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Title: Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics
Date of first publication: 1922
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
  Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1922 (First Edition)
Author: John Wesley Dafoe (1866-1944)
Date first posted: 20 August 2007
Date last updated: 20 August 2007
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LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS

By J. W. DAFOE

THOMAS ALLEN
PUBLISHER, TORONTO


Copyright, Canada, 1922
by Thomas Allen

Printed in Canada




TO E. H. MACKLIN
IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF A CONSTANT
FRIENDSHIP.




PREFACE

The four articles which make up this volume were originally published in
successive issues of the Monthly Book Review of the _Manitoba Free
Press_ and are herewith assembled in book form in response to what
appears to be a somewhat general request that they be made available in
a more permanent form.

J. W. D.

October 13 1922.




[Transcriber's Notes: Added missing item in Table of Contents, Fixed
paragraphs that were not indicated in original text file, and added
italics where applicable. Corrected spelling of Macchiavelli to
Machiavelli]




CONTENTS

I. LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS

II. LAURIER AND EMPIRE RELATIONSHIPS

III. FIFTEEN YEARS OF PREMIERSHIP

IV. LAURIER: DEFEAT AND ANTI-CLIMAX





I.--LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS

THE CLIMB TO POWER.


The life story of Laurier by Oscar D. Skelton is the official biography
of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Official biographies of public men have their
uses; they supply material for the definitive biography which in the
case of a great man is not likely to be written by one who knew him in
the flesh. An English public man, who was also a novelist and poet,
wrote:

    "Ne'er of the living can the living judge,
    Too blind the affection or too fresh the grudge."


The limitation is equally true in the case of one like Sir Wilfrid
Laurier who, though dead, will be a factor of moment in our politics for
at least another generation. Professor Skelton's book is interesting and
valuable, but not conclusive. The first volume is a political history of
Canada from the sixties until 1896, with Laurier in the setting at first
inconspicuously but growing to greatness and leadership. For the fifteen
years of premiership the biographer is concerned lest Sir Wilfrid should
not get the fullest credit for whatever was achieved; while in dealing
with the period after 1911, constituting the anti-climax of Laurier's
career, Mr. Skelton is avowedly the alert and eager partisan, bound to
find his hero right and all those who disagreed with him wrong. Sir
Wilfrid Laurier is described in the preface as "the finest and simplest
gentleman, the noblest and most unselfish man it has ever been my good
fortune to know;" and the work is faithfully devoted to the elucidation
of this theme. Men may fail to be heroes to their valets but they are
more successful with their biographers. The final appraisement of Sir
Wilfrid, to be written perhaps fifty years hence by some tolerant and
impartial historian, will probably not be an echo of Prof. Skelton's
judgment. It will perhaps put Sir Wilfrid higher than Prof. Skelton
does and yet not quite so high; an abler man but one not quite so
preternaturally good; a man who had affinities with Machiavelli as well
as with Sir Galahad.

The Laurier of the first volume is an appealing, engaging and most
attractive personality. There was about his earlier career something
romantic and compelling. In almost one rush he passed from the
comparative obscurity of a new member in 1874 to the leadership of the
French Liberals in 1877; and then he suffered a decline which seemed to
mark him as one of those political shooting stars which blaze in the
firmament for a season and then go black; like Felix Geoffrion who,
though saluted by Laurier in 1874 as the coming leader, never made any
impress upon his times. A political accident, fortunate for him, opened
the gates again to a career; and he set his foot upon a road which took
him very far.

The writer made acquaintance with Laurier in the Dominion session of
1884. He was then in his forty-third year; but in the judgment of many
his career was over. His interest in politics was, apparently, of the
slightest. He was deskmate to Blake, who carried on a tremendous
campaign that session against the government's C. P. R. proposals.
Laurier's political activities consisted chiefly of being an acting
secretary of sorts to the Liberal leader. He kept his references in
order; handed him Hansards and blue-books in turn; summoned the pages to
clear away the impedimenta and to keep the glass of water
replenished--little services which it was clear he was glad to do for
one who engaged his ardent affection and admiration. There were memories
in the house of Laurier's eloquence; but memories only. During this
session he was almost silent. The tall, courtly figure was a familiar
sight in the chamber and in the library--particularly in the library,
where he could be found every day ensconced in some congenial alcove;
but the golden voice was silent. It was known that his friends were
concerned about his health.


LAURIER AND THE RIEL AGITATION

The "accident" which restored Laurier to public life and opened up for
him an extraordinary career was the Riel rebellion of 1885. In the
session of 1885, the rebellion being then in progress, he was heard from
to some purpose on the subject of the ill treatment of the Saskatchewan
half-breeds by the Dominion government. The execution of Riel in the
following November changed the whole course of Canadian politics. It
pulled the foundations from under the Conservative party by destroying
the position of supremacy which it had held for a generation in the most
Conservative of provinces and condemned it to a slow decline to the ruin
of to-day; and it profoundly affected the Liberal party, giving it a
new orientation and producing the leader who was to make it the
dominating force in Canadian politics. These things were not realized at
the time, but they are clear enough in retrospect. Party policy, party
discipline, party philosophy are all determined by the way the
constituent elements of the party combine; and the shifting from the
Conservative to the Liberal party of the political weight of Quebec, not
as the result of any profound change of conviction but under the
influence of a powerful racial emotion, was bound to register itself in
time in the party outlook and morale. The current of the older tradition
ran strong for some time, but within the space of about twenty years
the party was pretty thoroughly transformed. The Liberal party of to-day
with its complete dependence upon the solid support it gets in Quebec is
the ultimate result of the forces which came into play as the result of
the hanging of Riel.

After the lapse of so many years there is no need for lack of candor in
discussing the events of 1885. To put it plainly Riel's fate turned
almost entirely upon political considerations. Which was the less
dangerous course,--to reprieve him or let him hang? The issue was
canvassed back and forth by the distracted ministry up to the day before
that fixed for the execution when a decision was reached to let the law
take its course. The feeling in Quebec in support of the commutation was
so intense and overwhelming that it was accepted as a matter of course
that Riel would be reprieved; and the news of the contrary decision was
to them, as Professor Skelton says, "unbelievable." The actual
announcement of the hanging was a match to a powder magazine. That night
there were mobs on the streets of Montreal and Sir John Macdonald was
burned in effigy in Dominion square. On the following Sunday forty
thousand people swarmed around the hustings on Champ de Mars and heard
the government denounced in every conceivable term of verbal violence by
speakers of every tinge of political belief. This outpouring of a common
indignation with its obliteration of all the usual lines of demarcation
was the result of the "wounding of the national self-esteem" by the
flouting of the demand for leniency, as it was put by La Minerve.
Mercier put it still more strongly when he declared that "the murder of
Riel was a declaration of war upon French Canadian influence in
Confederation." A binding cement for this union of elements ordinarily
at war was sought for in the creation of the "parti national" which a
year later captured the provincial Conservative citadel at Quebec and
turned it over to Honore Mercier.

This violent racial movement raged unchecked in the provincial arena,
but in the federal field it was held in leash by Laurier. That he saw
the possibilities of the situation is not to be doubted. He took part in
the demonstration on Champ de Mars and in his speech 'made a
declaration--"Had I been born on the banks of the Saskatchewan I myself
would have shouldered a musket"--which riveted nation-wide attention
upon him. Laurier followed this by his impassioned apology for the
half-breeds and their leader in the House of Commons, of which
deliverance Thomas White, of the assailed ministry, justly said: "It was
the finest parliamentary speech ever pronounced in the parliament of
Canada since Confederation." In the debate on the execution of Riel all
the orators of parliament took part. It was the occasion for one of
Blake's greatest efforts. Sir John Thompson, in his reply to Blake,
revealed himself to parliament and the country as one worthy of crossing
swords with the great Liberal tribune. But they and all the other "big
guns" of the Commons were thrown into complete eclipse by Laurier's
performance. It is easy to recall after the lapse of thirty-six years
the extraordinary impression which that speech made upon the great
audience which heard it--a crowded House of Commons and the public
galleries packed to the roof.

In the early winter of 1886-7 Laurier went boldly into Ontario where,
addressing great audiences in Toronto, London and other points, he
defended his position and preferred his indictment against the
government. This was Laurier's first introduction to Ontario, under
circumstances which, while actually threatening, were in reality
auspicious. It was at once an exhibition of moral and physical courage
and a manifestation of Laurier's remarkable qualities as a public
speaker. Within a few months Laurier passed from the comparative
obscurity to which he had condemned himself by his apparent indifference
to politics to a position in public life where he divided public
attention and interest with Edward Blake and Sir John Macdonald. When a
few months later Blake, in a rare fit of the sulks, retired to his tent,
refusing to play any longer with people who did not appreciate his
abilities, Laurier succeeded to the leadership--apparently upon the
nomination of Blake, actually at the imperious call of those inescapable
forces and interests which men call Destiny.


LEADERSHIP AND THE ROAD TO IT.

Laurier, then in his 46th year, became leader of the Liberal party in
June, 1887. It was supposedly a tentative experimental choice; but the
leadership thus begun ended only with his death in February, 1919,
nearly thirty-two years later. Laurier was a French Canadian of the
ninth generation. His first Canadian ancestor, Augustin Hebert, was one
of the little band of soldier colonists who, under the leadership of
Maisonneuve founded Montreal in 1641. Hebert's granddaughter married a
soldier of the regiment Carignan-Salieres, Franois Cotineau dit
Champlaurier. The Heberts were from Normandy, Cotineau from Savoy. From
this merging of northern and southern French strains the Canadian family
of Laurier resulted; this name was first assumed by the grandson of the
soldier ancestor. The record of the first thirty years of Wilfrid
Laurier's life was indistinguishable from that of scores of other
French-Canadian professional men. Born in the country (St. Lin, Nov.
20, 1841) of parents in moderate circumstances; educated at one of the
numerous little country colleges; a student at law in Montreal; a young
and struggling lawyer, interested in politics and addicted upon occasion
to political journalism.--French-Canadians by the hundreds have
travelled that road. A fortunate combination of circumstances took him
out of the struggle for a place at the Montreal bar and gave him a
practice in the country combined with the editorship of a Liberal
weekly, a position which made him at once a figure of some local
prominence. Laurier's personal charm and obvious capacity for politics
marked him at once for local leadership. At the age of 30 he was sent to
the Quebec legislature as representative of the constituency of Drummond
and Arthabaska; and three years later he went to Ottawa. The rapid
retirement of the Rouge leaders, Dorion and Fournier to the bench and
Letellier to the lieutenant-governorship of Quebec, opened the way for
early promotion, and in 1877 he entered the cabinet of Alex. Mackenzie
and assumed at the same time the leadership of the French Liberals.
Defeated in Drummond-Arthabaska upon seeking re-election he was taken to
its heart by Quebec East and continued to represent that constituency
for an unbroken period of forty years. He went out of office with
Mackenzie in 1878, and thereafter his career which had begun so
promisingly dwindled almost to extinction until the events already noted
called him back to the lists and opened for him the doors of
opportunity.

When Wilfrid Laurier went to Montreal in 1861 he began the study of law
in the office of Rodolphe Laflamme, a leading figure in the Rouge
political group; and he joined L'Institut Canadien already far advanced
in the struggle with the church which was later to result in open
warfare. Those two acts revealed his political affiliations and fixed
the environment in which he was to move during the plastic twenties. Ten
years had passed since a group of ardent young men, infected with the
principles and enthusiasm of 1848, of which Papineau returning from
exile in Paris was the apostle, had stormed the constituencies of Lower
Canada and had appeared in the parliament of Canada as a radical,
free-thinking, ultra-Democratic party, bearing proudly the badge of
"Rouge"; and the passage of time was beginning to temper their views
with a tinge of sobriety. The church, however, had them all in her black
books and Bishop Bourget, that incomparable zealot and bigot, was
determined to destroy them politically and spiritually, to whip them
into submission. The struggle raged chiefly in the sixties about
L'Institut Canadien, frowned upon by the church because it had books in
its library which were banned by the Index and because it afforded a
free forum for discussion. When Confederation cut the legislative
connection between Upper and Lower Canada the church felt itself free
to proceed to extremes in the Catholic province of Quebec and embarked
upon that campaign of political proscription which ultimately reached a
point where even the Rome of Pius IX. felt it necessary to intervene.

In this great battle for political and intellectual freedom the young
Laurier played his part manfully. He boldly joined L'Institut Canadien,
though it lay under the shadow of Bishop Bourget's minatory pastoral;
and became an active member and officer. He was one of a committee which
tried unavailingly to effect an understanding with Bishop Bourget. When
he left Montreal in 1866 he was first vice-president of the Institute.
His native caution and prudence and his natural bent towards moderation
and accommodation enabled him to play a great and growing, though
non-spectacular, part in the struggle against the church's pretensions.
As his authority grew in the party he discouraged the excesses in theory
and speech which invited the Episcopal thunders; even in his earliest
days his radicalism was of a decidedly Whiggish type and his political
color was several shades milder than the fiery red of Papineau, Dorion
and Laflamme. Under his guidance the Rouge party was to be transformed
in outlook, mentality and convictions into something very different
indeed; but this was still far in the future. But towards the church's
pretensions to control the political convictions of its adherents he
presented an unyielding front. On the eve of his assumption of the
leadership of the French Liberals he discussed at Quebec, June 1877, the
question of the political relations between church and state and the
rights of the individual in one of his most notable addresses. In this
he vindicated, with eloquence and courage, the right of the individual
to be both Catholic and Liberal, and challenged the policy of clerical
intimidation which had made the leaders of the church nothing but the
tools and chore-boys of Hector Langevin, the Tory leader in the
province. It may rightly be assumed that it was something more than a
coincidence that not long after the delivery of this speech, Rome put a
bit in the mouth of the champing Quebec ecclesiastics. This remained
Laurier's most solid achievement up to the time when he was called to
the leadership of the Dominion Liberal party.


DOUBTS AND HESITATIONS

Laurier's accession to leadership caused doubt and heart-burnings among
the leaders of Ontario Liberalism. Still under the influence of the Geo.
Brown tradition of suspicion of Quebec they felt uneasy at the transfer
of the sceptre to Laurier, French by inheritance, Catholic in religion,
with a political experience derived from dealing with the feelings,
ambitions and prejudices of a province which was to them an unknown
world. Part of the doubt arose from misconception of the qualities of
Laurier. As a hard-bitten, time-worn party fighter, with an experience
going back to pre-confederation days, said to the writer: "Laurier will
never make a leader; he has not enough of the devil in him." This meant,
in the brisk terminology of to-day, that he could not deliver the rough
stuff. This doubter and his fellows had yet to learn that the flashing
rapier in the hands of the swordsman makes a completer and far less
messy job than the bludgeon; and that there is in politics room for the
delicate art of jiu-jitsu. Further, the Ontario mind was under the sway
of that singular misconception, so common to Britishers, that a
Frenchman by temperament is gay, romantic, inconsequent, with few
reserves of will and perseverance. Whereas the good French mind is about
the coolest, clearest, least emotional instrument of the kind that there
is. The courtesy, grace, charm, literary and artistic ability that go
with it are merely accessories; they are the feathers on the arrow that
help it in its flight from the twanging bow-cord to the bull's-eye.
Laurier's mind was typically French with something also Italianate about
it, an inheritance perhaps from the long-dead Savoyard ancestor who
brought the name to this continent. Later when Laurier had proved his
quality and held firmly in his hands the reins of power, the fatuous
Ontario Liberal explained him as that phenomenon, a man of pure French
ancestry who was spiritually an Englishman--this conclusion being drawn
from the fact that upon occasion the names of Charles James Fox and
Gladstone came trippingly from his tongue.

