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+Project Gutenberg's Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics, by J. W. Dafoe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics
+
+Author: J. W. Dafoe
+
+Release Date: March 30, 2005 [EBook #15509]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN ***
+
+
+
+
+-
+
+
+
+
+LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
+
+By J. W. DAFOE
+
+THOMAS ALLEN
+PUBLISHER, TORONTO
+
+
+Copyright, Canada, 1922 by Thomas Allen
+
+Printed in Canada
+
+DEDICATION:
+ TO E. H. MACKLIN
+ IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF A CONSTANT FRIENDSHIP.
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The four articles which make up this volume were originally published
+in successive issues of the Monthly Book Review of the Manitoba Free
+Press and are herewith assembled in book form in response to what
+appears to be a somewhat general request that they be made available
+ in a more permanent form.
+
+J. W. D.
+October 13 1922.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ PART 1. LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
+ PART 2. LAURIER AND EMPIRE RELATIONSHIPS
+ Part 3. FIFTEEN YEARS OF PREMIERSHIP
+
+
+
+
+LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
+
+THE CLIMB TO POWER.
+
+THE life story of Laurier by Oscar D. Skelton is the official
+biography of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Official biographies of public men
+have their uses; they supply material for the definitive biography
+which in the case of a great man is not likely to be written by one
+who knew him in the flesh. An English public man, who was also a
+novelist and poet, wrote:
+
+ "Ne'er of the living can the living judge,
+ Too blind the affection or too fresh the grudge."
+
+The limitation is equally true in the case of one like Sir Wilfrid
+Laurier who, though dead, will be a factor of moment in our politics
+for at least another generation. Professor Skelton's book is
+interesting and valuable, but not conclusive. The first volume is a
+political history of Canada from the sixties until 1896, with
+Laurier in the setting at first inconspicuously but growing to
+greatness and leadership. For the fifteen years of premiership the
+biographer is concerned lest Sir Wilfrid should not get the fullest
+credit for whatever was achieved; while in dealing with the period
+after 1911, constituting the anti-climax of Laurier's career, Mr.
+Skelton is avowedly the alert and eager partisan, bound to find his
+hero right and all those who disagreed with him wrong. Sir Wilfrid
+Laurier is described in the preface as "the finest and simplest
+gentleman, the noblest and most unselfish man it has ever been my
+good fortune to know;" and the work is faithfully devoted to the
+elucidation of this theme. Men may fail to be heroes to their valets
+but they are more successful with their biographers. The final
+appraisement of Sir Wilfrid, to be written perhaps fifty years hence
+by some tolerant and impartial historian, will probably not be an
+echo of Prof. Skelton's judgment. It will perhaps put Sir Wilfrid
+higher than Prof. Skelton does and yet not quite so high; an abler
+man but one not quite so preternaturally good; a man who had
+affinities with Macchiavelli as well as with Sir Galahad.
+
+The Laurier of the first volume is an appealing, engaging and most
+attractive personality. There was about his earlier career something
+romantic and compelling. In almost one rush he passed from the
+comparative obscurity of a new member in 1874 to the leadership of
+the French Liberals  in 1877; and then he suffered a decline which
+seemed to mark him as one of those political shooting stars which
+blaze in the firmament for a season and then go black; like Felix
+Geoffrion who, though saluted by Laurier in 1874 as the coming
+leader, never made any impress upon his times. A political accident,
+fortunate for him, opened the gates again to a career; and he set
+his foot upon a road which took him very far.
+
+The writer made acquaintance with Laurier in the Dominion session of
+1884. He was then in his forty-third year; but in the judgment of
+many his career was over. His interest in politics was, apparently,
+of the slightest. He was deskmate to Blake, who carried on a
+tremendous campaign that session against the government's C. P. R.
+proposals. Laurier's political activities consisted chiefly of being
+an acting secretary of sorts to the Liberal leader. He kept his
+references in order; handed him Hansards and blue-books in turn;
+summoned the pages to clear away the impedimenta and to keep the
+glass of water replenished--little services which it was clear he
+was glad to do for one who engaged his ardent affection and
+admiration. There were memories in the house of Laurier's eloquence;
+but memories only. During this session he was almost silent. The
+tall, courtly figure was a familiar sight in the chamber and in the
+library--particularly in the library, where he could be found every
+day ensconced in some congenial alcove; but the golden voice was
+silent. It was known that his friends were concerned about his
+health.
+
+LAURIER AND THE RIEL AGITATION
+
+The "accident" which restored Laurier to public life and opened up
+for him an extraordinary career was the Riel rebellion of 1885. In
+the session of 1885, the rebellion being then in progress, he was
+heard from to some purpose on the subject of the ill treatment of
+the Saskatchewan half-breeds by the Dominion government. The
+execution of Riel in the following November changed the whole course
+of Canadian politics. It pulled the foundations from under the
+Conservative party by destroying the position of supremacy which it
+had held for a generation in the most Conservative of provinces and
+condemned it to a slow decline to the ruin of to-day; and it
+profoundly affected the Liberal party, giving it a new orientation
+and producing the leader who was to make it the dominating force in
+Canadian politics. These things were not realized at the time, but
+they are clear enough in retrospect. Party policy, party discipline,
+party philosophy are all determined by the way the constituent
+elements of the party combine; and the shifting from the Conservative
+to the Liberal party of the political weight of Quebec, not as the
+result of any profound change of conviction but under the influence
+of a powerful racial emotion, was bound to register itself in time
+in the party outlook and morale. The current of the older tradition
+ran strong for some time, but within the space of about twenty years
+the party was pretty thoroughly transformed. The Liberal party of
+to-day with its complete dependence upon the solid support it gets
+in Quebec is the ultimate result of the forces which came into play
+as the result of the hanging of Riel.
+
+After the lapse of so many years there is no need for lack of candor
+in discussing the events of 1885. To put it plainly Riel's fate
+turned almost entirely upon political considerations. Which was the
+less dangerous course,--to reprieve him or let him hang? The issue
+was canvassed back and forth by the distracted ministry up to the
+day before that fixed for the execution when a decision was reached
+to let the law take its course. The feeling in Quebec in support of
+the commutation was so intense and overwhelming that it was accepted
+as a matter of course that Riel would be reprieved; and the news of
+the contrary decision was to them, as Professor Skelton says,
+"unbelievable." The actual announcement of the hanging was a match
+to a powder magazine. That night there were mobs on the streets of
+Montreal and Sir John Macdonald was burned in effigy in Dominion
+square. On the following Sunday forty thousand people swarmed around
+the hustings on Champ de Mars and heard the government denounced in
+every conceivable term of verbal violence by speakers of every tinge
+of political belief. This outpouring of a common indignation with
+its obliteration of all the usual lines of demarcation was the
+result of the "wounding of the national self-esteem" by the flouting
+of the demand for leniency, as it was put by La Minerve. Mercier put
+it still more strongly when he declared that "the murder of Riel
+was a declaration of war upon French Canadian influence in
+Confederation." A binding cement for this union of elements
+ordinarily at war was sought for in the creation of the "parti
+national" which a year later captured the provincial Conservative
+citadel at Quebec and turned it over to Honore Mercier. This violent
+racial movement raged unchecked in the provincial arena, but in the
+federal field it was held in leash by Laurier. That he saw the
+possibilities of the situation is not to be doubted. He took part in
+the demonstration on Champ de Mars and in his speech 'made a
+declaration--"Had I been born on the banks of the Saskatchewan I
+myself would have shouldered a musket"--which riveted nation-wide
+attention upon him. Laurier followed this by his impassioned apology
+for the halfbreeds and their leader in the House of Commons, of
+which deliverance Thomas White, of the assailed ministry, justly
+said: "It was the finest parliamentary speech ever pronounced in the
+parliament of Canada since Confederation." In the debate on the
+execution of Riel all the orators of parliament took part. It was
+the occasion for one of Blake's greatest efforts. Sir John Thompson,
+in his reply to Blake, revealed himself to parliament and the
+country as one worthy of crossing swords with the great Liberal
+tribune. But they and all the other "big guns" of the Commons were
+thrown into complete eclipse by Laurier's performance. It is easy to
+recall after the lapse of thirty-six years the extraordinary
+impression which that speech made upon the great audience which
+heard it--a crowded House of Commons and the public galleries packed
+to the roof.
+
+In the early winter of 1886-7 Laurier went boldly into Ontario
+where, addressing great audiences in Toronto, London and other
+points, he defended his position and preferred his indictment
+against the government. This was Laurier's first introduction to
+Ontario, under circumstances which, while actually threatening, were
+in reality auspicious. It was at once an exhibition of moral and
+physical courage and a manifestation of Laurier's remarkable
+qualities as a public speaker. Within a few months Laurier passed
+from the comparative obscurity to which he had condemned himself by
+his apparent indifference to politics to a position in public life
+where he divided public attention and interest with Edward Blake and
+Sir John Macdonald. When a few months later Blake, in a rare fit of
+the sulks, retired to his tent, refusing to play any longer with
+people who did not appreciate his abilities, Laurier succeeded to
+the leadership--apparently upon the nomination of Blake, actually at
+the imperious call of those inescapable forces and interests which
+men call Destiny.
+
+
+LEADERSHIP AND THE ROAD TO IT.
+
+Laurier, then in his 46th year, became leader of the Liberal party
+in June, 1887. It was supposedly a tentative experimental choice;
+but the leadership thus begun ended only with his death in February,
+1919, nearly thirty-two years later. Laurier was a French Canadian
+of the ninth generation. His first Canadian ancestor, Augustin
+Hebert, was one of the little band of soldier colonists who, under
+the leadership of Maisonneuve founded Montreal in 1641. Hebert's
+granddaughter married a soldier of the regiment Carignan-Salieres,
+Francois Cotineau dit Champlaurier. The Heberts were from Normandy,
+Cotineau from Savoy. From this merging of northern and southern
+French strains the Canadian family of Laurier resulted; this name
+was first assumed by the grandson of the soldier ancestor. The
+record of the first thirty years of Wilfrid Laurier's life was
+indistinguishable from that of scores of other French-Canadian
+professional men. Born in the country (St. Lin, Nov. 20, 1841) of
+parents in moderate circumstances; educated at one of the numerous
+little country colleges; a student at law in Montreal; a young and
+struggling lawyer, interested in politics and addicted upon occasion
+to political journalism.--French-Canadians by the hundreds have
+travelled that road. A fortunate combination of circumstances took
+him out of the struggle for a place at the Montreal bar and gave
+him a practice in the country combined with the editorship of a
+Liberal weekly, a position which made him at once a figure of some
+local prominence. Laurier's personal charm and obvious capacity for
+politics marked him at once for local leadership. At the age of 30
+he was sent to the Quebec legislature as representative of the
+constituency of Drummond and Arthabaska; and three years later he
+went to Ottawa. The rapid retirement of the Rouge leaders, Dorion
+and Fournier to the bench and Letellier to the lieutenant-governorship
+of Quebec, opened the way for early promotion, and in 1877
+he entered the cabinet of Alex. Mackenzie and assumed at the
+same time the leadership of the French Liberals. Defeated in
+Drummond-Arthabaska upon seeking re-election he was taken to its
+heart by Quebec East and continued to represent that constituency
+for an unbroken period of forty years. He went out of office with
+Mackenzie in 1878, and thereafter his career which had begun so
+promisingly dwindled almost to extinction until the events already
+noted called him back to the lists and opened for him the doors of
+opportunity.
+
+When Wilfrid Laurier went to Montreal in 1861 he began the study of
+law in the office of Rodolphe Laflamme, a leading figure in the
+Rouge political group; and he joined L'Institut Canadien already far
+advanced in the struggle with the church which was later to result
+in open warfare. Those two acts revealed his political affiliations
+and fixed the environment in which he was to move during the plastic
+twenties. Ten years had passed since a group of ardent young men,
+infected with the principles and enthusiasm of 1848, of which
+Papineau returning from exile in Paris was the apostle, had stormed
+the constituencies of Lower Canada and had appeared in the
+parliament of Canada as a radical, free-thinking, ultra-Democratic
+party, bearing proudly the badge of "Rouge"; and the passage of time
+was beginning to temper their views with a tinge of sobriety. The
+church, however, had them all in her black books and Bishop Bourget,
+that incomparable zealot and bigot, was determined to destroy them
+politically and spiritually, to whip them into submission. The
+struggle raged chiefly in the sixties about L'Institut Canadien,
+frowned upon by the church because it had books in its library which
+were banned by the Index and because it afforded a free forum for
+discussion. When Confederation cut the legislative connection
+between Upper and Lower Canada the church felt itself free to
+proceed to extremes in the Catholic province of Quebec and embarked
+upon that campaign of political proscription which ultimately
+reached a point where even the Rome of Pius IX. felt it necessary to
+intervene.
+
+In this great battle for political and intellectual freedom the
+young Laurier played his part manfully. He boldly joined L'Institut
+Canadien, though it lay under the shadow of Bishop Bourget's
+minatory pastoral; and became an active member and officer. He was
+one of a committee which tried unavailingly to effect an
+understanding with Bishop Bourget. When he left Montreal in 1866 he
+was first vice-president of the Institute. His native caution and
+prudence and his natural bent towards moderation and accommodation
+enabled him to play a great and growing, though non-spectacular,
+part in the struggle against the church's pretensions. As his
+authority grew in the party he discouraged the excesses in theory
+and speech which invited the Episcopal thunders; even in his
+earliest days his radicalism was of a decidedly Whiggish type and
+his political color was several shades milder than the fiery red of
+Papineau, Dorion and Laflamme. Under his guidance the Rouge party
+was to be transformed in outlook, mentality and convictions into
+something very different indeed; but this was still far in the
+future. But towards the church's pretensions to control the
+political convictions of its adherents he presented an unyielding
+front. On the eve of his assumption of the leadership of the French
+Liberals he discussed at Quebec, June 1877, the question of the
+political relations between church and state and the rights of the
+individual in one of his most notable addresses. In this he
+vindicated, with eloquence and courage, the right of the individual
+to be both Catholic and Liberal, and challenged the policy of
+clerical intimidation which had made the leaders of the church
+nothing but the tools and chore-boys of Hector Langevin, the Tory
+leader in the province. It may rightly be assumed that it was
+something more than a coincidence that not long after the delivery
+of this speech, Rome put a bit in the mouth of the champing Quebec
+ecclesiastics. This remained Laurier's most solid achievement up to
+the time when he was called to the leadership of the Dominion
+Liberal party.
+
+DOUBTS AND HESITATIONS
+
+Laurier's accession to leadership caused doubt and heart-burnings
+among the leaders of Ontario Liberalism. Still under the influence
+of the Geo. Brown tradition of suspicion of Quebec they felt uneasy
+at the transfer of the sceptre to Laurier, French by inheritance,
+Catholic in religion, with a political experience derived from
+dealing with the feelings, ambitions and prejudices of a province
+which was to them an unknown world. Part of the doubt arose from
+misconception of the qualities of Laurier. As a hard-bitten, time-worn
+party fighter, with an experience going back to pre-confederation
+days, said to the writer: "Laurier will never make a leader; he has
+not enough of the devil in him." This meant, in the brisk terminology
+of to-day, that he could not deliver the rough stuff. This doubter
+and his fellows had yet to learn that the flashing rapier in the
+hands of the swordsman makes a completer and far less messy job than
+the bludgeon; and that there is in politics room for the delicate
+art of jiu-jitsu. Further, the Ontario mind was under the sway of
+that singular misconception, so common to Britishers, that a
+Frenchman by temperament is gay, romantic, inconsequent, with few
+reserves of will and perseverance. Whereas the good French mind is
+about the coolest, clearest, least emotional instrument of the kind
+that there is. The courtesy, grace, charm, literary and artistic
+ability that go with it are merely accessories; they are the
+feathers on the arrow that help it in its flight from the twanging
+bow-cord to the bull's-eye. Laurier's mind was typically French with
+something also Italianate about it, an inheritance perhaps from the
+long-dead Savoyard ancestor who brought the name to this continent.
+Later when Laurier had proved his quality and held firmly in his
+hands the reins of power, the fatuous Ontario Liberal explained him
+as that phenomenon, a man of pure French ancestry who was
+spiritually an Englishman--this conclusion being drawn from the fact
+that upon occasion the names of Charles James Fox and Gladstone came
+trippingly from his tongue. The new relationship between the
+Liberals and Laurier was entered upon with obvious hesitation on the
+part of many of the former and by apparent diffidence by the latter.
+It may be that the conditional acceptance and the proffered
+resignation at call were tactical movements really intended by
+Laurier to buttress his position as leader, as most assuredly his
+frequent suggestions of a readiness or intention to retire during
+the last few years of his leadership were. But, whatever the
+uncertainties of the moment, they soon passed. Laurier at once
+showed capacities which the Liberals had never before known in a
+leader. The long story of Liberal sterility and ineffectiveness from
+the middle of the last century to almost its close is the story of
+the political incapacity of its successive leaders, a demonstration
+of the unfitness of men with the emotional equipment of the
+pamphleteer, crusader and agitator for the difficult business of
+party management. The party sensed almost immediately the difference
+in the quality of the new leadership; and liked it. Laurier's powers
+of personal charm completed the "consolidation of his position," and
+by the early nineties the Presbyterian Grits of Ontario were
+swearing by him. When Blake, after two or three years of nursing his
+wounds in retirement, began to think it was time to resume the
+business of leading the Liberals, he found everywhere invisible
+barriers blocking his return. Laurier was, he found, a different
+proposition from Mackenzie; and there was nothing for it but to
+return to his tent and take farewell of his constituents in that
+tale of lamentations, the West Durham letter. The new regime, the
+new leadership, did not bring results at once. The party experienced
+a succession of unexpected and unforeseen misfortunes that almost
+made Laurier superstitious. "Tell me," he wrote to his friend Henri
+Beaugrand, in August, 1891, "whether there is not some fatality
+pursuing our party." In the election of 1891 not even the
+theatricality of Sir John Macdonald's last appeal nor the untrue
+claim by the government that it was about, itself, to secure a
+reciprocal trade arrangement with Washington, could have robbed the
+Liberals of a triumph which seemed certain; it was the opportune
+revelation, through the stealing of proofs from a printing office,
+that Edward Farrer, one of the Globe editors, favored political
+union with the United States, that gave victory into the hands of
+the Conservatives. But their relatively narrow majority would not
+have kept them in office a year in view of the death of Sir John A.
+Macdonald in June, 1891, and the stunning blows given the government
+by the "scandal session" of 1891, had it not been for two disasters
+which overtook the Liberals: The publication of Blake's letter and
+the revelation of the rascalities of the Mercier regime. Perhaps of
+the two blows, that delivered by Blake was the more disastrous. The
+letter was the message of an oracle. It required an interpretation
+which the oracle refused to supply; and in its absence the people
+regarded it as implying a belief by Blake that annexation was the
+logical sequel to the Liberal policy of unrestricted reciprocity.
+The result was seen in the by-election campaign of 1892 when the
+Liberals lost seat after seat in Ontario, and the government
+majority mounted to figures which suggested that the party, despite
+the loss of Sir John, was as strong as ever. The Tories were in the
+seventh heaven of delight. With the Liberals broken, humiliated and
+discouraged, and a young and vigorous pilot, in the person of Sir
+John Thompson, at the helm, they saw a long and happy voyage before
+them. Never were appearances more illusory, for the cloud was
+already in the sky from which were to come storm, tempest and
+ruinous over-throw.
+
+
+THE TACTICS OF VICTORY
+
+The story of the Manitoba school question and the political struggle
+which centred around it, as told by Prof. Skelton, is bald and
+colorless; it gives little sense of the atmosphere of one of the
+most electrical periods in our history. The sequelae of the Riel
+agitation, with its stirring up of race feeling, included the Jesuit
+Estates controversy in parliament, the Equal Rights movement in
+Ontario, the attack upon the use of the French language in the
+legislature of the Northwest Territories and the establishment of a
+system of National schools in Manitoba through the repeal of the
+existing school law, which had been modelled upon the Quebec law and
+was intended to perpetuate the double-barrelled system in vogue in
+that province. The issue created by the Manitoba legislation
+projected itself at once into the federal field to the evident
+consternation of the Dominion government. It parried the demand for
+disallowance of the provincial statute by an engagement to defray
+the cost of litigation challenging the validity of the law. When the
+Privy Council, reversing the judgment of the Supreme Court, found
+that the law was valid because it did not prejudicially affect
+rights held prior to or at the time of union, the government was
+faced with a demand that it intervene by virtue of the provisions in
+the British North America act, which gave the Dominion parliament
+the power to enact remedial educational legislation overriding
+provincial enactments in certain circumstances. Again it took refuge
+in the courts. The Supreme Court of Canada held that under the
+circumstances the power to intervene did not exist; and the
+government breathed easier. Again the Privy Council reversed the
+judgment of the Supreme Court and held that because the Manitoba law
+prejudicially affected educational privileges enjoyed by the
+minority after union there was a right of intervention. The last
+defence of the Dominion government against being forced to make a
+decision was broken down; in the language of to-day, it was up
+against it. And the man who might have saved the party by inducing
+the bishops of the Catholic church to moderate their demands was
+gone, for Sir John Thompson died in Windsor Castle in December,
+1894, one month before the Privy Council handed down its fateful
+decision. Sir John was a faithful son of the church, with an immense
+influence with the clerical authorities; he was succeeded in the
+premiership by Sir Mackenzie Bowell, ex-grand master of the Orange
+Order. The bishops moved on Ottawa and demanded action.
+
+There ensued a duel in tactics between the two parties, intensely
+interesting in character and in its results surprising, at least for
+some people. The parties to the struggle which now proceeded to
+convulse Canada were the government of Manitoba, the author of the
+law in question, the Roman Catholic hierarchy in their capacity of
+guardians and champions of the Manitoba minority, and the two
+Dominion political parties. The bishops were in deadly earnest in
+attack; so was the Manitoba government in defence; but with the
+others the interest was purely tactical. How best to set the sails
+to catch the veering winds and blustering gusts to win the race, the
+prize for which was the government of Canada? The Conservatives had
+the right of initiative--did it give them the advantage? They
+thought so; and so did most of the Liberal generals who were mostly
+in a blue funk during the year 1895 in anticipation of the hole into
+which the government was going to place them. But there was at least
+one Liberal tactician who knew better.
+
+The Conservatives decided upon a line of action which seemed to them
+to have the maximum of advantage. They would go in for remedial
+legislation. In the English provinces they would say that they did
+this reluctantly as good, loyal, law-abiding citizens obeying the
+order of the Queen delivered through the Privy Council. From their
+experiences with the electors they had good reason to believe that
+this buncombe would go down. But in Quebec they would pose as the
+defenders of the oppressed, loyal co-operators with the bishops in
+rebuking, subduing and chaining the Manitoba tyrants. Obviously they
+would carry the province; if Laurier opposed their legislation they
+would sweep the province and he would be left without a shred of the
+particular support which was supposed to be his special contribution
+to a Liberal victory. The calculation looked good to the
+Conservatives; also to most of the Liberals. As one Liberal veteran
+put it in 1895: "If we vote against remedial legislation we shall be
+lost, hook, line and sinker." But there was one Liberal who thought
+differently.
+
+
+His name was J. Israel Tarte. Tarte was in office an impossibility;
+power went to his head like strong wine and destroyed him. But he
+was the man whose mind conceived, and whose will executed, the
+Napoleonic stroke of tactics which crumpled up the Conservative army
+in 1896 and put it in the hole which had been dug for the Liberals.
+On the day in March, 1895, when the Dominion government issued its
+truculent and imperious remedial order, Tarte said to the present
+writer: "The government is in the den of lions; if only Greenway
+will now shut the door." At that early day he saw with a clearness
+of vision that was never afterwards clouded, the tactics that meant
+victory: "Make the party policy suit the campaign in the other
+provinces; leave Quebec to Laurier and me." He foresaw that the
+issue in Quebec would not be made by the government nor by the
+bishops; it would be whether the French-Canadians, whose imagination
+and affections had already been captured by Laurier, would or would
+not vote to put their great man in the chair of the prime minister
+of Canada. All through the winter and spring of 1895 Tarte was
+sinking test wells in Quebec public opinion with one uniform result.
+The issue was Laurier. So the policy was formulated of marking time
+until the government was irretrievably committed to remedial
+legislation; then the Liberals as a solid body were to throw
+themselves against it. So Laurier and the Liberal party retired
+within the lines of Torres Vedras and bided their time.
+
+But Tarte had no end of trouble in keeping the party to the path
+marked out. The fainthearts of the other provinces could not keep
+from their minds the haunting fear that the road they were marching
+along led to a morass. They wanted a go-as-you please policy by
+which each section of the party could make its own appeal to local
+feeling. Laurier was never more indecisive than in the war councils
+in which these questions of party policy were fought over. And with
+good reason. His sympathy and his judgment were with Tarte but he
+feared to declare himself too pronouncedly. The foundation stone of
+Tarte's policy was a belief in the overwhelming potency of Laurier's
+name in Quebec; Laurier was naturally somewhat reluctant to put his
+own stock so high. He had not yet come to believe implicitly in his
+star. Within forty-eight hours of the time when Laurier made his
+speech moving the six months' hoist to the Remedial bill, a group of
+Liberal sub-chiefs from the English provinces made a resolute
+attempt to vary the policy determined upon. Their bright idea was
+that Clarke Wallace, the seceding cabinet minister and Orange
+leader, should move the six months' hoist; this would enable the
+Liberals to divide, some voting for it and some against it. But the
+bold idea won. With Laurier's speech of March 3, 1896, the death-blow
+was given to the Conservative administration and the door to
+office and power opened to the Liberals.
+
+The campaign absolutely vindicated the tactical foresight of Tarte.
+A good deal might be said about that campaign if space were
+available. But one or two features of it may be noted. In the
+English provinces great play was made with Father Lacombe's minatory
+letter to Laurier, sent while the issue was trembling in the balance
+in parliament: "If the government . . is beaten . . I inform you
+with regret that the episcopacy, like one man, united with the
+clergy, will rise to support those who may have fallen in defending
+us." In his Reminiscences, Sir John Willison speculates as to how
+this letter, so detrimental to the government in Ontario, got itself
+published. Professor Skelton says boldly that it was "made public
+through ecclesiastical channels." It would be interesting to know
+his authority for this statement. The writer of this article says it
+was published as the result of a calculated indiscretion by the
+Liberal board of strategy. As it was through his agency that
+publication of the letter was sought and secured, it will be agreed
+that he speaks with knowledge. It does not, of course, follow that
+Laurier was a party to its publication.
+
+The campaign of 1896 was on both sides lively, violent and
+unscrupulous. The Conservatives had two sets of arguments; and so
+had the Liberals. Those of us who watched the campaign in Quebec at
+close range know that not much was said there by the Liberals about
+the high crime of coercing a province. Instead, stress was laid upon
+the futility and inadequacy of the proposed remedial legislation;
+upon the high probability that more could be got for the minority by
+negotiation; upon the suggestion that, negotiation failing, remedial
+legislation that would really accomplish something could still be
+invoked. This argument, plus the magic of Laurier's personality and
+Tarte's organizing genius, did the business. Futile the sniping of
+the curés; vain the broadsides of the bishops; empty the thunders of
+the church! Quebec went to the polls and voted for Laurier.
+Elsewhere the government just about held its own despite the burden
+of its remedial policy; but it was buried under the Quebec
+avalanche. The Liberals took office sustained by the 33 majority
+from the province which had once been the citadel of political
+Conservatism.
+
+ "Now is the winter of our discontent
+ Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
+ And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
+ In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
+ Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
+ Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
+ Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings;
+ Our dreadful marches to delightful measures."
+
+
+
+PART TWO. LAURIER AND EMPIRE RELATIONSHIPS
+
+WILFRID Laurier was Prime Minister of Canada from July 9, 1896, to
+October 6, 1911, fifteen years and three months, which, for the
+Dominion, is a record. Sir John Macdonald was Premier of the
+Dominion of Canada for over nineteen years, but this covered two
+terms separated by five years of Liberal rule.
+
+The theory of government by party is that the two parties are
+complementary instruments of government; by periodic interchanges of
+position they keep the administration of the country efficient and
+progressive. The complete acceptance of this view would imply a
+readiness upon the part of a party growing stale to facilitate the
+incoming of the required alternative administration, but no such
+phenomenon in politics has ever been observed. Parties, in reality,
+are organized states within the state. They have their own dynasties
+and hierarchies; and their reason for existence is to clothe
+themselves with the powers, functions and glory of the state which
+they control. Their desire is for absolute and continuing control to
+which they come to think they have a prescriptive right; and they
+never leave office without a sense of outrage. There never yet was a
+party ejected from office which did not feel pretty much as the
+Stuarts did when they lost the throne of England; the incoming
+administration is invariably regarded by them in the light of
+usurpers. This was very much the case with the Conservatives after
+1896; and the Liberals had the same feeling after 1911, that they
+had been robbed, as they deemed, of their rightful heritage. Parties
+are not, as their philosophers claim, servants of the state
+co-operating in its service; their real desire is the mastery of the
+state and the brooking of no opposition or rivalship. Nevertheless
+the people by a sure instinct compel a change in administration
+every now and then; but they move so slowly that a government well
+entrenched in office can usually outstay its welcome by one term of
+office. The Laurier administration covering a full period of fifteen
+years illustrates the operation of this political tendency. The
+government came in with the good wishes of the people and for nearly
+ten years went on from strength to strength, carrying out an
+extensive and well-considered domestic programme; then its strength
+began to wane and its vigor to relax. Its last few years were given
+up to a struggle against the inevitable fate that was visibly rising
+like a tide; and the great stroke of reciprocity which was attempted
+in 1911 was not nearly so much a belated attempt to give effect to a
+party principle as it was a desperate expedient by an ageing
+administration to stave off dissolution. The Laurier government died
+in 1911, not so much from the assaults of its enemies as from
+hardening of its arteries and from old age. Its hour had struck in
+keeping with the law of political change. Upon any reasonable survey
+of the circumstances it would be held that Laurier was fortunate
+beyond most party leaders in his premiership--in its length, in the
+measure of public confidence which he held over so long a period, in
+the affection which he inspired in his immediate following, and for
+the opportunities it gave him for putting his policies into
+operation.
+
+
+Viewed in retrospect most of the domestic occurrences of the Laurier
+regime lose their importance as the years recede; it will owe its
+place in Canadian political history to one or two achievements of
+note. Laurier's chief claim to an enduring personal fame will rest
+less upon his domestic performances than upon the contribution he
+made towards the solution of the problem of imperial relations. The
+examination of his record as a party leader in the prime minister's
+chair can be postponed while consideration is given to the great
+services he rendered the cause of imperial and international
+Liberalism as Canada's spokesman in the series of imperial
+conferences held during his premiership.
+
+Laurier, up to the moment of his accession to the Liberal
+leadership, had probably given little thought to the question of
+Canada's relationship to the empire. Blake knew something about the
+intricacies of the question. His Aurora speech showed that as early
+as 1874 he was beginning to regard critically our status of
+colonialism as something which could not last; and while he was
+minister of justice in the Mackenzie ministration he won two notable
+victories over the centralizing tendencies of the colonial office.
+But Laurier had never been brought into touch with the issue; and
+when, after assuming the Liberal leadership, he found it necessary
+to deal with it, he spoke what was probably the belief latent in
+most of the minds of his compatriots: acceptance of colonial status
+with the theoretical belief that some time, so far distant as not to
+be a matter of political concern, this status would give way to one
+of independence. "The day is coming," he said in Montreal in 1890,
+"when this country will have to take its place among the nations of
+the earth. ... I want my country's independence to be reached
+through the normal and regular progress of all the elements of its
+populations toward the realization of a common aspiration." Looking
+forward to the issues about which it would be necessary for him to
+have policies, it is not probable that he put the question of
+imperial relationships very high. Certainly he had no idea that it
+would be in dealing with this matter that he would reveal his
+qualities at their highest and lay the surest foundation for his
+fame.
