LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
SIR WILFRID LAURIER
VOLUME I
WILFRID LAURIER
At twenty-eight
LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
SIR WILFRID LAURIER
BY
OSCAR DOUGLAS SKELTON
ILLUSTRATED WITH
PHOTOGRAPHS
VOLUME I
S. B. GUNDY
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
TORONTO
1921
, /
Copyright, 1921, by
THE CENTURY Co.
J^RAS
3 1
S79073
TO
MY MOTHER
PEEFAOE
Some time before his death, Sir Wilfrid Laurier
placed in my hands all his papers, covering the period
to the close of his term of office. After his death, Lady
Laurier gave access to the later papers. These papers
included all the documents of public interest which he
had accumulated, with the exception of a few boxes of
letters lost in the burning of the Parliament Buildings
during the war.
It will be noted that few letters have been reprinted
in the early as compared with the late years of Sir Wil-
frid's life. There is a striking difference, in the char-
acter of the correspondence of the middle and of the
last years. During his years of office, when business
pressed and when men came across a continent at a
prime minister's nod, the letters, though abundant, are
nearly always brief and rarely of general interest. In
the years of comparative leisure, when a leader in op-
position had to go to men, or write them, and partic-
ularly when emotions were stirred, the letters are longer
and freer. Sir Wilfrid's caution and his remarkable
memory lessened the extent to which he committed him-
self on paper. He never wrote a letter when he could
hold a conversation, and he never filed a document when
he could store the fact in his memory: fortunately, his
secretaries saw to the filing. So far as is known, he
never wrote a line in a diary in his life. He was not
given to introspection ; he lived in his day's work.
The writer is deeply indebted to friends of Sir Wil-
frid and of his own who have read these pages in proof.
PREFACE
They are given to the public with the hope that they may
provide his countrymen with the material for a fuller
understanding of one who was not only a moving orator,
a skilled parliamentarian, a courageous party leader,
and a faithful servant of his country, but who was the
finest and simplest gentleman, the noblest and most un-
selfish man, it has ever been my good fortune to know.
O. D. SKELTON.
Kingston, Canada,
October, 1921.
I
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGK
I THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN . .. ,., ... ,., ,., . 3
II THE POLITICAL SCENE . . ... .. ,., ,., ,., ,., . 45
III FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT . . ..... 105
IV THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION . ... ,. 157
V UNDER A NEW LEADER . . . 218
VI RAIL AND KIEL .... . . . ,. . . . 260
VII LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY . . ,. ,., . . 332
VIII MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED 350
IX THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION ... ,. 424
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Wilfrid Laurier Frontispiece
l-AOINO
PAGE
Carolus Laurier 20
River Achigan and St. Lin 28
The Village School, St. Lin * ... 32
L'Assomption College 32
Wilfrid Laurier 40
Mile. Zoe Lafontaine 48
A Street in L'Assomption 64
The Hills of Arthabaska 64
Louis Joseph Papineau 80
Cardinal Taschereau 128
Bishop Bourget 128
Bishop Lafleche 128*
Alexander Mackenzie 160
Edward Blake 224
Four Quebec Leaders 240
Builders of the Canadian Pacific 272
Wilfrid Laurier 336
Sir John A. Macdonald 416
Four Conservative Prime Ministers . 464
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR
WILFRID LAURIER
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR
WILFRID LAURIER
CHAPTER I
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
The Peopling of New France An Outpost of the Faith A Sol-
dier of France The Laurier Stock The Habitant New France
and British Policy Charles Laurier, Inventor Carolus and Mar-
celle Lauirer Birth of Wilfrid Laurier Boyhood in St. Lin
An English Schooling L'Assomption College Student at Law
Early Partnerships The Eastern Townships A Happy Mar-
riage.
WILFRID LAURIER was born at St. Lin,
a little village on the Laurentian plain
north of Montreal, on November 20, 1841.
Exactly two hundred years earlier his first Canadian
ancestor had fared forth from Normandy, a member of
the little band of pioneers who had undertaken to plant
an outpost of France and the Faith on the Iroquois-
harried island of Montreal. For eight generations his
forefathers took their part in the unending task of sub-
duing the Laurentian wilderness. Striking deep roots
in Canadian soil, shaping and shaped by the new ways
and new interests of the colony, they worked, like thou-
sands of their compatriots, for the most part in obscurity
and silence. Then at last the sound and sturdy stock
3
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRED LAURIER
found expression. We cannot understand Wilfrid
Laurier, his character, temperament, viewpoint, his
problems, limitations, achievements, unless we bear in
mind those two centuries of life and work in the Canada
which had become his kinsmen's only home.
France had entered late into the race for overseas pos-
sessions. The wars of religion, entanglements in Eu-
rope, court intrigues, had occupied the whole interest of
her rulers. When at last, in the seventeenth century,
with a measure of unity attained at home, France had
brief leisure to dream of New- World empire, there
seemed little place left in the sun. Spaniards and Por-
tuguese, English and Dutch, were staking out the lands
of sun and gold. French adventurers found a footing
in India and Florida and Brazil, but for the most part
they followed the track of Breton fishermen to the fogs
and furs of the St. Lawrence. In 1608, a year after
the London Company had founded, in the marshes of
Jamestown, the first enduring English settlement in the
South, Champlain founded, on the rock of Quebec, the
first enduring French settlement in the North. For all
Champlain's courage and persistence, it grew but slowly.
The weary and perilous voyage in crude and comfortless
craft barred all but the most courageous or the most de-
spairing. There was no gold to lure. The fur-trade
was monopolized by the trading companies to which in
turn kingly favour inclined. It was a task of years to
clear an opening in the dense forests, and the little settle-
ment planted in a vast fertile continent was long de-
pendent for food and stores on the yearly ships from
4
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
France. The Iroquois lurked at the gate. Winter and
scurvy and brandy played havoc with men who would
not learn the country's ways. If New France was to
become more than a fur-trader's post, some other power
was needed to drive or draw men forth.
That power was religion. In the English settlements
to the south, it was religion more than any other factor
that impelled men to leave the land of their birth and
seek homes overseas. Men who could not find in Eng-
land freedom to worship as their conscience dictated, or
power to make others worship as they themselves pleased
-Puritans, Quakers, Roman Catholics, and, in Long
Parliament days, Episcopalians formed the backbone
of the settlements on the Atlantic coast, and gave the
young colonies their fateful bias toward self-govern-
ment.
In New France it was not the discontent of a religious
minority that sent men and women overseas. This solu-
tion of France's colonizing problem had been definitely
rejected. France, like England, had its dissenters:
there were in Europe no more resolute or enterprising
men, no better stuff for the building of a new state, than
the Huguenots. But they were not allowed to find an
outlet in America, under the flag of France. For years
advisers of the court, lay and cleric, urged that New
France should be saved from the evil of a divided faith
which had brought old France to the verge of ruin, and
that the simplest way to avoid conflict was to bar the
Huguenot. Insistent pressure and the flaring out again
of Huguenot revolt, brought Richelieu to yield, and in
5
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the charter granted the Hundred Associates trading
company, in 1627, all Huguenots and foreigners were
forbidden to enter the colony. The discontented minor-
ity who might have emigrated to New France and who
eventually were exiled from France to build up her
rivals, were not allowed to grapple with the task. The
contented majority for whom the colony was reserved
had little wish to go.
Yet in another way than in the English colonies re-
ligion was destined to provide the impelling force.
There were among the Catholics of France men and
women of burning zeal, who felt a call to bring the
Indians to Christ. While English settlers with their
families were flocking to New England and Virginia,
seeking to better themselves both here and hereafter, in
New France martyr priests and devoted nuns were fac-
ing endless perils and privations in the hope of winning
savage souls. There are no more glorious pages in
the annals of missions than those which record the
womanly tenderness and practical efficiency of Jeanne
Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys and Mere Marie de
Tlncarnation, or the devotion of Franciscan and Jesuit
fathers, Le Caron and Dablon, Lalemant and Brebeuf ,
Le Jeune and Masse and Jogues, following the shifting,
shiftless Montagnais through filth and famine, labour-
ing patient years in the great Huron villages of what is
now western Ontario, or braving the Iroquois in their
innermost strongholds, only too often crowning a life
of service by martyrdom under the scalping-knife or at
the stake.
6
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
The reports or Relations in which each year the
Jesuits recorded their efforts, fired the imagination of
pious men and women throughout France. Not least
they stirred one extraordinary group of men and women,
in whom mystic piety, hard-headed grasp of practical
affairs and unquestioning courage were strangely
mingled, to a resolve to plant the Cross far toward the
heart of the new land. Jerome le Royer de la Dauver-
siere, tax-gatherer of Anjou; Jean Jacques Olier, Paris
abbe and later founder of the Order of St. Sulpice;
Pierre Chevrier, Baron de Fancamp ; Mme. de Bullion,
as pious as she was rich; Mile. Jeanne Mance, honoured
of all Canadian nurses who have followed in her foot-
steps, and Paul de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve,
Christian gentleman, whose simple faith had withstood
contact with soldiers and with heretics, were only the
more notable of the associates who thus came together
to found the Society of Our Lady of Montreal. Their
aim was to found a mission outpost on the island of
Montreal, which lay at the junction of the two great
Indian waterways, the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa,
and was famed through all North America as a rendez-
vous. Here priests were to minister to the spiritual
needs of such savages as could be made to halt and heed ;
nursing sisters were to care for the sick and the aged,
and teaching sisters to instruct the young. Funds were
raised, a grant of the island secured, soldier colonists se-
lected, and three small vessels equipped. In the sum-
mer of 1641 the expedition reached Quebec. Here
they found little backing for their rash venture. Gov-
T
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
ernor and Jesuit sought to dissuade them from inevi-
table and useless sacrifice; it was unwise to scatter
forces when the whole white population of Canada was
less than three hundred; the island of Montreal was
straight in the track of the Iroquois hordes who every
year swept up the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa in their
relentless hunting of men. But Maisonneuve insisted
that to Montreal he would go "if every tree on the island
were to be changed to an Iroquois," and in the following
spring the undaunted little band took possession.
Among the soldier colonists who followed Maison-
neuve there was found Wilfrid Laurier's first known
Canadian ancestor. * Augustin Hebert was a native of
the Norman town of Caen, the birthplace of William the
Conqueror. Four years after his coming he married a
girl of twenty, Adrienne Du Vivier, daughter of An-
toine Du Vivier and Catherine Journe, originally from
Carbony, in the province of Laon. Four children were
born to them, Paule, Jeanne, Leger, and Ignace.
Paule, who died in infancy, was sponsored by M. de
Maisonneuve and Mile. Mance. In August, 1651, Au-
gustin Hebert died of wounds received in an engage-
ment with the Iroquois. Three years later his widow
i List of the first colonists of Montreal, as given by M. l'Abb6 Verreau,
in "Trans. Royal Society of Canada," 1882, p. 99:
1642: May to August
1. M. de Maisonneuve 8. Jean Robelin
2. Le Pere Poncet 9. Augustin Hubert
3. M. de Puiseau 10. Antoin Damiens
4. Mile. Mance 11. Jean Caillot
5. Mme. de la Peltrie 12. Pierre Laimery
6. Mile. Catheiin Barr6 13. Nicolas Code and family
7. Jean Gorry
8
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
married Robert Le Cavelier. M. de Maisonneuve
granted them forty arpents of land near the fort, on
condition that the land might be resumed if needed for
building, that Adrienne Du Vivier renounced her dowry
and her rights in the estate of her first husband, and that
they would undertake to bring up the three surviving
children of Hebert until they attained their twelfth
year. J
The vision of Indians flocking peaceably from all the
St. Lawrence valley to hear the gospel message faded
before the stern reality of Iroquois attack. The Five
Nations had vowed to destroy the whole French colony,
and particularly the outpost at Montreal. They were
then at the height of their power. An unusual capacity
for political organization, a shrewd mastery of diplo-
macy, a grasp of military strategy, a persistence as rare
among Indians as their ruthlessness was common, and,
not least, ample stores of firearms sold by recklessly
profiteering Dutch traders from New Netherlands made
the Iroquois the most formidable of all Indian peoples,
unquestioned lords from Maine to the Mississippi and
from Hudson Bay to Tennessee. Hurons, Neutrals,
Eries, Andastes, in turn were exterminated. Only their
French foes withstood them. For twenty-seven years
(1640-67) the war continued, with only two brief
breathing spells. Now great bands of warriors attacked
in force ; now single braves lurked for days in ambush to
catch a Frenchman unawares. The builders of this
New Jerusalem, as of the Jerusalem of old, worked in
iL'Abb6 Dejordy: La Famille Hubert-Lambert, p. 1.
9
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the fields with their weapons by their side. "Not a
month of this summer passed," a chronicler recorded,
"but the book of the dead was marked in letters of red
by the hand of the Iroquois." Maisonneuve and his
comrades fought hard, worked hard, prayed hard, and
against all chance the little colony survived. Rarely
had they strength to take the offensive. One breathing
spell came when in 1660 Adam Dollard and his immortal
sixteen young comrades, all but two in their twenties,
after making their wills, their peace with their Maker,
and their last farewells, struck up the Ottawa to meet
the oncoming Iroquois, and at the Rapids of the Long
Sault, Canada's more glorious Thermopylae, fought for
eight days and nights against seven hundred frantic foes,
until arms, water, strength but never courage failed, and
one by one the little band had fallen by musket or toma-
hawk or at the stake.
Exploits such as Bollard's checked the Iroquois, but
only a great accession of force to the colonists could
subdue them. Fortunately help was at hand. The
rulers of France had at last both the will and the power
to aid. The young king, Louis XIV, and his great
minister, Colbert, were for the moment keenly alive to
the possibilities of colonial strength. The Hundred
Associates, the trading company which for a generation
had misruled New France, lost its charter, and in 1663
the colony came virtually under the king's direct control.
Jean Talon, intendant or business manager of the
colony, came out to play Colbert's part on the smaller
stage. Soldiers and settlers streamed in for a decade,
10
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
and the Marquis de Tracy, at the head of large French
and Canadian forces, laid waste the Iroquois country
and brought peace for a score of years.
One of the soldiers in Tracy's crack f orce,the regiment
of Carignan-Salieres, raised by the Prince de Carignan
in Savoy, tried and hardened in campaigns against the
Turk, and brought to Canada under Sieur de Salieres,
was Francois Cottineau, dit Champlaurier, the first of
the Laurier name in Canada. Francois Cottineau was
born in 1641 at St.-Cloud, near Rochefoucauld, in what
was then the province of Angoumois and is now the de-
partment of Charente, son, as the records say, of Jean
Cottineau, vine-grower, and Jeanne Dupuy. In that
day, when family names were still in the making, doubt-
less some ancestral field of lauriers or oleanders had
given a sept of the Cottineaus the additional surname
which in time was to become their only one.
The coming of Talon and Tracy assured the perma-
nence of the colony. The little settlement on the is-
land of Montreal shared in the brief outburst of vigour
and support. Its religious purpose was not forgotten.
Priests of the Order of St. Sulpice took spiritual charge
and temporal lordship of the island, not without a bitter
feud with the Jesuits which did not soon die. Mile.
Mance still gave to the Hotel Dieu her skill and judg-
ment, and Marguerite Bourgeoys continued the work of
teaching which the Congregation de Notre Dame has
carried on to this day. But gradually the advantages of
the island port for trade, and the rich farming possibili-
ties of the volcanic island soil, led to growth in other
11
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
directions which soon overshadowed the original activi-
ties of the associates of Our Lady of Montreal. Mon-
treal, like all New France, had ceased to be merely a fur-
traders' counter and a missionaries' base of operations;
it had become for all time a land of settlers and of homes.
For a few brief years the State took unwonted care to
stimulate the growth of New France. Officers and men
of the Carignan-Salieres regiment were induced to set-
tle, Roman-wise, on the imperilled borders, though it is
to be feared that more of them turned coureurs de bois,
roaming far in the Western wilderness, than remained to
till the soil of the Richelieu seigniories. Ship after ship
of settlers came, and thrifty efforts were made to save
the men of France for cannon fodder in Europe by
encouraging early marriage in the colony itself. Hun-
dreds of girls were brought from the old land, and mar-
ried out of hand to soldier and settler. The quick to
wed were rewarded and the tardy punished. The State
provided dowries of money or supplies, while in antici-
pation of Honore Mercier, Louis XIV offered a pen-
sion of three hundred livres to all Canadians who had ten
children living and four hundred for families of twelve
girls who had entered any religious order not being
counted. Fathers were fined if their sons were not mar-
ried at twenty or their daughters at sixteen, and mar-
riageable bachelors were forbidden to set out hunting
unless they undertook to marry within a fortnight of the
arrival of the next matrimonial ship from France. 1 Not
i Colbert summed up the policy succinctly in a despatch to Talon in 1668:
"I beg you to commend it to the consideration of the whole people that
their well-being, their subsistence, and all that most nearly concerns them,
12
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
even a Colbert could ensure that such drastic and pater-
nal interference would be permanent, but pressure of
Church and State and frontier conditions long made
marriage at an early age a feature of New France.
This rapid marrying and the steady pushing back of
the frontier which went with it, are brought out clearly
in the annals of the Hebert and the Cottineau-Laurier
families. Thanks to the care with which the parish
registers were kept by the church authorities, and the
tireless industry with which historians from Abbe Tan-
guay to M. Massicotte have delved into the records, and
thanks also to the fact that immigration from France
ceased early, making it possible to trace all the present
families to the early stocks, we can follow the branching
of these, as of countless other families of New France,
without a break through the generations.
Jeanne Hebert, the only surviving daughter of Au-
gustin Hebert and Adrienne Du Vivier, was married in
Montreal in 1660, to Jacques Millot, son of Gabriel
Millot and Julienne Phelippot; the bride was in her
fourteenth year, but the husband, doubtless a newcomer,
in his twenty-eighth. They did not quite earn the
depend on a general resolution, never to be broken, to marry youths at
eighteen or nineteen years, and girls at fourteen or fifteen; in countries
where everybody labors, and in Canada in particular, there is food for
all, and abundance can never come to them except through abundance
of men. ... It would be well to double the taxes and duties of bachelors
who do not marry at that age . . . and as regards those who seem to
have utterly forsworn marriage it would be expedient to increase their
taxes, to deprive them of all honors and even to attach to them some
mark of infamy. . . . Even though the kingdom of France be as populous
as any country in the world, it is certain that it would be difficult to
maintain large armies and at the same time to send great numbers of
settlers to distant lands. ... It is then . . . chiefly to increase from mar-
riage that we must look for the growth of the colony."
13
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
King's pension, for though they had ten children, not
more than seven were living at one time. It was the
eldest of these ten children, Madeleine Millot, who in
1677 in her fifteenth year, was married to the soldier of
Carignan-Salieres, Fra^ois Cottineau, dit Champ-
laurier, then approaching thirty-six.
Marriages in those days might be made early, but they
were not contracted lightly. The marriage contract of
Fran9ois Cottineau and Madeleine Millot, which is still
preserved, reveals with what a multitude of witnesses-
kinsmen, neighbours, old regimental officers the sol-
emn undertaking was made, and with what thrifty
and cautious care the future family finances were de-
tailed and guarded. 1
When the eldest of the four children of Fra^ois Cot-
tineau-Laurier, fittingly named Jean Baptiste, was
married at twenty-six to Catherine Lamoureux, a girl
of sixteen, youngest but one of a family of eleven, it was
not at Montreal but at St. Fra^ois in He Jesus, to the
northeastward, that the marriage was performed. That
even Colbert could not mould the people to his will is
made clear by the fact that the two daughters of Fran-
9ois Cottineau-Laurier did not marry until one was
twenty-nine and the other was twenty-four. Jean
Baptiste made his home at Lachenaie, across the river
from St. Fran9ois, but at first in the same parish. Here
his quiverful of children were born Jean Baptiste,
Marie Catherine, Marie, Agathe, Jacques, Rose,
Therese, Joseph, Pierre, Marie Anne, and Veronique.
i See Appendix I.
14
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
Here it was, in 1742, that Jacques, his second son, at
twenty-six, married Agathe Rochon, aged twenty-one,
and here for three generations more the family took root.
In every parish from Tadoussac to Montreal the same
story of early and fruitful marriage and of steady widen-
ing of the bounds of settlement is to be told. All along
the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu the habitants were
clearing their deep narrow holdings, winning an acre
or two a year from the dense forest. Facing the river-
road, the steep-roofed whitewashed houses of logs or
field stone, a furlong apart, soon gave the river bank
the air of an unending village street. Fur-trader and
explorer, missionary and soldier, ventured far into the
unknown West; while the English colonists were still
clinging to the coast or breaking through the Appa-
lachian barrier, the sons of New France were blazing
trails from Texas to Hudson Bay and from the Atlan-
tic to the foothills of the Rockies. Yet the great bulk
of the population remained in the St. Lawrence valley,
and in that community farming more and more became
the mainstay.
Farming methods were crude, but the soil was rich
and the habitant hard-working. Save in a rare famine
year, he had in his fields abundance of wheat and oats,
of corn and rye and the indispensable peas, and of fish
and game and wild fruits in the river and forest at his
door. Home-brewed ale and, later, home-grown and
home-cured tabac canadien helped to pass the long win-
ter nights. Every household was self-sufficient and self-
contained, The habitant picked up something of many
15
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
a trade, and developed a versatility which marks his
descendants to this day. From the iron-tipped wooden
plough, the wooden harrow and shovel and rake, to the
spinning-wheel that stood beside the great open fire-
place, the many-colored rug, the homespun linens and
etoffe du pays, the wooden dishes, the deerskin moccasin,
the knitted tasselled toque and the gay sash, all were his
own and his family's handiwork.
The habitant had found comfort. He had not yet
found full freedom, though the independent strain in
his blood and the democracy of the frontier ensured him
much greater liberty than is usually recognized, and
there was always the safety-valve of escape to the law-
less life of the coureur de bois. In the wider affairs
of the colony he had little voice. King and governor
and intendant made his laws, with some slight aid from
a nominated council; yet his taxes were light, and if he
did not make the laws, neither did they greatly circum-
scribe his daily life. The seigneur counted for more
in his eyes than the king, but had only a shadow of
the authority wielded by feudal lords in France: the
farmer proudly insisted that he was habitant, not censi-
taire. The Church came closest. The missionary aims
of the founders of the colony, the unwearied devotion
of the Church's servants, the outstanding ability of some
of its servants, notably Bishop Laval America's first
prohibitionist and the barring of heretics, gave the
Church sweeping and for a time unquestioned and un-
grudged authority. After Colbert came to office, and
throughout the French regime, the State increasingly
16
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
asserted its power, controlling the Church in matters of
tithes, the founding of new orders or communities, ap-
peals from ecclesiastical courts, and many issues of
policy, but the Church remained the dominant social
influence in the colony.
Already New France had taken on a life and colour of
its own. Governors and merchants and soldiers might
come and go, but the ways of the colony were little
changed. The striking and significant feature of these
later years is the cessation of contact with France
through immigration. The outburst of colonizing
energy under Colbert proved brief. Louis XIV and
Louis XV were seeking glory on European battle-fields,
and could spare no men for the wilderness. Daring
projects of American empire were staked out, but the
men needed to hold and develop the vast arc from Mon-
treal to New Orleans did not come. In the seventy
years up to 1680 the colony had received at most three
thousand immigrants from France ; in the eighty years
that followed, an incredibly small number came a
number which a distinguished authority, M. Benjamin
Suite, has put as low as one thousand all told.
Through all this period France had more than twice the
population of the British Isles, but did not send one
settler to the New World for the twenty that Britain and
Ireland urged and forced to go. In forty years half
the Presbyterian population of Ulster sought refuge in
the American colonies from British industrial and re-
ligious oppression; German, Dutch, Swiss settlers
poured in during the eighteenth century by tens of thou-
17
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
sands. The numbers of Ulstermen and of Germans
coming to the English colonies in a single year exceeded
the number of French settlers who crossed the Atlantic
in the century and a half from the beginning to the end
of the French regime. Of the four or five hundred
thousand Huguenots exiled from France more came
to the English colonies than Catholic France could spare
for her own New- World plantations, and the names of
Bowdoin, Faneuil, Revere, Bayard, Jay, Maury,
Marion, and many another bear witness of their quality.
For all the rapid multiplying of the original stock in
New France, it continued to be outnumbered by the
English colonies twenty to one.
For New France this cessation of new settlement and
the limitation of growth to the natural increase of popu-
lation, meant isolation and the development of a distinc-
tive, homogeneous community. With each year that
passed the men of New France knew less of any country
other than the land of their birth. For old France it
meant defeat in the struggle for colonial empire, defeat
which might be postponed by the bravery and resource
of individual leaders, by the firm military organization
of the people of New France, and by the disunion of the
English colonies, but which could not be averted.
The French regime came to an end a century and a
half after Champlain had raised the flag of France on
the rock of Quebec. The new rulers were faced at once
by the most serious difficulty that had yet beset any
colonizing power. Here were nearly eighty thousand
Frenchmen and Catholics, firmly rooted in the soil, with
18
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
ways of life and thought fixed by generations of tradi-
tion. What was to be the attitude of their English and
Protestant rulers ? On the answer to that question hung
the future of Canada, and the answer, or rather the
answers, that were given shaped the problems and the
tasks that in after days faced Wilfrid Laurier and his
contemporaries and that in changing forms will face the
Canadians of to-morrow.
The solution first adopted was what might have been
expected in a time when the right of self-determination
had not even become a paper phrase. It was simply to
turn New France into another New England, to swamp
the old inhabitants by immigration from the colonies to
the south and to make over their laws, land tenure, and
religion on English models. No little progress had been
made in this attempt when the shadow of the American
Revolution and the sympathy of soldier governors for
the old autocratic regime and for the French-Canadian
people about them brought a fateful change in
policy. British statesmen determined to build up on the
St. Lawrence a bulwark against democracy and a base
of operations against the Southern colonies in case of
war, by confirming the habitant in his laws, the seigneur
in his dues, the priest in his authority. To keep the
colony British, the government now sought to prevent it
becoming English. The Quebec Act, the "sacred
charter" of French-speaking Canada, embodied this new
policy. A measure of success followed. Then the un-
expected result of the American Revolution in exiling
to the St. Lawrence and the St. John tens of thousands
19
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of English-speaking settlers made it impossible to keep
Canada wholly French, and the hatred for democracy
and for all things French which developed during the
wars with Napoleon made Englishmen unwilling to let
French-speaking Canada rule itself.
The lesson which the statesmen in control in Britain
learned from the two revolutions, the American and the
French, was not the need of making terms with democ-
racy, but the need of nipping democracy in the bud.
Elective assemblies were conceded the people of Lower
or French-speaking Canada, and Upper Canada, the
newer English-speaking settlements to the west, as they
had previously been granted to the old colony of Nova
Scotia and the Loyalist settlement of New Brunswick,
but beyond this British governments would not go. An
all-guiding Colonial Office, a governor who really
governed, an appointed, and but for the grace of God an
hereditary, upper house which could always block the
popular assembly, little cliques of a governing caste in
control of administration, a church established and
endowed to teach the people respect for authority, long
barred the advance of self-government. Then the tide
of democracy surging through the world, the constitu-
tional campaigns of Baldwin and Papineau and
Howe, the bullets of Mackenzie's and Chenier's men,
the abandonment by Britain itself of the protection-
ist ideal of a self-contained empire, forced reform.
This is not the place to repeat the familiar story
of that early struggle for self-government. Later it
will be necessary to consider what were the results of the
20
CAROLUS LAURIER
Father of Wilfrid Laurier
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
half-century of British policy and Canadian develop-
ment, on the political and party situation, the unity of
the provinces, the relations of Church and State, the
sentiment of French-Canadian nationalism, the evolu-
tion of the colonial status, and the other issues which
faced Wilfrid Laurier and his fellow-countrymen as
they came to manhood.
While these affairs of state were in the balance, gener-
ation after generation of Lauriers were hewing their
way through the Northern woods. It was in 1742 in
the parish of Lachenaie that Jacques, second son of
Jean Baptiste Laurier and Catherine Lamoureux, mar-
ried Agathe Rochon. Charles Laurier, fourth of
Jacques's five children, was a boy of eleven when the bat-
tles of the Plains of Abraham and of Ste. Foye were
fought. In the year of the Quebec Act he married
Marie Marguerite Parant, or Parent. Of their four
children, only two, Charles and Toussaint, grew to man-
hood. With Charles Laurier the younger the capacity
of the stock began to reveal itself and the environment
to take the shape required to fit his grandson, Wilfrid
Laurier, for the part he was to play in his country's life.
Charles Laurier, the grandfather of Wilfrid Laurier,
was a man of unusual mental capacity and force of char-
acter. His interests and ambitions extended beyond
the narrow range of habitant life. Not content with the
scanty education available in the parish school, he mas-
tered mathematics and land-surveying. He surveyed a
great part of the old seigniory of Lachenaie, originally
granted to Sieur de Repentigny in 1647, and later di-
21
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
vided, the western half, two leagues along the river and
six leagues deep, falling in 1794 into the hands of Peter
Pangman, "Bastonnais" or New Englander, famed for
his exploits as fighter and fur-trader in the far North-
West.
Charles Laurier had an ingenious and practical turn,
which is evidenced by the fact that he was the first man
in Upper or Lower Canada to obtain a patent for an
invention. In 1822 he invented what he termed a loch
terrestre, or "land log." The Quebec "Gazette" of
June 24, 1822, noted that an ingenious machine to be
attached to the wheel of a carriage for measuring the
distance traversed had been exhibited that month in
Quebec, and that it was the invention of Mr. Charles de
Laurier, dit Cottineau, who intended to seek a patent
from the legislature next session. A letter in the "Ga-
zette" a few days later from Charles Laurier himself
dealt at length with the device. He explained that the
"land log" recorded automatically the number of revolu-
tions of the carriage-wheel to which it was attached, the
dials indicating in leagues and decimal fractions of a
league the distance traversed. In a carriage to which
this instrument had been attached, one could almost
make a survey of a province while driving, provided one
had a good compass.
In the summer of 1823 M. Laurier determined to put
his suggestion into practice. He attached the instru-
ment to the dashboard of a caleche, with five dials indi-
cating respectively tens of leagues, units, tenths, hun-
dredths, and thousandths. He drove from Lachenaie
22
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
to Quebec city, recording the distance as 54 and
487/1000 leagues. The legislative assembly, after call-
ing Joseph Bouchette, the surveyor-general of the prov-
ince, and E. D. Wells, a Quebec watchmaker, as expert
witnesses, decided to grant the patent. It was not until
1826, by which time five other patents had been regis-
tered, that the formalities were completed, the fees paid
and the patent obtained. In the same year, 1826, we
find him asking the Assembly for assistance in making
experiments in measuring distances on water and record-
ing the course of a vessel at sea. No aid was granted,
and apparently nothing further came of the project.
In 1805 Charles Laurier married Marie Therese
Cusson. To his son Charles, or Carolus, who was born
in 1815, he gave a forest farm at St. Lin, on the river
Achigan, some fifteen miles northeast of Lachenaie.
Here the son followed in his father's footsteps, survey-
ing and farming by turns, and here in 1840, when Caro-
lus had been married some six years, Charles and his
wife came to spend the rest of their days in a joint house-
hold.
The strong common sense of the elder Laurier, his
frankness and his sturdy emphasis on independence are
brought out clearly in the etrennes or New Year's
blessing sent to Carolus in 1836:
( Translation)
NEW YEAR'S BLESSING OF CAROLUS LAURIER
January 1st, 1836
MY DEAR SON:
For New Year's blessing I am going to give you some ad-
23
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
vice, and I hope that you will not scorn it, as you are now the
head of a household, a substantial villager, and consequently
a member of society.
Now in order to be a good member of society, you must be
independent. Besides independence, many rules of conduct
are understood, but that is the root of them all. Independence
does not always mean riches ! It means prudence, foresight
in business so that you are not taken unawares and forced to
yield or compromise with anyone. You must judge your own
business, watch over everything that goes on in your house,
in a word, over all that may help or hinder your interests.
You must subdue the flesh. That is to say, work reason-
ably, prudently and faithfully. A man of bodily activity may
earn, without any exaggeration, 25 or 50 dollars a year more
than an indolent man would. That may make an increase in
his fortune of from 13 to 26 thousand francs at the end of 30
years.
Finally, my son, you are your own master; do as you please;
I give you no commands. But if you wish to achieve inde-
pendence, pray God to direct your thoughts and your work. It
is spiritual and bodily activity which leads to independence:
the indolent man is always in need. This precept may be of
service to your wife and to everyone.
CHARLES LAURIER,
Your affectionate father.
The same Polonian prudence is evident in another
New Year's letter, written this time to his daughter-in-
law, in anticipation of the two households being joined:
NEW YEAR'S BLESSING OF MARCELLE MARTINEAU, WIFE OF
CAROLUS LAURIER
( Translation)
January First, 1840.
DEAR MADAM:
As we intend to be joined together next year and for the rest
of our days, unless we are greatly disappointed, God grant
that we may live on good terms with one another. It is to
24
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
Him that we must pray for this. Be resolute and patient. If
we take care, both of us, not to be embittered against one an-
other, we shall be able to live together happily, for it will be
less costly to keep house for two families joined together than
separated, as regards both household tasks and expense. If
we have the good fortune to agree, we shall be happier together
than apart. That is why we must fortify ourselves beforehand
with prudence and patience and resignation. When we fear
some misfortune, it is very seldom that it comes to us. Be
wise and prudent.
CHARLES LAURIEE.
Carolus Laurier had not the rugged individuality or
the practical interests of his father, but he had his own
full share of capacity. His keen wit, his genial com-
radeship, his generous sympathy, his strong, handsome
figure, made him a welcome guest through all the French
and Scotch settlements of the north country. He was
more interested in political affairs than his father had
been, and a strong supporter of the Liberal or "Patriot"
demand for self-government. It was an index of his
progressiveness that he was the first in the countryside
to discard the flail for a modern threshing-machine.
It was to his mother that Wilfrid Laurier always felt
he owed most. Marie Marcelle Martineau was born in
L'Assomption in 1815. Her first Canadian ancestor
was Mathurin Martineau, who emigrated to Canada
from the same part of France as Jean Cottineau, about
1687; from this Martineau stock came the poet Louis
Frechette, who counted himself a Scotch cousin of Wil-
frid Laurier. On her mother's side Scholastique or
Colette Desmarais Marcelle Martineau had the blood
of Acadian exiles in her veins. In 1834, when each was
25
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
nineteen, Carolus Laurier and Marcelle Martineau were
married at L'Assomption. Marcelle Laurier was a
woman of fine mind and calm strength, with an interest
in literature and an appreciation of beauty in nature
unusual in her place and time. She was passionately
fond of pictures, though there was little opportunity to
gratify her longing, and had a very good natural talent
for drawing. In the home she made in St. Lin there
was an intellectual interest and a grace and distinction of
life which were to leave a lasting impress on the son who
came to her in her twenty-seventh year.
In 1841 Carolus Laurier proudly recorded the follow-
ing entry in his papers :
(Translation)
To-day, the twenty-second day of the month of November,
in the year of Our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and forty-
one, was baptised in the church of St. Lin, by Messire G.
Chabot, cure for the said parish, Henri Charles Wilfrid, born
the twentieth day of the present month, of the lawful marriage
of Carolus Laurier, gentleman, land-surveyor, and Marie Mar-
celle Martinault. His godfather is Sieur Louis Charles Beau-
mont, Esq., gentleman, of Lechenaie; his godmother is Marie
Zoe Laurier, wife of Sieur L. C. Beaumont.
On January 23, 1844, he records the birth and baptism
that day of Marie Honorine Malvina Laurier.
Marcelle Martineau was not fated to be with her chil-
dren long. She died in March, 1848, in her thirty-fifth
year. But in the seven years of her son's life with her,
she had so knit herself into his being that the proud and
tender memory of her never faded from his deeply im-
pressionable mind. A second blow came with the death,
26
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
when barely eleven, of the sister who had grown very
dear to him.
Carolus Laurier soon took a second wife, Adeline
Ethier. By this marriage there were five children:
Ubalde, who became a physician and died at Arthabaska
in 1898; Charlemagne, for many years a merchant at
St. Lin, and member for the county of L'Assomption in
the House of Commons from 1900 until his death in
1907; Henri, prothonotary at Arthabaska, who died in
1906, and Carolus and Doctoree (Mme. Lamarche),
both of whom survived their half-brother.
Adeline Laurier proved a very kindly and capable
mother to all her flock. Her hold on the elder boy's
warm affections, and incidentally her husband's light-
hearted outlook on life, are brought out in a letter which
Carolus wrote to a niece of his wife, many years after :
(Translation)
St. Lin, March 19, 1886.
I am almost certain to get well in spite of my seventy-one
years, and I embarked on the seventy-second the day before
yesterday, while the Irish were holding their procession in the
streets of Montreal, and as that day is the day of their patron
saint and their national festival, and as I came into the world
71 years ago, I think that is the reason why, when I was a
widower, 5 or 6 old Irish damsels from New Glasgow used to
come to mass at St. Lin every Sunday and my seat was always
full of them. But the moment I married your aunt, pst ! their
devotion was at an end, and I found myself rid of these old
girls, and my seat and the rest of the church likewise.
. . . That did not prevent me keeping my health and being
very happy with your aunt, and my children too, for I am cer-
tain that Wilfrid loves his stepmother just as if she was his
own mother. I always remember that at the age of eleven,
27
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
when he came home from school, he would go and sit on his
stepmother's lap to eat his bread and jam or bread and sugar,
with his arms round her neck, and that he would put his "piece"
on his knees and wipe his mouth with his handkerchief and kiss
her over and over, and then pick up his "piece," eat a few
mouthfuls and begin to kiss her again. . . .
CAROLUS L.
St. Lin in the early fifties was a prosperous frontier
village. Twenty miles to the north the blue Lauren-
tians set a barrier to further expansion. The village it-
self was the centre of a broad, fertile, slightly rolling
plain, still covered for the most part with the maples
and elms, the pine and spruce, of the primitive forest.
Its great stone church towered high above the houses
that lined the two straggling streets. The river Achi-
gan, on which it lay, turned the wheels of the grist-mills
on its banks, floated down the logs from the upper
reaches, and, not least, provided fishing and swimming-
holes for boys' delight. It was a quiet, pleasant home,
well devised to give its children happiness in youth,
strength in manhood, and serene memories in old age.
Young Laurier shared in the usual children's games,
though an old companion recalls that many a time when
the boys would call, "Wilfrid, come, we are ready for a
race," the answer from the boy bent over a book would
be, "Just a minute," and again, "A minute more." He
particularly delighted in wandering through the woods,
sometimes with gun on his shoulder for rabbit or part-
ridge, but more often with no other purpose than to
search out bird and plant and tree. His sharp eyes and
retentive memory gave him an intimate and abiding
28
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
knowledge of wood life of which few but his closest
friends in later days were aware.
The boy's early schooling was given partly by his
mother and partly in the parish school of St. Lin. Un-
der the French regime a fair measure of elementary
schooling had been provided, mainly by the religious
orders, but with diversion of endowments to other ends
and disputes between Church and State as to control,
progress after 1763 had been slow. It was not until
1841 that an adequate system came into force. In the
school in St. Lin, which is still standing, though no
longer used as a school, the children of the late forties
learned their catechism and the three H's. For the ma-
jority, no further training was possible. For the few
who were destined for the Church, the bar or medicine,
the classical college followed. In young Laurier's case
a novel departure was taken.
Some seven miles west of St. Lin, on the Achigan, lay
the village of New Glasgow. It had been settled about
1820, chiefly by Scottish Presbyterians belonging to
various British regiments. Carolus Laurier in his work
as a surveyor had made many friends in New Glasgow,
and had come to realize the value of knowledge not only
of English speech but of the way of life and thought of
his English-speaking countrymen. He accordingly
determined to send Wilfrid, at the age of eleven, to the
school in New Glasgow for two years. Arrangements
were made to have him stay with the Kirks, an Irish
Catholic family, but when the time came illness in the
Kirk household prevented, and it was necessary to seek
29
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
a lodging elsewhere. One of Carolus's most intimate
friends was John Murray, clerk of the court and owner
of the leading village store. Mrs. Murray took in the
boy and for some months he was one of the family. The
Murrays, Presbyterians of the old stock, held family
worship every night. Wilfrid was told that if he de-
sired he would be excused from attending, but he ex-
pressed the wish to take part, and night after night
learned never-forgotten lessons of how men and women
of another faith sought God. When Mrs. Kirk re-
covered, he went to her for the remainder of his two
years in New Glasgow, but he was still in and out of the
Murrays' every day, and many a time helped behind the
counter in the store. The place he found in the life of
the Kirks may be gathered from a passing remark in a
letter from his father forty years later: "Nancy Kirk
writes that her father is now over a hundred and begin-
ning to wander in his mind : 'he does not see us at all,
but talks of Wilfrid and of Ireland.'
The school in New Glasgow was open to all creeds and
was attended by both boys and girls. It was taught by
a succession of unconventional schoolmasters, for the
most part old soldiers. The work of the first year in
New Glasgow, 1852-53, came to an abrupt end with the
sudden departure of the master in April. A man of
much greater parts, Sandy Maclean, took his place the
following year. He had read widely, and was never so
happy as when he was quoting English poetry by the
hour. With a stiff glass of Scotch within easy reach on
his desk, and the tawse still more prominent, he drew on
30
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
the alert and spurred on the laggards. His young pupil
from St. Lin often recalled in after years with warm
good-will the name of the man who first opened to him
a vision of the great treasures of English letters.
The two years spent in New Glasgow were of price-
less worth in the turn they gave to young Laurier's
interests. It was much that he learned the English
tongue, in home and school and playground. It was
more that he came unconsciously to know and appreciate
the way of looking at life of his English-speaking coun-
trymen, and particularly to understand that many roads
lead to heaven. It was an admirable preparation for the
work which in later years was to be nearest to his heart,
the endeavour to make the two races in Canada under-
stand each other and work harmoniously together for
their common country. Carolus Laurier set an example
which French-speaking and English-speaking Cana-
dians alike might still follow with profit to their children
and their country.
New Glasgow was only an interlude. Carolus
Laurier had determined to give his son as good a train-
ing as his means would allow. That meant first a long
course in a secondary school, followed by professional
study for law, medicine or the Church, the three fields
then open to an ambitious youth. Secondary education
in Lower Canada was relatively much more advanced
than primary; the need of adequate training for the
leaders of the community had been recognized earlier
than the need or possibility of adequate training for all.
The petit seminaire at Quebec and the Sulpicians' col-
31
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
lege at Montreal had trained the men who led their
people in the constitutional struggles following 1791.
Secondary schools or colleges, modelled largely on the
French colleges and lycees, had early been established in
the more accessible centres, in 1804 at Nicolet, in 1812
at St. Hyacinthe, in 1824 at Ste. Therese, in 1827 at Ste.
Anne de la Pocatiere, and in 1832 at L'Assomption.
All were maintained and controlled by the Church.
In September, 1854, Wilfrid Laurier entered the col-
lege at L'Assomption in the town of the same name, on
L'Assomption River twenty miles east of St. Lin.
Here for seven years he followed the regular course,
covering what in English-speaking Canada would be
taken up in high school and the first years of college.
The chief emphasis was laid on Latin ; the good fathers
succeeded not merely in grinding into their pupils a
thorough knowledge of moods and tenses, but in giving
them an appreciation of the masterpieces of Roman
literature. Many a time in later years when leaving for
a brief holiday Mr. Laurier would slip into his bag a
volume of Horace or Catullus or an oration of Cicero,
and, what is less usual, would read it. French literature
was given the next place in their studies, the literature,
needless to say, of the grand age, of Bossuet and Racine
and Corneille, not the writings of the men of revolution-
ary and post-revolutionary days, from Voltaire to Hugo
and Beranger. Briefer courses in Greek, English,
mathematics, philosophy, geography and history com-
pleted the seven years' studies. It was a training of ob-
vious limitations, but in the hands of good teachers such
32
THE VILLAGE SCHOOL, ST. LIN
L'ASSOMPTION COLLEGE
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
as the fathers at L'Assomption were, it gave men des-
tined for the learned professions an excellent mental
discipline, a mastery of speech and style, and a sympa-
thetic understanding of the life and culture of men of
other lands and times.
The school discipline at L'Assomption was strict.
The boys rose at 5:30, and every hour had its task or
was set aside for meal-time or play-time. The college
had not then built a refectory, and the students, though
rooming in the college buildings, scattered through the
town for their meals. Every Sunday, garbed in blue
and black coat, collegian's cap, and blue sash, all at-
tended the parish church; on week-days only the sash
was worn. Once a week, on Thursday afternoons,
there came a welcome half-holiday excursion to the coun-
try, usually to a woods belonging to the college a few
miles away. 5 These excursions young Laurier enjoyed
to the full, but he was not able to take much part in
the more strenuous games of his comrades. The weak-
i During the celebration, in 1883, of the fiftieth anniversary of the found-
ing of i/Assomption, Mr. Laurier recalled to his friends, young and old,
the part this holiday had held in their student life:
(Translation)
"In my time, we began to think of the next holiday when do you think?
At the end of the holiday. All week, our main preoccupation was as to
whether it would be fine next Thursday. All week, we studied the heavens
with as much care and more anxiety than the Vennors of to-day. On
Wednesday evening if the weather was fine, prayers were held in the open
air on the ballground. Our prayers mounted straight to heaven.
Invariably we ended by a canticle to her whom we called the patron saint
of scholars. What we sang was that sweet canticle of which each stanza
ends with the words so very appropriate to the thought which was filling
our minds for the morrow: 'Grant us a good day.' Ah, with what
confidence, with what ardour, our invocations rose to heaven! Even those
who had no voice found one for the occasion. Next day our prayers had
33
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
ness which was to beset his early manhood was already
developing, and violent exercise had been forbidden.
His recreation took other forms. The literary part of
the course, the glories of Roman and French and Eng-
lish literature, made a deep appeal to him. He took his
full share in the warm and dogmatic discussions in which
groups of the keener youngsters settled the problems of
life and politics raised by their reading or echoed from
the world outside. Sometimes a nearer glimpse was
given of the activities of that outer world. Assize courts
were held twice a year, and when election-time came
round, joint debates between the rival candidates at the
church door after Sunday mass or from improvised
street platforms on a week-day evening were unalloyed
delight. More than once he broke bounds to drink in
the fiery eloquence of advocate or politician, well con-
tent to purchase a stimulating hour with the punishment
that followed.
Wilfrid Laurier had come to L'Assomption with a
strong leaning toward Liberalism. His father's freely
spoken views, discussions of his elders overheard in St.
Lin and New Glasgow, echoes of the eloquence of the
great tribune Papineau, the reading of the history of
Canada which Garneau had written to belie Durham's
charge that French-speaking Canada had no literature,
had awakened political interest and given him the bent
i
been granted: the weather was fine. The flag, messenger of good tidings,
floated gaily at the top of the May-pole: it was 'the long holiday'; we were
going to the woods. And I ask you, my old fellow-students, is there a
single one of us who is not rejoicing that to-morrow will be 'the long
holiday' and that we are going to the woods?"
34
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
which his own temperament and his later reading con-
firmed. If the seed had not been vital and deeply
planted, his Liberalism could scarcely have survived the
Conservative atmosphere of L'Assomption. When the
French-Canadian majority which had fought
solidly for self-government divided, once self-
government was attained, into Liberals and Con-
servatives, the great mass of the clergy, as will
be noted later, took the Conservative turning. The col-
lege authorities and the great majority of his fellow-
students looked with more than suspicion on his political
heresies. When a debating society which young
Laurier had helped to organize ventured on still more
dangerous ground, taking up the highly contentious
theme over which historians have shed quarts of ink:
"Resolved, that in the interests of Canada the French
kings should have permitted the Huguenots to settle
here," and when the student from St. Lin took the
affirmative and pressed his points home, the scandalized
prefet d* etudes intervened, and there was no more debat-
ing at L'Assomption. Yet these differences were not
serious. The relations between teachers and pupils
were very friendly. Young Laurier was soon recog-
nized as the most promising student of his time, and it
was with pride that the authorities and his fellows chose
him to make the orations or read the addresses on state
occasions.
Students of all political tendencies and of none were
graduated from L'Assomption. It was the alma mater,
though in the days before the rise of parties (1835-42) ,
35
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of the giant Rouge tribune, Joseph Papin, le gros canon
du parti democratique, who is still commemorated in
the college halls, with laudable impartiality, as vir
statura, voce et dialectica potens, and of Leon Simeon
Morin (1841-48), his brilliant Conservative opponent,
who shot like a fiery meteor across the political sky of
Canada. Louis A. Jette, founder of the Parti Na-
tional which sought to reconcile Liberalism and the
Church, and later an eminent judge, left L'Assomption
the year before Wilfrid Laurier entered. Arthur Dan-
sereau, for many years the leading Conservative jour-
nalist in Quebec, was a year his junior, while in his
last year there entered a young lad from Lanoraie whose
path was to cross his many a time in the future, the
stormy petrel of Quebec politics, J. Israel Tarte.
The seven years soon passed and the momentous day
of graduation came. Of the twenty-three members of
his class (the 22nd "course") only nine completed the
seven years. The interests of the class were well
divided. Of the later career of three, two of whom
went to the Western States, no record is available. Of
the other twenty, three became barristers (avocats) and
three notaries, these six providing the three who won
legislative honours; four became priests, four doctors,
and three farmers, two entered business, and one died
while at school.
Wilfrid Laurier's ambitions had long been turned
toward law, and when he left L'Assomption at the age
of nineteen it was with the purpose of beginning imme-
diately to study for the bar. The leading law school of
36
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
Canada was then the Faculty of Law at McGill Uni-
versity. It had a strong staff of judges and of barris-
ters in active practice, and the offices of the city gave
ample opportunity for training in the routine of law.
The law faculty of Laval University, Montreal, it may
be noted, was not established until 1878.
To Montreal, then, Wilfrid Laurier journeyed in the
fall of 1861, with high hopes but some foreboding as to
what life in a large city would mean. He found a place
in the office of Rodolphe Laflamme, one of the leaders
of the Montreal bar and a very aggressive Rouge or
advanced Liberal. The salary paid, though small, was
a very welcome supplement to the funds his father had
been able to advance.
The three-year course, which led to the degree of
Bachelor of Civil Law, covered not only the basic sys-
tems of our jurisprudence, the civil law of Rome and the
common law of England, but the developments which
custom and legislators and code-makers had brought
about in English-speaking and French-speaking
Canada. The lectures were given in English or French,
according to the mother tongue of the speaker. Mr.
Laurier, with his New Glasgow training and his later
reading, had no great difficulty in following the Eng-
lish lectures. He had more trouble at first in under-
standing the Latin phrases in the lectures on Roman
law delivered by Justice Torrance, for at that time the
English pronunciation of Latin was almost the uni-
versal rule among English-speaking scholars. Hon.
J. J. C. Abbott, dean of the faculty, and destined thirty
37
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
years later to become in a party emergency Prime Min-
ister of Canada, was a sound and authoritative teacher
of commercial law. Rodolphe Laflamme taught cus-
tomary law and the law of real estate, and Hon. Wm.
Badgeley and E. C. Carter criminal law. Throughout,
Wilfrid Laurier ranked high in his work, though for the
comfort of those students who gather instances of men
succeeding in examinations and failing in the sterner
tests of life, it may be noted that the one man who ranked
higher was never heard of again. In his first and again
in his third year, he stood second in general proficiency,
and at graduation was first in the thesis required of all
candidates for the degree. He was accordingly chosen
to give the valedictory. It is not customary to find in
student valedictories mature and original contributions
to the philosophy of life. The address given on this
occasion had its share of the rhetoric of youth, but it
was a really notable utterance. The young valedic-
torian sketched a picture, somewhat idealized perhaps,
of the lawyer's place in the nation's life, forecasting
in more than one particular the principles which were
to guide his own public career. The duty and the op-
portunity of the lawyer to maintain private right, to
uphold constitutional liberty, and to work for the har-
mony of the two races in Canada, were strongly empha-
sized in vigorous and glowing phrase.
Valedictories butter no parsnips. No time could be
lost in seeking to make a living. Mr. Laurier was ad-
mitted to the bar of Quebec in 1864, and in October of
that year began practice in Montreal as a member of
the firm of Laurier, Archambault and Desaulniers.
38
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
All three partners were keen and ambitious, but the
city seemed well satisfied with the old established firms,
and clients were few. Finding difficulty in tiding over
the months of waiting, the partners dissolved in April,
1865. Mr. Laurier then formed a partnership with
Mederic Lanctot. Lanctot was a fiery and brilliant
speaker, of unbounded energy and audacity, but poorly
ballasted with judgment and fated for all his lavish
endowment to wreck his career. The partners were
curiously assorted the older man eager, passionate,
fond of lively company, ready to debate any question
in heaven above or earth beneath ; the younger, reserved,
retiring, firmly rooted in his convictions but calm and
balanced in their defence. Lanctot was absorbed in
politics, writing, speaking, organizing petitions against
Cartier's Confederation policy. Laurier was left to
carry on most of the work of the office. Their rooms
were the meeting place of an eager group of young law-
yers, burning with opinion or phrases on the political
issues of the day, and in Quebec fashion turning lightly
from law to journalism. Ill-health and his reserve and
moderation of temper kept Mr. Laurier from taking an
active part in their discussions, but friendships were
formed and opinions shaped which counted for much in
after years.
The question of his health was in fact now giving him
serious concern. Throat and lung trouble had devel-
oped, accompanied by serious hemorrhages. Many of
his friends felt that a quiet country town would give a
better fighting chance than a crowded city. Antoine
Dorion, his most valued friend, and the Liberal leader
39
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
in Canada East, * advised him to open a law office in the
growing village of L'Avenir, in the Eastern Townships,
and to combine with the law the editing of the weekly
newspaper, "Le Defricheur," which Dorion's younger
brother, Eric, had founded and managed until his death
in 1866. Mr. Laurier felt that the advice was sound,
and in November, 1866, he left Montreal for the little
backwoods village. A brief residence convinced him
that in spite of its optimistic name L'Avenir had no fu-
ture, and accordingly he moved his newspaper and his
law office to Victoriaville, thirty miles further east.
While Victoriaville, as the railway centre of the district,
became in time the chief business town, Mr. Laurier con-
cluded that his law practice would flourish more securely
in the judicial centre or chef lieu of the district, St.
Christophe, or, as it was later termed, Arthabaskaville,
and early in 1867 he opened his office in the picturesque
little town which was to be his home for the next thirty
years. 2
One further personal episode, and that the most im-
portant of his career, remains to be chronicled before sur-
1 The two provinces of Lower Canada and Upper Canada nominally
became one after 1841, but the old names lingered in popular usage, and
the corresponding division into Canada East and Canada West held a
measure of official sanction until at Confederation the present names of
Quebec and Ontario were substituted.
2 On the eve of his departure for Arthabaska, "Le Pays" records a ban-
quet given by his Montreal friends at the Hotel St. Louis in his honour.
The gathering was notable, the toasts many and all duly honoured.
Among the friends recorded as present were Edmond Angers, L. O. Da-
vid, J. A. Chapleau, C. A. Geoffrion, G. Doutre, L. A. Jett6, Metric
Lanctot, T. R. Laflamme, Charles Marcil, F. X. Rainville, and J. C.
Robidoux.
40
WILFRID LAURIER
At twenty-four
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
veying the beginnings of his public interests and activi-
ties in Montreal and the Townships.
When Wilfrid Laurier first came to Montreal he
knew little of the city or its people his only memory
of it a child's awe-struck vision of endless houses and
endless people, glimpsed from a crowded seat in a car-
riole, a dozen winters before. Neighbours in St. Lin
reminded him of a close friend of his mother, Mme.
Gauthier, whose husband had been the village doctor in
Marcelle Laurier's short married life. Dr. Gauthier
was now practising in Montreal. The young student
went to their home, and lived with them two of his
five Montreal years.
Both Dr. and Mme. Gauthier were much interested in
music and both were hospitably inclined. They kept
open house for a wide circle of young people of like
tastes. In this group Wilfrid Laurier took his place,
but it was within the house that he found his absorbing
interest. Mme. Lafontaine and her daughter Zoe were
also living at the Gauthiers'. Not many months had
passed before the vivacious charm, the piquant blending
of deep kindliness and straight-spoken frankness, the
wit and judgment, and the musical gifts of Mile. La-
fontaine had completely captured young Laurier's
heart. Nor was it long until Mile. Lafontaine had
come to feel that this quiet young man of reserved but
assured power, of strikingly handsome figure, of unfail-
ing courtesy to all about him, who had already an air of
distinction and a touch of the grand seigneur which
41
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
made all eyes follow him, was the centre of her world.
But he was as yet only a student at law, and she was
earning her living as a teacher of music. Marriage
seemed out of the question for long years. Then came
the increasing grip of illness on his frail body, and the
removal to Arthabaskaville without any definite under-
standing between them. 3
i To this period naturally belong Mr. Laurier's few lapses into poetry,
of which the following unpublished verses are typical:
LE TEMPS
.
Comme 1'onde qui fuit de rivage en rivage,
Sans suspendre jamais son cours sur nulle plage,
Tels pousse"s du destin qui nous tient enchaines
'Nos jours fuient du berceau vers la tombe entrained.
Le Temps marche tou jours d'une aile infatigable;
II n'est point de repos pour sa main redoutable;
Elle va, d^triusant, batissant tour a tour,
Pour batir et d6truire encore un autre jour.
Si quelqu* Eclair de joie illumine ma vie,
En vain je crie au Temps, en vain je le supplie
De ralentir 1'essor de son vol destructeur,
De me laisser jouir d'un instant de bonheur.
Comme un gladiateur dans la cite" romaine,
Aux cent mille bravos du peuple dans 1'arene,
Etreint son ennemi de son bras de g6ant,
L'6touffe et, plein d'orgueil, le rejette sanglant,
Tel le Temps me saisit dans le sein de ma joie;
II m'entraine avec lui, comme 1'aigle sa proie;
II m'abandonne enfin; sa main me laisse aller,
Pour me reprendre, et puis, me laisser retomber.
January 6, 1863.
A UN PAPILLON
Doux petit papillon, a peine dans la nuit
Commence de briller ma lampe solitaire,
Comme le plomb fatal, qui vers le but s'enfuit,
Tu tombes palpitant sur la pale lumiere.
Et chaque fois pourtant tes pures ailes d'or
A la flamme brulante ont laisse des parcelles:
42
THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN
Separation and time did not weaken affection, but
neither did they remove the barriers. There were weeks
of doubt when Mr. Laurier was convinced that his days
were numbered and that he could not fairly ask any girl
to share them. Then would come days of hope and de-
termination, and in his letters he would insist that he
could and would recover. In the meantime other suit-
ors were pressing, and particularly a physician in good
practice and good circumstances in Montreal. Pru-
dence, friends urged that it was quixotic to refuse this
suitor because of an interest in a struggling country
lawyer, with a most uncertain lease of life. The
pressure won. The engagement of Mile. Lafontaine
and her Montreal suitor was announced. Then ten
days before the marriage was to have taken place, Fate,
in the cheery person of Dr. Gauthier, intervened. He
telegraphed Mr. Laurier to come to Montreal at once
on important business. He came, saw, conquered.
The young couple determined to heed their own hearts
and their own half -believed hopes. In reality Mile. La-
fontaine did not believe that their married life would
be longer than a year or two, but if she could make her
husband's life happier and easier for that time, she was
prepared to make the venture. Action followed
quickly. A special dispensation was secured, and at
Quel atroce plaisir peut t'amener encore
Y chercher aujourd'hui des tortures nouvelles?
Comme toi, papillon, jadis naif enfant,
A gravir du succes 1'inaccessible cime,
J'ai vers6 sans profit le meilleur de mon sang,
Et de ma folle ardeur suis retombe victirae.
May, 1867.
43
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
eight o'clock that evening, May 13, 1868, Wilfrid
Laurier and Zoe Lafontaine were married. As he had
to appear in court in Arthabaskaville next morning, he
left at ten the same evening, returning three days later
to take Mme. Laurier back to their new home. They
had challenged fortune, and fortune yielded to their
faith. Soon the shadows lifted, and they entered on
fifty years of rare happiness and close communion.
That was for the future to disclose, but already in mar-
rying Mile. Lafontaine, Wilfrid Laurier had achieved
half his career.
CHAPTER II
THE POLITICAL SCENE
The Union Era The Reshaping of Parties: Responsible
Government Bedard and Papineau Papineau and LaFontaine
The Rise of the Rouges The Liberal-Conservatives Parties at
Confederation The Rise of Nationalism: A Conflict of Races
Laurier on Durham The Failure of Durham's Policy Barriers
to National Unity Laurier and Confederation Church and
State: The Church under Two Regimes The Rouges and Rome
The Passing of L'Avenir The Institute Controversy Laurier
and Le Defricheur.
IN the Canada of the sixties a young man's fancies
lightly turned to thoughts of polities. Public life
dominated the interest of the general public and
stirred the ambition of the abler individuals in far
greater measure than is true in these days when business
makes a rival appeal. Particularly in Lower Canada,
a political career was the normal objective, or at least
the visioned hope, of the majority of the young men of
education and capacity.
From boyhood days Wilfrid Laurier had been keenly
interested in public affairs. His student apprenticeship
and his first years of practice in Montreal gave an oppor-
tunity for forming political connections and taking a
part in public controversies which strongly confirmed
his early leanings. Now, as editor of the chief demo-
cratic journal of the Eastern Townships, he was a char-
tered guide of public opinion. His law practice brought
him into close contact with all parts of the district, and
before five years had passed he was marked as the des-
45
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
tined standard-bearer of the Liberals of the county.
Wilfrid Laurier was born in the year that Upper and
Lower Canada were yoked together in uneasy fellow-
ship. He had just begun the practice of law at Artha-
baskaville when the union of the two Canadas was dis-
solved and the wider federation of all the mainland
provinces was achieved. It was in the Canada of the
Union era that the stage was set and the players trained
for the comedies and the tragedies, the melodrama and
the vaudeville, of Confederation politics.
The stage was not a large one. The province of
Canada was just emerging from its years of pioneer
struggles and backwoods isolation. Its two million peo-
ple seemed to count for little in the work of the world.
Neither Britain nor France nor the United States gave
them more than a passing thought. Even with the
other provinces of British North America they had lit-
tle contact : no road or railway bound them. Until well
on in the Union period, each section had closer relations
with the adjoining states than with its sister provinces
Upper Canada with "York" State, Lower Canada
with New Hampshire and Vermont, and the Maritime
provinces with Maine and Massachusetts.
Yet if it was not large, the provincial stage witnessed
its full share of the dramatic motives and movements of
political life. Here experiments were worked out in
the organization of government and of parties, in the
relation of race with race, in the connection between
Church and State, and in the linking of colony and em-
pire, which deeply influenced the development of the
46
THE POLITICAL SCENE
future Dominion and were not without interest to the
world beyond.
In the words of Mr. Laurier, in an unpublished frag-
ment of a work he long planned to write, had fate given
him leisure, the political history of Canada under the
Union,
A new era began with the Union. In this new era there was
found nothing of that which had given the past its attraction,
neither the great feats of arms to save the native soil from in-
vasion, nor the intrepid journeys of the explorers led on and
on by an unquenchable thirst for the unknown, nor the journeys,
more intrepid still, of the missionaries everywhere marking with
their blood the path for the explorers. The very parlia-
mentary battles on which henceforth the attention of the na-
tion was to be concentrated no longer bore the striking impress
which had been stamped on the parliamentary struggles after
the Conquest by the prestige of those who took part in them,
the greatness of the cause which was defended, and the bloody
catastrophe which was their outcome.
Colourless these pages may be, but they are not barren.
They recall an epoch which, in spite of failures, was on the
whole fruitful, in which the patriot's eye may follow with legiti-
mate pride the calm, powerful and salutary influence of free
institutions. 1
The tasks of government and the scope and organiza-
tion of parties had been greatly modified by the union of
Upper and Lower Canada in 1841. The Union Act
brought together two communities of deeply varying
ways and traditions, communities which for fifty years
had had their separate governments and their local
parties. The mere union of the two provinces would
have made it necessary to shift the bases of political
activity, but union further brought in its train respon-
i Translation.
47
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
sible government, and responsible government involved
as an essential condition the existence of political par-
ties more definite and coherent than had hitherto existed
in the Canadas.
The insistence of the Reformers of Upper Canada
and the Patriotes of Lower Canada, through years of
struggle, upon a greater share in their own governing,
and the shock of the rebellion of 1837, had compelled
British statesmen to recognize at last that concessions
must be made. Under Durham's guidance, they had
come to see that the concession should take the form
which Robert Baldwin, the leader of the Upper Canada
Reformers, had long demanded the grant, in some
measure, of responsible government. Responsible
government meant in essence that the administration of
the country should be entrusted* to the leaders of the
dominant party in parliament, rather than, as in the
past, to the governor and the bureaucrats whom he ap-
pointed. But how could such freedom, even with the
restrictions with which in early years the concession was
hedged about, be granted to a colony like Lower Can-
ada, where the majority would inevitably be composed of
French-Canadians? English statesmen could bring
themselves, with difficulty, to admit the need of self-
government for the colonists of English speech and tra-
ditions in Upper Canada, but to propose the same policy
for a colony alien in blood and tongue and sympathy
appeared to them beyond discussion. Only by uniting
the provinces, to assure an English-speaking majority,
could the experiment be risked. Nor was the Union
48
MLLE. ZOE LAFONTAINE
THE POLITICAL SCENE
only negatively directed against French- Canadian
aspirations. Its framers hoped to make Union a posi-
tive means of anglicizing French Canada, of bringing
the habitant to realize the folly of isolation in a con-
tinent of English speech. How they fared in this en-
deavour will be noted later.