The new relationship between the Liberals and Laurier was entered upon
with obvious hesitation on the part of many of the former and by
apparent diffidence by the latter. It may be that the conditional
acceptance and the proffered resignation at call were tactical movements
really intended by Laurier to buttress his position as leader, as most
assuredly his frequent suggestions of a readiness or intention to
retire during the last few years of his leadership were. But, whatever
the uncertainties of the moment, they soon passed. Laurier at once
showed capacities which the Liberals had never before known in a leader.
The long story of Liberal sterility and ineffectiveness from the middle
of the last century to almost its close is the story of the political
incapacity of its successive leaders, a demonstration of the unfitness
of men with the emotional equipment of the pamphleteer, crusader and
agitator for the difficult business of party management. The party
sensed almost immediately the difference in the quality of the new
leadership; and liked it. Laurier's powers of personal charm completed
the "consolidation of his position," and by the early nineties the
Presbyterian Grits of Ontario were swearing by him. When Blake, after
two or three years of nursing his wounds in retirement, began to think
it was time to resume the business of leading the Liberals, he found
everywhere invisible barriers blocking his return. Laurier was, he
found, a different proposition from Mackenzie; and there was nothing for
it but to return to his tent and take farewell of his constituents in
that tale of lamentations, the West Durham letter.

The new regime, the new leadership, did not bring results at once. The
party experienced a succession of unexpected and unforeseen misfortunes
that almost made Laurier superstitious. "Tell me," he wrote to his
friend Henri Beaugrand, in August, 1891, "whether there is not some
fatality pursuing our party." In the election of 1891 not even the
theatricality of Sir John Macdonald's last appeal nor the untrue claim
by the government that it was about, itself, to secure a reciprocal
trade arrangement with Washington, could have robbed the Liberals of a
triumph which seemed certain; it was the opportune revelation, through
the stealing of proofs from a printing office, that Edward Farrer, one
of the Globe editors, favored political union with the United States,
that gave victory into the hands of the Conservatives. But their
relatively narrow majority would not have kept them in office a year in
view of the death of Sir John A. Macdonald in June, 1891, and the
stunning blows given the government by the "scandal session" of 1891,
had it not been for two disasters which overtook the Liberals: The
publication of Blake's letter and the revelation of the rascalities of
the Mercier regime. Perhaps of the two blows, that delivered by Blake
was the more disastrous. The letter was the message of an oracle. It
required an interpretation which the oracle refused to supply; and in
its absence the people regarded it as implying a belief by Blake that
annexation was the logical sequel to the Liberal policy of unrestricted
reciprocity. The result was seen in the by-election campaign of 1892
when the Liberals lost seat after seat in Ontario, and the government
majority mounted to figures which suggested that the party, despite the
loss of Sir John, was as strong as ever. The Tories were in the seventh
heaven of delight. With the Liberals broken, humiliated and discouraged,
and a young and vigorous pilot, in the person of Sir John Thompson, at
the helm, they saw a long and happy voyage before them. Never were
appearances more illusory, for the cloud was already in the sky from
which were to come storm, tempest and ruinous over-throw.


THE TACTICS OF VICTORY

The story of the Manitoba school question and the political struggle
which centred around it, as told by Prof. Skelton, is bald and
colorless; it gives little sense of the atmosphere of one of the most
electrical periods in our history. The sequelae of the Riel agitation,
with its stirring up of race feeling, included the Jesuit Estates
controversy in parliament, the Equal Rights movement in Ontario, the
attack upon the use of the French language in the legislature of the
Northwest Territories and the establishment of a system of National
schools in Manitoba through the repeal of the existing school law, which
had been modelled upon the Quebec law and was intended to perpetuate the
double-barrelled system in vogue in that province. The issue created by
the Manitoba legislation projected itself at once into the federal field
to the evident consternation of the Dominion government. It parried the
demand for disallowance of the provincial statute by an engagement to
defray the cost of litigation challenging the validity of the law. When
the Privy Council, reversing the judgment of the Supreme Court, found
that the law was valid because it did not prejudicially affect rights
held prior to or at the time of union, the government was faced with a
demand that it intervene by virtue of the provisions in the British
North America act, which gave the Dominion parliament the power to enact
remedial educational legislation overriding provincial enactments in
certain circumstances. Again it took refuge in the courts. The Supreme
Court of Canada held that under the circumstances the power to intervene
did not exist; and the government breathed easier. Again the Privy
Council reversed the judgment of the Supreme Court and held that because
the Manitoba law prejudicially affected educational privileges enjoyed
by the minority after union there was a right of intervention. The last
defence of the Dominion government against being forced to make a
decision was broken down; in the language of to-day, it was up against
it. And the man who might have saved the party by inducing the bishops
of the Catholic church to moderate their demands was gone, for Sir John
Thompson died in Windsor Castle in December, 1894, one month before the
Privy Council handed down its fateful decision. Sir John was a faithful
son of the church, with an immense influence with the clerical
authorities; he was succeeded in the premiership by Sir Mackenzie
Bowell, ex-grand master of the Orange Order. The bishops moved on
Ottawa and demanded action.

There ensued a duel in tactics between the two parties, intensely
interesting in character and in its results surprising, at least for
some people. The parties to the struggle which now proceeded to convulse
Canada were the government of Manitoba, the author of the law in
question, the Roman Catholic hierarchy in their capacity of guardians
and champions of the Manitoba minority, and the two Dominion political
parties. The bishops were in deadly earnest in attack; so was the
Manitoba government in defence; but with the others the interest was
purely tactical. How best to set the sails to catch the veering winds
and blustering gusts to win the race, the prize for which was the
government of Canada? The Conservatives had the right of initiative--did
it give them the advantage? They thought so; and so did most of the
Liberal generals who were mostly in a blue funk during the year 1895 in
anticipation of the hole into which the government was going to place
them. But there was at least one Liberal tactician who knew better.

The Conservatives decided upon a line of action which seemed to them to
have the maximum of advantage. They would go in for remedial
legislation. In the English provinces they would say that they did this
reluctantly as good, loyal, law-abiding citizens obeying the order of
the Queen delivered through the Privy Council. From their experiences
with the electors they had good reason to believe that this buncombe
would go down. But in Quebec they would pose as the defenders of the
oppressed, loyal co-operators with the bishops in rebuking, subduing and
chaining the Manitoba tyrants. Obviously they would carry the province;
if Laurier opposed their legislation they would sweep the province and
he would be left without a shred of the particular support which was
supposed to be his special contribution to a Liberal victory. The
calculation looked good to the Conservatives; also to most of the
Liberals. As one Liberal veteran put it in 1895: "If we vote against
remedial legislation we shall be lost, hook, line and sinker." But there
was one Liberal who thought differently.

His name was J. Israel Tarte. Tarte was in office an impossibility;
power went to his head like strong wine and destroyed him. But he was
the man whose mind conceived, and whose will executed, the Napoleonic
stroke of tactics which crumpled up the Conservative army in 1896 and
put it in the hole which had been dug for the Liberals. On the day in
March, 1895, when the Dominion government issued its truculent and
imperious remedial order, Tarte said to the present writer: "The
government is in the den of lions; if only Greenway will now shut the
door." At that early day he saw with a clearness of vision that was
never afterwards clouded, the tactics that meant victory: "Make the
party policy suit the campaign in the other provinces; leave Quebec to
Laurier and me." He foresaw that the issue in Quebec would not be made
by the government nor by the bishops; it would be whether the
French-Canadians, whose imagination and affections had already been
captured by Laurier, would or would not vote to put their great man in
the chair of the prime minister of Canada. All through the winter and
spring of 1895 Tarte was sinking test wells in Quebec public opinion
with one uniform result. The issue was Laurier. So the policy was
formulated of marking time until the government was irretrievably
committed to remedial legislation; then the Liberals as a solid body
were to throw themselves against it. So Laurier and the Liberal party
retired within the lines of Torres Vedras and bided their time.

But Tarte had no end of trouble in keeping the party to the path marked
out. The fainthearts of the other provinces could not keep from their
minds the haunting fear that the road they were marching along led to a
morass. They wanted a go-as-you please policy by which each section of
the party could make its own appeal to local feeling. Laurier was never
more indecisive than in the war councils in which these questions of
party policy were fought over. And with good reason. His sympathy and
his judgment were with Tarte but he feared to declare himself too
pronouncedly. The foundation stone of Tarte's policy was a belief in the
overwhelming potency of Laurier's name in Quebec; Laurier was naturally
somewhat reluctant to put his own stock so high. He had not yet come to
believe implicitly in his star. Within forty-eight hours of the time
when Laurier made his speech moving the six months' hoist to the
Remedial bill, a group of Liberal sub-chiefs from the English provinces
made a resolute attempt to vary the policy determined upon. Their bright
idea was that Clarke Wallace, the seceding cabinet minister and Orange
leader, should move the six months' hoist; this would enable the
Liberals to divide, some voting for it and some against it. But the bold
idea won. With Laurier's speech of March 3, 1896, the death-blow was
given to the Conservative administration and the door to office and
power opened to the Liberals.

The campaign absolutely vindicated the tactical foresight of Tarte. A
good deal might be said about that campaign if space were available. But
one or two features of it may be noted. In the English provinces great
play was made with Father Lacombe's minatory letter to Laurier, sent
while the issue was trembling in the balance in parliament: "If the
government . . is beaten . . I inform you with regret that the
episcopacy, like one man, united with the clergy, will rise to support
those who may have fallen in defending us." In his Reminiscences, Sir
John Willison speculates as to how this letter, so detrimental to the
government in Ontario, got itself published. Professor Skelton says
boldly that it was "made public through ecclesiastical channels." It
would be interesting to know his authority for this statement. The
writer of this article says it was published as the result of a
calculated indiscretion by the Liberal board of strategy. As it was
through his agency that publication of the letter was sought and
secured, it will be agreed that he speaks with knowledge. It does not,
of course, follow that Laurier was a party to its publication.

The campaign of 1896 was on both sides lively, violent and unscrupulous.
The Conservatives had two sets of arguments; and so had the Liberals.
Those of us who watched the campaign in Quebec at close range know that
not much was said there by the Liberals about the high crime of coercing
a province. Instead, stress was laid upon the futility and inadequacy of
the proposed remedial legislation; upon the high probability that more
could be got for the minority by negotiation; upon the suggestion that,
negotiation failing, remedial legislation that would really accomplish
something could still be invoked. This argument, plus the magic of
Laurier's personality and Tarte's organizing genius, did the business.
Futile the sniping of the curs; vain the broadsides of the bishops;
empty the thunders of the church! Quebec went to the polls and voted for
Laurier. Elsewhere the government just about held its own despite the
burden of its remedial policy; but it was buried under the Quebec
avalanche. The Liberals took office sustained by the 33 majority from
the province which had once been the citadel of political Conservatism.

        "Now is the winter of our discontent
        Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
        And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
        In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
        Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
        Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
        Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings;
        Our dreadful marches to delightful measures."




II.--LAURIER AND EMPIRE RELATIONSHIPS

Wilfrid Laurier was Prime Minister of Canada from July 9, 1896, to
October 6, 1911, fifteen years and three months, which, for the
Dominion, is a record. Sir John Macdonald was Premier of the Dominion
of Canada for over nineteen years, but this covered two terms separated
by five years of Liberal rule.

The theory of government by party is that the two parties are
complementary instruments of government; by periodic interchanges of
position they keep the administration of the country efficient and
progressive. The complete acceptance of this view would imply a
readiness upon the part of a party growing stale to facilitate the
incoming of the required alternative administration, but no such
phenomenon in politics has ever been observed. Parties, in reality, are
organized states within the state. They have their own dynasties and
hierarchies; and their reason for existence is to clothe themselves with
the powers, functions and glory of the state which they control. Their
desire is for absolute and continuing control to which they come to
think they have a prescriptive right; and they never leave office
without a sense of outrage. There never yet was a party ejected from
office which did not feel pretty much as the Stuarts did when they lost
the throne of England; the incoming administration is invariably
regarded by them in the light of usurpers. This was very much the case
with the Conservatives after 1896; and the Liberals had the same feeling
after 1911, that they had been robbed, as they deemed, of their rightful
heritage. Parties are not, as their philosophers claim, servants of the
state co-operating in its service; their real desire is the mastery of
the state and the brooking of no opposition or rivalship.

Nevertheless the people by a sure instinct compel a change in
administration every now and then; but they move so slowly that a
government well entrenched in office can usually outstay its welcome by
one term of office. The Laurier administration covering a full period
of fifteen years illustrates the operation of this political tendency.
The government came in with the good wishes of the people and for nearly
ten years went on from strength to strength, carrying out an extensive
and well-considered domestic programme; then its strength began to wane
and its vigor to relax. Its last few years were given up to a struggle
against the inevitable fate that was visibly rising like a tide; and the
great stroke of reciprocity which was attempted in 1911 was not nearly
so much a belated attempt to give effect to a party principle as it was
a desperate expedient by an ageing administration to stave off
dissolution. The Laurier government died in 1911, not so much from the
assaults of its enemies as from hardening of its arteries and from old
age. Its hour had struck in keeping with the law of political change.
Upon any reasonable survey of the circumstances it would be held that
Laurier was fortunate beyond most party leaders in his premiership--in
its length, in the measure of public confidence which he held over so
long a period, in the affection which he inspired in his immediate
following, and for the opportunities it gave him for putting his
policies into operation.

Viewed in retrospect most of the domestic occurrences of the Laurier
regime lose their importance as the years recede; it will owe its place
in Canadian political history to one or two achievements of note.
Laurier's chief claim to an enduring personal fame will rest less upon
his domestic performances than upon the contribution he made towards the
solution of the problem of imperial relations. The examination of his
record as a party leader in the prime minister's chair can be postponed
while consideration is given to the great services he rendered the cause
of imperial and international Liberalism as Canada's spokesman in the
series of imperial conferences held during his premiership.

Laurier, up to the moment of his accession to the Liberal leadership,
had probably given little thought to the question of Canada's
relationship to the empire. Blake knew something about the intricacies
of the question. His Aurora speech showed that as early as 1874 he was
beginning to regard critically our status of colonialism as something
which could not last; and while he was minister of justice in the
Mackenzie ministration he won two notable victories over the
centralizing tendencies of the colonial office. But Laurier had never
been brought into touch with the issue; and when, after assuming the
Liberal leadership, he found it necessary to deal with it, he spoke what
was probably the belief latent in most of the minds of his compatriots:
acceptance of colonial status with the theoretical belief that some
time, so far distant as not to be a matter of political concern, this
status would give way to one of independence. "The day is coming," he
said in Montreal in 1890, "when this country will have to take its
place among the nations of the earth.... I want my country's
independence to be reached through the normal and regular progress of
all the elements of its populations toward the realization of a common
aspiration." Looking forward to the issues about which it would be
necessary for him to have policies, it is not probable that he put the
question of imperial relationships very high. Certainly he had no idea
that it would be in dealing with this matter that he would reveal his
qualities at their highest and lay the surest foundation for his fame.