+
+In 1890 Laurier, as we have seen, believed the Canadian future was
+to be that of colonialism for an indefinite period and then
+independence. In 1911, the year he left office, in a letter to a
+friend he said: "We are making for a harbor which was not the harbor
+I foresaw twenty-five years ago, but it is a good harbor. It will
+not be the end. Exactly what the course will be I cannot tell, but I
+think I know the general bearing and I am content." The change in
+view indicated by these words is thus expounded by Professor
+Skelton: "The conception of Canada's status which Sir Wilfrid
+developed in his later years of office was that of a nation within
+the empire." But between the two quoted declarations there lay
+twenty-one years of time, fifteen years of prime ministership and
+the experiences derived from attendance at four imperial conferences
+in succession--another record set by Laurier not likely ever to be
+repeated.
+
+THE IMPERIALIST DRIVE
+
+Laurier's imperial policies were forged in the fire. He took to
+London upon the occasion of each conference a fairly just
+appreciation of what was politically achievable and what was not,
+and there he was put to the test of refusing to be stampeded into
+practicable courses. Professor Skelton records two enlightening
+conversations with Laurier dealing with the difficulties in which
+the colonial representatives in attendance at these gatherings found
+themselves. Said Sir Wilfrid:
+
+"One felt the incessant and unrelenting organization of an
+imperialist campaign. We were looked upon, not so much as individual
+men, but abstractly as colonial statesmen, to be impressed and
+hobbled. The Englishman is as businesslike in his politics,
+particularly his external politics, as in business, even if he
+covers his purposefulness with an air of polite indifference. Once
+convinced that the colonies were worth keeping, he bent to the work
+of drawing them closer within the orbit of London with marvelous
+skill and persistence. In this campaign, which no one could
+appreciate until he had been in the thick of it, social pressure is
+the subtlest and most effective force. In 1897 and 1902 it was Mr.
+Chamberlain's personal insistence that was strongest, but in 1907
+and after, society pressure was the chief force. It is hard to stand
+up against the flattery of a gracious duchess. Weak men's heads are
+turned in an evening, and there are few who can resist long. We were
+dined and wined by royalty and aristocracy and plutocracy and always
+the talk was of empire, empire, empire. I said to Deakin in 1907
+that this was one reason why we could not have a parliament or
+council in London; we can talk cabinet to cabinet, but cannot send
+Canadians or Australians as permanent residents to London, to debate
+and act on their own discretion."
+
+Still more enlightening is this observation:
+
+"Sir Joseph Ward was given prominence in 1911 through the exigencies
+of imperialist politics. At each imperial conference some colonial
+leader was put forward by the imperialists to champion their cause.
+In 1897 it was obvious that they looked to me to act the bell-wether,
+but I fear they were disappointed. In 1902 it was Seddon; in 1907,
+Deakin; in 1911, Ward. He had not Deakin's ability or Seddon's
+force. His London friends stuffed him for his conference speeches;
+he came each day with a carefully typewritten speech, but when once
+off that, he was at sea."
+
+What was the intention of this "unrelenting imperialist campaign"?
+It took many forms, wore many disguises, but in its secret purposes
+it was unchangeable and unwearying. It was a conscious, determined
+attempt to recover what Disraeli lamented that Great Britain had
+thrown away. Twenty years after Disraeli had referred to the
+colonies as "wretched millstones hung about our neck," he changed
+his mind and in 1872 he made an address as to the proper relations
+between the Mother Land and the colonies which is the very
+corner-stone of imperialistic doctrine. His declaration was in these
+words:
+
+"Self-government, in my opinion, when it was conceded, ought to have
+been conceded as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation.
+It ought to have been accompanied by an imperial tariff; by
+securities for the people of England for the enjoyment of the
+unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as their
+trustee; and by a military code which should have precisely defined
+the means, and the responsibilities, by which the colonies should be
+defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for
+aid from the colonies themselves. It ought, further, to have been
+accompanied by the institution of some representative council in the
+metropolis, which would have brought the colonies into constant and
+continuous relations with the home government."
+
+From the day Disraeli uttered these words down to this present time
+there has been a persistent, continuous, well-financed and
+resourceful movement looking towards the establishment in London of
+some kind of a central governing body--parliament, council, cabinet,
+call it what you will--which will determine the foreign policies of
+the British Empire and command in their support the military and
+naval potentialities of all the dominions and dependencies. It fell
+to Laurier to hold the pass against this movement; and this he did
+for fifteen years with patience, sagacity and imperturbable firmness
+against the enraged and embattled imperialists, both of England and
+Canada. Laurier, in the comment quoted above, said that in 1897 the
+imperialists had looked to him to act as the bell-wether. They had
+good reason to be hopeful about his usefulness to them. The imperial
+preference just enacted by the Canadian parliament had been hailed
+both in Canada and Great Britain as a great concession to
+imperialistic sentiment, whereas it was in reality an exceedingly
+astute stroke of domestic politics by which the government lowered
+the tariff and at the same time spiked the guns of the high
+protectionists. In 1897, when Laurier first went to England, the
+imperial movement was at its crescent, synchronous with the great
+welling up of sentiment and reverence called forth by the Diamond
+Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Strachey has a penetrating word about the
+strength which Queen Victoria's "final years of apotheosis" brought
+to the imperialistic movement:
+
+"The imperialist temper of the nation invested her office with a new
+significance exactly harmonizing with her own inmost proclivities.
+The English policy was in the main a common-sense structure; but
+there was always a corner in it where common-sense could not enter.
+. . . Naturally it was in the crown that the mysticism of the
+English polity was concentrated--the crown with its venerable
+antiquity, its sacred associations, its imposing spectacular array.
+But, for nearly two centuries, common-sense had been predominant in
+the great building and the little, unexplored, inexplicable corner
+had attracted small attention. Then with the rise of imperialism
+there was a change. For imperialism is a faith as well as a
+business; as it grew the mysticism in English public life grew with
+it and simultaneously a new importance began to attach to the crown.
+The need for a symbol--a symbol of England's might, of England's
+worth, of England's extraordinary mystical destiny--became felt more
+urgently than before. The crown was the symbol and the crown rested
+upon the head of Victoria."
+
+To be translated from the humdrum life of Ottawa to a foremost place
+in the vast pageantry of the Diamond Jubilee, there to be showered
+with a wealth of tactful and complimentary personal attentions was
+rather too much for Laurier. The oratorical possibilities of the
+occasion took him into camp; and in a succession of speeches he gave
+it as his view that the most entrancing future for Canada was one in
+which she should be represented in the imperial parliament sitting
+in Westminster. "It would be," he told the National Liberal club,
+"the proudest moment of my life if I could see a Canadian of French
+descent affirming the principles of freedom in the parliament of
+Great Britain." This, of course, was nothing but the abandonment of
+the orator to the rhetorical possibilities of the situation. Under
+the impulse of these emotions he fell an easy victim to the
+conspiracy of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Strathcona (of which he later
+made complaint) by which the "democrat to the hilt" (as Laurier had
+proclaimed himself but a short time earlier when he had been given
+prematurely the knightly title at a public function) was transmuted
+into Sir Wilfrid Laurier. It was, therefore, not without apparent
+reason that the imperialists thought that they had captured for
+their own this new romantic and appealing figure from the premier
+British dominion. But when the imperial conference met, Mr.
+Chamberlain, as colonial secretary, encountered not the orator
+intent on captivating his audience, but the cool, cautious statesman
+thinking of the folks at home. When the proposition for the
+establishment of an imperial council was made by Mr. Chamberlain it
+was deftly shelved by a declaration which stated that in the view of
+the colonial prime ministers "the present political relations are
+generally satisfactory under existing conditions." The wording is
+suggestive of Laurier, though it is not known that he drafted the
+statement. The skilful suspension of the issue without meeting it
+was certainly the tactics with which he met and blocked, in
+succeeding conferences, all attempts by the imperialists to give
+practical effect to their doctrine.
+
+FIFTEEN YEARS OF SAYING "NO"
+
+The role which Laurier had to play in the successive conferences was
+not one agreeable to his temperament. It gave no opening for his
+talent. It supplied no opportunities for the making of the kind of
+speeches at which he was a master. It kept him from the centre of
+the stage, a position which Sir Wilfrid Laurier had no objection to
+occupying. It obliged him to courses which, in the setting in which
+he found himself, must at times have seemed ungracious, and this
+must have been a trial to a nature so courtly and considerate. To
+the successive proposals that came before the conference, togged out
+in all the gorgeous garb of Imperialism, he was unable to offer
+constructive alternatives; for his political sense warned him that
+it was twenty years too soon to suggest propositions embodying his
+conception of the true relations of the British nations to one
+another. There was nothing to do but to block all suggestions of
+organic change designed to strengthen the centralizing of power and
+to await the development of a national spirit in Canada to the point
+where it would afford backing for a movement in the opposite
+direction. So Laurier had to look pleasant and keep on saying no. To
+Mr. Chamberlain's proposal in 1897 "to create a great council of the
+Empire," No. To the proposal made at the same time for a Canadian
+money contribution to the navy, No. To these propositions and others
+of like tenor urged in 1902 by Mr. Chamberlain with all his
+persuasive masterfulness, No. No naval subsidy because it "would
+entail an important departure from the principle of Colonial
+self-government." No special military force in the Dominion
+available for service overseas because it "derogated from the powers
+of self-government." To the Pollock-Lyttleton suggestion of a
+Council of advice or a permanent "secretariat" for an "Imperial
+Council," No, because it "might eventually come to be regarded as an
+encroachment upon the full measure of autonomous, legislative and
+administrative power now enjoyed by all the self-governing powers."
+
+Sir Wilfrid's policy was not, however, wholly negative, for he was
+mainly responsible for the formal change in 1907 in the character of
+the periodical conferences. The earlier conferences were between the
+secretary of state and representatives of "the self-governing
+colonies." They were colonial conferences in fact and in name--a
+fact egregiously pictured to the eye in the famous photograph of the
+conference of 1897, revealing Mr. Chamberlain complacently seated,
+with 15 colonial representatives grouped about him in standing
+postures. In 1907 the conference became one between governments
+under the formal title of imperial conference, with the prime
+minister the official chairman, as primus inter pares. It was the
+first exemplification of the new theory of equality.
+
+The change of government in Great Britain in 1905 must have brought
+to Sir Wilfrid a profound sense of relief; it was no longer
+necessary to rest upon his armor night and day. Not that the
+Imperialist drive ceased but it no longer found its starting point
+and rallying place in the Colonial office. The centralists operated
+from without, looking about for someone to put forward their ideas,
+as in 1911 when they took possession of Sir Joseph Ward, New
+Zealand's vain and ambitious Prime Minister, and induced him to
+introduce their half-baked schemes into the Conference. He and they
+were suppressed by universal consent, Sir Wilfrid simply lending a
+hand. Sir Wilfrid's refusal at this conference to join Australia and
+other Dominions in a demand that they be consulted by the British
+government in matters of foreign policy seemed to many out of
+harmony with the Imperial policies which he had been pursuing. Mr.
+Asquith at this conference declared that Great Britain could not
+share foreign policy with the Dominions; and Sir Wilfrid declared
+that Canada did not want to share this responsibility with the
+British government. Seemingly Sir Wilfrid thus accepted, despite his
+repeated claim that Canada was a nation, a subordinate relation to
+Great Britain in the field of foreign relations which is the real
+test of nationhood. In fact, however, this was the crowning
+manifestation of his wariness and far-sightedness. He realized in
+1911 what is only now beginning to be understood by public men who
+succeeded to his high office, that a method of consultation
+obviously defective and carrying with it in reality no suspensory or
+veto power, involves by indirection the adoption of that very
+centralizing system which it had been his purpose to block. If, Sir
+Wilfrid said, Dominions gave advice they must be prepared to back it
+with all their strength; yet "we have taken the position in Canada
+that we do not think we are bound to take part in every war." He saw
+in 1911 as clearly as Lloyd George did in 1921 (as witness the
+latter's statement to the House of Commons in that year on the Irish
+treaty) that the policy of consultation gave the Dominions a shadowy
+and unreal power; but imposed upon them a responsibility, serious
+and inescapable. He thus felt himself obliged to discourage the
+procedure suggested by Premier Fisher of Australia, even though, to
+the superficial observer, this involved him in the contradiction of,
+at the same time, exalting and depreciating the status of his
+country.
+
+
+LAURIER'S VIEW OF CANADA'S FUTURE
+
+What conception was there in Laurier's mind as to the right future
+for Canada? He revealed it pretty clearly on several occasions;
+notably in 1908 in a tercentenary address at Quebec in the presence
+of the present King, when he said: "We are reaching the day when our
+parliament will claim co-equal rights with the British parliament
+and when the only ties binding us together will be a common flag and
+a common crown." He was equally explicit two years later when,
+addressing the Ontario club in Toronto, he said: "We are under the
+suzerainty of the King of England. We are his loyal subjects. We bow
+the knee to him. But the King of England has no more rights over us
+than are allowed him by our own Canadian parliament. If this is not
+a nation, what then is a nation?" Laurier looked forward to the
+complete enfranchisement of Canada as a nation under the British
+Crown, with a status of complete equality with Great Britain in the
+British family. A keen-witted member of the Imperial Conference of
+1911, Sir John G. Findlay, Attorney-General for New Zealand, saw the
+reality behind the anomalous position which Sir Wilfrid held. "I
+recognized," he says, "that Canadian nationalism is beginning to
+resent even the appearance--the constitutional forms--of a
+sub-ordination to the Mother country." "And," he added, revealing
+the clarity of his understanding, "this is not a desire for
+separation." But it was not in London that the question of Imperial
+relationships presented its most thorny aspect. Laurier could
+maintain there a stand-pat, blocking attitude with no more
+disagreeable consequences than perhaps a little social chilliness,
+the symbolical "gracious duchess" showing a touch of hauteur and
+disappointment. It was in the reactions of the issue upon Canadian
+politics that Laurier met with his real difficulties. He could not,
+by tactics of procrastination or evasion, keep the question out
+of the domestic field; the era of abject, passive and unthinking
+colonialism was beginning to pass; and the spirit of nationalism was
+stirring the sluggish waters of Canadian politics. Sir Wilfrid had
+to face the issue and make the best of it. He handled the question
+with consummate adroitness and judgment; but ultimately its
+complexities baffled him and the Imperialists who wanted everything
+done for the Empire and the so-called "Nationalists" of Quebec, who
+wanted nothing done, joined forces against him.
+
+THE CANADIAN IMPERIALISTS
+
+It was the Imperialists in the old country and in Canada who gave
+the issue no rest; they believed, apparently with good reason, that
+a little urgency was all that was needed to make Canada the very
+forefront of the drive for the consolidation of the Empire. The
+English-speaking Canadians were traditionally and aggressively
+British. The basic population in the English provinces was United
+Empire Loyalist, which absorbed and colored all later accretions
+from the Motherland--an immigration which in its earlier stages was
+also largely militarist following the reduction of the army
+establishment upon the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. It was
+inspired with a traditional hostility to the American republic. The
+hereditary devotion to the British Crown, of which Victoria to the
+passing generations appeared to be the permanent and unchanging
+personification, threw into eclipse the corresponding sentiment in
+England. English-speaking Canadians were more British than the
+British; they were more loyal than the Queen. One can get an
+admirable idea of the state of Ontario feeling in the addresses at
+the various U.E. L. celebrations in the year 1884; in both its
+resentments and its affections there was something childish and
+confiding.
+
+Imperialism, on its sentimental side, was a glorification of the
+British race; it was a foreshadowing of the happy time when this
+governing and triumphant people would give the world the blessing of
+the pax Britannica. "We are not yet," said Ruskin in his inaugural
+address, "dissolute in temper but still have the firmness to govern
+and the grace to obey." In this address he preached that if England
+was not to perish, "she must found colonies as fast and far as she
+is able," while for the residents of these colonies "their chief
+virtue is to be fidelity to their country (i.e. England) and their
+first aim is to be to advance the power of England by land and sea."
+Seely got rid of all problems of relationship and of status by
+expanding England to take in all the colonies; the British Empire
+was to become a single great state on the model of the United
+States. "Here, too," he said, "is a great homogeneous people, one
+in blood, language, religion and laws, but dispersed over a
+boundless space." Such a conception was vastly agreeable to the more
+aggressive and assertive among the English Canadians. It kindled
+their imagination; from being colonists of no account in the
+backwash of the world's affairs, they became integrally a part of a
+great Imperial world-wide movement of expansion and domination; were
+they not of what Chamberlain called "that proud, persistent,
+self-asserting and resolute stock which is infallibly destined to be
+the predominating force in the future history and civilization of
+the world"? Moreover, it gave them a sense of their special
+importance here in Canada where the population was not "homogeneous
+in blood, language and religion;" it was for them, they felt, to
+direct policy and to control events; to take charge and see that
+developments were in keeping with suggestions from headquarters
+overseas.
+
+What these Canadian parties to the great Imperial drive thought of
+Sir Wilfrid's dilatory, evasive and blocking tactics is not a matter
+of surmise. Upon this point they did not practise the fine art of
+reticence; and their angry expostulations are to be found in the
+pages of Hansard, in the editorial pages of the Conservative press,
+in the political literature of the time, in heavy condemnatory
+articles which found publication through various mediums. Thus Sir
+George Foster could see in Laurier's statements to the Ontario club
+nothing but "foolish, even mischievous talk." "If," he added, "they
+are merely for the sake of rhetorical adornment they are but
+foolish. If, however, they are studied and serious they are
+revolutionary." And to the extent that they could they made trouble
+for Sir Wilfrid, in which labor of love they were energetically
+assisted, upon occasion, by high officials from the other side of
+the Atlantic. Laurier had five years of more or less continuous
+struggle with Lord Minto, a combination of country squire and heavy
+dragoon, who was sent to Canada as governor-general in 1898 to
+forward by every means in his power the Chamberlain policies. He
+busied himself at once and persistently in trying to induce the
+Canadian government to commit itself formally to the policy of
+supplying Canadian troops for Imperial wars. In the spring of 1899
+he wanted an assurance which would justify the war office in
+"reckoning officially" upon Canadian troops "in case of war with a
+European power;" in July he urged an offer of troops in the event of
+war in South Africa which "would be a proof that the component parts
+of the Empire are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder to support
+Imperial interests." With the outbreak of the South African war,
+Lord Minto regarded himself less as Governor-General than as
+Imperial commissioner charged with the vague and shadowy powers
+which go with that office; and Sir Wilfrid had, in consequence, to
+instruct him on more than one occasion that Canada was still a
+self-governing country and not a military satrapy. Professor Skelton
+does nothing more than barely allude to these troubles; the story,
+which would be most interesting and suggestive, will perhaps never
+be told. But some idea of what was afoot can be drawn from the fact
+that at a public gathering in Montreal in the month of November,
+1899, Lord Minto was advised and instructed by an active politician
+and leading lawyer that under his powers as the representative of
+Imperial authority he could order the Canadian militia to South
+Africa without reference to the Canadian parliament!
+
+Associated with Lord Minto in the applying of Imperial pressure to
+the Canadian government was General Hutton, commander of the
+Canadian forces. In those days this position was always filled by an
+Imperial officer who was given leave of absence in order that he
+might fill the position. He was thus a Canadian official, paid out
+of the Canadian treasury and subject to the Canadian government; but
+few of the occupants of the office were capable of appreciating this
+fact. They regarded themselves as representatives of the war office
+with large but undefined powers in the exercise of which they
+frequently found themselves in conflict with the Canadian
+government. General Hutton's interfering activities were so
+objectionable that he was got rid of by a face-saving expedient; but
+four years later a successor to his office, Lord Dundonald, was
+formally dismissed by order-in-council for his "unpardonable
+indiscretion" in publicly criticizing the acting minister of
+militia. Lord Minto, unofficially advised by military officers and
+opposition politicians, resisted signing the order-in-council until
+it was made clear to him that the alternative would be a general
+election in which the issue would be his refusal. The incident was
+conclusive as to the necessity of having a Canadian at the head of
+the Canadian forces--a change which was subsequently effected.
+
+These controversies and conflicts of opinion became factors in
+Canadian politics. The Conservatives sought in the general elections
+of 1900 to make an issue out of the government's hesitation in
+taking part in the South African war in advance of the meeting of
+parliament; this, plus injudicious and provocative speeches by the
+incalculable Mr. Tarte and the general indictment of Laurier as
+lukewarm towards the cause of a "united Empire" weakened the
+Liberals in Ontario; but this loss was easily off-set by gains
+elsewhere. Again in 1904 the Dundonald issue was effective only in
+Ontario which, in keeping with what appears to be an instinctive
+political process, was beginning to consolidate itself as a
+make-weight against the overwhelming predominance of Liberalism in
+Quebec. In the 1908 elections the Imperial question was almost
+quiescent in the English provinces; but it was beginning to emerge
+in a different guise and with aspects distinctly threatening to
+Laurier in his own province.
+
+"COLONIALISM INGRAINED AND IMMITIGABLE"
+
+Laurier in resisting the Chamberlain push knew that even English-Canada,
+long somnolent under a colonial regime, was not in the mood
+to accept the radical innovations that were being planned in
+Whitehall; and he knew, still better, that his own people would be
+against the programme to a man. The colonialism of the French-Canadians
+was immitigable and ingrained. They had secured from the
+British parliament in 1774 special immunities and privileges as the
+result of Sir Guy Carleton's hallucination that given these the
+French-Canadian habitant would assist the British authorities in
+chastising the rebellious American colonists into submission. These
+privileges, continued and embodied in the act of confederation, were
+enjoyed by the French-Canadians--as they believed--by virtue of
+Imperial guarantees; they held that they were safe in their
+enjoyment only While there was in the last analysis British control
+over Canada and while the final judgment on Canadian laws was passed
+by British courts. But their colonialism, unlike that of the
+English-Canadians, was of a quality that could never be transmuted into
+Imperialism. The racial mysticism of that movement repelled them;
+and still more they were deterred by the cost and dangers of
+Imperialistic adventure. It was for England, in return for their
+whole-hearted acceptance of colonial subordination, to protect them
+internally against any courses by the English-Canadians which they
+might choose to regard as an infringement of their privileged
+position and externally against all danger of invasion or conquest.
+
+If Sir Wilfrid had been called upon to choose only between these two
+camps he could perhaps have made a choice which would not have been
+ultimately a political liability. But the situation was not so
+simple. There was a third factor which, alike by inclination and
+political necessity, Sir Wilfrid had to take into account. This was
+Canadian nationalism, in contrast with the racial nationalism of
+which Mr. Bourassa was the apostle. The backing upon which Sir
+Wilfrid relied at first to resist the military and naval policies of
+the Imperialists was the timidity and reluctances of colonialism;
+but he knew that this was at best a temporary expedient. To urgings
+that Canada should assist in the upkeep of the Imperial navy by
+money contributions and should also maintain special militia forces
+available for service in Imperial wars overseas, Sir Wilfrid felt
+that some more plausible reply than a brusque refusal was necessary;
+and he met them with the contention that Canada must create military
+and naval forces for her own defence which would be available for
+the wars of the Empire at the discretion of the Canadian parliament.
+These views put forward almost tentatively in 1902 ultimately bore
+fruit in definite policies of national defence. Thus the answer to
+demand for naval contribution, to which policy all the other
+Dominions had subscribed, was to declare that Canada should have her
+own navy; and this took form, after numerous skirmishes with
+admiralty opinion, which was scandalized at the suggestion, in the
+Naval Service Bill of 1910.
+
+This course, which was thus urged upon Sir Wilfrid by events, earned
+him the displeasure of both the Imperialists and the Little
+Canadians. To the former Laurier's policy seemed little short of
+treasonable, particularly his insistence that while Canada was at
+war when England was at war the extent, if any, of Canada's
+participation in such war must be determined solely by the Canadian
+parliament. His own countrymen on the other hand viewed with
+disquietude these first halting steps along the road of national
+preparedness; might it not lead by easy gradations to that "vortex
+of militarism" against which Sir Wilfrid had voiced an eloquent
+warning? Where there is opinion capable of being exploited against a
+government the exploiter soon appears. In Quebec, Monk,
+Conservative, and the Nationalist, Bourassa, who entering Parliament
+as a follower of Laurier had developed a strong antipathy to him,
+were indefatigable in alarming the habitant by interpreting to him
+the secret purposes of the naval service bill. It was nothing, they
+claimed, but an Imperialistic device by which the Canadian youth
+would be dragged from his peaceful fireside to become cannon fodder
+in the Empire's wars. Meanwhile in the English provinces, the
+government's policy was fiercely attacked as inadequate and verging
+upon disloyalty by the Imperialists. The Conservative opposition,
+after one virtuous interlude in 1909 when they showed a fleeting
+desire to take a non-political and national view of this matter of
+defence, could not resist the temptation to profit by the campaign
+against the government's policy; and they joined shrilly in the
+derisive cry of "tin pot navy." These onslaughts from opposite camps
+were a factor in the elections of 1911; especially in Quebec where
+twenty-seven constituencies (against eleven in 1908) elected
+opponents of Laurier.
+
+POLICIES THAT ENDURE
+
+Sir Wilfrid fell; but his Imperial policies lived. During the
+campaign the old country Imperialists had been very busy from
+Rudyard Kipling down--or up--in lending aid to the forces fighting
+the Liberal government; and its defeat was the occasion for much
+rejoicing among them. Mr. A. Bonar Law, M. P., doubtless voiced
+their views when he predicted under the incoming regime, "a real
+advance towards the organic union of the Empire." All these hopes,
+like many which preceded them, were short-lived; for Sir Robert
+Borden, once he got his bearings, took over the Laurier policies and
+widened them. In that significant fact the clue to these policies is
+found. They were not personal to Laurier, owing their coolness
+towards perfervid Chamberlainism to his lack of English blood as his
+critics held; they were in fact national policies dictated by the
+necessities of the times. To the casual student of the development
+of Imperial relations for the decade following 1896, it might seem
+that the Liberal conception of an Empire evolving steadily into a
+league of free nations was only saved from destruction by the
+fortunate circumstance that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was during those
+years the representative of Canada at successive Imperial
+conferences; but this would be, perhaps, to put his services too
+high. Canada's public men have never failed her in the critical
+times in her history when attempts were made through ignorance or
+design to turn her aside from the high road to national sovereignty;
+as witness Gait in 1859, Blake in his long duel with Lord Carnarvon,
+Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885, when he resisted the premature demand
+for a Canadian contingent for service in the Soudan, Tupper in the
+early nineties when his vigorous resistance to the proposal that
+Canada should pay tribute for protection had something to do with
+the demise of the Imperial Federation League. Any man fit to be
+premier of Canada would have taken pretty much the position that Sir
+Wilfrid did. This does not in the least detract from the credit due
+Laurier. The task was his and he discharged it with tact, ability,
+patience and courage. For his services in holding their future open
+for them every British Dominion owes the memory of Laurier a statue
+in its parliament square.
+
+
+
+PART THREE. FIFTEEN YEARS OF PREMIERSHIP
+
+There have been prime ministers of Canada casually thrown up by the
+tide of events and as casually re-engulfed; but Wilfrid Laurier was
+not one of them. There may have been something accidental in his
+rise to leadership, but his capture of the premiership was a solid
+political achievement. The victory of June 23, 1896, crowned with
+triumph the daring strategy of the campaign. But popular opinion
+regarded the victory as a gift of the gods. The wheel of fortune
+spinning from the hands of fate had thrown into the high office of
+the premiership one about whose qualifications there was doubt even
+in the secret minds of many of his supporters. He was a man of
+charming manners and of gracious personality. His carriage on the
+platform and the grace and finish of his speaking had fascinated the
+public imagination. But what likelihood was there that these
+qualities would enable him to deal adequately with the harsh
+realities, the stubborn problems which he must face as premier? Most
+unlikely, it was generally agreed. The Conservatives, though
+profoundly chagrined at the trick fate had played upon them, looked
+forward with pleasurable expectation to the revenge that would be
+theirs when Laurier, political dilettante and amateur, took up the
+burden that had been too great for their own Ulysses. They foresaw a
+Laurier regime which for futility and brevity would take its place
+in history with the ill-starred prime ministership of Mackenzie. The
+average Liberal felt that the government, which would get its
+driving force and executive power from someone else--identity not
+yet revealed--would have in Laurier a most attractive and genial
+figurehead. These illusions long persisted, though there was little
+excuse for them on election night and still less a month later when
+the Laurier cabinet was in being.
+
+To be a Rouge and to be in Montreal during the three weeks following
+the glorious 23rd of June was the height of felicity. After nearly
+50 years of proscription and impotence in their own province, they
+were triumphant and dominant. Moreover, since they had supplied the
+majority which made possible the taking of office by the Liberals,
+they would be triumphant and dominant as well in the Dominion field.
+Among the election occurrences which they regarded as specially
+providential was the defeat of Tarte in Beauharnois. If he had been
+elected it might have been necessary for Laurier to do something for
+him, but now that he had fallen upon the glacis of the impregnable
+fortress he had elected to assail, who were they to repine over the
+doings of fate? "The Moor has done his work; the Moor can go!"
+Moreover, had he not been for long an inveterate Bleu? Had he not
+actually been the organizer of Bleu victory when Laurier experienced
+his memorable defeat in Drummond-Arthabaska in 1877? His defeat made
+it possible to have a simon-pure Rouge contingent from Quebec.
+
+While they were thus indulging in roseate day-dreams the actual
+business of cabinetmaking was going forward, with Tarte at Laurier's
+right hand as chief adviser from Quebec. The writer has a very clear
+recollection of a long conversation which he had at that time with
+Tarte. Much of it was given up to picturesque and forthright
+denunciation by Tarte of the means by which he had been defeated in
+Beauharnois. The mill-owners at Valleyfield, he said, had lined up
+their operatives and had given them the option of voting for
+Bergeron or getting out. The worth to a country of an industrial
+system which makes political serfs of its workmen was vigorously
+challenged in language which had little resemblance to the harangues
+which led to Tarte's undoing six years later. From this he went on
+to speak of Laurier's qualities and the amazing ignorance of them
+shown even by his intimates of his own race. There had been much
+speculation in Montreal as to who should be the new high
+commissioner for Canada in London. Sir Donald A. Smith, who had been
+appointed in the last weeks of Conservative rule, would be, it was
+assumed, dismissed. Tarte scouted the idea that Smith would be
+disturbed. Laurier was not that kind of a man. He would not dismiss
+Smith; he would make friends with him. Sir Donald was a man of
+affairs, and so was Laurier; they would co-operate with one another.
+"These people do not understand Laurier; he has a governing mind; he
+wants to do things; he has plans; he will walk the great way of life
+with anyone of good intention who will join him." With much more to
+the same effect. To Tarte, who was his intimate, Laurier at this
+moment did not appear as one overcome with his destiny and drifting
+with the tide, but as the resolute captain of the ship, who knew
+where he wanted to go, had a fairly clear idea as to how to get
+there, and also knew whom he wanted with him on the voyage. Later on
+Tarte forgot about this.
+
+THE MAKING OF THE GOVERNMENT
+
+There was verification of Tarte's estimate in the job of cabinet-making
+turned out by Laurier in July. In building the government the
+lines of least resistance were not followed. A dozen men who deemed
+themselves sure of cabinet rank found themselves overlooked; five of
+fifteen portfolios went to men imported from provincial arenas
+without Dominion parliamentary experience. Laurier knew the kind of
+government he wanted and he provided himself with such a government
+by the direct method of getting the colleagues he desired wherever
+he could find them. No doubt he found plenty of employment for his
+sunny ways in placating his disappointed colleagues. In time there
+were consolation prizes for all, for this one a judgeship, for that
+one a lieutenant-governorship, for the next a life seat in the
+senate; the phalanx of fighting second-raters who had done valuable
+work in opposition, reinforcing and buttressing the work of the
+front benches disappeared gradually from parliament. And with those
+he chose he too had his way, as witness the side-tracking of Sir
+Richard Cartwright to the dignified but at the time relatively
+unimportant department of trade and commerce. Between Sir Richard
+and the Canadian manufacturers there was a blood feud. It was not
+Sir Wilfrid's intention to make the feud his own or even to agree to
+it being carried on by Sir Richard. He took for minister of finance,
+W. S. Fielding, who justified his choice by successfully steering
+the budget bark between Scylla and Charybdis for fourteen years in
+succession before the whirlpool finally sucked him down. Where
+Laurier went outside his following for colleagues he had equally
+definite ends to serve.