The primary task of the forties was the winning and
consolidation of responsible government. Governor
after governor and tenant after tenant of Downing
Street sought to set narrow bounds to the concession
that had been found unavoidable, but in vain. Robert
Baldwin, "the man of one idea," and Louis Hippolyte
LaFontaine, leader, in Papineau's enforced absence, of
the Lower Canada Liberals, stood firm in their in-
sistence that complete control of the domestic affairs of
the province must be conceded to a body of ministers
responsible to parliament and chosen from its dominant
parties. Sydenham fought their demands, but by mak-
ing himself the leader of a party majority in the As-
sembly played into the hands of those who insisted that
party majorities should rule. Bagot, less assertive in
temper, made some concessions of intention and more
through the accident of illness. Metcalfe, sent out by
the Colonial Office as the last bulwark of authority,
breasted the tide with success for a year or two, but at
last was compelled to recognize his failure. Elgin, the
last of the governors of the forties, gave formal recogni-
tion of the victory of the upholders of self-government
by summoning LaFontaine and Baldwin to form the
ministry of 1848. \
49
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
On this question of responsible government, the con-
clusions of Mr. Laurier, embodied in the same pregnant
fragment, are of particular interest because of his early
relations with the Rouges and the exponents of the
Papineau tradition, and his own long experience of the
working of the system:
Thus Lord Durham's idea had been realized, but its realiza-
tion had only been gradual. The theory of Lord John Russell
continued to be the theory of Lord Sydenham, of Sir Charles
Metcalfe and of the Colonial Office, until Lord Elgin, who to
the generous spirit of Lord Durham added a capacity perhaps
more solid, grasped the great reformer's idea and applied it
with as much freedom as he himself would have done.
If, to the England of 1840, the idea of the responsibility of
ministers appeared incompatible with the colonial status, the col-
ony was more advanced on this point than the mother country.
In Upper Canada a large group, -more important even for
talent than for numbers, had long been demanding the responsi-
bility of ministers to the Assembly. The men of this party had
found in Lord Durham's report the expression of the ideas
which they had long been professing. They had voted without
hesitation for the proposal for union, because they had hoped
that Lord Durham's report would be acted upon in its en-
tirety. Nevertheless, it was not in Upper Canada, nor in the
British population [of Lower Canada] that the idea of minis-
terial responsibility as applied to the government of the colon-
ies had seen the light for the first time. The man who was the
first to affirm the principle of ministerial responsibility in the
government of the colonies was Joseph Bedard, and that as
early as 1809. Nevertheless, this weighty suggestion had not
been followed up. A few years later, Bedard had withdrawn
from the arena and Mr. Papineau had entered it. The policy
enunciated by Bedard had been set aside, to give place to an-
other much bolder. In all the long struggles that Mr. Papi-
50
THE POLITICAL SCENE
neau carried on with the government, he does not seem ever
to have dreamed that the concession of constitutional govern-
ment might be a sufficient reform and that he himself might be-
come the minister in control. All his efforts were unceasingly
directed toward establishing the supremacy of the Assembly
over the executive power, and toward making the executive
power the executor of the will of the Assembly. Under a con-
stitutional monarchy, it is true, the ministry exists only with
the consent of the elective branch, but in reality, it is the min-
istry that dominates the Assembly. The Assembly has num-
bers and strength, but it allows itself to be led and dominated
until the time when, changing its mind, it resumes its power
only to let itself be dominated once more by others. This sys-
tem is doubtless not the perfect ideal that a thinker might
dream of, nevertheless it is the system, of all invented by man,
which has taken away least of individual liberty. This is not
the system that Mr. Papineau sought. Mr. Papineau seemed
to conceive a state of things in which in point of fact the As-
sembly would be sovereign, and in which the Administration's
sole duty would be to carry out its decrees. Everything was
subordinated to secure this result, and certainly, if it had been
secured, it would have been good enough. Yet Mr. Papineau's
thought went much farther still. In the debates on the 92
resolutions, he allows us to see clearly his republican ideals:
"It is the obvious destiny of the continent, and since a change
must be made in our constitution, is it a crime to make it with
this conjecture in view?" The man who used such words could
have only one end in view : independence.
Responsible government meant party government.
Only through party organization could there be assured
a stable and united majority to back the ministry in
power, and a definite opposition to criticize that minis-
try and stand prepared to provide an alternative ad-
ministration. And yet the very winning of responsible
51
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
government, and the union of the provinces which was
bound up with it, made it extremely difficult to find or
keep stable and effective political parties.
The weakness and instability of parties in this period
had two roots. One was the union of the provinces, a
union which brought together extremely diverse ele-
ments and yet was not sufficiently complete to merge
and fuse them. Union made it necessary to organize
a majority not in one section alone but in the whole
province, and to organize it out of parties which hitherto
had had little contact or little in common. At the same
time the incomplete and semi-federal character of the
union prevented the complete assimilation which the
smooth working of the party machinery demanded.
From the beginning there had been a recognition of
continuing separateness in the provision that each sec-
tion of the province, irrespective of population, should
be given half the number of representatives in the
legislature. As time went on, this separateness was con-
firmed by the practice of passing laws applying only to
one section, by holding the sessions of parliament alter-
nately in Quebec and in Toronto, by the inclusion in the
cabinet of both an Attorney-General West and an At-
torney-General East, and by the custom of a double-
barrelled leadership, two "premiers," LaFontaine-
Baldwin, Macdonald-Cartier, Brown-Dorion. It was
inevitable under such circumstances that any union of
parties from Canada East and Canada West should be,
not a complete merging, but only a coalition of more
or less stability.
52
THE POLITICAL SCENE
The other source of party weakness lay in the break-
ing up of the existing parties in each section because
of the achievement of old aims or the emergence of new
issues. The Tory parties, the defenders of the estab-
lished order, were broken up by defeat, by the steady
destruction of one after another of the planks in the
platform upon which they had stood and fought. The
control of colonial affairs by the mother country, the
authority within the province of the governor and his
preordained advisers, the active share in legislation of
the narrow, nominated legislative council, the endow-
ment of a state church in Upper Canada by the grant
of vast areas of crown lands, the maintenance in Lower
Canada of that survival of medieval feudalism, seign-
oirial tenure, these and other principles of the old
ascendancy parties went by the board in the late forties
and early fifties. To their opponents victory proved
almost as disintegrating as defeat. The Reformers in
Upper Canada, the Patriote or Canadien or Liberal
party in Lower Canada, had within their ranks diverse
elements which only opposition to a common foe could
hold together. Once victory, or an instalment of vic-
tory, was won, these latent differences became apparent.
The moderate men who were content to abide in a half-
way house and the radicals who were eager to push on
to the end of the vanishing road, now parted company.
The experience gained in actual administration brought
out differences of temperament and interest. New
economic issues, canal and railway projects, tax and
tariff questions, forced new alignments. The outcome
53
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
was curiously parallel to the reorganization of parties
which was going on at the same time in Great Britain.
In both cases, Tories were mellowing into Conservatives
and the victorious opposition breaking up into Whigs
and Radicals, or into moderate Liberals and Clear Grits
or Rouges.
In Canada West, Robert Baldwin was the leader and
the best representative of the moderate Reformers.
Scrupulously fair, sturdily independent, he was pre-
pared to fight without rest or truce for the right as he
saw it, but equally prepared to find the right on most
political and economic issues midway between the ex-
treme positions. He fought until he had achieved re-
sponsible government, but he was unwilling to use the
new powers to secure all the sweeping changes his more
impatient followers demanded. The malcontents were
led at first by Dr. Rolph and William Lyon Mackenzie,
of the left wing of the old Reform party, but later they
drew to themselves new men like William McDougall,
disappointed Tories like Malcolm Cameron, and latest
and greatest, George Brown, a powerful journalist and
tribune, newly come from Scotland. The Clear Grits,
as these uncompromising stalwarts came to be known,
were, in the first place, more democratic than the Bald-
win Reformers, insisting on a widely extended suffrage,
vote by ballot, and the abolition of property qualifica-
tions for members. Unlike Baldwin, who looked wholly
to England for his political inspiration, most of them
(Brown excepted) were inclined to find the United
States the last word in democracy, and particularly
54
THE POLITICAL SCENE
when disillusioned by discovering that even Liberals
when in office could be arbitrary and high-handed, they
sought to lessen the power of governments by extending
the elective principle, proposing to elect not merely the
legislative council or upper house, but the governor and
the chief administrative officials. A third point of dif-
ference lay in their more sweeping insistence on Ca-
nadian autonomy. A still more marked characteristic
was their strong anti-clerical bias, which first found
vent in their opposition to the endowment and establish-
ment of the Church of England, but later, under George
Brown's vigorous impulse, turned chiefly into suspi-
cion and denunciation of Roman Catholic intrigue and
domination of the province by "priest-ridden French-
Canadians."
In Canada East, the causes of the split in the Liberal
ranks were in part strikingly alike and in part signifi-
cantly different. Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine, who
stood head and shoulders above all his Canadian con-
temporaries in capacity, was, like Baldwin, emphatically
a Whig rather than a Radical. A member of the old
Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada in his twenties,
he had ardently supported Papineau's strongest de-
mands, but had opposed any resort to arms, and on the
failure of the rebellion, his compatriots turned unan-
imously to his prudent and sober leadership. Massive
in intellect, cold and judicial in temperament, thorough
and untiring in his habits of work, Napoleonic in phy-
sique the story ran that on his visit to Paris, the guards
at the Invalides, in great excitement, presented arms to
55
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
their resurrected emperor, not greatly displeasing the
Canadian visitor thereby LaFontaine dominated the
political scene throughout the forties. But hardly had
he taken power, in 1848, when a rift in the party ap-
peared, and steadily widened until in disdain of factional
quarrelling he retired from political life in 1851, at the
age of forty-four.
The group which chafed under LaFontaine's leader-
ship, which later formed a distinct party called by them-
selves the Democrats and by their enemies the Rouges,
and which eventually became under Laurier the Que-
bec wing of the Canadian Liberal party, was a strange
product of many personal and social factors. Its first
leader and rallying-centre was the old tribune, Louis
Joseph Papineau. Returning to Canada in 1847 after
a ten-years' exile, he had entered parliament the follow-
ing year. Intercourse in Paris with republican and
socialist circles had strengthened his democratic tenden-
cies, though altering little his views on the economic
ordering of society to the last he remained the seign-
eur. l After a lifetime of uncompromising opposition
and criticism, he found it difficult to accept the irksome
i The influences to which Papineau was subjected in Paris are in-
dicated in the notice contained in the last issue of "L'Avenir," January
21, 1852, on the death, at twenty-one, of his son, Philippe Gustave Papineau:
"With what eagerness he would tell us of his first impressions of life
in raris! At the feet of JbJ6ranger or Lamennais he had heard a lan-
guage at the time unintelligible, but which had left indelible impressions
on his memory. Uood old Beranger he had seen, bent by age, at play
under the trees of the garden, and going about harnessed to a little child's
wagon. Intercourse with men like Stranger, Lamennais, Louis Blanc
and other leaders of the republican party, who expressed freely among
friends the opinions which were at the time suppressed on the platform
and in the press, had helped to form in this young and impressionable
heart the tendencies which family tradition had already stamped there."
56
THE POLITICAL SCENE
responsibilities of a party in office; after a lifetime as un-
questioned dictator of his people, he could not bend his
proud spirit to accept the leadership of his former lieu-
tenant. Doctrinaire, unchanging in the changing times,
conscious of his powers and of his rectitude, he set him-
self from the first in violent opposition to the opportun-
ist and conservative measures and tactics of LaFon-
taine, and never modified his position until his retire-
ment from active politics in 1854. Around him there
gathered a group of fiery young Montrealers, who have
never had their like in Canadian politics for sheer abil-
ity, crusading zeal, and reckless frankness Antoine
Aime Dorion, Eric Dorion, Charles Laberge, Louis La-
breche-Viger, Joseph Papin, Rodolphe Laflamme, Jo-
seph Doutre, Charles Daoust, P. R. LaFrenaye, and
scores of others destined to play an active part in pro-
fessional or public life. They were all in their early
twenties. Nearly all the leaders among them were
lawyers or journalists, not too burdened with clients or
commissions to be unable to give their time to set the
world right. They had their full share of youth's heady
impatience with the hesitations and compromises of the
middle years, the indifference and conservatism of old
age. ] They were temporarily elated by the sweeping
success they had scored, on the platform and the streets,
with argument and the clubs which often took the place
of argument in those days of open polling and organ-
ized political rioting, in assisting to carry to victory the
* "In our century, he who keeps the middle path is shattered, he who
does not go forward is crushed; it is the divine law of progress which
decrees it so." "L'Avenir," Nov. 22, 1848.
57
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Liberal or LaFontaine candidates in Montreal in the
general election of 1847. More enduring}/ they kin-
dled to the call of the surging forces of democracy and
nationalism in Europe, sympathizing deeply with the
generous aims of the revolution against the accepted
order which swept that continent in the memorable year
of 1848. Canada was far geographically and farther
mentally from the France of Louis Blanc and Ledru-
Rollin, but the vigorous flame leaped the ocean and even
bridged for a moment the gulf between the old France
which had gone through three revolutions and the New
France which still clung to seventeenth-century ways.
The issues they urged were partly nationalist, partly
democratic. When LaFontaine abandoned the demand
for the repeal of the Union with Upper Canada which
had been forced upon the French- Canadians, Papineau
and his young Rouges took up the cry. When repeal
appeared impossible, they called for at least the repre-
sentation in parliament that Lower Canada's popula-
tion warranted. Democracy of the French and Amer-
ican patterns, with fixed term of parliament and ses-
sions, universal suffrage and elective officials; decen-
tralization of political power and judicial activities;
demands foreshadowing the recall, and safeguarding the
independence of parliament by forbidding members to
accept office within a year of occupying a seat in the
House; freer trade, economical administration, the de-
velopment of agriculture, the widest possible expansion
of education; the abolition of all class and ecclesiastical
privilege the seigneur's dues, the priest's tithes, the
58
THE POLITICAL SCENE
Protestant Clergy Reserves, were the other more im-
portant planks in their platform. A little later they
joined the disappointed Tories in urging annexation to
the United States, though in a few years this demand
faded from their banners. 1 Altogether a programme
well calculated pour epater les bourgeois.
The eager, reforming spirit of these democratic youths
found more than one expression. The first outlet was
the famous "Institut Canadien" founded in December,
1844, as a means of mutual education. The institute
i OUK POLITICAL CREED
L'Avenir, Jan. 4, 1850.
Education as wide-spread as possible.
Agricultural improvement: establishment of model farms.
Colonization of waste lands available for the poorer classes.
Free navigation of the St. Lawrence.
Free trade as far as possible.
Judicial reform; decentralization of the judiciary; codification of laws.
Postal reform; free circulation of newspapers.
Less extravagant administration of the government than at present; re-
duction of salaries in all branches of the public service and of the
number of employees.
Municipal organization based on the parish; decentralization of power.
Elective institutions everywhere elective governor, elective legislative
council, elective magistrates; all the heads of public departments made
elective.
Electoral reform based on population.
Universal suffrage.
Eligibility for office dependent on the confidence of the people.
Summoning and length of parliamentary sessions fixed by law.
Every representative of the people forbidden by a special law to accept
any remunerative office from the Crown during the exercise of his
mandate and for one year after its expiry.
Abolition of seigniorial tenure.
Abolition of the tithing system.
Abolition of Protestant Clergy Reserves.
Abolition of the system of state pensions.
Abolition of the privileges of lawyers, and liberty granted every man to
defend his own cause.
Equal rights, equal justice for all citizens.
The repeal of the Union.
Finally and above all; Independence of" Canada and its annexation to the
United States.
59
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
provided for its members a library and reading-room,
public lectures, and an open forum for debates. 1 It met
a need which hitherto had been wholly neglected, and
exercised wide influence in Montreal and in other centres
where similar institutes were soon established, until a
long and bitter struggle with the Church brought dis-
sension and defeat. A club modelled on the latest
Parisian political organizations, Le Club National et
Democratique, had a much shorter career. To reach
the general public they took over, in January, 1848, a
struggling weekly, "L'Avenir," which another group,
more interested in literature than in politics, had estab-
lished a few months earlier. With Eric Dorion as edi-
tor, and Labreche-Viger, Doutre, Durandan, Daoust,
Laflamme, V. P. W. Dorion and Papin collaborating,
"L'Avenir" had a brilliant if brief career, tilting fear-
lessly against every personage and every institution
which stood in the path of young democracy, and if not
converting the community as rapidly as had been hoped,
at least giving its editors the joy of work and sacrifice
and free expression. When, in January, 1852, scanty
finances and the solid opposition of the clergy forced
"L'Avenir" to discontinue, its place as the organ of the
democratic Liberals was taken by the more sober and
conventional "Le Pays," under the editorship of Louis
Labreche-Viger and L. A. Dessaulles. Finally, a
i"A rallying point for the young men of Montreal, an arena of com-
petition, where every young man making his entry into the world could
come and be inspired with pure patriotism, improve his mind by making
use of the advantages of a common library, and become accustomed to
speaking by taking part in the deoating open to all sorts and conditions
of men." "L'Annuaire de 1'Institut," 1852.
60
THE POLITICAL SCENE
political party took shape, and found representation in
parliament. In the election of 1851, five Rouges were
returned, and in 1854 nearly twenty. After Papineau
retired, A. A. Dorion became their leader.
The situation presented by the union of the two
provinces, the break-up of the old parties and the rise
of new groups, afforded an admirable opportunity to a
master strategist. In each section of the province there
was found a centre party of moderate Liberals, with a
radical and a conservative wing in each case. Early in
the fifties George Brown believed it would be possible to
unite all the Upper Canada factions on a platform of
resistance to French- Canadian and priestly domination,
but a greater strategist than Brown was at work. John
A. Macdonald, realizing the essentially conservative
character of the French-Canadians, sought to form a
coalition of the moderate Liberals in both provinces with
what was left of the Conservative or Tory parties.
Joining forces with George Etienne Cartier, the most
vigorous personality among the Lower Canada
members, he succeeded in forming an enduring coalition
which eventually fused into a coherent party. In
Upper Canada it retained for the next two generations
a name which betokened its origin, the Liberal- Conser-
vative party, but in Lower Canada "Liberal" faded out
of name and policy, and this wing was frankly known
as the Conservative party, or, in contrast to the
"Rouges," as the "Bleus."
Perforce the radical parties in the two sections of the
province, thus left in opposition, stood together. They
shared in common many tendencies in political and
61
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
economic policy, but during the Union period they never
united as closely as their rivals. It is perhaps easier for
defenders of the status quo to hold together enduringly
than for reformers who differ as to what corner of the
old structure should be overturned first. In any case,
the fact that the demand for doing away with Lower
Canada's equality of representation in parliament and
opposition to "French and priestly domination" soon be-
came the chief planks in the platform of Brown and the
Upper Canada Reformers, made it very difficult for a
Lower Canada party to work with them and impossible
for it, if it did, to attain a majority in its own section.
For ten years after its formation in 1854, the Liberal-
Conservative party retained power, except for two brief
intervals. Yet as the years advanced, its margin of
power vanished. Brown had not been able to unite the
parties of Upper Canada under his own leadership, but
he came near to uniting the electors of Upper Canada.
The Reformers won seat after seat in the West, leaving
Macdonald in a hopeless minority in his own section,
more and more dependent upon the solid cohorts which
followed his colleague, Cartier. At last the two parties,
and, what was more serious, the two sections of the
province, stood deadlocked. Neither could attain a se-
cure or adequate majority, and the personal bitterness
and intrigue, the wide-spread corruption, and the naked
sectional controversy which resulted, made a change im-
perative. The Union experiment had, indeed, greatly
improved the situation that existed in 1837, thanks to
the solvent power of liberty, but it had not secured com-
plete success. The relations between the colony and the
62
THE POLITICAL SCENE
mother country and between the two races in Canada
itself had bettered, but neither the harmonizing of East
and West nor the stability of parties which were essen-
tial for its success had been attained. A real feder-
ation, which would give each section control of the mat-
ters most closely affecting it and yet retain common
action in affairs of common interest, became inevitable.
The issue of Confederation had not originally been a
party matter. Its first effective advocate had been one
of the Liberal-Conservative leaders, A. T. Gait, but
Macdonald himself always opposed a wider union ex-
cept on the unattainable and unworkable basis of legis-
lative or organic union, and voted against a federation
motion a few hours before the fall of his government
in 1864 opened his eyes to the need of changed tactics,
if the province was to be saved from futile wrangling
and his government kept in power. On the other hand,
the Rouges, who had been the first party to propose,
in 1856, a solution of the difficulties of the time by mak-
ing Canada a federation of two distinct provinces, op-
posed a union of all the British North American prov-
inces in which Lower Canada would be overwhelmed.
The outcome of the forcing of the Confederation issue,
so far as party fortunes were concerned, was a further
strengthening of the Liberal-Conservative ranks.
Brown and the majority of his followers joined Mac-
donald, Cartier and Gait in a coalition to carry Con-
federation, while the Rouges, with a few Canada West
Reformers such as Malcolm Cameron and Sandfield
Macdonald, and a few Conservatives such as Hillyard
Cameron in the West and Christopher Dunkin in the
63
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
East, took up the same attitude of opposition which
Joseph Howe maintained with more support in Nova
Scotia. The coalition did not prove lasting; before
Confederation was enacted Brown was out of the cabinet
in which he found himself far from master, and though
a few Liberal leaders from each province joined forces
with Macdonald, they carried with them little popu-
lar support and soon faded into the Conservative party.
Confederation began with a Conservative or Liberal-
Conservative government firmly entrenched in the ad-
ministration not only of the new Dominion, but of the
provinces of Ontario and Quebec, into which the old
province of Canada had been divided.
It was not, then, from any desire to float with the
tide that Wilfrid Laurier became an active member
of the Liberal or Rouge party of Canada East. Nor
was it from any temperamental sympathy with the ex-
treme views and tendencies which had marked that party
at its beginning. Laurier, like Dorion, was ever more
of the Whig than of the Radical, moderate, judicial,
respectful of precedent, aware of the difficulty of ef-
fecting sudden reforms that would be lasting. Yet
Dorion and Laurier were in turn leaders of this most
aggressively democratic party. The paradox is only
seeming. Both men joined the party in their teens,
when they had their share of youth's boundless hopes
and sweeping judgments, and both in later years guided
their followers into more moderate ways. And par-
ticularly when Wilfrid Laurier became a member, the
party had thrown overboard most of its youthful indis-
cretions though kind friends always insisted on en-
64
A STREET IN L'ASSOMPTION
THE HILLS OF ARTHABASKA
THE POLITICAL SCENE
deavouring to restore the abandoned political baggage.
They had ceased to attack the priest's tithe or to call for
annual parliaments or elective governors, and the an-
nexationist sympathies they had shared with Montreal
Tories had faded away under the influence of the pros-
perity reciprocity helped to ensure, and observation of
the troubles which slavery and the struggle as to States'
rights were bringing upon the republic. But there re-
mained a solid core of doctrine with which Laurier, like
Dorion, was deeply and vehemently in sympathy. A
passion for individual freedom and constitutional lib-
erty, an abiding faith in the power of the people to
work out their own salvation, were the moving forces of
their political activity throughout the careers of both
men, and made it inevitable that they would align them-
selves with the party which, whatever its vagaries, did
stand clearly for the fundamentals of liberalism.
Political ideals, forms of government, parties and
party traditions, were not the only political inheritance
which Confederated Canada received from the Canada
of the Union era. The racial issue, the problem of con-
tending nationalities, was an inescapable heritage, shap-
ing and conditioning political activity at every turn.
Canada had its full share of the nineteenth-century
surge of racial and nationalist feeling, and of the prob-
lems of adjustment which it involved.
The fundamental fact in the political life of Canada
was the existence side by side of two peoples differing
in creed, in speech, in blood and in all the traditions
65
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
that make up national consciousness. With the Con-
quest, as has been seen, Britain's first policy was that
of out-and-out assimilation. The policy might have
succeeded. In the eighteenth century the fires of na-
tionalism had not begun to flare. The ordained leaders
of the people had largely returned to France. The
habitant had little love and less regret for the corrupt
and oppressive administration which had marked the last
years of the French regime. A substantial measure
of success was attained in the first dozen years of British
rule, in breaking down the allegiance of the people to
the laws, the seigniorial ordering of society, and, accord-
ing to Maseres, even to the Church and the other institu-
tions which sheltered and preserved racial consciousness.
But suddenly the old policy was reversed, and Carleton's
plan of confirming and isolating French-Canadian na-
tionalism as a barrier against the tide of democracy and
rebellion setting in from the south was put into force.
After the Revolution, the situation changed
once more, and with it changed British policy. The old
colonies had now seceded ; there was no further occasion
to shape a policy for their retention. The St. Lawrence
valley, resigned under Carleton's plan as a permanent
home for French-speaking colonists, now became, with
Nova Scotia, the only outlet on the continent for Eng-
lish-speaking citizens who wished to remain under the
British flag. Loyalists from the United States, and,
later, British immigrants from overseas, poured in by
tens of thousands, and forced the granting of a measure
of self-government. The British government was still
66
THE POLITICAL SCENE
prepared to stand by the bargain made with the French-
Canadians in the Quebec Act, their Magna Charta, and
when the Constitutional Act was passed in 1791 Gren-
ville magnanimously and modestly affirmed the inten-
tion to "continue to the French inhabitants the enjoy-
ment of those civil and religious rights which have been
secured to them by the capitulation of the Province, or
have since been granted by the liberal and enlightened
spirit of the British Government." But soon a change
came. The memory of 1774 gradually faded, the Eng-
lish-speaking minority in Lower Canada became more
insistent, and above all, the wars with Napoleon made
France and democracy anathema in England. When
the French-Canadian representatives in the Assembly,
quickly learning the possibilities of their half -measure
of liberty, demanded full self-government, they were
met with blank refusal. After years of petition and
inquiry and debate, British statesmanship could rise no
further than the imperious insistence of Russell in 1837,
backed by an almost unanimous parliament, that neither
responsible government nor an elective legislative
council could be permitted in a colony, and his action in
authorizing the governor to take needed funds out of
the provincial treasury without the Assembly's consent.
Rebellion followed; the Assembly was suspended; a
second rebellion broke out, again to be put down.
Writing in the calm retrospect of two generations
later, Mr. Laurier thus summed up the struggle:
The struggle thus begun continued throughout the fifty
years that the constitution of 1791 endured. Pitt had ex-
67
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
pressed the hope that the -ma j orit j would govern. During the
fifty years that the constitution of 1791 was in force, the real
government of the country was exercised by the English minor-
ity in despite of the French majority. During the fifty years
of the constitution of 1791, the Assembly struggled and
struggled in vain to secure the most elementary powers of a
representative body. The right to choose its president freely
was vigorously contested ; the right to protect its independence
was long disputed ; the right to control public expenditure was
constantly refused. Each claim -that it made, each remon-
strance against an abuse, each insistence on an unrecognized
right, each assertion of a principle which had been violated,
was the occasion, in the body of the Assembly, of bitter
struggles with the minority, followed by violent conflicts with
the oligarchy. As soon as the decision of the Assembly was
rejected by the Council, the session would be suddenly pro-
rogued in the dissenting chamber, by the governor, acting at
the instigation of his officials.
The struggles of the Assembly each day extended farther
among the different sections of the people.
The inhabitants of the Anglo-Saxon race, who everywhere
else would have taken the initiative in the reforms demanded
by the Assembly, formed an alliance with the oligarchy, which
became closer each day. They persuaded themselves, and each
day were more convinced, that the principles insisted upon by
the Assembly hid so many thoughts of treason. Their anxious
devotion to the Crown made them believe that the least
authority conceded to the Assembly would be employed by it
to further the independence of the colony. They did not sus-
pect that by fear of rebellion, they themselves were provoking
rebellion.
All the men of Anglo-Saxon birth in the province formed be-
fore long a compact group, from the governor to the least of
the sailors whom the hazards of an adventurous life had brought
to the port of Quebec. /
National feeling was equally stirred up among the French
population. The cause of the Assembly became the cause
of the entire race. The principles that it affirmed, the rights
68
THE POLITICAL SCENE
that it insisted upon, the whole race affirmed and insisted upon
with an emotion that was at the same time enthusiasm and
anger. These principles and these rights were in fact synony-
mous with the preservation of the French race.
Scorn, hostility and hate developed, deepened, became ever
more and more intense ; conflicts between the Assembly and the
Executive grew more and more frequent, and each conflict was
reflected with an ever-increasing intensity in each element of
the population. When rebellion broke out, although there
were found Canadians on the side of the English and English
among the Canadians, the rebellion was the explosion of ra-
cial hate.
The rebellion forced attention and a measure of con-
cession to the demand for self-government. It did not
advance the cause of French- Canadian nationalism.
On the contrary, advantage was taken of the suspension
of the Assembly and the discrediting of the Patriote
cause to revert once more fully and frankly to the policy
of anglicizing the whole province. The more extreme
leaders of the English minority called for the permanent
disenfranchisement of the French-Canadians. Lord
Durham was equally insistent as to the end, if some-
what more moderate as to the means. There could be
no peace, he insisted, while the two nationalities stood
opposed. There could be no question that in the long
run the progressive, enterprising, numerous English-
speaking people would dominate all North America, and
that the French- Canadian people, hopelessly inferior
in wealth and culture and numbers, "a people with no
history and no literature," would be absorbed, to their
own good. Therefore, the sooner the better. It must
"be the first and steady purpose of the British govern-
69
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
ment to establish an English population, with English
laws and language, in this Province, and to trust its
government to none but a decidedly English legisla-
ture"; the "nationality of the French-Canadians" must
be "obliterated." *
Mr. Laurier condemns Durham's policy and defends
his character; incidentally he explains, in a passage
remarkable equally for its insight and its detachment,
the influence of the struggle of the French-Canadians
to preserve their nationality, upon their material
fortunes :
The man who used this harsh language was not an enemy of
the race whose annihilation he thus advised. Neither was he
one of those unbending spirits who reckon human life and all
that may make it precious as of small account, when the at-
taining of a desired result is at stake. The name of Lord Dur-
ham has always been held in execration among French-Cana-
dians since the day when the sentence he had delivered upon
their national existence was made known. They believed then
i Durham's prescription erred, but his diagnosis was acute. In a secret
and confidential despatch to Lord Glenelg on August 9, 1838, recently
deposited in the Canadian Archives, he is frank in his discussion of the
real issues behind the constitutional struggle and the rebellion r "The
truth is that, with exceptions which tend to prove the rule, all the Brit-
ish are on one side and all the Canadians are on the other. ... It ap-
pears upon a careful review of the political struggle between those who
have termed themselves the loyal party and the popular party, that the
subject of dissension has been, not the connection with England, nor the
form of the constitution, nor any of the political abuses which have af-
fceted all classes of the people, but simply such institutions, laws and
customs as are of French origin, which the British have sought to over-
throw and the Canadians have struggled to preserve. . . . The consequent
rebellion, although precipitated by the British from an instinctive sense of
the danger of allowing the Canadians full time for preparation, could not,
perhaps, have been avoided . . . Their [the British inhabitants'] main ob-
ject ... has been ... to substitute, in short, for Canadian institutions,
laws and practices, others of a British character. In this pursuit they
have necessarily disregarded the implied, not to say precise, engagement
of England, to respect the peculiar institutions of French Canada."
TO
THE POLITICAL SCENE
that Her Majesty's High Commissioner was narrow-minded,
and that he had sacrificed the sentiments of justice to race
prejudice. This impression, caused by the painful emotion
that the publication of his report produced, has not been re-
moved. Nothing, however, is further opposed to the truth;
impartial history must give a different verdict. Lord Durham
was generous, a man of supremely liberal spirit. A disciple of
Fox, he had like him an innate sympathy for the cause of the
weak and the oppressed. He had been one of the champions of
the emancipation of the Catholics. He had been one of the
authors of electoral reform, and had striven for its accomplish-
ment rather with the passion of an apostle than the calm reso-
lution of a statesman. He was one of the most ardent in that
ardent school of reformers who, after the Napoleonic wars,
undertook to root out of the soil of old England the laws of
privilege and caste, and to put within reach of the poorest
classes, the benefits of civilization and liberty.
It may seem strange that a man of these opinions should in
cold blood have counselled the annihilation among a whole peo-
ple of all that it held most dear. Lord Durham himself has
given the explanation, by setting forth deductions which events
have fortunately disproved, but whose logic at the time it
seemed hardly possible to dispute. To his mind it was im-
possible that the two races could live in harmony on the same
soil. Until one or the other should have disappeared, all hope
of peace was an illusion, and since either one or the other had
to disappear, the lot had to fall on the weaker, on the French
race. Lord Durham devoted the greater part of his report to
discussing this question, which he examined (from every angle,
and which he solved precisely, fundamentally, like a problem in
mathematics. If he advised the British government not to hesi-
tate to sacrifice the French race, it was not out of hostility to
that race, of which he spoke in sympathetic terms ; it was be-
cause such was the fatal decree of necessity.
Lord Durham indicated the means with no less precision:
namely, to overwhelm the French population in an English
majority. But as the population of British origin was less
numerous than the French population, within the limits of
71
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Lower Canada, the quickest and most effective policy was to
join the province of Upper Canada and that of Lower Canada
under the same government, and by uniting the total number of
the British population of Upper Canada with the British minor-
ity of Lower Canada, to form in the united Canada a majority
of the English element against the French element.
As to the effect of this form of government on the French
population, he considered that it would facilitate the realiza-
tion of the homicidal idea he set forth as indispensable to the
peace of the colony. He calculated that the French race would
be reduced to powerlessness by "the vigorous arm of a popular
legislature"; that everything that constituted its autonomy
would disappear slowly but surely, simply by the force of the
majority, unless it itself entered resolutely on the path of ab-
sorption in order to have its legitimate part in the new state
of things. At bottom, Lord Durham's policy did not differ
from the policy of the oligarchy. It differed only in means.
He did not propose to molest the French race or to take away
its autonomy by force. He did not propose to take away its
political rights. He proposed to place it in a position numer-
ically inferior and to make the exercise of its political rights
of no avail. His plan was to have it governed legally by a
majority just as it had previously been governed illegally by
a minority, to substitute legal tyranny for illegal tyranny, and
to force the French-Canadians, if they wished to escape from
it, to renounce their national character.
There is nothing in Lord Durham's report to show that he
ever, even once, dreamed what cruelty his policy involved.
Rather, this idea which to us appears cruel, reveals his philan-
thropic character. Taking his stand on purely utilitarian
grounds, he persuaded himself that the obvious interests of the
French race demanded its extinction. It is not extermination
that he advises, it is progressive, systematic absorption of one
element into another. In remaining what it is, the French
race must become more and more isolated on the American con-
tinent, and consequently fall into a state of material and moral
inferiority ; absorbed into the British element, it takes its place
in the advancement, the wealth, the high degree of civilization
72
THE POLITICAL SCENE
that the numerical preponderance of this great race assures
it on the continent.
These considerations, in the eyes of a humanitarian like Lord
Durham might appear decisive, but could a patriot like Lord
Durham forget how they would wound the self-respect of a
proud people?
The reflection that the preservation of the national in-
dividuality of the French-Canadians exposed them to being out-
distanced perhaps did not lack truth.
It cannot be denied that the French-Canadians, in the pres-
ervation of their national existence, have absorbed a fund of
activity, energy, and force, which the rival races, free from
this preoccupation, have utilized for their material advance-
ment. But such was the pride of the French people that they
wished to remain what they were. Since the Conquest every
other consideration had been subordinated to this. They
had pride in their origin, in their traditions, history, and in-
dividuality, and the efforts, the struggles and the sacrifices
that this sentiment had cost them should have been sufficient to
inspire in a generous soul, a higher thought than regard
simply for their material existence.
But Lord Durham, although a friend of liberty, did not
realize its full power.
Sydenham and his backers in London and Canada,
blind as Durham himself to the powers of resistance in-
herent in nationalism, tried to carry this policy into
force. Union was enacted to give an English-speaking
majority in the new province. All official electoral and
parliamentary proceedings were to be in English.
Though Lower Canada far outnumbered Upper Can-
ada, it was given only the same number of representa-
tives in the provincial assembly. When the elections
were held, Sydenham exhausted all the efforts of official
pressure, corruption and violence to prevent the French-
73
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Canadian electorate securing a fair proportion of the
seats assigned to Lower Canada, and endeavoured to
ignore altogether such French-Canadian members as
were elected. Mr. Laurier declares :
It was the imposition of the will of the stronger the vce
victis. The French race had to disappear; it must be grad-
ually swallowed up, buried in quicksand, without commotion,
without violence, but by the regular, normal, inflexible, irre-
sistible action of an external and ever-increasing majority.
The French-Canadians made vain appeals to the generosity,
to the justice of the mother country. At the same time they
tried all the constitutional methods that the suspension of the
constitution left at their disposal: protests, petitions, resolu-
tions adopted in public assemblies. These useless appeals,
which remained unanswered, finally exasperated the people.
Perhaps never had the British domination been more detested
than at this time. The bloody vengeance visited upon the in-
surgents, the countrysides laid waste by fire, the pitiless exe-
cutions, the deportations by the hundred, did not show so much
cruelty, in the eyes of the vanquished, helpless people, as the
cold-blooded determination to take away from it the national
character that was its whole pride.
The programme of Durham and Sydenham and their
backers in the English-speaking minority, on its racial
side, proved a complete failure:
Union and liberty produced all the good that Lord Durham
expected, without realizing the evil that he had foreseen in it.
The new institutions were found to be broad enough for the
two races who had been enemies to live and grow together with-
out fusion and without friction.
The French-Canadian people, disheartened for the
moment, soon rallied. Under LaFontaine they found
a determined and skilful leader. Their representatives
74
THE POLITICAL SCENE
in parliament held together, for the first few years, in a
solid block. The efforts of governors and ministers to
detach a few of their leading men proved unavailing;
any individual who stood out from his people committed
political suicide. Soon these tactics forced conces-
sions in a parliament of divided parties. In 1844 a
unanimous resolution passed the Assembly advocat-
ing the recognition of French as an official language,
and four years later the British parliament assented.
The year 1849 saw the establishment in office of a strong
administration with a French-Canadian premier, and
the passing of a measure to recompense those who had
suffered loss in the rebellion, barring only men con-
victed in court of open rebellion. The English-speak-
ing minority protested vigorously, the more irrespon-
sible element burning the parliament buildings and
stoning the governor-general for assenting to such a
measure, the more substantial leaders turning to annexa-
tion, determined, as Durham had prophesied, to remain
'English, at the expense, if necessary, of not being Brit-
ish." But the protest was in vain: the policy of ascend-
ancy and of anglicization had failed.
At this point a divergence appeared in the ranks of the
French-Canadians. Papineau wished to undo the
wrong of coerced union, to revert to the isolation of the
Lower Canada of his earlier days. LaFontaine aban-
doned the demand for repeal of the Union and insisted
that the legitimate aspirations of French-Canadians
could be satisfied under the existing constitution: the
Union must be judged not by the purposes of its
75
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
founders but by the achievements of those who actually
administered it. The Rouges' adoption of Papineau's
insistence on an extreme and isolated nationalism was
curiously tempered by the actual co-operation with the
English-speaking Tories of Montreal and the Eastern
Townships, and by the potential relations with the Eng-
lish-speaking people across the border, which their tem-
porary conversion to the policy of annexation involved.
It was significant that after the rise of the annexation
movement "L'Avenir" dropped from its programme the
clause which had previously headed the list, Canadien-
franpais avant tout.
The alliance of Baldwin and LaFontaine and later
of Macdonald and Cartier, and the common interest in
railway development and general economic expansion
counted for much in bringing the two races together.
Yet there remained two seemingly insuperable obstacles
to harmony the system of government and the colonial
status.
So long as every detail regarding either section of
the province had to be dealt with by a house containing
an equal number of representatives from the other sec-
tion, friction, and cries of unwarranted interference, of
"French domination" or of "English tyranny" were
certain to arise. Only by a federal solution could the
most contentious issues be assigned to local legislatures
and united action still secured in matters of joint con-
cern.
So long, again, as Canada remained a subordinate
and dependent colony, it was hopeless to expect any
76
THE POLITICAL SCENE
solution of the racial issue. The people as yet con-
sidered themselves English, Irish, Scotch, French, or
at most "Canadien" or French-Canadian, not Cana-
dians. The English-speaking peoples in Canada, by
their kinship with the dominant power overseas, were in
a different political position from their French-speak-
ing compatriots. To the majority of the English-
speaking peoples the old country was still "home."
This was not true in the case of the French-Canadians.
They were longer rooted in the soil. Even under the
French regime, it has been seen, fresh immigration was
extraordinarily scanty. After the Conquest immigra-
tion from France ceased wholly. The ties were not
year by year renewed. Still more effective in breaking
off all connection was the growth of revolutionary and
anti-clerical sentiment in France. The revolution of
J 93 had created a great gulf between old France and
New France. The Canadian clergy sought to keep their
flock free from the slightest contact with a people who
scorned all legitimate authority or bowed to upstart
dictators. The British government and the Roman
Catholic Church, each for its own ends, did their best
for generations to hold Canada aloof, and it was not
surprising that they succeeded. Such sympathy with
France as survived was naturally more common in radi-
cal than in conservative circles, but except in the out-
burst of democratic fervour of the late forties, when
Papineau linked Paris and Montreal together, here also
it was a weak and transient force. 1 The habitant had
iThe viewpoint of the young Rouges in their halcyon days is brought
77
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
ceased to be French; he had not become English; he was
Canadien.
When Wilfrid Laurier entered politics, the issue of
nationalism had again been brought to the front by the
discussion of Confederation. His Rouge friends were
opposing Confederation on the ground that it would
mean the overwhelming of the French-Canadians in an
English-speaking mass and on other grounds, of which
not the least important was that their political rivals
were supporting it. Durham had failed to obliterate
French- Canadian nationality by uniting another prov-
ince with Lower Canada; now Brown and Macdonald
and Cartier and Gait were proposing the experiment of
uniting five English-speaking provinces with the one
French-speaking section. Cartier and his friends, on
the other hand, insisted that by restoring a separate
legislature to Lower Canada, a legislature which would
have control over all the matters of intimate concern,
they were immensely strengthening the French- Ca-
nadian position. Laurier did not at first disassociate
himself from these sectional views. In "Le Defricheur"
he echoed the criticism, which had no small measure of
truth, that Brown desired Confederation as a means of
out in this eloquent apostrophe of V. P. W. Dorion at a banquet given
to the collaborators of "L'Avenir," August 26, 1848, in proposing the toast,
le peuple Canadien: ". . . . France, our ungrateful mother, yet whom we
always love in spite of the wrong she has done us, because it is she who
cared for us in our childhood, it is from her we drew the strength needed
to cross the ocean of difficulties which beset our childhood's path, it is she
who fed us with the bread of wit and civilization, who taught us to pray
God according to our holy and beautiful religion, who taught us to lisp
the beloved tongue our fathers bequeathed to us and which we hold dearer
than life."
78
THE POLITICAL SCENE
lessening French-Canadian power, and that the Con-
servatives, facing defeat in 1864, had conceded his de-
mand as the price of retaining office. Lower Canada
had no more interest in Nova Scotia than in Australia;
the only tie that bound them was subjection to the com-
mon colonial yoke. Confederation would prove the
tomb of the French race.
It was not long before his views had widened. The
influence of his early associations in New Glasgow, the
intercourse with the Scotch and English settlers in the
Townships, his constant browsing in the classics of Eng-
lish Liberalism, kindled his sympathies with his Eng-
lish-speaking compatriots. His sympathy with his own
people never lessened, but he came to see that their
future lay not in isolation, nor, for that matter, in assim-
ilation, but in full and frank partnership with their fel-
low-Canadians.
Unlike Howe, Dorion and Laurier accepted Con-
federation, once accomplished, as an established fact.
Very early Wilfrid Laurier came to see the possibilities
it involved of solving the racial problem. From the
outset of his parliamentary career, two principles guided
his conduct in the endeavour which was always nearest
his heart, to achieve union and harmony for all Canada.
The first was to adhere faithfully to the guarantees of
the federation compact, to refrain from federal inter-
ference with provincial affairs, to respect the safeguards
thrown around the rights and privileges of the minori-
ties within each province. The other was to develop a
common unhyphenated Canadian nationality, in which
79
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the older loyalties would be fused and blended, not com-
pelling any man to forget the land of his fathers, but
bringing all to put first the land of their sons. To
quote one last word from his survey of the Union period:
The sentiment of nationality was thus made secure. The
ideal of each race was henceforth the progress of the common
country, and the supreme pride of both, to proclaim themselves
above all Canadian.
In the early years of Wilfrid Laurier's career, a third
issue divided interest with the reorganization of parties
and the conflict of nationalities. The question of the
relations of Church and State had its roots both in local
conditions and in the European struggle between liberal-
ism and ultramontism. In nineteenth-century Europe
no country escaped violent controversy on this issue.
In Canada, the close connection between Church and
State which had existed from the beginning of the
French regime, and the complications introduced by
the sudden change of control at the Conquest, made the
issue one of vital importance during both the Union and
the Confederation period. There was no question with
which Wilfrid Laurier was more intimately concerned
from his first to his last day in public life, and none on
which he impressed more enduringly the stamp alike of
his courage and of his moderation.
Upper Canada was fortunate in solving the most se-
rious of its ecclesiastical conflicts relatively early.
With the first organization of the province there had be-
gun the endeavour to establish and endow the Church of
England as a safeguard for faith and morals and a but-
80
LOUIS JOSEPH PAPINEAU
Tribune of Lower Canada
(1832)
THE POLITICAL SCENE
tress of state authority. The proposals met with little
opposition so long as the Anglicans formed the great
majority of the population. With the coming in large
numbers of Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and Ro-
man Catholic settlers, the inevitable conflict began.
The claims of the Church of England to receive as en-
dowment vast areas of Clergy Reserves or Crown
Lands, to monopolize the performance of the marriage
ceremony, and to control university education, were
fought with vigour and eventual success. The winning
of self-government, and the growth of the dissentient
denominations to an overwhelming majority in their
turn, led to the speedy triumph of the forces which op-
posed any union of Church and State. The appropria-
tion in 1854 of the unallotted Clergy Reserves for edu-
cational purposes marked the end of the dream of church
establishment. The question revived in a new form
with the setting up of Roman Catholic separate or de-
nominational schools. For twenty years the contro-
versy waged. The provincial Acts of 1855 and 1863
accorded the Roman Catholics the right to establish
separate schools, controlled by local boards of their own
faith, subject to the supervision of the provincial depart-
ment of education as to curriculum, teachers' qualifica-
tions, and administration, and maintained by provincial
grants and by local assessments on their supporters, who
were exempted from taxes for maintenance of public
schools. These concessions were bitterly fought by
George Brown and his cohorts, but after 1863 the prin-
ciple was definitely recognized and the issue of Church
81
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
and State, while never wholly quiescent, receded into the
background.
Lower Canada could not so easily escape its difficul-
ties. The difference in religion between the vast ma-
jority of its people and the people not only of the United
Kingdom but of the greater part of British North
America, the breaking of relations with France, the con-
tinuance and eventually the closer welding of relations
with Rome and the consequent echoing of the contro-
versies which divided Catholic Europe, all made a situa-
tion full of difficulty for the statesman and often for the
private citizen.
Under the French regime the Church was a potent
force. It could not be otherwise in a colony which for
many a year was mainly a mission station and in which
religious zeal throughout supplied a great part of the
driving power. The Church provided and controlled
school and hospital and refuge. It built up great ter-
ritorial endowments: by the end of the French regime
the Church owned the same proportion of the granted
land of New France as of the land of old France one-
fourth of the whole. The bishop shared control with
governor and intendant. Mgr. Laval made and un-
made governors and exalted the authority of Rome at
the expense of that of the court of France. Yet in the
later years its political if not its social power declined.
The missionary motive faded. Frontenac fought
bishop and Jesuit, rightly and wrongly, with success
and with failure, but always with vigour, and after his
day the superior power of the state authorities was
82
THE POLITICAL SCENE
scarcely questioned. The ecclesiastical law of France
and the Gallican liberties, setting bounds to papal inter-
vention in the affairs of the national church, held sway
in the colony, though the great Gallican charter of 1682
was never formally registered in New France.
Then came the conquest of Canada by a power mili-
9
tantly Protestant. The overthrow of the Roman Cath-
olic Church appeared inevitable. The British authori-
ties, it is true, promised freedom of worship, but with the
saving qualification, "as far as the laws of Great
Britain permit." While permitting the people to wor-
ship at what altar they pleased, they endeavoured in
every way to subordinate the Church to the State's au-
thority, to refuse formal recognition to the bishop, to re-
serve to the King the right of nominating parish priests,
to break up the male clerical orders particularly the
Society of Jesus, which the Pope himself suppressed in
1773 to require permission from the governor before
entering such order, to bar all but native Canadians from
ecclesiastical office, and to throw open the churches for
Anglican as well as for Catholic use. The Church of
England was to take its place as the established body,
as fast as governor and schoolmaster and parson could
bring the people to the new way of thinking.
The policy proved an utter failure. Before two gen-
erations had passed, the Catholic Church in Canada had
not only struck off the new shackles imposed on its free-
dom of action but had become more independent and
more powerful under the British than it had been under
the French regime.
83
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
One reason for the failure was that the policy was
pressed only intermittently. With more persistence
and fitter tools it might have won a measure of success.
Maseres witnesses that in the first dozen years the pay-
ing of tithes to the clergy fell rapidly into disuse. But
policy wavered, and the Protestant clergymen sent out
were too few and too weak to make any impression.
The people cleaved to their ancient faith, and their
clergy became every year a greater power in the land.
The strength of the Church under alien rule had
more than one source. First came the consideration
that heretic rulers could not exercise the control over the
Church which His Most Christian Majesty had exer-
cised without running counter to every racial and relig-
ious conviction ; when a French king disciplined a bishop
it was a mere family quarrel; if an English king used
half his sternness, the heather was afire. The Church,
again, in the absence of other leaders, became the rally-
ing-centre of nationalism, sheltering the people against
the attempts made to assimilate them, and gaining
strength from the people's enduring gratitude.
But it was not merely with the people that the Church
gained influence. It speedily came to terms with the
government. The British authorities, once convinced
that their own church could not prevail, were prepared
to avail themselves of the power which did exist as an
even more stable bulwark. The leaders of the Church
met them half-way. A king was a king; '93 created a
gulf between old France and New France ; the priest-
hood after 1763 became almost wholly native-born, and
84
THE POLITICAL SCENE
its national sentiment not French but French-Canadian.
"Mgr. Briand," declared Mgr. Plessis, his successor in
the bishopric of Quebec, in 1790, "had hardly seen the
British arms placed over the gates of our city, before he
perceived that God had transferred to England the
dominion of the country ; that with the change of posses-
sors our duties had changed their direction . . . and
that religion itself might gain by the change of govern-
ment." In one emergency after another, when British
rule was threatened by external attack or internal re-
volt, the Church gave its support to the throne, gave it
gladly but not for naught. There was no vulgar bar-
gaining between the honourable gentlemen who repre-
sented the King and the distinguished prelates who
served the Church, but the safeguarding of British in-
terests and the recognition of the Church's claims syn-
chronized. In 1774 the Quebec Act confirmed the
Church's power to levy tithes; in 1775 bishop and priest
exhorted their flocks to stand by the government and flee
the wiles of the invading Bastonnais. During the war
between Britain and France, revolutionary and anti-
clerical France, British victories were celebrated by Te
Deums in the cathedral at Quebec and the ban against
the admission of French priests was raised. In the war
of 1812 Mgr. Plessis issued vigorous pastorals calling on
the people to fight for their old country and their new
flag; after the war his right to official recognition as
Bishop of Quebec and to a seat on the Legislative
Council was recognized and his stipend from the British
government increased to 1000 a year. Before the
85
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
rebellion of 1837 Bishop Lartigue of Montreal issued
a solemn mandement, quoting all that St. Peter and St.
Paul had to say about fearing God and honouring the
King and being subjected to the higher powers, and all
that Gregory XVI had recently added "in condemna-
tion of those who by schemes of sedition and revolt en-
deavour to shake allegiance to Princes and hurl them
from their thrones"; the Act of Union of 1841 struck
hard at the political and nationalist claims of the French-
Canadians, but left the Church untouched.
The Church had now secured complete freedom.
Not only was its worship untrammelled but its hierarchy
was recognized, its property, except for the Jesuits'
Estates, conserved, and its right of tithe given the force
of law. The Fifth Council of the Church in 1850
formally proclaimed this freedom: 'We rejoice to
make the solemn declaration that in no country is the
Church freer than in Canada," while the Archbishop of
Quebec, Mgr. Baillargeon, a little later declared, 'We
know no country where religion enjoys so great liberty
and exercises a wider influence." Nor was its power
merely legal and external. It held sway in the hearts
of the people. Its teachings comforted them in distress,
its ceremonies kindled their imagination, and its pastors
were their most trusted friends and counsellors.
Until after Union was effected there had been prac-
tically no dissension within the Church itself. After
the Union, and particularly after the winning of respon-
sible government, controversy was frequent and vigor-
ous. Two wings of opinion fought for the mastery.
86
THE POLITICAL SCENE
The struggle took many forms controversies among
the leaders of the Church themselves, conflicts between
a section of the clergy and a small but active section of
the laity, and finally, the warring of political parties.
Many of these controversies concern directly only the
student of ecclesiastical history, but others had a wider
range, and have become part of the history of the
country, as they were part of the lives of its political
chieftains.
The achievement of self-government itself hastened
the rise of public controversy. Now that the freedom
alike of the people and of the Church had been securely
attained, there was less risk of internal dissension
jeopardizing common ends. The triumph of democ-
racy involved, further, a change of venue. When
power lay with the governor and his circle, it was with
the governor and his circle that bishops and vicars-gen-
eral carried on their negotiations. When power came
to rest with the people, the Church, in the New as in the
Old World, naturally became vitally interested in the
schools and the press that formed the electors' opinions,
and in the parties and the elections through which their
opinions found expression.
The personal factor was important. Men of a new
temper came to power, or power and freedom brought
out qualities hitherto repressed. The tradition of
leaders such as Mgr. Briand, Mgr. Plessis, Mgr. Hu-
bert, firm in upholding the rights of their church, un-
tiring in advancing its interests, but ruling their own
people with easy rein and broadly tolerant toward those
87
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of other faiths, was continued by Mgr. Baillargeon,
Archbishop of Quebec from 1867 to 1870, and his suc-
cessor, Mgr. Taschereau, as well as the greater number
of their colleagues. In Montreal the Sulpicians, the
chief religious order, and in Quebec, Laval University
and the Seminary, maintained the same tradition. But
Mgr. Bourget, Bishop of Montreal from 1841 to 1876,
and Mgr. Lafleche, his younger colleague in Three
Rivers, were men of another mould, fiery crusaders, in-
tolerant of difference, impatient of resistance, prepared
to fight to the end rather than yield one jot or tittle of
their authority or permit any slightest growth of inde-
pendence among their flocks.
In still greater measure, the controversies which de-
veloped were manifestations of the world-wide conflict
between authority and liberalism which had continued
p
without ceasing since the French Revolution, or echoes
of its European phases. It was not until after Con-
federation that the full effect of these European develop-
ments was felt in Canada, but during the Union period
their bearing was shown both in party conflict and in
private controversy. Improvements in travel and com-
munication brought the isolated provinces on the St.
Lawrence within the range of European influence, at
the same time that the changes which have been sur-
veyed within the country itself had prepared a freer
field for the exercise of the new tendencies.
There had been in pre-Union days little attempt from
within the ranks of the Church to question either its
doctrines or its authority. Journals such as "Le Cana-
88
THE POLITICAL SCENE
dieri" and "Le Liberal" which had made cautious steps in
this direction had found little support and proved un-
able to withstand the solid opposition of the clergy.
Papineau, it was true, had early imbibed the doctrines
of eighteenth-century deism, but he never sought to
weaken the faith of his countrymen and showed deep
respect for the customs and the leaders of the Church.
Toward the end of the separate existence of Lower
Canada, he and those behind him were feeling their
way to question the Church's control over education.
"Le Canadien" in 1835 had criticized the training given
in the colleges under ecclesiastical direction, as in-
adequate and impractical, failing to equip the French-
Canadian to compete with his English-speaking rivals
in business affairs, and had proposed that the Jesuits'
Estates, confiscated by the Crown at the Conquest,
should be utilized to establish under state control an edu-
cation of more ample and practical scope. In the fol-
lowing year Papineau proposed in the assembly that the
Jesuits' Estates be handed over by the imperial authori-
ties for educational purposes: "These estates," he con-
tinued, "were granted exclusively for Catholics, for a
French and Catholic posterity; from reasons of expe-
diency and of justice, we are agreed that henceforth
they should be available for the inhabitants of all races
and all creeds, and, to avert jealousies, that theological
studies should be excluded." The constitutional crisis
soon drove these proposals from the stage, but they un-
doubtedly had a share, which has not been adequately
recognized, in determining the hostile attitude of the
89
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
clergy to the radical reformers and to the rebellion into
which they drifted or were driven. During the rebel-
lion, more than one group of Patriotes issued manifestos
protesting against the intervention of the clergy in
political affairs and demanding that they should remain
neutral in the conflict. ]
The publication, in 1845-58, of the work which still
remains the outstanding contribution of French-speak-
ing Canada to scholarship and literature, F. X. Gar-
neau's "Histoire du Canada," not only stimulated a
new intellectual interest among the young men of the
forties, but gave their interest a questioning bias by its
mingling of frank criticism with sincere appreciation in
its record of the work of the Church. The return of
Papineau from his years of exile in the France where
the revolution of 1848 was incubating provided a per-
sonal link with the radicalism of the Seine. The new
spirit found expression, as has been indicated previously,
in the intellectual activities of L'Institut Canadien,
the party organization of the Democrats or Rouges,
and in the columns of "L'Avenir." *
The editors of "L'Avenir" declared in their opening
manifesto that as Democrats by conviction and French-
Canadians by birth, they were pained to think : 'that
the electric currents of democracy which are to-day giv-
i Cf. " La Minerve," 30 Oct., 13 Nov., 16 Nov., 1837.
i "It was in 1848 that the group of men imbued with the false and
perverse principles termed 'the principles of '89,' appeared as a party in
Canada, and it was at this time that, believing themselves strong enough
to propagate and establish their doctrines and errors in our country, they
founded the newspaper 'L'Avenir.'" Memoir of Mgr. Lafleche, 1881:
cited in Savaete, "Vers 1'Abime," ii. 217.
90
THE POLITICAL SCENE
ing new vigour to the civilized world, might be dis-
sipated without effect here, for want of finding a con-
ducting wire to the countries of the New World." It
was mainly the literary heresies of Hugo and Lamartine
and the political aspirations of the Democrats and Re-
publicans of the Left which found entry by this route.
Few references at first were made to religious affairs.
Then in March, 1849, came word of the dethronement of
the Pope as temporal sovereign and the proclamation of
a short-lived republic in Rome. "L'Avenir" could not
restrain its "enthusiasm over this glorious event," mak-
ing it clear, however, that it was the fall of the Pope
as king that was hailed, and that his spiritual authority
was in no way weakened or attacked. Father Chiniquy,
the apostle of temperance, fated later to desert the
church of his fathers, took up the cudgels in defence
of the temporal power, at first in good-tempered re-
gret, later in strong denunciation. "L'Avenir" replied
that long before the editorial on the fall of the temporal
power, a notable part of the clergy had been waging
war upon it purely because of opposition to its political
views ; that it respected the clergy and was profoundly
grateful for their services to education, but that they
should confine themselves to the sphere of morals and
religion; that when they ventured into politics it had
always been to oppose democracy, and to support con-
stituted authority. Later it cited the similar treatment
meted out to Thomas D'Arcy McGee when in his New
York journal, "The Nation," he had also ventured to
criticize the temporal power. Letters in its columns,
91
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
signed and unsigned, attacked churchly creeds and
priestly conduct. In January, 1850, 'L'Avenir" began
to question the tithes which the law authorized the
clergy to levy, and added both "abolition of the tithing
system" and "abolition of the Protestant Clergy Re-
serves" to its formal programme : "a poorer clergy would
be a better clergy."
In November, 1849, "L'Avenir" proudly declared
that it had survived "the most formidable, the best or-
ganized, the most powerful persecution which could exist
in Canada, the persecution of the majority of the Cath-
olic clergy"; that after a war to the death it counted
more adherents and more subscribers than ever; that it
could not be crushed as "Le Canadien" had been twenty
years and "Le Liberal" a dozen years before; "Thank
Heaven, those times are gone, the reign of persecutors
draws to its end in America, and 'L'Avenir' will survive
its paid detractors as it will the various privileged orders
which have an interest in extinguishing the light in order
to keep our people in darkness and ignorance." The
rejoicing was premature; on January 21, 1852, Eric
Dorion was forced to announce, in bitterly disappointed
but still courageous and uncompromising terms, that
subscribers had fallen away and the journal could not
continue. Clearly Quebec had little sympathy for a
critic of the Church. "Le Pays," which took the place
of "L'Avenir" as the Rouge organ in Montreal, re-
frained from any attack on church creed or practice,
confining itself to occasional protests against incursions
of priests into politics, against "the crime of erecting the
92
THE POLITICAL SCENE
altar side by side with the hustings." "Le National,"
of Quebec, followed the same discreet path. The
journals of wider influence, the leading Conservative
organ, "La Minerve," and Cauchon's "Le Journal de
Quebec," were vigorously clerical in sympathies. The
influence of '48 had faded. Not the Seine, but the
Tiber, was to flow into the St. Lawrence.
The Rouge group in the House of Assembly in the
fifties incurred the hostility of the clergy by their at-
titude on two questions the powers of religious com-
munities and the control of the schools. Nearly every
session witnessed a contest over the incorporation of
some ecclesiastical order or institution. The Clear Grits
opposed incorporation on any terms ; the Rouges usually
supported the main proposals, but joined in questioning
the right of such communities to hold in perpetuity
lands of unlimited value. 1 Of more importance was the
school question. The Rouges, after initiating and car-
rying to a successful conclusion their demands for the
abolition of the seigniorial system and the establish-
ment of an elective upper house, turned to the better-
ment of education as their main policy. They called for
free elementary schools, liberally sustained by the pro-
vincial government, uniform in type, progressive in
curriculum, and open to all children irrespective of re-
i "The Hon. M. de Boucherville understood perfectly the aim of the
clergy in bringing some religious community here every year, when again
and again he opposed in the House the granting of acts of incorporation
to these communities. He realized how dangerous to the cause of liberty
the accumulation of property in the hands of the clergy is, and his is the
merit of having uttered the first cry of warning in parliament." Article
in "L'Avenir," Jan. 18, 1850.
93
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
ligious belief. Papin's motion in 1855 summed up this
policy: 'To establish throughout the province a gen-
eral and uniform system of free elementary education,
maintained wholly at the cost of the State by means
of a special fund created for that purpose; to make it
possible to carry on this system in a just and effective
manner, it will be necessary that all schools thus estab-
lished should be open without discrimination to all chil-
dren of school age, without exposing any, by the char-
acter of the teaching given, to having their religious be-
liefs or opinions assailed or injured in any manner."
In presenting his motion this young Rouge declared:
There can be no established religion, and if so, the state
cannot in any fashion grant money for the teaching
of any religious faith. The system of education in
force hitherto has been far from satisfactory. What
we need is a general system applicable to all sections of
the province, which will bring about the disappearance
of the prejudices of Catholics and Protestants alike.
This was not practical politics in 1855: even in Upper
Canada there were few supporters of uniform and free,
to say nothing of secular, education. Action followed
the other trend, of confirming and extending denomina-
tional control, where desired, and the Rouge demands
were very soon consigned to the legislative lumber-
room.
The criticisms of "L'Avenir" and the school and cor-
porations programme of the Rouge party concerned the
Church as a whole, and they could not complain if the
overwhelming body of the clergy opposed their conduct.
94
THE POLITICAL SCENE
In the case of the Institut Canadien, however, the ag-
gression came from the other side; the quarrel was a
more limited and personal affair, and the attitude of the
chief figure in the controversy, Bishop Bourget, was
very far from being endorsed by all his episcopal col-
leagues.
