not expedient, was in accord with Liberal principles and
Liberal traditions. If Liberals would not support it, that meant that
they were forgetting the necessity of tolerance and diversity in
Canada's governing, or were afraid to face popular prejudice as he had
faced it in Ontario in 1886 and in Quebec in 1896. He considered the
question a touchstone of popular and party attitude, a test of the
success or failure of his lifelong striving for racial sympathy. The
test was not reassuring. It was an evidence of his concern over the
deeper issues at stake that the defection of the Western Liberals
forced from him a rare outbreak of anger. One who saw him in daily and
intimate intercourse for eight years declares that in all that time he
never heard a single impatient or angry word pass Sir Wilfrid's lips
but twice,--once over some trifling stupidity of locked and keyless
trunks, once now over the refusal of the Westerners to make any
concession to him who had made so many.

In letters to his friends he had more than once declared that the
hesitation of the party to follow his lead was proof that he should
have insisted upon his resignation being accepted when last he
proferred it. Now the question had been put to the proof. During the
debate the Liberal members had met in caucus by provinces. Senator
Dandurand brought to him in his office their report; the Quebec and
Maritime-province members were all supporting, the Western members
opposing; the Ontario men, while in sympathy with the aim of the
motion, doubted its expediency, but they would vote for it if Sir
Wilfrid so desired them. "No," he replied, "I shall not ask them; they
should not expect that after all these years." He walked to the
window, stood looking out in silence a few minutes, and then came back
to his desk. "I have lived too long, I have outlived Liberalism. The
forces of prejudice in Ontario have been too much for my friends. It
was a mistake for a French Roman Catholic to take the leadership. I
told Blake so thirty years ago."--"Yes, but those thirty years--" He
was silent again and then scribbled a few lines: "I am resigning and
shall announce my resignation in the House this afternoon. Please give
this to George." Senator Dandurand took the letter to George Graham.
Immediately the Ontario Liberals assembled. They had not realized that
"the Old Man" took it so much to heart. At once they sent word that
they would support the motion, and urgently requested him to withdraw
his resignation. He was deeply moved by their warm expressions of
confidence, and agreed to continue.

To an Ontario editor, who had made the criticism that the speech
should have been delivered to the electors of Ontario, not to the
members at Ottawa, and had gone on to insist that English must be
taught adequately in every school in Ontario he wrote later:

      What is the use of my going to Toronto or anywhere
      else in Ontario if I am to speak to deaf ears, ears
      voluntarily deaf? What is the use of trying to
      convince those whom I would address, if there is no
      possibility of changing their minds?

      Did I say that I wanted children to issue from schools
      of Ontario without knowing English? Did I, on the
      contrary, not say that for every reason I wanted every
      child of French origin to speak English? Did Sir
      Oliver Mowat, when he established the system of which
      Dr. Merchant complained, intend that children of
      French origin should not learn English? If Dr.
      Merchant found that there were schools in which no
      English was taught, it was not as the result of the
      system established by Sir Oliver Mowat, but because
      that system was not properly enforced, and the remedy
      was not to alter the system but to insist upon the
      fulfilment of its regulations.

And again, somewhat earlier:

      You add that Howard Ferguson and the extreme Orange
      element feel that there is party advantage for them in
      insisting upon greater restrictions in the teaching of
      French, just as Bourassa, Lavergne, and the extreme
      partisans on the other side feel that there is an
      advantage for them in insisting upon the recognition
      of French as an official language in the province of
      Ontario. We, French Liberals of Quebec, are fighting
      Bourassa and Lavergne; will the English Liberals in
      Ontario fight Howard Ferguson and the extreme Orange
      element?

To another Ontario friend:

      You call my attention to the official interpretations
      of Regulation 17 which have recently been given to the
      press, and which were quoted in part in the debates in
      the House. It may be that the practice of the
      Department of Education is sometimes better than its
      regulations, and its intentions better than its
      grammar. I am advised that the Department is not
      altogether happy over its position, but is not
      prepared to make a frank reversal. Can you imagine
      anything more confused than these regulations and
      amendments and interpretations? . . . Doubtless the
      minster learned English in one of these hopelessly
      backward bilingual schools.

      Yet these interpretations, if they show a desire to
      hedge, do not in the least explain away the objections
      which have been taken. It is declared that Regulation
      17 does not apply to all schools in which French has
      been taught, but only to certain specially designated
      ones among them, in which English has not been taught
      properly. Do you, as a matter of fact, know of any
      bilingual schools in which Regulation 17 is not in
      force? If there are any such, is French taught there
      more freely and more extensively? If not, it is
      nonsense to say that the regulation does not apply. If
      so, then the Department is confessing that it is quite
      possible to teach English adequately and yet to give
      French more than the grudging scope of Regulation 17.
      . . .

Ontario was not the only province in which the bilingual issue was
alive. In Manitoba, the new Liberal government of Premier Norris had
rescinded the clause in the School Act, inserted as a result of the
Laurier-Greenway agreement of 1896, which gave the parents of ten
children speaking any language other than English the right to
bilingual instruction. The unforeseen immigration of thousands of
settlers from Central Europe had created an extremely difficult
situation in many sections where Polish, Ruthenian, or German parents
all clamoured for teaching in their mother tongue. The government
insisted on securing a free hand, though informally undertaking not to
disturb the privileges of the French-speaking citizens so long at
least as the schooling was adequate. In a letter to a prominent
French-Canadian in Winnipeg, Sir Wilfrid went at some length into this
situation and into the general racial and constitutional background:

(_Translation_) Ottawa, July 12, 1916.

      The transition from winter to spring is always a
      depressing period for me, and I have perhaps felt it
      more this year than usually. Yet my health is still
      very good, and now that the sun has at last come back
      to us, I am feeling myself again.

      I have read and reread your letter in reply to my own.
      I agree with you on all points but one, to which I
      refer later. We have reached a critical period in the
      development of Confederation, with regard to the
      rights of the French language. Unfortunately, the B.
      N. A. Act contains only one article on this subject,
      and the rights which are conferred upon us are very
      restricted alike in letter and in spirit. . . .

      This article is so explicit that it seems to me
      impossible to interpret it judicially otherwise than
      in a wholly restrictive sense. The Nationalists,
      however, maintain that since we have the right to
      speak French in the federal parliament and before the
      courts, we have the right to teach French in the
      schools of every province. Even if Section 133 were
      not positive and restricted, as it is, to conclude
      that the concession of a privilege carries with it an
      obligatory consequence seems to me a judicial heresy. . . .

      It is an historical fact that without the French
      population of Quebec the union of the provinces of
      British North America would have been a legislative
      union; the French population of Quebec would never
      have consented to such a form, since that would mean
      its disappearance as a distinct element. It is Quebec
      that suggested the federal form, and it must be
      accepted with all its consequences. For the French
      population of Quebec the advantages have been immense;
      outside Quebec, in face of the positive terms of
      Section 133, the French tongue has nothing to look for
      aside from whatever sentiments the justice of the
      cause may arouse and whatever influence may be brought
      to bear on the majority.

      The desire for centralization, which had not succeeded
      in getting entrenched in the constitutional act, was
      not long in reappearing and in aiming at domination,
      in spite of the letter of the law. Then began the
      struggle between the federal and the provincial
      governments, particularly Ontario and Manitoba.
      Experience has certainly made it clear that, after
      all, the division of power between the Dominion and
      the provinces is the only principle on which the
      Canadian Confederation can be worked. The province of
      Quebec is more interested than any other in the
      maintenance of this principle in its absolute
      integrity.

      Yet from this comes also the anguish of the present
      hour. What are the rights of the French language other
      than those defined in Section 133, and, to come to the
      question of the moment, what are the rights of the
      French language in the matter of education? This
      question will be decided judicially by the Privy
      Council in the case which is now being heard. If the
      decision goes against us, what remains to be done, and
      to what tribunal must we have recourse? Here I come to
      the point where, unfortunately, I do not agree with
      you.

      You believe in remedial legislation, but remedial
      legislation is provided for only under Section 93, and
      Section 93 applies only to denominational schools
      (Roman Catholic minority and Protestant minority).
      Whatever arguments may be devised to bring language
      within the category of denominational schools, you are
      confronted by this positive fact that in the province
      of Ontario, if the Catholic minority of French speech
      complains of Regulation 17 as an attack upon separate
      schools, on the other hand the Catholic minority of
      English speech makes no objection and in fact
      approves. In any case, were there a basis for remedial
      legislation, that remedy would be wholly illusory, and
      the objections which you recognize yourself seem to me
      peremptory.

      What remains? Nothing but the means which has brought
      about every reform in British countries and which has
      transformed Great Britain itself; which has turned an
      oligarchy into a democracy; which has extended the
      franchise from one class to another in turn, until now
      it is the privilege of every class in the nation;
      which has abolished many of the privileges of caste
      and is on the way to extinguish what remains; which
      has brought about the replacement of protection by
      free trade; which has abolished the privileges of the
      Church of England in Ireland and is on the way to
      abolish them in Wales; which is proceeding to attack
      with the same success all that remains of the feudal
      regime; and which, finally, after a struggle of more
      than a century, has obtained the concession of Home
      Rule for Ireland.

      That amounts to saying that in constitutional
      countries it is by persuasion, by moderation that in
      the end right triumphs. The struggle for Home Rule in
      Ireland has lasted for more than a century, but the
      cause has triumphed at last. That is the only resource
      remaining to us. Observe that this resource has always
      won, even in this country of ours; in Nova Scotia,
      where the bilingual method of teaching exists in
      practice though not by law, and so, too, in the
      province of New Brunswick.

      To come now to what concerns Manitoba. I have had
      several conferences with members of the cabinet. I
      have not been able to persuade them to leave the
      Laurier-Greenway agreement alone. On this point, they
      have all taken a stand of blank refusal, alleging that
      the regulation has been abused, on behalf not so much
      of the languages, as of the Slav dialects, which are
      now met with in Manitoba. All have declared that they
      recognize that the French language has rights not
      based on law, but which they agree to respect.

      I am informed that so far no change whatever has been
      made in the French schools. If this is so, is it not
      best to accept the rgime of tolerance, such as exists
      in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick?

      This is the conclusion to which I have come, and I
      submit it to you for your full consideration and for
      your own opinion. Not only have I no confidence in the
      violent methods of Senator Landry, but I see great
      danger in them. I have said so frankly to Landry,
      whose zeal I respect, but who is of too fiery a temper
      to be a safe guide. . . .




CHAPTER XIX

THE CLOSING YEARS

      Canada's Achievement--The Recruiting
      Situation--Conscription Proposals--Imperialist
      Campaign--Borden and Conscription--Belated Coalition
      Offers--The Conscription Debate--Cleavage in the
      Liberal Ranks--The Western Convention--Railways,
      Franchise Act and Union Government--The December
      Election--Unionist Victory--The Failure of
      Conscription--Rallying the Forces--The End.


The bilingual question was a minor issue, but its discussion revealed,
though faintly, some of the factors that were soon to shape action on
the more temporary but more acute issue of conscription. The lines of
cleavage within the party and in the country were drawn. As yet the
wedge was not thrust in as deep as opponents had hoped and friends had
feared. Sir Wilfrid's attitude undoubtedly weakened his position in
the English-speaking provinces, but the immediate results were not
marked. For the time, the government had no competitor in
unpopularity.[59] The election of Hartley Dewart in a provincial
contest in south-west Toronto and of Mr. Wellington Hay in the federal
riding of Perth and particularly the steady victory of the Liberals in
the provincial elections, resulting in a change from 1911 of five
Conservative and four Liberal administrations and of 280 Conservative
and 187 Liberal members to seven Liberal and two Conservative
administrations by the end of 1916, with 336 Liberal as against 180
Conservative seats, indicated a strong current. Some relief came with
the resignation of General Hughes in November, 1916, for it was
against Sir Sam that the most vigorous Liberal and independent
criticism was directed. The correspondence exchanged at the time, with
Sir Robert's charges of mismanagement and dictatorialness, "your
desire to administer your department as if it were a distinct and
separate government in itself," and Sir Sam's counter-charges of
muddling incompetence, snobbish favouritism, and petty intrigue, did
not in itself do the government any good. The storm of criticism was a
sign of frazzling nerves. The government had undoubtedly made serious
mistakes, and was to make more, but it had a great achievement to its
credit. By the end of 1916, 400,000 men had been enrolled and 280,000
had gone overseas; a munitions industry employing 300,000 men had been
built up; a tardy beginning made in direct taxation through the
assessment of business profits, and a second domestic loan of
$100,000,000 subscribed twice over. As to how far the government and
how much the people could claim the credit, there was room for
debate, but unquestionably Canada's achievement, in the field and at
home, was immensely beyond any dreaming when the war began, and not
unworthy of the high need.

[Footnote 59: A trained newspaper observer with an unusually intimate
knowledge of Ontario politics, wrote on Sept. 14, 1916, of impressions
gathered during two weeks at the Toronto Exhibition:

"Really, Sir Wilfrid, it was a revelation. It took my breath away. I
would not now be surprised to see anything happen in Ontario. Meeting
the visitors one by one, now one from Barrie, now one from Sudbury,
now from Peterboro, and so on, it was always the same, discontent and
disgust with the Borden administration. So far as I could diagnose it,
Sam Hughes and Camp Borden play a big part, but no bigger than does
Borden himself. The people have the idea that the premier is a man
without forcefulness or personality and without leadership, and that
he is afraid to make any definite move."]

The clashing demands of the army and of production for men led in this
year to much scattered discussion of relative needs and of means of
holding the balance right. Recruiting in the beginning of the year
brought in thirty thousand men a month; at the close of the year, with
seasonal expansion, the growth of the munitions industry and the
exhaustion of eligible men, the numbers fell to six thousand. The
counter currents of opinion were seen in the demand of recruiting
leagues for conscription, and from manufacturers and business men for
selective enlistment which would leave their working forces
undisturbed; and in typical utterances such as Lord Shaughnessy's
speech in April doubting whether the premier's proposal to raise
500,000 men was practicable except at the cost of a serious drain on
the country's working forces, the resolution of the United Farmers of
Ontario against further draining of the scanty labour of the farms,
and the demand of the munitions section of the Canadian Manufacturers'
Association in March that munitions workers should be protected
against recruiting. There was an increasing demand for compulsory
service, but the leading newspapers on both sides of politics opposed
it.

In September, the government as a compromise measure established a
National Service Board to encourage recruiting while at the same time
endeavouring to protect essential industries. Unfortunately the plan
was marked from the beginning by the habit of the government in
considering the war as a branch of the patronage system of the
Conservative party. Of the eleven Directors of National Service
appointed, ten were strong Conservative workers. The director-general,
Sir Thomas Tait, resigned after three weeks' experience of government
methods. In accordance with a resolution of the National Service
Board, Sir Robert Borden then requested Sir Wilfrid to name five
Liberal members to serve on a co-operating parliamentary committee of
twelve, but in view of the conditions of which Sir Thomas Tait's
resignation was only one evidence Sir Wilfrid declined this belated
plea: "I feel, under the circumstances, in acceding to your suggestion
any assistance to the cause which I have endeavoured to serve from the
first day of the war would not be untrammelled and consequently as
effective as if I continue to serve it according to my own ways as
heretofore." Mr. R. B. Bennett succeeded as director-general, and
carried on a vigorous campaign, in which he took repeated occasion to
oppose the suggestion of conscription as disruptive of national unity.
A national registration in December proved of little practical value.
Sir Wilfrid's attitude to the conscription proposals, and his
anticipation of the lengths to which the race cry would be carried,
are clear from a letter to a British Columbia supporter:

      Ottawa, January 8, 1917.

      I accept your kind wishes for myself and my wife with
      great pleasure, and I adhere to the old ways of our
      fathers in that respect, and I wish we would still
      follow their example in many other ways. There was a
      time when I thought that with the inventions of recent
      times, which have brought the world more closely
      together, a feeling of brotherhood would ensue, but
      the reverse has happened. The nations have opened ways
      of communication between them, not for the purpose of
      having peace and amity, but to assail one another even
      with more bitterness than before. The present war is a
      sad blow to those who had hoped for an advanced
      civilization.

      Therefore, I come back to the old ways, and not only
      do I receive your greetings as they are sent, but I
      pray you to accept all my best wishes for the coming
      year, for yourself and your family.

      What you tell me about the nature of the next campaign
      is quite true: the only tactics of the Tories will be
      "French Quebec." To talk of civil war in Quebec is
      simply sheer nonsense. There is a certain element
      noisy and bombastic, and this element is what is left
      of the "parti nationaliste." For two or three years
      before 1911, and especially in the election of 1911,
      they roused a very dangerous spirit; dangerous, not
      because it means civil war, but because it means a
      cleavage between French and British races. The Tories
      are reaping now what they sowed, for at that time they
      were in open alliance with the Nationalists.

      The feeling in favour of conscription, which
      undoubtedly is making headway in the British
      provinces, is not a genuine one. The British people
      are averse to conscription, but the attitude which is
      represented as the attitude of Quebec maddens them,
      and every one who is in favour of conscription, except
      yourself, favours the movement not because he believes
      it necessary, but because Quebec is represented to be
      against it. On this point, even after reading your
      careful letter, I see no reason to change my views. If
      we have conscription, it is a severe blow to
      immigration, and without immigration what is to become
      of the country? Think of all this, and let me have
      your matured consideration.

      I agree with you in everything that you say as to the
      necessity of winning this war. I think we have done
      well, very well indeed. But already agriculture and
      industry are suffering for the lack of labour. The
      acreage under seed in 1916 was less than in 1915 and,
      I understand, will be less still in 1917.

      With regard to the coming elections, I fear nothing
      but the prejudice which will be the only weapon of the
      enemy. I have often regretted that I accepted the
      leadership of the party in 1887. My judgment was very
      keen at that time that the leader should be of the
      majority. We have not done badly, we have even done
      well, beyond all our expectations perhaps, but I have
      had to battle all the time against the insidious
      tactics which will be openly used, and more wickedly
      than ever, in the next campaign.

Along with the discussion of the organization of the nation for the
war grew the discussion of a national or coalition government. The
movement had different roots, the belief of patriots that only with a
non-party or all-party government could Canada rise to the height of
the need, and that only by coalition could a distracting war-time
election be avoided, the belief of conscriptionists that only a
coalition government could enforce compulsion, and the unwillingness
of Ontario men to accept as the alternative to the existing government
a Liberal administration in which Quebec would probably be strongly
represented. The movement developed chiefly in Toronto and Winnipeg,
and largely in independent and Liberal circles; the Liberal press,
with the notable exceptions of the Toronto "Star" and the "Manitoba
Free Press," were for the most part, and the Conservative press almost
unanimously, against it. Sir Wilfrid's attitude to the movement and
his quick appreciation of the personal and racial undercurrents
involved, is indicated in a brief letter to Mr. Rowell early in 1917:

      Ottawa, January 23, 1917.

      My Dear Rowell:

      Your letter in no way surprises me. It is not the
      first that I have had on this subject of a national
      government.

      The situation is simply this, that the government has
      been constantly losing ground, but a good many of
      those dissatisfied, and perhaps all, do not want to
      entrust the direction of affairs to a leader of French
      origin. Analyze the situation any way you please, and
      tell me candidly if this is not at the present moment
      the true and only difficulty. The constant appeals
      which have been made on that ground by the "News," the
      "Telegram," the "Orange Sentinel," and some other
      papers of the same sort have produced their effect,
      all the more so that the defence on our side has
      lacked vigour.

      Under such circumstances a national government is
      proposed.

      What is a national government? Is it anything else but
      coalition under another name; and after the experience
      of coalition in Great Britain during the present war,
      have you still much faith in it? The very fact that
      you and so many of our friends in Toronto are looking
      to a coalition government is abundant proof that my
      usefulness is gone. Of this I do not complain,
      especially after what happened to Asquith less than a
      month ago.

      You want me to join a coalition if Borden invites me.
      Even in the face of your insistence, I am sure you
      would not expect me to join blindly, without first
      knowing what would be the programme of the next
      administration. There are many questions now looming
      up, which cannot be long deferred, and as to which you
      cannot expect me to join this or any other government,
      unless I knew at once where the new government would
      stand.

      Do you think differently?

      I write you frankly, and if you would come to Ottawa
      any time during the week, I would much prefer to have
      the occasion of going over that ground verbally than
      by letter.

That Sir Wilfrid had not erred in his analysis of the motives behind
the movement was made clear in a notable address, urging greater war
sacrifice, delivered by an eminent Toronto business man, Mr. J. W.
Flavelle, chairman of the Imperial Munitions Board, before the Ottawa
Canadian Club in December, 1916. Mr. Flavelle made it precisely clear
that the group of imperialists for whom he spoke were determined to
preserve, with or preferably without an election, an English-speaking
bloc for the after-war making over of the Empire:

      If a general election is held shortly, a racial cry
      will be inevitable and English will be pitted against
      French and French against English, and there will
      follow years of bitterness. Moreover, remember when
      the struggle is over, the group of men who will sit
      round the table in council with the representatives
      from other Dominions to determine what will be the
      future of this Empire will have to be a group of men
      chosen from this Dominion not by party guidance or by
      party methods, for it is inconceivable to me that a
      government sustained by the vote of a section of this
      Dominion which, no matter for what reason or
      conscience, were unwilling to bear their share in this
      struggle, would be permitted without civil strife to
      determine what part Canada should take in the Imperial
      Council which must follow the war.

The seventh session of the parliament elected in 1911 was opened on
January 19, 1917. It was to be a momentous session, but little was
accomplished at the outset. The Speech from the Throne announced the
government's intention to seek a further extension of the life of
parliament. Apparently, its intention was to prolong its own power
without the risk of an appeal to the electors; there was no
announcement and no appearance of any intention to offer the
Opposition a share in the control of the administration. Within the
Liberal ranks, the feeling was on the whole in favour of an election.
Some urged the acceptance of extension on condition of coalition,
either because they considered coalition desirable or because they
considered the rejection of such an offer would put the government at
a disadvantage. Sir Wilfrid's own feeling, whether because of the
mismanagement in the war, or the growing uneasiness in the country and
a moribund parliament's obvious losing of its grip, or because of his
expectation of a Liberal victory, leaned toward an election, but no
decision was made, awaiting events.