+
+The care with which Laurier chose his colleagues, and his
+indifference to personal appeal, should have been proof sufficient
+to the public that he was a prime minister who looked forward and
+planned for the future. And the plan? Why to stay in power for the
+longest possible period of time. It is as natural for a government
+to want to stay in power as it is for a man to want to live; nor is
+there in this anything discreditable. A prime minister is sure that
+he desires to retain power in order that he may serve the country as
+no rival could conceivably serve it; and even if the desire fades
+and is replaced by a lively appreciation of the personal
+satisfactions which can be served by the office, no real prime
+minister notices the transformation. The ego and the country soon
+become interblended in his mind. A prime minister under the party
+system as we have had it in Canada is of necessity an egotist and
+autocrat. If he comes to office without these characteristics his
+environment equips him with them as surely as a diet of royal jelly
+transforms a worker into a queen bee.
+
+Laurier saw that an efficient government, harmonious in its policies
+and ably led, would afford a contrast to the preceding
+administration that must forcibly impress the Canadian people. He,
+therefore created a government of all the talents. Anxious for
+discreet handling of the difficult fiscal problem he turned to Nova
+Scotia for W. S. Fielding. Foreseeing the possibility of grave
+constitutional problems arising he put the portfolio of justice into
+the hands of the wisest and most venerable of Liberals, Sir Oliver
+Mowat. Recognizing that a backward and stagnant west meant failure
+for his administration he placed the department of interior, which
+had become a veritable circumlocution office, under the direction of
+the ablest and most aggressive of western Liberal public men,
+Clifford Sifton. The time was to come when other values were to hold
+in relation to cabinet appointments; but in the beginning efficiency
+was the test, at least in intention. It was thus Laurier proposed in
+part to build foundations under his house that it might endure. And
+to insure that virtue should not lack its reward he proceeded to
+buttress the edifice by a second line of support.
+
+In the general election of 1896 the Liberal strategy had been to
+give the party managers in the English provinces an apparent choice
+of the best weapons, but with all these advantages the results
+showed that they had barely held their own. The majority came from
+Quebec where Laurier had apparently to face the heaviest odds. The
+natural inference was not lost upon Laurier. If he was to remain in
+power he must look to Quebec for his majority. A majority was
+necessary and he must get it where it was to be had. This decision
+was at first probably purely political. The consequences were not
+fully foreseen, that to get this support a price would have to be
+paid--by the Liberals of the other provinces. Still less was it
+foreseen that the overwhelming support of his own people would
+become not only politically essential to Laurier but a moral
+necessity as well--something which in time he felt, by an imperious
+demand of the spirit, that he must hold even though this allegiance
+became not a political asset but a liability. Gradually, perhaps
+insensibly at first, in opposition possibly to his judgment,
+certainly to his public professions oft repeated, he came to regard
+it as necessary to so shape party policy as always to command the
+approval of French-Canadian public opinion. Sir Wilfrid lived to
+see, as the culmination of 20 years of this policy, the French and
+the English-Canadians more sharply divided than they had been for 80
+years. Such is the capacity of the human mind for self-deception
+that he could see in this divergence nothing but the proof that his
+life's work had been destroyed by envious and designing men.
+
+THE FOUNDATION STONE OF POLICY
+
+Quebec in turning Laurierite did not turn Liberal. This was the
+factor hidden from the public eye that governed the future. The
+Laurier sweep of Quebec in 1896 was the result of a combination of
+the Bleu and Rouge elements. The old dominant French-Canadian party
+had been made up of Bleus and Castors--factions bitterly divided by
+differences of temperament, of outlook and belief, and still more by
+desperate personal feuds between the leaders. When the coming of
+responsible government broke up the solidarity of the French-Canadians
+they separated into three groups, the controlling factor in each
+case being religious belief. The Castors were ultra-clerical
+and ultramontane; the Bleus inherited the tradition of Gallicanism;
+the Rouges imported and adapted the anti-clericalism of European
+Liberals. Various influences--the brilliance and resourcefulness of
+Cartier's leadership and antipathy to Rouge extremism among them--kept
+Bleu and Castor in an uneasy alliance. This alliance began to
+disintegrate when Laurier rose to the command of the Liberals. There
+was a steady drift from the Bleu to the Liberal camp--by this time
+the old definition of "Rouge" was under taboo; and in 1896 the Bleus
+moved over almost in a body. This was not an altogether instinctive
+and voluntary movement; it was suggested, inspired, successfully
+shepherded and safely delivered.
+
+Tarte's confidence that Laurier could win Quebec was not based
+wholly upon faith in the power of Laurier's personal appeal. He was
+himself a Bleu leader brought into accidental relations with the
+Liberals. His breach with the Conservatives began as one of the
+unending Castor-Bleu feuds. His knowledge of the McGreevy-Connolly
+frauds gave him the power, as he thought, to blow the Castor chief,
+Sir Hector Langevin--a cold, selfish, greedy, domineering, rather
+stupid man--into thinnest air, thus opening the road to the
+leadership of the French-Conservatives to his friend and leader, the
+brilliant, unscrupulous and ambitious Chapleau. He over-estimated
+his power. The whole strength of the government at Ottawa was at
+once concentrated in keeping the lid on that smouldering cauldron of
+stench and rottenness, the system of practical politics of that day.
+The Conservative chiefs tried to suppress Tarte and he refused to be
+suppressed--there was not a drop of coward's blood in his veins.
+Then they set to work to destroy him. He sought a refuge and he
+found it--in parliament, to which he was elected in 1891 as an
+Independent as the result of an arrangement with Laurier. As he used
+to say, it was a case of parliament or jail for him.
+
+Inevitably, in following up his charges in parliament, Tarte was
+thrown into more and more intimate relations with the Liberal
+leaders. He knew that for him there was no Conservative forgiveness;
+as he was wont to say: "I have spoiled the soup for too many." It
+was not long before Sir John Thompson could congratulate Laurier, in
+one of the sharpest sayings parliament ever heard, upon having among
+his lieutenants--"the black Tarte and the yellow Martin." For ten
+years he remained Laurier's chief lieutenant in Quebec, but he never
+in any sense of the word became a Liberal, though in 1902, just
+before he was thrown from the battlements, he busied himself in
+reading lifelong Liberals out of the party. Chapleau, who was
+Tarte's confidant and ally, though he was also a member of the
+Dominion government, became Lieutenant-governor of Quebec and
+retired to Spencer Wood, but not to forget politics among its
+shades. When the peculiar developments of the Dominion campaign of
+1896 made it evident that Conservative victory in Quebec under the
+virtual leadership of the bishops meant the permanent domination of
+the Castors, the whole Bleu influence was thrown to the Liberals.
+
+Professor Skelton's life of Laurier does not take us much behind the
+scenes. It is in the main a record of political events, with
+comments upon Laurier's relations to them. Laurier's letters, mostly
+to unnamed correspondents, are of slight interest, but to this there
+are a few notable exceptions. There are letters between Laurier,
+Tarte and Chapleau of the greatest political value. They make clear
+to a demonstration, what shrewd political observers of that day
+surmised, that there was a definite political understanding between
+these three men. This explains the composition of the Quebec
+delegation in the Laurier government. Apart from Laurier there was
+in it no representative of French Catholic Liberalism, unless the
+purely nominal honor of minister without portfolio given to C. A.
+Geoffrion is to be taken as giving this representation. C. A. did
+not put the honor very high. "I am," he said, "the mat before the
+door." Tarte, a Quebecker and a Bleu, became Montreal's
+representative at Ottawa. Disappointment among the Liberals led
+first to rage and then to rage plus fear as Tarte with the magic
+wand of the patronage and power of the public works department,
+began to make over the party organization in the province. Open
+rebellion under François Langelier broke out in December: "A
+coalition with Chapleau," Langelier informed the public, "is under
+way." But the rebellion died away. The Laurier influence was too
+strong. Langelier was quite right in his statement. The coalition
+movement at that time was far advanced. The letter from Chapleau to
+Laurier, bearing date February 21, 1897, quoted by Professor
+Skelton, was that of one political intimate to another. Take this
+paragraph as an illustration: "The Castors in the battle of June
+23rd 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 only in
+catalogues of extinct species." The reference to the coming
+extinction of the Castors had relation to the then pending
+provincial elections as to which he made certain references to
+political strokes which "I am preparing." Associated with this
+Laurier-Tarte-Chapleau triumvirate was a fourth, C. A. Dansereau,
+nominally postmaster of Montreal, actually the most restless
+political intriguer in the province of Quebec. Dansereau had been
+the brains of the old Senecal-Chapleau combination which had
+dominated Quebec in the eighties. Just what Laurier thought of the
+company he was now keeping was a matter of record for he had set it
+forth in a famous article in L'Electeur in 1882 entitled "The Den of
+Thieves," which led to L. A. Senecal, the Bleu "boss," prosecuting
+him for criminal libel. Laurier stood his trial in Montreal, pleaded
+justification, and after a hard fought battle won a virtual triumph
+through a disagreement of the jury with ten of the jurymen favorable
+to acquittal.
+
+LAST ROUND WITH THE BISHOPS
+
+Little wonder that Francois Langelier, his brother Charles, and
+other associates of Laurier in the lean years of proscription were
+consumed with indignation that Laurier should pass them by to
+associate with his former enemies. They did not realize the
+political necessity that controlled Laurier's course. Laurier had
+great need to hold his new allies for his position in Quebec for the
+first year or so of office was precarious. The Manitoba school
+question had still to be settled. Laurier was political realist
+enough to know that he would have to take what he could get and this
+he would have to dress up and present to the public as his own
+child. He knew that the bishops, chagrined, humiliated, enraged by
+their election experience, were only waiting for the announcement of
+settlement to open war on him. It would then depend upon whether or
+not they were more successful than in June in commanding the support
+of their people. In Laurier's own words: "They will not pardon us
+for their check of last summer; they want revenge at all costs."
+
+The real fight, it was recognized, would be in Rome. Thither there
+went within two months of the Liberals taking office, two emissaries
+of the French Liberals, the parish priest of St. Lin, a lifelong,
+personal and political friend of Laurier, and Chevalier Drolet, one
+of the Canadian papal Zouaves, who had rallied to the defence of the
+Holy City twenty-six years before. There followed swiftly two more
+distinguished intermediaries, Charles Fitzpatrick, solicitor-general
+of Canada, and Charles Russell, of London, son of Lord Russell of
+Killowen. Backing them up was a petition to the pope signed by
+Laurier and forty-four members of parliament, protesting against the
+political actions of the Canadian episcopate. Nor did the Canadian
+hierarchy lack representation in Rome. While this conflict of
+influence was in progress at Rome, the terms of the Manitoba school
+settlement were made public in November, 1896. The settlement
+embodied substantial concessions in fact, but Archbishop Langevin
+and his fellow clerics at once fell upon it. Langevin denounced it
+as a farce. To Cardinal Begin it appeared an "indefensible
+abandonment of the best established, most sacred rights of the
+Catholic minority." A regime of religious proscription was
+inaugurated. Public men were subjected to intimidation; Liberal
+newspapers were banned, among them L'Electeur, the chief organ of
+the party. The bishops destroyed themselves by their violence. Rome
+does not lightly quarrel with governments and prime ministers. By
+March Mgr. Merry Del Val was in Canada as apostolic delegate; and
+though care was taken to save the faces of the bishops, their
+concerted assaults upon the government ceased. Laurier had never
+again to face the embattled bishops, which is not the same thing as
+saying that they ceased to take a hand in politics. As Professor
+Skelton truly remarks: "The Archbishop of Montreal, Monseigneur 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 thunderbolts of the doughty old warrior of Three Rivers."
+With the bishops silenced, Laurier's foes in Quebec found the issue
+valueless to them. Their political associates from other provinces,
+after the disappointment of 1896, would not consent to a revival of
+the question. One of the party leaders declared he would not touch
+it with a forty-foot pole. Tupper formally erased it from the party
+calendar. The question remained quiescent; but Laurier always
+remained in fear of its re-emergence; and with cause. The
+resentments it left went underground and later had a revival in the
+passionate zeal with which the Quebec clergy embraced the faith of
+nationalism as preached by Bourassa. In one respect the school
+question and its settlement proved useful. It was the exhibit
+unfailingly displayed to prove upon needed occasions that the charge
+was quite untrue that in directing party policy Laurier was unduly
+sensitive to Quebec sentiment. In effect it was said: "Laurier made
+Quebec swallow in 1896; now it is your turn"--a formula which
+finally became tedious through repetition.
+
+SUPREME IN QUEBEC
+
+The second issue which appeared for a moment to put Laurier's grip
+on Quebec in peril was the South African war. Looking back
+twenty-three years it is pretty clear that Laurier's position at the
+outbreak of the war, that the Canadian parliament should be
+consulted as to the sending of a contingent, was wholly reasonable.
+Those were the days of heady Imperialism in the English provinces;
+and, vigorously stirred up by Laurier's party foes for political
+purposes, it struck out with a violence which threatened to bring
+serious political consequences in its train. Tarte was credited with
+having declared publicly in the Russell House rotunda: "Not a man
+nor a cent for South Africa," which did not help matters. The storm
+was so instant and threatening that Laurier and his colleagues bowed
+before it. By order-in-council Canada authorized the sending of a
+contingent. Other contingents followed, and Canada took part in the
+war on terms of limited liability which were agreeable to both the
+British and Canadian governments.
+
+The South African war was most unpopular with the French-Canadians,
+but the unpopularity did not extend to Laurier. They agreed in
+theory with Bourassa but they recognized that Laurier had yielded to
+force majeure. Indeed the very violence with which Laurier was
+assailed in Ontario strengthened his hold in Quebec. It is not easy
+for a proud people to stomach insults such as, for instance, the
+remark in the Toronto News, that the English-Canadians would find
+some way of "emancipating themselves from the dominance of an
+inferior people whom peculiar circumstances had placed in authority
+in the Dominion." The election of 1900 gave Laurier fifty-eight
+supporters in the province of Quebec out of a total of sixty-five
+seats. The Rouge-Bleu coalition had not come off officially,
+Chapleau's death in 1898 having removed the necessity of formally
+recognizing his services, but the coalition of Bleu and Rouge
+elements had taken place; and it held so firmly that when some of
+the architects of the fusion tried later to undo their work they
+found this could not be done. Dansereau was the first to go. Mr.
+Mulock, the postmaster-general, entirely oblivious of the fact that
+Dansereau was one of the main wheels in the Quebec machine and
+seeing in him only an entirely incapable postmaster, fired him in
+1899 with as little hesitation as a section boss would show in
+bouncing an incompetent navvy. Tarte and Laurier tried to patch up
+the quarrel, but Dansereau preferred to return to journalism as
+editor of an independent journal whose traditions were Conservative.
+He was to be, five years later, one of the leaders in that curious
+conspiracy, the MacKenzie-Mann-Berthiaume-La Presse deal--the details
+of which as told by Professor Skelton read like a detective yarn--which
+was turned into opera bouffe by Laurier's decisive and timely
+interference. In 1902, Tarte, in Laurier's absence and in the belief
+that he could not resume the premiership on account of illness,
+attempted to seize the successorship by pre-emption, and was
+promptly dismissed from office by Laurier. Tarte and Dansereau tried
+to rally the Bleu forces against Laurier, but these were no longer
+distinguishable from the Liberal hosts into which they had merged.
+Their day was over and their power gone. Laurier reigned supreme.
+
+These commitments and considerations furnished the background to the
+drama of Laurier's premiership. Much that took place on the fore-stage
+is only intelligible by taking a long vision of the whole setting.
+There was nothing of assertiveness or truculence in this
+steady movement by which Liberal policy and outlook was given a new
+orientation, Quebec replacing Ontario as the determinant. Students
+of politics can trace the changing influence through the fifteen
+years of Liberal rule, in legislation, in appointments and in
+administrative policies. One or two illustrations might be noted.
+
+A CHALLENGE AND A CHECK
+
+During the crisis of 1905 over the school provisions in the Autonomy
+bills erecting Alberta and Saskatchewan into provinces, Walter
+Scott, M.P., in a letter quoted by Professor Skelton, refers to the
+"almost unpardonable bungling" which had brought the crisis about.
+But Sir Wilfrid did not step into this difficulty by mischance. He
+knew precisely what he was doing though he did not foresee the
+consequences of his action because with all his experience and
+sagacity he never could foretell how political developments would
+react upon the English-Canadian mind. The educational provisions of
+the autonomy bill were designed to remove the still lingering
+resentment of Quebec over the settlement of the Manitoba school
+question and to further this purpose Sir Wilfrid indulged in his
+speech introducing these bills in that entirely gratuitous laudation
+of separate schools which had on Ontario and western Canadian
+opinion the enlivening effect of a match thrown into a powder
+barrel. This incident revealed not only the tendency of Laurier's
+policy but illustrated the tactics which he had developed for
+achieving his ends in the face of opposition within the party. Upon
+occasions of this kind he was addicted to confronting his associates
+and followers with an accomplished fact, leaving no alternative to
+submission but a palace rebellion which he felt confident no one
+would attempt. By such methods he had already rounded several
+dangerous corners, as for instance his committing Canada to submit
+her case in the matter of the Alaska boundaries to a tribunal
+without an umpire--though it was the clearly understood policy of
+the Canadian government and the Canadian parliament to insist upon
+an umpire; and he resorted again to a stroke of this character in
+1905. Professor Skelton's story of the crisis is the official
+version, but there is another version which happens to be more
+authentic.
+
+Following the general election of 1904, the government decided to
+deal without further delay with the matter of setting up the new
+provinces. It was known that there was danger of revival of the
+school question, for during the election campaign a Toronto
+newspaper had sought to make this an issue, contending that the
+delay in giving the provinces constitutions was due to the demand of
+the Roman Catholic church that they should include a provision for
+separate schools. The policy agreed upon by the government was to
+continue in the provincial constitutions the precise rights enjoyed
+by the minority under the territorial school ordinances of 1901.
+There was a vigorous controversy in parliament as to whether the
+autonomy bills in their original form kept faith with this
+understanding. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Mr. Fitzpatrick, minister of
+justice, contended vehemently that they did. Clifford Sifton, who
+was the western representative in the cabinet and the party most
+directly interested, held that they did not. Mr. Sifton was absent
+in the Southern States when the bill was drafted. He reached Ottawa
+on his return the day after Sir Wilfrid had introduced the bills to
+parliament. He at once resigned. Fielding, who had also been absent,
+was credited with sharing to a considerable extent Sifton's view
+that the bill introduced did not embody the policy agreed upon. The
+resulting crisis put the government in jeopardy. A considerable
+number of members associated themselves with Mr. Sifton and the
+government was advised that their support for the measure could only
+be secured if clauses were substituted for the provisions in the act
+to which objection was taken. To make sure that there would be no
+mistake that the substituted provisions should merely continue the
+territorial law as it stood, they insisted upon drafting the
+alternative clauses themselves. Sir Wilfrid, acutely conscious that
+this constituted a challenge to his prestige and authority, used
+every artifice and expedient at his command to induce the insurgents
+either to accept the original clause or alternatives drafted by Mr.
+Fitzpatrick; for the first time the tactical suggestion that
+resignation would follow noncompliance was put forward. The
+dissentient members stood to their guns; Sir Wilfrid yielded and the
+measure thus amended commanded the vote of the entire party with one
+Ontario dissentient.
+
+The storm blew over but the wreckage remained. The episode did
+Laurier harm in the English provinces. It predisposed the public
+mind to suspicion and thus made possible the ne temere and Eucharist
+congress agitations which were later factors in solidifying Ontario
+against him. In Quebec it gave Mr. Bourassa, whose hostility to
+Laurier was beginning to take an active form, an opportunity to
+represent Laurier as the betrayer of French Catholic interests and
+to put himself forward as their true champion. "Our friend,
+Bourassa," wrote Sir Wilfrid to a friend in April, 1905, "has begun
+in Quebec a campaign that may well cause us trouble." From this
+moment the Nationalist movement grew apace until six years later it
+looked as though Bourassa was destined to displace Laurier as the
+accepted leader of the French Canadians. It was only the
+developments of the war that restored Laurier to his position of
+unchallenged supremacy.
+
+In Manitoba also there were evidences of Sir Wilfrid's preoccupation
+with the business of never getting himself out of touch with Quebec
+public opinion. For years he sought by private and semi-public
+negotiations to get the Winnipeg school board to come to a modus
+vivendi with the church by which Catholic children would be
+segregated in their own schools within the orbit of the public
+school system, but failed, partly owing to the non possumus attitude
+of Archbishop Langevin, who was not prepared to be deprived of a
+grievance which enabled him to mix in Quebec and Manitoba politics.
+The Liberal policy of accepting provincial electoral lists for
+Dominion purposes resulted in the Manitoba lists being compiled
+under conditions to which the Liberals of this province strongly
+objected, and they fought for years to secure a right to final
+revision under Dominion auspices. Twice they pressed their case with
+such vigor that the government undertook to pass the requested
+legislation but on both occasions resistance in the house by the
+Conservatives led to the prompt withdrawal of the measure by Sir
+Wilfrid. In both cases Manitoba Liberals knew quite well that the
+difficulty was not the opposition of the Conservatives but the
+opposition of Laurier. They were advised that Laurier was
+apprehensive of the effect of the proposed legislation upon public
+opinion in Quebec. He feared the criticism by his opponents that
+while Laurier would not interfere with Manitoba when it was a matter
+of the educational rights of the minority he was willing to
+interfere when it was a matter of obliging his political friends.
+There was something too in the charge that the delay in dealing with
+the matter of the extension of the Manitoba boundaries arose from
+the same feeling. To transfer the Northwest territories, where the
+minority had certain constitutional rights in matters of education,
+to Manitoba where the minority had none would be to put one more
+weapon into the hands of Mr. Bourassa. The extension of Manitoba's
+boundaries had to await a change in administration.
+
+THE TALE OF FIFTEEN YEARS.
+
+There is always a temptation to the biographer of a prime minister
+to relate his hero to the events of his period as first cause and
+controlling spirit--the god of the storm; whereas prime ministers,
+like individuals, are the sports of destiny; things happen and they
+have to make the best of them. The performances of the Laurier
+government may be divided into two classes, those due to its own
+initiative and those which were imposed by circumstances. The ratio
+between the two classes changed steadily as the administration grew
+in age. After the impetus born of the reforming zeal of opposition
+and the natural and creditable desire to fulfil express engagements
+dies away, the inclination of a government is not to invite trouble
+by looking around for difficult tasks to do. "Those who govern,
+having much business on their hands," says Benjamin Franklin, "do
+not like to take the trouble to consider and carry into execution
+new projects." This is a political law to which all governments
+conform. Even the great reforming administration of Gladstone which
+took office in 1868, had earned five years later the famous jest of
+Disraeli: "The ministers remind me of one of those marine landscapes
+not very unusual off the coast of South America; you behold a range
+of extinct volcanoes; not a flame flickers upon a single pallid
+crest."
+
+Fifteen years of Liberal rule in Canada furnish a complete field for
+the study of the party system under our system. In 1896 a party
+stale in spirit, corrupt and inefficient, went out of office and was
+replaced by a government which had been bred to virtue by eighteen
+years of political penury. It entered upon its tasks with vigor,
+ability and enthusiasm. It had its policies well defined and it set
+briskly about carrying them out. A deft, shrewd modification of the
+tariff helped to loosen the stream of commerce which after years of
+constriction began again to flow freely. There was a courageous and
+considered increase in expenditures for productive objects. A
+constructive, vigorously executed immigration policy brought an ever
+expanding volume of suitable settlers to Western Canada which in
+turn fed the springs of national prosperity. This impulse lasted
+through the first parliamentary term and largely through the second,
+though by then disruptive tendencies were appearing. By its third
+term the government was mainly an office-holding administration on
+the defensive against an opposition of growing effectiveness. And
+then in the fourth term there was an attempt at a rally before the
+crash. The treatment of the tariff question, always a governing
+factor in Canadian politics even when apparently not in play, is an
+illustration of the government's progress towards stagnation. The
+1897 tariff revision "could not," says Professor Skelton, "have been
+bettered as a first preliminary step toward free trade."
+"Unfortunately," he adds, "it proved to be the last step save for
+the 1911 attempt to secure reciprocity." After 1897 Laurier's policy
+was to discourage the revival of the tariff question. Tarte's
+offence was partly that he did not realize that sleeping dogs should
+be allowed to lie. "It is not good politics to try to force the hand
+of the government," wrote Laurier to Tarte. And he added: "The
+question of the tariff is in good shape if no one seeks to force the
+issue." With Tarte's ejection there followed nearly eight years
+during which real tariff discussion was taboo. Then under the
+pressure of the rising western resentment against the tariff
+burdens, the government turned to reciprocity as a means by which
+they could placate the farmers without disturbing or alarming the
+manufacturers. By what seemed extraordinary good luck the United
+States president, Republican in politics, was by reason of domestic
+political developments, in favor of a reciprocal trade agreement. It
+seemed as though the Laurier government as by a miracle would renew
+its youth and vigor; but the situation, temporarily favorable, was
+so fumbled that it ended not in triumph but in defeat.
+
+
+The disasters of the Laurier railway policy--or rather lack of
+policy--must always weigh heavily against the undoubted achievements
+of the Laurier regime. A period of marked national expansion gave
+rise to all manner of railway ambitions and schemes, and Laurier
+lacked the practical capacity, foresight and determination to fit
+them into a general, well-thought-out, practicable scheme of
+development. Again it was a case of letting the pressure of events
+determine policy, in place of policy controlling events. He could
+not deny the Grand Trunk's ambitions, but he obliged it to submit to
+modifications demanded by political pressure which turned its
+project, perhaps practicable in its original form, into a huge,
+ill-thought-out transcontinental enterprise. Equally he could not hold
+the ambitions of Mann and McKenzie in check. The advisability of a
+merger of these rival railway groups was obvious at the time, but
+Laurier let them each have their head, dividing government
+assistance between them, with resulting ruin to both and bequeathing
+to his successors a problem for which no solution has yet been found.
+
+PERSONAL GOVERNMENT
+
+During the years of his premiership Laurier rose steadily in
+personal power and in prestige. It is in keeping with the genius of
+our party system that the leader who begins as the chosen chief of
+his associates proceeds by stages, if he has the necessary
+qualities, to a position of dominance; the republic is transformed
+into an absolute monarchy. In the government of 1896 Laurier was
+only primus inter pares; his associates were in the main
+contemporary with him in point of years and public service. Their
+places had been won by party recognition of their services and
+abilities. In the government of 1911 Laurier was the veteran
+commander of a company which he had himself recruited. Of his 1896
+colleagues but few remained, and of these only Mr. Fielding had kept
+his relative rank in the party hierarchy. All his remaining
+colleagues had entered public life long subsequent to his accession
+the Liberal leadership. Not one had been in parliament prior to
+1896. Their entrance into public life, their steps in promotion,
+their admittance to the government were all subject to his approval,
+where they were not actually due to his will. To Laurier's authority
+they yielded unquestioning obedience, and with it went a deep
+affection inspired and made sure by the personal consideration and
+kindliness that marked his relations with them. Under these
+conditions, men of strong, individual views and ambitions, with
+reforming temperaments and a desire to force issues, did not find
+the road to the Privy Council open to them; different qualities held
+the password.
+
+In 1908 Sir Wilfrid, when a discerning electorate had deprived him
+of a colleague whose political incapacity had been completely
+demonstrated, became a party to a deal by which he re-entered
+parliament. An old friend took the liberty of asking Sir Wilfrid why
+he wanted this associate back in the cabinet, only to be told that
+"So-and-So never made any trouble for me." At least twice in the last
+four years of his regime Sir Wilfrid, conscious of the waning
+energies of his party, took advice outside of his immediate circle
+as to what should be done; on both occasions he rejected advice
+tendered to him because this involved the inclusion in the cabinet
+of personalities that might have disturbed the charmed serenity of
+that circle. Sir Wilfrid preferred to have things as they were,
+perhaps because his sense of reality warned him that, so far as the
+duration of time during which he would hold office was concerned,
+there probably would not be any great difference between a
+government wholly agreeable to him and one reconstituted to meet the
+demand of the younger and more vigorous elements in the party. In
+1909, in a letter to a supporter who had lost the party nomination
+for his constituency, he gave premonition of his own fate: "What has
+happened to you in your county will happen to me before long in
+Canada. Let us submit with good grace to the inevitable."
+
+The inevitable end in the ordinary course of events would have been
+the going on of the party until it died of dry rot and decay, as the
+Liberals had already died in Ontario; but fortunately, both for the
+party and for Laurier's subsequent fame--though it may not have
+seemed so at the time--emergence of the reciprocity question gave
+it an opportunity to fall on an issue which seemed to link up the
+end of the regime with its heroic beginnings and to reinvest the
+party with some of its lost glamor.
+
+LAURIER: DEFEAT AND ANTI-CLIMAX
+
+THE defeat of the Liberals in September, 1911, raised sharply the
+question of the party's future and the leadership under which it
+would face that future. Speaking at St. Jerome toward the close of
+the campaign Sir Wilfrid had stated positively that if defeated he
+would retire. This declaration of intention--no doubt at the moment
+sincerely made--was designed to check the falling away from
+Laurier's leadership in Quebec, which was becoming more noticeable
+as election day drew near. But the appeal was ineffective.. The
+effective opposition to Laurier in Quebec came not from Borden or
+from Monk, the official leader of the French Conservatives, but from
+Bourassa. Laurier and his lieutenants fought desperately, but in
+vain, to break the strengthening hold of the younger man on the
+sympathies of the French electors. In Quebec the custom of the joint
+open air political meeting is still popular, and at such a concourse
+in St. Hyacinthe, an old Liberal stronghold, Sir Wilfrid's
+colleagues, Lemieux and Beland, met a notable defeat at the hands of
+Bourassa--an incident which clearly revealed how the winds were
+blowing. Bourassa, fanatically "nationalist" in his convictions and
+free from any political necessity to consider the reactions
+elsewhere of his doctrines, was outbidding Sir Wilfrid in the
+latter's own field. Laurier received the news of the electoral
+result in a hall in Quebec East, surrounded by the electors of the
+constituency which had been faithful to him for 40 years. He
+accepted the blow with the tranquil fortitude which was his most
+notable personal characteristic; but the feature in the disaster
+which must have made the greatest demand upon his stoicism was this
+indication that his old surbordinate and one time friend
+was--apparently--about to supplant him in the leadership of his own
+people. The election figures showed that whereas Laurier had carried
+49 seats in Quebec in 1896, 58 in 1900, 54 in 1904 and again in
+1908, he had been successful in only 38 constituencies against 27
+for the Conservatives and Nationalists combined. Laurier, at the
+moment of his defeat, was within two months of entering upon his
+70th year. He had been 40 years in public life; for 24 years leader
+of his party; for 15 years prime minister. He had had a long and
+distinguished career; and he had gone out of office upon an issue
+which, with confidence, he counted upon time to vindicate. He had
+long cherished a purpose to write a history of his times. The moment
+was, therefore, opportune for retirement; and it must be assumed
+that he gave some thought to the advisability or otherwise of living
+up to his St. Jerome pledge. But neither his own inclination nor the
+desire of his followers pointed to retirement; and the next session
+of parliament found him in the seat he had occupied twenty years
+before as leader of the opposition. The party demand for his
+continuance in the leadership was virtually unanimous. There was
+only one possible successor to Sir Wilfrid--Mr. Fielding. But he was
+not in parliament. Also he was in disfavour as the general whose
+defensive plan of campaign had ended in disaster. His name suggested
+"Reciprocity"--a word the Liberals were quite willing, for the time
+being, to forget. He was left to lie where he had fallen. For some
+years he lived in political obscurity, and it was only the emergence
+of the Unionist movement which made possible his re-entrance to
+public life and his later career.
+
+
+THE REVIVAL OF LIBERAL HOPES
+
+When Sir Wilfrid resumed the leadership after the formality of
+tendering his resignation to the party caucus it meant, in fact,
+that he intended to die in the saddle. Thereafter Sir Wilfrid talked
+much about the inexpediency of continuing in the leadership, and
+often used language foreshadowing his resignation--indeed the
+letters quoted by Professor Skelton in the latter chapters of his
+book abound in these intimations--but these came to be regarded by
+those in the know as portents: implying an intention to insist upon
+policies to which objections were likely to develop within the party.