The Institut Canadien, it has been seen, was a
literary club, organized in Montreal in 1844 for the pur-
pose of providing the library and reading-room facilities
which were conspicuously lacking in French-speaking
Canada, and a forum for discussion and debate. It met
with instant and enthusiastic success. Similar institutes
were organized throughout the province; that was the
day, it will be remembered, when Mechanics' Insti-
tutes, public libraries, and popular lectures and lyceum
courses were coming into popularity in English-speak-
ing America. But their success was not long un-
clouded. The same group of young Montrealers who
edited 'L'Avenir" and organized the Rouge party led
the debates and controlled the library and reading-room
of the parent institute. It was not surprising that a
section of the clergy came to look upon the institute
with a very critical eye. The first hint of trouble came
in 1850. Father Paul Chiniquy demanded that jour-
nals which opposed the Pope's temporal power, and par-
ticularly 'The Witness" and a French Protestant and
proselytizing paper, "Le Semeur," should be excluded
from the reading-room; others sought to bar from
membership all but French- Canadians. Both pro-
posals were rejected, but a few members seceded, and
95
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
rival Instituts Nationaux were established throughout
the province in the next two years under clerical aus-
pices. Again, in 1852, when the Montreal institute
sought to rent a building owned by the Seminary, per-
mission was declined unless the offending newspapers
were barred and the bishop's censorship of the library
accepted. These terms were declined. The Quebec
Institut Canadien proved more amenable; in 1852 it
voted to exclude "L'Avenir" ; a motion was made in the
Montreal institute to retaliate in coin by excluding the
ultra-clerical "Journal de Quebec," but the proposal
was overwhelmingly rejected as inconsistent with the
liberty of discussion which was the issue at stake. The
question smouldered until in 1858 the action of Bishop
Bourget in condemning the institute for harbouring in
its library dangerous and immoral books fanned it into
flame. A section of the institute's members proposed
to bow to his wishes by appointing a committee to ban
all books to which objection was made. After a stormy
debate, a declaration was adopted by a vote of 110 to
88 to the effect that the institute's library did not con-
tain and never had contained a single immoral book;
and that it had always been and still was capable of
judging of the morality of its library and of conducting
its administration without the intervention of outside in-
fluences. The minority at once seceded. Mgr.
Bourget issued a pastoral condemning the majority for
assuming to judge of the morality of their books, and
for asserting that books which were on the Index Expur-
gatorius were not immoral. Unless they rescinded their
96
THE POLITICAL SCENE
action, no good Catholic could continue to belong to the
institute, and its members became liable to excommuni-
cation.
When Wilfrid Laurier came to Montreal in 1860, the
bishop and the institute were still at swords' points.
The young student was not deterred by the fear of
episcopal lightnings from joining the institute and
taking an active part in its debates and its administra-
tion. He became a vice-president in 1865, and again
the following year, retiring from office only on the eve
of his departure for L'Avenir. 1
In October, 1863, the institute endeavoured to heal
the breach. On the motion of Dr. Coderre, a committee
consisting of himself and of Messrs. Dessaulles, Laurier
and Joseph Doutre was appointed to "consider means
of settling the difficulties which have arisen between His
Grace the Bishop of Montreal and the Institute." This
committee secured an interview with Mgr. Bourget.
They were received with cordial courtesy and unyield-
ing opposition; nothing but complete submission would
avail. Later Dr. Coderre and M. Dessaulles waited
upon His Grace, and left with him a catalogue of the
library, asking him to indicate those books which he
i Officers of L'Institut Canadien. May to November, 1866:
President: J. Emery-Coderre
First Vice-President: Wilfrid Laurier
Second Vice-President: C. Alphonse Geoff rion
Recording Secretary: Alphonse Lusignan
Assistant Recording-Secretary: Zotique Labrecque
Corresponding Secretary: Gonzalve Doutre
Treasurer: Peter Henry
Librarian: Nephthali Durand
Assistant Librarian: Godefroi Papineau
97
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
considered undesirable for general reading, undertaking
to set these aside under lock and key, to be given to
Catholic members of the institute only upon authori-
zation of the president of the executive committee. Mgr.
Bourget took the catalogue. Six months passed with-
out response. Then M. Dessaulles sought an interview
once more, only to be informed that while dangerous
books had been found in the list, it was not considered
that it would serve any useful purpose to indicate them.
In March, 1864, in further token of the desire to avoid
offense, the institute adopted a resolution declaring
That the constitution of the Institut Canadien, while it
does not take into consideration the religious creed of any of
its members, does not thereby imply the denial of any truth or
religious authority, and allows the personal responsibilities
and duties of its members as regards their relation with estab-
lished modes of worship to be maintained without interference ;
that in order to set religious liberty as admitted in this institu-
tion above conflict of any sort and to protect it from any un-
pleasantness, it is essential to avoid carefully touching on or
discussing any question which might wound the religious sus-
ceptibilities of any of the members of this society; in con-
sequence it would be desirable that no reading or discussion
should be capable of giving rise to any complaint in this
respect.
In November, 1865, seventeen members of the insti-
tute decided to appeal to Csesar. A petition was drawn
up and despatched to the Sacred Congregation of the
Index protesting against Bishop Bourget's condemna-
tion, and asking for an answer to this question: "May
a Catholic, without rendering himself liable to ec-
clesiastical censures, belong to a literary association
98
THE POLITICAL SCENE
some of whose members are Protestants, and which
possesses books condemned by the Index, but which are
neither obscene nor immoral?' 3 His Grace, who was
not one to rest quiet under attack, carried his case to
Rome in person. When Wilfrid Laurier left Montreal
and the institute late in 1866, no decision had come
from His Holiness.
Meanwhile the institute continued its course. In
1867 we find the Rev. John Cordner declaring in an ad-
dress before the institute that it represented the Gallican
ideal in its breadth and independence, as against the
exclusiveness and domineering spirit of Ultramontan-
ism. In the same year Hon. L. J. Papineau made one
of his last public appearances before the institute, prais-
ing it for its defence of the right of free inquiry, en-
dorsing the principles of '76 and '89, calling on young
men of whatever creed or race to take part in the work
of the institute, and assuring it the support of all en-
lightened citizens in its struggle against "these enemies
of reason and of thought." A year later, two ad-
dresses were given which were still less acceptable.
Horace Greeley came from New York in December,
1868, to tell his hearers that "for the man who is
genuinely liberal in this century in which we live, tt\ere
is but one country, the world; one religion, charity; one
patriotism, to civilize and do good to all the family of
mankind; for adversaries, tyranny, ignorance, supersti-
tion, and, in short, everything which oppresses or de-
grades." On the same night, Dessaulles urged the need
of tolerance, sympathy, respect for the rights of others ;
99
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
insisted that in a country of mixed religions there could
be no harm in men of mature mind, who belonged to
different churches, meeting on common ground in the
pursuit of literature and of science; cited many good
Catholic writers who preached the same doctrine, and at-
tacked "the reactionaries who thirsted to stifle liberty of
thought and to keep grown men in dishonouring
tutelage." True, he continued, their library contained
books which were upon the Index, but what university
or parliamentary library did not contain more, since
works of Hallam and Michelet, of Agassiz and Cuvier,
of Cousin and Royer-Collard, of Chateaubriand and
Lamartine, of Pascal and Montaigne, of Hugo and
Goethe were on the prohibited list? All these addresses
were published in the "Annuaire" or "Handbook" for
1868.
At last, in 1869, Rome spoke. The question sub-
mitted by the members of the institute in 1865 was
not answered, but the "Annuaire" of 1868 was made the
ground for condemnation. The Congregation of the
Holy Office condemned as pernicious the doctrines
taught in the "Annuaire," and forbade the faithful to
belong to the institute so long as it taught such doc-
trines. A decree of the Congregation of the Index for-
bade any to publish, read or possess the "Annuaire."
Bishop Bourget, in a pastoral letter sent from Rome,
added the warning that if any person persisted in ad-
hering to the institute or keeping the "Annuaire" in
his possession, he would be deprived of the sacraments,
"meme a 1'article de la mort." The institute met in
100
THE POLITICAL SCENE
September, 1869, and declared: "1. That the In-
stitut Canadien, founded solely for literary and scien-
tific purposes, teaches no doctrine of any kind, and care-
fully excludes all teaching of pernicious doctrines; 2.
That the Catholic members of the Institut Canadien,
having learned of the condemnation of the 'Annuaire'
of 1868, by a decree of Rome's authority, declare that
they submit purely and simply to this decree." Bishop
Bourget was not content with this submission, which he
declared was hypocritical and inadequate : "This act of
submission forms part of the report of the committee
unanimously approved by the members of the institute,
in which there is set forth a resolution heretofore kept
secret, establishing the principle of religious toleration,
which was the chief ground for the condemnation of the
institute." In face of such frank and implacable hos-
tility, the institute dwindled away; prudence led the
weak-kneed to resign and death in time carried away the
stiff-necked.
The death in 1869 of one of the enduring members,
Joseph Guibord, printer by trade, a man of upright
character and a lifelong faithful Catholic, brought about
the final stage in the long struggle. A priest had re-
fused to give him the last rites of the Church unless he
would withdraw ; he declined, and died suddenly shortly
afterwards. The cure in charge of the cemetery of Cote
des Neiges therefore refused to grant his body ec-
clesiastical burial or to admit it within consecrated
ground. His friends took up the challenge. While
Joseph Guibord's body lay in a vault, Joseph Doutre
101
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
and Rodolphe Laflamine, on behalf of the widow, ap-
pealed to the courts, carried the case to the Privy Coun-
cil of England, and secured a decision in 1874 that
under the ecclesiastical law of New France, which had
never recognized the authority of the decrees of the Con-
gregation of the Index, Guibord did not lie under any
valid censure which could warrant his exclusion from
Christian burial. In September, 1875, Guibord's body
was carried to the cemetery, only to be met by barred
gates and angry mobs. Two months later, under
military escort, and with injunctions from the clergy to
the people to refrain from all resistance, Guibord was
buried without religious rites in the consecrated ground,
side by side with his wife, and the grave protected by
cement and iron. Yet here again Bishop Bourget had
the last word, formally proclaiming the ground in which
the stubborn printer lay, interdicted and unconsecrated.
One point was yielded; to no other member were the
rites of the Church refused.
The passions roused by this unfortunate affair made
the continuance of the institute impossible. Steadily
the membership fell away, the books and journals were
transferred to the Fraser Institute, a free public library,
and the institute became but a name. Mgr. Bourget
had triumphed.
Mr. Laurier had had no part in the later develop-
ments of the struggle, and had regretted the open cleav-
age and the bitter recriminations of the closing scenes.
Yet he never regretted that he had stood for freedom
in the days of his own membership in the institute.
102
THE POLITICAL SCENE
There have been few men in public life so little given
to cherishing a grudge. A singular temperamental
tolerance, resting in part on kindly sympathy, in part on
a cynical refusal to expect too much from human nature,
and an abiding understanding of the folly of vendettas
in a political game wherein the adversaries of to-day
might be the allies of to-morrow, made him ever slow in
condemnation. But fifty years after he had ceased to
be a member of the Institut Canadien, at the men-
tion of Mgr. Bourget's name his long mobile upper lip
would tighten, and his kindly eye grow stern as he
voiced his judgment of the prelate whose interpretation
of Christianity and their common Catholic faith differed
so widely from his own.
Even after his removal from Montreal, Mr. Laurier
met his share of episcopal censure. In leaving the
diocese of Mgr. Bourget to go to the diocese of Mgr.
Lafleche, he found he had exchanged the frying-pan for
the fire. In addition to his law practice, he had under-
taken to edit the weekly newspaper, 'Le Defricheur,"
which Eric Dorion had founded to further his work of
constructive colonization in the Eastern Townships. So
far as the few copies of "Le Defricheur" which are still
extant reveal, the new editor had little to say of the
Church, if much of his political opponents. But in the
rising temper of the ultramontane group it mattered
little whether the provocation was little or great. Mgr.
Lafleche put the journal under the ban. Cure after
cure advised his parishioners to give up their subscrip-
tions. Parishioner after parishioner declined to take
103
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
the paper from the post, or shamefacedly sought the
office and declared that as he feared to oppose his wife,
who feared to oppose the cure, he would have to give
it up. In six months "Le Defricheur" had gone the
way of many a Liberal paper in Quebec before and
after. Years later, when Mr. Laurier was on intimate
terms with Father Suzor, the cure at Arthabaskaville,
he asked what excuse there had been for crushing his ef-
fort. "Oh, we felt you were growing too powerful,"
was the reply. "And did you not consider that you
were depriving an honest man of his livelihood, destroy-
ing the investment into which I had put all I could find
or borrow?" A shrug, and the comforting suggestion
that such temporal considerations were of little weight,
were all the satisfaction Mr. Laurier could secure. It
was not probable that in any case, with his law practice
growing, he could have long continued to act as editor,
but that did not lessen the weight of the blow at the
time.
104
CHAPTER III
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
Clients, Friends, and Books Election to the Legislature A
Maiden Speech Clerical Hostility The European Background
The Catholic Programme of 1871 The Parti National Diversion
-The U tramontane Campaign in Quebec The Appeal to the
Courts The Appeal to Rome The Appeal to the Public
Laurier on Political Liberalism The Victory of Moderation.
FOR thirty years Wilfrid Laurier made his home
in the village of Arthabaskaville, or Arthabaska,
as it was later sensibly abbreviated. The early
years of his life in the Townships were years of quiet
happiness, of successful work and pleasant leisure.
Country air and the skilful care of the local physician,
Dr. Poisson, soon brought back a measure of strength.
Mr. Laurier's health never ceased to be a matter of con-
cern. He was well past middle age before any insur-
ance company would risk a policy on his life. Only an
ordered and abstemious way of living kept the shadow
averted.
On coming first to Arthabaska, Mr. Laurier formed a
partnership with Mr. Crepeau, which proved of brief
duration. He then joined forces with Mr. Edouard
Richard, who is best known as the historian of the
Acadians. When Mr. Richard was elected as member
in the federal house for Megantic, and took up his resi-
dence in that constituency, Mr. Laurier, in 1874, asked
Joseph Lavergne to join him. The partnership proved
105
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
both enduring and congenial, ending only when Mr.
Lavergne, who had been member for Drummond-
Arthabaska from 1887 to 1897, went on the bench in
the latter year. Joseph Lavergne, it may be noted, was
followed as member for the county by his brother Louis,
whose appointment as senator in 1910 gave occasion for
the fateful by-election of Drummond-Arthabaska.
The practice flourished. Both in the judicial seat and
on circuit the services of young Laurier were greatly
in demand. It was a litigious neighbourhood, and the
partners frequently had more difficulty in inducing their
clients to settle their disputes out of court than in find-
ing suits to plead. The cases were not of great moment,
a family quarrel over a will, a neighbour's line-fence dis-
pute, a damage suit against a railway, but whether little
or much was at stake, Mr. Laurier greatly enjoyed
the grappling of minds, and the jousting in the court-
room. Fees were not high: it was ten years before his
income rose to two thousand a year, and the largest
income he ever enjoyed while in practice was five thou-
sand; but in Arthabaska, and in the seventies and
eighties, five thousand, or even two, was wealth unques-
tioned.
Law did not absorb all Mr. Laurier's time or interest.
For a time he returned to journalism, acting as editor
of "Le Journal d' Arthabaska," founded in 1872 by his
friend Ernest Pacaud, later editor of the leading Lib-
eral newspaper in Quebec, "L'Electeur." Even with
this fresh duty, there was leisure for living in Artha-
baska, and both the desire and the means to live. Al-
106
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
though the town had only some three thousand people,
it was a literary and artistic centre of no little moment.
A community that produced jovial wits like his brother
lawyer, Louis Edouard Pacaud, such poets as Adolphe
Poisson and musicians as Romeo Poisson, and, later,
sculptors like Philippe Hebert and painters like Suzor
Cote, was vigorously alive: the great cities had not yet
drained the countryside. An evening passed in talk
and song or in a rubber of whist in such company was
not soon forgotten. The woods and the hills about lured
to many a quiet ramble, or to a hunt for partridge. The
local militia offered another outlet. Mr. Laurier be-
came ensign in 1868. His company was called out for
service during the Fenian Raid of 1870, though it did
not have an opportunity to share in the brief skirmishes
on the Townships' borders.
But it was in his library that Mr. Laurier passed his
happiest hours. He read widely in the literature and
history of his own country and of the two countries from
which Canada drew its inspiration. Garneau and
Cremazie, Bossuet and Moliere, Hugo and Lamartine,
Burke and Sheridan and Fox, Macaulay and Bright,
Shakespeare and Burns, Newman and Lamennais, were
the companions of his evening hours. His father's con-
nection with the seigniory of Peter Pangman, the
North- West fur-trader, drew his interest to the West-
ern field, and his shelves soon held many prized narra-
tives of travel or fur-company feuds beyond the Great
Lakes. The life and writings of Lincoln were another
special interest. He had escaped being carried away by
107
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the enthusiasm for the South which marked official circles
and the larger cities in Canada during the Civil War,
when Southern refugees swarmed in Montreal, and
plotted border raids. He had pierced below caricature
and calumny to the rugged strength of the Union leader,
and held in highest honour his homespun wit, his shrewd
judgment, his magnanimous patience. More than one
shelf of his library was set apart for Lincolniana.
Writing in 1876 to James Young of Gait, Mr.
Laurier refers to some of his reading in English history:
I am just finishing "Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay." Have
you read it? It is a fine book. I greatly admired Macaulay
as a writer and a public man, but I am delighted with the private
man. I have immediately, upon finishing reading the "Life
of Macaulay," begun to read anew his history, and am now
concluding the fourth volume. The history of England has
for a foreigner like myself a charm which, I am sure, it has not
for one accustomed from his infancy to English ideas and tra-
ditions. As you follow in Macaulay's pages that constant
struggle between liberty and despotism and the slow and steady
progress and at last complete triumph of liberty, the student
of French history is struck with amazement. This is the rea-
son why I admire you so much, you Anglo-Saxons.
It was a little more than four years after Wilfrid
Laurier had begun to practise in Arthabaska that the
way opened into political life. The first provincial
legislature had been dissolved, and the general elections
for the new house were to be held in June and July,
1871. The counties of Drummond and Arthabaska had
been represented for the previous four years by a Con-
servative, Edward Hemming, a Drummondville bar-
rister. The Liberals of the two counties urged Mr.
108
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
Laurier to contest the seat. Though deeply interested
in politics, and with a full share of a somewhat fastidi-
ous ambition, he hesitated on account of the precarious
state of his health. Finally he undertook the contest,
and though a series of painful hemorrhages hampered
his campaign, the popularity he had built up among both
the French-speaking and the English-speaking Cana-
dians, and particularly the Scots, of the constituency,
stood him in good stead. While the Liberals through-
out the province returned only a third of the house,
Mr. Laurier was triumphantly elected for Drummond-
Arthabaska, by over one thousand majority.
In one of the few letters of this period which have been
preserved, addressed to a class-mate of L'Assomption
days, shortly after his victory, Mr. Laurier reveals a
youthful impulsiveness and vagueness of ambition which
disappeared or at least failed to come to the surface in
later years :
Wilfrid Laurier to Oscar Archambault. (Translation)
Arthabaska, July 23, 1871.
MY DEAE OSCAR:
How can I thank you for your good letter! Of all the
many congratulations which have come to me, it is yours, and
yours alone, that I looked for. Yours, I knew, would come
from a friendly heart. My own heart leaped when I saw your
writing and read the post-mark, "L'Assomption." At that
word, my whole life, our whole life in college, our life as stu-
dents, a whole world, passed before my eyes like a flash. In an
instant I surveyed ten years of my life. How many memories,
how many happenings, how many intimate thoughts, how
many anxieties, how many hopes buried by the hand of time,
surged up in my heart again as freshly as ten years ago. I
109
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
said to myself then with what joy I would throw to the winds
ray deputy's seat if I could find myself back in that blessed
time.
Yes, my friend, I am now a member of Parliament. I have
scored a triumph, a real triumph; I have beaten the govern-
ment, the gold of the government, the eloquence of the min-
isters ; I have been carried through the portals with nothing
to help me but popular sympathy. Yet, once more, I would
sacrifice all that to find myself back at nineteen with my pov-
erty, but with my hopes, with my illusions, with your friend-
ship. There is in the depths of my heart an enduring regret
which the hand of time does not efface ; regret that we have
not been able to realize the dreams of our youth, that we have
not been able to carry on beyond the threshold of life that
union of our career which we had planned so long. How many
times do I find these thoughts in my head, these regrets in my
heart ; I say to myself : what 's the use, what 's the use of re-
gretting what cannot be helped, what 's the use of complaining
of the implacable edicts of destiny, and yet the very instant
afterward I find myself again dallying with the same thoughts,
the same regrets.
Assuredly I ought to be perfectly happy. It would rest
only with myself to be happy and I would be were it not for
this regret. I do not know what you think about it, but for
me it is a sorrow at every moment.
Like you, I regret that you have not been able to make your
entrance into political life this year. We would have come
together, we would have been able to work together, we would
have tasted again something of the great days of yore. So
far as this goes, however, that opportunity is not lost, it is
merely postponed. At the next elections your turn will come ;
you will carry by assault that fine county of Assomption of
Papin's which now lets itself be hypnotized by a wretched
coterie. I know that that will be a hard struggle to fight,
but the goal is worthy of your striving.
As for me, I have not the ambitious ideas with which you
credit me. I am entering political life without any precon-
110
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
ceived ideas, without seeking any personal advantage, I might
say without desire, or, if I have any desire, it is that of making
my ideas triumph. We are, it is true, in an era of transition,
and there is a fair field for any one who will take the trouble
to strike out his own path. I shall not take the trouble,
even if I should raise against myself every prejudice in the
Province of Quebec. My decision, however, has not yet been
taken or mv line of conduct decided. There was a time when
/
I felt tremendously ambitious, but age has dissipated these
dreams of adolescence; I am turning into a positivist.
Adieu, my dear Oscar, or rather au revoir. I suppose that
I shall see you at Quebec this winter during the session. Ac-
cept my regards and those of my wife and please remember me
to your family whose many kindnesses to me will never vanish
from my memory.
Your friend,
W. LAURIER.
The Assembly met in Quebec, early in November.
Its legislative tasks were not arduous. The provincial
legislatures were still groping to ascertain the share of
the field of activity which had fallen to them when the
federal system was adopted in 1867. The Conservative
administration in power was not aggressive. At its
head since 1867 had been Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau.
A precocious youth, a poet of fair workmanship, author
of a novel of French Canada which all praised and few
read, a glowing and somewhat flowery orator, M. Chau-
veau had been Superintendent of Education for Canada
East for the twelve years preceding Confederation.
When in 1867 Hon. J. E. Cauchon, the hard-hitting
veteran of Union politics, failed to form a cabinet be-
cause of the unwillingness of Christopher Dunkin to
serve under him, M. Chauveau was summoned to form
111
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the first provincial administration. His cabinet com-
prised Gedeon Ouimet, J. O. Beaubien, Charles Boucher
de Boucherville, Louis Archambault, George Irvine,
and Christopher Dunkin, best known to fame as the
most searching critic of Confederation, who was suc-
ceeded after 1869 by J. G. Robertson. Outside the
cabinet, and aside from the three federal ministers,
Cartier, Langevin and Robitaille, who also held seats
in the provincial house, the ablest man on the govern-
ment side was Joseph- Adolphe Chapleau. The ranks
of the Opposition were thin, and the men of outstand-
ing capacity and experience among them few. Henri
Joly de Lotbiniere, Luther Hamilton Holton, and
Telesphore Fournier, all of whom held seats both at
Ottawa and at Quebec, were men of first-rate capacity.
In this Assembly Mr. Laurier was not long in mak-
ing his mark. His conspicuous success in the general
election had drawn wide attention. His maiden speech,
on the Reply to the Address, more than justified ex-
pectations. It was acclaimed with enthusiasm by his
colleagues, and frankly recognized by his opponents in
the House and in the press as marking the rise of a new
force in provincial politics.
Mr. Laurier, as a member of the Opposition, was in
duty bound to find the situation of the province less
hopeful than the ministerial speakers had painted it.
Yet he did not paint it wholly black. On the political
and social side there was much to be thankful for. "Cer-
tainly," he declared, "the fact is one of which we can
be justly proud, that so many different faces and so
112
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
many opposite creeds should find themselves gathered in
this little corner of earth, and that our constitution
should prove broad enough to leave them all plenty of
elbow room, without friction or danger of collision, and
with the fullest latitude to each to speak its own tongue,
practise its own religion, retain its own customs and en-
joy its equal share of liberty and of the light of the
sun." He found two outstanding omissions in the gov-
ernment's programme so far as political questions were
concerned. It had failed to bring in a bill to do away
with the pernicious system of spreading elections out
over weeks or months, thus permitting the government
of the day to issue writs first for the seats it considered
safe and to concentrate its influence later on the seats
it considered in danger. It had failed, in spite of the
premier's long study of educational affairs, to propose
any improvements in the school system of the province.
But the government's greatest weakness, Mr. Laurier
continued, was its failure on the industrial side, its un-
readiness to grapple with the serious economic problems,
the backward state of agriculture, the stagnation of in-
dustry, the steady outward flow of the young men and
women of the province to the United States. With all
the great resources of which so much was heard, the
people were in the position of Tantalus, starving in sight
of a sumptuous table. Doubtless the ministry were not
alone responsible for this bleeding of the country's
strength. Yet they might have sought to build up a
national industry, to remove the humiliating confes-
sion that after three centuries the country was still un-
113
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
able to supply its own wants, to go back if need be to
Papineau's policy: 'We should buy nothing from the
metropolis." The government should seek to bring in
industrial immigrants, master mechanics and small cap-
italists, the master miners of Wales and the north of
England, the mechanics of Alsace, the weavers of
Flanders and the artisans of Germany, rather than en-
deavour to recruit solely agricultural immigration.
The agricultural population of Quebec, he acutely in-
sisted, would never be increased from outside: "Our
climate is too severe and the development of our lands
too costly and difficult. The children of the soil will
not be deterred by these obstacles, but the stranger will
simply pass through our territory and locate on the rich
prairies of the West." The French-Canadians them-
selves should take on a more industrial character. 'We
are surrounded," he declared, "by a strong and vigorous
race who are endowed with a devouring activity and
have taken possession of the entire universe as their
field of labour. As a French-Canadian, Sir, I am
pained to see my people eternally excelled by our fel-
low-countrymen of British origin. We must frankly
acknowledge that down to the present we have been left
behind in the race. We can admit this and admit it
without shame, because the fact is explained by purely
political reasons which denote no inferiority on our part.
After the Conquest, the French-Canadians, desirous of
maintaining their national inheritance intact, fell back
upon themselves, and kept up no relations with the out-
side world. The immediate result of this policy was to
114
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
keep them strangers to the reforms which were con-
stantly taking place beyond their boundaries, and fatally
to shut them up within the narrow circle of their own
old views. On the other hand, the new blood which was
poured into the colony came from the most advanced
country under the sun in point of trade and industry.
They brought with them the civilization of their native
land and their strength was ceaselessly renewed by a
steady current of immigration, which added not only
to their numbers but to their stock of information and
their ideas."
Mr. Laurier's maiden speech doubtless had its share
of party rhetoric and of an Opposition member's li-
censed criticism. Yet it was in matter a distinct
achievement for a man of thirty, broad in its sweep and
markedly free from partisan recriminations, while the
grace and persuasiveness of his manner held high
promise. The steady drain of Quebeckers to the in-
dustrial towns of the Eastern States to which he called
attention was a serious loss. In a vivid passage in a
speech the following session, discussing some restric-
tions introduced by the government on the settlement of
the Crown lands of the province, Mr. Laurier pictured
fifty thousand sturdy Canadians filing in slow and un-
broken column past the minister, on their way into exile
in the Republic, crying Roman-wise, Ave, migraturi te
salutant.
It was, however, in the debate in 1871 on the aboli-
tion of dual representation that Mr. Laurier most
clearly showed his strength. The constitutional issues
115
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
involved were then as ever more congenial to him than
economic questions : his training as a lawyer, his reading
in the classics of French radicalism and English liberal-
ism, and his position as a member of a minority relying
on constitutional guarantees for the preservation of its
rights, gave a leading place in his thinking to consider-
ations of justice and of the legality in which justice was
assumed to fee^ashr^ined.
The system of dual representation, by which the same
men could hold seats both in the federal parliament and
in the legislature of their province, had not been made
a positive feature of the Confederation scheme. It
had developed because no law forbade it, and because
of the dearth of men of first-rate calibre. Each party
was keen to be represented by its strongest men both at
the federal and at the provincial capital. Sir John
Macdonald, with his theoretical preference for a legis-
lative rather than a federal union of the Dominion, and
his practical desire to have his hand on the provincial
machine, was particularly determined in support of the
dual system. It had its strong features, raising the level
of capacity in the local legislatures, and in some cases
conducing to harmony between federal and provincial
policy. Yet there were still stronger grounds of objec-
tion on principle, and in spite of the short sessions which
were then the rule, the practical inconvenience of adjust-
ing the meetings of parliament and of legislature every
year in such a way as to avoid conflict was increasingly
felt.
In discussing the general question of constitutional
116
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
limitations, Mr. Laurier gave interesting evidence of
the influence on his thought of the social-contract doc-
trines of the older radical individualist tradition:
When a people accept a constitution, they make the sacri-
fice of a portion of their liberty, a generous sacrifice by which
each gives up something belonging to himself individually for
the benefit and security of the whole. When a people accept
a constitution they trace out themselves the circle which they
assign to their liberties ; they say to themselves, in a sense :
This space belongs to me; here I can speak, think, act; I owe
no account of my words, my thoughts, my acts to any one ex-
cept to my own conscience and to God ; but as regards society,
here its domain begins and mine ends, and I shall not go fur-
ther. Still, like all human works, constitutions are not per-
fect. New horizons, which were not before perceived, are
constantly opening up, and unsuspected abuses are discovered.
It is then the duty of the legislature to step in and enlarge or
contract, according 1 to needs and circumstances, the circle
within which the institutions of the country move.
Passing to the specific issue, he showed convincingly
that dual representation led to practical inconvenience
and inconsistency of policy, and particularly that it
tended to confuse federal and provincial issues and sub-
ordinate provincial to federal policy. For Quebec the
system was particularly dangerous: 'With the single
mandate, Quebec is Quebec; with the double mandate,
it becomes merely an appendix to Ottawa."
The motion to abolish dual representation was de-
feated by a small margin on this occasion; it was carried
the next session, only to be rejected in the legislative
council. In the meantime the province of Ontario had
abolished the system in 1872. In 1873 the Dominion
117
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
parliament made the prohibition general by providing
that members of any provincial legislature should be in-
eligible for the federal house.
Mr. Laurier spoke rarely, but always with effect.
The Quebec correspondent of the chief French Liberal
newspaper, "Le Pays," summing up the session of 1872,
declared that " Mr. Laurier has definitely carried off the
sceptre of eloquence in the Legislative Assembly ; I can-
not, however, help reproaching him for not taking part
often enough in the debates." Even "Le Nouveau
Monde," the ultra-clerical organ, generously bore
tribute to the grace of his style and his insistence on go-
ing back to first principles though unfortunately those
principles were Liberal if not Socialist.
In the first ten years of Wilfrid Laurier's public
career, the outstanding issue with which he had to deal
was the hostility of a vigorous and aggressive sec-
tion of the Quebec clergy to the party of which he was
one of the responsible leaders. It has been seen that
in the twenty years before Confederation the Rouge
party and its journalistic spokesmen had, not without
reason, found themselves in the black books of the clergy,
and that with much less reason Bishop Bourget and his
abettors had waged war upon the young men grouped in
Tlnstitut Canadien who had dared to maintain the lib-
erty of inquiry and discussion. In the dozen years that
followed, the storm, instead of abating, grew more vio-
lent. The area of conflict widened, occupying the whole
provincial stage, and the connection with the contem-
118
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
poraneous movements in Europe became still more
marked than in the Union period.
One factor in the situation was that the aggressively
ultramontane -wing of the Church in Quebec had grown
more powerful. Mgr. Bourget and Mgr. Lafleche were
now older and more firmly established in their seats, with
wills which had become no less firm with years of exer-
cised authority. Around them, and particularly in
Montreal, there gathered the men of what Mgr. Bourget
termed the New School, journalists like the editors of
the "Nouveau Monde" and the "Franc-Parleur," pam-
phleteers like Alphonse Villeneuve, and preachers like
Abbe Pelletier and Father Braiin, a newly come Jesuit.
In the archbishop's palace, in the Seminary of St. Sul-
pice and in Laval University at Quebec, another temper
and other views of how the Church's interest could best
be served prevailed, but the fighting, uncompromising,
unrecking minority daily gained ascendancy.
The activity of this school was the more intense be-
cause Confederation seemed to have left them a free
field. In Quebec as in the other provinces there had
been set up a provincial government to which were as-
signed education and the local matters in which the
Church was chiefly concerned. No longer was it neces-
sary to run the gauntlet of a vigilant and biased
Clear Grit group from Upper Canada when matters
ecclesiastical were brought before the House. In Que-
bec the people were four-fifths Catholic, and on this fact
the ultramontane wing based its hopes of moulding the
province to its will.
119
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
But more effective than any other factor was the influ-
ence of the Old World conflict. The Canadian move-
ment was not merely parallel with the European, but in
issues and inspiration, party labels and party cries, it
was directly and closely shaped by it.
In Catholic Europe, and particularly in France, a
struggle had waged for centuries between opposing
tendencies, which before 1789 were usually termed
Gallican and ultramontane and after 1789 liberal and
ultramontane, though the shades of opinion were too
multiform and shifting for any single labels to qualify
them aright. The Gallican sought to build up an inde-
pendent national church, demanding administrative
authority for the king, and, usually, doctrinal authority
for church councils, as against the claims of the papacy.
The ultramontane, looking "beyond the mountains" to
Rome, insisted that the one Holy Catholic Church must
be ruled as a unity, that the Pope as its head and God's
vice-regent not only was supreme in spiritual affairs, but
was entitled, because of the inherent superiority of
spiritual power over temporal, to control all temporal
affairs, and they were not few, in which moral or spirit-
ual issues could be said to be involved. The Gallican
on the whole had the better of the dispute, until the
French Revolution seemed likely to end it by complet-
ing the destruction alike of national church and papal
power. The national churches, undermined by the
rationalist questioning of the age of Voltaire and weak-
ened by the worldliness of the higher clergy, appeared
destined to crumble under the attacks of the revolution-
120
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
ary spirit which accepted no institution however ancient
and no claim that could not justify itself at the bar of
reason. The papacy, with its Italian possessions in-
vaded and seized, and the Popes themselves exiled and
prisoners, had fallen to its lowest ebb of power.
Yet the tide speedily turned. The nineteenth century
witnessed no more remarkable development than the
steady revival of the Roman Catholic Church and the
still more rapid growth of the ultramontane spirit within
the Church. The people, when admitted to power,
proved to be much more religious than the sceptical
aristocrats of the old regime. In the softer lights of
romanticism, faiths revived which had wilted under the
harsh noonday glare of rationalism. Kings and nobles
and capitalists, seeking to build up bulwarks against
tumultuous change, turned to the most ancient and un-
changing seat of authority in Europe. But the new
religious zeal, for all the efforts of Bourbon and Haps-
burg kings, could not be put back into the old bottles of
Gallicanism. The clergy in France had ceased to be
a separate estate of the realm ; the episcopate had ceased
to be made up of scions of ancient families, bound by
training and territorial possessions to the political in-
terests of their kingdom. All the men of vitality in the
reviving Church preferred to be the religious servants of
the Vicar of Christ rather than the civil servants of a
Bourbon king.
What was to be the attitude of the ancient power thus
revived to the new power unloosed by the Revolution?
Could the Church accept the principles of '89 and '93,
121
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
inscribe "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" on its ban-
ners, and make terms with Liberalism and the states in
which Liberalism was in control? Continental Liberal-
ism, with its emphasis on the individual, had assumed a
state founded on the free contract of individual men, had
asserted the right to freedom of thought, of speech, and
of organization and then had often inconsistently
refused the Church freedom to act and organize as it
willed. The Church had held that political societies
were not man-made but ordained of Heaven, and that
individual reason and individual claims must be subordi-
nated to the authority in Church and State which God
himself had set up.
There were many ardent spirits in France, Lamen-
nais, Lacordaire and Montalembert foremost among
them, who believed it would be possible to bring the
Church and Liberalism to terms, and to develop a Cath-
olic Liberalism which would meet the needs of the new
day. * They besought the Pope to place himself at the
head of a purified Liberal movement in Europe, and to
base Catholicism firmly once more on the will and the
devotion of the multitudes. In revolt against the policy
which made the Church merely an instrument of state
policy, they turned to Rome for freedom from royal
shackles ; urging freedom for themselves, they were pre-
pared to extend it to others. Fighting Gallican kings
and ministers, they sought to be at once ultramontane
and liberal, ultramontane from religious conviction and
i"I am a disciple of Lacordaire," wrote Mr. Laurier in 1897, replying
to a fellow-Liberal who took the uncompromising anti-clerical Liberalism
of Continental Europe as his model.
122
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
liberal from political expediency. "Men tremble before
Liberalism," Lamennais had declared; "make it Catho-
lic, and society will be born again." 'There are two
Liberalisms," he wrote in "L'Avenir" in 1830, "the old
and the new : the old, heir to the doctrines of eighteenth
century philosophy, breathes only religious intolerance
and oppression, but the new liberalism, which will in
time overcome the old, is only concerned, as regards
religion, with demanding the separation of Church and
State, a separation which is necessary for the liberty of
the Church." "Understand clearly, my Catholic
brethren," Lacordaire had added: "if you wish liberty
for yourselves, you must wish it for all men and for
every land. If you demand it for yourselves alone, it
will never be given you. Grant it where you are masters
in order that it may be given you where you are slaves."
And the Bishop of Orleans, Mgr. Dupanloup, had been
equally clear-cut: 'These liberties so dear to those who
accuse us of not loving them, we proclaim and we invoke,
for ourselves as well as for others. We accept, we in-
voke, the principles and the liberties proclaimed in '89."
Catholic Liberalism fought in vain. The Liberals of
the straiter sect would not make peace, continuing to
attack the doctrines of the Church and too suspicious of
its power to grant it the unrestricted liberty of teaching
and organization that was demanded. Liberal or con-
stitutional politicians, particularly in central Europe,
insisted that the Church had no rights save what the state
conferred, and that the religious affairs of a nation
should be regulated by the Minister of Worship as f or-
123
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
eign affairs were regulated by the Foreign Secretary.
Nor was Rome more ready to accept a compromise.
Liberalism had too much to say about the rights of man,
and too little about duty to God ; it erred in endeavour-
ing to found society upon the shifting sands of individual
compact, instead of upon the rock of divine ordinance
applied and interpreted by the Church and its earthly
head ; Liberalism was only Gallicanism transformed for
the worse, kingless as well as godless ; liberty was not for
all times and places, for while truth must always be
given liberty, the right to do wrong or think wrong
could not be claimed. Time and time again the decision
was given against Catholic Liberalism. In 1832 Greg-
ory XVI issued his famous Encyclical, "Mirari vos,"
condemning the policy of its leaders, particularly of
Lamennais, and' repudiating "the absurd and erroneous
maxim that liberty of conscience must be assured and
guaranteed to all." In 1864, Pius IX, who had been
hailed as liberal in his early days, but had become more
conservative after having been driven from Rome in the
revolution of 1848, issued the Syllabus, containing a list
of "the principal errors of our time," including notably
the advocacy of separation of Church and State, and of
the necessity of reconciling the Church and modern
Liberalism. Finally in 1869, the great Vatican Coun-
cil, attended by over seven hundred bishops and prelates
from every Catholic people under the sun, after much
debate and wide difference of opinion, voted overwhelm-
ingly to accept the doctrine of papal infallibility on ques-
tions of faith and morals.
124
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
Ultramontanism had triumphed, triumphed so com-
pletely that leaders of the Church thereafter denied that
it was merely one current of action and opinion, and in-
sisted that it was synonymous with any permissible in-
terpretation of Roman Catholicism itself. Yet if ac-
cepted within the Church, the tendencies of which the
proclamation of papal infallibility was the crowning
achievement were not accepted by European statesmen.
Austria annulled the Concordat, Prussia launched out
upon its Kulturkampf, and in France the war between
clerical and anti-clerical parties grew ever more bitter
until it led, many years later, to the disestablishment
of the Church and the expulsion of the religious orders.
The day after the decree was issued, war broke out be-
tween France and Prussia, Napoleon withdrew the
troops which had garrisoned the Papal States, and the
temporal power of the Pope collapsed in the very year
that his spiritual authority reached transcendent heights.
In Canada as elsewhere the Church authorities were
divided in opinion as to the doctrinal soundness or the
practical expediency of the Syllabus and the defini-
tion of papal infallibility. In Quebec, Archbishop
Baillargeon circulated among his clergy the famous
letter in which Bishop Dupanloup, on the eve of depart-
ing for the Council, had vigorously and minutely called
in question both the soundness and opportuneness of the
doctrine. But the men of the newer school, led by
Bishop Bourget, gave hearty support to the ultramon-
tane movement, and were encouraged by its success to as-
sert a wider influence in state affairs and to take a
125
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
stronger line against their more moderate brethren with-
in the Church itself.
A remarkable episode, making dramatically clear the
closer bonds that now united Quebec and Rome, was
the organization in 1867 and the two years following
of companies of Papal Zouaves for the defence of the
Pope's temporal realms. So strong was the conviction
that the whole future of religion and the Church were
imperilled, that hundreds of young crusaders, feted and
garlanded by sympathetic friends and blessed by Bishop
Bourget in a glowing pastoral, crossed the seas from this
land that had seemed to know little and care less for
Old World quarrels, prepared to fight side by side with
papal guards against the forces that were striving to
make Italy a single nation, with Rome as its centre and
crown.
At home, the new spirit was manifested in many on-
slaughts against the men of moderate views. The Sem-
inary of St. Sulpice in Montreal, and Laval University
in Quebec, with the archbishop as its patron, were vigor-
ously attacked in the sixties and seventies. Mgr. Bour-
get was Bishop of Montreal, but the Seminary, as
seigneur in receipt of rents and lods et Denies, and as
cure, in receipt of tithes, secured the chief revenues ac-
cruing within the diocese. The main issue at stake was
the right of the bishop to subdivide the old single parish
of Montreal, hitherto in charge of the Seminary; a sub-
sidiary question was as to whether he could establish the
new parishes without the consent of the majority of
the parishioners concerned, and the formal approval of
126
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
the State. Sir George Cartier and "La Minerve"
stoutly championed the Seminary; in "Le Nouveau
Monde," established in 1864 under his direct control,
Mgr. Bourget found vigorous newspaper support.
Against Laval University, again, charges of Gallican
and Liberal leanings were freely brought. Even old
political friends were not spared. The hostility of Mgr.
Bourget contributed heavily to Cartier's defeat in the
general election of 1872. At his death a year later the
"Nouveau Monde" very frankly exposed his fault:
'The epoch of Mr. Cartier's greatest power was also the
epoch when the errors which were to prove fatal devel-
oped. Thinking himself invincible, he forgot the source
whence he derived his strength. . . . The attempt in
which he persisted with so great perseverance to defeat
the projects of his Bishop and procure the annulment of
canonical decrees by the civil tribunals, destroyed the
confidence of the Catholics and brought on the ruin of
the colossus."
Not content with indirect control, the ultramontane
school determined in 1871 to enter the political field
openly and aggressively. Early in that year a group
of editors and lawyers, all deep-dyed Conservatives, and
all, in their own words, "belonging heart and soul to the
ultramontane school," gathered in Montreal to consider
how best to advance their cause. The group included
F. X. A. Trudel, a prominent member of the Legislative
Assembly, A. B. Routhier, and other lawyers, and
the leading ultramontane editors, Alphonse Desjardins
of "L'Ordre," Magloire Macleod of the "Journal des
127
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Trois-Rivieres," M. Renault of the "Courrier du
Canada," and C. Beausoleil, the editor, and Canon La-
marche, the censor, of "Le Nouveau Monde." They
decided, after recalling the effective work Louis Veuil-
lot had done in France by his uncompromising stand, to
launch a movement for organizing a Catholic party, or
rather for purging the Conservative party of the anti-
clerical elements which were creeping in. A manifesto
embodying their views was drawn by M. Routhier, re-
vised by Mgr. Lafleche, approved by Mgr. Bourget, and
published first in the "Journal des Trois-Rivieres" on
April 20, 1871.
The "Catholic Programme," as the manifesto was
termed, was devised to guide aright the Catholic voters
in the approaching provincial elections. Taking as its
starting-point a pastoral of Mgr. Lafleche exhorting the
people to choose legislators who would safeguard the
interests of the Church, the "Programme" declared that
since the separation of Church and State was an absurd
and impious doctrine, and legislators would therefore
have to do with matters ecclesiastical, it was essential
for Catholics to choose men who gave full and unre-
served adhesion to the religious, political and social doc-
trines of their church. Protestants, of course, would
have the same liberty. This involved, as a rule, the sup-
port of the Conservative party, as the only one offering
valid guarantees for the interests of religion, but the
support should not be blind. Only those candidates
should be chosen who would agree to modify the laws
of the province in regard to education, marriage, the
128
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
erection of parishes and other matters, in the way de-
manded by the Bishops. In detail, this meant: "1 If
the contest is between two Conservatives, it goes with-
out saying that we shall support the one who accepts
the platform we have just outlined; 2 If, on the con-
trary, it is between a Conservative of any shade what-
ever and an adept of the Liberal school, our sympathies
will be given actively to the former; 3 If the only
candidates who come forward in a constituency are both
Liberals or oppositionists, we must choose whichever
will agree to our terms; 4 Finally, in the event that the
contest lies between a Conservative who rejects our
programme and an opportunist of any brand who ac-
cepts it, the position would be more delicate. To vote
for the former would be to contradict the doctrine we
have just expounded; to vote for the latter would be
to imperil the Conservative party, which we wish to see
strong. What decision should we make as between
these two dangers? In this case we should advise Cath-
olic electors to abstain from voting."
This extraordinary document was republished and
supported by the "Nouveau Monde," the "Franc Par-
leur," the "Ordre," the "Courrier du Canada," the
'Union des Cantons de 1'Est," and the "Pionnier de
Sherbrooke. Several members of the Assembly has-
tened to proclaim their adhesion. But "La Minerve"
and the erstwhile clerical "Journal de Quebec" flatly and
vigorously denounced the manifesto as an insufferable
affront. More significant still was the publication of a
letter, on April 26, from Archbishop Taschereau, stat-
129
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
ing that he knew of the document only through the
newspapers and that it therefore lay under the grave dis-
ability of having been drawn up wholly without any
participation by the episcopacy; no member of the
clergy was authorized to exceed the limits laid down by
the Fourth Council of Quebec. This disavowal did not
deter the two episcopal champions of ultramontanism.
Both issued pastorals approving its doctrines, and stated
publicly and explicitly that they endorsed the Pro-
gramme, Mgr. Bourget adding that he considered it the
surest safeguard for a truly Conservative party.
When the provincial elections of 1871, in which Wil-
frid Laurier was returned for Drummond-Arthabaska,
were over, the Liberals found themselves once more in
a small minority. A group of moderate Liberals deter-
mined to make a fresh start and blot out the tradition
of anti-clericalism which barred their path to power.
Under the leadership of Louis A. Jette, a Montreal
barrister, the endeavour was made to reorganize the
Liberal party as the Parti National. The new label was
accepted, though without enthusiasm, by the old Rouges,
and fresh recruits were gathered in circles friendly to the
clergy. The Parti National stood for Canada first
and last, had a leaning toward protection, and expressed
the friendliest feelings toward the clergy, though still
solicitous to prevent their robes being soiled in the mire
of politics. A new journal, "Le National," was estab-
lished in Montreal to voice its views, and the "Bien
Public" of the same city, and "L'Electeur" and
130
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
"L'Evenement" of Quebec, gave it general support. *
The effects of the new tactics were seen in the in-
creased Liberal representation in the federal elections
of 1872, and particularly in the defeat of the veteran
Cartier himself by Jette in Montreal East. In the
latter election there was open alliance between the Parti
National and the Ultramontanes against their common
foe. But the reconciliation did not prove lasting. The
great bulk of the clergy looked upon this sudden re-
pentance as merely a ruse, and the fighting clans among
the old Rouges were uneasy in their unwonted company.
Gradually the transformation was reversed, the former
chieftains again took control, and the Parti National
faded into the Liberal party once more. When the
Liberal party came to power in Ottawa after the ex-
posure of the Pacific scandal, it was the old Rouge
leaders, Letellier, Fournier, Laflamme, Geoffrion, who
were taken into the cabinet, not the Jettes. The ap-
pointment of Cauchon was the only concession made to
the new allies.
Writing in July 1874 to James Young, an Ontario
member whom he had met at Ottawa, Mr. Laurier ex-
plains the situation:
The Nouveau Monde party have been clamorous to have
Jette installed in office. You want to know the reason. Here
it is. The Nouveau Monde party are not Liberals : they are
of the worst class of Conservatives they are Ultramontanes.
1 "... We are a national party because, before all, we are attached to
our nation, and because we have pledged our unswerving loyalty to Canada
above the whole world: Canada against the world. . . . 'Le National'
will be a political and non-religious paper, but, as the special organ of
the Catholic population, and in conformity with the opinions of the di-
131
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
That party have been Instrumental in making Cartier what
he was amongst us. They took him when he was nothing, and
for years fought all his battles. They approved of everything
he said or did, they represented him as a pillar of the altar, and
they poured the blessings of the Church over all his scandals.
Cartier, as long as he was weak and needy, humiliated his
despotic nature to them, and was in their hands a pliant tool.
But when, after Confederation, he found himself supported by
an overwhelming majority, he gave free vent to his own haughty
nature. He did nothing against them, it is true, but he treated
them as inferiors, and no longer submissively kissed their hands :
that was enough to alienate their affections. He did still more :
he gave them to understand very freely that he was the master,
that he could rule and would rule without them.
The Ultramontanes were incensed with rage, but what could
they do? Cartier knew perfectly what he was about. They
had too long proclaimed him a little saint, to brand him now
as a heretic or an enemy of the Church. Cartier knew per-
fectly well that they would not dare to undo their own work.
They then adopted a new tactics. (Is this English, by the
way?) They made a movement forward in the doctrine.
Cartier was yet a good man, but he could be better. He had
too much of the Liberal ideas in him; though he had been a
servant of the Church, he had not in him the true spirit of the
Church in all its purity.
Our friend Jette, who is clever, and has alwavs been known
' V
as a moderate Liberal, adopted this new programme. In re-
turn, he was adopted both by the Ultramontanes, on account of
his avowed principles, and by the Liberals, on account of his
supposed tendencies. Since then, Jette has always acted with
us, and in the same time, has always been careful to keep on
good terms with the Ultramontanes. And this is the reason
why they have been so zealous to get him a seat in the Cabinet.
rectors of the journal, when occasion arises, we shall concur with Catholic
opinion, and we repudiate in advance anything which may inadvertently
be overlooked in the hasty editing of a daily paper, in order to protest
our entire devotion and our filial obedience to the Church." Opening
manifesto of "Le National," April 24, 1872.
132
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
They want to have there a representative of their own prin-
ciples.
The Parti National diversion had failed to avert
the wrath of the ultramontane crusaders. More con-
vinced than ever that even moderate Liberals were incor-
rigible, they renewed their endeavour to place submissive
politicians in control of the local government. Develop-
ments in the provincial field soon provided an oppor-
tunity. The Conservative government of Gedeon
Ouimet, who had succeeded Chauveau as premier in
1873, was forced to resign in September, 1874, as the
result of charges of administrative corruption the Tan-
neries or "land-swap" scandal. The Ouimet cabinet
had consisted mainly of the C artier wing of the Con-
servative party. Charles de Boucherville, who formed
the new administration, was one of the leading lay ad-
herents of the Programme. When the general provin-
cial elections followed in July, 1875, the whole weight
of the ultramontane wing of the clergy was thrown
to their support. The Liberals were nearly annihi-
lated. Their leader, Henri Joly de Lotbiniere, who
was a Protestant, offered to resign on the ground that
his religion was a handicap to his party, but his sup-
porters in the House denied that the ultramontanes
could be any more hostile to a Protestant than to a
Catholic Liberal, and insisted on his retaining his
post.
The activities of the majority in the new legislature
soon justified its ultramontane backers. In the first
session three significant acts were passed. One was de-
133
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
signed to prevent a second Guibord appeal to the courts ;
it declared the right of the ecclesiastical authorities to
designate the place in the cemetery where each individual
was to be buried, and provided that if according to the
canonical rules and in the opinion of the bishop any de-
ceased person could not be buried in consecrated ground
with liturgical prayers, he should receive civil burial in
ground adjoining the cemetery. A second law gave
civil confirmation to the action of Bishop Bourget in
dividing the parish of Montreal; a marginal note, later
explained away as an inexact expression of a compiler,
declared that "decrees of our Holy Father the Pope
are binding." Most important was the establishment
of education upon a wholly denominational basis, and
the restriction of state control by making the superin-
tendent a civil servant instead of a cabinet member as
formerly. Control of Catholic education was given to
a committee consisting of the bishops and an equal
number of appointed laymen, the bishops, however, alone
enjoying the right to be represented by proxy. Con-
trol of Protestant schools was confided as fully and
freely to a Protestant committee. It was urged that it
was desirable to remove education from politics, and that
the freedom given the Protestant minority was a proof
of liberality and tolerance, but the fact remained that
the measure was a concession to the element which op-
posed state control over education and other matters de-
clared to be within the Church's sphere.
The next concerted action was the issuing of a joint
pastoral on the political situation. The Council of
134
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
Bishops had on several occasions issued advice on politi-
cal issues to clergy and laity; the Second Council, of
1858, urged the clergy to be neutral in political issues
where religion was not involved; the Third, in 1863, con-
demned secret societies and the plague of evil news-
papers; the Fourth, in 1868, criticized the assertion that
religion had nothing to do with politics, and the Fifth,
in 1873, attacked, but in brief and vague terms, that false
serpent Catholic Liberalism and asserted that the
Church was independent of the State and superior to it.
Now in September, 1875, Archbishop Taschereau was
induced to join the other bishops of the province in
issuing a joint letter, designed, as the letter stated, "to
shut the mouths of those who, to sanction their false
doctrines, find pretexts for escaping the teachings of
their own bishop by invoking the authority of other
bishops which unfortunately they abuse, deceiving the
good people."
The joint pastoral of September, 1875, was mainly a
warning against Catholic Liberalism that subtle error,
that serpent that crept into Eden, that most bitter and
most dangerous enemy of the Church. "Distrust above
all," the letter ran, "that liberalism which wishes to cover
itself with the fine name of 'catholic' in order to accom-
plish more surely its criminal mission. You will recog-
nize it easily from the description which the Sovereign
Pontiff has often given of it: 1 The endeavour to sub-
ordinate the Church to the State; 2 incessant attempts
to break the bonds which unite the children of the Church
with one another and with their clergy ; 3 the monstrous
135
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
alliance of truth with error, under the pretext of recon-
ciling all things and avoiding conflicts; 4 finally, the
illusion, or at times the hypocrisy, which conceals a
boundless pride under the mask of religion and of fine
assurances of submission to the Church. . . . No one,
therefore, may in future with good conscience be per-
mitted to remain a Catholic Liberal." As to the activity
of the clergy in politics, they had the same rights as
other citizens, and further, as representing the Church
might and should intervene in moral issues or questions
affecting the liberty or independence of the Church.
An individual candidate may be a menace, or a whole
party may be so considered, not only because of its own
programme and antecedents but because of the pro-
gramme and private antecedents of its leaders and its
journals. In such case the Church must speak, the
priest "may declare with authority that to vote in such
a way is a sin, and exposes the doer to the censures
of the Church." If any priest errs in applying these
principles, the remedy lies in the tribunals of the Church,
not, as had been hinted, in haling the priest before the
civil courts. A circular to the clergy, accompanying the
pastoral, warned the priests not to intervene too freely
and to consult their bishop before acting in unusual cir-
cumstances. If accused of undue influence before a civil
court, they should deny its competence, but if con-
demned should suffer persecution in patience. In a
pastoral letter of February, 1876, Bishop Bourget ex-
plained how the layman could carry out this advice : let
136
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
each say this in his heart, "I hear my cure, my cure
hears the Bishop, the Bishop hears the Pope, and the
Pope hears our Lord Jesus Christ."
The pastoral was taken as a fresh declaration of war
on the Liberal party. True, no party was specifically
named, but, as Mgr. Lafleche declared, "it would not
be strictly true to say that the letter did not condemn
the Liberal party." The clerical press, and when by-
elections afforded an opportunity, the majority of the
clergy, dotted the i's and crossed the t's. In January,
1876, two federal by-elections were held in Quebec con-
stituencies. In Charlevoix, M. Tremblay, a good Cath-
olic all his life, was the Liberal candidate. His op-
ponent was Hector Langevin, who had been tarred by
the Pacific scandal, but was still an aspirant for Car-
tier's mantle. Langevin announced that he presented
himself after consulting the clergy of the district and
with their full and hearty support, though Mr. Tremb-
lay was able to produce two dissenting cures. Priest
after priest denounced Liberalism, invoked the horrors
of the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, pic-
tured the contest as one between the Pope and Gari-
baldi, and warned his hearers of how they would feel
on their death-bed, or still worse, if carried away by
sudden death, if they had voted for a party condemned
by the Church. Some cures stated explicitly that to
vote for the Liberals was to commit a mortal sin, and
such phrases as "subtle serpent," "false Christs,"
"yawning abyss," heightened many a discourse. In
137
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Chambly, one cure, M. Lussier, after consulting Mgr.
Bourget, declared that no Catholic could be a moderate
Liberal: moderate meant liar. The crusade had its ef-
fect, and in both constituencies the Liberal candidates
were decisively defeated.
The policy of clerical intervention reached its climax
in the pastoral of 1875, and the elections of that and the
following year. Many were intimidated by the reign
of terror that prevailed, but others were roused to a re-
sistance which compelled a halt.
The ultramontane campaign had not been without its
effect on the Protestant minority in Quebec. Its
leaders were divided between acquiescing in a situation
in which they themselves were accorded full liberty, and
protesting against the inroads on the liberty of their
fellow-citizens. In December, 1875, Huntington took
occasion in a by-election speech in Argenteuil to de-
nounce the English-speaking Protestants for giving
ultramontanism its chance by their blind support of the
Conservative party, and to call upon them to support
the French Liberals in the common cause of freedom.
Holton at once raised the question in Parliament, de-
nouncing this "offensive attack" and asking whether it
had the sanction of the cabinet of which Huntington was
a member. Mackenzie replied by expressing his regret
at Huntington's remarks, and his disapproval of raising
religious issues in politics ; Huntington, while making it
clear that he spoke only as a private citizen of his prov-
ince, declared that the opinions he had expressed were
his opinions still. On the other side of politics, Sir
138
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
A. T. Gait took the same stand as Huntington in
speeches and pamphlets unfolding "the dangers of ultra-
montanism," but his fellow-Conservative, Thomas
White, insisted that Protestants, who had been fairly
treated themselves, should not interfere in the family
quarrels of the majority, and Macdonald characteristic-
ally urged that the best policy was "to use the priests for
the next election but be ready to fight them in the
Dominion parliament," and insisted that, though their
arrogance was hard to bear, it could be borne when it was
remembered that "ultramontanism depends on the life
of two old men, the Pope and Bishop Bourget." Pru-
dence prevailed in both political camps, so far as the
English-speaking Protestants were concerned, and the
French Catholics were left to work out their own salva-
tion.
The seriousness of the situation faced by Quebec Lib-
erals may well be gauged by a valedictory address of
one of the foremost journalists of the day. Mr. L. O.
David, editor of the "Bien Public," was a man not only
of standing and ability but of unquestioned moderation
in all affairs, and friendly to the Church, of which he was
a faithful son; he had been one of the minority which
seceded from 1'Institut Canadien in 1858, and had
taken an active part in endeavouring to live down the
Rouge tradition by the establishment of the Parti
National. Yet he found his journal banned in parish
after parish, and in May, 1876, announced his retire-
ment. "The later pastorals of the Bishop of Montreal,"
he declared, "and the interpretation which had been put
139
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
upon them by a number of priests, and certain facts
which I need not mention, have finally convinced me that
the profession of politics has become intolerable in this
country to anyone who has more independence of char-
acter than of purse. In the name of religion, we have
seen destruction fall upon the political careers of sincere
and earnest men whose religious convictions have never
been questioned. The clergy cannot pretend that they
have reason to fear the Liberals on account of their
past, for they had absolved them of their past in 1872.
The Reform party having done nothing since then
against the clergy and religion, the religious war now
being waged against it is unjustifiable. . . . The
pastoral letters of the Bishop of Montreal, which were
nothing more than articles of the 'Nouveau Monde'
converted into mandements, are incomprehensible.
They have stirred prejudices, encouraged bad faith, and
excited a certain number of priests who needed to be re-
strained. There are parishes where since then the pul-
pit has become nothing but a tribune for the most violent
political harangues. It would appear that there is no
longer but one crime in the world, but one mortal sin,
that of voting for a Reform candidate, of receiving a
Reform journal which questions the infallibility of Sir
John and Mr. Langevin. ... A Catholic people will
support such abuses long; they will even shut their eyes
not to see them in order that their faith may not suffer,
but as abuses rapidly accumulate when they are not
controlled, the day arrives when they become intoler-
140
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
able and then indifference toward religion and hatred
toward the priest produce revolution."
Mr. Laurier, writing to a friend in December, 1875,
in regard to rumours of his approaching accession to the
cabinet, makes equally clear the tension of the situa-
tion: "My name has been put forward, but I never
made a step towards it. To speak the truth, I do not
desire an appointment to an official position at present.
But the press, which in this province is in the hands
of young men, calls loud for me. The men of more
mature age desire to have Cauchon in. The fact is,
that Cauchon has all the qualities of the position,
but he is so thoroughly unprincipled and so deeply
stained with the jobberies of the old regime that his ap-
pointment would perhaps be more an injury than a
benefit to our cause. As to myself personally, I have
~
the bones and sinew of the Liberal party. They push
me ahead, and would have me to take a more active part
in politics than I have done hitherto. I, however, feel
very reluctant to do it. I am at present quiet and
happy. The moment I accept office, I will go into it
actively and earnestly, and from that moment my quiet-
ness and happiness will be gone. It will be a war with
the clergy, a war of every day, of every moment. . . .
Political strifes are bitter enough in your province, but
you have no idea of what it is with us. ... Whenever
I shall be in office, I intend to go seriously into it, and
I will be denounced as Anti-Christ. You may laugh
at that, but it is no laughing matter to us."
141
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Relief from this intolerable situation came from
various quarters. Appeal was made to the civil courts,
and the courts set bounds to clerical intervention. Ap-
peal was made to Rome, and the higher authorities of
the Church ordained restraint. The Liberals them-
selves, through Wilfrid Laurier, made a declaration of
their principles which it was not possible for any rea-
sonable opponent to attack or any weak-kneed friend
to renounce.
The advisability of taking legal action to halt clerical
intervention in elections had been discussed in Liberal
quarters for some years. The suggestion had come
from the action of an Irish court, in 1872, in declaring
a Galway election void because of the undue influence
exercised by the clergy on behalf of the successful candi-
date. The Dominion law against undue influence in
elections was based on the British statute. Yet the
moderate men who were in control of the party's policy
hesitated to take such a step. It would be charged that
they were trying to deprive the priest of the elementary
right of every citizen to have opinions and to urge them
upon one's fellows. Even friends would contend that
clerical intervention, however biased and uninformed,
should be met by discussion, not by an appeal to law
as Liberals were to conclude when, many years later,
in the closing rather than the opening days of Wilfrid
Laurier's career, hundreds of Protestant preachers
throughout Canada were stampeded and manipulated
into a grossly biased and uninformed pulpit attack
upon the Liberal party and its leader. But the Charle-
142
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
voix outburst determined a courageous group to take up
the challenge. Appeal was at first made to the arch-
bishop, but afterwards withdrawn, and in July, 1876,
Fran9ois Langelier, member of a leading Liberal family
of Quebec, and professor of Civil Law in Laval, brought
action in the civil court at Murray Bay. The fact of
intervention and its effect in changing votes were clearly
proved. Israel Tarte, who had been Langevin's elec-
tion agent, conducted his case, browbeating witnesses in
court and pillorying them afterwards in his newspaper,
'Le Canadien." The judge was A. B. Routhier, form-
erly Langevin's right-hand man in politics, and the
drafter of the Catholic Programme. He dismissed the
petition, denying that British precedents applied in
Canada under the differing relations of Church and
State, and taking high ultramontane ground as to the
immunity of the clergy from state question or control
for their actions on a moral issue, such as voting must
be when properly considered. The case was at once ap-
pealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, where the
unanimous decision was rendered that undue influence
had been exercised and the election was declared void.
