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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Canadian Dominion, by Oscar D. Skelton
+
+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: The Canadian Dominion
+       A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor
+
+Author: Oscar D. Skelton
+
+Posting Date: December 11, 2008 [EBook #2835]
+Release Date: September, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CANADIAN DOMINION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The James J. Kelly Library Of St. Gregory's
+University; Alev Akman, Dianne Bean, and Joe Buersmeyer
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CANADIAN DOMINION
+
+A CHRONICLE OF OUR NORTHERN NEIGHBOR
+
+By Oscar D. Skelton
+
+
+     NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
+     TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO.
+     LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
+     OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+     1919
+     Copyright, 1919, by Yale University Press
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The history of Canada since the close of the French regime falls into
+three clearly marked half centuries. The first fifty years after
+the Peace of Paris determined that Canada was to maintain a separate
+existence under the British flag and was not to become a fourteenth
+colony or be merged with the United States. The second fifty years
+brought the winning of self-government and the achievement of
+Confederation. The third fifty years witnessed the expansion of the
+Dominion from sea to sea and the endeavor to make the unity of the
+political map a living reality--the endeavor to weld the far-flung
+provinces into one country, to give Canada a distinctive place in the
+Empire and in the world, and eventually in the alliance of peoples
+banded together in mankind's greatest task of enforcing peace and
+justice among nations.
+
+The author has found it expedient in this narrative to depart from the
+usual method of these Chronicles and arrange the matter in chronological
+rather than in biographical or topical divisions. The first period of
+fifty years is accordingly covered in one chapter, the second in two
+chapters, and the third in two chapters. Authorities and a list
+of publications for a more extended study will be found in the
+Bibliographical Note.
+
+O. D. S.
+
+QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, CANADA, July, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I. THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS
+
+     II. THE FIGHT FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT
+
+     III. THE UNION ERA
+
+     IV. THE DAYS OF TRIAL
+
+     V. THE YEARS OF FULFILMENT
+
+     BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+
+
+
+THE CANADIAN DOMINION
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS
+
+Scarcely more than half a century has passed since the Dominion of
+Canada, in its present form, came into existence. But thrice that period
+has elapsed since the fateful day when Montcalm and Wolfe laid down
+their lives in battle on the Plains of Abraham, and the lands which now
+comprise the Dominion finally passed from French hands and came under
+British rule.
+
+The Peace of Paris, which brought the Seven Years' War to a close in
+1763, marked the termination of the empire of France in the New World.
+Over the continent of North America, after that peace, only two flags
+floated, the red and yellow banner of Spain and the Union Jack of
+Great Britain. Of these the Union Jack held sway over by far the larger
+domain--over the vague territories about Hudson Bay, over the great
+valley of the St. Lawrence, and over all the lands lying east of the
+Mississippi, save only New Orleans. To whom it would fall to develop
+this vast claim, what mighty empires would be carved out of the
+wilderness, where the boundary lines would run between the nations yet
+to be, were secrets the future held. Yet in retrospect it is now
+clear that in solving these questions the Peace of Paris played no
+inconsiderable part. By removing from the American colonies the menace
+of French aggression from the north it relieved them of a sense of
+dependence on the mother country and so made possible the birth of a new
+nation in the United States. At the same time, in the northern half of
+the continent, it made possible that other experiment in democracy, in
+the union of diverse races, in international neighborliness, and in
+the reconciliation of empire with liberty, which Canada presents to the
+whole world, and especially to her elder sister in freedom.
+
+In 1763 the territories which later were to make up the Dominion of
+Canada were divided roughly into three parts. These parts had little or
+nothing in common. They shared together neither traditions of suffering
+or glory nor ties of blood or trade. Acadia, or Nova Scotia, by the
+Atlantic, was an old French colony, now British for over a generation.
+Canada, or Quebec, on the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, with seventy
+thousand French habitants and a few hundred English camp followers,
+had just passed under the British flag. West and north lay the vaguely
+outlined domains of the Hudson's Bay Company, where the red man and the
+buffalo still reigned supreme and almost unchallenged.
+
+The old colony of Acadia, save only the island outliers, Cape Breton
+and Prince Edward Island, now ceded by the Peace of Paris, had been
+in British hands since 1713. It was not, however, until 1749 that any
+concerted effort had been made at a settlement of this region. The
+menace from the mighty fortress which the French were rebuilding at that
+time at Louisbourg, in Cape Breton, and the hostility of the restless
+Acadians or old French settlers on the mainland, had compelled action
+and the British Government departed from its usual policy of laissez
+faire in matters of emigration. Twenty-five hundred English settlers
+were brought out to found and hold the town and fort of Halifax. Nearly
+as many Germans were planted in Lunenburg, where their descendants
+flourish to this day. Then the hapless Acadians were driven into
+exile and into the room they left, New Englanders of strictest Puritan
+ancestry came, on their own initiative, and built up new communities
+like those of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Other waves
+of voluntary immigration followed--Ulster Presbyterians, driven out by
+the attempt of England to crush the Irish woolen manufacture, and,
+still later, Highlanders, Roman Catholic and Presbyterian, who soon made
+Gaelic the prevailing tongue of the easternmost counties. By 1767 the
+colony of Nova Scotia, which then included all Acadia, north and east of
+Maine, had a prosperous population of some seven thousand Americans,
+two thousand Irish, two thousand Germans, barely a thousand English,
+and well over a thousand surviving Acadian French. In short, this
+northernmost of the Atlantic colonies appeared to be fast on the way
+to become a part of New England. It was chiefly New Englanders who had
+peopled it, and it was with New England that for many a year its whole
+social and commercial intercourse was carried on. It was no accident
+that Nova Scotia later produced the first Yankee humorist, "Sam Slick."
+
+With the future sister province of Canada, or Quebec, which lay along
+the St. Lawrence as far as the Great Lakes, Acadia or Nova Scotia had
+much less in common than with New England. Hundreds of miles of unbroken
+forest wilderness lay between the two colonies, and the sea lanes ran
+between the St. Lawrence, the Bay of Fundy, or Halifax and Havre or
+Plymouth, and not between Quebec and Halifax. Even the French settlers
+came of different stocks. The Acadians were chiefly men of La Rochelle
+and the Loire, while the Canadians came, for the most part, from the
+coast provinces stretching from Normandy and Picardy to Poitou and
+Bordeaux.
+
+The situation in Canada proper presented the British authorities with a
+problem new in their imperial experience. Hitherto, save for Acadia and
+New Netherland, where the settlers were few in numbers and, even in
+New Netherland, closely akin to the conquerors in race, religion, and
+speech, no colony containing men of European stocks had been acquired
+by conquest. Canada held some sixty or seventy thousand settlers,
+French and Catholic almost to a man. Despite the inefficiency of French
+colonial methods the plantation had taken firm root. The colony had
+developed a strength, a social structure, and an individuality all its
+own. Along the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu the settlements lay close
+and compact; the habitants' whitewashed cottages lined the river banks
+only a few arpents apart. The social cohesion of the colony was equally
+marked. Alike in government, in religion, and in industry, it was a land
+where authority was strong. Governor and intendant, feudal seigneur,
+bishop and Jesuit superior, ruled each in his own sphere and provided a
+rigid mold and framework for the growth of the colony. There were, it
+is true, limits to the reach of the arm of authority. Beyond Montreal
+stretched a vast wilderness merging at some uncertain point into the
+other wilderness that was Louisiana. Along the waterways which threaded
+this great No Man's Land the coureurs-de-bois roamed with little heed to
+law or license, glad to escape from the paternal strictness that irked
+youth on the lower St. Lawrence. But the liberty of these rovers of the
+forest was not liberty after the English pattern; the coureur-de-bois
+was of an entirely different type from the pioneers of British stock who
+were even then pushing their way through the gaps in the Alleghanies
+and making homes in the backwoods. Priest and seigneur, habitant and
+coureur-de-bois were one and all difficult to fit into accepted English
+ways. Clearly Canada promised to strain the digestive capacity of the
+British lion.
+
+The present western provinces of the Dominion were still the haunt of
+Indian and buffalo. French-Canadian explorers and fur traders, it is
+true, had penetrated to the Rockies a few years before the Conquest, and
+had built forts on Lake Winnipeg, on the Assiniboine and Red rivers,
+and at half a dozen portages on the Saskatchewan. But the "Company of
+Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay" had not yet ventured
+inland, still content to carry on its trade with the Indians from its
+forts along the shores of that great sea. On the Pacific the Russians
+had coasted as far south as Mount Saint Elias, but no white man, so far
+as is known, had set foot on the shores of what is now British Columbia.
+
+Two immediate problems were bequeathed to the British Government by the
+Treaty of Paris: what was to be done with the unsettled lands between
+the Alleghanies and the Mississippi; and how were the seventy thousand
+French subjects in the valley of the St. Lawrence to be dealt with? The
+first difficulty was not solved. It was merely postponed. The whole back
+country of the English colonies was proclaimed an Indian reserve where
+the King's white subjects might trade but might not acquire land. This
+policy was not devised in order to set bounds to the expansion of the
+older colonies; that was an afterthought. The policy had its root in
+an honest desire to protect the Indians from the frauds of unscrupulous
+traders and from the encroachments of settlers on their hunting grounds.
+The need of a conciliatory, if firm, policy in regard to the great
+interior was made evident by the Pontiac rising in 1763, the aftermath
+of the defeat of the French, who had done all they could to inspire the
+Indians with hatred for the advancing English.
+
+How to deal with Canada was a more thorny problem. The colony had not
+been sought by its conquerors for itself. It was counted of little
+worth. The verdict of its late possessors, as recorded in Voltaire's
+light farewell to "a few arpents of snow," might be discounted as an
+instance of sour grapes; but the estimate of its new possessors was
+evidently little higher, since they debated long and dubiously whether
+in the peace settlement they should retain Canada or the little sugar
+island of Guadeloupe, a mere pin point on the map. Canada had been
+conquered not for the good it might bring but for the harm it was doing
+as a base for French attack upon the English colonies--"the wasps' nest
+must be smoked out." But once it had been taken, it had to be dealt with
+for itself.
+
+The policy first adopted was a simple one, natural enough for
+eighteenth-century Englishmen. They decided to make Canada* over in
+the image of the old colonies, to turn the "new subjects," as they were
+called, in good time into Englishmen and Protestants. A generation
+or two would suffice, in the phrase of Francis Maseres--himself a
+descendant of a Huguenot refugee but now wholly an Englishman--for
+"melting down the French nation into the English in point of language,
+affections, religion, and laws." Immigration was to be encouraged from
+Britain and from the other American colonies, which, in the view of the
+Lords of Trade, were already overstocked and in danger of being forced
+by the scarcity or monopoly of land to take up manufactures which would
+compete with English wares. And since it would greatly contribute to
+speedy settlement, so the Royal Proclamation of 1763 declared, that the
+King's subjects should be informed of his paternal care for the security
+of their liberties and properties, it was promised that, as soon as
+circumstances would permit, a General Assembly would be summoned, as in
+the older colonies. The laws of England, civil and criminal, as near as
+might be, were to prevail. The Roman Catholic subjects were to be free
+to profess their own religion, "so far as the laws of Great Britain
+permit," but they were to be shown a better way. To the first Governor
+instructions were issued "that all possible Encouragement shall be given
+to the erecting Protestant Schools in the said Districts, Townships and
+Precincts, by settling and appointing and allotting proper Quantities
+of Land for that Purpose and also for a Glebe and Maintenance for a
+Protestant minister and Protestant schoolmasters." Thus in the fullness
+of time, like Acadia, but without any Evangelise of Grand Pre, without
+any drastic policy of expulsion, impossible with seventy thousand people
+scattered over a wide area, even Canada would become a good English
+land, a newer New England.
+
+     * The Royal Proclamation of 1763 set the bounds of the new
+     colony. They were surprisingly narrow, a mere strip along
+     both sides of the St. Lawrence from a short distance beyond
+     the Ottawa on the west, to the end of the Gasps peninsula on
+     the east. The land to the northeast was put under the
+     jurisdiction of the Governor of Newfoundland, and the Great
+     Lakes region was included in the territory reserved for the
+     Indians.
+
+It is questionable whether this policy could ever have achieved success
+even if it had been followed for generations without rest or turning.
+But it was not destined to be given a long trial. From the very
+beginning the men on the spot, the soldier Governors of Canada, urged
+an entirely contrary policy on the Home Government, and the pressure of
+events soon brought His Majesty's Ministers to concur.
+
+As the first civil Governor of Canada, the British authorities chose
+General Murray, one of Wolfe's ablest lieutenants, who since 1760 had
+served as military Governor of the Quebec district. He was to be
+aided in his task by a council composed of the Lieutenant Governors of
+Montreal and Three Rivers, the Chief Justice, the head of the
+customs, and eight citizens to be named by the Governor from "the most
+considerable of the persons of property" in the province.
+
+The new Governor was a blunt, soldierly man, upright and just according
+to his lights, but deeply influenced by his military and aristocratic
+leanings. Statesmen thousands of miles away might plan to encourage
+English settlers and English political ways and to put down all that was
+French. To the man on the spot English settlers meant "the four hundred
+and fifty contemptible sutlers and traders" who had come in the wake of
+the army from New England and New York, with no proper respect for their
+betters, and vulgarly and annoyingly insistent upon what they claimed to
+be their rights. The French might be alien in speech and creed, but at
+least the seigneurs and the higher clergy were gentlemen, with a due
+respect for authority, the King's and their own, and the habitants were
+docile, the best of soldier stuff. "Little, very little," Murray wrote
+in 1764 to the Lords of Trade, "will content the New Subjects, but
+nothing will satisfy the Licentious Fanaticks Trading here, but the
+expulsion of the Canadians, who are perhaps the bravest and best
+race upon the Globe, a Race, who cou'd they be indulged with a few
+priviledges wch the Laws of England deny to Roman Catholicks at
+home, wou'd soon get the better of every National Antipathy to their
+Conquerors and become the most faithful and most useful set of Men in
+this American Empire."*
+
+     * This quotation and those following in this chapter are
+     from official documents most conveniently assembled in Shorn
+     and Doughty, "Documents relating to the Constitutional
+     History of Canada, 1759-1791", and Doughty and McArthur,
+     "Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada,
+     1791-1818".
+
+Certainly there was much in the immediate situation to justify Murray's
+attitude. It was preposterous to set up a legislature in which only the
+four hundred Protestants might sit and from which the seventy thousand
+Catholics would be barred. It would have been difficult in any case
+to change suddenly the system of laws governing the most intimate
+transactions of everyday life. But when, as happened, the Administration
+was entrusted in large part to newly created justices of the peace, men
+with "little French and less honour," "to whom it is only possible to
+speak with guineas in one's hand," the change became flatly impossible.
+Such an alteration, if still insisted upon, must come more slowly than
+the impatient traders in Montreal and Quebec desired.
+
+The British Government, however, was not yet ready to abandon its
+policy. The Quebec traders petitioned for Murray's recall, alleging that
+the measures required to encourage settlement had not been adopted, that
+the Governor was encouraging factions by his partiality to the French,
+that he treated the traders with "a Rage and Rudeness of Language and
+Demeanor" and--a fair thrust in return for his reference to them as "the
+most immoral collection of men I ever knew"--as "discountenancing the
+Protestant Religion by almost a Total Neglect of Attendance upon the
+Service of the Church." When the London business correspondents of
+the traders backed up this petition, the Government gave heed. In 1766
+Murray was recalled to England and, though he was acquitted of the
+charges against him, he did not return to his post in Canada.
+
+The triumph of the English merchants was short. They had jumped from the
+frying pan into the fire. General Guy Carleton, Murray's successor and
+brother officer under Wolfe, was an even abler man, and he was still
+less in sympathy with democracy of the New England pattern. Moreover, a
+new factor had come in to reenforce the soldier's instinctive preference
+for gentlemen over shopkeepers. The first rumblings of the American
+Revolution had reached Quebec. It was no time, in Carleton's view, to
+set up another sucking republic. Rather, he believed, the utmost should
+be made of the opportunity Canada afforded as a barrier against the
+advance of democracy, a curb upon colonial insolence. The need of
+cultivating the new subjects was the greater, Carleton contended,
+because the plan of settlement by Englishmen gave no sign of succeeding:
+"barring a Catastrophe shocking to think of, this Country must, to the
+end of Time, be peopled by the Canadian race."
+
+To bind the Canadians firmly to England, Carleton proposed to work
+chiefly through their old leaders, the seigneurs and the clergy. He
+would restore to the people their old system of laws, both civil and
+criminal. He would confirm the seigneurs in their feudal dues and
+fines, which the habitants were growing slack in paying now that the
+old penalties were not enforced, and he would give them honors and
+emoluments such as they had before enjoyed as officers in regular or
+militia regiments. The Roman Catholic clergy were already, in fact,
+confirmed in their right to tithe and toll; and, without objection
+from the Governor, Bishop Briand, elected by the chapter in Quebec and
+consecrated in Paris, once more assumed control over the flock.
+
+Carleton's proposals did not pass unquestioned. His own chief legal
+adviser, Francis Maseres, was a sturdy adherent of the older policy,
+though he agreed that the time was not yet ripe for setting up an
+Assembly and suggested some well-considered compromise between the old
+laws and the new. The Advocate General of England, James Marriott, urged
+the same course. The policy of 1768, he contended eleven years later,
+had already succeeded in great measure. The assimilation of government
+had been effected; an assimilation of manners would follow. The
+excessive military spirit of the inhabitants had begun to dwindle, as
+England's interest required. The back settlements of New York and Canada
+were fast being joined. Two or three thousand men of British stock, many
+of them men of substance, had gone to the new colony; warehouses and
+foundries were being built; and many of the principal seigneuries
+had passed into English hands. All that was needed, he concluded, was
+persistence along the old path. The same view was of course strenuously
+urged by the English merchants in the colony, who continued to demand,
+down to the very eve of the Revolution, an elective Assembly and other
+rights of freeborn Britons.
+
+Carleton carried the day. His advice, tendered at close range during
+four years' absentee residence in London, from 1770 to 1774, fell in
+with the mood of Lord North's Government. The measure in which the new
+policy was embodied, the famous Quebec Act of 1774, was essentially a
+part of the ministerial programme for strengthening British power to
+cope with the resistance then rising to rebellious heights in the old
+colonies. Though not, as was long believed, designed in retaliation for
+the Boston disturbances, it is clear that its framers had Massachusetts
+in mind when deciding on their policy for Quebec. The main purpose of
+the Act, the motive which turned the scale against the old Anglicizing
+policy, was to attach the leaders of French-Canadian opinion firmly
+to the British Crown, and thus not only to prevent Canada itself from
+becoming infected with democratic contagion or turning in a crisis
+toward France, but to ensure, if the worst came to the worst, a military
+base in that northland whose terrors had in old days kept the seaboard
+colonies circumspectly loyal. Ministers in London had been driven by
+events to accept Carleton's paradox, that to make Quebec British,
+it must be prevented from becoming English. If in later years the
+solidarity and aloofness of the French-Canadian people were sometimes to
+prove inconvenient to British interests, it was always to be remembered
+that this situation was due in great part to the deliberate action of
+Great Britain in strengthening French-Canadian institutions as a means
+of advancing what she considered her own interests in America. "The
+views of the British Government in respect to the political uses to
+which it means to make Canada subservient," Marriott had truly declared,
+"must direct the spirit of any code of laws."
+
+The Quebec Act multiplied the area of the colony sevenfold by the
+restoration of all Labrador on the east and the region west as far as
+the Ohio and the Mississippi and north to the Hudson's Bay Company's
+territory. It restored the old French civil law but continued the milder
+English criminal law already in operation. It gave to the Roman Catholic
+inhabitants the free exercise of their religion, subject to a modified
+oath of allegiance, and confirmed the clergy in their right "to hold,
+receive and enjoy their accustomed dues and rights, with respect to such
+persons only as shall confess the said religion." The promised elective
+Assembly was not granted, but a Council appointed by the Crown received
+a measure of legislative power.
+
+On his return to Canada in September, 1774, Carleton reported that the
+Canadians had "testified the strongest marks of Joy and Gratitude and
+Fidelity to their King and to His Government for the late Arrangements
+made at Home in their Favor." The "most respectable part of the
+English," he continued, urged peaceful acceptance of the new order.
+Evidently, however, the respectable members of society were few, as the
+great body of the English settlers joined in a petition for the repeal
+of the Act on the ground that it deprived them of the incalculable
+benefits of habeas corpus and trial by jury. The Montreal merchants,
+whether, as Carleton commented, they "were of a more turbulent Turn, or
+that they caught the Fire from some Colonists settled among them," were
+particularly outspoken in the town meetings they held. In the older
+colonies the opposition was still more emphatic. An Act which hemmed
+them in to the seacoast, established on the American continent a Church
+they feared and hated, and continued an autocratic political system,
+appeared to many to be the undoing of the work of Pitt and Wolfe and
+the revival on the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi of a
+serious menace to their liberty and progress.
+
+Then came the clash at Lexington, and the War of American Independence
+had begun. The causes, the course, and the ending of that great civil
+war have been treated elsewhere in this series.* Here it is necessary
+only to note its bearings on the fate of Canada.
+
+     * See "The Eve of the Revolution" and "Washington and His
+     Comrades in Arms" (in "The Chronicles of America").
+
+Early in 1775 the Continental Congress undertook the conquest of Canada,
+or, as it was more diplomatically phrased, the relief of its inhabitants
+from British tyranny. Richard Montgomery led an expedition over the old
+route by Lake Champlain and the Richelieu, along which French and Indian
+raiding parties used to pass years before, and Benedict Arnold made a
+daring and difficult march up the Kennebec and down the Chaudiere
+to Quebec. Montreal fell to Montgomery; and Carleton himself escaped
+capture only by the audacity of some French-Canadian voyageurs, who,
+under cover of darkness, rowed his whaleboat or paddled it with their
+hands silently past the American sentinels on the shore. Once down the
+river and in Quebec, Carleton threw himself with vigor and skill into
+the defense of his capital. His generalship and the natural strength
+of the position proved more than a match for Montgomery and Arnold.
+Montgomery was killed and Arnold wounded in a vain attempt to carry the
+city by storm on the last night of 1775. At Montreal a delegation from
+Congress, composed of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles
+Carroll of Carrollton, accompanied by Carroll's brother, a Jesuit priest
+and a future archbishop, failed to achieve-more by diplomacy than their
+generals had done by the sword. The Canadians seemed, content enough to
+wear the British yoke. In the spring, when a British fleet arrived with
+reenforcements, the American troops retired in haste and, before the
+Declaration of Independence had been proclaimed, Canada was free from
+the last of its ten thousand invaders.
+
+The expedition had put Carleton's policy to the test. On the whole it
+stood the strain. The seigneurs had rallied to the Government which had
+restored their rights, and the clergy had called on the people to stand
+fast by the King. So far all went as Carleton had hoped: "The Noblesse,
+Clergy, and greater part of the Bourgeoisie," he wrote, "have given
+Government every Assistance in their Power." But the habitants refused
+to follow their appointed leaders with the old docility, and some even
+mobbed the seigneurs who tried to enroll them. Ten years of freedom had
+worked a democratic change in them, and they were much less enthusiastic
+than their betters about the restoration of seigneurial privileges.
+Carleton, like many another, had held as public opinion what were merely
+the opinions of those whom he met at dinner. "These people had been
+governed with too loose a rein for many years," he now wrote to
+Burgoyne, "and had imbibed too much of the American Spirit of
+Licentiousness and Independence administered by a numerous and turbulent
+Faction here, to be suddenly restored to a proper and desirable
+Subordination." A few of the habitants joined his forces; fewer joined
+the invaders or sold them supplies--till they grew suspicious of paper
+"Continentals." But the majority held passively aloof. Even when France
+joined the warring colonies and Admiral d'Estaing appealed to the
+Canadians to rise, they did not heed; though it is difficult to say what
+the result would have been if Washington had agreed to Lafayette's plan
+of a joint French and American invasion in 1778.
+
+Nova Scotia also held aloof, in spite of the fact that many of the men
+who had come from New England and from Ulster were eager to join the
+colonies to the south. In Nova Scotia democracy was a less hardy plant
+than in Massachusetts. The town and township institutions, which had
+been the nurseries of resistance in New England, had not been allowed to
+take root there. The circumstances of the founding of Halifax had given
+ripe to a greater tendency, which lasted long, to lean upon the mother
+country. The Maine wilderness made intercourse between Nova Scotia and
+New England difficult by land, and the British fleet was in control
+of the sea until near the close of the war. Nova Scotia stood by Great
+Britain, and was reserved to become part of a northern nation still in
+the making.
+
+That nation was to owe its separate existence to the success of the
+American Revolution. But for that event, coming when it did, the
+struggling colonies of Quebec and Nova Scotia would in time have become
+merged with the colonies to the youth and would have followed them,
+whether they remained within the British Empire or not. Thus it was due
+to the quarrel between the thirteen colonies and the motherland that
+Canada did not become merely a fourteenth colony or state. Nor was this
+the only bearing of the Revolution on Canada's destiny. Thanks to the
+coming of the Loyalists, those exiles of the Revolution who settled in
+Canada in large numbers, Canada was after all to be dominantly a land of
+English speech and of English sympathies. By one of the many paradoxes
+which mark the history of Canada, the very success of the plan which
+aimed to save British power by confirming French-Canadian nationality
+and the loyalty of the French led in the end to making a large part of
+Canada English. The Revolution meant also that for many a year those in
+authority in England and in Canada itself were to stand in fear of the
+principles and institutions which had led the old colonies to rebellion
+and separation, and were to try to build up in Canada buttresses against
+the advance of democracy.
+
+The British statesmen who helped to frame the Peace of 1783 were men
+with broad and generous views as to the future of the seceding colonies
+and their relations with the mother country. It was perhaps inevitable
+that they should have given less thought to the future of the colonies
+in America which remained under the British flag. Few men could realize
+at the moment that out of these scattered fragments a new nation and a
+second empire would arise. Not only were the seceding colonies given a
+share in the fishing grounds of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, which was
+unfortunately to prove a constant source of friction, but the
+boundary line was drawn with no thought of the need of broad and easy
+communication between Nova Scotia and Canada, much less between Canada
+and the far West. Vague definitions of the boundaries, naturally
+incident to the prevailing lack of geographical knowledge of the vast
+continent, held further seeds of trouble. These contentions, however,
+were far in the future. At the moment another defect of the treaty
+proved to be Canada's gain. The failure of Lord Shelburne's Ministry to
+insist upon effective safeguards for the fair treatment of those who had
+taken the King's side in the old colonies, condemned as it was not only
+by North and the Tories but by Fox and Sheridan and Burke, led to that
+Loyalist migration which changed the racial complexion of Canada.
+
+The Treaty of 1783 provided that Congress would "earnestly recommend"
+to the various States that the Loyalists be granted amnesty and
+restitution. This pious resolution proved not worth the paper on which
+it was written. In State after State the property of the Loyalists
+was withheld or confiscated anew. Yet this ungenerous treatment of the
+defeated by the victors is not hard to understand. The struggle had been
+waged with all the bitterness of civil war. The smallness of the field
+of combat had intensified personal ill-will. Both sides had practiced
+cruelties in guerrilla warfare; but the Patriots forgot Marion's raids,
+Simsbury mines, and the drumhead hangings, and remembered only Hessian
+brutalities, Indian scalpings, Tarleton's harryings, and the infamous
+prison ships of New York. The war had been a long one. The tide of
+battle had ebbed and flowed. A district that was Patriot one year was
+frequently Loyalist the next. These circumstances engendered fear and
+suspicion and led to nervous reprisals.
+
+At least a third, if not a half, of the people of the old colonies
+had been opposed to revolution. New York was strongly Loyalist, with
+Pennsylvania, Georgia, and the Carolinas closely following. In the end
+some fifty or sixty thousand Loyalists abandoned their homes or suffered
+expulsion rather than submit to the new order. They counted in their
+ranks many of the men who had held first place in their old communities,
+men of wealth, of education, and of standing, as well as thousands
+who had nothing to give but their fidelity to the old order. Many,
+especially of the well-to-do, went to England; a few found refuge in the
+West Indies; but the great majority, over fifty thousand in all, sought
+new homes in the northern wilderness. Over thirty thousand, including
+many of the most influential of the whole number (with about three
+thousand negro slaves, afterwards freed and deported to Sierra Leone)
+were carried by ship to Nova Scotia. They found homes chiefly in
+that part of the province which in 1784 became New Brunswick. Others,
+trekking overland or sailing around by the Gulf and up the River,
+settled in the upper valley of the St. Lawrence--on Lake St. Francis, on
+the Cataraqui and the Bay of Quinte, and in the Niagara District.
+
+Though these pioneers were generously aided by the British Government
+with grants of land and supplies, their hardships and disappointments
+during the first years in the wilderness were such as would have daunted
+any but brave and desperate men and women whom fate had winnowed. Yet
+all but a few, who drifted back to their old homes, held out; and the
+foundations of two more provinces of the future Dominion--New Brunswick
+and Upper Canada--were thus broadly and soundly laid by the men whom
+future generations honored as "United Empire Loyalists." Through all
+the later years, their sacrifices and sufferings, their ideals and
+prejudices, were to make a deep impress on the development of the nation
+which they helped to found and were to influence its relations with the
+country which they had left and with the mother country which had held
+their allegiance.
+
+Once the first tasks of hewing and hauling and planting were done, the
+new settlers called for the organization of local governments. They
+were quite as determined as their late foes to have a voice in their
+own governing, even though they yielded ultimate obedience to rulers
+overseas.
+
+In the provinces by the sea a measure of self-government was at once
+established. New Brunswick received, without question, a constitution on
+the Nova Scotia model, with a Lieutenant Governor, an Executive Council
+appointed to advise him, which served also as the upper house of the
+legislature, and an elective Assembly. Of the twenty-six members of the
+first Assembly, twenty-three were Loyalists. With a population so much
+at one, and with the tasks of road making and school building and tax
+collecting insistent and absorbing, no party strife divided the province
+for many years. In Nova Scotia, too, the Loyalists were in the majority.
+There, however, the earlier settlers soon joined with some of the
+newcomers to form an opposition. The island of St. John, renamed Prince
+Edward Island in 1798, had been made a separate Government and had
+received an Assembly in 1773. Its one absorbing question was the tenure
+of land. On a single day in 1767 the British authorities had granted the
+whole island by lottery to army and navy officers and country gentlemen,
+on condition of the payment of small quitrents. The quitrents were
+rarely paid, and the tenants of the absentee landlords kept up an
+agitation for reform which was unceasing but which was not to be
+successful for a hundred years. In all three Maritime Provinces
+political and party controversy was little known for a generation after
+the Revolution.
+
+It was more difficult to decide what form of government should be set up
+in Canada, now that tens of thousands of English-speaking settlers dwelt
+beside the old Canadians. Carleton, now Lord Dorchester, had returned
+as Governor in 1786, after eight years' absence. He was still averse
+to granting an Assembly so long as the French subjects were in the
+majority: they did not want it, he insisted, and could not use it.
+But the Loyalist settlers, not to be put off, joined with the English
+merchants of Montreal and Quebec in demanding an Assembly and relief
+from the old French laws. Carleton himself was compelled to admit the
+force of the conclusion of William Grenville, Secretary of State for the
+Home Department, then in control of the remnants of the colonial empire,
+and son of that George Grenville who, as Prime Minister, had introduced
+the American Stamp Act of 1765: "I am persuaded that it is a point
+of true Policy to make these Concessions at a time when they may be
+received as a matter of favour, and when it is in Our own power to
+regulate and direct the manner of applying them, rather than to wait
+till they shall be extorted from us by a necessity which shall neither
+leave us any discretion in the form nor any merit in the substance of
+what We give." Accordingly, in 1791, the British Parliament passed the
+Constitutional Act dividing Canada into two provinces separated by
+the Ottawa River, Lower or French-speaking Canada and Upper or
+English-speaking Canada, and granting each an elective Assembly.
+
+Thus far the tide of democracy had risen, but thus far only. Few in
+high places had learned the full lesson of the American Revolution. The
+majority believed that the old colonies had been lost because they had
+not been kept under a sufficiently tight rein; that democracy had been
+allowed too great headway; that the remaining colonies, therefore,
+should be brought under stricter administrative control; and that care
+should be taken to build up forces to counteract the democracy which
+grew so rank and swift in frontier soil. This conservative tendency
+was strengthened by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.* The
+rulers of England had witnessed two revolutions, and the lesson they
+drew from both was that it was best to smother democracy in the cradle.
+
+     * It will be remembered that in the debate on the
+     Constitutional Act the conflicting views of Burke and Fox on
+     the French Revolution led to the dramatic break in their
+     lifelong friendship.
+
+For this reason the measure of representative government that had been
+granted each of the remaining British colonies in North America was
+carefully hedged about. The whole executive power remained in the hands
+of the Governor or his nominees. No one yet conceived it possible that
+the Assembly should control the Executive Council. The elective Assembly
+was compelled to share even the lawmaking power with an upper house,
+the Legislative Council. Not only were the members of this upper house
+appointed by the Crown for life, but the King was empowered to bestow
+hereditary titles upon them with a view to making the Council in the
+fullness of time a copy of the House of Lords. A blow was struck even
+at that traditional prerogative of the popular house, the control of
+the purse. Carleton had urged that in every township a sixth of the
+land should be reserved to enable His Majesty "to reward such of His
+provincial Servants as may merit the Royal favour" and "to create and
+strengthen an Aristocracy, of which the best use may be made on this
+Continent, where all Governments are feeble and the general condition of
+things tends to a wild Democracy." Grenville saw further possibilities
+in this suggestion. It would give the Crown a revenue which would
+make it independent of the Assembly, "a measure, which, if it had been
+adopted when the Old Colonies were first settled, would have retained
+them to this hour in obedience and Loyalty." Nor was this all. From
+the same source an endowment might be obtained for a state church which
+would be a bulwark of order and conservatism. The Constitutional
+Act accordingly provided for setting aside lands equal in value to
+one-seventh of all lands granted from time to time, for the support of
+a Protestant clergy. The Executive Council received power to set up
+rectories in every parish, to endow them liberally, and to name as
+rectors ministers of the Church of England. Further, the Executive
+Council was instructed to retain an equal amount of land as crown
+reserves, distributed judiciously in blocks between the grants made to
+settlers. Were any radical tendencies to survive these attentions, the
+veto power of the British Government could be counted on in the last
+resort.
+
+For a time the installment of self-government thus granted satisfied the
+people. The pioneer years left little leisure for political discussion,
+nor were there at first any general issues about which men might
+differ. The Government was carrying on acceptably the essential tasks
+of surveying, land granting, and road building; and each member of the
+Assembly played his own hand and was chiefly concerned in obtaining
+for his constituents the roads and bridges, they needed so badly. The
+English-speaking settlers of Upper Canada were too widely scattered,
+and the French-speaking citizens of Lower Canada were too ignorant of
+representative institutions, to act in groups or parties.
+
+Much turned in these early years upon the personality of the Governor.
+In several instances, the choice of rulers for the new provinces proved
+fortunate. This was particularly so in the case of John Graves Simcoe,
+Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1792 to 1799. He was a good
+soldier and a just and vigorous administrator, particularly wise in
+setting his regulars to work building roads such as Yonge Street and
+Dundas Street, which to this day are great provincial arteries of
+travel. Yet there were many sources of weakness in the scheme of
+government--divided authority, absenteeism, personal unfitness. When
+Dorchester was reappointed in 1786, he had been made Governor in
+Chief of all British North America. From the beginning, however, the
+Lieutenant Governors of the various provinces asserted independent
+authority, and in a few years the Governor General became in fact merely
+the Governor of the most populous province, Lower Canada, in which he
+resided.