In 1890 Laurier, as we have seen, believed the Canadian future was to be
that of colonialism for an indefinite period and then independence. In
1911, the year he left office, in a letter to a friend he said: "We are
making for a harbor which was not the harbor I foresaw twenty-five years
ago, but it is a good harbor. It will not be the end. Exactly what the
course will be I cannot tell, but I think I know the general bearing
and I am content." The change in view indicated by these words is thus
expounded by Professor Skelton: "The conception of Canada's status which
Sir Wilfrid developed in his later years of office was that of a nation
within the empire." But between the two quoted declarations there lay
twenty-one years of time, fifteen years of prime ministership and the
experiences derived from attendance at four imperial conferences in
succession--another record set by Laurier not likely ever to be
repeated.


THE IMPERIALIST DRIVE

Laurier's imperial policies were forged in the fire. He took to London
upon the occasion of each conference a fairly just appreciation of what
was politically achievable and what was not, and there he was put to
the test of refusing to be stampeded into practicable courses. Professor
Skelton records two enlightening conversations with Laurier dealing with
the difficulties in which the colonial representatives in attendance at
these gatherings found themselves. Said Sir Wilfrid:

     "One felt the incessant and unrelenting organization of an
     imperialist campaign. We were looked upon, not so much as
     individual men, but abstractly as colonial statesmen, to be
     impressed and hobbled. The Englishman is as businesslike in his
     politics, particularly his external politics, as in business,
     even if he covers his purposefulness with an air of polite
     indifference. Once convinced that the colonies were worth
     keeping, he bent to the work of drawing them closer within the
     orbit of London with marvelous skill and persistence. In this
     campaign, which no one could appreciate until he had been in the
     thick of it, social pressure is the subtlest and most effective
     force. In 1897 and 1902 it was Mr. Chamberlain's personal
     insistence that was strongest, but in 1907 and after, society
     pressure was the chief force. It is hard to stand up against the
     flattery of a gracious duchess. Weak men's heads are turned in an
     evening, and there are few who can resist long. We were dined and
     wined by royalty and aristocracy and plutocracy and always the
     talk was of empire, empire, empire. I said to Deakin in 1907 that
     this was one reason why we could not have a parliament or council
     in London; we can talk cabinet to cabinet, but cannot send
     Canadians or Australians as permanent residents to London, to
     debate and act on their own discretion."


Still more enlightening is this observation:

     "Sir Joseph Ward was given prominence in 1911 through the
     exigencies of imperialist politics. At each imperial conference
     some colonial leader was put forward by the imperialists to
     champion their cause. In 1897 it was obvious that they looked to
     me to act the bell-wether, but I fear they were disappointed. In
     1902 it was Seddon; in 1907, Deakin; in 1911, Ward. He had not
     Deakin's ability or Seddon's force. His London friends stuffed
     him for his conference speeches; he came each day with a
     carefully typewritten speech, but when once off that, he was at
     sea."


What was the intention of this "unrelenting imperialist campaign"? It
took many forms, wore many disguises, but in its secret purposes it was
unchangeable and unwearying. It was a conscious, determined attempt to
recover what Disraeli lamented that Great Britain had thrown away.
Twenty years after Disraeli had referred to the colonies as "wretched
millstones hung about our neck," he changed his mind and in 1872 he made
an address as to the proper relations between the Mother Land and the
colonies which is the very corner-stone of imperialistic doctrine. His
declaration was in these words:

     "Self-government, in my opinion, when it was conceded, ought to
     have been conceded as part of a great policy of imperial
     consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied by an imperial
     tariff; by securities for the people of England for the enjoyment
     of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as
     their trustee; and by a military code which should have precisely
     defined the means, and the responsibilities, by which the
     colonies should be defended, and by which, if necessary, this
     country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. It
     ought, further, to have been accompanied by the institution of
     some representative council in the metropolis, which would have
     brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations with
     the home government."

From the day Disraeli uttered these words down to this present time
there has been a persistent, continuous, well-financed and resourceful
movement looking towards the establishment in London of some kind of a
central governing body--parliament, council, cabinet, call it what you
will--which will determine the foreign policies of the British Empire
and command in their support the military and naval potentialities of
all the dominions and dependencies. It fell to Laurier to hold the pass
against this movement; and this he did for fifteen years with patience,
sagacity and imperturbable firmness against the enraged and embattled
imperialists, both of England and Canada. Laurier, in the comment quoted
above, said that in 1897 the imperialists had looked to him to act as
the bell-wether. They had good reason to be hopeful about his usefulness
to them. The imperial preference just enacted by the Canadian parliament
had been hailed both in Canada and Great Britain as a great concession
to imperialistic sentiment, whereas it was in reality an exceedingly
astute stroke of domestic politics by which the government lowered the
tariff and at the same time spiked the guns of the high protectionists.
In 1897, when Laurier first went to England, the imperial movement was
at its crescent, synchronous with the great welling up of sentiment and
reverence called forth by the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
Strachey has a penetrating word about the strength which Queen
Victoria's "final years of apotheosis" brought to the imperialistic
movement:

     "The imperialist temper of the nation invested her office with a
     new significance exactly harmonizing with her own inmost
     proclivities. The English policy was in the main a common-sense
     structure; but there was always a corner in it where common-sense
     could not enter.... Naturally it was in the crown that the
     mysticism of the English polity was concentrated--the crown with
     its venerable antiquity, its sacred associations, its imposing
     spectacular array. But, for nearly two centuries, common-sense
     had been predominant in the great building and the little,
     unexplored, inexplicable corner had attracted small attention.
     Then with the rise of imperialism there was a change. For
     imperialism is a faith as well as a business; as it grew the
     mysticism in English public life grew with it and simultaneously
     a new importance began to attach to the crown. The need for a
     symbol--a symbol of England's might, of England's worth, of
     England's extraordinary mystical destiny--became felt more
     urgently than before. The crown was the symbol and the crown
     rested upon the head of Victoria."

To be translated from the humdrum life of Ottawa to a foremost place in
the vast pageantry of the Diamond Jubilee, there to be showered with a
wealth of tactful and complimentary personal attentions was rather too
much for Laurier. The oratorical possibilities of the occasion took him
into camp; and in a succession of speeches he gave it as his view that
the most entrancing future for Canada was one in which she should be
represented in the imperial parliament sitting in Westminster. "It would
be," he told the National Liberal club, "the proudest moment of my life
if I could see a Canadian of French descent affirming the principles of
freedom in the parliament of Great Britain." This, of course, was
nothing but the abandonment of the orator to the rhetorical
possibilities of the situation. Under the impulse of these emotions he
fell an easy victim to the conspiracy of Lord Aberdeen and Lord
Strathcona (of which he later made complaint) by which the "democrat to
the hilt" (as Laurier had proclaimed himself but a short time earlier
when he had been given prematurely the knightly title at a public
function) was transmuted into Sir Wilfrid Laurier. It was, therefore,
not without apparent reason that the imperialists thought that they had
captured for their own this new romantic and appealing figure from the
premier British dominion. But when the imperial conference met, Mr.
Chamberlain, as colonial secretary, encountered not the orator intent on
captivating his audience, but the cool, cautious statesman thinking of
the folks at home. When the proposition for the establishment of an
imperial council was made by Mr. Chamberlain it was deftly shelved by a
declaration which stated that in the view of the colonial prime
ministers "the present political relations are generally satisfactory
under existing conditions." The wording is suggestive of Laurier, though
it is not known that he drafted the statement. The skilful suspension of
the issue without meeting it was certainly the tactics with which he met
and blocked, in succeeding conferences, all attempts by the imperialists
to give practical effect to their doctrine.


FIFTEEN YEARS OF SAYING "NO"

The role which Laurier had to play in the successive conferences was not
one agreeable to his temperament. It gave no opening for his talent. It
supplied no opportunities for the making of the kind of speeches at
which he was a master. It kept him from the centre of the stage, a
position which Sir Wilfrid Laurier had no objection to occupying. It
obliged him to courses which, in the setting in which he found himself,
must at times have seemed ungracious, and this must have been a trial to
a nature so courtly and considerate. To the successive proposals that
came before the conference, togged out in all the gorgeous garb of
Imperialism, he was unable to offer constructive alternatives; for his
political sense warned him that it was twenty years too soon to suggest
propositions embodying his conception of the true relations of the
British nations to one another. There was nothing to do but to block all
suggestions of organic change designed to strengthen the centralizing
of power and to await the development of a national spirit in Canada to
the point where it would afford backing for a movement in the opposite
direction. So Laurier had to look pleasant and keep on saying no. To Mr.
Chamberlain's proposal in 1897 "to create a great council of the
Empire," No. To the proposal made at the same time for a Canadian money
contribution to the navy, No. To these propositions and others of like
tenor urged in 1902 by Mr. Chamberlain with all his persuasive
masterfulness, No. No naval subsidy because it "would entail an
important departure from the principle of Colonial self-government." No
special military force in the Dominion available for service overseas
because it "derogated from the powers of self-government." To the
Pollock-Lyttleton suggestion of a Council of advice or a permanent
"secretariat" for an "Imperial Council," No, because it "might
eventually come to be regarded as an encroachment upon the full measure
of autonomous, legislative and administrative power now enjoyed by all
the self-governing powers."

Sir Wilfrid's policy was not, however, wholly negative, for he was
mainly responsible for the formal change in 1907 in the character of the
periodical conferences. The earlier conferences were between the
secretary of state and representatives of "the self-governing colonies."
They were colonial conferences in fact and in name--a fact egregiously
pictured to the eye in the famous photograph of the conference of 1897,
revealing Mr. Chamberlain complacently seated, with 15 colonial
representatives grouped about him in standing postures. In 1907 the
conference became one between governments under the formal title of
imperial conference, with the prime minister the official chairman, as
primus inter pares. It was the first exemplification of the new theory
of equality.

The change of government in Great Britain in 1905 must have brought to
Sir Wilfrid a profound sense of relief; it was no longer necessary to
rest upon his armor night and day. Not that the Imperialist drive ceased
but it no longer found its starting point and rallying place in the
Colonial office. The centralists operated from without, looking about
for someone to put forward their ideas, as in 1911 when they took
possession of Sir Joseph Ward, New Zealand's vain and ambitious Prime
Minister, and induced him to introduce their half-baked schemes into the
Conference. He and they were suppressed by universal consent, Sir
Wilfrid simply lending a hand. Sir Wilfrid's refusal at this conference
to join Australia and other Dominions in a demand that they be consulted
by the British government in matters of foreign policy seemed to many
out of harmony with the Imperial policies which he had been pursuing.
Mr. Asquith at this conference declared that Great Britain could not
share foreign policy with the Dominions; and Sir Wilfrid declared that
Canada did not want to share this responsibility with the British
government. Seemingly Sir Wilfrid thus accepted, despite his repeated
claim that Canada was a nation, a subordinate relation to Great Britain
in the field of foreign relations which is the real test of nationhood.
In fact, however, this was the crowning manifestation of his wariness
and far-sightedness. He realized in 1911 what is only now beginning to
be understood by public men who succeeded to his high office, that a
method of consultation obviously defective and carrying with it in
reality no suspensory or veto power, involves by indirection the
adoption of that very centralizing system which it had been his purpose
to block. If, Sir Wilfrid said, Dominions gave advice they must be
prepared to back it with all their strength; yet "we have taken the
position in Canada that we do not think we are bound to take part in
every war." He saw in 1911 as clearly as Lloyd George did in 1921 (as
witness the latter's statement to the House of Commons in that year on
the Irish treaty) that the policy of consultation gave the Dominions a
shadowy and unreal power; but imposed upon them a responsibility,
serious and inescapable. He thus felt himself obliged to discourage the
procedure suggested by Premier Fisher of Australia, even though, to the
superficial observer, this involved him in the contradiction of, at the
same time, exalting and depreciating the status of his country.


LAURIER'S VIEW OF CANADA'S FUTURE

What conception was there in Laurier's mind as to the right future for
Canada? He revealed it pretty clearly on several occasions; notably in
1908 in a tercentenary address at Quebec in the presence of the present
King, when he said: "We are reaching the day when our parliament will
claim co-equal rights with the British parliament and when the only ties
binding us together will be a common flag and a common crown." He was
equally explicit two years later when, addressing the Ontario club in
Toronto, he said: "We are under the suzerainty of the King of England.
We are his loyal subjects. We bow the knee to him. But the King of
England has no more rights over us than are allowed him by our own
Canadian parliament. If this is not a nation, what then is a nation?"
Laurier looked forward to the complete enfranchisement of Canada as a
nation under the British Crown, with a status of complete equality with
Great Britain in the British family. A keen-witted member of the
Imperial Conference of 1911, Sir John G. Findlay, Attorney-General for
New Zealand, saw the reality behind the anomalous position which Sir
Wilfrid held. "I recognized," he says, "that Canadian nationalism is
beginning to resent even the appearance--the constitutional forms--of a
sub-ordination to the Mother country." "And," he added, revealing the
clarity of his understanding, "this is not a desire for separation."

But it was not in London that the question of Imperial relationships
presented its most thorny aspect. Laurier could maintain there a
stand-pat, blocking attitude with no more disagreeable consequences than
perhaps a little social chilliness, the symbolical "gracious duchess"
showing a touch of hauteur and disappointment. It was in the reactions
of the issue upon Canadian politics that Laurier met with his real
difficulties. He could not, by tactics of procrastination or evasion,
keep the question out of the domestic field; the era of abject, passive
and unthinking colonialism was beginning to pass; and the spirit of
nationalism was stirring the sluggish waters of Canadian politics. Sir
Wilfrid had to face the issue and make the best of it. He handled the
question with consummate adroitness and judgment; but ultimately its
complexities baffled him and the Imperialists who wanted everything
done for the Empire and the so-called "Nationalists" of Quebec, who
wanted nothing done, joined forces against him.


THE CANADIAN IMPERIALISTS

It was the Imperialists in the old country and in Canada who gave the
issue no rest; they believed, apparently with good reason, that a little
urgency was all that was needed to make Canada the very forefront of the
drive for the consolidation of the Empire. The English-speaking
Canadians were traditionally and aggressively British. The basic
population in the English provinces was United Empire Loyalist, which
absorbed and colored all later accretions from the Motherland--an
immigration which in its earlier stages was also largely militarist
following the reduction of the army establishment upon the conclusion
of the Napoleonic wars. It was inspired with a traditional hostility to
the American republic. The hereditary devotion to the British Crown, of
which Victoria to the passing generations appeared to be the permanent
and unchanging personification, threw into eclipse the corresponding
sentiment in England. English-speaking Canadians were more British than
the British; they were more loyal than the Queen. One can get an
admirable idea of the state of Ontario feeling in the addresses at the
various U. E. L. celebrations in the year 1884; in both its resentments
and its affections there was something childish and confiding.

Imperialism, on its sentimental side, was a glorification of the British
race; it was a foreshadowing of the happy time when this governing and
triumphant people would give the world the blessing of the pax
Britannica. "We are not yet," said Ruskin in his inaugural address,
"dissolute in temper but still have the firmness to govern and the
grace to obey." In this address he preached that if England was not to
perish, "she must found colonies as fast and far as she is able," while
for the residents of these colonies "their chief virtue is to be
fidelity to their country (i.e. England) and their first aim is to be to
advance the power of England by land and sea." Seely got rid of all
problems of relationship and of status by expanding England to take in
all the colonies; the British Empire was to become a single great state
on the model of the United States. "Here, too," he said, "is a great
homogeneous people, one in blood, language, religion and laws, but
dispersed over a boundless space." Such a conception was vastly
agreeable to the more aggressive and assertive among the English
Canadians. It kindled their imagination; from being colonists of no
account in the backwash of the world's affairs, they became integrally a
part of a great Imperial world-wide movement of expansion and
domination; were they not of what Chamberlain called "that proud,
persistent, self-asserting and resolute stock which is infallibly
destined to be the predominating force in the future history and
civilization of the world"? Moreover, it gave them a sense of their
special importance here in Canada where the population was not
"homogeneous in blood, language and religion;" it was for them, they
felt, to direct policy and to control events; to take charge and see
that developments were in keeping with suggestions from headquarters
overseas.