Mr. Justice Ritchie declared that the clergyman, like
the layman, had free and full liberty to advise and per-
suade, but no right, in the pulpit or out, to threaten
or compel a voter to do otherwise than as he freely
willed. Mr. Justice Taschereau, a brother of the arch-
bishop, in delivering the main judgment of the court,
brushed aside the claim of ecclesiastical immunity, found
proof of "undue influence of the worst kind, inasmuch
143
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
as these threats and these declarations fell from the lips
of priests speaking from the pulpit in the name of
religion, and were addressed to persons ill-instructed and
generally well-disposed to follow the counsel of their
cures." In a decision rendered shortly before this ap-
peal, three judges of the Superior Court of Quebec,
Messrs. Casault, McGuire and McCord, annulled the
election held in the provincial constituency of Bona-
venture, where two cures had threatened to refuse the
sacraments to Liberal voters, and disqualified the candi-
date on the ground that "these fraudulent manoeuvres
were practised with his knowledge and consent."
Shortly after, the by-election of Chambly was voided.
The intervention of the law, external and formal in
its working, could not go to the root of the matter. Of
more enduring importance was the change of ecclesiasti-
cal policy, or rather, the assertion of authority by the
tolerant and far-seeing elements within the Church.
Mgr. Taschereau, realizing the danger of an open rup-
ture and the introduction into Canada of a real anti-
clerical movement, such as the ultramontane editors
were always seeing in their nightmares, issued in May,
1876, a pastoral on the Church in politics which took
much more moderate ground. The pastoral set forth
the high importance of the elector's task, warned against
perjury, violence, and bribery, urged calm and careful
inquiry into the merits of rival candidates and their
ability to conserve the people's interests, spiritual as well
as temporal, denied any intention under present cir-
cumstances of urging the electors to vote for this or that
144
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
party and suggested that all join in a solemn mass to
ensure guidance: this, and no more. True, the arch-
bishop declared that his new pastoral neither revoked
nor superseded the joint letter of 1875, but the out-
burst of indignation from certain other bishops, and
their action in sending Mgr. Lafleche and Canon
Lamarche hotfoot to Rome to protest were illuminat-
ing.
It was, however, with Rome itself that the last word
lay. It was to Rome that Bishop Langevin's demand
for the dismissal of Judge Casault from his chair at
Laval, because of his judgment in the Bonaventure elec-
tion, was carried; Rome upheld the professor against
the bishop. It was to Rome that Conservatives ap-
pealed in 1876 when they wished to learn whether in a
Montreal election it was permissible to vote for a candi-
date who was a Free Mason, seeing that the other candi-
date was worse (i. e., a Liberal), and Rome replied it
was permissible. It was to Rome that the bitter and
interminable disputes between Montreal and Quebec
over the university question were appealed, and finally
it was to Rome that in 1876 a group of Quebec Liberals,
headed by Cauchon, appealed for inquiry and decision on
the charges brought by their ultramontane opponents.
The fact that an appeal should be carried to Rome at all
made it clear how far ultramontanism had triumphed
over the old Gallican spirit, even among the Liberals,
but if it was to decide in any case on the ecclesiastical
issues involved, it was well that the views of both parties
to the controversy should be before it.
145
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
At Rome Pius IX was still Pontiff, but his years were
evidently numbered, and it was an open secret that
pressure was being brought to bear to ensure that his
successor should be more in harmony with democratic
tendencies. It was decided to send Mgr. Conroy,
Bishop of Ardagh, in Ireland, as Ablegate to investi-
gate the situation in Canada. He spent several months
in diligent and unobtrusive inquiry, heard all sides, and
came to the conclusion that a halt must be called. The
bishops met in consistory in October, 1877, and issued
a new pastoral, declaring that while the joint letter con-
tained the true doctrine on the constitution and rights of
the Church, and Liberal Catholics were still anathema,
yet it was not to be assumed that any political party was
condemned. The forces of moderation and tolerance
had won.
While the attitude of the Church was still unde-
termined, Wilfrid Laurier came forward to perform one
of the greatest services of his career. His speech on
political Liberalism, delivered before an immense audi-
ence on the invitation of the Club Canadien of Quebec,
on June 26, 1877, was essentially a manifesto of the Lib-
eral party on the question of the relation of religion and
politics. Mr. Laurier was about to assume the leader-
ship of the Liberal party in Quebec: three months later
he entered the Mackenzie cabinet. In his address at
Quebec he stated his policy and his terms. At once the
issue was clarified, the path of moderation and of
progress marked out, and a great step taken toward the
just and permanent settlement of an issue which had
146
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
threatened to divide a whole people into warring and
irrreconcilable factions.
Without preface, Mr. Laurier at once set forth the
purpose of his address. It was to define the ideas and
principles of Liberalism, in order to remove the preju-
dices and the opposition of those who believed that Lib-
eralism meant heresy in faith and revolution in politics.
All the charges made against the Liberal party could be
crystallized in two propositions that Liberalism was a
heresy condemned by the head of the Church, and that a
Catholic could not be a Liberal. It was true that Cath-
olic Liberalism had been condemned, but what had that
to do with political Liberalism? What would be the
consequence of accepting the contention that no French-
Canadian Catholic could be a Liberal? Either Cath-
olics must abstain from any share in political life, or
must bind themselves hand and foot to the Conservative
party, must endure "the ignominy of being regarded by
the other members of the Canadian family composing
the Conservative party as tools and slaves."
What was the meaning of Liberalism and Conserva-
tism? At bottom the distinction was a matter of tem-
perament; some men, in Macaulay's phrase, were drawn
by the charm of habit and others by the charm of novelty.
There was no moral superiority in either tendency. The
Conservative might do good in defending old and tried
institutions, or much evil in maintaining intolerable
abuses ; the Liberal might be a benefactor in overthrow-
ing these abuses or a scourge in laying rash hands on
hallowed institutions. Then Mr. Laurier continued:
147
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
For my part, as I have already said, I am a Liberal. I am
one of those who think that everywhere, in human things, there
are abuses to be reformed, new horizons to be opened up, and
new forces to be developed. Moreover, Liberalism seems to me
in all respects superior to the other principle. The principle
of Liberalism is inherent in the very essence of our nature, in
that desire for happiness with which we are all born into the
world, which pursues us throughout life, and which is never com-
pletely gratified on this side of the grave. Our souls are im-
mortal, but our means are limited. We constantly strive to-
ward an ideal which we never attain. We dream of good, but
we never realize the best. We only reach the goal we have set
for ourselves, to discover new horizons opening up, which we
had not before even suspected. We rush on toward them and
those horizons, explored in their turn, reveal to us others which
lead us on ever further and further. And thus it will be as
long as man is what he is, as long as the immortal soul in-
habits a mortal body; his desires will be always vaster than
his means and his actions will never rise to the height of his
conceptions. He is the real Sisyphus of the fable; his work,
always finished, must always be begun again. This condition
of our nature is precisely that which makes the greatness of
man, for it condemns him irrevocably to movement, to prog-
ress; our means are limited, but our nature is perfectible and
we have the infinite for our arena. Thus there is always room
for the perfecting of our nature and for the attainment by a
larger number of an easier way of life. This, in my eyes, is
what constitutes the superiority of Liberalism.
Abuses, Mr. Laurier continued, were bound to creep
into every body politic, and institutions which at the be-
ginning were useful become intolerable because every-
thing around them had changed, as in the instance of
seigneurial tenure. Men were always found to defend
these abuses to the bitter end, until they had provoked
revolution. "More revolutions have been caused by
148
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
Conservative obstinacy than by Liberal exaggeration
. . . ; wherever there is compression, there will be
explosion, violence and ruin; . . . I hate revolution and
detest all attempts to win the triumph of opinions by
violence, but I am less inclined to throw the responsi-
bility on those who make them than on those who pro-
voke them by their blind obstinacy."
The Liberal party of England had known how to
reform abuse before discontent fermented into revolu-
tion: the Liberals of the Continent had not been so wise:
What is grander than the history of the great English Liberal
party during the present century? On its threshold looms
up the figure of Fox, the wise, the generous Fox, defending the
cause of the oppressed, wherever there were oppressed to be
defended. A little later comes O'Connell, claiming and secur-
ing for his co-religionists the rights and privileges of British
subjects. He is helped in this work by all the Liberals of the
three kingdoms, Grey, Brougham, Russell, Jeffrey and a host
of others. Then came, one after the other, the abolition of the
rule of the landed oligarchy, the repeal of the corn laws, the
extension of the suffrage to the working classes, and lastly, to
crown the whole, the disestablishment of the Church of England
as the state religion in Ireland. . . . Members of the Club
Canadien, Liberals of the province of Quebec, there are our
models, there are our principles, there is our party!
It is true that there is in Europe, in France, in Italy and in
Germany a class of men who give themselves the title of Liberals,
but who have nothing of the Liberal about them hut the name,
and who are the most dangerous of men. They are not
Liberals ; they are revolutionaries ; in their principles they are
so extravagant that they aim at nothing less than the destruc-
tion of modern society. With these men we have nothing in
common, but it is the tactics of our adversaries always to
identify us with them.
149
I
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Mr. Laurier proceeded to review the history of the
Canadian political parties. Up to 1848, all French-
Canadians had belonged to the one Liberal party.
Then, in the conflict between LaFontaine and Papineau,
divergence had begun. A group of young men of great
talent and greater impetuosity, disappointed at having
come upon the scene too late to stake their heads in
1837, first followed, then outmarched Papineau. They
founded "L'Avenir," and issued a programme begin-
ning with election of justices of the peace and ending
with annexation to the United States which would have
meant a complete revolution in the province. Their ex-
aggerations were not surprising; in Canada, the memory
of the vengeance exacted for the rebellion and the lack
of faith of the Colonial Office stirred discontent, while
from Europe there came great soul-disturbing blasts of
revolution. The only excuse for these Liberals was
their youth: the oldest of them was not more than
twenty-two. Hardly had they taken two steps when
they recognized their error, but the harm was done:
The clergy, alarmed at these proceedings, which reminded
them of the revolutionaries of Europe, at once declared merci-
less war on the new party. The English population, friendly
to liberty, but equally friendly to the maintenance of order, also
ranged themselves against the new party. During twenty-five
years that party has remained in opposition, though to it be-
longs the honour of having taken the initiative in all the reforms
accomplished in that period. It was in vain that it demanded
and obtained judicial decentralization; it was in vain that it
was the first to give an impetus to the work of colonization ; it
was not credited with these wise reforms. It was in vain that
those children, now grown into men, disavowed the rashness of
150
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
their youth; it was in vain that the Conservative party made
mistake after mistake; the generation of the Liberals of 1848
had almost entirely disappeared from the political scene ere
the dawn of a new day began to break for the Liberal party.
Since that time the party has received new accessions, calmer
and more thoughtful ideas have prevailed in it, and as for the
old programme, nothing whatever remains of its social part,
while of the political part there remain only the principles of the
English Liberals.
In the meantime, a fraction of the Liberals had united
with the Tories of Upper Canada, to form the Liberal-
Conservative party. Of late years its leaders had
sought to transform it into an ultramontane or Catholic
party. They understood neither their country nor their
time ; all their ideas were modelled on those of the reac-
tionaries of France. Their chief aim was to degrade
religion to the level of a political party:
In our adversaries' party it is the custom to accuse us,
Liberals, of irreligion. I am not here to parade my religious
sentiments, but I declare that I have too much respect for the
faith in which I was born ever to use it as the basis of a political
organization. You wish to organize a Catholic party ... to
organize all the Catholics into one party, without other bond,
without other basis, than a common religion. Have you not
reflected that by that very fact you will organize the Protestant
population as a single party, and then, instead of the peace and
harmony now prevailing between the different elements of the
Canadian people, you throw open the door to war, a war of
religion, the most terrible of all wars ? . . .
Our adversaries further reproach us ... with denying to
the Church the freedom to which it is entitled. They reproach
us with seeking to silence the administrative body of the Church,
and to prevent it from teaching the people their duties as citi-
zens and electors. They reproach us with wanting to hinder
151
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the clergy from sharing in politics and to relegate them to the
sacristy. In the name of the Liberal party and of Liberal
principles, I repel this assertion. I maintain that there is
not one Canadian Liberal who wants to prevent the clergy from
taking part in political affairs if they wish to do so.
In the name of what principle should the friends of liberty
seek to deny to the priest the right to take part in political
affairs? In the name of what principle should the friends of
liberty seek to deny to the priest the right to have and to ex-
press political opinions, the right to approve or disapprove
public men and their acts, and to instruct the people in what
he believes to be their duty? In the name of what principle
should he not have the right to say that if I am elected religion
will be endangered, when I have the right to say that if my
adversary is elected, the state will be endangered? . . . No, let
the priest speak and preach as he thinks best ; such is his right,
and no Canadian Liberal will dispute that right. . . . Every
one has the right not only to express his opinion, but to influ-
ence, if he can, by the expression of his opinion, the opinion of
his fellow-citizens. This right exists for all, and there can be
no reason why the priest should be deprived of it. I am here
to speak my whole mind, and I may add that I am far from
finding opportune the intervention of the clergy in the domain
of politics, as it has been exercised for some years. I believe,
on the contrary, that from the standpoint of the respect due
his character, the priest has everything to lose by meddling
in the ordinary questions of politics : still, his right to do so is
indisputable, and if he thinks proper to use it, our duty, as
Liberals, is to guarantee it to him against all denial.
This right, however, is not unlimited. We have no absolute
rights among us. The rights of each man, in our state of so-
ciety, end precisely where they encroach upon the rights of
others.
The right of interference in politics ends where it would
encroach upon the elector's independence. . . .
The constitution of the country rests on the freely expressed
will of every elector. ... It is perfectly legitimate to alter the
152
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
elector's opinion by argument and all other means of per-
suasion, but never by intimidation. As a matter of fact, per-
suasion changes the elector's conviction; intimidation does not.
... If the opinion expressed by the majority of the electors
is not their real opinion, but an opinion snatched from them by
fraud, by threats or by corruption, the constitution is violated,
you have not government by the majority but government by
the minority. . . .
I am not one of those who parade themselves as friends and
champions of the clergy. However, I say this: like the most
of my young fellow-countrymen, I have been educated by priests
and among young men who have become priests. I flatter my-
self that I have among them some sincere friends, and to them
at least I can and do say: Consider whether there is under the
sun a country happier than our own ; consider whether there is
under the sun a country where the Catholic Church is freer or
more privileged than it is here. Why then should you, by
claiming rights incompatible with our state of society, expose
this country to agitations of which the consequences are im-
possible to foresee? But I address myself also to all my fellow-
countrymen without distinction, and to them I say: We are
a free and happy people, and we are so owing to the liberal
institutions by which we are governed, institutions which we
owe to the exertions of our forefathers and the wisdom of the
mother country. The policy of the Liberal party is to protect
these institutions, to defend and extend them, and, under their
sway, to develop the latent resources of our country. That is
the policy of the Liberal party : it has no other.
At last Liberalism had found the interpreter it sorely
needed. Rising completely above the level of partisan
personalities and recriminations, frank in its recognition
of past errors, moderate in its full and ready recognition
of the place and rights of the clergy, firm in its insistence
that these rights ended where intimidation began, inspir-
ing in its assertion of the eternal and unchanging princi-
153
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
pies of freedom, sustained in its lofty eloquence, Mr.
Laurier's luminous and persuasive speech marked a new
era in the long controversy. Resistance to intolerance
was given a firm foundation in the unceasing strivings
of man for full and free expression, and a guiding chart
in the experience and achievements of English Liber-
alism.
Opposition was not at once disarmed by Mr. Laurier's
calm analysis of the situation, nor by the verdict of the
papal legate. The ultramontane organs, while admit-
ting the moderation of his exposition of political Liber-
alism, insisted that Mr. Laurier was still endeavouring
to set bounds to the rights and activities of the Church
and presuming to set himself above his bishops. So
when the results of Mgr. Conroy's mission were an-
nounced, Mr. Tarte's journal, "Le Canadien," lamented
that "concession had followed upon concession, outrage
upon outrage," and the "Journal de Trois-Rivieres,"
that "the year 1877 may be designated as the epoch of
concessions and cowardice, the epoch of the triumph of
Catholic Liberalism." Whereupon Mr. Laurier, in an
editorial in the "Journal d'Arthabaska" (January 24,
1878) , entitled ff Les Tartuffes de la Pressed paid his re-
spects to them once more. For many years, he wrote,
these Conservative organs had cloaked themselves in the
mantle of religion and sheltered themselves behind the
screen of the clergy. It was a clever play, for the Ca-
nadian loved nothing in the world so much as his religion
and his clergy, and to identify the cause of Conservatism
and of the Church was to damn the Liberal party to in-
154
FIRST YEARS IN PARLIAMENT
significance. These editors took "Louis Veuillot as their
model, and not possessing his talents, at least were able
to imitate his excesses of speech and his bombastic style.
The decalogue was revised, corrected, and considerably
extended by these gentlemen. . . . They posed as
theologians, twisted the sense of pastorals and mande-
ments, and, with these documents in their hands, like the
Pharisee in the Gospel, they pointed at us with the finger
of scorn and demanded our exile and excommunication.
The Church, that good mother, allowed these wretched
enfants terrible* to have their way, but as impunity gave
them courage, our high and mighty ultramontanes set
themselves to smashing the whole shop. . . . At last the
attention of the Holy See was drawn upon these men
and their outpourings. Wishing to bring to an end so
deplorable a state of affairs, our Holy Father sent his
legate, Mgr. Conroy. . . . Now Rome has spoken.
But what of our high and mighty ultramontanes, 'Le
Canadien' and 'Le Journal de Trois-Rivieres' ? . . .
And these are the submissive children of the Church!
Pouah ! What Tartuff es I"
The struggle had not ended, but a lull had come in the
fighting and high and safe ground had been occupied
and consolidated. Not again for a score of years was
the question of Church and State thrust into the fore-
ground. The attitude of Wilfrid Laurier and his fel-
low-Liberals of Quebec had been effective in averting
the danger alike of unbridled assertion of ultramontane
pretensions and of the outburst of an anti-clerical cam-
paign. The demands for the recognition of the
155
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
supremacy of the Church over the State, for the repeal
of the statutes prohibiting undue intervention in elec-
tions, so far as they applied to the clergy, for the grant-
ing of civil immunity to ecclesiastics, and for the still
more complete control of the schools by the Church,
failed to find assent : ultramontanism reached its climax
in 1876. Nor did the reaction in the form of anti-cleri-
calism make much headway. It was only a month be-
fore Wilfrid Laurier's speech in the capital of New
France that the leader of the Liberalism of Old France,
M. Gambetta, had uttered his famous cry to action:
"Le clericalisme, c'est Vennemi" If the Catholic Church
in Canada was spared the long and bitter onslaught
which was to be its fate for the next generation in
France, it was owing not only to the wisdom of some of
its own leaders but to the sanity and courage of its lay-
men who sought, and not in vain, to reconcile faith and
freedom.
156
CHAPTER IV
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
Laurier at Ottawa The Forming of the Mackenzie Government
The Conservative Leadership The Liberal Leadership Mac-
kenzie and the Old Guard Blake and Canada First Unsettling
Rivalry Shifting Quebec Lieutenants The Kiel Agitation Lau-
rier's First Speech Railway-building and Tariff-making Weak-
ening of the Government Laurier Enters the Cabinet Electoral
Defeat and Victory The Overthrow of the Administration.
IN these issues, it was as leader of Quebec Liberalism
that Wilfrid Laurier spoke. The issues might
have national consequences, they might be treated
in a national spirit, but the stage was provincial. Like
every other Canadian politician of that day, Wilfrid
Laurier had to make his mark in provincial affairs be-
fore entering national politics. Canada was still
merely a formal bracket, a grouping of the provinces
in which lay the real springs of life and the vital tradi-
tions of politics. For a time the two fields overlapped.
Well before the end of his conflict with ultramontanism
in Quebec, Wilfrid Laurier had begun to take his part
in the more varied struggles of federal politics.
His success in the provincial legislature had early led
to demands that he should go to the federal house, where
the Liberal contingent from Quebec sadly needed
strengthening. Ottawa was farther from Arthabaska
than Quebec, and the federal sessions were slightly
longer, covering two or even three months blessed con-
157
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
trast with the six- and eight-month sessions of later days
but these considerations did not weigh heavily against
the wider opportunities of the Dominion field. He be-
came the Liberal candidate for the federal constituency
of Drummond-Arthabaska in the general election of
1874, and was returned by a majority of 238.
The political situation at Ottawa had suddenly been
transformed. After Confederation, Sir John Mac-
donald seemed assured of an indefinite lease of power.
Though a late convert to the federation project, he had
rendered invaluable service in carrying it through, and
had reaped from its success more popular prestige and
political strength than any of his rivals. For five years
he proved invincible. Then shortly after the general
election of 1872 had returned the Conservatives again to
power, though with lessened strength, a storm arose
from an unexpected quarter and swept the government
from office. One of the Liberal leaders, Lucius Hunt-
ington, brought before parliament charges of gross
corruption in connection with the granting to Hugh Al-
lan of Montreal, and his associates, the charter for the
construction of the railway which was to be built to the
Pacific coast in fulfilment of the terms under which the
far Western province of British Columbia entered Con-
federation in 1871. The charges were flatly denied, but
after a stormy controversy they were proved to the hilt.
Allan had expended vast sums in securing the support
of newspapers and the lesser politicians, particularly in
Quebec, and in contributions to the campaign funds of
the Conservative party in the election of 1872. Mac-
158
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
donald and Cartier had themselves demanded and re-
ceived large contributions for election purposes. Mac-
donald in vain insisted that there was no connection be-
tween the contributions and the granting of the charter.
A wave of public indignation swept the country.
Many of his own followers, notably Donald A. Smith of
Hudson's Bay fame, deserted him. In November,
1873, he resigned, and the Liberal leader, Alexander
Mackenzie, was called upon to form a ministry. 3 Two
months later the new premier went to the country and
came back with a majority of sixty behind him.
The Liberal party triumphed in 1874 because of its
opponents' weakness rather than because of its own
strength. It came to power at a critical time. The
panic of 1873 and the five years of depression that fol-
lowed, the inherited promise to build a railway to the
Pacific, the aftermath of the rising on the Red River,
would in any case have proved difficult tasks to handle.
With a party which had not been fused into unity, with
iThe Mackenzie ministry was formed on Nov. 7, 1873, as follows:
Alexander Mackenzie (Ontario), Prime Minister and Minister of Public
Works
Antoine A. Dorion (Quebec), Minister of Justice
Albert J. Smith (New Brunswick), Minister of Marine and Fisheries
Lue Letellier de Saint Just (Quebec), Minister of Agriculture
Richard J. Cartwright (Ontario), Minister of Finance
David Laird (P. E. I.), Minister of the Interior
Isaac Burpee (New Brunswick), Minister of Customs
David Christie (Ontario), Secretary of State
Telesphore Fournier (Quebec), Minister of Inland Revenue
Donald A. Macdonald (Ontario), Postmaster-General
Thomas Coffin (Nova Scotia), Receiver-General
William Ross (Nova Scotia), Minister of Militia and Defence
Edward Blake (Ontario), Minister without Portfolio
Richard W. Scott (Ontario), Minister without Portfolio
Lucius Huntington (Quebec, January, 1874-), President of Privy Council
159
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the federal leadership distracted by the rivalry of Blake
and Mackenzie, and with the Quebec lieutenants shift-
ing with kaleidoscopic quickness, it was not surprising
that the first term of the Mackenzie government proved
its last.
For a quarter-century after Confederation, as for
many years before it, the Conservative party of Canada
followed a single leader. Never in Canada's history,
and rarely in the annals of any other country has any
man dominated a great political party through so long
a term as John A. Macdonald. His leadership was not
wholly unquestioned. At times, severe illness, at
others, inattention to duties, and again the seemingly
hopeless load of obloquy and discredit following the
revelations of the Pacific scandal, threatened his hold.
Yet never for long. Macdonald's infinite patience
and resource, his uncanny knowledge of men and the
motives that moved them, his grip on the popular imagi-
nation not less for his human failings than for his states-
man's virtues, the mistakes of his opponents or the
weakness of his rivals, brought the party humbly and
gratefully back to the incomparable leader. He was
primarily an Ontario man, and each of the other prov-
inces had its own leader, Cartier or Langevin, Tupper,
Tilley, but the system of dual premiership which had
marked the Union disappeared under Confederation
and the prime minister was really first. As year after
year went by, and "John A." still reigned, his luck be-
came legendary and his prestige invincible.
The Liberal party had not such good fortune. It
160
ALEXANDER MACKENZIE
Prime Minister of Canada, 1873-1878
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
had not one chief but many. Leader after leader took
up the task of vanquishing Sir John, and leader after
leader laid it down again. Brown, Mackenzie, Blake
in turn failed or found success but momentary, and
Laurier won through to power only after his great
rival had passed from the scene. All were men of
outstanding personal force, of unquestioned sincerity
and devotion to their country's good, endowed with
many of the qualities that stir a people's and a party's
loyalty. Brown and Blake and Laurier had broad
constructive vision and a statesmanlike grasp of the
wider issues of politics, and if Brown did not wholly
despise the arts of the practical politician, Mackenzie
and Blake as well as their successor scorned corruption
and fought it whether in the ranks in front or in the
ranks behind them.
In so far as the Conservatives owed their victories
to the people's belief that they were more national-
minded, more positive and optimistic in their policies,
whether of trade development or of railway-building,
there might be room for dispute but none for despair.
In so far as they owed their fortune to a greater readi-
ness to grant or to promise favours to an individual or
a class at public cost, or to gerrymander a riding or a
province, it was not surprising that many observers
grew doubtful of democracy. There is more than the
loser's disappointment in Mackenzie's word to a friend
a few days after his defeat in 1878: "The recent verdict
has shaken my confidence in the general soundness of
public opinion and has given cause to fear that an
161
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
upright administration of public affairs will not be ap-
preciated by the mass of the people. If political crim-
inals and political chicanery are to be preferred to such
a course as we pursued, the outlook is an alarming one."
Whichever of these factors is held the more weighty,
there was a third of undoubled force the constant
and disturbing shift in leadership.
The Liberal party entered the Dominion field under
a heavy disability. Their opponent was in power, pos-
sessed of the honey-pots of patronage; they had nothing
to offer but the stern task of opposition which for years
to come must be its own reward. True, when the pro-
ject of Confederation was adopted, Macdonald had
been steadily losing his grip on his party as well as on
himself, and the government formed to carry the proj-
ect through was a coalition in which the Liberals
had a fair-sized share. But the coalition, and later the
opportunity of patching up alliances with men from
the new provinces, gave the master strategist of Cana-
dian politics a new lease of life. Brown, with all his
downright and domineering force, could not hold his
own in the administration against his shrewd and sup-
ple rival; bitterly disappointed, he shook the dust of
the cabinet from his feet, and the Liberal tinge soon
faded out of the coalition.
From the parties which had existed in the Canadas,
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the Conservatives
were able to build a single Dominion party, controlled
by a single leader, cemented by office, and supported
by the general desire that the administration in power
162
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
should be given a fair opportunity to prove itself in the
new task. Out of the fragments that remained, in the
Maritime provinces based on the unstable foundation
of hostility to the high-handed tactics by which Con-
federation had been effected, in Quebec still over-
whelmed by C artier and the clergy, in Ontario divided
by the seductions of coalition, a new Liberal Opposition
was formed more slowly. It was not clear who should
lead this party. In the Maritime provinces Tilley had
followed Tupper in swearing a lifelong alliance with
Sir John, and the older champion of Liberalism, Howe,
would not enter Dominion politics for the time, and
when he did enter, took an uneasy seat in the govern-
ment fold. In Quebec Holton and Dorion were of
leadership quality, but they preferred not to undertake
the task, both on personal grounds and because of their
belief that the leader should come from Ontario, then
the home of militant Liberalism and the province which
provided the strongest contingent to the party, both in
numbers and in capacity. It was to Ontario, then, that
the Liberal party looked for its leader. The chief diffi-
culty was that Ontario offered not one but many
leaders.
Throughout the Union period, George Brown had
dominated the Liberal party of Canada West. A fiery
and uncompromising Covenanter, fierce in assault upon
sectional or religious or racial or class privilege, con-
structive on occasion, as in his insistence upon the ac-
quisition of the North- West and his championing of
Confederation, hard-hitting in parliamentary debate, a
163
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
whirlwind force in country campaigning, a shrewd and
tireless organizer, Brown had many qualities of a great
party leader. But he was too impatient and too sure
not only of the superiority of his own powers but of the
Tightness of his own opinions to be able to keep a parlia-
mentary following contented and in line. His uncom-
promising bluntness wounded many a possible ally, and
his unmeasured criticisms of the French-Canadian
clergy and people made it hopeless for himself or for a
party which he led to find substantial support in
the East: "I am a governmental impossibility," he
once avowed. A serious illness in 1862 robbed him of
much of his vigour. His entrance into a coalition cabi-
net, even to carry Confederation, hurt him in some quar-
ters and his resignation before the task was fully
achieved, in others. When personal defeat came in
the general elections of 1867, George Brown deter-
mined to retire from parliament. But he did not re-
tire from politics. He was still a power behind the
scenes, and through the unparalleled ascendancy in
Ontario journalism of the Toronto "Globe," edited
first by himself and later by his brother Gordon, he con-
tinued, if in lessening degree, to form and drive the
public opinion of the province.
Alexander Mackenzie had brought his Scotch Radi-
calism and his dour downrightness to Canada in 1842,
a year before George Brown arrived similarly freighted.
But where Brown, trained to journalism, plunged at
once into politics, Mackenzie, every whit as keen, had
164
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
first to earn a living in occupations which offered less
scope. He had left school at thirteen, herded and
ploughed on Scottish farms, and turned stone-cutter
before emigrating to Canada as a lad of twenty.
When John A. Macdonald was building up his law
practice in Kingston and representing that city in the
provincial parliament, and Oliver Mowat and Alex-
ander Campbell, one-time students in Macdonald's
office, were beginning practice, in the same town Alex-
ander Mackenzie was dressing or laying stone for the
doorway of St. Mary's Cathedral or the Martello tower
at Fort Henry, or the walls of the City Hall, attending
the local temperance society, joining in the worship of
the Baptist Church, or debating hotly with his fellow
workmen the iniquity of the Clergy Reserves or Gover-
nor Metcalf's last stand for high toryism. Pushing
farther west, in Sarnia he became in turn a prosperous
contractor, an editor strong alike on principles and on
personalities, and then in 1861 member for Lambton in
the provincial parliament. He declined to walk into
Macdonald's coalition parlour, was elected a member of
the first Dominion and of the second provincial parlia-
ment, joined Blake in 1871 in overturning the govern-
ment which Sir John had set up in Ontario under his
clansman and former foe, John Sandfield Macdonald,
became provincial treasurer under Blake as premier,
and in 1872, when the abolition of dual representation
forced both Blake and himself to choose between To-
ronto and Ottawa, decided for the federal field, but not
165
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
until he had joined Blake in setting Oliver Mowat
firmly on the provincial throne that pawky chieftain
was to occupy for a quarter-century.
Edward Blake came by other ways to power. His
father, William Hume Blake, a member of a distin-
guished Irish family, had come to Canada in 1832, with
a colony of kinsmen and neighbours who had combined
to charter a vessel. Finding a backwoods clearing far
from corresponding to his dreams of a forest estate, the
elder Blake turned city man and barrister, fought on
the Liberal side in the struggle for responsible govern-
ment, entered the Baldwin-LaFontaine cabinet in 1848,
swept the House on a memorable occasion by his fierce
exposure of Tory claims to a superior loyalty, was pre-
vented by the Speaker's intervention from fighting a
duel with John A. Macdonald, became the first Chan-
cellor of Upper Canada, and made the name of Blake
a mark of honour by his high interpretation of the
judge's calling. Edward Blake, born in 1833 on his
father's clearing, went through the University of To-
ronto with high honours, was called to the bar in 1859,
rose to unquestioned leadership of the equity bar al-
most at a stroke, became a member of both the federal
and the provincial parliaments in 1867, and premier of
Ontario four years later. After a year of office, he
resigned the premiership to Mowat, and chose a federal
career.
Mackenzie and Blake both entered public life pos-
sessed of a deeply rooted and almost hereditary Liber-
alism. In nearly every other respect of training, as of
166
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
temperament, they were poles apart. Mackenzie had
the self-taught man's unevenness as well as his intensity ;
Blake's leisurely training had given him a wider culture
but less driving force. Both had extraordinary memo-
ries, but Mackenzie's was vertical, furnishing him with
a store of fact and precedent as to the achievements of
the good men and the lapses of the sinners through
many a year of party warfare, while Blake's was hori-
zontal, enabling him to survey with his mind's eye every
present angle and every minutest detail of the most
complicated issue. Mackenzie was the best debater in
parliament, "a grand man on his legs," as Layrier used
to say, going straight for his antagonist's weakest
point with unerring keenness and unsparing stroke;
Blake was its most masterful and overwhelming logi-
cian, surveying every phase of the case, fitting argu-
ment into argument and heaping up demonstration
upon demonstration until his opponent sank crushed
under the weight, or until the members were lost in
mazes of detail; rarely, when deeply moved, passion
added a force and fire to his words that burned up resist-
ance. Mackenzie was an admirable partisan, absolutely
clean, scrupulous and fair, but also absolutely con-
vinced of the deep sinfulness of his opponents and the
high righteousness of his own cause; Blake was too in-
dependent and original a man to wear any party's har-
ness easily, and too self-absorbed for team-play. Mac-
kenzie delighted in the fray, and never counted the
odds; Blake was made for victory rather than for
the fighting that brought victory. Mackenzie's nature
167
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
was transparently simple; Blake was reserved, moody,
the most complex and baffling character in Canada's
political history. The one had the strength and the
weakness of clear-cut edges; the other, of vague hori-
zons and margins of indefinable suggestion.
Mr. Goldwin Smith, with that thoroughgoing snob-
bery of which none but the Radical conscious of the
condescension involved in consorting with other Radi-
cals is capable, once remarked, in a phrase curiously
reminiscent of that other Oxford don who snubbed the
hopes of "Mr. Jude Pawley, stone-mason," that Mac-
kenzie had been bred a stone-mason and that as premier
a stone mason he remained. Bigger men than Smith
saw in all Mackenzie's political achievements the same
honest efficiency, the same plummet-straight workman-
ship that marked his masonry. There is on record a
letter of Mackenzie to George Brown, written in 1872,
which sets forth in sincere, honourable and pathetic
words his sense of his own deficiencies and of Blake's
strong qualities: "I know too well my own deficiencies
as a political leader to wonder at other people seeing
them as well. The want of early advantages was but ill
compensated for by an anxious-enough effort to acquire
such in the midst of a laborious life, deeply furrowed
by domestic trials, and it has left me but ill-fitted to
grapple with questions and circumstances constantly
coming up in Parliament. I am quite aware of the
advantages possessed by a leader of men, of high men-
tal culture and having ample means, especially when
joined to intellectual power and personal excellence.
168
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
Therefore I do not wonder at, or complain of, those
who see in others possessing such, greater fitness for
the work required of them than myself."
The call for Blake as leader was not only a recog-
nition of his high abilities, it was an expression of the
new spirit in Canadian politics or, more strictly
speaking, in the Canadian phase of Ontario politics,
for as yet even men who thought nationally thought
and worked by provinces. To many men, and particu-
larly young men, Confederation had opened up new
horizons. Canada was no longer a backwoods prov-
ince, it was a half-continent far on the road to nation-
hood, rich in opportunities which promised it high
place in the world and threw on its people correspond-
ing responsibilities. A new pride and confidence
glowed in many an ardent mind. Colonial depend-
ence gave way to national aspiration. This was the
note that Thomas D'Arcy McGee had struck in urging
Confederation. Brown might see in Confederation a
means of solving political deadlock and securing "rep.
by pop."; Macdonald, a new lease of power for himself
and a new source of strength for his country; Gait
might catch a glimpse of what the opening of the West
would mean to the East and devote himself to working
out a sound financial basis for the new Dominion, but
it was McGee above all who quickened the hope of a
new unity and a new reliance. "There is a name I
would fain approach with befitting reverence," wrote
William A. Foster in the manifesto of the "Canada
First" movement in 1871, "for it casts athwart memory
169
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the shadow of all those qualities that man admires in
man. It tells of one in whom the generous enthusiasm
of youth was but mellowed by the experience of cul-
tured manhood, of one who lavished the warm love of
an Irish heart on the land of his birth, yet gave a loyal
and true affection to the land of his adoption; who
strove with all the power of genius to convert the stag-
nant pool of politics into a stream of living water ; who
dared to be national in the face of provincial selfishness
and impartially liberal in the teeth of sectarian strife;
who from Halifax to Sandwich sowed broadcast the
seeds of a higher national life, and with persuasive elo-
quence drew us closer together as a people, pointing
out to each what was good in the other, wreathing our
sympathies and blending our hopes; yes, one who
breathed into our New Dominion the spirit of a proud
self-reliance and first taught Canadians to respect them-
selves. Was it a wonder that a cry of agony rang
throughout the land when murder foul and most un-
natural drank the life-blood of Thomas D'Arcy Mc-
Gee?"
National spirit brought discontent with party spirit.
In the years before Confederation, political life had
been degenerating into personal vendettas; parties
were becoming fighting clans, public life a succession
of bitter feuds. Shrieking personalities were the staple
of discussion in parliament and in press. A Liberal
had come to mean a man who feared and hated John
A. Macdonald; a Conservative, a man who scorned and
hated George Brown, Now, so many an ardent young
170
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
man dreamed, the time had come to sweep away all these
unrealities, to build afresh parties based on ideas, parties
which could appeal to every province alike and not
seek to impose on the new provinces the discredited
leaders and labels of the old, parties that would be con-
structive and would stand for "Canada First."
This new nationalism found most significant expres-
sion in the writings and activities of a group which
centred in Toronto, with W. H. Rowland and W. A.
Foster as their leaders. The Canadian National
Association, in which in 1874 the more active members
found definite grouping, adopted as its main planks
consolidation of the Empire and a voice in treaties affec-
ting Canada; closer trade and eventually political rela-
tions with the British West Indies; income franchise,
the secret ballot, compulsory voting and minority repre-
sentation; the reorganization of the Senate and aboli-
tion of property qualifications for members of the
House of Commons; free homesteads; an improved
militia system under command of trained Dominion offi-
cers, and the imposition of duties for revenue, so ad-
justed as to afford every possible encouragement to
native industry. There was no little vagueness and
uncertainty as to the channels in which the new national-
ism was to flow. Some leaned toward economic inde-
pendence through protection. Of those who empha-
sized political activities, some urged complete separa-
tion from Britain, others sought through imperial fed-
eration the voice in foreign affairs Canada as a mere
colony was denied, while others were content, without
171
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
any formal change, to have the interests of Canada
kept first and her government confided to men, whether
native-born or Canadians by choice, who were Cana-
dians through and through. In "The Nation," a weekly
founded in 1874, they possessed a journal which for its
brief two years of existence maintained the highest
standards of independent and informed literary and
political comment in the record of the Canadian press.
Distinct from these youthful crusaders, who stood
ostentatiously aloof from both the old parties, there
was a wing of the Liberal party with much the same
ends in view, but believing that a reorganized Liberalism
was the best means to that end. Men like David Mills,
the "philosopher of Bothwell," and Thomas Moss, a bril-
liant young Toronto lawyer who entered the House in
1873, and who moved the Address on the occasion that
Wilfrid Laurier seconded it, were keen to broaden the
issues of party contest. Other Liberals, notably John
Cameron, editor of the London "Advertiser," the
"Globe's" most notable rival, chafed at the domination
of the Browns, and balked at following Mackenzie
because he was considered an echo of George Brown.
To men of these varied shades of thinking, Edward
Blake appeared to be the leader predestined to guide
Canada out of the bogs of partisanship and colonialism.
He was a man of outstanding capacity and scrupulous
integrity. He was a Liberal who could be liberal to
new ideas and old opponents. Not least, he was a
Canadian born and bred, determined to assert for his
country a more distinctive place in the world's affairs.
172
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
In the first Confederation parliament the Opposition
had not chosen a leader. The different provincial
groups had not yet fused into one. Dorion continued
to lead the Quebec wing, while Smith and Jones mar-
shalled the Maritime contingents. Blake was a mem-
ber of the Ontario group, but as he was serving his first
years of parliamentary apprenticeship, he was not yet
in the running. Mackenzie, with six years of parlia-
mentary experience and many more of party service,
came to the front among the Ontario Reformers when
Brown retired and McDougall joined Macdonald.
He soon made his place as virtual leader of the whole
party, simply because unflagging industry and interest
and unsparing criticism of every Government weak-
ness put him at the front of the fray.
In the Dominion elections of 1872 Mackenzie had
charge of the Ontario campaign. He fought hard,
and no small measure of the success which was won in
that province was due to his campaigning. Through-
out the contest Blake was absent in Europe, seeking to
restore the health which overwork at the bar had im-
paired. Immediately upon the opening of parliament
Mackenzie raised the question of a formal choice of
leader. An Ontario committee, Mackenzie, Blake,
W. B. Richards, Joseph Rymal, and James Young,
and a Quebec committee, Dorion, Holton, Letellier,
Huntington and John Young, the Maritime mem-
bers taking no concerted part, unanimously agreed
that one leader should be chosen and that he should
come from Ontario. Blake was their first choice, but
173
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
though Mackenzie pressed, he declined, on the ground
that it was not he who had borne the burden and heat of
the electoral and parliamentary struggles. Macken-
zie was then urged to accept, declined at first, in view
of the general recognition of Blake's great potential
powers, but at last agreed.
After eight months' service as leader of the Opposi-
tion, Mackenzie was summoned, in November, 1873,
to form a ministry, after the Pacific scandal had
forced the retirement of Macdonald. With much
difficulty Blake was induced to enter the cabinet. He
would not, however, undertake any administrative
tasks, and became a minister without portfolio, an ex-
pedient then unprecedented in Canadian practice, but
supported by two British instances; even so, he in-
formed his constituents that it might not be possible
for him to continue permanently in the government.
His presence in the administration, however tentative,
undoubtedly strengthened it in the general elections
which followed in January and February, 1874. No
sooner were the elections completed and a strong ma-
jority for the government assured than Blake re-
signed. He declared that his legal responsibilities
would not permit him to continue in office, even with-
out departmental duties, and recalled the intimations
he had given during the election. His critics declined
to accept this explanation at face value. Conservative
editors insisted that his resignation made evident a
want of confidence in Mackenzie's policy. Macdonald,
in his place in the House, criticized the transaction as
174
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
an instance of selling under false pretences: the ad-
ministration had gone to the country as a Mackenzie-
Blake government, it owed much of the support it
received to the character and repute of the member for
South Bruce; it had sold by sample, and one of the
strongest claims for the cabinet cloth was that it con-
tained a strong fibre all the way from Bruce, that would
stand sun, wind or rain ; now, that fibre was withdrawn
before delivery, and the people were saying, "We have
had palmed off upon us the same old brown stuff."
In October, 1874, Blake delivered a speech to a
Liberal county convention at Aurora, which raised
the hopes of the progressive wing and the ire of the
standpatters. After developing the issues on which he
was in agreement with the whole party, endorsing the
efficient and economical administration of Mowat in
Ontario, and urging the construction of the Canadian
Pacific Railway with a view to the expansion of settle-
ment on the prairies rather than to the immediate ful-
filment of the rash undertaking to pierce British Colum-
bia's "sea of mountains," he then proceeded to sug-
gest new fields to explore. Compulsory voting, based
on the recognition of the franchise as a sacred trust;
extension of the suffrage, then limited to property
owners, by adding farmers' sons and income schedules ;
representation of minorities by some modification of
the Hare system, and reform of the Senate were all
urged with reasoned force. Some change in imperial
relations was imperative: "Matters cannot drift much
longer ^s they have drifted hitherto. The Treaty of
175
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Washington produced a very profound impression
throughout this country. It produced a feeling that at
no distant period the people of Canada would desire
that they should have some greater share of control
than they now have in the management of foreign
affairs. . . . This is a state of things of which you have
no right to complain, because so long as you do not
choose to undertake the responsibilities and burdens
which attach to some share of control in these affairs,
you cannot fully claim the rights and privileges of
free-born Britons in such matters. . . . The time will
come when that national spirit which has been spoken
of will be truly felt among us, when we shall realize
that we are four millions of Britons who are not free/'
Blake recognized that he was departing from the
usual path set for the leaders of a party when in power.
"I know," he concluded, "that I have made a rather
disturbing speech, but I am not afraid of that. Not
much good can be done without disturbing something
or somebody. I may be said also to have made an im-
prudent speech; at least that might be said if I were
one of those who aspire to lead their fellow-countrymen
as ministers. It is the function of a minister to say
nothing that can be caught hold of, nothing in advance
of the public opinion of the day, and to catch the current
of that opinion when it has gathered strength, and
crystallize it in Acts of Parliament. That is the func-
tion of a Liberal minister. The function of a Tory
minister is to wait until he is absolutely forced to swal-
low his own opinions. It may be permitted to one who
176
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
prefers to be a private in the advance-guard of the
army of freedom to a commanding place in the main
body, to run the risk of promulgating what may be a
political heresy to-day and may perhaps become a polit-
ical creed to-morrow."
That the suggestions thus freely thrown out were
disturbing to the old guard was sufficiently indicated
by the fact that the "Globe," though publishing the
speeches of lesser lights delivered later in the proceed-
ings, held over Blake's speech until an editorial counter-
blast could be prepared. In a series of editorials
Blake's Canadian Pacific policy was endorsed, and a
tribute paid to his vigour and independence, but there
agreement ended. Senate reform was premature, com-
pulsory voting a fad, the revision of imperial relations
an academic issue: Canada was suffering from no injus-
tice, conscious of no hampering and degrading influ-
ence exerted by her colonial status. Throughout the
winter the discussion continued. The "Globe's" criti-
cism was nominally directed against the Canada First
group, and particularly against Goldwin Smith, the
Oxford professor who had recently, after a temporary
sojourn in Cornell, made Toronto his home, and who
was a particularly shining and vulnerable mark because
of his well-known belief that Canada must find her
future in union with the United States as Scotland had
found her opportunity in union with England. The
"Globe" poured scorn upon the "sucking politicians,"
"the Canada First mischievous little snakes in the
grass," "the diseased self-consciousness and absurd
177
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
pretensions of these praters of Nationalism," and upon
their programme, of which "every plank was calculated
to inspire sensible men with wonder if not with ridicule
and contempt," and the whole likened to Milton's
"asinine feast of sow thistles and brambles." The
Toronto "Mail," the leading Conservative organ, gave
no more sympathy; the Canada First group were
"beardless boys," and their proposals "the innocent
work of bumptious lads who have not cut their eye-teeth
in politics." But the "Globe" was the more fierce and
pertinacious, for it was its camp that was threatened;
"it is the shades, not the colours that fight," as the
French proverb has it.
The Blake wing of the Liberal party, finding the
necessity of having a daily newspaper of their way of
thinking in Toronto, established in January, 1875, the
"Liberal," edited by John Cameron of the London
"Advertiser." From the beginning the friction be-
tween the two guides of Liberalism was apparent, but
it flamed out when the test issue of Senate reform was
urged. In March, David Mills succeeded in having
a resolution in favour of an elective Senate passed by
the Commons by a vote of 77 to 74. Mackenzie as
well as Blake, Holton, Huntington and three-fourths
of the Liberals supported Mills; the others joined the
Conservatives in opposition; Laurier was not present.
The "Globe," not less incensed because George Brown
had only the year before been appointed to the Senate,
at once fell upon the proposal as a senseless tearing up
of the constitution by the roots to see if it was growing;
178
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
the people wanted to let well enough alone, wanted
sound administration, not constitution-mongering and
change for change's sake. It sneered at Mills as a
meagrely educated school-teacher whose limited success
did not entitle him to speak disparagingly of the men of
substance and standing who constituted the Senate, and
scolded those Liberals who would interfere with the
"beneficial movement" by which, as Conservative sena-
tors died off, Liberals took their place. The "Liberal"
retorted that the "Globe's" criticism proved the need
for a real Liberal newspaper. The "Globe" had once
done good service to party and country by its outspoken
advocacy of reform; to-day it was an exponent of dyed-
in-the-wool Toryism, entitled to its own views, but not
entitled to dictate to the party: "In the days that are
now past and so long as the 'Liberal' lives shall never
come again, the 'Globe' hounded down with vindic-
tive bitterness and without permission of self-defence
every Reformer who differed in opinion from it; ...
it may as well understand that the day has passed when
it can decide by its mere ipse dixit who shall and who
shall not be leaders and members of the Liberal party."
Suddenly these controversies ceased. In May, 1875,
after a last display of independence in opposing Mac-
kenzie's concession to British Columbia in the matter
of the Pacific railway, Edward Blake re-entered the
Mackenzie cabinet, taking the portfolio of Justice.
His supporters were uncertain whether his action was
a triumph or a defeat, whether it meant that he had con-
cluded he could best revive the party from within, or
179
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
whether he had concluded to abandon his efforts alto-
gether. It did not mean immediate harmony. The
"Globe," though welcoming the return of an able minis-
ter, intimated the hope that the Council Chamber would
bring a sense of responsibility which would lessen his
tendency to raise disturbing abstract propositions, and
found in his first speech as minister, "evidence that Mr.
Blake can sink the doctrinaire in the public servant."
It continued its flings at the few young and excitable
Liberals who had tried but in vain to feel keenly about
this and that, at their fancy grievances and their pro-
grammes which never had come home to the business
and bosoms of men. The "Liberal" ceased publication,
but the influence of the Blake wing was seen in the re-
tirement shortly afterward of Gordon Brown from the
editorship of the "Globe," and the appointment of John
Cameron in his stead.
For two years Blake served as Minister of Justice.
The post was particularly congenial in that it gave
scope for his mastery of constitutional principles and
his policy of extending Canada's national powers. In
a series of controversies with the Colonial Office,
Blake stood firmly for carrying the principles of re-
sponsible government to their logical conclusion. He
protested vigorously against a revision of the governor-
general's instructions to conform with those designed
for Crown colonies, making the governor-general
once more what he had long ceased to be, a member
of the working executive, and authorizing him to act
independently of his advisers. He pressed for the
180
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
abandonment of the instructions requiring the governor-
general to reserve for the consideration of the British
government bills on certain subjects enacted by the
Canadian parliament. He contended that the preroga-
tive of pardon should be exercised by the governor-
general, as in the case of other powers, on ministerial
advice. He insisted that the power of disallowing pro-
vincial statutes was vested by the British North America
Act in the governor-general in Council, that is, the
cabinet, not in the governor-general acting on his own
discretion or under London advice. In each and all
he won his point, and contributed materially to the rec-
ognition of Canada's national status. In all these
measures he had the warm support of Mackenzie,
though when it came to discussions of a more sweeping
change in imperial relations, Mackenzie had little
sympathy with Blake's tentative acceptance of imperial
federation.
In June, 1877, once more on the ground of ill-health,
Blake resigned his portfolio and took the nominal post
of President of the Council. Six months later, he re-
tired from the cabinet altogether. Mackenzie repeat-
edly offered to make way for him. "From the first,"
he wrote in 1877, "I was more willing to serve than to
reign, and would even now be gladly relieved from a
position the toils of which no man can appreciate who
has not had the experience. I pressed Mr. Blake in
November, 1874, to take the lead, and last winter I
again urged him to do so, and this summer I offered to
go out altogether, or serve under him, as he might
181
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
deem best in the general interest." But Blake would
neither consent to displace Mackenzie nor rest content
as his follower.
It was not merely in the party as a whole that diffi-
culties of leadership arose. The Quebec wing of the
party had troubles of its own. While Mr. Laurier
shared in the interest in the Blake-Mackenzie duel, he
was more immediately concerned in the leadership of
the Liberal contingent from his own province.
Quebec was the government's weakest quarter. The
tidal wave of repudiation of the Macdonald government
had increased the Quebec Liberal representation from
27 out of 65 to 33, but leaders were lacking and the al-
legiance of several of the rank and file uncertain.
Antoine Aime Dorion, for twenty years the Rouge
chieftain and the leader of the Quebec bar, was re-
tiring from politics. He had established a reputation
beyond cavil for integrity and single-minded devotion
to the country's interest, and carried weight not only
in Quebec but throughout the Dominion. Yet his heart
was not in the game of politics; he could never throw
himself into the battles of the hustings or take delight
in parliamentary intrigues with the whole-hearted
abandon of his opponent, Cartier. Twenty years of
public life had left him not only poor but heavily in
debt, and the wishes of his family weighed heavily
against the demands of his party. Six months after
taking office in the Mackenzie cabinet, and a year after
death had carried Cartier off the scene, Antoine Dorion
resigned to become Chief Justice of Quebec.
182
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
His colleague, Letellier de Saint- Just, was a man of
average ability, and of much more than average deter-
mination and sense of dignity ; he had won a place by his
persistent fighting of the Rouge battles in eastern Que-
bec since 1851, and was destined after he too resigned in
1876 in order to take the lieutenant-governorship of
Quebec, to become the occasion of a famous constitu-
tional crisis. Telesphore Fournier, who held in turn the
portfolios of Inland Revenue, Justice and the Post-
Office, was a man of greater capacity, who for years had
carried on a vigorous but hopeless fight in the Quebec
district against Conservative and clerical, only winning
his way to the Commons when too firmly set in his ways
to be able to repeat in the House the success he had won
at the bar. Fournier resigned in 1875 to become a
member of the Canadian Supreme Court which he had
taken the leading part in establishing. Dorion's place
was taken by Felix Geoffrion, who proved a very good
administrator, and when a serious illness forced him to
resign in 1876, Rodolphe Laflamme, Mr. Laurier's one-
time preceptor in the law, and another uncompromising
Rouge champion, succeeded, only to meet Fournier's
difficulty of adjusting himself to the ways of parlia-
ment. Letellier's post as Minister of Agriculture was
taken by C. A. P. Pelletier, an urbane gentleman who
found his place at the same time in the Senate. When
Fournier retired, Mackenzie, hard put for a successor,
made a choice difficult to reconcile with his own char-
acter and his party's traditions. For thirty years
Joseph Cauchon had been active in public life, vigorous
183
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
in parliamentary debate, and in his newspaper, "Le
Journal de Quebec," as slashing, aggressive and power-
ful as George Brown himself. He had been an uncom-
promising Conservative and a thoroughgoing up-
holder of clerical claims until shortly after Confedera-
tion, when disappointed ambition and quarrels over rail-
way projects set him adrift from his old friends. He
was a man of unquestioned force, and still a power with
the clergy. Mackenzie's action in offering him a
cabinet seat might have been defended had it not been
for his reputation for corruption. A parliamentary in-
quiry in 1872 had branded him as secretly interested in
government contracts with the Beauport Asylum while
himself a member of the provincial legislature. Sir
John Macdonald might have appointed him, and the
Opposition could not have shouted "robbery and cor-
ruption" louder than they were already and always do-
ing, but for God-fearing, broad-phylacteried Liberals,
and particularly a man so personally upright and so im-
patient of dishonour as Mackenzie, the appointment was
a fatal blunder. It was with relief that many Liberals
saw Cauchon accept the lieutenant-governorship of
Manitoba in 1877, and make way for Wilfrid Laurier.
These kaleidoscopic and unsettling changes, the ap-
pointment of member after member to the cabinet only
to leave it for a safer and more profitable billet, and
the unfortunate selection of Cauchon, prevented the
Liberal party from building up a strong position in
French-speaking Quebec. Nor was the position wholly
satisfactory with regard to the leadership of the English-
184
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
speaking Liberals of the province. Luther Holton,
who had entered politics after making a comfortable
fortune out of the building of a section of the Grand
Trunk Railway, had for many years been the Liberals'
financial expert, and a man of weight and judgment in
the party councils. Yet the claims of Huntington, who
had launched the Pacific charges which had driven the
Conservatives from office, could not be denied. Holton
continued to give Mackenzie support that was unswerv-
ingly loyal, but not as effective as if he had been with-
in the cabinet, while Huntington's somewhat easy-go-
ing ways lessened the contribution his independent turn
of mind and vigorous power of debate might otherwise
have made.
Writing in the summer of 1874 to James Young,
Mr. Laurier comments on the party situation in his own
province :
I am now busy with courts and judges and have been so ever
since the close of the session. I argued a case some time ago,
in the Court of Appeal, before the new Chief Justice, Dorion.
He is an admirable judge, but as you truly say, his absence
greatly weakens the cabinet. '
We, the Lower Canada Reformers, claim that we have acted
like patriots in this matter: we have unhesitatingly sacrificed
our party to our province. Dorion's appointment to the bench
is an irretrievable loss to our party, but it is an incalculable
advantage to our province. The bench of the province, for
many years past, has been every day more and more sinking
into contempt and scorn. Dorion was the very man to raise it
up again to its former position. His accession to the high of-
fice of Chief Justice has been hailed by all classes and creeds in
Lower Canada.
But to us as a party, it is a loss which cannot be made up.
185
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
We have no man in Quebec who can lead the party. Fournier
is not that one; Letellier still less. The man who will come
nearest to the point is Geoffrion. Geoffrion has many good
qualities : he is clever, shrewd, smooth, and understands human
nature thoroughly. Were there more in him of the speaker
or the thinker, he would make a consummate leader. Such as
he is, he will be our leader, and it is well that it should be so.
He will perhaps not do as much for the fame of the party as
one would desire, but he will do more for rooting the party in
the people than any other one could do.
Writing to the same correspondent in October, 1876,
Mr. Laurier refers to the situation as it had developed in
the two years intervening:
First let me give you the information you ask. As to my-
self, I am perfectly well. My health, which has always been
delicate, is getting decidedly better and better. I hope to see
the day when I shall be as fat and rosy as my friend Mousseau.
I wish I could speak as cheerfully of the political situation in
this province. But the plain, unvarnished truth is that our
party is going to the dogs in Quebec. I am fully convinced
that the next elections will make a terrible sweep in our ranks.
. . . Now, you ask me, what is the cause of our going down?
The cause is not uniform all through the province. In the
cities, the protection cry is hurting us ; there can be no doubt
of it, especially in Montreal. . . . The great cause of our
weakness is the old everlasting one: the hostility of the priests.
. . . But there is another cause which, within the ranks of the
Liberal party itself, is doing us more harm than clerical hos-
tility. Our government is sorely disappointing our friends.
Notwithstanding priestly tyranny, the Liberal party, so long
as it was in opposition, could and did count upon a vigorous
minority. It was- composed of men at once enthusiastic and
disinterested. When the Conservatives were turned out, the
expectations of our people were at once raised to a high pitch.
They expected, they were sure, that the new government would
at once enter upon a career of reforms, and that the abuses
186
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
which had grown up under Conservative rule would be crushed
down. I am free to admit that amongst the illiterate class,
many of these expectations were absurd, and that what in their
eves were abuses were administrative necessities. However,
H
the fact is there, we have done nothing. Except the creation
of the Supreme Court, we have not passed a law of any impor-
tance, and the idea of the Supreme Court is not ours. I cer-
tainly admire the great qualities of Mackenzie, but he has no
zest to carry a party on. His policy is at once cautious and
honest, but it is not progressive.
After all, I am French, and you will perhaps think that my
French nature unconsciously makes me long for a little bit of
revolutionary excitement, but I do not believe so. We must
give something to public opinion, or we die. Our adversaries
can and do prey upon prejudices; they keep their people to-
gether by a constant appeal to prejudices. While we were in
opposition, we always had schemes and devices to discuss and
suggest, but now we do nothing, and the reproach which I often
hear amongst the Rouges is this: what difference is there be-
tween this and the late government? Still the Rouges will not
go over to the other side ; that is quite certain, but they will not
fight. And it seems to me that even in Ontario, in the great
centre of Reform and Liberalism, reform and liberalism are
not in the ascendancy.
With us, however, it is still worse. You have strong men
in the cabinet, but we are weak. I of course except Hunting-
ton, of whom I think a great deal. I except also poor Geof-
frion, though he is perhaps forever lost. I refer to the other
two. I refer to them without any comment, because you know
them. I should, however, judge that you do not know them,
since you believe that they will think of retiring. As to
Cauchon, he never will think of going out as long as he will
not have brought the government into some dirty and dis-
graceful scrape. It is of no use to speculate who will be their
successor. A more appropriate question would be, who shall
be tall David's [David Laird's] successor? Will it be yourself,
or Mills or John McDonald? The gods keep their secret, as
187
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
yet, but two things which are now known give me unbounded
pleasure: the next man will be an Ontario man and he will be
an up and down Grit. . . .
Aside from difficulties as to leadership, and in Que-
bec the hostile attitude of an important section of the
clergy, the Liberal party in the seventies faced three
serious issues, the Kiel agitation, the demand of the
West for the speedy construction of the Pacific railway,
and the world-wide trade depression which brought a re-
vival of protectionism in its wake.
The Kiel agitation was an unfortunate aftermath of
Canada's bungling in handling its first difficult task of
national expansion. The development of the American
West had long directed attention to the possibilities of
the vast British territory to the northward, under the
control of the Hudson's Bay Company. For years be-
fore Confederation Brown and McDougall had urgently
demanded that Canada should acquire this heritage, to
which the enterprise of French-Canadian explorers
under the old regime gave the province some legal claim.
With the enlarged resources and the new national aspi-
rations that Confederation brought, the dream of west-
ward expansion became real. Within four years after
1867, the bounds of the Dominion had been extended
to the Pacific, and its territory multiplied eightfold.
When, in 1870-71, the Dominion government pro-
vided for the entry of British Columbia into the federa-
tion, the negotiations were conducted with the represen-
tatives of the Pacific colony's ten thousand white settlers
on a footing of equality, and generous, even extravagant
188
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
terms, including the promise to build a railway through
trackless wastes to the Pacific within ten years, were
offered. When, two years earlier, the same government
had sought to bring the vast territory between the Great
Lakes and the Rockies under its sway, it paid no heed
to the wishes of the twelve thousand whites and half-
breeds gathered in the valley of the Red River. Nego-
tiations were carried on with the British government
and the governors of the Hudson's Bay Company;
money was paid to extinguish the company's rights, but
no step was taken to discuss with the people of the
country the terms under which they and their lands were
to be transferred to a new allegiance.
The situation was one that needed care. With the
authority of the Hudson's Bay Company steadily slip-
ping from its grasp, and its representatives on the spot
convinced that the financial magnates in London had
sacrificed the working partners, and therefore unwill-
ing to exert themselves to aid the establishment of the
new regime; with half the community made up of
French half-breeds, used to the free life of voyageur,
buffalo-hunter or transport-driver, and apprehensive of
a flood of alien and disdainful immigrants unsettling
their old ways of life; with thousands of Scottish half-
breeds, less unruly, but dubious also of newcomers ; with
a Canadian colony already in the settlement, urging for
years annexation to Canada, and some of its members
foolishly boasting how the backward elements would
have to make way when the tide of progressive Canadian
settlers poured in; with priests like Father Ritchot in
189
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
full and active sympathy with the fears and hopes of
their parishionres ; with Minnesota traders and profes-
sional Fenian raiders across the border anxious to swing
the settlement into the American orbit, it was imperative
to take steps to ensure the Red River settlement a voice
in its own future governing. No such steps were taken,
and the action of the Canadian government in starting
surveys in half-breed settlements before the transfer,
and the greedy staking out of lands by members of offi-
cial missions gave positive ground for alarm.
Out of this friction and muddle conflict rapidly de-
veloped. Many men played a part in the succession of
blunders and misunderstandings which marked the in-
terregnum between the rule of the company and the
rule of Canada. Joseph Howe, long leader of Nova
Scotia's fight against being coerced into Confederation,
now won over to acquiescence and a seat in the cabinet,
with special charge of the Western Territories, paid a
flying visit to Red River in the fall of 1869, and whether
merely through declining to take sides with the Canadian
faction or because, in McDougall's words, of "seditious
talk and bibulous fraternization with rebels," undoubt-
edly encouraged resistance. William McDougall, ap-
pointed lieutenant-governor of the territory he had done
more than any other man to keep before the mind of
Canada, reached Pembina before the formal transfer of
the territory to the Dominion, only to be blocked at the
border by a French half-breed band, and there held,
fuming and fretting, issuing unwarranted proclama-
tions and rashly seeking to rouse the English settlers
190
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
against the "rebels," until, disavowed and embittered, he
was forced to return to Ottawa. Governor McTavish,
of the Hudson's Bay Company, ill, resentful of the
change, convinced that annexation to the United States
was inevitable, supinely bowed to the insurgents' every
demand. Louis Riel, a native of the settlement, edu-
cated at Montreal for the priesthood but drawn by his
wayward temper and heterodox views into other paths,
now made himself the champion of the half-breeds'
cause, broke up the surveyors' operations, blocked Mc-
Dougall's entry, seized, without resistance, Fort Garry
and the company stores, and set up a provisional
government. "Abandoned by our own government,
which had sold its title to this country," he declared, they
must refuse to accept "a governor whom Canada, an
English colony like ourselves, ignoring our aspirations
and our existence as a people, forgetting the rights of
nations and our rights as British subjects, sought to im-
pose upon us without consulting or even notifying us."
William O'Donoghue, a student for the priesthood, of
strong Fenian leanings, plotting annexation, and Am-
broise Lepine, a half-breed of herculean build and more
moderation of temper, backed Riel.