+
+Notwithstanding the severity of their defeat--they were in a
+minority of 45 in the House--the Liberals in opposition showed a
+good fighting front, and ere long hope revived. The Borden
+government found itself in difficulties from the moment of taking
+office--largely by reason of the tactics by which Laurier's
+supremacy in Quebec had been undermined. The Nationalist chiefs
+declined an invitation to enter the government, but they controlled
+the Quebec appointments to the cabinet, and thus assumed a
+quasi-responsibility for the new government's policy. The result was
+disastrous to them; for the Borden government, subject to the
+influences that had enabled it to sweep Ontario, could not concern
+itself with the preservation of Bourassa's fortunes. The extension
+of the Manitoba boundaries was a blow to the Nationalists; they
+failed in their efforts to preserve the educational rights of the
+minority in the added territory. Laurier had evaded this issue;
+Borden could not evade it, and by its settlement Bourassa was
+damaged. Still more disastrous to the Nationalist cause was the
+naval policy which Mr. Borden submitted to Parliament in the session
+of 1912-1913. There was in its presentation an ingenious attempt to
+reconcile the irreconcilable which deceived nobody. The contribution
+of the three largest dreadnoughts that could be built was to satisfy
+the Conservatives; the Nationalists were expected to be placated by
+the assurance that this contribution was merely to meet an
+emergency, leaving over for later consideration the question of a
+permanent naval policy. But all the circumstances attending the
+setting out of the policy--the report of the admiralty, the letters
+of Mr. Churchill, the speeches by which it was supported with their
+insistence upon the need for common naval and foreign policies--made
+it only too clear that it marked the abandonment of the Canadian
+naval policy which had been entered upon only four years before with
+the consent of all parties and the acceptance in principle of the
+Round Table view of the Imperial problem. Laurier challenged the
+proposition whole-heartedly. Here was familiar fighting ground. From
+the moment they joined battle with the government the Liberals found
+their strength growing. They were indubitably on firm ground. They
+were helped mightily by Mr. Churchill's attempted intervention in
+which he belittled Canadian capacity in a manner worthy of Downing
+street in its palmiest days. Mr. Churchill had the bright idea of
+coming to Canada to take a hand personally in the controversy. A
+Canadian-born member of the British House of Commons sounded out
+various Canadians as to the nature of the reception Mr. Churchill
+would receive. Mr. Churchill did not come--fortunately for the
+government. The Liberals fought the proposition so furiously in the
+Commons that the government had to introduce closure to secure its
+passage through the commons, whereupon the Liberal majority in the
+Senate threw it out. The Liberal policy was to challenge the
+government to submit the issue to the people in a general election.
+That within eighteen months from the date of their disastrous defeat
+the Liberals should invite a second trial of strength spoke of
+rapidly reviving confidence. The government ignored the challenge,
+for very good reasons. In the sequel Laurier, as with all his
+policies having to deal with Imperial questions, was amply
+justified. The policy of Dominion navies was never again seriously
+questioned in Canada; when admiralty officials, true to form,
+challenged it in 1918 it was Sir Robert Borden who defended it, to
+some purpose.
+
+These developments were fatal to Quebec Nationalism as a distinct
+political force under the direction of Mr. Bourassa. The ideas that
+inspired it did not lapse. Nor did Mr. Bourassa, as apostle of these
+ideas, lose his personal eminence. But the electors in sympathy with
+these ideals began to develop views of their own as to the political
+action required by the times. Their alliance with the Conservatives
+had brought them no satisfaction. They had ejected the most eminent
+living French-Canadian from the premiership to the very evident
+injury of Quebec's influence in Confederation--that about
+represented the sum of their achievements. The thought that they had
+been on the wrong track began to grow in their minds. The conditions
+making for the creation of the Quebec bloc were developing. The
+disposition was to get together under a common leadership. It was
+still a question as to whether, in the long run, that leader should
+be Laurier or Bourassa; but all the conditions favored Laurier. For
+one thing, he could command a large body of support outside of his
+own province which it was quite beyond the power of Bourassa to
+duplicate. The swing to Laurier was so marked that by 1914 the
+confident prediction was made by good political judges that if there
+were an election Laurier would carry 60 out of the 65 seats in
+Quebec. Such a vote meant victory. Sir Wilfrid was slow in coming to
+believe that an early reversal of the decision of 1911 was possible;
+but finally found himself infected with the hopefulness of his
+following. Hard times became a powerful ally of the Liberals and the
+government suffered from the first shock of the impending railway
+collapse. The course of the party lay clear before it; it was to see
+that the conditions in Quebec remained favorable and to await, with
+patience, the coming of an election which would reopen the doors to
+office. But not too much patience, for the years were slipping past.
+Laurier was in his 73rd year.
+
+THE PARTIES AND THE WAR
+
+Such were the political conditions: a government in a position of
+growing doubtfulness and a combative and confident opposition--when
+Canada found herself plunged over night into the Great War. Under
+the high emotion of this venture into the unknown politics vanished
+for a brief moment from the land. If that moment could have been
+seized for a sacred union of hearts dedicated to the great task of
+carrying on the war how different would the whole future of Canada
+have been! In the fires of war our sectional and racial intractibilities
+might have been fused into an enduring alliance. But Canadian
+statesmanship was not equal to the opportunity. For this
+Sir Wilfrid has no accountability. There is no question of the
+correctness and generosity of his attitude as revealed in the war
+session of August, 1914. From a speech in the next session it might
+be inferred that he would have gone farther than he did if overtures
+had been made to him.
+
+In Canada, as elsewhere, the war spelt opportunity for more than the
+patriot and the hero. The schemer, resolute to make the war serve
+his ends, appeared everywhere. From the morrow of those first days
+of high exaltation the two currents ran side by side in Canada: the
+clear tide of valor and self-sacrifice, the muddy stream of
+cowardice and self-seeking. There was an influential element in the
+dominant party which was determined to exploit the war to the limit
+for political and personal interests. The war meant patronage; it
+must be placed where it would do the most party good. It meant an
+opportunity for artificial and perfectly safe distinction; this must
+be employed for increasing the political availability of friends.
+Political colonels began to adorn the landscape. It meant a corking
+good issue upon which an election could be won; why not take
+advantage of it? While the government officially was leading a
+united people into action, these scheming political profiteers were
+perfecting their plans for appealing to the people on the ground
+that the government--a party government which had not invited any
+measure of close co-operation from the opposition--must have a
+mandate to carry on the war. There is a quite authentic story of a
+leading Canadian being cheered up on a train journey by assurances
+from a travelling companion, a friend holding high office, that
+events were shaping for certain victory; until he learned that the
+enemy about to be defeated was the "damn Grits." The battle of Ypres
+in April, 1915, saved Canada from an ignoble general election on the
+meanest of issues. Though some of the conspirators still pressed for
+an election, it soon became apparent that the proposal was abhorrent
+to public opinion. Canadians could not bring themselves to the point
+of fighting one another while their sons and brothers were dying
+side by side in the mud of Flanders.
+
+The danger of a profound division of the Canadian people in war-time
+passed; but irretrievable damage had been done to the cause of
+national unity. In considering subsequent events these unhappy
+developments of the first year of the war cannot be overlooked.
+Party feeling among the Liberals had been held in leash with
+difficulty; now it was running free again. The attitude of the party
+towards the government was in effect: "You have tried to play
+politics with the war; very well, you will find that this is a game
+that two can play at." The strategy looking to a future trial of
+strength was skilfully planned. There was no challenge to the
+government plans. It was given full liberty of action upon the
+understanding that it would accept full responsibility and be
+prepared to render an account in due time to parliament and people.
+The tactics were those of paying out the rope as the government
+called for it. The attitude of the Liberal leaders towards the war
+was unexceptionable. Sir Wilfrid's recruiting speeches--and he made
+many of them--were admirable; and he did not hesitate to point the
+way of duty to the young men of his own province. Upon things done
+or not done the attitude of the parliamentary Liberals was
+increasingly critical; and the government, it must be said, with its
+scandals over supplies, its favoritism in recruiting, its beloved
+Ross rifle, gave plenty of opportunity to opposition critics. With
+every month that passed the political advantage that had come to the
+government, because it was charged with the task of making war,
+waned.
+
+General elections were due in the autumn of 1916. It became a
+serious question of Liberal policy to decide between agreeing to an
+extension of the life of parliament, which the government intended
+to request, and the forcing of an election. Two lieutenants of Sir
+Wilfrid toured Western Canada sounding Liberal opinion; their
+disappointment was obvious when, in a conference with a group of
+Liberals in Winnipeg, they found opinion solidly adverse to an
+election. Their reasons for an election were plainly stated--in
+brief they were that on the details of its war management the
+government could be, and, in their judgement, should be, beaten. But
+Sir Wilfrid, with his hand on the country's pulse, could not be
+stampeded. He saw, more clearly than his lieutenants, the danger to
+the party of refusing an extension at that time. A twelve months was
+added to the life of parliament with a reservation in the minds of
+the Liberals that the first extension would be the last. This meant
+an election in 1917.
+
+
+THE NATIONALISTS AND ONTARIO
+
+Mr. Bourassa was acutely conscious of the development of opinion in
+Quebec favorable to the Liberals, and he sought to retain his hold
+upon his following by the tactics which in the first place had given
+him his following--by going to extremes and outbidding Laurier. The
+chief article in the Nationalist creed was that Canada was
+everywhere a bilingual country, French being on an equality with
+English in all the provinces. This contention rested upon a
+conglomeration of arguments, assertions, assumptions, inferences,
+and it was backed by thinly disguised threats of political action.
+The opposing contention that bilingualism had a legal basis only in
+Quebec and in the Dominion parliament with its services and courts
+was interpreted as an insult. Mr. Lavergne, the chief lieutenant of
+Mr. Bourassa, was wont to wax furiously indignant over the
+suggestion, as he put it, that he must "stay on the reservation" if
+he was to enjoy the privileges that he held to be equally his in
+whatever part of Canada he might find himself.
+
+Events in Ontario put the test of reality to the Nationalist
+theories. A feud broke out between the English-speaking and the
+French-speaking Catholics over the language used for instruction in
+separate schools where both languages were represented; and
+resulting investigation revealed a state of affairs suggesting
+something very like a conspiracy to minimize or even abolish the use
+of English in all school areas where the French were in control.
+Resulting regulations and legislation intended to put a stop to
+these conditions gave French a definitely subordinate status. This
+fired the heather, and later somewhat similar action by Manitoba
+added fuel to the flames. The Nationalist agitation was resumed with
+increased vehemence in Quebec; and the Ontario minority were
+encouraged to defy the regulations by assurances that means would be
+found to bring Ontario to time. In addition to legal action (which
+brought in the end a finding by the Privy Council completely
+destroying the Nationalist claim that bilingualism was implied in
+the scheme of Confederation) various ingenious attempts were made to
+apply pressure to Ontario. The most daring, and in results the most
+disastrous, was the threat that if Ontario did not remove the
+"grievances of the minority" the people of Quebec would go on strike
+against further participation in the war. That dangerous doctrine
+operating upon a popular mind impregnated with suspicion of the
+motives and intentions behind Canada's war activities, produced the
+situation which made inevitable the developments of 1917. The
+movement against Ontario was Nationalist in its spirit, its
+inspiration and its direction. Side by side with it went a
+Nationalist agitation of ever-increasing boldness against the war.
+Ammunition for this campaign was readily found in the imputations,
+innuendoes, charges, mendacities of the Labor and pacifist
+extremists of Great Britain and France; they lost none of their
+malignancy in the retelling. Bourassa included Laurier in the scope
+of his denunciations. Laurier's loyal support of the war and his
+candid admonitions to the young men of his own race made him the
+target for Bourassa's shafts. Something more than a difference of
+view was reflected in Bourassa's harangues; there was in them a
+distillation of venom, indicating deep personal feeling. "Laurier,"
+he once declared in a public meeting, "is the most nefarious man in
+the whole of Canada." Bourassa hated Laurier. Laurier had too
+magnanimous a mind to cherish hate; but he feared Bourassa with a
+fear which in the end became an obsession. He feared him because, if
+he only retained his position in Quebec, Liberal victory in the
+coming Dominion elections would not be possible. Laurier feared him
+still more because if Bourassa increased his hold upon the people,
+which was the obvious purpose of the raging, tearing Nationalist
+propaganda, he would be displaced from his proud position as the
+first and greatest of French-Canadians. Far more than a temporary
+term of power was at stake. It was a struggle for a niche in the
+temple of fame. It was a battle not only for the affection of the
+living generation, but for place in the historic memories of the
+race. Laurier, putting aside the weight of 75 years and donning his
+armor for his last fight, had two definite purposes: to win back, if
+he could, the prime ministership of Canada; but in any event to
+establish his position forever as the unquestioned, unchallenged
+leader of his own people. In this campaign--which covered the two
+years from the moment he consented to one year's extension of the
+life of parliament until election day in 1917--he had repeatedly to
+make a choice between his two purposes; and he invariably preferred
+the second. In the sequel he missed the premiership; but he very
+definitely accomplished his second desire. He died the unquestioned
+leader, the idol of his people; and it may well be that as the
+centuries pass he will become the legendary embodiment of the
+race--like King Arthur of the English awaiting in the Isle of Avalon the
+summons of posterity. As for Bourassa, he may live in Canadian
+history as Douglas lives in the history of the United States--by
+reason of his relations with the man he fought.
+
+THE BILINGUAL EPISODE
+
+The Canadian house of commons was the vantage point from which Sir
+Wilfrid carried on the operations by which he unhorsed Bourassa.
+Here we find the explanation of much that appears inexplicable in
+the political events of 1916 and 1917. Laurier was out to
+demonstrate that he was the true champion of Quebec's views and
+interests, because he could rally to her cause the support of a
+great national party. Hence the remarkable projection of the
+bilingual issue into the proceeding of parliament in May, 1916. The
+question as an Ontario one could only be dealt with by the Ontario
+authorities once it was admitted--Sir Wilfrid being in agreement--that
+disallowance was not possible. Yet Sir Wilfrid brought the
+issue into the Dominion parliament. If he had done this merely for
+the purpose of making his own attitude of sympathy with his
+compatriots in Ontario clear, the course would have been of doubtful
+political wisdom, in view of his responsibilities to the party he
+led. But he insisted upon a formal resolution being submitted.
+Professor Skelton, in the passages dealing with this episode, shows
+him whipping up a reluctant party and compelling it, by every
+influence he could command, to follow him. The writer, arriving in
+Ottawa when this situation was developing, was informed by a
+leading Liberal member of parliament that the "old man" had thought
+out a wonderful stroke of tactics by which he was going to
+strengthen himself in Quebec and at the same time do no harm in
+Ontario--a feat beside which squaring the circle would be child's
+play. Very brief enquiry revealed the situation. Sir Wilfrid was
+determined to have a resolution and a vote. The western Liberals
+were in revolt; the Ontario Liberals were reluctant but were
+prepared to be coerced; most of the maritime province Liberals were
+obedient, but there was a minority strongly opposed. Theoretically
+the formula that there was to be no coercion, each member voting as
+his conscience directed, was honored; but Sir Wilfrid had found it
+necessary to indicate that if in the outcome it should be found that
+any considerable number of his supporters were not in agreement with
+him, he would be obliged to interpret this as indicating that the
+party no longer had confidence in him. Professor Skelton supplies
+the evidence that Sir Wilfrid pressed the threat to resign almost to
+the breaking point. He actually wrote out something which was
+supposed to be a resignation before the Ontario Liberals
+capitulated. The western Liberals were of sterner stuff; they stood
+to their guns. No resignation followed. "The defection of the
+western Liberals," says Professor Skelton, "forced from Sir Wilfrid
+a rare outbreak of anger." The use of the word "defection" is
+enlightening, as showing Professor Skelton's attitude towards the
+Liberals who in those trying times adhered to their convictions
+against the party whip. He is a thorough-going partisan, which, in
+an official biographer, is perhaps the right thing.
+
+The writer's activities in encouraging opposition to these party
+tactics led to a long interview with Sir Wilfrid, in which there was
+considerable frank language used on both sides. Sir Wilfrid gave
+every indication that he was profoundly moved by what he called "the
+plight of the French-Canadians of Ontario." They were, he said,
+politically powerless and leaderless; the provincial Liberal
+leaders, who should have been their champions, had abandoned them;
+the obligation rested upon him to come to their rescue. The
+suggestion that, while he might be within his rights in thus
+expressing his individual views, he should not seek to make it a
+party matter in view of the strong differences of opinion within the
+party, was rather impatiently brushed aside. Still less respect was
+shown the observation that it was not desirable that the Liberal
+party should identify itself with a resolution the carrying of which
+meant a general election in the height of the war upon a race and
+religious issue. Sir Wilfrid, in the course of the conversation,
+touched quite frankly upon the necessities of the Quebec political
+situation. He advanced the argument, which was put forward so
+persistently a year later, that it must be made possible for him to
+keep control of Quebec province, since the only alternative was the
+triumph of Bourassa extremism, which might involve the whole
+Dominion in conflict and ruin.
+
+The episode passed apparently without disruptive results; but
+surface indications were misleading. In reality a heavy blow had
+been struck at the unity of the Liberal party; there began to be
+questionings in unexpected quarters of the Laurier leadership. What
+had happened was only too clear, to those who looked at the
+situation steadily. Party policy had been shaped with a single eye
+to Quebec necessities; and party feeling, party discipline, the
+personal authority of Laurier has been drawn on heavily to secure
+acceptance of this policy by Liberals who did not favor it. But
+there is in politics, as in economics, a law of diminishing returns.
+A year later the same tactics applied to a situation of greater
+gravity ended in disaster. The split which came in 1917 followed
+pretty exactly the split that would have come in 1916 over
+bilingualism, had the Liberal members not been constrained by their
+devotion to party regularity to vote against their convictions.
+
+THE MOVEMENT FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
+
+The movement for national government long antedated the emergence of
+the issue of conscription; it was, in its origin, Liberal. Its most
+persistent advocates in the later months of 1916 and the opening
+months of 1917 were Liberal newspapers, among them the Manitoba Free
+Press; and there was an answer from the public which showed that the
+appeal for a union of all Canadians who were concerned with "getting
+on with the war" made a deep appeal to popular feeling. The most
+determined resistance came from the Conservatives. The ministerial
+press could see nothing in it but a Grit scheme to break up the
+Borden government, which they lauded as being in itself a "national
+government" of incomparable merit. But that movement was equally
+disconcerting to the Liberal strategists since it threatened to
+interfere with their plans for a battle, to end, as they confidently
+believed, in a Liberal victory. In January, 1917, Sir Wilfrid could
+see nothing in the movement but an attempt to prevent a French-Canadian
+from succeeding to the premiership, and wrote in those terms
+to N. W. Rowell.
+
+An offer by Sir Robert Borden to Sir Wilfrid Laurier to join him in a
+national government would have been unwelcome at any time excepting
+perhaps in the first months in the war; but in the form in which it
+finally came, in May, 1918, it was trebly unacceptable. Sir Wilfrid
+was asked to help in the formation of a national government to put
+into effect a policy of conscription, already determined upon.
+Although history will no doubt confirm the bona fides of Sir
+Robert's offer, it cannot but be lenient to Sir Wilfrid's
+interpretation of it as a political stroke intended to disrupt the
+Liberal party and rob him of the premiership. From his viewpoint it
+must have had exactly that appearance. Laurier's position in Quebec
+had been undermined in the years preceding the war by the
+Nationalist charge that his naval and military policies implied
+unlimited participation, by means of conscription, in future
+Imperial wars. He had always denied this; and when Canada entered
+the great war he, to keep his record clear, was careful to declare
+over and over again that Canadian participation by the people
+collectively, and by the individual, was and would remain voluntary.
+As the strain of the war increased the feeling in Quebec in its
+favor, never very strong, grew less. There began to be echoes of
+Bourassa's open anti-war crusade in the Liberal party and press. Sir
+Wilfrid, watching with alert patience the development of Quebec
+opinion, began cautiously to replace his earlier whole-hearted
+recognition of the supreme need of defeating Germany at all costs by
+a cooler survey of the situation in which considerations of prudent
+national self-interest were deftly suggested. The "We-have-done-enough"
+view was beginning to prevail; and Laurier, intent upon the
+complete capture of Quebec at the impending elections, while he did
+not subscribe to it, found it discreet to hint that it might be
+desirable to begin to think about the wisdom of not too greatly
+depleting our reserves of national labor. To Laurier, thus engaged
+in formulating a cautious war policy against the day of voting, came
+the invitation from Borden to join him in a movement to keep the
+armies of Canada in the field up to strength by the enforcement of
+conscription. Every aspect of the proposition was objectionable to
+Laurier. It meant handing back to Bourassa the legions he had won
+from him, and with them many of his own followers. No one was
+justified in believing that Laurier with all his prestige and power
+could commend conscription to more than a minority of his
+compatriots. Sir Robert Borden's proposal meant the foregoing of the
+anticipated party victory at the polls, the renouncement of the
+premiership, and the loss, certainly for the immediate future and
+probably for all time, of the affection and regard of his own people
+as a body. The proposition doubtless looked to him weird and
+impossible, and not a little impudent. The argument that the
+proposed government could better serve the general interests of the
+public, or even the cause of the war, than a purely Liberal
+government, of which he would be the head, probably struck him as
+presumptuous. Three days before Sir Robert Borden made his
+announcement of an intention to introduce conscription, Sir Wilfrid,
+anticipating the announcement, wrote to Sir Allan Aylesworth his
+unalterable opposition to the policy. This being the case, there
+never was a chance that Laurier would entertain Borden's offer to
+join him in a national government.
+
+THE LIBERAL DISRUPTION
+
+Sir Wilfrid, rejecting Borden's offer, adhered to his plan of an
+election on party lines; but he knew that conditions had been
+powerfully affected by these developments. His position in Quebec
+was now secure and unchallenged--even Bourassa, recognizing the
+logic of the situation, commended Laurier's leadership to his
+followers. If he could hold his following in the English provinces
+substantially intact the result was beyond question. He set himself
+resolutely to the task. Thereafter the situation developed with all
+the inevitableness of a Greek tragedy to the final catastrophe. Sir
+Wilfrid surveyed the field with the wisdom and experience of the
+veteran commander, and from the disposition of his forces and the
+lay of the land he foresaw victory. But he overlooked the
+imponderables. Forces were abroad which he did not understand and
+which, when he met them, he could not control. He counted upon the
+strength of party feeling, upon his extraordinary position of moral
+authority in the party, upon his personal hold upon thousands of
+influential Liberals in every section of Canada, upon the lure of a
+victory which seemed inevitable, upon the widespread and justified
+resentment among the Liberals against the government for things done
+and undone to keep the party intact through the ardors of an
+election. One thing he would not do; he would not deviate by an inch
+from the course he had marked out. Repeated and unavailing efforts
+were made to find some formula by which a disruption of the party
+might be avoided. One such proposition was that the life of the
+parliament should be extended. This would enable the government,
+with its majority and the support it would get from conscriptionist
+Liberals, to carry out its programme accepting full responsibility
+therefor. Sir Wilfrid rejected this; an election there must be. This
+was probably the only expedient which held any prospects of avoiding
+party disruption; but after its rejection Liberals in disagreement
+with Laurier still sought for an accommodation. There was a
+continuous conference going on for weeks in which all manner of
+suggestions were made. They all broke down before Laurier's
+courteous but unyielding firmness. There was the suggestion that the
+Liberals should accept the second reading of the Military Service
+Act and then on the third reading demand a referendum; rejected on
+the ground that this would imply a conditional acceptance of the
+principle of compulsion. There was the proposal that Laurier should
+engage, if returned to power, to resort to conscription if voluntary
+recruiting did not reach a stipulated level--not acceptable. Scores
+of men had the experience of the writer; going into Laurier's room
+on the third floor of the improvised parliamentary offices in the
+National History Museum, spending an hour or so in fruitless
+discussion and coming out with the feeling that there was no choice
+between unquestioning acceptance of Laurier's policy or breaking
+away from allegiance to him. Not that Laurier ever proposed this
+choice to his visitors. He had a theory--which not even he with all
+his lucidity could make intelligible--that a man could support both
+him and conscription at the same time. There is an attempt at
+defining this policy in a curious letter to Wm. Martin, then premier
+of Saskatchewan, which is quoted by Skelton. Sir Wilfrid in these
+conversations--as in his letters of that period, many of which
+appear in Skelton's Life--never failed to stress conditions in Quebec
+as compelling the course which he followed; the alternative was to
+throw Quebec to the extremists, with a resulting division that might
+be fatal. There was, too, the mournful and repeated assertion--which
+abounds also in his letters--that these developments showed that it
+was a mistake for a member of the minority to be the leader of the
+party. At the close of the session, when it became increasingly
+evident that a party split was impending, there were reports that
+Laurier proposed to make way for a successor upon some basis which
+might make an accommodation between the two wings of the party
+possible; and there was an attempt by a small group of Liberal
+M.P.'s to bring this about. The treatment of this incident in
+Professor Skelton's volume is obscure. In any case it had no
+significance and it came to nothing. Laurier alike by choice and
+necessity retained the leadership.
+
+Sir Wilfrid misjudged, all through the piece, the temper and purpose
+of the Liberals who dissented from his policy. For his own courses
+and actions there was a political reason; he looked for the
+political reasons behind the actions of those in disagreement with
+him. He found what he looked for, not in the actual facts of the
+situation but in his imagination. He saw conversion to the Round
+Table view of the Imperial problem and the acceptance of dictation
+from London--a very wild shot this! He saw political ambition. He
+saw unworthy desires to forward personal and business ends. But he
+did not see what was plain to view--that the whole movement was
+derived from an intense conviction on the part of growing numbers of
+Liberals that united national action was necessary if Canada was to
+make the maximum contribution to the war. There was very little
+feeling against Sir Wilfrid--rather a sympathetic understanding of
+the position in which he found himself; but they were wholly out of
+agreement with his view that Canada was in the war on a limited
+liability basis. In the very height of the controversy Sir Wilfrid
+could not be got to go beyond saying that Canada should make
+enquiries as to how many men she could afford to spare from her
+industries and these she should send if they could be induced
+voluntarily to enlist. This was wholly unsatisfactory to those who
+held that Canada was a principal in the war, and must shrink from no
+sacrifices to make victory possible. Still less satisfactory was the
+professed attitude of the Liberal candidates in Quebec; with few
+exceptions they embraced the anti-war Nationalist programme. It
+became only too evident that a Liberal victory would mean a
+government dependent upon and controlled by a Quebec bloc pretty
+thoroughly committed to the view that Canada had "done enough." For
+those committed to the prosecution of the war to the limit,
+conscription became a test and a symbol; and ultimately the pressure
+forced reluctant politicians to come together in the Union
+government. There followed the general election and the Unionist
+sweep. Laurier returned to parliament with a following of eighty-two
+in a house of 235. Of these 62 came from Quebec; and nine from the
+Maritime provinces. From the whole vast expanse from the Ottawa
+river to the Pacific Ocean ten lone Liberals were elected; of these
+only two represented the west, that part of Canada where Liberal
+ideas grow most naturally and freely. The policy of shaping national
+programmes to meet sectional predilections, relying upon party
+discipline and the cultivation of personal loyalties to serve as
+substitutes elsewhere had run its full course--and this was the
+harvest!
+
+THE LAST YEAR
+
+The events of 1917 were both an end and a beginning in Canada's
+political development. They brought to a definite close what might
+be called the era of the Great Parties. Viscount Bryce, in a work
+based upon pre-war observations, in dealing with Canadian political
+conditions, said:
+
+"Party (in Canada) seems to exist for its own sake. In Canada ideas
+are not needed to make parties, for these can live by heredity, and,
+like the Guelfs and Ghibellines of mediaeval Italy, by memories of
+past combats; attachment to leaders of such striking gifts and long
+careers as were Sir John Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, created
+a personal loyalty which exposed a man to reproach as a deserter
+when he voted against his party."
+
+For these conditions there were reasons in our history. Our parties
+once expressed deep divergencies of view upon issues of vital
+import; and each had experienced an individual leadership that had
+called forth and had stereotyped feelings of unbounded personal
+devotion. The chiefships of Laurier and Macdonald overlapped by only
+four years, but they were of the same political generation and they
+adhered to the same tradition. The resemblances in their careers,
+often commented upon, arose from a common attitude towards the
+business of political management. They conceived their parties as
+states within the state. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say
+they conceived them as co-ordinate with the state. Of these
+principalities they were the chieftains, chosen in the first place
+by election--as kings often were in the old times; but thereafter
+holding their positions by virtue of personal right and having the
+power in the last analysis by their own acts to determine party
+policy and to enforce discipline. Their personalities made these
+assumptions of power appear not only inevitable, but proper.
+Personal charm, human qualities of sympathy and understanding; an
+inflexible will which, except in crises, worked by indirection; the
+prestige of office and the glamor of victory; and the accretions of
+power which came from the passage of time--half their followers
+towards the end of their careers could not remember when other suns
+shone in the firmament; all these influences helped to transform
+party feeling into that blind worship which drew from Viscount Bryce
+his mordant comment.
+
+This venerable but archaic political system did not survive the war.
+Beside the loyalties inspired by the war tribal devotion to a party
+chief seemed a trivial concern. Canadians, who gave first place to
+the need of getting on with the war, viewed with consternation the
+readiness of elements in both parties to put their political
+interests above the safety and honor of the commonwealth. The
+movement for national political unity was born of their concern and
+indignation. This development was almost as displeasing to the
+Conservative partisans as to the Liberal "legitimists," who upheld
+the right, under all circumstances, of Laurier to regain the
+premiership; and it was their inveterate and unthinking opposition
+that had much to do with the ultimate disruption of the union. They
+did not realize, until they got into the elections of 1921, that
+their party had disintegrated under the stresses of war.
+
+A study of the origin, achievements, failures, downfall and
+consequences of Union government might be of interest, but it does
+not come into a survey of the life of Laurier. These matters are
+related to the influences that are now making over Canadian
+politics; they concern the leaders of to-day, all minor figures in
+the 1917 drama. Because the Union government passed without leaving
+behind it tangible and visible manifestations of its power, there
+are those who regard it as a mere futility--a sword-cut in the
+water, as the French say. But of the Union movement it might well be
+said: Si monumentum requiris circumspice. The spirit behind the
+movement passed with the war, but it left the old traditional party
+system in ruins. The readjustments that are going on to-day, the
+efforts at the realignment of parties, the attempt to newly appraise
+political values, and to redefine political relationships--all these
+things are testimony to the dissolving, penetrating power of the
+impulses of 1917.
+
+But the task of attempting political reconstruction in a new world
+was not imposed upon Laurier. The signing of the armistice was the
+signal for the release of new forces; it was a great turning point
+in the world's history. But for Laurier the tale of his years was
+told. There was something fitting in the departure of the veteran
+with the turning of the tide. He had been a mere survival on the
+scene following the elections of 1917 which put into the hands of
+the Union government a mandate to "carry on" for the remainder of
+the war--which at that time gave promise of stretching out
+interminably. That election set bounds to his ambitions, wrote finis
+to his political career. "Unarm; the long day's work is o'er." He
+continued to hold his rank in a party which waited upon events,
+knowing that the task of rebuilding and reconstruction must fall to
+younger hands. The serenity of mind which had sustained him in all
+the changes of a long and varied life did not desert him; and he
+looked forward with fortitude to the end now approaching. He had
+come a long way from the humble beginnings in St. Lin, 77 years
+before. Childhood; happy, carefree boyhood; a youth of gallant
+comradeship with the young swordsmen of a fighting political army;
+the ardors of a career in the making full of delights of battle with
+his peers; the call to the command; the conquest of the premiership;
+the long, crowded, brilliant years of office with their deep
+anxieties, crushing responsibilities, great satisfactions,
+substantial achievements; the bitterness of unexpected defeat; the
+gallant fight to win back to power ending by a stroke of fate in
+disaster; the final disruption of his party and the loss of old
+friends who had followed him in victory or defeat; these
+recollections must have been much in his mind during this year of
+afterglow. The end was fitting in its swiftness and dignity. No
+lingering, painful illness, but a swift stroke and a happy release.
+"Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail."