What these Canadian parties to the great Imperial drive thought of Sir
Wilfrid's dilatory, evasive and blocking tactics is not a matter of
surmise. Upon this point they did not practise the fine art of
reticence; and their angry expostulations are to be found in the pages
of Hansard, in the editorial pages of the Conservative press, in the
political literature of the time, in heavy condemnatory articles which
found publication through various mediums. Thus Sir George Foster could
see in Laurier's statements to the Ontario club nothing but "foolish,
even mischievous talk." "If," he added, "they are merely for the sake of
rhetorical adornment they are but foolish. If, however, they are studied
and serious they are revolutionary." And to the extent that they could
they made trouble for Sir Wilfrid, in which labor of love they were
energetically assisted, upon occasion, by high officials from the other
side of the Atlantic. Laurier had five years of more or less continuous
struggle with Lord Minto, a combination of country squire and heavy
dragoon, who was sent to Canada as governor-general in 1898 to forward
by every means in his power the Chamberlain policies. He busied himself
at once and persistently in trying to induce the Canadian government to
commit itself formally to the policy of supplying Canadian troops for
Imperial wars. In the spring of 1899 he wanted an assurance which would
justify the war office in "reckoning officially" upon Canadian troops
"in case of war with a European power;" in July he urged an offer of
troops in the event of war in South Africa which "would be a proof that
the component parts of the Empire are prepared to stand shoulder to
shoulder to support Imperial interests." With the outbreak of the South
African war, Lord Minto regarded himself less as Governor-General than
as Imperial commissioner charged with the vague and shadowy powers which
go with that office; and Sir Wilfrid had, in consequence, to instruct
him on more than one occasion that Canada was still a self-governing
country and not a military satrapy. Professor Skelton does nothing more
than barely allude to these troubles; the story, which would be most
interesting and suggestive, will perhaps never be told. But some idea of
what was afoot can be drawn from the fact that at a public gathering in
Montreal in the month of November, 1899, Lord Minto was advised and
instructed by an active politician and leading lawyer that under his
powers as the representative of Imperial authority he could order the
Canadian militia to South Africa without reference to the Canadian
parliament!

Associated with Lord Minto in the applying of Imperial pressure to the
Canadian government was General Hutton, commander of the Canadian
forces. In those days this position was always filled by an Imperial
officer who was given leave of absence in order that he might fill the
position. He was thus a Canadian official, paid out of the Canadian
treasury and subject to the Canadian government; but few of the
occupants of the office were capable of appreciating this fact. They
regarded themselves as representatives of the war office with large but
undefined powers in the exercise of which they frequently found
themselves in conflict with the Canadian government. General Hutton's
interfering activities were so objectionable that he was got rid of by a
face-saving expedient; but four years later a successor to his office,
Lord Dundonald, was formally dismissed by order-in-council for his
"unpardonable indiscretion" in publicly criticizing the acting minister
of militia. Lord Minto, unofficially advised by military officers and
opposition politicians, resisted signing the order-in-council until it
was made clear to him that the alternative would be a general election
in which the issue would be his refusal. The incident was conclusive as
to the necessity of having a Canadian at the head of the Canadian
forces--a change which was subsequently effected.

These controversies and conflicts of opinion became factors in Canadian
politics. The Conservatives sought in the general elections of 1900 to
make an issue out of the government's hesitation in taking part in the
South African war in advance of the meeting of parliament; this, plus
injudicious and provocative speeches by the incalculable Mr. Tarte and
the general indictment of Laurier as lukewarm towards the cause of a
"united Empire" weakened the Liberals in Ontario; but this loss was
easily off-set by gains elsewhere. Again in 1904 the Dundonald issue was
effective only in Ontario which, in keeping with what appears to be an
instinctive political process, was beginning to consolidate itself as a
make-weight against the overwhelming predominance of Liberalism in
Quebec. In the 1908 elections the Imperial question was almost quiescent
in the English provinces; but it was beginning to emerge in a different
guise and with aspects distinctly threatening to Laurier in his own
province.


"COLONIALISM INGRAINED AND IMMITIGABLE"

Laurier in resisting the Chamberlain push knew that even English-Canada,
long somnolent under a colonial regime, was not in the mood to accept
the radical innovations that were being planned in Whitehall; and he
knew, still better, that his own people would be against the programme
to a man. The colonialism of the French-Canadians was immitigable and
ingrained. They had secured from the British parliament in 1774 special
immunities and privileges as the result of Sir Guy Carleton's
hallucination that given these the French-Canadian habitant would assist
the British authorities in chastising the rebellious American colonists
into submission. These privileges, continued and embodied in the act of
confederation, were enjoyed by the French-Canadians--as they
believed--by virtue of Imperial guarantees; they held that they were
safe in their enjoyment only while there was in the last analysis
British control over Canada and while the final judgment on Canadian
laws was passed by British courts. But their colonialism, unlike that of
the English-Canadians, was of a quality that could never be transmuted
into Imperialism. The racial mysticism of that movement repelled them;
and still more they were deterred by the cost and dangers of
Imperialistic adventure. It was for England, in return for their
whole-hearted acceptance of colonial sub-ordination, to protect them
internally against any courses by the English-Canadians which they might
choose to regard as an infringement of their privileged position and
externally against all danger of invasion or conquest.

If Sir Wilfrid had been called upon to choose only between these two
camps he could perhaps have made a choice which would not have been
ultimately a political liability. But the situation was not so simple.
There was a third factor which, alike by inclination and political
necessity, Sir Wilfrid had to take into account. This was Canadian
nationalism, in contrast with the racial nationalism of which Mr.
Bourassa was the apostle. The backing upon which Sir Wilfrid relied at
first to resist the military and naval policies of the Imperialists was
the timidity and reluctances of colonialism; but he knew that this was
at best a temporary expedient. To urgings that Canada should assist in
the upkeep of the Imperial navy by money contributions and should also
maintain special militia forces available for service in Imperial wars
overseas, Sir Wilfrid felt that some more plausible reply than a brusque
refusal was necessary; and he met them with the contention that Canada
must create military and naval forces for her own defence which would be
available for the wars of the Empire at the discretion of the Canadian
parliament. These views put forward almost tentatively in 1902
ultimately bore fruit in definite policies of national defence. Thus the
answer to demand for naval contribution, to which policy all the other
Dominions had subscribed, was to declare that Canada should have her
own navy; and this took form, after numerous skirmishes with admiralty
opinion, which was scandalized at the suggestion, in the Naval Service
Bill of 1910.

This course, which was thus urged upon Sir Wilfrid by events, earned him
the displeasure of both the Imperialists and the Little Canadians. To
the former Laurier's policy seemed little short of treasonable,
particularly his insistence that while Canada was at war when England
was at war the extent, if any, of Canada's participation in such war
must be determined solely by the Canadian parliament. His own countrymen
on the other hand viewed with disquietude these first halting steps
along the road of national preparedness; might it not lead by easy
gradations to that "vortex of militarism" against which Sir Wilfrid had
voiced an eloquent warning? Where there is opinion capable of being
exploited against a government the exploiter soon appears. In Quebec,
Monk, Conservative, and the Nationalist, Bourassa, who entering
Parliament as a follower of Laurier had developed a strong antipathy to
him, were indefatigable in alarming the habitant by interpreting to him
the secret purposes of the naval service bill. It was nothing, they
claimed, but an Imperialistic device by which the Canadian youth would
be dragged from his peaceful fireside to become cannon fodder in the
Empire's wars. Meanwhile in the English provinces, the government's
policy was fiercely attacked as inadequate and verging upon disloyalty
by the Imperialists. The Conservative opposition, after one virtuous
interlude in 1909 when they showed a fleeting desire to take a
non-political and national view of this matter of defence, could not
resist the temptation to profit by the campaign against the government's
policy; and they joined shrilly in the derisive cry of "tin pot navy."
These onslaughts from opposite camps were a factor in the elections of
1911; especially in Quebec where twenty-seven constituencies (against
eleven in 1908) elected opponents of Laurier.


POLICIES THAT ENDURE

Sir Wilfrid fell; but his Imperial policies lived. During the campaign
the old country Imperialists had been very busy from Rudyard Kipling
down--or up--in lending aid to the forces fighting the Liberal
government; and its defeat was the occasion for much rejoicing among
them. Mr. A. Bonar Law, M. P., doubtless voiced their views when he
predicted under the incoming regime, "a real advance towards the organic
union of the Empire." All these hopes, like many which preceded them,
were short-lived; for Sir Robert Borden, once he got his bearings, took
over the Laurier policies and widened them. In that significant fact
the clue to these policies is found. They were not personal to Laurier,
owing their coolness towards perfervid Chamberlainism to his lack of
English blood as his critics held; they were in fact national policies
dictated by the necessities of the times. To the casual student of the
development of Imperial relations for the decade following 1896, it
might seem that the Liberal conception of an Empire evolving steadily
into a league of free nations was only saved from destruction by the
fortunate circumstance that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was during those years
the representative of Canada at successive Imperial conferences; but
this would be, perhaps, to put his services too high. Canada's public
men have never failed her in the critical times in her history when
attempts were made through ignorance or design to turn her aside from
the high road to national sovereignty; as witness Gait in 1859, Blake in
his long duel with Lord Carnarvon, Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885, when
he resisted the premature demand for a Canadian contingent for service
in the Soudan, Tupper in the early nineties when his vigorous resistance
to the proposal that Canada should pay tribute for protection had
something to do with the demise of the Imperial Federation League. Any
man fit to be premier of Canada would have taken pretty much the
position that Sir Wilfrid did. This does not in the least detract from
the credit due Laurier. The task was his and he discharged it with tact,
ability, patience and courage. For his services in holding their future
open for them every British Dominion owes the memory of Laurier a statue
in its parliament square.




III.--FIFTEEN YEARS OF PREMIERSHIP

There have been prime ministers of Canada casually thrown up by the tide
of events and as casually re-engulfed; but Wilfrid Laurier was not one
of them. There may have been something accidental in his rise to
leadership, but his capture of the premiership was a solid political
achievement. The victory of June 23, 1896, crowned with triumph the
daring strategy of the campaign. But popular opinion regarded the
victory as a gift of the gods. The wheel of fortune spinning from the
hands of fate had thrown into the high office of the premiership one
about whose qualifications there was doubt even in the secret minds of
many of his supporters. He was a man of charming manners and of gracious
personality. His carriage on the platform and the grace and finish of
his speaking had fascinated the public imagination. But what likelihood
was there that these qualities would enable him to deal adequately with
the harsh realities, the stubborn problems which he must face as
premier? Most unlikely, it was generally agreed. The Conservatives,
though profoundly chagrined at the trick fate had played upon them,
looked forward with pleasurable expectation to the revenge that would be
theirs when Laurier, political dilettante and amateur, took up the
burden that had been too great for their own Ulysses. They foresaw a
Laurier regime which for futility and brevity would take its place in
history with the ill-starred prime ministership of Mackenzie. The
average Liberal felt that the government, which would get its driving
force and executive power from someone else--identity not yet
revealed--would have in Laurier a most attractive and genial figurehead.
These illusions long persisted, though there was little excuse for them
on election night and still less a month later when the Laurier cabinet
was in being.

To be a Rouge and to be in Montreal during the three weeks following the
glorious 23rd of June was the height of felicity. After nearly 50 years
of proscription and impotence in their own province, they were
triumphant and dominant. Moreover, since they had supplied the majority
which made possible the taking of office by the Liberals, they would be
triumphant and dominant as well in the Dominion field. Among the
election occurrences which they regarded as specially providential was
the defeat of Tarte in Beauharnois. If he had been elected it might have
been necessary for Laurier to do something for him, but now that he had
fallen upon the glacis of the impregnable fortress he had elected to
assail, who were they to repine over the doings of fate? "The Moor has
done his work; the Moor can go!" Moreover, had he not been for long an
inveterate Bleu? Had he not actually been the organizer of Bleu victory
when Laurier experienced his memorable defeat in Drummond-Arthabaska in
1877? His defeat made it possible to have a simon-pure Rouge contingent
from Quebec.

While they were thus indulging in roseate day-dreams the actual business
of cabinetmaking was going forward, with Tarte at Laurier's right hand
as chief adviser from Quebec. The writer has a very clear recollection
of a long conversation which he had at that time with Tarte. Much of it
was given up to picturesque and forthright denunciation by Tarte of the
means by which he had been defeated in Beauharnois. The mill-owners at
Valleyfield, he said, had lined up their operatives and had given them
the option of voting for Bergeron or getting out. The worth to a country
of an industrial system which makes political serfs of its workmen was
vigorously challenged in language which had little resemblance to the
harangues which led to Tarte's undoing six years later. From this he
went on to speak of Laurier's qualities and the amazing ignorance of
them shown even by his intimates of his own race. There had been much
speculation in Montreal as to who should be the new high commissioner
for Canada in London. Sir Donald A. Smith, who had been appointed in the
last weeks of Conservative rule, would be, it was assumed, dismissed.
Tarte scouted the idea that Smith would be disturbed. Laurier was not
that kind of a man. He would not dismiss Smith; he would make friends
with him. Sir Donald was a man of affairs, and so was Laurier; they
would co-operate with one another. "These people do not understand
Laurier; he has a governing mind; he wants to do things; he has plans;
he will walk the great way of life with anyone of good intention who
will join him." With much more to the same effect. To Tarte, who was his
intimate, Laurier at this moment did not appear as one overcome with his
destiny and drifting with the tide, but as the resolute captain of the
ship, who knew where he wanted to go, had a fairly clear idea as to how
to get there, and also knew whom he wanted with him on the voyage. Later
on Tarte forgot about this.


THE MAKING OF THE GOVERNMENT

There was verification of Tarte's estimate in the job of cabinetmaking
turned out by Laurier in July. In building the government the lines of
least resistance were not followed. A dozen men who deemed themselves
sure of cabinet rank found themselves overlooked; five of fifteen
portfolios went to men imported from provincial arenas without Dominion
parliamentary experience. Laurier knew the kind of government he wanted
and he provided himself with such a government by the direct method of
getting the colleagues he desired wherever he could find them. No doubt
he found plenty of employment for his sunny ways in placating his
disappointed colleagues. In time there were consolation prizes for all,
for this one a judgeship, for that one a lieutenant-governorship, for
the next a life seat in the senate; the phalanx of fighting
second-raters who had done valuable work in opposition, reinforcing and
buttressing the work of the front benches disappeared gradually from
parliament. And with those he chose he too had his way, as witness the
side-tracking of Sir Richard Cartwright to the dignified but at the time
relatively unimportant department of trade and commerce. Between Sir
Richard and the Canadian manufacturers there was a blood feud. It was
not Sir Wilfrid's intention to make the feud his own or even to agree to
it being carried on by Sir Richard. He took for minister of finance, W.
S. Fielding, who justified his choice by successfully steering the
budget bark between Scylla and Charybdis for fourteen years in
succession before the whirlpool finally sucked him down. Where Laurier
went outside his following for colleagues he had equally definite ends
to serve.