+
+In Upper Canada, as in New Brunswick, the population was at first much
+at one. In time, however, discordant elements appeared. Religious, or
+at least denominational, differences began to cause friction. The great
+majority of the early settlers in Upper Canada belonged to the Church of
+England, whose adherents in the older colonies had nearly all taken
+the Loyalist side. Of the Ulster Presbyterians and New England
+Congregationalists who formed the backbone of the Revolution, few came
+to Canada. The growth of the Methodists and Baptists in the United
+States after the Revolution, however, made its mark on the neighboring
+country. The first Methodist class meetings in Upper Canada, held in
+the United Empire Loyalist settlement on the Bay of Quinte in 1791,
+were organized by itinerant preachers from the United States; and in the
+western part of the province pioneer Baptist evangelists from the same
+country reached the scattered settlers neglected by the older churches.
+
+Nor was it in religion alone that diversity grew. Simcoe had set up a
+generous land policy which brought in many "late Loyalists," American
+settlers whose devotion to monarchical principles would not always bear
+close inquiry. The fantastic experiment of planting in the heart of
+the woods of Upper Canada a group of French nobles driven out by
+the Revolution left no trace; but Mennonites, Quakers, and Scottish
+Highlanders contributed diverse and permanent factors to the life of the
+province. Colonel Thomas Talbot of Malahide, "a fierce little Irishman
+who hated Scotchmen and women, turned teetotallers out of his house,
+and built the only good road in the province," made the beginnings
+of settlement midway on Lake Erie. A shrewd Massachusetts merchant,
+Philemon Wright, with his comrades, their families, servants, horses,
+oxen, and 10,000 pounds, sledded from Boston to Montreal in the winter
+of 1800, and thence a hundred miles beyond, to found the town of Hull
+and establish a great lumbering industry in the Ottawa Valley.
+
+These differences of origin and ways of thought had not yet been
+reflected in political life. Party strife in Upper Canada began with
+a factional fight which took place in 1805-07 between a group of Irish
+officeholders and a Scotch clique who held the reins of government.
+Weekes, an Irish-American barrister, Thorpe, a puisne judge, Wyatt,
+the surveyor general, and Willcocks, a United Irishman who had become
+sheriff of one of the four Upper Canada districts, began to question the
+right to rule of "the Scotch pedlars" or "the Shopkeeper Aristocracy,"
+as Thorpe called those merchants who, for the lack of other leaders,
+had developed an influence with the governors or ruled in their frequent
+absence. But the insurgents were backed by only a small minority in the
+Assembly, and when the four leaders disappeared from the stage,* this
+curtain raiser to the serious political drama which was to follow came
+quickly to its end.
+
+     * Weekes was slain in a duel. Wyatt and Thorpe were
+     suspended by the Lieutenant Governor, Sir Francis Gore, only
+     to win redress later in England. Willcocks was dismissed
+     from office and fell fighting on the American side in the
+     War of 1812.
+
+In Lower Canada the clash was more serious. The French Canadians, who
+had not asked for representative government, eventually grasped its
+possibilities and found leaders other than those ordained for them. In
+the first Assembly there were many seigneurs and aristocrats who
+bore names notable for six generations back Taschereau, Duchesnay,
+Lothiniere, Rouville, Salaberry. But they soon found their surroundings
+uncongenial or failed to be reelected. Writing in 1810 to Lord
+Liverpool, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, the Governor,
+Sir James Craig, with a fine patrician scorn thus pictures the Assembly
+of his day.
+
+"It really, my Lord, appears to me an absurdity, that the Interests of
+certainly not an unimportant Colony, involving in them those also of no
+inconsiderable portion of the Commercial concerns of the British Empire,
+should be in the hands of six petty shopkeepers, a Blacksmith, a Miller,
+and 15 ignorant peasants who form part of our present House; a Doctor
+or Apothecary, twelve Canadian Avocats and Notaries, and four so far
+respectable people that at least they do not keep shops, together with
+ten English members compleat the List: there is not one person coming
+under the description of a Canadian Gentleman among them."
+
+And again:
+
+"A Governor cannot obtain among them even that sort of influence that
+might arise from personal intercourse. I can have none with Blacksmiths,
+Millers, and Shopkeepers; even the Avocats and Notaries who compose so
+considerable a portion of the House, are, generally speaking, such as I
+can nowhere meet, except during the actual sitting of Parliament, when
+I have a day of the week expressly appropriated to the receiving a large
+portion of them at dinner."
+
+Leadership under these conditions fell to the "unprincipled Demagogues,"
+half-educated lawyers, men "with nothing to lose."
+
+But it was not merely as an aristocrat facing peasants and shopkeepers,
+nor as a soldier faced by talkers, but as an Englishman on guard against
+Frenchmen that Craig found himself at odds with his Assembly. For nearly
+twenty years in this period England was at death grips with France,
+end to hate and despise all Frenchmen was part of the hereditary and
+congenial duty of all true Britons. Craig and those who counseled him
+were firmly convinced that the new subjects were French at heart. Of
+the 250,000 inhabitants of Lower Canada, he declared, "about 20,000 or
+25,000 may be English or Americans, the rest are French. I use the term
+designedly, my Lord, because I mean to say that they are in Language, in
+religion, in manner and in attachment completely French." That there
+was still some affection for old France, stirred by war and French
+victories, there is no question, but that the Canadians wished to return
+to French allegiance was untrue, even though Craig reported that such
+was "the general opinion of all ranks with whom it is possible to
+converse on the subject." The French Revolution had created a great gulf
+between Old France and New France. The clergy did their utmost to bar
+all intercourse with the land where deism and revolution held sway, and
+when the Roman Catholic Church and the British Government combined for
+years on a single object, it was little wonder they succeeded. Nelson's
+victory at Trafalgar was celebrated by a Te Deum in the Roman Catholic
+Cathedral at Quebec. In fact, as Craig elsewhere noted, the habitants
+were becoming rather a new and distinct nationality, a nation
+canadienne. They ceased to be French; they declined to become English;
+and sheltered under their "Sacred Charter"* they became Canadians first
+and last.
+
+     * "It cannot be sufficiently inculcated ON THE PART OF
+     GOVERNMENT that the Quebec Act is a Sacred Charter, granted
+     by the King in Parliament to the Canadians as a Security for
+     their Religion, Laws, and Property." Governor Sir Frederick
+     Haldimand to Lord George Germaine, Oct. 25, 1780.
+
+The governors were not alone in this hostility to the mass of
+the people. There had grown up in the colony a little clique of
+officeholders, of whom Jonathan Sewell, the Loyalist Attorney General,
+and later Chief Justice, was the chief, full of racial and class
+prejudice, and in some cases greedy for personal gain. Sewell declared
+it "indispensably necessary to overwhelm and sink the Canadian
+population by English Protestants," and was even ready to run the
+risk of bringing in Americans to effect this end. Of the non-official
+English, some were strongly opposed to the pretensions of the "Chateau
+Clique"; but others, and especially the merchants, with their organ the
+Quebec "Mercury", were loud in their denunciations of the French who
+were unprogressive and who as landowners were incidentally trying to
+throw the burden of taxation chiefly on the traders.
+
+The first open sign of the racial division which was to bedevil the life
+of the province came in 1806 when, in order to meet the attacks of
+the Anglicizing party, the newspaper "Le Canadien" was established at
+Quebec. Its motto was significant: "Notre langue, nos institutions, et
+nos lois." Craig and his counselors took up the challenge. In 1808 he
+dismissed five militia officers, because of their connection with the
+irritating journal, and in 1810 he went so far as to suppress it and
+to throw into prison four of those responsible for its management. The
+Assembly, which was proving hard to control, was twice dissolved in
+three years. Naturally the Governor's arbitrary course only stiffened
+resistance; and passions were rising fast and high when illness led
+to his recall and the shadow of a common danger from the south, the
+imminence of war with the United States, for a time drew all men
+together.
+
+
+While the foundations of the eastern provinces of Canada were being
+laid, the wildernesses which one day were to become the western
+provinces were just rising above the horizon of discovery. In the plains
+and prairies between the Great Lakes and the Rockies, fur traders warred
+for the privilege of exchanging with the Indians bad whiskey for good
+furs. Scottish traders from Montreal, following in the footsteps of La
+Verendrye and Niverville, pushed far into the northern wilds.* In 1788
+the leading traders joined forces in organizing the North-West Company.
+Their great canoes, manned by French-Canadian voyageurs, penetrated the
+network of waters from the Ottawa to the Saskatchewan, and poured wealth
+into the pockets of the lordly partners in Montreal. Their rivalry
+wakened the sleepy Hudson's Bay Company, which was now forced to leave
+the shores of the inland sea and build posts in the interior.
+
+     * It is interesting to note the dominant share taken in the
+     trade and exploration of the North and West by men of
+     Highland Scotch and French extraction. For an account of La
+     Verendrye see "The Conquest of New France" and for the
+     Scotch fur traders of Montreal see "Adventurers of Oregon"
+     (in "The Chronicles of America").
+
+On the Pacific coast rivalry was still keener. The sea otter and the
+seal were a lure to the men of many nations. Canada took its part in
+this rivalry. In 1792, when the Russians were pressing down from their
+Alaskan posts, when the Spaniards, claiming the Pacific for their own,
+were exploring the mouth of the Fraser, when Captain Robert Gray of
+Boston was sailing up the mighty Columbia, and Captain Vancouver
+was charting the northern coasts for the British Government, a young
+North-West Company factor, Alexander Mackenzie, in his lonely post on
+Lake Athabaska, was planning to cross the wilderness of mountains to
+the coast. With a fellow trader, Mackay, and six Canadian voyageurs, he
+pushed up the Peace and the Parsnip, passed by way of the Fraser and
+the Blackwater to the Bella Coola, and thence to the Pacific, the first
+white man to cross the northern continent. Paddling for life through
+swirling rapids on rivers which rushed madly through sheer rock-bound
+canyons, swimming for shore when rock or sand bar had wrecked the
+precious bark canoe, struggling over heartbreaking portages, clinging
+to the sides of precipices, contending against hostile Indians and
+fear-stricken followers, and at last winning through, Mackenzie summed
+up what will ever remain one of the great achievements of exploration
+in the simple record, painted in vermilion on a rock in Burke Channel:
+Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July,
+one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three. The first bond had been
+woven in the union of East and West. Between the eastern provinces a
+stronger link was soon to be forged. The War of 1812 gave the scattered
+British colonies in America for the first time a living sense of unity
+that transcended all differences, a memory of perils and of victories
+which nourished a common patriotism.
+
+The War of 1812 was no quarrel of Canada's. It was merely an incident
+in the struggle between England and Napoleon. At desperate grips, both
+contestants used whatever weapons lay ready to their hands. Sea power
+was England's weapon, and in her claim to forbid all neutral traffic
+with her enemies and to exercise the galling right of search, she
+pressed it far. France trampled still more ruthlessly on American and
+neutral rights; but, with memories of 1776 still fresh, the dominant
+party in the United States was disposed to forgive France and to hold
+England to strict account.
+
+England had struck at France, regardless of how the blow might injure
+neutrals. Now the United States sought to strike at England through the
+colonies, regardless of their lack of any responsibility for English
+policy. The "war hawks" of the South and West called loudly for the
+speedy invasion and capture of Canada as a means of punishing England.
+In so far as the British North American colonies were but possessions
+of Great Britain, overseas plantations, the course of the United States
+could be justified. But potentially these colonies were more than mere
+possessions. They were a nation in the making, with a right to their own
+development; they were not simply a pawn in the game of Britain and the
+United States. Quite aside from the original rights or wrongs of
+the war, the invasion of Canada was from this standpoint an act of
+aggression. "Agrarian cupidity, not maritime right, wages this war,"
+insisted John Randolph of Roanoke, the chief opponent of the "war
+hawks" in Congress. "Ever since the report of the Committee on Foreign
+Relations came into the House, we have heard but one word--like the
+whippoorwill, but one eternal monotonous tone--Canada, Canada, Canada!"
+
+At the outset there appeared no question that the conquest of Canada
+could be, as Jefferson forecast, other than "a mere matter of marching."
+Eustis, the Secretary of War, prophesied that "we can take Canada
+without soldiers." Clay insisted that the Canadas were "as much under
+our command as the Ocean is under Great Britain's." The provinces had
+barely half a million people, two-thirds of them allied by ties of
+blood to Britain's chief enemy, to set against the eight millions of the
+Republic. There were fewer than ten thousand regular troops in all the
+colonies, half of them down by the sea, far away from the danger zone,
+and less than fifteen hundred west of Montreal. Little help could
+come from England, herself at war with Napoleon, the master of half of
+Europe.
+
+But there was another side. The United States was not a unit in the war;
+New England was apathetic or hostile to the war throughout, and as late
+as 1814 two-thirds of the army of Canada were eating beef supplied
+by Vermont and New York contractors. Weak as was the militia of the
+Canadas, it was stiffened by English and Canadian regulars, hardened by
+frontier experience, and led for the most part by trained and able
+men, whereas an inefficient system and political interference greatly
+weakened the military force of the fighting States. Above all, the
+Canadians were fighting for their homes. To them the war was a matter of
+life and death; to the United States it was at best a struggle to assert
+commercial rights or national prestige.
+
+The course and fortunes of the war call for only the briefest notice.
+In the first year the American plans for invading Upper Canada came to
+grief through the surrender of Hull at Detroit to Isaac Brock and the
+defeat at Queenston Heights of the American army under Van Rensselaer.
+The campaign ended with not a foot of Canadian soil in the invaders'
+hands, and with Michigan lost, but Brock, Canada's brilliant leader, had
+fallen at Queenston, and at sea the British had tasted unwonted defeat.
+In single actions one American frigate after another proved too much for
+its British opponent. It was a rude shock to the Mistress of the Seas.
+
+The second year's campaign was more checkered. In the West the Americans
+gained the command of the Great Lakes by rapid building and good
+sailing, and with it followed the command of all the western peninsula
+of Upper Canada. The British General Procter was disastrously defeated
+at Moraviantown, and his ally, the Shawanoe chief Tecumseh, one of
+the half dozen great men of his race, was killed. York, later known
+as Toronto, the capital of the province, was captured, and its public
+buildings were burned and looted. But in the East fortune was kinder
+to the Canadians. The American plan of invasion called for an attack on
+Montreal from two directions; General Wilkinson was to sail and march
+down the St. Lawrence from Sackett's Harbor with some eight thousand
+men, while General Hampton, with four thousand, was to take the historic
+route by Lake Champlain. Half-way down the St. Lawrence Wilkinson came
+to grief. Eighteen hundred men whom he landed to drive off a force of
+a thousand hampering his rear were decisively defeated at Chrystler's
+Farm. Wilkinson pushed on for a few days, but when word came that
+Hampton had also met disaster he withdrew into winter quarters. Hampton
+had found Colonel de Salaberry, with less than sixteen hundred troops,
+nearly all French Canadians, making a stand on the banks of the
+Chateauguay, thirty-five miles south of Montreal. He divided his
+force in order to take the Canadians in front and rear, only to be
+outmaneuvered and outfought in one of the most brilliant actions of
+the war and forced to retire. In the closing months of the year the
+Americans, compelled to withdraw from Fort George on the Niagara, burned
+the adjoining town of Newark and turned its women and children into the
+December snow. Drummond, who had succeeded Brock, gained control of both
+sides of the Niagara and retaliated in kind by laying waste the frontier
+villages from Lewiston to Buffalo. The year closed with Amherstburg on
+the Detroit the only Canadian post in American hands. On the sea the
+capture of the Chesapeake by the Shannon salved the pride of England.
+
+The last year of the war was also a year of varying fortunes. In the far
+West a small body of Canadians and Indians captured Prairie du Chien, on
+the Mississippi, while Michilimackinac, which a force chiefly composed
+of French-Canadian voyageurs and Indians had captured in the first
+months of war, defied a strong assault. In Upper Canada the Americans
+raided the western peninsula from Detroit but made their chief attack
+on the Niagara frontier. Though they scored no permanent success, they
+fought well and with a fair measure of fortune. The generals with whom
+they had been encumbered at the outset of the war, Revolutionary relics
+or political favorites, had now nearly all been replaced by abler
+men--Scott, Brown, Exert--and their troops were better trained and
+better equipped. In July the British forces on the Niagara were
+decisively beaten at Chippawa. Three weeks later was fought the
+bloodiest battle on Canadian soil, at Lundy's Lane, either side's
+victory at the moment but soon followed by the retirement of the
+invading force. The British had now outbuilt their opponents on Lake
+Ontario; and, though American ships controlled Lake Erie to the end, the
+Ontario flotilla aided Drummond, Brock's able successor, in forcing the
+withdrawal of Exert forces from the whole peninsula in November. Farther
+east a third attempt to capture Montreal had been defeated in the
+spring, after Wilkinson with four thousand men had failed to drive five
+hundred regulars and militia from the stone walls of Lacolle's Mill.
+
+Until this closing year Britain had been unable, in face of the more
+vital danger from Napoleon, to send any but trifling reenforcements to
+what she considered a minor theater of the war. Now, with Napoleon in
+Elba, she was free to take more vigorous action. Her navy had already
+swept the daring little fleet of American frigates and American merchant
+marine from the seas. Now it maintained a close blockade of all the
+coast and, with troops from Halifax, captured and held the Maine coast
+north of the Penobscot. Large forces of Wellington's hardy veterans
+crossed the ocean, sixteen thousand to Canada, four thousand to aid in
+harrying the Atlantic coast, and later nine thousand to seize the mouth
+of the Mississippi. Yet, strangely, these hosts fared worse, because
+of hard fortune and poor leadership, than the handful of militia and
+regulars who had borne the brunt of the war in the first two years.
+Under Ross they captured Washington and burned the official buildings;
+but under Prevost they failed at Plattsburg; and under Pakenham, in
+January, 1815, they failed against Andrew Jackson's sharpshooters at New
+Orleans.
+
+Before the last-named fight occurred, peace had been made. Both sides
+were weary of the war, which had now, by the seeming end of the struggle
+between England and Napoleon in which it was an incident, lost whatever
+it formerly had of reason. Though Napoleon was still in Elba, Europe
+was far from being at rest, and the British Ministers, backed by
+Wellington's advice, were keen to end the war. They showed their
+contempt for the issues at stake by sending to the peace conference at
+Ghent three commissioners as incompetent as ever represented a great
+power, Gambier, Goulburn, and Adams. To face these the United States had
+sent John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin, Henry Clay, James Bayard, and
+Jonathan Russell, as able and astute a group of players for great stakes
+as ever gathered round a table. In these circumstances the British
+representatives were lucky to secure peace on the basis of the status
+quo ante. Canada had hoped that sufficient of the unsettled Maine
+wilderness would be retained to link up New Brunswick with the inland
+colony of Quebec, but this proposal was soon abandoned. In the treaty
+not one of the ostensible causes of the war was even mentioned.
+
+The war had the effect of unifying Canadian feeling. Once more it had
+been determined that Canada was not to lose her identity in the nation
+to the south. In Upper Canada, especially in the west, there were many
+recent American settlers who sympathized openly with their kinsmen, but
+of these some departed, some were jailed, and others had a change of
+heart. Lower Canada was a unit against the invader, and French-Canadian
+troops on every occasion covered themselves with glory. To the
+Canadians, as the smaller people, and as the people whose country had
+been the chief battle ground, the war in later years naturally bulked
+larger than to their neighbors. It left behind it unfortunate legacies
+of hostility to the United States and, among the governing classes, of
+deep-rooted opposition to its democratic institutions. But it left also
+memories precious for a young people--the memory of Brock and Macdonell
+and De Salaberry, of Laura Secord and her daring tramp through the
+woods to warn of American attacks, of Stony Creek and Lundy's Lane,
+Chrystler's Farm and Chateauguay, the memory of sacrifice, of endurance,
+and of courage that did not count the odds.
+
+Nor were the evil legacies to last for all time. Three years after peace
+had been made the statesmen of the United States and of Great Britain
+had the uncommon sense to take a great step toward banishing war between
+the neighbor peoples. The Rush-Bagot Convention, limiting the naval
+armament on the Great Lakes to three vessels not exceeding one hundred
+tons each, and armed only with one eighteen-pounder, though not always
+observed in the letter, proved the beginning of a sane relationship
+which has lasted for a century. Had not this agreement nipped naval
+rivalry in the bud, fleets and forts might have lined the shores and
+increased the strain of policy and the likelihood of conflict. The New
+World was already preparing to sound its message to the Old.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE FIGHT FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT
+
+The history of British North America in the quarter of a century that
+followed the War of 1812 is in the main the homely tale of pioneer life.
+Slowly little clearings in the vast forest were widened and won to order
+and abundance; slowly community was linked to community; and out of the
+growing intercourse there developed the complex of ways and habits and
+interests that make up the everyday life of a people.
+
+All the provinces called for settlers, and they did not call in vain.
+For a time northern New England continued to overflow into the Eastern
+Townships of Lower Canada, the rolling lands south of the St. Lawrence
+which had been left untouched by riverbound seigneur and habitant. Into
+Upper Canada, as well, many individual immigrants came from the south,
+some of the best the Republic had to give, merchants and manufacturers
+with little capital but much shrewd enterprise, but also some it could
+best spare, fugitives from justice and keepers of the taverns that
+adorned every four corners. Yet slowly this inflow slackened. After the
+war the Canadian authorities sought to avoid republican contagion and
+moreover the West of the United States itself was calling for men.
+
+But if fewer came in across the border, many more sailed from across the
+seas. Not again until the twentieth century were the northern provinces
+to receive so large a share of British emigrants as came across in the
+twenties and thirties. Swarms were preparing to leave the overcrowded
+British hives. Corn laws and poor laws and famine, power-driven looms
+that starved the cottage weaver, peace that threw an army on a crowded
+and callous labor market, landlords who rack-rented the Connaughtman's
+last potato or cleared Highland glens of folks to make way for sheep,
+rulers who persisted in denying the masses any voice in their own
+government--all these combined to drive men forth in tens of thousands.
+Australia was still a land of convict settlements and did not attract
+free men. To most the United States was the land of promise. Yet, thanks
+to state aid, private philanthropy, landlords' urging and cheap fares
+on the ships that came to St. John and Quebec for timber, Canada and
+the provinces by the sea received a notable share. In the quarter of
+a century following the peace with Napoleon, British North America
+received more British emigrants than the United States and the
+Australian colonies together, though many were merely birds of passage.
+
+The country west of the Great Lakes did not share in this flood of
+settlement, except for one tragic interlude. Lord Selkirk, a Scotchman
+of large sympathy and vision, convinced that emigration was the cure for
+the hopeless misery he saw around him, acquired a controlling interest
+in the Hudson's Bay Company, and sought to plant colonies in a vast
+estate granted from its domains. Between 1811 and 1815 he sent out to
+Hudson Bay, and thence to the Red River, two or three hundred crofters
+from the Highlands and the Orkneys. A little later these were joined by
+some Swiss soldiers of fortune who had fought for Canada in the War of
+1812. But Selkirk had reckoned without the partners of the North-West
+Company of Montreal, who were not prepared to permit mere herders and
+tillers to disturb the Indians and the game. The Nor'Westers attacked
+the helpless colonists and massacred a score of them. Selkirk retorted
+in kind, leading out an armed band which seized the Nor'Westers' chief
+post at Fort William. The war was then transferred to the courts, with
+heart-breaking delays and endless expense. At last Selkirk died broken
+in spirit, and most of his colonists drifted to Canada or across
+the border. But a handful held on, and for fifty years their little
+settlement on the Red River remained a solitary outpost of colonization.
+
+
+Once arrived in Canada, the settler soon found that he had no primrose
+path before him. Canada remained for many years a land of struggling
+pioneers, who had little truck or trade with the world out of sight
+of their log shacks. The habitant on the seigneuries of Lower Canada
+continued to farm as his grandfather had farmed, finding his holding
+sufficient for his modest needs, even though divided into ever narrower
+ribbons as le bon Dieu sent more and yet more sons to share the
+heritage. The English-speaking settler, equipped with ax and sickle and
+flail, with spinning wheel and iron kettle, lived a life almost equally
+primitive and self-contained. He and his good wife grew the wheat, the
+corn, and the potatoes, made the soap and the candles, the maple sugar
+and the "yarbs," the deerskin shoes and the homespun-cloth that met
+their needs. They had little to buy and little to sell. In spite of the
+preference which Great Britain gave Canadian grain, in return for the
+preference exacted on British manufactured goods, practically no wheat
+was exported until the close of this period. The barrels of potash and
+pearl-ash leached out from the ashes of the splendid hardwood trees
+which he burned as enemies were the chief source of ready money for the
+backwoods settler. The one substantial export of the colonies came, not
+from the farmer's clearing, but from the forest. Great rafts of square
+pine timber were floated down the Ottawa or the St. John every spring
+to be loaded for England. The lumberjack lent picturesqueness to
+the landscape and the vocabulary and circulated ready money, but his
+industry did little directly to advance permanent settlement or the wise
+use of Canadian resources.
+
+The self-contained life of each community and each farm pointed to the
+lack of good means of transport. New Brunswick and the Canadas were
+fortunate in the possession of great lake and river systems, but these
+were available only in summer and were often impeded by falls and
+rapids. On these waters the Indian bark canoe had given way to the
+French bateau, a square-rigged flat-bottomed boat, and after the war
+the bateau shared the honors with the larger Durham boat brought in from
+"the States."
+
+Canadians took their full share in developing steamship transportation.
+In 1809, two years after Fulton's success on the Hudson, John Molson
+built and ran a steamer between Montreal and Quebec. The first vessel to
+cross the Atlantic wholly under steam, the Royal William, was built
+in Quebec and sailed from that port in 1833. Following and rivaling
+American enterprise, side-wheelers, marvels of speed and luxury for
+the day, were put on the lakes in the thirties. Canals were built, the
+Lachine in 1821-25, the Welland around Niagara Falls in 1824-29, and the
+Rideau, as a military undertaking, in 1826-32, all in response to the
+stimulus given by De Witt Clinton, who had begun the "Erie Ditch" in
+1817. On land, road making made slower progress. The blazed trail gave
+way to the corduroy road, and the pack horse to the oxcart or the stage.
+Upper Canada had the honor of inventing, in 1835, the plank road, which
+for some years thereafter became the fashion through the forested States
+to the south. But at best neither roads nor vehicles were fitted for
+carrying large loads from inland farms to waterside markets.
+
+Money and banks were as necessary to develop intercourse as roads and
+canals. Until after the War of 1812, when army gold and army bills ran
+freely, money was rare and barter served pioneer needs. For many years
+after the war a jumble of English sovereigns and shillings, of Spanish
+dollars, French crowns, and American silver, made up the currency in
+use, circulating sometimes by weight and sometimes by tale, at rates
+that were constantly shifting. The position of the colonies as a link
+between Great Britain and the United States, was curiously illustrated
+in the currency system. The motley jumble of coins in use were rated in
+Halifax currency, a mere money of account or bookkeeping standard, with
+no actual coins to correspond, adapted to both English and United States
+currency systems. The unit was the pound, divided into shillings and
+pence as in England, but the pound was made equal to four dollars in
+American money; it took 1 pound 4s. 4d. in Halifax currency to make
+1 pound sterling. Still more curious was the influence of American
+banking. Montreal merchants in 1808 took up the ideas of Alexander
+Hamilton and after several vain attempts founded the Bank of Montreal
+in 1817, with those features of government charter, branch banks, and
+restrictions as to the proportion of debts to capital and the holding
+of real property which had marked Hamilton's plan. But while Canadian
+banks, one after another, were founded on the same model and throughout
+adhered to an asset-secured currency basis, Hamilton's own country
+abandoned his ideas, usually for the worse.
+
+In the social life of the cities the influence of the official classes
+and, in Halifax and Quebec, of the British redcoats stationed there was
+all pervading. In the country the pioneers took what diversions a hard
+life permitted. There were "bees" and "frolics," ranging from strenuous
+barn raisings, with heavy drinking and fighting, to mild apple parings
+or quilt patchings. There were the visits of the Yankee peddler with his
+"notions," his welcome pack, and his gossip. Churches grew, thanks
+in part to grants of government land or old endowments or gifts from
+missionary societies overseas, but more to the zeal of lay preachers
+and circuit riders. Schools fared worse. In Lower Canada there was an
+excellent system of classical schools for the priests and professional
+classes, and there were numerous convents which taught the girls, but
+the habitants were for the most part quite untouched by book learning.
+In Upper Canada grammar schools and academies were founded with
+commendable promptness, and a common school system was established in
+1816, but grants were niggardly and compulsion was lacking. Even at the
+close of the thirties only one child in seven was in school, and he was,
+as often as not, committed to the tender mercies of some broken-down
+pensioner or some ancient tippler who could barely sign his mark. There
+was but little administrative control by the provincial authorities. The
+textbooks in use came largely from the United States and glorified that
+land and all its ways in the best Fourth-of-July manner, to the
+scandal of the loyal elect. The press was represented by a few weekly
+newspapers; only one daily existed in Upper Canada before 1840.
+
+
+Against this background there developed during the period 1815-41 a
+tense constitutional struggle which was to exert a profound influence on
+the making of the nation. The stage on which the drama was enacted was
+a small one, and the actors were little known to the world of their day,
+but the drama had an interest of its own and no little significance for
+the future.
+
+In one aspect the struggle for self-government in British North America
+was simply a local manifestation of a world-wide movement which found
+more notable expression in other lands. After a troubled dawn,
+democracy was coming to its own. In England the black reaction which
+had identified all proposals for reform with treasonable sympathy for
+bloodstained France was giving way, and the middle classes were about
+to triumph in the great franchise reform of 1832. In the United States,
+after a generation of conservatism, Jacksonian democracy was to sweep
+all before it. These developments paralleled and in some measure
+influenced the movement of events in the British North American
+provinces. But this movement had a color of its own. The growth of
+self-government in an independent country was one thing; in a colony
+owing allegiance to a supreme Parliament overseas, it was quite another.
+The task of the provinces--not solved in this period, it is true, but
+squarely faced--was to reconcile democracy and empire.
+
+The people of the Canadas in 1791, and of the provinces by the sea
+a little earlier, had been given the right to elect one house of
+the legislature. More than this instalment of self-government the
+authorities were not prepared to grant. The people, or rather the
+property holders among them, might be entrusted to vote taxes
+and appropriations, to present grievances, and to take a share in
+legislation. They could not, however, be permitted to control the
+Government, because, to state an obvious fact, they could not govern
+themselves as well as their betters could rule them. Besides, if the
+people of a colony did govern themselves, what would become of the
+rights and interests of the mother country? What would become of the
+Empire itself?
+
+What was the use and object of the Empire? In brief, according to the
+theory and practice then in force, the end of empire was the profit
+which comes from trade; the means was the political subordination of the
+colonies to prevent interference with this profit; and the debit entry
+set against this profit was the cost of the diplomacy, the armaments,
+and the wars required to hold the overseas possessions against other
+powers. The policy was still that which had been set forth in the
+preamble of the Navigation Act of 1663, ensuring the mother country the
+sole right to sell European wares in its colonies: "the maintaining a
+greater correspondence and kindness between them [the subjects at home
+and those in the plantations] and keeping them in a firmer dependence
+upon it [the mother country], and rendering them yet more beneficial and
+advantageous unto it in the further Imployment and Encrease of English
+Shipping and Seamen, and vent of English Woollen and other Manufactures
+and Commodities rendering the Navigation to and from the same more
+safe and cheape, and makeing this Kingdom a Staple not only of the
+Commodities of those Plantations but also of the Commodities of other
+countries and places for the supplying of them, and it being the usage
+of other Nations to keep their [plantation] Trade to themselves." Adam
+Smith had raised a doubt as to the wisdom of the end. The American
+Revolution had raised a doubt as to the wisdom of the means. Yet,
+with significant changes, the old colonial system lasted for full two
+generations after 1776.
+
+In the second British Empire, which rose after the loss of the first in
+1783, the means to the old end were altered. To secure control and to
+prevent disaffection and democratic folly, the authorities relied not
+merely on their own powers but on the cooperation of friendly classes
+and interests in the colonies themselves. Their direct control was
+exercised in many ways. In last reserve there was the supreme authority
+of King and Parliament to bind the colonies by treaty and by law and the
+right to veto any colonial enactment. This was as before the Revolution.
+One change lay in the renunciation in 1778 of the intention to use the
+supreme legislative power to levy taxes, though the right to control
+the fiscal system of the colonies in conformity with imperial policy
+was still claimed and practised. In fact, far from seeking to secure a
+direct revenue, the British Government was more than content to pay part
+of the piper's fee for the sake of being able to call the tune. "It is
+considered by the Well wishers of Government," wrote Milnes, Lieutenant
+Governor of Lower Canada, in 1800, "as a fortunate Circumstance that the
+Revenue is not at present equal to the Expenditure." A further change
+came in the minute control exercised by the Colonial Office, or rather
+by the permanent clerks who, in Charles Buller's phrase, were really
+"Mr. Mother Country." The Governor was the local agent of the Colonial
+Office. He acted on its instructions and was responsible to it, and to
+it alone, for the exercise of the wide administrative powers entrusted
+to him.
+
+But all these powers, it was believed, would fail in their purpose if
+democracy were allowed to grow unchecked in the colonies themselves.
+It was an essential part of the colonial policy of the time to build up
+conservative social forces among the people and to give a controlling
+voice in the local administration to a nominated and official class. It
+has been seen that the statesmen of 1791 looked to a nominated executive
+and legislative council, an hereditary aristocracy, and an established
+church, to keep the colony in hand. British legislation fostered and
+supported a ruling class in the colonies, and in turn this class was to
+support British connection and British control. How this policy, half
+avowed and half unconscious, worked out in each of the provinces must
+now be recorded.
+
+
+In Upper Canada party struggles did not take shape until well after the
+War of 1812. At the founding of the colony the people had been very much
+of one temper and one condition. In time, however, divergences appeared
+and gradually hardened into political divisions. A governing class, or
+rather clique, was the first to become differentiated. Its emergence
+was slower than in New Brunswick, for instance, since Upper Canada had
+received few of the Loyalists who were distinguished by social position
+or political experience. In time a group was formed by the accident of
+occupation, early settlement, residence in the little town of York,
+the capital after 1794, the holding of office, or by some advantage in
+wealth or education or capacity which in time became cumulative. The
+group came to be known as the Family Compact. There had been, in fact,
+no intermarriage among its members beyond what was natural in a small
+and isolated community, but the phrase had a certain appositeness.
+They were closely linked by loyalty to Church and King, by enmity to
+republics and republicans, by the memory of the sacrifice and peril they
+or their fathers had shared, and by the conviction that the province
+owed them the best living it could bestow. This living they succeeded
+in collecting. "The bench, the magistracy, the high officials of the
+established church, and a great part of the legal profession," declared
+Lord Durham in 1839, "are filled by the adherents of this party; by
+grant or purchase they have acquired nearly the whole of the waste lands
+of the province; they are all powerful in the chartered banks, and till
+lately shared among themselves almost exclusively all offices of trust
+and profit." Fortunately the last absurdity of creating Dukes of Toronto
+and Barons of Niagara Falls was never carried through, or rather was
+postponed a full century; but this touch was scarcely needed to give the
+clique its cachet. The ten-year governorship of Sir Peregrine Maitland
+(1818-28), a most punctilious person, gave the finishing touches to this
+backwoods aristocracy.
+
+The great majority of the group, men of the Scott and Boulton, Sherwood
+and Hagerman and Allan MacNab types, had nothing but their prejudices to
+distinguish them, but two of their number were of outstanding capacity.