The government at Ottawa, awakened by this unex-
pected resistance, took a conciliatory attitude, send-
ing commissioners, in turn Colonel de Salaberry, Vicar-
General Thibault, Donald A. Smith and Bishop Tache,
hastily summoned from Rome to shepherd his wander-
ing flock, to explain their benevolent intentions, and
agreeing to receive delegates from the settlement.
191
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Meanwhile Kiel's authority had been challenged by a
group of Canadians who fortified the house of their
leader, Dr. Schultz, and later by a badly organized band
of English settlers. Both movements failed. The
second was particularly unfortunate, coming just when
the great majority of the old settlers, English as well as
French, had come together in a convention to support
the demand for terms, and when Donald A. Smith's
extremely cautious diplomacy had undermined Kiel's
authority. The challenge and its failure increased
Kiel's prestige ?ind, what was more ominous, inflamed
his erratic temper. To strike a lesson home he haled
one of the prisoners before a court martial and after a
farcical trial had him brutally shot. It was a fateful
blunder. The blood of Thomas Scott called for ven-
geance. Ontario insisted that no truce or terms could
be made with murderers ; Quebec, that the execution was
a political act, not to be held against individuals. The
cabinet at Ottawa tried to follow a double course. To
meet Ontario's demands it sent an armed expedition
under Colonel Wolseley to enforce order. To satisfy
Quebec, it discussed terms with the delegates from the
North- West, Judge Black, Father Ritchot and A. H.
Scott, and agreed to grant the community the status of
a province, the half-breeds generous holdings of land or
scrip, and the Church its schools. By the fall of 1870
all was quiet on the Red River.
Peace did not so soon follow in eastern Canada.
Here was ample tinder to relight the fires of sectarian
and racial controversy. Ontario saw only that an On-
192
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
tario man, and an Orangeman at that, had been brutally
murdered at the command of a French Catholic "rebel."
Quebec saw only a struggle for the assertion of just
rights against scornful neglect, in which the execution
by constituted authority of a troublesome prisoner was
an unfortunate but minor incident. Nor was this all.
Below the individual issues and the specific incidents of
the conflict there waged a clash of wills as to the national
future of the West. Ontario, aware of its superior en-
terprise, eager to find an outlet for home-seekers to rival
the Western States, and deeply suspicious of French
and Catholic Quebec, looked for the building up of new
Ontarios in the vast prairies. Quebec, disappointed at
finding its position under Confederation less influential
than had been hoped, proudly mindful that it was dar-
ing French- Canadian explorers who had opened up the
Western country, and anxious to stem the tide of habit-
ant migration to New England mills, equally naturally
hoped that a French-Canadian province would arise in
the West to redress the balance.
The specific issue was the punishment of those respon-
sible for the death of Scott. For years this question
bedeviled Canadian politics. Both parties sought to
turn to political account the passions it raised and both
found that it was easier to arouse passion than to allay
it. The Liberals of Ontario, themselves carried away
by the popular indignation against Kiel, or unable to
resist the temptation to turn the normally Conservative
Orange vote against the government, denounced Mac-
donald for trafficking with treason, and even so cautious
193
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
and judicial a man as Edward Blake, on becoming
premier of Ontario in 1871, carried a resolution through
the local house offering a reward of $5,000 for the arrest
of any or all of the slayers of Scott. The Liberals of
Quebec, equally pleased to be able for once to have pop-
ular prejudice on their side, attacked the government for
not granting unconditional amnesty for all the incidents
in a conflict for which that government was itself mainly
to blame. Macdonald was still more adroit at this
double game, exclaiming to an Ontario audience,
"Where is Kiel? God knows: I wish I could lay my
hands on him," at the very time that his agents were
paying Riel and Lepine secret service money to induce
them to keep out of the country and avert the crisis their
arrest would bring. After the fall of the Macdonald
government had tranf erred to Mackenzie the responsi-
bility for pardoning the offenders the responsibility
for taking action against them lay with the provincial
government the Conservative forces in Ontario and
Quebec were free to follow the tactics of their opponents
in attacking from diametrically opposite directions.
The Maritime provinces were throughout little con-
cerned in what was virtually a Quebec-Ontario duel, and
in Manitoba itself, where the races were evenly balanced,
politicians walked much more warily than in the
provinces where one could safely bluster to sympathetic
majorities.
Controversy raged as to whether an amnesty for
offences before the territory was formally incorporated
lay within the jurisdiction of the imperial or of the
194
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
Canadian government, and as to whether it had been
explicitly or implicitly promised. It was urged that
Bishop Tache, when sent as the federal government's
commissioner, had been authorized to promise amnesty,
but it was replied that the execution of Scott did not
occur until after Mgr. Tache had left Ottawa, though
before he reached Fort Garry. It was urged that on a
later visit to Ottawa, Mgr. Tache had been assured par-
don for all offenders by the governor-general and by
Cartier, then acting premier ; and while there was some
misunderstanding as to these interviews, it was proved
that Cartier at least had given strong assurances. The
reception of the delegates from the settlement was held
to constitute a recognition of the provisional govern-
ment, though in reply Macdonald insisted the delegates
were not from Kiel but from the Convention. Kiel's
retirement in 1872 from the electoral contest in the
Manitoba constituency of Provencher to make way for
Cartier, defeated in Montreal, was another incident
difficult to explain away. Finally, the action of Lieu-
tenant- Cover nor Archibald, McDougall's successor, in
asking and receiving the aid of Riel and Lepine in
repelling a threatened Fenian invasion of Manitoba in
1871, was held to wipe out all old scores.
Two incidents brought the issue to a head. In 1873,
after long obstruction by those in authority, warrants
were issued for the arrest of Riel and Lepine, who had
returned to Red River. Riel escaped; Lepine stood his
trial, and in November, 1874, was condemned to death.
Earlier in the year, Riel, who had been elected for
195
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Provencher after Carrier's death, made his way east, and
when parliament opened in March, crossed the river
from Hull, presented himself at the office of the Clerk
of the House, took the oath, signed the roll and walked
out before the astounded clerk realized who stood be-
fore him. Then after a canny but unsuccessful attempt
to collect his mileage, Kiel disappeared. On April 15
Mackenzie Bowell, a leading Ontario Conservative and
Orange Grand Master, seconded by Dr. Schultz, now
member for Lisgar, moved the expulsion of Riel as a
fugitive from justice. Luther Holton, seconded by
Malcolm Cameron, moved an amendment to suspend
proceedings pending the report of the committee lately
appointed to inquire into the claim that a full amnesty
had been promised or implied by the late government or
its representatives. J. A. Mousseau and L. F. Baby,
Quebec Conservatives, moved as an amendment to the
amendment that an address be issued for a full and im-
mediate amnesty.
The issue thus raised cut across party lines. Mem-
bers of the cabinet took opposite sides. Ontario and
Quebec lined up in more clear-cut opposition than on
any other vote in parliament before that day. Only one
Ontario member voted against the motion for Kiel's
expulsion, which was carried by 123 to 68; Holton's
amendment was lost by 76 to 117, and Mousseau's, which
was supported only by Quebec Conservatives, by 27
to 164.
Mr. Laurier had made his first speech in the House
of Commons on the day of Kiel's hurried visit, second-
196
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
*
ing, in French, the address in reply to the Speech from
the Throne. He decided to take part in the Kiel debate,
and to speak in English, in order to make his position
clear to the majority of the House. "I must apologize
to the House," he began, "for using a language with
which I am only imperfectly acquainted ; really, I should
claim a complete amnesty, because I know only too
surely that in the course of the few remarks I wish to
make, I shall frequently murder the Queen's English."
The greater part of the speech was devoted to the
question whether in presuming to act in a judicial ca-
pacity, the House had observed the rules of judicial
proof. No evidence had been formally offered that an
indictment had been laid against the member for
Provencher or a true bill returned against him. It
had, indeed, been shown that a bench warrant had been
issued, but where was the proof that he was contuma-
cious, that the sheriff had tried to execute the warrant
and had failed? In the leading British precedent, Sad-
dlier's case, the necessity for complying strictly with all
the requirements of legal procedure had been fully
recognized. Mr. Laurier continued:
It will be argued, perhaps, that the reasons which I advance
are pure legal subtleties. Name them as you please, technical
expressions, legal subtleties, it matters little; for my part, I
say that these technical reasons, these legal subtleties, are the
guarantees of British liberty. Thanks to these technical ex-
pressions, these legal subtleties, no person on British soil can
be arbitrarily deprived of what belongs to him. There was a
time when the procedure was much simpler than it is to-day,
when the will alone of one man was sufficient to deprive another
197
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of his liberty, his property, his honour and all that makes life
dear. But since the days of the Great Charter, never has it
been possible on British soil to rob a man of his liberty, his
property or his honour except under the safeguard of what has
been termed in this debate technical expressions and legal sub-
tleties. . . .
But there is more than all this. The member for Provencher
has always asserted that the old administration had promised
him an amnesty for all the acts in which he had taken part in
Manitoba prior to the admission of that province into the Con-
federation. He has reiterated that assertion twenty times,
perhaps. Called upon over and over again to declare what
there was in this alleged promise of amnesty, to state simply
^es or no, it has never been willing to say yes or no. I regard
this obstinate silence of the old administration as an absolute
confirmation of the pretensions of Mr. Kiel and his friends ; it
is a case of silence giving consent.
Well, if this be the case, if the member for Provencher was
promised an amnesty for all the acts which he may have com-
mitted in Manitoba while at the head of the provincial govern-
ment, is it surprising that he should not want to submit to those
who now wish to drag him before the courts for those same
acts? Is he not warranted in so acting? Is he not right in so
doing in order that the promise of amnesty made to him in the
Queen's name may be carried out ?
No, sir, as long as this question of the amnesty has not been
cleared up, I for one shall never declare that this man is a fugi-
tive from his country's justice. Moreover, this question will
be soon elucidated, as no later than last week we named a com-
mittee to enquire into it. This committee is sitting at this
moment and the House, in my opinion, would do not only a
culpable but an illogical and inconsistent act, if it came to any
decision affecting this question from near or far until it has
received the report of the committee. . . .
After making it clear that he would vote against the
198
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
amendment for an immediate amnesty on the same
ground, he continued:
I am in favour of the amnesty for two reasons. The first is
that given last night by the honourable member for South On-
tario [Mr. Cameron], that the Canadian government received
the delegates of Mr. Kiel's government and treated with him as
one power treats with another power. ... I am in favour of
the amnesty for still another reason because all the acts with
which Mr. Kiel is charged are purely political acts. It was
said here yesterday that the execution of Scott was a crime;
granted, but it was a political act. Mr. Riel in signing the
warrant for Scott's execution did nothing but give effect to the
sentence of a court. However illegal may have been that court,
however iniquitous may have been the sentence rendered by that
court, the fact alone that it was rendered by a court and that
that court existed de facto was sufficient to impart an exclu-
sively political character to the execution.
It has been said that Mr. Riel was only a rebel. How is it
possible to use such language? What act of rebellion did he
commit? Did he ever raise any other standard than the na-
tional flag? Did he ever proclaim any other authority than
the sovereign authority of the Queen? No, never. His whole
crime and the crime of his friends was that they wanted to be
treated like British subjects and not to be bartered away like
common cattle. If that be an act of rebellion, where is the one
amongst us who if he had happened to have been with them
would not have been rebels as they were? Taken all in all,
I would regard the events at Red River in 1869-70 as consti-
tuting a glorious page in our history, if unfortunately they
had not been stained with the blood of Thomas Scott. But
such is the state of human nature and of all that is human:
good and evil are constantly intermingled; the most glorious
cause is not free from impurity and the vilest may have its
noble side.
The speech could not turn the House from its pur-
199
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
pose, nor satisfy the extremists in either province, but its
forceful logic and its pointed phrase established Mr.
Laurier's reputation in the new field as firmly as earlier
at Quebec. A different angle is presented in a very
frank letter written in September, 1874, to his friend
Young:
We in the province of Quebec feel rather anxious about this
amnesty question. It is not that we have any sympathy for
those whom this amnesty is intended to cover. They are not
now, nor ever shall be, whatever we may do for them, our
friends or allies. But when we were fighting the old enemy, and
making a weapon of everything at our hand, we took this Kiel
question and kindled the enthusiasm of the people for him and
his friends, in order to damage the old Administration, who
were doing nothing for his relief. On the other hand, at the
same time you were working the other way in your province,
pitching into the government for not bringing to justice these
same men. So the duplicity of the government and its double
game were a two-edged weapon in our and your hands.
We can now admit that both in Ontario and Quebec we have
been imprudent in intensifying the feelings of the people as we
have done. But without recriminating on the past, we have to
look squarely at the situation.
There is but one solution. Either we must yield to you, or
you must yield to us. Either we must bring the accused to
trial or must grant an amnesty.
You might say that we should yield, because you are the
strongest. I do not believe so; you must adopt our policy,
because it is the more liberal policy, and because it must some
day be finally adopted ; its adoption is only a question of time.
Since, therefore, we must come to it some day, better to make
up our mind at once and act accordingly.
What I would suggest would be the following: that the On-
tario legislature be called early this fall, that the local elections
should be brought early next winter, say in January, and that
200
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
the federal parliament be called only when they are over. If
this plan were adopted, the ministry would not be fettered by
the coming local elections during the session. It would be left
to act according to the best interests of the country and the
party, and if it had to countenance any unpopular measure,
we would have four years before us to work away the bad
feeling. Perhaps you do not think much of this amnesty ques-
tion in Ontario, but to us here it is of the greatest importance.
It may hve been only a coincidence; but it is worth
>
noting that the Ontario legislature was called that fall,
in November, that the Ontario elections were brought
on in January, and that the federal house was called in
February.
The question continued to trouble parliament for
three years longer. Early in 1875 the governor-gen-
eral, Lord Dufferin, acting on his own responsibility,
commuted Lepine's death-sentence to two years' im-
prisonment. The government, while doubtless not un-
willing to be freed from the thorny task of itself advis-
ing action, could not on constitutional grounds recog-
nize the claim of the governor-general to independent
authority, and in 1878 Blake succeeded in establishing
his contention that the prerogative of pardoning, like
other prerogatives of the Crown, was to be exercised by
the governor-general on the advice of his responsible
ministers. In February, 1875, Mackenzie, on the
ground that the government was committed by the
actions of its predecessor and of the provincial authori-
ties, moved a full amnesty to all persons concerned in
the North- West troubles, saving only Riel, Lepine and
O'Donoghue; Riel and Lepine were to be amnestied
201
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
after five years' banishment, but O'Donoghue, who had
participated in the Fenian Raid of 1871, was excluded.
At the same time, on Mackenzie's motion, Riel, who had
been re-elected for Provencher, was adjudged an out-
law for felony, on the basis of a sentence passed by the
Chief Justice of Manitoba, and his seat vacated. This
solution was approved by all parties except the Quebec
Conservatives, who demanded immediate and complete
amnesty.
In supporting the government's course, Mr. Laurier
insisted that the question could not be settled unless
settled in a spirit of leniency: "History has proved to us
that there has never been peace or harmony in any
country until a free pardon has been given for all
offences of this kind." It was not a question to be de-
cided according to race or religion ; all had their prefer-
ences, but must not be carried away by them. Members
of parliament were representatives of the Canadian
people, to give justice to whom it was due, without bias
or favour. He believed that a full amnesty should have
been granted, but as the imperial government had ad-
vised otherwise, there was nothing to be said. This
solution had the further advantage of being a com-
promise between Ontario and Quebec ; it should have the
effect of burying the past in oblivion and promoting a
sentiment of mutual self-respect between the two great
provinces of the Dominion. And so, for the time, Riel
passed off the political scene.
Long before the controversies over the incidents in
202
L THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
Canada's assumption of sovereignty in the West had
ended, the question of developing this vast heritage had
become pressing. Development meant first and fore-
most railway-building. The Macdonald government
had agreed in 1871, as a condition of the entrance of
British Columbia into Confederation, to begin in two
years and complete in ten, the construction of a railway
to the Pacific coast. There were strong national
reasons for hastening to make the West one and make
it Canadian, but none the less it was a rash undertaking.
Canada then held fewer than four million people, of
whom only one hundred thousand, chiefly Indians, lived
west of the Great Lakes. Between old Ontario and
the prairies there stretched for nearly a thousand miles
a rocky and forest-clad Northern wilderness. On the
Pacific coast, a "sea of mountains" threatened to make
the work of surveying slow and the work of construction
costly. It was not surprising that difficulty was ex-
perienced in carrying the agreement through parlia-
ment, and still greater difficulty in carrying it into effect.
When the Macdonald government left office in 1873,
construction had not been begun, and the collapse of the
company headed by Allan, to which a charter and a
large subsidy had been granted, as a result both of po-
litical exposures and money-market indifference, com-
pelled a fresh start by the new administration.
Mackenzie was a man of cautious temperament.
Times were hard, and after the collapse of the Northern
Pacific and other American roads in 1873, money was
203
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
not easy to borrow for a wilderness project. Most
people in the East believed the original agreement with
British Columbia a rash and unnecessary concession.
The question of the best route to follow required long
investigation and much debate. He therefore an-
nounced a policy of thorough survey and gradual con-
struction, connecting the Red River settlement with
United States lines, beginning building in British Co-
lumbia, and utilizing the water stretches the Great
Lakes, the river system from Lake Superior to the Red
River, and the Saskatchewan system beyond. Then,
as settlement progressed and funds permitted, the gaps
could be filled in. Preferably the work should be done
by a private company, liberally bonused ; this failing, by
the government itself.
Mackenzie's policy had much to commend it, given the
formidable character of the task, the slender financial
resources of the country, and the hard times that afflicted
all the world in the seventies. But it did not make a
strong appeal to popular imagination, nor give sufficient
weight to the national considerations which called for
welding East and West together as speedily as could be
done if the hardly won unity of the map was ever to be-
come a reality. "The opening by us first of a North
Pacific Railroad," a naively frank United States Senate
Committee had declared in 1869, "seals the destiny of
the British possessions west of the 91st meridian; they
will become so Americanized in interests and feelings
that they will be in effect severed from the new Do-
minion, and the question of their annexation will be but
204
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
a question of time." The settlers or speculators in the
West protested against compromise or delay with a
vehemence inversely in proportion to their numbers.
An adverse party majority in the Senate blocked one
promising solution. When, therefore, the Mackenzie
government left office in 1878, though elaborate surveys
had been effected and construction begun in east, west,
and centre, and the Red River practically linked with
the roads to the south, there was a general feeling that
the administration had not scored success in its handling
of the railway question.
The fiscal issue was still more thorny. The Mac-
kenzie government was unfortunate in taking office just
when the whole continent was entering upon a period
of prolonged and disastrous depression, and in leaving
office just on the eve of the return of prosperity. In the
United States, reaction from the outburst of speculation
and railway-building which had followed the close of the
Civil War and the rapid opening of the West, and in
Europe, reaction from the hectic prosperity of the
Franco-Prussian War period, had brought sharp finan-
cial crisis and enervating industrial depression. Canada
could not escape. Exports and imports declined.
Bankruptcies and soup-kitchens multiplied. The fed-
eral revenue, derived mainly from duties on imports, de-
clined. A demand that soon became irresistible arose
for a higher tariff, to fill the treasury chests and
protect home industry from being made a "slaughter-
market."
Hitherto the tariff had not been a party issue. The
205
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
example of the United States had stirred up many eager
advocates of protection, but they were found in both
parties. The Liberals, in so far as they had been influ-
enced by the traditions of English Liberalism, were the
more inclined to free trade, but politicians of both parties
had preferred to find safety in the compromise of "tariff
for revenue with incidental protection." Now a more
clear-cut position was demanded. The industrial de-
pression converted many to desperate remedies. The
financial stringency, in spite of all that Mackenzie and
his Finance Minister, Richard Cartwright, could do in
the way of economies, demanded new sources of revenue.
The failure of the United States Senate to pass a
wide and statesmanlike treaty of reciprocity which
George Brown had negotiated on behalf of the Mac-
kenzie government in 1874, quickened the demand for
retaliation, for "reciprocity of trade or reciprocity of
tariffs." The national sentiment stirred by Confedera-
tion, which at first had urged many toward political
independence, now was diverted into industrial channels
and gave protection the guise of a "national policy" as
well as an individual benefit. It was significant that the
"Canada First" group in Toronto, and the Parti Na-
tional into which the Liberals of Quebec had been for a
short time transformed, leaned strongly toward protec-
tion.
The issue came to a head in 1876. In the preceding
year the government had increased the main fifteen per
cent schedules of the tariff by two and a half per cent.
Now the question was whether it should accede to the
206
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
protectionists' demands and raise the rates another two
and a half per cent. It seemed probable that the in-
crease would be made. Cartwright favoured it ; Liberal
members from industrial centres insisted upon it; the
"Globe" forecast it as certain. Then at the last moment,
under pressure from a deputation of Maritime-province
members who protested against any further increase in
the cost of goods they consumed but did not produce,
Mackenzie, not unwilling to be urged in the direction
whither his own convictions led, decided against any
change. The astounded Conservative leaders, who had
been prepared to take the opposite tack, floundered for
a few hours, and then swung round to a demand for pro-
tection, or rather a "readjustment" of the tariff.
Mr. Laurier's position was not an easy one. His
Quebec opponents cast up to him the protectionist
tendencies of the Parti National in 1871. Mr. Masson
quoted abundantly from his speech on the address in, the
Quebec legislature "the most significant, the best and
the most eloquent speech of all." Mr. Laurier frankly
admitted the charge. "I do not deny that I have been a
protectionist, which I am still, but I am a moderate pro-
tectionist and the honourable member [M. Masson] is
an extreme protectionist." It was not a party issue.
True, in England the Liberal party had stood for
freedom of trade, but the Conservatives had accepted
the same policy. "We find the Liberal party of France
divided. While Thiers is an intense protectionist, Gam-
betta and Say are both free traders. The Conserva-
tives of France, and the great body of Conservatives of
207
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Lower Canada, do not trouble themselves about any-
thing except saving their own souls and cursing the
souls of other people. In the United States the Liberal
party is intensely protectionist and the Conservative or
Democratic party free trade. ... In our own country
the Liberal party is far from being a unit on this subject.
We have consistent and lifelong Liberals on both sides.
As to the Conservatives, I am not aware that until very
recently the party had a policy on the question; at least
their leaders never avowed any. It is true from what
we have seen in the House that the great mass of the
party seems to be protectionist, but it is equally true
they have only within two or three days come to adopt
that policy openly, probably in justification of the well-
known saying that a political party, like a fish, is moved
by its tail."
While free trade was probably the ultimate goal of
most countries, still "protection," Mr. Laurier con-
tinued, "is a matter of necessity for a young nation, in
order that it may attain the full development of its own
resources. ... If I were in Britain I would avow free
trade, but I am a Canadian born and resident, and I
think that we require protection. But to what extent
do we need it? ... I consider that the present tariff
affords sufficient protection. . . . The depression is not
particular to this country, but is universal and affects
highly protected as well as free-trade countries. Then
will it be pretended that an increase in the tariff will
restore prosperity?"
The government was sustained by a large majority
208
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
f
in the House, but its position in the country steadily
grew weaker. Instead of the improvement in trade on
which the government had counted, they had to face a
succession of bad harvests in 1876, 1877 and 1878. It
was true that Canada could do little to restore pros-
perity so long as the United States and Europe were
depressed, but when Cartwright frankly admitted that
ministers were but "flies upon the wheel," the cry for
more vigorous action and for men more optimistic in
their promises grew stronger in every province.
The legislative programme of the Mackenzie govern-
ment was far from negligible. It introduced voting by
ballot, ended the pernicious system by which elections
were spread over weeks or months, passed a strong Cor-
rupt Practices Act, and transferred the settlement of
controverted elections from parliament to the courts.
It established the Canadian Supreme Court, the Royal
Military College and the North- West Mounted Police.
It passed the Scott Act, providing for local county
option in prohibiting the sale of intoxicants. Its ad-
ministrative record was strong and clean. Yet fortune
was against it. Honest administration could not satisfy
a country calling for a stronger stimulant. The very
virtues of the administration told against it. Mackenzie
had taken upon himself the heavy duties of Minister of
Public Works, a department which then included rail-
ways. He "kept the thieves away from the Treasury
with a shot-gun," but he broke down his own health and
neglected his duties as party leader.
Wilfrid Laurier joined the administration when it was
209
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
already drifting to defeat. His eloquence and his
character had marked him out for the leadership of the
Liberals of his province, and his famous speech at Que-
bec, in June, 1877, on Political Liberalism, in which he
defined in words as moderate as they were fearless the
attitude of the party to the Church, had confirmed his
outstanding position. On October 8, 1877, the day that
Joseph Cauchon left the cabinet to become Lieutenant-
governor of Manitoba, Wilfrid Laurier entered it as
Minister of Inland Revenue. He had adhered to his
statement to Mackenzie that he would not join the
cabinet so long as Cauchon remained a member. *
The announcement of Mr. Laurier's accession to the
cabinet was greeted with enthusiasm by his own party,
and, with few exceptions, with unusually considerate
expressions of personal respect from his opponents.
His acceptance of office made it necessary to present
himself for re-election. His majority in Drummond-
Arthabaska at the general election had been substantial,
his personal popularity had continued to increase, and
the honour of being represented by a member of the
cabinet might be expected to appeal to the electors.
Yet it was realized it would be an uphill fight. The tide
was running against the government, and the Opposi-
tion were determined at all costs to administer a final
blow by the defeat of the newest minister.
Both parties were well organized for the fray. Mr.
Laurier was seconded by a brilliant band of speakers,
i "We took him pretty soiled ; we send him back a little cleaner."
Laurier in speech at L'Avenir, "LA MINERVE," Oct. 11, 1877.
210
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
Francois Langelier, Louis Frechette, Honore Mercier,
Hector Fabre, Charles Devlin and Ernest Pacaud, while
his opponent, M. Bourbeau, himself of little distinction,
had the support of the leading Conservative speakers of
the province, J. A. Chapleau, L. F. R. Masson, J. J.
Curran, and Thomas White, with Israel Tarte directing
the campaign. But it was not in the public oratory of
the Whites and the Chapleaus that Mr. Laurier's oppo-
nents put their main trust. Drummond-Arthabaska
was the county which witnessed, a generation later, the
famous whispering campaign on the naval issue. In
1877, the same tactics were freely used in the back con-
cessions. The religious attitude of the Liberals was
strongly attacked : the Rouges were declared to be under
the censure of the Pope, friends of the apostate Chini-
quy, allies of the excommunicated Guibord, rebels
against the authority of the bishops. It was announced
that Mr. Laurier had become "a minister" a Protestant
clergyman. Another ingenious canvasser declared that
none of his children had been baptized, which was strictly
true, as no children had ever blessed his home. An
extraordinary individual named Thibault, a Montreal
attorney, with "a baggage of blather, bluff and billings-
gate," seems from the epithets hurled at him by the Lib-
eral organ in the county to have been particularly effec-
tive. Possessed of a very flexible grandmother, who
was born in whatever parish he was visiting a few
weeks later, in a campaign among the Acadians of Nova
Scotia, declared to be a daughter of Evangeline the
familiar friend of bishops, whose carriages stood every
211
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
day at his door; the instructor of priests, who through-
out the world were trained on his treatises; flourishing
a telegram of approval which he announced he had just
received from the Pope; builder of hospitals, convents,
colleges; an orator famed throughout Canada, the
United States, the Indies and Senegambia, the mild and
modest Thibault proved a thorn in the flesh to the Lib-
erals. Not even Thibault marked the lowest depths.
The Liberals charged that money was flowing like water,
and though the charges were denied and countered, they
were later fully sustained.
One incident in the campaign it always gave Mr.
Laurier much pleasure to recall. A good supporter of
his listened attentively one Sunday to a sermon in which
his cure denounced Liberal Catholics. On the Monday
he sought out the cure and asked whether it would be
possible for a good Catholic to vote for a Liberal. "No :
impossible," was the reply. Next Sunday, the cure,
more discreet, exhorted his flock to vote according to
their conscience. "But," the query followed, "my con-
science tells me to vote for Mr. Laurier ; and yet you say
if I vote for a Liberal it will be a sin. I think I must
not vote at all." The third Sunday brought a sermon
denouncing political indifference, and insisting that it
was the duty of good citizens to vote and not leave the
suffrage to the uninformed and evil-minded. "My
cure," responded the puzzled voter next morning, "I
cannot vote for Mr. Laurier, for you tell me that if I
vote for a Liberal I shall be damned ; I cannot vote for
Mr. Bourbeau, for you tell me that if I do not follow my
212
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
conscience I shall be damned ; I cannot vote for neither,
for you tell me that if I do not vote at all I shall be
damned. Since I must be damned anyway, I '11 be
damned for doing what I like. I am going to vote for
Mr. Laurier."
The election was held on October 27. The result is
thus stated in the next issue of the "Journal d'Artha-
baska" : "Mr. Laurier is beaten by 29 votes. We have
gone through the figures twenty times, before we could
credit them. The thing was perfectly impossible; we
would not believe it. Yet such is the fact, and it is with
a feeling of profound humiliation that we announce it."
The defeat was a serious blow to the government and
to the new minister, repudiated in his home riding on the
threshold of his career. True, next year, when the case
came to trial, Mr. Bourbeau admitted that his agents
had committed bribery, and the election was annulled;
true, in the general election that followed, the Conserva-
tives of Drummond-Arthabaska offered Mr. Laurier an
acclamation; but that did not repair the damage done.
It might have been expected that the young minister
would be crushed by the blow. To be accorded the rare
honour of entry into the federal cabinet in his thirty-
sixth year, with scarce six years of parliamentary ex-
perience behind him, and then to have the cup dashed
from his lips, to be flouted by his own constituents, to be
rejected in favour of an obscure and harmless local rival,
was a catastrophe which might well have brought dis-
turbance, if not despair, to his mind. Yet he faced the
outlook with a smile, without a word of recrimination or
218
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
regret. In that hour of defeat he revealed the power
that was to be the outstanding mark of his future career.
It was a power which had its root in mind and heart, in
a philosophic fatalism and in a courage that never feared
odds. He had early schooled himself not to expect too
much from life, not to be carried away by success or cast
down by defeat, to watch the players and the scenes on
life's stage with an objective calm and a recognition of
the touch of inevitableness in all they said and did. A
personal courage which never failed reinforced his phil-
osophy, and the self-control which made his face an im-
perturbable mask concealed from the world any chagrin
or regret. His distant cousin and later fellow-member
of parliament, the poet Louis Frechette, thus in later
years recorded the day:
A reverse does not disturb him any more than success ex-
alts him. He receives it with the same smile. His defeat in
1877 was a terrible body blow, an unexpected, it might be a
fatal reverse. I was with him that evening, along with other
friends. We felt overwhelmed. Yet his good humour never
varied by a hair's-breadth from his habitual calm, and his
hand did not shake with the slightest quiver as he raised his
glass to the toast of better days. I ask myself if, as with the
debits and credits of a ledger, good fortune and ill fortune are
not entered in due order as a necessary part of the whole ac-
count, in the calculations of that soul so profoundly philo-
sophical in temper. 1
It was impossible to accept the verdict as final. Mr.
Laurier had an interview with Mr. Mackenzie in Mon-
treal. Several Liberal members at once offered to
i"Les Hommes du Jour; Wilfrid Laurier," p.
214
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
resign in Mr. Laurier's favour. It was determined to
accept the offer of Hon. Isidore Thibaudeau, member
for Quebec East. The nominations were held on No-
vember 7, Mr. Laurier's opponent being a former mem-
ber, Adolphe Tourangeau. Both sides threw them-
selves into a contest which has become legendary in the
annals of Quebec politics for its fierce rivalry and wild
humour. Mr. Laurier fought with a vigour that
aroused his party's enthusiasm. The ineffable Thibault
took a part in the campaign which was excessive even
for his vanity. There are still current in Quebec verses
of the songs that were sung to drown poor Thibault's
harangue. 'The glory of a blagueur of this sort," de-
clared the "Journal d'Arthabaska," "is always ephem-
eral; the public may be deceived once, but rarely twice.
The success of the Conservatives in Arthabaska had
gone to the heads of Thibault and his friends. Con-
fident from this success, the clowns have tried to ex-
hibit their bear in the heart of Quebec, but the people
have mocked both the bear and the bear-leaders :
Thibault est a Peau,
Dondain,
Thibault est noye
Donde.
Instead of chasing him and beating him as the Conserva-
tives would have done, they contented themselves with
greeting him with songs." When the polls closed on
November 28, the new minister was found to be elected
by a majority of 315. "I have unfurled the Liberal
standard above the ancient citadel of Quebec," the vic-
215
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
tor announced, "and there I will keep it waving." For
over forty years it waved in old Quebec, and the names
of Laurier and Quebec East were not divided.
The outburst of joy in ministerial circles was evidence
of their tension and their fears. From Quebec to Ot-
tawa the journey was marked by torch-light processions,
bonfires, massed bands, and speeches of glowing
triumph. In Quebec East itself, in Arthabaska, in
Montreal, thousands assembled to greet him. But when
Ottawa was reached, Ottawa, not yet blase and cynical
from over-much knowledge of politics behind the scenes,
turned out in cheering multitudes with brass bands,
hundreds of carriages and six hundred torch-bearers in
procession.
One victory could not save a party. The government
decided to go to the country in September, 1878. Some
members of the cabinet, including Cartwright, thought
it would have been better to appeal in June, before the
tide reached its height ; other Ontario Liberals, like John
Charlton, urged postponement to give time for a cam-
paign of education and for something to turn up. Mac-
kenzie was confident. The government had given an
honest and efficient administration; the ills from which
the country suffered were beyond the power of any gov-
ernment to cure; surely Ontario at least would not
return to the arch-corruptionists it had spewed forth
four short years before. Laurier was quite of the con-
trary view. Yet, believing the government doomed, he
fought none the less vigorously, speaking for the first
time in Ontario as well as in Quebec constituencies.
216
THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION
The outcome exceeded the worst fear of the govern-
ment and the highest hopes of the Opposition. The
Conservatives swept every province except New Bruns-
wick. 1 From a minority of sixty they had leaped to
a majority of sixty-eight. Lavish promises proved
more seductive than honest deeds. The Liberals en-
tered on a twenty-year pilgrimage in the deserts of op-
position. *
i GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS
1872 1874 1878
Lib- Con- Lib- Con- Lib- Con-
erals servatives erals servatives erals servatives
Ontario 50 38 64 24 29 59
Quebec 27 38 33 32 20 45
Nova Scotia 10 11 17 4 7 14
New Brunswick 9 7 11 5 11 5
Prince Edward Island .. 6 1 5
Manitoba 1 3 2 2 1 3
British Columbia 6 6 6
97 103 133 73 69 137
217
CHAPTER V
UNDER A NEW LEADER
The Retirement of Mackenzie Blake Becomes Leader Laurier
on his Fellow-Leaders The Working of Federalism The Letellier
Affair Macdonald and Mowat Quebec Provincial Politics
Laurier and The Den of Forty Thieves Canadian Pacific Contract
Hiving the Grits The General Election of 1882.
T
HE overthrow of the Mackenzie government
gave new urgency to the question of the leader-
ship of the Liberal party. Mackenzie had com-
mitted the crime of being defeated. Many were ready
to lay the blame for the party's failure upon his un-
bending rigidity, his lack of conciliatory manners, his
over-caution. As r a matter of fact, Mackenzie had been
prepared, in 1876, to compromise on the tariff issue
to the extent of a slight increase in the general rates,
for additional revenue, with any protective effects that
might be incidental, but had been prevented by the op-
position of the Maritime Liberals. He had been
anxious, when he saw the tide going against him, to
bring on the elections in June instead of September;
Cartwright, Mills, Burpee, Jones, as well as Laurier
and Huntington, urged the same course, but some
Quebec and Maritime members were not ready
and against his better judgment Mackenzie had yielded.
Yet when all allowance was made, it was clear that he
had not kept in touch with the country, too absorbed in
218
UNDER A NEW LEADER
the administrative work of the heaviest department to
have adequate leisure for party leadership or general
guidance of policy. Laurier had come back after his
speaking tour in Ontario convinced that the govern-
ment was going to be defeated, but Mackenzie scouted
his forecast and insisted to the last that they would have
a sweeping majority.
Blake had taken no part in the election. He had been
absent in Europe while Mackenzie was straining every
nerve to combat the influences of commercial depression
and the lavish promises of protectionist soothsayers.
He had stood for Bruce, but had been defeated. For
one session he was absent from Ottawa. Then the
resignation of the member of the West Durham opened
a way, and in October, 1 879, he was once more returned
to parliament.
During the week after the election Mackenzie had
announced to several friends his intention to resign and
to let the members choose a leader who might be more
successful. But as the year went on and his fighting
spirit revived, he had thought better of it, and no res-
ignation was offered. When the second session came,
with Blake once again in his seat, there was still no hint
of withdrawal. Through the whole session Mackenzie
did not once summon a caucus of the party, an omission
unprecedented for many years. The death of Holton
and Brown during the session robbed him of two of
his closest personal and political friends, Holton
dying in March, and Brown, shot by a drunken dis-
charged printer in the same month, lingering on in pain
219
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
until May. Still the lonely and austere leader gave
no sign.
Discontent mounted, until finally the chairman of the
caucus, "Joe" Rymal, called a meeting on his own initia-
tive. A resolution was passed, asking Mackenzie to
consider the question of the leadership. Five of his late
colleagues, Cartwright, Burpee, Smith, Pelletier, and
Laurier, were asked to put the matter before him.
Laurier was ill, and not present at the caucus. Smith,
Burpee, and Cartwright called at his rooms at the
Russell House and asked him to go with them to Mac-
kenzie's office. He could not go that day. Next morn-
ing the five went to Mackenzie's room in the Commons.
Pelletier did not enter. The others greeted Mackenzie,
then stood ill at ease. Burpee mentioned that the party
had held a caucus. 'Yes, I heard about that," was
Mackenzie's gruff response. A pause followed; then
Pelletier entered. Mackenzie turned to him : "Pelletier,
is not this simply a conspiracy of Mills and Rymal to
put Blake in?" "No, Mr. Mackenzie," Pelletier stam-
mered, "we thought that in your state of health !
'There is nothing the matter with my health. It is all
a conspiracy of a few men." Then another pause,
more lengthy and more painful. At last, seeing the
older men mute, Laurier spoke out: "As a sincere friend
of yours, Mr. Mackenzie, I must tell you that it is not
so: there is a general movement. We have been de-
feated; you have been defeated; it is only human nature
that a defeated army should seek another general.
There is not a man who has not high regard for your
220
UNDER A NEW LEADER
services, but there is a general feeling " 'Very well,"
Mackenzie broke in, "if that is so, I shall very soon
cease to lead the Liberal party."
Late that night, just as the House was about to
adjourn at two o'clock, Mr. Mackenzie rose: "I desire
to say a word or two with regard to my personal rela-
tions to the House. I yesterday determined to with-
draw from my position as leader of the Opposition, and
from this time forth I will speak and act for no person
but myself." That was all. For twelve years more
Mackenzie sat on the Liberal benches, slowly worn
down by a fatal paralytic malady, taking less and less
part in the proceedings of the House, until in his last
sessions he appeared a mere ghost of the fighter he once
had been. With grim lips he saw his successors come
and go; with mellowing comprehension he watched
Macdonald manage men; and then, in 1892, a year after
his great rival, he passed from the scene. *
i It may be of interest here to note Laurier's comments, long years
afterward, on his fellow-leaders. These judgments, and those noted in
later chapters, were given to the writer, in casual and unpremeditated
but never unconsidered conversation. They were coloured by no bias or
passion; Laurier's power of objective judgment was as marked as his
tolerance, a tolerance which had its roots as much in the cynicism born
of a varied experience of men as in his native kindliness and sympathy:
"Cartwright was the most finished speaker in the House in my time,
and a very effective debater. Mackenzie knocked his opponent down;
Cartwright ran his through with keen rapier thrust, and usually turned
the sword in the wound. He was a master of classic eloquence, and it
was a pleasure, at least on our side, to listen to the fluent, precise,
faultless English of his most impromptu utterance. Blake was perhaps
a more omnivorous reader, but Cartwright was distinctly the most lettered
man in the House. His mordant wit set his opponents writhing, and
did not always spare his technical friends. His duels with Tupper, who
was a better hand at the bludgeon, were particularly interesting, though
the exchange of personalities was more intense than I had been used to
in Quebec. He was a good Liberal, at least a good Grit, after he
221
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Edward Blake became the leader of the Liberal party
in the Dominion in May, 1880. Wilfred Laurier had
been recognized as the leader of the Quebec wing of the
party since his entrance into the Mackenzie cabinet in
October, 1877. The years that followed, until the gen-
eral election of 1887, seated the Conservatives firmly in
power for the third time in succession, brought to Blake
bitter disappointment, loss of hope, and loss of interest,
and gave to Laurier the opportunity of developing from
a provincial to a national position.
Blake led the Liberal party for seven years and
through two general elections. He and his followers
were filled with hope and enthusiasm when the pilgrim-
age began; he was wearied of politics and politicians
when it ended. Important issues arose on which he and
his party had taken an emphatic stand, but the country
was not persuaded that a change of government was
left the Tory fold, but I often felt that he would have been more at
home in the old unreformed House of Commons in England, or in the
diplomatic service. No man among us paid so much heed to international
affairs, and to the international aspect of Canadian questions, and few
had as far vision.
"Alexander Mackenzie was straight and solid as his own masonry.
He was more characteristically Scotch than his fellow-countryman
Sir John, who had a suppleness more Southern. The Scotch Presbyter-
ians who have stood for democracy for generations, and who were the
backbone of Upper Canada Liberalism, never had a more upright and
more downright representative than Mackenzie, if he did happen to be
a Scotch Baptist; the Baptists themselves usually had the root of the
matter in them. He was a thorough-going party man. Not that he
would for an instant countenance any tricky or underhanded 'practical*
politics; he was too unswervingly honest for that, and too deeply con-
vinced that time and the Lord would be on the side of the righteous.
But he was certain that the Tories had inherited most of Adam's
original sin, and he usually had the facts at his fingers' ends to prove
it. We never had a better debater in the House; a grand man on his
legs, we used to call him. There was no one who could stand up under
his sledge-hammer blows. He knew his facts, he knew his men, he had
222
UNDER A NEW LEADER
needed. The Fates, his own temperament, the adroit-
ness of his opponent, the renewal of dissensions in the
Liberal ranks, the influence of protected manufacturers
and the loading of the dice in electoral redistribution
were to prove too much even for Blake's great powers
to overcome.
Throughout these years Laurier was a loyal and ef-
fective lieutenant. He did not speak often: his contri-
butions to Hansard do not make one page for twenty of
his leader's. Yet he took his part in every first-class
issue, shared in the protracted struggles which marked
the fourth and fifth parliaments of Canada, and in in-
creasing measure came before the public to defend his
party's policy. His share in debate varied with the
issue. On such a question as the financial relations of
the government with the Canadian Pacific, Laurier had
little to say ; Blake had made that issue absorbingly his
own and in any case, while possessed of no small share
a firm grip on principle and an inexhaustible fund of indignation, a
mind that thought straight and could turn quick. He made an excellent
administrator of a department. It was his misfortune that he was
called to face other tasks for which he was not so well fitted, and that
he was contrasted with the more brilliant and unfathomed qualities
of Blake. He had not the imagination nor the breadth of view required
to lead a party and a country; and he gave to the details of a department
the time that should have gone to planning and overseeing the general
conduct of the administration. But it would be well if we had more
Mackenzies in public life to-day.
"Blake was the most powerful intellectual force in Canadian political
history. He had an extraordinary mental organization, a grasp that
covered the whole and searched out each smallest detail. He was first and
foremost the great advocate, a tremendous dialectician, analyzing and
cross analyzing to the last point, major points and minor points, utterly
exhaustive. But he was no mere man of words. He would have proved
Canada's most constructive statesman had he held office. Why did he
never reach the place his genius warranted and all men expected? I
do not know whether the reason lay more in the country, in his party,
223
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of business shrewdness, Laurier was never interested
and never at home in the intricacies of high finance. On
constitutional questions, the powers and privileges of a
lieutenant-governor or the encroachment of the federal
authority upon local rights, and on political. questions, a
uniform federal franchise or a gerrymandering of On-
tario, Laurier's firm grasp of principles and direct in-
terest in the political fray forced him to the front. But
it was only when an issue arose in which principle was
touched with passion, an issue that involved the pride
and prejudice of race, that went to the heart of the prob-
lem of the relation of English-speaking and French-
speaking Canadians Kiel's revolt and its aftermath
that Laurier was fully roused and took a foremost part.
Partly because the constitution of the Dominion was
still in the gristle, partly because of the unusually close
connection between federal and local politics which
marked these years, questions of the scope and
limit of federal or provincial powers were in the fore-
ground throughout the period.
or with Blake himself. You must remember that he took hold after
a crushing defeat, and held the party leadership seven years. Seven
years was not a long time in Canadian party warfare, and most of our
opposition Jacobs have had to serve more than seven years in bondage.
Patience was needed, but Blake was never patient. He was not the
man to fight uphill battles. He was proud, and expected men to come
to him; sensitive, for he lacked humour; honourable and earnest, and
saw charlatans and men steeped in corruption holding high place in
public life. Public life in the eighties was not a calling where thin-
skinned men throve. The kindliest of men to his intimates, he wore
the sensitive man's mask of indifference to the public. Ill-health and
a nervous temperament unfitted him for the drudgery and disappoint-
ments of politics. He was moody and nervous when things were not
going well. Yet without any of the lesser arts, he cast a spell over
every man in parliament. We felt in the presence of genius, and would
have been proud to serve to the end, had he not drawn himself aloof.
224
EDWARD BLAKE
Leader of the Liberal Party, 1880-87
UNDER A NEW LEADER
In a federal state it was inevitable that difficulties
should arise as to the bounds and shifts of power.
There had been few models to guide the fathers of
Confederation in their task. In the great republic
which was the foremost exemplar of federalism, dif-
ficulties had arisen so serious that only the sword could
cut the knot. Canada had sought to avoid some of
the weaknesses the experience of the United States
made clear, but in so doing had sailed into uncharted
waters.
Macdonald, it has been observed, was opposed to the
union of the provinces upon a federal basis, literally
until the hour of the decision which made it feasible.
His plan of a single parliament for all Canada would
have made Confederation impossible, since there was
not a ghost of a likelihood that Quebec or the provinces
by the sea would make the sacrifice of local freedom
this involved. Time has made it clear that if estab-
lished, in a country soon to cover half a continent and
with the widest diversity of ways, of needs and op-
portunities, legislative union would have proved stifling
and unworkable. Yet his influence and the influence
of those who shared his dread of States' rights tenden-
cies resulted in the adoption of many expedients de-
vised to strengthen the hands of the central authorities.
The central government was given wide specified
powers and made the residuary legatee; it could ap-
point and dismiss the lieutenant-governors who were
the formal heads of the provincial governments, veto
the laws of provincial legislatures, appoint the judges
225
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of the higher provincial courts, and with substantial
subsidies soothe the provinces into content.
For twenty years after Confederation, and particu-
larly in the second decade, the scope and workability
of this constitution were constantly put to the test. In
large measures the solution was worked out by fine-
spun constitutional arguments and lengthy court de-
cisions, which might be of far-reaching import but did
not, as Brown would say, come home to the business
and bosoms of men. When, however, the personal
aspect was involved, as in the long duel between Mo-
wat and Macdonald, or when party fortunes were at
stake, as in Letellier's Coup d'etat, or when vital eco-
nomic issues underlay the* constitutional wrangles,
as in Manitoba's fight against the disallowance of her
measures chartering competitors to the Canadian
Pacific, then lawyers' tomes provided welcome am-
munition to hurl at opponents and constitutional for-
mulas became party war-cries.
There was no uncertainty as to party attitude on
the issue. The Conservatives, as champions of author-
ity and incidentally as the party in control of the
central government, exalted national unity and federal
power. The Liberals, champions of freedom, heirs of
the groups which had opposed Confederation, and in-
cidentally as the party in power in the foremost prov-
ince, stood steadily for provincial rights. Laurier
gave this policy whole-hearted support. He had much
of the Whig respect for balanced powers. He believed
that a wide measure of local autonomy was essential
226
UNDER A NEW LEADER
in order to develop responsibility, to avert friction' and
to ensure the confidence and good-will essential for
enduring unity. Only by adhering faithfully to the
principle and promise of a federal union could Con-
federation avoid the rock on which Union had
foundered.
It was typical of Macdonald that his first scheme for
undermining provincial autonomy was through personal
control. He succeeded in having installed in Toronto
as well as in Quebec a government closely in sympathy
with the Ottawa administration. The practice of
double mandates greatly facilitated this means of con-
trol. Macdonald himself did not hold seats in both
the federal and the local house, but he seriously con-
templated entering the Ontario house to keep "a check
on the powers that be in Toronto." Laurier, in his
first session in the Quebec legislature, had summed up
pithily the objection from the provincial point of view:
'With the single mandate, Quebec is Quebec; with the
double mandate, it becomes only an appendix to Ot-
tawa." The practice of double representation was pro-
hibited in 1872, and though close relations continued
to exist between federal and provincial party leaders,
the loss of this direct means of enforcing uniformity
and the inevitability that some at least of the provincial
governments would always be of a different political
complexion from the federal, forced Macdonald to seek
more permanent means of control.
The Letellier case raised the next question, the part
the lieutenant-governors of the provinces were to play.
227
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Were they to be agents of Ottawa, responsible to the
federal cabinet for their conduct, or constitutional king-
lets, sheltered by the assumption of all responsibility
by provincial ministers? It was not Ottawa that first
forced this issue, but Quebec. Luc Letellier de Saint-
Just had given up his post as Minister of Agriculture
in the Mackenzie cabinet in 1876 to become Lieutenant-
Governor of Quebec. His coming added to the tensity
of a difficult political situation. The De Boucherville
ministry, representing the extreme Tory and ultramon-
tane wing of the Bleus, was beset by dissension in the
ranks of its own party and by the disintegrating influ-
ence of railway lobbyists and speculative rings. Now
it was called upon to face for the first time since
Confederation a situation under which the formal head
of the provincial administration was a man who for
many years had been a vigorous and unrelenting foe
of all that his ministers stood for. The personal factor
accentuated the difficulty. Ever since entering political
life in 1850, as a man of thirty, Letellier had been
fighting Conservative and clerical influence in eastern
Quebec. His electoral struggles, legendary for their
bitterness and persistence, had intensified his stubborn
convictions, and made it difficult for him to act King
Log. A man of imposing figure and address, proud,
insistent on the dignity of his position, rather indolent
between outbursts of political campaigning or deer-
hunting, Letellier would not be easily managed. Nor
were his ministers the men to manage him. Charles
Boucher de Boucherville, the premier, was a man of
228
UNDER A NEW LEADER
unquestioned probity and honour, but at the opposite
pole of political opinion, and of a dignity more at
ease, as resting on the consciousness of many gen-
erations of seigniorial eminence, though no less insistent.
His attorney-general, A. R. Angers, the real power in
the cabinet, had made his way rapidly by energy
and ability, but his domineering temper had not made
him popular.
Beginning with doubtless sincere expressions of
desire to work in harmony, Letellier and his ministers
were soon at outs. No one outstanding issue developed.
Petty slights and misunderstandings now Angers
furious because of being given too low a place at a
state dinner, now Letellier piqued because formal pro-
clamations had been issued without his signature being
authorized prepared the way for deadlock over the
cabinet's plans for building the North Shore Railway
between Quebec and Montreal. The growing extrav-
agance of administration, the wide-spread public suspi-
cion of intrigue and corruption on the part of some
of the government's supporters in connection with the
railway, and the Quebeckers' traditional hostility to
the direct taxation to which low finances had forced
the administration, were stirring public opinion and pro-
viding an atmosphere in which the lieutenant-governor's
hostility throve apace. On March 2, 1878, after some
brief interchanges, Letellier informed the premier, in
terms which amounted to a dismissal, that he would not
sanction the North Shore Bill. De Boucherville at
once resigned. Letellier sent for Joly, as leader of the
229
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Opposition, to form a new government, and granted
a dissolution. The elections were bitter. The Con-
servatives denounced Letellier's tyranny and pro-
claimed themselves champions of responsible govern-
ment; the Liberals attacked the railway rings and
Angers le taxeur, and assumed responsibility for
Letellier's noble action. When they went to the
country, the Liberals had barely half as many members
as their opponents : the elections raised them to equality.
With difficulty and many shifts, Joly weathered the
first weeks of the session on a precarious majority of
one, which was, however, increased steadily but slowly
in by-elections.
Then the contest shifted to Ottawa. In the spring
session of 1878 Macdonald moved a vote of censure on
Letellier. The Liberals, though unaware in advance
of Letellier's intention to dismiss his ministers, and con-
vinced that he erred in not letting events take their
course and giving the De Boucherville cabinet enough
rope to hang itself, opposed and defeated the vote of
censure, insisting that the matter was one for the people
of Quebec to determine at the pending provincial
election. Next session saw the Conservatives in power
at Ottawa and Joly in power, or at least in office, at
Quebec. Macdonald hesitated to take further action
in face of the endorsement of Joly by the people, but
the Quebec Bleus demanded their pound of flesh.
Mousseau moved Macdonald's resolution of the previous
session. Mackenzie opposed any attempt to go behind
the Quebec electors and insisted that if action were
230
UNDER A NEW LEADER
taken, it should be on the initiative of the governor-
general's responsible advisers.
Laurier had made a cautious defence of Letellier's
coup in the previous session. Now he took the lead in
opposing Mousseau's motion. He declared that in re-
fusing to pass the same resolution a year before, the
majority had not expressed any opinion upon Letellier's
course, but had merely affirmed it was a matter for
the people of the province. Now the people had
spoken, and had upheld his action. ("No, no.")
'What are you here for if you say no? If your course
had been supported by the people, you would not seek
at the hands of this House the vengeance which you
are now seeking." Why seek to override the judgment
of the province concerned, by the votes of members
from other provinces in whose campaign Letellier had
never been an issue? Letellier had committed no
crime; he had exercised a right which he had the ab-
stract power to exercise: "It is said that the exercise of
it was unwise, but in the estimation of the people of
Quebec, that unwise act saved the country." Letel-
lier's act had since been covered by ministerial respon-
sibility. The Dominion should not interfere. Granted
that the House had a right to interfere in provincial
matters in some cases, where could the line be drawn?
The same rule should be applied to administrative as
to legislative acts.
The doctrine is now settled that the power of disallowing
provincial laws is to be confined to those cases only where pro-
vincial legislatures may have stepped beyond their jurisdiction
231
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
into prohibited ground ; that this power is to be exercised only
for the protection of imperial or federal rights which may
have been invaded by provincial legislatures, but never to af-
ford relief to any section of the community which may deem
itself aggrieved by that legislation. Interference in such
cases would be a violation of the federal principle, and in all
such cases the aggrieved portion of the community must seek
and can find its relief in the application of the principle of re-
sponsible government.
For the members from the province of Quebec, he
concluded, to urge federal intervention was to put in
jeopardy the independence of their province merely to
snatch a party triumph.
The Bleus had their motion of censure, passed on a
straight party vote, by 136 to 51. Next they demanded
Letellier's head. The governor-general, the Marquis
of Lome, had a fellow-feeling for lieutenant-governors,
and was extremely reluctant to sanction Letellier's dis-
missal after Joly had assumed responsibility and been
sustained by the people. Macdonald himself had
little enthusiasm for the task, but the Bleus would
brook no delay. Macdonald offered his half-hearted
recommendation of dismissal; the marquis demurred,
and believed that he should seek instructions from the
British government before establishing an important
precedent. The government was in a quandary ; should
they yield, or should they resign? Macdonald decided
to yield, but with ill-grace; his statement to the Com-
mons gave the impression that the governor-general's
action had not the assent of the cabinet. The Bleus
were furious, hooted their leader in the House, stormed
in caucus, threatened a vote of non-confidence, but fell
UNDER A NEW LEADER
into line. The British authorities advised the governor-
general to follow the recommendations of his cabinet
on this as on other matters. Letellier's dismissal fol-
lowed, and De Boucherville was avenged.
In the attempt to hold a lieutenant-governor per-
sonally responsible to the federal government rather
than allow him shelter behind the responsibility of the
provincial ministry, Macdonald had acted with some
reluctance. Into the conflicts with Ontario which
followed he threw himself with a vigour and tenacity
rooted in strong personal feeling. In great measure
the conflicts as to constitutional rights were merely
the cover for personal rivalry and party jockeying.
In Ottawa John A. Macdonald was now supreme; in
Toronto, Oliver Mowat. They had been friends in
youth, Mowat studying law in Macdonald's Kingston
office, but in the intensely personal atmosphere of Union
politics they had become bitter enemies. We have a
glimpse of their relations, and incidentally of the amen-
ities of parliamentary life in the sixties, in a scene in
the House in April, 1861, Macdonald accusing Mowat
of inconsistency, Mowat declaring the attack false and
unwarranted, and Macdonald crossing the floor of the
House, shaking his fist in Mowat's face, and shouting,
'You damned pup, I '11 slap your chops for you."
When Mowat retired to the bench, hostilities slumbered,
but when he stepped down to take control of the provin-
cial administration in 1872, and particularly when in
face of Conservative victory on federal issues, he
strengthened his grip on Ontario, the rivalry became
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
acute. It was a well-matched struggle. Macdonald
had nearly forty years of parliamentary experience
behind him, a mastery of every trick of the trade, a
shrewd knowledge of men, and a hold on the public
imagination that no other man could hope to equal.
Mowat was fully as shrewd, a sounder lawyer, and
with a firmer grip on himself; his deep and genuine
piety even on a trip to Paris and Italy he is found
hunting out three Presbyterian or at least evangelical
services a Sunday in byways and over grocery shops
won him support in many quarters, and the rooted con-
fidence that his piety would not hamper his political
tactics in an emergency prevented it proving a handi-
cap in other quarters. A Liberal by conviction and
a Tory by temperament, he was well equipped to give
his province honest and cautiously progressive govern-
ment.
Macdonald's first line of attack was to seek to limit
the physical bounds of Mowat's domain. The western
and northern boundaries of Ontario had never been
definitely drawn. Before Confederation, the province
of Canada, heir to New France, had claimed all the
Western lands that the daring of French explorers
and fur-traders had staked out: it was to be one of the
ironies of history that in the very lands that came to
Ontario on the strength of these French-Canadian ex-
ploits, later generations of politicians were to seek to
limit the French tongue by making assent to restrictive
school regulations a condition of the grant of northern
Ontario homesteads. After Confederation, the Domin-
234
UNDER A NEW LEADER
ion, as successor to the Hudson's Bay Company,
claimed for itself every acre southward and eastward
that the company had ever asserted lordship over.
The issue hung on the interpretation of a medley of
treaties, statutes, executive acts. In Mackenzie's
time the Dominion and Ontario agreed to submit the
issue to arbitration; but when the arbitrators decided
in favour of the province, Macdonald, again in office,
refused to accept the award. He adroitly involved
Manitoba in the dispute by having an act passed grant-
ing it the greater part of the territory in dispute, and
encouraged demands from Quebec that the balance of
provincial power should not be disturbed by a huge
addition to Ontario's domains.
In the session of 1882 the dispute came before the
House of Commons. There was much parade of tech-
nical interpretation, and Laurier in rising, after listen-
ing to many disquisitions on the difference between
"north" and "northward," quoted the appeal of the
Marquis of Torcy to Bolingbroke during the negotia-
tion of the Treaty of Utrecht: "In the name of God,
sir, order your plenipotentiaries to be less excellent
grammarians." He urged that the acceptance of the
award was an obligation of honour, and that it was
a judicial finding and not a compromise. Then, turn-
ing to the Quebec Conservatives who were opposing
the award, he declared:
In speaking thus I know perfectly well that I shall be vio-
lently attacked in my own province by the members of the Con-
servative party. ["Hear, hear!"]. I see that I have not
235
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
mistaken the prejudices of my honourable friends opposite. I
know their prejudices too well not to know in advance what
their argument will be: I know that it will be an appeal to the
baser prejudices of my fellow-countrymen. But, sir, I have
too much respect for the sense of justice of my countrymen to
fear the effect of those appeals. ... I have no hesitation in
saying this award is binding on both parties and should be
carried out in good faith. The consideration that the great
province of Ontario may be made greater I altogether lay
aside as unfair, unfriendly, and unjust, I do not grudge to On-
tario the extent of territory declared hers under this award.
The eternal principles of justice are far more important than
thousands of millions of acres of land. Let us adhere to those
principles of justice, and in so doing we will have the surest
foundation for securing justice on every occasion.
The boundary dispute and its sequels dragged
through another parliament, but meanwhile other phases
of the same broad issue had developed. Throughout
the eighties a series of legal battles was fought between
the Dominion and the Ontario governments to determine
the limits of the legislative powers assigned each author-
ity by the British North America Act. One case * had
arisen under the Mackenzie regime, and Mowat had
made good his contention that the government of the
province and not of the Dominion represented the
Crown in taking possession of escheated estates. More
important in its practical bearings was the confirmation
of the power of the province to impose conditions for
carrying on business upon companies whether incor-
porated by the Dominion, by a foreign or British
government, or by the province itself. 2 But it was
iln re Mercer.
2 Citizens' Insurance Company vs. Parsons.
236
UNDER A NEW LEADER
V
only when the question of the control of the liquor
traffic was touched that popular and party interest was
aroused. In 1876 the Ontario legislature had adopted
the Crooks Act, stiffening the conditions under which
licenses for the retailing of liquors could be granted,
and giving the licensing power to boards of commis-
sioners appointed by the provincial government for
each municipality. Liberals praised the Crooks Act
as a progressive measure of temperance reform; Con-
servatives damned it as an attempt to build up a polit-
ical machine through the patronage and the power con-
ferred upon the government. Macdonald decided to
| intervene. In the federal campaign of 1882 he declared
that if he carried the country, as he would do, he would
| "tell Mr. Mowat, that little tyrant" who had "attempted
to control public opinion by getting hold of every office
from that of a Division Court bailiff to a tavern-
keeper," that he would get a bill passed at Ottawa re-
turning to the municipalities the power taken from
them by the License Act.
Macdonald had still another shot in his locker, the
federal power of disallowing provincial statutes. The
British North America Act had given the governor-
general the same power of disallowing provincial stat-
utes which the Queen enjoyed of disallowing federal
statutes. Macdonald had early realized that if the
governor-general's advisers should be "States' rights
men, who would look more to sectional than to general
interests," this power might be little used, and accord-
ingly in January, 1869, he had suggested to the
23Tj
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
governor-general, Lord Monck, the advisability of seek-
ing instructions from the Colonial Office empowering
him to act in case of disallowance or reservation, in-
dependently or under British instructions. 1 The cor-
respondence between Monck and Grenville which fol-
lowed led to the issuing of instructions to refer such
measures to England for advice. When Blake became
Minister of Justice, he made short work of this arrange-
ment, insisting and in the end securing that in this as
other connections, the "governor-general" could only
mean the governor-general in council, acting on the ad-
vice of his ministers. It still remained to determine how
the federal ministers would exercise their powers. It
was at first assumed that the veto power would be used
only in case a provincial act infringed federal or imperial
interests or was plainly unconstitutional. But in 1881
Macdonald extended its scope. The Ontario legislature
had intervened in a lumbermen's dispute by passing an
act giving the holders of limits up-stream the right to use
slides constructed in a non-navigable stream by a limit-
holder lower down, on payment of certain tolls. The
up-stream lumberman, Caldwell, happened to be a Lib-
eral; the down-stream man, McLaren, a Conservative.
On the ground that the provincial measure involved tak-
ing property without adequate compensation, the Do-
minion government promptly disallowed it. Mowat
had it passed again, and once more Macdonald had it
disallowed. The Liberal Opposition at Ottawa raised a
i Pope's "Memoirs of Sir John A. Macdonald." II. 297.
238
UNDER A NEW LEADER
debate on the question, vigorously supporting Mowat's
stand, and here for the time the matter rested.
As has already been noted, the prominence of the
constitutional issue was due in no small measure to the
close connection between provincial and federal politics
and politicians. The Dominion was not yet a distinct
entity; it was merely a loose grouping of provinces.
Canadians, when they did not call themselves English-
men or Irishmen or Scotchmen or Frenchmen, were apt
to think as Quebeckers or Nova Scotians or Ontario
men. It was in the provincial arena that all the leading
federal politicians had first to prove their mettle. While
the double mandate had been abolished, the personal
ties between the leaders at Ottawa and the leaders at
Toronto or Quebec, surviving from pre-Confederation
days, were still strong. This provincial trend was
strengthened by the dominance at Ottawa of the two
central provinces ; the Maritime provinces seemed to be
isolated and apart, and the Western lands had not yet
come to a power which would compel a widening of
Ottawa horizens.