The care with which Laurier chose his colleagues, and his indifference
to personal appeal, should have been proof sufficient to the public that
he was a prime minister who looked forward and planned for the future.
And the plan? Why to stay in power for the longest possible period of
time. It is as natural for a government to want to stay in power as it
is for a man to want to live; nor is there in this anything
discreditable. A prime minister is sure that he desires to retain power
in order that he may serve the country as no rival could conceivably
serve it; and even if the desire fades and is replaced by a lively
appreciation of the personal satisfactions which can be served by the
office, no real prime minister notices the transformation. The ego and
the country soon become inter-blended in his mind. A prime minister
under the party system as we have had it in Canada is of necessity an
egotist and autocrat. If he comes to office without these
characteristics his environment equips him with them as surely as a diet
of royal jelly transforms a worker into a queen bee.

Laurier saw that an efficient government, harmonious in its policies and
ably led, would afford a contrast to the preceding administration that
must forcibly impress the Canadian people. He, therefore created a
government of all the talents. Anxious for discreet handling of the
difficult fiscal problem he turned to Nova Scotia for W. S. Fielding.
Foreseeing the possibility of grave constitutional problems arising he
put the portfolio of justice into the hands of the wisest and most
venerable of Liberals, Sir Oliver Mowat. Recognizing that a backward and
stagnant west meant failure for his administration he placed the
department of interior, which had become a veritable circumlocution
office, under the direction of the ablest and most aggressive of western
Liberal public men, Clifford Sifton. The time was to come when other
values were to hold in relation to cabinet appointments; but in the
beginning efficiency was the test, at least in intention. It was thus
Laurier proposed in part to build foundations under his house that it
might endure. And to insure that virtue should not lack its reward he
proceeded to buttress the edifice by a second line of support.

In the general election of 1896 the Liberal strategy had been to give
the party managers in the English provinces an apparent choice of the
best weapons, but with all these advantages the results showed that they
had barely held their own. The majority came from Quebec where Laurier
had apparently to face the heaviest odds. The natural inference was not
lost upon Laurier. If he was to remain in power he must look to Quebec
for his majority. A majority was necessary and he must get it where it
was to be had. This decision was at first probably purely political. The
consequences were not fully foreseen, that to get this support a price
would have to be paid--by the Liberals of the other provinces. Still
less was it foreseen that the overwhelming support of his own people
would become not only politically essential to Laurier but a moral
necessity as well--something which in time he felt, by an imperious
demand of the spirit, that he must hold even though this allegiance
became not a political asset but a liability. Gradually, perhaps
insensibly at first, in opposition possibly to his judgment, certainly
to his public professions oft repeated, he came to regard it as
necessary to so shape party policy as always to command the approval of
French-Canadian public opinion. Sir Wilfrid lived to see, as the
culmination of 20 years of this policy, the French and the
English-Canadians more sharply divided than they had been for 80 years.
Such is the capacity of the human mind for self-deception that he could
see in this divergence nothing but the proof that his life's work had
been destroyed by envious and designing men.


THE FOUNDATION STONE OF POLICY

Quebec in turning Laurierite did not turn Liberal. This was the factor
hidden from the public eye that governed the future. The Laurier sweep
of Quebec in 1896 was the result of a combination of the Bleu and Rouge
elements. The old dominant French-Canadian party had been made up of
Bleus and Castors--factions bitterly divided by differences of
temperament, of outlook and belief, and still more by desperate personal
feuds between the leaders. When the coming of responsible government
broke up the solidarity of the French-Canadians they separated into
three groups, the controlling factor in each case being religious
belief. The Castors were ultra-clerical and ultramontane; the Bleus
inherited the tradition of Gallicanism; the Rouges imported and adapted
the anti-clericalism of European Liberals. Various influences--the
brilliance and resourcefulness of Cartier's leadership and antipathy to
Rouge extremism among them--kept Bleu and Castor in an uneasy alliance.
This alliance began to disintegrate when Laurier rose to the command of
the Liberals. There was a steady drift from the Bleu to the Liberal
camp--by this time the old definition of "Rouge" was under taboo; and in
1896 the Bleus moved over almost in a body. This was not an altogether
instinctive and voluntary movement; it was suggested, inspired,
successfully shepherded and safely delivered.

Tarte's confidence that Laurier could win Quebec was not based wholly
upon faith in the power of Laurier's personal appeal. He was himself a
Bleu leader brought into accidental relations with the Liberals. His
breach with the Conservatives began as one of the unending Castor-Bleu
feuds. His knowledge of the McGreevy-Connolly frauds gave him the power,
as he thought, to blow the Castor chief, Sir Hector Langevin--a cold,
selfish, greedy, domineering, rather stupid man--into thinnest air, thus
opening the road to the leadership of the French-Conservatives to his
friend and leader, the brilliant, unscrupulous and ambitious Chapleau.
He over-estimated his power. The whole strength of the government at
Ottawa was at once concentrated in keeping the lid on that smouldering
cauldron of stench and rottenness, the system of practical politics of
that day. The Conservative chiefs tried to suppress Tarte and he refused
to be suppressed--there was not a drop of coward's blood in his veins.
Then they set to work to destroy him. He sought a refuge and he found
it--in parliament, to which he was elected in 1891 as an Independent as
the result of an arrangement with Laurier. As he used to say, it was a
case of parliament or jail for him.

Inevitably, in following up his charges in parliament, Tarte was thrown
into more and more intimate relations with the Liberal leaders. He knew
that for him there was no Conservative forgiveness; as he was wont to
say: "I have spoiled the soup for too many." It was not long before Sir
John Thompson could congratulate Laurier, in one of the sharpest sayings
parliament ever heard, upon having among his lieutenants--"the black
Tarte and the yellow Martin." For ten years he remained Laurier's chief
lieutenant in Quebec, but he never in any sense of the word became a
Liberal, though in 1902, just before he was thrown from the battlements,
he busied himself in reading lifelong Liberals out of the party.
Chapleau, who was Tarte's confidant and ally, though he was also a
member of the Dominion government, became Lieutenant-governor of Quebec
and retired to Spencer Wood, but not to forget politics among its
shades. When the peculiar developments of the Dominion campaign of 1896
made it evident that Conservative victory in Quebec under the virtual
leadership of the bishops meant the permanent domination of the Castors,
the whole Bleu influence was thrown to the Liberals.

Professor Skelton's life of Laurier does not take us much behind the
scenes. It is in the main a record of political events, with comments
upon Laurier's relations to them. Laurier's letters, mostly to unnamed
correspondents, are of slight interest, but to this there are a few
notable exceptions. There are letters between Laurier, Tarte and
Chapleau of the greatest political value. They make clear to a
demonstration, what shrewd political observers of that day surmised,
that there was a definite political understanding between these three
men. This explains the composition of the Quebec delegation in the
Laurier government. Apart from Laurier there was in it no representative
of French Catholic Liberalism, unless the purely nominal honor of
minister without portfolio given to C. A. Geoffrion is to be taken as
giving this representation. C. A. did not put the honor very high. "I
am," he said, "the mat before the door." Tarte, a Quebecker and a Bleu,
became Montreal's representative at Ottawa. Disappointment among the
Liberals led first to rage and then to rage plus fear as Tarte with the
magic wand of the patronage and power of the public works department,
began to make over the party organization in the province. Open
rebellion under Franois Langelier broke out in December: "A coalition
with Chapleau," Langelier informed the public, "is under way." But the
rebellion died away. The Laurier influence was too strong. Langelier was
quite right in his statement. The coalition movement at that time was
far advanced. The letter from Chapleau to Laurier, bearing date February
21, 1897, quoted by Professor Skelton, was that of one political
intimate to another. Take this paragraph as an illustration: "The
Castors in the battle of June 23rd lost their head and their tail; their
teeth and claws are worn down; even breath is failing for their cries
and their movements and I hope that before the date of the Queen's
jubilee we shall be able to say that this race of rodents is extinct and
figures only in catalogues of extinct species." The reference to the
coming extinction of the Castors had relation to the then pending
provincial elections as to which he made certain references to political
strokes which "I am preparing." Associated with this
Laurier-Tarte-Chapleau triumvirate was a fourth, C. A. Dansereau,
nominally postmaster of Montreal, actually the most restless political
intriguer in the province of Quebec. Dansereau had been the brains of
the old Senecal-Chapleau combination which had dominated Quebec in the
eighties. Just what Laurier thought of the company he was now keeping
was a matter of record for he had set it forth in a famous article in
L'Electeur in 1882 entitled "The Den of Thieves," which led to L. A.
Senecal, the Bleu "boss," prosecuting him for criminal libel. Laurier
stood his trial in Montreal, pleaded justification, and after a hard
fought battle won a virtual triumph through a disagreement of the jury
with ten of the jurymen favorable to acquittal.


LAST ROUND WITH THE BISHOPS

Little wonder that Franois Langelier, his brother Charles, and other
associates of Laurier in the lean years of proscription were consumed
with indignation that Laurier should pass them by to associate with his
former enemies. They did not realize the political necessity that
controlled Laurier's course. Laurier had great need to hold his new
allies for his position in Quebec for the first year or so of office was
precarious. The Manitoba school question had still to be settled.
Laurier was political realist enough to know that he would have to take
what he could get and this he would have to dress up and present to the
public as his own child. He knew that the bishops, chagrined,
humiliated, enraged by their election experience, were only waiting for
the announcement of settlement to open war on him. It would then depend
upon whether or not they were more successful than in June in commanding
the support of their people. In Laurier's own words: "They will not
pardon us for their check of last summer; they want revenge at all
costs."

The real fight, it was recognized, would be in Rome. Thither there went
within two months of the Liberals taking office, two emissaries of the
French Liberals, the parish priest of St. Lin, a lifelong, personal and
political friend of Laurier, and Chevalier Drolet, one of the Canadian
papal Zouaves, who had rallied to the defence of the Holy City
twenty-six years before. There followed swiftly two more distinguished
intermediaries, Charles Fitzpatrick, solicitor-general of Canada, and
Charles Russell, of London, son of Lord Russell of Killowen. Backing
them up was a petition to the pope signed by Laurier and forty-four
members of parliament, protesting against the political actions of the
Canadian episcopate. Nor did the Canadian hierarchy lack representation
in Rome. While this conflict of influence was in progress at Rome, the
terms of the Manitoba school settlement were made public in November,
1896. The settlement embodied substantial concessions in fact, but
Archbishop Langevin and his fellow clerics at once fell upon it.
Langevin denounced it as a farce. To Cardinal Begin it appeared an
"indefensible abandonment of the best established, most sacred rights of
the Catholic minority." A regime of religious proscription was
inaugurated. Public men were subjected to intimidation; Liberal
newspapers were banned, among them L'Electeur, the chief organ of the
party. The bishops destroyed themselves by their violence. Rome does not
lightly quarrel with governments and prime ministers. By March Mgr.
Merry Del Val was in Canada as apostolic delegate; and though care was
taken to save the faces of the bishops, their concerted assaults upon
the government ceased. Laurier had never again to face the embattled
bishops, which is not the same thing as saying that they ceased to take
a hand in politics. As Professor Skelton truly remarks: "The Archbishop
of Montreal, Monseigneur Paul Bruchesi, who kept in close touch with
Wilfrid Laurier, soon proved that sunny ways and personal pressure would
go further than the storms and thunderbolts of the doughty old warrior
of Three Rivers." With the bishops silenced, Laurier's foes in Quebec
found the issue valueless to them. Their political associates from other
provinces, after the disappointment of 1896, would not consent to a
revival of the question. One of the party leaders declared he would not
touch it with a forty-foot pole. Tupper formally erased it from the
party calendar. The question remained quiescent; but Laurier always
remained in fear of its re-emergence; and with cause. The resentments it
left went underground and later had a revival in the passionate zeal
with which the Quebec clergy embraced the faith of nationalism as
preached by Bourassa. In one respect the school question and its
settlement proved useful. It was the exhibit unfailingly displayed to
prove upon needed occasions that the charge was quite untrue that in
directing party policy Laurier was unduly sensitive to Quebec sentiment.
In effect it was said: "Laurier made Quebec swallow in 1896; now it is
your turn"--a formula which finally became tedious through repetition.


SUPREME IN QUEBEC

The second issue which appeared for a moment to put Laurier's grip on
Quebec in peril was the South African war. Looking back twenty-three
years it is pretty clear that Laurier's position at the outbreak of the
war, that the Canadian parliament should be consulted as to the sending
of a contingent, was wholly reasonable. Those were the days of heady
Imperialism in the English provinces; and, vigorously stirred up by
Laurier's party foes for political purposes, it struck out with a
violence which threatened to bring serious political consequences in its
train. Tarte was credited with having declared publicly in the Russell
House rotunda: "Not a man nor a cent for South Africa," which did not
help matters. The storm was so instant and threatening that Laurier and
his colleagues bowed before it. By order-in-council Canada authorized
the sending of a contingent. Other contingents followed, and Canada took
part in the war on terms of limited liability which were agreeable to
both the British and Canadian governments.

The South African war was most unpopular with the French-Canadians, but
the unpopularity did not extend to Laurier. They agreed in theory with
Bourassa but they recognized that Laurier had yielded to force majeure.
Indeed the very violence with which Laurier was assailed in Ontario
strengthened his hold in Quebec. It is not easy for a proud people to
stomach insults such as, for instance, the remark in the Toronto News,
that the English-Canadians would find some way of "emancipating
themselves from the dominance of an inferior people whom peculiar
circumstances had placed in authority in the Dominion." The election of
1900 gave Laurier fifty-eight supporters in the province of Quebec out
of a total of sixty-five seats. The Rouge-Bleu coalition had not come
off officially, Chapleau's death in 1898 having removed the necessity of
formally recognizing his services, but the coalition of Bleu and Rouge
elements had taken place; and it held so firmly that when some of the
architects of the fusion tried later to undo their work they found this
could not be done. Dansereau was the first to go. Mr. Mulock, the
postmaster-general, entirely oblivious of the fact that Dansereau was
one of the main wheels in the Quebec machine and seeing in him only an
entirely incapable postmaster, fired him in 1899 with as little
hesitation as a section boss would show in bouncing an incompetent
navvy. Tarte and Laurier tried to patch up the quarrel, but Dansereau
preferred to return to journalism as editor of an independent journal
whose traditions were Conservative. He was to be, five years later, one
of the leaders in that curious conspiracy, the
MacKenzie-Mann-Berthiaume-La Presse deal--the details of which as told
by Professor Skelton read like a detective yarn--which was turned into
opera bouffe by Laurier's decisive and timely interference. In 1902,
Tarte, in Laurier's absence and in the belief that he could not resume
the premiership on account of illness, attempted to seize the
successorship by pre-emption, and was promptly dismissed from office by
Laurier. Tarte and Dansereau tried to rally the Bleu forces against
Laurier, but these were no longer distinguishable from the Liberal hosts
into which they had merged. Their day was over and their power gone.
Laurier reigned supreme.

These commitments and considerations furnished the background to the
drama of Laurier's premiership. Much that took place on the fore-stage
is only intelligible by taking a long vision of the whole setting. There
was nothing of assertiveness or truculence in this steady movement by
which Liberal policy and outlook was given a new orientation, Quebec
replacing Ontario as the determinant. Students of politics can trace the
changing influence through the fifteen years of Liberal rule, in
legislation, in appointments and in administrative policies. One or two
illustrations might be noted.