+John Beverley Robinson, Attorney General from 1819 to 1829 and
+thereafter for over thirty years Chief Justice, was a true aristocrat,
+distrustful of the rabble, but as honest and highminded as he was able,
+seeking his country's gain, as he saw it, not his own. A more rugged
+and domineering character, equally certain of his right to rule and
+less squeamish about the means, was John Strachan, afterwards Bishop of
+Toronto. Educated a Presbyterian, he had come to Canada from Aberdeen
+as a dominie but had remained as an Anglican clergyman in a capacity
+promising more advancement. His abounding vigor and persistence soon
+made him the dominant force in the Church, and with a convert's zeal
+he labored to give it exclusive place and power. The opposition to the
+Family Compact was of a more motley hue, as is the way with oppositions.
+Opposition became potential when new settlers poured into the province
+from the United States or overseas, marked out from their Loyalist
+forerunners not merely by differences of political background and
+experience but by differences in religion. The Church of England had
+been dominant among the Loyalists; but the newcomers were chiefly
+Methodist and Presbyterian. Opposition became actual with the rise of
+concrete and acute grievances and with the appearance of leaders who
+voiced the growing discontent.
+
+The political exclusiveness of the Family Compact did not rouse
+resentment half as deep as did their religious, or at least
+denominational, pretensions. The refusal of the Compact to permit
+Methodist ministers to perform the marriage ceremony was not soon
+forgotten. There were scores of settlements where no clergyman of the
+Established Church of England or of Scotland resided, and marriages here
+had been of necessity performed by other ministers. A bill passed the
+Assembly in 1824 legalizing such marriages in the past and giving the
+required authority for the future; and when it was rejected by the
+Legislative Council, resentment flamed high. An attempt of Strachan
+to indict the loyalty of practically all but the Anglican clergy
+intensified this feeling; and the critics went on to call in question
+the claims of his Church to establishment and landed endowment.
+
+The land question was the most serious that faced the province. The
+administration of those in power was condemned on three distinct counts.
+The granting of land to individuals had been lavish; it had been lax;
+and it had been marked by gross favoritism. By 1824, when the population
+was only 150,000, some 11,000,000 acres had been granted; ninety years
+later, when the population was 2,700,000, the total amount of improved
+land was only 13,000,000 acres. Moreover the attempt to use vast areas
+of the Crown Lands to endow solely the Anglican Church roused bitter
+jealousies. Yet even these grievances paled in actual hardship beside
+the results of holding the vast waste areas unimproved. What with Crown
+Reserves, Clergy Reserves, grants to those who had served the state, and
+holdings picked up by speculators from soldiers or poorer Loyalists for
+a few pounds or a few gallons of whisky, millions of acres were held
+untenanted and unimproved, waiting for a rise in value as a consequence
+of the toil of settlers on neighboring farms. Not one-tenth of the lands
+granted were occupied by the persons to whom they had been assigned.
+The province had given away almost all its vast heritage, and more than
+nine-tenths of it was still in wilderness. These speculative holdings
+made immensely more difficult every common neighborhood task. At best
+the machinery and the money for building roads, bridges, and schools
+were scanty, but with these unimproved reserves thrust in between
+the scattered shacks, the task was disheartening. "The reserve of
+two-sevenths of the land for the Crown and clergy," declared the
+township of Sandwich in 1817, "must for a long time keep the country
+a wilderness, a harbour for wolves, a hindrance to a compact and good
+neighborhood."
+
+A further source of discontent developed in the disabilities affecting
+recent American settlers. A court decision in 1824 held that no one who
+had resided in the United States after 1783 could possess or transmit
+British citizenship, with which went the right to inherit real estate.
+This decision bore heavily upon thousands of "late Loyalists" and
+more recent incomers. Under the instructions of the Colonial Office, a
+remedial bill was introduced in the Legislative Council in 1827, but it
+was a grudging, halfway measure which the Assembly refused to accept.
+After several sessions of quarreling, the Assembly had its way; but in
+the meantime the men affected had been driven into permanent and active
+opposition.
+
+The leaders of the movement of resistance which now began to gather
+force included all sorts and conditions of men. The fiercest and
+most aggressive were two Scotchmen, Robert Gourlay and William Lyon
+Mackenzie. Gourlay, one of those restless and indispensable cranks
+who make the world turn round, active, obstinate, imprudent,
+uncompromisingly devoted to the common good as he saw it, came to Canada
+in 1817 on settlement and colonization bent. Innocent inquiries which he
+sent broadcast as to the condition of the province gave the settlers an
+opportunity for voicing their pent-up discontent, and soon Gourlay was
+launched upon the sea of politics. Mackenzie, who came to Canada three
+years later, was a born agitator, fearless, untiring, a good hater,
+master of avitriolic vocabulary, and absolutely unpurchasable. He found
+his vein in weekly journalism, and for nearly forty years was the stormy
+petrel of Canadian politics. From England there came, among others, Dr.
+John Rolph, shrewd and politic, and Captain John Matthews, a half-pay
+artillery officer. Peter Perry, downright and rugged and of a homely
+eloquence, represented the Loyalists of the Bay of Quinte, which was
+the center of Canadian Methodism. Among the newer comers from the
+United States, the foremost were Barnabas Bidwell, who had been Attorney
+General of Massachusetts but had fled to Canada in 1810 when accused of
+misappropriating public money, and his son, Marshall Spring Bidwell,
+one of the ablest and most single-minded men who ever entered Canadian
+public life. From Ireland came Dr. William Warren Baldwin, whose son
+Robert, born in Canada, was less surpassingly able than the younger
+Bidwell but equally moderate and equally beyond suspicion of faction or
+self-seeking.
+
+How were these men to bring about the reform which they desired? Their
+first aim was obviously to secure a majority in the Assembly, and by the
+election of 1828 they attained this first object. But the limits of the
+power of the Assembly they soon discovered. Without definite leadership,
+with no control over the Administration, and with even legislative power
+divided, it could effect little. It was in part disappointment at the
+failure of the Assembly that accounted for the defeat of the Reformers
+in 1830, though four years later this verdict was again reversed.
+Clearly the form of government itself should be changed. But in what
+way? Here a divergence in the ranks of the Reformers became marked.
+One party, looking upon the United States as the utmost achievement
+in democracy, proposed to follow its example in making the upper house
+elective and thus to give the people control of both branches of the
+Legislature. Another group, of whom Robert Baldwin was the chief, saw
+that this change would not suffice. In the States the Executive was also
+elected by the people. Here, where the Governor would doubtless continue
+to be appointed by the Crown, some other means must be found to give
+the people full control. Baldwin found it in the British Cabinet system,
+which gave real power to ministers having the confidence of a majority
+in Parliament. The Governor would remain, but he would be only a
+figurehead, a constitutional monarch acting, like the King, only on
+the advice of his constitutional advisers. Responsible government
+was Baldwin's one and absorbing idea, and his persistence led to its
+ultimate adoption, along with a proposal for an elective Council, in
+the Reform party's programme in 1834. Delay in affecting this reform,
+Baldwin told the Governor a year later, was "the great and all absorbing
+grievance before which all others sank into insignificance." The remedy
+could be applied "without in the least entrenching upon the just and
+necessary prerogatives of the Crown, which I consider, when administered
+by the Lieutenant. Governor through the medium of a provincial ministry
+responsible to the provincial parliament, to be an essential part of the
+constitution of the province." In brief, Baldwin insisted that Simcoe's
+rhetorical outburst in 1791, when he declared that Upper Canada was
+"a perfect Image and Transcript of the British Government and
+Constitution," should be made effective in practice.
+
+The course of the conflict between the Compact and the Reformers cannot
+be followed in detail. It had elements of tragedy, as when Gourlay was
+hounded into prison, where he was broken in health and shattered in
+mind, and then exiled from the province for criticism of the Government
+which was certainly no more severe than now appears every day in
+Opposition newspapers. The conflict had elements of the ludicrous, too,
+as when Captain Matthews was ordered by his military superiors to return
+to England because in the unrestrained festivities of New Year's Eve he
+had called on a strolling troupe to play Yankee Doodle and had shouted
+to the company, "Hats off"; or when Governor Maitland overturned
+fourteen feet of the Brock Monument to remove a copy of Mackenzie's
+journal, the "Colonial Advocate", which had inadvertently been included
+in the corner stone.
+
+The weapons of the Reformers were the platform, the press, and
+investigations and reports by parliamentary committees. The Compact hit
+back in its own way. Every critic was denounced as a traitor. Offending
+editors were put in the pillory. Mackenzie was five times expelled from
+the House, only to be returned five times by his stubborn supporters.
+Matters were at a deadlock, and it became clear either that the British
+Parliament, which alone could amend the Constitution, must intervene or
+else that the Reformers would be driven to desperate paths. But before
+matters came to this pass, an acute crisis had arisen in Lower Canada
+which had its effect on all the provinces.
+
+
+In Lower Canada, the conflict which had been smoldering before the war
+had since then burst into flame. The issues of this conflict were more
+clearcut than in any of the other provinces. A coherent opposition had
+formed earlier, and from beginning to end it dominated the Assembly.
+The governing forces were outwardly much the same as in Upper Canada--a
+Lieutenant Governor responsible to the Colonial Office, an Executive
+Council appointed by the Crown but coming to have the independent power
+of a well-entrenched bureaucracy, and a Legislative Council nominated by
+the Crown and, until nearly the end of the period, composed chiefly of
+the same men who served in the Executive. The little clique in control
+had much less popular backing than the Family Compact of Upper Canada
+and were of lower caliber. Robert Christie, an English-speaking member
+of the Assembly, who may be counted an unprejudiced witness since he was
+four times expelled by the majority in that house, refers to the
+real rulers of the province as "a few rapacious, overbearing, and
+irresponsible officials, without stake or other connexion in the
+country than their interests." At their head stood Jonathan Sewell,
+a Massachusetts Loyalist who had come to Lower Canada by way of New
+Brunswick in 1789, and who for over forty years as Attorney General,
+Chief Justice, or member of Executive and Legislative Councils, was the
+power behind the throne.
+
+The opposition to the bureaucrats at first included both English and
+French elements, but the English minority were pulled in contrary ways.
+Their antecedents were not such as to lead them to accept meekly either
+the political or the social pretensions of the "Chateau Clique"; the
+American settlers in the Eastern Townships, and the Scotch and American
+merchants who were building up Quebec and Montreal, had called for
+self-government, not government from above. Yet their racial and
+religious prejudices were strong and made them unwilling to accept in
+place of the bureaucrats the dominance of an unprogressive habitant
+majority. The first leader of the opposition which developed in the
+Assembly after the War of 1812 was James Stuart, the son of the leading
+Anglican clergyman of his day, but he soon fell away and became a
+mainstay of the bureaucracy. His brother Andrew, however, kept up
+for many years longer a more disinterested fight. Another Scot, John
+Neilson, editor of the Quebec "Gazette", was until 1833 foremost
+among the assailants of the bureaucracy. But steadily, as the extreme
+nationalist claims of the French-speaking majority provoked reprisals
+and as the conviction grew upon the minority that they would never be
+anything but a minority,* most of them accepted clique rule as a lesser
+evil than "rule by priest and demagogue."
+
+     * The natural increase of the French-Canadian race under
+     British rule is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in
+     social history. The following figures illustrate the rate of
+     that increase: the number was 16,417 in 1706; 69,810 in
+     1765; 479,288 in 1825; 697,084 in 1844. The population of
+     Canada East or Lower Canada in 1844 was made up as follows:
+     French Canadians, 524,244; English Canadians. 85,660;
+     English, 11,895; Irish, 43,982; Scotch, 13,393; Americans,
+     11,946; born in other countries, 1329; place of birth not
+     specified, 4635.
+
+In the reform movement in Upper Canada there were a multiplicity of
+leaders and a constant shifting of groups. In Lower Canada, after the
+defection of James Stuart in 1817, there was only one leader, Louis
+Joseph Papineau. For twenty years Papineau was the uncrowned king of the
+province. His commanding figure, his powers of oratory, outstanding in a
+race of orators, his fascinating manners, gave him an easy mastery over
+his people. Prudence did not hamper his flights; compromise was a word
+not found in his vocabulary. Few men have been better equipped for the
+agitator's task.
+
+His father, Joseph Papineau, though of humble birth, had risen high in
+the life of the province. He had won distinction in his profession as a
+notary, as a speaker in the Assembly, and as a soldier in the defense of
+Quebec against the American invaders of 1775. In 1804 he had purchased
+the seigneury of La Petite Nation, far up the Ottawa. Louis Joseph
+Papineau followed in his father's footsteps. Born in 1786, he served
+loyally and bravely in the War of 1812. In the same year he entered the
+Assembly and made his place at a single stroke. Barely three years after
+his election, he was chosen Speaker, and with a brief break he held that
+post for over twenty years.
+
+Papineau did not soon or lightly begin his crusade against the
+Government. For the first five years of his Speakership, he confined
+himself to the routine duties of his office. As late as 1820 he
+pronounced a glowing eulogy on the Constitution which Great Britain
+had granted the province. In that year he tested the extent of the
+privileges so granted by joining in the attempt of the Assembly to
+assert its full control of the purse; but it was not until the project
+of uniting the two Canadas had made clear beyond dispute the hostility
+of the governing powers that he began his unrelenting warfare against
+them.
+
+There was much to be said for a reunion of the two Canadas. The St.
+Lawrence bound them together, though Acts of Parliament had severed
+them. Upper Canada, as an inland province, restricted in its trade with
+its neighbor to the south, was dependent upon Lower Canada for access to
+the outer world. Its share of the duties collected at the Lower Canada
+ports until 1817 had been only one-eighth, afterwards increased to
+one-fifth. This inequality proved a constant source of friction. The
+crying necessity of cooperation for the improvement of the St. Lawrence
+waterway gave further ground for the contention that only by a reunion
+of the two provinces could efficiency be secured. In Upper Canada the
+Reformers were in favor of this plan, but the Compact, fearful of any
+disturbance of their vested interests, tended to oppose it. In Lower
+Canada the chief support came from the English element. The governing
+clique, as the older established body, had no doubt that they could
+bring the western section under their sway in case of union. But the
+main reason for their advocacy was the desire to swamp the French
+Canadians by an English majority. Sewell, the chief supporter of the
+project, frankly took this ground. The Governor, Lord Dalhousie, and
+the Colonial Office adopted his view; and in 1822 an attempt was made to
+rush a Union Bill through the British Parliament without any notice to
+those most concerned. It was blocked for the moment by the opposition
+of a Whig group led by Burdett and Mackintosh; and then Papineau and
+Neilson sailed to London and succeeded in inducing the Ministry to stay
+its hand. The danger was averted; but Papineau had become convinced
+that if his people were to retain the rights given them by their "Sacred
+Charter" they would have to fight for them. If they were to save their
+power, they must increase it.
+
+How could this be done? Baldwin's bold and revolutionary policy of
+making the Executive responsible to the Assembly did not seem within
+the range of practical politics. It meant in practice the abandonment of
+British control, and this the Colonial Office was not willing to grant.
+Antoine Panet and other Assembly leaders had suggested in 1815 that
+it would be well, "if it were possible, to grant a number of places as
+Councillors or other posts of honour and of profit to those who have
+most influence over the majority in the Assembly, to hold so long
+as they maintained this influence," and James Stuart urged the same
+tentative suggestion a year later. But even before this the Colonial
+Office had made clear its position. "His Majesty's Government," declared
+the Colonial Secretary, Lord Bathurst, in 1814, "never can admit so
+novel & inconvenient a Principle as that of allowing the Governor of a
+Colony to be divested of his responsibility [to the Colonial Office] for
+the acts done during his administration or permit him to shield himself
+under the advice of any Persons, however respectable, either from their
+character or their Office."
+
+Two other courses had the sanction of precedent, one of English, the
+other of American example. The English House of Commons had secured its
+dominant place in the government of the country by its control of the
+purse. Why should not the Assembly do likewise? One obvious difficulty
+lay in the fact that the Assembly was not the sole authority in raising
+revenue. The British Parliament had retained the power to levy certain
+duties as part of its system of commercial control, and other casual and
+territorial dues lay in the right of the Crown. From 1820, therefore,
+the Assembly's main aim was twofold--to obtain control of these
+remaining sources of revenue, and by means of this power to bludgeon the
+Legislative Council and the Governor into compliance with its wishes.
+The Colonial Office made concessions, offering to resign all its taxing
+powers in return for a permanent civil list, that is, an assurance that
+the salaries of the chief officials would not be questioned annually.
+The offer was reasonable in itself but, as it would have hampered the
+full use of the revenue bludgeon, it was scornfully declined.
+
+The other aim of the Patriotes, as the Opposition styled themselves, was
+to conquer the Legislative Council by making it elective. Papineau, in
+spite of his early prejudices, was drawn more and more into sympathy
+with the form of democracy worked out in the United States. In fact, he
+not only looked to it as a model but, as the thirties wore on, he came
+to hope that moral, if not physical, support might be found there for
+his campaign against the English Government. After 1830 the demand for
+an elective Legislative Council became more and more insistent.
+
+The struggle soon reached a deadlock. Governor followed Governor: Lord
+Dalhousie, Sir James Kempt, Lord Aylmer, all in turn failed to allay
+the storm. The Assembly raised its claims each session and fulminated
+against all the opposing powers in windy resolutions. Papineau,
+embittered by continued opposition, carried away by his own eloquence,
+and steadied by no responsibility of office, became more implacable in
+his demands. Many of his moderate supporters--Neilson, Andrew Stuart,
+Quesnel, Cuvillier--fell away, only to be overwhelmed in the first
+election at a wave of the great tribune's hand. Business was blocked,
+supplies were not voted, and civil servants made shift without salary as
+best they could.
+
+The British Government awoke, or half awoke, to the seriousness of the
+situation. In 1835 a Royal Commission of three, with the new Governor
+General, Lord Gosford, as chairman, was appointed to make inquiries and
+to recommend a policy. Gosford, a genial Irishman, showed himself
+most conciliatory in both private intercourse and public discourse.
+Unfortunately the rash act of the new Lieutenant Governor of Upper
+Canada, Sir Francis Bond Head, in publishing the instructions of the
+Colonial Office, showed that the policy of Downing Street was the futile
+one of conciliation without concession. The Assembly once more refused
+to grant supplies without redress of grievances. The Commissioners made
+their report opposing any substantial change. In March, 1837, Lord John
+Russell, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Melbourne Ministry, opposed
+only by a handful of Radical and Irish members, carried through the
+British Parliament a series of resolutions authorizing the Governor to
+take from the Treasury without the consent of the Assembly the funds
+needed for civil administration, offering control of all revenues in
+return for a permanent civil list, and rejecting absolutely the demands
+alike for a responsible Executive and for an elective Council.
+
+British statesmanship was bankrupt. Its final answer to the demands for
+redress was to stand pat. Papineau, without seeing what the end would
+be, held to his course. Younger men, carried away by the passions he
+had aroused, pushed on still more recklessly. If reform could not be
+obtained within the British Empire, it must be sought by setting up an
+independent republic on the St. Lawrence or by annexation to the United
+States.
+
+
+In Upper Canada, at the same time, matters had come to the verge of
+rebellion. Sir John Colborne had, just before retiring as Lieutenant
+Governor in 1836, added fuel to the flames by creating and endowing some
+forty-four rectories, thus strengthening the grip of the Anglican Church
+on the province. His successor, Sir Francis Bond Head, was a man of such
+rash and unbalanced judgment as to lend support to the tradition that
+he was appointed by mistake for his cousin, Edmund Head, who was made
+Governor of United Canada twenty years later. He appointed to his
+Executive Council three Reformers, Baldwin, Rolph, and Dunn, only to
+make clear by his refusal to consult them his inability to understand
+their demand for responsible government. All the members of the
+Executive Council thereupon resigned, and the Assembly refused supplies.
+Head dissolved the House and appealed to the people.
+
+The weight of executive patronage, the insistence of the Governor that
+British connection was at stake, the alarms caused by some injudicious
+statements of Mackenzie and his Radical ally in England, Joseph Hume,
+and the defection of the Methodists, whose leader, Egerton Ryerson, had
+quarreled with Mackenzie, resulted in the overwhelming defeat of the
+Reformers. The sting of defeat, the failure of the Family Compact to
+carry out their eleventh hour promises of reform, and the passing of
+Lord John Russell's reactionary resolutions convinced a section of the
+Reform party, in Upper Canada as well as in Lower Canada, that an appeal
+to force was the only way out.
+
+Toward the end of 1837 armed rebellion broke out in both the Canadas.
+In both it was merely a flash in the pan. In Lower Canada there had been
+latterly much use of the phrases of revolution and some drilling, but
+rebellion was neither definitely planned nor carefully organized. The
+more extreme leaders of the Patriotes simply drifted into it, and
+the actual outbreak was a haphazard affair. Alarmed by the sudden and
+seemingly concerted departure of Papineau and some of his lieutenants,
+Nelson, Brown, and O'Callaghan, from Montreal, the Government gave
+orders for their arrest. The petty skirmish that followed on November
+16, 1837, was the signal for the rallying of armed habitants around
+impromptu leaders at various points. The rising was local and spasmodic.
+The vast body of the habitants stood aloof. The Catholic Church, which
+earlier had sympathized with Papineau, had parted from him when he
+developed radical and republican views. Now the strong exhortations of
+the clergy to the faithful counted for much in keeping peace, and in
+one view justified the policy of the British Government in seeking to
+purchase their favor. The Quebec and Three Rivers districts remained
+quiet. In the Richelieu and Montreal districts, where disaffection was
+strongest, the habitants lacked leadership, discipline, and touch with
+other groups, and were armed only with old flintlocks, scythes, or
+clubs. Here and there a brave and skillful leader, such as Dr. Jean
+Olivier Chenier, was thrown up by the evidence opened a way out of the
+difficult situation. A year later Peel and Webster, representing the two
+countries, exchanged formal explanations, and the incident was closed.
+
+In Upper Canada many a rebel sympathizer lay for months in jail, but
+only two leaders, Lount and Matthews, both brave men, paid the penalty
+of death for their failure. In Lower Canada the new Governor General,
+Lord Durham, proved more clement, merely banishing to Bermuda eight
+of the captured leaders. When, a year later, after Durham's return to
+England, a second brief rising broke out under Robert Nelson, it was
+stamped out in a week, twelve of the ringleaders were executed, and
+others were deported to Botany Bay.
+
+The rebellion, it seemed, had failed and failed miserably. Most of the
+leaders of the extreme factions in both provinces had been discredited,
+and the moderate men had been driven into the government camp. Yet in
+one sense the rising proved successful. It was not the first nor the
+last time that wild and misguided force brought reform where sane
+and moderate tactics met only contempt. If men were willing to die to
+redress their wrongs, the most easy-going official could no longer
+deny that there was a case for inquiry and possibly for reform. Lord
+Melbourne's Government had acted at once in sending out to Canada, as
+Governor General and High Commissioner with sweeping powers, one of
+the ablest men in English public life. Lord Durham was an aristocratic
+Radical, intensely devoted to political equality and equally convinced
+of his own personal superiority. Yet he had vision, firmness,
+independence, and his very rudeness kept him free from the social
+influences which had ensnared many another Governor. Attended by a
+gorgeous retinue and by some able working secretaries, including Charles
+Buller, Carlyle's pupil, he made a rapid survey of Upper and Lower
+Canada. Suddenly, after five crowded months, his mission ended. He had
+left at home active enemies and lukewarm friends. Lord Brougham, one
+of his foes, called in question the legality of his edict banishing the
+rebel leaders to Bermuda. The Ministers did not back him, as they should
+have done; and Durham indignantly resigned and hurried back to England.
+
+Three months later, however, his "Report" appeared and his mission stood
+vindicated. There are few British state papers of more fame or more
+worth than Durham's "Report". It was not, however, the beginning and the
+end of wisdom in colonial policy, as has often been declared. Much that
+Durham advocated was not new, and much has been condemned by time. His
+main suggestions were four: to unite the Canadas, to swamp the French
+Canadians by such union, to grant a measure of responsible government,
+and to set up municipal government. His attitude towards the French
+Canadians was prejudiced and shortsighted. He was not the first to
+recommend responsible government, nor did his approval make it a
+reality. Yet with all qualifications his "Report" showed a confidence
+in the liberating and solving power of self-government which was the
+all-essential thing for the English Government to see; and his reasoned
+and powerful advocacy gave an impetus and a rallying point to the
+movement which were to prove of the greatest value in the future growth
+not only of Canada but of the whole British Empire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE UNION ERA
+
+The struggle for self-government seemed to have ended in deadlock and
+chaos. Yet under the wreckage new lines of constructive effort were
+forming. The rebellion had at least proved that the old order was
+doomed. For half a century the attempt had been made to govern the
+Canadas as separate provinces and with the half measure of freedom
+involved in representative government. For the next quarter of a century
+the experiment of responsible government together with union of the two
+provinces was to be given its trial.
+
+The union of the two provinces was the phase of Durham's policy which
+met fullest acceptance in England. It was not possible, in the view of
+the British Ministry, to take away permanently from the people of Lower
+Canada the measure of self-government involved in permitting them to
+choose their representatives in a House of Assembly. It was equally
+impossible, they considered, to permit a French-Canadian majority ever
+again to bring all government to a standstill. The only solution of
+the problem was to unite the two provinces and thus swamp the French
+Canadians by an English majority. Lower Canada, Durham had insisted,
+must be made "an English province." Sooner or later the French Canadians
+must lose their separate nationality; and it was, he contended, the part
+of statesmanship to make it sooner. Union, moreover, would make possible
+a common financial policy and an energetic development of the resources
+of both provinces.
+
+This was the first task set Durham's successor, Charles Poulett Thomson,
+better known as Lord Sydenham. Like Durham he was a man of outstanding
+capacity. The British Government had learned at last to send men of the
+caliber the emergency demanded. Like Durham he was a wealthy Radical
+politician, but there the resemblance ended. Where Durham played the
+dictator, Sydenham preferred to intrigue and to manage men, to win them
+by his adroitness and to convince them by his energy and his business
+knowledge. He was well fitted for the transition tasks before him,
+though too masterful to fill the role of ornamental monarch which the
+advocates of responsible government had cast for the Governor.
+
+Sydenham reached Canada in October, 1839. With the assistance of James
+Stuart, now a baronet and Chief Justice of Lower Canada, he drafted a
+union measure. In Lower Canada the Assembly had been suspended, and the
+Special Council appointed in its stead accepted the bill without serious
+demur. More difficulty was found in Upper Canada, where the Family
+Compact, still entrenched in the Legislative Council, feared the risk
+to their own position that union would bring and shrank from the task of
+assimilating half a million disaffected French Canadians. But with
+the support of the Reformers and of the more moderate among the Family
+Compact party, Sydenham forced his measure through. A confirming bill
+passed the British Parliament; and on February 10, 1841, the Union of
+Canada was proclaimed.
+
+The Act provided for the union of the two provinces, under a Governor,
+an appointed Legislative Council, and an elective Assembly. In
+the Assembly each section of the new province was to receive equal
+representation, though the population of Lower Canada still greatly
+exceeded that of Upper Canada. The Assembly was to have full control of
+all revenues, and in return a permanent civil list was granted. Either
+English or French could be used in debate, but all parliamentary
+journals and papers were to be printed in English only.*
+
+     * From 1841 to 1867 the whole province was legally known as
+     the "Province of Canada." Yet a measure of administrative
+     separation between the old sections remained, and the terms
+     "Canada East" and "Canada West" received official sanction.
+     The older terms, "Lower Canada" and "Upper Canada," lingered
+     on in popular usage.
+
+In June, 1841, the first Parliament of united Canada met at Kingston,
+which as the most central point had been chosen as the new capital.
+Under Sydenham's shrewd and energetic leadership a business programme
+of long-delayed reforms was put through. A large loan, guaranteed by
+the British Government, made possible extensive provision for building
+roads, bridges, and canals around the rapids in the St. Lawrence.
+Municipal institutions were set up, and reforms were effected in the
+provincial administration.
+
+Lord John Russell in England and Sydenham in Canada were anxious to keep
+the question of responsible government in the background. For the first
+busy months they succeeded, but the new Parliament contained men quite
+as strong willed as either and of quite other views. Before the first
+session had begun, Baldwin and the new French-Canadian leader, La
+Fontaine, had raised the issue and begun a new struggle in which their
+single-minded devotion and unflinching courage were to attain a complete
+success.
+
+Responsible government was in 1841 only a phrase, a watchword. Its full
+implications became clear only after many years. It meant three things:
+cabinet government, self-government, and party government. It meant
+that the government of the country should be carried on by a Cabinet or
+Executive Council, all members of Parliament, all belonging to the party
+which had the majority in the Assembly, and under the leadership of a
+Prime Minister, the working head of the Government. The nominal head,
+Governor or King, could act only on the advice of his ministers,
+who alone were held responsible to Parliament for the course of the
+Government. It meant, further, national self-government. The Governor
+could not serve two masters. If he must take the advice of his ministers
+in Canada, he could not take the possibly conflicting advice of
+ministers in London. The people of Canada would be the ultimate court of
+appeal. And finally, responsible government meant party government. The
+cabinet system presupposed a definite and united majority behind the
+Government. It was the business of the party system to provide that
+majority, to insure responsible and steady action, and at the same time
+responsible criticism from Her Majesty's loyal Opposition. Baldwin saw
+this clearly in 1841, but it took hard fighting throughout the forties
+to bring all his fellow countrymen to see likewise and to induce the
+English Government to resign itself to the prospect.
+
+Sydenham fought against responsible government but advanced it against
+his will. The only sense in which he, like Russell, was prepared to
+concede such liberty was that the Governor should choose his advisers
+as far as possible from men having the confidence of the Assembly. They
+were to be his advisers only, in fact as well as form. The Governor
+was still to govern, was to be Prime Minister and Governor in one. When
+Baldwin, who had been given a seat in the Executive Council, demanded in
+1841 that this body should be reconstructed in such a way as to include
+some French-Canadian members and to exclude the Family Compact men,
+Sydenham flatly refused. Baldwin then resigned and went into opposition,
+but Sydenham unwillingly played into his hand. By choosing his council
+solely from members of the two Houses, he established a definite
+connection between Executive and Assembly and thus gave an opportunity
+for the discussion of the administration of policy in the House and
+for the forming of government and opposition parties. Before the first
+session closed, the majority which Sydenham had built up by acting as a
+party leader at the very time he was deriding parties as mere factions,
+crumbled away, and he was forced to accept resolutions insisting that
+the Governor's advisers must be men "possessed of the confidence of
+the representatives of the people." Fate ended his work at its height.
+Riding home one September evening, he was thrown from his horse and died
+from the injuries before the month was out.
+
+It fell to the Tory Government of Peel to choose Sydenham's successor.
+They named Sir Charles Bagot, already distinguished for his career in
+diplomacy and known for his hand in matters which were to interest the
+greater Canada, the Rush-Bagot Convention with the United States and
+the treaty with Russia which fixed, only too vaguely, the boundaries
+of Alaska. He was under strict injunctions from the Colonial Secretary,
+Lord Stanley, to continue Sydenham's policy and to make no further
+concession to the demands for responsible government or party control.
+Yet this Tory nominee of a Tory Cabinet, in his brief term of office,
+insured a great advance along this very path toward freedom. His
+easy-going temper predisposed him to play the part of constitutional
+monarch rather than of Prime Minister, and in any case he faced a
+majority in the Assembly resolute in its determination.
+
+The policy of swamping French influence had already proved a failure.
+Sydenham had given it a full trial. He had done his best, or his worst,
+by unscrupulous manipulation, to keep the French Canadians from gaining
+their fair quota of the members in the Union Assembly. Those who were
+elected he ignored. "They have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing
+by the Rebellion," he declared, "and are more unfit for representative
+government than they were in 1791." This was far from a true reading of
+the situation. The French stood aloof, it is true, a compact and sullen
+group, angered by the undisguised policy of Anglicization that faced
+them and by Sydenham's unscrupulous tactics. But they had learned
+restraint and had found leaders and allies of the kind most needed.
+Papineau's place--for the great tribune was now in exile in Paris,
+consorting with the republicans and socialists who were to bring about
+the Revolution of 1848--had been taken by one of his former lieutenants.
+Louis Hippolyte La Fontaine still stands out as one of the two or three
+greatest Canadians of French descent, a man of massive intellect, of
+unquestioned integrity, and of firm but moderate temper. With Baldwin
+he came to form a close and lifelong friendship. The Reformers of Canada
+West, as Upper Canada was now called, formed a working alliance with
+La Fontaine which gave them a sweeping majority in the Assembly. Bagot
+bowed to the inevitable and called La Fontaine and Baldwin to his
+Council. Ill health made it impossible for him to take much part in the
+government, and the Council was far on the way to obtaining the unity
+and the independence of a true Cabinet when Bagot's death in 1843
+brought a new turn in affairs.
+
+The British Ministers had seen with growing uneasiness Bagot's
+concessions. His successor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, a man of honest and
+kindly ways but accustomed to governing oriental peoples, determined to
+make a stand against the pretensions of the Reformers. In this attitude
+he was strongly backed both by Stanley and by his successor, that
+brilliant young Tory, William Ewart Gladstone. Metcalfe insisted once
+more that the Governor must govern. While the members of the Council, as
+individuals, might give him advice, it was for him to decide whether
+or not to take it. The inevitable clash with his Ministers came in the
+autumn of 1843 over a question of patronage. They resigned, and after
+months of effort Metcalfe patched up a Ministry with W. H. Draper as
+the leading member. In an election in which Metcalfe himself took the
+platform and in which once more British connection was said to be at
+stake, the Ministry obtained a narrow majority. But opinion soon turned,
+and when Metcalfe, the third Governor in four years to whom Canada had
+proved fatal, went home to die, he knew that his stand had been in
+vain. The Ministry, after a precarious life of three years, went to the
+country only to be beaten by an overwhelming majority in both East and
+West. When, in 1848, Baldwin and La Fontaine were called to office under
+the new Governor General, Lord Elgin, the fight was won. Many years
+were to pass before the full implications of responsible government
+were worked out, but henceforth even the straitest Tory conceded the
+principle. Responsible government had ceased to be a party cry and had
+become the common heritage of all Canadians.
+
+Lord Elgin, who was Durham's son-in-law, was a man well able to bear the
+mantle of his predecessors. Yet he realized that the day had passed when
+Governors could govern and was content rather to advise his advisers, to
+wield the personal influence that his experience and sagacity warranted.
+Hitherto the stages in Canadian history had been recorded by the term of
+office of the Governors; henceforth it was to be the tenure of Cabinets
+which counted. Elgin ceased even to attend the Council, and after his
+time the Governor became more and more the constitutional monarch,
+busied in laying corner stones and listening to tiresome official
+addresses. In emergencies, and especially in the gap or interregnum
+between Ministries, the personality of the Governor might count, but as
+a rule this power remained latent. Yet in two turning points in Canadian
+history, both of which had to do with the relations of Canada to the
+United States, Elgin was to play an important part: the Annexation
+Movement of 1849 and the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854.
+
+In the struggle for responsible government, loyalty to the British
+Crown, loyalty of a superior and exclusive brand, had been the creed and
+the war cry of the Tory party. Yet in 1849 men saw the hotheads of this
+group in Montreal stoning a British Governor General and setting fire to
+the Parliament Buildings, while a few months later their elders issued a
+manifesto urging the annexation of Canada to the United States. Why this
+sudden shift? Simply because the old colonial system they had known and
+supported had come to an end. The Empire had been taken to mean racial
+ascendancy and trade profit. Now both the political and the economic
+pillars were crumbling, and the Empire appeared to have no further
+excuse for existence.