Parliament had scarcely met when it was proposed to adjourn. The new
British prime minister. David Lloyd-George, had invited the prime
ministers of the Dominions to attend a war meeting of the Imperial
Conference, the first since 1911, and also a meeting of the Imperial
War Cabinet. Sir Robert Borden accepted, but could not well take his
hand from the helm in Canada. Sir Wilfrid therefore offered to vote
the necessary war supplies and an interim proportion of other grants,
in order to permit parliament to adjourn during the prime minister's
absence overseas. This was arranged and on February 12 Sir Robert
sailed for Britain, accompanied by his chosen colleagues, Douglas
Hazen, Minister of Marine, and Robert Rogers, Minister of Public Works
and Elections.

The Conference, which consisted, as usual, of the representatives of
Great Britain, of the Dominions, except Australia (where the prime
minister was in the throes of a general election), and, for the first
time, of India, debated the usual inter-imperial issues. The
resolutions provided for the future admission of India to Imperial
Conferences, a self-contained trade and immigration policy to assist
the development of imperial resources, a request to the Admiralty to
work out after the war a scheme of naval defence of the Empire for the
consideration of the various governments, and the postponement of any
constitutional change until a special conference after the war, with
the understanding, however, that any readjustment, while preserving
existing self-government and recognizing the Dominions as "autonomous
nations of an Imperial Commonwealth," should also recognize "the right
of the Dominions and India to an adequate voice in foreign policy and
in foreign relations," and provide for continuous consultation on
matters of common imperial concern. The Imperial War Cabinet, which
consisted of the British War Cabinet and two other British members
together with one representative from each Dominion and two from
India, was an innovation in imperial affairs. It was devised by Mr.
Lloyd-George, on the prompting of Round Table confidants, to provide a
central executive authority for the whole Empire, dealing with the
details of war policies and war problems in decisive administrative
fashion, and hence differed wholly from the Imperial Conference, which
was a meeting of governments to consider general policy. It meant
practically that on certain days the Dominion premiers sat in the
small inner British cabinet to which the conduct of the war had been
devised. So well pleased were the members with the experiment that Mr.
Lloyd-George declared it should be perpetuated, that an annual
imperial cabinet should be held to discuss foreign affairs and other
aspects of imperial policy; while Sir Robert Borden reported that a
new era in the history of the Empire had dawned, a notable advance
made in the development of constitutional relations which he was
confident would "gradually but surely develop into a recognized
convention."

The attitude of the prime minister of Canada in these meetings
reflected the shifting and contradictory currents of the time. He
stood for the national position in opposing, with General Smuts, any
creation of an imperial parliament, and in urging the status of
"autonomous nations." Yet this was contradicted in the recognition of
imperial rights over the natural resources of the Dominions, in the
assumption of a single foreign policy for the Empire, to be determined
in London, and in the acceptance of the scheme of an imperial cabinet,
which, if it meant anything, meant the creation of a new executive
authority, not, as Sir Robert termed it, "a cabinet of governments,"
but itself a new government for which the next effort would be to
provide a legislative base,--in fact, the old imperial-council idea
which Chamberlain and Lyttleton had urged and which Laurier had
defeated.

Sir Wilfrid was not surprised at these developments. They were part
and parcel of the attempt once more made during the war to crystallize
imperial sentiment into centralized institutions. The activity of the
Round Table groups; the urging of imperial parliamentary federation by
their chief apostle, Mr. Lionel Curtis, and Mr. Lloyd George's
secretary, Mr. Philip Kerr; Mr. Bonar Law's pronouncement for an
imperial parliament after the war; Mr. Hughes's vague but vociferous
demands for a share in determining imperial policy; the audacious
endeavour to extend and implant an hereditary aristocracy in Canada,
with the creation of three Canadian or ex-Canadian peers in 1916 and
1917, (Lord Shaughnessy, Lord Atholstan, Lord Beaverbrook), together
with a baronetcy to Sir Joseph Flavelle; the participation by two
Canadian members in the Paris Economic Conference, not as representing
Canada but as part of a British delegation, and now the Empire cabinet
proposals, all represented the same tendency. To all, he was firmly
and increasingly opposed. The war had intensified his admiration for
the English people; it had also intensified his belief that in free
co-operation and not in a unified empire lay the hope of effective
partnership and enduring friendship. The negative side of his view is
sufficiently indicated in a letter to the editor of the "Manchester
Guardian":

(_Wilfrid Laurier to C. P. Scott_) Ottawa, February 13, 1917.

      My dear Sir:

      I have your letter of the 19th ultimo, as well as the
      copy of the American number of the "Manchester
      Guardian" which I owe to your kindness and for which I
      pray you to accept my thanks.

      I understand that you are now preparing, on the same
      plan, a Canadian issue of the "Guardian," and to this
      you would desire me to contribute an article
      especially devoted to the approaching Imperial
      Conference, and to the future relations of the
      Dominions with the mother country.

      You will excuse me for not responding affirmatively to
      your request. I am strongly of the opinion that, at
      the Conference as everywhere else, the only questions
      discussed should be confined to the winning of the
      war. I thought the Paris Conference of last summer, on
      the subject of trade after the war, most inopportune,
      and any discussion at this stage of such a subject as
      future imperial relations would seem to me still more
      inopportune, not to use a more severe expression.

      I may, however, offer you--if acceptable--my own
      personal views on the subject, on the understanding
      that they are merely for your information, with the
      sole object of presenting to you an aspect of the case
      which is seldom if ever heard on your side of the
      water.

      You start with the proposition that everybody in
      England is anxious to give to the Dominions a voice in
      the determination of peace and war. These words sound
      well, but they are mere sound. You assert yourself
      that foreign affairs cannot be divorced from the
      domestic politics of the United Kingdom. If that be
      so--and I altogether agree--what voice can the
      Dominions have in questions of peace and war, except
      to express pious wishes? Of course, some council may
      be organized which may flatter the vanity or, if you
      prefer, the pride of the Dominions, but nothing worthy
      the attention of serious men, no real power to affirm
      or negative, since foreign affairs cannot be divorced
      from the domestic politics of the United Kingdom.

      Nor is that all. If the Dominions are to have a real
      voice in questions of peace and war, two consequences
      must follow: foreign affairs must be removed from the
      exclusive control of the United Kingdom and placed in
      the hands of a real council, and the Dominions must
      back their voice with a regular and permanent system
      of contributions to a common fund of defense. This
      project seems to me very short-sighted. Those who
      champion it forget that at present and for many years
      to come, the economic position of Britain and of the
      Dominions is not and cannot be on a par. Britain by
      her geographical condition and historic traditions
      must ever maintain a large war budget. Canada--to
      speak of Canada alone--must devote her chief attention
      to internal development: railways, canals, rivers and
      harbours. To force on her a war budget must divert
      from and retard her development and, obviously,
      instead of working towards union, must produce the
      very reverse result.

      Whilst in this war I am convinced that Canada should
      assist to the fullest extent of her power, I am
      equally convinced that no greater mistake could be
      made than to force her into a permanent military
      organization, which of necessity must paralyze her
      development. And to be perfectly frank with you, I
      have more than once in our parliament expressed the
      opinion that were England to engage in such a
      senseless war as the Crimean War, I would resolutely
      oppose Canada's participation.

      If you tell me that the present connection is loose
      and unsafe, I answer that this loose tie put to the
      test of this war has proved stronger than any
      long-planned organization. Imperial federation is a
      great and noble idea. It has almost irresistible
      attractions. Whether it ever will be practicable is
      still a question. At present it certainly is not, and
      until the verdict of time has pronounced, the present
      connection seems to me the safest and the most
      promising.

When the prime minister, on his return, referred to the imperial
cabinet as a development which would likely prove permanent, a body
to advise the Crown in matters of common Empire concern, a body having
authority, subject to ratification, of any action taken by the several
parliaments of the Empire, Sir Wilfrid put his finger quickly on the
inconsistencies of the proposal. Was the imperial cabinet to be a
conference of governments or a distinct executive? What was the Crown?
Was not the government of Canada as much His Majesty's government as
the government of the United Kingdom? He replied, in the House debate
on May 18:

      This cabinet is to advise the Crown. What Crown? The
      Crown in Great Britain, the Crown in Canada, the Crown
      in Australia, the Crown in New Zealand, the Crown in
      South Africa, the Crown in Newfoundland, the Crown in
      India,--because under our present system of government
      the Crown is represented by ministers who advise it in
      all these different countries?

      The imperial cabinet has no executive power; it can
      report, it can pass judgment, it can come to
      conclusions upon any subject, but its conclusions
      achieve nothing; they are simply reported to the Crown
      in parliament in Great Britain, in the different
      countries overseas, and in India. And when such a
      report has been made it may be accepted by one
      parliament and rejected by the other. . . . I do not
      object to it as a consultative body, but I object to
      terms being used, which, in their very nature, cannot
      accord with the rules of parliamentary government as
      it exists to-day in the British Empire, in the
      motherland and in the Dominions overseas. I do not
      object to there being consultations, quite the
      contrary. . . . A great deal of advantage is to be
      derived by frequent consultations between people and
      people. Ignorance has been, all through the ages, the
      cause of many discords indeed and of many wars; and
      when peoples are living under the same allegiance and
      are part of the same Empire, undoubtedly nothing but
      advantage can come from frequent consultation.

But these were speculative possibilities of the future. The country
and its political leaders were now brought face to face with a grave
and immediate crisis. Sir Robert Borden had returned to Canada on May
14. On May 18, after giving to parliament an account of his
stewardship overseas, he announced the intention of the government to
bring down shortly a plan of "compulsory military service on a
selective basis." The Canadian troops at the front could not be
maintained without large and steady reinforcements. It was now
apparent that the voluntary system could not provide the needed men.
Everything had been done, by government and people, that could be
done, to stimulate voluntary recruiting. The sacrifice of the brave
men who had died that Canada might live must not be in vain. For
Canada there could be no hesitation. Sir Wilfrid in reply, took up Sir
Robert's speech point by point, not forgetting to comment on his
choice of colleagues, and ended with a guarded comment on the
announcement that had been made. Canada was in the war to the end. As
to the method to be followed to carry the war to the end, a good deal
of consideration must be given before the settled policy of the
country was set aside. Whenever the government made known its policy,
it would be given due and fair consideration. He would not say whether
it should be adopted or rejected; he would say that those who sat
beside him would do their duty to the best of their judgment.

As to the motives for the government's sudden change of policy,
opinion differed then and will differ until the files are opened on
Judgment Day. Considerations of military necessity played their part,
a genuine belief that Canada could not do what her honour, her
interest, her duty to the men who had fought for her demanded, except
by compulsion, and that by compulsion it could be done. Military
considerations of another sort counted, but counted for much
less,--the desire of prominent officers overseas to organize a fifth
division in which there would be many high posts, rather than to send
reinforcements under subordinate officers to the existing four
divisions. The London atmosphere had not been without influence. The
action of the United States in adopting conscription immediately after
entering the war--it was not a mere coincidence that the premier made
his announcement on the day that the Select Draft bill became law at
Washington--removed a serious practical difficulty to compulsion in
Canada. Racial prejudice was strong, not so strong among the leaders
as among the rank and file, but still a factor. Political necessity
warranted drastic action. The government had lost its grip on the
country. The probability, in the public mood, was a Liberal victory in
any election fought on its six-year record. The alternative was a
coalition in which the government would have to give up half its
places and half its power, perhaps the premiership. By declaring for
conscription, while some risks would be run, the ginger groups, the
for-God's-sake-do-something critics, would be propitiated. Quebec,
lost in any case to the government, would be either split among
Liberals and Nationalists, probably of the usual pliable type, or, if
a unit, would provide a basis for attack and for solidifying the
English-speaking provinces.

Sir Wilfrid, who had known for some days that the project was brewing,
at once consulted his party, but he had himself no moment's hesitation
in deciding to oppose conscription. It was not merely that he was by
temperament and training a believer in individual liberty; or that he
was opposed to fighting the devil with fire, alarmed lest in
conquering Prussia the Allies would be conquered by the Prussian
spirit and the Prussian worship of the State; he had never let a
doctrine stand in the way of reality, and he had in him an iron strain
that would go through unfalteringly with any policy once proved
essential. But he did not believe that the necessity or the expediency
of the step had been proved. He did not believe that conscription
would bring any substantially greater number of men than a vigorous
voluntary appeal; the falling off in enlistment was not due to the
inherent defects of the voluntary method, but to the simple fact that
the country was reaching its limit, that there was no longer any real
great reservoir of available men. True, Britain and the United States
had adopted conscription, but they had entered the war as principals:
it would undermine the whole basis of the empire, destroy the whole
spirit of free and friendly aid and sympathy, if compulsion were
resorted to in a country which had gone in, not for its own sake, but
for Britain's. Britain and the United States were not divided
historically into distinct and compact racial groups,--except as to
Ireland, and no English statesman had attempted to apply compulsion to
Ireland,--whereas in Canada this division was the most fundamental and
enduring fact in political life. Least of all should it have been
proposed in Canada by a government whose coquetting in turn with
Imperialism and with Nationalism had done more than any other
avoidable factor to bring about the very situation in Quebec of which
complaint was made. There was no evidence in the government's record
or in its arguments, that the whole field had been surveyed, the
relative needs of men, munitions and food compared, the actual facts
as to available men studied. Whether the motives were good or ill, the
decision was a gamble; the loss was certain, great; the gain--at
least, the gain of the nation--a hazard.

Writing to Sir Allen Aylesworth, the day after Sir Robert Borden's
return, Sir Wilfrid, after quoting the prime minister's emphatic
repudiation of conscription a year earlier, stated his case
succinctly:

      Ottawa, May 15, 1917.

      He may change, I will not. Quite apart from this
      personal view, and simply from the point of view of
      winning the war, has a case been made out for
      conscription? There is a shortage of labour in
      agriculture and industry, in fact in every field where
      brawn and muscles are needed, and in the face of this
      condition people there are still yelling for more men
      being taken away from occupations in which they are so
      much needed. If we had been in office a survey would
      have been made at once as to how many men could be
      spared from their usual occupations, and, having
      obtained a reliable statistical record, we would have
      endeavoured, and I think would have succeeded, in
      having in the field by voluntary enlistment the number
      of men which we could afford to give, and to that
      policy we would have adhered, instead of changing and
      again changing, with confusion worse confounded as a
      consequence. Every man in a certain section is
      striving to make himself more popular than the other
      by shouting for a large number of soldiers. I say all
      this in the full consciousness that public opinion
      seems to have been swayed in Ontario to a feverish
      heat without any serious appreciation of the real
      situation.

      But we are not in office, and what are we to do? I
      repeat: in so far as I am personally concerned, the
      way is clear, but I am alarmed as to the future.
      Toryism has obtained an enormous influence in Ontario.
      In fact, Ontario is no longer Ontario: it is again the
      old small province of Upper Canada, and again governed
      from London. There is only one difference and the
      difference is only in the name. Upper Canada was
      governed from Downing Street with the instrumentality
      of the Family Compact sitting at York, now Toronto.
      Canada is now governed by a junta sitting at London,
      known as "The Round Table" with ramifications in
      Toronto, in Winnipeg, in Victoria, with Tories and
      Grits receiving their ideas from London, and
      insidiously forcing them on their respective parties.
      As to the Tories, I am not surprised, they are in
      their element, true to the instincts of their nature,
      to the traditions of their ancestors, but for the
      Grits, oh! for the old spirit of sturdy Liberalism
      which still prevailed in my youth! Truly, I have lived
      too long.

      I would have long ago opened battle upon this new
      organization of Toryism, which like the serpent sheds
      its skin, but ever remains the same reptile, but for
      my origin. The only answer would have been my origin,
      and this alone would have substituted prejudice for
      argument.

      Now as to the actual situation. The probability is
      that Hughes's motion will never come up, but that the
      government themselves will introduce a conscription
      bill. As to this, I have of course no information, but
      I strongly believe that my surmise is the correct
      one. Were I to agree, it would be I, not they, who
      would be guilty of that "treason and shameful
      truckling to Bourassa and Armand" of which you speak,
      for Bourassa and Armand have built their strength in
      Quebec by accusing me of being a conscriptionist.

      The situation is very different from what it was in
      1896. Then when the government attempted to force upon
      a province the domination of the Canadian parliament,
      we stood strongly on the Liberal doctrine of
      provincial rights. I appealed to the Liberals of
      Quebec to stand firm by the traditions of their party,
      and they did.

      Now, when the government is going to introduce a
      policy which is at variance with all the traditions of
      Liberalism what will the Liberals of Ontario do? As to
      the rank and file, I do not know; as to the leaders
      they have already received and accepted the dictation
      of the "Round Table."

      And now to answer the last thought of your letter.
      There is need of more men at the front. How many men
      will conscription bring in? Just a few slackers,
      exactly the same as in England. How many men has
      conscription brought to the ranks in England? An
      infinitesimal number, so small that the actual figures
      have never been given to the public. Sir John Simon
      was supremely right, but Northcliffe and Carson and
      Toryism insisted and won their point, and won nothing
      else. It will be the same here: the number of men who
      can be spared from agriculture and industry is
      infinitesimally small. Conscription will take in a
      few, farmers and school-boys; this will be the supreme
      triumph of Toryism, but Toryism will once more have
      asserted its undying spirit of domination.

      These are the views with which I regard the situation.
      In 1896 we stood by the true principles of Liberalism,
      with the chance of losing, and won because the
      Liberals of Quebec remained true. In 1917, I, for one,
      will again remain true to Liberalism, again with the
      chance of losing, but will win if the Liberals of
      Ontario remain true.

Five days later, in answer to a forecast that with compulsory service
the government would sweep all English-speaking Canada, but
declaring, "For myself I have one word alone to say; it is 'whither
thou goest, I will go,'" Sir Wilfrid replied:

      Ottawa, May 21, 1917.

      Your last letter touched me very deeply. I am more
      grateful to you than mere words can express for this
      new manifestation of your old friendship, and also for
      the hearty concern which it betrays for my political
      welfare.

      We are now sure to have conscription. My course is
      very clear, and upon it I have no hesitation and no
      misgiving. The result may be my own end, but I will go
      down with colours flying at the topmast.

To Sir Lomer Gouin he wrote, a week later:

(_Translation_)

      . . . As to conscription, there can equally be no
      hesitation. After the agitation which has been carried
      on upon this subject, if we were to hesitate at this
      moment, we would hand over the province to the
      extremists; in place of promoting national unity, it
      would open up a breach, perhaps fatal.

      As for myself, the situation is clear, but I doubt
      whether I will succeed in inducing our friends from
      the other provinces to accept it. The Eastern
      provinces will be nearly solid with us; Ontario solid
      on the other side, and the West perhaps divided; there
      is some ground for hoping for a fairly solid vote, but
      I am far from being sure.

The public discussion had made it plain that the compulsory-service
proposals would not have plain sailing. On May 29, Sir Robert Borden
proposed to Sir Wilfrid the organization of a coalition government,
with equal representation for the two parties, aside from his own
premiership, with the enforcement of conscription as the basis, and
with elections postponed if possible. Later he modified this proposal
to provide for the passing of a Military Service Act with a pledge
not to enforce it until after a general election at which the
coalition should seek a mandate from the people. The negotiations
continued until June 6. While Sir Wilfrid felt that the offer of
coalition after the determination, without a gesture or thought of
consultation, of the all-important policy the coalition was to carry
out, was insincere, while he felt that a proposal to have him join in
carrying out a policy from which the premier would score all the
political gain and he incur the political loss and the loss of
principle, was preposterous, yet he was anxious to sound out every
possibility of co-operation, and to consult his friends. When the
prime minister made it clear that he would not agree to a coalition
except on the acceptance of compulsory service, Sir Wilfrid definitely
declined to take office. He could not take responsibility for a policy
which he had no share in making, a policy devised to cover the
failures of the government, and a policy for which he would have to
bear the chief brunt of the attack. With the adoption of conscription,
the chief argument for coalition had vanished: it was obvious to any
one who faced realities that an election must be held, and that the
country would be bitterly divided.

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Premier Murray)_

      Ottawa, June 5, 1917.

      My dear Murray:

      I thank you very sincerely for your letter. I will now
      present the situation as I view it. Permit me to say
      that the idea of forming a coalition government sounds
      very well, but the situation has been so bedevilled
      that hitherto I have not been able to see my way to
      accept.

      There is not only the military situation, but there is
      also the economic question, the railway question and a
      multitude of other problems upon which we would be
      considerably at variance for, remember that the crowd
      of men with whom Borden surrounded himself, when he
      formed his cabinet, will still continue to try to
      influence him. I would not suspect his loyalty to his
      colleagues, but I would be afraid that he would
      unconsciously be influenced by a lot of men in whom I
      cannot have any confidence. That would be my view,
      even if conscription were eliminated, though, with the
      latter question eliminated, I might perhaps overcome
      my difficulties. But coalition is wanted to pass
      conscription, and to that I cannot agree. . . .

To Mr. Rowell he had written on June 3:

      My dear Rowell:

      If the present situation is distressing to you, which
      I can very well believe, I think you may be sure that
      it is no less painful to me, perhaps more, as I have
      more responsibility than any other in the unfortunate
      position in which we are.

      I am quite as anxious as you are to send as many men
      as the country can afford to deplete itself of, if we
      can obtain them by voluntary enlistment; and I have
      always thought, and I am more than ever confident,
      that they can be had. But if you are to resort to
      conscription, I cannot agree. By conscription, you may
      undoubtedly assist the cause, but you will injure it
      more than you will assist, because you are going to
      create a line of cleavage in the population, the
      consequences of which I know too well, and for which I
      will not be responsible.

      You will tell me, why should I not agree to
      conscription? Here are my reasons.

      The people, I have no doubt, can be reconciled to the
      sacrifice, here as elsewhere, if they are properly
      educated to it. It is not only the people of Quebec
      who are opposed to conscription, but my correspondence
      satisfies me that in every other province there is
      amongst the masses an undercurrent [indicating] that
      they will be sore and bitter if at the present moment
      a conscription law is forced upon them. Remember that
      from the beginning of the war, through the prime
      minister, the government affirmed and re-affirmed that
      there would be no conscription; and one of the
      ministers, Mr. Crothers, if I mistake not, stated with
      the elegance peculiar to him that any such statement
      was a "Grit lie." To have all of a sudden, without
      preparation, without a word of warning, launched the
      policy of conscription was, you will admit, with me, a
      singular want of foresight on the part of the
      government. This is the general idea. Now as to my own
      self.