+
+
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics
+by J. W. Dafoe
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN ***
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+Project Gutenberg's Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics, by J. W. Dafoe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics
+
+Author: J. W. Dafoe
+
+Release Date: March 30, 2005 [EBook #15509]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN ***
+
+
+
+
+-
+
+
+
+
+LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
+
+By J. W. DAFOE
+
+THOMAS ALLEN
+PUBLISHER, TORONTO
+
+
+Copyright, Canada, 1922 by Thomas Allen
+
+Printed in Canada
+
+DEDICATION:
+ TO E. H. MACKLIN
+ IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF A CONSTANT FRIENDSHIP.
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The four articles which make up this volume were originally published
+in successive issues of the Monthly Book Review of the Manitoba Free
+Press and are herewith assembled in book form in response to what
+appears to be a somewhat general request that they be made available
+ in a more permanent form.
+
+J. W. D.
+October 13 1922.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ PART 1. LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
+ PART 2. LAURIER AND EMPIRE RELATIONSHIPS
+ Part 3. FIFTEEN YEARS OF PREMIERSHIP
+
+
+
+
+LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
+
+THE CLIMB TO POWER.
+
+THE life story of Laurier by Oscar D. Skelton is the official
+biography of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Official biographies of public men
+have their uses; they supply material for the definitive biography
+which in the case of a great man is not likely to be written by one
+who knew him in the flesh. An English public man, who was also a
+novelist and poet, wrote:
+
+ "Ne'er of the living can the living judge,
+ Too blind the affection or too fresh the grudge."
+
+The limitation is equally true in the case of one like Sir Wilfrid
+Laurier who, though dead, will be a factor of moment in our politics
+for at least another generation. Professor Skelton's book is
+interesting and valuable, but not conclusive. The first volume is a
+political history of Canada from the sixties until 1896, with
+Laurier in the setting at first inconspicuously but growing to
+greatness and leadership. For the fifteen years of premiership the
+biographer is concerned lest Sir Wilfrid should not get the fullest
+credit for whatever was achieved; while in dealing with the period
+after 1911, constituting the anti-climax of Laurier's career, Mr.
+Skelton is avowedly the alert and eager partisan, bound to find his
+hero right and all those who disagreed with him wrong. Sir Wilfrid
+Laurier is described in the preface as "the finest and simplest
+gentleman, the noblest and most unselfish man it has ever been my
+good fortune to know;" and the work is faithfully devoted to the
+elucidation of this theme. Men may fail to be heroes to their valets
+but they are more successful with their biographers. The final
+appraisement of Sir Wilfrid, to be written perhaps fifty years hence
+by some tolerant and impartial historian, will probably not be an
+echo of Prof. Skelton's judgment. It will perhaps put Sir Wilfrid
+higher than Prof. Skelton does and yet not quite so high; an abler
+man but one not quite so preternaturally good; a man who had
+affinities with Macchiavelli as well as with Sir Galahad.
+
+The Laurier of the first volume is an appealing, engaging and most
+attractive personality. There was about his earlier career something
+romantic and compelling. In almost one rush he passed from the
+comparative obscurity of a new member in 1874 to the leadership of
+the French Liberals  in 1877; and then he suffered a decline which
+seemed to mark him as one of those political shooting stars which
+blaze in the firmament for a season and then go black; like Felix
+Geoffrion who, though saluted by Laurier in 1874 as the coming
+leader, never made any impress upon his times. A political accident,
+fortunate for him, opened the gates again to a career; and he set
+his foot upon a road which took him very far.
+
+The writer made acquaintance with Laurier in the Dominion session of
+1884. He was then in his forty-third year; but in the judgment of
+many his career was over. His interest in politics was, apparently,
+of the slightest. He was deskmate to Blake, who carried on a
+tremendous campaign that session against the government's C. P. R.
+proposals. Laurier's political activities consisted chiefly of being
+an acting secretary of sorts to the Liberal leader. He kept his
+references in order; handed him Hansards and blue-books in turn;
+summoned the pages to clear away the impedimenta and to keep the
+glass of water replenished--little services which it was clear he
+was glad to do for one who engaged his ardent affection and
+admiration. There were memories in the house of Laurier's eloquence;
+but memories only. During this session he was almost silent. The
+tall, courtly figure was a familiar sight in the chamber and in the
+library--particularly in the library, where he could be found every
+day ensconced in some congenial alcove; but the golden voice was
+silent. It was known that his friends were concerned about his
+health.
+
+LAURIER AND THE RIEL AGITATION
+
+The "accident" which restored Laurier to public life and opened up
+for him an extraordinary career was the Riel rebellion of 1885. In
+the session of 1885, the rebellion being then in progress, he was
+heard from to some purpose on the subject of the ill treatment of
+the Saskatchewan half-breeds by the Dominion government. The
+execution of Riel in the following November changed the whole course
+of Canadian politics. It pulled the foundations from under the
+Conservative party by destroying the position of supremacy which it
+had held for a generation in the most Conservative of provinces and
+condemned it to a slow decline to the ruin of to-day; and it
+profoundly affected the Liberal party, giving it a new orientation
+and producing the leader who was to make it the dominating force in
+Canadian politics. These things were not realized at the time, but
+they are clear enough in retrospect. Party policy, party discipline,
+party philosophy are all determined by the way the constituent
+elements of the party combine; and the shifting from the Conservative
+to the Liberal party of the political weight of Quebec, not as the
+result of any profound change of conviction but under the influence
+of a powerful racial emotion, was bound to register itself in time
+in the party outlook and morale. The current of the older tradition
+ran strong for some time, but within the space of about twenty years
+the party was pretty thoroughly transformed. The Liberal party of
+to-day with its complete dependence upon the solid support it gets
+in Quebec is the ultimate result of the forces which came into play
+as the result of the hanging of Riel.
+
+After the lapse of so many years there is no need for lack of candor
+in discussing the events of 1885. To put it plainly Riel's fate
+turned almost entirely upon political considerations. Which was the
+less dangerous course,--to reprieve him or let him hang? The issue
+was canvassed back and forth by the distracted ministry up to the
+day before that fixed for the execution when a decision was reached
+to let the law take its course. The feeling in Quebec in support of
+the commutation was so intense and overwhelming that it was accepted
+as a matter of course that Riel would be reprieved; and the news of
+the contrary decision was to them, as Professor Skelton says,
+"unbelievable." The actual announcement of the hanging was a match
+to a powder magazine. That night there were mobs on the streets of
+Montreal and Sir John Macdonald was burned in effigy in Dominion
+square. On the following Sunday forty thousand people swarmed around
+the hustings on Champ de Mars and heard the government denounced in
+every conceivable term of verbal violence by speakers of every tinge
+of political belief. This outpouring of a common indignation with
+its obliteration of all the usual lines of demarcation was the
+result of the "wounding of the national self-esteem" by the flouting
+of the demand for leniency, as it was put by La Minerve. Mercier put
+it still more strongly when he declared that "the murder of Riel
+was a declaration of war upon French Canadian influence in
+Confederation." A binding cement for this union of elements
+ordinarily at war was sought for in the creation of the "parti
+national" which a year later captured the provincial Conservative
+citadel at Quebec and turned it over to Honore Mercier. This violent
+racial movement raged unchecked in the provincial arena, but in the
+federal field it was held in leash by Laurier. That he saw the
+possibilities of the situation is not to be doubted. He took part in
+the demonstration on Champ de Mars and in his speech 'made a
+declaration--"Had I been born on the banks of the Saskatchewan I
+myself would have shouldered a musket"--which riveted nation-wide
+attention upon him. Laurier followed this by his impassioned apology
+for the halfbreeds and their leader in the House of Commons, of
+which deliverance Thomas White, of the assailed ministry, justly
+said: "It was the finest parliamentary speech ever pronounced in the
+parliament of Canada since Confederation." In the debate on the
+execution of Riel all the orators of parliament took part. It was
+the occasion for one of Blake's greatest efforts. Sir John Thompson,
+in his reply to Blake, revealed himself to parliament and the
+country as one worthy of crossing swords with the great Liberal
+tribune. But they and all the other "big guns" of the Commons were
+thrown into complete eclipse by Laurier's performance. It is easy to
+recall after the lapse of thirty-six years the extraordinary
+impression which that speech made upon the great audience which
+heard it--a crowded House of Commons and the public galleries packed
+to the roof.
+
+In the early winter of 1886-7 Laurier went boldly into Ontario
+where, addressing great audiences in Toronto, London and other
+points, he defended his position and preferred his indictment
+against the government. This was Laurier's first introduction to
+Ontario, under circumstances which, while actually threatening, were
+in reality auspicious. It was at once an exhibition of moral and
+physical courage and a manifestation of Laurier's remarkable
+qualities as a public speaker. Within a few months Laurier passed
+from the comparative obscurity to which he had condemned himself by
+his apparent indifference to politics to a position in public life
+where he divided public attention and interest with Edward Blake and
+Sir John Macdonald. When a few months later Blake, in a rare fit of
+the sulks, retired to his tent, refusing to play any longer with
+people who did not appreciate his abilities, Laurier succeeded to
+the leadership--apparently upon the nomination of Blake, actually at
+the imperious call of those inescapable forces and interests which
+men call Destiny.
+
+
+LEADERSHIP AND THE ROAD TO IT.
+
+Laurier, then in his 46th year, became leader of the Liberal party
+in June, 1887. It was supposedly a tentative experimental choice;
+but the leadership thus begun ended only with his death in February,
+1919, nearly thirty-two years later. Laurier was a French Canadian
+of the ninth generation. His first Canadian ancestor, Augustin
+Hebert, was one of the little band of soldier colonists who, under
+the leadership of Maisonneuve founded Montreal in 1641. Hebert's
+granddaughter married a soldier of the regiment Carignan-Salieres,
+Francois Cotineau dit Champlaurier. The Heberts were from Normandy,
+Cotineau from Savoy. From this merging of northern and southern
+French strains the Canadian family of Laurier resulted; this name
+was first assumed by the grandson of the soldier ancestor. The
+record of the first thirty years of Wilfrid Laurier's life was
+indistinguishable from that of scores of other French-Canadian
+professional men. Born in the country (St. Lin, Nov. 20, 1841) of
+parents in moderate circumstances; educated at one of the numerous
+little country colleges; a student at law in Montreal; a young and
+struggling lawyer, interested in politics and addicted upon occasion
+to political journalism.--French-Canadians by the hundreds have
+travelled that road. A fortunate combination of circumstances took
+him out of the struggle for a place at the Montreal bar and gave
+him a practice in the country combined with the editorship of a
+Liberal weekly, a position which made him at once a figure of some
+local prominence. Laurier's personal charm and obvious capacity for
+politics marked him at once for local leadership. At the age of 30
+he was sent to the Quebec legislature as representative of the
+constituency of Drummond and Arthabaska; and three years later he
+went to Ottawa. The rapid retirement of the Rouge leaders, Dorion
+and Fournier to the bench and Letellier to the lieutenant-governorship
+of Quebec, opened the way for early promotion, and in 1877
+he entered the cabinet of Alex. Mackenzie and assumed at the
+same time the leadership of the French Liberals. Defeated in
+Drummond-Arthabaska upon seeking re-election he was taken to its
+heart by Quebec East and continued to represent that constituency
+for an unbroken period of forty years. He went out of office with
+Mackenzie in 1878, and thereafter his career which had begun so
+promisingly dwindled almost to extinction until the events already
+noted called him back to the lists and opened for him the doors of
+opportunity.
+
+When Wilfrid Laurier went to Montreal in 1861 he began the study of
+law in the office of Rodolphe Laflamme, a leading figure in the
+Rouge political group; and he joined L'Institut Canadien already far
+advanced in the struggle with the church which was later to result
+in open warfare. Those two acts revealed his political affiliations
+and fixed the environment in which he was to move during the plastic
+twenties. Ten years had passed since a group of ardent young men,
+infected with the principles and enthusiasm of 1848, of which
+Papineau returning from exile in Paris was the apostle, had stormed
+the constituencies of Lower Canada and had appeared in the
+parliament of Canada as a radical, free-thinking, ultra-Democratic
+party, bearing proudly the badge of "Rouge"; and the passage of time
+was beginning to temper their views with a tinge of sobriety. The
+church, however, had them all in her black books and Bishop Bourget,
+that incomparable zealot and bigot, was determined to destroy them
+politically and spiritually, to whip them into submission. The
+struggle raged chiefly in the sixties about L'Institut Canadien,
+frowned upon by the church because it had books in its library which
+were banned by the Index and because it afforded a free forum for
+discussion. When Confederation cut the legislative connection
+between Upper and Lower Canada the church felt itself free to
+proceed to extremes in the Catholic province of Quebec and embarked
+upon that campaign of political proscription which ultimately
+reached a point where even the Rome of Pius IX. felt it necessary to
+intervene.
+
+In this great battle for political and intellectual freedom the
+young Laurier played his part manfully. He boldly joined L'Institut
+Canadien, though it lay under the shadow of Bishop Bourget's
+minatory pastoral; and became an active member and officer. He was
+one of a committee which tried unavailingly to effect an
+understanding with Bishop Bourget. When he left Montreal in 1866 he
+was first vice-president of the Institute. His native caution and
+prudence and his natural bent towards moderation and accommodation
+enabled him to play a great and growing, though non-spectacular,
+part in the struggle against the church's pretensions. As his
+authority grew in the party he discouraged the excesses in theory
+and speech which invited the Episcopal thunders; even in his
+earliest days his radicalism was of a decidedly Whiggish type and
+his political color was several shades milder than the fiery red of
+Papineau, Dorion and Laflamme. Under his guidance the Rouge party
+was to be transformed in outlook, mentality and convictions into
+something very different indeed; but this was still far in the
+future. But towards the church's pretensions to control the
+political convictions of its adherents he presented an unyielding
+front. On the eve of his assumption of the leadership of the French
+Liberals he discussed at Quebec, June 1877, the question of the
+political relations between church and state and the rights of the
+individual in one of his most notable addresses. In this he
+vindicated, with eloquence and courage, the right of the individual
+to be both Catholic and Liberal, and challenged the policy of
+clerical intimidation which had made the leaders of the church
+nothing but the tools and chore-boys of Hector Langevin, the Tory
+leader in the province. It may rightly be assumed that it was
+something more than a coincidence that not long after the delivery
+of this speech, Rome put a bit in the mouth of the champing Quebec
+ecclesiastics. This remained Laurier's most solid achievement up to
+the time when he was called to the leadership of the Dominion
+Liberal party.
+
+DOUBTS AND HESITATIONS
+
+Laurier's accession to leadership caused doubt and heart-burnings
+among the leaders of Ontario Liberalism. Still under the influence
+of the Geo. Brown tradition of suspicion of Quebec they felt uneasy
+at the transfer of the sceptre to Laurier, French by inheritance,
+Catholic in religion, with a political experience derived from
+dealing with the feelings, ambitions and prejudices of a province
+which was to them an unknown world. Part of the doubt arose from
+misconception of the qualities of Laurier. As a hard-bitten, time-worn
+party fighter, with an experience going back to pre-confederation
+days, said to the writer: "Laurier will never make a leader; he has
+not enough of the devil in him." This meant, in the brisk terminology
+of to-day, that he could not deliver the rough stuff. This doubter
+and his fellows had yet to learn that the flashing rapier in the
+hands of the swordsman makes a completer and far less messy job than
+the bludgeon; and that there is in politics room for the delicate
+art of jiu-jitsu. Further, the Ontario mind was under the sway of
+that singular misconception, so common to Britishers, that a
+Frenchman by temperament is gay, romantic, inconsequent, with few
+reserves of will and perseverance. Whereas the good French mind is
+about the coolest, clearest, least emotional instrument of the kind
+that there is. The courtesy, grace, charm, literary and artistic
+ability that go with it are merely accessories; they are the
+feathers on the arrow that help it in its flight from the twanging
+bow-cord to the bull's-eye. Laurier's mind was typically French with
+something also Italianate about it, an inheritance perhaps from the
+long-dead Savoyard ancestor who brought the name to this continent.
+Later when Laurier had proved his quality and held firmly in his
+hands the reins of power, the fatuous Ontario Liberal explained him
+as that phenomenon, a man of pure French ancestry who was
+spiritually an Englishman--this conclusion being drawn from the fact
+that upon occasion the names of Charles James Fox and Gladstone came
+trippingly from his tongue. The new relationship between the
+Liberals and Laurier was entered upon with obvious hesitation on the
+part of many of the former and by apparent diffidence by the latter.
+It may be that the conditional acceptance and the proffered
+resignation at call were tactical movements really intended by
+Laurier to buttress his position as leader, as most assuredly his
+frequent suggestions of a readiness or intention to retire during
+the last few years of his leadership were. But, whatever the
+uncertainties of the moment, they soon passed. Laurier at once
+showed capacities which the Liberals had never before known in a
+leader. The long story of Liberal sterility and ineffectiveness from
+the middle of the last century to almost its close is the story of
+the political incapacity of its successive leaders, a demonstration
+of the unfitness of men with the emotional equipment of the
+pamphleteer, crusader and agitator for the difficult business of
+party management. The party sensed almost immediately the difference
+in the quality of the new leadership; and liked it. Laurier's powers
+of personal charm completed the "consolidation of his position," and
+by the early nineties the Presbyterian Grits of Ontario were
+swearing by him. When Blake, after two or three years of nursing his
+wounds in retirement, began to think it was time to resume the
+business of leading the Liberals, he found everywhere invisible
+barriers blocking his return. Laurier was, he found, a different
+proposition from Mackenzie; and there was nothing for it but to
+return to his tent and take farewell of his constituents in that
+tale of lamentations, the West Durham letter. The new regime, the
+new leadership, did not bring results at once. The party experienced
+a succession of unexpected and unforeseen misfortunes that almost
+made Laurier superstitious. "Tell me," he wrote to his friend Henri
+Beaugrand, in August, 1891, "whether there is not some fatality
+pursuing our party." In the election of 1891 not even the
+theatricality of Sir John Macdonald's last appeal nor the untrue
+claim by the government that it was about, itself, to secure a
+reciprocal trade arrangement with Washington, could have robbed the
+Liberals of a triumph which seemed certain; it was the opportune
+revelation, through the stealing of proofs from a printing office,
+that Edward Farrer, one of the Globe editors, favored political
+union with the United States, that gave victory into the hands of
+the Conservatives. But their relatively narrow majority would not
+have kept them in office a year in view of the death of Sir John A.
+Macdonald in June, 1891, and the stunning blows given the government
+by the "scandal session" of 1891, had it not been for two disasters
+which overtook the Liberals: The publication of Blake's letter and
+the revelation of the rascalities of the Mercier regime. Perhaps of
+the two blows, that delivered by Blake was the more disastrous. The
+letter was the message of an oracle. It required an interpretation
+which the oracle refused to supply; and in its absence the people
+regarded it as implying a belief by Blake that annexation was the
+logical sequel to the Liberal policy of unrestricted reciprocity.
+The result was seen in the by-election campaign of 1892 when the
+Liberals lost seat after seat in Ontario, and the government
+majority mounted to figures which suggested that the party, despite
+the loss of Sir John, was as strong as ever. The Tories were in the
+seventh heaven of delight. With the Liberals broken, humiliated and
+discouraged, and a young and vigorous pilot, in the person of Sir
+John Thompson, at the helm, they saw a long and happy voyage before
+them. Never were appearances more illusory, for the cloud was
+already in the sky from which were to come storm, tempest and
+ruinous over-throw.
+
+
+THE TACTICS OF VICTORY
+
+The story of the Manitoba school question and the political struggle
+which centred around it, as told by Prof. Skelton, is bald and
+colorless; it gives little sense of the atmosphere of one of the
+most electrical periods in our history. The sequelae of the Riel
+agitation, with its stirring up of race feeling, included the Jesuit
+Estates controversy in parliament, the Equal Rights movement in
+Ontario, the attack upon the use of the French language in the
+legislature of the Northwest Territories and the establishment of a
+system of National schools in Manitoba through the repeal of the
+existing school law, which had been modelled upon the Quebec law and
+was intended to perpetuate the double-barrelled system in vogue in
+that province. The issue created by the Manitoba legislation
+projected itself at once into the federal field to the evident
+consternation of the Dominion government. It parried the demand for
+disallowance of the provincial statute by an engagement to defray
+the cost of litigation challenging the validity of the law. When the
+Privy Council, reversing the judgment of the Supreme Court, found
+that the law was valid because it did not prejudicially affect
+rights held prior to or at the time of union, the government was
+faced with a demand that it intervene by virtue of the provisions in
+the British North America act, which gave the Dominion parliament
+the power to enact remedial educational legislation overriding
+provincial enactments in certain circumstances. Again it took refuge
+in the courts. The Supreme Court of Canada held that under the
+circumstances the power to intervene did not exist; and the
+government breathed easier. Again the Privy Council reversed the
+judgment of the Supreme Court and held that because the Manitoba law
+prejudicially affected educational privileges enjoyed by the
+minority after union there was a right of intervention. The last
+defence of the Dominion government against being forced to make a
+decision was broken down; in the language of to-day, it was up
+against it. And the man who might have saved the party by inducing
+the bishops of the Catholic church to moderate their demands was
+gone, for Sir John Thompson died in Windsor Castle in December,
+1894, one month before the Privy Council handed down its fateful
+decision. Sir John was a faithful son of the church, with an immense
+influence with the clerical authorities; he was succeeded in the
+premiership by Sir Mackenzie Bowell, ex-grand master of the Orange
+Order. The bishops moved on Ottawa and demanded action.
+
+There ensued a duel in tactics between the two parties, intensely
+interesting in character and in its results surprising, at least for
+some people. The parties to the struggle which now proceeded to
+convulse Canada were the government of Manitoba, the author of the
+law in question, the Roman Catholic hierarchy in their capacity of
+guardians and champions of the Manitoba minority, and the two
+Dominion political parties. The bishops were in deadly earnest in
+attack; so was the Manitoba government in defence; but with the
+others the interest was purely tactical. How best to set the sails
+to catch the veering winds and blustering gusts to win the race, the
+prize for which was the government of Canada? The Conservatives had
+the right of initiative--did it give them the advantage? They
+thought so; and so did most of the Liberal generals who were mostly
+in a blue funk during the year 1895 in anticipation of the hole into
+which the government was going to place them. But there was at least
+one Liberal tactician who knew better.
+
+The Conservatives decided upon a line of action which seemed to them
+to have the maximum of advantage. They would go in for remedial
+legislation. In the English provinces they would say that they did
+this reluctantly as good, loyal, law-abiding citizens obeying the
+order of the Queen delivered through the Privy Council. From their
+experiences with the electors they had good reason to believe that
+this buncombe would go down. But in Quebec they would pose as the
+defenders of the oppressed, loyal co-operators with the bishops in
+rebuking, subduing and chaining the Manitoba tyrants. Obviously they
+would carry the province; if Laurier opposed their legislation they
+would sweep the province and he would be left without a shred of the
+particular support which was supposed to be his special contribution
+to a Liberal victory. The calculation looked good to the
+Conservatives; also to most of the Liberals. As one Liberal veteran
+put it in 1895: "If we vote against remedial legislation we shall be
+lost, hook, line and sinker." But there was one Liberal who thought
+differently.
+
+
+His name was J. Israel Tarte. Tarte was in office an impossibility;
+power went to his head like strong wine and destroyed him. But he
+was the man whose mind conceived, and whose will executed, the
+Napoleonic stroke of tactics which crumpled up the Conservative army
+in 1896 and put it in the hole which had been dug for the Liberals.
+On the day in March, 1895, when the Dominion government issued its
+truculent and imperious remedial order, Tarte said to the present
+writer: "The government is in the den of lions; if only Greenway
+will now shut the door." At that early day he saw with a clearness
+of vision that was never afterwards clouded, the tactics that meant
+victory: "Make the party policy suit the campaign in the other
+provinces; leave Quebec to Laurier and me." He foresaw that the
+issue in Quebec would not be made by the government nor by the
+bishops; it would be whether the French-Canadians, whose imagination
+and affections had already been captured by Laurier, would or would
+not vote to put their great man in the chair of the prime minister
+of Canada. All through the winter and spring of 1895 Tarte was
+sinking test wells in Quebec public opinion with one uniform result.
+The issue was Laurier. So the policy was formulated of marking time
+until the government was irretrievably committed to remedial
+legislation; then the Liberals as a solid body were to throw
+themselves against it. So Laurier and the Liberal party retired
+within the lines of Torres Vedras and bided their time.
+
+But Tarte had no end of trouble in keeping the party to the path
+marked out. The fainthearts of the other provinces could not keep
+from their minds the haunting fear that the road they were marching
+along led to a morass. They wanted a go-as-you please policy by
+which each section of the party could make its own appeal to local
+feeling. Laurier was never more indecisive than in the war councils
+in which these questions of party policy were fought over. And with
+good reason. His sympathy and his judgment were with Tarte but he
+feared to declare himself too pronouncedly. The foundation stone of
+Tarte's policy was a belief in the overwhelming potency of Laurier's
+name in Quebec; Laurier was naturally somewhat reluctant to put his
+own stock so high. He had not yet come to believe implicitly in his
+star. Within forty-eight hours of the time when Laurier made his
+speech moving the six months' hoist to the Remedial bill, a group of
+Liberal sub-chiefs from the English provinces made a resolute
+attempt to vary the policy determined upon. Their bright idea was
+that Clarke Wallace, the seceding cabinet minister and Orange
+leader, should move the six months' hoist; this would enable the
+Liberals to divide, some voting for it and some against it. But the
+bold idea won. With Laurier's speech of March 3, 1896, the death-blow
+was given to the Conservative administration and the door to
+office and power opened to the Liberals.
+
+The campaign absolutely vindicated the tactical foresight of Tarte.
+A good deal might be said about that campaign if space were
+available. But one or two features of it may be noted. In the
+English provinces great play was made with Father Lacombe's minatory
+letter to Laurier, sent while the issue was trembling in the balance
+in parliament: "If the government . . is beaten . . I inform you
+with regret that the episcopacy, like one man, united with the
+clergy, will rise to support those who may have fallen in defending
+us." In his Reminiscences, Sir John Willison speculates as to how
+this letter, so detrimental to the government in Ontario, got itself
+published. Professor Skelton says boldly that it was "made public
+through ecclesiastical channels." It would be interesting to know
+his authority for this statement. The writer of this article says it
+was published as the result of a calculated indiscretion by the
+Liberal board of strategy. As it was through his agency that
+publication of the letter was sought and secured, it will be agreed
+that he speaks with knowledge. It does not, of course, follow that
+Laurier was a party to its publication.
+
+The campaign of 1896 was on both sides lively, violent and
+unscrupulous. The Conservatives had two sets of arguments; and so
+had the Liberals. Those of us who watched the campaign in Quebec at
+close range know that not much was said there by the Liberals about
+the high crime of coercing a province. Instead, stress was laid upon
+the futility and inadequacy of the proposed remedial legislation;
+upon the high probability that more could be got for the minority by
+negotiation; upon the suggestion that, negotiation failing, remedial
+legislation that would really accomplish something could still be
+invoked. This argument, plus the magic of Laurier's personality and
+Tarte's organizing genius, did the business. Futile the sniping of
+the cures; vain the broadsides of the bishops; empty the thunders of
+the church! Quebec went to the polls and voted for Laurier.
+Elsewhere the government just about held its own despite the burden
+of its remedial policy; but it was buried under the Quebec
+avalanche. The Liberals took office sustained by the 33 majority
+from the province which had once been the citadel of political
+Conservatism.
+
+ "Now is the winter of our discontent
+ Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
+ And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
+ In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
+ Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
+ Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
+ Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings;
+ Our dreadful marches to delightful measures."
+
+
+
+PART TWO. LAURIER AND EMPIRE RELATIONSHIPS
+
+WILFRID Laurier was Prime Minister of Canada from July 9, 1896, to
+October 6, 1911, fifteen years and three months, which, for the
+Dominion, is a record. Sir John Macdonald was Premier of the
+Dominion of Canada for over nineteen years, but this covered two
+terms separated by five years of Liberal rule.
+
+The theory of government by party is that the two parties are
+complementary instruments of government; by periodic interchanges of
+position they keep the administration of the country efficient and
+progressive. The complete acceptance of this view would imply a
+readiness upon the part of a party growing stale to facilitate the
+incoming of the required alternative administration, but no such
+phenomenon in politics has ever been observed. Parties, in reality,
+are organized states within the state. They have their own dynasties
+and hierarchies; and their reason for existence is to clothe
+themselves with the powers, functions and glory of the state which
+they control. Their desire is for absolute and continuing control to
+which they come to think they have a prescriptive right; and they
+never leave office without a sense of outrage. There never yet was a
+party ejected from office which did not feel pretty much as the
+Stuarts did when they lost the throne of England; the incoming
+administration is invariably regarded by them in the light of
+usurpers. This was very much the case with the Conservatives after
+1896; and the Liberals had the same feeling after 1911, that they
+had been robbed, as they deemed, of their rightful heritage. Parties
+are not, as their philosophers claim, servants of the state
+co-operating in its service; their real desire is the mastery of the
+state and the brooking of no opposition or rivalship. Nevertheless
+the people by a sure instinct compel a change in administration
+every now and then; but they move so slowly that a government well
+entrenched in office can usually outstay its welcome by one term of
+office. The Laurier administration covering a full period of fifteen
+years illustrates the operation of this political tendency. The
+government came in with the good wishes of the people and for nearly
+ten years went on from strength to strength, carrying out an
+extensive and well-considered domestic programme; then its strength
+began to wane and its vigor to relax. Its last few years were given
+up to a struggle against the inevitable fate that was visibly rising
+like a tide; and the great stroke of reciprocity which was attempted
+in 1911 was not nearly so much a belated attempt to give effect to a
+party principle as it was a desperate expedient by an ageing
+administration to stave off dissolution. The Laurier government died
+in 1911, not so much from the assaults of its enemies as from
+hardening of its arteries and from old age. Its hour had struck in
+keeping with the law of political change. Upon any reasonable survey
+of the circumstances it would be held that Laurier was fortunate
+beyond most party leaders in his premiership--in its length, in the
+measure of public confidence which he held over so long a period, in
+the affection which he inspired in his immediate following, and for
+the opportunities it gave him for putting his policies into
+operation.
+
+
+Viewed in retrospect most of the domestic occurrences of the Laurier
+regime lose their importance as the years recede; it will owe its
+place in Canadian political history to one or two achievements of
+note. Laurier's chief claim to an enduring personal fame will rest
+less upon his domestic performances than upon the contribution he
+made towards the solution of the problem of imperial relations. The
+examination of his record as a party leader in the prime minister's
+chair can be postponed while consideration is given to the great
+services he rendered the cause of imperial and international
+Liberalism as Canada's spokesman in the series of imperial
+conferences held during his premiership.
+
+Laurier, up to the moment of his accession to the Liberal
+leadership, had probably given little thought to the question of
+Canada's relationship to the empire. Blake knew something about the
+intricacies of the question. His Aurora speech showed that as early
+as 1874 he was beginning to regard critically our status of
+colonialism as something which could not last; and while he was
+minister of justice in the Mackenzie ministration he won two notable
+victories over the centralizing tendencies of the colonial office.
+But Laurier had never been brought into touch with the issue; and
+when, after assuming the Liberal leadership, he found it necessary
+to deal with it, he spoke what was probably the belief latent in
+most of the minds of his compatriots: acceptance of colonial status
+with the theoretical belief that some time, so far distant as not to
+be a matter of political concern, this status would give way to one
+of independence. "The day is coming," he said in Montreal in 1890,
+"when this country will have to take its place among the nations of
+the earth. ... I want my country's independence to be reached
+through the normal and regular progress of all the elements of its
+populations toward the realization of a common aspiration." Looking
+forward to the issues about which it would be necessary for him to
+have policies, it is not probable that he put the question of
+imperial relationships very high. Certainly he had no idea that it
+would be in dealing with this matter that he would reveal his
+qualities at their highest and lay the surest foundation for his
+fame.