+
+In the past British connection had meant to many of the English
+minority in Lower Canada a means of redressing the political balance,
+of retaining power in face of a body of French-speaking citizens
+outnumbering them three or four to one. Now that support had been
+withdrawn. Britain had consented, unwillingly, to the setting up of
+responsible government and the calling to office of men who a dozen
+years before had been in arms against the Queen or fleeing from the
+province. This was gall and wormwood to the English. But when the
+Ministry introduced, and the Assembly passed, the Rebellion Losses Bill
+for compensating those who had suffered destruction of property in the
+outbreak, and when the terms were so drawn as to make it possible, its
+critics charged, that rebels as well as loyalists would be compensated,
+flesh and blood could bear no more. The Governor was pelted with rotten
+eggs when he came down to the House to sign the bill, and the buildings
+where Parliament had met since 1844, when the capital had been
+transferred from Kingston to Montreal, were stormed and burned by a
+street mob.
+
+The anger felt against the Ministry thus turned against the British
+Government. The English minority felt like an advance guard in a hostile
+country, deserted by the main forces, an Ulster abandoned to Home
+Ruler and Sinn Feiner. They turned to the south, to the other great
+English-speaking Protestant people. If the older branch of the race
+would not give them protection or a share in dominance, perhaps the
+younger branch could and would. As Lord Durham had suggested, they
+were resolved that "Lower Canada must be ENGLISH, at the expense, if
+necessary, of not being BRITISH."
+
+But it was not only the political basis of the old colonial system that
+was rudely shattered. The economic foundations, too, were passing away,
+and with them the profits of the Montreal merchants, who formed the
+backbone of the annexation movement. It has been seen that under this
+system Great Britain had aimed at setting up a self-contained empire,
+with a monopoly of the markets of the colonies. Now for her own sake she
+was sweeping away the tariff and shipping monopoly which had been
+built up through more than two centuries. The logic of Adam Smith, the
+experiments of Huskisson, the demands of manufacturers for cheap food
+and raw materials, the passionate campaigns of Cobden and Bright, and
+the rains that brought the Irish famine, at last had their effect. In
+1846 Peel himself undertook the repeal of the Corn Laws. To Lower Canada
+this was a crushing blow. Until of late the preference given in the
+British market on colonial goods in return for the control of colonial
+trade had been of little value; but in 1848 the duties on Canadian
+wheat and flour had been greatly lowered, resulting in a preference over
+foreign grain reckoned at eighteen cents a bushel. While in appearance
+an extension of the old system of preference and protection, in reality
+this was a step toward its abandonment. For it was understood that
+American grain, imported into Canada at a low duty, whether shipped
+direct or ground into flour, would be admitted at the same low rates.
+The Act, by opening a back door to United States wheat, foreshadowed the
+triumph of the cheap food agitators in England. But the merchants, the
+millers, and the forwarders of Montreal could not believe this. The
+canal system was rushed through; large flour mills were built, and heavy
+investments of capital were made. Then in 1846 came the announcement
+that the artificial basis of this brief prosperity had vanished. Lord
+Elgin summed up the results in a dispatch in 1849: "Property in most of
+the Canadian towns, and more especially in the capital, has fallen fifty
+per cent in value within the last three years. Three-fourths of the
+commercial men are bankrupt, owing to free trade. A large proportion
+of the exportable produce of Canada is obliged to seek a market in the
+United States. It pays a duty of twenty per cent on the frontier. How
+long can such a state of things endure?"
+
+In October, 1849, the leading men of Montreal issued a manifesto
+demanding annexation to the United States. A future Prime Minister
+of Canada, J. J. C. Abbott, four future Cabinet Ministers, John Rose,
+Luther Holton, D. L. Macpherson, and A. A. Dorion, and the commercial
+leaders of Montreal, the Molsons, Redpaths, Torrances, and Workmans,
+were among the signers. Besides Dorion, a few French Canadians of the
+Rouge or extreme Radical party joined in. The movement found supporters
+in the Eastern Townships, notably in A. T. Galt, a financier and
+railroad builder of distinction, and here and there in Canada West. Yet
+the great body of opinion was unmistakably against it. Baldwin and
+La Fontaine opposed it with unswerving energy, the Catholic Church
+in Canada East denounced it, and the rank and file of both parties in
+Canada West gave it short shrift. Elgin came out actively in opposition
+and aided in negotiating the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States
+which met the economic need. Montreal found itself isolated, and even
+there the revival of trade and the cooling of passions turned men's
+thoughts into other channels. Soon the movement was but a memory,
+chiefly serviceable to political opponents for taunting some signer of
+the manifesto whenever he later made parade of his loyalty. It had
+a more unfortunate effect, however, in leading public opinion in the
+United States to the belief for many years that a strong annexationist
+sentiment existed in Canada. Never again did annexation receive any
+notable measure of popular support. A national spirit was slowly gaining
+ground, and men were eventually to see that the alternative to looking
+to London for salvation was not looking to Washington but looking to
+themselves.
+
+
+In the provinces by the sea the struggle for responsible government was
+won at much the same time as in Canada. The smaller field within which
+the contest was waged gave it a bitter personal touch; but racial
+hostility did not enter in, and the British Government proved less
+obdurate than in the western conflicts. In both Nova Scotia and New
+Brunswick little oligarchies had become entrenched. The Government was
+unprogressive, and fees and salaries were high. The Anglican Church had
+received privileges galling to other denominations which surpassed it in
+numbers. The "powers that were" found a shrewd defender in Haliburton,
+who tried to teach his fellow Bluenoses through the homely wit of "Sam
+Slick" that they should leave governing to those who had the training,
+the capacity, and the leisure it required. In Prince Edward Island the
+land question still overshadowed all others. Every proposal for its
+settlement was rejected by the influence of the absentee landlords in
+England, and the agitation went wearily on.
+
+In Nova Scotia the outstanding figure in the ranks of reform was Joseph
+Howe. The son of a Loyalist settler, Howe early took to his father's
+work of journalism. At first his sympathies were with the governing
+powers, but a controversy with a brother editor, Jotham Blanchard, a New
+Hampshire man who found radical backing among the Scots of Pictou, gave
+him new light and he soon threw his whole powers into the struggle
+on the popular side. Howe was a man lavishly gifted, one of the most
+effective orators America has produced, fearing no man and no task
+however great, filled with a vitality, a humor, a broad sympathy for his
+fellows that gave him the blind obedience of thousands of followers and
+the glowing friendship of countless firesides. There are still old men
+in Nova Scotia whose proudest memory is that they once held Howe's horse
+or ran on an errand for a look from his kingly eye.
+
+Howe took up the fight in earnest in 1835. The western demand for
+responsible government pointed the way, and Howe became, with Baldwin,
+its most trenchant advocate. In spite of the determined opposition
+of the sturdy old soldier Governor, Sir Colin Campbell, and of his
+successor, Lord Falkland, who aped Sydenham and whom Howe threatened to
+"hire a black man to horse-whip," the reformers won. In 1848 the first
+responsible Cabinet in Nova Scotia came to power.
+
+In New Brunswick the transition to responsible government came gradually
+and without dramatic incidents or brilliant figures on either side.
+Lemuel Wilmot, and later Charles Fisher, led the reform ranks, gradually
+securing for the Assembly control of all revenues, abolishing religious
+inequalities, and effecting some reform in the Executive Council, until
+at last in 1855 the crowning demand was tardily conceded.
+
+
+From the Great Lakes to the Atlantic the political fight was won,
+and men turned with relief to the tasks which strife and faction had
+hindered. Self-government meant progressive government. With organized
+Cabinets coordinating and controlling their policy the provinces went
+ahead much faster than when Governor and Assembly stood at daggers
+drawn. The forties and especially the fifties were years of rapid and
+sound development in all the provinces, and especially in Canada West.
+Settlers poured in, the scattered clearings; widened until one joined
+the next, and pioneer hardships gave way to substantial, if crude,
+prosperity. Education, notably under the vigorous leadership of Egerton
+Ryerson in Canada West, received more adequate attention. Banks grew and
+with them all commercial facilities increased.
+
+The distinctive feature of this period of Canadian development, however,
+was the growth of canals and railroads. The forties were the time of
+canal building and rebuilding all along the lakes and the St. Lawrence
+to salt water. Canada spent millions on what were wonderful works for
+their day, in the hope that the St. Lawrence would become the channel
+for the trade of all the growing western States bordering on the Great
+Lakes. Scarcely were these waterway improvements completed when it was
+realized they had been made largely in vain. The railway had come and
+was outrivaling the canal. If Canadian ports and channels were even to
+hold their own, they must take heed of the enterprise of all the cities
+along the Atlantic coast of the United States, which were promoting
+railroads to the interior in a vigorous rivalry for the trade of the
+Golden West. Here was a challenge which must be taken up. The fifties
+became the first great railway era of Canada. In 1850 there were only
+sixty-six miles of railway in all the provinces; ten years later there
+were over two thousand. Nearly all the roads were aided by provincial or
+municipal bonus or guarantee. Chief among the lines was the Grand Trunk,
+which ran from the Detroit border to Riviere du Loup on the Gulf of St.
+Lawrence, and which, though it halted at that eastern terminus in the
+magnificent project of connecting with the railways of the Maritime
+Provinces, was nevertheless at that time the longest road in the world
+operating under single control.
+
+The railways brought with them a new speculative fever, a more complex
+financial structure, a business politics which shaded into open
+corruption, and a closer touch with the outside world. The general
+substitution of steam for sail on the Atlantic during this period aided
+further in lessening the isolation of what had been backwoods provinces
+and in bringing them into closer relation with the rest of the world.
+
+
+It was in closer relations with the United States that this emergence
+from isolation chiefly manifested itself. In the generation that
+followed the War of 1812 intercourse with the United States was
+discouraged and was remarkably insignificant. Official policy and the
+memories of 1783 and 1812 alike built up a wall along the southern
+border. The spirit of Downing Street was shown in the instructions given
+to Lord Bathurst, immediately after the close of the war, to leave the
+territory between Montreal and Lake Champlain in a state of nature,
+making no further grants of land and letting the few roads which had
+been begun fall into decay thus a barrier of forest wilderness would
+ward off republican contagion. This Chinese policy of putting up a wall
+of separation proved impossible to carry through, but in less extreme
+ways this attitude of aloofness marked the course of the Government all
+through the days of oversea authority.
+
+The friction aroused by repeated boundary disputes prevented friendly
+relations between Canada and the United States. With unconscious irony
+the framers of the Peace of 1783 had prefaced their long outline of the
+boundaries of the United States by expressing their intention "that all
+disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the boundaries
+of the said United States may be prevented." So vague, however, were the
+terms of the treaty and so untrustworthy were the maps of the day that
+ultimately almost every clause in the boundary section gave rise to
+dispute.
+
+As settlement rolled westward one section of the boundary after another
+came in question. Beginning in the east, the line between New Brunswick
+and New England was to be formed by the St. Croix River. There had been
+a St. Croix in Champlain's time and a St. Croix was depicted on the
+maps, but no river known by that name existed in 1783. The British
+identified it with the Schoodic, the Americans with the Magaguadavic.
+Arbitration in 1798 upheld the British in the contention that the
+Schoodic was the St. Croix but agreed with the Americans in the
+secondary question as to which of the two branches of the Schoodic
+should be followed. A similar commission in 1817 settled the dispute as
+to the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay.
+
+More difficult, because at once more ambiguous in terms and more vitally
+important, was the determination of the boundary in the next stage
+westward from the St. Croix to the St. Lawrence. The British position
+was a difficult one to maintain. In the days of the struggle with
+France, Great Britain had tried to push the bounds of the New England
+colonies as far north as might be, making claims that would hem in
+France to the barest strip along the south shore of the St. Lawrence.
+Now that she was heir to the territories and claims of France and
+had lost her own old colonies, it was somewhat embarrassing, but for
+diplomats not impossible, to have to urge a line as far south as the
+urgent needs of the provinces for intercommunication demanded. The
+letter of the treaty was impossible to interpret with certainty. The
+phrase, "the Highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves
+into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic
+Ocean," meant according to the American reading a watershed which was a
+marshy plateau, and according to the British version a range of hills to
+the south which involved some keen hairsplitting as to the rivers they
+divided. The intentions of the parties to the original treaty were
+probably much as the Americans contended. From the standpoint of
+neighborly adjustment and the relative need for the land in question, a
+strong case in equity could be made out for the provinces, which would
+be cut asunder for all time if a wedge were driven north to the very
+brink of the St. Lawrence.
+
+As lumbermen and settlers gathered in the border area, the risk of
+conflict became acute, culminating in the Aroostook War in 1838-39,
+when the Legislatures of Maine and New Brunswick backed their rival
+lumberjacks with reckless jingoism. Diplomacy failed repeatedly to
+obtain a compromise line. Arbitration was tried with little better
+success, as the United States refused to accept the award of the King
+of the Netherlands in 1831. The diplomats tried once more, and in
+1842 Daniel Webster, the United States Secretary of State, and Lord
+Ashburton, the British Commissioner, made a compromise by which some
+five thousand miles of the area in dispute were assigned to Great
+Britain and seven thousand to the United States. The award was not
+popular on either side, and the public seized eagerly on stories of
+concealed "Red Line" maps, stories of Yankee smartness or of British
+trickery. Webster, to win the assent of Maine, had exhibited in the
+Senate a map found in the French Archives and very damaging to the
+American claim. Later it appeared that the British Government also had
+found a map equally damaging to its own claims. The nice question of
+ethics involved, whether a nation should bring forward evidence that
+would tell against itself, ceased to have more than an abstract interest
+when it was demonstrated that neither map could be considered as one
+which the original negotiators had used or marked.*
+
+     * See "The Path, of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The
+     Chronicles of America").
+
+The boundary from the St. Lawrence westward through the Great Lakes and
+thence to the Lake of the Woods had been laid down in the Treaty of
+1783 in the usual vague terms, but it was determined in a series of
+negotiations from 1794 to 1842 with less friction and heat than the
+eastern line had caused. From the Lake of the Woods to the Rockies a new
+line, the forty-ninth parallel, was agreed upon in 1818. Then, as the
+Pacific Ocean was neared, the difficulties once more increased. There
+were no treaties between the two countries to limit claims beyond the
+Rockies. Discovery and settlement, and the rights inherited from or
+admitted by the Spaniards to the south and by the Russians to the north,
+were the grounds put forward. British and Canadian fur traders had been
+the pioneers in overland discovery, but early in the forties thousands
+of American settlers poured into the Columbia Valley and strengthened
+the practical case for their country. "Fifty-four forty or fight"--in
+other words, the calm proposal to claim the whole coast between Mexico
+and Alaska--became the popular cry in the United States; but in face
+of the firm attitude of Great Britain and impending hostilities with
+Mexico, more moderate counsels ruled. Great Britain held out for the
+Columbia River as the dividing line, and the United States for the
+forty-ninth parallel throughout. Finally, in 1846, the latter contention
+was accepted, with a modification to leave Vancouver Island wholly
+British territory. A postscript to this settlement was added in 1872,
+when the German Emperor as arbitrator approved the American claim to
+the island of San Juan in the channel between Vancouver Island and the
+mainland.*
+
+     * See "The Path of Empire".
+
+With the most troublesome boundary questions out of the way, it became
+possible to discuss calmly closer trade relations between the Provinces
+and the United States. The movement for reciprocal lowering of the
+tariffs which hampered trade made rapid headway in the Provinces in the
+late forties and early fifties. British North America was passing out of
+the pioneer, self-sufficient stage, and now had a surplus to export
+as well as townbred needs to be supplied by imports. The spread of
+settlement and the building of canals and railways brought closer
+contact with the people to the south. The loss of special privileges
+in the English market made the United States market more desired. In
+official circles reciprocity was sought as a homeopathic cure for
+the desire for annexation. William Hamilton Merritt, a Niagara border
+business man and the most persistent advocate of closer trade relations,
+met little difficulty in securing almost unanimous backing in Canada,
+while the Maritime Provinces lent their support.
+
+It was more difficult to win over the United States. There the people
+showed the usual indifference of a big and prosperous country to the
+needs or opportunities of a small and backward neighbor. The division
+of power between President and Congress made it difficult to carry any
+negotiation through to success. Yet these obstacles were overcome. The
+depletion of the fisheries along the Atlantic coast of the United States
+made it worth while, as I.D. Andrews, a United States consul in New
+Brunswick, urged persistently, to gain access to the richer grounds to
+the north and, if necessary, to offer trade concessions in exchange. At
+Washington, the South was in the saddle. Its sympathies were strongly
+for freer trade, but this alone would not have counted had not the
+advocates of reciprocity convinced the Democratic leaders of the bearing
+of their policy on the then absorbing issue of slavery. If reciprocity
+were not arranged, the argument ran, annexation would be sure to come
+and that would mean the addition to the Union of a group of freesoil
+States which would definitely tilt the balance against slavery for all
+time. With the ground thus prepared, Lord Elgin succeeded by adroit and
+capable diplomacy in winning over the leaders of Congress as well as
+the Executive to his proposals. The Reciprocity Treaty was passed by the
+Senate in August, 1854, and by the Legislatures of the United Kingdom,
+Canada, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia in the next
+few months, and of Newfoundland in 1855. This treaty provided for free
+admission into each country of practically all the products of the farm,
+forest, mine, and fishery, threw open the Atlantic fisheries, and gave
+American vessels the use of the St. Lawrence and Canadian vessels
+the use of Lake Michigan. The agreement was to last for ten years and
+indefinitely thereafter, subject to termination on one year's notice by
+either party.
+
+To both countries reciprocity brought undoubted good. Trade doubled and
+trebled. Each country gained by free access to the nearest sources
+of supply. The same goods figured largely in the traffic in both
+directions, the United States importing grain and flour from Canada and
+exporting it to the Maritime Provinces. In short the benefits which had
+come to the United States from free and unfettered trade throughout half
+a continent were now extended to practically a whole continent.
+
+Yet criticism of the new economic regime was not lacking. The growth
+of protectionist feeling in both countries after 1857 brought about
+incidents and created an atmosphere which were dangerous to the
+continuance of close trade relations. In 1858 and 1859 the Canadian
+Government raised substantially the duties on manufactured goods in
+order to meet the bills for its lavish railway policy. This increase hit
+American manufacturers and led to loud complaints that the spirit of
+the Reciprocity Treaty had been violated. Alexander T. Galt, Canadian
+Minister of Finance, had no difficulty in showing that the tariff
+increases were the only feasible sources of revenue, that the agreement
+with the United States did not cover manufactures, and that the United
+States itself, faced by war demands and no longer controlled by free
+trade Southerners, had raised duties still higher. The exports of the
+United States to the Provinces in the reciprocity period were greater,
+contrary to the later traditions, than the imports. On economic grounds
+the case for the continuance of the reciprocity agreement was strong,
+and probably the treaty would have remained in force indefinitely had
+not the political passions roused by the Civil War made sanity and
+neighborliness in trade difficult to maintain.
+
+
+When the Civil War broke out, the sympathies of Canadians were
+overwhelmingly on the side of the North. The railway and freer trade had
+been bringing the two peoples closer together, and time was healing old
+sores. Slavery was held to be the real issue, and on that issue there
+were scarcely two opinions in the British Provinces.
+
+Yet in a few months sympathy had given way to angry and suspicious
+bickering, and the possibility of invasion of Canada by the Northern
+forces was vigorously debated. This sudden shift of opinion and the
+danger in which it involved the provinces were both incidents in the
+quarrel which sprang up between the United States and Great Britain. In
+Britain as in Canada, opinion, so far as it found open expression, was
+at first not unfriendly to the North. Then came the anger of the North
+at Great Britain's legitimate and necessary, though perhaps precipitate,
+action in acknowledging the South as a belligerent. This action ran
+counter to the official Northern theory that the revolt of the Southern
+States was a local riot, of merely domestic concern, and was held to
+foreshadow a recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. The
+angry taunts were soon returned. The ruling classes in Great Britain
+made the discovery that the war was a struggle between chivalrous
+gentlemen and mercenary counterhoppers and cherished the hope that the
+failure of the North would discredit, the world over, the democracy
+which was making uncomfortable claims in England itself. The English
+trading classes resented the shortage of cotton and the high duties
+which the protectionist North was imposing. With the defeat of the Union
+forces at Bull Run the prudent hesitancy of aristocrat and merchant in
+expressing their views disappeared. The responsible statesmen of both
+countries, especially Lincoln and Lord John Russell, refused to be
+stampeded, but unfortunately the leading newspapers served them ill.
+The "Times", with its constant sneers and its still more irritating
+patronizing advice, and the New York "Herald", bragging and blustering
+in the frank hope of forcing a war with Britain and France which would
+reunite South and North and subordinate the slavery issue, did more than
+any other factors to bring the two countries to the verge of war.
+
+In Canada the tendency in some quarters to reflect English opinion,
+the disappointment in others that the abolition of slavery was not
+explicitly pledged by the North, and above all resentment against
+the threats of the "Herald" and its followers, soon cooled the early
+friendliness. The leading Canadian newspaper, for many years a vigorous
+opponent of slavery, thus summed up the situation in August, 1861:
+
+"The insolent bravado of the Northern press towards Great Britain and
+the insulting tone assumed toward these Provinces have unquestionably
+produced a marked change in the feelings of our people. When the war
+commenced, there was only one feeling, of hearty sympathy with the
+North, but now it is very different. People have lost sight of the
+character of the struggle in the exasperation excited by the injustice
+and abuse showered upon us by the party with which we sympathized."*
+
+     * Toronto "Globe", August 7, 1861.
+
+The Trent affair brought matters to a sobering climax.* When it was
+settled, resentment lingered, but the tension was never again so acute.
+Both Great Britain and in Canada the normal sympathy with the cause of
+the Union revived as the war went on. In England the classes continued
+to be pro-Southern in sympathy, but the masses, in spite of cotton
+famines, held resolutely to their faith in the cause of freedom. After
+Lincoln's emancipation of the slaves, the view of the English middle
+classes more and more became the view of the nation. In Canada,
+pro-Southern sentiment was strong in the same classes and particularly
+in Montreal and Toronto, where there were to be found many Southern
+refugees, some of whom made a poor return for hospitality by endeavoring
+to use Canada as a base for border raids. Yet in the smaller towns and
+in the country sympathy was decidedly on the other side, particularly
+after the "Herald" had ceased its campaign of bluster and after
+Lincoln's proclamation had brought the moral issue again to the fore.
+The fact that a large number of Canadians, popularly set at forty
+thousand, enlisted in the Northern armies, is to be explained in part by
+the call of adventure and the lure of high bounties, but it must also be
+taken to reflect the sympathy of the mass of the people.
+
+     * See "Abraham Lincoln and the Union", by Nathaniel W.
+     Stephenson (in "The Chronicles of America").
+
+In the United States resentment was slower in passing. While the war was
+on, prudence forbade any overt act. When it was over, the bill for the
+Alabama raids and the taunts of the "Times" came in. Great Britain
+paid in the settlement of the Alabama claims.* Canada suffered by the
+abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty at the first possible date, and by
+the connivance of the American authorities in the Fenian raids of 1866
+and 1870. Yet for Canada the outcome was by no means ill. If the Civil
+War did not bring forth a new nation in the South, it helped to make one
+in the far North. A common danger drew the scattered British Provinces
+together and made ready the way for the coming Dominion of Canada.
+
+     *See "The Day of the Confederacy", by Nathaniel W.
+     Stephenson; and "The Path of Empire" (in "The Chronicles of
+     America").
+
+It was not from the United States alone that an impetus came for the
+closer union of the British Provinces. The same period and the same
+events ripened opinion in the United Kingdom in favor of some practical
+means of altering a colonial relationship which had ceased to bring
+profit but which had not ceased to be a burden of responsibility and
+risk.
+
+The British Empire had its beginning in the initiative of private
+business men, not in any conscious policy of state. Yet as the Empire
+grew the teaching of doctrinaires and the example of other colonial
+powers had developed a definite policy whereby the plantations overseas
+were to be made to serve the needs of the nation at home. The end of
+empire was commercial profit; the means, the political subordination of
+the colonies; the debit entry, the cost of the military and naval and
+diplomatic services borne by the mother country. But the course of
+events had now broken down this theory. Britain, for her own good, had
+abandoned protection, and with it fell the system of preference and
+monopoly in colonial markets. Not only preference had gone but even
+equality. The colonies, notably Canada, which was most influenced by the
+United States, were perversely using their new found freedom to protect
+their own manufacturers against all outsiders, Britain included.
+When Sheffield cutlers, hard hit by Canada's tariff, protested to
+the Colonial Secretary and he echoed their remonstrance, the
+Canadian Minister of Finance, A. T. Galt, stoutly refused to heed.
+"Self-government would be utterly annihilated," Galt replied in 1860,
+"if the views of the Imperial Government were to be preferred to
+those of the people of Canada. It is therefore the duty of the present
+government distinctly to affirm the right of the Canadian legislature to
+adjust the taxation of the people in the way they deem best--even if
+it should unfortunately happen to meet the disapproval of the Imperial
+Ministry." Clearly, if trade advantage were the chief purpose of empire,
+the Empire had lost its reason for being.
+
+With the credit entry fading, the debit entry loomed up bigger. Hardly
+had the Corn Laws been abolished when Radical critics called on the
+British Government to withdraw the redcoat garrisons from the colonies:
+no profit, no defense. Slowly but steadily this reduction was effected.
+To fill the gaps, the colonies began to strengthen their militia forces.
+In Canada only a beginning had been made in the way of defense when the
+Trent episode brought matters to a crisis. If war broke out between the
+United States and Great Britain, Canada would be the battlefield. Every
+Canadian knew it; nothing could be clearer. When the danger of immediate
+war had passed, the Parliament of Canada turned to the provision of more
+adequate defense. A bill providing for a compulsory levy was defeated in
+1862, more on personal and party grounds than on its own merits, and
+the Ministry next in office took the other course of increasing the
+volunteer force and of providing for officers' training. Compared with
+any earlier arrangements for defense, the new plans marked a great
+advance; but when judged in the light of the possible necessity of
+repelling American invasion, they were plainly inadequate. A burst
+of criticism followed from England; press and politicians joined in
+denouncing the blind and supine colonials. Did they not know that
+invasion by the United States was inevitable? "If the people of the
+North fail," declared a noble lord, "they will attack Canada as a
+compensation for their losses; if they succeed, they will attack Canada
+in the drunkenness of victory." If such an invasion came, Britain had
+neither the power nor the will, the "Times" declared, to protect Canada
+without any aid on her part; not the power, for "our empire is too vast,
+our population too small, our antagonist too powerful"; not the will,
+for "we no longer monopolize the trade of the colonies; we no longer job
+their patronage." To these amazing attacks Canadians replied that they
+knew the United States better than Englishmen did. They were prepared to
+take their share in defense, but they could not forget that if war came
+it would not be by any act of Canada. It was soon noted that those
+who most loudly denounced Canada for not arming to the teeth were the
+Southern sympathizers. "The 'Times' has done more than its share in
+creating bad feeling between England and the United States," declared
+a Toronto newspaper, "and would have liked to see the Canadians take up
+the quarrel which it has raised.... We have no idea of Canada being made
+a victim of the Jefferson Bricks on either side of the Atlantic."
+
+The question of defense fell into the background when the war ended
+and the armies of the Union went back to their farms and shops. But
+the discussion left in the minds of most Englishmen the belief that the
+possession of such colonies was a doubtful blessing. Manchester men like
+Bright, Liberals like Gladstone and Cornewall Lewis, Conservatives
+like Lowe and Disraeli, all came to believe that separation was only a
+question of time. Yet honor made them hesitate to set the defenseless
+colonies adrift to be seized by the first hungry neighbor.
+
+At this juncture the plans for uniting all the colonies in one great
+federation seemed to open a way out; united, the colonies could stand
+alone. Thus Confederation found support in Britain as well as a stimulus
+from the United States. This, however, was not enough. Confederation
+would not have come when it did--and that might have meant it would
+never have come at all--had not party and sectional deadlock forced
+Canadian politicians to seek a remedy in a wider union.
+
+At first all had gone well with the Union of 1841. It did not take
+the politicians long to learn how to use the power that responsible
+government put into their hands. After Elgin's day the Governor General
+fell back into the role of constitutional monarch which cabinet control
+made easy for him. In the forties, men had spoken of Sydenham and
+Bagot, Metcalfe and Elgin; in the fifties, they spoke of Baldwin and La
+Fontaine, Hincks and Macdonald and Cartier and Brown, and less and less
+of the Governors in whose name these men ruled. Politics then attracted
+more of the country's ablest men than it does now, and the party leaders
+included many who would have made their mark in any parliament in the
+world. Baldwin and La Fontaine, united to the end, resigned office
+in 1851, believing that they had played their part in establishing
+responsible government and feeling out of touch with the radical
+elements of their following who were demanding further change. Their
+place was taken in Canada West by Hincks, an adroit tactician and a
+skilled financier, intent on railway building and trade development; and
+in Canada East by Morin, a somewhat colorless lieutenant of La Fontaine.
+
+But these leaders in turn soon gave way to new men; and the political
+parties gradually fell into a state of flux. In Canada West there were
+still a few Tories, survivors of the Family Compact and last-ditch
+defenders of privilege in Church and State, a growing number of moderate
+Conservatives, a larger group of moderate Liberals, and a small
+but aggressive extreme left wing of "Clear Grits," mainly Scotch
+Presbyterians, foes of any claim to undue power on the part of class or
+clergy. In Canada East the English members from the Townships, under
+A. T. Galt, were ceasing to vote as a unit, and the main body of
+French-Canadian members were breaking up into a moderate Liberal party,
+and a smaller group of Rouges, fiery young men under the leadership
+of Papineau, now returned from exile, were crusading against clerical
+pretensions and all the established order.
+
+The situation was one made to the hand of a master tactician. The time
+brought forth the man. John A. Macdonald, a young Kingston lawyer
+of Tory upbringing, or "John A.", as generation after generation
+affectionately called him, was to prove the greatest leader of men in
+Canada's annals. Shrewd, tactful, and genial, never forgetting a face
+or a favor, as popular for his human frailties as for his strength,
+Macdonald saw that the old party lines drawn in the days of the struggle
+for responsible government were breaking down and that the future lay
+with a union of the moderate elements in both parties and both sections.
+He succeeded in 1854 in bringing together in Canada West a strong
+Liberal-Conservative group and in effecting a permanent alliance with
+the main body of French-Canadian Liberals, now under the leadership
+of Cartier, a vigorous fighter and an easy-going opportunist. With
+the addition of Galt as the financial expert, these allies held power
+throughout the greater part of the next dozen years. Their position was
+not unchallenged. The Clear Grits had found a leader after their own
+heart in George Brown, a Scotchman of great ability, a hard hitter and
+a good hater--especially of slavery, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and
+"John A." Through his newspaper, the Toronto "Globe", he wielded a power
+unique in Canadian journalism. The Rouges, now led by A. A. Dorion, a
+man of stainless honor and essentially moderate temper, withdrew from.
+their extreme anticlerical position but could not live down their youth
+or make head against the forces of conservatism in their province. They
+did not command many votes in the House, but every man of them was an
+orator, and they remained through all vicissitudes a power to reckon
+with.
+
+Step by step, under Liberal and under Liberal Conservative Governments,
+the programme of Canadian Liberalism was carried into effect.
+Self-government, at least in domestic affairs, had been attained. An
+effective system of municipal government and a good beginning in popular
+education followed. The last link between Church and State was severed
+in 1854 when the Clergy Reserves were turned over to the municipalities
+for secular purposes, with life annuities for clergymen who had been
+receiving stipends from the Reserves. In Lower Canada the remnants of
+the old feudal system, the rights of the seigneurs, were abolished in
+the same year with full compensation from the state. An elective upper
+Chamber took the place of the appointed Legislative Council a year
+later. The Reformers, as the Clear Grits preferred to call themselves
+officially, should perhaps have been content with so much progress.
+They insisted, however, that a new and more intolerable privilege had
+arisen--the privilege which Canada East held of equal representation
+in the Legislative Assembly long after its population had fallen behind
+that of Canada West.
+
+The political union of the two Canadas in fact had never been complete.
+Throughout the Union period there were two leaders in each Cabinet, two
+Attorney Generals, and two distinct judicial systems. Every session laws
+were passed applying to one section alone. This continued separation had
+its beginning in a clause of the Union Act itself, which provided that
+each section should have equal representation in the Assembly, even
+though Lower Canada then had a much larger population than Upper Canada.
+When the tide of overseas immigration put Canada West well in the lead,
+it in its turn was denied the full representation its greater population
+warranted. First the Conservatives, and later the Clear Grits, took
+up the cry of "Representation by Population." It was not difficult to
+convince the average Canada West elector that it was an outrage
+that three French-Canadian voters should count as much as four
+English-speaking voters. Macdonald, relying for power on his alliance
+with Cartier, could not accept the demand, and saw seat after seat in
+Canada West fall to Brown and his "Rep. by Pop." crusaders. Brown's
+success only solidified Canada East against him, until, in the early
+sixties, party lines coincided almost with sectional lines. Parties were
+so closely matched that the life of a Ministry was short. In the
+three years ending in 1864 there were two general elections and
+four Ministries. Political controversy became bitterly personal, and
+corruption was spreading fast.
+
+Constant efforts were made to avert the threatened deadlock. Macdonald,
+who always trusted more to personal management than to constitutional
+expedients, won over one after another of the opponents who troubled
+him, and thus postponed the day of reckoning. Rival plans of
+constitutional reform were brought forward. The simplest remedy was the
+repeal of the union, leaving each province to go its own way. But this
+solution was felt to be a backward step and one which would create more
+problems than it would solve. More support was given the double majority
+principle, a provision that no measure affecting one section should be
+passed unless a majority from that section favored it, but this method
+broke down when put to a practical test. The Rouges, and later Brown,
+put forward a plan for the abolition of legislative union in favor of
+a federal union of the two Canadas. This lacked the wide vision of the
+fourth suggestion, which was destined to be adopted as the solution,
+namely, the federation of all British North America.
+
+Federal union, it was urged, would solve party and sectional deadlock by
+removing to local legislatures the questions which created the greatest
+divergence of opinion. The federal union of the Canadas alone or the
+federal union of all British North America would either achieve this
+end. But there were other ends in view which only the wider plan could
+serve. The needs of defense demanded a single control for all the
+colonies. The probable loss of the open market of the United States made
+it imperative to unite all the provinces in a single free trade area.
+The first faint stirrings of national ambition, prompting the younger
+men to throw off the leading strings of colonial dependence, were
+stimulated by the vision of a country which would stretch from sea
+to sea. The westward growth of the United States and the reports of
+travelers were opening men's eyes to the possibilities of the vast lands
+under the control of the Hudson's Bay Company and the need of asserting
+authority over these northern regions if they were to be held for the
+Crown. Eastward, also, men were awaking to their isolation. There was
+not, in the Maritime Provinces, any popular desire for union with the
+Canadas or any political crisis compelling drastic remedy, but the
+need of union for defense was felt in some quarters, and ambitious
+politicians who had mastered their local fields were beginning to sigh
+for larger worlds to conquer.