A CHALLENGE AND A CHECK

During the crisis of 1905 over the school provisions in the Autonomy
bills erecting Alberta and Saskatchewan into provinces, Walter Scott,
M. P., in a letter quoted by Professor Skelton, refers to the "almost
unpardonable bungling" which had brought the crisis about. But Sir
Wilfrid did not step into this difficulty by mischance. He knew
precisely what he was doing though he did not foresee the consequences
of his action because with all his experience and sagacity he never
could foretell how political developments would react upon the
English-Canadian mind. The educational provisions of the autonomy bill
were designed to remove the still lingering resentment of Quebec over
the settlement of the Manitoba school question and to further this
purpose Sir Wilfrid indulged in his speech introducing these bills in
that entirely gratuitous laudation of separate schools which had on
Ontario and western Canadian opinion the enlivening effect of a match
thrown into a powder barrel. This incident revealed not only the
tendency of Laurier's policy but illustrated the tactics which he had
developed for achieving his ends in the face of opposition within the
party. Upon occasions of this kind he was addicted to confronting his
associates and followers with an accomplished fact, leaving no
alternative to submission but a palace rebellion which he felt confident
no one would attempt. By such methods he had already rounded several
dangerous corners, as for instance his committing Canada to submit her
case in the matter of the Alaska boundaries to a tribunal without an
umpire--though it was the clearly understood policy of the Canadian
government and the Canadian parliament to insist upon an umpire; and he
resorted again to a stroke of this character in 1905. Professor
Skelton's story of the crisis is the official version, but there is
another version which happens to be more authentic.

Following the general election of 1904, the government decided to deal
without further delay with the matter of setting up the new provinces.
It was known that there was danger of revival of the school question,
for during the election campaign a Toronto newspaper had sought to make
this an issue, contending that the delay in giving the provinces
constitutions was due to the demand of the Roman Catholic church that
they should include a provision for separate schools. The policy agreed
upon by the government was to continue in the provincial constitutions
the precise rights enjoyed by the minority under the territorial school
ordinances of 1901. There was a vigorous controversy in parliament as to
whether the autonomy bills in their original form kept faith with this
understanding. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Mr. Fitzpatrick, minister of
justice, contended vehemently that they did. Clifford Sifton, who was
the western representative in the cabinet and the party most directly
interested, held that they did not. Mr. Sifton was absent in the
Southern States when the bill was drafted. He reached Ottawa on his
return the day after Sir Wilfrid had introduced the bills to parliament.
He at once resigned. Fielding, who had also been absent, was credited
with sharing to a considerable extent Sifton's view that the bill
introduced did not embody the policy agreed upon. The resulting crisis
put the government in jeopardy. A considerable number of members
associated themselves with Mr. Sifton and the government was advised
that their support for the measure could only be secured if clauses were
substituted for the provisions in the act to which objection was taken.
To make sure that there would be no mistake that the substituted
provisions should merely continue the territorial law as it stood, they
insisted upon drafting the alternative clauses themselves. Sir Wilfrid,
acutely conscious that this constituted a challenge to his prestige and
authority, used every artifice and expedient at his command to induce
the insurgents either to accept the original clause or alternatives
drafted by Mr. Fitzpatrick; for the first time the tactical suggestion
that resignation would follow noncompliance was put forward. The
dissentient members stood to their guns; Sir Wilfrid yielded and the
measure thus amended commanded the vote of the entire party with one
Ontario dissentient.

The storm blew over but the wreckage remained. The episode did Laurier
harm in the English provinces. It predisposed the public mind to
suspicion and thus made possible the ne temere and Eucharist congress
agitations which were later factors in solidifying Ontario against him.
In Quebec it gave Mr. Bourassa, whose hostility to Laurier was beginning
to take an active form, an opportunity to represent Laurier as the
betrayer of French Catholic interests and to put himself forward as
their true champion. "Our friend, Bourassa," wrote Sir Wilfrid to a
friend in April, 1905, "has begun in Quebec a campaign that may well
cause us trouble." From this moment the Nationalist movement grew apace
until six years later it looked as though Bourassa was destined to
displace Laurier as the accepted leader of the French Canadians. It was
only the developments of the war that restored Laurier to his position
of unchallenged supremacy.

In Manitoba also there were evidences of Sir Wilfrid's preoccupation
with the business of never getting himself out of touch with Quebec
public opinion. For years he sought by private and semi-public
negotiations to get the Winnipeg school board to come to a modus vivendi
with the church by which Catholic children would be segregated in their
own schools within the orbit of the public school system, but failed,
partly owing to the non possumus attitude of Archbishop Langevin, who
was not prepared to be deprived of a grievance which enabled him to mix
in Quebec and Manitoba politics. The Liberal policy of accepting
provincial electoral lists for Dominion purposes resulted in the
Manitoba lists being compiled under conditions to which the Liberals of
this province strongly objected, and they fought for years to secure a
right to final revision under Dominion auspices. Twice they pressed
their case with such vigor that the government undertook to pass the
requested legislation but on both occasions resistance in the house by
the Conservatives led to the prompt withdrawal of the measure by Sir
Wilfrid. In both cases Manitoba Liberals knew quite well that the
difficulty was not the opposition of the Conservatives but the
opposition of Laurier. They were advised that Laurier was apprehensive
of the effect of the proposed legislation upon public opinion in Quebec.
He feared the criticism by his opponents that while Laurier would not
interfere with Manitoba when it was a matter of the educational rights
of the minority he was willing to interfere when it was a matter of
obliging his political friends. There was something too in the charge
that the delay in dealing with the matter of the extension of the
Manitoba boundaries arose from the same feeling. To transfer the
Northwest territories, where the minority had certain constitutional
rights in matters of education, to Manitoba where the minority had none
would be to put one more weapon into the hands of Mr. Bourassa. The
extension of Manitoba's boundaries had to await a change in
administration.


THE TALE OF FIFTEEN YEARS.

There is always a temptation to the biographer of a prime minister to
relate his hero to the events of his period as first cause and
controlling spirit--the god of the storm; whereas prime ministers, like
individuals, are the sports of destiny; things happen and they have to
make the best of them. The performances of the Laurier government may be
divided into two classes, those due to its own initiative and those
which were imposed by circumstances. The ratio between the two classes
changed steadily as the administration grew in age. After the impetus
born of the reforming zeal of opposition and the natural and creditable
desire to fulfil express engagements dies away, the inclination of a
government is not to invite trouble by looking around for difficult
tasks to do. "Those who govern, having much business on their hands,"
says Benjamin Franklin, "do not like to take the trouble to consider and
carry into execution new projects." This is a political law to which all
governments conform. Even the great reforming administration of
Gladstone which took office in 1868, had earned five years later the
famous jest of Disraeli: "The ministers remind me of one of those
marine landscapes not very unusual off the coast of South America; you
behold a range of extinct volcanoes; not a flame flickers upon a single
pallid crest."

Fifteen years of Liberal rule in Canada furnish a complete field for the
study of the party system under our system. In 1896 a party stale in
spirit, corrupt and inefficient, went out of office and was replaced by
a government which had been bred to virtue by eighteen years of
political penury. It entered upon its tasks with vigor, ability and
enthusiasm. It had its policies well defined and it set briskly about
carrying them out. A deft, shrewd modification of the tariff helped to
loosen the stream of commerce which after years of constriction began
again to flow freely. There was a courageous and considered increase in
expenditures for productive objects. A constructive, vigorously
executed immigration policy brought an ever expanding volume of suitable
settlers to Western Canada which in turn fed the springs of national
prosperity. This impulse lasted through the first parliamentary term and
largely through the second, though by then disruptive tendencies were
appearing. By its third term the government was mainly an office-holding
administration on the defensive against an opposition of growing
effectiveness. And then in the fourth term there was an attempt at a
rally before the crash. The treatment of the tariff question, always a
governing factor in Canadian politics even when apparently not in play,
is an illustration of the government's progress towards stagnation. The
1897 tariff revision "could not," says Professor Skelton, "have been
bettered as a first preliminary step toward free trade."
"Unfortunately," he adds, "it proved to be the last step save for the
1911 attempt to secure reciprocity." After 1897 Laurier's policy was to
discourage the revival of the tariff question. Tarte's offence was
partly that he did not realize that sleeping dogs should be allowed to
lie. "It is not good politics to try to force the hand of the
government," wrote Laurier to Tarte. And he added: "The question of the
tariff is in good shape if no one seeks to force the issue." With
Tarte's ejection there followed nearly eight years during which real
tariff discussion was taboo. Then under the pressure of the rising
western resentment against the tariff burdens, the government turned to
reciprocity as a means by which they could placate the farmers without
disturbing or alarming the manufacturers. By what seemed extraordinary
good luck the United States president, Republican in politics, was by
reason of domestic political developments, in favor of a reciprocal
trade agreement. It seemed as though the Laurier government as by a
miracle would renew its youth and vigor; but the situation, temporarily
favorable, was so fumbled that it ended not in triumph but in defeat.

The disasters of the Laurier railway policy--or rather lack of
policy--must always weigh heavily against the undoubted achievements of
the Laurier regime. A period of marked national expansion gave rise to
all manner of railway ambitions and schemes, and Laurier lacked the
practical capacity, foresight and determination to fit them into a
general, well-thought-out, practicable scheme of development. Again it
was a case of letting the pressure of events determine policy, in place
of policy controlling events. He could not deny the Grand Trunk's
ambitions, but he obliged it to submit to modifications demanded by
political pressure which turned its project, perhaps practicable in its
original form, into a huge, ill-thought-out transcontinental enterprise.
Equally he could not hold the ambitions of Mann and McKenzie in check.
The advisability of a merger of these rival railway groups was obvious
at the time, but Laurier let them each have their head, dividing
government assistance between them, with resulting ruin to both and
bequeathing to his successors a problem for which no solution has yet
been found.


PERSONAL GOVERNMENT

During the years of his premiership Laurier rose steadily in personal
power and in prestige. It is in keeping with the genius of our party
system that the leader who begins as the chosen chief of his associates
proceeds by stages, if he has the necessary qualities, to a position of
dominance; the republic is transformed into an absolute monarchy. In the
government of 1896 Laurier was only _primus inter pares;_ his associates
were in the main contemporary with him in point of years and public
service. Their places had been won by party recognition of their
services and abilities. In the government of 1911 Laurier was the
veteran commander of a company which he had himself recruited. Of his
1896 colleagues but few remained, and of these only Mr. Fielding had
kept his relative rank in the party hierarchy. All his remaining
colleagues had entered public life long subsequent to his accession the
Liberal leadership. Not one had been in parliament prior to 1896. Their
entrance into public life, their steps in promotion, their admittance to
the government were all subject to his approval, where they were not
actually due to his will. To Laurier's authority they yielded
unquestioning obedience, and with it went a deep affection inspired and
made sure by the personal consideration and kindliness that marked his
relations with them. Under these conditions, men of strong, individual
views and ambitions, with reforming temperaments and a desire to force
issues, did not find the road to the Privy Council open to them;
different qualities held the password.

In 1908 Sir Wilfrid, when a discerning electorate had deprived him of a
colleague whose political incapacity had been completely demonstrated,
became a party to a deal by which he re-entered parliament. An old
friend took the liberty of asking Sir Wilfrid why he wanted this
associate back in the cabinet, only to be told that "So-and-So never
made any trouble for me." At least twice in the last four years of his
regime Sir Wilfrid, conscious of the waning energies of his party, took
advice outside of his immediate circle as to what should be done; on
both occasions he rejected advice tendered to him because this involved
the inclusion in the cabinet of personalities that might have disturbed
the charmed serenity of that circle. Sir Wilfrid preferred to have
things as they were, perhaps because his sense of reality warned him
that, so far as the duration of time during which he would hold office
was concerned, there probably would not be any great difference between
a government wholly agreeable to him and one reconstituted to meet the
demand of the younger and more vigorous elements in the party. In 1909,
in a letter to a supporter who had lost the party nomination for his
constituency, he gave premonition of his own fate: "What has happened to
you in your county will happen to me before long in Canada. Let us
submit with good grace to the inevitable."

The inevitable end in the ordinary course of events would have been the
going on of the party until it died of dry rot and decay, as the
Liberals had already died in Ontario; but fortunately, both for the
party and for Laurier's subsequent fame--though it may not have seemed
so at the time--emergence of the reciprocity question gave it an
opportunity to fall on an issue which seemed to link up the end of the
regime with its heroic beginnings and to reinvest the party with some of
its lost glamor.




IV.--LAURIER: DEFEAT AND ANTI-CLIMAX


The defeat of the Liberals in September, 1911, raised sharply the
question of the party's future and the leadership under which it would
face that future. Speaking at St. Jerome toward the close of the
campaign Sir Wilfrid had stated positively that if defeated he would
retire. This declaration of intention--no doubt at the moment sincerely
made--was designed to check the falling away from Laurier's leadership
in Quebec, which was becoming more noticeable as election day drew
near. But the appeal was ineffective.. The effective opposition to
Laurier in Quebec came not from Borden or from Monk, the official leader
of the French Conservatives, but from Bourassa. Laurier and his
lieutenants fought desperately, but in vain, to break the strengthening
hold of the younger man on the sympathies of the French electors. In
Quebec the custom of the joint open air political meeting is still
popular, and at such a concourse in St. Hyacinthe, an old Liberal
stronghold, Sir Wilfrid's colleagues, Lemieux and Beland, met a notable
defeat at the hands of Bourassa--an incident which clearly revealed how
the winds were blowing. Bourassa, fanatically "nationalist" in his
convictions and free from any political necessity to consider the
reactions elsewhere of his doctrines, was outbidding Sir Wilfrid in the
latter's own field. Laurier received the news of the electoral result in
a hall in Quebec East, surrounded by the electors of the constituency
which had been faithful to him for 40 years. He accepted the blow with
the tranquil fortitude which was his most notable personal
characteristic; but the feature in the disaster which must have made the
greatest demand upon his stoicism was this indication that his old
subordinate and one time friend was--apparently--about to supplant him
in the leadership of his own people. The election figures showed that
whereas Laurier had carried 49 seats in Quebec in 1896, 58 in 1900, 54
in 1904 and again in 1908, he had been successful in only 38
constituencies against 27 for the Conservatives and Nationalists
combined.

Laurier, at the moment of his defeat, was within two months of entering
upon his 70th year. He had been 40 years in public life; for 24 years
leader of his party; for 15 years prime minister. He had had a long and
distinguished career; and he had gone out of office upon an issue which,
with confidence, he counted upon time to vindicate. He had long
cherished a purpose to write a history of his times. The moment was,
therefore, opportune for retirement; and it must be assumed that he gave
some thought to the advisability or otherwise of living up to his St.
Jerome pledge. But neither his own inclination nor the desire of his
followers pointed to retirement; and the next session of parliament
found him in the seat he had occupied twenty years before as leader of
the opposition. The party demand for his continuance in the leadership
was virtually unanimous. There was only one possible successor to Sir
Wilfrid--Mr. Fielding. But he was not in parliament. Also he was in
disfavour as the general whose defensive plan of campaign had ended in
disaster. His name suggested "Reciprocity"--a word the Liberals were
quite willing, for the time being, to forget. He was left to lie where
he had fallen. For some years he lived in political obscurity, and it
was only the emergence of the Unionist movement which made possible his
re-entrance to public life and his later career.


THE REVIVAL OF LIBERAL HOPES

When Sir Wilfrid resumed the leadership after the formality of tendering
his resignation to the party caucus it meant, in fact, that he intended
to die in the saddle. Thereafter Sir Wilfrid talked much about the
inexpediency of continuing in the leadership, and often used language
foreshadowing his resignation--indeed the letters quoted by Professor
Skelton in the latter chapters of his book abound in these
intimations--but these came to be regarded by those in the know as
portents: implying an intention to insist upon policies to which
objections were likely to develop within the party.