+
+In 1890 Laurier, as we have seen, believed the Canadian future was
+to be that of colonialism for an indefinite period and then
+independence. In 1911, the year he left office, in a letter to a
+friend he said: "We are making for a harbor which was not the harbor
+I foresaw twenty-five years ago, but it is a good harbor. It will
+not be the end. Exactly what the course will be I cannot tell, but I
+think I know the general bearing and I am content." The change in
+view indicated by these words is thus expounded by Professor
+Skelton: "The conception of Canada's status which Sir Wilfrid
+developed in his later years of office was that of a nation within
+the empire." But between the two quoted declarations there lay
+twenty-one years of time, fifteen years of prime ministership and
+the experiences derived from attendance at four imperial conferences
+in succession--another record set by Laurier not likely ever to be
+repeated.
+
+THE IMPERIALIST DRIVE
+
+Laurier's imperial policies were forged in the fire. He took to
+London upon the occasion of each conference a fairly just
+appreciation of what was politically achievable and what was not,
+and there he was put to the test of refusing to be stampeded into
+practicable courses. Professor Skelton records two enlightening
+conversations with Laurier dealing with the difficulties in which
+the colonial representatives in attendance at these gatherings found
+themselves. Said Sir Wilfrid:
+
+"One felt the incessant and unrelenting organization of an
+imperialist campaign. We were looked upon, not so much as individual
+men, but abstractly as colonial statesmen, to be impressed and
+hobbled. The Englishman is as businesslike in his politics,
+particularly his external politics, as in business, even if he
+covers his purposefulness with an air of polite indifference. Once
+convinced that the colonies were worth keeping, he bent to the work
+of drawing them closer within the orbit of London with marvelous
+skill and persistence. In this campaign, which no one could
+appreciate until he had been in the thick of it, social pressure is
+the subtlest and most effective force. In 1897 and 1902 it was Mr.
+Chamberlain's personal insistence that was strongest, but in 1907
+and after, society pressure was the chief force. It is hard to stand
+up against the flattery of a gracious duchess. Weak men's heads are
+turned in an evening, and there are few who can resist long. We were
+dined and wined by royalty and aristocracy and plutocracy and always
+the talk was of empire, empire, empire. I said to Deakin in 1907
+that this was one reason why we could not have a parliament or
+council in London; we can talk cabinet to cabinet, but cannot send
+Canadians or Australians as permanent residents to London, to debate
+and act on their own discretion."
+
+Still more enlightening is this observation:
+
+"Sir Joseph Ward was given prominence in 1911 through the exigencies
+of imperialist politics. At each imperial conference some colonial
+leader was put forward by the imperialists to champion their cause.
+In 1897 it was obvious that they looked to me to act the bell-wether,
+but I fear they were disappointed. In 1902 it was Seddon; in 1907,
+Deakin; in 1911, Ward. He had not Deakin's ability or Seddon's
+force. His London friends stuffed him for his conference speeches;
+he came each day with a carefully typewritten speech, but when once
+off that, he was at sea."
+
+What was the intention of this "unrelenting imperialist campaign"?
+It took many forms, wore many disguises, but in its secret purposes
+it was unchangeable and unwearying. It was a conscious, determined
+attempt to recover what Disraeli lamented that Great Britain had
+thrown away. Twenty years after Disraeli had referred to the
+colonies as "wretched millstones hung about our neck," he changed
+his mind and in 1872 he made an address as to the proper relations
+between the Mother Land and the colonies which is the very
+corner-stone of imperialistic doctrine. His declaration was in these
+words:
+
+"Self-government, in my opinion, when it was conceded, ought to have
+been conceded as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation.
+It ought to have been accompanied by an imperial tariff; by
+securities for the people of England for the enjoyment of the
+unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as their
+trustee; and by a military code which should have precisely defined
+the means, and the responsibilities, by which the colonies should be
+defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for
+aid from the colonies themselves. It ought, further, to have been
+accompanied by the institution of some representative council in the
+metropolis, which would have brought the colonies into constant and
+continuous relations with the home government."
+
+From the day Disraeli uttered these words down to this present time
+there has been a persistent, continuous, well-financed and
+resourceful movement looking towards the establishment in London of
+some kind of a central governing body--parliament, council, cabinet,
+call it what you will--which will determine the foreign policies of
+the British Empire and command in their support the military and
+naval potentialities of all the dominions and dependencies. It fell
+to Laurier to hold the pass against this movement; and this he did
+for fifteen years with patience, sagacity and imperturbable firmness
+against the enraged and embattled imperialists, both of England and
+Canada. Laurier, in the comment quoted above, said that in 1897 the
+imperialists had looked to him to act as the bell-wether. They had
+good reason to be hopeful about his usefulness to them. The imperial
+preference just enacted by the Canadian parliament had been hailed
+both in Canada and Great Britain as a great concession to
+imperialistic sentiment, whereas it was in reality an exceedingly
+astute stroke of domestic politics by which the government lowered
+the tariff and at the same time spiked the guns of the high
+protectionists. In 1897, when Laurier first went to England, the
+imperial movement was at its crescent, synchronous with the great
+welling up of sentiment and reverence called forth by the Diamond
+Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Strachey has a penetrating word about the
+strength which Queen Victoria's "final years of apotheosis" brought
+to the imperialistic movement:
+
+"The imperialist temper of the nation invested her office with a new
+significance exactly harmonizing with her own inmost proclivities.
+The English policy was in the main a common-sense structure; but
+there was always a corner in it where common-sense could not enter.
+. . . Naturally it was in the crown that the mysticism of the
+English polity was concentrated--the crown with its venerable
+antiquity, its sacred associations, its imposing spectacular array.
+But, for nearly two centuries, common-sense had been predominant in
+the great building and the little, unexplored, inexplicable corner
+had attracted small attention. Then with the rise of imperialism
+there was a change. For imperialism is a faith as well as a
+business; as it grew the mysticism in English public life grew with
+it and simultaneously a new importance began to attach to the crown.
+The need for a symbol--a symbol of England's might, of England's
+worth, of England's extraordinary mystical destiny--became felt more
+urgently than before. The crown was the symbol and the crown rested
+upon the head of Victoria."
+
+To be translated from the humdrum life of Ottawa to a foremost place
+in the vast pageantry of the Diamond Jubilee, there to be showered
+with a wealth of tactful and complimentary personal attentions was
+rather too much for Laurier. The oratorical possibilities of the
+occasion took him into camp; and in a succession of speeches he gave
+it as his view that the most entrancing future for Canada was one in
+which she should be represented in the imperial parliament sitting
+in Westminster. "It would be," he told the National Liberal club,
+"the proudest moment of my life if I could see a Canadian of French
+descent affirming the principles of freedom in the parliament of
+Great Britain." This, of course, was nothing but the abandonment of
+the orator to the rhetorical possibilities of the situation. Under
+the impulse of these emotions he fell an easy victim to the
+conspiracy of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Strathcona (of which he later
+made complaint) by which the "democrat to the hilt" (as Laurier had
+proclaimed himself but a short time earlier when he had been given
+prematurely the knightly title at a public function) was transmuted
+into Sir Wilfrid Laurier. It was, therefore, not without apparent
+reason that the imperialists thought that they had captured for
+their own this new romantic and appealing figure from the premier
+British dominion. But when the imperial conference met, Mr.
+Chamberlain, as colonial secretary, encountered not the orator
+intent on captivating his audience, but the cool, cautious statesman
+thinking of the folks at home. When the proposition for the
+establishment of an imperial council was made by Mr. Chamberlain it
+was deftly shelved by a declaration which stated that in the view of
+the colonial prime ministers "the present political relations are
+generally satisfactory under existing conditions." The wording is
+suggestive of Laurier, though it is not known that he drafted the
+statement. The skilful suspension of the issue without meeting it
+was certainly the tactics with which he met and blocked, in
+succeeding conferences, all attempts by the imperialists to give
+practical effect to their doctrine.
+
+FIFTEEN YEARS OF SAYING "NO"
+
+The role which Laurier had to play in the successive conferences was
+not one agreeable to his temperament. It gave no opening for his
+talent. It supplied no opportunities for the making of the kind of
+speeches at which he was a master. It kept him from the centre of
+the stage, a position which Sir Wilfrid Laurier had no objection to
+occupying. It obliged him to courses which, in the setting in which
+he found himself, must at times have seemed ungracious, and this
+must have been a trial to a nature so courtly and considerate. To
+the successive proposals that came before the conference, togged out
+in all the gorgeous garb of Imperialism, he was unable to offer
+constructive alternatives; for his political sense warned him that
+it was twenty years too soon to suggest propositions embodying his
+conception of the true relations of the British nations to one
+another. There was nothing to do but to block all suggestions of
+organic change designed to strengthen the centralizing of power and
+to await the development of a national spirit in Canada to the point
+where it would afford backing for a movement in the opposite
+direction. So Laurier had to look pleasant and keep on saying no. To
+Mr. Chamberlain's proposal in 1897 "to create a great council of the
+Empire," No. To the proposal made at the same time for a Canadian
+money contribution to the navy, No. To these propositions and others
+of like tenor urged in 1902 by Mr. Chamberlain with all his
+persuasive masterfulness, No. No naval subsidy because it "would
+entail an important departure from the principle of Colonial
+self-government." No special military force in the Dominion
+available for service overseas because it "derogated from the powers
+of self-government." To the Pollock-Lyttleton suggestion of a
+Council of advice or a permanent "secretariat" for an "Imperial
+Council," No, because it "might eventually come to be regarded as an
+encroachment upon the full measure of autonomous, legislative and
+administrative power now enjoyed by all the self-governing powers."
+
+Sir Wilfrid's policy was not, however, wholly negative, for he was
+mainly responsible for the formal change in 1907 in the character of
+the periodical conferences. The earlier conferences were between the
+secretary of state and representatives of "the self-governing
+colonies." They were colonial conferences in fact and in name--a
+fact egregiously pictured to the eye in the famous photograph of the
+conference of 1897, revealing Mr. Chamberlain complacently seated,
+with 15 colonial representatives grouped about him in standing
+postures. In 1907 the conference became one between governments
+under the formal title of imperial conference, with the prime
+minister the official chairman, as primus inter pares. It was the
+first exemplification of the new theory of equality.
+
+The change of government in Great Britain in 1905 must have brought
+to Sir Wilfrid a profound sense of relief; it was no longer
+necessary to rest upon his armor night and day. Not that the
+Imperialist drive ceased but it no longer found its starting point
+and rallying place in the Colonial office. The centralists operated
+from without, looking about for someone to put forward their ideas,
+as in 1911 when they took possession of Sir Joseph Ward, New
+Zealand's vain and ambitious Prime Minister, and induced him to
+introduce their half-baked schemes into the Conference. He and they
+were suppressed by universal consent, Sir Wilfrid simply lending a
+hand. Sir Wilfrid's refusal at this conference to join Australia and
+other Dominions in a demand that they be consulted by the British
+government in matters of foreign policy seemed to many out of
+harmony with the Imperial policies which he had been pursuing. Mr.
+Asquith at this conference declared that Great Britain could not
+share foreign policy with the Dominions; and Sir Wilfrid declared
+that Canada did not want to share this responsibility with the
+British government. Seemingly Sir Wilfrid thus accepted, despite his
+repeated claim that Canada was a nation, a subordinate relation to
+Great Britain in the field of foreign relations which is the real
+test of nationhood. In fact, however, this was the crowning
+manifestation of his wariness and far-sightedness. He realized in
+1911 what is only now beginning to be understood by public men who
+succeeded to his high office, that a method of consultation
+obviously defective and carrying with it in reality no suspensory or
+veto power, involves by indirection the adoption of that very
+centralizing system which it had been his purpose to block. If, Sir
+Wilfrid said, Dominions gave advice they must be prepared to back it
+with all their strength; yet "we have taken the position in Canada
+that we do not think we are bound to take part in every war." He saw
+in 1911 as clearly as Lloyd George did in 1921 (as witness the
+latter's statement to the House of Commons in that year on the Irish
+treaty) that the policy of consultation gave the Dominions a shadowy
+and unreal power; but imposed upon them a responsibility, serious
+and inescapable. He thus felt himself obliged to discourage the
+procedure suggested by Premier Fisher of Australia, even though, to
+the superficial observer, this involved him in the contradiction of,
+at the same time, exalting and depreciating the status of his
+country.
+
+
+LAURIER'S VIEW OF CANADA'S FUTURE
+
+What conception was there in Laurier's mind as to the right future
+for Canada? He revealed it pretty clearly on several occasions;
+notably in 1908 in a tercentenary address at Quebec in the presence
+of the present King, when he said: "We are reaching the day when our
+parliament will claim co-equal rights with the British parliament
+and when the only ties binding us together will be a common flag and
+a common crown." He was equally explicit two years later when,
+addressing the Ontario club in Toronto, he said: "We are under the
+suzerainty of the King of England. We are his loyal subjects. We bow
+the knee to him. But the King of England has no more rights over us
+than are allowed him by our own Canadian parliament. If this is not
+a nation, what then is a nation?" Laurier looked forward to the
+complete enfranchisement of Canada as a nation under the British
+Crown, with a status of complete equality with Great Britain in the
+British family. A keen-witted member of the Imperial Conference of
+1911, Sir John G. Findlay, Attorney-General for New Zealand, saw the
+reality behind the anomalous position which Sir Wilfrid held. "I
+recognized," he says, "that Canadian nationalism is beginning to
+resent even the appearance--the constitutional forms--of a
+sub-ordination to the Mother country." "And," he added, revealing
+the clarity of his understanding, "this is not a desire for
+separation." But it was not in London that the question of Imperial
+relationships presented its most thorny aspect. Laurier could
+maintain there a stand-pat, blocking attitude with no more
+disagreeable consequences than perhaps a little social chilliness,
+the symbolical "gracious duchess" showing a touch of hauteur and
+disappointment. It was in the reactions of the issue upon Canadian
+politics that Laurier met with his real difficulties. He could not,
+by tactics of procrastination or evasion, keep the question out
+of the domestic field; the era of abject, passive and unthinking
+colonialism was beginning to pass; and the spirit of nationalism was
+stirring the sluggish waters of Canadian politics. Sir Wilfrid had
+to face the issue and make the best of it. He handled the question
+with consummate adroitness and judgment; but ultimately its
+complexities baffled him and the Imperialists who wanted everything
+done for the Empire and the so-called "Nationalists" of Quebec, who
+wanted nothing done, joined forces against him.
+
+THE CANADIAN IMPERIALISTS
+
+It was the Imperialists in the old country and in Canada who gave
+the issue no rest; they believed, apparently with good reason, that
+a little urgency was all that was needed to make Canada the very
+forefront of the drive for the consolidation of the Empire. The
+English-speaking Canadians were traditionally and aggressively
+British. The basic population in the English provinces was United
+Empire Loyalist, which absorbed and colored all later accretions
+from the Motherland--an immigration which in its earlier stages was
+also largely militarist following the reduction of the army
+establishment upon the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. It was
+inspired with a traditional hostility to the American republic. The
+hereditary devotion to the British Crown, of which Victoria to the
+passing generations appeared to be the permanent and unchanging
+personification, threw into eclipse the corresponding sentiment in
+England. English-speaking Canadians were more British than the
+British; they were more loyal than the Queen. One can get an
+admirable idea of the state of Ontario feeling in the addresses at
+the various U.E. L. celebrations in the year 1884; in both its
+resentments and its affections there was something childish and
+confiding.
+
+Imperialism, on its sentimental side, was a glorification of the
+British race; it was a foreshadowing of the happy time when this
+governing and triumphant people would give the world the blessing of
+the pax Britannica. "We are not yet," said Ruskin in his inaugural
+address, "dissolute in temper but still have the firmness to govern
+and the grace to obey." In this address he preached that if England
+was not to perish, "she must found colonies as fast and far as she
+is able," while for the residents of these colonies "their chief
+virtue is to be fidelity to their country (i.e. England) and their
+first aim is to be to advance the power of England by land and sea."
+Seely got rid of all problems of relationship and of status by
+expanding England to take in all the colonies; the British Empire
+was to become a single great state on the model of the United
+States. "Here, too," he said, "is a great homogeneous people, one
+in blood, language, religion and laws, but dispersed over a
+boundless space." Such a conception was vastly agreeable to the more
+aggressive and assertive among the English Canadians. It kindled
+their imagination; from being colonists of no account in the
+backwash of the world's affairs, they became integrally a part of a
+great Imperial world-wide movement of expansion and domination; were
+they not of what Chamberlain called "that proud, persistent,
+self-asserting and resolute stock which is infallibly destined to be
+the predominating force in the future history and civilization of
+the world"? Moreover, it gave them a sense of their special
+importance here in Canada where the population was not "homogeneous
+in blood, language and religion;" it was for them, they felt, to
+direct policy and to control events; to take charge and see that
+developments were in keeping with suggestions from headquarters
+overseas.
+
+What these Canadian parties to the great Imperial drive thought of
+Sir Wilfrid's dilatory, evasive and blocking tactics is not a matter
+of surmise. Upon this point they did not practise the fine art of
+reticence; and their angry expostulations are to be found in the
+pages of Hansard, in the editorial pages of the Conservative press,
+in the political literature of the time, in heavy condemnatory
+articles which found publication through various mediums. Thus Sir
+George Foster could see in Laurier's statements to the Ontario club
+nothing but "foolish, even mischievous talk." "If," he added, "they
+are merely for the sake of rhetorical adornment they are but
+foolish. If, however, they are studied and serious they are
+revolutionary." And to the extent that they could they made trouble
+for Sir Wilfrid, in which labor of love they were energetically
+assisted, upon occasion, by high officials from the other side of
+the Atlantic. Laurier had five years of more or less continuous
+struggle with Lord Minto, a combination of country squire and heavy
+dragoon, who was sent to Canada as governor-general in 1898 to
+forward by every means in his power the Chamberlain policies. He
+busied himself at once and persistently in trying to induce the
+Canadian government to commit itself formally to the policy of
+supplying Canadian troops for Imperial wars. In the spring of 1899
+he wanted an assurance which would justify the war office in
+"reckoning officially" upon Canadian troops "in case of war with a
+European power;" in July he urged an offer of troops in the event of
+war in South Africa which "would be a proof that the component parts
+of the Empire are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder to support
+Imperial interests." With the outbreak of the South African war,
+Lord Minto regarded himself less as Governor-General than as
+Imperial commissioner charged with the vague and shadowy powers
+which go with that office; and Sir Wilfrid had, in consequence, to
+instruct him on more than one occasion that Canada was still a
+self-governing country and not a military satrapy. Professor Skelton
+does nothing more than barely allude to these troubles; the story,
+which would be most interesting and suggestive, will perhaps never
+be told. But some idea of what was afoot can be drawn from the fact
+that at a public gathering in Montreal in the month of November,
+1899, Lord Minto was advised and instructed by an active politician
+and leading lawyer that under his powers as the representative of
+Imperial authority he could order the Canadian militia to South
+Africa without reference to the Canadian parliament!
+
+Associated with Lord Minto in the applying of Imperial pressure to
+the Canadian government was General Hutton, commander of the
+Canadian forces. In those days this position was always filled by an
+Imperial officer who was given leave of absence in order that he
+might fill the position. He was thus a Canadian official, paid out
+of the Canadian treasury and subject to the Canadian government; but
+few of the occupants of the office were capable of appreciating this
+fact. They regarded themselves as representatives of the war office
+with large but undefined powers in the exercise of which they
+frequently found themselves in conflict with the Canadian
+government. General Hutton's interfering activities were so
+objectionable that he was got rid of by a face-saving expedient; but
+four years later a successor to his office, Lord Dundonald, was
+formally dismissed by order-in-council for his "unpardonable
+indiscretion" in publicly criticizing the acting minister of
+militia. Lord Minto, unofficially advised by military officers and
+opposition politicians, resisted signing the order-in-council until
+it was made clear to him that the alternative would be a general
+election in which the issue would be his refusal. The incident was
+conclusive as to the necessity of having a Canadian at the head of
+the Canadian forces--a change which was subsequently effected.
+
+These controversies and conflicts of opinion became factors in
+Canadian politics. The Conservatives sought in the general elections
+of 1900 to make an issue out of the government's hesitation in
+taking part in the South African war in advance of the meeting of
+parliament; this, plus injudicious and provocative speeches by the
+incalculable Mr. Tarte and the general indictment of Laurier as
+lukewarm towards the cause of a "united Empire" weakened the
+Liberals in Ontario; but this loss was easily off-set by gains
+elsewhere. Again in 1904 the Dundonald issue was effective only in
+Ontario which, in keeping with what appears to be an instinctive
+political process, was beginning to consolidate itself as a
+make-weight against the overwhelming predominance of Liberalism in
+Quebec. In the 1908 elections the Imperial question was almost
+quiescent in the English provinces; but it was beginning to emerge
+in a different guise and with aspects distinctly threatening to
+Laurier in his own province.
+
+"COLONIALISM INGRAINED AND IMMITIGABLE"
+
+Laurier in resisting the Chamberlain push knew that even English-Canada,
+long somnolent under a colonial regime, was not in the mood
+to accept the radical innovations that were being planned in
+Whitehall; and he knew, still better, that his own people would be
+against the programme to a man. The colonialism of the French-Canadians
+was immitigable and ingrained. They had secured from the
+British parliament in 1774 special immunities and privileges as the
+result of Sir Guy Carleton's hallucination that given these the
+French-Canadian habitant would assist the British authorities in
+chastising the rebellious American colonists into submission. These
+privileges, continued and embodied in the act of confederation, were
+enjoyed by the French-Canadians--as they believed--by virtue of
+Imperial guarantees; they held that they were safe in their
+enjoyment only While there was in the last analysis British control
+over Canada and while the final judgment on Canadian laws was passed
+by British courts. But their colonialism, unlike that of the
+English-Canadians, was of a quality that could never be transmuted into
+Imperialism. The racial mysticism of that movement repelled them;
+and still more they were deterred by the cost and dangers of
+Imperialistic adventure. It was for England, in return for their
+whole-hearted acceptance of colonial subordination, to protect them
+internally against any courses by the English-Canadians which they
+might choose to regard as an infringement of their privileged
+position and externally against all danger of invasion or conquest.
+
+If Sir Wilfrid had been called upon to choose only between these two
+camps he could perhaps have made a choice which would not have been
+ultimately a political liability. But the situation was not so
+simple. There was a third factor which, alike by inclination and
+political necessity, Sir Wilfrid had to take into account. This was
+Canadian nationalism, in contrast with the racial nationalism of
+which Mr. Bourassa was the apostle. The backing upon which Sir
+Wilfrid relied at first to resist the military and naval policies of
+the Imperialists was the timidity and reluctances of colonialism;
+but he knew that this was at best a temporary expedient. To urgings
+that Canada should assist in the upkeep of the Imperial navy by
+money contributions and should also maintain special militia forces
+available for service in Imperial wars overseas, Sir Wilfrid felt
+that some more plausible reply than a brusque refusal was necessary;
+and he met them with the contention that Canada must create military
+and naval forces for her own defence which would be available for
+the wars of the Empire at the discretion of the Canadian parliament.
+These views put forward almost tentatively in 1902 ultimately bore
+fruit in definite policies of national defence. Thus the answer to
+demand for naval contribution, to which policy all the other
+Dominions had subscribed, was to declare that Canada should have her
+own navy; and this took form, after numerous skirmishes with
+admiralty opinion, which was scandalized at the suggestion, in the
+Naval Service Bill of 1910.
+
+This course, which was thus urged upon Sir Wilfrid by events, earned
+him the displeasure of both the Imperialists and the Little
+Canadians. To the former Laurier's policy seemed little short of
+treasonable, particularly his insistence that while Canada was at
+war when England was at war the extent, if any, of Canada's
+participation in such war must be determined solely by the Canadian
+parliament. His own countrymen on the other hand viewed with
+disquietude these first halting steps along the road of national
+preparedness; might it not lead by easy gradations to that "vortex
+of militarism" against which Sir Wilfrid had voiced an eloquent
+warning? Where there is opinion capable of being exploited against a
+government the exploiter soon appears. In Quebec, Monk,
+Conservative, and the Nationalist, Bourassa, who entering Parliament
+as a follower of Laurier had developed a strong antipathy to him,
+were indefatigable in alarming the habitant by interpreting to him
+the secret purposes of the naval service bill. It was nothing, they
+claimed, but an Imperialistic device by which the Canadian youth
+would be dragged from his peaceful fireside to become cannon fodder
+in the Empire's wars. Meanwhile in the English provinces, the
+government's policy was fiercely attacked as inadequate and verging
+upon disloyalty by the Imperialists. The Conservative opposition,
+after one virtuous interlude in 1909 when they showed a fleeting
+desire to take a non-political and national view of this matter of
+defence, could not resist the temptation to profit by the campaign
+against the government's policy; and they joined shrilly in the
+derisive cry of "tin pot navy." These onslaughts from opposite camps
+were a factor in the elections of 1911; especially in Quebec where
+twenty-seven constituencies (against eleven in 1908) elected
+opponents of Laurier.
+
+POLICIES THAT ENDURE
+
+Sir Wilfrid fell; but his Imperial policies lived. During the
+campaign the old country Imperialists had been very busy from
+Rudyard Kipling down--or up--in lending aid to the forces fighting
+the Liberal government; and its defeat was the occasion for much
+rejoicing among them. Mr. A. Bonar Law, M. P., doubtless voiced
+their views when he predicted under the incoming regime, "a real
+advance towards the organic union of the Empire." All these hopes,
+like many which preceded them, were short-lived; for Sir Robert
+Borden, once he got his bearings, took over the Laurier policies and
+widened them. In that significant fact the clue to these policies is
+found. They were not personal to Laurier, owing their coolness
+towards perfervid Chamberlainism to his lack of English blood as his
+critics held; they were in fact national policies dictated by the
+necessities of the times. To the casual student of the development
+of Imperial relations for the decade following 1896, it might seem
+that the Liberal conception of an Empire evolving steadily into a
+league of free nations was only saved from destruction by the
+fortunate circumstance that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was during those
+years the representative of Canada at successive Imperial
+conferences; but this would be, perhaps, to put his services too
+high. Canada's public men have never failed her in the critical
+times in her history when attempts were made through ignorance or
+design to turn her aside from the high road to national sovereignty;
+as witness Gait in 1859, Blake in his long duel with Lord Carnarvon,
+Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885, when he resisted the premature demand
+for a Canadian contingent for service in the Soudan, Tupper in the
+early nineties when his vigorous resistance to the proposal that
+Canada should pay tribute for protection had something to do with
+the demise of the Imperial Federation League. Any man fit to be
+premier of Canada would have taken pretty much the position that Sir
+Wilfrid did. This does not in the least detract from the credit due
+Laurier. The task was his and he discharged it with tact, ability,
+patience and courage. For his services in holding their future open
+for them every British Dominion owes the memory of Laurier a statue
+in its parliament square.
+
+
+
+PART THREE. FIFTEEN YEARS OF PREMIERSHIP
+
+There have been prime ministers of Canada casually thrown up by the
+tide of events and as casually re-engulfed; but Wilfrid Laurier was
+not one of them. There may have been something accidental in his
+rise to leadership, but his capture of the premiership was a solid
+political achievement. The victory of June 23, 1896, crowned with
+triumph the daring strategy of the campaign. But popular opinion
+regarded the victory as a gift of the gods. The wheel of fortune
+spinning from the hands of fate had thrown into the high office of
+the premiership one about whose qualifications there was doubt even
+in the secret minds of many of his supporters. He was a man of
+charming manners and of gracious personality. His carriage on the
+platform and the grace and finish of his speaking had fascinated the
+public imagination. But what likelihood was there that these
+qualities would enable him to deal adequately with the harsh
+realities, the stubborn problems which he must face as premier? Most
+unlikely, it was generally agreed. The Conservatives, though
+profoundly chagrined at the trick fate had played upon them, looked
+forward with pleasurable expectation to the revenge that would be
+theirs when Laurier, political dilettante and amateur, took up the
+burden that had been too great for their own Ulysses. They foresaw a
+Laurier regime which for futility and brevity would take its place
+in history with the ill-starred prime ministership of Mackenzie. The
+average Liberal felt that the government, which would get its
+driving force and executive power from someone else--identity not
+yet revealed--would have in Laurier a most attractive and genial
+figurehead. These illusions long persisted, though there was little
+excuse for them on election night and still less a month later when
+the Laurier cabinet was in being.
+
+To be a Rouge and to be in Montreal during the three weeks following
+the glorious 23rd of June was the height of felicity. After nearly
+50 years of proscription and impotence in their own province, they
+were triumphant and dominant. Moreover, since they had supplied the
+majority which made possible the taking of office by the Liberals,
+they would be triumphant and dominant as well in the Dominion field.
+Among the election occurrences which they regarded as specially
+providential was the defeat of Tarte in Beauharnois. If he had been
+elected it might have been necessary for Laurier to do something for
+him, but now that he had fallen upon the glacis of the impregnable
+fortress he had elected to assail, who were they to repine over the
+doings of fate? "The Moor has done his work; the Moor can go!"
+Moreover, had he not been for long an inveterate Bleu? Had he not
+actually been the organizer of Bleu victory when Laurier experienced
+his memorable defeat in Drummond-Arthabaska in 1877? His defeat made
+it possible to have a simon-pure Rouge contingent from Quebec.
+
+While they were thus indulging in roseate day-dreams the actual
+business of cabinetmaking was going forward, with Tarte at Laurier's
+right hand as chief adviser from Quebec. The writer has a very clear
+recollection of a long conversation which he had at that time with
+Tarte. Much of it was given up to picturesque and forthright
+denunciation by Tarte of the means by which he had been defeated in
+Beauharnois. The mill-owners at Valleyfield, he said, had lined up
+their operatives and had given them the option of voting for
+Bergeron or getting out. The worth to a country of an industrial
+system which makes political serfs of its workmen was vigorously
+challenged in language which had little resemblance to the harangues
+which led to Tarte's undoing six years later. From this he went on
+to speak of Laurier's qualities and the amazing ignorance of them
+shown even by his intimates of his own race. There had been much
+speculation in Montreal as to who should be the new high
+commissioner for Canada in London. Sir Donald A. Smith, who had been
+appointed in the last weeks of Conservative rule, would be, it was
+assumed, dismissed. Tarte scouted the idea that Smith would be
+disturbed. Laurier was not that kind of a man. He would not dismiss
+Smith; he would make friends with him. Sir Donald was a man of
+affairs, and so was Laurier; they would co-operate with one another.
+"These people do not understand Laurier; he has a governing mind; he
+wants to do things; he has plans; he will walk the great way of life
+with anyone of good intention who will join him." With much more to
+the same effect. To Tarte, who was his intimate, Laurier at this
+moment did not appear as one overcome with his destiny and drifting
+with the tide, but as the resolute captain of the ship, who knew
+where he wanted to go, had a fairly clear idea as to how to get
+there, and also knew whom he wanted with him on the voyage. Later on
+Tarte forgot about this.
+
+THE MAKING OF THE GOVERNMENT
+
+There was verification of Tarte's estimate in the job of cabinet-making
+turned out by Laurier in July. In building the government the
+lines of least resistance were not followed. A dozen men who deemed
+themselves sure of cabinet rank found themselves overlooked; five of
+fifteen portfolios went to men imported from provincial arenas
+without Dominion parliamentary experience. Laurier knew the kind of
+government he wanted and he provided himself with such a government
+by the direct method of getting the colleagues he desired wherever
+he could find them. No doubt he found plenty of employment for his
+sunny ways in placating his disappointed colleagues. In time there
+were consolation prizes for all, for this one a judgeship, for that
+one a lieutenant-governorship, for the next a life seat in the
+senate; the phalanx of fighting second-raters who had done valuable
+work in opposition, reinforcing and buttressing the work of the
+front benches disappeared gradually from parliament. And with those
+he chose he too had his way, as witness the side-tracking of Sir
+Richard Cartwright to the dignified but at the time relatively
+unimportant department of trade and commerce. Between Sir Richard
+and the Canadian manufacturers there was a blood feud. It was not
+Sir Wilfrid's intention to make the feud his own or even to agree to
+it being carried on by Sir Richard. He took for minister of finance,
+W. S. Fielding, who justified his choice by successfully steering
+the budget bark between Scylla and Charybdis for fourteen years in
+succession before the whirlpool finally sucked him down. Where
+Laurier went outside his following for colleagues he had equally
+definite ends to serve.