+
+It took the patient and courageous striving of many men to make this
+vision of a united country a reality. The roll of the Fathers of
+Confederation is a long and honored one. Yet on that roll there are
+some outstanding names, the names of men whose services were not merely
+devoted but indispensable. The first to bring the question within the
+field of practical politics was A. T. Galt, but when attempt after
+attempt in 1864 to organize a Ministry with a safe working majority had
+failed, it was George Brown who proposed that the party leaders should
+join hands in devising some form of federation. Macdonald had hitherto
+been a stout opponent of all change but, once converted, he threw
+himself into the struggle, with energy. He never appeared to better
+advantage than in the negotiations of the next few years, steering
+the ship of Confederation through the perilous shoals of personal and
+sectional jealousies. Few had a harder or a more important task than
+Cartier's-reconciling Canada East to a project under which it would be
+swamped, in the proposed federal House, by the representatives of four
+or five English-speaking provinces. McDougall, a Canada West Reformer,
+shared with Brown the credit for awakening Canadians to the value of the
+Far West and to the need of including it in their plans of expansion.
+D'Arcy McGee, more than any other, fired the imagination of the people
+with glowing pictures of the greatness and the limitless possibilities
+of the new nation. Charles Tupper, the head of a Nova Scotia
+Conservative Ministry which had overthrown the old tribune, Joseph
+Howe, had the hardest and seemingly most hopeless task of all; for his
+province appeared to be content with its separate existence and was
+inflamed against union by Howe's eloquent opposition; but to Tupper a
+hard fight was as the breath of his nostrils. In New Brunswick, Leonard
+Tilley, a man of less vigor but equal determination, led the struggle
+until Confederation was achieved.
+
+It was in June, 1864, that the leaders of the Parliament of Canada
+became convinced that federation was the only way out. A coalition
+Cabinet was formed, with Sir Etienne Tache as nominal Premier, and
+with Macdonald, Brown, Cartier, and Galt all included. An opening for
+discussing the wider federation was offered by a meeting which was to be
+held in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, of delegates from the three
+Maritime Provinces to consider the formation of a local union. There, in
+September, 1864, went eight of the Canadian Ministers. Their proposals
+met with favor. A series of banquets brought the plans before the
+public, seemingly with good results. The conference was resumed a month
+later at Quebec. Here, in sixteen working days, delegates from Canada,
+Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and also from
+Newfoundland, thirty-three in all, after frank and full deliberation
+behind closed doors, agreed upon the terms of union. Macdonald's
+insistence upon a legislative union, wiping out all provincial
+boundaries, was overridden; but the lesson of the conflict between
+the federal and state jurisdiction in the United States was seen in
+provisions to strengthen the central authority. The general government
+was empowered to appoint the lieutenant governors of the various
+provinces and to veto any provincial law; to it were assigned all
+legislative powers not specifically granted to the provinces; and
+a subsidy granted by the general government in lieu of the customs
+revenues resigned by the provinces still further increased their
+dependence upon the central authority.
+
+It had taken less than three weeks to draw up the plan of union. It
+took nearly three years to secure its adoption. So far as Canada
+was concerned, little trouble was encountered. British traditions of
+parliamentary supremacy prevented any direct submission of the question
+to the people; but their support was clearly manifested in the press and
+on the platform, and the legislature ratified the project with emphatic
+majorities from both sections of the province. Though it did not pass
+without opposition, particularly from the Rouges under Dorion and from
+steadfast supporters of old ways like Christopher Dunkin and Sandfield
+Macdonald, the fight was only halfhearted. Not so, however, in the
+provinces by the sea. The delegates who returned from the Quebec
+Conference were astounded to meet a storm of criticism. Local pride and
+local prejudice were aroused. The thrifty maritime population feared
+Canadian extravagance and Canadian high tariffs. They were content to
+remain as they were and fearful of the unknown. Here and there advocates
+of annexation to the United States swelled the chorus. Merchants in
+Halifax and St. John feared that trade would be drawn away to Montreal.
+Above all, Howe, whether because of personal pique or of intense local
+patriotism, had put himself at the head of the agitation against union,
+and his eloquence could still play upon the prejudices of the people.
+The Tilley Government in New Brunswick was swept out of power early in
+1865. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland both drew back, the one for
+eight years, the other to remain outside the fold to the present day. In
+Nova Scotia a similar fate was averted only by Tupper's Fabian tactics.
+Then the tide turned. In New Brunswick the Fenian Raids, pressure from
+the Colonial Office, and the blunders of the anti-Confederate Government
+brought Tilley back to power on a Confederation platform a year later.
+Tupper seized the occasion and carried his motion through the Nova
+Scotia House. Without seeking further warrant the delegates from Canada,
+Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick met in London late in 1866, and there
+in consultation with the Colonial Office drew up the final resolutions.
+They were embodied in the British North America Act which went through
+the Imperial Parliament not only without raising questions but even
+without exciting interest. On July 1, 1867, the Dominion of Canada, as
+the new federation was to be known, came into being. It is a curious
+coincidence that the same date witnessed the establishment of the North
+German Bund, which in less than three years was to expand into the
+German Empire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE DAYS OF TRIAL
+
+The federation of the four provinces was an excellent achievement,
+but it was only a beginning on the long, hard road to nationhood. The
+Fathers of Confederation had set their goal and had proclaimed their
+faith. It remained for the next generation to seek to make their
+vision a reality. It was still necessary to make the Dominion actual by
+bringing in all the lands from sea to sea. And when, on paper, Canada
+covered half a continent, union had yet to be given body and substance
+by railway building and continuous settlement. The task of welding two
+races and many scattered provinces into a single people would call for
+all the statesmanship and prudence the country had to give. To chart the
+relations between the federal and the provincial authorities, which had
+so nearly brought to shipwreck the federal experiment of Canada's great
+neighbor, was like navigating an unknown sea. And what was to be the
+attitude of the new Dominion, half nation, half colony, to the mother
+country and to the republic to the south, no one could yet foretell.
+
+The first problem which faced the Dominion was the organization of
+the new machinery of government. It was necessary to choose a federal
+Administration to guide the Parliament which was soon to meet at Ottawa,
+the capital of the old Canada since 1858 and now accepted as the capital
+of the larger Canada. It was necessary also to establish provincial
+Governments in Canada West, henceforth known as Ontario and in Canada
+East, or Quebec. The provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were to
+retain their existing provincial Governments.
+
+There was no doubt as to whom the Governor General, Lord Monck, should
+call to form the first federal Administration. Macdonald had proved
+himself easily the greatest leader of men the four provinces had
+produced. The entrance of two new provinces into the union, with all
+the possibilities of new party groupings and new personal alliances
+it involved, created a situation in which he had no rival. His great
+antagonist, Brown, passed off the parliamentary stage. When he proposed
+a coalition to carry through federation, Brown had recognized that he
+was sacrificing his chief political asset, the discontent of Canada
+West. But he was too true a patriot to hesitate a moment on that score,
+and in any case he was sufficiently confident of his own abilities to
+believe that he could hold his own in a fresh field. In this expectation
+he was deceived. No man among his contemporaries surpassed him in
+sheer ability, in fearless honesty, in vigor of debate, but he lacked
+Macdonald's genial and supple art of managing men. And with broad
+questions of state policy for the moment out of the way, it was
+capacity in managing men that was to count in determining success. Never
+afterward did Brown take an active part in parliamentary life, though
+still a power in the land through his newspaper, the Toronto "Globe",
+which was regarded as the Scotch Presbyterian's second Bible. Of the
+other leaders of old Canada, Cartier with failing health was losing his
+vigor and losing also the prestige with his party which his solid Canada
+East majority had given him; Galt soon retired to private business, with
+occasional incursions into diplomacy; and McGee fell a victim in 1868
+to a Fenian assassin. From the Maritime Provinces the ablest recruit was
+Tupper, the most dogged fighter in Canadian parliamentary annals and a
+lifelong sworn ally of Macdonald.
+
+It was at first uncertain what the grouping of parties would be.
+Macdonald naturally wished to retain the coalition which assured him
+unquestioned mastery, and the popular desire to give Confederation a
+good start also favored such a course. In his first Cabinet, formed with
+infinite difficulty, with provinces, parties, religions, races, all to
+consider in filling a limited number of posts, Macdonald included six
+Liberal ministers out of thirteen, three from Ontario, and three from
+the Maritime Provinces. Yet if an Opposition had not existed, it would
+have been necessary to create one in order to work the parliamentary
+machine. The attempt to keep the coalition together did not long
+succeed. On the eve of the first federal election the Ontario Reformers
+in convention decided to oppose the Government, even though it contained
+three of their former leaders. In the contest, held in August and
+September, 1867, Macdonald triumphed in every province except Nova
+Scotia but faced a growing Opposition party. Under the virtual
+leadership of Alexander Mackenzie, fragments of parties from the four
+provinces were united into a single Liberal group. In a few years the
+majority of the Liberal rank and file were back in the fold, and
+the Liberal members in the Cabinet had become frankly Conservative.
+Coalition had faded away.
+
+
+Within six years after Confederation the whole northern half of the
+continent had been absorbed by Canada. The four original provinces
+comprised only one-tenth of the area of the present Dominion, some
+377,000 square miles as against 3,730,000 today. The most easterly of
+the provinces, little Prince Edward Island, had drawn back in 1865,
+content in isolation. Eight years later this province entered the fold.
+Hard times and a glimpse of the financial strength of the new federation
+had wrought a change of heart. The solution of the century-old problem
+of the island, absentee landlordism, threatened to strain the finances
+of the province; and men began to look to Ottawa for relief. A railway
+crisis turned their thoughts in the same direction. The provincial
+authorities had recently arranged for the building of a narrow-gauge
+road from one end of the island to the other. It was agreed that the
+contractors should be paid 5000 pounds a mile in provincial debentures,
+but without any stipulation as to the total length, so that the builders
+caused the railway to meander and zigzag freely in search of lower
+grades or long paying stretches. In 1873, which was everywhere a year of
+black depression, it was found that these debentures, which were pledged
+by the contractors to a local bank for advances, could not be sold
+except at a heavy loss. The directors of the bank were influential in
+the Government of the province. It was not surprising, therefore,
+that the government soon opened negotiations with Ottawa. The Dominion
+authorities offered generous terms, financing the land purchase scheme,
+and taking over the railway. Some of the islanders made bitter charges,
+but the Legislature confirmed the agreement, and on July 1, 1873, Prince
+Edward Island entered Confederation.
+
+While Prince Edward Island was deciding to come in, Nova Scotia was
+straining every nerve to get out. There was no question that Nova
+Scotia had been brought into the union against its will. The provincial
+Legislature in 1866, it is true, backed Tupper. But the people backed
+Howe, who thereupon went to London to protest against the inclusion of
+Nova Scotia without consulting the electors, but he was not heeded.
+The passing of the Act only redoubled the agitation. In the provincial
+election of 1867, the anti-Confederates carried thirty-six out of
+thirty-eight seats. In the federal election Tupper was the only union
+candidate returned in nineteen seats contested. A second delegation was
+sent to London to demand repeal. Tupper crossed the ocean to counter
+this effort and was successful. Then he sought out Howe, urged that
+further agitation was useless and could only bring anarchy or, what
+both counted worse, a movement for annexation to the United States,
+and pressed him to use his influence to allay the storm. Howe gave way;
+unfortunately for his own fame, he went further and accepted a seat in
+the federal Cabinet. Many of his old followers kept up the fight, but
+others decided to make a bargain with necessity. Macdonald agreed to
+give the province "better terms," and the Dominion assumed a larger part
+of its debt. The bitterness aroused by Tupper's high-handed procedure
+lingered for many a day; but before the first Parliament was over,
+repeal had ceased to be a practical issue.
+
+Union could never be real so long as leagues of barren, unbroken
+wilderness separated the maritime from the central provinces. Free
+intercourse, ties of trade, knowledge which would sweep away prejudice,
+could not come until a railway had spanned this wilderness. In the
+fifties plans had been made for a main trunk line to run from Halifax
+to the Detroit River. This ambitious scheme proved too great for the
+resources of the separate provinces, but sections of the road were
+built in each province. As a condition of Confederation, the Dominion
+Government undertook to fill in the long gaps. Surveys were begun
+immediately; and by 1876, under the direction of Sandford Fleming, an
+engineer of eminence, the Intercolonial Railway was completed. It never
+succeeded in making ends meet financially, but it did make ends meet
+politically. In great measure it achieved the purpose of national
+solidification for which it was mainly designed.
+
+Meanwhile the bounds of the Dominion were being pushed westward to the
+Pacific. The old province of Canada, as the heir of New France, had
+vague claims to the western plains, but the Hudson's Bay Company was in
+possession. The Dominion decided to buy out its rights and agreed, in
+1869, to pay the Company 300,000 pounds for the transfer of its lands
+and exclusive privileges, the Company to retain its trading posts and
+two sections in every township. So far all went well. But the Canadian
+Government, new to the tasks of empire and not as efficient in
+administration as it should have been, overlooked the necessity of
+consulting the wishes and the prejudices of the men on the spot. It was
+not merely land and buffalo herds which were being transferred but also
+sovereignty over a people.
+
+In the valley of the Red River there were some twelve thousand metis,
+or half-breeds, descendants of Indian mothers and French or Scottish
+fathers. The Dominion authorities intended to give them a large share in
+their own government but neglected to arrange for a formal conference.
+The metis were left to gather their impression of the character and
+intentions of the new rulers from indiscreet and sometimes overbearing
+surveyors and land seekers. In 1869, under the leadership of Louis
+Riel, the one man of education in the settlement, able but vain and
+unbalanced, and with the Hudson's Bay officials looking on unconcerned,
+the metis decided to oppose being made "the colony of a colony." The
+Governor sent out from Ottawa was refused entrance, and a provisional
+Government under Riel assumed control. The Ottawa authorities first
+tried persuasion and sent a commission of three, Donald A. Smith
+(afterwards Lord Strathcona), Colonel de Salaberry, and Vicar General
+Thibault. Smith was gradually restoring unity and order, when the act
+of Riel in shooting Thomas Scott, an Ontario settler and a member of the
+powerful Orange order, set passions flaring. Mgr. Tache, the Catholic
+bishop of the diocese, on his return aided in quieting the metis.
+Delegates were sent by the Provisional Government to Ottawa, and, though
+not officially recognized, they influenced the terms of settlement. An
+expedition under Colonel Wolseley marched through the wilderness north
+of Lake Superior only to find that Riel and his lieutenants had fled. By
+the Manitoba Act the Red River country was admitted to Confederation as
+a self-governing province, under the name of Manitoba, while the country
+west to the Rockies was given territorial status. The Indian tribes were
+handled with tact and justice, but though for the time the danger of
+armed resistance had passed, the embers of discontent were not wholly
+quenched.
+
+The extension of Canadian sovereignty beyond the Rockies came about in
+quieter fashion. After Mackenzie had shown the way, Simon Fraser and
+David Thompson and other agents of the NorthWest Company took up the
+work of exploration and fur trading. With the union of the two rival
+companies in 1821, the Hudson's Bay Company became the sole authority
+on the Pacific coast. Settlers straggled in slowly until, in the late
+fifties, the discovery of rich placer gold on the Fraser and later
+in the Cariboo brought tens of thousands of miners from Australia and
+California, only to drift away again almost as quickly when the sands
+began to fail.
+
+Local governments had been established both in Vancouver Island and on
+the mainland. They were joined in a single province in 1866. One of the
+first acts of the new Legislature was to seek consolidation with the
+Dominion. Inspired by an enthusiastic Englishman, Alfred Waddington,
+who had dreamed for years of a transcontinental railway, the province
+stipulated that within ten years Canada should complete a road from the
+Pacific to a junction with the railways of the East. These terms were
+considered presumptuous on the part of a little settlement of ten or
+fifteen thousand whites; but Macdonald had faith in the resources of
+Canada and in what the morrow would bring forth. The bargain was made;
+and British Columbia entered the Confederation on July 1, 1871.
+
+East and West were now staked out. Only the Far North remained outside
+the bounds of the Dominion and this was soon acquired. In 1879 the
+British Government transferred to Canada all its rights and claims over
+the islands in the Arctic Archipelago and all other British territory
+in North America save Newfoundland and its strip of Labrador. From the
+Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the forty-ninth parallel to the North
+Pole, now all was Canadian soil.
+
+
+Confederation brought new powers and new responsibilities and thrust
+Canada into the field of foreign affairs. It was with slow and groping
+steps that the Dominion advanced along this new path. Then--as now--for
+Canada foreign relations meant first and foremost relations with her
+great neighbor to the south. The likelihood of war had passed. The need
+for closer trade relations remained. When the Reciprocity Treaty was
+brought to an end, on March 17, 1866, Canada at first refrained from
+raising her tariff walls. "The provinces," as George Brown declared in
+1874, "assumed that there were matters existing in 1865-66 to trouble
+the spirit of American statesmen for the moment, and they waited
+patiently for the sober second thought which was very long in
+coming, but in the meantime Canada played a good neighbor's part, and
+incidentally served her own ends, by continuing to grant the United
+States most of the privileges which had been given under the treaty free
+navigation and free goods, and, subject to a license fee, access to the
+fisheries."
+
+It was over these fisheries that friction first developed.* Canadian
+statesmen were determined to prevent poaching on the inshore fisheries,
+both because poaching was poaching and because they considered the
+fishery privileges the best makeweight in trade negotiations with the
+United States. At first American vessels were admitted on payment of a
+license fee; but when, on the increase of the fee, many vessels tried to
+fish inshore without permission, the license system was abolished, and
+in 1870 a fleet of revenue cruisers began to police the coast waters.
+American fishermen chafed at exclusion from waters they had come to
+consider almost their own, and there were many cases of seizure and
+of angry charge and countercharge. President Grant, in his message to
+Congress in 1870, denounced the policy of the Canadian authorities as
+arbitrary and provocative. Other issues between the two countries were
+outstanding as well. Canada had a claim against the United States for
+not preventing the Fenian Raids of 1866; and the United States had a
+much bigger bill against Great Britain for neglect in permitting the
+escape of the Alabama. Some settlement of these disputed matters was
+necessary; and it was largely through the activities of a Canadian
+banker and politician, Sir John Rose, that an agreement was reached to
+submit all the issues to a joint commission.
+
+     * See "The Path of Empire".
+
+Macdonald was offered and accepted with misgivings a post as one of the
+five British Commissioners. He pressed the traditional Canadian policy
+of offering fishery for trade privileges but found no backing in this
+or other matters from his British colleagues, and he met only unyielding
+opposition from the American Commissioners. He fell back, under protest,
+on a settlement of narrower scope, which permitted reciprocity in
+navigation and bonding privileges, free admission of Canadian and
+Newfoundland fish to United States markets and of American fishermen to
+Canadian and Newfoundland waters, and which provided for a subsidiary
+commission to fix the amount to be paid by the United States for the
+surplus advantage thus received. The Fenian Raids claims were not even
+considered, and Macdonald was angered by this indifference on the part
+of his British colleagues. "They seem to have only one thing in their
+minds," he reported privately to Ottawa, "that is, to go home to England
+with a treaty in their pocket, settling everything, no matter at what
+cost to Canada." Yet when the time came for the Canadian Parliament to
+decide whether to ratify the fishery clauses of the Treaty of Washington
+in which the conclusions of the commission were embodied, Macdonald, in
+spite of the unpopularity of the bargain in Canada, "urged Parliament
+to accept the treaty, accept it with all its imperfections, to accept it
+for the sake of peace and for the sake of the great Empire of which
+we form a part." The treaty was ratified in 1871 by all the powers
+concerned; and the stimulus to the peaceful settlement of international
+disputes given by the Geneva Tribunal which followed* justified the
+subordination of Canada's specific interests.
+
+     * See "The Path of Empire"
+
+A change in party now followed in Canada, but the new Government under
+Alexander Mackenzie was as fully committed as the Government of Sir
+John Macdonald to the policy of bartering fishery for trade advantage.
+Canada therefore proposed that instead of carrying out the provisions
+for a money settlement, the whole question should be reopened. The
+Administration at Washington was sympathetic. George Brown was appointed
+along with the British Ambassador, Sir Edward Thornton, to open
+negotiations. Under Brown's energetic leadership a settlement of all
+outstanding issues was drafted in 1874, which permitted freedom of trade
+in natural and in most manufactured products for twenty-one years, and
+settled fishery, coasting trade, navigation, and minor boundary
+issues. But diplomats proposed, and the United States Senate disposed.
+Protectionist feeling was strong at Washington, and the currency
+problem absorbing, and hence this broad and statesmanlike essay in
+neighborliness could not secure an hour's attention. This plan having
+failed, the Canadian Government fell back on the letter of the treaty.
+A Commission which consisted of the Honorable E. H. Kellogg representing
+the United States, Sir Alexander T. Galt representing Canada, and the
+Belgian Minister to Washington, M. Delfosse, as chairman, awarded Canada
+and Newfoundland $5,500,000 as the excess value of the fisheries for
+the ten years the arrangement was to run. The award was denounced in
+the United States as absurdly excessive; but a sense of honor and the
+knowledge that millions of dollars from the Alabama award were still in
+the Treasury moved the Senate finally to acquiesce, though only for the
+ten-year term fixed by treaty. In Canada the award was received with
+delight as a signal proof that when left to themselves Canadians could
+hold their own. The prevailing view was well summed up in a letter from
+Mackenzie to the Canadian representative on the Halifax commission,
+written shortly before the decision: "I am glad you still have hopes of
+a fair verdict. I am doubly anxious to have it, first, because we are
+entitled to it and need the dollars, and, second, because it will be the
+first Canadian diplomatic triumph, and will justify me in insisting that
+we know our neighbors and our own business better than any Englishmen."
+
+Mackenzie's insistence that Canada must take a larger share in the
+control of her foreign affairs was too advanced a stand for many of his
+more conservative countrymen. For others, he did not go far enough.
+The early seventies saw the rise of a short-lived movement in favor
+of Canadian independence. To many independence from England seemed the
+logical sequel to Confederation; and the rapid expansion of Canadian
+territory over half a continent stimulated national pride and national
+self-consciousness Opinion in England regarding Canadian independence
+was still more outspoken. There imperialism was at its lowest ebb. With
+scarcely an exception, English politicians, from Bright to Disraeli,
+were hostile or indifferent to connection with the colonies, which
+had now ceased to be a trade asset and had clearly become a military
+liability.
+
+But no concrete problem arose to make the matter a political issue. In
+England a growing uneasiness over the protectionist policies and the
+colonial ambitions of her European rivals were soon to revive imperial
+sentiment. In Canada the ties of affection for the old land, as well
+as the inertia fostered by long years of colonial dependence, kept
+the independence movement from spreading far. For the time the rising
+national spirit found expression in economic rather than political
+channels. The protectionist movement which a few years later swept
+all Canada before it owed much of its strength to its claim to be the
+national policy.
+
+
+But it was not imperial or foreign relations that dominated public
+interest in the seventies. Domestic politics were intensely absorbing
+and bitterly contested. Within five years there came about two sudden
+and sweeping reversals of power. Parties and Cabinets which had seemed
+firmly entrenched were dramatically overthrown by sudden changes in the
+personal factors and in the issues of the day. In the summer of 1872 the
+second general election for the Dominion was held. The Opposition had
+now gained in strength. The Government had ceased to be in any real
+sense a coalition, and most of the old Liberal rank and file were
+back in the party camp. They had found a vigorous leader in Alexander
+Mackenzie.
+
+Mackenzie had come to Canada from Scotland in 1842 as a lad of twenty.
+He worked at his trade as a stonemason, educated himself by wide
+reading and constant debating, became a successful contractor and,
+after Confederation, had proved himself one of the most aggressive
+and uncompromising champions of Upper Canada Liberalism. In the first
+Dominion Parliament he tacitly came to be regarded as the leader of all
+the groups opposed to the Macdonald Administration. He was at the same
+time active in the Ontario Legislature since, for the first five
+years of Confederation, no law forbade membership in both federal and
+provincial Parliaments, and the short sessions of that blessed time
+made such double service feasible. Here he was aided by two other men of
+outstanding ability, Edward Blake and Oliver Mowat. Blake, the son of
+a well-to-do Irishman who had been active in the fight for responsible
+government, became Premier of Ontario in 1871 but retired in 1872 when
+a law abolishing dual representation made it necessary for him to choose
+between Toronto and Ottawa. His place was taken by Mowat, who for
+a quarter of a century gave the province thrifty, honest, and
+conservatively progressive government.
+
+In spite of the growing forces opposed to him Macdonald triumphed once
+more in the election of 1872. Ontario fell away, but Quebec and the
+Maritime Provinces stood true. A Conservative majority of thirty or
+forty seemed to assure Macdonald another five-year lease of power.
+Yet within a year the Pacific Scandal had driven him from office and
+overwhelmed him in disgrace.
+
+The Pacific Scandal occurred in connection with the financing of the
+railway which the Dominion Government had promised British Columbia,
+when that province entered Confederation in 1871, would be built through
+to the Pacific coast within ten years. The bargain was good politics
+but poor business. It was a rash undertaking for a people of three and
+a half millions, with a national revenue of less than twenty million
+dollars, to pledge itself to build a railway through the rocky
+wilderness north of Lake Superior, through the trackless plains and
+prairies of the middle west, and across the mountain ranges that
+barred the coast. Yet Macdonald had sufficient faith in the country, in
+himself, and in the happy accidents of time--a confidence that won
+him the nickname of "Old Tomorrow"--to give the pledge. Then came the
+question of ways and means. At first the Government planned to build the
+road. On second thoughts, however, it decided to follow the example
+set by the United States in the construction of the Union Pacific and
+Southern Pacific, and to entrust the work to a private company liberally
+subsidized with land and cash. Two companies were organized with a view
+to securing the contract, one a Montreal company under Sir Hugh
+Allan, the foremost Canadian man of business and the head of the Allan
+steamship fleet, and the other a Toronto company under D. L. Macpherson,
+who had been concerned in the building of the Grand Trunk. Their rivalry
+was intense. After the election of 1872 a strong compromise company was
+formed, with Allan at the head, and to this company the contract was
+awarded.
+
+When Parliament met in 1872, a Liberal member, L. S. Huntington, made
+the charge that Allan had really been acting on behalf of certain
+American capitalists and that he had made lavish contributions to the
+Government campaign fund in the recent election. In the course of the
+summer these charges were fully substantiated. Allan was proved by his
+own correspondence, stolen from his solicitor's office, to have spent
+over $350,000, largely advanced by his American allies, in buying the
+favor of newspapers and politicians. Nearly half of this amount had been
+contributed to the Conservative campaign fund, with the knowledge and
+at the instance of Cartier and Macdonald. Macdonald, while unable to
+disprove the charges, urged that there was no connection between the
+contributions and the granting of the charter. But his defense was not
+heeded. A wave of indignation swept the country; his own supporters in
+Parliament fell away; and in November, 1873, he resigned. Mackenzie,
+who was summoned to form a new Ministry, dissolved Parliament and was
+sustained by a majority of two to one.
+
+Mackenzie gave the country honest and efficient administration. Among
+his most important achievements were the reform of elections by the
+introduction of the secret ballot and the requirement that elections
+should be held on a single day instead of being spread over weeks,
+a measure of local option in controlling the liquor traffic, and
+the establishment of a Canadian Supreme Court and the Royal Military
+College--the Canadian West Point. But fate and his own limitations were
+against him. He was too absorbed in the details of administration to
+have time for the work of a party leader. In his policy of constructing
+the Canadian Pacific as a government road, after Allan had resigned his
+charter, he manifested a caution and a slowness that brought British
+Columbia to the verge of secession. But it was chiefly the world-wide
+depression that began in his first year of office, 1873, which proved
+his undoing. Trade was stagnant, bankruptcies multiplied, and acute
+suffering occurred among the poor in the larger cities. Mackenzie had no
+solution to offer except patience and economy; and the Opposition were
+freer to frame an enticing policy. The country was turning toward a high
+tariff as the solution of its ills. Protection had not hitherto been a
+party issue in Canada, and it was still uncertain which party would take
+it up. Finally Mackenzie, who was an ardent free trader, and the Nova
+Scotia wing of his party triumphed over the protectionists in their own
+ranks and made a low tariff the party platform. Macdonald, who had been
+prepared to take up free trade if Mackenzie adopted protection, now
+boldly urged the high tariff panacea. The promise of work and wages
+for all, the appeal to national spirit made by the arguments of
+self-sufficiency and fully rounded development, the desire to retaliate
+against the United States, which was still deaf to any plea for more
+liberal trade relations, swept the country. The Conservative minority
+of over sixty was converted into a still greater majority in the general
+election of 1878, and the leader whom all men five years before had
+considered doomed, returned to power, never to lose it while life
+lasted.
+
+The first task of the new Government, in which Tupper was Macdonald's
+chief supporter, was to carry out its high tariff pledges. "Tell us
+how much protection you want, gentlemen," said Macdonald to a group of
+Ontario manufacturers, "and we'll give you what you need." In the
+new tariff needs were rated almost as high as wants. Particularly on
+textiles, sugar, and iron and steel products, duties were raised far
+beyond the old levels and stimulated investment just as the world-wide
+depression which had lasted since 1873 passed away. Canada shared in
+the recovery and gave the credit to the well-advertised political patent
+medicine taken just before the turn for the better came. For years the
+National Policy or "N.P.," as its supporters termed it, had all the
+vogue of a popular tonic.
+
+The next task of the Government was to carry through in earnest the
+building of the railway to the Pacific. For over a year Macdonald
+persisted in Mackenzie's policy of government construction but with the
+same slow and unsatisfactory results. Then an opportunity came to enlist
+the services of a private syndicate. Four Canadians, Donald A. Smith, a
+former Hudson's Bay Company factor, George Stephen, a leading merchant
+and banker of Montreal, James J. Hill and Norman W. Kittson, owners of
+a small line of boats on the Red River, had joined forces to revive a
+bankrupt Minnesota railway.* They had succeeded beyond all parallel, and
+the reconstructed road, which later developed into the Great Northern,
+made them all rich overnight. This success whetted their appetite for
+further western railway building and further millions of rich western
+acres in subsidies. They met Macdonald and Tupper half way. By the
+bargain completed in 1881 the Canadian Pacific Railway Company undertook
+to build and operate the road from the Ottawa Valley to the Pacific
+coast, in return for the gift of the completed portions of the road (on
+which the Government spent over $37,000,000), a subsidy of $25,000,000
+in cash, 25,000,000 selected acres of prairie land, exemption from
+taxes, exemption from regulation of rates until ten per cent was earned,
+and a promise on the part of the Dominion to charter no western lines
+connecting with the United States for twenty years. The terms were
+lavish and were fiercely denounced by the Opposition, now under the
+leadership of Edward Blake. But the people were too eager for railway
+expansion to criticize the terms. The Government was returned to power
+in 1882 and the contract held.
+
+     * See "The Railroad Builders", by John Moody (in "The
+     Chronicles of America").
+
+The new company was rich in potential resources but weak in available
+cash. Neither in New York nor in London could purse strings be loosened
+for the purpose of building a road through what the world considered
+a barren and Arctic wilderness. But in the faith and vision of the
+president, George Stephen, and the ruthless energy of the general
+manager, William Van Horne, American born and trained, the Canadian
+Pacific had priceless assets. Aided in critical times by further
+government loans, they carried the project through, and by 1886, five
+years before the time fixed by their contract, trains were running from
+Montreal to Port Moody, opposite Vancouver.
+
+A sudden burst of prosperity followed the building of the road. Settlers
+poured into the West by tens of thousands, eastern investors promoted
+colonization companies, land values soared, and speculation gave
+a fillip to every line of trade. The middle eighties were years of
+achievement, of prosperity, and of confident hope. Then prosperity fled
+as quickly as it had come. The West failed to hold its settlers. Farm
+and factory found neither markets nor profits. The country was bled
+white by emigration. Parliamentary contest and racial feud threatened
+the hard-won unity. Canada was passing through its darkest hours.
+
+During this period, political friction was incessant. Canada was
+striving to solve in the eighties the difficult question which besets
+all federations--the limits between federal and provincial power.
+Ontario was the chief champion of provincial rights. The struggle was
+intensified by the fact that a Liberal Government reigned at Toronto
+and a Conservative Government at Ottawa, as well as by the keen personal
+rivalry between Mowat and Macdonald. In nearly every constitutional
+duel Mowat triumphed. The accepted range of the legislative power of the
+provinces was widened by the decisions of the courts, particularly of
+the highest court of appeal, the Judicial Committee of the Privy
+Council in England. The successful resistance of Ontario and Manitoba
+to Macdonald's attempt to disallow provincial laws proved this power,
+though conferred by the Constitution, to be an unwieldy weapon. By the
+middle nineties the veto had been virtually abandoned.
+
+More serious than these political differences was the racial feud that
+followed the second Riel Rebellion. For a second time the Canadian
+Government failed to show the foresight and the sympathy required
+in dealing with an isolated and backward people. The valley of the
+Saskatchewan, far northwest of the Red River, was the scene of the new
+difficulty. Here thousands of metis, or French half-breeds, had settled.
+The passing of the buffalo, which had been their chief subsistence, and
+the arrival of settlers from the East caused them intense alarm. They
+pressed the Government for certain grants of land and for the retention
+of the old French custom of surveying the land along the river front
+in deep narrow strips, rather than according to the chessboard pattern
+taken over by Canada from the United States. Red tape, indifference,
+procrastination, rather than any illwill, delayed the redress of the
+grievances of the half-breeds. In despair they called Louis Riel back
+from his exile in Montana. With his arrival the agitation acquired a new
+and dangerous force. Claiming to be the prophet of a new religion, he
+put himself at the head of his people and, in the spring of 1885, raised
+the flag of revolt. His military adviser, Gabriel Dumont, an old buffalo
+hunter, was a natural-born general, and the half-breeds were good shots
+and brave fighters. An expedition of Canadian volunteers was rushed
+west, and the rebellion was put down quickly, but not without some hard
+fighting and gallant strokes and counterstrokes.
+
+The racial passions roused by this conflict, however, did not pass so
+quickly. The fate to be meted out to Riel was the burning question.
+Ontario saw in him the murderer of Scott and an ambitious plotter who
+had twice stirred up armed rebellion. Quebec saw in him a man of French
+blood, persecuted because he had stood up manfully for the undoubted
+rights of his kinsmen. Today experts agree that Riel was insane and
+should have been spared the gallows on this if on no other account. But
+at the moment the plea of insanity was rejected. The Government made
+up for its laxity before the rebellion by severity after it; and in
+November, 1885, Riel was sent to the scaffold. Bitterness rankled in
+many a French-Canadian heart for long years after; and in Ontario, where
+the Orange order was strongly entrenched, a faction threatened "to smash
+Confederation into its original fragments" rather than submit to "French
+domination."
+
+Racial and religious passions, once aroused, soon found new fuel to feed
+upon. Honore Mercier, a brilliant but unscrupulous leader who had ridden
+to power in the province of Quebec on the Riel issue, roused Protestant
+ire by restoring estates which had been confiscated at the conquest in
+1763 to the Jesuits and other Roman Catholic authorities, in proportions
+which the act provided were to be determined by "Our Holy Father the
+Pope." In Ontario restrictions began to be imposed on the freedom of
+French-Canadian communities on the border to make French the sole or
+dominant tongue in the schoolroom. A little later the controversy was
+echoed in Manitoba in the repeal by a determined Protestant majority
+of the denominational school privileges hitherto enjoyed by the Roman
+Catholic minority.
+
+Economic discontent was widespread. It was a time of low and falling
+prices. Farmers found the American market barred, the British market
+flooded, the home market stagnant. The factories stimulated by the "N.
+P." lacked the growing market they had hoped for. In the West climatic
+conditions not yet understood, the monopoly of the Canadian Pacific, and
+the competition of the States to the south, which still had millions of
+acres of free land, brought settlement to a standstill. From all parts
+of Canada the "exodus" to the United States continued until by 1890
+there were in that country more than one-third as many people of
+Canadian birth or descent as in Canada itself.