      When I introduced the Naval Policy, with the full
      approval of the Conservative party, as you will
      remember, I was assailed, viciously assailed, by the
      Nationalists of Quebec, on the ground that this
      Canadian navy--Canadian in peace time, Imperial in war
      time--was nothing short of a national crime; that
      under no circumstances should we fight for England;
      that it was the first step to conscription. I had to
      face the issue, and faced it by stating that the navy,
      Canadian at all times, in war time might be placed at
      the service of the imperial authorities; that Canada
      was a free country, and might, if it so chose, fight
      for England, as in certain circumstances it certainly
      would; that the navy was in no sense a first step
      towards conscription; that enlistment for the naval
      service would be voluntary, as enlistment for land
      service. I fought the issue upon those lines, always
      protesting that I was opposed to conscription.

      Now if I were to waver, to hesitate or to flinch, I
      would simply hand over the province of Quebec to the
      extremists. I would lose the respect of the people
      whom I thus addressed, and would deserve it. I would
      not only lose their respect, but my own self-respect
      also.

      I appreciate whatever you say in favour of national
      unity. I do not think I can be charged with not having
      it in view during the last three years, from the very
      day that the war broke out.

      I have been approached to enter a coalition
      government. My friends, especially those from Ontario,
      have pressed me very warmly to agree to it. It was
      always repugnant to me, but in order to help the
      cause, I would have been willing to put aside my
      personal views, tardy though the offer was. But the
      basis upon which it was offered to me was
      unacceptable. I am not in a position yet to put it
      before you, but I sincerely believe that when it is
      made known, it will satisfy neither the
      conscriptionists nor the anti-conscriptionists.

      I wholly agree with you in the deduction which you
      make from Balfour's speech, that in a struggle such as
      the present one, we must be prepared to give up the
      normal party divisions. Indeed, so much do I believe
      in this, that I am quite prepared to see my friends
      take a different attitude from my own, and support
      conscription whilst I will oppose it. The only
      solution seems to me this: have an appeal to the
      people, have it right away, either in the form of a
      referendum or an election. Let the people decide, and
      if they decide in favour of conscription, as it seems
      to me they will, under present circumstances, from the
      attitude of our friends in Ontario, whatever influence
      I may have will be employed in pleading to the Quebec
      people that the question is settled by the verdict of
      the majority, and that all must loyally accept the
      issue and submit to the law: and this will be no light
      task, but a task to which I will devote myself with
      all my energy.

During these discussions Sir Wilfrid was visited by Sir Clifford
Sifton. Sir Clifford was no longer in parliament, but he was still in
politics, with close relations with Western political leaders and
wide-spreading business interests. They discussed the proposals. "You
are opposed to conscription," his visitor summed it up; "good. You are
opposed to coalition; good. You are opposed to an extension of the
term of parliament; no, you should agree to that." Why? Sir Clifford
would give no answer, other than the general consideration that the
Liberal party would stand a better chance in an election a year later.
The real reasons Sir Wilfrid could not fathom, though he believed they
were connected with the desire to have an amenable parliament for the
enactment of certain plans for meeting the approaching crisis in the
affairs of the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific. Once it was
clear that his advice on the really vital one of the three points
would not be taken, and that an election was inevitable, Mr. Sifton
sought the same ends another way, seeking, it might be, a still more
amenable parliament by supporting coalition and supporting
conscription.

On June 11, the prime minister introduced the Military Service Act,
providing for the division of all male British subjects into classes
according to age and family status, for exemption in case of essential
war occupation, serious individual hardship, or conscientious
objections, and for the establishment of tribunals to deal with
exemptions and to hear appeals. Sir Wilfrid moved an amendment
providing for a referendum of the electors before further
consideration. In the debate, the Liberal forces were badly split.
Graham, Pardee, Guthrie, Nesbitt, Charlton, Ross, of Ontario; Carvell,
A. K. Maclean, H. H. McLean, Loggie, of the Maritime provinces; and
Clark, Cruise, McCraney, Buchanan, Turriff, Douglas, Champagne and
Neely of the West, spoke and voted for conscription, while McMillan,
McCoig, Truax, German, Thomson, Knowles and Sinclair voted first for
the amendment and then for the main motion. Two Quebec Conservatives
and nine Nationalists voted for the referendum. A six-months hoist
amendment received only nine Nationalist votes. The third reading
carried on July 24 by 102 to 44.

Sir Wilfrid wrote during the debate:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Sir Allen Aylesworth_) Ottawa,
      June 22, 1917.

      It is quite true: in these recent weeks, I have often
      thought of resigning, but whenever I sat down to think
      the matter out, my courage rose up against the
      difficulties which I saw impending were I to give up
      the fight, now especially that the fight has become a
      losing battle. Oh! but what a wrench at all my heart's
      strings!

      Yesterday it was Pardee, and to-day it will be Graham!
      Graham and Pardee as dear to me as my own brothers! Do
      not, however, think hard of them, for I do not. They
      have behaved all through most honourably, and there is
      not and there will not be any loss of friendship
      between us. The pain is not less acute on their side
      than on mine, and I know only too well the
      difficulties which faced them.

      Those I hold responsible are the Liberals of the
      "Round Table" group, who by their alliance with the
      Tories, have forced the government to take up the
      issue of conscription, at so much risk to and danger
      for the country. How it will all end, I venture not to
      predict. I still hope, perhaps against all hope, that
      when this nightmare is over, we may still maintain the
      party together.

      To you I owe more gratitude than my words can express.
      My courage will not flinch, but your friendship
      assuages some painful moments.

Frequently letters came from Ontario men who seemed to imagine that
Laurier had only to raise his finger to induce Quebec to take any
stand he suggested. To one correspondent, later Mr. Rowell's
successor as leader of the Ontario Opposition, he replied:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Wm. Proudfoot_)

      Ottawa, June 29, 1917.

      I sincerely wish that I had the power which you
      attribute to me. It is easy for you to make a
      suggestion about the province of Quebec, and then to
      add as you do: "If successful, and I have no doubt you
      would be, you will come out of the ordeal the
      strongest public man now or at any previous time in
      Canada."

      Permit me to say, with all deference but with absolute
      certainty, that you do not know the situation in
      Quebec as it is. You forget that for the last seven
      years I have been represented in Quebec by the
      Nationalist press as a conscriptionist, working for
      conscription and preparing it. You forget also that
      these slanders were subsidized by the Conservative
      party, and carried out by men who are now sitting with
      the government. If I were to flinch in this matter,
      instead of coming out the strongest man in Canada,
      past or present, as you say, I would simply lose the
      confidence and respect of those who believed in me
      when I said that I was against conscription. This I
      will not do for any consideration. I would lose my own
      character, and it would not help the cause which I
      have as much at heart as you have.

      This conscription issue has been thrown to the public
      without consideration on the part of the government as
      to the consequences; feeling sure, however, that in so
      doing they would destroy the Liberal party, which they
      have partially done already. When this was done, there
      was only one salvation for us: it was a referendum,
      which would have solved the question and which would
      have silenced all opposition. Our friends would not
      take my judgment upon this. I regret it more than I
      can say, but if the position is to be redeemed it is
      certainly not by the way which you suggest.

To a Winnipeg correspondent he presented a further summary of his
position:

      Ottawa, September 27, 1917.

      I am just as anxious as you are yourself to win the
      war. The only question is which is the best policy: is
      conscription the best means to the end? You may
      remember that last fall, when Sir Robert Borden and
      Mr. R. B. Bennett were touring the country for the
      organization of what they called the National Service,
      Mr. Bennett disclaimed with great force, in all his
      speeches, the policy of conscription. This he did in
      the presence and full concurrence of Sir Robert
      Borden; and the reasons which Mr. Bennett gave, though
      not expressed in any way to satisfy me, still showed
      very clearly the conviction then entertained by the
      government. You noticed also that as late as the month
      of June, when the government had altered their views
      and announced that they would resort to conscription,
      Sir Clifford Sifton pronounced himself most
      emphatically to Dr. Neely, M. P., against any idea of
      conscription. These different opinions were all
      expressed at a time when the military situation was
      the same as it is to-day, no better and no worse.

      What is the reason for the change? The military
      situation being the same, the reason must be sought
      elsewhere, and elsewhere there is no other reason than
      a purely political one, and the object not to win the
      war but to win the elections. Permit me to look over
      the situation with you a moment.

      Is it not true that the main reason advocated for
      conscription--not so much publicly as privately, not
      shouted but whispered--is that Quebec must be made to
      do her part, and French-Canadians forced to enlist
      compulsorily since they did not enlist voluntarily? If
      this is not the main reason advanced in Winnipeg for
      conscription, I hope you will tell me frankly that I
      am in error, and then I will know that Winnipeg is an
      exception to all other centres where conscription is
      advocated.

      It is quite true that Quebec has not enlisted
      proportionately as the other provinces. No one regrets
      it more than I do, but could any other result be
      expected?

After reviewing the Conservative-Nationalist alliance, he continued:

      . . . Do you wonder that under such circumstances,
      when these men appealed for volunteers in Quebec, that
      such appeals should have fallen very flat?

      You may ask me now, all this being granted, what is
      the remedy? My answer is that the remedy cannot be to
      apply compulsion upon people who have thus been
      educated against conscription. It is always an easy
      task to arouse passion and prejudice, to quell them is
      more difficult. To arouse passion may be the work of a
      moment, to quell a storm may be the work of years.

      This is the situation, and I am satisfied that more
      can be obtained from the people of Quebec by
      persevering appeals than by compulsion. I make bold to
      believe that we Liberals who were defeated in 1911 can
      obtain more from the people of Quebec than the men who
      defeated us by such mischievous conduct.

      If you want any further evidence that the conscription
      act was passed for political purposes alone, you find
      it in the infamous act just passed for the
      disfranchisement of men who are by the laws of the
      land our fellow-citizens. By the conscription act all
      British subjects resident in Canada between the ages
      of 20 and 45 are liable to be called, but by the War
      Times Election Act subsequently passed, all
      naturalized subjects born in enemy countries, and
      naturalized after the 31st of March 1902, are
      disfranchised, unless they enlist. Do you see in these
      two acts any evidence that the government intend to
      win the war, or to win the elections?

      These are the main reasons which have directed my
      attitude in the present contest. We have gone
      voluntarily into this war for a noble object, and I
      still believe that we can reach the end by adhering to
      the principle collectively and individually.

      Let me add in conclusion that if there be any further
      information or further explanation which you desire,
      it will be my duty and still more my pleasure to
      answer any enquiry with which you may favour me.

The long discussion of conscription, in parliament and in the country,
had inevitably widened the cleavage in the Liberal ranks. Public
meetings in Toronto and Winnipeg, addressed by prominent men of all
parties and none, had vigorously supported the government's proposal;
public meetings in Montreal had voiced an equally vigorous and more
violent and frothy opposition. Whether it was that patriotism raised
men above party or that racialism sank them below it, the bonds of
party allegiance slackened. Sir Clifford Sifton and Sir Robert Borden
were quick to see the renewed opportunity for coalition, but coalition
of a limited kind. They were met half-way by a group of Liberals,
chiefly of provincial rather than federal activity. It was now clear
that the original arguments advanced for coalition had lost their
force; a war-time election could not now be avoided, and a partial
coalition instead of averting a racial cleavage would intensify it.
But other factors had force. Honest conscriptionists, eager to have an
administration solid and whole-hearted in the policy which they
considered indispensable to winning the war; partisans keen on
splitting the Liberal party; racialists determined to isolate Quebec
and put it in its place; railway financiers and speculators fishing in
troubled waters, aided the movement.[60]

[Footnote 60: To Mr. Rowell Sir Wilfrid wrote on July 4: "As to a
coalition government, or, as you call it, a national government, I am
less and less in favour of it. I have evidences coming to me every day
that certain railway interests are actively at work amongst our
friends still, with a view of forming a coalition. Such sinister
influences are not calculated to impress one favourably. Anything
which is not done openly always seems to me dangerous."]

Toronto and Winnipeg were the chief secondary centres of the new
attempt to form a quasi-union government, with the West obviously the
determining factor. In Ontario, many private and two semi-public
meetings were held to endeavour to bring the Liberals into line. On
July 20, a meeting of Ontario Liberal members and candidates was held
in Toronto. Unexpected hostility developed. While there was difference
of opinion, the majority present pronounced against extension of
parliament, against coalition with the Borden government, against the
enforcement of conscription until after another voluntary effort, and
for the continued leadership of Laurier. More success was met with the
Liberal editors of the province. Meeting in Toronto six days later,
they supported conscription of men and conscription of wealth, and
called for a union government on this platform, but not under Sir
Robert Borden's leadership. In the Western movement, Sir Clifford
Sifton took direct charge. On July 3 he issued a manifesto demanding
union government and conscription, with an extension of parliament's
term if possible. A few days later he arranged more quietly for the
calling of a Convention of Western Liberals in Winnipeg, and, going
West, sought to arouse opinion in a series of public addresses. His
success was limited. The West held him chiefly responsible for the
defeat of reciprocity and distrusted his financial affiliations.[61]

Then on August 7 the great convention of a thousand delegates met in
Winnipeg. The plan was to form a distinct Western Liberal party which
would endorse conscription, renounce Laurier's leadership, and support
a Union government, if possible under a Liberal or neutral leader. The
majority of the Manitoba provincial leaders, dominated by the "Free
Press," were strongly in support of this policy; the majority of the
Alberta leaders, not including the premier, A. L. Sifton, were
opposed, with British Columbia and Saskatchewan divided. But once
again the organizers of the movement had failed to allow for the Old
Adam of party prejudice and particularly for the intense personal
loyalty to Laurier. The Alberta delegates, marshalled by Frank Oliver
and C. W. Cross, were particularly vigorous, but the whole convention
was so obviously committed to Laurier's leadership that Dr. Michael
Clark took the train for home the first day without attempting to
address it. Behind the doors of the committee rooms fierce controversy
waged, ending in a platform appearance of harmony among the leaders
and the adoption of resolutions by unanimity or overwhelming
majorities, condemning the gross incompetency of the Borden
government, calling for a vigourous and co-ordinated rallying of all
Canada's forces for the war, including the increased production of
food and munitions, the repression of profiteers, and "the
maintenance, in unimpaired strength at the front, of our fighting
forces and the taking of all steps necessary to secure required
reinforcements for this purpose." To the latter resolution an
amendment adding "and by compulsion if necessary," was rejected, by
some on the ground that conscription was implied and by others because
of opposition to conscription. On the following day a resolution was
enthusiastically carried recording the convention's "admiration of the
life and work of the greatest of all Canadians, Sir Wilfrid Laurier,"
and its hope that his ability and "matchless statesmanship may be
utilized in reuniting the people of Canada in this great crisis, in
the successful prosecution of the war, and in carrying out the
platform laid down by this convention." The second movement had
failed. The West was on the whole for conscription, but aside from a
few quarters there was little of the Ontario bitterness against
Quebec, and a strong affection for Laurier.

[Footnote 61: A Western minister, who later supported Union government
but for whose honour as well as ability Sir Wilfrid continued to have
the highest regard, thus wrote on August 4;

"August, 1917. "Dear Sir Wilfrid:

"I do not think that you need have any fears of the influence of Sir
Clifford Sifton in the West. His appearance as an ally of Sir Robert
Borden has been met with a storm of resentment, which has done much to
consolidate the public feeling against the present government.

"I agree with what you say about the desirability of national unity. I
am sure this will be kept before the convention, but in my opinion, it
will not be possible to evade dealing with war issues. I think this
should be done in a frank and straightforward manner, and hope as a
result a policy will be adopted that will be to the best interest of
the country as a whole. I recognize after the war is over and
conscription forgotten that the natural allies of the people of the
prairie will be found in rural Quebec.

"It is not possible for any one to successfully steer this convention,
but its pronouncements will in all probability accurately reflect
Western opinion. . . ."

(_Wilfrid Laurier to W. M. Martin_) "Ottawa; July 31, 1917.

"My Dear Martin:

"I had hoped after our short interview of the other day that you would
be able to come again to Ottawa, and we would have an opportunity of
continuing our exchange of views. I regret it all the more in view of
the western convention which has been called by Sifton.

"As to the convention itself, I have no objection, far from it; I
always favoured it. I thought it would be a good move to have the
Liberals of the western provinces put their programme into concrete
form. The movement, however, seems to me a dangerous one. It is not
for the purpose of having the programme of the western Liberals that
the convention is called, but rather to split the Liberal party.

"It has been my policy all along to keep the Liberal party together on
broad national lines, appealing to no creed and no race. Bourassa
endeavoured to split the Liberal party in Quebec and created the
Nationalist platform based upon creed and race. Sifton is attempting
to do the very thing at the other end of the line and remake the
Liberal party upon creed and race. The only difference is that in one
case the party was to be French and Roman Catholic, and now it should
be Protestant and English. The one is just as mischievous as the
other.

"Moreover, the attitude taken by Sifton is not only mischievous, but
it is untrue. He bases his propaganda upon the extreme attitude of the
Nationalists, for which he makes me responsible, and which--even
now--I am fighting in the province of Quebec.

"Upon the question of conscription as I early realized that there was
a divided opinion even in the English speaking provinces, I would not
make it a party question. If Sifton has his way he will try to commit
the western Liberals to conscription.

"I submit to you that the best policy is the policy which we adopted
here, to leave it an open question and to confine your resolutions to
the broad questions for which western Liberals have long striven, and
which will be still alive when conscription will be dead, not to be
resurrected,--certainly not for many generations.

"I submit to you these views in all sincerity and the full belief that
the policy here laid down is the policy which will keep the Liberal
party a unit from one end of the country to the other, not only for
this day but for all times.

"Believe me ever, my dear Martin,

"Yours very sincerely, "Wilfrid Laurier."

"Hon. W. M. Martin, "Prime Minister's Office, "Regina, Sask."]

The project of union seemed scotched. Yet the forces that made for it,
good and bad, were strong, and still a third attempt followed. With a
patience, a persistence, and an adroitness for which his critics had
not given him credit, Sir Robert Borden continued his negotiations,
and, incidentally, Sir Clifford Sifton continued his. In the West, the
Manitoba element which had been defeated in the convention, found
expression in the "Manitoba Free Press," owned by Sir Clifford but
under the direction of J. A. Dafoe, and in meetings of Liberal
supporters. On August 21 Premier Norris voiced public opposition to
Laurier's leadership and his readiness to support a Union government
under Borden. Provincial leaders of the more westernly provinces who
favoured conscription were not yet prepared to agree. They were
prepared to abandon Laurier, but not to follow Borden. On August 17
the prime minister accepted the resignation of Robert Rogers, who had
been under judicial fire in connection with his Manitoba career, but
had been strongly backed by the Conservative members at Ottawa; one
substantial obstacle to a Union government was thus removed. After
conferences at Ottawa on August 20 between Sir Clifford Sifton, his
brother A. L. Sifton, and a Western member J. G. Turriff, J. A.
Calder, the dominant figure in the Saskatchewan government, and T. A.
Crerar and H. W. Wood, leaders of the Western farmers' movement, and
conferences in Winnipeg three days later between Messrs. Sifton,
Calder, Crerar and Wood, William Martin and C. A. Dunning of
Saskatchewan and A. B. Hudson of Manitoba, an offer was made to the
prime minister to join a Union government under the leadership of any
one of six other men, three Conservatives and three Liberals. At a
caucus of the Conservative members at Ottawa on August 29, Sir Robert
submitted this proposal, and offered to retire altogether or to serve
under Sir George Foster. The caucus would not listen to this
suggestion, and expressed approval of Sir Robert's past and future
conduct.

Meanwhile two significant developments were under way at Ottawa. One
had to do with the railway situation which was not far in the
background of all the Union discussion. The Canadian Northern had not
found relief in the government gifts of 1913 nor the government loans
of 1914. The railway, or the bond-holders and pledgees behind it, were
again in straits. Rather than make further advances, the government
proposed to take over the road, at a price to be set by arbitration.
The Opposition did not object to nationalization, but urged that it
was preposterous to pay a cent for a road confessedly in bankruptcy,
and that defalcation proceedings should be taken under the provisions
made by the government itself in the Act of 1914. After a vigorous
discussion, in which there was no element of obstruction, as the
government benches contributed more words to the debate than the
Opposition, the bill was jammed through under closure on August 29.

[Illustration: THEIR GOLDEN WEDDING DAY (May 13, 1918)]

The other measures were a revision of the machinery for recording the
vote of the soldiers overseas, and a War Times Election Act to
establish a new franchise in Canada. The provisions of the latter
measure were announced by Mr. Meighen, its chief framer and defender,
in the Commons on September 6. On the plea that the soldiers could not
poll their full vote, the franchise was conferred upon the women
next-of-kin of all overseas men. On the plea that their sympathies
were with the enemy, all former citizens of Germany or Austria, and
all former citizens of other European countries whose mother tongue
was German, who had become naturalized in Canada since 1902, were
to be deprived of the franchise. This extraordinary measure was at
once attacked by the whole Opposition, but was forced through. The
pretences urged in its behalf were flimsy and insupportable. There was
no difficulty, and no reason to anticipate any difficulty, in polling
as large a proportion of the soldiers' as of the civilian vote. There
was doubtless some lukewarmness or even sympathy with the enemy among
some of the German settlers in the West, but to assume that the Czech
and Slovak, the Ruthenian and the Pole, who made up the bulk of the
settlers from the enemy powers, had any love for Austria or Germany
was to fly in the face of facts, and to deprive Russians and Swiss of
votes because German was their mother tongue was even less defensible.
The majority of these people, who had found prosperity under the
Laurier rgime, were Liberals, had been so before any international
issue arose, and doubtless would be so still; that was sufficient to
warrant breaking the solemn pledge of citizenship. As for the special
women's franchise, it was assumed that pride in privilege and the
argument that conscription would bring relief to their men overseas,
would throw this vote wholly to the government. It was frankly a
stacking of the cards, a gerrymander on a colossal scale, an attempt
without parallel except in the tactics of Lenin and Trotsky to ensure
the dominance of one party in the state. The excuse given that the end
justified the means, that any measure was warranted which would
prevent the victory of a leader whose policy was traitorous and
disastrous, begged the question and added insolence to highway
robbery.