The relations between Blake and Mowat were
close and friendly, but Ontario political affairs were be-
coming too stabilized to offer much room for aid or inter-
vention. In 1875 and again in 1879 Mowat had been
confirmed in the seat to which Blake and Brown had
called him in 1872. The new leader of the Opposition
William Ralph Meredith, had put himself in a difficult
position by trying to defend the anti-provincial policy
239
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of his fellow-Conservatives at Ottawa. With this issue,
with economical and progressive administration, and
with the possibilities of patronage well employed,
Mowat had little difficulty in holding his own, without
more than the normal assistance from his party friends
in the House of Commons.
In Quebec, matters were far otherwise. The two par-
ties were divided; the question of leadership was unset-
tled; cabinets came and went with rapidity. In the
fifteen years that followed 1872 Ontario had one pre-
mier, Quebec eight. In 1879, on the defeat of the Joly
government, J. A. Chapleau, perhaps Quebec's most
moving orator, had formed a Bleu ministry. After
three years of easy-going administration, Chapleau en-
deavoured to replenish the empty treasury by the sale of
the North Shore Railway, the western section to the
Canadian Pacific and the eastern to a Senecal-Mc-
Greevy syndicate. The sale was fought hard, not only
by the Liberals but by the rigid ultramontane section
of his own party, under De Boucherville and Beaubien.
To bring peace, Chapleau resigned, exchanging posts
with J. A. Mousseau, secretary of state in the federal
government, but Mousseau was little more successful
than Chapleau in conciliating the De Boucherville or
"Castor" wing. Nor were the Liberals sufficiently
united to take full advantage of these dissensions.
While Joly continued as leader, the most aggressive
force in the party was a young ex- Conservative lawyer,
Honore Mercier, an astute tactician, a hard fighter, and
a speaker of torrential powers. Mercier coquetted with
240
Sir Antoine Aim Dorion
Sir Hector Langevin
Sir J. A. Chapleau Honor6 Mercier
FOUR QUEBEC LEADERS
UNDER A NEW LEADER
Chapleau and Mousseau, who were prepared to consider
a coalition with moderate opponents to save themselves
from their Castor friends. Joly strongly opposed coali-
tion and the new Liberal organ in Montreal, "La
Patrie," under the editorship of M. Beaugrand, at-
tacked Mercier as being willing to sell the party's inter-
ests for private gain. At the opening of the 1883 ses-
sion, Joly resigned and Mercier was elected in his stead,
but with the distinct understanding there should be no
coalition.
In these provincial controversies, Laurier leaned to
Joly and the old Rouge traditions. He was on friendly
but hardly on intimate terms with Mercier, and, though
sympathetic with Chapleau, disliked the men Chapleau
had about him. In 1882 he became involved in a lively
controversy. He had been, along with Honore Mercier
and C. A. Langelier, an active collaborator in a new Lib-
eral journal, "L'Electeur," founded in Quebec city in
July, 1880, under the editorship, first, of Fra^ois
Langelier, and later of Ernest Pacaud. The group in
control were young and aggressive, full of the joy of
combat, but they were also shrewd; within seven years
"L'Electeur" had undergone fifty libel suits and had
never once been condemned. Now an editorial contrib-
uted by Mr. Laurier gave rise to one of the most sensa-
tional libel suits in the annals of Quebec. The editorial,
entitled "The Den of the Forty Thieves," 1 made a
iThe Den of the Forty Thieves: "L'Electeur," April 20, 1881.
"This den of the Forty Thieves, which it was thought existed only in
the land of legend, is really in existence here among us. It is not, as
might be believed, in the heart of a forest, protected by inaccessible
241
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
scathing indictment of L. A. Senecal, a contractor and
boss, high in Bleu circles, Chapleau, Senecal, and a
Montreal journalist, Dansereau, forming what was
familiarly known as the Holy Trinity. When suit was
brought Mr. Laurier avowed authorship and was
promptly put on trial. His counsel pleaded justifica-
tion; the jury disagreed, with ten for acquittal and two
for conviction, but the ventilation of Bleu secrets had
been thorough.
In the federal arena the tariff continued an important
issue. The government lost no time in carrying out the
mandate given it in the elections of 1878. 'Tell us
what you want," Macdonald told the manufacturers,
"and we will give you what you need." For textiles,
furniture, boots and shoes, sugar, foodstuffs, and iron
and steel products from pig-iron to farm implements,
rocks, guarded by armed sentinels. The robbers who seek refuge in it
are not obscure bandits, hidden by day, prowling by night. On the
contrary, they flaunt their shamelessness in the full light of day; they
strut through the streets, they drink at the public bars, the smoke of
their cigars is found on every hand. Moreover, these robbers are not
any Tom, Dick, and Harry; robbers though they are, they have been
entrusted with a glorious task, the task of restoring the finances of
the province of Quebec. This den of robbers is the Administration of
the Northern Railway, and the name of the chief of the band is Louis
Adelard Senecal. . . .
"The administration of the Northern Railway to-day is robbery erected
into a system. Let no one protest; the word we use does not indicate
any violence of language or any irritation of temper. We are merely
calling things by their name. When the public contracts on the railway
are awarded without competition and in return for a money consideration;
when in every undertaking carried on a percentage is levied by the
management; when the supplies used on the road are paid for at ex-
orbitant prices, and the ordinary commercial profits are shared, in more
or less equal parts between the buyer and seller; when every friend of
the government travels free on the road; if this is not robbery erected
into a system, what then is it? We speak with knowledge. We know
that with the very money drawn from the Northern Railway, M. S6ncal
has subsidized lavishly certain newspapers. . . ."
242
UNDER A NEW LEADER
wants and needs were held to be not far apart. The
budgets of 1879 and succeeding years brought marked
tariff increase, accompanied by a general substitution of
specific or compound for ad-valorem rates. At the same
time the long depression which had shadowed the whole
continent came to an end. Trade revived in the United
States, giving a fillip to industry in its Northern neigh-
bour. The building of the Canadian Pacific and other
roads created a lively demand for men and goods and
credit. Soon CanTada had passed from soup-kitchens
and bankruptcies to rising factory chimneys and feverish
speculation. Naturally, the general public gave credit
for the improvement in industrial health to the widely
advertised patent medicine which had just been taken.
They were prepared to give the N. P. a glowing testi-
monial*
Even had the chances of the attack on the N. P.
seemed fair, Blake would have been reluctant to make
the tariff the foremost issue. He had no small sym-
pathy with protection on its national side, and was pre-
pared to give it a fair trial, while criticizing its chief ex-
cresences. With this attitude Laurier agreed. He had
shared in the desire of the Parti National to give
infant industries a chance, and at this period he differed
from the out-and-out protectionists more in questions of
degree and application than in questions of principle.
The party policy was defined most fully during the ses-
sion of 1882. The Opposition assault was directed
almost wholly against specific tariff schedules. Laurier
moved the abolition of the duty designed to force the use
243
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of Nova Scotia coal in Ontario and the duty designed to
force the use of Ontario wheat and flour in Nova Scotia.
Paterson of Brant attacked the sugar monopoly. Ang-
lin criticized the duties on cottons and woolens as dis-
criminating against the poor. Burpee of St. John
showed that the duties on pig- and bar- and sheet-iron
were hampering the manufacturers to whom these wares
were raw materials. One and all, these proposals were
voted down, but the Opposition had prepared its fight-
ing ground for the coming election.
But it was neither fiscal nor constitutional questions
which bulked largest in the work of the fourth parlia-
ment. Could Canada be made one by building a tariff
wall around it ? Could Canada be made one by exalting
the powers of the central government? There was yet
another question to solve: could Canada be made one by
building a railway from coast to coast?
The outstanding federal issue in the early eighties,
the issue which Blake made most distinctively and most
vigorously his own, was the construction and financing
of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The weaknesses of
the government's bargain provided the main staple of
Liberal attack; the eventual success of the project, the
government's overwhelming retort. This dominance of
a transportation question in the country's politics was
neither unprecedented nor surprising. "Consult the
annals of Canada for the past fifty years at random,
and whatever party may be in power, what do you
find?' 1 asked a brilliant Canadian whose premature
death was a calamity to his country. "The government
244
UNDER A NEW LEADER
is building a railway, buying a railway, selling a railway,
or blocking a railway." *
Railways have counted greatly in the making of Can-
ada and in the party struggles which have reflected the
clashing interests at stake. In every new country the
railway is indispensable in opening lands to settlement
and markets to settlers, and nowhere more than in Can-
ada, with its vast distances, and the seal set by winter on
its waterways. But in Canada it has been not merely
tonnage and homestead entries that have been at stake,
but the very nation's existence. The Dominion was not
a natural unity: for thousands of miles but a fringe of
settlement a hundred or fewer miles deep along the
American border, cut in four by the jutting northward
of Maine, the thrust of the Laurentian plateau south-
ward to the Great Lakes and the barriers of the Sel-
kirks and the Rockies, it could never have been made
one or kept one unless by the railway. So it was that
when in the fifties the Grand Trunk bound the two
Canadas, for all their incompatibility of temperament,
together beyond possibility of divorce ; and when in the
seventies the Intercolonial united East and Centre, and
justified its builders by making ends meet politically
if it could not make ends meet financially, and when
in the eighties the Canadian Pacific bound East and
West and gave reality to the map's pictured unity,
the making of railways not only made and unmade
governments in the Dominion, but had a share in the
iPaul Lamarche: "Conference & la Bibliotheque Saint Sulpice."
Montreal, 1917.
245
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
making of a people, and in more than one way their
unmaking.
A way from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond
had been the dream of many a daring explorer and
fur-trader in Canada's beginnings. The search for the
North-West Passage had lured brave English seamen
to shipwreck and death on the islands of the North.
It was in the search for "La Chine" that La Salle traced
the Mississippi to the sea. La Verendrye pushed
westward almost within sight of the Rockies, and Mac-
kenzie to the shores of the Pacific, but the paths they
blazed took months to follow, in canoe and on foot,
with packhorse and Red River cart. The coming of
the railway gave a new turn to men's visions, and the
pamphleteer and the promoter built many a trans-
continental road on paper. It was not until the pros-
pect of bringing all British North America within the
Canadian federation emphasized the need, and the
achievement of the United States in building the Union
Pacific in the sixties pointed the way, that the question
entered practical politics.
Within six years after Confederation the Dominion
had staked out the lands from sea to sea for its own and
multiplied its original area tenfold. First the central
territories had been acquired from the Hudson's Bay
Company, and then in 1871 the Pacific coast colony
entered the union. Canadian statesmen were eager to
have an outlet to the Western ocean, and apprehensive
of a movement which found backing both inside and
outside British Columbia to bring the whole coast from
246
UNDER A NEW LEADER
Alaska to California under the Stars and Stripes. The
ten thousand white settlers in the new province there-
fore set their terms high, urging first and foremost the
immediate building of a transcontinental railway. It
was an audacious demand. The engineering difficulties
were great; for hundreds of miles the road would have
to run through territory where no white man had ever
passed. Canada had not yet four million people; the
United States had not built across the continent until
it had over thirty million. Yet Macdonald accepted
the terms, agreeing to begin in two years and complete
in ten a road connecting the Pacific Ocean with the
railway systems of Ontario and Quebec. He felt
strongly the national issues at stake and the confidence
that "something would turn up" which gave him his
sobriquet of "Old To-morrow" enabled him to discount
the difficulties ahead.
The Pacific railway question entered federal politics
in 1871 and never left it for a score of years. The
Opposition attacked the undertaking to complete a
transcontinental road in ten years as extravagant and
impossible; the government defended 1 it with mental
reservations. The selection of a route roused local
rivalries which found political expression. The eager-
ness of railway promoters to secure the fortunes which
American experience had shown could be reaped from
extravagant land subsidies and dummy construction
companies led to the most audacious campaign of
electoral and legislative corruption in Canada's annals
up to that time: the revelation in 1872 of the extent to
247
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
which Macdonald, Cartier, and Langevin had drawn
upon the leader of the chief Pacific syndicate, Sir Hugh
Allan, for campaign funds, drove the government out
and brought Mackenzie in. In the lean years of world-
wide depression that followed, Mackenzie's cautious
policy of piecemeal construction as finance and settle-
ment warranted brought British Columbia to the verge
of secession. On his return to power in 1878, Mac-
donald continued the policy of government construction
with the same reluctance and the same leisureliness
which had marked Mackenzie's regime, until in 1880
the revival of prosperity and speculation reawakened
private interest and the opportune appearance of a new
syndicate made possible a change of policy.
A group of Canadian and ex-Canadian business
men James J. Hill, Norman Kittson, Donald A.
Smith, George Stephen, and R. B. Angus had found
in the lavish land grants and the discouragement of
the Dutch bondholders of a thrice-looted Minnesota
railway, an opportunity for a daring stroke. They had
secured the road for a tithe of its value, and from the
outset had reaped immense returns. Their road, the
St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba, ran to the Mani-
toba boundary, where it connected with a Pacific branch
built by the Mackenzie government from Winnipeg
south. Its owners were therefore in a strategic position
to undertake construction in Canada. They were
flushed with success, and possessed of wealth or pros-
pects of wealth beyond Canadian compare. Naturally
their thoughts turned to the possibilities of the newer
248
UNDER A NEW LEADER
North-West. The Canadian government, eager to
abandon state construction, met them half-way.
"Catch them while their pockets are full," was the ad-
vice given Macdonald by his shrewd Eastern Townships
lieutenant, John Henry Pope. Negotiations were be-
gun in Ottawa in the spring of 1880 and continued in
London during the summer. The attempt to enlist
British and Continental capital in the scheme met little
success, though the inclusion of a few London, Paris,
and Berlin names enabled Sir John on his return to
Canada to announce that he had "made a good arrange-
ment with a number of capitalists, not alone in England,
but in Germany, France, the United States, and Can-
ada ... a combination of forces which will not only
be sufficient to build the road, but will have additional
influence to turn the great current of German emigra-
tion from the States to Canada" (cheers). As a mat-
ter of fact, the burden of the construction of the road
was to fall almost wholly on the Canadian investor and
the Canadian taxpayer.
In October, 1880, a formal agreement was reached
between the government and a syndicate consisting of
George Stephen, Duncan Mclntyre, John S. Kennedy,
Richard B. Angus, James J. Hill, Morton Rose and
Company, and Kohn, Reinach and Company. In
December the contract was submitted to parliament and
its terms given to the public. In return for the build-
ing and operating of a road running through Canadian
territory from Lake Nipissing to the Pacific, involv-
ing some nineteen hundred miles of new construction,
249
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the syndicate was to receive a subsidy of $25,000,000
in cash, 25,000,000 acres of selected lands in the fertile
belt, mainly in alternate sections within twenty-four
miles of the railway, and the seven hundred miles of
road then under construction by the government. They
were promised exemption from import duties on con-
struction materials, from taxes on land for twenty years
after the patents were issued, and on stock and other
property forever, and from regulation of rates until
ten per cent, was earned on the capital. They were
guaranteed also against competition from United States
roads in the West; for twenty years the Dominion was
to charter "no line of railway south of the Canadian
Pacific, except such lines as shall run southwest or to
the westward of southwest, or to be within fifteen
miles of latitude 49." The road was to be completed
by 1891.
No sooner were the terms of the contract announced
than Blake and the Opposition launched an attack upon
it in full force. That opportunity should have been
given for competitive offers from other sources under
the new conditions ; that the government was virtually
building the road and then presenting it free to the syndi-
cate ; that the financial expenditure involved would ruin
the country; that there was no certainty that the syndi-
cate could or would supply the capital required for
immediate expenditure and ultimate operation; that the
blanket choice of land and the exemption from taxation
and particularly the monopoly of construction for
twenty years would hamper and discourage settlement,
250
UNDER A NEW LEADER
were the main counts in their indictment. A vigorous
press and platform campaign was carried on during
the Christmas recess. A rival company was organized
by prominent capitalists of Liberal leanings, including
Sir William Rowland, William Hendrie, A. R. Mc-
Master, A. T. Wood, Allan Gilmour, George A. Cox,
P. Larkin, James McLaren, John Walker, John
Carruthers, and Alexander Gibson. It submitted an
offer to build the road for a smaller subsidy, to waive
the exemption and monopoly clauses, and to give the
government the : 'privilege" of postponing the Lake
Superior and mountain sections. When parliament
met in January, Blake moved a six-page omnibus
amendment and exposed every weakness of the con-
tract to galling and overwhelming fire, while his fol-
lowers in turn offered some twenty-four specific amend-
ments as his share in the comprehensive campaign of his
leader.
In a speech made in the House in December, 1880,
Mr. Laurier attacked the extravagant terms of the
syndicate bargain as the inevitable outcome of the
government's rash policy in promising the immediate
completion of the road. If the road were built gradu-
ally, as the real necessities of the country required,
there would be no need to alienate to the syndicate vast
areas of land which would better be reserved for home-
stead grants: "Perhaps if that system were followed
there might in a few years be fewer millionaires in this
country, but there would be a much greater number of
happy and contented homes." The company would be
the landlord of the North- West, a monopoly with power
251
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
to dominate the settlers either through its ownership of
land or its control of the rates on their products. The
company's exemption from taxation would retard com-
petition and cripple the development of local govern-
ments. While "a Canadian Pacific railway must be
built on Canadian soil," the construction of the link north
of Lake Superior might well be postponed for some
years. It was a delusion to imagine that a contract such
as this would end the government's obligations ; it merely
added new inconveniences and new dangers.
Neither in the country nor in the House did the
efforts of the Opposition avail. The government had
definitely committed itself before parliament met, and
its large majority backed it without flinching. The
public was more impressed than deterred by the sums
involved. There was general distrust of state con-
struction. Before the organization of the syndicate
no alternative and feasible method had been suggested.
Stephen and his associates were men of standing and
tried capacity. The money-bags of London, Paris,
Berlin, and New York were thought to be open to
them. The benefits to the country from an energetic
policy of construction were immediate; the ills the
Opposition stressed were of to-morrow. The people
welcomed a policy which was courageous and spectac-
ular. For all the desire for economy in the abstract, a
proposal to spend tens of millions of the country's and
other peoples' money on railway projects and to create
a wide demand for goods and labour of every kind
proved immensely popular; henceforth that lesson was
252
UNDER A NEW LEADER
to be so clear that every politician who ran could read it.
The government's new policy had many strong
features which the passing of time has only emphasized.
Both parties and the country as a whole favoured
private construction and operation. No government
department of that day or this could have shown the
energy and fertility of resource, made the necessary
extensions and connections not only in eastern Canada
but in the United States, undertaken the many sub-
sidiary enterprises and assumed the initiative in seeking
and building traffic which marked the operations of
the Canadian Pacific. Probably the government was
right, again, in deciding to give the contract to the
Stephen rather than to the Rowland syndicate. The
offer of the latter group was far from being the sham
the government forces charged, and its members were
hard-headed and energetic men who had made a success
of large enterprises. Yet they were not first in the
field, and it is difficult to imagine that they would have
shown more courage or persistence or carried out their
obligations more honourably than the men to whom the
task was given. The public aid granted was large, but
large aid was needed to induce investors to face the risks
not only of building through unknown wildernesses but
of operating a road for which little assured traffic was in
sight. The country assumed a heavy burden, but the
national issues at stake, the necessity of unifying the
far-flung Dominion, justified no small sacrifices.
Yet time has also brought out more clearly the
weaknesses charged against the contract. The exemp-
253
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
tion from taxation threw undue burdens on straggling
settlers, and the monopoly clause, inserted to attract
English investors, who, in Van Home's phrase, hated
a monopoly at home as they hated the devil but looked
with favour, born of experience of the working of
competitive railways, on monopoly abroad, did not
attract capital and did deter and hamper settlers. The
land bonus failed to produce capital when capital was
needed most, though it doubtless facilitated the raising
of funds in later days. The private capital put into
the road was not adequate, and in consequence the
company was compelled to go to the government for
aid again and again.
Unfortunately but inevitably the Canadian Pacific
project became a party question. It is the function of
an Opposition to oppose, a course which often leads to
factious quibbling but usually ensures responsible and
guarded action. Smarting under electoral defeat,
mindful of the earlier overthrow of the government on
a railway issue, honestly convinced of the danger and
extravagance of the new proposals, the Liberals
launched a strong attack on the whole policy. Not con-
tent with assailing the weak points of the contract,
they were led into taking a position of hostility to the
whole project. The complicated financial questions in-
volved gave Blake's critical powers a congenial task.
The government forces, convinced of the essential
soundness of the policy, with equal lack of discrimina-
tion felt called upon to defend every line and comma of
the bargain. The action of the Canadian Pacific in
254
UNDER A NEW LEADER
entering territory in eastern Canada which the Grand
Trunk had long considered its private preserve, and
the bitter quarrels that followed between the two roads,
would in any event have been reflected in politics. The
result was that for three general elections railway issues
were always prominent and more than once decisive.
Once the contract was ratified by parliament, no time
was lost in grappling with the task ahead. A remark-
able organization was built up. George Stephen, with
his indomitable persistence and unfailing faith; R. B.
Angus with his financial experience and shrewd judg-
ment; James J. Hill, until in 1882 divergence of
interests between the St. Paul and the new road led
him to retire, and William C. Van Home, whose tireless
driving force and freshness of resource marked him as
one of the great railway men and one of the outstanding
personalities of his time, were chiefly responsible for
the efficiency and the success which the road achieved.
Donald A. Smith's name had not appeared in the
directorate until 1882; it had been only two years be-
fore the formation of the syndicate that Macdonald, who
never forgave Smith for casting what proved to be the
de'ciding vote in turning him out of office on the Pacific
scandal, and Tupper, who vigorously backed his chief,
had exchanged with Smith hot and bitter words, in a
fugue of "coward," "liar," "traitor," which fills six
staccato pages of Hansard, ending with Macdonald's
shout, 'That fellow Smith is the biggest liar I ever
met"; a little time was necessary to permit the wrath
of the two Highlanders to cool to the point where they
255
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
could see how their interests ran. After 1882 Smith,
though a member of the executive, took little part in the
management ; it was not until the road was a success and
an imperial asset which might serve as a basis for an im-
perial title that he took any interest in it, half persuaded
by the chance that he drove the last spike, into believing,
as the public believed, that he had driven most of the
earlier spikes.
For the first three years the company concentrated
on the plain and prairie sections, while the government
completed the unfinished portions of the seven hundred
miles it had under way, including the line from Fort
William, on Lake Superior, to Winnipeg, and the Paci-
fic coast section from Port Moody eastward to Kam-
loops. After Van Home took hold, remarkable pro-
gress was made in construction. A time schedule was
prepared and rigidly observed ; track-layers and bridge-
gangs followed hard on the grader's heels; week after
week two and even three miles of track were laid every
day. By December, 1882, the end of steel was 965
miles from Winnipeg and only four miles short of the
summit of the Rockies.
The building of the prairie section was accompanied
by the usual wave of speculation and seeming prosper-
ity. The railway itself called for men, tools, supplies,
in endless procession. Into the West tens of thousands
of settlers and speculators poured, first by St. Paul
and later through Fort William, staking out home-
steads, filing pre-emption sections or buying Winnipeg
256
UNDER A NEW LEADER
or Brandon town lots to unload on the tenderfoot fol-
lowing. In Ontario, those who did not go west bought
town lots or sold farm machinery or organized coloniza-
tion companies to buy and people the land the govern-
ment offered for a dollar an acre. In 1882 sixty thou-
sand settlers swarmed into Manitoba, and nearly three
million acres were entered by homesteading, pre-emp-
tion, or sale.
It was in this atmosphere that the general election of
1882 was fought. It was a C. P. R. election, as 1878
had been a N. P. election. The Liberal leaders found
it difficult to get a hearing. It was useless to question
the financial strength of a company which was setting
new world records for rapidity of construction. It was
wasted breath to attack the government's lavish terms
before men who were pocketing real or paper profits
from the activities those grants had caused or primed.
The Canadian Pacific Railway Company itself was not,
so far as was known, a participant in the campaign, but
its seemingly assured success was an overwhelming
argument in support of the administration. The
Liberals had attacked both the N. P. and the C. P. R.,
and at this stage the success of both appeared to vindi-
cate Macdonald's policy.
Before appealing to the country, the government
made assurance doubly sure by a measure which the
Liberals denounced as a colossal gerrymander. The
decennial census of 1881 had shown numerous shifts in
the balance of population and rendered necessary a re-
257
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
distribution of seats in the federal parliament. The
opportunity was improved to the full in the Redistribu-
tion Bill. The bill dealt almost exclusively with On-
tario and Manitoba, the only provinces where the ratio
of population to that of the pivotal province, Quebec,
had materially changed. Under cover of granting On-
tario four additional representatives, the boundaries of
fifty electoral divisions were redrawn, with complete
disregard of county boundaries or consistent principles.
There was no question that the purpose was, in Mac-
donald's phrase, "to hive the Grits," and to snatch for
the party in power an unfair advantage at the polls.
Blake riddled the inconsistencies and denounced the in-
justice of the project, but the majority paid no heed.
The gerrymander was forced through. Macdonald had
won; Blake had lost. What was more serious, parlia-
ment and the country had lost : for many a year the level
of political life in Canada was lowered by this triumph
of unscrupulous partisanship.
The general elections were held on June 20, 1882.
Neither Blake nor Laurier had any expectation of win-
ning, but they hoped that the government's majority
would be cut. The result left the parties virtually as
they were. The government once more carried two
seats to one, with a majority in every province except
Prince Edward Island and Manitoba. Quebec contin-
ued to be the chief Conservative stronghold, returning
three Conservatives to one Liberal, whereas in Ontario
the popular vote was evenly divided, though the gerry-
258
>
UNDER A NEW LEADER
mander gave the government threx seats to two. 1 None
of the government leaders were defeated; among the
Liberals, Cartwright, Mills, Huntington, Anglin,
Smith, Jones, Laird, and Laflamme had fallen. Mr.
Laurier was re-elected by a safe but decreased majority
in Quebec East. The country was too prosperous to
seek a change. Manufacturers, shareholders in North-
west colonization companies, dealers in railway sup-
plies, wished to let well enough alone. As for the Can-
adian Pacific, the country wanted the road, and did not
care to read the fine print in the contract. Depres-
sion had killed the Mackenzie government; prosperity
gave the Macdonald government a new lease of life.
1878 1882
Conservatives
Liberals
Conservatives
Liberals
Prince Edward
Island 5
1
4
2
Nova Scotia
14
7
15
6
New Brunswick
5
11
10
6
Quebec
Ontario
45
59
20
29
48
54
17
38
Manitoba
3
1
2
3
British Columbia
6
6
Total 137 69 139 72
259
CHAPTER VI
RAIL AND KIEL
Blake, the Orange Order, and Home Rule The Canadian Pacific
in Difficulties The Strike of the Bleus The Crisis Surmounted
The Prairie in Transition The Half-Breed Grievances Kiel's
Career The Storm Breaks The Hanging of Kiel The Parlia-
mentary Debate The Issue in Ontario and Quebec Saskatch-
ewan Muskets Laurier's Indictment Before Ontario Audiences
The Aftermath.
THE parliament which met in February, 1883, and
was dissolved in January, 1887, was the fifth
since Confederation, the fourth under Macdon-
ald's premiership, the second with Blake leading the
Opposition. In its four sessions the tariff counted
little; for the earlier years the Canadian Pacific domi-
nated discussion, and at the close the Franchise Act and
the Riel rebellion.
Macdonald changed but did not strengthen his cab-
inet. Sir Charles Tupper succeeded Sir A. T. Gait as
Canadian High Commissioner in London, endeavour-
ing at the same time to hold his post as Minister of Rail-
ways. He was keen to try his hand at the diplomatic
tasks opening up in Britain and the Continent, but did
not wish to be side-tracked at home, and so for two
years he shuttled back and forth across the Atlantic.
John Carling, John Costigan, Frank Smith, and A. W.
260
RAIL AND KIEL
McLelan were the new men, with J. A. Chapleau in
J. A. Mousseau's stead.
After his first disappointment at the size of the gov-
ernment's majority, Blake was heartened by the rise of
issues which gave the scope and promise he desired.
The intricacies of the financing of the Canadian Pacific
particularly appealed to him, and he made himself mas-
ter of the situation. The only drawback to his interest
was that he was so much the master that nothing was left
for his lieutenants but to repeat some of the countless
points he had made. Not until the franchise debate
toward the parliament's end was a satisfactory division
of labour arranged and full use made of the abundant
capacity in the ranks behind him. Outside of the
House, Blake carried on an active and persistent cam-
paign. Now or never, he believed, the government
must be overthrown.
Laurier continued to divide his time between his law
practice, his library, and the House. Arthabaska still
gave a pleasant home and a comfortable practice; he
found time in 1882 to perform the onerous duties of
mayor. In the House he took part in the debates
rarely, and only on the major issues. Outside he spoke
frequently, mainly in Quebec. He joined Blake in a
speaking tour through the Eastern Townships in the
summer of 1883 and Cartwright in Montreal later. At
Mercier banquets, at St. Jean-Baptiste celebrations, at
the Club National's annual dinner, he discussed politics
and public life with a powej* of detachment, of seeing
woods as well as the trees, of scrupulous fairness com-
261
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
bined with vigorous condemnation, which gave him a
place apart in the life of Quebec.
The provincial situation gave ground for reasoned
hope. In Quebec, the bitter fight between the Chap-
leau and the Castor wings of the Conservatives and the
indefatigable assaults of Mercier were undermining the
government's position. To the older Liberals, more
attached to principles than to office, it was, however,
not wholly satisfactory to see the way to a Liberal vic-
tory being paved by an alliance between Mercier and
the most irreconcilable among the Castors. A reorgani-
zation of the government under Dr. J. J. Ross, gave
somewhat more weight to the Castor wing, but did not
wholly heal the breach.
In Ontario, Mowat was again victorious in the gen-
eral elections of 1883, though with a reduced majority.
Mowat forced the fighting on the provincial-rights
issue, called a Liberal convention which proclaimed un-
dying resistance to jealous premiers and jealous Bleus,
fought the boundary case and its sequel through in the
courts, won out on the control of liquor-licensing, and
wore out Macdonald's resistance by passing again and
again his Rivers and Streams Bill. Handicapped by
the unpopular side in these repeated controversies, Mer-
edith sought to change the ground. Each party ac-
cused the other of angling for the Irish Catholic vote.
Certainly the relations between Mowat and Arch-
bishop Lynch were extremely cordial and the influence
of the palace was thrown to the Liberal side. On the
other hand, a frank if not flagrant bid for support was
262
RAIL AND KIEL
made by the Conservative forces, seemingly not without
Meredith's knowledge, by the issue on the eve of the
1883 election of a pamphlet, "Facts for the Irish Elec-
tors," declaring that the Conservative party had been
"the faithful sentinel of our interests," and that Mowat
had always been an enemy and Meredith a friend.
After the election the Opposition swung around and
struck for the ultra-Protestant vote. Was not Arch-
bishop Lynch Oliver Mowat's father confessor? Had
not the government submitted the "Ross Bible," a col-
lection of Scripture readings for public schools, pre-
pared under the direction of the Minister of Education,
George W. Ross, to Archbishop Lynch, who had sug-
gested the substitution of "which" for "who" in the
Lord's Prayer, and did not all Protestants, in the words
of a fervent orator, stand for "the Bible, the whole
damned Bible"? Had not the same sinister influence
resulted in the exclusion of Scott's "Marmion" from the
school curriculum because of its assumed reflections on
the Church? Meredith himself did not relish "riding
George Brown's old Protestant horse," but many of his
followers had no such scruple.
In the federal house a somewhat parallel situation
arose. By accident or by design Blake took a stand on
two questions, Irish Home Rule and the incorporation
of the Orange Order, which was calculated to win the
sympathies of the Catholic and particularly the Irish
Catholic voter. Macdonald's power had rested for
many a year on the votes of Catholic Quebec; there
could have been no complaint had Blake deliberately
263
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
sought a similar support in other provinces. Yet, so far
as that subtle mind may be understood, it seems clear
that Blake's stand was taken because of deep and sincere
conviction.
The Loyal Orange Association, which had grown up
in Ulster as a secret society seeking to perpetuate "the
glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and
good King William who saved us from popery, slavery,
knavery, brass money and wooden shoes," and inciden-
tally to maintain Protestant ascendancy, was stronger
in Canada than in any other country outside Ireland it-
self. Particularly in Ontario, it was overwhelmingly
Conservative in sympathies. The leaders of the order,
therefore, were not unmindful of the embarrassment
which might be caused a Grit government when in 1873
they pressed in the Ontario house for incorporation.
The bills were passed by a slight majority and with a
divided cabinet, but Mowat had them reserved for the
governor-general's pleasure, only to have Macdonald
decline to take any such responsibility and to send them
back to Toronto. In the following session Mowat in-
troduced and passed a general measure whereunder any
benevolent society might find incorporation, but the
Orangemen pressed again and again for more direct
recognition. Then in 1883, with much division of opin-
ion, they sought in the Dominion house a general incor-
porating act which would give them standing and the
right to hold property in every province. The govern-
ment induced its sponsors to drop the bill, but it came
up again in 1884. Blake was not content to give a
264
RAIL AND KIEL
silent vote. Speaking appropriately on March 17, he
declared that the matter was wholly for the provinces,
that no secret society should be given state recognition
and that the Orange order was merely a disguised
branch of the Tory party. The measure was thrown
out by the Liberal and Quebec vote, and not again
brought forward. Blake was lectured, pamphleted,
attacked from all quarters, but he held to his position.
On the Home Rule issue, Blake felt still more keenly.
A Protestant of Protestants, evangelical in all his tra-
ditions and surroundings, great-grandson of a man who
had been killed fighting the insurgents of '98, he had
yet been brought by his study of Irish history to an in-
tense and abiding sympathy with Irish aspirations and
a vigorous condemnation of the arrogance and stupidity
of English policy. Now that Parnell and Gladstone
were making Home Rule a fighting issue, he and the
great majority of men of Southern Irish descent in
Canada felt that Canada should have a word to say in
the settlement. They met with stubborn opposition.
Ulstermen were numerous and well organized; the mem-
ories of Fenian plots and Fenian Raid fiascoes were
strong in Canada; besides, if Canada claimed the right
of self-government, why not permit the United King-
dom to enjoy the same privilege? When in 1882 John
Costigan, Macdonald's leading Irish-Catholic sup-
porter, introduced in the Commons a resolution advo-
cating Home Rule, Blake supported it vigorously, and
condemned Costigan for his weakness in consenting to
water down his original resolution to meet Macdonald's
265
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
objections. When Lord Kimberley, Secretary for the
Colonies, snubbed the Canadian parliament frigidly for
its presumption, Blake declined to be snubbed by a Kim-
berley, and returned to the charge. In 1886 he raised
the question in a powerful speech, and once more put the
Canadian parliament on record.
But these were only side issues. In the new parlia-
ment, the Canadian Pacific continued to be the foremost
question. The going was now becoming harder for the
railway and incidentally for the government. It had
been comparatively easy to build a road through the
prairie, and though the plains to the west presented
some engineering difficulties, and it was necessary to
transport supplies long distances, the obstacles hitherto
had been in no way unprecedented. But now the com-
pany was facing the mountain and Lake Superior sec-
tions. Its engineers had to find a way through the
seemingly hopeless tangle of mountain peaks in the Sel-
kirk range which faced the Kicking Horse Pass, to
carve a track down the canons of the Columbia and to
guard the line against the threatened avalanche of
mountain snows. North of Lake Superior they had to
bridge a way over swamp and muskeg so voracious that
to-day in one muskeg area seven layers of Canadian
Pacific rails are buried, one below the other, and to blast
a way through miles of Laurentian rock so massive and
unyielding that it was necessary to build a dynamite fac-
tory on the spot and to spend half to three-quarters of a
million a mile on more than one stretch of road.
At the same time the promise of rapid settlement and
266
\
RAIL AND KIEL
development of the West faded away. Frost and
drought fell on the land and settlers who had not yet
learned the ways of the country reaped little for their
pains. The Manitoba boom collapsed, homesteaders
abandoned their holdings, mushroom cities fell away
again into prairie, colonization companies were wound
up and Eastern speculators saw their profits shrivel to
nothingness. Homestead entries, which reached 7,500
in 1882, fell to one-half that number in 1883, and one-
fourth in 1885. Later, the North- West rebellion, the
discontent produced by monopoly railway rates and the
high price of farm implements, the counter attractions
of Minnesota and Dakota and the adverse propaganda
of rival railways deterred settlement. Not for a score
of years was the West to come into its own and justify
the faith of those who had urged and those who had
shared in its development. With construction tasks
ahead which would call for tremendous outlay and with
the West and Western lands condemned by the sudden
slackening of settlement, the Canadian Pacific in 1883
faced a series of financial crises which all but brought
it to bankruptcy.
The company's situation was made more difficult by
the necessity of acquiring feeders and connections, par-
ticularly in the East. t It was realized from the begin-
ning that so long as the Canadian Pacific remained a
single-track road which began in the wilderness near
Lake Nipissing and ended on the untenanted Pacific it
was not likely to secure paying traffic. The manage-
ment therefore sought to build or buy or lease branches
267
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
in the thickly settled territories of the East which soon
equalled in mileage the whole main line. The greater
part of this expansion was effected through leases or the
organization of subsidiary companies, involving no great
drain on the treasury of the parent road. Yet some
mortgaging of the company's funds was involved, and
what was perhaps more serious, the Grand Trunk was
roused by this invasion of its preserves to assail its young
rival at home and block it in the money markets across
the sea.
The financing of the Canadian Pacific presented sev-
eral unique features. The country contributed the
major part of the funds required for construction. It
presented the company with a clear gift of seven hun-
dred miles of road, which cost the government over $35,-
000,000 to survey and build but undoubtedly was worth
much less to the company. It granted a cash subsidy of
$25,000,000, paid as earned, a larger proportion being
assigned per mile to the mountain and Lake Superior
sections than to the plains. It granted a land subsidy
of 25,000,000 acres of selected land. The land was not
immediately available; the competition of the free
homestead land alongside, and the campaign of depreci-
ation carried on by the Grand Trunk offset the energetic
endeavours of the company to find settlers and a market
for its holdings. Bonds issued on the security of the
land grant met little greater response. By 1885 some
$11,000,000 had been secured from this source.
The amount of private capital invested during con-
268
RAIL AND KIEL
struction was less than the promoters expected and less
than the interests of both the company and the country
required. The millions of English, French, and Ger-
man capitalists proved a mirage, and the original
nucleus of the syndicate, the St. Paul group, found
themselves compelled to shoulder a greater part of the
burden than they had foreseen. In seeking capital, to
an extent unprecedented in railway history they relied
upon the sale of shares, and avoided the issuing of
bonds. This policy was adopted deliberately as a result
of close study of the fate of many United States roads
which had found themselves hopelessly waterlogged by
excessive bond issues, and had been forced by foreclos-
ure out of the original shareholders' hands. If it suc-
ceeded, fixed charges would be kept low until earning
power was well developed^ Whether or not it could
succeed was more doubtful: to market the stock at a
price which would bring into the treasury funds compar-
able to what could have been secured by the sale of
bonds was no easy task. The first issues of stock were
marketed at a heavy discount. Of the $100,000,000
authorized, the first $5,000,000 was subscribed by the
syndicate at par, and the next $10,000,000 at 25; $50,-
000,000 additional was sold privately or through Ameri-
can bankers at prices netting about 50; from the $65,-
000,000 stock issued during the construction period
about $31,000,000 came into the treasury. It was
partly with the intention of making the stock attractive
that the company paid interest on it, water and all, from
269
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the beginning. The Railway Act permitted the pay-
ment of interest during construction, but not to exceed
six per cent, on the actual investment.
Toward the close of 1883 the company seemed to have
reached the end of its tether. Funds were badly
needed, and investors were coy. To meet this situa-
tion, the executive, fortified by the advice of New York
and London financiers, adopted the precarious polidy of
using current funds to secure future dividends and thus
render the stock more attractive to prudent purchasers.
They undertook to purchase from the Dominion gov-
ernment a guaranty of a three per cent, dividend for ten
years on the stock already issued, by depositing $16,-
000,000, the cost of such a terminable annuity calculated
at four per cent. Over half of this sum was deposited
in cash, and security given for the early payment of the
balance. A similar provision was to be made on the
sale of any part of the remaining $35,000,000 of unis-
sued stock. This dividend might be supplemented
from any current surplus available, but for ten years
shareholders would be assured at least of their three per
cent.
The policy was of doubtful expediency at the best.
It meant locking up for dividends funds that were ur-
gently needed for construction. It was not calculated
to reassure investors as to the earnings of the road once
the ten-year guaranty expired. It was open to serious
criticism from the point of view of the people who were
advancing the main share of the funds. What would
have been the outcome of the guaranty policy, had it
270
RAIL AND KIEL
been persistently followed, is matter for conjecture.
Scarcely had the arrangement been made when the
smash of the Northern Pacific sent all Western railway
stocks down in sympathy, and Canadian Pacific sold
lower than before the guaranty. Clearly, rescue would
not come from the general investing public:
In this emergency the Canadian members of the syn-
dicate gave of their cash and credit to the utmost.
Stephen and Smith pledged their St. Paul and other
stocks in Montreal and New York to make advances to
the road, but to no lasting purpose. There seemed only
one recourse left,- -the sil'ent partner who had sunk so
much in the road that perchance he could not refuse to
advance the remainder. They determined to ask the
government for a loan of $22,500,000. Twenty-odd
million, it must be remembered, meant infinitely more
in the frugal eighties than it meant in later years when
heady prosperity and particularly unsettling war and
rash inflation had changed all standards. In the eight-
ies it meant nearly a whole year's revenue of the federal
government.
Late in the winter of 1883 Stephen, Angus, Mcln-
tyre, Van Home, and the C. P. R. solicitor, J. J. C.
Abbott, went down to Ottawa to seek to convince Sir
John of their and the country's necessity. * They drove
out at night to Earnscliffe, and put their case before
him, making it plain that every other resource had been
exhausted and that the sum they asked was the least re-
i The writer is indebted to the late Sir William Van Home for the de-
tails of this incident.
271
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
quired to see them through. Macdonald heard them
patiently, but gave no comfort : "Gentlemen, I need not
detain you long. You might as well ask for the planet
Jupiter. I would not give you the millions you ask,
and if I did the cabinet would not agree, and if they
did it would smash the party. Now, gentlemen, I did
not have much sleep last night, and I should like to get
to bed. I am sorry, but there is no use discussing the
question further." They tried to argue the matter,
but he would not listen. Somewhat apprehensive,
from the beginning, of the greatness of the country's
risk, sharing in the reaction that had come with the
slackening of settlement and the bankruptcy of
^Western roads, not convinced that this application
would be the last, fully aware of the opening a further
loan would give an eager Opposition, Macdonald felt
the time had come to call a halt. He bowed the
petitioners out and went to bed.
Blue and dejected and silent, Stephen and his asso-
ciates drove back to town, to wait for the four-o'clock
morning train to Montreal. They decided to spend
the hours that intervened at the old Bank of Montreal
cottage. Here John Henry Pope, who was acting
Minister of Railways during Tupper's absence in
England, had rooms. They found him lying on a
couch, reading, with a strong habitant cigar in his
mouth and a glass of whiskey at his side. He turned
over, offered cigars, put his feet up on a chair, and
questioned, "Well, what's up?" Stephen told him
briefly, while Mclntyre danced about excitedly. Pope
272
George Stephen
Later Lord Mount Stephen
First President
Richard B. Angus
Vice-President
Sir William C. Van Home
General Manager and later President
Donald Smith
Later Lord Strathcona
Director
BUILDERS OF THE CANADIAN PACIFIC
RAIL AND KIEL
listened, got up slowly, lighted another cigar, put on his
old otter cap and shaggy coat, called a carriage it was
then after one o'clock and departed, with the words,
"Wait till I get back." An hour and a half later he
returned, entered without a word, kicked off his rub-
bers, hung up cap and coat, poured out another glass
of whiskey, and lighted a cigar, all with deliberation and
an impassive face, while his visitors waited, with their
hearts in their mouths, for the fateful word. "Well,
boys," he broke the silence at last, "he '11 do it. Stay
over till to-morrow." Pope had roused Macdonald out
of bed and put the case before him with the intimacy of
an old friend and the effectiveness of a shrewd party
counsellor. "The day the Canadian Pacific busts," he
summed it up, "the Conservative party busts the day
after."
The deputation saw Sir John and his colleagues the
next morning. Macdonald was grouchy; Alexander
Campbell opposed any further aid ; Tilley, the Minister
of Finance, wanted to take the road over. Pope
fought it through in council, and the agreement was
made. It still remained to convince the party. For
this no half-hearted convictions would suffice. Tupper
was cabled to return from England. He approved the
cabinet's decision, and stormed it through caucus, ap-
pealing to the members as party men, whose fortunes
were bound up with the road's success, and as Cana-
dians, who could not allow a great national enterprise to
fail within sight of completion. To give the appear-
ance of a quid pro quo, the company was to agree to
273
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
complete the transcontinental line by May 1, 1886, five
years in advance of the time provided in the contract.
The majority appeared to be convinced, but danger was
not yet over. The Quebec Bleus determined to take
advantage of the government's straits to force through
another railway deal which had hitherto hung fire.
The Conservative administration in Quebec was in
financial difficulties, as a result of extravagance and
jobbery. It had put itself in funds once by the sale of
the provincial North Shore Railway, from Quebec to
Montreal and Ottawa, to a local syndicate and eventu-
ally to the Canadian Pacific. The policy announced
by the Dominion government in 1882 of subsidizing new
roads which though wholly within one province might be
considered of general advantage seemed to open a way
for further relief. The provincial government and the
Bleu members at Ottawa demanded that this policy be
made retroactive so far as the North Shore line was con-
cerned. The cabinet had refused. Now the Bleus had
the government at their mercy. They withdrew from
the House during the debates on the Pacific resolutions,
meeting in conference by themselves, while M. Mous-
seau and his colleagues in the provincial administration
came to Ottawa to join in presenting the ultimatum.
Finally, Macdonald capitulated and the strike was
called off. The government's majority was safe, and
the Opposition, if it could not be answered, was at least
outvoted.
When the resolution granting the province of Quebec
$2,394,000, "in consideration of their having con-
274
RAIL AND KIEL
structed the railway from Quebec to Ottawa ... a
work of national and not merely provincial utility," was
before the House, Blake moved and Laurier seconded
an amendment deprecating singling out Quebec for
such aid when other provinces had equally devoted large
sums to building roads of national utility. Laurier
particularly warned the members from Quebec against
the danger of coercive action:
It is always a fault on the part of a minority in any legis-
lative assembly to throw obstacles in the way of a government
in order to force them to act against their will. . . . All ques-
tions coming before this House should be decided according
to justice, equity and fairness. If the Pacific resolutions were
just and reasonable, it was their duty to adopt them; if they
were unjust and unreasonable, it was their duty to object
to them. There is in the Dominion no body of men who should
always be so careful to adhere to principles of justice as the
Quebec contingent in this House, which must always be in
a minority.
For this stand, Laurier was warmly attacked in the
province of Quebec, but he held a great op en-air meet-
ing in the Champ de Mars, in Quebec city, and was tri-
umphantly endorsed by his constituents; his old school
friend and later political antagonist, Israel Tarte, editor
of the chief Quebec Conservative organ, "Le Canadien,"
who was for the moment at outs with his party, joined
in his defence.
The Pacific crisis had passed for the moment, but
soon it reappeared. The loan was quickly exhausted in
rapid and costly construction. The government, as
security for the advance, had taken a mortgage not only
275
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
on the main line but on all the company's interests in the
Eastern branch lines, their unsold stock, and their land
grant. When further funds were needed, it was found
impossible to borrow or to sell stock with a blanket
mortgage covering every asset of the road. Once more
in the winter of 1884-85, the directors approached the
government. They had been forced at last to abandon
their policy of relying on stock rather than on bond
issues. They requested that the unissued $35,000,000
stock in the government's hands be cancelled, that an
equal amount of five per cent, first-mortgage bonds be
issued, and that the government should accept a portion
of this issue as its security, leaving the balance free
for disposal in open market. The government refused
any further aid or variation. Early in January Van
Home met Pope: "Why not put us out of our misery?
Let us go off into some corner and bust?" Pope replied
that the government was too much afraid of what
Louis Kiel and his half-breed followers in the North-
West might do, to undertake any further entangle-
ments. They feared a dangerous outbreak in the
Spring. Kiel's emissaries were out stirring up the
Indian tribes. When the grass grew, the Indians would
move. Three thousand men could cope with them at
the start; later it might take two years and fifty thou-
sand men. "I wish your C. P. R. was through." Van
Home had had experience in military transportation
during the Civil War. "When could your regiments
be ready?" "The first or second week in March."
Van Home told Pope and later the council that he could
276
RAIL AND KIEL
get regiments through from Kingston or Quebec to
Qu'Appelle on the Saskatchewan in ten days. The
members of council did not credit him. "Has any one
a better plan?" asked Macdonald. None had, and Van
Home was told to prepare. There was a stretch of
two hundred and fifty miles between Dog Lake and
Nipigon, which did not seem passable; in half of it no
tracks were laid, and where rails were, rolling-stock
was lacking. Yet six days after the first troops, the
batteries from Kingston and Quebec, had left Ottawa,
on March 28, they were in Winnipeg and could have
been in Qu'Appelle in seven. When the troops reached
the first gap of forty miles they were bundled into
sleighs and driven along the tote-roads through the
woods. Then came a stretch of ninety miles with rails
laid but only three locomotives and forty flat-cars.
The sleighs and teams were loaded on the cars and the
whole outfit carried through the bitterly cold. Lake
Superior snows. Then a trackless gap, then a flat-car
stretch, and so on to the end. In more than one place
rails had been laid down over the snow and ice. Camps
and provisions had been supplied along the way. It
was a triumph of energy and organization. In 1870
it had taken Wolseley and his men more than two
months to reach Fort Garry; had the same delay oc-
curred in 1885, and assuming also that the government
had persisted in its supine neglect of the grievances
which gave Riel his opportunity, the half-breed rebellion
and the Indian rising would have proved infinitely more
dangerous and destructive. Why, knowing the danger,
277
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the government took no effective steps to check it in
advance, is another question.
The national service thus conspicuously rendered by
the Canadian Pacific made the government more ame-
nable to its requests and the Opposition less vigorous in
its resistance. Van Home even suggested that the
Canadian Pacific ought to erect a monument to Louis
Kiel. The government agreed to cancel the $35,000,-
000 stock and authorized the issue of a similar amount
of bonds. For the thirty millions which were due it
from the company, including the 1884 loan and the
balance due on the 1883 guaranty agreement, it was
arranged to accept $20,000,000 first-mortgage bonds,
and the unsold twenty million acres of the land grant
as full security. Of the $15,000,000 bonds thus avail-
able for sale, the company was to deposit $8,000,000
as security for a temporary one-year loan of $5,000,000.
Yet the company was not yet out of the woods. The
Opposition must register its criticisms and point to
the confirmation of its earlier prophecies, while the
government was not prepared to carry through the
necessary legislation until the success of other measures
was assured.
All that could be said against the government's
policy, in this and previous years, was said in an ex-
traordinarily comprehensive and powerful speech by
Blake, which was said to have taken seven weeks to
prepare and seven hours to deliver. Replying to Pope
and Chapleau, who had moved the government resolu-
tions, Blake asked why they had neglected to refer to
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the acquisition by the Canadian Pacific of the Lauren-
tian road, in which Mr. Chapleau's friends were in-
terested, or the International, equally close to Mr.
Pope; scored the lack of detailed information in the
company's financial reports, the use of company funds
to sustain artificially the stock of the Canada North-
West Land Company, and the bargain, on terms not
revealed, with a construction company in which the
railway directors were interested; attacked the policy
of rapid and reckless construction, increasing cost, scat-
tering settlement, and stimulating speculation; insisted
that the company's difficulties were due to its own
peculiar financial policies; calculated the aid given by
the government, in cash subsidy, loans, and the proceeds
of lands or land bonds sold, omitting completed govern-
ment road and unsold lands, to the close of 1884, at
$60,000,000, and the cost up to that time of the con-
struction and equipment of the main line at only
$58,000,000; declared that the $37,000,000 raised by
the company from private sources had gone half into
Eastern expansion and connections and half into pay-
ing or securing dividends; calculated that up to Feb-
ruary, 1886, the company would have paid out in
dividends or set aside to pay future dividends $24,500,-
000, which was exactly the sum invested, excluding the
last pending issue of $10,000,000 stock, disposed of for
half its par value, so that "in substance the proceeds
of the stock are divided among the stockholders; we
are to raise money to build the road, and the country
is to pay tolls for all time to meet the dividends on
279
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the stock so divided"; and concluded by demanding
that the company, instead of seeking $15,000,000 fresh
money, should take back the $14,000,000 left in the
government's hands for dividends, and put it into the
building of the road.
D'Alton McCarthy, in the only other speech in the
debate which was at all comparable to Blake's in force
and keenness, replied that the expenditure on Eastern
branches was indispensable and rightly considered a
part of the original plan; that the money paid out or
set aside for dividends as yet was only $20,000,000 and
that some $7,000,000 of this was furnished by the
government and set aside as a charge against the road;
that the guaranty arrangement, while extraordinary,
was made in good faith and on expert advice as the
only feasible way of securing further funds; and that
the money thus set aside had been entrusted by the
government to the Bank of Montreal for the payment
of dividends, that shares had been sold on the strength
of this agreement, and that the money -could not be
withdrawn without repudiation and breaking of faith.
It was, however, not the Opposition's argument but
the government's delays that worried the company.
Though the government had a majority of nearly two
to one in the Commons, they were not finding it easy to
jam through the long and contentious programme of
legislation they had prepared. The session was the
longest in Canadian annals, lasting from January 29
to July 20. Aside from the North- West rebellion and
the Canadian Pacific issue, other questions proved con-
280
RAIL AND KIEL
tentious, prohibition of liquor traffic, civil-service reform,
subsidies to minor railways, and particularly the
Franchise Bill, devised to substitute in federal elections
a uniform federal property franchise, based on lists
prepared by federal agents, for the provincial franchise,
based on lists prepared by provincial and, incidentally,
Liberal, agencies. Seven-hour speeches, an unbroken
three-days' sitting, and ninety-three divisions of the
House, were features of the contest.
To no one did the session appear so long as to the
directors of the Canadian Pacific. Macdonald insisted
that the railway legislation would not be passed until
the Franchise Bill was out of the way; he would not
risk the postponement of a measure on which he had
so set his heart, and considered it good tactics to com-
pel all other seekers of legislation to use their influence
to clear the way. The middle of July came, and the
railway was in hard straits. Its credit and the credit
of its backers had again been stretched to the breaking
point. The credit of its friends had been utilized;
Frank Smith, who besides being a cabinet minister
in Ottawa was a wholesale merchant in Toronto, had
given credit for essential supplies beyond the point of
safety. A payment of four hundred thousand dollars
had to be made before three o'clock on July 11, to
a creditor who declined to accept any renewal. The
Canadian Pacific, which in later 1 days could borrow
at will by the hundred million, could not meet this
claim. Its directors faced a receivership and loss of
control. At twelve o'clock the bill passed and the road
281
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
was saved. Stephen went to London, and without dif-
ficulty floated the $15,000,000 bonds through the
Barings. The $5,000,000 borrowed from the govern-
ment was returned without being used, the company
incidentally finding almost as much difficulty in giving
it back as in securing it, since Mackenzie Bowell,
who was acting premier during Sir John's absence in
England, could not understand a railway paying back
a loan ahead of time, and suspected a trap.
On November 7, 1885, the last spike in the main
line was driven. A train carrying Smith, Van Home,
and Sandford Fleming had come through from Mont-
real to Craigellachie, in Eagle Pass in the Gold Range,
where eastward and westward track-layers were to meet.
Van Home had determined there would be no ceremo-
nious speeches or driving of golden spikes. Less than
two years before, the Northern Pacific had celebrated
its completion by organizing an excursion, at a cost
of a third of a million, to take part in driving a last
golden spike, and as the train laden with investors and
brokers and champagne passed through what seemed
to the watchers from the car windows the hopelessly
arid deserts of Montana, on a scorching summer day,
the guests had one by one slipped out at passing stations
to use their free telegram blanks to order their stock
unloaded ; and scarcely had the golden spike been driven
when the road was bankrupt. But Smith would drive
a spike, if an iron one, and Van Home gave him his way.
The train passed on to Port Moody, crossing the con-
tinent in exactly five days.
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RAIL AND KIEL
To the general public, the great task was over. To
the men in control, it was only beginning. Ballast had
to be laid, wooden trestles filled with earth or replaced
with stone or steel, curves straightened, grades less-
ened, rolling-stock increased, and terminals built or ex-
tended. What was more difficult, traffic had to be built
up. For a thousand miles the road ran through moun-
tain range and rocky waste. Even in plains and
prairie, settlement had gone little way : when the Cana-
dian Pacific began construction, the white settlers in
the belt of twenty miles on each side of the line between
Portage la Prairie and Kamloops, some twelve hun-
dred miles, could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
To find business the company capitalized its scenery,
carried buffalo bones while waiting for wheat, pushed
its Ontario and Quebec extensions, developed traffic at
both United States ends of the line, sought settlers in
England, aided industries at strategic points, organ-
ized a loyal and efficient staff, and by unremitting effort
met operating expenses, paid a dividend, and accu-
mulated a surplus every year from the beginning. The
company's obligations to the government were promptly
met. In March, 1886, the cash advanced upon the
security of the $20,000,000 bonds was repaid, and for
the balance of the indebtedness the government agreed
to take back some six million acres of the land grant
at $1.50 per acre. By the following year the company
was in uncontrolled possession of its property, and the
prophecies of repudiation confounded.
The Canadian Pacific was not a vital issue in the
283
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
general election of 1887. The road was built; the
loans had been repaid. What would be its measure
of eventual success, whether the prophecies of monopoly
and stagnation would come true, were matters for
future accounting. Issues that appealed more to the
average voter had arisen. And yet the Canadian
Pacific was not out of politics, as the election of 1891
was to make clear.
Now in the middle eighties the sudden flare of armed
rebellion and bloody conflict drove all thought of
abstruse constitutional disputes and tariff or railway
issues from men's minds. The insurrection of the
French- Canadian half-breeds on the banks of the Sas-
katchewan in 1885 put the newly cemented unity of
the Dominion to a perilous test. And hardly had the
hasty levies of Canadian volunteers restored order in
the West, when in the East a yet severer strain came
with the outburst once more of the sectional and racial
and religious strife which Confederation had sought to
allay.
Canada had had its share of the difficulties that face
a colonizing people in contact with a less advanced
civilization. In dealing with the Indian tribes who held
the land when the white man came, no small success had
been attained. The British government had set a
splendid example of just and considerate treatment,
and Canadian governments fully maintained that
policy. The country was spared the countless breaches
of faith which marked the dealings of the United States
284
RAIL AND KIEL
with its Indian wards, and spared the wars and mas-
sacres which followed as retribution. But in dealing
with the half-breeds of the Western plains the Cana-
dian government displayed neither understanding nor
diligence, and the penalty was paid in the disturbances
on the Red River in 1870 and on the Saskatchewan in
1885.
When the Dominion took over from the Hudson's
Bay Company the vast Western empire which had long
been held as a hunting-preserve, Canadians hastened to
enter the promised land. Local administrations were
set up, roads and railways built, lands surveyed, home-
stead policies adopted. It was recognized that the land
was not wholly masterless. Tens of thousands of Indi-
ans, Cree and Blackfoot, Piegan and Sarcee, Chipe-
wyan and Ojibway, still roamed the plains. Treaties
were made to extinguish the Indian title, granting the
Indians in return ample reserves and moderate annui-
ties. So far, so good, but equal care was not taken to
help the half-breed adjust himself to the new conditions.
The half-breed descendants of the French or Scotch or
more rarely English hunters and traders of early days
and the Indian women with whom they mated, formed
communities distinct alike from Indian and from white.
They manned the canoes, drove the Red River carts,
hunted the buffalo, and gathered the furs for company
and private trader, and in more ways than one linked
the peoples from which they were sprung. A simple
people, of few needs, reckless and light-hearted, they
were none too well prepared for the new way of life that
285
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
came with the opening of the West to settlement. It
was not merely new governors and irksome laws, but a
change in the economic basis of the community that
came upon them ; reckless hunting and the activities of
American traders brought the endless herds of buffalo
to an end, and the railway brought a flood of settlers
into the plains. The old free days were over.
For such a people the shift from a nomadic hunting
life to a settled agricultural one would have involved
difficulties at best. The bungling and dilatoriness of
the new governing authority doubled the difficulty. On
the Red River the failure of the Canadian government
to realize that the wilderness they were taking over held
thousands of men with hopes and fears and pride of
their own, men who were not content to be transferred
to newcomers like herds of cattle, led to resistance which
the Canadian government in which at the time no
shred of legal right to the Red River territory was
vested humorously termed "a rebellion." The gov-
ernment mended its ways, conceded the community im-
mediate self-government, and gave liberal land grants
to the old settlers; only the echoes of Riel's fatal blunder
in the execution of Scott disturbed the further develop-
ment of the Red River country. But the transition was
not yet completed. Thousands of half-breeds, irked by
the closer settlement or fleeced of their land-scrip by the
greed of speculators and their own improvidence, had
drifted away, some south of the border, but the greater
number further west, settling along the far-winding
banks of the Saskatchewan. Even here, as for the
286
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Boers in earlier days trekking further and further from
the seats of authority, isolation did not last long; gov-
ernment land-agents and surveyors, mounted police and
magistrates, came north -as the advance guard of the
great wave of settlement that was expected with the
completion of the Canadian Pacific.
For a second time the problem of adjustment arose
and for a second time it was bungled. The half-breeds
on the Saskatchewan sought certain privileges. They
asked for patents for the lands on which they had squat-
ted before the surveyor came. They asked that the
river-lot system of surveying shduld be adopted in their
settlements rather than the rectangular; they had staked
out their land according to the custom in force on the
Red River, and on the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu
for centuries before, in long narrow strips, twenty or
forty chains wide and a few miles deep, sometimes with
pasture-land running two miles further back, a system
which strung all the households close together along the
sociable river street ; and now the government's survey-
ors were applying the American system of rectangular
sections and townships, perfectly logical and geometri-
cally exact, but taking no heed of the lie of the country,
or the social instincts of the settlers. They demanded,
also, that every half-breed should be granted scrip for a
quarter-section of land or thereabouts, in extinguish-
ment of the Indian title ; in Manitoba it had been agreed
that the half-breeds, while entitled, like white men, to
earn a homestead by fulfilling settlement duties, should,
in virtue of their Indian blood, receive a free grant of a
287
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
few acres of land in the many-million-acred country to
which their ancestors had the claim of first occupation.
The requests were just and reasonable. There was
no valid ground for refusal or delay in granting
patents. The river-lot method of survey, while not
without its drawbacks, in itself and as a part of a wide
system, had a clear balan'ce of convenience in its favour.
The demand for scrip was more controversial. It
might be held illogical, as the government contended,
for the half-breeds to claim both the white man's home-
stead and the Indian's free grant, but the homestead
was given on fulfilling settlement duties and the free
grant on claims of blood; the Manitoba precedent
could not be set aside, and in any case the area involved
was but a speck on the map in comparison with the vast
domains available and out of which tens of millions of
acres were being carved for railway-builders and coloni-
zation companies. It might be urged that the granting
of scrip would prove of no lasting benefit either to the
half-breed or to the country; in Manitoba the half-
breeds, like the Canadian volunteers of 1870 to whom
similar grants had been made, had for the most part
sold their claims for a few dollars or gallons of whiskey
to speculators who thereupon held choice lands out of
use and forced real settlers to go far from town and rail-
way. There was no doubt, further, that speculators in
the Saskatchewan country, and particularly in Prince
Albert, were egging the half-breeds on, with very defi-
nite designs upon their scrip. Yet this did not lessen
the force of the half-breeds' claim, and, had the govern-
288
RAIL AND KIEL
ment willed, ways could have been found to prevent the
alienation of the land for a time.
Beginning in the last years of the Mackenzie regime,
and increasing in urgency with the imminence of the
rush of settlers from the East, the half-breeds pressed
their claims. Petition after petition was sent to
Ottawa; money was scraped together to send a deputa-
tion to the same far tribune; local officials and even the
North- West Council, a nominated body of little more
than advisory powers, urged compliance. Sometimes a
little was done; the Scotch half-breeds at Prince Albert
were given their river-lot surveys, but this only empha-
sized still more the grievance of the French half-breeds
at St. Laurent. Often much was promised, only to be
forgotten. Time and again the authorities undertook
to give the matter their most careful consideration.
Then the petitions were pigeonholed and the Metis
waited in vain. The petitioners were few and far
away; they had no votes, no representation in parlia-
ment. From 1878 to 1883 the Ministry of the Inte-
rior, to which was confided the oversight of the West-
ern territories, was in the hands of Sir John Macdon-
ald, never interested in the details of administration,
trustful, as his nickname of "Old To-morrow" indi-
cated, in the healing power of procrastination, and so
little interested in the West that until 1886 he never set
foot in the domain which had so long been under his
charge. From 1883 to 1885 the ministry fell to Sir
David Macpherson, an easy-going retired capitalist,
more interested in the dignity than the duties of his
289
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
post. And while Ottawa slumbered, the Metis watched
the rising of the tide of settlement and nursed their
grievances.