+
+
+It was not surprising that in these extremities men were prepared to
+make trial of drastic remedies. Nor was it surprising that it was
+beyond the borders of Canada itself that they sought the unity and the
+prosperity they had not found at home. Many looked to Washington, some
+for unrestricted trade, a few for political union. Others looked to
+London, hoping for a revival of the old imperial tariff preferences or
+for some closer political union which would bring commercial advantages
+in its train.
+
+The decade from 1885 to 1895 stands out in the record of the relations
+of the English-speaking peoples as a time of constant friction, of petty
+pin pricks, of bluster and retaliation. The United States was not in
+a neighborly mood. The memories of 1776, of 1812, and of 1861 had
+been kept green by exuberant comment in school textbooks and by
+"spread-eagle" oratory. The absence of any other rivalry concentrated
+American opposition on Great Britain, and isolation from Old World
+interests encouraged a provincial lack of responsibility. The sins of
+England in Ireland had been kept to the fore by the agitation of Parnell
+and Davitt and Dillon; and the failure of Home Rule measures, twice in
+this decade, stirred Irish-American antagonism. The accession to power
+of Lord Salisbury, reputed to hold the United States in contempt, and
+later the foolish indiscretion of Sir Lionel Sackville-West, British
+Ambassador at Washington, in intervening in a guileless way in the
+presidential election of 1888, did as much to nourish ill-will in the
+United States as the dominance of Blaine and other politicians who
+cultivated the gentle art of twisting the tail of the British lion.
+
+Protection, with the attitude of economic warfare which it involved
+and bred, was then at its height. Much of this hostility was directed
+against Canada, as the nearest British territory. The Dominion, on
+its part, while persistently seeking closer trade relations, sometimes
+sought this end in unwise ways. Many good people in Canada were
+still fighting the War of 1812. The desire to use the inshore fishery
+privileges as a lever to force tariff reductions led to a rigid and
+literal enforcement of Canadian rights and claims which provoked
+widespread anger in New England. The policy of discrimination in canal
+tolls in favor of Canadian as against United States ports was none the
+less irritating because it was a retort in kind. And when United States
+customs officials levied a tax on the tin cans containing fish free
+by treaty, Canadian officials had retaliated by taxing the baskets
+containing duty-free peaches.
+
+The most important specific issue was once more the northeastern
+fisheries. As a result of notice given by the United States the
+fisheries clauses of the Treaty of Washington ceased to operate on
+July 1, 1885. Canada, for the sake of peace, admitted American fishing
+vessels for the rest of that season, though Canadian fish at once became
+dutiable. No further grace was given. The Canadian authorities rigidly
+enforced the rules barring inshore fishing, and in addition denied port
+privileges to deep-sea fishing vessels and forbade American boats to
+enter Canadian ports for the purpose of trans-shipping crews, purchasing
+bait, or shipping fish in bond to the United States. Every time a
+Canadian fishery cruiser and a Gloucester skipper had a difference of
+opinion as to the exact whereabouts of the three-mile limit, the press
+of both countries echoed the conflict. Congress in 1887 empowered the
+President to retaliate by excluding Canadian vessels and goods from
+American ports. Happily this power was not used. Cleveland and Secretary
+of State Bayard were genuinely anxious to have the issue settled. A
+joint commission drew up a well-considered plan, but in the face of
+a presidential election the Senate gave it short shrift. Fortunately,
+however, a modus vivendi was arranged by which American vessels were
+admitted to port privileges on payment of a license. Healing time, a
+healthful lack of publicity, changing fishing methods, and Canada's
+abandonment of her old policy of using fishing privileges as a
+makeweight, gradually eased the friction.
+
+Yet if it was not the fishing question, there was sure to be some other
+issue--bonding privileges, Canadian Pacific interloping in western rail
+hauls, tariff rates, or canal tolls-to disturb the peace. Why not seek
+a remedy once for all, men now began to ask, by ending the unnatural
+separation between the halves of the continent which God and geography
+had joined and history and perverse politicians had kept asunder?
+
+The political union of Canada and the United States has always found
+advocates. In the United States a large proportion, perhaps a majority,
+of the people have until recently considered that the absorption of
+Canada into the Republic was its manifest destiny, though there has been
+little concerted effort to hasten fate. In Canada such course of action
+has found much less backing. United Empire Loyalist traditions, the ties
+with Britain constantly renewed by immigration, the dim stirrings of
+national sentiment, resentment against the trade policy of the United
+States, have all helped to turn popular sentiment into other channels.
+Only at two periods, in 1849, and forty years later, has there been any
+active movement for annexation.
+
+In the late eighties, as in the late forties, commercial depression and
+racial strife prepared the soil for the seed of annexation. The chief
+sower in the later period was a brilliant Oxford don, Goldwin Smith,
+whose sympathy with the cause of the North had brought him to the United
+States. In 1871, after a brief residence at Cornell, he made his home
+in Toronto, with high hopes of stimulating the intellectual life and
+molding the political future of the colony. He so far forsook the strait
+"Manchester School" of his upbringing as to support Macdonald's campaign
+for protection in 1878. But that was the limit of his adaptability. To
+the end he remained out of touch with Canadian feeling. His campaign for
+annexation, or for the reunion of the English-speaking peoples on this
+continent, as he preferred to call it, was able and persistent but moved
+only a narrow circle of readers. It was in vain that he offered the
+example of Scotland's prosperity after her union with her southern
+neighbor, or insisted that Canada was cut into four distinct and
+unrelated sections each of which could find its natural complement
+only in the territory to the south. Here and there an editor or a minor
+politician lent some support to his views, but the great mass of the
+people strongly condemned the movement. There was to be no going back to
+the parting of the ways: the continent north of Mexico was henceforth to
+witness two experiments in democracy, not one unwieldy venture.
+
+Commercial union was a half-way measure which found more favor. A North
+American customs union had been supported by such public men as
+Stephen A. Douglas, Horace Greeley, and William H. Seward, by official
+investigators such as Taylor, Derby, and Larned, and by committees of
+the House of Representatives in 1862, 1876, 1880, and 1884. In Canada it
+had been endorsed before Confederation by Isaac Buchanan, the father of
+the protection movement, and by Luther Holton and John Young. Now for
+the first time it became a practical question. Erastus Wiman, a Canadian
+who had found fortune in the United States, began in 1887 a vigorous
+campaign in its favor both in Congress and among the Canadian public.
+Goldwin Smith lent his dubious aid, leading Toronto and Montreal
+newspapers joined the movement, and Ontario farmers' organizations swung
+to its support. But the agitation proved abortive owing to the triumph
+of high protection in the presidential election of 1888; and in Canada
+the red herring of the Jesuits' Estates controversy was drawn across the
+trail.
+
+Yet the question would not down. The political parties were compelled to
+define their attitude. The Liberals had been defeated once more in the
+election of 1887, where the continuance of the National Policy and of
+aid to the Canadian Pacific had been the issue. Their leader, Edward
+Blake, had retired disheartened. His place had been taken by a young
+Quebec lieutenant, Wilfrid Laurier, who had won fame by his courageous
+resistance to clerical aggression in his own province and by his
+indictment of the Macdonald Government in the Riel issue. A veteran
+Ontario Liberal, Sir Richard Cartwright, urged the adoption of
+commercial union as the party policy. Laurier would not go so far, and
+the policy of unrestricted reciprocity was made the official programme
+in 1888. Commercial union had involved not only absolute free trade
+between Canada and the United States but common excise rates, a common
+tariff against the rest of the world, and the division of customs and
+excise revenues in some agreed proportion. Unrestricted reciprocity
+would mean free trade between the two countries, but with each left free
+to levy what rates it pleased on the products of other countries.
+
+When in 1891 the time came round once more for a general election, it
+was apparent that reciprocity in some form would be the dominant issue.
+Though the Republicans were in power in the United States and though
+they had more than fulfilled their high tariff pledges in the McKinley
+Act, which hit Canadian farm products particularly hard, there was some
+chance of terms being made. Reciprocity, as a form of tariff bargaining,
+really fits in better with protection than with free trade, and Blaine,
+Harrison's Secretary of State, was committed to a policy of trade
+treaties and trade bargaining. In Canada the demand for the United
+States market had grown with increasing depression. The Liberals, with
+their policy of unrestricted reciprocity, seemed destined to reap the
+advantage of this rising tide of feeling. Then suddenly, on the eve of
+the election, Sir John Macdonald sought to cut the ground from under
+the feet of his opponents by the announcement that in the course of
+a discussion of Newfoundland matters the United States had taken the
+initiative in suggesting to Canada a settlement of all outstanding
+difficulties, fisheries, coasting trade, and, on the basis of a renewal
+and extension of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. This policy promised to
+meet all legitimate economic needs of the country and at the same time
+avoid the political dangers of the more sweeping policy. Its force was
+somewhat weakened by the denials of Secretary Blaine that he had taken
+the initiative or made any definite promises. As the election drew near
+and revelations of the annexationist aims of some supporters of the
+wider trade policy were made, the Government made the loyalty cry its
+strong card. "The old man, the old flag, and the old policy," saved the
+day. In Ontario and Quebec the two parties were evenly divided, but
+the West and the Maritime Provinces, the "shreds and patches of
+Confederation," as Sir Richard Cartwright, too ironic and vitriolic in
+his speech for political success, termed them, gave the Government a
+working majority, which was increased in by-elections.
+
+Again in power, the Government made a formal attempt to carry out its
+pledges. Two pilgrimages were made to Washington, but the negotiators
+were too far apart to come to terms. With the triumph of the Democrats
+in 1899. and the lowering of the tariff on farm products which followed,
+there came a temporary improvement in trade relations. But the tariff
+reaction and the silver issue brought back the Republicans and led to
+that climax in agricultural protection, the Dingley Act of 1897, which
+killed among Canadians all reciprocity longings and compelled them to
+look to themselves for salvation. Although Canadians were anxious for
+trade relations, they were not willing to be bludgeoned into accepting
+one-sided terms. The settlement of the Bering Sea dispute in 1898 by
+a board of arbitration, which ruled against the claims of the United
+States but suggested a restriction of pelagic sealing by agreement,
+removed one source of friction. Hardly was that out of the way when
+Cleveland's Venezuela message brought Great Britain and the United
+States once more to the verge of war. In such a war Canadians knew they
+would be the chief sufferers, but in 1895, as in 1862, they did not
+flinch and stood ready to support the mother country in any outcome. The
+Venezuela episode stirred Canadian feeling deeply, revived interest in
+imperialism, and ended the last lingering remnants of any sentiment for
+annexation. As King Edward I was termed "the hammer of the Scots," so
+McKinley and Cleveland became "the hammer of the Canadians," welding
+them into unity.
+
+
+While most Canadians were ceasing to look to Washington for relief,
+an increasing number were looking once more to London. The revival of
+imperial sentiment which began in the early eighties, seemed to promise
+new and greater possibilities for the colonies overseas. Political
+union in the form of imperial federation and commercial union through
+reciprocal tariff preferences were urged in turn as the cure for all
+Canada's ills. Neither solution was adopted. The movement greatly
+influenced the actual trend of affairs, but there was to be no mere
+turning back to the days of the old empire.
+
+The period of laissez faire in imperial matters, of Little Englandism,
+drew to a close in the early eighties. Once more men began to value
+empire, to seek to annex new territory overseas, and to bind closer the
+existing possessions. The world was passing through a reaction destined
+to lead to the earth-shaking catastrophe of 1914. The ideals of peace
+and free trade preached and to some degree practiced in the fifties and
+sixties were passing under an eclipse. In Europe the swing to free
+trade had halted, and nation after nation was becoming aggressively
+protectionist. The triumph of Prussia in the War of 1870 revived and
+intensified military rivalry and military preparations on the part of
+all the powers of Europe. A new scramble for colonies and possessions
+overseas began, with the late comers nervously eager to make up for time
+lost. In this reaction Britain shared. Protection raised its head again
+in England; only by tariffs and tariff bargaining, the Fair Traders
+insisted, could the country hold its own. Odds and ends of territory
+overseas were annexed and a new value was attached to the existing
+colonies. The possibility of obtaining from them military support and
+trade privileges, the desirability of returning to the old ideal of
+a self-contained and centralized empire, appealed now to influential
+groups. This goal might be attained by different paths. From the United
+Kingdom came the policy of imperial federation and from the colonies the
+policy of preferential trade as means to this end.
+
+In 1884 the Imperial Federation League was organized in London with
+important men of both parties in its ranks. It urged the setting up
+in London of a new Parliament, in which the United Kingdom and all the
+colonies where white men predominated would be represented according to
+population. This Parliament would have power to frame policies, to make
+laws, and to levy taxes for the whole Empire. To the colonist it offered
+an opportunity to share in the control of foreign affairs; to the
+Englishman it offered the support of colonies fast growing to power
+and the assurance of one harmonious policy for all the Empire. Both in
+Britain and overseas the movement received wide support and seemed for a
+time likely to sweep all before it. Then a halt came.
+
+Imperial federation had been brought forward a generation too late to
+succeed. The Empire had been developing upon lines which could not be
+made to conform to the plans for centralized parliamentary control.
+It was not possible to go back to the parting of the ways. Slowly,
+unconsciously, unevenly, yet steadily, the colonies had been ceasing
+to be dependencies and had been becoming nations. With Canada in the
+vanguard they had been taking over one power after another which had
+formerly been wielded by the Government of the United Kingdom. It
+was not likely that they would relinquish these powers or that
+self-governing colonies would consent to be subordinated to a Parliament
+in London in which each would have only a fragmentary representation.
+
+The policy of imperial cooperation which began to take shape during
+this period sought to reconcile the existing desire for continuing the
+connection with the mother country with the growing sense of national
+independence. This policy involved two different courses of action:
+first, the colonies must assert and secure complete self-government on
+terms of equality with the United Kingdom; second, they must unite as
+partners or allies in carrying out common tasks and policies and in
+building up machinery for mutual consultation and harmonious action.
+
+It was chiefly in matters of trade and tariffs that progress was made
+in the direction of self-government. Galt had asserted in 1859 Canada's
+right to make her own tariffs, and Macdonald twenty years later had
+carried still further the policy of levying duties upon English as well
+as foreign goods. That economic point was therefore settled, but it was
+a slower matter to secure control of treaty-making powers. When Galt and
+Huntington urged this right in 1871 and when Blake and Mackenzie pressed
+it ten years later, Macdonald opposed such a demand as equivalent to
+an effort for independence. Yet he himself was compelled to change
+his conservative attitude. After 1877 Canada ceased to be bound by
+commercial treaties made by the United Kingdom, unless it expressly
+desired to be included. In 1879 Galt was sent to Europe to negotiate
+Canadian trade agreements with France and Spain; and in the next decade
+Tupper carried negotiations with France to a successful conclusion,
+though the treaty was formally concluded between France and Britain.
+By 1891 the Canadian Parliament could assert with truth that "the
+self-governing colonies are recognized as possessing the right to define
+their respective fiscal relations to all countries." But Canada as yet
+took no step toward assuming a share in her own naval defense, though
+the Australasian colonies made a beginning, along colonial rather than
+national lines, by making a money contribution to the British navy.
+
+The second task confronting the policy of imperial cooperation was a
+harder one. For a partnership between colony and mother country there
+were no precedents. Centralized empires there had been; colonies there
+had been which had grown into independent states; but there was no
+instance of an empire ceasing to be an empire, of colonies becoming
+self-governing states and then turning to closer and cooperative union
+with one another and with the mother country.
+
+Along this unblazed trail two important advances were made. The
+initiative in the first came from Canada. In 1880 a High Commissioner
+was appointed to represent Canada in London. The appointment of Sir
+Alexander Galt and the policy which it involved were significant. The
+Governor-General had ceased to be a real power; he was becoming the
+representative not of the British Government but of the King; and, like
+the King, he governed by the advice of the responsible ministers in the
+land where he resided. His place as the link between the Government of
+Canada and the Government of Britain was now taken in part by the High
+Commissioner. The relationship of Canada to the United Kingdom was
+becoming one of equality not of subordination.
+
+The initiative in the second step came from Britain, though Canada's
+leaders gave the movement its final direction. Imperial federationists
+urged Lord Salisbury to summon a conference of the colonies to discuss
+the question they had at heart. Salisbury doubted the wisdom of such
+a policy but agreed in 1887 to call a conference to discuss matters of
+trade and defense. Every self-governing colony sent representatives to
+this first Colonial Conference; but little immediate fruit came of its
+sessions. In 1894 a second Conference was held at Ottawa, mainly to
+discuss intercolonial preferential trade. Only a beginning had been
+made, but already the Conferences were coming to be regarded as meetings
+of independent governments and not, as the federationists had hoped,
+the germ of a single dominating new government. The Imperial Federation
+League began to realize that it was making little progress and dissolved
+in 1893.
+
+Preferential trade was the alternative path to imperial federation.
+Macdonald had urged it in 1879 when he found British resentment strong
+against his new tariff. Again, ten years later, when reciprocity with
+the United States was finding favor in Canada, imperialists urged the
+counterclaims of a policy of imperial reciprocity, of special tariff
+privileges to other parts of the Empire. The stumbling-block in the
+way of such a policy was England's adherence to free trade. For the
+protectionist colonies preference would mean only a reduction of an
+existing tariff. For the United Kingdom, however, it would mean a
+complete reversal of fiscal policy and the abandonment of free trade
+for protection in order to make discrimination possible. Few Englishmen
+believed such a reversal possible, though every trade depression revived
+talk of "fair trade" or tariffs for bargaining purposes. A further
+obstacle to preferential trade lay in the existence of treaties with
+Belgium and Germany, concluded in the sixties, assuring them all tariff
+privileges granted by any British colony to Great Britain or to sister
+colonies. In 1892 the Liberal Opposition in Canada indicated the line
+upon which action was eventually to be taken by urging a resolution in
+favor of granting an immediate and unconditional preference on British
+goods as a step toward freer trade and in the interest of the Canadian
+consumer.
+
+Little came of looking either to London or to Washington. Until the
+middle nineties Canada remained commercially stagnant and politically
+distracted. Then came a change of heart and a change of policy. The
+Dominion realized at last that it must work out its own salvation.
+
+In March, 1891, Sir John Macdonald was returned to office for the sixth
+time since Confederation, but he was not destined to enjoy power long.
+The winter campaign had been too much for his weakened constitution,
+and he died on June 6, 1891. No man had been more hated by his political
+opponents, no man more loved by his political followers. Today the
+hatred has long since died, and the memory of Sir John Macdonald has
+become the common pride of Canadians of every party, race, and creed.
+He had done much to lower the level of Canadian politics; but this fault
+was forgiven when men remembered his unfailing courage and confidence,
+his constructive vision and fertility of resource, his deep and
+unquestioned devotion to his country.
+
+The Conservative party had with difficulty survived the last election.
+Deprived of the leader who for so long had been half its force, the
+party could not long delay its break-up. No one could be found to fill
+Macdonald's place. The helm was taken in turn by J. J. C. Abbott, "the
+confidential family lawyer of the party," by Sir John Thompson, solid
+and efficient though lacking in imagination, and by Sir Mackenzie
+Bowell, an Ontario veteran. Abbott was forced to resign because of ill
+health; Thompson died in office; and Bowell was forced out by a revolt
+within the party. Sir Charles Tupper, then High Commissioner in London,
+was summoned to take up the difficult task. But it proved too great for
+even his fighting energy. The party was divided. Gross corruption in the
+awarding of public contracts had been brought to light. The farmers were
+demanding a lower tariff. The leader of the Opposition was proving to
+have all the astuteness and the mastery of his party which had marked
+Macdonald and a courage in his convictions which promised well. Defeat
+seemed inevitable unless a new issue which had invaded federal politics,
+the Manitoba school question, should prove more dangerous to the
+Opposition than to the forces of the Government.
+
+The Manitoba school question was an echo of the racial and religious
+strife which followed the execution of Riel and in which the Jesuits'
+Estates controversy was an episode. In the early days of the province,
+when it was still uncertain which religion would be dominant among
+the settlers, a system of state-aided denominational schools had been
+established. In 1890 the Manitoba Government swept this system away
+and replaced it by a single system of non-sectarian and state-supported
+schools which were practically the same as the old Protestant schools.
+Any Roman Catholic who did not wish to send his children to such a
+school was thus compelled to pay for the maintenance of a parochial
+school as well as to pay taxes for the public schools. A provision of
+the Confederation Act, inserted at the wish of the Protestant minority
+in Quebec, safeguarded the educational privileges of religious
+minorities. A somewhat similar clause had been inserted in the Manitoba
+Act of 1870. To this protection the Manitoba minority now appealed. The
+courts held that the province had the right to pass the law but also
+that the Dominion Government had the constitutional right to pass
+remedial legislation restoring in some measure the privileges taken
+away. The issue was thus forced into federal politics.
+
+A curious situation then developed. The leader of the Government,
+Sir Mackenzie Bowell, was a prominent Orangeman. The leader of the
+Opposition, Wilfrid Laurier, was a Roman Catholic. The Government, after
+a vain attempt to induce the province to amend its measure, decided
+to pass a remedial act compelling it to restore to the Roman Catholics
+their rights. The policy of the Opposition leader was awaited with
+keen expectancy. Strong pressure was brought upon Laurier by the
+Roman Catholic hierarchy of Quebec. Most men expected a temporizing
+compromise. Yet the leader of the Opposition came out strongly and
+flatly against the Government's measure. He agreed that a wrong had been
+done but insisted that compulsion could not right it and promised that,
+if in power, he would follow the path of conciliation. At once all the
+wrath of the hierarchy was unloosed upon him, and all its influence was
+thrown to the support of the Government. Yet when the Liberals blocked
+the Remedial Bill by obstructing debate until the term of Parliament
+expired, and forced an election on this issue in the summer of 1896,
+Quebec gave a big majority to Laurier, while Manitoba stood behind the
+party which had tried to coerce it. The country over, the Liberals had
+gained a decisive majority. The day of new leaders and anew policy had
+dawned at last.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE YEARS OF FULFILMENT
+
+Wilfrid Laurier was summoned to form his first Cabinet in July, 1896.
+For eighteen years previous to that time the Liberals had sat in what
+one of their number used to call "the cold shades of Opposition." For
+half of that term Laurier had been leader of the party, confined to
+the negative task of watching and criticizing the administration of his
+great predecessor and of the four premiers who followed in almost as
+many years. Now he was called to constructive tasks. Fortune favored him
+by bringing him to power at the very turn of the tide; but he justified
+fortune's favor by so steering the ship of state as to take full
+advantage of wind and current. Through four Parliaments, through fifteen
+years of office, through the time of fruition of so many long-deferred
+hopes, he was to guide the destinies of the nation.
+
+Laurier began his work by calling to his Cabinet not merely the party
+leaders in the federal arena but four of the outstanding provincial
+Liberals--Oliver Mowat, Premier of Ontario, William S. Fielding, Premier
+of Nova Scotia, Andrew G. Blair, Premier of New Brunswick, and, a
+few months later, Clifford Sifton of Manitoba. The Ministry was the
+strongest in individual capacity that the Dominion had yet possessed.
+The prestige of the provincial leaders, all men of long experience and
+tested shrewdness, strengthened the Administration in quarters where
+it otherwise would have been weak, for there had been many who doubted
+whether the untried Liberal party could provide capable administrators.
+There had also been many who doubted the expediency of making Prime
+Minister a French-Canadian Catholic. Such doubters were reassured by
+the presence of Mowat and Fielding, until the Prime Minister himself
+had proved the wisdom of the choice. There were others who admitted
+Laurier's personal charm and grace but doubted whether he had the
+political strength to control a party of conflicting elements and
+to govern a country where different race and diverging religious and
+sectional interests set men at odds. Here again time proved such fears
+to be groundless. Long before Laurier's long term of office had ended,
+any distrust was transformed into the charge of his opponents that he
+played the dictator. His courtly manners were found not to hide weakness
+but to cover strength.
+
+The first task of the new Government was to settle the Manitoba school
+question. Negotiations which were at once begun with the provincial
+Government were doubtless made easier by the fact that the same party
+was in power at Ottawa and at Winnipeg, but it was not this fact alone
+which brought agreement. The Laurier Government, unlike its predecessor,
+did not insist on the restoration of separate schools. It accepted a
+compromise which retained the single system of public schools, but which
+provided religious teaching in the last half hour of school and, where
+numbers warranted, a teacher of the same faith as the pupils. The
+compromise was violently denounced by the Roman Catholic hierarchy
+but, except in two cities, where parochial schools were set up, it was
+accepted by the laity.
+
+With this thorny question out of the way, the Government turned to
+what it recognized as its greatest task, the promotion of the country's
+material prosperity. For years industry had been at a standstill.
+Exports and imports had ceased to expand; railway building had halted;
+emigrants outnumbered immigrants. The West, the center of so many
+hopes, the object of so many sacrifices, had not proved the El Dorado so
+eagerly sought by fortune hunters and home builders. There were little
+over two hundred thousand white men west of the Great Lakes. Homesteads
+had been offered freely; but in 1896 only eighteen hundred were taken
+up, and less than a third of these by Canadians from the East. The stock
+of the Canadian Pacific was selling at fifty. All but a few had begun to
+lose faith in the promise of the West.
+
+Then suddenly a change came. The failure of the West to lure pioneers
+was not due to poverty of soil or lack of natural riches: its resources
+were greater than the most reckless orator had dreamed. It was merely
+that its time had not come and that the men in charge of the country's
+affairs had not thrown enough energy into the task of speeding the
+coming of that time. Now fortune worked with Canada, not against it. The
+long and steady fall of prices, and particularly of the prices of farm
+products, ended; and a rapid rise began to make farming pay once more.
+The good free lands of the United States had nearly all been taken up.
+Canada's West was now the last great reserve of free and fertile land.
+Improvements in farming methods made it possible to cope with the
+peculiar problems of prairie husbandry. British capital, moreover, no
+longer found so ready an outlet in the United States, which was now
+financing its own development; and it had suffered severe losses in
+Argentine smashes and Australian droughts. Capital, therefore, was free
+to turn to Canada.
+
+But it was not enough merely to have the resources; it was essential to
+display them and to disclose their value. Canada needed millions of
+men of the right stock, and fortunately there were millions who needed
+Canada. The work of the Government was to put the facts before these
+potential settlers. The new Minister of the Interior, Clifford Sifton,
+himself a western man, at once began an immigration campaign which has
+never been equaled in any country for vigor and practical efficiency.
+Canada had hitherto received few settlers direct from the Continent.
+Western Europe was now prosperous, and emigrants were few. But eastern
+Europe was in a ferment, and thousands were ready to swarm to new homes
+overseas.
+
+The activities of a subsidized immigration agency, the North Atlantic
+Trading Company, brought great numbers of these peoples. Foremost in
+numbers were the Ruthenians from Galicia. Most distinctive were the
+Doukhobors or Spirit Wrestlers of Southern Russia, about ten thousand of
+whom were brought to Canada at the instance of Tolstoy and some English
+Quakers to escape persecution for their refusal to undertake military
+service. The religious fanaticism of the Doukhobors, particularly when
+it took the form of midwinter pilgrimages in nature's garb, and the
+clannishness of the Ruthenians, who settled in solid blocks, gave rise
+to many problems of government and assimilation which taught Canadians
+the unwisdom of inviting immigration from eastern or southern Europe.
+Ruthenians and Poles, however, continued to come down to the eve of the
+Great War, and nearly all settled on western lands. Jewish Poland sent
+its thousands who settled in the larger cities, until Montreal had
+more Jews than Jerusalem and its Protestant schools held their Easter
+holidays in Passover. Italian navvies came also by the thousands, but
+mainly as birds of passage; and Greeks and men from the Balkan States
+were limited in numbers. Of the three million immigrants who came to
+Canada from the beginning of the century to the outbreak of the war,
+some eight hundred thousand came from continental Europe, and of
+these the Ruthenians, Jews, Italians, and Scandinavians were the most
+numerous.
+
+It was in the United States that Canada made the greatest efforts
+to obtain settlers and that she achieved the most striking success.
+Beginning in 1897 advertisements were placed in five or six thousand
+American farm and weekly newspapers. Booklets were distributed by the
+million. Hundreds of farmer delegates were given free trips through
+the promised land. Agents were appointed in each likely State, with
+sub-agents who were paid a bonus on every actual settler. The first
+settlers sent back word of limitless land to be had for a song, and of
+No. 1 Northern Wheat that ran thirty or forty bushels to the acre. Soon
+immigration from the States began; the trickle became a trek; the trek,
+a stampede. In 1896 the immigrants from the United States to Canada had
+been so few as not to be recorded; in 1897 there were 2000; in 1899,
+12,000; in the fiscal year 1902-03, 50,000; and in 1912-13, 139,000.
+The new immigrants proved to be the best of settlers; nearly all were
+progressive farmers experienced in western methods and possessed of
+capital. The countermovement from Canada to the United States never
+wholly ceased, but it slackened and was much more than offset by this
+northward rush. Nothing so helped to confirm Canadian confidence in
+their own land and to make the outside world share this high estimate as
+this unimpeachable evidence from over a million American newcomers who
+found in Canada, between 1897 and 1914, greater opportunities than even
+the United States could offer. The Ministry then carried its propaganda
+to Great Britain. Newspapers, schools, exhibitions were used in ways
+which startled the stolid Englishman into attention. Circumstances
+played into the hands of the propagandists, who took advantage of the
+flow of United States settlers into the West, the Klondike gold fields
+rush, the presence of Laurier at the Jubilee festivities at London in
+1897, Canada's share in the Boer War. British immigrants rose to 50,000
+in 1903-04, to 120,000 in 1907-08, and to 150,000 in 1912-13. From 1897
+to the outbreak of the war over 1,100,000 Britishers came to Canada.
+Three out of four were English, the rest mainly Scotch; the Irish, who
+once had come in tens of thousands and whose descendants still formed
+the largest element in the English-speaking peoples of Canada, now
+sent only one man for every twelve from England. The gates of Canadian
+immigration, however, were not thrown open to all comers. The criminal,
+the insane and feeble-minded, the diseased, and others likely to
+become public charges, were barred altogether or allowed to remain
+provisionally, subject to deportation within three years. Immigrants
+sent out by British charitable societies were subjected, after 1908,
+to rigid inspection before leaving England. No immigrant was admitted
+without sufficient money in his purse to tide over the first few weeks,
+unless he were going to farm work or responsible relatives. Asiatics
+were restricted by special regulations. Steadily the bars were raised
+higher.
+
+Not all the 3,000,000 who came to Canada between 1897 and 1914 remained.
+Many drifted across the border; many returned to their old homes, their
+dreams fulfilled or shattered; yet the vast majority remained. Never
+had any country so great a task of assimilation as faced Canada,
+with 3,000,000 pouring into a country of 5,000,000 in a dozen years.
+Fortunately the great bulk of the newcomers were of the old stocks.
+
+Closely linked with immigration in promoting the prosperity of
+the country were the land policy and the railway policy of the
+Administration. The system of granting free homesteads to settlers
+was continued on an even more generous scale. The 1800 entries for
+homesteads in 1896 had become 40,000 ten years later. In 1906 land equal
+in area to Massachusetts and Delaware was given away; in 1908 a Wales,
+in 1909 five Prince Edward Islands, and in 1910 and 1911 a Belgium, a
+Netherlands, and two Montenegros passed from the state to the settler.
+Unfortunately not every homesteader became an active farmer, and
+production, though mounting fast, could not keep pace with speculation.
+
+Railway building had almost ceased after the completion of the Canadian
+Pacific system. Now it revived on a greater scale than ever before. In
+the twenty years after 1896 the miles in operation grew from 16,000 to
+nearly 40,000. Two new transcontinentals were added, and the older roads
+took on a new lease of life. At the end of this period of expansion,
+only the United States, Germany, and Russia had railroad mileage
+exceeding that of Canada. Much of the building was premature or
+duplicated other roads. The scramble for state aid, federal and
+provincial, had demoralized Canadian politics. A large part of the notes
+the country rashly backed, by the policy of guaranteeing bond issues,
+were in time presented for payment. Yet the railway policies of the
+period were broadly justified. New country was opened to settlers;
+outlets to the sea were provided; capital was obtained in the years when
+it was still abundant and cheap; the whole industry of the country
+was stimulated; East was bound closer to West and depth was added to
+length.*
+
+     * During the Great War it became necessary for the Federal
+     Government to take over both the National Transcontinental,
+     running from Moncton in New Brunswick to Winnipeg, and the
+     Canadian Northern, running from ocean to ocean, and to
+     incorporate both, along with the Intercolonial, in the
+     Canadian National Railways, a system fourteen thousand miles
+     in length.
+
+The opening of the West brought new prosperity to every corner of the
+East. Factories found growing markets; banks multiplied branches and
+business; exports mounted fast and imports faster; closer relations
+were formed with London and New York financial interests; mushroom
+millionaires, country clubs, city slums, suburban subdivisions,
+land booms, grafting aldermen, and all the apparatus of an advanced
+civilization grew apace. A new self-confidence became the dominant note
+alike of private business and of public policy.
+
+With industrial prosperity, political unity became assured. Canada
+became more and more a name of which all her sons were proud. Expansion
+brought men of the different provinces together. The Maritime Provinces
+first felt fully at one with the rest of Canada when Vancouver and
+Winnipeg rather than Boston and New York called their sons. Even
+Ontario and Quebec made some advance toward mutual understanding, though
+clerical leaders who sought safety for their Church in the isolation
+of its people, imperialists who drove a wedge between Canadians by
+emphasizing Anglo-Saxon racial ties, and politicians of the baser sort
+exploiting race prejudice for their own gain, opened rifts in a society
+already seamed by differences of language and creed. In the West unity
+was still harder to secure, for men of all countries and of none
+poured into a land still in the shaping. The divergent interests of the
+farming, free trade West and of the manufacturing, protectionist East
+made for friction. Fortunately strong ties held East and West together.
+Eastern Canadians or their sons filled most of the strategic posts in
+Government and business, in school and church and press in the West.
+Transcontinental railways, chartered banks with branches and interests
+in every province, political parties organizing their forces from
+coast to coast, played their part. Much had been accomplished; but
+much remained to be done. With this background of rapid industrial
+development and growing national unity, Canada's relations with the
+Empire, with her sister democracy across the border, and with foreign
+states, took on new importance and divided interest with the changes in
+her internal affairs.
+
+From being a state wherein the mother country exercised control and the
+colonies yielded obedience the Empire was rapidly being transformed
+into a free and equal partnership of independent commonwealths under one
+king. Out of the clash of rival theories and conflicting interests a
+new ideal and a new reality had developed. The policy of imperial
+cooperation--the policy whereby each great colony became independent of
+outside control but voluntarily acted in concert with the mother country
+and the sister states on matters of common concern--sought to reconcile
+liberty and unity, nationhood and empire, to unite what was most
+practicable in the aims of the advocates of independence and the
+advocates of imperial federation. The movement developed unevenly. At
+the outbreak of the Great War, it was still incomplete. The ideal was
+not always clearly or consciously held in the Empire itself and was
+wholly ignored or misunderstood in Europe and even in the United States.
+Yet in twenty years' space it had become dominant in practice and theory
+and had built up a new type of political organization, a virtual league
+of nations, fruitful for the future ordering of the world.
+
+The three fields in which this new policy was worked out were trade,
+defense, and political organization. Canada had asserted her right to
+control her tariff and commercial treaty relations as she pleased.
+Now she used this freedom to offer, without asking any return in kind,
+tariff privileges to the mother country. In the first budget brought
+down by the Minister of Finance in the Laurier Cabinet, William S.