The War Times Election Act achieved Union government. It compelled the
Western Liberals who had sought union on their own terms to accede to
it on Sir Robert Borden's terms. James Calder held the key to the
Western situation and James Calder handed it over very shortly after
this blackjack was brandished. Meanwhile Robert Rogers was forced to
watch his old rival Clifford Sifton taking up his original idea and
inducing the prime minster, who had refused to use it to elect a
Conservative government with Rogers in, to use it to elect a Unionist
government with Rogers out.

Before giving in, a section of the conscriptionist Liberals sought one
more solution. Early in October three Liberals waited on Sir Wilfrid
Laurier in his study to suggest that he resign in favour of an
English-speaking leader. They intimated that the leadership of a
French-Canadian, opposed to conscription, would be a handicap in their
communities, and that even in spite of the War Times Elections Act, a
Liberal party under a conscriptionist leader would have a chance for
victory. Sir Wilfrid, who had more than once sought in vain to resign,
was surprised by this intimation, but at once replied that if there
was any general feeling in that direction he would immediately
withdraw; he would therefore consult his friends. On the way home, one
of the visitors stopped at a news agency, and stated that Sir Wilfrid
had definitely resigned. The blaze of astounded query and indignant
protest from every quarter next day revealed the fatuity of the
suggestion. The Liberal party was clearly doomed to defeat, but it was
not doomed to dishonour; any change in leadership in that crisis would
not have averted defeat and would still further have accentuated the
racial cleavage. Sir Wilfrid took the train immediately for Toronto
and Montreal, where he consulted political and personal friends. Their
insistence confirmed his rising pugnacity, and he stayed.

The union negotiations now came quickly to a head. For a week Ottawa
swarmed with Liberal and ex-Liberal and near-Liberal politicians, soon
to be transformed into Unionist statesmen. The decision of the
Westerners to enter had made it merely a question of personnel. On
October 12, Sir Robert Borden announced his new Union cabinet. Even in
the face of certain defeat, few of Laurier's federal colleagues had
accepted office; Charles Murphy, William Pugsley, D. D. McKenzie, had
supported him throughout, and George Graham, though opposed on
conscription, would not go in. A. K. Maclean and Hugh Guthrie, and
later F. B. Carvell, were the only members of the federal group to
enter the new administration. The other Liberals were drawn from
provincial politics or private life: Mr. Rowell, General Mewburn and a
Labour representative, Senator Robertson, from Ontario; Mr. Calder
from Saskatchewan; Mr. Sifton from Alberta; Mr. Crerar from Manitoba,
and Mr. Ballantyne from Quebec. It was not found possible to induce
any French-Canadian of weight to join Messrs. Blondin and Svigny.
Unquestionably, the new administration was individually a strong one,
however its members would succeed in pulling together.

The day after the new cabinet was formed Sir Wilfrid wrote to his
staunchest Nova Scotia lieutenant:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to D. D. Mackenzie_) Ottawa, October
      13, 1917.

      My dear Mackenzie:

      In the first place let me again pray you to accept my
      very sincere thanks for your kind and warm telegram.

      The whole story is that it was represented to me by
      some friends that under present circumstances an
      English-speaking leader would be more acceptable to
      the Liberal party. My answer was that if such was the
      wish of the party, I would undoubtedly resign, but the
      matter could not be decided without reference to the
      party itself. This was a confidential talk, but some
      indiscretion was committed--I do not know by whom--and
      a distorted announcement was made in the press to the
      effect that I had resigned. This brought me a shower
      of representations, your own included, showing me
      conclusively that the feeling was far from unanimous,
      and if I may judge, the feeling is preponderant that I
      should continue at my post. The formation of the Union
      government, so-called, has confirmed me in this view;
      and now I am in the fight to face a murderous winter
      election, even if I have to die for it. This is not
      the time to desert the ship.

      I just learned that Carvell was sworn this morning. As
      to Murray I had a visit from him yesterday accompanied
      by Maclean. He told me that he would not decide
      anything without previous consultation with his
      friends and that he was returning to Halifax with that
      object in view. He came and very frankly asked me, as
      I thought, my opinion. I told him that my views were
      well known, as I had already declined to form part of
      a so-called Union government: but I would not presume
      to give him any advice. He left the matter altogether
      in the hands of our Nova Scotia friends. I have the
      greatest confidence in Murray's judgment and loyalty,
      and if he were to accept it would be the worst blow of
      all. But it is for you and for our other friends to
      discuss the matter with him.

      I can see no reason to change my attitude. But there
      have been so many defections since prorogation that I
      am prepared for the worst every day.

      In the meantime I cannot conceal from myself the fact
      that the Western defection is a serious one. In
      Saskatchewan the whole of our organization passes into
      the hands of the Conservatives, and we have little
      hope there. In Manitoba the local government will be
      against us, but their influence, though still large,
      is not what it was. In Alberta the new local
      government will be with us, and we can look to a good
      account there. In British Columbia I am not in a
      position to make any statement. Our friends are very
      enthusiastic in that province, but the conscriptionist
      sentiment is very strong.

      And now, my dear Mackenzie, I have unfolded my whole
      thought to you, and my prayer is that the Lord may
      preserve me from having to sit face to face and not
      side by side with my old friend Murray. . . .

In the election campaign which followed, conscription was the dominant
issue. The Liberals endeavoured to shift the fighting to the
incompetence and grafting revealed in the conduct of the war, but the
people could not now be interested. The government forces insisted it
was a plain issue of going on with the war or quitting, of supporting
or deserting the men at the front. Conscription was necessary;
voluntary enlistment had failed to reach the half-million mark set, to
equal the casualties, particularly now in the heavy fighting in the
mud of Passchendaele, or to equal proportionately the Australian or
New Zealand level; with Russia out, the emergency was pressing. It was
fair; it meant equality of sacrifice between man and man, between
province and province. It was businesslike: it saved the effort and
the indignity of begging men to fight for their country, saved the
waste of enlisting unfit recruits, saved the married man with
responsibilities going because the young slacker would not go. The
leaders of the Canadian forces called for it. It had been adopted by
Britain and the United States and every European combatant. Its
adoption would convince Germany that Canada was in the war to the end,
and her resistance hopeless. The Opposition leaders denied its
necessity: voluntary enlistment had not failed, running six to seven
thousand a month in 1917 until May; the half-million mark was wholly
arbitrary; few armies could expect after three years of war to keep
new recruits equal to wastage, it was not being done in Britain, with
conscription, and the casualties of Passchendaele called for inquiry
as to the conduct of the war rather than for unlimited new
contingents; Australia and New Zealand had no munitions industry and
with their distance from the war could not meet half so well as Canada
the pressing, almost famine, conditions in Europe's food supply. If
Russia was out, the United States was in, and would have to raise
nearly six million men before it equalled Canada's record by voluntary
enlistment; the trouble was not to find men but, according to the
British Shipping Controller, to find ships to transport them overseas
and food to maintain them. It was not necessary to form a fifth
division; there were ample men to supply reinforcements for four
divisions. It was significant that in South Africa conscription for
European service had never been seriously proposed and it had been
proposed in Australia only to be beaten on a referendum. As to the
urging of the officers, "I have never heard of a general," Sir Wilfrid
declared, "in this war or any other who did not want more men."
Equality of sacrifice between individuals was impossible, in face of
the accident of age or a flat foot or early marriage or engagement in
an exempt occupation. Wiser selection might have been possible, some
had gone who should have stayed, some stayed who should have gone, but
by and large the composition of the forces did not greatly differ from
what selective tribunals would have secured. To secure equality of
enlistment among communities, it would be necessary to secure first
identity of race, of sentiment, of social conditions, of industrial
organization. The proposal would bring few more men than the voluntary
system; it was disrupting Canada to appease a few hysterical patriots
and to win an election.

But it was not merely the arguments, but the force behind them that
counted. The government had practically the whole English-speaking
daily press, save the London "Advertiser," the Calgary "News-Telegram"
and the Edmonton "Bulletin"; it had the organization of both parties
in most of the provinces; it had funds for advertising and
organization. A Victory Loan campaign in November provided
organization, enthusiasm, advertising, which were diverted to the
government's aid in December. Practically every city-dweller in
Ontario and the Western provinces who admitted he was in the leading
citizen class backed Union. The Protestant pulpits, with a few Roman
Catholic prelates like Bishop Fallon assisting them, became Unionist
strongholds. On the Sunday before the election, which came on a
Monday, three out of four Protestant pulpits, in accordance with
skilfully devised circulars from the Unionist headquarters and with
personal promptings, urged the support of the government as a sacred
duty; in the palmiest days of the hierarchy in Quebec, no such
fusillade of ecclesiastic advice had ever been fired in Canada. In the
cities, the Unionists seemed to have things their own way. Not so in
the country, where many of the leaders in the farmers' organizations
condemned the campaign as arrogant and hysterical. A fortnight before
the election the rumours from the rural districts of Ontario brought
panic to Unionist headquarters; a special Sunday council was called at
Ottawa, and the final proof that conscription was devised to win the
war and not to win the election came with the public pledge from the
Minister of Militia, General Mewburn, that farmers' sons would be
exempted:

"I will give you my word that if any farmers' sons who are honestly
engaged in farm work and in the production of foodstuffs, are not
exempted by the tribunals and are called up for military service, I
will have them honourably discharged."

The campaign for conscription enlisted many noble qualities. The
mother, dreaming night and day of the boy facing death overseas,
starting at the sight of every telegram, wearing herself out knitting
for him and other mothers' sons, and longing for the day, which she
believed conscription would hasten, when he would come back to her;
the honest patriot, determined that his country would not weaken in
its task; the strong party man, sacrificing old associations and old
prejudices at the call of duty, did honour to their country. But there
were other motives not so commendable concerned: the racial hatred
against Quebec, the arrogant assumption of exclusive patriotism; the
twisting and suppression of Laurier's statements; the weak swimming
with the tide of prejudice. The Toronto "News" criticizing Laurier as
"a demagogue, a charlatan and a mountebank," a Montreal
Scotch-Canadian declaration that "if Laurier were to win he would win
leading the cockroaches of the kitchen of Canada to victory,"
advertisements of a Toronto Citizens' Union Committee appealing for "a
solid Ontario to prevent the domination of a solid Quebec," asserting
that "a Laurier victory will be the first Canadian defeat," that
"Laurier is the tool of Bourassa," that "our Victory Loan must not be
handed over to Quebec to spend," the posters declaring that "a vote
for Laurier is a vote for the Kaiser," were typical instances of the
campaign that lashed the English-speaking provinces into passion in
the last few weeks of the campaign.[62]

Sir Wilfrid faced the bitter and hopeless fight with undaunted
courage. In his election address, on November 4, he insisted that
conscription was hindering rather than helping to win the war,
defended his policy of a referendum, showed that Australia had not
"quit" after rejecting conscription, reviewed the Borden-Bourassa
alliance, denounced the War Times Election Act as vicious in principle
and vicious in detail, "a blot upon every instinct of justice, honesty
and fair play," urged generous treatment to soldiers' families and to
injured men, held the government responsible for unchecked
profiteering, and proposed a constructive programme for the rebuilding
of Canada after the war. In the East he spoke little; one meeting in
Quebec, one in Ottawa and one in Arnprior were all that renewed
illness permitted him to make in the month following his manifesto.

[Footnote 62: Welcome in the storm of such abuse were letters such as
the following from the chivalrous son of a strong and prudent father,
under whose leadership no more than under Laurier's, could Canada have
been suffered to drift to the verge of the precipice:

"Winnipeg, Nov. 21, 1917.

"_The Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, G. C. M. G., "Ottawa, Ont._

"My dear Sir Wilfrid:

"As I learned from this morning's papers that this was the anniversary
of your birth, I write, as I have frequently done before, to tender
you my most hearty congratulations and to express the hope that you
may be long spared to us in health and strength. Having been brought
up in a different school of thought, I have never seen eye to eye with
you in matters political, but, from the first moment that I met you,
to the present time, I have received at your hands nothing but the
most courteous treatment, and I can assure you that I prize highly the
friendly regard that you have always shown towards me. It must be
gratifying to you to know that, even at a moment like the present,
when we are in the midst of a General Election, where the issue
involved is one likely to excite political passions more than an
ordinary contest would, there are thousands, who think as I do, who
entertain towards you nothing but the most friendly feeling and who
wish you well from the bottom of their hearts. Indeed, I can say
truthfully that by far the greater part of the Conservative party in
Canada, although strongly opposed to your political views, have an
esteem for you personally that it is hard to overestimate, and are
always delighted to hear anything to your advantage outside the
political arena.

"With kindest regards and best wishes, I remain, my dear Sir Wilfrid,

"Yours very sincerely, "Hugh J. Macdonald."]

With virtually no English-speaking press, with no funds, no
organization, and hosts of old supporters alienated, the task that
fell upon himself and the faithful few was overwhelming. In Quebec,
the whole phalanx of Liberals, federal and provincial, French-speaking
and English-speaking, stood solid; Henri Bourassa, who did not run
himself, advised support to the Liberals as the lesser evil, but
Armand Lavergne contested a seat--in vain--against both a Liberal and
a Conservative. Feeling ran quite as high as in Ontario, and while
there was less of the cheap abuse of opponents there was much frothy
exaggeration and mob attacks on government speakers. The Maritime
provinces, as usual, avoided the worst excesses of the central
provinces; Premier Murray gave a cautious blessing to Unionism, but
did not fight for it; Mr. Fielding supported it with slightly greater
warmth; Dr. Pugsley retired to the haven of a lieutenant-governorship;
E. M. Macdonald did not run, but the other leaders stood fast. In
Ontario, in spite of the whirlwind of denunciation, there were a
number of strong candidates, George S. Gibbons, A. C. Hardy, Frank
Denton, W. D. Gregory, Gordon Waldron, Herbert Horsey, W. C. Kennedy,
I. E. Pedlow, E. C. Drury, Duncan Ross, A. B. McCoig, Reuben Truax,
the latter four supporting conscription but opposing the government,
in addition to Charles Murphy and Mackenzie King, but the warmth of
the contest left them little opportunity for work outside their own
ridings. Sir Allen Aylesworth and Hartley Dewart on the platform and
John Ewart with his pen threw themselves into the breach. In Manitoba,
only two former members of parliament, J. P. Molloy and J. E. Adamson,
now stood with Laurier; all the provincial ministers were opposed. In
Saskatchewan, Premier Martin gave a moderate support to Union; W. R.
Motherwell, George Langley, George Bell and W. F. Turgeon, of the
Martin cabinet, supported Laurier; the organization was in Mr.
Calder's pocket. In Alberta, C. W. Cross, J. R. Boyle, W. Gariepy, and
G. P. Smith, all local ministers, with A. G. Mackay, reinforced Frank
Oliver, while in British Columbia, J. H. King, F. C. Wade, W. W. B.
McInnes, J. W. deB. Farris, M. A. Macdonald and Joseph Martin, back in
Canada after an erratic course in the British House of Commons, were
active.

Realizing that the West held the deciding voice, Sir Wilfrid, in spite
of illness and December rigours, made a hurried trip through to the
Pacific coast accompanied by Walter Mitchell and Hartley Dewart. At
Winnipeg on December 10, next day at Regina, at four meetings in
Calgary on the 12th, and five in Vancouver on the 14th, he addressed
great crowds whose cheers made it clear that in spite of calumny his
name was still a watchword to tens of thousands. From Vancouver he
turned east, and heard the results of the polling on the journey.

The result, as modified later by the soldiers' vote, was an
overwhelming victory for the Union government. In the Maritime
provinces, the Liberals held ten seats, the Union Liberals seven and
the Conservatives fourteen. In Quebec, there was a solid Liberal block
of sixty-two against one Union and two Conservative members. Ontario
returned eight Liberals, twelve Union Liberals and sixty-two
Conservatives. In the West, only two Liberal candidates survived
against eighteen Union Liberals and thirty-seven Conservatives. In the
whole Dominion, there were eighty-two straight Liberals, thirty-eight
Union Liberals and one hundred and fifteen Conservatives, or a
government majority of seventy-one. On the government side there was
only one French-Canadian, returned for an Ottawa seat. The vote of
Quebec was not a surprise, except in its emphasis. The equally
emphatic vote of the West was unexpected, and to Sir Wilfrid, after
his brief but encouraging trip, the chief disappointment. The
soldiers' vote went twelve to one for the government, as against
fourteen to eleven in the Australian soldiers' vote on the
conscription referendum. The different result in Canada's case
revealed the extent to which undisguised official pressure and racial
antipathy against Quebec supplemented the natural desire of the man in
the trenches to make his home-keeping fellow do his turn. As usual,
but in more pronounced degree, the results did not correspond fairly
to the popular vote. In Nova Scotia, the Liberals should have had
half, instead of one-fourth the seats, and in Ontario, one-third
instead of one-tenth, while in Quebec, the government polled
one-fourth the vote and secured one-twentieth of the seats. In
Ontario, Laurier polled sixty thousand votes more than in 1911. Much
of this lack of correspondence between votes and seats was due to the
system of single-member constituencies, and incurable unless with the
adoption of some method of proportional representation. Much of it,
however, in the case of the soldiers' vote, was due to flagrant
manipulation and wholesale jobbery, the ballots being assigned to
close constituencies regardless of the men's real residence.

Sir Wilfrid took the result with his usual serene courage. The strain
of his Western trip confined him to his room for a week, but did not
daunt his spirit. To a member of the Press Gallery,[63] Herbert
Chisholm, who spoke to him of the great ovations which had greeted him
in the West, he cheerfully replied from his pillows: "Yes, they
cheered for me, but they didn't vote for me."

[Footnote 63: Sir Wilfrid never gave an interview for publication, but
he was always on close and friendly terms with newspaper men,
particularly members of the Press Gallery. He would talk freely, and
never had his confidence abused. While he never followed the common
practice of reading newspapers during debates in the House, he was
very often to be seen running through files in the Commons
reading-room, while on the table of the morning-room at home a large
number of Canadian newspapers were always to be found, ranging from
the "Orange Sentinel" to "Le Devoir."]

The personal attacks, deeply as he felt them, unwarranted as he knew
them, he magnanimously forgave. It was harder to reassure himself that
his life-work of bringing unity to English-speaking and
French-speaking Canadians had not come to ruin. Yet he soon regained
confidence. "I still have faith," he wrote, "in the sound sense of the
Canadian people and in the broad forces that make for national unity
on a basis of fair and respecting partnership. Once the war is over,
no election, no dozen elections, no unscrupulous propaganda, can
prevent Canadians more and more becoming Canadians first, and when
they are so, we shall hear less and less of Ontario and of Quebec."

A friend wrote him on December 19:

      Is there any answer to the question, "What happened?"
      Possibly I might suggest one. Calder told me, before
      Union Government was formed, that with the Franchise
      Act and $100,000, every follower of the government, no
      matter what it was, could be elected west of the Great
      Lakes. In Ontario the situation was complicated, and
      had not the government interfered with the working of
      the Military Service Act we would have had at least 25
      seats. As it was, they sent representatives through
      every riding releasing the farmers, sons from the
      draft, altogether illegal of course but nevertheless
      it was done. The women's vote was largely in favour of
      the government. The fact that the Protestant clergy
      took a prominent part reached the women voters more
      than anything else, and appeals they made in the homes
      as well as in the pulpit went straight to the
      sympathies and sentiments of the mothers and wives,
      who were told that unless the government was returned
      their relatives would never come back from the front,
      but if Unionism was supported their loved ones would
      be allowed to come home in a few weeks.

Sir Wilfrid replied:

      You give me in your letter the true cause of our
      defeat. As it was expressed by Calder, so it was
      expressed to me by him: the government could carry
      every seat in the West with the War-Times Elections
      Act. Knowing the means and methods so well, and being
      in the government himself, he has worked the trick.

      My trip westward convinced me that the masses of the
      people were with us, but effective means were taken to
      stifle their voice and have not a real but a
      mechanical majority.

      Ontario did not surprise me. Our friends were very
      confident of electing twenty-five, but it seemed to me
      that they were over sanguine, and that the racial cry
      would work its effect.

To an Ontario candidate he wrote:

      Ottawa, December 27, 1917.

      The result in Ontario did not surprise me. With the
      press of the province almost unanimous against us, it
      would have been difficult to hope for victory, or even
      for a fair show. What the press failed to achieve the
      women and parsons completed.

      It has been my lot to run the whole gamut of
      prejudices in Canada. In 1896 I was excommunicated by
      the Roman priests and in 1917 by Protestant parsons.
      Let us take it cheerfully, however, and be prepared to
      continue the fight for the good cause.

[Illustration: SIR WILFRID LAURIER Photograph taken at Senator David's
home, Montreal, a few weeks before his death.]

To a Liberal friend in command of a regiment overseas he gave another
angle of the situation:

      Ottawa, January 18, 1918.

      You tell me that in this election you went against me.
      In this, let me tell you frankly, you were wrong, but
      if it be any consolation to you, you know that you
      were not the only one. The party has been largely with
      you in the present issue. Your reason to take the
      stand which you took is: "To us speedy reinforcements
      seem to take precedence of all else." I appreciate the
      point of view, but you will see how far wrong you
      were. The conscription measure was introduced in the
      first week of June. We are now in the third week of
      January and not ten thousand men, if indeed half that
      many, have been brought into the ranks by this
      measure. By next June you will not have one
      conscripted man across the ocean, and I doubt if you
      will have any number by the first of January next. You
      may perhaps have a few hundred, but never the figure
      contemplated.

      The wrong of the measure is forcing it upon an
      unwilling people; and by this I do not mean the
      French-Canadians alone. All the labour classes
      protested against it and asked for a referendum upon
      it. In Quebec public opinion had been created by the
      alliance of the Nationalists and jingoes in the
      election of 1911 when, as you remember, the
      Nationalists carried on a campaign upon the cry that
      under no circumstances should Canada participate in
      the wars of Great Britain. But it would be of no use
      to recriminate. The government has won not upon the
      merits of the issue but by the working of the War
      Times Elections Act. You are still a Liberal--I have
      no doubt of that whatever--but you will find, when the
      war is over, that it will be difficult to undo the
      mischief which has been done. It would have been far
      easier to have the men by voluntary enlistment, if the
      government had applied itself to the task with some
      judgment.