The prairie was dry as tinder, but had not fate sent
the spark the blaze might never have come. It was
not the first time nor the last that ministers had lacked
energy and sympathetic vision. Without the coming of
Louis Riel, they and the country with them might
have escaped the penalty. But unfortunately Riel had
come.
Louis Riel was born in the Red River country in
October, 1844. He had little Indian blood in his veins,
but that little was enough to make him at home with
his half-breed kindred. His father, Jean-Louis Riel,
had come from Berthier in Quebec a few years before ;
on his father's side, Jean-Louis traced his descent
through four generations of Canadian-born, back to a
Reilly from Ireland and back of that again to a Reilson
from Scandinavia; his mother Louis Riel's grand-
mother was a Montagnais Indian. Jean-Louis mar-
ried Julie Lagimodiere, the daughter of the first white
woman to settle in the West; the mother, Marie Anne
Gaboury, had come from the Three Rivers country in
1807 with her coureur-de-bois husband, Jean-Baptiste
Lagimodiere, narrowly escaping death by storm on the
lakes and death by poison at the hands of a squaw with
whom Jean-Baptiste had lived before going east, and
had survived countless perils and hardships through a
life of nearly a hundred years. Jean-Louis, married
to the daughter Julie, in turn hunter, student for the
290
RAIL AND KIEL
priesthood, farmer and miller, became a leading figure
in the Red River community and led the Metis in 1849
in resisting and smashing the claim of the Hudson's Bay
Company to a monopoly of the trade in furs.
Louis Riel the younger early showed a precocious
talent which drew the attention of Mgr. Tache. On
his suggestion, a wealthy lady of Terrebonne, Quebec,
Mme. Masson, had him sent to the College of Montreal
in 1858, with a view to training for the priesthood.
Riel's training ended abruptly in 1864. His father had
died, leaving him head of a family of nine. More im-
portant, he had developed erratic traits which convinced
Mgr. Tache of his unfitness for the service of the Church,
dreaming wild dreams of a religious mission he was
destined to perform, demanding from Montreal ac-
quaintainces $10,000 to carry out his crusade, urging
his feeble-minded old mother to sell her effects to aid
him, and then, after she had journeyed four hundred
miles by ox-cart to meet him, writing her that a new
mission required him to remain in Montreal. After
three years' aimless drifting in Montreal and the
Western States, this "spoiled priest" or stickit minister
came back to his father's farm at St. Vital.
The unrest prevalent in the settlement over the com-
ing transfer of control from the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany to Canada, and the high-handed attitude of some
of the Canadian party in Red River gave Riel his oppor-
tunity. His own faith in his destiny, the ascendancy
which his half -learning, his mystic faith, his aggressive
audacity, and his knowledge of Metis ways gave him
291
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
over his fellows, soon made him dominant in the com-
munity. The claims he championed were reasonable in
the main, and Riel would have held a place as one of the
minor prophets of liberty in Canada had it not been for
the execution of Scott. Resistance always irritated and
inflamed him and disturbed the precarious balance of
his mind; like General Dyer of Amritsar, he could not
endure the thought of being despised and laughed at for
his weakness, and determined to teach a lesson to the
minority which had challenged his control. It fell to
Thomas Scott to play the victim. Scott, an Ontario
pioneer, had served, none too peaceably, in a Dominion
surveyor's party, had joined in the attempt of the Por-
tage la Prairie settlers to overthrow Riel, and, when it
failed, had been confined with his fellows in cold and
crowded quarters in Fort Garry. A taunting word
singled him out for disfavour, and after a farcical trial,
without proof of the flimsy allegations brought against
him, without defence, Scott was condemned for treason
to the provisional government and next day, in spite of
protest and intercession, met death at the hands of a
firing-squad.
Scott was executed on March 4, 1870. On February
24, 1875, Riel was declared an outlaw. Through the
intervening years Riel was the centre of a political
storm. He had fled from Fort Garry a quarter-hour
before Wolseley's troops arrived in August, 1870,
sought refuge for a year south of the border, placed his
Metis followers at Governor Archibald's disposal to
fight the Fenian raid of 1871, accepted Macdonald's
292
RAIL AND RIEL
direct and indirect bribes of $4,000 to leave the country
till the elections of 1872 were over, escaped arrest a year
later under a warrant for the murder of Scott, secured
election unopposed to the House of Commons in 1874,
and even appeared for an audacious moment in the
House at Ottawa. Then came the general amnesty,
with the provision that the pardon was to extend to Riel
and Lepine only after five years' banishment.
Kiel's banishment was brief. He spent a short
period in the United States, undergoing confinement for
a part of this time in a private asylum maintained by
Major Edmond Mallet in Washington. But he was
soon back in Canada, where the sympathy of the people
of Quebec and the willingness of the Ottawa authorities
to let slumbering dogs lie assured him safety. For three
years his presence in the province was an open secret.
Early in 1876 he entered a Montreal church and noisily
interrupted mass, insisting that as he was superior to
any of the dignitaries present he should be allowed to
conduct the service. He was arrested and on the certif-
icate of two doctors immured in Longue Pointe asylum,
near Montreal, under the name of Louis David. His
outbursts of violence proved too much for the sisters
who conducted the asylum, and under the name of La-
Rochelle, he was transferred to Beauport asylum, near
Quebec. From these headquarters, during his lucid in-
tervals, he sallied forth from time to time, travelling by
the underground route from parish to parish.
It was during this period that Mr. Laurier had his
first and last interview with Louis Riel. One Sunday
293
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
he was invited by the cure of a neighbouring village to
come over for dinner, to meet an interesting guest. Mr.
Laurier was surprised on entering the study to find him-
self face to face with the man whom he had helped to
vote into temporary exile. He was much impressed by
the vigour and daimonic personality of the Metis leader,
and found him surprisingly fluent and, on the whole,
well informed, on American and European politics.
When, however, religion was touched upon, Kiel's deep-
set eyes lit up, and he launched into an excited and
jumbled harangue, boasting vaguely of the great mis-
sion for the further revelation of God's will which a
heavenly vision had urged him to undertake. From
that day Laurier never had any question as to Kiel's
insanity, though he had as yet no surmise of the lengths
to which this fatal twist was once more to drive him in the
West.
Kiel was discharged from Beauport in January, 1878.
He returned to the United States, carried himself so
strangely on the streets of Washington that he was
taken in charge by the police, spent some months in Dr.
Mallet's sanatorium, went west to Minnesota, and
thence to a Metis colony at Sun River, Montana, where
he opened a school, became the leader of the community,
stirred up his fellows to resist paying customs duty,
took it upon himself to hold an unauthorized poll during
a local election, and in consequence found himself for a
brief sojourn within the walls of Fort B.enton. Later
he became an American citizen, married a Metis woman
with much Cree blood, and settled down as a teacher in
294
RAIL AND RIEL
a little industrial school maintained by a Jesuit father
at St. Peter's Mission, in Montana. In the summer
of 1883 he paid a visit to Red River, where he met his
cousin and former co-worker, Napoleon Nault, a Metis
trader, and possibly laid the lines for the invitation to
return to Canada. A little later he seems to have made
a visit to Quebec to consult eminent theologians as to
his mission, and to have received little comfort.
It was to this strangely equipped leader that the
half-breeds of the Saskatchewan turned when their
grievances found no redress. Early in the summer of
1884 James Isbester, Moise Ouellette, Michel Dumas,
and Gabriel Dumont journeyed the seven hundred
miles to Montana, and begged Riel to return to their
aid. After some demur, he agreed, observing that he
had claims of his own to press against the government.
Making his headquarters at Batoche, on the South
Saskatchewan, Riel began his agitation, quietly, and
received much support not merely from the French and
English half-breeds, but from English settlers who
were feeling the pinch of drought and frost, of
railway monopoly and tariff exactions, and welcomed
any expression of discontent that might force Ottawa
to deal with the problems of the West. But as winter
came on, Riel began to talk wildly, to hold meetings
in secret, and to flout the authority of the priests with
whom he had at first been in close harmony. At the
same time he threw out hints, which did not reach those
in authority, that if the government would again pay
him a sum to leave the country, say $100,000, or $35,000
295
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
or perhaps only $10,000 the half-breed question could be
settled: "I am the half-breed question."
The government was repeatedly informed of the
storm that was brewing; government officials, local
newspapers, missionaries, settlers, urged considera-
tion. l But Ottawa could not be roused from its leth-
argy. In 1883 Blake moved for papers on the half-
breeds' grievances, but none were brought down for
two years; in 1884 Cameron called for a committee of
investigation, but the reply was given that there was
nothing to investigate. True, the time-honoured
method of silencing agitation by giving office to the
agitators was adopted: Louis Schmidt, secretary of the
committee which had invited Riel, was made an assist-
ant land-agent, and of the delegates, Isbester was
offered and Dumas accepted a post as Indian farm in-
structor, while Gabriel Dumont received a ferry license ;
it was not surprising that Riel thought his silence worth
at least ten thousand. In January, 1885, further,
authority was taken to appoint a commission to enumer-
i Charles Mair of Prince Albert, an Ontario pioneer who had been a
vigorous supporter of the Canada party in Red River in 1869, made
four pilgrimages to Ottawa to seek to rouse the government to action.
Failing, in April, 1884, to receive a hearing, he returned to Prince Al-
bert and brought his family back to Ontario to escape the threatened ris-
ing; a final appeal in December was equally futile. Of the April attempt
Lieut.-Col. George T. Denison has written: "When he returned to
Toronto from Ottawa he told me positively that there would be a rebel-
lion, that the officials were absolutely indifferent and immovable, and I
could not help laughing at the picture he gave me of Sir David Mac-
pherson, a very large, handsome, erect man of six feet four inches,
getting up, leaving his room, and walking away down the corridor, while
Mair, a short stout man, had almost to run alongside of him, as he
made his final appeal to preserve the peace and prevent bloodshed."
"Soldiering in Canada," p. 263.
296
RAIL AND KIEL
ate the half-breeds, but the government still insisted that
the claim to the same treatment accorded the Manitoba
half-breeds could not be conceded; in February ap-
proval was telegraphed of a report on half-breed claims
at St. Laurent, made months before. Steps were
taken to strengthen the North- West Mounted Police
and to ascertain the possibility of carrying troops from
eastern Canada over the uncompleted Canadian Pacific
tracks in case of an outbreak, but to take effective and
comprehensive action to avert the outbreak was beyond
Ottawa's capacity or its will. On the very day that
Duck Lake was fought, Macdonald reiterated his op-
position to the Metis demand for scrip. Ten days
later the policy was reversed, and instructions were
given to issue the scrip so long denied. But a concession
at that late date could only condemn the previous re-
fusal; it could not avert the consequences.
In March, 1885, the storm broke. Irritated by the
government's continued neglect and roused to action
by Kiel's hypnotic eloquence, the half-breeds of St.
Laurent drifted into rebellion. A rumour spread by
Lawrence Clark, a former Hudson's Bay Chief Factor,
of the approach of a force of police to arrest Riel and his
followers made the hesitating throw in their lot with the
reckless. A provisional government was established
with Riel as president and Gabriel Dumont as mili-
tary chief. The rebels seized stores and occupied the
government post at Duck Lake; a party of police and
volunteers sent out under Major Crozier to protect the
post encountered a half-breed force and in the fight
297
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
that followed, in which the police seem to have fired the
first shot, twelve of Crozier's men, including a nephew
of Edward Blake, were killed and the rest forced to re-
treat. The news of the Duck Lake disaster called all
Canada to arms. Two thousand troops were raised in
the West, and over three thousand, including small ar-
tillery units from the permanent corps, were rushed
from the East, the gaps in the Canadian Pacific being
covered by marching or in sleighs along rough tote-
roads.
There were three centres of disturbance : Batoche, on
the South Saskatchewan, where five hundred half-
breeds rallied round Kiel and Dumont; Battleford, on
the North Saskatchewan, where an Indian chief,
Poundmaker, responded to the Metis call, and the Fort
Pitt country, on the same river, between Edmonton
and Battleford, where another chief, Big Bear, was
gathering his braves. The total number of half-breeds
and Indians in the field never greatly exceeded a thou-
sand, but there were tens of thousands of Indians on
the plains with whom fighting was a deep-rooted habit,
and Metis settlements along the river in more or less
sympathy with their brothers of St. Laurent. The
Canadian Pacific ran parallel to these centres and about
two hundred miles south. From this railway base, three
columns were thrown north. Their rapid advance pre-
vented the insurrection from becoming general, but it
was no easy task to suppress the forces already in the
field. Dumont, practised in buffalo-hunting, a born
leader of men, with an excellent eye for country, was
298
RAIL AND KIEL
fully a match for his antagonists in capacity, but num-
bers, artillery, and the dash and courage of the Cana-
dian volunteers broke down all resistance. After an
indecisive engagement at Fish Creek in April, Batoche
was carried by storm on May 12. Further west, Battle-
ford and Edmonton had been relieved, but isolated
settlers had been forced to flee in terror or had been
taken captive by looting Indian bands; at Frog Lake,
near Fort Pitt, five men, including two Catholic priests,
had been murdered by members of Big Bear's tribe.
After the fall of Batoche, the Indian movement col-
lapsed, and by June all was quiet again on the Sas-
katchewan.
Kiel was the prophet rather than the captain of the
movement. His assurance drove the Metis into action,
but once the conflict had begun, Dumont took the lead.
Charges of personal cowardice were in fact made
against Kiel later, but were disproved by the burden of
the evidence. He was a man of deeply religious in-
stincts, and in the first weeks of his visit he had been on
good terms with the Catholic missionaries in the North,
one of whom, Father Andre, had been instrumental in
securing his return from Montana. But during the
winter their suspicion of his revolutionary bias and his
growing heterodoxy brought a cooling, and the priests,
meeting in council, agreed that he could not be allowed
to continue his religious duties. Once the die was cast,
Biel devoted himself as much to building up a new
church suited to the Metis needs as to defending the
new state. He induced the great majority of his fol-
299
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
lowers to renounce allegiance to the Roman Catholic
Church ff La vieille romaine est cassee, le pape est
tombe" danced and shouted on the altar steps in the
church of Saint Antoine, proclaimed himself a prophet
sent to achieve a reformation long overdue, and denied
the divinity of Jesus and the doctrine of the real pres-
ence; how could Jesus, who was six and a half feet
tall, be in a little wafer? His council or exovidat he
insisted that they were merely "of the flock," assuming
no authority but voicing the people's will took their
ecclesiastical duties seriously. Alternating with resolu-
tions as to the disposition and duties of their little force,
motions to assign a gun to Pierre, a horse to Maxime,
or a cow to Napoleon, or decisions to send a scout to
Qu'Appelle or letters to a Cree chief, the papers of the
council reveal many decisions on religious matters.
Now it is merely a resolution to take a church to serve
as school or an exhortation to Father Vegreville or to
Father Fourmond to hold himself neutral; now it is
a declaration that "the Exovidat of the French-Cana-
dian Metis believes firmly that hell will not last forever,
that the doctrine of everlasting future punishment is
contrary to Divine Mercy as well as to the charity of
our Saviour Jesus Christ," or a resolution "that the
Lord's Day be put back to the seventh day of the week,"
carried with nine ayes and three nays. Riel had the
honour, unique since time began, of being proclaimed
prophet by order in council: "Moved by M. Boucher,
seconded by M. Tourond, That the Canadian half-breed
Exovidat acknowledges Louis 'David' Riel as a prophet
300
RAIL AND RIEL
in the service of Jesus Christ ... as a prophet,
the humble imitator in many things of St. John the
Baptist," carried by nine ayes, M. Ouellette not voting.
Or again, after a controversy with Father Vegreville,
it is moved "that if God so wills, if He has so decided in
His eternal designs, we desire nothing better than to be
His priests and to constitute, if such is His desire and
His holy will, the new religious ministry of Jesus Christ;
and we at once establish the living Catholic Apostolic
and vital church of the new world." A fragment from
the minutes of March 25 records that it was "proposed
by M. Boucher, seconded by M. Pierre Henry, that the
Commandments of God be the laws of the provisional
government, that we recognize the right of Mr. Louis
'David' Riel to direct the priests; that the Archbishop
Ignace Bourget be recognized from this day as the Pope
of the new world, and the members of the Council . . . '
As became a prophet, Riel saw visions and heard voices,
and each morning recounted what he had seen and
heard. *
i Kiel's diary presents an extraordinary jumble of acuteness and of
rambling nonsense: ". . . The Spirit of God said to me, 'The enemy has
gone to Prince Albert.* I prayed saying, 'Deign to make me know who
is that enemy.' He answered, 'Charlie Larence.' The Spirit of God has
shown me the place where I should be wounded, the highest joint of the
ring finger. He pointed out to me which joint it was on his own finger.
. . ." "Do you know some one called Charlie Larence? He wants to
drink five gallons in the name of the movement. The Spirit of God has
made me understand that we must bind the prisoners. I have seen Gabriel
Dumont; he was afflicted, ashamed; he did not look at me, he looked at
his empty table. But Gabriel Dumont is blessed, his faith will not totter.
He is fired by the grace of God. . . . My ideas are just, well weighed, well
defined; mourning is not in my thoughts. My ideas are level with my gun;
my gun is standing. It is the invisible power of God which keeps my
gun erect. Oh, my God, give me grace to establish the day of your rest,
to bring back in honour the Sabbath day as it was fixed by the Holy Spirit
301
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
After the storming of Batoche, Dumont made good
his escape to the United States. To Riel General Mid-
dleton sent a message stating that he was ready to re-
ceive him and his council and to protect him until their
case had been decided upon by the government; three
days after the fight, scouts came upon Riel, who sur-
rendered.
The rapid collapse of the insurrection brought a
surge of relief over all Canada, apprehensive, with the
memory of Custer and Sitting Bull still fresh, of the
horrors of an Indian rising. With relief there came,
particularly from Ontario, a stern demand for the
punishment of the guilty leaders. Riel was brought
to trial at Regina before a stipendiary magistrate and
an English-speaking jury of six men. The Crown
was represented by Christopher Robinson, B. B. Osier,
R. W. Burbidge, D. L. Scott, and T. C. Casgrain;
and the prisoner by F. X. Lemieux, Charles Fitzpat-
rick, J. N. Greenshields, and T. C. Johnston. The
Crown urged Riel's responsibility for the outbreak
and the loss of life that had followed, his attempt to
incite the Indians to war, his offers to sell out his com-
rades. Counsel for Riel took exception to the juris-
diction of the court, demanded, in vain, opportunity to
consult the papers of Riel seized at Batoche, and rested
their case mainly on the plea of insanity, a plea
in the person of Moses, your servant." . . . "While I was praying, the
Spirit of God showed me, in the south branch, a small vessel in which there
were two or three men, one of whom had a red tongue. ... I have seen
the giant. He comes. He is hideous. He is Goliath. ... He loses his
own body and all his people. There is left to him nothing but the head.
He is not willing to humble himself. He has his head cut off."
302
RAIL AND RIEL
which Riel vigorously repudiated in his own address to
the jury. The jury brought in a verdict of guiltfy,
with a recommendation to mercy; the magistrate sen-
tenced Riel to be hanged on September 18. The
Court of Queen's Bench in Manitoba confirmed the
jurisdiction of the court, and the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council, on petition, declined leave to appeal.
After the cabinet had come to its decision to let the
sentence stand, a commission of three doctors, all in the
government's employ and none specialists in mental
diseases, was sent to investigate Kiel's sanity; they re-
ported in substance that he was subject to delusions on
political and religious subjects, but that they consid-
ered him responsible for his actions. After three re-
prieves, Riel, who had recanted his religious heresies
and faced his end with calm courage, was hanged in the
yard of the mounted-police barracks, November 16.
Eighteen of his half-breed followers were sentenced to
terms of imprisonment of from one to seven years,
while later in November eight of the Indians convicted
of the murders at Frog Lake and elsewhere, Wander-
ing Spirit, Little Bear, Iron Body, Ikta, Bad Arrow,
Round the Sky, Man without Blood and Miserable
Man, paid the penalty on the gallows.
Riel was dead, but for many a month his ghost walked
the stage of Canadian politics. Ontario had called
for punishment, Quebec for pardon, and passion
mounted on both sides until it threatened to break
Confederation into fragments.
Parliament was early called upon to face the issue,
303
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
While the rebellion was in progress, there was unani-
mous backing of the government in its suppression.
Once it had collapsed and Kiel lay in the Regina gaol,
Blake, in the beginning of July, moved a vote of cen-
sure on the government for the "grave neglect, delay,
and mismanagement" which had marked its handling
of North- West affairs. In a long and powerful speech,
Blake analyzed and marshalled the evidence gleaned
from the papers which had tardily been submitted to
the House, and framed an overwhelming indictment
against the administration. Macdonald replied. He
accused Blake of preparing a brief for Kiel, denied
that the grievances of the Metis were serious, charged
the Opposition with neglect in the years between 1873
and 1878, and laid the blame on white speculators in
Prince Albert. He did not even yet believe that the
grant of scrip was just or expedient; he had yielded
for the sake of peace: "Well, for God's sake let them
have the scrip; they will either drink it or waste it or
sell it, but let us have peace."
Laurier rose to second Blake's resolution of censure.
He dealt first with Macdonald's contention that the
insurgents had no grievances but were simply the
dupes of Riel. In a passage characteristic of his
measured eloquence and of his habit of illuminating
the present by light from the past, he declared:
I can illustrate what I am now saying, that no man, how-
ever powerful, can exercise such influence as is attributed to
Louis Riel, by a page from our own history. Few men have
there been anywhere who have wielded greater sway over their
304
RAIL AND RIEL
fellow-countrymen than did Mr. Papineau at a certain time
in the history of Lower Canada, and no man ever lived who
had been more profusely endowed by nature to be the idol
of a nation. A man of commanding presence, of majestic
countenance, of impassioned eloquence, of unblemished char-
acter, of pure, disinterested patriotism, for years and years
he held over the hearts of his 1 fellow-countrymen almost un-
bounded sway, and, even to this day, the mention of his name
will arouse throughout the length and breadth of Lower Can-
ada a thrill of enthusiasm in the breasts of all, men or women,
old or young. What was the secret of that great power he
held at one time? Was it simply his eloquence, his command-
ing intellect, or even his pure patriotism? No doubt, they
all contributed; but the main cause of his authority over
his fellow-countrymen was this, that, at that time, his fellow-
countrymen were an oppressed race, and he was the champion
of their cause. But when the day of relief came, the influence
of Mr. Papineau, however great it might have been and how-
ever great it still remained, ceased to be paramount. When
eventually the Union Act was carried, Papineau violently as-
saulted it, showed all its defects, deficiencies and dangers, and
yet he could not raise his followers and the people to agitate
for the repeal of that act. What was the reason? The
conditions were no more the same. Imperfect as was the
Union Act, it still gave a measure of freedom and justice to
the people, and men who at the mere sound of Mr. Papineau's
voice would have gladly courted death on battle-field or scaf-
fold, then stood silent and unresponsive, though he asked them
nothing more than a constitutional agitation for a repeal of
the Union Act. Conditions were no more the same; tyranny
and oppression had made rebels of the people of Lower Canada,
while justice and freedom made them true and loyal subjects,
which they have been ever since. And now to tell us that
Louis Kiel, simply by his influence, could bring these men from
peace to war; to tell us that they had no grievances; to tell
us that they were brought into a state of rebellion either
through pure malice or through imbecile adherence to an ad-
305
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
venturer, is an insult to the intelligence of the people at large
and an unjust aspersion on the people of the Saskatchewan.
The honourable gentleman tells us' that the people of the
Saskatchewan River have no wrongs ; this is but a continua-
tion of the system which has been followed all along with regard
to this people. They have been denied their just rights, and
now they are slandered by the same men whose unjust course
towards them drove them to the unfortunate proceedings they
have adopted since. This I do charge upon the government;
that they have for years and years ignored the just claims
of the half-breeds of the Saskatchewan, that for years and
years these people have been petitioning the government and
always in vain. I say they have been treated by this govern-
ment with an indifference amounting to undisguised contempt,
that they have been goaded into the unfortunate course they
have adopted, and if this rebellion be a crime, I say the respon-
sibility for that crime weighs as much upon the men who, by
their conduct, have caused the rebellion, as upon those who
engaged in it.
The government, he continued, was doubly open to
censure, since the troubles of 1869 had given it warning
of the danger of neglect. If now millions of dol-
lars had been expended and some of the most precious
blood of Canada shed, the reason was the ostrich policy
of the government in denying the existence of griev-
ances. In consenting after the rebellion had broken
out to grant the half-breeds their scrip, the govern-
ment had condemned itself. Petitions, assemblies,
delegations, even the sending for Riel, had not stirred
the government out of its lethargy, but the bullets of
Duck Lake had brought at once what six years
of prayers could not bring: "Justice loses most of its
value when it is tardily and grudgingly conceded.
306
RAIL AND RIEL
Even last night the honourable gentleman would not
say that in so doing ... he recognized their rights; he
simply said that he would do it and did it for the sake
of peace. For the sake of peace, when we were in the
midst of war! for the sake of peace, when insurgents
were in the field and blood had been shed!" The
government was seeking to shelter itself behind the
anger against Riel. It would not do to rouse preju-
dices in this matter: there were prejudices in this
country of many kinds :
We are not yet so built up a nation as to forget our respec-
tive origins, and I say frankly that the people of my own
province, who have a community of origin with the insurgents,
sympathize with them, just as the sympathies of the people
of Ontario who are of a different origin would go altogether
in the other direction. I am of French origin, and I confess
that if I were to act only from the blood that runs in my
veins, it would carry me strongly in favour of these people,
but above all I claim to be in favour of what is just and right
and fair. . . . Let justice be done and let the consequences
fall upon the guilty ones, whether on the head of Louis Riel
or on the shoulders of the government. . . . There is in con-
nection with this matter another point which I have not heard
referred to, but which seems to be in the minds of a good
many people. It is not expressed, but I think the feeling
permeates the very atmosphere, not only of this House, but
of the whole of this country. I have not heard it stated, but
it is in the minds of many that if these men have rebelled,
it is because they are, to a certain extent, of French origin.
The First Minister stated yesterday that Gabriel Dumont
and his friends are and always were rebels. It is not to my
knowledge that Dumont or any one of those who took up arms
on the Saskatchewan any more than on the Red River ever
had the thought of rebelling against the authority of Her
307
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Majesty. It was not against Her Majesty the Queen; they
rebelled against the tyranny of the Canadian government. . . .
This I say, and I say it coming from a province where less
than fifty years ago every man of the race to which I belong
was a rebel and where to-day every man of that race is a
true and loyal subject, as' true and loyal as any that breathes
I say give them justice, give them freedom, give them their
rights, treat them as for the last forty years you have treated
the people of Lower Canada, and by and by throughout those
territories you will have contentment, peace and harmony,
where to-day discord, hatred and war are ruining the land.
The resolution of censure was defeated on a party
vote, but that did not check the storm of discussion be-
yond the walls of parliament. After the trial and
condemnation of Kiel, the question shifted from the
responsibility of the government to the advisability of
pardon for the rebel leader. It was a question that
stirred sectional and party animosity to the depths,
though there was by no means a united or a consistent
voice in either section or either party.
From Ontario the first insistent cry had been for
punishment. Kiel was twice guilty of the black crime
of treason. He had attempted to bring on the horrors
of an Indian rising. He had occasioned the death of
scores of Canadian men and women. No plea could
lessen the enormity of that offence. The grievances of
the Metis could not excuse rebellion. And in the
minds of many, more serious even than the lives lost in
battle was the unforgivable, cold-blooded murder of
Thomas Scott. Yet as the summer passed, the voice
of clemency began to be heard, distorted though it was
308
RAIL AND RIEL
by partisan manoeuvring. The Toronto "Mail," the
leading government organ in Ontario, which admitted
after Blake's July speech that the government had
been guilty of "gross and inexcusable negligence," ad-
mitted to its columns forceful pleas for pardon on the
ground of national policy and of Kiel's insanity; edi-
torially, it prepared opinion for either decision on the
cabinet's part. The Toronto "Globe" while insisting
that the government was equally guilty, had at first
joined in the demand for punishment. "No one who
has read the evidence," it declared in August, "can
doubt that Kiel richly deserves death." But as the
weeks went on, the cooling of passion and the fuller
recognition of extenuating circumstances brought a
growing leaning toward amnesty, even if the old Adam
of partisanship could not resist the temptation at times
to interpret the assumed leaning of the government in
the same direction as a weak concession to the French
Bleus who were holding the pistol to Sir John's ear.
Only in the Loyal Orange lodges was there no weaken-
ing; one brother served notice that "if the government
allows Rome to step in and reprieve this arch-traitor,
the Conservative party can no longer count on our
services," and the "Orange Sentinel" in October insist-
ed that "the blood of Thomas Scott yet cries aloud for
justice."
In Quebec, while the rebellion had been denounced,
there was deep sympathy with the Metis claims, and a
growing sympathy with the rebel leader. Public sub-
scriptions provided for Kiel's defence at the trial, and
309
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
after the sentence, press and platform demands for his
pardon grew more insistent. The government was at
least as guilty as Kiel; his insanity was notorious, gen-
uine ; no civilized people now put to death the leader of
an unsuccessful revolt. And in any case, sane or
insane, fight or wrong, Kiel and the people he had
championed were kinsmen, children of the Quebec that
had sent its daring pioneers to the prairies and the
rivers of the West long years before. It was in vain
that every priest on the Saskatchewan wrote publicly
and privately denouncing Riel as the arch-enemy of
the Church, anti-Christ, the hand behind the massacre
of Father Marchand and Father Fafard at Frog
Lake. It was in vain that the extravagant laudation
of Riel was attacked as a slur on the real heroes of
French Canada, daring leaders like Cartier and Cham-
plain, Maisonneuve and Dollard, Montcalm and Levis,
de Salaberry and Chenier, sainted apostles like Laval
and Brebeuf, Marguerite Bourgeoys, and Jeanne
Mance. The movement grew. There was much that
was deplorable in the Quebec as in the Ontario agita-
tion, much of ignorance and fanaticism and blind ra-
cial jealousy, much pandering by politicians to local
passion, but just as the Ontario demand had as one of
its main roots a growing national sense, a lofty de-
termination to make Canada one and make it strong,
so the Quebec campaign had its nobler side, its sym-
pathy with the poor and dispossessed, its readiness to
respond to the cry of kinsmen in distress. Kiel's
grave faults were no more to the point than the dis-
310
RAIL AND KIEL
torted limbs or wayward habits of a son in the eyes of
his mother.
So vital a movement could not but raise questions of
party attitude. Rouge newspapers like "La Patrie"
joined with Castor journals like "L'Etendard" to
threaten the government with vengeance if it sacrificed
Kiel to Orange hatred. But it was not merely from
the Opposition that these demands came. The con-
troversy gave a new angle and a new channel to the jeal-
ousy and rivalry which marked the relations of the
federal Bleu leaders. Between elections, Langevin, a
supple and experienced tactician, though not a man of
force, Chapleau, the most moving platform orator of his
day, save perhaps the more tempestuous Mercier, and
Caron, a skilful manager of election campaigns, fought
a bitter and unrelenting triangular contest for leader-
ship of the Quebec contingent in the Conservative
party. The fact that Chapleau and his chief newspa-
per supporter, "La Minerve," condemned Kiel, was an-
other reason why Langevin and his organ, "Le Monde,"
should demand pardon. Langevin gave his friends to
understand that either through executive pardon or a
medical finding of insanity, Kiel would escape the gal-
lows, and "Le Monde" outshouted its contemporaries
in praise of Kiel and anathemas upon his opponents.
Even "La Minerve" was forced to shift its position and,
while contending that petitions, not criticisms, should be
directed to the government, promised that the Bleus
would do more for Kiel than his Rouge champions.
The government itself therefore contributed largely
311
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
to the agitation in Quebec and to the belief that Kiel
would never be executed. When at last after much
balancing of opinion balancing of votes, its critics
charged the majority in the cabinet decided that Kiel
must swing, the news was received in Quebec, first with
incredulity, then with the stupor of a national calam-
ity, and then with a universal cry of anger that shook
not merely the government but the nation to its found-
ations. The strength of the feeling that pervaded the
whole province that fateful November may be gauged
from an editorial the day after the hanging, from the
staunchest defender of the government in the province,
a journal which for months had derided Kiel's claim to
sympathy, "La Minerve" :
Why is it that Kiel, the fugitive rebel of 1870, the inmate
of the asylums of Saint-Jean and Beauport, the author of the
late rebellion, the insulter of the bishops and priests of his
church, the instigator of the Indian rising and the man respon-
sible for the massacre of Frog Lake, the wretched rebel hiding
among the women and children while his men were giving them-
selves up to death at Batoche, why is it that this traitor,
this apostate, this madman, for that and nothing but that
is what Kiel has been, holds so great a place in the public
mind? . . . What is the mysterious force which creates this
movement, which lets loose the tempest that threatens to
overturn in its course reputations, prestige, power? It is
a thing at once petty and great, fickle and determined, tender
and cruel. It is the wounding of the national self-esteem.
Riel will leave no trace in the memories of men by the work
he has done, the ideas he has given forth, the doctrines he
has preached, and yet his name marks a deep furrow in the
political soil of our young country. The reason is that the
hand that placed the gallows rope about his neck wounded
312
RAIL AND KIEL
a whole people. It is becaus'e the cry of justice, calling for
his death in the name of the law, has been drowned by the cry
of fanaticism calling for revenge. That is why the death of
this criminal takes on the proportions of a national calamity.
To every man in public life, and not least to Wilfrid
Laurier, the crisis brought a challenge. He was not a
man easily stirred by 'popular cries. His instincts
were all on the side of order and constitutional pro-
cedure. He desired, as few men of the day desired, the
close union of the two races of Canada. Yet in the
Canada of that day, Canadianism pure and unhy-
phenated was still an aspiration, and if the practical al-
ternative was merely to be English-Canadian, Laurier
would prefer to be French-Canadian. He had little
sympathy with Kiel, much with the Metis whose cause
Riel had championed so blunderingly. His anger
burned deep against the government's bungling and
neglect, and the ill-concealed scorn for all that was
French-Canadian which marked the noisier elements
in Ontario awoke resentment even in his balanced
mind. When the unbelievable news came that the
government had let Riel go to the scaffold, it seemed
to him for a brief moment that the hopes of his youth
were doomed to disappointment, that racial harmony
was a mirage, and that nothing remained but for each
section to make itself strong and independent.
Quebec's anger found expression in countless meet-
ings of protest, in editorials and pamphlets and peti-
tions, but the most striking manifestation was the
great meeting held in Montreal, in the Champ de
313
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Mars, on the Sunday following the hanging. Never
in Montreal's history had there been a gathering to
compare to it. Forty thousand people crowded about
the three platforms which had been erected, and
cheered every one of the thirty speakers to the echo.
Party lines seemed to have disappeared; Mercier and
Desjardins, Robidoux and Beaubien, Turcotte and
Trudel, Beausoleil and Bergeron, Poirier and Tarte,
Rouge and Bleu, voiced the indignation of a united
people. Laurier spoke with the rest. Henceforth
there would be in Quebec neither Liberals nor Con-
servatives; the government's callous policy had broken
down party lines. The half-breeds had been the vic-
tims of extortion and neglect and contempt, they had
been driven to revolt. "Had I been born on the banks
of the Saskatchewan," he was reported as declaring in a
sentence that for ten years every Tory editor in Can-
ada kept standing in type, "I would myself have shoul-
dered a musket to fight against the neglect of govern-
ments and the shameless greed of speculators."
Throughout the winter the agitation flamed. Many
wild and foolish words were spoken, Riel was painted
a hero, a martyr, a saint, and the members of the gov-
ernment, particularly the Bleu leaders, hanged in
effigy. The Quebec Liberals joined forces with the
dissentient Conservatives, including a number of
Castors; many of them had previously been ready to
come to terms with the Chapleau wing of the Bleus,
and even to accept Chapleau as leader, but Chapleau
had declined the advances, and carried on a courageous
314
RATT. AND KIEL
against the government's critics. He did not
fight alone. The English Liberals of Qudbec dis-
countenanced the agitation; Henri Joly and W. J.
Watts resigned their seats in the local house in witness
of their disapproval. The dignitaries of the Church
threw all their weight into the same scale. Mgr.
Fabre, Mgr. Gravel, Mgr. Moreau, Mgr.
and Mgr. Cameron in Xova Scotia, issued
pointing out the sin of revolution,
spect to constituted authority, warning against ike
danger of irreverence and anarchy, and reminding
their flocks that after all ft was to the bishops, not to the
journalists, that the Holy Spirit had confided the task
of guiding the Church and its members.
Laurier shouldered no more muskets. He re-
mained firm in his indignation against the govern-
ment's laxness before the rebellion and its sternness
after, but he had no sympathy with those who heaped
personal abuse on every pendard and exalted Kiel to a
martyr's seat. He could not support the policy to
which the provincial Liberal leaders were committed,
of attempting to form a Parti National, * union of ail
French-Canadians, for he had long ago realized and
pointed out to his compatriots the folly of
tion He took no more part in
tions, but prepared to take the government to task in
the House.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Quebec's outburst had been followed by a still more
extraordinary if more limited crusade in Ontario.
Fearing that the government had lost Quebec, and
seeking to restore the balance by creating a solid On-
tario, Conservative organs, and particularly the "Mail,"
broke into furious attacks upon "French-Canadian
domination," which made "L'Etendard" seem a mod-
erate and reasonable sheet, and far outdistanced George
Brown at his worst. Quebec had demanded that no
criminal must be punished if French blood ran in his
veins; it sought to impose its arrogant will on all
Canada. The answer must be plain. "Let us sol-
emnly assure them again," declared the "Mail" on
November 23, "that rather than submit to such a yoke,
Ontario would smash Confederation into its original
fragments, preferring that the dream of a united
Canada should be shattered forever." And again,
two days later: "As Britons we believe the conquest
will have to be fought over again. Lower Canada
may depend upon it there will be no treaty of 1763.
The victors will not capitulate next time. . . . But
the French-Canadian people will lose everything.
The wreck of their fortunes and their happiness would
be swift, complete and irremediable/' And the
"Orange Sentinel": "Must it be said that the rights
and liberties of the English people in this English
colony depend upon a foreign race? . . . The
day is near when an appeal to arms will be heard in all
parts of Canada. Then certainly our soldiers, benefit-
ing by the lessons of the past, will have to complete in
316
RAIL AND KIEL
this country the work they began in the North- West."
Ontario Liberals were divided. The majority, both
of the leaders and of the rank and file, believed the exe-
cution was justified, but a large minority attacked it.
Partisanship plajyed as obvious a part in their manoeu-
vring as in the backing and filling of the ministers and
their supporters; some of the Liberal newspapers
which condemned the government for hanging Kiel
would have condemned it as strongly for pardoning
him. A Conservative speaker, J. C. Rykert, amused
himself by collecting specimens of inconsistency and
sharp curves; the classic instance was that of the Port
Hope "Guide" which before the execution declared,
"It has come to a pretty pass indeed when a red-handed
rebel can thus snap his fingers at the law," and after,
"It has come to a pretty pass indeed that in the noon-
tide glare of the nineteenth century political offenders
must suffer death if they dare to assert their just rights."
Yet there was more in the protest than partisan ma-
noeuvring. For months before the hanging opinion
had been turning steadily toward clemency, toward a
clearer recognition not only of the government's com-
plicity but of Kiel's irresponsibility. Until the last
moment it was not believed that the sentence would be
enforced. The revelation of the effect upon Quebec
completed the proof of the national inexpediency of
the government's decision.
Blake had been absent in England from the end of
August until the end of December. His attitude was
awaited with keen interest. In his first public address
317
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
in London, Ontario, in January, he declared that he
did not desire a party conflict over the Regina tragedy :
I do not propose to construct a party platform out of the
Regina scaffold. ... I believe we cannot, if we would, make
of this a party question. After full reflection, I do not enter-
tain that desire, but were it otherwise, I doubt that the result
could be accomplished. ... I entertain the impression that
with us as with the Tories there are differences of opinion in
the ranks not likely to be composed, and which I at any rate
shall make no endeavour to control to a party end.
While going on to rebuke some of the extreme outbursts
from Quebec, and remaining of the opinion that the
execution of Riel neither should nor could be made a
strictly party question, Blake was none the less deter-
mined to express his individual views and to arraign the
government in the measured and serious words the cri-
sis demanded. He was, in fact, prepared to go further
than his Quebec lieutenant. In a consultation in Ot-
tawa shortly after the London speech, Laurier urged
that, as before, the guilt of the government, not the
punishment of Riel, should be the question to keep in
the foreground, but Blake was prepared, if need be, to
change the emphasis.
The House opened the end of February. Realiz-
ing that a debate was inevitable, the government ma-
noeuvred to secure the most favourable fighting
ground. One of its Quebec supporters, Philippe
Landry of Montmagny, who had condemned the exe-
cution, undertook to move a resolution "that this
House feels it its duty to express its deep regret that the
sentence of death passed upon Louis Riel, convicted of
318
RAIL AND KIEL
high treason, was allowed to he carried into execution."
The moment his speech, condemning the government
in moderate phrases, was concluded, Langevin took the
floor, and after a very brief and formal defence, de-
clared that "in order that there may be no misunder-
standing, no false issues or side issues, and that we may
have a direct vote," he would move the previous ques-
tion. This prevented the offering of any further
amendment, and compelled the Liberals to debate and
vote upon the question of Kiel's punishment, on which
they were divided, rather than to offer an amendment,
on which they would have united, condemning the gov-
ernment for its whole North- West policy. It was an
adroit manoeuvre, and though M. Landry denied col-
lusion, his protests carried little credence.
The debate was long and bitter. Macdonald did not
speak, nor any of the Ontario Liberals who opposed the
motion, but every angle of opinion was abundantly
presented. A second government follower, Colonel
Amyot, supported Landry; Royal of Provencher,
Kiel's former friend, insisted that the Liberals were
worse than the government. Malcolm Cameron con-
demned the "corrupt, incompetent, and imbecile" minis-
try for casting dice over the body of Riel and finally
yielding to Orange pressure. Curran defended with tu
quoques, Rykert produced his scrap-book, Francois
Langelier reviewed Langevin's devious policy, and
Pierre Bechard, an old Rouge of moderate but firm con-
victions, reviewed the policy adopted elsewhere toward
unsuccessful rebellion.
319
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
It was late on the night of March 16 when M. Bech-
ard concluded. The government put no one up to an-
swer him. The Speaker began to ask whether the
question should be put, when Laurier rose. The
empty house filled quickly. For two hours it listened,
breathless; at more than one tense moment, not a
sound was heard but the speaker's ringing voice and
the ticking of the clock.
Laurier wasted no words. At the outset he accused
the government of judicial murder. In his province the
execution had been universally condemned, as the sacri-
fice of a life not to inexorable justice but to bitter passion
and revenge. He denounced as a vile calumny the
"Mail's" contention that French-Canadians opposed
the punishment of any criminal of French blood. The
press of the whole world had condemned that act.
Doubtless kinship added keenness to conviction: "I
cheerfully admit and I will plead guilty to that weak-
ness, if weakness it be, that if an injustice be committed
against a fellow-being, the blow will fall deeper into
my heart if it should fall upon one of my kith and kin."
He denied absolutely any sympathy with the suicidal
policy of forming a purely French-Canadian party.
In concise and lucid review he indicted the government
for its years of neglect, not to be atoned for by eleventh-
hour repentance: "At last justice was coming to them.
In ten days, from the twenty-sixth of March to the
sixth of April, the government had altered their policy
and had given what they had refused for years. What
320
RAIL AND RIEL
was the cause? The bullets of Duck Lake, the rebel-
lion in the North- West. . . ."
I appeal now to any friend of liberty in this House; I
appeal not only to the Liberals who sit beside me, but to any
man who has a British heart in his breast, and I ask, when
subjects of Her Majesty have been petitioning for years for
their rights, and these rights' have not only been ignored, but
have been denied, and when these men take their lives in
their hands and rebel, will any one in this House say that
these men, when they got their rights, should not have saved
their heads as well, and that the criminals, if criminals there
were in this rebellion, are not those who fought and bled and
died, but the men who sit on thes'e Treasury benches? Sir,
rebellion is always an evil, it is always an offence against the
positive law of a nation ; it is not always a moral crime. The
Minister of Militia in the week that preceded the execution
of Riel declared : "I hate all rebels ; I have no sympathy, good,
bad or indifferent, with rebellion." Sir, what is hateful . . .
is not rebellion but the despotism which induces that rebellion ;
what is hateful are not rebels but the men, who, having the
enjoyment of power, do not discharge the duties of power;
they are the men who, having the power to redress wrongs,
refuse to listen to the petitions that are sent to them; they
are the men who, when they are asked for a loaf, give a
stone.i . . . Though, Mr. Speaker; these men were in the
wrong; though the rebellion had to be put down; though
it was the duty of the Canadian government to assert its
authority and vindicate the law, still, I ask any friend of
liberty, is there not a feeling rising in his heart, stronger
than all reasoning to the contrary, that those men were
excusable?
Such were, Mr. Speaker, my sentiments. I spoke them else-
where. I have had, since that time, occasion to realize that
I have greatly shocked Tory editors and Tory members. Sir,
I know what Tory loyalty is 1 . Tories have always been famous*
for being loyal so long as it was profitable to be so. .
321
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Sir, I will not receive any lectures on loyalty from men with
such a record. I am a British subject, and I value the proud
title as much as any one in this House. But if it is expected
of me that I shall allow fellow-countrymen, unfriended, un-
defended, unprotected, and unrepresented in this House, to be
trampled under foot by this government, I s'ay that is not
what I understand by loyalty, I would call that slavery. . . .
Sir, I am not of those who look upon Louis Riel as a hero.
Nature had endowed him with many brilliant qualities, but
nature denied him that supreme quality without which all other
qualities, however brilliant, are of no avail. Nature denied
him a well-balanced mind. At his worst he was a subject
fit for an asylum; at his best he was a religious and political
^monomaniac. But he was 1 not a bad man I do not believe
at least that he was the bad man he has been represented
to be in a certain press. But that he was insane appears to
me beyond the possibility of controversy. When the reports
first came here last spring and in the early summer of his
doings' and sayings in the North-West, when we heard that
he was to depose the Pope and establish an American Pope,
those who did not know him believed he was an impostor,
but those who knew him knew at once what was the matter.
In the province of Quebec there was not an instant's hesita-
tion about it. Almost every man in that province knew that
he had been several times confined in asylums, and therefore
it was manifest to the people of Quebec that he had fallen
into one of those misfortunes with which he was afflicted.
When his counsel were engaged and commenced to prepare his
trial, they saw at once that if justice to him and only justice
was to be done, their plea should be a plea of insanity.
Laurier went on to impugn the fairness of the trial:
the request of Kiel's counsel for delay, for witnesses,
were granted only in part; the requests for Kiel's
papers were refused. The medical commission sent
to Regina was a shameful sham. Kiel's secretary,
322
RAIL AND KIEL
William Jackson, was acquitted as insane; why, the
people of Lower Canada demanded, was a different
measure meted out to the man of French blood? "Jack-
son is free to-day, Riel is in his grave,"
Then followed a reference to old wounds:
The death of Scott is the cause of the death of Riel to-day.
Why, if the honourable gentleman thinks that the death of
Scott was a crime, did he not punish Riel at the time? 1870,
'71, '72, '73, almost four years passed away, and yet the
government, knowing such a crime as it has been represented
here had been committed, never took any step to have the
crime punished. What was their reason? The reason was
that the government had promised to condone the offence;
the reason was that the government was not willing to let
that man come to trial but on the contrary actually supplied
him with money to induce him to leave the country. Sir,
I ask any man on the other side of the House, if this offence
was punishable then, why was it not punished then, and if it
was not punishable then, why is it punished now? . . . This
issue of the death of Thomas Scott has long been buried,
and now it is raised by whom? It is raised by members op-
posite, the last men who should ever speak of it. Sir, we
are a new nation, we are attempting to unite the different
conflicting elements which we have into a nation. Shall we
ever succeed if the bond of union is to be revenge?
The example of the United States after the Civil War
should have been followed. Time had proved that
General Grant, who stood for pardon, was a "truer
patriot, a truer statesman than Andrew Johnston, who
urged a trial for treason."
You see the result to-'day. Scarcely twenty years have
passed away since that rebellion, the most terrible that ever
323
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
shook a civilized nation, was put down, and because of the
merciful course adopted by the victors, the two sections of
that country are now more closely united than ever be-
fore. . . . But our government say they were desirous of
giving a lesson. . . . Had they taken as much pains to do
right as 1 they have taken to punish wrong, they would never
have had any occasion to convince those people that the law
cannot be violated with impunity, because the law would never
have been violated at all.
Then came the conclusion:
But to-day, not to speak of those who have lost their
lives, our prisons are full of men who, despairing ever to get
justice by peace, sought to obtain it by war, who, despairing
of ever being treated like freemen, took their lives in their
hands, rather than be treated as slaves. They have suffered
a great deal, they are suffering still; yet their sacrifices will
not be without reward. Their leader is in the grave, they
are in durance, but from their prisons they can see that that
justice, that liberty which the*y sought in vain, and for which
they fought not in vain, has at last dawned upon their country.
Their fate well illustrates the truth of Byron's invocation to
liberty, in the introduction to the Pris'oner of Chillon :
Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty thou art!
For there thy habitation is the heart
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned
To fetters and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom.
Yes, their country has conquered with their martyrdom.
They are in durance to-day; but the rights for which they
were fighting have been acknowledged. We have not the
report of the commission yet, but we know that more than
two thousand claims so long denied have been at last granted.
And more still more. We have it in the Speech from the
Throne that at last representation is to be granted to those
Territories. This side of the House long sought, but s'ought
824
RAIL AND KIEL
in vain, to obtain that measure of justice. It could not come
then, but it came after the war; it came as the last conquest
of that insurrection. And again I say that their country
has conquered with their martyrdom, and if we look at that
one fact alone there was cause sufficient, independent of all
others, to extend mercy to the one who is dead and to those
who live.
Never had the House heard a more moving speech.
Never did Laurier's eloquence rise higher. Friend and
opponent joined in rare tribute. Thomas White, who
had succeeded Senator Macpherson as Minister of the
Interior, referred next day to "a speech of which, al-
though I differ from him altogether, I as a Canadian
am justly proud, because I think it is a matter of com-
mon pride to us that any public man in Canada can
make on the floor of parliament such a speech as we lis-
tened to last night," and Blake declared it "the crown-
ing proof of French domination ; my honourable friend,
not contented with having for this long time in his own
tongue borne away the palm of parliamentary elo-
quence, has invaded ours, and in that field has pro-
nounced a speech which in my humble opinion, merits
this compliment, because it is the truth, that it was the
finest parliamentary speech ever pronounced in the
Parliament of Canada since Confederation."
The debate went on. Caron dwelt on Kiel's Indian
negotiations and defended himself from the charge of
callous participation in a Western banquet on the day
Biel was expected to hang; Mills gave an admirably
judicial review of the evidence manifesting Kiel's in-
sanity; Chapleau declared that Laurier had met the
325
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
criticism of his bold and fatal words in the Champ de
Mars by a more audacious speech in the House, and
that Blake had chivalrously but uselessly sought to sup-
port his lieutenant by sacrificing his own convictions.
But the outstanding speeches after Laurier's were
Blake's and Thompson's. Blake refrained from further
discussion of the government's North-West policy; for
five hours he piled proof upon proof of Kiel's insanity
and of the weight of precedent against holding men in
his situation responsible for their acts. 1 John Thomp-
son, who had recently left the Bench in Nova Scotia to
become Minister of Justice in the Macdonald cabinet,
replied in a speech which, if not so eloquent or weighty
as Blake's, was powerful and reasoned and made it
clear that a man of first calibre had been added to the
ranks of parliament.
The government was sustained by the largest major-
ity of the session, 146 to 52. Seventeen Quebec sup-
l In considering the failure to recognize this fact, weight must be given
not merely to party and racial passion, but to the lack of knowledge
prevailing forty years ago as to the nature and effects of insanity. To-day,
no medical authority would question that the man who was hanged at
Regina was insane: "When one considers the mass of testimony pointing
to Kiel's mental defect, the undoubted history of insanity from boyhood,
with the recurring paroxysms of intense excitement, he wonders that there
could have been the slightest discussion regarding it. ... Riel's was simply
a case of evolutional insanity, which would in the modern school no
doubt be classed as one of the paranoiac forms of dementia. The first
manifestations, as were to be expected, were observed when he was at a
critical period of his boyhood. His early associations were of such a
nature as to turn his mind to the wrongs of his people and develop the
religious fanaticism so prominent at all times in his career. Persecution
is invariably the accompaniment of the paranoiac delusion, and nowhere
have I seen such intense cases of this form of insanity develop as on the
lonely prairies of the North- West, and they have all been of the very same
type as Riel's." Dr. C. K. Clarke, Superintendent of Rockwood Asylum,
in "Queen's Quarterly," April-June, 1905.
326
RAIL AND KIEL
porters of the government voted against it; twenty-
three Liberals, including Mackenzie, Cartwright, and
Charlton from Ontario, Fisher from Quebec, and Wat-
son from Manitoba, parted from Blake and Laurier.
The smart Landry-Langevin manoeuvre had turned the
issue to the hurt of the Opposition rather than of the
government. Even so, Laurier always insisted that
Blake could have saved the situation had he heeded the
advice to put the emphasis on the government's neglect
rather than on Kiel's insanity.
The country did not escape so easily as the Ottawa
ministry. In Ontario the "Mail's" agitation stirred old
sectarian fires, and for years to come new fuel, the
North- West language issue, the Jesuits' Estates Act,
the Manitoba schools controversy, fed the flames. In
Quebec, Honore Mercier rode the tempest to power.
In the election campaign of October, 1886, Mercier
raised the same cry of provincial autonomy which Mo-
wat in Ontario and Fielding in Nova Scotia had found
of such avail, and, with less justification, appealed to
the people's anger against the party that had hanged
Kiel. * The Ross government, after a vain attempt to
reorganize under Hon. L. O. Taillon, resigned in Janu-
a speech in Quebec the night before assuming the premiership, Mer-
cier declared: "When the murder of Louis Kiel had been consummated,
when that unfortunate and unbalanced man had been hung on the gibbet,
it was assumed that the question was settled. That was a grave mistake.
The French-Canadian people felt that a deep blow had been inflicted upon
their nationality. . . . We took up that question because we felt that the
murder of Kiel was a declaration of war upon French-Canadian influence
in Confederation, a violation of right and of justice. . . . We cannot expect
our English speaking fellow-citizens to share our sentiments to the full,
but throughout all Canada, there is not a free and honest man who is not
ready to join with us in condemning the iniquities of the North-West
policy."
327
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
ary, and Mercier formed a ministry, including two
Nationalist-Conservatives. Throughout the Dominion
sectional sentiment grew, national unity appeared a
dream. The agitation for commercial union with the
United States which marked the next four years was
based as much on political as on commercial despair.
Laurier had repeated in the House the stand he had
taken in the Champ de Mars. He was prepared to go
further, to repeat in Toronto the charges he had made
in Ottawa. Toronto newspapers dared him to shoulder
his musket in Ontario. He determined to take up the
challenge. The older Liberals attempted to dissuade
him. There was, however, a vigorous Young Men's
Liberal Club in Toronto which cared less for expedi-
ency. An invitation was sent him on behalf of the club
to speak on the North- West rebellion on December 10,
in the Horticultural Pavilion in Toronto. It was
promptly accepted. The announcement was met with
renewed attacks upon Laurier and dire hints of personal
assault. The Young Liberals organized a body-guard,
but the city showed its good sense by avoiding any
unusual demonstration or interruption. After a
crowded reception at the Rossin House, Laurier faced
a tremendous audience at the Pavilion. His speech
was not one of his great achievements. A theory, none
too well founded, that an Anglo-Saxon audience pre-
ferred cold logic to moving eloquence, led him to make
long citations from state documents which lessened his
effectiveness. Yet he carried his audience with him
throughout, and his closing appeal drove conviction
328
RAIL AND KIEL
home, A Young Liberal of those days wrote lately:
People endured the cold of a bleak December night in
the topmost gallery of the pavilion, leaning in through lowered
windows' to hear the address to the end. The vote of thanks
was moved by Edward Blake, in an address of half an hour,
which many considered the most powerful public address Blake
had ever given. It seemed as if the elder statesman had
been put on his mettle by the triumph of his lieutenant;
certainly he fully rivalled him in eloquence. It was a great
night ; those who went to s'coff remained to cheer.
The Tory press had denounced French-Canadians
as disloyal. Who were the men who made this charge?
The party which for thirty long years had been kept in
power by French-Canadian votes: "Yesterday, in
order to retain power these men pandered to the pre-
judices of my fellow-countrymen in Canada. To-day,
when they see that notwithstanding all that, the votes
are now escaping them, they turn in another direction,
and pander to what prejudices they suppose may exist
in this province." The charge was false. French-
Canadians had become attached to British institutions
and the British connection because they had found more
freedom under the flag of St. George than they could
ever have had as subjects of France. True, they re-
tained their racial individuality:
I honour and esteem English institutions, I do not regret
that we are now subjects of the Queen instead of France;
but may my right hand wither by my side, if the memories
of my forefathers ever cease to be dear to my ears. . . . We
are Canadians. Below the island of Montreal the water that
comes from the north, the Ottawa, unites with the waters
that come from the Western lakes', but uniting they do not
329
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
mix. There they run parallel, separate, distinguishable, and
yet are one stream, flowing within the same banks, the mighty
St. Lawrence, rolling on toward the sea bearing the commerce
of a nation upon its bosom,- a perfect image of our nation.
We may not assimilate, we may not blend, but for all that
we are the component parts of the same country. We may
be French in our origin, and I do not deny my origin, I
pride myself on it, we may be English or Scotch, or what-
ever it may be, but we are Canadians, one in aim and purpose
... As Canadians' we have feelings in common with each
other that are not shared by our fellow-countrymen on the
other side of the water. As Canadians we are affected by
local and national considerations which bind us together ;
we look back to the land of our ancestors and feel, for all
that, no less good Canadians.
In great detail Mr. Laurier proceeded to arraign the
government for its North-West policy. He prefaced:
In my opinion, the guilt of the rebellion does not rest with
the miserable wretches who took up arms but rests altogether
with the government who provoked it. ... I bring this charge
against the government, and I will endeavour, I think I will
not fail, to prove, that the half-breeds were denied for long
years rights and justice, rights which were admitted as soon as
they were asked by bullets; I charge against them that they
have treated the half-breeds with contempt, with undisguised
disdain; I charge against them that they would not listen to
their prayers ; I charge against them that they drove them to
despair, that they drove them to the rashness, to the madness,
to the crime which they afterwards committed.
"When we find a government ill-treating a poor
people, simply because they are poor and ignorant," he
concluded, "I say that it behooves us to fight freely with
all the means that the constitution places in our hands."
In a series of addresses in western Ontario, in Lon-
330
RAIL AND RIEL
don, Stratford, Windsor, Laurier repeated his criticism
of the government. The government press had prophe-
sied a hostile reception; the "Mail" had printed "Don't
put his head under the pump" editorials; at London
dodgers were circulated inciting an attack upon "the
traitor Laurier." But beyond a few interruptions
which the speaker readily parried, no trouble developed.
Laurier had taken in Ontario the stand he had taken
in Quebec, and Ontario had been convinced alike of his
courage and of his moderation.
Kiel was dead, but his deeds lived after him. On-
tario and Quebec were once more at loggerheads, with
the Maritime provinces wearying of their bickering.
The old Bleu party had been shaken and Mercier
exalted, Ontario Liberalism split, Blake divided from
his party, Laurier's powers revealed.
331
CHAPTER VII
>
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PAETY
The General Elections of 1887 Blake on the Tariff Renewed
Defeat The Resignation of Blake His Power of Leadership
Gartwright and Mills Laurier Ghosen Leader Building up a
Party.
FOR the second time since assuming the leader-
ship of the Liberal party, Edward Blake faced
his opponents in the general election of Feb-
ruary, 1887. Five years had passed since the first en-
counter, years of rapidly shifting issues, of party ebb
and flow. Blake had no little ground for believing that
better fortune would attend the second conflict. Not
least among the signs of change was the outcome of the
provincial elections which, by a most unusual coincidence,
had been held in every section of the Dominion in the
preceding year. True, the West remained Conserva-
tive, John Norquay, the able half-breed chief of that
party, returning to power in Manitoba, and William
Smith, leader of a more or less Conservative group in
British Columbia, retaining control of the Pacific pro-
vince. But the West then counted little in numbers or
prestige. The East had voted solidly Liberal. In
April, William S. Fielding had swept Nova Scotia; in
June, Andrew G. Blair, leading a coalition party of a
predominantly Liberal tinge, carried New Brunswick by
a large majority; in October, Honore Mercier turned a
332
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY
small minority into a majority, and in December Oliver
Mowat won his fourth success. The omens seemed
favourable, and Blake himself had no shred of doubt as
to the issue.
The government pointed with pride to the prosperity
of the country clouded, it was true, but only for the
moment and to the successful completion of the Cana-
dian Pacific. To the business men who were building
up factories under the shelter of the national-policy wall,
the bogey of the blue ruin free trade would bring was
once more displayed. In Ontario the Riel issue was
relied upon to lose votes for the Opposition, while in
Quebec the support of the bishops would keep the loss
anticipated by the government within narrow bounds.
In Ontario constituencies the Grits had been hived into
harmlessness ; the franchise lists were now in the hands of
the government's friends; Macdonald was still able to
rouse to fever heat the eager loyalty of his myriad of
personal followers; what was there to fear?
The Opposition pictured the country hurling head-
long into bankruptcy through the government's extrav-
agance. They rang the changes on every instance of
administrative corruption and political jobbery. They
held the ministers to account not merely for the un-
doubted ebb in commercial prosperity but for the rising
tide of political discontent; with Manitoba up in arms
against the federal railway policy, with Nova Scotia on
the verge of secession, with Ontario and Quebec at log-
gerheads, what had become of the heritage of good-will
and reasoned hope with which the Dominion had been
333
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
endowed at its birth? In Ontario the cry of provincial
rights and in Quebec the North-West issue were relied
upon. And as for the personal factor, the five years
that had passed had given unquestioned proof that in
intellectual capacity, in statesmanlike grasp and breadth
of vision, in unflagging study of every rising issue,
Blake stood head and shoulders above all his contempo-
raries.
On one question Blake was careful to define anew
his stand. He insisted that the tariff was not an issue.
Even in 1882 he had made it clear that his objections
were against details and not against the principle of
protection. Now he declared, notably in a speech at
Malvern in January, 1887, that even change in detail
was less feasible, since the enormous increase in debt and
expenditure made it necessary to raise still larger sums
from customs. Free trade was absolutely out of the
question. "I have only to repeat," he asserted, "in the
most emphatic language, my declaration that there is in
my judgment no possibility of a change in that system
of taxation which I have described, the necessary effect
of which is to give a large and ample advantage to the
home manufacturer over his competitor abroad." Some
reduction of duties on raw materials, some readjust-
ment to lighten the burden on the goods consumed by the
poor, there should be, but no sweeping change. The
"Globe" dotted his i's and crossed his t's. Tory extrav-
agance had put low tariffs out of the question; the tariff
was not an issue in the campaign; there would be no
revolutionary changes, no factory would close its doors,
334
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY
no one but a few Tory hacks would lose a day's work
after the election. "After this," it concluded, "no manu-
facturer has any excuse for ranging himself in hostility
to the Liberal party on account of the tariff."
Blake was not to be allowed to decide what would and
what would not be an issue. Manufacturers could not
forget, or at least were not allowed to forget, that in the
past the Liberals had stood, if not for free trade, for at
any rate a lower tariff and sweeping reduction of the
most burdensome and monopolistic schedules. The
Conservative press insisted that it was to Cartwright,
not to Blake, that the country must look for light on
Liberal tariff policy. Blake had sought to meet this
contention in his Malvern speech:
Some of your adversaries presume to say that it is not I
who am to expound the party policy on this question, and
that you must look elsewhere for light. The general prin-
ciples and policy of the party have been shaped under my
lead by the concurrence of its representatives in parliament.
What I have said and am about to say, you may take as
authoritative to whatever extent a leader has authority, and
so far from there being divergence I can assure you there
is in my belief a general concurrence of sentiment between us,
including Sir Richard Cartwright, whom I name only because
our adversaries delight to represent him as holding other views.
On February 22 the electors rendered judgment, or
at least decision. The results were deeply disappoint-
ing to the Liberals. A gain of but two seats in Ontario
had been offset by a loss of two in Manitoba; Nova
Scotia and Prince Edward Island sent six more
Liberals, and Quebec fifteen more opponents of the
335
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
government, but even so Macdonald could count on a
majority of thirty. Before the first session was over
this majority had grown still higher. The bolting
Bleus from Quebec were not able to resist the lure of
patronage, and half forgiving, half forgiven, they
sheepishly returned to the government fold. Ontario
gerrymanders, Quebec episcopal support, protection-
ist sentiment, administrative patronage and pressure,
Macdonald's personal appeal, the division in the Op-
position ranks on the Riel and tariff issues, had proved
too much once more for the forces of Liberalism.