+
+The care with which Laurier chose his colleagues, and his
+indifference to personal appeal, should have been proof sufficient
+to the public that he was a prime minister who looked forward and
+planned for the future. And the plan? Why to stay in power for the
+longest possible period of time. It is as natural for a government
+to want to stay in power as it is for a man to want to live; nor is
+there in this anything discreditable. A prime minister is sure that
+he desires to retain power in order that he may serve the country as
+no rival could conceivably serve it; and even if the desire fades
+and is replaced by a lively appreciation of the personal
+satisfactions which can be served by the office, no real prime
+minister notices the transformation. The ego and the country soon
+become interblended in his mind. A prime minister under the party
+system as we have had it in Canada is of necessity an egotist and
+autocrat. If he comes to office without these characteristics his
+environment equips him with them as surely as a diet of royal jelly
+transforms a worker into a queen bee.
+
+Laurier saw that an efficient government, harmonious in its policies
+and ably led, would afford a contrast to the preceding
+administration that must forcibly impress the Canadian people. He,
+therefore created a government of all the talents. Anxious for
+discreet handling of the difficult fiscal problem he turned to Nova
+Scotia for W. S. Fielding. Foreseeing the possibility of grave
+constitutional problems arising he put the portfolio of justice into
+the hands of the wisest and most venerable of Liberals, Sir Oliver
+Mowat. Recognizing that a backward and stagnant west meant failure
+for his administration he placed the department of interior, which
+had become a veritable circumlocution office, under the direction of
+the ablest and most aggressive of western Liberal public men,
+Clifford Sifton. The time was to come when other values were to hold
+in relation to cabinet appointments; but in the beginning efficiency
+was the test, at least in intention. It was thus Laurier proposed in
+part to build foundations under his house that it might endure. And
+to insure that virtue should not lack its reward he proceeded to
+buttress the edifice by a second line of support.
+
+In the general election of 1896 the Liberal strategy had been to
+give the party managers in the English provinces an apparent choice
+of the best weapons, but with all these advantages the results
+showed that they had barely held their own. The majority came from
+Quebec where Laurier had apparently to face the heaviest odds. The
+natural inference was not lost upon Laurier. If he was to remain in
+power he must look to Quebec for his majority. A majority was
+necessary and he must get it where it was to be had. This decision
+was at first probably purely political. The consequences were not
+fully foreseen, that to get this support a price would have to be
+paid--by the Liberals of the other provinces. Still less was it
+foreseen that the overwhelming support of his own people would
+become not only politically essential to Laurier but a moral
+necessity as well--something which in time he felt, by an imperious
+demand of the spirit, that he must hold even though this allegiance
+became not a political asset but a liability. Gradually, perhaps
+insensibly at first, in opposition possibly to his judgment,
+certainly to his public professions oft repeated, he came to regard
+it as necessary to so shape party policy as always to command the
+approval of French-Canadian public opinion. Sir Wilfrid lived to
+see, as the culmination of 20 years of this policy, the French and
+the English-Canadians more sharply divided than they had been for 80
+years. Such is the capacity of the human mind for self-deception
+that he could see in this divergence nothing but the proof that his
+life's work had been destroyed by envious and designing men.
+
+THE FOUNDATION STONE OF POLICY
+
+Quebec in turning Laurierite did not turn Liberal. This was the
+factor hidden from the public eye that governed the future. The
+Laurier sweep of Quebec in 1896 was the result of a combination of
+the Bleu and Rouge elements. The old dominant French-Canadian party
+had been made up of Bleus and Castors--factions bitterly divided by
+differences of temperament, of outlook and belief, and still more by
+desperate personal feuds between the leaders. When the coming of
+responsible government broke up the solidarity of the French-Canadians
+they separated into three groups, the controlling factor in each
+case being religious belief. The Castors were ultra-clerical
+and ultramontane; the Bleus inherited the tradition of Gallicanism;
+the Rouges imported and adapted the anti-clericalism of European
+Liberals. Various influences--the brilliance and resourcefulness of
+Cartier's leadership and antipathy to Rouge extremism among them--kept
+Bleu and Castor in an uneasy alliance. This alliance began to
+disintegrate when Laurier rose to the command of the Liberals. There
+was a steady drift from the Bleu to the Liberal camp--by this time
+the old definition of "Rouge" was under taboo; and in 1896 the Bleus
+moved over almost in a body. This was not an altogether instinctive
+and voluntary movement; it was suggested, inspired, successfully
+shepherded and safely delivered.
+
+Tarte's confidence that Laurier could win Quebec was not based
+wholly upon faith in the power of Laurier's personal appeal. He was
+himself a Bleu leader brought into accidental relations with the
+Liberals. His breach with the Conservatives began as one of the
+unending Castor-Bleu feuds. His knowledge of the McGreevy-Connolly
+frauds gave him the power, as he thought, to blow the Castor chief,
+Sir Hector Langevin--a cold, selfish, greedy, domineering, rather
+stupid man--into thinnest air, thus opening the road to the
+leadership of the French-Conservatives to his friend and leader, the
+brilliant, unscrupulous and ambitious Chapleau. He over-estimated
+his power. The whole strength of the government at Ottawa was at
+once concentrated in keeping the lid on that smouldering cauldron of
+stench and rottenness, the system of practical politics of that day.
+The Conservative chiefs tried to suppress Tarte and he refused to be
+suppressed--there was not a drop of coward's blood in his veins.
+Then they set to work to destroy him. He sought a refuge and he
+found it--in parliament, to which he was elected in 1891 as an
+Independent as the result of an arrangement with Laurier. As he used
+to say, it was a case of parliament or jail for him.
+
+Inevitably, in following up his charges in parliament, Tarte was
+thrown into more and more intimate relations with the Liberal
+leaders. He knew that for him there was no Conservative forgiveness;
+as he was wont to say: "I have spoiled the soup for too many." It
+was not long before Sir John Thompson could congratulate Laurier, in
+one of the sharpest sayings parliament ever heard, upon having among
+his lieutenants--"the black Tarte and the yellow Martin." For ten
+years he remained Laurier's chief lieutenant in Quebec, but he never
+in any sense of the word became a Liberal, though in 1902, just
+before he was thrown from the battlements, he busied himself in
+reading lifelong Liberals out of the party. Chapleau, who was
+Tarte's confidant and ally, though he was also a member of the
+Dominion government, became Lieutenant-governor of Quebec and
+retired to Spencer Wood, but not to forget politics among its
+shades. When the peculiar developments of the Dominion campaign of
+1896 made it evident that Conservative victory in Quebec under the
+virtual leadership of the bishops meant the permanent domination of
+the Castors, the whole Bleu influence was thrown to the Liberals.
+
+Professor Skelton's life of Laurier does not take us much behind the
+scenes. It is in the main a record of political events, with
+comments upon Laurier's relations to them. Laurier's letters, mostly
+to unnamed correspondents, are of slight interest, but to this there
+are a few notable exceptions. There are letters between Laurier,
+Tarte and Chapleau of the greatest political value. They make clear
+to a demonstration, what shrewd political observers of that day
+surmised, that there was a definite political understanding between
+these three men. This explains the composition of the Quebec
+delegation in the Laurier government. Apart from Laurier there was
+in it no representative of French Catholic Liberalism, unless the
+purely nominal honor of minister without portfolio given to C. A.
+Geoffrion is to be taken as giving this representation. C. A. did
+not put the honor very high. "I am," he said, "the mat before the
+door." Tarte, a Quebecker and a Bleu, became Montreal's
+representative at Ottawa. Disappointment among the Liberals led
+first to rage and then to rage plus fear as Tarte with the magic
+wand of the patronage and power of the public works department,
+began to make over the party organization in the province. Open
+rebellion under Francois Langelier broke out in December: "A
+coalition with Chapleau," Langelier informed the public, "is under
+way." But the rebellion died away. The Laurier influence was too
+strong. Langelier was quite right in his statement. The coalition
+movement at that time was far advanced. The letter from Chapleau to
+Laurier, bearing date February 21, 1897, quoted by Professor
+Skelton, was that of one political intimate to another. Take this
+paragraph as an illustration: "The Castors in the battle of June
+23rd 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 only in
+catalogues of extinct species." The reference to the coming
+extinction of the Castors had relation to the then pending
+provincial elections as to which he made certain references to
+political strokes which "I am preparing." Associated with this
+Laurier-Tarte-Chapleau triumvirate was a fourth, C. A. Dansereau,
+nominally postmaster of Montreal, actually the most restless
+political intriguer in the province of Quebec. Dansereau had been
+the brains of the old Senecal-Chapleau combination which had
+dominated Quebec in the eighties. Just what Laurier thought of the
+company he was now keeping was a matter of record for he had set it
+forth in a famous article in L'Electeur in 1882 entitled "The Den of
+Thieves," which led to L. A. Senecal, the Bleu "boss," prosecuting
+him for criminal libel. Laurier stood his trial in Montreal, pleaded
+justification, and after a hard fought battle won a virtual triumph
+through a disagreement of the jury with ten of the jurymen favorable
+to acquittal.
+
+LAST ROUND WITH THE BISHOPS
+
+Little wonder that Francois Langelier, his brother Charles, and
+other associates of Laurier in the lean years of proscription were
+consumed with indignation that Laurier should pass them by to
+associate with his former enemies. They did not realize the
+political necessity that controlled Laurier's course. Laurier had
+great need to hold his new allies for his position in Quebec for the
+first year or so of office was precarious. The Manitoba school
+question had still to be settled. Laurier was political realist
+enough to know that he would have to take what he could get and this
+he would have to dress up and present to the public as his own
+child. He knew that the bishops, chagrined, humiliated, enraged by
+their election experience, were only waiting for the announcement of
+settlement to open war on him. It would then depend upon whether or
+not they were more successful than in June in commanding the support
+of their people. In Laurier's own words: "They will not pardon us
+for their check of last summer; they want revenge at all costs."
+
+The real fight, it was recognized, would be in Rome. Thither there
+went within two months of the Liberals taking office, two emissaries
+of the French Liberals, the parish priest of St. Lin, a lifelong,
+personal and political friend of Laurier, and Chevalier Drolet, one
+of the Canadian papal Zouaves, who had rallied to the defence of the
+Holy City twenty-six years before. There followed swiftly two more
+distinguished intermediaries, Charles Fitzpatrick, solicitor-general
+of Canada, and Charles Russell, of London, son of Lord Russell of
+Killowen. Backing them up was a petition to the pope signed by
+Laurier and forty-four members of parliament, protesting against the
+political actions of the Canadian episcopate. Nor did the Canadian
+hierarchy lack representation in Rome. While this conflict of
+influence was in progress at Rome, the terms of the Manitoba school
+settlement were made public in November, 1896. The settlement
+embodied substantial concessions in fact, but Archbishop Langevin
+and his fellow clerics at once fell upon it. Langevin denounced it
+as a farce. To Cardinal Begin it appeared an "indefensible
+abandonment of the best established, most sacred rights of the
+Catholic minority." A regime of religious proscription was
+inaugurated. Public men were subjected to intimidation; Liberal
+newspapers were banned, among them L'Electeur, the chief organ of
+the party. The bishops destroyed themselves by their violence. Rome
+does not lightly quarrel with governments and prime ministers. By
+March Mgr. Merry Del Val was in Canada as apostolic delegate; and
+though care was taken to save the faces of the bishops, their
+concerted assaults upon the government ceased. Laurier had never
+again to face the embattled bishops, which is not the same thing as
+saying that they ceased to take a hand in politics. As Professor
+Skelton truly remarks: "The Archbishop of Montreal, Monseigneur 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 thunderbolts of the doughty old warrior of Three Rivers."
+With the bishops silenced, Laurier's foes in Quebec found the issue
+valueless to them. Their political associates from other provinces,
+after the disappointment of 1896, would not consent to a revival of
+the question. One of the party leaders declared he would not touch
+it with a forty-foot pole. Tupper formally erased it from the party
+calendar. The question remained quiescent; but Laurier always
+remained in fear of its re-emergence; and with cause. The
+resentments it left went underground and later had a revival in the
+passionate zeal with which the Quebec clergy embraced the faith of
+nationalism as preached by Bourassa. In one respect the school
+question and its settlement proved useful. It was the exhibit
+unfailingly displayed to prove upon needed occasions that the charge
+was quite untrue that in directing party policy Laurier was unduly
+sensitive to Quebec sentiment. In effect it was said: "Laurier made
+Quebec swallow in 1896; now it is your turn"--a formula which
+finally became tedious through repetition.
+
+SUPREME IN QUEBEC
+
+The second issue which appeared for a moment to put Laurier's grip
+on Quebec in peril was the South African war. Looking back
+twenty-three years it is pretty clear that Laurier's position at the
+outbreak of the war, that the Canadian parliament should be
+consulted as to the sending of a contingent, was wholly reasonable.
+Those were the days of heady Imperialism in the English provinces;
+and, vigorously stirred up by Laurier's party foes for political
+purposes, it struck out with a violence which threatened to bring
+serious political consequences in its train. Tarte was credited with
+having declared publicly in the Russell House rotunda: "Not a man
+nor a cent for South Africa," which did not help matters. The storm
+was so instant and threatening that Laurier and his colleagues bowed
+before it. By order-in-council Canada authorized the sending of a
+contingent. Other contingents followed, and Canada took part in the
+war on terms of limited liability which were agreeable to both the
+British and Canadian governments.
+
+The South African war was most unpopular with the French-Canadians,
+but the unpopularity did not extend to Laurier. They agreed in
+theory with Bourassa but they recognized that Laurier had yielded to
+force majeure. Indeed the very violence with which Laurier was
+assailed in Ontario strengthened his hold in Quebec. It is not easy
+for a proud people to stomach insults such as, for instance, the
+remark in the Toronto News, that the English-Canadians would find
+some way of "emancipating themselves from the dominance of an
+inferior people whom peculiar circumstances had placed in authority
+in the Dominion." The election of 1900 gave Laurier fifty-eight
+supporters in the province of Quebec out of a total of sixty-five
+seats. The Rouge-Bleu coalition had not come off officially,
+Chapleau's death in 1898 having removed the necessity of formally
+recognizing his services, but the coalition of Bleu and Rouge
+elements had taken place; and it held so firmly that when some of
+the architects of the fusion tried later to undo their work they
+found this could not be done. Dansereau was the first to go. Mr.
+Mulock, the postmaster-general, entirely oblivious of the fact that
+Dansereau was one of the main wheels in the Quebec machine and
+seeing in him only an entirely incapable postmaster, fired him in
+1899 with as little hesitation as a section boss would show in
+bouncing an incompetent navvy. Tarte and Laurier tried to patch up
+the quarrel, but Dansereau preferred to return to journalism as
+editor of an independent journal whose traditions were Conservative.
+He was to be, five years later, one of the leaders in that curious
+conspiracy, the MacKenzie-Mann-Berthiaume-La Presse deal--the details
+of which as told by Professor Skelton read like a detective yarn--which
+was turned into opera bouffe by Laurier's decisive and timely
+interference. In 1902, Tarte, in Laurier's absence and in the belief
+that he could not resume the premiership on account of illness,
+attempted to seize the successorship by pre-emption, and was
+promptly dismissed from office by Laurier. Tarte and Dansereau tried
+to rally the Bleu forces against Laurier, but these were no longer
+distinguishable from the Liberal hosts into which they had merged.
+Their day was over and their power gone. Laurier reigned supreme.
+
+These commitments and considerations furnished the background to the
+drama of Laurier's premiership. Much that took place on the fore-stage
+is only intelligible by taking a long vision of the whole setting.
+There was nothing of assertiveness or truculence in this
+steady movement by which Liberal policy and outlook was given a new
+orientation, Quebec replacing Ontario as the determinant. Students
+of politics can trace the changing influence through the fifteen
+years of Liberal rule, in legislation, in appointments and in
+administrative policies. One or two illustrations might be noted.
+
+A CHALLENGE AND A CHECK
+
+During the crisis of 1905 over the school provisions in the Autonomy
+bills erecting Alberta and Saskatchewan into provinces, Walter
+Scott, M.P., in a letter quoted by Professor Skelton, refers to the
+"almost unpardonable bungling" which had brought the crisis about.
+But Sir Wilfrid did not step into this difficulty by mischance. He
+knew precisely what he was doing though he did not foresee the
+consequences of his action because with all his experience and
+sagacity he never could foretell how political developments would
+react upon the English-Canadian mind. The educational provisions of
+the autonomy bill were designed to remove the still lingering
+resentment of Quebec over the settlement of the Manitoba school
+question and to further this purpose Sir Wilfrid indulged in his
+speech introducing these bills in that entirely gratuitous laudation
+of separate schools which had on Ontario and western Canadian
+opinion the enlivening effect of a match thrown into a powder
+barrel. This incident revealed not only the tendency of Laurier's
+policy but illustrated the tactics which he had developed for
+achieving his ends in the face of opposition within the party. Upon
+occasions of this kind he was addicted to confronting his associates
+and followers with an accomplished fact, leaving no alternative to
+submission but a palace rebellion which he felt confident no one
+would attempt. By such methods he had already rounded several
+dangerous corners, as for instance his committing Canada to submit
+her case in the matter of the Alaska boundaries to a tribunal
+without an umpire--though it was the clearly understood policy of
+the Canadian government and the Canadian parliament to insist upon
+an umpire; and he resorted again to a stroke of this character in
+1905. Professor Skelton's story of the crisis is the official
+version, but there is another version which happens to be more
+authentic.
+
+Following the general election of 1904, the government decided to
+deal without further delay with the matter of setting up the new
+provinces. It was known that there was danger of revival of the
+school question, for during the election campaign a Toronto
+newspaper had sought to make this an issue, contending that the
+delay in giving the provinces constitutions was due to the demand of
+the Roman Catholic church that they should include a provision for
+separate schools. The policy agreed upon by the government was to
+continue in the provincial constitutions the precise rights enjoyed
+by the minority under the territorial school ordinances of 1901.
+There was a vigorous controversy in parliament as to whether the
+autonomy bills in their original form kept faith with this
+understanding. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Mr. Fitzpatrick, minister of
+justice, contended vehemently that they did. Clifford Sifton, who
+was the western representative in the cabinet and the party most
+directly interested, held that they did not. Mr. Sifton was absent
+in the Southern States when the bill was drafted. He reached Ottawa
+on his return the day after Sir Wilfrid had introduced the bills to
+parliament. He at once resigned. Fielding, who had also been absent,
+was credited with sharing to a considerable extent Sifton's view
+that the bill introduced did not embody the policy agreed upon. The
+resulting crisis put the government in jeopardy. A considerable
+number of members associated themselves with Mr. Sifton and the
+government was advised that their support for the measure could only
+be secured if clauses were substituted for the provisions in the act
+to which objection was taken. To make sure that there would be no
+mistake that the substituted provisions should merely continue the
+territorial law as it stood, they insisted upon drafting the
+alternative clauses themselves. Sir Wilfrid, acutely conscious that
+this constituted a challenge to his prestige and authority, used
+every artifice and expedient at his command to induce the insurgents
+either to accept the original clause or alternatives drafted by Mr.
+Fitzpatrick; for the first time the tactical suggestion that
+resignation would follow noncompliance was put forward. The
+dissentient members stood to their guns; Sir Wilfrid yielded and the
+measure thus amended commanded the vote of the entire party with one
+Ontario dissentient.
+
+The storm blew over but the wreckage remained. The episode did
+Laurier harm in the English provinces. It predisposed the public
+mind to suspicion and thus made possible the ne temere and Eucharist
+congress agitations which were later factors in solidifying Ontario
+against him. In Quebec it gave Mr. Bourassa, whose hostility to
+Laurier was beginning to take an active form, an opportunity to
+represent Laurier as the betrayer of French Catholic interests and
+to put himself forward as their true champion. "Our friend,
+Bourassa," wrote Sir Wilfrid to a friend in April, 1905, "has begun
+in Quebec a campaign that may well cause us trouble." From this
+moment the Nationalist movement grew apace until six years later it
+looked as though Bourassa was destined to displace Laurier as the
+accepted leader of the French Canadians. It was only the
+developments of the war that restored Laurier to his position of
+unchallenged supremacy.
+
+In Manitoba also there were evidences of Sir Wilfrid's preoccupation
+with the business of never getting himself out of touch with Quebec
+public opinion. For years he sought by private and semi-public
+negotiations to get the Winnipeg school board to come to a modus
+vivendi with the church by which Catholic children would be
+segregated in their own schools within the orbit of the public
+school system, but failed, partly owing to the non possumus attitude
+of Archbishop Langevin, who was not prepared to be deprived of a
+grievance which enabled him to mix in Quebec and Manitoba politics.
+The Liberal policy of accepting provincial electoral lists for
+Dominion purposes resulted in the Manitoba lists being compiled
+under conditions to which the Liberals of this province strongly
+objected, and they fought for years to secure a right to final
+revision under Dominion auspices. Twice they pressed their case with
+such vigor that the government undertook to pass the requested
+legislation but on both occasions resistance in the house by the
+Conservatives led to the prompt withdrawal of the measure by Sir
+Wilfrid. In both cases Manitoba Liberals knew quite well that the
+difficulty was not the opposition of the Conservatives but the
+opposition of Laurier. They were advised that Laurier was
+apprehensive of the effect of the proposed legislation upon public
+opinion in Quebec. He feared the criticism by his opponents that
+while Laurier would not interfere with Manitoba when it was a matter
+of the educational rights of the minority he was willing to
+interfere when it was a matter of obliging his political friends.
+There was something too in the charge that the delay in dealing with
+the matter of the extension of the Manitoba boundaries arose from
+the same feeling. To transfer the Northwest territories, where the
+minority had certain constitutional rights in matters of education,
+to Manitoba where the minority had none would be to put one more
+weapon into the hands of Mr. Bourassa. The extension of Manitoba's
+boundaries had to await a change in administration.
+
+THE TALE OF FIFTEEN YEARS.
+
+There is always a temptation to the biographer of a prime minister
+to relate his hero to the events of his period as first cause and
+controlling spirit--the god of the storm; whereas prime ministers,
+like individuals, are the sports of destiny; things happen and they
+have to make the best of them. The performances of the Laurier
+government may be divided into two classes, those due to its own
+initiative and those which were imposed by circumstances. The ratio
+between the two classes changed steadily as the administration grew
+in age. After the impetus born of the reforming zeal of opposition
+and the natural and creditable desire to fulfil express engagements
+dies away, the inclination of a government is not to invite trouble
+by looking around for difficult tasks to do. "Those who govern,
+having much business on their hands," says Benjamin Franklin, "do
+not like to take the trouble to consider and carry into execution
+new projects." This is a political law to which all governments
+conform. Even the great reforming administration of Gladstone which
+took office in 1868, had earned five years later the famous jest of
+Disraeli: "The ministers remind me of one of those marine landscapes
+not very unusual off the coast of South America; you behold a range
+of extinct volcanoes; not a flame flickers upon a single pallid
+crest."
+
+Fifteen years of Liberal rule in Canada furnish a complete field for
+the study of the party system under our system. In 1896 a party
+stale in spirit, corrupt and inefficient, went out of office and was
+replaced by a government which had been bred to virtue by eighteen
+years of political penury. It entered upon its tasks with vigor,
+ability and enthusiasm. It had its policies well defined and it set
+briskly about carrying them out. A deft, shrewd modification of the
+tariff helped to loosen the stream of commerce which after years of
+constriction began again to flow freely. There was a courageous and
+considered increase in expenditures for productive objects. A
+constructive, vigorously executed immigration policy brought an ever
+expanding volume of suitable settlers to Western Canada which in
+turn fed the springs of national prosperity. This impulse lasted
+through the first parliamentary term and largely through the second,
+though by then disruptive tendencies were appearing. By its third
+term the government was mainly an office-holding administration on
+the defensive against an opposition of growing effectiveness. And
+then in the fourth term there was an attempt at a rally before the
+crash. The treatment of the tariff question, always a governing
+factor in Canadian politics even when apparently not in play, is an
+illustration of the government's progress towards stagnation. The
+1897 tariff revision "could not," says Professor Skelton, "have been
+bettered as a first preliminary step toward free trade."
+"Unfortunately," he adds, "it proved to be the last step save for
+the 1911 attempt to secure reciprocity." After 1897 Laurier's policy
+was to discourage the revival of the tariff question. Tarte's
+offence was partly that he did not realize that sleeping dogs should
+be allowed to lie. "It is not good politics to try to force the hand
+of the government," wrote Laurier to Tarte. And he added: "The
+question of the tariff is in good shape if no one seeks to force the
+issue." With Tarte's ejection there followed nearly eight years
+during which real tariff discussion was taboo. Then under the
+pressure of the rising western resentment against the tariff
+burdens, the government turned to reciprocity as a means by which
+they could placate the farmers without disturbing or alarming the
+manufacturers. By what seemed extraordinary good luck the United
+States president, Republican in politics, was by reason of domestic
+political developments, in favor of a reciprocal trade agreement. It
+seemed as though the Laurier government as by a miracle would renew
+its youth and vigor; but the situation, temporarily favorable, was
+so fumbled that it ended not in triumph but in defeat.
+
+
+The disasters of the Laurier railway policy--or rather lack of
+policy--must always weigh heavily against the undoubted achievements
+of the Laurier regime. A period of marked national expansion gave
+rise to all manner of railway ambitions and schemes, and Laurier
+lacked the practical capacity, foresight and determination to fit
+them into a general, well-thought-out, practicable scheme of
+development. Again it was a case of letting the pressure of events
+determine policy, in place of policy controlling events. He could
+not deny the Grand Trunk's ambitions, but he obliged it to submit to
+modifications demanded by political pressure which turned its
+project, perhaps practicable in its original form, into a huge,
+ill-thought-out transcontinental enterprise. Equally he could not hold
+the ambitions of Mann and McKenzie in check. The advisability of a
+merger of these rival railway groups was obvious at the time, but
+Laurier let them each have their head, dividing government
+assistance between them, with resulting ruin to both and bequeathing
+to his successors a problem for which no solution has yet been found.
+
+PERSONAL GOVERNMENT
+
+During the years of his premiership Laurier rose steadily in
+personal power and in prestige. It is in keeping with the genius of
+our party system that the leader who begins as the chosen chief of
+his associates proceeds by stages, if he has the necessary
+qualities, to a position of dominance; the republic is transformed
+into an absolute monarchy. In the government of 1896 Laurier was
+only primus inter pares; his associates were in the main
+contemporary with him in point of years and public service. Their
+places had been won by party recognition of their services and
+abilities. In the government of 1911 Laurier was the veteran
+commander of a company which he had himself recruited. Of his 1896
+colleagues but few remained, and of these only Mr. Fielding had kept
+his relative rank in the party hierarchy. All his remaining
+colleagues had entered public life long subsequent to his accession
+the Liberal leadership. Not one had been in parliament prior to
+1896. Their entrance into public life, their steps in promotion,
+their admittance to the government were all subject to his approval,
+where they were not actually due to his will. To Laurier's authority
+they yielded unquestioning obedience, and with it went a deep
+affection inspired and made sure by the personal consideration and
+kindliness that marked his relations with them. Under these
+conditions, men of strong, individual views and ambitions, with
+reforming temperaments and a desire to force issues, did not find
+the road to the Privy Council open to them; different qualities held
+the password.
+
+In 1908 Sir Wilfrid, when a discerning electorate had deprived him
+of a colleague whose political incapacity had been completely
+demonstrated, became a party to a deal by which he re-entered
+parliament. An old friend took the liberty of asking Sir Wilfrid why
+he wanted this associate back in the cabinet, only to be told that
+"So-and-So never made any trouble for me." At least twice in the last
+four years of his regime Sir Wilfrid, conscious of the waning
+energies of his party, took advice outside of his immediate circle
+as to what should be done; on both occasions he rejected advice
+tendered to him because this involved the inclusion in the cabinet
+of personalities that might have disturbed the charmed serenity of
+that circle. Sir Wilfrid preferred to have things as they were,
+perhaps because his sense of reality warned him that, so far as the
+duration of time during which he would hold office was concerned,
+there probably would not be any great difference between a
+government wholly agreeable to him and one reconstituted to meet the
+demand of the younger and more vigorous elements in the party. In
+1909, in a letter to a supporter who had lost the party nomination
+for his constituency, he gave premonition of his own fate: "What has
+happened to you in your county will happen to me before long in
+Canada. Let us submit with good grace to the inevitable."
+
+The inevitable end in the ordinary course of events would have been
+the going on of the party until it died of dry rot and decay, as the
+Liberals had already died in Ontario; but fortunately, both for the
+party and for Laurier's subsequent fame--though it may not have
+seemed so at the time--emergence of the reciprocity question gave
+it an opportunity to fall on an issue which seemed to link up the
+end of the regime with its heroic beginnings and to reinvest the
+party with some of its lost glamor.
+
+LAURIER: DEFEAT AND ANTI-CLIMAX
+
+THE defeat of the Liberals in September, 1911, raised sharply the
+question of the party's future and the leadership under which it
+would face that future. Speaking at St. Jerome toward the close of
+the campaign Sir Wilfrid had stated positively that if defeated he
+would retire. This declaration of intention--no doubt at the moment
+sincerely made--was designed to check the falling away from
+Laurier's leadership in Quebec, which was becoming more noticeable
+as election day drew near. But the appeal was ineffective.. The
+effective opposition to Laurier in Quebec came not from Borden or
+from Monk, the official leader of the French Conservatives, but from
+Bourassa. Laurier and his lieutenants fought desperately, but in
+vain, to break the strengthening hold of the younger man on the
+sympathies of the French electors. In Quebec the custom of the joint
+open air political meeting is still popular, and at such a concourse
+in St. Hyacinthe, an old Liberal stronghold, Sir Wilfrid's
+colleagues, Lemieux and Beland, met a notable defeat at the hands of
+Bourassa--an incident which clearly revealed how the winds were
+blowing. Bourassa, fanatically "nationalist" in his convictions and
+free from any political necessity to consider the reactions
+elsewhere of his doctrines, was outbidding Sir Wilfrid in the
+latter's own field. Laurier received the news of the electoral
+result in a hall in Quebec East, surrounded by the electors of the
+constituency which had been faithful to him for 40 years. He
+accepted the blow with the tranquil fortitude which was his most
+notable personal characteristic; but the feature in the disaster
+which must have made the greatest demand upon his stoicism was this
+indication that his old surbordinate and one time friend
+was--apparently--about to supplant him in the leadership of his own
+people. The election figures showed that whereas Laurier had carried
+49 seats in Quebec in 1896, 58 in 1900, 54 in 1904 and again in
+1908, he had been successful in only 38 constituencies against 27
+for the Conservatives and Nationalists combined. Laurier, at the
+moment of his defeat, was within two months of entering upon his
+70th year. He had been 40 years in public life; for 24 years leader
+of his party; for 15 years prime minister. He had had a long and
+distinguished career; and he had gone out of office upon an issue
+which, with confidence, he counted upon time to vindicate. He had
+long cherished a purpose to write a history of his times. The moment
+was, therefore, opportune for retirement; and it must be assumed
+that he gave some thought to the advisability or otherwise of living
+up to his St. Jerome pledge. But neither his own inclination nor the
+desire of his followers pointed to retirement; and the next session
+of parliament found him in the seat he had occupied twenty years
+before as leader of the opposition. The party demand for his
+continuance in the leadership was virtually unanimous. There was
+only one possible successor to Sir Wilfrid--Mr. Fielding. But he was
+not in parliament. Also he was in disfavour as the general whose
+defensive plan of campaign had ended in disaster. His name suggested
+"Reciprocity"--a word the Liberals were quite willing, for the time
+being, to forget. He was left to lie where he had fallen. For some
+years he lived in political obscurity, and it was only the emergence
+of the Unionist movement which made possible his re-entrance to
+public life and his later career.
+
+
+THE REVIVAL OF LIBERAL HOPES
+
+When Sir Wilfrid resumed the leadership after the formality of
+tendering his resignation to the party caucus it meant, in fact,
+that he intended to die in the saddle. Thereafter Sir Wilfrid talked
+much about the inexpediency of continuing in the leadership, and
+often used language foreshadowing his resignation--indeed the
+letters quoted by Professor Skelton in the latter chapters of his
+book abound in these intimations--but these came to be regarded by
+those in the know as portents: implying an intention to insist upon
+policies to which objections were likely to develop within the party.