As Sir Wilfrid indicated in this letter, the Military Service Act did
more to win the election than to win the war. It failed absolutely in
the ostensible aim of providing greater reinforcements than the
voluntary system. The government had had a free hand in framing the
measure. No effort or expense was spared in its enforcement. A huge
administrative staff was set up, each office with its full equipment
of shining desks and elaborate files; forms and instructions and
regulations rained from the Printing Bureau; medical officers and
reviewing boards, local tribunals, appeal courts and a central appeal
judge (Mr. Justice Duff) were appointed, with militia representatives
to check exemptions; police were enrolled to round up defaulters. In
Quebec as elsewhere, once the issue was decided at the polls, the act
was accepted, and its operation given full scope.

Yet the legions promised did not appear. The first shock to the
sanguine supporters of the act came when it was found that of the
404,000 of the first class, unmarried men from twenty to thirty-four,
who had registered by the end of 1917, 380,000 had claimed exemption;
the next, with the announcement that there were 118,000 claims for
exemption from Ontario as against 115,000 from Quebec (out of 125,000
and 117,000 registrants). Local tribunals, particularly in Quebec,
were charged with being farcically lax; on the other hand, the
military representatives appealed nearly every exemption in Quebec,
but allowed 90,000 in Ontario to go unopposed. Exemptions were
reviewed by the appeal judges and later by Justice Duff; by the end of
March, some 364,000 out of 372,000 cases had been decided. In Quebec
108,000 exemptions had been finally approved, and in Ontario 104,000.
Sir Robert Borden had insisted in June that it was absolutely
essential to have 70,000 men by December 31, 1917. By March 31, 1918,
the number ordered to report for duty was only 31,000, of whom 5,000
defaulted, the net yield being less than 26,000. Supporters of
conscription were slow to admit its failure, but in the face of this
breakdown criticism could not be wholly suppressed. "The spectacle
offered by the operation of the draft system has not been
encouraging," the Montreal "Gazette" declared in March; "the
government appears to have established a system which if it gets the
men at all, will get them so slowly that whatever military advantage
depends upon expeditious reinforcement will be lost." The Toronto
"Globe" referred to "the wide-spread feeling of disappointment," while
Mayor Church of Toronto stated: "The Military Service Act will cost
the country millions and is getting very little results. If the
government had spent one-quarter of the money in voluntary recruiting,
they would have got more men."

Writing to an Ontario friend, Sir Wilfrid commented:

      Yes, it is admitted by foes as well as by friends that
      the session opened as satisfactorily as we of the
      Opposition could desire. In the House, the few of us
      Liberals who have survived are all united. We have no
      ambition to defeat, even to harass the government.
      Quite the reverse: our only aim is to help and assist.

      It is now felt on the Treasury Benches that
      conscription was a failure, and that coercion will not
      produce the results which its authors anticipated.
      There are strong reasons for believing that the
      government would quietly let the act pass into
      oblivion, but the blind, the fools and the miscreants
      who coerced the government to coerce still hold the
      whip high over their heads. And now the band of the
      blind, the fools and the miscreants is being
      strengthened by those other blind, fools and
      miscreants who at this moment are stirring up the
      people of Quebec to violence and riot.

      Of course violence must be put down and obedience to
      the law maintained. . . .

      . . . I am very much alarmed at the situation in
      Quebec. Our troubles however are nothing. The
      situation in Europe is alarming almost to
      heartbreaking. For the moment the German offensive
      seems to be arrested. We are thankful, not that we
      won, but that we did not lose more. Yet I see no
      alternative. The fight must go on. Peace to-day would
      be a German peace and after the experience of Russia,
      we know what a German peace means.

      Wilson is easily, as you well say, the world's Liberal
      leader. He is more; he is the leader. The principles
      and ideals which he put forth were admirable and
      admirably expressed. In my opinion he made a mistake
      in hoping that the peace ideals of which he made
      himself the champion may find an echo in Germany, and
      there rouse the democratic forces. In this I
      believe--how I would hope that I am wrong!--his
      judgment was wrong. So long as Germany is victorious,
      democracy in Germany will be impotent, and perhaps
      silently acquiescent to triumphant autocracy.
      Principles are eternal, but German democrats have
      always shown themselves stronger in theory than in
      practice. This has also happened elsewhere.

      In this country public opinion seems at last to have
      been aroused by the scandalous crop of titles with
      which we are yearly vexed. Nickle, I am told, is in
      dead earnest. We will be only too glad on our side, to
      second his efforts,

      Yours very sincerely, Wilfrid Laurier

The military crisis caused by the German drive for the channel ports
in March gave occasion for a change in policy. The government decided
to cancel all the exemptions granted to men of twenty, twenty-one and
twenty-two years of age. A resolution sanctioning an order in council
to this effect passed parliament by a vote of 114 to 65. The validity
of the order-in-council was tested in the courts, denied by the
Alberta Supreme Court, whose orders were overridden by the military
authorities, and upheld in a four-to-two division of the federal
Supreme Court. So far as the cancelling of exemptions affected
farmers' sons, it was a plain breach of the promise given on the eve
of election. A huge deputation of farmers, mainly from Ontario,
stormed Ottawa, but met little sympathy and much ridicule. Sir Robert
Borden insisted that there was "a still more solemn covenant" with the
men who stood with their backs to the wall in Flanders. In the cities,
the farmer began to take the place of the French-Canadian as the
target of criticism, and the farmer on his part learned the value of
election pledges and the weakness of unorganized masses. The farmer
had received his second lesson. City-made tariffs and city-made
standards of patriotism were very largely responsible for the
political organization and victories of the farmers that followed.

When the end came in November, 1918, some 83,000 men had been enrolled
under the act, or had reported voluntarily after its enactment; of
these, 7,000 were on compassionate leave and 15,000 on farm leave, so
that the actual yield was 61,000 men, of whom few ever saw France. Of
these, Ontario yielded more than Quebec. The slacker remained a
slacker still, some 24,000 defaulters escaping apprehension. The act,
even with the cancelling of exemption, did not yield as many men a
month as the voluntary system, and even if allowance were made for the
cumulative exhaustion of the supply of men, and the greater proportion
available for infantry duty, it was clear that the test of experience
had gone against the measure. It yielded no margin of reinforcements
to balance the stirring of passion and the cleavage of race and
province it provoked. It did produce the Unionist party.

The first session of Canada's thirteenth parliament was a quiet one.
The government had a fair quota of important measures to its credit,
granting woman suffrage, bringing the outside civil service under the
merit system, enacting daylight-saving, and increasing income and
business-profits taxes. Aside from the cancellation of exemptions, the
most contentious question was the movement against titles,
particularly hereditary titles. W. F. Nickle, seconded by A. R.
McMaster, moved the abolition of all hereditary titles, to be met by
the prime minister with the unexpected statement that the government
had already taken action by order-in-council requesting that no honour
be conferred upon Canadians, save for service in the present war,
except with the approval of the prime minister, that no further
hereditary titles be granted, and existing titles be made to terminate
with the present holder: Sir Wilfrid was prepared to go much further:

      Is there any reason why there should be the bestowal
      of titles of any kind in Canada? Everybody will, I
      believe, agree that in Canada, badges, titles, honours
      and trappings will never take root. We are a
      democratic country; we have been made so by
      circumstances. . . . If my friends will join me, I am
      quite prepared, if we can do it without any disrespect
      to the Crown of England, to bring our titles to the
      market-place and make a bonfire of them.

There were few open defenders of this exotic device. Sir Robert
Borden, it is true, threatened to resign if an amendment involving
the abolition of non-hereditary titles as well, were carried.

Throughout the session, Sir Wilfrid pursued a policy of conciliation.
He knew that differences of tradition and the difficulties of
reconstruction would inevitably disintegrate the coalition ranks. He
urged, in vain, the repeal of the War Time Election Act, but he made
no personal attack on any of his former supporters. The light was in
the window for the wanderers to return. To an ardent Western supporter
he counselled tolerance:

      Ottawa, December 23, 1918.

      The situation is a very simple one to me. It is never
      sound policy to harbour a grudge nor even to resent an
      injury, except when inspired by sheer malice. With
      regard to those who deserted us and went into the
      Union government we shall be spared the trouble of
      deciding whether they should be taken back or kept
      out, with the exception of one and perhaps two; they
      will all remain with the Union and support the
      Conservative policy without any shame about it. As to
      the rank and file, when we have the convention--which
      I think ought to be held during the course of the
      coming year--the platform of the party will be defined
      and all who accept it will be welcome without any
      question put as to their past.

      As to the Union government, it is very much as your
      friend expressed it: they have still lots of support
      but very few friends.

      With regard to the War Time Elections Act, the
      question must be put straight to the majority now
      behind the government to repeal it. If they refuse,
      they will thereby deem it essential to their salvation
      to keep alive that instrument of iniquity, and in the
      next election the contest will be directly and openly
      between Might and Right.

In any case, growing weakness would have prevented a very vigorous
campaign. In June and July Sir Wilfrid faced much pain. A visit to
Senator Casgrain's home at Val Morin and to Sydney Fisher's Alva Farm,
restored something of his strength, but every exertion left him
exhausted; he would nod in conference, fumble for a word. Yet his
wonderful memory for men at least had not yet failed him. As he was
sailing down Lake Memphremagog, in a little steamer, an old man came
aboard from a wayside port, passed along the gangway, halted, to be
greeted by a sharp glance from Sir Wilfrid, the glad uttering of his
name, a warm handclasp, and a lively exchange of reminiscences. It was
a friend of law-student days whom he had not seen for fifty years, and
yet through all the disguises of age and time he had instantly
recalled him.

Well or ill, Sir Wilfrid never lost interest in books, and
particularly in books bearing on Canadian life; a letter to a young
friend in these months is typical:

(_Wilfrid Laurier to Lon Mercier Gouin.--Translation_)
      Ottawa, September 8, 1918.

      My dear Lon:

      Yes, I know quite well Louis Hmon's "Marie
      Chapdelaine," the first and unfortunately the last
      work of that young author too soon taken from us. As I
      was taking the train at Quebec one day to return to
      Ottawa, an enthusiastic friend put it in my hands. I
      read it through at a sitting, at first from curiosity,
      and then with growing interest.

      It is a very thorough psychological study of the life
      of our pioneers and settlers.

      The opening pages are very vivid and very true to
      life. The worshipping assembly scattering after the
      "Ite Missa est"; the hubbub at the church door; the
      interjections, the sallies full of wit and
      malice,--all that is closely observed and well
      described.

      The characters are excellently drawn. Father
      Chapdelaine, eager not so much to farm as to clear the
      ground and make a farm; Mother Chapdelaine who would
      have liked to live out her whole reign in the old
      parishes; Franois Paradis, brave in toil as in peril,
      at once adventurous and calculating; Marie
      Chapdelaine, strong and valiant,--all these characters
      have lived; all are clearly types which the author has
      met and has studied from the life.

      Might I, however, make a further comment? Hmon has
      not been as fortunate in grasping the spirit of all
      this sturdy folk. He pictures them as striving, but
      striving joylessly, with a sort of resigned but sombre
      fatalism, to snatch from the soil a wretched
      existence, regretting their lot and yet persisting in
      it.

      That is not the attitude of the settlers who attack
      our forests, not from necessity but from choice; for
      proof, Samuel Chapdelaine himself.

      Beyond doubt, the labour is hard and it must be
      unceasing. The soil, in our northern climes, is not as
      lavish as in the lands of the sun, but it responds
      freely to labour and effort. In the humble settler's
      hut, his log cabin, one must not look for the abundant
      comfort of the old parishes, but there are always
      bread in the pantry, pork in the salting-tub, warmth
      and gaiety at the fireside.

      All these pioneers, it is true, love to dwell on the
      obstacles they have to surmount and to exaggerate the
      rudeness of their life. Odilon Desbois, a settler whom
      I knew very well in Arthabaska, said one day in my
      presence: "I am on the eleventh range of Trigwick, far
      from bread, behind the meat." That is the invariable
      story of our people; they are pleased to cry poverty
      and famine. Hmon should have remembered that "the
      Frenchman born a grouser" remains a grouser.

      With this reservation, and it is the only one, Hmon's
      book remains a work of worth and beauty.

      You have piqued my curiosity with the photograph you
      have sent me, and for which please accept my thanks.
      Some day you must explain to me all the people in the
      group. It is not enough that you have marked Hmon and
      Chapdelaine; there is in this photograph a whole story
      which I should be happy to learn.

      I should have liked to reply immediately to your last
      letter, but at that time I was absolutely incapable of
      writing a letter or even of dictating it. I was then
      absolutely without strength; my strength had failed me
      at a stroke, and it has taken weeks to pull me
      together. Heaven be thanked, I am myself again. You
      will lose nothing by delay: some fine day I shall send
      you a reply to your heresies [on federalism].

      My best wishes to your gracious little wife.

      Your devoted friend, W. L.

During the winter Sir Wilfrid's strength seemed to revive. His
speeches at meetings of the newly formed Western Ontario Liberal
Association at London in November and the Eastern Ontario Association
in Ottawa in January were vigorous and in his best vein. He concluded
his London address to the Young Liberals with the memorable words:

      As for you who stand to-day on the threshold of life,
      with a long horizon open before you for a long career
      of usefulness to your native land, if you will permit
      me, after a long life, I shall remind you that already
      many problems rise before you: problems of race
      division, problems of creed differences, problems of
      economic conflict, problems of national duty and
      national aspiration. Let me tell you that for the
      solution of these problems you have a safe guide, an
      unfailing light, if you remember that faith is better
      than doubt and love is better than hate.

      Banish doubt and hate from your life. Let your souls
      be ever open to the promptings of faith and the gentle
      influence of brotherly love. Be adamant against the
      haughty, be gentle and kind to the weak. Let your aim
      and purpose, in good report or ill, in victory or
      defeat, be so to live, so to strive, so to serve as
      to do your part to raise ever higher the standard of
      life and of living.

Yet force was failing fast, and it was only his strong will that
enabled him to persist in the preparations for the second session,
which was to open on February 20, 1921. On the preceding Saturday he
attended a Canadian Club luncheon, going on to his office in the
Victoria Museum. While alone in his inner rooms, he had a slight
stroke of paralysis and fell, injuring his head slightly. Recovering,
he showed his characteristic dislike of fuss by saying nothing of it
to those about him, and going home in the street car rather than have
his motor sent for earlier than the usual hour. Next morning, as he
was dressing for church, a second stroke came. He rallied slightly,
but lapsed into unconsciousness at midnight. The end came at three on
Monday afternoon. A pressure from his hand to the hand of the
companion of his life beside him and the whispered words, "C'est
fini," were the only signs of consciousness in his last hours. Then
came a week of a nation's mourning, the thronging to Ottawa of vast
crowds of sorrowing pilgrims, the tribute of parliament, voiced
feelingly by Sir Thomas White and Rodolphe Lemieux, the thousands of
messages of sympathy and tribute from King and cottager, the State
funeral, the solemn services in the Basilica with orations in French
by Mgr. Mathieu and in English by Father Burke, and the laying to rest
in the cemetary of Notre-Dame. Wilfrid Laurier's body had gone back to
the soil of his native land and his memory had become its abiding
heritage.




APPENDIX I

_Translation_

CONTRACT OF MARRIAGE BETWEEN FRANOIS COTTINEAU,
CALLED CHAMPLAURI AND MAGDELAINE MILLOTS

1676--August 24th

Before Benigne Basset, King's Notary, of the Island of Montreal in New
France, and the undersigned witnesses, appeared Franois Cottineau
called Champlauri, resident of the Seigneurie of La Chesnaye, at
present living in this city of Montreal, son of the late Jean
Cottineau, formerly a vine-grower of the borough of St. Clou, near La
Rochefoucaut of the diocese of Angoulesme, and of Jeanne Dupuis, his
father and mother, on the one part, and Magdelaine Millots, daughter
of Jacques Millots, resident of the said city of Montreal, and of
Jeanne Hbert, her father and mother, on the other part. These
parties, in the presence and with the consent of their parents and
friends, for this purpose assembled for both parties, namely, for the
said Franois Cottineau, Seraphin Marganne, Esquire, Sieur de la
Valtrye, Lieutenant in the Carignan Regiment, Pierre Perthuy called La
Line, resident of the said city of Montreal, and Bernard Mercier
called La Fontaine, resident of the said seigniory of La Chesnaye; and
for the said Magdelaine Millots, the said Jacques Millots and Jeanne
Hbert, her father and mother, Robert le Cavellier called Deslauriers,
and Adrianne du Vivier, her grandfather and grandmother, Sieur Antoine
Forestier, her uncle, representing Marie Magdelaine Cavelier, his wife
and maternal aunt of the said Magdelaine Millots, Ignace Hbert, her
uncle, Jean Baptiste Le Cavelier, her uncle on the maternal side;
Philippes de Carion, Esquire, Sieur du Fresnoye, Lieutenant of a
Company of Infantry in the L'Estrade Regiment, Paul Maurel, Esquire,
Ensign in the same Regiment, Sieur Abraham Bouat, Nicolas Hubert,
Master Tailor, Pierre Caill, Sieur de la Rochelle, also Master
Tailor, Sieur Gilles Lauson, Master Copper-smith, Urbain Get, farmer,
Jacques Hubert, also a farmer, Guillaume Gourany, Antoine Brunel, all
living in the said city of Montreal; they avowed and confessed having
made and agreed in the articles and promise of marriage which follow:
that is, the said Franois Cottineau has promised to take the said
Magdelaine Millots as his wife and spouse, and likewise the said
Magdelaine Millots has promised to take the said Franois Cottineau as
her husband and spouse, and to make and solemnise marriage in the
faith of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome as soon as may
be, and as will be advised and determined among them, their parents
and friends, if God and our Holy Mother Church consent and agree
thereto, and according to the Custom of Paris to be one and common in
all goods movable and immovable owned and acquired.

They will not be bound by the debts and mortgages of one another made
and created before the solemnization of their marriage; those of the
future, if any there are, will be paid and acquitted by the person
who makes and creates them and from his property. In behalf of this
marriage, the father and mother of the future wife have promised to
give and provide to the future espoused persons the day after their
espousal as part payment of the marriage settlement, a sum amounting
to seventy-five livres, including a milch cow and other animals as may
be estimated for them, this sum of seventy-five livres to remain with
the two parties together in their community. The future wife will be
dowered with the sum of two hundred livres of Tours according to the
dowry agreed upon beforehand, and paid once and for all into the
customary dowry according to the said Custom as she may desire. In the
event of the death of the future husband without living child of this
marriage, the said future husband has made gift on account of death,
to the future wife and to the kinsmen of all and each, the goods of
their said community, to whatever value the whole may mount up, to be
enjoyed by her and hers as their own legal property; and also, if the
said future wife happen to die before the said future husband, without
living child by them two, the said future husband will enjoy, during
his life only, the goods of the said community, half of it to be
returned to the heirs of the said future wife, as best qualified to
succeed and have share. For thus etc., promising and binding each in
his right etc., renouncing etc., made and passed in the said city of
Montreal in the house of the said Sieurs Forestier, before noon of the
twenty-fourth day of August of the year one thousand six hundred and
seventy-six, in the presence of Sieurs Jean Gervaise and Jean
Bousquet, witnesses residing therein, and undersigned along with the
said Sieur de la Valletrie, Perthuy, Millots, Le Cavelier, Forestier,
Ignace Hbert, the Sieurs De Carlon, Maurel, Hubert, Caill, Lauson,
the said Sieur Bouat, the said future husband and wife, their other
kinsmen and friends.

                          Lavaltrie

Pr Perthus
A. Bouat
 Millots
Le Cavelier
 Maurel
Nicolas Hubert
 Jaque Hubert
 Gilles Lauson
A Forestier
 Mlle Cavelier
      Carion
   Pierre Caill
   Jehan Gervaise
      Basset
Ignace Heber




APPENDIX II

MESSAGES FROM HIS MAJESTY GEORGE V., FEBRUARY, 1919:


To Lady Laurier: "The Queen and I are deeply grieved at the news of
your irreparable loss. We recall the days of more than seventeen years
ago, since which time we have regarded Sir Wilfrid with feelings of
friendship and esteem. We offer you our heartfelt sympathy in your
sorrow."

To the Governor-General, the Duke of Devonshire: "I have received the
news of the death of Sir Wilfrid Laurier with true regret. Canada will
mourn for one who dearly loved his country and will remember with
pride and gratitude his great powers of administrative genius."


From a Canadian follower:

"Sir Wilfrid Laurier was the best man I have ever known. His
instinctive honour, his kindliness and forgetfulness of self, that
shining out of nobility and distinction of character which men called
magnetism, made every man who entered his presence a better man for
it."




INDEX


Abbot, J. J. C., professor of law, i, 37;
  Canadian Pacific Solicitor, 271;
  prime minister of Canada, 430;
  retires, 438.

Alaska boundary, origin of dispute, ii, 134;
  issues, 135;
  Commission negotiations, 136;
  failure to reach agreement, 138;
  modus-vivendi boundary, 140;
  draft treaties, 140;
  arbitration treaty, 143;
  impartial jurists, 144;
  commission constituted, 148;
  decision, 149;
  criticism in Canada, 153;
  judicial or diplomatic, 157.

Alverstone, Lord, appointed to Alaska tribunal, ii, 148;
  verdict, 149;
  change of opinion, 151;
  correspondence with Laurier, 156.

Angers, A. R., member of De Boucherville administration, i, 229;
  enters Thompson ministry, 439;
  resigns, 462;
  in Tupper ministry, 480.

Angus, R. B., in St. Paul Syndicate, i, 248;
  in Canadian Pacific Syndicate, 249, 255;
  seeks loan for railway, 271.

Arbitration, fisheries, successful, ii, 361.

Archambault, Oscar, letter from W. Laurier to, i, 189.

Armour, Justin, appointed to Alaska tribunal, ii, 148;
  death, 148.

Arthabaskaville, Wilfrid Laurier removes to, i, 40;
  practice in, 105;
  mayor of, 261;
  last summer in, ii, 426.

Asselin, Olivar, leader of Nationaliste movement, ii, 311;
  navy campaign, 335.