Notwithstanding the severity of their defeat--they were in a minority
of 45 in the House--the Liberals in opposition showed a good fighting
front, and ere long hope revived. The Borden government found itself in
difficulties from the moment of taking office--largely by reason of the
tactics by which Laurier's supremacy in Quebec had been undermined. The
Nationalist chiefs declined an invitation to enter the government, but
they controlled the Quebec appointments to the cabinet, and thus assumed
a quasi-responsibility for the new government's policy. The result was
disastrous to them; for the Borden government, subject to the influences
that had enabled it to sweep Ontario, could not concern itself with the
preservation of Bourassa's fortunes. The extension of the Manitoba
boundaries was a blow to the Nationalists; they failed in their efforts
to preserve the educational rights of the minority in the added
territory. Laurier had evaded this issue; Borden could not evade it,
and by its settlement Bourassa was damaged. Still more disastrous to the
Nationalist cause was the naval policy which Mr. Borden submitted to
Parliament in the session of 1912-1913. There was in its presentation an
ingenious attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable which deceived nobody.
The contribution of the three largest dreadnoughts that could be built
was to satisfy the Conservatives; the Nationalists were expected to be
placated by the assurance that this contribution was merely to meet an
emergency, leaving over for later consideration the question of a
permanent naval policy. But all the circumstances attending the setting
out of the policy--the report of the admiralty, the letters of Mr.
Churchill, the speeches by which it was supported with their insistence
upon the need for common naval and foreign policies--made it only too
clear that it marked the abandonment of the Canadian naval policy which
had been entered upon only four years before with the consent of all
parties and the acceptance in principle of the Round Table view of the
Imperial problem. Laurier challenged the proposition whole-heartedly.
Here was familiar fighting ground. From the moment they joined battle
with the government the Liberals found their strength growing. They were
indubitably on firm ground. They were helped mightily by Mr. Churchill's
attempted intervention in which he belittled Canadian capacity in a
manner worthy of Downing street in its palmiest days. Mr. Churchill had
the bright idea of coming to Canada to take a hand personally in the
controversy. A Canadian-born member of the British House of Commons
sounded out various Canadians as to the nature of the reception Mr.
Churchill would receive. Mr. Churchill did not come--fortunately for the
government. The Liberals fought the proposition so furiously in the
Commons that the government had to introduce closure to secure its
passage through the commons, whereupon the Liberal majority in the
Senate threw it out. The Liberal policy was to challenge the government
to submit the issue to the people in a general election. That within
eighteen months from the date of their disastrous defeat the Liberals
should invite a second trial of strength spoke of rapidly reviving
confidence. The government ignored the challenge, for very good reasons.
In the sequel Laurier, as with all his policies having to deal with
Imperial questions, was amply justified. The policy of Dominion navies
was never again seriously questioned in Canada; when admiralty
officials, true to form, challenged it in 1918 it was Sir Robert Borden
who defended it, to some purpose.

These developments were fatal to Quebec Nationalism as a distinct
political force under the direction of Mr. Bourassa. The ideas that
inspired it did not lapse. Nor did Mr. Bourassa, as apostle of these
ideas, lose his personal eminence. But the electors in sympathy with
these ideals began to develop views of their own as to the political
action required by the times. Their alliance with the Conservatives had
brought them no satisfaction. They had ejected the most eminent living
French-Canadian from the premiership to the very evident injury of
Quebec's influence in Confederation--that about represented the sum of
their achievements. The thought that they had been on the wrong track
began to grow in their minds. The conditions making for the creation of
the Quebec bloc were developing. The disposition was to get together
under a common leadership. It was still a question as to whether, in the
long run, that leader should be Laurier or Bourassa; but all the
conditions favored Laurier. For one thing, he could command a large body
of support outside of his own province which it was quite beyond the
power of Bourassa to duplicate. The swing to Laurier was so marked that
by 1914 the confident prediction was made by good political judges that
if there were an election Laurier would carry 60 out of the 65 seats in
Quebec. Such a vote meant victory. Sir Wilfrid was slow in coming to
believe that an early reversal of the decision of 1911 was possible; but
finally found himself infected with the hopefulness of his following.
Hard times became a powerful ally of the Liberals and the government
suffered from the first shock of the impending railway collapse. The
course of the party lay clear before it; it was to see that the
conditions in Quebec remained favorable and to await, with patience, the
coming of an election which would reopen the doors to office. But not
too much patience, for the years were slipping past. Laurier was in his
73rd year.


THE PARTIES AND THE WAR

Such were the political conditions: a government in a position of
growing doubtfulness and a combative and confident opposition--when
Canada found herself plunged over night into the Great War. Under the
high emotion of this venture into the unknown politics vanished for a
brief moment from the land. If that moment could have been seized for a
sacred union of hearts dedicated to the great task of carrying on the
war how different would the whole future of Canada have been! In the
fires of war our sectional and racial intractabilities might have been
fused into an enduring alliance. But Canadian statesmanship was not
equal to the opportunity. For this Sir Wilfrid has no accountability.
There is no question of the correctness and generosity of his attitude
as revealed in the war session of August, 1914. From a speech in the
next session it might be inferred that he would have gone farther than
he did if overtures had been made to him.

In Canada, as elsewhere, the war spelt opportunity for more than the
patriot and the hero. The schemer, resolute to make the war serve his
ends, appeared everywhere. From the morrow of those first days of high
exaltation the two currents ran side by side in Canada: the clear tide
of valor and self-sacrifice, the muddy stream of cowardice and
self-seeking. There was an influential element in the dominant party
which was determined to exploit the war to the limit for political and
personal interests. The war meant patronage; it must be placed where it
would do the most party good. It meant an opportunity for artificial and
perfectly safe distinction; this must be employed for increasing the
political availability of friends. Political colonels began to adorn the
landscape. It meant a corking good issue upon which an election could be
won; why not take advantage of it? While the government officially was
leading a united people into action, these scheming political
profiteers were perfecting their plans for appealing to the people on
the ground that the government--a party government which had not invited
any measure of close co-operation from the opposition--must have a
mandate to carry on the war. There is a quite authentic story of a
leading Canadian being cheered up on a train journey by assurances from
a travelling companion, a friend holding high office, that events were
shaping for certain victory; until he learned that the enemy about to be
defeated was the "damn Grits." The battle of Ypres in April, 1915, saved
Canada from an ignoble general election on the meanest of issues. Though
some of the conspirators still pressed for an election, it soon became
apparent that the proposal was abhorrent to public opinion. Canadians
could not bring themselves to the point of fighting one another while
their sons and brothers were dying side by side in the mud of Flanders.


The danger of a profound division of the Canadian people in war-time
passed; but irretrievable damage had been done to the cause of national
unity. In considering subsequent events these unhappy developments of
the first year of the war cannot be overlooked. Party feeling among the
Liberals had been held in leash with difficulty; now it was running free
again. The attitude of the party towards the government was in effect:
"You have tried to play politics with the war; very well, you will find
that this is a game that two can play at." The strategy looking to a
future trial of strength was skilfully planned. There was no challenge
to the government plans. It was given full liberty of action upon the
understanding that it would accept full responsibility and be prepared
to render an account in due time to parliament and people. The tactics
were those of paying out the rope as the government called for it. The
attitude of the Liberal leaders towards the war was unexceptionable. Sir
Wilfrid's recruiting speeches--and he made many of them--were admirable;
and he did not hesitate to point the way of duty to the young men of his
own province. Upon things done or not done the attitude of the
parliamentary Liberals was increasingly critical; and the government, it
must be said, with its scandals over supplies, its favoritism in
recruiting, its beloved Ross rifle, gave plenty of opportunity to
opposition critics. With every month that passed the political advantage
that had come to the government, because it was charged with the task of
making war, waned.

General elections were due in the autumn of 1916. It became a serious
question of Liberal policy to decide between agreeing to an extension of
the life of parliament, which the government intended to request, and
the forcing of an election. Two lieutenants of Sir Wilfrid toured
Western Canada sounding Liberal opinion; their disappointment was
obvious when, in a conference with a group of Liberals in Winnipeg, they
found opinion solidly adverse to an election. Their reasons for an
election were plainly stated--in brief they were that on the details of
its war management the government could be, and, in their judgement,
should be, beaten. But Sir Wilfrid, with his hand on the country's
pulse, could not be stampeded. He saw, more clearly than his
lieutenants, the danger to the party of refusing an extension at that
time. A twelve months was added to the life of parliament with a
reservation in the minds of the Liberals that the first extension would
be the last. This meant an election in 1917.


THE NATIONALISTS AND ONTARIO

Mr. Bourassa was acutely conscious of the development of opinion in
Quebec favorable to the Liberals, and he sought to retain his hold upon
his following by the tactics which in the first place had given him his
following--by going to extremes and outbidding Laurier. The chief
article in the Nationalist creed was that Canada was everywhere a
bilingual country, French being on an equality with English in all the
provinces. This contention rested upon a conglomeration of arguments,
assertions, assumptions, inferences, and it was backed by thinly
disguised threats of political action. The opposing contention that
bilingualism had a legal basis only in Quebec and in the Dominion
parliament with its services and courts was interpreted as an insult.
Mr. Lavergne, the chief lieutenant of Mr. Bourassa, was wont to wax
furiously indignant over the suggestion, as he put it, that he must
"stay on the reservation" if he was to enjoy the privileges that he held
to be equally his in whatever part of Canada he might find himself.

Events in Ontario put the test of reality to the Nationalist theories. A
feud broke out between the English-speaking and the French-speaking
Catholics over the language used for instruction in separate schools
where both languages were represented; and resulting investigation
revealed a state of affairs suggesting something very like a conspiracy
to minimize or even abolish the use of English in all school areas where
the French were in control. Resulting regulations and legislation
intended to put a stop to these conditions gave French a definitely
subordinate status. This fired the heather, and later somewhat similar
action by Manitoba added fuel to the flames. The Nationalist agitation
was resumed with increased vehemence in Quebec; and the Ontario
minority were encouraged to defy the regulations by assurances that
means would be found to bring Ontario to time. In addition to legal
action (which brought in the end a finding by the Privy Council
completely destroying the Nationalist claim that bilingualism was
implied in the scheme of Confederation) various ingenious attempts were
made to apply pressure to Ontario. The most daring, and in results the
most disastrous, was the threat that if Ontario did not remove the
"grievances of the minority" the people of Quebec would go on strike
against further participation in the war. That dangerous doctrine
operating upon a popular mind impregnated with suspicion of the motives
and intentions behind Canada's war activities, produced the situation
which made inevitable the developments of 1917.

The movement against Ontario was Nationalist in its spirit, its
inspiration and its direction. Side by side with it went a Nationalist
agitation of ever-increasing boldness against the war. Ammunition for
this campaign was readily found in the imputations, innuendoes, charges,
mendacities of the Labor and pacifist extremists of Great Britain and
France; they lost none of their malignancy in the retelling. Bourassa
included Laurier in the scope of his denunciations. Laurier's loyal
support of the war and his candid admonitions to the young men of his
own race made him the target for Bourassa's shafts. Something more than
a difference of view was reflected in Bourassa's harangues; there was in
them a distillation of venom, indicating deep personal feeling.
"Laurier," he once declared in a public meeting, "is the most nefarious
man in the whole of Canada." Bourassa hated Laurier. Laurier had too
magnanimous a mind to cherish hate; but he feared Bourassa with a fear
which in the end became an obsession. He feared him because, if he only
retained his position in Quebec, Liberal victory in the coming Dominion
elections would not be possible. Laurier feared him still more because
if Bourassa increased his hold upon the people, which was the obvious
purpose of the raging, tearing Nationalist propaganda, he would be
displaced from his proud position as the first and greatest of
French-Canadians. Far more than a temporary term of power was at stake.
It was a struggle for a niche in the temple of fame. It was a battle not
only for the affection of the living generation, but for place in the
historic memories of the race. Laurier, putting aside the weight of 75
years and donning his armor for his last fight, had two definite
purposes: to win back, if he could, the prime ministership of Canada;
but in any event to establish his position forever as the unquestioned,
unchallenged leader of his own people. In this campaign--which covered
the two years from the moment he consented to one year's extension of
the life of parliament until election day in 1917--he had repeatedly to
make a choice between his two purposes; and he invariably preferred the
second. In the sequel he missed the premiership; but he very definitely
accomplished his second desire. He died the unquestioned leader, the
idol of his people; and it may well be that as the centuries pass he
will become the legendary embodiment of the race--like King Arthur of
the English awaiting in the Isle of Avalon the summons of posterity. As
for Bourassa, he may live in Canadian history as Douglas lives in the
history of the United States--by reason of his relations with the man he
fought.


THE BILINGUAL EPISODE

The Canadian house of commons was the vantage point from which Sir
Wilfrid carried on the operations by which he unhorsed Bourassa. Here
we find the explanation of much that appears inexplicable in the
political events of 1916 and 1917. Laurier was out to demonstrate that
he was the true champion of Quebec's views and interests, because he
could rally to her cause the support of a great national party. Hence
the remarkable projection of the bilingual issue into the proceeding of
parliament in May, 1916. The question as an Ontario one could only be
dealt with by the Ontario authorities once it was admitted--Sir Wilfrid
being in agreement--that disallowance was not possible. Yet Sir Wilfrid
brought the issue into the Dominion parliament. If he had done this
merely for the purpose of making his own attitude of sympathy with his
compatriots in Ontario clear, the course would have been of doubtful
political wisdom, in view of his responsibilities to the party he led.
But he insisted upon a formal resolution being submitted. Professor
Skelton, in the passages dealing with this episode, shows him whipping
up a reluctant party and compelling it, by every influence he could
command, to follow him. The writer, arriving in Ottawa when this
situation was developing, was informed by a leading Liberal member of
parliament that the "old man" had thought out a wonderful stroke of
tactics by which he was going to strengthen himself in Quebec and at the
same time do no harm in Ontario--a feat beside which squaring the circle
would be child's play. Very brief enquiry revealed the situation. Sir
Wilfrid was determined to have a resolution and a vote. The western
Liberals were in revolt; the Ontario Liberals were reluctant but were
prepared to be coerced; most of the maritime province Liberals were
obedient, but there was a minority strongly opposed. Theoretically the
formula that there was to be no coercion, each member voting as his
conscience directed, was honored; but Sir Wilfrid had found it necessary
to indicate that if in the outcome it should be found that any
considerable number of his supporters were not in agreement with him, he
would be obliged to interpret this as indicating that the party no
longer had confidence in him. Professor Skelton supplies the evidence
that Sir Wilfrid pressed the threat to resign almost to the breaking
point. He actually wrote out something which was supposed to be a
resignation before the Ontario Liberals capitulated. The western
Liberals were of sterner stuff; they stood to their guns. No resignation
followed. "The defection of the western Liberals," says Professor
Skelton, "forced from Sir Wilfrid a rare outbreak of anger." The use of
the word "defection" is enlightening, as showing Professor Skelton's
attitude towards the Liberals who in those trying times adhered to their
convictions against the party whip. He is a thorough-going partisan,
which, in an official biographer, is perhaps the right thing.