+Fielding, a reduction, by instalments, of twenty-five per cent in tariff
+duties was offered to all countries with rates as low as Canada's--that
+is, to the United Kingdom and possibly to the Netherlands and New South
+Wales. The reduction was meant both as a fulfilment of the Liberal
+party's free trade pledges and as a token of filial good will to
+Britain. It was soon found that Belgium and Germany, by virtue of their
+special treaty rights, would claim the same privileges as Britain, and
+that all other countries with most favored nation clauses could then
+demand the same rates. This might serve the free trade aims of the
+Fielding tariff but would block its imperial purpose. If this purpose
+was to be achieved, these treaties must be denounced. To effect this
+was one of the tasks Laurier undertook in his first visit to England in
+1897.
+
+The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, celebrating the sixtieth
+anniversary of her reign, was made the occasion for holding the
+third Colonial Conference. It was attended by the Premiers of all the
+colonies. Among them Wilfrid Laurier, or Sir Wilfrid as he now became,
+stood easily preeminent. In the Jubilee festivities, among the crowds in
+London streets and the gatherings in court and council, his picturesque
+and courtly figure, his unmistakable note of distinction, his silvery
+eloquence, and, not least, the fact that this ruler of the greatest of
+England's colonies was wholly of French blood, made him the lion of the
+hour. In the Colonial Conference, presided over by Joseph Chamberlain,
+the new Colonial Secretary, Laurier achieved his immediate purpose. The
+British Government agreed to denounce the Belgian and German treaties,
+now that the preference granted her came as a free gift and not as part
+of a bargain which involved Britain's abandonment of free trade. The
+other Premiers agreed to consider whether Canada's preferential
+tariff policy could be followed. Chamberlain in vain urged defense and
+political policies designed to centralize power in London. He praised
+the action of the Australian colonies in contributing money to the
+British navy but could get no promise of similar action from the others.
+He urged the need of setting up in London an imperial council, with
+power somewhat more than advisory and likely "to develop into something
+still greater," but for this scheme he elicited little support. After
+the Conference Sir Wilfrid visited France and in ringing speeches in
+Paris did much to pave the way for the good understanding which later
+developed into the entente cordiale.
+
+The glitter and parade of the Jubilee festivities soon gave way to a
+sterner phase of empire. For years South Africa had been in ferment
+owing to the conflicting interests of narrow, fanatical, often
+corrupt Boer leaders, greedy Anglo-Jewish mining magnates, and British
+statesmen-Rhodes, Milner, Chamberlain--dominated by the imperial idea
+and eager for an "all-red" South Africa. Eventually an impasse was
+reached over the question of the rights and privileges of British
+subjects in the Transvaal Republic. On October 9, 1899, President Kruger
+issued his fateful ultimatum and war began.
+
+What would be Canada's attitude toward this imperial problem? She had
+never before taken part in an overseas war. Neither her own safety nor
+the safety of the mother country was considered to be at stake. Yet war
+had not been formally declared before a demand arose among Canadians
+that their country should take a hand in rescuing the victims of Boer
+tyranny. The Venezuela incident and the recent Jubilee ceremonies had
+fanned imperialist sentiment. The growing prosperity was increasing
+national pride and making many eager to abandon the attitude of colonial
+dependence in foreign affairs. The desire to emulate the United States,
+which had just won more or less glory in its little war with Spain, had
+its influence in some quarters. Belief in the justice of the British
+cause was practically universal, thanks to the skillful manipulation
+of the press by the war party in South Africa. Leading newspapers
+encouraged the campaign for participation. Parliament was not in
+session, and the Government hesitated to intervene, but the swelling
+tide of public opinion soon warranted immediate action. Three days after
+the declaration of war an order in council was passed providing for
+a contingent of one thousand men. Other infantry battalions, Mounted
+Rifles, and batteries of artillery were dispatched later. Lord
+Strathcona, formerly Donald Smith of the Canadian Pacific syndicate, by
+a deed recalling feudal days, provided the funds to send overseas the
+Strathcona Horse, roughriders from the Canadian West. In the last
+years of the war the South African Constabulary drew many recruits from
+Canada. All told, over seven thousand Canadians crossed half the world
+to share in the struggle on the South African veldt.
+
+The Canadian forces held their own with any in the campaign. The first
+contingent fought under Lord Roberts in the campaign for the relief of
+Kimberley; and it was two charges by Canadian troops, charges that cost
+heavily in killed and wounded, that forced the surrender of General
+Cronje, brought to bay at Paardeberg. One Canadian battery shared in the
+honor of raising the siege of Mafeking, where Baden-Powell was besieged,
+and both contingents marched with Lord Roberts from Bloemfontein to
+Pretoria and fought hard and well at Doornkop and in many a skirmish.
+Perhaps the politic generosity of the British leaders and the patriotic
+bias of correspondents exaggerated the importance of the share of the
+Canadian troops in the whole campaign; but their courage, initiative,
+and endurance were tested and proved beyond all question. Paardeberg
+sent a thrill of pride and of sorrow through Canada.
+
+The only province which stood aloof from wholehearted participation in
+the war was Quebec. Many French Canadians had been growing nervous over
+the persistent campaign of the imperialists. They exhibited a certain
+unwillingness to take on responsibilities, perhaps a survival of the
+dependence which colonialism had bred, a dawning aspiration toward an
+independent place in the world's work, and a disposition to draw
+tighter racial and religious lines in order to offset the emphasis which
+imperialists placed on Anglo-Saxon ties. Now their sympathies went out
+to a people, like themselves an alien minority brought under British
+rule, and in this attitude they were strengthened by the almost
+unanimous verdict of the neutral world against British policy. Laurier
+tried to steer a middle course, but the attacks of ultra-imperialists
+in Ontario and of ultra-nationalists in Quebec, led henceforward by a
+brilliant and eloquent grandson of Papineau, Henri Bourassa,
+hampered him at every turn. The South African War gave a new unity to
+English-speaking Canada, but it widened the gap between the French and
+English sections.
+
+The part which Australia and New Zealand, like Canada, had taken in
+the war gave new urgency to the question of imperial relations. English
+imperialists were convinced that the time was ripe for a great advance
+toward centralization, and they were eager to crystallize in permanent
+institutions the imperial sentiment called forth by the war. When,
+therefore, the fourth Colonial Conference was summoned to meet in London
+in 1902 on the occasion of the coronation of Edward VII, Chamberlain
+urged with all his force and keenness a wide programme of centralized
+action. "Very great expectations," he declared in his opening address,
+"have been formed as to the results which may accrue from our meeting."
+The expectations, however, were doomed to disappointment. He and those
+who shared his hopes had failed to recognize that the war had
+called forth a new national consciousness in the Dominions, as the
+self-governing colonies now came to be termed, even more than it had
+developed imperial sentiment. In the smaller colonies, New Zealand,
+Natal, Cape of Good Hope, the old attitude of colonial dependence
+survived in larger measure; but in Canada and in Australia, now
+federated into commonwealths, national feeling was uppermost.
+
+Chamberlain brought forward once more his proposal for an imperial
+council, to be advisory at first and later to attain power to tax and
+legislate for the whole Empire, but he found no support. Instead, the
+Conference itself was made a more permanent instrument of imperial
+cooperation by a provision that it should meet at least every four
+years. The essential difference was that the Conference was merely a
+meeting of independent Governments on an equal footing, each claiming to
+be as much "His Majesty's Government" as any other, whereas the council
+which Chamberlain urged in vain would have been a new Government,
+supreme over all the Empire and dominated by the British
+representatives. Chamberlain then suggested more centralized means
+of defense, grants to the British navy, and the putting of a definite
+proportion of colonial militia at the disposal of the British War
+Office for overseas service. The Cape and Natal promised naval grants;
+Australia and New Zealand increased their contributions for the
+maintenance of a squadron in Pacific waters; but Canada held back. The
+smaller colonies were sympathetic to the militia proposal; but Canada
+and Australia rejected it on the grounds that it was "objectionable in
+principle, as derogating from the powers of self-government enjoyed
+by them, and would be calculated to impede the general improvement
+in training and organization of their defense forces." Chamberlain's
+additional proposal of free trade within the Empire and of a common
+tariff against all foreign countries found little support. That each
+part of the Empire should control its own tariff and that it should make
+what concessions it wished on British imports, either as a part of a
+reciprocal bargain or as a free gift, remained a fixed idea in the minds
+of the leaders of the Dominions. Throughout the sessions it was Laurier
+rather than Chamberlain who dominated the Conference.
+
+Balked in his desire to effect political or military centralization,
+Chamberlain turned anew to the possibilities of trade alliance. His
+tariff reform campaign of 1903, which was a sequel to the Colonial
+Conference of 1902, proposed that Great Britain set up a tariff,
+incidentally to protect her own industries and to have matter for
+bargaining with foreign powers, but mainly in order to keep the colonies
+within her orbit by offering them special terms. In this way the Empire
+would become once more self-sufficient. The issue thus thrust upon Great
+Britain and the Empire in general was primarily a contest between free
+traders and protectionists, not between the supporters of cooperation
+and the supporters of centralization. On this basis the issue was fought
+out in Great Britain and resulted in the overwhelming victory of free
+trade and the Liberal party, aided as they were by the popular reaction
+against the jingoist policy which had culminated in the war. When the
+fifth Conference, now termed Imperial instead of Colonial, met in 1907,
+there was much impassioned advocacy of preference and protection on the
+part of Alfred Deakin of Australia and Sir L.S. Jameson of the Cape;
+but the British representatives stuck to their guns and, in Winston
+Churchill's phrase, the door remained "banged, barred, and bolted"
+against both policies. At this conference Laurier took the ground that,
+while Canada would be prepared to bargain preference for preference, the
+people of Great Britain must decide what fiscal system would best serve
+their own interests. A consistent advocate of home rule, he was willing,
+unlike some of his colleagues, from the other Dominions, to let the
+United Kingdom control its own affairs.
+
+The defense issue had slumbered since the Boer War. Now the unbounded
+ambitions of Germany gave it startling urgency. It was about 1908
+that the British public first became seriously alarmed over the danger
+involved in the lessening margin of superiority of the British over the
+German navy. The alarm was echoed throughout the Dominions. The Kaiser's
+challenge threatened the safety not only of the mother country but of
+every part of the Empire. Hitherto the Dominions had done little in
+the way of naval defense, though they had one by one assumed full
+responsibility for their land defense. The feeling had been growing
+that they should take a larger share of the common burden. Two factors,
+however, had blocked advance in this direction. The British Government
+had claimed and exercised full control of the issues of peace and
+war, and the Dominions were reluctant to assume responsibility for
+the consequences of a foreign policy which they could not direct. The
+hostility of the British Admiralty, on strategic and political grounds,
+to the plan of local Dominion navies, had prevented progress on the most
+feasible lines. The deadlock was a serious one. Now the imminence of
+danger compelled a solution. Taking the lead in this instance in the
+working out of the policy of colonial nationalism, Australia had already
+insisted upon abandoning the barren and inadequate policy of making a
+cash contribution for the support of a British squadron in Australasian
+waters and had established a local navy, manned, maintained, and
+controlled by the Commonwealth. Canada decided to follow her example.
+In March, 1909, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously adopted
+a resolution in favor of establishing a Canadian naval service to
+cooperate in close relation with the British navy. During the summer a
+special conference was held in London attended by ministers from all the
+Dominions. At this conference the Admiralty abandoned its old position;
+and it was agreed that Australia and Canada should establish local
+forces, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, with auxiliary ships and
+naval bases.
+
+When the Canadian Parliament met in 1910, Sir Wilfrid Laurier submitted
+a Naval Service Bill, providing for the establishment of local fleets,
+of which the smaller vessels were to be built in Canada. The ships were
+to be under the control of the Dominion Government, which might, in case
+of emergency, place them at the disposal of the British Admiralty. The
+bill was passed in March. In the autumn two cruisers, the Rainbow and
+the Niobe, were bought from Britain to serve as training ships. In the
+following spring a naval college was opened at Halifax, and tenders
+were called for the construction, in Canada, of five cruisers and six
+destroyers. In June, 1911, at the regular Imperial Conference of
+that year, an agreement was reached regarding the boundaries of
+the Australian and Canadian stations and uniformity of training and
+discipline.
+
+Then came the reciprocity fight and the defeat of the Government. No
+tenders had been finally accepted, and the new Administration of Premier
+Borden was free to frame its own policy.
+
+The naval issue had now become a party question. The policy of
+a Dominion navy, a policy which was the logical extension of the
+principles of colonial nationalism and imperial cooperation which
+had guided imperial development for many years, was attacked by
+ultra-imperialists in the English-speaking provinces as strategically
+unsound and as leading inevitably to separation from the Empire. It was
+also attacked by the Nationalists of Quebec, the ultra-colonialists or
+provincialists, as they might more truly be termed, under the vigorous
+leadership of Henri Bourassa, as yet another concession to imperialism
+and to militarism. In November, 1910, by alarming the habitant by
+pictures of his sons being dragged away by naval press gangs, the
+Nationalists succeeded in defeating the Liberal candidate in a
+by-election in Drummond-Arthabaska, at one time Laurier's own
+constituency. In the general election which followed in 1911, the same
+issue cost the Liberals a score of seats in Quebec.
+
+When, therefore, the new Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, faced the
+issue, he endeavored to frame a policy which would suit both wings
+of his following. In 1912 he proposed as an emergency measure to
+appropriate a sum sufficient to build three dreadnoughts for the British
+navy, subject to recall if at any time the Canadian people decided
+to use them as the nucleus of a Canadian fleet. At the same time he
+undertook to submit to the electorate his permanent naval policy, as
+soon as it was determined. What that permanent policy would be he was
+unwilling to say, but the Prime Minister made clear his own leanings
+by insisting that it would take half a century to form a Canadian navy,
+which at best would be a poor and weak substitute for the organization
+the Empire already possessed. The contribution to the British navy
+satisfied the ultra-imperialists, while the promise of a referendum and
+the call for money alone, and not men, appealed to the Nationalist wing.
+Under the impetuous control of its new head, Winston Churchill, the
+British Admiralty showed that it had repented its brief conversion
+to the Dominion navy policy, by preparing an elaborate memorandum to
+support Borden's proposals, and also by formulating plans for imperial
+flying squadrons to be supplied by the Dominions, which made clear
+its wish to continue the centralizing policy permanently. The Liberal
+Opposition vigorously denounced the whole dreadnought programme,
+advocating instead two Canadian fleet units somewhat larger than at
+first contemplated. Their obstruction was overcome in the Commons by the
+introduction of the closure, but the Liberal majority in the Senate, on
+the motion of Sir George Ross, a former Premier of Ontario, threw
+out the bill by insisting that it should not be passed before being
+"submitted to the judgment of the country." This challenge the
+Government did not accept. Until the outbreak of the war no further
+steps were taken either to arrange for contribution or to establish a
+Canadian navy, though the naval college at Halifax was continued, and
+the training cruisers were maintained in a half-hearted way.
+
+In the Imperial Conference of 1911, one more attempt was made to set
+up a central governing authority in London. Sir Joseph Ward, of New
+Zealand, acting as the mouthpiece of the imperial federationists, urged
+the establishment, first of an Imperial Council of State and later of
+an Imperial Parliament. His proposals met no support. "It is absolutely
+impracticable," was Laurier's verdict. "Any scheme of representation--no
+matter what you call it, parliament or council--of the overseas
+Dominions, must give them so very small a representation that it would
+be practically of no value," declared Premier Morris of Newfoundland.
+"It is not a practical scheme," Premier Fisher of Australia agreed;
+"our present system of responsible government has not broken down." "The
+creation of some body with centralized authority over the whole Empire,"
+Premier Botha of South Africa cogently insisted, "would be a step
+entirely antagonistic to the policy of Great Britain which has been so
+successful in the past .... It is the policy of decentralization which
+has made the Empire--the power granted to its various peoples to govern
+themselves." Even Premier Asquith of the United Kingdom declared the
+proposals "fatal to the very fundamental conditions on which our empire
+has been built up and carried on."
+
+Stronger than any logic was the presence of Louis Botha in the
+conferences of 1907 and 1911. On the former occasion it was only five
+years since he had been in arms against Great Britain. The courage and
+vision of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in granting full and immediate
+self-government to the conquered Boer republics had been justified by
+the results. Once more freedom proved the only enduring basis of empire.
+Botha's task in attempting to make Boer and Briton work together, first
+in the Transvaal, and, after 1910, in the Union of South Africa, had not
+been an easy one. Attacked by extremists from both directions, he
+faced much the same difficulties as Laurier, and he found in Laurier's
+friendship, counsel, and example much that stood him in good stead in
+the days of stress to come.
+
+
+Not less important than the relations with the United Kingdom in this
+period were the relations with the United States. The Venezuela episode
+was the turning point in the relations between the United States and the
+British Empire. Both in Washington and in London men had been astounded
+to find themselves on the verge of war. The danger passed, but the shock
+awoke thousands to a realization of all that the two peoples had in
+common and to the need of concerted effort to remove the sources
+of friction. Then hard on the heels of this episode followed the
+Spanish-American War.* Not the least of its by-products was a remarkable
+improvement in the relations of the English-speaking nations. The course
+of the war, the intrigues of European courts to secure intervention on
+behalf of Spain, and the lining up of a British squadron beside Dewey
+in Manila Bay when a German Admiral blustered, revealed Great Britain
+as the one trustworthy friend the United States possessed abroad. The
+annexation of the Philippines and the definite entry of the United
+States upon world politics broke down the irresponsible isolation
+which British ministers had found so much of a barrier to diplomatic
+accommodations. With John Hay and later Elihu Root at the State
+Department, and Lansdowne and Grey at the Foreign Office in London,
+there began an era of good feeling between the two countries.
+
+     * See "The Path of Empire".
+
+Ottawa and Washington were somewhat slower in coming to terms. Many
+difficulties can arise along a three thousand mile border, and with a
+people so sure of themselves as the Americans were at this period and a
+people so sensitive to any infringements of their national rights as
+the Canadians were, petty differences often loomed large. The Laurier
+Government, therefore, proposed shortly after its accession to power in
+1896 that an attempt should be made to clear away all outstanding issues
+and to effect a trade agreement. A Joint High Commission was constituted
+in 1898. The members from the United States were Senator Fairbanks,
+Senator Gray, Representative Nelson Dingley, General Foster, J.A.
+Kasson, and T.J. Coolidge of the State Department. Great Britain was
+represented by Lord Herschell, who acted as chairman, Newfoundland
+by Sir James Winter, and Canada by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir Richard
+Cartwright, Sir Louis Davies, and John Charlton, M.P.
+
+The Commission held prolonged sittings, first at Quebec and later
+at Washington, and reached tentative agreement on nearly all of the
+troublesome questions at issue. The bonding privileges on both sides the
+border were to be given an assured basis; the unneighborly alien labor
+laws were to be relaxed; the Rush-Bagot Convention regarding armament
+on the Great Lakes was to be revised; Canadian vessels were to
+abandon pelagic sealing in Bering Sea for a money compensation; and a
+reciprocity treaty covering natural products and some manufactures was
+sketched out. Yet no agreement followed. One issue, the Alaska boundary,
+proved insoluble, and as no agreement was acceptable which did not
+cover every difference, the Commission never again assembled after its
+adjournment in February, 1899.
+
+
+The boundary between Alaska and the Dominion was the only bit of the
+border line not yet determined. As in former cases of boundary disputes,
+the inaccuracies of map makers, the ambiguities of diplomats, the clash
+of local interests, and stiff-necked national pride made a settlement
+difficult. In 1825 Russia and Great Britain had signed a treaty which
+granted Russia a long panhandle strip down the Pacific coast. With
+the purchase of Alaska in 1867 the United States succeeded to Russia's
+claim. With the growth of settlement in Canada this long barrier down
+half of her Pacific coast was found to be irksome. Attempt after attempt
+to have the line determined only added to the stock of memorials in
+official pigeonholes. Then came the discovery of gold in the Klondike
+in 1896, and the question of easy access by sea to the Canadian back
+country became an urgent one. Canada offered to compromise, admitting
+the American title to the chief ports on Lynn Canal, Dyea and Skagway,
+if Pyramid Harbor were held Canadian. She urged arbitration on the model
+the United States had dictated in the Venezuela dispute. But the United
+States was in possession of the most important points. Its people
+believed the Canadian claims had been trumped up when the Klondike
+fields were opened. The Puget Sound cities wanted no breach in their
+monopoly of the supply trade to the north. The only concession the
+United States would make was to refer the dispute to a commission of
+six, three from each country, with the proviso that no area settled by
+Americans should in any event pass into other bands. Canada felt that
+arbitration under these conditions would either end in deadlock, leaving
+the United States in possession, or in concession by one or more of
+the British representatives, and so declined to accept the proposed
+arrangement.
+
+Finally, in 1903, agreement was reached between London and Washington
+to accept the tribunal proposed by the United States, which in turn
+withdrew its veto on the transfer of any settled area. Canada's
+reluctant consent was won by a provision that the members of the
+tribunal should be "impartial jurists of repute," sworn to render a
+judicial verdict. When Elihu Root, Senator Lodge, and Senator Turner
+were named as the American representatives, Ottawa protested that
+eminent and honorable as they were, their public attitude on this
+question made it impossible to consider them "impartial jurists." The
+Canadian Government in return nominated three judges, Lord Alverstone,
+Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Louis Jette, of Quebec, and Mr.
+Justice Armour, succeeded on his death by A. B. Aylesworth, a leader
+of the Ontario bar. The tribunal met in London, where the case was
+thoroughly argued.
+
+The Treaty of 1825 had provided that the southern boundary should follow
+the Portland Canal to the fifty-sixth parallel of latitude and thence
+the summits of the mountains parallel to the coast, with the stipulation
+that if the summit of the mountains anywhere proved to be more than ten
+marine leagues from the ocean, a line drawn parallel to the windings of
+the coast not more than ten leagues distant should form the boundary.
+Three questions arose: What was the Portland Canal? Did the treaty
+assure Russia an unbroken strip by making the boundary run round the
+ends of deep inlets? Did mountains exist parallel to the coast within
+ten leagues' distance? In October these questions received their answer.
+Lord Alverstone and the three American members decided in favor of the
+United States on the main issues. The two Canadian, representatives
+refused to sign the award and denounced it as unjudicial and
+unwarranted.
+
+The decision set Canada aflame. Lord Alverstone was denounced in
+unmeasured terms. From Atlantic to Pacific the charge was echoed that
+once more the interests of Canada had been sacrificed by Britain on
+the altar of Anglo-American friendship. The outburst was not understood
+abroad. It was not, as United States opinion imagined, merely childish
+petulance or the whining of a poor loser. It was against Great Britain,
+not against the United States, that the criticism was directed. It was
+not the decision, but the way in which it was made, that roused deep
+anger. The decision on the main issue, that the line ran back of even
+the deepest inlets and barred Canada from a single harbor, though
+unwelcome, was accepted as a judicial verdict and has since been
+little questioned. The finding that the boundary should follow certain
+mountains behind those Canada urged, but short of the ten league line,
+was attacked by the Canadian representatives as a compromise, and its
+judicial character is certainly open to some doubt. But it was on the
+third finding that the thunders broke. The United States had contended
+that the Portland Channel of the treaty makers ran south of four islands
+which lay east of Prince of Wales Island, and Canada that it ran north
+of these islands. Lord Alverstone, after joining in a judgment with
+the Canadian commissioners that it ran north, suddenly, without any
+conference with them, and, as the wording of the award showed, by
+agreement with the United States representatives, announced that it ran
+where no one had ever suggested it could run, north of two and south
+of two, thus dividing the land in dispute. The islands were of little
+importance even strategically, but the incontrovertible evidence that
+instead of a judicial finding a political compromise had been effected
+was held of much importance. After a time the storm died down, but it
+revealed one unmistakable fact: Canadian nationalism was growing fully
+as fast as Canadian imperialism.
+
+The relations between Canada and the United States now came to show the
+effect of increasingly close business connections. The northward trek
+of tens of thousands of American farmers was under way. United States
+capitalists began to invest heavily in farm and timber lands.
+Factory after factory opened a Canadian branch. Ten years later these
+investments exceeded six hundred millions. In the West, James J. Hill
+was planning the expansion of the Great Northern system throughout the
+prairie provinces and was securing an interest in the great Crow's Nest
+Pass coal fields. Tourist travel multiplied. The two peoples came
+to know each other better than ever before, and with knowledge many
+prejudices and misunderstandings vanished. Canada's growing prosperity
+did not merely bring greater individual intercourse; it made the United
+States as a whole less patronizing in its dealings with its neighbor and
+Canada less querulous and thin-skinned.
+
+In this more favorable temper many old issues were cleared off the
+slate. The northeastern fisheries question, revived by a conflict
+between Newfoundland and the United States as to treaty privileges,
+was referred to the Hague Court in 1909. The verdict of the arbitrators
+recognized a measure of right in the contentions of both sides. A
+detailed settlement was prescribed which was accepted without demur in
+the United States, Newfoundland, and Canada alike. Pelagic sealing
+in the North Pacific was barred in 1911 by an international agreement
+between the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia. Less
+success attended the attempt to arrange joint action to regulate and
+conserve the fisheries of the Great Lakes and the salmon fisheries of
+the Pacific, for the treaty drawn up in 1911 by the experts from both
+countries failed to pass the United States Senate.
+
+But the most striking development of the decade was the businesslike
+and neighborly solution found for the settlement of the boundary waters
+controversy. The growing demands for the use of streams such as the
+Niagara, the St. Lawrence, and the Sault for power purposes, and of
+western border rivers for irrigation schemes, made it essential to take
+joint action to reconcile not merely the conflicting claims from the
+opposite sides of the border but the conflicting claims of power and
+navigation and other interests in each country. In 1905 a temporary
+waterways commission was appointed, and four years later the Boundary
+Waters Treaty provided for the establishment of a permanent Joint High
+Commission, consisting of three representatives from each country,
+and with authority over all cases of use, obstruction, or diversion of
+border waters. Individual citizens of either country were allowed to
+present their case directly before the Commission, an innovation in
+international practice. Still more significant of the new spirit was
+the inclusion in this treaty of a clause providing for reference to
+the Commission, with the consent of the United States Senate and the
+Dominion Cabinet, of any matter whatever at issue between the two
+countries. With little discussion and as a matter of course, the two
+democracies, in the closing years of a full century of peace, thus made
+provision for the sane and friendly settlement of future line-fence
+disputes.
+
+The chief barrier to good relations was the customs tariff.
+Protectionism, and the attitude of which it was born and which it bred
+in turn, was still firmly entrenched in both countries. Tariff bars, it
+is true, had not been able to prevent the rapid growth of trade; imports
+from the United States to Canada had grown especially fast and Canada
+now ranked third in the list of the Republic's customers. Yet in many
+ways the tariff hindered free intercourse. Though every dictate of
+self-interest and good sense demanded a reduction of duties, Canada
+would not and did not take the initiative. Time and again she had
+sought reciprocity, only to have her proposals rejected, often with
+contemptuous indifference. When Sir Wilfrid Laurier announced in 1900
+that there would be no more pilgrimages to Washington, he voiced the
+almost unanimous opinion of a people whose pride had been hurt by
+repeated rebuffs.
+
+Meanwhile protectionist sentiment had grown stronger in Canada. The
+opening of the West had given an expanding market for eastern factories
+and had seemingly justified the National Policy. The Liberals, the
+traditional upholders of freer trade, after some initial redemptions
+of their pledges, had compromised with the manufacturing interests. The
+Conservatives, still more protectionist in temper, voiced in Parliament
+little criticism of this policy, and the free trade elements among
+the farmers were as yet unorganized and inarticulate. Signs of this
+protectionist revival, which had in it, as in the seventies, an element
+of nationalism, were many. A four-story tariff was erected. The lowest
+rates were those granted the United Kingdom; then came the intermediate
+tariff, for the products of countries giving Canada special terms; next
+the general tariff; and, finally, the surtax for use against powers
+discriminating in any special degree against the Dominion. The provinces
+one by one forbade the export of pulp wood cut on Crown Lands, in
+order to assure its manufacture into wood pulp or paper in Canada. The
+Dominion in 1907 secured the abrogation of the postal convention
+made with the United States in 1875 providing for the reciprocal free
+distribution of second class mail matter originating in the other
+country. This step was taken at the instance of Canadian manufacturers,
+alarmed at the effect of the advertising pages of United States
+magazines in directing trade across the line. Yet even with such
+developments, the Canadian tariff remained lower than its neighbor's.
+
+In the United States the tendency was in the other direction. With the
+growth of cities, the interests of the consumers of foods outweighed the
+influence of the producers. Manufacturers in many cases had reached the
+export stage, where foreign markets, cheap food, and cheap raw materials
+were more necessary than a protected home market. The "muckrakers" were
+at the height of their activity; and the tariff, as one instrument of
+corruption and privilege, was suffering with the popular condemnation
+of all big interests. United States newspapers were eager for free wood
+pulp and cheaper paper, just as Canadian newspapers defended the policy
+of checking export. It was not surprising, therefore, that reciprocity
+with Canada, as one means of increasing trade and reducing the tariff,
+took on new popularity. New England was the chief seat of the movement,
+with Henry M. Whitney and Eugene N. Foss as its most persistent
+advocates. Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, and other border cities were also
+active.
+
+Official action soon followed this unofficial campaign. Curiously
+enough, it came as an unexpected by-product of a further experiment
+in protection, the Payne-Aldrich tariff. For the first time in the
+experience of the United States this tariff incorporated the principle
+of minimum and maximum schedules. The maximum rates, fixed at
+twenty-five per cent ad valorem above the normal or minimum rates, were
+to be enforced upon the goods of any country which had not, before March
+10, 1910, satisfied the President that it did not discriminate against
+the products of the United States. One by one the various nations
+demonstrated this to President Taft's satisfaction or with wry faces
+made the readjustments necessary. At last Canada alone remained. The
+United States conceded that the preference to the United Kingdom did
+not constitute discrimination, but it insisted that it should enjoy
+the special rates recently extended to France by treaty. In Canada this
+demand was received with indignation. Its tariff rates were much lower
+than those which the United States imposed, and its purchases in that
+country were twice as great as its sales. The demand was based on a
+sudden and complete reversal of the traditional American interpretation
+of the most favored nation policy. The President admitted the force of
+Canada's contentions, but the law left him no option. Fortunately it did
+leave him free to decide as to the adequacy of any concessions, and thus
+agreement was made possible at the eleventh hour. At the President's
+suggestion a conference at Albany was arranged, and on the 30th of
+March a bargain was struck. Canada conceded to the United States its
+intermediate tariff rates on thirteen minor schedules--chinaware, nuts,
+prunes, and whatnot. These were accepted as equivalent to the special
+terms given France, and Canada was certified as being entitled to
+minimum rates. The United States had saved its face. Then to complete
+the comedy, Canada immediately granted the same concessions to all other
+countries, that is, made the new rates part of the general tariff.
+The United States ended where it began, in receipt of no special
+concessions. The motions required had been gone through; phantom
+reductions had been made to meet a phantom discrimination.
+
+This was only the beginning of attempts at accommodation. The threat of
+tariff war had called forth in the United States loud protests against
+any such reversion to economic barbarism. President Taft realized that
+he had antagonized the growing low-tariff sentiment of the country by
+his support of the Payne-Aldrich tariff and was eager to set himself
+right. A week before the March negotiations were concluded, a Democratic
+candidate had carried a strongly Republican congressional district in
+Massachusetts on a platform of reciprocity with Canada. The President,
+therefore, proposed a bold stroke. He made a sweeping offer of better
+trade relations. Negotiations were begun at Ottawa and concluded
+in Washington. In January, 1911, announcement was made that a broad
+agreement had been effected. Grain, fruit, and vegetables, dairy and
+most farm products, fish, hewn timber and sawn lumber, and several
+minerals were put on the free list. A few manufactures were also made
+free, and the duties on meats, flour, coal, agricultural implements, and
+other products were substantially reduced. The compact was to be carried
+out, not by treaty, but by concurrent legislation. Canada was to extend
+the same terms to the most favored nations by treaty, and to all parts
+of the British Empire by policy.
+
+For fifty years the administrations of the two countries had never been
+so nearly at one. More difficulty was met with in the legislatures. In
+Congress, farmers and fishermen, standpat Republicans and Progressives
+hostile to the Administration, waged war against the bargain. It was
+only in a special session, and with the aid of Democratic votes and a
+Washington July sun, that the opposition was overcome. In the Canadian
+Parliament, after some initial hesitation, the Conservatives attacked
+the proposal. The Government had a safe majority, but the Opposition
+resorted to obstruction; and late in July, Parliament was suddenly
+dissolved and the Government appealed to the country.
+
+When the bargain was first concluded, the Canadian Government had
+imagined it would meet little opposition, for it was precisely the type
+of agreement that Government after Government, Conservative as well as
+Liberal, had sought in vain for over forty years. For a day or two that
+expectation was justified. Then the forces of opposition rallied, timid
+questioning gave way to violent denunciation, and at last agreement and
+Government alike were swept away in a flood of popular antagonism.
+
+One reason for this result was that the verdict was given in a general
+election, not in a referendum. The fate of the Government was involved;
+its general record was brought up for review; party ambitions and
+passions were stirred to the utmost. Fifteen years, of office-holding
+had meant the accumulation of many scandals, a slackening in
+administrative efficiency, and the cooling by official compromise of the
+ardent faith of the Liberalism of the earlier day. The Government had
+failed to bring in enough new blood. The Opposition fought with the
+desperation of fifteen years of fasting and was better served by its
+press.
+
+Of the side issues introduced into the campaign, the most important were
+the naval policy in Quebec and the racial and religious issue in the
+English-speaking provinces. The Government had to face what Sir Wilfrid
+Laurier termed "the unholy alliance" of Roman Catholic Nationalists
+under Bourassa in Quebec and Protestant Imperialists in Ontario. In
+the French-speaking districts the Government was denounced for allowing
+Canada to be drawn into the vortex of militarism and imperialism and
+for sacrificing the interests of Roman Catholic schools in the West. On
+every hand the naval policy was attacked as inevitably bringing in its
+train conscription to fight European wars a contention hotly denied
+by the Liberals. The Conservative campaign managers made a working
+arrangement with the Nationalists as to candidates and helped
+liberally in circulating Bourassa's newspaper, Le Devoir. On the back
+"concessions" of Ontario a quieter but no less effective campaign was
+carried on against the domination of Canadian politics by a French Roman
+Catholic province and a French Roman Catholic Prime Minister. In vain
+the Liberals appealed to national unity or started back fires in Ontario
+by insisting that a vote for Borden meant a vote for Bourassa. The
+Conservative-Nationalist alliance cost the Government many seats in
+Quebec and apparently did not frighten Ontario.
+
+Reciprocity, however, was the principal issue everywhere except in
+Quebec. Powerful forces were arrayed against it. Few manufactures
+had been put on the free list, but the argument that the reciprocity
+agreement was the thin edge of the wedge rallied the organized
+manufacturers in almost unbroken hostile array. The railways, fearful
+that western traffic would be diverted to United States roads, opposed
+the agreement vigorously under the leadership of the ex-American
+chairman of the board of directors of the Canadian Pacific, Sir William
+Van Horne, who made on this occasion one of his few public entries into
+politics. The banks, closely involved in the manufacturing and railway
+interests, threw their weight in the same direction. They were aided
+by the prevalence of protectionist sentiment in the eastern cities and
+industrial towns, which were at the same stage of development and in the
+same mood as the cities of the United States some decades earlier. The
+Liberal fifteen-year compromise with protection made it difficult in a
+seven weeks' campaign to revive a desire for freer trade. The prosperity
+of the country and the cry, "Let well enough alone," told powerfully
+against the bargain. Yet merely from the point of view of economic
+advantage, the popular verdict would probably have been in its favor.