Aylesworth, Allen, appointed to Alaska tribunal, ii, 148;
  declines to sign award, 152;
  opposes agitation, 154;
  enters ministry, 263;
  fisheries arbitration, 362;
  waterways treaty, 363;
  retires, 384;
  letters to, 509, 512, 518.


Baldwin, Robert, leader of Upper Canada Reformers, i, 54.

Barron, John E., on Jesuits' Estates, 389.

Beaugrand, H., editor of "La Patrie," letter to, i, 434;
  on episcopal crusade, ii, 27;
  letter to, 321.

Bidard, Joseph, first exponent of responsible government, i, 50.

Bique, Senator, letter to, ii, 306.

Bland, Henri, in Laurier ministry, ii, 252;
  naval debate, 385;
  on foreign policy, 407.

Bennett, R. B., opposes Canadian Northern subsidy, ii, 424;
  National Service Board, 494.

Bernier, M. E., member of Laurier cabinet, ii, 251.

Blair, Andrew G., carries New Brunswick, i, 332;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 7;
  career, 184;
  opposes Grand Trunk Pacific project, 188;
  resignation, 189;
  "Cox cannot wait," 193;
  appointed to Railway Commission, 195;
  resigns, 205.

Blake, Edward, early career, i, 166;
  comparison with Mackenzie, 166;
  exponent of the new nationalism, 169;
  unwilling to take leadership of Liberal party, 174;
  Aurora speech, 175;
  "Liberal" founded, 178;
  re-enters ministry, 180;
  develops Canada's constitutional powers, 180;
  resigns, 181;
  takes no part in 1878 elections, 219;
  Laurier's comment, 223n.;
  becomes leader of the Liberal party, 222;
  attacks Canadian Pacific contract, 251;
  confident of party outlook, 261;
  speaking tour, 261;
  criticizes Orange order, 265;
  urges Irish Home Rule, 265;
  attacks Canadian Pacific financing, 278;
  condemns government's North-West policy, 303;
  no platform out of Regina scaffold, 318;
  tribute to Laurier, 325;
  speech on execution of Riel, 326;
  Toronto speech, 329;
  confidence in 1887 election, 332;
  moderate tariff views, 334;
  resigns leadership, 336;
  proposes Laurier as successor, 340;
  on imperial federation, 361;
  returns to parliament, 368;
  attitude to leadership, 400;
  opposed to party policy, 418;
  letter on Canada's position, 419;
  goes to British House, 422;
  relations with Laurier, 422;
  on South African situation, ii, 88;
  North-West school question, 226;
  on imperial federation, 345;
  message to Laurier, 1911, 382.

Blondin, Pierre, in Drummond by-election, ii, 338;
  enters Borden ministry, 441.

Borden, Frederick, enters Laurier cabinet, ii, 11;
  South African War, 100;
  Dundonald episode, 198;
  position in cabinet, 251;
  at 1902 Colonial Conference, 294, 299;
  at 1907 Conference, 305;
  at 1909 Conference, 323.

Borden, Robert Laird, debate on Alaska negotiations, ii, 140;
  on Autonomy bills, 228, 240;
  influence in House, 257;
  position on navy, 322, 324, 328;
  on reciprocity, 371;
  silence on navy issue, 378, 379;
  becomes prime minister, 386;
  forms cabinet, 387;
  government's policy, 392;
  naval policy, 394;
  introduces closure, 409;
  war programme, 434;
  forms Union government, 531.

Botha, Louis, seeks reform in Transvaal, ii, 87;
  at 1907 Conference, 305;
  friendship with Laurier, 307, 308n.;
  letter to, 463.

Boucherville, Charles de, Third premier of Quebec, i, 133;
  administration dismissed by Letellier, 229;
  dismisses Mercier administration, 433.

Bourassa, Henri, opposes South African War, ii, 99;
  criticizes government policy, 105;
  urges peace on basis of Boer independence, 109;
  defends Lord Alverstone, 154;
  opposes North-West school settlement, 246;
  opposes Lord's Day Act, 247;
  on scandal charges, 260;
  view of Laurier's imperial policy, 289;
  takes lead in Nationaliste movement, 311;
  career, 311;
  Laurier on, 314;
  anti-navy campaign, 333;
  director of "Le Devoir," 334;
  in Drummond-Arthabaska, 338;
  co-operates with Conservatives in 1911, 337;
  early comments on the war, 435;
  later, 461;
  attacks Laurier, 462;
  Laurier on, 463, 464;
  1917 election, 539.

Bourget, Bishop of Montreal, i, 88;
  opposes L'Institute Canadian, 96-102;
  controversy with Seminary and Cartier, 126;
  supports Catholic Programme, 128;
  pastoral of 1876, 136.

Bowell, Mackenzie, moves expulsion of Riel, i, 196;
  becomes prime minister, 459;
  in "nest of traitors", 466;
  condemns bolters, 467n.;
  retires from ministry, 480.

Brodeur, Louis P., Speaker, member of Laurier cabinet, ii, 251;
  at 1907 Conference, 305;
  at 1909 Conference, 323;
  French treaty, 347;
  tariff commission, 357.

Brown, George, joins Clear Grits, i, 54;
  seeks to unite Upper Canada members, 61;
  joins coalition, outmanoevred by Macdonald, 162;
  gives up Liberal leadership, 164;
  death, 217;
  attitude on separate schools cited, ii, 226, 232.

Bruchesi, Paul, Mgr., Archbishop of Montreal, ii, 41;
  relations with Laurier, 44;
  supports Lord's Day Act, 248.

Bryce, James, service as ambassador, ii, 347;
  waterways treaty, 363.

Bulyea, George H., in Territorial government, ii, 225;
  lieutenant-governor of Alberta, 243;
  letter, 243n.

Bureau, Jacques, enters Laurier ministry, ii, 251;
  in Drummond-Arthabaska election, 339.


Calder, J. A., Rogers charges, ii, 452;
  enters Union government, 530.

Cameron, John, editor of London "Advertiser", i, 172;
  editor of "Liberal," 179;
  editor of "Globe," 180.
Canada First movement, i, 171.


Canada, province of, the Union experiment, i, 47;
  responsible government, 48;
  union incomplete, 52;
  break-up of parties, 53;
  failure of Union, 62;
  federation a necessity, 63.

Carignan-Salires, regiment in Canada, i, 11.

Caron, Adolphe, speech on execution of Riel, i, 324;
  Edgar charges, 437;
  position on school question, 462;
  remedial debate, 476;
  retires from cabinet, 480.

Carroll, Henry, member of Laurier ministry, ii, 251.

Cartier, George tienne, joins with Macdonald to form
          Liberal-Conservative party, i, 61;
  urges Confederation, 63, 78;
  controversy with ultramontanes, 127.

Cartwright, Richard, finance minister in Mackenzie administration, i, 206;
  on election tactics, 216;
  Laurier's comment, 221n.;
  defeated in 1882, 259;
  speaking tour, 261;
  parts from Blake on Riel issue, 327;
  tariff position in 1887, 335;
  urged as Liberal leader, 338;
  on exodus, 359;
  on commercial union, 376;
  on unrestricted reciprocity, 378;
  on Blake's tactics, 402;
  on "shreds and patches", 417;
  controversies, 440n.;
  in Laurier ministry, ii, 9;
  on tariff commission, 52;
  on Joint High Commission, 127;
  on Alaska negotiations, 135n.;
  introduces old age annuities, 250;
  in Senate, 252;
  favours proportional representation, 267; on titles, 277.

Carvell, Frank, charges against Borden government, ii, 454;
  enters Union government, 531.

Casgrain, J. P. B., letter to, ii, 247.

Casgrain, T. C., counsel in Riel trial, i, 302;
  on imperial relations, ii, 109;
  enters Borden ministry, 441.

Castors, ultramontane wing of Quebec Conservatives, i, 240;
  Chapleau's obituary notice, ii, 172;
  Laurier on, 337.

Catholic Programme, issued in 1871, i, 128.

Cauchon, J. E., fails to form provincial administration, in 1867, i, 111;
  enters Mackenzie government, 183; resigns, 200.

Chamberlain, Joseph, in fisheries negotiation, i, 376;
  memorandum to, on new tariff, ii, 56;
  pushes the new imperialism, 62;
  South African negotiations, 88;
  accepts Canadian "offer," 94;
  consistent in policy, 99;
  hopes from Colonial Conference of 1902, 294;
  disappointment, 298;
  discussion with Laurier, 298;
  with Laurier's colleagues, 299;
  turns to tariff reform, 302.

Chapais, Thomas, on Tarte, ii, 167.

Chapleau, J. A., at Laurier banquet, i, 40n.;
  in Quebec legislature, 112;
  in Drummond-Arthabaska by-election, 211;
  premier of Quebec, 240;
  enters Macdonald cabinet, 240;
  Laurier's relations to, 241;
  attitude on Riel issue, 311;
  speech on Riel's execution, 325;
  on tariff prosperity, 379;
  lieutenant-governor of Quebec, 439;
  friendly to Liberals, ii, 171;
  death, 173.

Charlton, John, on Riel issue, i, 327;
  Doubts as to Laurier's leadership, 348 n.;
  on commercial union, 377;
  on Jesuits' Estates, 389;
  remedial debate, 476;
  mission in Washington, ii, 124;
  Joint High Commission, 127, 130 n.;
  on selection of Alaska tribunal, 145.

Chauveau, P. J. O., first premier of Quebec, i, 111.

China, emigration from, ii, 348;
  proposed agreement, 350.

"Chronicle", Halifax, on Tarte's campaign, ii, 179;
  reciprocity campaign, 371.

Church, Roman Catholic, early missions, i, 6;
  influence in New France, 80;
  opposes intercourse with France, 77;
  school question in upper Canada, 81;
  power under the French rgime, 82;
  consolidated under British rgime, 84;
  policy questioned before 1837, 89;
  "L'Avenir", 90;
  attitude of Rouge party, 93;
  growth of ultramontane feeling in Quebec, 119;
  Gallican and ultramontane, 120;
  Catholic Liberalism, 123;
  triumph of ultramontanism in Europe,
  125;
  Catholic Programme of 1871, 128;
  ultramontane legislation, 88;
  episcopal pastorals, 134;
  attitude of Protestant minority, 188;
  Mgr. Conroy sent to Canada, 146;
  position on Manitoba school question, 482;
  Eucharistic Congress, ii, 336; 377.

Church, Roman Catholic, leaders, Mgr. Laval, i, 82;
  Mgr. Briand, 85;
  Mgr. Plessis, 85;
  Mgr. Lartigue, 86;
  Mgr. Hubert, 87;
  Mgr. Baillargeon, 86;
  Mgr. Taschereau, 88;
  Mgr. Bourget, 88, 96, 100, 101, 102;
  Mgr. Laflche, 88, 103, 482, ii, 26, 41;
  Mgr. Langevin, i, 469, ii, 20;
  Mgr. Begin, i, 469, ii, 20, 26;
  Father Lacombe, i, 470;
  Mgr. Cameron, i, 483;
  Mgr. Bruchesi, ii, 41, 44;
  Mgr. Merry del Val, 40, 41;
  Mgr. Sbarretti, 242.

Churchill, W., naval policy, ii, 396, 408.

Colby, C. C., on Jesuits' Estates, i, 390.

Confederation, necessitated by Union dead-lock, i, 62;
  coalition formed to carry, 63.

Conservative party, mellowed Tories, i, 54;
  join with moderate Liberals, 61;
  in minority in Canada West, 62;
  coalition with Reformers to carry Confederation, 63;
  lose power on Pacific scandal, 159;
  single leader, 160;
  returns to power on tariff issue, 217;
  upholds Dominion powers, 226;
  railway policy, 247;
  returned to power in 1882, 258;
  in 1887, 335;
  attitude on commercial union, 373;
  victory in 1891, 417;
  beginning of break-up, 428;
  defeat in 1896, 484;
  drop school issue, ii, 29;
  recovery in provinces, 255;
  victory in 1911, p. 381;
  naval policy, 321, 394;
  war policy, 432;
  revival of party strife, 438;
  decline of confidence, 456;
  merge in Unionist party, 531.

Constitution of Canada, party controversies over federation, i, 224;
  Letellier case, 227;
  division of legislative power, 236;
  disallowance power, 237;
  school clause, 452;
  North-West provinces, ii, 226.

Cottineau, Franois, dit Champlaurier, first of Laurier name in
          Canada, i, 11;
  marriage, 14 and appendix I., ii, 556.

Cox, George, A., Grand Trunk Pacific project, ii, 187.


Dandurand, Senator, inter-parliamentary peace movement, ii, 320;
  letter to, 330;
  recruiting, 436, 448;
  Laurier sends resignation through, 484.

Dansereau, A., at L'Assomption College, i, 96;
  leading Conservative journalist, 242;
    ii, suspended by Mulock, 173;
  returning to journalism, 173;
  in "La Presse" deal, 212.

David, L. O., friend of Wilfrid Laurier in early days, i, 40n.;
  moderate attitude in Institute controversy, 138;
  supports Parti National, 139;
  editorial on political situation in 1876, 139;
  on Liberal leaders, 347;
  pamphlet on attitude of clergy, ii, 27.

Davies, Louis H., on tariff issue, i, 379;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 11;
  preference resolution, 54;
  negotiations in Washington, 126;
  Joint High Commission, 127;
  appointed to Supreme Court, 250.

Deakin, Alfred, at 1907 Conference, ii, 305.

Desjardins, A., school negotiations, i, 478;
  in Tupper ministry, 480.

Dessaulles, L. A., one of founders of Rouge party, i, 57;
  editor of "Le Pays", 60;
  active in l'Institut Canadien, 97.

Dickey, resigns from Bowell ministry, i, 466;
  introduces Remedial Bill, 469;
  negotiations with Manitoba, 478.

Dingley, Nelson, framer of high tariff, ii, 125;
  on Joint High Commission, 127, 129.

Dollard, Adam, exploit at Long Sault, i, 10.

Dorion, Antoine Aim, Rouge leader, advises Laurier to go to
          Townships, i, 40;
  one of founders of Rouge party, 57;
  succeeds Papineau as chief, 61;
  moderation, 65;
  retires from politics, 182; comparison with Laurier, 346n.

Dorion, Eric, "l'enfant terrible", editor of "Le Dfricheur", i, 40;
  one of founders of Rouge party, 57;
  editor of "L'Avenir", 60.

Dougall, John R., letter to, ii, 232.

Doutre, Gonzalve, at Laurier banquet, i, 40 n.

Doutre, Joseph, collaborator of "L'Avenir", i, 60.

Drolet Chevalier, mission to Rome, ii, 33.

Drummond-Arthabaska, Laurier elected in, i, 108, 158;
  defeated in, 213;
  1910 by-election, ii, 337.

Duff, L. P., counsel in Alaska arbitration, ii, 148;
  in charge of Military Service decisions, 545.

Dumont, Gabriel, Mtis leader, i, 296, 297, 298, 299, 302.

Dundonald, Lord, appointed G. O. C. in Canada, ii, 196;
  friction with minister, 197;
  explosion, 198;
  debate on action, 199;
  dismissed, 201;
  speeches, 202;
  returns to Britain, 202.

Durham, Lord; hostility to French Canadian nationality; Laurier's
          comment, i, 70.


Edgar, James D., criticism by Charlton, i, 348 n.;
  proposes unrestricted reciprocity, 337;
  charges against Caron, 437;
  remedial debate, 476;
  elected Speaker, ii, 11.

Elections, general, results, 1872-8, i, 217 n.;
  1882, 258;
  1887, 335;
  1891, 417;
  1896, 484;
  1900, ii, 117;
  1904, 217;
  1908, 282;
  1911, 381;
  1917, 541.

Emmerson, Henry R., member of Laurier cabinet, ii, 250;
  on W. Churchill, 408.

"Empire", Toronto, slogan in 1891 election, i, 413;
  opposition to McCarthy, 457.

Ewart, John S., counsel in Manitoba school question, i, 453, 460;
  1917 contest, ii, 540.


Fairbanks, Senator, on Joint High Commission, ii, 127;
  letter on results, 133.

Farrer, Edward, editorial writer on "Mail", i, 372;
  on "Globe", 413;
  annexation pamphlet, 413;
  inquiry in Washington, ii, 125 n.;
  interviews with Mr. Hay, 139;
  report on Montreal railway scheme, 209.

Fielding, William S., sweeps Nova Scotia, i, 332;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 7;
  on tariff commission, 52;
  first budget, 52;
  on Autonomy issue, 230, 239;
  strong position, 251;
  at 1902 Colonial Conference, 294, 299;
  French treaty, 347;
  tariff commission, 357;
  tariff revision, 356, 357;
  French treaty, 359;
  negotiations with U. S., 366;
  attitude to Union, 539.

Fisher, Sydney, enters Laurier government, ii, 8;
  Dundonald episode, 198.

Fitzpatrick, Charles, counsel in Riel trial, i, 302;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 9;
  mission to Rome, 39;
  Autonomy bills, 225, 234, 236, 240;
  appointed Chief Justice, 251;
  on fisheries arbitration, 362.

Flavelle, J. W., owner of Toronto "News", ii, 229;
  on coalition, 498.

Forget, R., purchase of Saguenary road, ii, 456.

Foster, George, on unrestricted reciprocity, 379;
  leads bolters in 1896, 466;
  on Autonomy bills, ii, 240;
  insurance charges, 259;
  raises navy issue, 321;
  on war unity, 434.

Fournier, Tlesphore, member of Mackenzie government, i, 183.

Fowler, G. W., scandal charges, ii, 259, 260.

France, scramble for colonies, i, 4;
  bars Huguenots, 6;
  end of rgime, 18;
  lessening intercourse with New France, 77;
  Laurier in, ii, 79;
  entente cordiale, 302;
  treaty with, 347, 359.

Frchette, Louis, of kin to Wilfrid Laurier, 25;
  in Drummond-Arthabaska by-election, 211;
  comment on Laurier's bearing, 214.


Galt, A. T., urges Confederation, i, 63;
  attacks ultramontanism, 139;
  school clause, 455.

Garneau, F. X., influence of his "History of Canada", i, 90.

Gauthier, Dr., friend of Wilfrid Laurier in Montreal, i, 41.

Geoffrion, C. A., at Laurier banquet, i, 40 n.;
  remedial debate, 476;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 9;
  death, 251.

Geoffrion, Felix, member of Mackenzie government, i, 183.

Germany, treaty with, denounced, ii, 77;
  tariff war, 358;
  war, _see_, War, European.

Gibbons, George C., waterways treaty, ii, 363.

Gladstone, Home Rule policy debated in Canada, i, 265;
  Laurier visits, ii, 78.

"Globe", Toronto, a power under the Browns, i, 164;
  critical of Blake, 177;
  opposed by "Liberal", 178;
  Cameron's editorship, 180;
  on Riel, 309;
  prophesies Macdonald's retirement, 337;
  restrained in attitude to new leader, 343;
  pioneer of independence within the Empire, 366;
  attitude on commercial union, 373;
  proposes national convention, 458;
  interview on South African contingent, ii, 93;
  on Tarte's campaign, 179;
  on "La Presse" deal, 207;
  opposes Autonomy bill, 229;
  Dreadnought editorial, 319;
  reciprocity campaign, 371.

Gouin, Lomer, "La Patrie", negotiations, ii, 184;
  premier of Quebec, 254;
  recruiting efforts, 436, 448;
  letter to, 471, 512.

Governors-general, Lord Dufferin, commutes Lepine's sentence, i, 201;
  Lord Aberdeen, ii, controversy with Tupper, ii, 6;
  Laurier's comments, 86;
  Minto appointed, 85;
  on Canadian participation in war, 90, 99;
  Minto on Dundonald episode, 200;
  Minto, on peerage offered to Laurier, 279.

Graham, George, enters Laurier government, ii, 253;
  tariff negotiations, 366;
  bilingual debate, 478;
  conscription, 517.

Graham, Hugh, in Montreal railway scheme, ii, 204, 208-215;
  position in 1908 election, 281;
  peerage, 502.

Grant, Principal: on imperial federation, i, 360;
  on South African controversy, ii, 89;
  letter to, 131.

Greenshields, J. N., in Montreal railway scheme, ii, 204.

Greenway, Thomas, separate school pledges, i, 445;
  Laurier-Greenway agreement, ii, 13.

Grits, Clear, rise of, in Upper Canada, i, 54;
  relation with Rouges, 62.

Guibord, Joseph, member of l'Institut Canadien, i, 101;
  dispute over burial in consecrated ground, 102.


Haultain, Frederick, share in western development, ii, 224;
  opposes Autonomy bill, 229, 243.

Hays, Charles M., General manager Grand Trunk, 187;
  Grand Trunk Pacific project, 188;
  Canadian Northern negotiations, 194;
  death, 417.

Hay, John, on Joint High Commission, ii, 128, 129, 130;
  Alaska negotiations, 139, 141;
  anxious for fair settlement, 145.

Hbert, Augustin, Wilfrid Laurier's first Canadian ancestor, i, 8;
  his daughter Jeanne, 13.

Herschell, Lord, on Joint High Commission, ii, 126, 130;
  death, 130;
  memorandum, 138 n.

Hill, James J., in St. Paul Syndicate, i, 248;
  in Canadian Pacific syndicate, 249;
  retires, 255.

Holton, Luther, criticizes Huntington, i, 138;
  rivalry with Huntington, 185;
  Riel resolution, 196;
  death, 219.

Hughes, Sam, energy in direction of war, ii, 451;
  attacked, 451;
  resignation, 492.

Huntington, Lucius, attacks ultramontanism, i, 138;
  brings charges against Allan, 158;
  in Mackenzie government, 185.

Hutton, General, appointed G. O. C., i, 86;
  friction with minister of Militia, 93.