The writer's activities in encouraging opposition to these party
tactics led to a long interview with Sir Wilfrid, in which there was
considerable frank language used on both sides. Sir Wilfrid gave every
indication that he was profoundly moved by what he called "the plight of
the French-Canadians of Ontario." They were, he said, politically
powerless and leaderless; the provincial Liberal leaders, who should
have been their champions, had abandoned them; the obligation rested
upon him to come to their rescue. The suggestion that, while he might be
within his rights in thus expressing his individual views, he should not
seek to make it a party matter in view of the strong differences of
opinion within the party, was rather impatiently brushed aside. Still
less respect was shown the observation that it was not desirable that
the Liberal party should identify itself with a resolution the carrying
of which meant a general election in the height of the war upon a race
and religious issue. Sir Wilfrid, in the course of the conversation,
touched quite frankly upon the necessities of the Quebec political
situation. He advanced the argument, which was put forward so
persistently a year later, that it must be made possible for him to keep
control of Quebec province, since the only alternative was the triumph
of Bourassa extremism, which might involve the whole Dominion in
conflict and ruin.

The episode passed apparently without disruptive results; but surface
indications were misleading. In reality a heavy blow had been struck at
the unity of the Liberal party; there began to be questionings in
unexpected quarters of the Laurier leadership. What had happened was
only too clear, to those who looked at the situation steadily. Party
policy had been shaped with a single eye to Quebec necessities; and
party feeling, party discipline, the personal authority of Laurier has
been drawn on heavily to secure acceptance of this policy by Liberals
who did not favor it. But there is in politics, as in economics, a law
of diminishing returns. A year later the same tactics applied to a
situation of greater gravity ended in disaster. The split which came in
1917 followed pretty exactly the split that would have come in 1916 over
bilingualism, had the Liberal members not been constrained by their
devotion to party regularity to vote against their convictions.


THE MOVEMENT FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

The movement for national government long antedated the emergence of the
issue of conscription; it was, in its origin, Liberal. Its most
persistent advocates in the later months of 1916 and the opening months
of 1917 were Liberal newspapers, among them the Manitoba Free Press;
and there was an answer from the public which showed that the appeal for
a union of all Canadians who were concerned with "getting on with the
war" made a deep appeal to popular feeling. The most determined
resistance came from the Conservatives. The ministerial press could see
nothing in it but a Grit scheme to break up the Borden government, which
they lauded as being in itself a "national government" of incomparable
merit. But that movement was equally disconcerting to the Liberal
strategists since it threatened to interfere with their plans for a
battle, to end, as they confidently believed, in a Liberal victory. In
January, 1917, Sir Wilfrid could see nothing in the movement but an
attempt to prevent a French-Canadian from succeeding to the premiership,
and wrote in those terms to N. W. Rowell.

An offer by Sir Robert Borden to Sir Wilfrid Laurier to join him in a
national government would have been unwelcome at any time excepting
perhaps in the first months in the war; but in the form in which it
finally came, in May, 1918, it was trebly unacceptable. Sir Wilfrid was
asked to help in the formation of a national government to put into
effect a policy of conscription, already determined upon. Although
history will no doubt confirm the bona fides of Sir Robert's offer, it
cannot but be lenient to Sir Wilfrid's interpretation of it as a
political stroke intended to disrupt the Liberal party and rob him of
the premiership. From his viewpoint it must have had exactly that
appearance. Laurier's position in Quebec had been undermined in the
years preceding the war by the Nationalist charge that his naval and
military policies implied unlimited participation, by means of
conscription, in future Imperial wars. He had always denied this; and
when Canada entered the great war he, to keep his record clear, was
careful to declare over and over again that Canadian participation by
the people collectively, and by the individual, was and would remain
voluntary. As the strain of the war increased the feeling in Quebec in
its favor, never very strong, grew less. There began to be echoes of
Bourassa's open anti-war crusade in the Liberal party and press. Sir
Wilfrid, watching with alert patience the development of Quebec opinion,
began cautiously to replace his earlier whole-hearted recognition of the
supreme need of defeating Germany at all costs by a cooler survey of the
situation in which considerations of prudent national self-interest were
deftly suggested. The "We-have-done-enough" view was beginning to
prevail; and Laurier, intent upon the complete capture of Quebec at the
impending elections, while he did not subscribe to it, found it discreet
to hint that it might be desirable to begin to think about the wisdom of
not too greatly depleting our reserves of national labor.

To Laurier, thus engaged in formulating a cautious war policy against
the day of voting, came the invitation from Borden to join him in a
movement to keep the armies of Canada in the field up to strength by the
enforcement of conscription. Every aspect of the proposition was
objectionable to Laurier. It meant handing back to Bourassa the legions
he had won from him, and with them many of his own followers. No one was
justified in believing that Laurier with all his prestige and power
could commend conscription to more than a minority of his compatriots.
Sir Robert Borden's proposal meant the foregoing of the anticipated
party victory at the polls, the renouncement of the premiership, and the
loss, certainly for the immediate future and probably for all time, of
the affection and regard of his own people as a body. The proposition
doubtless looked to him weird and impossible, and not a little impudent.
The argument that the proposed government could better serve the general
interests of the public, or even the cause of the war, than a purely
Liberal government, of which he would be the head, probably struck him
as presumptuous. Three days before Sir Robert Borden made his
announcement of an intention to introduce conscription, Sir Wilfrid,
anticipating the announcement, wrote to Sir Allan Aylesworth his
unalterable opposition to the policy. This being the case, there never
was a chance that Laurier would entertain Borden's offer to join him in
a national government.


THE LIBERAL DISRUPTION

Sir Wilfrid, rejecting Borden's offer, adhered to his plan of an
election on party lines; but he knew that conditions had been powerfully
affected by these developments. His position in Quebec was now secure
and unchallenged--even Bourassa, recognizing the logic of the
situation, commended Laurier's leadership to his followers. If he could
hold his following in the English provinces substantially intact the
result was beyond question. He set himself resolutely to the task.
Thereafter the situation developed with all the inevitableness of a
Greek tragedy to the final catastrophe. Sir Wilfrid surveyed the field
with the wisdom and experience of the veteran commander, and from the
disposition of his forces and the lay of the land he foresaw victory.
But he overlooked the imponderables. Forces were abroad which he did not
understand and which, when he met them, he could not control. He counted
upon the strength of party feeling, upon his extraordinary position of
moral authority in the party, upon his personal hold upon thousands of
influential Liberals in every section of Canada, upon the lure of a
victory which seemed inevitable, upon the widespread and justified
resentment among the Liberals against the government for things done
and undone to keep the party intact through the ardors of an election.
One thing he would not do; he would not deviate by an inch from the
course he had marked out. Repeated and unavailing efforts were made to
find some formula by which a disruption of the party might be avoided.
One such proposition was that the life of the parliament should be
extended. This would enable the government, with its majority and the
support it would get from conscriptionist Liberals, to carry out its
programme accepting full responsibility therefor. Sir Wilfrid rejected
this; an election there must be. This was probably the only expedient
which held any prospects of avoiding party disruption; but after its
rejection Liberals in disagreement with Laurier still sought for an
accommodation. There was a continuous conference going on for weeks in
which all manner of suggestions were made. They all broke down before
Laurier's courteous but unyielding firmness. There was the suggestion
that the Liberals should accept the second reading of the Military
Service Act and then on the third reading demand a referendum; rejected
on the ground that this would imply a conditional acceptance of the
principle of compulsion. There was the proposal that Laurier should
engage, if returned to power, to resort to conscription if voluntary
recruiting did not reach a stipulated level--not acceptable. Scores of
men had the experience of the writer; going into Laurier's room on the
third floor of the improvised parliamentary offices in the National
History Museum, spending an hour or so in fruitless discussion and
coming out with the feeling that there was no choice between
unquestioning acceptance of Laurier's policy or breaking away from
allegiance to him. Not that Laurier ever proposed this choice to his
visitors. He had a theory--which not even he with all his lucidity could
make intelligible--that a man could support both him and conscription at
the same time. There is an attempt at defining this policy in a curious
letter to Wm. Martin, then premier of Saskatchewan, which is quoted by
Skelton. Sir Wilfrid in these conversations--as in his letters of that
period, many of which appear in Skelton's Life--never failed to stress
conditions in Quebec as compelling the course which he followed; the
alternative was to throw Quebec to the extremists, with a resulting
division that might be fatal. There was, too, the mournful and repeated
assertion--which abounds also in his letters--that these developments
showed that it was a mistake for a member of the minority to be the
leader of the party. At the close of the session, when it became
increasingly evident that a party split was impending, there were
reports that Laurier proposed to make way for a successor upon some
basis which might make an accommodation between the two wings of the
party possible; and there was an attempt by a small group of Liberal M.
P.'s to bring this about. The treatment of this incident in Professor
Skelton's volume is obscure. In any case it had no significance and it
came to nothing. Laurier alike by choice and necessity retained the
leadership.

Sir Wilfrid misjudged, all through the piece, the temper and purpose of
the Liberals who dissented from his policy. For his own courses and
actions there was a political reason; he looked for the political
reasons behind the actions of those in disagreement with him. He found
what he looked for, not in the actual facts of the situation but in his
imagination. He saw conversion to the Round Table view of the Imperial
problem and the acceptance of dictation from London--a very wild shot
this! He saw political ambition. He saw unworthy desires to forward
personal and business ends. But he did not see what was plain to
view--that the whole movement was derived from an intense conviction on
the part of growing numbers of Liberals that united national action was
necessary if Canada was to make the maximum contribution to the war.
There was very little feeling against Sir Wilfrid--rather a sympathetic
understanding of the position in which he found himself; but they were
wholly out of agreement with his view that Canada was in the war on a
limited liability basis. In the very height of the controversy Sir
Wilfrid could not be got to go beyond saying that Canada should make
enquiries as to how many men she could afford to spare from her
industries and these she should send if they could be induced
voluntarily to enlist. This was wholly unsatisfactory to those who held
that Canada was a principal in the war, and must shrink from no
sacrifices to make victory possible.

Still less satisfactory was the professed attitude of the Liberal
candidates in Quebec; with few exceptions they embraced the anti-war
Nationalist programme. It became only too evident that a Liberal victory
would mean a government dependent upon and controlled by a Quebec bloc
pretty thoroughly committed to the view that Canada had "done enough."
For those committed to the prosecution of the war to the limit,
conscription became a test and a symbol; and ultimately the pressure
forced reluctant politicians to come together in the Union government.
There followed the general election and the Unionist sweep. Laurier
returned to parliament with a following of eighty-two in a house of 235.
Of these 62 came from Quebec; and nine from the Maritime provinces. From
the whole vast expanse from the Ottawa river to the Pacific Ocean ten
lone Liberals were elected; of these only two represented the west, that
part of Canada where Liberal ideas grow most naturally and freely. The
policy of shaping national programmes to meet sectional predilections,
relying upon party discipline and the cultivation of personal loyalties
to serve as substitutes elsewhere had run its full course--and this was
the harvest!


THE LAST YEAR

The events of 1917 were both an end and a beginning in Canada's
political development. They brought to a definite close what might be
called the era of the Great Parties. Viscount Bryce, in a work based
upon pre-war observations, in dealing with Canadian political
conditions, said:

"Party (in Canada) seems to exist for its own sake. In Canada ideas are
not needed to make parties, for these can live by heredity, and, like
the Guelfs and Ghibellines of medival Italy, by memories of past
combats; attachment to leaders of such striking gifts and long careers
as were Sir John Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, created a personal
loyalty which exposed a man to reproach as a deserter when he voted
against his party."

For these conditions there were reasons in our history. Our parties
once expressed deep divergencies of view upon issues of vital import;
and each had experienced an individual leadership that had called forth
and had stereotyped feelings of unbounded personal devotion. The
chiefships of Laurier and Macdonald overlapped by only four years, but
they were of the same political generation and they adhered to the same
tradition. The resemblances in their careers, often commented upon,
arose from a common attitude towards the business of political
management. They conceived their parties as states within the state.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they conceived them as
co-ordinate with the state. Of these principalities they were the
chieftains, chosen in the first place by election--as kings often were
in the old times; but thereafter holding their positions by virtue of
personal right and having the power in the last analysis by their own
acts to determine party policy and to enforce discipline. Their
personalities made these assumptions of power appear not only
inevitable, but proper. Personal charm, human qualities of sympathy and
understanding; an inflexible will which, except in crises, worked by
indirection; the prestige of office and the glamor of victory; and the
accretions of power which came from the passage of time--half their
followers towards the end of their careers could not remember when other
suns shone in the firmament; all these influences helped to transform
party feeling into that blind worship which drew from Viscount Bryce his
mordant comment.

This venerable but archaic political system did not survive the war.
Beside the loyalties inspired by the war tribal devotion to a party
chief seemed a trivial concern. Canadians, who gave first place to the
need of getting on with the war, viewed with consternation the readiness
of elements in both parties to put their political interests above the
safety and honor of the commonwealth. The movement for national
political unity was born of their concern and indignation. This
development was almost as displeasing to the Conservative partisans as
to the Liberal "legitimists," who upheld the right, under all
circumstances, of Laurier to regain the premiership; and it was their
inveterate and unthinking opposition that had much to do with the
ultimate disruption of the union. They did not realize, until they got
into the elections of 1921, that their party had disintegrated under the
stresses of war.

A study of the origin, achievements, failures, downfall and consequences
of Union government might be of interest, but it does not come into a
survey of the life of Laurier. These matters are related to the
influences that are now making over Canadian politics; they concern the
leaders of to-day, all minor figures in the 1917 drama. Because the
Union government passed without leaving behind it tangible and visible
manifestations of its power, there are those who regard it as a mere
futility--a sword-cut in the water, as the French say. But of the Union
movement it might well be said: Si monumentum requiris circumspice. The
spirit behind the movement passed with the war, but it left the old
traditional party system in ruins. The readjustments that are going on
to-day, the efforts at the realignment of parties, the attempt to newly
appraise political values, and to redefine political relationships--all
these things are testimony to the dissolving, penetrating power of the
impulses of 1917.

But the task of attempting political reconstruction in a new world was
not imposed upon Laurier. The signing of the armistice was the signal
for the release of new forces; it was a great turning point in the
world's history. But for Laurier the tale of his years was told. There
was something fitting in the departure of the veteran with the turning
of the tide. He had been a mere survival on the scene following the
elections of 1917 which put into the hands of the Union government a
mandate to "carry on" for the remainder of the war--which at that time
gave promise of stretching out interminably. That election set bounds to
his ambitions, wrote finis to his political career. "Unarm; the long
day's work is o'er." He continued to hold his rank in a party which
waited upon events, knowing that the task of rebuilding and
reconstruction must fall to younger hands. The serenity of mind which
had sustained him in all the changes of a long and varied life did not
desert him; and he looked forward with fortitude to the end now
approaching. He had come a long way from the humble beginnings in St.
Lin, 77 years before. Childhood; happy, carefree boyhood; a youth of
gallant comradeship with the young swordsmen of a fighting political
army; the ardors of a career in the making full of delights of battle
with his peers; the call to the command; the conquest of the
premiership; the long, crowded, brilliant years of office with their
deep anxieties, crushing responsibilities, great satisfactions,
substantial achievements; the bitterness of unexpected defeat; the
gallant fight to win back to power ending by a stroke of fate in
disaster; the final disruption of his party and the loss of old friends
who had followed him in victory or defeat; these recollections must have
been much in his mind during this year of afterglow. The end was fitting
in its swiftness and dignity. No lingering, painful illness, but a swift
stroke and a happy release. "Nothing is here for tears; nothing to
wail."

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Printers and Bookbinders, Toronto, Canada

The End



[End of _Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics_ by J. W. Dafoe]