+
+Notwithstanding the severity of their defeat--they were in a
+minority of 45 in the House--the Liberals in opposition showed a
+good fighting front, and ere long hope revived. The Borden
+government found itself in difficulties from the moment of taking
+office--largely by reason of the tactics by which Laurier's
+supremacy in Quebec had been undermined. The Nationalist chiefs
+declined an invitation to enter the government, but they controlled
+the Quebec appointments to the cabinet, and thus assumed a
+quasi-responsibility for the new government's policy. The result was
+disastrous to them; for the Borden government, subject to the
+influences that had enabled it to sweep Ontario, could not concern
+itself with the preservation of Bourassa's fortunes. The extension
+of the Manitoba boundaries was a blow to the Nationalists; they
+failed in their efforts to preserve the educational rights of the
+minority in the added territory. Laurier had evaded this issue;
+Borden could not evade it, and by its settlement Bourassa was
+damaged. Still more disastrous to the Nationalist cause was the
+naval policy which Mr. Borden submitted to Parliament in the session
+of 1912-1913. There was in its presentation an ingenious attempt to
+reconcile the irreconcilable which deceived nobody. The contribution
+of the three largest dreadnoughts that could be built was to satisfy
+the Conservatives; the Nationalists were expected to be placated by
+the assurance that this contribution was merely to meet an
+emergency, leaving over for later consideration the question of a
+permanent naval policy. But all the circumstances attending the
+setting out of the policy--the report of the admiralty, the letters
+of Mr. Churchill, the speeches by which it was supported with their
+insistence upon the need for common naval and foreign policies--made
+it only too clear that it marked the abandonment of the Canadian
+naval policy which had been entered upon only four years before with
+the consent of all parties and the acceptance in principle of the
+Round Table view of the Imperial problem. Laurier challenged the
+proposition whole-heartedly. Here was familiar fighting ground. From
+the moment they joined battle with the government the Liberals found
+their strength growing. They were indubitably on firm ground. They
+were helped mightily by Mr. Churchill's attempted intervention in
+which he belittled Canadian capacity in a manner worthy of Downing
+street in its palmiest days. Mr. Churchill had the bright idea of
+coming to Canada to take a hand personally in the controversy. A
+Canadian-born member of the British House of Commons sounded out
+various Canadians as to the nature of the reception Mr. Churchill
+would receive. Mr. Churchill did not come--fortunately for the
+government. The Liberals fought the proposition so furiously in the
+Commons that the government had to introduce closure to secure its
+passage through the commons, whereupon the Liberal majority in the
+Senate threw it out. The Liberal policy was to challenge the
+government to submit the issue to the people in a general election.
+That within eighteen months from the date of their disastrous defeat
+the Liberals should invite a second trial of strength spoke of
+rapidly reviving confidence. The government ignored the challenge,
+for very good reasons. In the sequel Laurier, as with all his
+policies having to deal with Imperial questions, was amply
+justified. The policy of Dominion navies was never again seriously
+questioned in Canada; when admiralty officials, true to form,
+challenged it in 1918 it was Sir Robert Borden who defended it, to
+some purpose.
+
+These developments were fatal to Quebec Nationalism as a distinct
+political force under the direction of Mr. Bourassa. The ideas that
+inspired it did not lapse. Nor did Mr. Bourassa, as apostle of these
+ideas, lose his personal eminence. But the electors in sympathy with
+these ideals began to develop views of their own as to the political
+action required by the times. Their alliance with the Conservatives
+had brought them no satisfaction. They had ejected the most eminent
+living French-Canadian from the premiership to the very evident
+injury of Quebec's influence in Confederation--that about
+represented the sum of their achievements. The thought that they had
+been on the wrong track began to grow in their minds. The conditions
+making for the creation of the Quebec bloc were developing. The
+disposition was to get together under a common leadership. It was
+still a question as to whether, in the long run, that leader should
+be Laurier or Bourassa; but all the conditions favored Laurier. For
+one thing, he could command a large body of support outside of his
+own province which it was quite beyond the power of Bourassa to
+duplicate. The swing to Laurier was so marked that by 1914 the
+confident prediction was made by good political judges that if there
+were an election Laurier would carry 60 out of the 65 seats in
+Quebec. Such a vote meant victory. Sir Wilfrid was slow in coming to
+believe that an early reversal of the decision of 1911 was possible;
+but finally found himself infected with the hopefulness of his
+following. Hard times became a powerful ally of the Liberals and the
+government suffered from the first shock of the impending railway
+collapse. The course of the party lay clear before it; it was to see
+that the conditions in Quebec remained favorable and to await, with
+patience, the coming of an election which would reopen the doors to
+office. But not too much patience, for the years were slipping past.
+Laurier was in his 73rd year.
+
+THE PARTIES AND THE WAR
+
+Such were the political conditions: a government in a position of
+growing doubtfulness and a combative and confident opposition--when
+Canada found herself plunged over night into the Great War. Under
+the high emotion of this venture into the unknown politics vanished
+for a brief moment from the land. If that moment could have been
+seized for a sacred union of hearts dedicated to the great task of
+carrying on the war how different would the whole future of Canada
+have been! In the fires of war our sectional and racial intractibilities
+might have been fused into an enduring alliance. But Canadian
+statesmanship was not equal to the opportunity. For this
+Sir Wilfrid has no accountability. There is no question of the
+correctness and generosity of his attitude as revealed in the war
+session of August, 1914. From a speech in the next session it might
+be inferred that he would have gone farther than he did if overtures
+had been made to him.
+
+In Canada, as elsewhere, the war spelt opportunity for more than the
+patriot and the hero. The schemer, resolute to make the war serve
+his ends, appeared everywhere. From the morrow of those first days
+of high exaltation the two currents ran side by side in Canada: the
+clear tide of valor and self-sacrifice, the muddy stream of
+cowardice and self-seeking. There was an influential element in the
+dominant party which was determined to exploit the war to the limit
+for political and personal interests. The war meant patronage; it
+must be placed where it would do the most party good. It meant an
+opportunity for artificial and perfectly safe distinction; this must
+be employed for increasing the political availability of friends.
+Political colonels began to adorn the landscape. It meant a corking
+good issue upon which an election could be won; why not take
+advantage of it? While the government officially was leading a
+united people into action, these scheming political profiteers were
+perfecting their plans for appealing to the people on the ground
+that the government--a party government which had not invited any
+measure of close co-operation from the opposition--must have a
+mandate to carry on the war. There is a quite authentic story of a
+leading Canadian being cheered up on a train journey by assurances
+from a travelling companion, a friend holding high office, that
+events were shaping for certain victory; until he learned that the
+enemy about to be defeated was the "damn Grits." The battle of Ypres
+in April, 1915, saved Canada from an ignoble general election on the
+meanest of issues. Though some of the conspirators still pressed for
+an election, it soon became apparent that the proposal was abhorrent
+to public opinion. Canadians could not bring themselves to the point
+of fighting one another while their sons and brothers were dying
+side by side in the mud of Flanders.
+
+The danger of a profound division of the Canadian people in war-time
+passed; but irretrievable damage had been done to the cause of
+national unity. In considering subsequent events these unhappy
+developments of the first year of the war cannot be overlooked.
+Party feeling among the Liberals had been held in leash with
+difficulty; now it was running free again. The attitude of the party
+towards the government was in effect: "You have tried to play
+politics with the war; very well, you will find that this is a game
+that two can play at." The strategy looking to a future trial of
+strength was skilfully planned. There was no challenge to the
+government plans. It was given full liberty of action upon the
+understanding that it would accept full responsibility and be
+prepared to render an account in due time to parliament and people.
+The tactics were those of paying out the rope as the government
+called for it. The attitude of the Liberal leaders towards the war
+was unexceptionable. Sir Wilfrid's recruiting speeches--and he made
+many of them--were admirable; and he did not hesitate to point the
+way of duty to the young men of his own province. Upon things done
+or not done the attitude of the parliamentary Liberals was
+increasingly critical; and the government, it must be said, with its
+scandals over supplies, its favoritism in recruiting, its beloved
+Ross rifle, gave plenty of opportunity to opposition critics. With
+every month that passed the political advantage that had come to the
+government, because it was charged with the task of making war,
+waned.
+
+General elections were due in the autumn of 1916. It became a
+serious question of Liberal policy to decide between agreeing to an
+extension of the life of parliament, which the government intended
+to request, and the forcing of an election. Two lieutenants of Sir
+Wilfrid toured Western Canada sounding Liberal opinion; their
+disappointment was obvious when, in a conference with a group of
+Liberals in Winnipeg, they found opinion solidly adverse to an
+election. Their reasons for an election were plainly stated--in
+brief they were that on the details of its war management the
+government could be, and, in their judgement, should be, beaten. But
+Sir Wilfrid, with his hand on the country's pulse, could not be
+stampeded. He saw, more clearly than his lieutenants, the danger to
+the party of refusing an extension at that time. A twelve months was
+added to the life of parliament with a reservation in the minds of
+the Liberals that the first extension would be the last. This meant
+an election in 1917.
+
+
+THE NATIONALISTS AND ONTARIO
+
+Mr. Bourassa was acutely conscious of the development of opinion in
+Quebec favorable to the Liberals, and he sought to retain his hold
+upon his following by the tactics which in the first place had given
+him his following--by going to extremes and outbidding Laurier. The
+chief article in the Nationalist creed was that Canada was
+everywhere a bilingual country, French being on an equality with
+English in all the provinces. This contention rested upon a
+conglomeration of arguments, assertions, assumptions, inferences,
+and it was backed by thinly disguised threats of political action.
+The opposing contention that bilingualism had a legal basis only in
+Quebec and in the Dominion parliament with its services and courts
+was interpreted as an insult. Mr. Lavergne, the chief lieutenant of
+Mr. Bourassa, was wont to wax furiously indignant over the
+suggestion, as he put it, that he must "stay on the reservation" if
+he was to enjoy the privileges that he held to be equally his in
+whatever part of Canada he might find himself.
+
+Events in Ontario put the test of reality to the Nationalist
+theories. A feud broke out between the English-speaking and the
+French-speaking Catholics over the language used for instruction in
+separate schools where both languages were represented; and
+resulting investigation revealed a state of affairs suggesting
+something very like a conspiracy to minimize or even abolish the use
+of English in all school areas where the French were in control.
+Resulting regulations and legislation intended to put a stop to
+these conditions gave French a definitely subordinate status. This
+fired the heather, and later somewhat similar action by Manitoba
+added fuel to the flames. The Nationalist agitation was resumed with
+increased vehemence in Quebec; and the Ontario minority were
+encouraged to defy the regulations by assurances that means would be
+found to bring Ontario to time. In addition to legal action (which
+brought in the end a finding by the Privy Council completely
+destroying the Nationalist claim that bilingualism was implied in
+the scheme of Confederation) various ingenious attempts were made to
+apply pressure to Ontario. The most daring, and in results the most
+disastrous, was the threat that if Ontario did not remove the
+"grievances of the minority" the people of Quebec would go on strike
+against further participation in the war. That dangerous doctrine
+operating upon a popular mind impregnated with suspicion of the
+motives and intentions behind Canada's war activities, produced the
+situation which made inevitable the developments of 1917. The
+movement against Ontario was Nationalist in its spirit, its
+inspiration and its direction. Side by side with it went a
+Nationalist agitation of ever-increasing boldness against the war.
+Ammunition for this campaign was readily found in the imputations,
+innuendoes, charges, mendacities of the Labor and pacifist
+extremists of Great Britain and France; they lost none of their
+malignancy in the retelling. Bourassa included Laurier in the scope
+of his denunciations. Laurier's loyal support of the war and his
+candid admonitions to the young men of his own race made him the
+target for Bourassa's shafts. Something more than a difference of
+view was reflected in Bourassa's harangues; there was in them a
+distillation of venom, indicating deep personal feeling. "Laurier,"
+he once declared in a public meeting, "is the most nefarious man in
+the whole of Canada." Bourassa hated Laurier. Laurier had too
+magnanimous a mind to cherish hate; but he feared Bourassa with a
+fear which in the end became an obsession. He feared him because, if
+he only retained his position in Quebec, Liberal victory in the
+coming Dominion elections would not be possible. Laurier feared him
+still more because if Bourassa increased his hold upon the people,
+which was the obvious purpose of the raging, tearing Nationalist
+propaganda, he would be displaced from his proud position as the
+first and greatest of French-Canadians. Far more than a temporary
+term of power was at stake. It was a struggle for a niche in the
+temple of fame. It was a battle not only for the affection of the
+living generation, but for place in the historic memories of the
+race. Laurier, putting aside the weight of 75 years and donning his
+armor for his last fight, had two definite purposes: to win back, if
+he could, the prime ministership of Canada; but in any event to
+establish his position forever as the unquestioned, unchallenged
+leader of his own people. In this campaign--which covered the two
+years from the moment he consented to one year's extension of the
+life of parliament until election day in 1917--he had repeatedly to
+make a choice between his two purposes; and he invariably preferred
+the second. In the sequel he missed the premiership; but he very
+definitely accomplished his second desire. He died the unquestioned
+leader, the idol of his people; and it may well be that as the
+centuries pass he will become the legendary embodiment of the
+race--like King Arthur of the English awaiting in the Isle of Avalon the
+summons of posterity. As for Bourassa, he may live in Canadian
+history as Douglas lives in the history of the United States--by
+reason of his relations with the man he fought.
+
+THE BILINGUAL EPISODE
+
+The Canadian house of commons was the vantage point from which Sir
+Wilfrid carried on the operations by which he unhorsed Bourassa.
+Here we find the explanation of much that appears inexplicable in
+the political events of 1916 and 1917. Laurier was out to
+demonstrate that he was the true champion of Quebec's views and
+interests, because he could rally to her cause the support of a
+great national party. Hence the remarkable projection of the
+bilingual issue into the proceeding of parliament in May, 1916. The
+question as an Ontario one could only be dealt with by the Ontario
+authorities once it was admitted--Sir Wilfrid being in agreement--that
+disallowance was not possible. Yet Sir Wilfrid brought the
+issue into the Dominion parliament. If he had done this merely for
+the purpose of making his own attitude of sympathy with his
+compatriots in Ontario clear, the course would have been of doubtful
+political wisdom, in view of his responsibilities to the party he
+led. But he insisted upon a formal resolution being submitted.
+Professor Skelton, in the passages dealing with this episode, shows
+him whipping up a reluctant party and compelling it, by every
+influence he could command, to follow him. The writer, arriving in
+Ottawa when this situation was developing, was informed by a
+leading Liberal member of parliament that the "old man" had thought
+out a wonderful stroke of tactics by which he was going to
+strengthen himself in Quebec and at the same time do no harm in
+Ontario--a feat beside which squaring the circle would be child's
+play. Very brief enquiry revealed the situation. Sir Wilfrid was
+determined to have a resolution and a vote. The western Liberals
+were in revolt; the Ontario Liberals were reluctant but were
+prepared to be coerced; most of the maritime province Liberals were
+obedient, but there was a minority strongly opposed. Theoretically
+the formula that there was to be no coercion, each member voting as
+his conscience directed, was honored; but Sir Wilfrid had found it
+necessary to indicate that if in the outcome it should be found that
+any considerable number of his supporters were not in agreement with
+him, he would be obliged to interpret this as indicating that the
+party no longer had confidence in him. Professor Skelton supplies
+the evidence that Sir Wilfrid pressed the threat to resign almost to
+the breaking point. He actually wrote out something which was
+supposed to be a resignation before the Ontario Liberals
+capitulated. The western Liberals were of sterner stuff; they stood
+to their guns. No resignation followed. "The defection of the
+western Liberals," says Professor Skelton, "forced from Sir Wilfrid
+a rare outbreak of anger." The use of the word "defection" is
+enlightening, as showing Professor Skelton's attitude towards the
+Liberals who in those trying times adhered to their convictions
+against the party whip. He is a thorough-going partisan, which, in
+an official biographer, is perhaps the right thing.
+
+The writer's activities in encouraging opposition to these party
+tactics led to a long interview with Sir Wilfrid, in which there was
+considerable frank language used on both sides. Sir Wilfrid gave
+every indication that he was profoundly moved by what he called "the
+plight of the French-Canadians of Ontario." They were, he said,
+politically powerless and leaderless; the provincial Liberal
+leaders, who should have been their champions, had abandoned them;
+the obligation rested upon him to come to their rescue. The
+suggestion that, while he might be within his rights in thus
+expressing his individual views, he should not seek to make it a
+party matter in view of the strong differences of opinion within the
+party, was rather impatiently brushed aside. Still less respect was
+shown the observation that it was not desirable that the Liberal
+party should identify itself with a resolution the carrying of which
+meant a general election in the height of the war upon a race and
+religious issue. Sir Wilfrid, in the course of the conversation,
+touched quite frankly upon the necessities of the Quebec political
+situation. He advanced the argument, which was put forward so
+persistently a year later, that it must be made possible for him to
+keep control of Quebec province, since the only alternative was the
+triumph of Bourassa extremism, which might involve the whole
+Dominion in conflict and ruin.
+
+The episode passed apparently without disruptive results; but
+surface indications were misleading. In reality a heavy blow had
+been struck at the unity of the Liberal party; there began to be
+questionings in unexpected quarters of the Laurier leadership. What
+had happened was only too clear, to those who looked at the
+situation steadily. Party policy had been shaped with a single eye
+to Quebec necessities; and party feeling, party discipline, the
+personal authority of Laurier has been drawn on heavily to secure
+acceptance of this policy by Liberals who did not favor it. But
+there is in politics, as in economics, a law of diminishing returns.
+A year later the same tactics applied to a situation of greater
+gravity ended in disaster. The split which came in 1917 followed
+pretty exactly the split that would have come in 1916 over
+bilingualism, had the Liberal members not been constrained by their
+devotion to party regularity to vote against their convictions.
+
+THE MOVEMENT FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
+
+The movement for national government long antedated the emergence of
+the issue of conscription; it was, in its origin, Liberal. Its most
+persistent advocates in the later months of 1916 and the opening
+months of 1917 were Liberal newspapers, among them the Manitoba Free
+Press; and there was an answer from the public which showed that the
+appeal for a union of all Canadians who were concerned with "getting
+on with the war" made a deep appeal to popular feeling. The most
+determined resistance came from the Conservatives. The ministerial
+press could see nothing in it but a Grit scheme to break up the
+Borden government, which they lauded as being in itself a "national
+government" of incomparable merit. But that movement was equally
+disconcerting to the Liberal strategists since it threatened to
+interfere with their plans for a battle, to end, as they confidently
+believed, in a Liberal victory. In January, 1917, Sir Wilfrid could
+see nothing in the movement but an attempt to prevent a French-Canadian
+from succeeding to the premiership, and wrote in those terms
+to N. W. Rowell.
+
+An offer by Sir Robert Borden to Sir Wilfrid Laurier to join him in a
+national government would have been unwelcome at any time excepting
+perhaps in the first months in the war; but in the form in which it
+finally came, in May, 1918, it was trebly unacceptable. Sir Wilfrid
+was asked to help in the formation of a national government to put
+into effect a policy of conscription, already determined upon.
+Although history will no doubt confirm the bona fides of Sir
+Robert's offer, it cannot but be lenient to Sir Wilfrid's
+interpretation of it as a political stroke intended to disrupt the
+Liberal party and rob him of the premiership. From his viewpoint it
+must have had exactly that appearance. Laurier's position in Quebec
+had been undermined in the years preceding the war by the
+Nationalist charge that his naval and military policies implied
+unlimited participation, by means of conscription, in future
+Imperial wars. He had always denied this; and when Canada entered
+the great war he, to keep his record clear, was careful to declare
+over and over again that Canadian participation by the people
+collectively, and by the individual, was and would remain voluntary.
+As the strain of the war increased the feeling in Quebec in its
+favor, never very strong, grew less. There began to be echoes of
+Bourassa's open anti-war crusade in the Liberal party and press. Sir
+Wilfrid, watching with alert patience the development of Quebec
+opinion, began cautiously to replace his earlier whole-hearted
+recognition of the supreme need of defeating Germany at all costs by
+a cooler survey of the situation in which considerations of prudent
+national self-interest were deftly suggested. The "We-have-done-enough"
+view was beginning to prevail; and Laurier, intent upon the
+complete capture of Quebec at the impending elections, while he did
+not subscribe to it, found it discreet to hint that it might be
+desirable to begin to think about the wisdom of not too greatly
+depleting our reserves of national labor. To Laurier, thus engaged
+in formulating a cautious war policy against the day of voting, came
+the invitation from Borden to join him in a movement to keep the
+armies of Canada in the field up to strength by the enforcement of
+conscription. Every aspect of the proposition was objectionable to
+Laurier. It meant handing back to Bourassa the legions he had won
+from him, and with them many of his own followers. No one was
+justified in believing that Laurier with all his prestige and power
+could commend conscription to more than a minority of his
+compatriots. Sir Robert Borden's proposal meant the foregoing of the
+anticipated party victory at the polls, the renouncement of the
+premiership, and the loss, certainly for the immediate future and
+probably for all time, of the affection and regard of his own people
+as a body. The proposition doubtless looked to him weird and
+impossible, and not a little impudent. The argument that the
+proposed government could better serve the general interests of the
+public, or even the cause of the war, than a purely Liberal
+government, of which he would be the head, probably struck him as
+presumptuous. Three days before Sir Robert Borden made his
+announcement of an intention to introduce conscription, Sir Wilfrid,
+anticipating the announcement, wrote to Sir Allan Aylesworth his
+unalterable opposition to the policy. This being the case, there
+never was a chance that Laurier would entertain Borden's offer to
+join him in a national government.
+
+THE LIBERAL DISRUPTION
+
+Sir Wilfrid, rejecting Borden's offer, adhered to his plan of an
+election on party lines; but he knew that conditions had been
+powerfully affected by these developments. His position in Quebec
+was now secure and unchallenged--even Bourassa, recognizing the
+logic of the situation, commended Laurier's leadership to his
+followers. If he could hold his following in the English provinces
+substantially intact the result was beyond question. He set himself
+resolutely to the task. Thereafter the situation developed with all
+the inevitableness of a Greek tragedy to the final catastrophe. Sir
+Wilfrid surveyed the field with the wisdom and experience of the
+veteran commander, and from the disposition of his forces and the
+lay of the land he foresaw victory. But he overlooked the
+imponderables. Forces were abroad which he did not understand and
+which, when he met them, he could not control. He counted upon the
+strength of party feeling, upon his extraordinary position of moral
+authority in the party, upon his personal hold upon thousands of
+influential Liberals in every section of Canada, upon the lure of a
+victory which seemed inevitable, upon the widespread and justified
+resentment among the Liberals against the government for things done
+and undone to keep the party intact through the ardors of an
+election. One thing he would not do; he would not deviate by an inch
+from the course he had marked out. Repeated and unavailing efforts
+were made to find some formula by which a disruption of the party
+might be avoided. One such proposition was that the life of the
+parliament should be extended. This would enable the government,
+with its majority and the support it would get from conscriptionist
+Liberals, to carry out its programme accepting full responsibility
+therefor. Sir Wilfrid rejected this; an election there must be. This
+was probably the only expedient which held any prospects of avoiding
+party disruption; but after its rejection Liberals in disagreement
+with Laurier still sought for an accommodation. There was a
+continuous conference going on for weeks in which all manner of
+suggestions were made. They all broke down before Laurier's
+courteous but unyielding firmness. There was the suggestion that the
+Liberals should accept the second reading of the Military Service
+Act and then on the third reading demand a referendum; rejected on
+the ground that this would imply a conditional acceptance of the
+principle of compulsion. There was the proposal that Laurier should
+engage, if returned to power, to resort to conscription if voluntary
+recruiting did not reach a stipulated level--not acceptable. Scores
+of men had the experience of the writer; going into Laurier's room
+on the third floor of the improvised parliamentary offices in the
+National History Museum, spending an hour or so in fruitless
+discussion and coming out with the feeling that there was no choice
+between unquestioning acceptance of Laurier's policy or breaking
+away from allegiance to him. Not that Laurier ever proposed this
+choice to his visitors. He had a theory--which not even he with all
+his lucidity could make intelligible--that a man could support both
+him and conscription at the same time. There is an attempt at
+defining this policy in a curious letter to Wm. Martin, then premier
+of Saskatchewan, which is quoted by Skelton. Sir Wilfrid in these
+conversations--as in his letters of that period, many of which
+appear in Skelton's Life--never failed to stress conditions in Quebec
+as compelling the course which he followed; the alternative was to
+throw Quebec to the extremists, with a resulting division that might
+be fatal. There was, too, the mournful and repeated assertion--which
+abounds also in his letters--that these developments showed that it
+was a mistake for a member of the minority to be the leader of the
+party. At the close of the session, when it became increasingly
+evident that a party split was impending, there were reports that
+Laurier proposed to make way for a successor upon some basis which
+might make an accommodation between the two wings of the party
+possible; and there was an attempt by a small group of Liberal
+M.P.'s to bring this about. The treatment of this incident in
+Professor Skelton's volume is obscure. In any case it had no
+significance and it came to nothing. Laurier alike by choice and
+necessity retained the leadership.
+
+Sir Wilfrid misjudged, all through the piece, the temper and purpose
+of the Liberals who dissented from his policy. For his own courses
+and actions there was a political reason; he looked for the
+political reasons behind the actions of those in disagreement with
+him. He found what he looked for, not in the actual facts of the
+situation but in his imagination. He saw conversion to the Round
+Table view of the Imperial problem and the acceptance of dictation
+from London--a very wild shot this! He saw political ambition. He
+saw unworthy desires to forward personal and business ends. But he
+did not see what was plain to view--that the whole movement was
+derived from an intense conviction on the part of growing numbers of
+Liberals that united national action was necessary if Canada was to
+make the maximum contribution to the war. There was very little
+feeling against Sir Wilfrid--rather a sympathetic understanding of
+the position in which he found himself; but they were wholly out of
+agreement with his view that Canada was in the war on a limited
+liability basis. In the very height of the controversy Sir Wilfrid
+could not be got to go beyond saying that Canada should make
+enquiries as to how many men she could afford to spare from her
+industries and these she should send if they could be induced
+voluntarily to enlist. This was wholly unsatisfactory to those who
+held that Canada was a principal in the war, and must shrink from no
+sacrifices to make victory possible. Still less satisfactory was the
+professed attitude of the Liberal candidates in Quebec; with few
+exceptions they embraced the anti-war Nationalist programme. It
+became only too evident that a Liberal victory would mean a
+government dependent upon and controlled by a Quebec bloc pretty
+thoroughly committed to the view that Canada had "done enough." For
+those committed to the prosecution of the war to the limit,
+conscription became a test and a symbol; and ultimately the pressure
+forced reluctant politicians to come together in the Union
+government. There followed the general election and the Unionist
+sweep. Laurier returned to parliament with a following of eighty-two
+in a house of 235. Of these 62 came from Quebec; and nine from the
+Maritime provinces. From the whole vast expanse from the Ottawa
+river to the Pacific Ocean ten lone Liberals were elected; of these
+only two represented the west, that part of Canada where Liberal
+ideas grow most naturally and freely. The policy of shaping national
+programmes to meet sectional predilections, relying upon party
+discipline and the cultivation of personal loyalties to serve as
+substitutes elsewhere had run its full course--and this was the
+harvest!
+
+THE LAST YEAR
+
+The events of 1917 were both an end and a beginning in Canada's
+political development. They brought to a definite close what might
+be called the era of the Great Parties. Viscount Bryce, in a work
+based upon pre-war observations, in dealing with Canadian political
+conditions, said:
+
+"Party (in Canada) seems to exist for its own sake. In Canada ideas
+are not needed to make parties, for these can live by heredity, and,
+like the Guelfs and Ghibellines of mediaeval Italy, by memories of
+past combats; attachment to leaders of such striking gifts and long
+careers as were Sir John Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, created
+a personal loyalty which exposed a man to reproach as a deserter
+when he voted against his party."
+
+For these conditions there were reasons in our history. Our parties
+once expressed deep divergencies of view upon issues of vital
+import; and each had experienced an individual leadership that had
+called forth and had stereotyped feelings of unbounded personal
+devotion. The chiefships of Laurier and Macdonald overlapped by only
+four years, but they were of the same political generation and they
+adhered to the same tradition. The resemblances in their careers,
+often commented upon, arose from a common attitude towards the
+business of political management. They conceived their parties as
+states within the state. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say
+they conceived them as co-ordinate with the state. Of these
+principalities they were the chieftains, chosen in the first place
+by election--as kings often were in the old times; but thereafter
+holding their positions by virtue of personal right and having the
+power in the last analysis by their own acts to determine party
+policy and to enforce discipline. Their personalities made these
+assumptions of power appear not only inevitable, but proper.
+Personal charm, human qualities of sympathy and understanding; an
+inflexible will which, except in crises, worked by indirection; the
+prestige of office and the glamor of victory; and the accretions of
+power which came from the passage of time--half their followers
+towards the end of their careers could not remember when other suns
+shone in the firmament; all these influences helped to transform
+party feeling into that blind worship which drew from Viscount Bryce
+his mordant comment.
+
+This venerable but archaic political system did not survive the war.
+Beside the loyalties inspired by the war tribal devotion to a party
+chief seemed a trivial concern. Canadians, who gave first place to
+the need of getting on with the war, viewed with consternation the
+readiness of elements in both parties to put their political
+interests above the safety and honor of the commonwealth. The
+movement for national political unity was born of their concern and
+indignation. This development was almost as displeasing to the
+Conservative partisans as to the Liberal "legitimists," who upheld
+the right, under all circumstances, of Laurier to regain the
+premiership; and it was their inveterate and unthinking opposition
+that had much to do with the ultimate disruption of the union. They
+did not realize, until they got into the elections of 1921, that
+their party had disintegrated under the stresses of war.
+
+A study of the origin, achievements, failures, downfall and
+consequences of Union government might be of interest, but it does
+not come into a survey of the life of Laurier. These matters are
+related to the influences that are now making over Canadian
+politics; they concern the leaders of to-day, all minor figures in
+the 1917 drama. Because the Union government passed without leaving
+behind it tangible and visible manifestations of its power, there
+are those who regard it as a mere futility--a sword-cut in the
+water, as the French say. But of the Union movement it might well be
+said: Si monumentum requiris circumspice. The spirit behind the
+movement passed with the war, but it left the old traditional party
+system in ruins. The readjustments that are going on to-day, the
+efforts at the realignment of parties, the attempt to newly appraise
+political values, and to redefine political relationships--all these
+things are testimony to the dissolving, penetrating power of the
+impulses of 1917.
+
+But the task of attempting political reconstruction in a new world
+was not imposed upon Laurier. The signing of the armistice was the
+signal for the release of new forces; it was a great turning point
+in the world's history. But for Laurier the tale of his years was
+told. There was something fitting in the departure of the veteran
+with the turning of the tide. He had been a mere survival on the
+scene following the elections of 1917 which put into the hands of
+the Union government a mandate to "carry on" for the remainder of
+the war--which at that time gave promise of stretching out
+interminably. That election set bounds to his ambitions, wrote finis
+to his political career. "Unarm; the long day's work is o'er." He
+continued to hold his rank in a party which waited upon events,
+knowing that the task of rebuilding and reconstruction must fall to
+younger hands. The serenity of mind which had sustained him in all
+the changes of a long and varied life did not desert him; and he
+looked forward with fortitude to the end now approaching. He had
+come a long way from the humble beginnings in St. Lin, 77 years
+before. Childhood; happy, carefree boyhood; a youth of gallant
+comradeship with the young swordsmen of a fighting political army;
+the ardors of a career in the making full of delights of battle with
+his peers; the call to the command; the conquest of the premiership;
+the long, crowded, brilliant years of office with their deep
+anxieties, crushing responsibilities, great satisfactions,
+substantial achievements; the bitterness of unexpected defeat; the
+gallant fight to win back to power ending by a stroke of fate in
+disaster; the final disruption of his party and the loss of old
+friends who had followed him in victory or defeat; these
+recollections must have been much in his mind during this year of
+afterglow. The end was fitting in its swiftness and dignity. No
+lingering, painful illness, but a swift stroke and a happy release.
+"Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail."
+
+
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics
+by J. W. Dafoe
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