Imperial relations: Canadian assertion of self-government, i, 49;
  Canada First movement, 171;
  Blake urges revision, 176;
  Blake limits power of governor-general, 180;
  revival of imperial sentiment, 359;
  imperial federation, 360;
  independence within the Empire, 366;
  trade Zollverein, 368;
  racial basis of imperialist
  movement, 392;
  Conference of 1894, 457;
  British preference, ii, 54;
  imperialism at flood-tide, 60;
  Jubilee festival, 66;
  imperial titles, 69;
  colonial conference, 74;
  Chamberlain policy, 86;
  outbreak of South African War, 86;
  proposals for Canadian participation, 90;
  Canadian contingent sent, 97;
  friction over Alaskan diplomacy, 153;
  demand for treaty-making power, 156;
  strength of imperial sentiment, 285;
  growth of national sentiment, 285;
  imperial propaganda, 287;
  Laurier's position, 288;
  Colonial Conference of 1902, 293;
  of 1907, 305;
  plans for Imperial Council, 306;
  policy of co-operation approved, 306;
  Canadian comment, 308;
  Nationaliste movement, 311;
  rise of navy issue, 317;
  1909 navy debate, 321, 329;
  1911 Conference, 340;
  rejection of imperial federation, 342;
  control of foreign policy, 342;
  Borden naval policy, 394;
  debated, 397;
  defeated in Senate, 413;
  foreign policy, 403, 406;
  imperial connection brings Canada into the war, 430;
  Imperial Conference and Cabinet, 500;
  imperialist activity, 502.

Independence, Canadian, movement in the eighties, i, 362;
  Laurier favours, 363;
  independence within the Empire, 366;
  colonial nationalism, ii, 288;
  control over foreign policy, 347.

India, emigration from, ii, 351;
  settlement reached satisfactory to Indian government, 352.

Indians, North-West, government treatment, 284;
  in North-West rising, 298, 303.

Institut Canadien, literary club, i, 90, 94;
  Rouge affiliations, 95;
  controversy with Bishop Bourget, 96;
  Laurier joins, 96;
  seeks compromise, 98;
  addressed by Papineau, 99;
  judgment of Rome, 100;
  dies out, 102.

Ireland, Home Rule, Blake urges, i, 265;
  Laurier on Easter executions, ii, 450 n.

Italy, commercial convention with, ii, 348, 359.


Japan, emigration from, ii, 348;
  Lemieux agreement, 350.

Jesuits, early missions, i, 6;
  career in Canada, 381;
  estates forfeited, 382;
  Mercier deals with estates, 384;
  measure attacked in Commons, 389;
  stands, 391.

Jett, L. A., at Laurier banquet, i, 40 n.;
  organizes Parti National, 130;
  member of Alaska tribunal, ii, 148;
  declines to sign award, 152.

Joly, Henri, de Lotbinire, Liberal leader in Quebec, i, 133;
  forms government, 229;
  defeated, 240;
  opposes coalition, 241;
  opposes Riel agitation, 315;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 8;
  lieutenant-governor of B. C., 251.


King, Mackenzie, deputy minister of labour, ii, 250;
  mission to India, 352;
  1917 contest, 540.

Kirk, family in New Glasgow, i, 29.

Knowles, W. E., opposes bilingual discussion, ii, 478.

Kruger, Paul, controversy with Chamberlain, ii, 87.

Kyte, G. W., charges against Borden government, ii, 454.


La Patrie, Montreal, opposes participation in South African war, ii, 96;
  control, 174-184 on navy issue, 338.

L'Assomption College;
  Wilfrid Laurier enters, i, 32;
  curriculum, 32;
  discipline, 33;
  alumni, 36;
  anniversary, 33 n.

L'Avenir, village in Eastern Townships, Wilfrid Laurier settles in, i, 40.

"L'Avenir", note on Papineau in Paris, 56 n.;
  Rouge organ, 60, 78 n.;
  attitude to Church, 90;
  forced to discontinue, 92.

"Le Canada", founded, ii, 184;
  on navy issue, 338.

"Le Dfricheur", Rouge journal, edited by Eric Dorion, i, 40;
  by Wilfrid Laurier, 40;
  attitude to Confederation, 78;
  banned by Bishop Laflche, 103.

"Le Devoir", Montreal, established, ii, 33;
  circulated by clergy, 334;
  by Conservative party, 377;
  on the war, 435.

"L'Electeur", Liberal journal in Quebec, i, 241;
  on Laurier's leadership, 343;
  banned, ii, 25.

"Le Pays", Rouge organ, i, 60;
  attitude on Church questions, 92;
  comment on Laurier, 118.

"La Presse", Montreal, on South African war, ii, 96;
  party position, 173;
  acquired in Montreal railway scheme, 205;
  further disposition, 208-9;
  on navy issue, 338.

"La Minerve", Montreal, on anti-clerical feeling in 1837, i, 90 n.;
  condemns Riel agitation, 311;
  explains it, 312;
  on Laurier's leadership, 344.

"Le Soleil", Quebec, criticizes Tarte, ii, 178;
  on navy issue, 335.

Labrche-Viger, Louis, one of founders of Rouge party, i, 57;
  collaborator of "L'Avenir", 60;
  editor of "Le Pays", 60.

Laflche, Bishop of Three Rivers, i, 88;
  bans "Le Dfricheur," 103;
  supports Catholic Programme, 128;
  condemns Liberals, 137;
  supports remedial law, 482;
  on Laurier-Greenway settlement, ii, 26, 41.

La Fontaine, Louis Hippolyte, leader of moderate Liberals, i, 55;
  opposes repeal of the Union, 75.

Laflamme, Rodolphe, Rouge leader, Laurier articled to, i, 37;
  professor in McGill law faculty, 38;
  Laurier banquet, 40 n.;
  collaborator of "L'Avenir", 60;
  member of Mackenzie government, 183;
  defeated, 1882, 259.

Lafontaine, Mlle. Zo, Wilfrid Laurier meets, i, 41;
  marries, 44.

Lanctot, Mdric, partner of Wilfrid Laurier, i, 39;
  at Laurier banquet, 40 n.

Langelier, Charles, criticizes alliance with Chapleau, ii, 169;
  letter to, 170;
  sheriff of Quebec, 171.

Langelier, Franois, brings action for undue influence, i, 143;
  Riel debate, 319;
  remedial debate, 476;
  aids in Drummond-Arthabaska election, i, 211;
  resents Tarte-Chapleau influence, ii, 169;
  appointed to Superior Court, 171.

Langevin, Archbishop, supports remedial bill, i, 469;
  opposes Laurier influence on Saskatchewan election, 246.

Langevin, Hector, Conservative candidate in Charlevoix, i, 137;
  attitude on Riel issue, 311;
  Tarte's charges, 406;
  loses leadership, 429;
  report on Tarte charges, 431;
  remedial debate, 476.

Language question, in Ontario schools in eighties, i, 391;
  in North-West, 397;
  bilingual clause in Laurier-Greenway agreement, ii, 16, 486;
  bilingual schools in Ontario, 469;
  Regulation, 17, 49;
  Nationalist attack, 470;
  question in parliament, 477.

Lapoint, Ernest, Drummond-Arthabaska by-election, ii, 339;
  moves bilingual resolution, 477.

Laurier, Canadian ancestors, Franois Cottineau, i, 11, 16;
  Jean Baptiste, 16;
  Jacques, 14, 21;
  Charles, son of Jacques, 21.

Laurier, Carolus, father of Wilfrid Laurier, farmer and surveyor, i, 23;
  character, 25;
  first marriage, 26;
  second marriage, 27;
  letter, 27;
  letter, 27.

Laurier, Charlemagne, Carolus, Doctore, Henri, Ubalde, half-brothers
          and sister of Wilfrid, i, 27.

Laurier, Charles, grandfather of Wilfrid Laurier, i, 21;
  surveyor and inventor, 22;
  marriage, 23;
  family letters, 23.

Laurier, Malvina, sister of Wilfrid Laurier, birth, i, 26;
  death, 27.

Laurier, Marcelle Martineau, mother of Wilfrid Laurier, i, 25;
  death, 26.

Laurier, Wilfrid, comments, on fellow leaders, i, 221 n.;
  on Macdonald, 425;
  on imperialist campaign, ii, 299 n.;
  on Australians and Africanders, 342 n.;
  on C. Sifton, 371 n.

Laurier, Wilfrid, letters from, to: James Young, on Macaulay, i, 108;
  Oscar Archambault, on election to legislature, 109;
  James Young, on ultramontanes, 132;
  on taking office, 141;
  James Young, on party situation in Quebec in 1874, 185;
  in 1876, 186;
  James Young, on Riel amnesty, 200;
  H. Beaugrand, on Chaleurs charges, 434;
  on school settlement, ii, 21;
  H. Beaugrand, on clerical controversy, 32;
  Abb Proulx, on appeal to Rome, 33, 34;
  Chevalier Drolet, on religious faith, 35 n.;
  Israel Tarte, on 1900 campaign, 115, 116, 117;
  on Washington negotiations, 127, 129;
  Principal Grant, on outcome, 131;
  to Lord Alverstone, 157;
  Charles Langelier, on party appointments, 170;
  Tarte, on Chapleau-Dansereau relations, 175;
  Tarte, on resignation, 181, 182;
  H. Graham, on "La Presse" deal, 208;
  on fortunes of politics, 222n.;
  on separate schools in west, 224 n;
  J. R. Dougall, on North-West schools, 232;
  G. H. Bulyea, on North-West situation, 243, 245n.;
  Casgrain, J. P. B., on Bourassa campaign, 247 n.;
  Sen. McMullen, on scandal charges, 263;
  on imperial titles, 278;
  on Botha, 308 n;
  on Bourassa, 314;
  Sen. Dandurand, on opposition to navy, 330;
  on Ontario protests, 331, 332;
  on 1911 results, 382;
  reciprocity, 390;
  F. Oliver, on election possibility, 440;
  on Irish situation, 450 n.;
  M. K. Cowan, on Quebec recruiting, 459;
  Louis Botha, on war policy and Bourassa, 463;
  Sen. Dandurand on Bourassa's attitude, 464;
  Lomer Gouin on bilingual issue, 471;
  M. K. Cowan on same, 471, 473;
  W. S. Fielding on same, 474;
  N. W. Rowell on same, 475, 476, 477, 485;
  on Manitoba situation, 487;
  on coming conscription agitation 494;
  N. W. Howell, on national government, 497;
  C. P. Scott, on imperial relations, 503;
  Sir Allen Aylesworth, on conscription, 509, 512, 518;
  Sir Lomer Gouin, on conscription, 512;
  G. H. Murray, on coalition, 513;
  Rowell, on situation, 514;
  W. Proudfoot, on Quebec position, 519;
  on forces behind conscription, 520;
  Rowell, N. W., on railway interests involved, 522;
  W. M. Martin, on Winnipeg convention, D. D. Mackenzie on Union
          government, 532;
  on causes of defeat, 543, 544;
  on need of toleration, 551;
  on "_Marie Chapdelaine_", 553.

Laurier, Wilfrid, letters to, from:
  Father Lacombe, i, 470;
  Israel Tarte, ii, 14, 15, 115, 171 n.; 174, 180, 182;
  Lord Minto, 91, 92, 279, 352;
  Senator Fairbanks, 133;
  Lord Alverstone, 155;
  George H. Bulyea, 243 n.;
  L. Botha, 163;
  H. G. Macdonald, 538, 543.

Laurier, Wilfrid, personal: Ancestry, i, 3;
  first Canadian ancestor, 8;
  first ancestor of Laurier name, 11;
  grandfather, 21;
  father, 23;
  mother, 25;
  sister, 26;
  half-brothers and sister, 27;
  record of birth, 26;
  death of mother, 27;
  boyhood in St. Lin, 28;
  at the parish school, 29;
  at school in New Glasgow, 29;
  at L'Assomption College, 32;
  college studies, 32;
  recreation, 33;
  Liberal leanings, 35;
  classmates, 36;
  begins study of law, 37;
  valedictorian, 38;
  admitted to bar, 38;
  partnerships, 38, 39;
  ill-health, 39;
  removes to Eastern Townships, 40;
  banquet in Montreal, 40 n.;
  meets Mlle. Lafontaine, 41;
  writes poetry, 41 n.;
  marriage, 44;
  joins L'Institut Canadien, 97;
  relations with Bishop Bourget, 97-103;
  his journal banned by Bishop Laflche, 104;
  partnerships in Arthabaska, 105;
  edits "Journal d'Arthabaska", 106;
  ensign in militia, 107;
  friends and reading, 107;
  libel suit, 241;
  mayor of Arthabaska, 261;
  interview with Riel, 293;
  qualities of leadership, 344;
  character, 345;
  appearance, 347;
  oratory, 347;
  first visit to England, ii, 59;
  public hospitality, 67;
  accepts Knighthood, 69;
  visit to Hawarden, 78;
  to France, 79;
  to Ireland, 83;
  welcome on return, 83;
  illness, 142, 161;
  qualities as head of administration, 161;
  character, 164;
  command of English, 200 n.;
  distinction, 221;
  influence on House, 257;
  "follow my White Plume," 265;
  refuses peerage, 279;
  summer in Arthabaska, 426;
  illness, 1915, 446;
  illness, 1919, and death, 555.

Laurier, Wilfrid, political career: Early political interests, i, 45;
  joins Rouges, 64;
  opposes Confederation scheme, 78;
  accepts Confederation, 79;
  enters provincial legislature, 108;
  manifesto of Liberalism in speech in Quebec, 146;
  follows English Liberalism, 149;
  on the clergy in politics, 151;
  ensures victory of moderation, 155;
  enters federal parliament, 158;
  speaks on Riel issue, 197;
  tariff attitude, 207;
  enters Mackenzie cabinet, 209;
  defeated in by-election, 213;
  returned for Quebec East, 215;
  urges early election, 216;
  campaigns in Ontario, 216;
  re-elected in Quebec East, 217;
  member of deputation to Mackenzie, 220;
  lieutenant of Blake, 223;
  supports provincial rights, 226;
  re-elected 1882, 259;
  platform activity, 261;
  opposes Quebec railway subsidy, 275;
  attacks government's North-West policy in House, 305;
  in Champ de Mars, 314;
  in House again, 320;
  in Ontario, 328;
  chosen leader of the Liberal party, 343;
  success, 343;
  opposed to commercial union, 375;
  urges unrestricted reciprocity, 379;
  opposes disallowance of Jesuits' Estates Act, 390;
  language issue creates difficulty, 400;
  relations with Blake, 400;
  manifesto, 1891, 415;
  defeat, 417;
  on Mercier charges, 434;
  urges joint redistribution, 438;
  position on Manitoba school question, 455;
  in lines of Torres Vedras, 463;
  growing strength, 468;
  urged to support Remedial Bill, 470;
  opposes it, 471;
  supports attempt at compromise, 478;
  the 1896 campaign, 481;
  victory, 484;
  forms ministry, ii, 5;
  school settlement, 16;
  faces attack, 28;
  opposes anti-clerical campaign, 32;
  appeals to Rome against bishops' action, 32;
  agitation lessens, 43;
  economic revival, 45;
  British preference, 54;
  first visit to England, 59;
  views on imperial relations, 65, 71, 81;
  Knighthood, 69;
  in colonial conference, 74;
  in France, 79;
  attitude to South African war, 89, 93, 97, 106, 110;
  Joint High Commission, 127;
  part in later negotiations, 139;
  on Alaskan boundary dispute, 142, 145, 155;
  does not press treaty power, 159;
  demands Tarte's resignation, 180;
  accepts Blair's, 190;
  seeks Grand Trunk-Canadian Northern coperation, 194;
  1906 campaign, 216;
  master of the Administration, 219;
  height of power, 220;
  meets difficulty in North-West school question, effects, 246;
  administration, 257;
  patronage, 270;
  attitude to titles, 277;
  reform of administration, 280;
  in 1908 campaign, 281;
  policy on imperial relations, 288;
  blocks Chamberlain plans, 298;
  urges moderation in South Africa, 299;
  Paris and the entente cordiale, 302;
  opposes Nationaliste movement, 314;
  opposes imperial federation, 340;
  control of foreign policy, 342;
  practical imperialism, 354;
  reciprocity campaign, 378;
  government defeated, 380;
  resigns, 384;
  opposes naval contribution, 398;
  opposes closure, 409;
  railway policy, 417, 419, 421;
  war policy, 435;
  recruiting speeches, 436, 447, 449, 468;
  agrees to year's extension, 454;
  charges against government, 455;
  bilingual issue, 470-490;
  disappointment, 483;
  offers resignation, 484;
  further extension, 499;
  opposes conscription, 508, and coalition on basis of conscription, 513;
  War Times Election Act, 528;
  resignation suggested, 530;
  declined, 531;
  last campaign, 540;
  defeat, 541;
  conciliation, 551;
  abolition of titles, 550;
  last speeches, 554.

Laurier, Wilfrid, speeches
  volume i:
  valedictory, 38;
  maiden speech in Quebec legislature, 112;
  on exodus, 115;
  on dual representation, 115;
  on political liberalism, 146;
  second reply to Speech from Throne, 1874, in French, 196;
  on motion for expulsion of Riel, in English, 197;
  on amnesty, 202;
  on tariff, 1876, 207;
  on Letellier affair, 231;
  on Ontario boundary, 235;
  on Quebec subsidy strike, 275;
  on Government's North-West policy, 305;
  on Saskatchewan muskets, 314;
  on execution of Riel, 320;
  on North-West issue, in Toronto, 328;
  in western Ontario, 330;
  at Somerset, 354, 375;
  on unrestricted reciprocity, 379;
  on Jesuits' Estates disallowance, 390, 395;
  on French in North-West, 398;
  on Sir John Macdonald, 425;
  on Manitoba schools, 455;
  on Torres Vedras and sunny ways tactics, 463;
  on Remedial Bill, 471;
  volume ii:
  on school settlement, 31;
  in England in 1897, 71;
  on death of Gladstone, 87 n.;
  on South African controversy, 92;
  on need for caution, 98 n.;
  on war enthusiasm, 104;
  in reply to Bourassa, 106-110;
  on treaty-making power, 155;
  on Grand Trunk Pacific, 190;
  on Dundonald episode, 199;
  on Autonomy bills, 225;
  on scandal charges, 260;
  on navy issue, 321;
  on naval service bill, 325;
  on Nationalist campaign, 336;
  in 1911, 378, 379, 380;
  on naval contribution, 398;
  on foreign policy, 403, 407;
  on closure, 409;
  on Canadian entry into war, 432;
  on war needs, 436, 447, 449, 468;
  on the Conservative war, 444;
  on Svigny speakership, 453;
  on bilingual question, 478;
  on Imperial Cabinet, 505;
  last speeches, 554.

Laurier, Wilfrid, writings: Fragment on Canada under the Union, i, 47;
  responsible government, 50;
  on Durham's attitude to French-Canadian nationality, 70;
  "Tartuffe" editorial, 156;
  "Den of Forty thieves" editorial, 241.

Lavergne, Armand, anti-navy campaign, ii, 333;
  in Drummond-Arthabaska, 338;
  in 1917, 539.

Lavergne, Joseph, partner of Wilfrid Laurier, i, 106.

Lavergne, Louis, member for Drummond-Arthabaska, i, 106;
  remedial debate, 476;
  appointed to Senate, ii, 337.

Lemieux, Rodolphe, enters Laurier government, ii, 251;
  Lemieux Act, 250;
  naval debate, 328, 385;
  recruiting efforts, 436, 448.

Lemieux, F. X., counsel in Riel trial, i, 302.

Letellier de Saint-Just, member of Mackenzie government, i, 183;
  lieutenant-governor of Quebec, 228;
  dismisses De Boucherville administration, 229;
  dismissed in turn, 233.

Liberal party; Reformers of Upper Canada, i, 53;
  Patriots of lower Canada, 53;
  break-up into Whig and Radical, 54;
  Clear Grit and Rouges, 62;
  coalition to carry Confederation, 63;
  in power in 1873, 159;
  not united, 159;
  elements, 163;
  uncertainty as to Dominion leadership, 173;
  Quebec leadership, 182;
  face Riel, tariff and railway issues, 188;
  defeated as fiscal issue, 217;
  a new leader, 222;
  uphold provincial rights, 226;
  Pacific railway policy, 251;
  defeated in 1882, 258;
  position on Riel question, 317;
  Laurier succeeds Blake as leader, 343;
  attitude to commercial union, 374;
  national convention of 1893, 458;
  returns to power in 1896, ii, 3;
  begins to decline, 221;
  changes in leadership, 250;
  achievement, 381;
  defeat in 1911, 381;
  naval policy, 321, 394;
  war policy, 432;
  revival of party strife, 438;
  break on conscription, 517.

Lincoln, Abraham, Laurier's interest in, i, 107.

Lodge, Senator, appointed to Alaska tribunal, ii, 146.

Loubet, President, and Laurier, ii, 302.


"Mail", Toronto, attacks Canada First group, i, 178;
  on Riel, 309;
  anti-Quebec agitation, 327;
  on Laurier tour, 331;
  forecasts Blake's retirement, 336;
  fair in references to Laurier as leader, 344;
  urges commercial union, 371.

Maisonneuve, founder of Montreal, i, 7.

Manitoba "Free Press", Winnipeg, on Tarte's campaign, ii, 179;
  reciprocity campaign, 371;
  national government, 496;
  urges coalition, 526.

Marchand, F. G., premier of Quebec, ii, 44;
  death, 254.

Martin, Joseph, separate schools, pledges, i, 445;
  proposes secular schools, 446;
  remedial debate, 476;
  in British Columbia, ii, 256;
  in 1917 contest, 539.

Meighen, Arthur, in charge of Canadian Northern bills, ii, 421;
  frames War Times Election Act, 528.

Mercier, Honor, aids in Drummond-Arthabaska by-election, i, 211;
  collaborator in "L'Electeur", 241;
  takes up Riel issue, 327;
  premier of Quebec, 327;
  deals with Jesuits' Estates, 383;
  charges against his government, 433;
  Laurier on charges, 434;
  government defeated, 436.

Meredith, William, leader of Conservative party in Ontario, i, 262;
  declines to enter Tupper cabinet, 481.

Merry del Val, Mgr., apostolic delegate to Canada, ii, 40.

Mtis, position disturbed by settlement, i, 285;
  grievances, 287;
  bring Riel back, 295;
  drift into rebellion, 297.

Millot, Madeleine, marries Franois Cottineau, i, 14.

Mills, David, progressive wing of Liberalism, i, 172;
  urges Senate reform, 178;
  defeated in 1882, 259;
  possible Liberal leader, 340;
  on commercial union, 377;
  on unrestricted reciprocity, 379;
  on Jesuits' Estates, 390;
  remedial debate, 476;
  defeated in 1896, ii, 12;
  Minister of Justice, 12.