+The United States market no longer loomed so large as it had in the
+eighties, but its value was undeniable. Farmer, fisherman, and miner
+stood to gain substantially by the lowering of the bars into the richest
+market in the world. Every farm paper in Canada and all the important
+farm organizations supported reciprocity. Its opponents, therefore,
+did not trust to a direct frontal attack. Their strategy was to divert
+attention from the economic advantages by raising the cry of political
+danger. The red herring of annexation was drawn across the trail, and
+many a farmer followed it to the polling booth.
+
+From the outset, then, the opponents of reciprocity concentrated
+their attacks on its political perils. They denounced the reciprocity
+agreement as the forerunner of annexation, the deathblow to Canadian
+nationality and British connection. They prophesied that the trade and
+intercourse built up between the East and the West of Canada by years of
+sacrifice and striving would shrivel away, and that each section of the
+Dominion would become a mere appendage to the adjacent section of the
+United States. Where the treasure was, there would the heart be also.
+After some years of reciprocity, the channels of Canadian trade would
+be so changed that a sudden return to high protection on the part of the
+United States would disrupt industry and a mere threat of such a change
+would lead to a movement for complete union.
+
+This prophecy was strengthened by apposite quotations showing the
+existing drift of opinion in the United States. President Taft's
+reference to the "light and imperceptible bond uniting the Dominion
+with the mother country" and his "parting of the ways" speech received
+sinister interpretations. Speaker Champ Clark's announcement that he
+was in favor of the agreement because he hoped "to see the day when the
+American flag will float over every square foot of the British North
+American possessions" was worth tens of thousands of votes. The
+anti-reciprocity press of Canada seized upon these utterances, magnified
+them, and sometimes, it was charged, inspired or invented them. Every
+American crossroads politician who found a useful peroration in a vision
+of the Stars and Stripes floating from Panama to the North Pole was
+represented as a statesman of national power voicing a universal
+sentiment. The action of the Hearst papers in sending pro-reciprocity
+editions into the border cities of Canada made many votes--but not for
+reciprocity. The Canadian public proved that it was unable to suffer
+fools gladly. It was vain to argue that all men of weight in the United
+States had come to understand and to respect Canada's independent
+ambitions; that in any event it was not what the United States thought
+but what Canada thought that mattered; or that the Canadian farmer who
+sold a bushel of good wheat to a United States miller no more sold his
+loyalty with it than a Kipling selling a volume of verse or a Canadian
+financier selling a block of stock in the same market. The flag was
+waved, and the Canadian voter, mindful of former American slights
+and backed by newly arrived Englishmen admirably organized by the
+anti-reciprocity forces, turned against any "entangling alliance." The
+prosperity of the country made it safe to express resentment of the
+slights of half a century or fear of this too sudden friendliness.
+
+The result of the elections, which were held on September 21, 1911,
+was the crushing defeat of the Liberal party. A Liberal majority of
+forty-four in a house of two hundred and twenty-one members was turned
+into a Conservative majority of forty-nine. Eight cabinet ministers went
+down to defeat. The Government had a slight majority in the Maritime
+Provinces and Quebec, and a large majority in the prairie West, but the
+overwhelming victory of the Opposition in Ontario, Manitoba, and British
+Columbia turned the day.
+
+The appeal to loyalty revealed much that was worthy and much that
+was sordid in Canadian life. It was well that a sturdy national
+self-reliance should be developed and expressed in the face of American
+prophets of "manifest destiny," and that men should be ready to set
+ideals above pocket. It was unfortunate that in order to demonstrate a
+loyalty which might have been taken for granted economic advantage
+was sacrificed; and it was disturbing to note the ease with which
+big interests with unlimited funds for organizing, advertising, and
+newspaper campaigning, could pervert national sentiment to serve their
+own ends. Yet this was possibly a stage through which Canada, like every
+young nation, had to pass; and the gentle art of twisting the lion's
+tail had proved a model for the practice of plucking the eagle's
+feathers.
+
+
+The growth of Canada brought her into closer touch with lands across the
+sea. Men, money, and merchandise came from East and West; and with their
+coming new problems faced the Government of the Dominion. With Europe
+they were trade questions to solve, and with Asia the more delicate
+issues arising out of oriental immigration.
+
+In 1907 the Canadian Government had established an intermediate tariff,
+with rates halfway between the general and the British preferential
+tariffs, for the express purpose of bargaining with other powers. In
+that year an agreement based substantially on these intermediate rates
+was negotiated with France, though protectionist opposition in the
+French Senate prevented ratification until 1910. Similar reciprocal
+arrangements were concluded in 1910 with Belgium, the Netherlands, and
+Italy. The manner of the negotiation was as significant as the matter.
+In the case of France the treaty was negotiated in Paris by two Canadian
+ministers, W.S. Fielding and L.P. Brodeur, appointed plenipotentiaries
+of His Majesty for that purpose, with the British Ambassador associated
+in what Mr. Arthur Balfour termed a "purely technical" capacity. In
+the case of the other countries even this formal recognition of the old
+colonial status was abandoned. The agreement with Italy was negotiated
+in Canada between "the Royal Consul of Italy for Canada, representing
+the government of the Kingdom of Italy, and the Minister of Finance
+of Canada, representing His Excellency the Governor General acting in
+conjunction with the King's Privy Council for Canada." The conclusions
+in these later instances were embodied in conventions, rather than
+formal treaties.
+
+With one country, however, tariff war reigned instead of treaty peace.
+In 1899 Germany subjected Canadian exports to her general or maximum
+tariff, because the Dominion refused to grant her the preferential rates
+reserved for members of the British Empire group of countries. After
+four years' deliberation Canada eventually retaliated by imposing on
+German goods a special surtax of thirty-three and one-third per
+cent. The trade of both countries suffered, but Germany's, being more
+specialized, much the more severely. After seven years' strife, Germany
+took the initiative in proposing a truce. In 1910 Canada agreed to admit
+German goods at the rates of the general--not the intermediate--tariff,
+while Germany in return waived her protest against the British
+preference and granted minimum rates on the most important Canadian
+exports.
+
+Oriental immigration had been an issue in Canada ever since Chinese
+navvies had been imported in the early eighties to work on the
+government sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Mine owners, fruit
+farmers, and contractors were anxious that the supply should continue
+unchecked; but, as in the United States, the economic objections of the
+labor unions and the political objections of the advocates of a "White
+Canada" carried the day.
+
+Chinese immigration had been restricted in 1885 by a head tax of $50 on
+all immigrants save officials, merchants, or scholars; in 1901 this tax
+was doubled; and in 1904 it was raised to $500. In each case the
+tax proved a barrier only for a year or two, when wages would rise
+sufficiently to warrant Orientals paying the higher toll to enter the
+Promised Land. Japanese immigrants did not come in large numbers until
+1906, when the activities of employment companies brought seven thousand
+Japanese by way of Hawaii. Agitators from the Pacific States fanned
+the flames of opposition in British Columbia, and anti-Chinese and
+anti-Japanese riots broke out in Vancouver in 1907. The Dominion
+Government then grappled with the question. Japan's national
+sensitiveness and her position as an ally of Great Britain called for
+diplomatic handling. A member of the Dominion Cabinet, Rodolphe Lemieux,
+succeeded in 1907 in negotiating at Tokio an agreement by which Japan
+herself undertook to restrict the number of passports issued annually to
+emigrants to Canada.
+
+The Hindu migration, which began in 1907, gave rise to a still more
+delicate situation. What did the British Empire mean, many a Hindu
+asked, if British subjects were to be barred from British lands? The
+only reply was that the British Government which still ruled India no
+longer ruled the Dominions, and that it was on the Dominions that
+the responsibility for the exclusion policy must rest. In 1909 Canada
+suggested that the Indian Government itself should limit emigration,
+but this policy did not meet with approval at the time. Failing in this
+measure, the Laurier Government fell back on a general clause in the
+Immigration Act prohibiting the entrance of immigrants except by direct
+passage from the country of origin and on a continuous ticket, a rule
+which effectually barred the Hindu because of the lack of any direct
+steamship line between India and Canada. An Order-in-Council further
+required that immigrants from all Asiatic countries must possess at
+least $200 on entering Canada. The Borden Government supplemented these
+restrictions by a special Order-in-Council in 1913 prohibiting the
+landing of artisans or unskilled laborers of any race at ports in
+British Columbia, ostensibly because of depression in the labor
+market. The leaders of the Hindu movement, with apparently some German
+assistance, determined to test these restrictions. In May, 1914, there
+arrived at Vancouver from Shanghai a Japanese ship carrying four
+hundred Sikhs from India. A few were admitted, as having been previously
+domiciled in Canada; the others, after careful inquiry, were refused
+admittance and ordered to be deported. Local police were driven away
+from the ship when attempting to enforce the order, and the Government
+ordered H.M.C.S. Rainbow to intervene. By a curious irony of history,
+the first occasion on which this first Canadian warship was called on to
+display force was in expelling from Canada the subjects of another part
+of the British Empire. Further trouble followed when the Sikhs reached
+Calcutta in September, 1914, for riots took place involving serious loss
+of life and later an abortive attempt at rebellion. Fortunately there
+were good prospects that the Indian Government would in future accept
+the proposal made by Canada in 1909. At the Imperial Conference of 1917,
+where representatives of India were present for the first time, it was
+agreed to recommend the principle of reciprocity in the treatment of
+immigrants, India thus being free to save her pride by imposing on
+men from the Dominions the same restrictions the Dominions imposed on
+immigrants from India.
+
+
+But all these dealings with lands across the sea paled into
+insignificance beside the task imposed on Canada by the Great War. In
+the sudden crisis the Dominion attained a place among the nations which
+the slower changes of peace time could scarcely have made possible in
+decades.
+
+When the war party in Germany and Austria-Hungary plunged Europe into
+the struggle the world had long been fearing, there was not a moment's
+hesitation on the part of the people of Canada. It was not merely the
+circumstance that technically Canada was at war when Britain was at war
+that led Canadians to instant action. The degree of participation, if
+not the fact of war, was wholly a matter for the separate Dominions.
+It was the deep and abiding sympathy with the mother country whose very
+existence was to be at stake. Later, with the unfolding of Germany's
+full designs of world dominance and the repeated display of her callous
+and ruthless policies, Canada comprehended the magnitude of the danger
+threatening all the world and grimly set herself to help end the menace
+of militarism once for all.
+
+On August 1, 1914, two days before Belgium was invaded, and three days
+before war between Britain and Germany had been declared, the Dominion
+Government cabled to London their firm assurance that the people of
+Canada would make every sacrifice necessary to secure the integrity and
+honor of the Empire and asked for suggestions as to the form aid should
+take. The financial and administrative measures the emergency demanded
+were carried out by Orders-in-Council in accordance with the scheme
+of defense which only a few months before had been drawn up in a "War
+Book". Two weeks later, Parliament met in a special four day session and
+without a dissenting voice voted the war credits the Government asked
+and conferred upon it special war powers of the widest scope. The
+country then set about providing men, money, and munitions of war.
+
+The day after war was declared, recruiting was begun for an
+expeditionary force of 21,000 men. Half as many more poured into the
+camp at Valcartier near Quebec; and by the middle of October this first
+Canadian contingent, over 30,000 strong, the largest body of troops
+which had ever crossed the Atlantic, was already in England, where
+its training was to be completed. As the war went on and all previous
+forecasts of its duration and its scale were far outrun, these numbers
+were multiplied many times. By the summer of 1917 over 400,000 men had
+been enrolled for service, and over 340,000 had already gone overseas,
+aside from over 25,000 Allied reservists.
+
+Naturally enough it was the young men of British birth who first
+responded in large numbers to the recruiting officer's appeal. A
+military background, vivid home memories, the enlistment of kinsmen or
+friends overseas, the frequent slightness of local ties, sent them
+forth in splendid and steady array. Then the call came home to the
+native-born, and particularly to Canadians of English speech. Few of
+them had dreamed of war, few had been trained even in militia musters;
+but in tens of thousands they volunteered. From French-speaking Canada
+the response was slower, in spite of the endeavors of the leaders of the
+Opposition as well as of the Government to encourage enlistment. In some
+measure this was only to be expected. Quebec was dominantly rural; its
+men married young, and the country parishes had little touch with the
+outside world. Its people had no racial sympathy with Britain and their
+connection with France had long been cut by the cessation of immigration
+from that country. Yet this is not the complete explanation of that
+aloofness which marked a great part of Quebec. Account must be taken
+also of the resentment caused by exaggerated versions of the treatment
+accorded the French-Canadian minority in the schools of Ontario and the
+West, and especially of the teaching of the Nationalists, led by Henri
+Bourassa, who opposed active Canadian participation in the war. Lack of
+tact on the part of the Government and reckless taunts from extremists
+in Ontario made the breach steadily wider. Yet there were many
+encouraging considerations. Another grandson of the leader of '37,
+Talbot Papineau, fell fighting bravely, and it was a French-Canadian
+battalion, Les Vingt Deuxiemes, which won the honors at Courcelette.
+
+When the war first broke out, no one thought of any but voluntary
+methods of enlistment. As the magnitude of the task came home to men
+and the example of Great Britain had its influence, voices began to be
+raised in favor of compulsion. Sir Robert Borden, the Premier, and Sir
+Wilfrid Laurier alike opposed the suggestion. Early in 1917 the adoption
+of conscription in the United States, and the need of reenforcements
+for the Canadian forces at the front led the Prime Minister, immediately
+after his return from the Imperial Conference in London, to bring down
+a measure for compulsory service. He urged in behalf of this course
+that the need for men was urgent beyond all question; that the voluntary
+system, wasteful and unfair at best, had ceased to bring more than six
+or seven thousand men a month, chiefly for other than infantry ranks;
+and that only by compulsion could Quebec be brought to shoulder her fair
+share and the slackers in all the provinces be made to rise to the need.
+It was contended, on the other hand, that great as was the need for men,
+the need for food, which Canada could best of all countries supply, was
+greater still; that voluntary recruiting had yielded over four hundred
+thousand men, proportionately equivalent to six million from the United
+States, and was slackening only because the reservoir was nearly drained
+dry; and that Quebec could be brought into line more effectively by
+conciliation than by compulsion.
+
+The issue of conscription brought to an end the political truce which
+had been declared in August, 1914. The keener partisans on both
+sides had not long been able to abide on the heights of non-political
+patriotism which they had occupied in the first generous weeks of the
+war. But the public was weary of party cries and called for unity.
+Suggestions of a coalition were made at different times, but the party
+in power, new to the sweets of office, confident of its capacity,
+and backed by a strong majority, gave little heed to the demand. Now,
+however, the strong popular opposition offered to the announcement of
+conscription led the Prime Minister to propose to Sir Wilfrid Laurier
+a coalition Government on a conscription basis. Sir Wilfrid, while
+continuing to express his desire to cooperate in any way that would
+advance the common cause, declined to enter a coalition to carry out a
+programme decided upon without consultation and likely, in his view,
+to wreck national unity without securing any compensating increase in
+numbers beyond what a vigorous and sympathetic voluntary campaign could
+yet obtain.
+
+For months negotiations continued within Parliament and without. The
+Military Service Act was passed in August, 1917, with the support of
+the majority of the English-speaking members of the Opposition. Then the
+Government, which had already secured the passage of an Act providing
+for taking the votes of the soldiers overseas, forced through under
+closure a measure depriving of the franchise all aliens of enemy birth
+or speech who had been admitted to citizenship since 1902, and giving
+a vote to every adult woman relative of a soldier on active service.
+Victory for the Government now appeared certain. Leading English-peaking
+Liberals, particularly from the West, convinced that conscription was
+necessary to keep Canada's forces up to the need, or that the War Times
+Election Act made opposition hopeless, decided to accept Sir Robert
+Borden's offer of seats in a coalition Cabinet.
+
+In the election of December, 1917, in which passion and prejudice were
+stirred as never before in the history of Canada, the Unionist forces
+won by a sweeping majority. Ontario and the West were almost solidly
+behind the Government in the number of members elected, Quebec as
+solidly against it, and the Maritime Provinces nearly evenly
+divided. The soldiers' vote, contrary to Australian experience, was
+overwhelmingly for conscription. The Laurier Liberals polled more
+civilian votes in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia, and in
+the Dominion as a whole, than the united Liberal party had received in
+the Reciprocity election of 1911. The increase in the Unionist popular
+vote was still greater, however, and gave the Government fifty-eight
+per cent of the popular vote and sixty-five per cent of the seats in the
+House. Confidence in the administrative capacity of the new Government,
+the belief that it would be more vigorous in carrying on the war, the
+desire to make Quebec do its share, the influence of the leaders of
+the Western Liberals and of the Grain Growers' Associations, wholesale
+promises of exemption to farmers, and the working of the new franchise
+law all had their part in the result. Eight months after the Military
+Service Act was passed, it had added only twenty thousand men to the
+nearly five hundred thousand volunteers; but steps were then taken to
+cancel exemptions and to simplify the machinery of administration. Some
+eighty thousand men were raised under conscription, but the war, so far
+as Canada was concerned, was fought and won by volunteers.
+
+"The self-governing British colonies," wrote Bernhardi before the war,
+"have at their disposal a militia, which is sometimes only in process
+of formation. They can be completely ignored so far as concerns any
+European theater of war." This contemptuous forecast might have been
+justified had German expectations of a short war been fulfilled. Though
+large and increasing sums had in recent years been spent on the Canadian
+militia and on a small permanent force, the work of building up an
+army on the scale the war demanded had virtually to be begun from the
+foundation. It was pushed ahead with vigor, under the direction, for the
+first three years, of the Minister of Militia, General Sir Sam Hughes.
+Many mistakes were made. Complaints of waste in supply departments
+and of slackness of discipline among the troops were rife in the early
+months. But the work went on; and when the testing time came, Canada's
+civilian soldiers held their own with any veterans on either side the
+long line of trenches.
+
+It was in April, 1915, at the second battle of Ypres--or, as it is more
+often termed in Canada, St. Julien or Langemarck--that the quality of
+the men of the first contingent was blazoned forth. The Germans had
+launched a determined attack on the junction of the French and Canadian
+forces, seeking to drive through to Calais. The use, for the first time,
+of asphyxiating gases drove back in confusion the French colonial troops
+on the left of the Canadians. Attacked and outflanked by a German army
+of 150,000 men, four Canadian brigades, immensely inferior in heavy
+artillery and tortured by the poisonous fumes, filled the gap, hanging
+on doggedly day and night until reenforcements came and Calais was
+saved. In sober retrospection it was almost incredible that the thin
+khaki line had held against the overwhelming odds which faced it. A few
+weeks later, at Givenchy and Festubert, in the same bloody salient of
+Ypres, the Canadian division displayed equal courage with hardly equal
+success. In the spring of 1916, when the Canadian forces grew first to
+three and then to four divisions, heavy toll was taken at St. Eloi and
+Sanctuary Wood.
+
+When they were shifted from the Ypres sector to the Somme, the dashing
+success at Courcelette showed them as efficient in offense as in
+defense. In 1917 a Canadian general, Sir Arthur Currie, three years
+before only a business man of Vancouver, took command of the Canadian
+troops. The capture of Vimy Ridge, key to the whole Arras position,
+after months of careful preparation, the hard-fought struggle for Lens,
+and toward the close of the year the winning of the Passchendaele Ridge,
+at heavy cost, were instances of the increasing scale and importance of
+the operations entrusted to Currie's men.
+
+In the closing year of the war the Canadian corps played a still more
+distinctive and essential part. During the early months of 1918, when
+the Germans were making their desperate thrusts for Paris and the
+Channel, the Canadians held little of the line that was attacked.
+Their divisions had been withdrawn in turn for special training in open
+warfare movements, in close cooperation with tanks and air forces. When
+the time came to launch the Allied offensive, they were ready. It
+was Canadian troops who broke the hitherto unbreakable Wotan line, or
+Drocourt-Queant switch; it was Canadians who served as the spearhead in
+the decisive thrust against Cambrai; and it was Canadians who captured
+Mons, the last German stronghold taken before the armistice was
+signed, and thus ended the war at the very spot where the British "Old
+Contemptibles" had begun their dogged fight four years before.
+
+Through all the years of war the Canadian forces never lost a gun nor
+retired from a position they had consolidated. Canadians were the first
+to practice trench raiding; and Canadian cadets thronged that branch of
+the service, the Royal Flying Corps, where steady nerves and individual
+initiative were at a premium. In countless actions they proved their
+fitness to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best that Britain and
+France and the United States could send: they asked no more than that.
+The casualty list of 220,000 men, of whom 60,000 sleep forever in the
+fields of France and Flanders and in the plains of England, witnesses
+the price this people of eight millions paid as its share in the task of
+freeing the world from tyranny.
+
+The realization that in a world war not merely the men in the trenches
+but the whole nation could and must be counted as part of the fighting
+force was slow in coming in Canada as in other democratic and unwarlike
+lands. Slowly the industry of the country was adjusted to a war basis.
+When the conflict broke out, the country was pulling itself together
+after the sudden collapse of the speculative boom of the preceding
+decade. For a time men were content to hold their organization together
+and to avert the slackening of trade and the spread of unemployment
+which they feared. Then, as the industrial needs and opportunities of
+the war became clear, they rallied. Field and factory vied in expansion,
+and the Canadian contribution of food and munitions provided a very
+substantial share of the Allies' needs. Exports increased threefold, and
+the total trade was more than doubled as compared with the largest year
+before the war.
+
+The financing of the war and of the industrial expansion which
+accompanied it was a heavy task. For years Canada had looked to Great
+Britain for a large share alike of public and of private borrowings. Now
+it became necessary not merely to find at home all the capital required
+for ordinary development but to meet the burden of war expenditure,
+and later to advance to Great Britain the funds she required for
+her purchase of supplies in Canada. The task was made easier by the
+effective working of a banking system which had many times proved its
+soundness and its flexibility. When the money market of Britain was
+no longer open to overseas borrowers, the Dominion first turned to the
+United States, where several federal and provincial loans were floated,
+and later to her own resources. Domestic loans were issued on an
+increasing scale and with increasing success, and the Victory Loan of
+1918 enrolled one out of every eight Canadians among its subscribers.
+Taxation reached an adequate basis more slowly. Inertia and the
+influence of business interests led the Government to cling for the
+first two years to customs and excise duties as its main reliance.
+Then excess profits and income taxes of steadily increasing weight were
+imposed, and the burdens were distributed more fairly. The Dominion was
+able not only to meet the whole expenditure of its armed forces but to
+reverse the relations which existed before the war and to become, as
+far as current liabilities went, a creditor rather than a debtor of the
+United Kingdom.
+
+It was not merely the financial relations of Canada with the United
+Kingdom which required readjustment. The service and the sacrifices
+which the Dominions had made in the common cause rendered it imperative
+that the political relations between the different parts of the Empire
+should be put on a more definite and equal basis. The feeling was
+widespread that the last remnants of the old colonial subordination must
+be removed and that the control exercised by the Dominions should be
+extended over the whole field of foreign affairs.
+
+The Imperial Conference met in London in the spring of 1917. At special
+War Cabinet meetings the representatives of the Dominions discussed war
+plans and peace terms with the leaders of Britain. It was decided to
+hold a Conference immediately after the end of the war to discuss the
+future constitutional organization of the Empire. Premier Borden and
+General Smuts both came out strongly against the projects of imperial
+parliamentary federation which aggressive organizations in Britain
+and in some of the Dominions had been urging. The Conference of 1917
+recorded its view that any coming readjustment must be based on a
+full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an imperial
+commonwealth; that it should recognize the right of the Dominions and of
+India to an adequate voice in foreign policy; and that it should provide
+effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important
+matters of common concern and for such concerted action as the several
+Governments should determine. The policy of alliance, of cooperation
+between the Governments of the equal and independent states of the
+Empire, searchingly tested and amply justified by the war, had compelled
+assent.
+
+The coming of peace gave occasion for a wider and more formal
+recognition of the new international status of the Dominions. It had
+first been proposed that the British Empire should appear as a unit,
+with the representatives of the Dominions present merely in an advisory
+capacity or participating in turn as members of the British delegation.
+The Dominion statesmen assembled in London and Paris declined to
+assent to this proposal, and insisted upon representation in the Peace
+Conference and in the League of Nations in their own right. The British
+Government, after some debate, acceded, and, with more difficulty,
+the consent of the leading Allies was won. The representatives of the
+Dominions signed the treaty with Germany on behalf of their respective
+countries, and each Dominion, with India, was made a member of the
+League. At the same time only the British Empire, and not any of the
+Dominions, was given a place in the real organ of power, the Executive
+Council of the League, and in many respects the exact relationship
+between the United Kingdom and the other parts of the Empire in
+international affairs was left ambiguous, for later events and counsel
+to determine. Many French and American observers who had not kept in
+close touch with the growth of national consciousness within the British
+Empire were apprehensive lest this plan should prove a deep-laid scheme
+for multiplying British influence in the Conference and the League.
+Some misunderstanding was natural in view not only of the unprecedented
+character of the Empire's development and polity, but of the incomplete
+and ambiguous nature of the compromise affected at Paris between the
+nationalist and the imperialist tendencies within the Empire. Yet the
+reluctance of the British imperialists of the straiter sect to accede
+to the new arrangement, and the independence of action of the Dominion
+representatives at the Conference, as in the stand of Premier Hughes of
+Australia on the Japanese demand for recognition of racial equality and
+in the statement of protest by General Smuts of South Africa on signing
+the treaty, made it clear that the Dominions would not be merely echoes.
+Borden and Botha and Smuts, though new to the ways of diplomacy, proved
+that in clear understanding of the broader issues and in moderation of
+policy and temper they could bear comparison with any of the leaders of
+the older nations.
+
+
+The war also brought changes in the relations between Canada and her
+great neighbor. For a time there was danger that it would erect a
+barrier of differing ideals and contrary experience. When month after
+month went by with the United States still clinging to its policy
+of neutrality, while long lists of wounded and dead and missing were
+filling Canadian newspapers, a quiet but deep resentment, not without
+a touch of conscious superiority, developed in many quarters in the
+Dominion. Yet there were others who realized how difficult and how
+necessary it was for the United States to attain complete unity of
+purpose before entering the war, and how different its position was
+from that of Canada, where the political tie with Britain had brought
+immediate action more instinctive than reasoned. It was remembered, too,
+that in the first 360,000 Canadians who went overseas, there were 12,000
+men of American birth, including both residents in Canada and men who
+had crossed the border to enlist. When the patience of the United States
+was at last exhausted and it took its place in the ranks of the nations
+fighting for freedom, the joy of Canadians was unbounded. The entrance
+of the United States into the war assured not only the triumph of
+democracy in Europe but the continuance and extension of frank and
+friendly relations between the democracies of North America. As the war
+went on and Canada and the United States were led more and more to pool
+their united resources, to cooperate in finance and in the supply
+of coal, iron, steel, wheat, and other war essentials, countless new
+strands were woven into the bond that held the two countries together.
+Nor was it material unity alone that was attained; in the utterances of
+the head of the Republic the highest aspirations of Canadians for the
+future ordering of the world found incomparable expression.
+
+Canada had done what she could to assure the triumph of right in the
+war. Not less did she believe that she had a contribution to make
+toward that new ordering of the world after the war which alone could
+compensate her for the blood and treasure she had spent. It would be her
+mission to bind together in friendship and common aspirations the two
+larger English-speaking states, with one of which she was linked by
+history and with the other by geography. To the world in general
+Canada had to offer that achievement of difference in unity, that
+reconciliation of liberty with peace and order, which the British Empire
+was struggling to attain along paths in which the Dominion had been
+the chief pioneer. "In the British Commonwealth of Nations," declared
+General Smuts, "this transition from the old legalistic idea of
+political sovereignty based on force to the new social idea of
+constitutional freedom based on consent, has been gradually evolving for
+more than a century. And the elements of the future world government,
+which will no longer rest on the imperial ideas adopted from the Roman
+law, are already in operation in our Commonwealth of Nations and will
+rapidly develop in the near future." This may seem an idealistic aim;
+yet, as Canada's Prime Minister asked a New York audience in 1916, "What
+great and enduring achievement has the world ever accomplished that was
+not based on idealism?"
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+For the whole period since 1760 the most comprehensive and thorough work
+is "Canada and its Provinces", edited by A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty, 23
+vols. (1914). W. Kingsford's "History of Canada", 10 vols. (1887-1898),
+is badly written but is an ample storehouse of material. The "Chronicles
+of Canada" series (1914-1916) covers the whole field in a number of
+popular volumes, of which several are listed below. F. X. Garneau's
+"Histoire du Canada" (1845-1848; new edition, edited by Hector Garneau,
+1913-), the classical French-Canadian record of the development of
+Canada down to 1840, is able and moderate in tone, though considered by
+some critics not sufficiently appreciative of the Church.
+
+Of brief surveys of Canada's history the best are W. L. Grant's "History
+of Canada" (1914) and H. E. Egerton's "Canada" (1908).
+
+The primary sources are abundant. The Dominion Archives have made a
+remarkable collection of original official and private papers and of
+transcripts of documents from London and Paris. See D. W. Parker, "A
+Guide to the Documents in the Manuscript Room at the Public Archives of
+Canada" (1914). Many of these documents are calendared in the "Report on
+Canadian Archives" (1882 to date), and complete reprints, systematically
+arranged and competently annotated, are being issued by the Archives
+Branch, of which A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty, "Documents Relating to the
+Constitutional History of Canada", 1759-1791, and Doughty and McArthur,
+"Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada", 1791-1818,
+have already appeared. A useful collection of speeches and dispatches
+is found in H. E. Egerton and W. L. Grant, "Canadian Constitutional
+Development" (1907), and W. P. M. Kennedy has edited a somewhat larger
+collection, "Documents of the Canadian Constitution", 1759-1915 (1918).
+The later Sessional Papers and Hansards or Parliamentary Debates are
+easily accessible. Files of the older newspapers, such as the Halifax
+"Chronicle" (1820 to date, with changes of title), Montreal "Gazette"
+(1778 to date), Toronto "Globe" (1844 to date), "Manitoba Free Press"
+(1879 to date), Victoria "Colonist" (1858 to date), are invaluable.
+"The Dominion Annual Register and Review", ed. by H. J. Morgan, 8 vols.
+(1879-1887) and "The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs", by John
+Castell Hopkins (1901 to date), are useful for the periods covered.
+
+For the first chapter, Sir Charles P. Lucas, "A History of Canada",
+1765-1812 (1909) and A. G. Bradley, "The Making of Canada" (1908) are
+the best single volumes. William Wood, "The Father of British Canada"
+("Chronicles of Canada", 1916), records Carleton's defense of Canada
+in the Revolutionary War; and Justin H. Smith's "Our Struggle for the
+Fourteenth Colony" (1907) is a scholarly and detailed account of the
+same period from an American standpoint. Victor Con's "The Province of
+Quebec and the Early American Revolution" (1896), with a review of the
+same by Adam Shortt in the "Review of Historical Publications Relating
+to Canada", vol. 1 (University of Toronto, 1897), and C. W. Alvord's
+"The Mississippi Valley in British Politics", 2 vols. (1917) should
+be consulted for an interpretation of the Quebec Act. For the general
+reader, W. S. Wallace's "The United Empire Loyalists" ("Chronicles of
+Canada", 1914) supersedes the earlier Canadian compilations; C. H.
+Van Tyne's "The Loyalists in the American Revolution" (1902) and A. C.
+Flick's "Loyalism in New York during the American Revolution" (1901)
+embody careful researches by two American scholars. The War of 1812 is
+most competently treated by William Wood in "The War with the United
+States" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1915); the naval aspects are sketched
+in Theodore Roosevelt's "The Naval War of 1812" (1882) and analyzed
+scientifically in A. T. Mahan's "Sea Power in its Relations to the War
+of 1812" (1905).
+
+For the period, 1815-1841, W. S. Wallace's "The Family Compact"
+("Chronicles of Canada", 1915) and A. D. De Celles's "The Patriotes of
+'37" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1916) are the most concise summaries. J.
+C. Dent's "The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion" (1885) is biased
+but careful and readable. "William Lyon Mackenzie", by Charles Lindsey,
+revised by G. G. S. Lindsey (1908), is a sober defense of Mackenzie by
+his son-in-law and grandson. Robert Christie's "A History of the
+Late Province of Lower Canada", 6 vols. (1848-1866) preserves much
+contemporary material. There are few secondary books taking the
+anti-popular side: T. C. Haliburton's "The Bubbles of Canada" (1839)
+records Sam Slick's opposition to reform; C. W. Robinson's "Life of
+Sir John Beverley Robinson" (1904) is a lifeless record of the greatest
+Compact leader. Lord Durham's "Report on the Affairs of British North
+America" (1839; available in Methuen reprint, 1902, or with introduction
+and notes by Sir Charles Lucas, 3 vols., 1912) is indispensable. For the
+Union period there are several political biographies available. G. M.
+Wrong's "The Earl of Elgin" (1905), John Lewis's "George Brown" (1906),
+W. L. Grant's "The Tribune of Nova Scotia" ("Chronicles of Canada",
+1915), J. Pope's "Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander
+Macdonald", 2 vols. (1894), J. Boyd's "Sir George Etienne Cartier"
+(1914), and O. D. Skelton's "Life and Times of Sir A. T. Galt"
+(1919), cover the political developments from various angles. A. H.
+U. Colquhoun's "The Fathers of Confederation" ("Chronicles of
+Canada", 1916) is a clear and impartial account of the achievement of
+Confederation; while M. O. Hammond's "Canadian Confederation and its
+Leaders" (1917) records the service of each of its chief architects.
+
+For the years since Confederation biographies again give the most
+accessible record. Sir John S. Willison's "Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the
+Liberal Party" (1903) is the best political biography yet written in
+Canada. Sir Richard Cartwright's Reminiscences (1912) reflects that
+statesman's individual and pungent views of affairs, while Sir Charles
+Tupper's "Recollections of Sixty Years" (1914) and John Castell
+Hopkins's "Life and Work of Sir John Thompson" (1895) give a
+Conservative version of the period. Sir Joseph Pope's "The Day of Sir
+John Macdonald" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1915), and O. D. Skelton's "The
+Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1916) between them
+cover the whole period briefly. L. J. Burpee's "Sandford Fleming" (1915)
+is one of the few biographies dealing with industrial as distinct from
+political leaders. Imperial relations may be studied in G. R. Parkin's
+"Imperial Federation, the Problem of National Unity" (1892) and in
+L. Curtis's "The Problem of the Commonwealth" (1916), which advocate
+imperial federation, and in R. Jebb's "The Britannic Question; a Survey
+of Alternatives" (1913), J. S. Ewart's "The Kingdom Papers" (1912-), and
+A. B. Keith's "Imperial Unity and the Dominions" (1916), which criticize
+that solution from different standpoints. The "Reports" of the Imperial
+Conferences of 1887, 1894, 1897, 1902, 1907, 1911, 1917, are of much
+value. Relations with the United States are discussed judiciously in W.
+A. Dunning's "The British Empire and the United States" (1914). Phases
+of Canada's recent development other than political are covered best
+in the volumes of "Canada and its Provinces", a History of the Canadian
+people and their institutions, edited by A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty.
+
+A useful guide to recent books dealing with Canadian history will be
+found in the annual "Review of Historical Publications Relating to
+Canada", published by the University of Toronto (1896 to date).
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Canadian Dominion, by Oscar D. Skelton
+
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