Monet, D., on imperial relations, ii, 109.

Monk, F. D., leadership challenged by Tarte, ii, 184;
  on Autonomy bills, 240;
  favours proportional representation, 267;
  opposes navy, 324, 329.

Montreal, founding, i, 7;
  Wilfrid Laurier student in, 37;
  law practice in, 38.

Moss, Thomas, progressive wing of Liberalism, i, 172.

Mousseau, J. A., urges dismissal of Letellier, i, 230;
  premier of Quebec, 240.

Mowat, Oliver, rivalry with Macdonald, i, 233;
  fourth success in Ontario, 333;
  school question, 391;
  avoids endorsing Laurier's stand, 396;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 6;
  lieutenant-governor of Ontario, 12.

Mulock, William, on tariff, i, 379;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 10;
  efficient administration of post-office, 50;
  on Grand Trunk Pacific, 193;
  on Autonomy bills, 225, 240;
  retires to bench, 252;
  at 1902 Colonial Conference, 294, 299;
  on militarism, 320.

Murphy, Charles, enters Laurier government, ii, 253;
  holds Ontario seat, 385.

Murray, G. H., retains Nova Scotia, ii, 254;
  Union government, 513, 539.

Murray, John, merchant in New Glasgow, i, 30.

McBride, Richard, first party premier of B. C., ii, 256;
  on Canadian navy, 324;
  government defeated, 452.

McCarthy, D'Alton, defends Canadian Pacific financing, i, 280;
  rivalry with Thompson, 387;
  on Jesuits' Estates disallowance, 389;
  attacks use of French in North-West debates, 397;
  claims to premiership, 429;
  fires western heather, 445;
  remedial debate, 477;
  agrees to enter Laurier ministry, ii, 12;
  death, 12;
  bilingual amendment, 18.

Macdonald, Hugh John, enters Tupper Cabinet, i, 481;
  candidate in 1900 election, ii, 118;
  letter to W. L., ii, 537 n.

Macdonald, John A., forms Liberal-Conservative coalition, i, 61;
  attitude to Confederation, 63;
  resigns office, 159;
  undisputed leader of party, 160;
  strengthened by Confederation, 162;
  dread of states' rights tendencies, 225;
  seeks control over provinces by personal alliances, 227;
  on Letellier affair, 230;
  rivalry with Mowat, 233;
  disallowance power, 237;
  National Policy, 242;
  railway policy, 247;
  fourth premiership, 260;
  hesitates to aid Pacific further, 271;
  Mtis policy, 289;
  defends policy, 304;
  on imperial federation, 361;
  on language question, 398;
  decides on election, 405;
  manifesto, 414;
  victory in election, 417;
  death, 424;
  Laurier on, 425;
  declined to participate in Soudan war, ii, 96.

Macdonald, J. A., editor of "Globe", on Autonomy bills, ii, 241;
  reciprocity negotiations, 367;
  on C. Sifton, 371 n.

McDougall, William, one of founders of Clear Grit party, i, 54;
  fails to enter Red River territory, 190.

McGee, Thomas D'Arcy, the prophet of Confederation, i, 169.

McGill University, Faculty of law, Wilfrid Laurier student in, i, 37.

McNeill, Alexander, on Jesuits' Estates, i, 389;
  on South African War, ii, 96.

Mackenzie, Alexander, on Huntington's ultramontanism speech, i, 138;
  prime minister, 159;
  early career in Canada, 164;
  comparison with Blake, 166;
  offers to serve under Blake, 181;
  amnesty question, 201;
  Pacific railway policy, 203;
  tariff views, 207;
  confidence in 1878 election, 216;
  retires from leadership, 220;
  later career, 221;
  Laurier's comment, 222 n.;
  attitude on western schools, ii, 226.

Mackenzie, William Lyon, Reform leader, i, 54.

Mackenzie and Mann, Canadian Northern project, ii, 194;
  "La Presse" deal, 209;
  reciprocity campaign, 372;
  programme, 418;
  aid from government, 420.

McKinley, President, friendly attitude in negotiations, ii, 126;
  assassination, 139.

Macpherson, David L., minister of Interior in Macdonald government, i, 289.


Nationalism, French-Canadian, encouraged by British government, i, 66;
  attacked by Durham, 69;
  and by Sydenham, 73;
  their failure, 74;
  diverse policies of Papineau and La Fontaine, 75;
  effect of colonial status, 77;
  bearing of Confederation on, 78;
  Quebec-Ontario rivalry, 193;
  feeling stirred by execution of Riel, 309;
  Nationaliste movement in Quebec, ii, 309;
  ultramontane leanings, 335;
  in 1911 campaign, 377;
  Conservative alliance, 377;
  represented in Borden cabinet, 388;
  influence on war, 460.

New France, missions, i, 6;
  Montreal colony, 7;
  era of settlement, 12;
  encouragement to early marriage, 13;
  widening of settlement, 15;
  farming methods, 15;
  government, 16;
  cessation of immigration, 17;
  a homogeneous community, 18;
  end of the French rgime, 18;
  British policy of assimilation, 19;
  later changes, 19.

New Glasgow, Wilfrid Laurier attends English school, i, 29-31.

Nickle, W. F., opposes Canadian Northern subsidy, ii, 423;
  bilingual debate, 478;
  moves abolition of titles, 550.

North-West, Canadian: Dominion takes over Hudson's Bay domains, 187;
  situation not properly handled, 189;
  outbreak in 1869, 191;
  building of Canadian Pacific, 244;
  settlement declines, 267;
  Canadian frontier administration, 284;
  Mtis grievances, 287;
  rising, 297;
  development under Laurier regime, ii, 47;
  political changes, 223;
  establishment of new provinces, 225.


O'Brien, Colonel, moves Jesuits' Estates disallowance, i, 389.

O'Donoghue, William, lieutenant of Riel, i, 191.

Oliver, Frank, share in western development, ii, 224;
  enters Laurier ministry, 253;
  bilingual debate, 478;
  1917 contest, 540.

Ontario politics: Mowat's provincial rights' platform, i, 239;
  sectarian issues, 262-391;
  Hardy and Ross rgimes, ii, 255;
  Whitney administration, 255;
  machine politics, 269;
  Liberal revival, 492.

Orange order, incorporation controversy, i, 263;
  Blake's criticism, 265;
  demands for punishment of Riel, 309;
  on school settlement, ii, 19.

"Orange Sentinel", "Duty of the Hour" pamphlet, ii, 281.

Osler, B. B., counsel in Riel trial, i, 302;
  declines to enter Tupper cabinet, 481.


Pacaud, Ernest, founder of "Le Journal d'Arthabaska", i, 106;
  aids in Drummond-Arthabaska by-election;
  Editor of "L'Electeur", 241;
  Baie des Chaleurs charges, 433;
  journal banned, ii, 25;
  protests, 171.

Papineau, Louis Joseph, tribune of Lower Canada, attitude to responsible
          government, i, 50;
  returns from exile, 56;
  founds Rouge party, 57;
  urges repeal of the Union, 75;
  addresses l'Institut Canadien, 99;
  Laurier on influence, 305.

Parent, S. N., premier of Quebec, ii, 254.

Party system, ii, 265;
  electoral corruption, 268;
  patronage, 270;
  reform, 280.

Paterson, William, on tariff, i, 379;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 10;
  on tariff commission, 52;
  veteran member, 252;
  at 1902 Colonial Conference, 294, 299;
  tariff commission, 357.

Pelletier, C. A. P., member of Mackenzie government, i, 183.

Pope, Joseph, Alaska tribunal, ii, 148.

Pope, John Henry, advice to Macdonald on Pacific contract, i, 249;
  aids Canadian Pacific to secure loan, 272-276;
  advises election in 1891, 411.

Prfontaine, Raymond, opposed to Tarte, ii, 169, 171;
  enters ministry, 183;
  death, 251.

Prendergast, J. E., in Greenway cabinet, i, 445;
  school negotiations, ii, 14;
  interview, 19.

Proulx, Abb, mission to Rome, ii, 33.

Pugsley, William, proposed Russell banquet to, ii, 205;
  enters Laurier cabinet, 251;
  charges against Borden government, 454;
  lieutenant-governor of N. B., 539.


Quebec politics, Chauveau Conservative administration, i, 111;
  "Catholic Programme" launched, 128;
  Ouimet and de Boucherville administrations, 133;
  Joly as Liberal leader, 133;
  ultramontane activity, 133;
  rapid shift of ministries, 240;
  Chapleau, Mercier, and the Castors, 262;
  Mercier becomes premier, 327;
  defeated, 436;
  Flynn ministry defeated, ii, 44;
  Marchand administration, 44;
  Parent administration, 254;
  Gouin administration, 254.


Railways, need of Pacific road, i, 203;
  Mackenzie's policy, 204;
  Quebec provincial roads, 240;
  importance in Canadian politics, 244;
  Pacific railway enters politics, 247;
  Canadian Pacific syndicate agreement, 249;
  attacked by Opposition, 251;
  Canadian Pacific meets difficulties, 266;
  its financing, 268;
  request for loan, 271;
  Quebec subsidies, 274;
  Canadian Pacific again in difficulties, 276;
  aids in transporting troops, 276;
  further government aid, 278, 281;
  last spike driven, 282;
  success in operating, 283;
  in the 1891 election, 407;
  share in the victory, 418;
  Laurier railway policy, Crow's Nest, ii, 49;
  Yukon, 49;
  Intercolonial extension, 184;
  new importance, 185;
  government policy, 186;
  Grand Trunk expansion, 187;
  Laurier seeks Grand Trunk and Canadian Northern co-operation, 194;
  revision of agreement, 195;
  railways in 1904 election, 204;
  Grand Trunk Pacific, 417;
  Canadian Northern programme, 418;
  party policy, 419;
  Borden government aid, 421;
  Union government, 528.

Reciprocity, see Tariff.

Responsible government in Canada, meaning, i, 48;
  primary task of the forties, 49;
  Laurier on Papineau and Bdard's attitude, 50;
  effect on reshaping of parties, 52.

Richard, Edward, partner of Wilfrid Laurier, i, 105.

Riel, Louis, leader of Red River movement, i, 191;
  arrest or amnesty, 194;
  appears at Ottawa, 196;
  motion for expulsion, 196;
  Laurier on, 197;
  amnesty, 201;
  reappears in North-West, 290;
  ancestry, 290;
  early career, 291;
  part in 1869 disturbances;
  mind unhinged, 293;
  Laurier meets, 293;
  in Montana, 294;
  on the Saskatchewan, 295;
  agitation, 295;
  religious vagaries, 299;
  arrest and trial, 302;
  execution, 303;
  debates in House, 304;
  agitation in Quebec, 309;
  in Ontario, 316;
  later views as to insanity, 326 n.;
  aftermath of agitation, 350.

Ritchot, Father, delegate from Red River, i, 192.

Robinson, Christopher, counsel in Riel trial, i, 302;
  counsel in Alaska arbitration, ii, 148.

Roblin, Rodman, on Canadian navy, ii, 324;
  government falls, 452.

Rogers, Robert, Sbarretti charges, ii, 242;
  on Canadian navy, 324;
  demands election, 1914 and 1915, 439, 446;
  Manitoba revelations, 452;
  resignation, 527.

Roosevelt, Theodore, becomes president, ii, 139;
  takes hand in Alaska negotiations, 141;
  share in selection of tribunal, 145.

Root, Elihu, appointed to Alaska tribunal, ii, 144;
  fisheries arbitration, 362;
  waterways treaty, 363, 364.

Ross, G. W., on Autonomy bills, ii, 241;
  government defeated, 255;
  moves rejection of naval bill, 412.

Rouges, left wing of Lower Canada Liberals, i, 56;
  Papineau first chief, 56;
  its youthful leaders, 57;
  their programme, 58;
  their journals, 60;
  relation with Clear Grits, 62;
  oppose Confederation, 63;
  Laurier joins, 64;
  moderating views, 65;
  nationalism, 76;
  reformed as Parti National, 130;
  relapse, 131;
  review of course by Laurier, 150.

Ross, J. H., share in western development, ii, 224.

Rowell, N. W., letters to, ii, 475, 476, 477, 497, 514;
  enters Union government, 531.

Russell, Charles, mission to Rome, ii, 39.

Russell, David, in Montreal railway scheme, ii, 204, 205, 207;
  transfer of newspapers, 281.

Rutherford, A. C., premier of Alberta, ii, 243;
  again sustained, 255.


Schools, separate, in Upper Canada, i, 81;
  denominational control in Quebec, 134;
  Mowat's Ontario policy, 263, 391;
  Manitoba school question, 439;
  minority clause in constitution, 441;
  Manitoba developments, 442;
  separate schools abolished, 450;
  disallowance sought, 451;
  appeal to the courts, 452;
  appeal to the cabinet, 453;
  Privy Council decision, 459;
  Remedial Bill introduced, 468;
  attempt at compromise, 477;
  Laurier-Greenway settlement, ii, 16;
  opposed by some bishops, 25;
  papal encyclical, 41;
  school question in new western provinces, 226.

Scott, Richard, enters Laurier cabinet, ii, 10;
  Autonomy Bills, 225;
  veteran member, 252.

Scott, Thomas, execution of, i, 192, 292.

Scott, Walter, letter on school question, ii, 234 n.;
  premier of Saskatchewan, 243.

Sncal, L. A., Quebec contractor, i, 242.

Svigny, Alfred, Drummond by-election, ii, 338;
  speaker 453.

Sifton, Clifford, Manitoba school negotiations with Bowell
           government, i, 478;
  with Laurier government, ii, 13;
  enters government, 47;
  vigorous immigration policy, 47;
  agent in Alaska tribunal, 148;
  absent on introduction of Autonomy Bills, 225;
  resigns from cabinet, 230, 236;
  accepts new clause, 237;
  charges against administration, 258;
  organizes anti-reciprocity campaign, 372;
  opposes conscription and coalition, 516;
  reverses position, 517;
  directs western campaign, 523;
  Winnipeg Convention escapes, 525;
  forms coalition, 527.

Smith, Donald A., envoy to Red River settlement, i, 191;
  in St. Paul syndicate, 248;
  in Canadian Pacific syndicate, 255;
  quarrel with Macdonald, 255;
  drives last spike, 282;
  seeks school compromise, 478;
  urges Laurier Knighthood, 70.

Smith, Goldwin, reference to Mackenzie, i, 168;
  attacked by "Globe", 177;
  opposed to South African war, ii, 89;
  attacks Autonomy Bills, 229.

"Star", Montreal, urges participation in South African war, ii, 90;
  on "La Presse" deal, 207;
  in 1908 campaign, 281;
  anti-reciprocity campaign, 371;
  on W. L., 448.

"Star", Toronto, reciprocity campaign, ii, 371;
  on national government, 496.

Stephen, George, in St. Paul syndicate, i, 248;
  persistence, 255;
  seeks loan for railway, 271;
  election arrangements, 409.

St. Lin, birthplace of Wilfred Laurier, i, 3, 26;
  a frontier village, 28;
  the parish school, 29;
  meeting in 1917, ii, 447.

Sydenham, Lord, attitude to French-Canadian nationalism, i, 73.


Tach, Bishop, envoy to Red River settlement, i, 191;
  on amnesty to Riel, 195;
  assists Louis Riel's schooling, 291;
  on Manitoba schools, 451.

Taillon, L. O., Conservative leader in Quebec, i, 327;
   enters Tupper ministry, 480.

Taschereau, Archbishop, successor to Mgr. Baillargeon, disavows
          "Catholic Programme," i, 129;
  pastoral of 1875, 135;
  of 1876, 144.

Taft, William, tariff negotiations, ii, 365, 366;
  reciprocity offer, 367;
  reciprocity speeches, 376.

Tariff, not originally party issue, i, 205;
  growth of protectionist feeling, 206;
  government policy in 1876, 207;
  Laurier's moderate protectionism, 207;
  National Policy, 242;
  Blake and Laurier accept main features but attack excrescences, 243;
  Blake's policy in 1887, 335;
  Cartwright's, 335;
  results of National Policy, 356;
  commercial union proposed, 370;
  party and press attitude, 371;
  unrestricted reciprocity, 377;
  reciprocity proposals in 1891, 405;
  Blake's fiscal views in 1891, 419;
  low tariff movement in Conservative ranks, 457;
  Liberal policy in 1896, ii, 51;
  maximum and minimum tariff, 54;
  Laurier policy in England, 73;
  treaties denounced, 77;
  control over tariff agreements, 348;
  Liberal drift to protection, 355;
  reaction after 1906, 357;
  Payne-Aldrich negotiations, 364;
  reciprocity agreement made, 369;
  attacked, 370, 374;
  defended, 373, 375;
  defeated, 380;
  tariff commission proposed, 393.

Tarte, Israel, student at L'Assomption, i, 36;
  manager for Langevin, 137;
  in Drummond-Arthabaska election, 211;
  supports Laurier's railway position, 275;
  exposes Public Works corruption, 406;
  charges in parliament, 431;
  share in 1896 campaign, 484;
  enters Laurier ministry, ii, 8;
  Manitoba negotiations, 14;
  on school settlement, 28;
  supports imperial federation, 65;
  opposes South African war, 99;
  on future policy, 109;
  in Paris, 114;
  personality, 165;
  career, 166;
  Laurier's relation to, 168;
  friction with old Liberals, 169;
  attacked in Ontario, 176;
  launches high tariff campaign, 176;
  resignation, 180;
  later career, 183;
  on Lord's Day Act, 248;
  on election and prayers, 269.

Templeman, William, enters Laurier government, ii, 253.

Thibault, Charles, campaigner in Drummond-Arthabaska, i, 211;
  in Quebec East, 215.

Thompson, John, enters Macdonald ministry, i, 326;
  speech on execution of Riel, 325;
  rivalry with McCarthy, 387;
  on language issue, 399;
  declines premiership, 429;
  introduces redistribution measure, 438;
  prime minister, 439;
  controversy with Cartwright, 440 n.;
  death, 459.

Titles, imperial, recommendations, ii, 276;
  Laurier opposes, for active politicians, 277;
  motion against, 550.

Tory party, defeat of policies, i, 52;
 mellow into Conservatives, 54.

Tupper, Charles, High Commissioner, i, 260;
  backs Canadian Pacific, 273;
  trade and fisheries negotiations, 373;
  on unrestricted reciprocity, 379;
  on Conservative leadership, 428;
  returns to Canada, 467;
  supports Remedial Bill, 471;
  tries to force it through, 479;
  becomes prime minister, 480;
  reluctance to retire, ii, 4;
  drops school issue, 29;
  on the Fielding tariff, 53;
  urges participation in South African war, 90;
  attacks government, 104;
  "Laurier too English," 114;
  patronage 271 n.

Tupper, Charles Hibbert, in Thompson ministry, i, 439;
  on school question, 462;
  joins bolters, 466;
  condemns McBride government, ii, 452.

Turner, Senator, appointed to Alaska tribunal, ii, 144.


Union movement, 1917, national government proposed, ii, 496;
  racial basis, 498;
  first coalition proposals, 513;
  second movement, 522;
  third movement, 526;
  Union Cabinet formed, 531.

United States, example of Civil War amnesty, i, 323;
  exodus to, 357, 438;
  annexation movement, 361;
  trade relations, 369;
  commercial union, 370;
  fisheries negotiation, 374;
  reciprocity proposals, 407;
  emigration from, ii, 47;
  difficulty of negotiation with, 119;
  specific issues, 120;
  government's policy of friendliness with, 122;
  trade policy, 123;
  Joint High Commission, 126;
  adjourns without settlement, 138;
  Alaska dispute, 134-159;
  change in international attitude, 360;
  Fisheries arbitration successful, 361;
  Waterways treaty, 362;
  tariff policy changes, 364;
  Payne-Aldrich negotiations, 364;
  reciprocity, 368.


Van Horne, William, on monopoly privileges, i, 253;
  driving power, 255;
  seeks loan for railway, 271;
  transporting troops, 276;
  driving of last spike, 282;
  learns of 1891 election from Laurier, 410;
  part in election, 416;
  opposes reciprocity, ii, 370.

Victoria, Queen, factor in imperial sentiment, ii, 63;
  Diamond Jubilee, 66.

Villiers, Sir Henry de, on South African war, ii, 111.


Wallace, Clarke, on Jesuits' Estates, i, 389;
  in Thompson ministry, 439;
  resigns on school issue, 465;
  remedial debate, 477.

War, the European, outbreak, ii, 428;
  effect on Canadian unity, 429;
  party agreement at outset, 432;
  campaign of 1915, 441;
  campaign of 1916, 450;
  French-Canadian share in, 457;
  recruiting, 459;
  war efforts, 492;
  national service, 493;
  government proposes conscription, 506;
  election issue, 534;
  failure of Military Service Act, 545.

War, South African: causes, ii, 87;
  outbreak, 89;
  Canadian participation in, 100;
  course, 102;
  comments of Sir Henry de Villiers, 111 n.

Ward, Joseph, at 1907 Conference, ii, 305;
  1911, 340;
  comment, 342 n.

Waterways treaty with United States, ii, 363.

White, Thomas, opposes discussion of ultramontanism, i, 139;
  in Drummond-Arthabaska by-election, 211;
  pays tribute to Laurier's eloquence, 325;
  on unrestricted reciprocity, 379.

White, W. T., enters Borden ministry, ii, 388;
  on Liberal railway policy, 445.

Whitney, James, premier of Ontario, ii, 255;
  criticizes navy proposals, 324.

Willison, John S., becomes editor of "Globe", i, 413;
  withholds Blake letter, 419;
  opposes Laurier on Autonomy Bills, ii, 229;
  language issue, 480.

Wiman, Erastus, advocates commercial union, i, 370;
  arranges Tupper-Bayard conference, 373;
  Edgar's letters to, 377.

"Witness", Montreal, on Tarte, ii, 179.

"World", Toronto, on Laurier's leadership, i, 344;
  on "La Presse" deal, ii, 207.


Young, James, Laurier's letters to, i, 108, 132, 185, 186, 200.


Zouaves, Papal, expedition, i, 126.


Transcriber's Note:

Spelling and grammar have been maintained as in the original. Obvious
typos and printer's errors have been corrected without comment.




[End of _Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Volume II)_
by Oscar Douglas Skelton]