To Blake defeat came as a personal blow. He was
angered, chagrined, filled with doubts of democracy's
capacity, doubts of his own powers of leadership.
Cartwright's unwillingness wholly to sink his views on
the fiscal question rankled. Insomnia and failing
health, due in part to overwork but more to nervous
worry and ceaseless introspection, lessened his force for
the coming uphill fight. He determined to resign the
leadership, and in a circular letter, written shortly be-
fore parliament opened, he so informed his followers.
It was not the first time Blake had resigned, much less
the first he had threatened to resign. He had sub-
mitted his resignation to caucus at the opening of the
session of 1882, but had been prevailed upon to remain.
More than once the government press had accepted his
resignation; at intervals during 1885 the "Mail" fore-
cast his retirement and the probable succession of Mo-
wat to the federal leadership. But this was only part
of the game of weakening the other party's morale, and
336
WILFRID LAURIER
Leader of the Liberal Party, 1887
(At forty-six)
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY
no more certain prophecy than the "Globe's" jaunty but
rather premature remark in 1857 that "John A. is
about to (retire from politics, a thoroughly used-up
character." More to the point were occasional hints
thrown out by Blake himself. Replying during the
campaign to a taunt of Macdonald that he was "de-
voured with ambition," he had declared that nothing
would suit him better than to return to the ranks ; it was
his duty to strive for victory, but if the people gave an
adverse verdict, he would for his part accept the deci-
sion gladly and gratefully. Clearly this was the re-
action of a sensitive nature to a foolish charge, and not
a considered determination. It was hoped that he
would be content with giving an opportunity for the
expression of any criticism, and once more assume the
leadership. But this time there was to be no drawing
back.
Blake's followers recognized that he had idiosyncra-
sies which told against success as a party leader. With
all his absorption in politics and his sincere sympathy
with progressive measures, he had not that lively inter-
est in individual men which is indispensable for a leader
and particularly a leader in opposition. He stood aloof
from his fellows, austere, moody, self-centred. His
high-strung nervous temperament forced him to build
up a protecting wall of personal reserve. In debate,
his comprehensive mind prevented him from assigning
a definite share of the assault to his lieutenants ; in pri-
vate conference, he could not easily bend to the light
word that would ease a strain or the kindly exaggerated
337
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
compliment by which Macdonald bound his liegemen to
him. That he was the iceberg his opponents termed
him, every man who knew him intimately denied with
vigour, but it was true that he moved in higher and
more rarified strata of logic than the average man
could thrive in. Above all, it was questioned whether
he would for long wage a losing fight.
For all that, there was not in any responsible quar-
ter the slightest disposition to question his leadership.
Whatever his failings, they were regarded as but evi-
dences of temperament, idiosyncrasies of genius, spots
upon the sun. In parliament and out, Liberals
cherished the deepest admiration for his masterful intel-
lect, his unswerving probity, his high sense of duty to
the State. Defeat did not lessen their confidence or
their loyalty. "We knew," as Laurier afterward
affirmed, "that no man could then have broken the
Tory machine." There was no movement to seek an-
other leader, no eager aspirant for his mantle.
Yet it soon became clear that another leader must
be sought. Blake held firmly to his determination to
retire. The parliamentary caucus which met at the be-
ginning of the session insisted upon re-electing him,
against his protests, but he declined to accept.
Through a dull, post-mortem session, the Opposition
grappled with the task of finding a successor.
Two men in the Ontario delegation seemed of leader-
ship calibre, and each was willing to undertake the task.
Sir Richard Cartwright was one of the strong individ-
ualities of the House. Grandson of a distinguished
338
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY
Loyalist who had much to do with establishing both the
commerce and the public life of Upper Canada on sound
foundations ; educated in Trinity College, Dublin ; pres-
ident in his thirties of the Commercial Bank; elected
to the legislature of united Canada as a Conservative
in 1863; gradually separated from his party by distrust
of its financial programme, personal hostility to Mac-
donald, and disappointment over not being chosen to
succeed Sir John Rose as Finance Minister in 1869;
a strong opponent of Macdonald's railway policy and
vigorous in denunciation of the Pacific scandal, Cart-
wright had finally thrown in his lot with the Liberals
and become a member of the Mackenzie government.
As Minister of Finance through a period of world-wide
depression, Cartwright was compelled by his opponents
to bear the responsibility for every closed factory and
every open soup-kitchen, and had thrust upon him a
reputation for pessimism and a rigid, doctrinaire laissez-
faire attitude which was far from earned. Yet in op-
position, with evidence ever before him of political
corruption, of hand-to-mouth expediency in high places,
of the bleeding white of the country by the exodus, he
undoubtedly did grow more pessimistic and more
vitriolic. A polished gentleman, a finished debater,
a master of mordant satire, widely read, with a much
wider outlook in international affairs than almost any
of his fellow-parliamentarians, Cartwright was a distinct
asset in the House, though sometimes a liability in the
country. For Blake, whom he was wont to term
"Master Blake" (Blake was fifty-four in 1887, and
339
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Cartwright fifty-two) he had little sympathy; his single-
track mind could not understand the many windings
and turnings of his leader's thought and action.
David Mills, on the contrary, was a warm and loyal
follower, almost a worshipper of Blake. Born in Kent
County, Ontario, in 1831, educated at the University
of Michigan, in turn school-teacher, inspector of schools,
editor, barrister, Mills entered parliament for Bothwell
in 1867 and for the last two years of the Mackenzie
regime served as Minister of the Interior. He was
a solid, industrious, straightforward, moderate man,
well-read and possessed of a reflective bent and a desire
to get down to fundamentals which led Macdonald to
call him always the philosopher of Bothwell. He was
unquestionably able, but lacked Cartwright's note of
distinction. While possessed of his share of ambition,
he would have been quite content to keep Blake's seat
warm for him if his leader wished at any time to return.
Yet it was to neither of these men that Blake turned.
/He knew that Cartwright, though respected, was far
from universally popular, and the personal antagonism
between the two men made him discount his Ontario
colleague's vigorous qualities. Mills he held made for
a lieutenant's, not a captain's place. In Laurier he
recognized a born leader./ Intimate intercourse in the
House and on many political tours^ they had taken
together had given him the measure of the man. Aside
from the personal factor, he felt that it was in Quebec
that the Liberal party's greatest opportunity lay.
When Mills and Burpee went to Blake on behalf of
340
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY]
the parliamentary party, seeking advice as to his suc-
cessor, his reply was emphatic: " There is only one pos-
sible choice Laurier."
To many members of the party the suggestion came
as a surprise. They had taken Blake's leadership so
much for granted that they had not thought of any
other man as more than an aide to the chief. Nor
could they now picture Laurier in his place. They had
not yet realized the iron determination that lay behind
that quiet manner, the latent strength housed in that
frail body. An orator of unsurpassed force and grace,
they granted, a man of incomparable charm, of un-
blemished reputation, of high and consistent aims, but
a student rather than a fighter, too quiet and retiring
for the task of popular leadership, too weak to hold
together a party of many strong and assertive person-
alities and break the hold of Macdonald on the country.
Even granting the personal qualities, was it expedient
to set a French-speaking Roman Catholic at the head
of a party of which the chief strength had always lain
in the English-speaking provinces, particularly when
the ashes of the Kiel controversy still were hot, and
Laurier's musket on exhibit in every Tory sanctum?
And yet, where was his equal?
Wilfred Laurier knew his own powers too well either
to display them before the need came or to fear that
they would not suffice. Yet he had not thought of
succeeding to the leadership, and was genuinely averse
to accepting the task. On personal grounds he pre-
ferred the quiet life he had been leading, the practice
341
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of his profession, the constant browsing in the parlia-
mentary library, the daily warm and pleasant com-
munion with chosen friends, the occasional call for
a parliamentary jousting. On party grounds, he
doubted, even more than his Ontario friends, the wis-
dom of choosing a man who was too good a Catholic
to suit Ontario and not submissive enough to suit
Quebec. If Blake must retire, he was convinced that
Cartwright was the man to succeed.
When Mills and Burpee reported Blake's attitude,
Laurier went to his house, urged him to reconsider, and
declared that he could not himself undertake the leader-
ship. Aside from other personal grounds, he was not
a man of independent means, and the new post would
involve a heavy pecuniary sacrifice; but it was mainly
the party reasons against the choice of a leader from
Quebec he emphasized. Blake, who was not well, lay
stretched upon a sofa, listening while Laurier talked;
then repeated his insistence that he must retire and that
no other man but Laurier could face the task. 'Yes,
Mr. Laurier," added Mrs. Blake, who was present and
who had evidently discussed the question many times
with her husband, "you are the only man for it."
On June 2, two months after the House met, Blake
definitely resigned. An advisory committee was named
in caucus, Cartwright and Mills from Ontario, Laurier
and Francois Langelier from Quebec, Charles Weldon
from New Brunswick, A. G. Jones from Nova Scotia,
L. H. Davies from Prince Edward Island, and Robert
Watson from Manitoba. This was only a stop-gap
342
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY
measure ; the choice of a leader had to be made without
further delay. On reflection, the majority of the party
had come to Blake's way of thinking. At a caucus
held on June 7, the leadership was offered to Laurier,
Cartwright making the nomination and Mills second-
ing it. Even yet, he hesitated, and deferred a definite
answer until the end of the session. When the session
drew to a close, he was persuaded, still against his judg-
ment, to accept the task and to announce his acceptance
to the country. Even so, he insisted to the caucus
that he would retire if Blake's health returned. At
the age of forty-six years Wilfred Laurier became the
leader of the party he was to guide for over thirty years.
The announcement stirred much comment. The
pervading note was of good-will tempered by doubt.
"L'Electeur" and "La Patrie" rejoiced that one great
Canadian had been found to succeed another, and fore-
cast fair fortunes for Laurier, Liberalism and Canada.
The "Globe" was more restrained in its eulogies. On
June 8, commenting on a report that Laurier had been
elected leader for the session only, it declared that "his
appointment would be as judicious and generally ac-
ceptable as any," but that it would be a grave error to
make him or any other man merely a temporary leader:
Blake's return was absolutely out of the question. A
fortnight later, on the announcement of Laurier's ac-
ceptance, the greeting was warmer: there was every
reason to believe that Laurier would justify as fully
as Blake did the old maxim that the man whom a great
place seeks is the man to fill a great place worthily:
343
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
an admirable speaker, a man of courage, patriotism,
character; not yet possessed of Blake's mastery of pro-
cedure or of business detail, but sure to develop: "he
has most gallantly and unselfishly placed himself at
the disposal of his friends ; every Liberal owes him grati-
tude and every Conservative owes him justice and fair
play." And yet a lingering doubt is reflected in the
fact that for weeks thereafter the new leader's name
never occurs in the columns of the chief journal of
the party. The "Mail" frankly and fairly recognized
the new leader's quality. A less sympathetic view was
reflected in the Toronto "World": Laurier was not
the Moses to lead the Liberals out of the wilderness;
an orator, not a parliamentarian, of little political judg-
ment, amiable, but not the stuff of which leaders are
made. And "La Minerve," suddenly discovering the
departing leader's greatness, lamented the "replacing
of a giant by a pigmy"; Laurier's election might gratify
the amour propre of Quebec, but it would assure the
Conservatives of twenty-five years of power: it would
be the regime of the worthy M. Joly transferred to
the federal house. Later in the year "La Minerve"
somewhat less ungraciously expressed its fear that the
task would prove above his strength, and at the same
time its willingness to applaud a compatriot if he rose
to his opportunity.
Wilfrid Laurier became leader of the Liberal party
in his forty-sixth year. He had been in political life
since thirty, and for all but three years of this time in
344
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY
the federal parliament. Time had tested his political
qualities ; it had not weakened his political interest. His
character was formed, his opinions ripened, his capa-
cities developed. Authority was to give a sharper edge
to some of his powers, age was to bring some disillusion-
ment, the turns of fate were to reveal to the public some
unexpected phases of his character and capacity, but in
all essentials the Wilfrid Laurier upon whom Edward
Blake's mantle had fallen so unexpectedly in 1887 was
the Wilfrid Laurier of the next thirty years.
It was pre-eminently to his character that Wilfrid
Laurier owed his new place. The public knew him as
the silver-tongued orator, his party hailed him as a firm
and skilled exponent of its principles, but it was not his
oratory, it was not his opinions, that chiefly marked him
out for power. Less consciously and obviously it was
the moral qualities of the man that won the allegiance
of those who knew him best, his courage, his self-control,
his honour, his essential kindliness. Courage was per-
haps his outstanding quality. He was not reckless ; he
was not regardless of the choice of the paths that led to
a goal ; he was ever an opportunist as to means ; he had
constantly in mind the necessity of keeping the country
moving abreast, but for all that he was unflinching and
unafraid wherever he found a principle at stake. Self-
control had marked him from student days, the assur-
ance of power, the patience to wait, the vigilance of
phrase, moderation in criticism and attack. Honour
was rooted in him. No friend ever complained that
345
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Wilfrid Laurier had deceived or misled him; no oppo-
nent ever charged that he had been tricked, or treated
with other than scrupulous chivalry. It was a bold man
who could propose in Laurier's presence any shady
policy, and if he ventured, it was not long until he wilted
into stammering silence under the calm influence of a
noble presence. Laurier shrank from mean and ignoble
things with a repugnance that was almost physical. He
was ambitious, and the fondness for power grew with its
exercise, but he was too proud to stoop, too fastidious to
make cheap bids for popularity. And yet he was not
self-centred; he did not hold himself aloof. A deep
and genuine kindliness marked all his actions; it shone
in the laughing intercourse with old friends in his home,
in his warm interest in children, in the tolerant attitude
toward those who differed from him. The perfect cour-
tesy that marked him through all his years was no cal-
culated and superficial accomplishment; it was the nat-
ural outcome of a spirit wherein friendly interest in his
fellows and respect for himself were subtly fused. *
i Laurier's estimate of Antoine Dorion is curiously applicable to him-
self; Dorion had been his boyish ideal and had profoundly influenced his
development :
"Considered as party leader Mr. Dorion was himself, and could be com-
pared with none other. In opinions no one could have been more demo-
cratic, but he never had resource to those expedients which are sometimes
^considered indispensable in democratic politics. A man of exquisitely
courteous manners he yet repelled all familiarity. He never resorted to
the facile method of courting popularity by spending himself on every
side. He never sought to flatter vulgar passion; he never deviated from
the path which seemed to him to be the path of truth. He never sought
success for the love of success, but he fought persistently for the right as
he saw it. He faced defeat without weakness, and when success came it
did not take away his modesty."
346
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY
The distinction of his presence was in keeping with the
distinction of his character. Tall, slight, but with a
broad pair of shoulders, of irregular features, smooth
face, pale complexion, hair jet-black, he stood out in any
company. There was about him an indefinable touch
of authority. "The three greatest French-Canadian
chieftains of democracy," his friend Senator David has
noted, "Papineau, Dorion and Laurier, were all of aris-
tocratic appearance; their bearing, their manners, their
features, were stamped with the imprint of unusual dis-
tinction." In friendly talk his features were in repose,
benovolent, serene ; when business was on foot his wary
eye sharpened and his face became as expressionless and
impenetrable as a mask.
It was as a speaker that he had first made his mark.
He had now become incomparably the first parliament-
ary orator, and one of the most skilled debaters in Can-
ada's annals. He had not Blake's range of mind, his
grasp and marshalling of intricate detail; he had not
Chapleau's brilliance and theatrical passion; he could not
play on crowds with the power and dash of Mercier ; but
he had distinctive qualities of his own which gave him
the mastery on the floor of parliament. He did not
speak often. When he did speak he confined himself to
a few broad points, developing them logically, calmly,
persuasively. The thought was not abtruse, the reason-
ing not subtle; it seemed to the hearer plain common
sense, touched with emotion, heightened with imagina-
tion, sharpened in a clinching phrase. In debate he was
347
LIFE AND LETTERS .OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
wary, alert, ready in resource, courteous but insistent,
rarely giving an opponent an opening and rarely missing
the weak joint in the opponent's armour. His clear sil-
very voice, his easy gesture, his twinkling eye as he
rallied an opponent, his stern features as he denounced
injustice, dominated his hearers.
Laurier had been reluctant to assume the task. Once
it was assumed, he threw himself vigorously into all
its duties. He realized that it was necessary to get
in touch with the rank and file of the party as well
as with its leaders. Quebec he already knew. In the
summer of 1888, accompanied by Mme. Laurier, he
made a long tour through western Ontario, giving a
number of addresses, but seeking chiefly to make the
personal acquaintance of the Liberal stalwarts in each
riding. His extempore speeches in English were not
at first as fluent and finished as he desired, but before
the tour was over he had gained ease and confidence.
Everywhere his fine presence, his unaffected friendli-
ness and interest, his frank discussion of the country's
affairs, won warm allegiance. In the House his success
was still more rapid and complete. At the beginning
of the session of 1888 he had to face the aloofness of
a number of members who had accepted his leadership
without enthusiasm, as merely a pis aller. * Their luke-
warmness was not of long duration. From the out-
set Laurier revealed a grasp of policy, a courage
iA letter from an Ontario Liberal member, John Charlton, forecasting
a gloomy future for a party with a French Catholic leader and with
"machine politicians like J. D. Edgar" high in its councils, which became
public, illustrated this attitude.
348
LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY
and firmness combined with prudence, tact, and unfail-
ing good temper, a careful planning of parliamentary
activities together with a readiness to let his associates
share the work and the honours, a genuine individual
interest in his followers, which stirred them to eager
loyalty. At the close of the session they expressed
unanimous, unqualified, and enthusiastic allegiance.
t
The new leader had established his right to lead.
349
CHAPTER VIII
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
A Canadian Stock-taking Political Discontent and Economic
Stagnation Heroic Remedies Imperial Federation Annexation
Independence Seeking New Markets An Imperial Zollverein
Commercial Union with the United States Laurier's Attitude
The Jesuits' Estates Diversion Macdonald and Mercier Mc-
Carthy and the Dual-Language Question Blake and the Leader-
ship The Canadian Pacific again in Politics The Election of
1891 The Old Man, the Old Flag, and the Old Policy The
Blake Postcript.
WHEN Wilfrid Laurier assumed the leader-
ship of the Liberal party, he found the
country facing new issues and new phases
of old issues. To follow a man like Edward Blake
would in any 'case have called for every quality of
leadership he possessed. When the situation was
complicated by the emergence of difficult and thorny
problems, charged with political dynamite and potent
to sweep away old party boundaries, the test became
as searching as could well be conceived.
The ghost of Louis Kiel, though not exorcised, no
longer walked nightly. Kiel lay in his grave; his Metis
followers had gone back to their carts and their ploughs;
the government had been put on its trial and had
escaped punishment. The storm that had swep
Quebec and Ontario died away. But when the wate
of racial passion have been stirred to their depths, tt
do not easily come to rest. In the Jesuits' Estates
350
r
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
controversy, in the demand for the abolition of French
in the schools of Ontario and the legislature of the
North- West, and later in the protracted struggle over
the schools of Manitoba, the country and its political
leaders had to face the aftermath of the storm.
Nor was it merely questions of race and creed that
called for prudent and courageous handling. The first
term of Laurier's leadership and the first general
election which followed were occupied still more absorb-
ingly with the problem of Canada's trade and political
connection with the United Kingdom and the United
States. For the first time in the history of the Domin-
ion, the issue of its national future and its relationship to
outside powers, particularly to the two great English-
speaking communities, became of wide and dominant
popular interest. The question was not raised by party
leaders. It grew out of the country's need, and found
its first expression through men who had played little
part in politics. The character and the ambitions of
individual men had much to do with the form in which
the issue arose and the solution which it received, but
they did not create it. Given Canada's historical re-
lations with the United Kingdom, her geographical con-
nection with the United States, and the trend of her
own political and industrial development after Con-
federation, the rise of the issue was inevitable.
In 1887 Canada had experienced twenty years of
Confederation, and nearly ten of the national policy.
What did the stock-taking show?
Confederation was to bring national unity, to create
351
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
a common Canadian sentiment which would submerge
.^^ . .,,! i rrua LJ*I ^>0i T~"n^~"~ """"** **^ Jfc ^"^^~* JJ '"' --.. - ^""^
provincial prejudices, end all hankering for union with
the United States, and prepare the Dominion for a
relationship of equality with the mother country. Had
this unity developed? For the most part it was still a
hope unrealized. True, the federal solution had re-
moved some of the more contentious questions from the
common parliament, but enough remained, or could
be dragged back, to keep sectional jealousy aflame.
True, there was no little growth of Canadian national
sentiment, as the North- West rebellion gave opportu-
nity for proving, and even in the Maritime provinces
many men had become used to calling themselves Cana-
dians, but it was doubtful whether this sentiment
was strong enough to enable the Dominion to resist
the separatist tendencies from within or the attraction
of greater bodies from without. There was little
provincial intercourse; in 1881, despite the building of
the Intercolonial, there were not a thousand Ontarians
in the Maritime provinces and there were actually fewer
Maritime province men in Ontario than there had been
in 1861. When a Nova Scotia' or New Brunswick
lad sought wider fields, it was not to Toronto or Mont-
real he turned, but to Boston or New York.
Nova Scotia, despite increased federal subsidies
which Nova Scotians regarded as belated instalments
of bare justice and Ontario grudged as necessary bribes,
was still unreconciled to having been forced into Con-
federation. In May, 1886, William S. Fielding had
352
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
moved a series of resolutions in the Nova Scotia legis-
lature, pointing out how much the condition of the
province, commercially *and financially, had changed
for the worse, insisting that the objections which had
been urged against union in 1867 still applied with
greater force, and proposed secession from the Domin-
ion, to form either a separate province or a maritime un-
ion under the Crown. The resolutions carried by a vote
of fifteen to seven and in the elections which followed
the Fielding government was sustained by an over-
whelming majority; curiously, a year later the Con-
servatives won in the federal fight, giving Fielding a
reason or excuse for going no further with his proposals.
Ontario and Quebec were rent by a more bitter quarrel
than any since the fifties, and the end was not yet.
Quebec newspapers were still railing against the in-
tolerance which had sent a lunatic (or a hero) to the
scaffold, while in Ontario the "Mail" was threatening
to smash Confederation into its original fragments
rather than submit to French Catholic dictation. In the
West, armed rebellion had broken out among the Metis
and resentment against high tariffs and railway monop-
olies was running high among the English-speaking
farmers. The Manitoba farmer bore fifteen cents a
bushel handicap as compared with his Minnesota neigh-
bour in the cost of shipping wheat to Liverpool; local
rates on coal and lumber and general merchandise were
from two to four times as high as for equal distances
in the Eastern provinces, and the West held, not climate
353
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
or geography, but Macdonald and Van Home and the
policy of artificial restriction of trade and trade chan-
nels to blame.
At Confederation it had been hoped that a new stage
and new players would bring higher political standards.
The hard reality was the Canada of gerrymanders and
Red Parlour funds, a low and stagnant level of political
methods that affected both parties and had its source
in the popular indifference that soon forgot Pacific
scandals. Nor had Canada taken the position in the
Empire and among the nations of the world that had
been hoped. In Great Britain she was considered a
colony which had ceased to fulfil the natural functions
of a colony and would some day go the way of all col-
onies, though in some quarters there was a reviving
interest and a belief that Britain's overseas possessions
would still prove serviceable. In the United States,
where Canada had been given a thought at all, she had
been considered an Arctic fringe, at the moment merely
a pawn in Britain's hands, but destined some day to
knock for admission to the Union. Latterly, friction
over the Northeastern fisheries had made her better
if not more favourably known. Elsewhere, Canada
was about as well known as Spitzbergen or Kamschatka
to the outside world to-day.
In his first public address after his election to the
leadership, at a political picnic held at Somerset, in
the county of Megantic, on August 2, 1887, ILaurier
emphasized the failure to attain national unity, and
laid the blame at the government's door. National
354
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
unity, he insisted, must be every patriot's aim, and not
least the aim of every French-Canadian:
French-Canadians, I ask you one thing, that, while remem-
bering that I, a French-Canadian, have been elected leader
of the Liberal party of Canada, you will not lose sight of
the fact that the limits of our common country are not con-
fined to the province of Quebec, but that they extend to all
the territory of Canada, and that our country is wherever
the British flag waves in America. I ask you to remember
this in order to remind you that your duty is simply and
above all to be Canadians. To be Canadians! That was
the object of Confederation in the intention of its authors;
the aim and end of Confederation was to bring the different
races closer together, to soften the asperities of their mutual
^ * * fc **~** - *****^*"^**o*^*fc*lp*fcW*MB""B<******^
relations and to connect the scattered groups of British
subjects.
Unfortunately this aim had not been attained:
This was the programme twenty years ago. But are the
divisions ended? The truth is that after twenty years' trial
of the system, the Maritime provinces submit to Confederation,
but do not love it. The province of Manitoba is in open
revolt against the Dominion government, gentlemen, not in
armed revolt, as in the revolt of the half-breeds, but in legal
revolt. The province of Nova Scotia demands its separa-
tion from the Confederation. In fact, carry your gaze from
east to west and from north to south and everywhere the
prevailing feeling will be found to be one of unrest and un-
easiness, of discontent and irritation.
. . . The fault rests with the men who have governed us,
the fault rests with the men who, instead of governing accord-
ing to the spirit of our institutions, have disregarded the
principle of iQcaL-Ubejties and local interests, the recognition
of which is the very basis^ of our constitution. ... In a
country like ours, with a heterogeneou?*^population, ... a
federative union is tne only one that can secure civil and
355
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
political liberty. . . . Legislative separation is the most
powerful factor in national unity. . . . Unfortunately the
constitution has placed in the hands of the government a
terrible weapon which it has used, when and how it pleased,
to assail the local liberties of the provinces, . . . the veto
power, which is by far the most arbitrary weapon with which
tyranny has ever armed a federal government.
If Confederation had not brought national unity
or higher political standards or a place in the world's
regard, had the National Policy given the economic
benefits its sponsors had promised? The trial had been
shorter, but the evidence of failure was almost equally
strong.
Protection was to assure prosperity to the manu-
facturer, bring home markets to the farmer, and force
the lowering of the United States tariff wall "a rec-
iprocity of trade through a reciprocity of tariffs."
There had been an outburst of prosperity, with the
revival of good times the world over in 1880, and the
impulse to trade that came with the building of the
Canadian Pacific and the fitting out of the settlers and
speculators who followed in its wake. But now the
reaction had come. The days of construction, with
millions to fling, were over, and the penny-counting
days of operating had succeeded. Of the settlers who
had poured into the West, a great proportion proved
merely tourists; frost, drought, grasshoppers, high rail-
way rates, low wheat prices, the prospect of hard work,
drove them east or south. Corner lots in mushroom
cities relapsed into prairie, and Eastern shareholders
in colonization companies found there was many a wait
356
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
between the prospectus and the settler. For a time
protection had encouraged the building and expansion
of Eastern factories, notably in the textile, sugar, and
iron and steel industries, but with the home market
stagnant and the market of the United States still
barred, this expansion led to over-production, the clos-
ing down of the weaker plants, and constant cries for
a larger dose of the stimulant. The farmer's home
markets shared the same restriction; in the British
market, he faced the world's competition; from the Unit-
ed States he was still shut out. The club of retaliation
had been no more successful than the olive branch of low
tariffs in inducing the United States to mend its ways.
The statistics of trade, railway traffic, bank deposits,
revealed the stagnation or snail-like progress of the
country. But the most convincing and most alarming
evidence was furnished by the slow growth of popula-
tion at home and the swelling exodus to the Uuited
States. Between 1851 and 1861 the province of Canada
had grown over six hundred thousand, and between 1871
and 1881 the Dominion nearly seven hundred thousand,
but between 1881 and 1891 by a bare half-million.
Between 1881 and 1891 the population of Manitoba
and the North- West grew from 120,000 to 250,000, but
Dakota alone in the same period had leaped from 135,-
000 to 510,000. Canadians flocked to the United
States, Maritime-province men to Boston, French- Can-
adians to the mill towns of New England, Ontario men
to the border cities and Dakota farms ; contrary to cur-
rent belief, over half of these emigrants sought the f arm,
357
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
not the city. Canada with its four million people and
its vast acres had sent more of its sons to the building of
the republic than England with its thirty millions and its
crowded land. There were virtually as many Canadian
doctors, nurses, architects, bartenders, actors, engineers,
cotton-mill operatives, lumbermen, in the United States
as in Canada itself. Counting native-born, the children
of two native-born parents and half the children claim-
ing one Canadian parent, there were in the United
States in 1890 one and a half-million Canadians, or
over one-third the home population. Never in history,
save perhaps from crowded and misgoverned Ireland,
had there been such an exodus from one country to
another. "In literal fashion," declared Sir Richard 1
Cartwright, whose scriptures, according to Nicholas
Flood Davin, began with Exodus and ended with
[Lamentations, "the United States are becoming liter-
ally flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood. I know
whole counties, I know great regions in Canada where
you cannot find one single solitary Canadian family
which has not a son or a daughter or a brother or a
sister or some near and dear relative now inhabiting
the United States."
Whence could escape be found from national dis-
union and economic stagnation? Desperate conditions
called for drastic remedies. Canada had failed to find
salvation in her own resources. Why not merge her
political or her industrial fortunes with one or the other
of the greater English-speaking peoples? Imperial
federation and imperial preferential trade, political
358
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
union and commercial union with the United States^ *
all found their eager advocates.
The swing to closer relations with Great Britain came
first, though it did not in this period bulk so large. A
new stage was opening in the transformation of the
British Empire. In early days the colonies had been
regarded as possessions of the mother country, markets
for its wares, sources of the raw materials required, to
be defended against other colony-hungry powers and to
be controlled by British governors. Then had come
the era of emancipation. The growth of the colonies
in numbers and self-confidence had coincided with the
decay in Britain of the belief that protection at home
and monopoly of colonial trade brought profit. Britain
abandoned trade monopoly and political control to-
gether. The colonies took over a steadily increasing
share of the management of their own affairs. In
Britain, most men expected the movement would con-
tinue until complete independence was reached. But
in the colonies the force of habit, inherited loyalties,
the renewal of ties by fresh immigration, the desire
for military aid, the lack of any precipitating crisis,
brought content with British connection. Then after
the Franco-Prussian War the tide turned once more.
The development of military ambitions and tariff wars
on the Continent, the entrance of European powers
upon the race for overseas possessions in which Britain
had long been without a rival, revived the imperial
spirit in Britain. A movement began to avert the drift
to independence and instead to link the colonies in closer
359
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
union. The new tendencies found expression in the
activities of the Imperial Federation League. Its
chief purpose was to secure from the colonies military
support for British policies. To reconcile them to this
obligation, they were to be given representation in a
parliament in London to which control over the
Empire's common affairs, whatever they might be,
would be entrusted. The league was organized in
London in 1884, with Hon. W. H. Forster and Lord
Rosebery as leading spirits. Branches were established
in Canada and Australia and a vigorous campaign of
popular education begun.
At first imperial federation made a strong appeal
in Canada. The desire to retain British connections
was strong, and yet men were increasingly discontented
with the subordinate part which Canada still played in
external affairs. Representation in a common parlia-
ment in London seemed to open a way out. Then, as
the attempt was made to crystallize the perorations in
a working plan, difficulties which proved insuperable
came to light. How was the parliament or council to be
constituted? What of India's position? Would the
colonies have to give up old powers as well as secure
new ones? Would taxation with fractional representa-
tion prove acceptable? Many men keenly interested
in public affairs and fired with a burning pride in the
memories and achievements of the British race Prin-
cipal Grant, Colonel Denison, D'Alton McCarthy
had faith that the questions could be answered, given
time and good-will. But no party leader, closer in
360
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
touch with realities, was convinced. Macdonald held
parliamentary federation "an idle dream"; "Canada
would never consent to be taxed by a central body sit-
ting at London, in which she would have practically
no voice." Blake, who had been one of the first to
welcome the proposal as an outlet from colonial de-
pendence, became convinced of its futility. "A quarter
of a century past," he declared in the British House of
Commons in 1900, "I dreamed the dream of imperial
parliamentary federation, but many years ago I came
to the conclusion that we had passed the turning that
could lead to that terminus, if ever, indeed, there was
a practicable road."
While some were looking to London for salvation,
others looked to Washington. The agitation for closer
political union with the older branch of the English-
speaking peoples provoked a counter-agitation for
political union with the younger branch. The chief
supporter of annexation was Goldwin Smith, an Oxford
Don who, after a brief residence in the United States,
had made Toronto his home and had undertaken the
double task of developing literary standards in Canada
and of convincing the Canadian people of the opportu-
nity that awaited them of becoming the Scotland of
North America. For a time he was a voice crying in
the wilderness. Then despair of national unity, com-
mercial depression, the desire to find a way out of the
incessant fishery and border conflicts with the United
States, hostility to the European entanglements which
the imperialists proposed, brought converts. There
361
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
were more advocates of annexation in Canada in the
decade from 1886 to 1896 than at any other time before
or since, but even so they remained a small if vigorous
minority, considered not merely traitorous but
scarcely even respectable. British sympathies, French-
Canadian preference for the status quo, the nascent
Canadian spirit, antagonisms traditional since United
Empire Loyalist days and the War of 1812, proved
forces too great to overcome.
It was not surprising that the constant and vigorous
advocacy of the merjging^T]]Cg^dg^l^ntity in^
British or American union provoked a movement in
favour of independence. Many Canadians had con-
sidered Confederation only a first step toward separa-
tion. In the early seventies Gait and McDougall had
urged that only through independence could respon-
sibility be developed and Canada, instead of a hostage
for Britain's submissive conduct, become a link of
friendship and ensurer of peace between Britain and
the United States. But the time was not ripe, and
much of the vague nationalist feeling was diverted into
economic rather than political channels when the
national policy struck out for industrial independence.
Now the sentiment revived. If a change in Canada's
political status was to be made, why not take the coura-
geous and clear-cut solution of independence?
Laurier was never a man to raise questions before
they were ripe. He did not believe that any far-
reaching* change was imminent or desirable, but he
did believe that when a change came it should and would
362
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
be toward independence. Speaking on the reciprocity
issue in the House of Commons in March, 1888, he
declared :
It was our hope at one time to make this country a nation."
It is our hope yet. ["Hear, hear!"] I hail that sentiment
with joy, with unbounded joy, all the more that it is al-
together unforeseen. I had expected, from the talk we have
heard from these gentlemen on the other side of the House,
that they expected that this country would forever and for-
ever remain a colony : I see now that they have higher aspira-
tions, and I give them credit for that. Colonies are destined
to become nations, as it is the destiny of a child to become
a man. No one, even on the other side, will assume that this
country, which will some day number a larger population than
Great Britain, is forever to remain in its present political re-
lation with Great Britain. The time is coming when the
present relations of Great Britain and Canada must either be-
come closer or be severed altogether. ... If ever and when-
ever Canada chooses, to use the language of Lord Palmerston,
to stand by herself, the separation will take place not only
in peace but in friendship and in love, as the son leaves the
house of his father to become himself the father of a family.
But this is not the question of to-day.
Two years later, at a banquet in the Club National
at Montreal, in celebration of Mercier's electoral victory,
he rebuked a little clique that was talking of "the
creation of a French-speaking republic on the banks
of the St. Lawrence," and continued:
When I say that I am not one of those who wish for the
breaking up of Confederation, and favour the creation of
little principalities in our midst, I do not mean to say that we
should always remain a colony. On the contrary, the day is
coming when this country will have to take its place among the
363
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
nations of the earth, but I do not want to see my country's
independence attained through the hostility of one race to the
others'. I do not want my country's independence to be con-
ceived in the blood of civil war. I want my country's in-
dependence to be reached through the normal and regular
progress of all the elements of its population toward the
realization of a common aspiration.
Again in 1892, in supporting a resolution of D' Alton
McCarthy in favour of the appointment of a Canadian
representative at Washington, which the government
was unwilling to accept in full, he renewed his profession
of faith in independence as the ultimate destiny of Can-
ada:
The honourable gentleman [Charles Tupper] said there was
no precedent for this motion, and nothing similar in the his-
tory of nations. I am sure that he is right . . . but at the
same time there has been no instance in the history of nations
of a. colony occupying toward the mother country the position
that Canada occupies toward Great Britain. Canada has
been the first colony in the world to obtain the right of self-
government, and the present motion is simply a development of
the policy adopted fifty years ago when we claimed and ob-
tained the right to govern ourselves. . . . The motion is pro-
posed by an honourable gentleman, whose views, as to the fu-
ture of Canada, are well known to be in favour of a closer re-
lation with Great Britain than we now have. The motion is
supported by myself, and it is known that I do not believe that
the present condition of things will endure forever. The
present relations between us and Great Britain must become
either closer or looser. My opinion is that in the course of
time the relations of Canada with Great Britain must cease,
as the relations of colonies with the mother country do cease,
by independence, just as a child becomes a man. There are
the views I hold, not in regard to the present or actual policy,
but as to the future of the country.
364
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MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
The sentiment in favour of eventual independence
was strongest in the Liberal ranks. The Liberal party
had fought for and achieved self-government in home
affairs. It had urged, under Blake and Mackenzie,
Canada's claim to make her own commercial treaties.
Now the policy of complete independence found much
support within its ranks. The Young Liberals' Club
in Toronto in 1889 and 1890 leaned strongly in that
direction. The "Globe" urged it repeatedly. Irritated
by failure of British support in the Atlantic fisheries
dispute, the "Globe" declared in February, 1888:
So long as the Canadian people remain unwilling to assume
the responsibility of independent nationality, so long must they
expect to be despoiled by the United States with British con-
sent and aid. Canada is far worse off in dealing with the
United States than she would be if independent. . . . The
truth is that the connection seriously embarrasses England
and seriously embarrasses and injures Canada. So long as
we insist upon retaining it, we cannot justly complain of
suffering for the indulgence in a noble loyalty to a country
five-sixths of us never saw.
Commenting on an independence speech of Malcolm
Cameron, in December, 1889, it declared: "The spirit
of independence is certainly moving throughout the
land. . . . Mr. Mowat, though deeply devoted to
British connection, stated the other day at Woodstock
that he hoped a change, if one must come, would be to
independence instead of annexation." "The colonial
status," it insisted a month later, "is being rapidly out-
grown. Ultimate independence seems so reasonable
a destiny for the Dominion that very many of the older
365
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
generation of Canadians unite heartily with the young
men in its advocacy."
Still more significant was the development in this
period of the conception of independence without
separation, as a final goal or a next step, the conversion
of the Empire into a league of equal states linked only
by allegiance to a common Crown. Sir John Mac-
donald, at Confederation, had foreshadowed the growth
of the colonies into "auxiliary kingdoms," but it was
in the Liberal ranks that the idea found its freest
expression. Mr. J. D. Edgar in 1885 and Sir Richard
Cartwright in 1887 urged that the Queen was to be
regarded as Queen of Canada, and that a new equality
would follow that recognition. The "Globe" developed
the idea, and alternating with expressions of opinion
in favour of unqualified independence of the older type,
its columns presented with remarkable insight and, so
far as is known, for the first time in any detail, that
conception of the Empire as a league of equal states
which it has been the task of these later years to make
a reality. 1
i "Mr. Cattanach says that Canadians have no alternative but Imperial
Federation or Annexation. We have a third and better alternative and
we say that complete independence is perfectly consistent with British
connection. Let Her Majesty take the title of Queen of Canada, let
her be advised directly by her Canadian Ministers, and Canada will be
as independent as England, which is sufficiently independent for any
country, without being separated from England, without breaking the
Canadian tradition, and with perfect satisfaction to the sentiments of
all Canadians and Englishmen who are not mainly concerned to keep this
country subordinate to Downing Street." "Globe," Feb. 27, 1889.
"The Globe has often propounded as an alternative project to imperial
federation, and a vastly better one, the abolition of the few legislative
disabilities that now pertain to the colonies, and the formation of an
international league under the Old Crown between the Mother Country
and the various sovereign powers which such an abolition would create.
366
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
None of these projects of political change reached
the stage of practical action. Imperial federation had
behind it the most fervent and wide-spread sentiment,
but the nebulous vagueness of the schemes of its ad-
vocates, the conflict within the movement between those
who stressed imperial defence and those who stressed
imperial trade, and the impossibility of reconciling any
form of imperial centralization with nationalist spirit,
kept it still an aspiration. Annexation had behind
it alluring and immediate prospects of individual gain
and national security, but it ran hopelessly counter to
deep traditions, prejudices, loyalties, which were of
the very soul of the people. Toward independence the
country moved with every increase of strength and con-
fidence, but as yet any formal programme of separation
was premature and won little assent. Imperial fed-
eration and annexation neutralized each other, eacH
saved the country from the other, permitting all the
while the growth of a national spirit which would not
seek absorption in either greater branch of the English-
speaking peoples.
The question of political status was of the morrow;
the questions of trade, markets, profits, were of the
day. Reaction from the prosperity which had gleamed
Such a league, we have pointed out, while amply satisfying all the con-
siderations of sentiment which are urged in favour of British connection,
would at the same time save the colonies from the imperial and European
complications in which Imperial Federation would involve us. Canada,
for iiistance, under such an alliance, though she might still acknowledge
the sovereignty of the Queen, could not be involved in England's quarrels
without her o\*n consent, and this consent any nation engaged in a war
with England would be scrupulously careful to give her no reason to
cease to withhold." "Globe," Feb. 20, 1890.
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LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
in Canada since 1880 forced the issue of larger markets
to the front.
The United Kingdom did not appear to offer a new
outlet. Its markets were already free to Canada, but
they were also free to the rest of the world. There
was little prospect of ousting the United States, Rus-
sia, Australia, from their share in Britain's imports.
Only if Britain could be induced to abandon free trade,
to return to her old policy of protection with its in-
cidental possibilities of colonial preference, to seek
once more to build up a self-contained empire, could
special favour come. Of that few had hope. In
England a rare fair-trader called for high tariffs and
retaliation, but the overwhelming voice of the country
agreed with Disraeli that protection was not only dead
but damned. In Canada, the memory of old preferen-
tial days had lingered longer; for a brief moment,
in the early days of the N. P., when English traders
were throwing stones at his industrial conservatories,
Macdonald thought of urging England, too, to build
glass houses, but Disraeli's fall brought his plans to
grief. In imperial federation circles, the possibility
of cementing the Empire by customs privileges kept
recurring, but the conviction that rightly or wrongly
England would stick to free trade for generations to
come, robbed the project of any practical appeal. It
was chiefly as a rhetorical alternative to closer trade
relations with the United States that imperial prefer-
ence or an imperial Zollverein was urged.
For it was the question lof access to the markets of
368
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
the United States that dominated Canadian politics
in these years. Those markets had always bulked large
on Canada's horizon. For three thousand miles her
borders marched with those of the most prosperous
and rapidly expanding country in the world. Even
though many of the products of the two countries were
the same, in large part each complemented the other
and even where both had a surplus, the accidents of
geography made it more convenient for Nova Scotia to
market its coal in New England and for Pennsylvania
to fill the bins of Ontario. The United States was
Canada's "natural market." But human nature was
also natural, and a leaning to protection seemed part
of the inheritance from Adam. Tariff walls had long
hampered, though they could not wholly block, the
movements of trade. In the reciprocity period, from
1854 to 1866, a wide breach had been made, and natural
products were exchanged freely to mutual advantage.
Then the bitterness of civil war antagonisms had led
the United States to bang, bar, and bolt the door.
Canada had done her best to open it again. Gait and
Rose, Macdonald and Brown, Grit and Tory, had gone
more than half-way to meet the United States, but had
gone in vain. The United States was prosperous, con-
tent, indifferent. Protectionist feeling was strong.
Local interests which might be prejudiced were firmly
entrenched. The division of authority between Pres-
ident and Congress made negotiation difficult and
ratification a gamble.
Now it appeared that an opening had come. In
369
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Canada, depression was giving a new insistence to the
longing 'of farmers, miners, lumbermen, for open
markets. For the first time since the Civil War, the
professedly low-tariff party in the United States held
executive power. Its manufacturers were beginning
to think of finding new outlets. Yet it was doubtful
whether the United States could be brought to accede
to any limited measure of reciprocity. The more
sweeping policy of a North American Zollverein might
perhaps strike the republic's imagination.
For thirty years, proposals for a North American
Zollverein, or commercial union, had found distin-
guished but sporadic backing in both the United States
and Canada. This project involved absolute free trade
between the United States and Canada, with a common
tariff, arranged by joint agreement, against the outside
world, and probably a pooling of customs dues; recip-
rocal free use of the fisheries might be made an incident.
The proposal had never found wide or enduring favour.
Now the time and the man had come. Erastus Wiman,
a Canadian business man who had found prosperity
in New York, took the idea from an American capital-
ist interested in Canadian ores, Samuel Ritchie, and
his legal adviser, Hezekiah Butterworth, then a member
of Congress. Wiman's intimate acquaintance with
business conditions in both countries, the opportunities
of propaganda afforded by his interests in commercial-
credit agencies and telegraph companies, and his organ-
izing capacity enabled him to force the proposal to the
front. Supported or hampered by the co-operation of
370
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
Goldwin Smith, and finding a surprisingly quick re-
sponse in farming and mining and lumbering circles,
Wiman carried the torch through Ontario in the summer
of 1887. Farmers' institute after farmers' institute
endorsed his proposals, and it soon became apparent
that a new issue had entered Canadian politics.
The power of the press in selecting, shaping, and
forcing an issue was never more clearly displayed in
Canada than in the campaign that followed. Ontario
was the centre of the movement. For a time its for-
tunes rose and fell with the attitude of the Toronto
"Mail." Founded in 1872 as a Conservative organ,
"to smite the Grits under the fifth rib every morning,"
as it once avowed, the "Mail" had made this duty a
pleasure. For years it had reflected the party will
without question. Then after the Riel episode it be-
gan to emphasize two issues, commercial union with
the United States and hostility to French-Canadian
and hierarchical domination, without considering too
closely how they would affect the interests of the party.
In a measure history was repeating itself. In 1849
the advocates of political union with the United States
were recruited chiefly from the Tories, who had been
hit in their pride by the rise of French-Canadian rebels
to power and in their pocket by Britain's change of
fiscal policy; the annexationists of '49 were determined
to find new markets at any cost and to remain English
even if they had to cease to be British. Now) the
journal which had led the attack on Quebec for its
defence of Riel and had talked of smashing Con-
371
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
federation into its original fragments, found in com-
mercial union with the United States a panacea alike
for French-Canadian domination and for business
stagnation.
The "Mail's" policy was shaped in no small measure
by its chief editorial writer, Edward Farrer. Farrer
was the most extraordinary figure in Canadian journal-
ism. A brilliant Irishman of uncertain antecedents,
educated for the priesthood but forced by growing dis-
belief to forego the Church's service, he had found
his destiny, after some business adventures, in news-
paper work in Canada. He combined a keen interest
in political and economic questions with unwearied zeal
in investigation and most convincing powers of ex-
position. His curious flexibility, his powers of secre-
tiveness, his loyalty after a fashion, made him capable
on occasion of editing a morning newspaper of one
political stripe and an evening newspaper of the con-
trary colour, in the same city, fulminating in turn
against the futilities of his esteemed contemporary, and
led in later years to his being entrusted by politicians
on both sides with commissions of discreet inquiry with-
out ever betraying a confidence. Yet he was a man of
real convictions of which hostility to the presumption
of the hierarchy and a belief in the inevitableness of
Canada's political union with the United States were
foremost. Farrer's lucid, informing, business-like edi-
torials in the "Mail" were the most important factors
in the growth of commercial union sentiment in 1887.
The Toronto "Globe," still edited by John Cameron,
372
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
was not the oracle it had been in George Brown's day,
but it was still a power. Its attitude on the trade
issue wavered. During the elections of 1887 it had
endorsed Blake's assurances that the tariff was out of
politics. When Wiman and the "Mail" thrust com-
mercial union forward, the "Globe" first rebuked its
contemporary for assuming that sentimental consid-
erations could be ignored, then on further inquiry
found that national and imperial sentiment would be
advanced rather than hampered by commercial union.
Party leaders were less responsive to the new pro-
posals. The Conservative party, champions of pro-
tection and already in control of the administration,
were least inclined to any change. Yet even Conserv-
ative leaders recognized that some concession must be
made. Tupper and Foster, faced with low-tariff
sentiment in the Maritime provinces, were more open
to conviction than Macdonald or Langevin, closely
leagued with Red Parlour groups of protected manu-
facturers in Ontario and Quebec. In 1887 the govern-
ment, with Tupper chiefly urging, tried the traditional
policy of linking fisheries and trade concessions. At
the suggestion of Wiman, Tupper visited Washington
and conferred with Thomas F. Bayard, Cleveland's
Secretary of State, thus incidentally breaking down the
diplomatic convention which made conversation between
Ottawa and Washington a leisurely triangular process,
Canadian ministers through the governor-general com-
municating with the Colonial Secretary hi London,
who took up the matter with the Foreign Office, which
373
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
gave instructions to the British minister in Washington,
;who interviewed the State Department, and then began
to wind up the coil again. Bayard displayed a states-
manlike breadth and a grasp of the issues involved
which had been rare at Washington. A commission,
consisting of Sir Lionel Sackville-West, British min-
ister at Washington, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, and Sir
Charles Tupper, representing the British and Canadian
governments, and James B. Angell and W. L. Putnam
for the United States, met at Washington in the summer
of 1887. Tupper at once proposed a measure of trade
reciprocity, later described as "an unrestricted offer
of reciprocity," in return for such reciprocity in fishing
rights as had been enjoyed under the Treaty of Wash-
ington, but the American commissioners declined to
purchase immunity from what they deemed hostile and
imneighbourly aggression by trade concessions. A
treaty providing a fair settlement of the fisheries dis-
pute was drafted, but was killed by the obstinacy of
the United States Senate. A modus Vivendi by which
Canada conceded port rights on payment of a license fee
thereupon went into force; its renewal from year to
year eased the tension. The trade issue remained.
The Liberals were expected to be more sympathetic.
As the party in opposition, new causes would make
more appeal to them than to the defenders of the
status quo. They had also more leaning toward freer
trade. True, there were distinctly protectionist strains
in the party, particularly in the Quebec representation,
and the party attitude as a whole for twenty years
374
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
had been that of moderate or incidental protection.
Yet they included, particularly among those members
closely in touch with British movements, a minority
who denounced protection as an economic fallacy and
a source of political corruption. There were many
signs of a drift toward commercial union in the Liberal
ranks, when the new leader made his first official pro-
nouncement at Somerset.
Mr. Laurier declared that the country was discon-
tented and disillusioned, and he agreed that protection
had not fulfilled its glowing promises. Yet he warned
his followers against precipitate adoption of the first
alternative proposed :
The reaction has come, gentlemen; it began in the province
of Ontario ; it has not stopped within moderate bounds ; on
the contrary it has gone to extremes, and at this very hourv
the great majority of the farmers of Ontario are clamouring
for commercial union with the United States, that is to say,
the suppression of all customs duties between the two coun-
tries. . . . We know that there is to-day in the United States
a group of men determined upon giving us commercial
union. ... If I am asked at present for my own opinion, I
may say that for my part I am not ready to declare that
commercial union is an acceptable idea. I am not ready, for
my part, to state that commercial union should be adopted
at the present moment.
But though not prepared to endorse commercial
union, Mr. Laurier was unhesitatingly in favour of
closer and friendlier trade relations with the United
States: "At the bottom of the commercial union idea,
badly defined, was the conviction of the Canadian people
that any kind of reciprocity with the people of the
375
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
United States would be to the advantage of the people
of Canada." Reciprocity had always been a Liberal
goal. The government had made futile attempts to
force reciprocity by a retaliatory customs and fisheries
policy. "I may say and it is my actual policy that
the time has come to abandon the policy of retaliation
followed thus far by the Canadian government, to show
the American people that we are brothers, and to hold
out our hands to them, with a due regard for the duties
we owe to our mother country."
As to "commercial union with Great Britain, which
has been suggested as an alternative to commercial
union with the United States," he would say the same
thing, "that the project was hazy and indefinite:
certainly if it were realizable, and all our interests were
protected, I would accept a commercial treaty of that
nature." A more immediate possibility would be com-
mercial treaties with other parts of the Empire: what
would be easier than to have a commercial treaty with
the Australian continent? "I believe that idea is good
and fair and that it will eventually triumph."
If the new leader stood aloof, some of the old lieu-
tenants were prepared to rush in. Sir Richard Cart-
wright, speaking in October at Ingersoll, flatly declared
for commercial union. No other way of escape seemed
possible. Granted, there was a risk, but it was a choice
of risks:
r
I have no hesitation in saying frankly that if the United
States are willing to deal with us on equitable terms the ad-
vantages to both countries, and especially to us, are so great
376
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
that scarcely any sacrifice is too severe to secure them. I am
as averse as any man can be to annexation or to resign our
political independence, but I cannot shut my eyes to the facts.
We have greatly misused our advantages, we have been foolish
in our expenditures, we have no means of satisfying the just
demands of large portions of the Dominion, except through
such an arrangement as commercial union. In the present
temper of Manitoba and the Maritime provinces, any failure
or refusal to secure free trade with the United States is much
more likely to bring about just such a political crisis as these
parties affect to dread than even the very closest commercial
connection that can be conceived.
John Charlton took the same stand. Mills showed
sympathy with it. Lesser lights followed.
In Ontario, and on a trade issue, Cartwright as yet
carried more weight in the Liberal party than Laurier.
Yet the majority of the party preferred the new leaders
more cautious policy. James D. Edgar contributed
materially to this conclusion by a series of open letters
to Mr. Wiman, in which he urged that abolition of the
custom-houses along the border was not essential to
ensure a very wide, even an unrestricted measure of
reciprocity; neither in 1854, nor in Brown's treaty of
1874, which provided for a much greater range of free
commodities, were uniform tariffs on the coast or the
abolition of tariffs along the border proposed. A
declaration from the interprovincial conference which
met in Quebec in the same month definitely marked out
unrestricted reciprocity rather than commercial union
as the Liberal policy. The conference, which comprised
representatives from the Liberal administrations of
Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward
377
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Island, of the coalition government in New Brunswick,
and the Conservative government of Manitoba, unani-
mously adopted a resolution to the effect that un-
restricted reciprocity would be of advantage to all the
provinces of the Dominion, would strengthen rather
than weaken British connection, and, with the settle-
ment of the fisheries dispute, would ease the strain in
the relations between the mother country and the United
States.
When parliament met in 1888, the trade question
overshadowed all other issues. A Liberal caucus was
called, to define the party's attitude. 'Commercial
union had its vigorous advocates, but they were in a
small minority. The great majority were not prepared
to risk the experiment of joint tariffs. Yet the minor-
ity were strong enough to secure a very sweeping phras-
ing in the reciprocity resolution which Sir Richard Cart-
wright moved on March 14. He demanded no less
than complete free trade between the United States
and Canada in all manufactured and natural products
of the two countries. In a powerful speech Cartwright
deplored the slow growth of Canada, demonstrated that
the United States was her natural and incomparable
market, insisted that this market could not be secured
save on generous and sweeping terms of reciprocity,
and met charges of disloyalty to Britain by asserting
that Canada's chief mission was to reconcile Britain
and the United States and denying that in any case
Canada owed England more than Christian forgive-?
ness for the blunders of her diplomats.
378
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
He was well supported. Louis H. Davies analyzed
the government's policy; John Charlton surveyed in
detail the possibilities of trade with the republic; Alfred
Jones exposed the failure of protection to build up inter-
provincial trade; William Paterson argued that legit-
imate manufacturing interests would gain, not lose;
David Mills insisted that the failure of the N. P. after
a ten-year trial called for a change; William Mulock
emphasized the importance of geography in determin-
ing world trade and the precedent England had set
of putting her own interests first. They did not have
matters their own way. Thomas White attacked
Liberal inconsistencies and stressed the revenue dif-
ficulty; George Foster contended that the physical
barriers to Canadian unity were merely opportunities
for calling forth a people's effort; Charles Tupper
insisted that the United States was not prepared to
trade on fair terms; J. A. Chapleau found Canada
abounding in prosperity, and the minor prophets
drummed on disloyalty and direct taxation.
The debate had dragged on for more than two weeks,
when Mr. Laurier took part. He declared that the
National Policy had failed to force reciprocity, had
failed to build up interprovincial trade, had failed to de-
velop the promised home market. Modern conditions
of large-scale production made it imperative to broaden
markets in order to reduce overhead and lessen costs,
If the interests of farmers and of manufacturers clashed,
he would stand by the basic and essential industry.
But their interests did not necessarily clash; manu-
379
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
facturers with brains and energy would, like the
farmers, gain from the wider outlet. As to the effect
upon England, while considerations of sentiment had
given him much concern ;./" while with all my soul I
say, let my tongue adhere to the roof of my mouth if
it were ever to speak an unkind word of England," yet
this was a question of duty not of sentiment : "if I have
to choose between the duty I owe to England and the
duty I owe to my native land, I stand by my native
land. ... It is quite possible that John Bull will
grumble, but in his grumbling there will be as much
pride as anger, and John Bull will feel flattered if
there is an offspring of his so much like the old gentle-
man that he will not lose any occasion to turn an honest
/
penny." He would like to be able to make a similar
bargain with England, but given England's free-trade
policy, that was out of the question. It might be that
the resolution would be defeated, but the cause would
go on. Giving even to a tariff issue a touch of imag-
ination, Laurier concluded:
We are to-day in the last days of a long and severe
winter. . . . Nature, which is now torpid and inert, will
awaken in a few days under the penetrating influence of a
warmer sun, and the great river at the foot of the cliff on
which we stand, now imprisoned in the close embrace of frost,
will throw off her shackles and roll unfettered and free toward
the sea. So sure as this will happen, I say that under the
penetrating influence of discussion, of better feelings on both
sides of the line, the hostility which now stains our long frontier
will disappear, the barriers which now obstruct trade will be
burst open, and trade will pour in along all the avenues from
380
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
the north to the south and from the south to the north, free,
untrammelled and no longer stained by the hues of hostility.
When on April 9 the debate ended, the government
was sustained by its full majority 124 to 67. But
the Opposition had put its case. In the three years
before the next election it could drive it home. The
river would roll to the sea. But unfortunately for
their forecasts, there proved to be many an eddy and
cross current. Before the year was out, the good ship
Reciprocity was making heavy weather. In November,
1888, the United States elections brought the defeat
of Cleveland and Bayard and the triumph of a Repub-
lican party once more committed to high protection.
In Canada itself the Jesuits' Estates agitation had
diverted public interest from trade to creed. With
Protestantism in danger (and fortunately from a
Liberal provincial premier), reciprocity could be side-
tracked. The "Mail" itself was at once in full cry down
the Jesuit trail, and grew lukewarm on its old gospel.
It was in vain that Goldwin Smith made light of its
defection: "What happens the tree when the bird which
has lighted on a twig flies away?" For the moment,
the trade issue took a very secondary place.
The disposition of the Jesuits' Estates had been for
many a year a thorny question with which few politi-
cians had cared to grapple. The Society of Jesus had
had a chequered career in Canada. In the early days
of New France, the courage, the unselfish devotion, the
crowning martyrdom of members of the order, and in
some cases the capacity for political manoeuvring, had
381
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
given the society prestige and power and in time wide
acres, the gift of the State or of private benefactors.
During the last years of the French regime in Canada,
the Jesuits throughout the world were falling on evil
days; one Catholic sovereign after another, alarmed
by their political intrigues and their growth in wealth
and assertiveness, expelled them from his dominions.
When the leading Protestant power became master of
the destinies of New France, it was therefore not
surprising that proposals were made for suppressing
the order and confiscating its estates. Whether by
force of the application of the laws of England at the
time of the Conquest, or of the proclamation of the
King in 1791 suppressing the order in Canada, or by
escheat after the death in 1800 of the last surviving
Canadian member, the Crown took title and control
of the estates. Lord Amherst, and after his death,
his heirs, sought the estates as recompense for military
service, but in spite of sundry promises, the grant was
not made. The situation was complicated by the fact
that in 1773 Pope Clement XIV had decreed the sup-
pression of the society; it was contended that by ec-
clesiastical usage and the civil law of New France,
any corporate property fell in such case to the ordi-
naries of the diocese, the bishops of Quebec and Mont-
real. In 1831 the estates, still segregated, were con-
veyed as a trust to the province of Canada for purposes
of education ; with Confederation they passed to Quebec.
In the meantime, the Jesuits had come back to the
scene of their early trials and triumphs. Pius VII
382
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
had raised the ban in 1814. In 1842, at the instance of
Bishop Bourget, a number of Jesuit priests came to
the diocese of Montreal ; ten years later a Jesuit school,
St. Mary's College, was incorporated by the province
of Canada, only seven members opposing and twenty-
five Catholic and twenty-nine Protestant members
supporting. They became a teaching order solely;
a generation later, as Sir John Macdonald noted, there
was not a single parish in Quebec that had a Jesuit
as its cure. In the ecclesiastical and political con-
troversies of the sixties and seventies, members of the
order were Bishop Bourget's most able and most aggres-
sive supporters. When their position was more assured,
they began to revive their claims to the old estates, but
not only did ministers of state turn a deaf ear, Gedeon
Ouimet, prime minister in 1874, protesting to Rome
that the question was closed and that the arguing
of the Jesuit claims would only stir passion and fanat-
icism, and all in vain, but Archbishop Taschereau and
the greater part of the ecclesiastical authorities opposed,
pressing the counter-claims of the dioceses and of Laval
University.
When Honore Mercier became premier, a new
chapter opened. Mfcrcier had been educated in St.
Mary's College, and had a fervent sympathy with his
old teachers. His political alliance with the ultramon-
tane wing of the Conservatives had carried him far
from the old Rouge traditions. He did not create the
issue, but neither did he run away from it. He was
honestly convinced that the Society of Jesus had moral,
383
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
though no legal rights. He found the peace of the
province disturbed by the controversy, and the title to
the estates so clouded in the public estimation that they
could not be sold or leased at their proper value. His
worst enemies never accused Mercier of lack of courage,
nor of lack of astuteness. When he determined to
settle the question, he laid his plans shrewdly and
pressed ahead regardless of opposition. The first step
was to reconstitute the order as a legal entity. In
1887 he introduced a bill to incorporate the Society of
Jesus. Mgr. Taschereau, now America's first cardinal,
opposed the bill. The Jesuits suggested a compromise,
to give them the right to establish schools only in
those dioceses whose bishops gave consent. Mgr.
Hamel, acting on behalf of the cardinal, agreed, but
a moment later declared that in so doing he had ex-
ceeded his mandate. But Mercier seized the opening,
accepted the amendment, and pushed the bill through:
every man, he declared, venerated Cardinal Taschereau,
but that was no reason for committing injustice, crush-
ing the little to exalt the great; if there were difficulties
between the ecclesiastical authorities and the Jesuits,
that was for the Holy See to judge; if the legislature
granted further delay, in order to enable all the bishops
to agree, well, he had the most profound respect for
the venerable prelates, but he could not help remark-
ing that if they waited till all were in agreement they
would wait a long time.
The next step was to reconcile the conflicting claims
to the estates. Mercier insisted that if the province
384
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
was to make any payment, it must secure a complete
discharge. Protracted negotiations in Rome and in
Quebec led to a settlement which was embodied in
an act which Mercier introduced into the legislature
in June, 1888. The sum of $400,000, much below the
value of the estates, was to be paid to ecclesiastical
authorities in the province, to be designated later by
the Pope, and in return a complete renunciation of any
further claims was to be given; until so validated, the
settlement was not to take effect; to compensate Prot-
estant schools, which had received a share of the revenue
from the estates, the sum of $80,000 was to be granted
them, to be distributed by the Protestant Committee
of the Council of Instruction. The bill passed with
scarcely a ripple of dissent. The Montreal "Witness"
deplored it in a moderate editorial; a Protestant member
of the legislature mildly questioned its expediency,
but not a vote was cast against it.
The calm did not long continue. Militant Prot-
estants in Ontario could not permit their weak-kneed
brethren in Quebec to sell their birthright for a little
silver and a quiet life. The "Mail" began the crusade:
'If the British and Protestant element in Quebec will
not save itself, we must try to save it for our own
sakes." Other journals took up the cry; preachers
denounced Mercier from the pulpit; Orange lodges
passed fiery resolutions; sober law journals found the
Act of Supremacy in danger; Toronto held the usual
mass meetings; in Quebec itself some Protestant op-
position was roused. A cry rose for disallowance.
385
LIFE! AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
The Ottawa government had used its veto power to
protect the vested interests of lumbermen in Ontario
and railway corporations in the West; why not to save
all Canada from papist aggression? Was a Canadian
legislature to be permitted not merely to revive the
old connection between Church and State, not merely
to select for state endowment the organization which
to fervid Protestants was the incarnation of unscru-
pulous perfidy and aggressive intrigue, but to call in
the Pope of Rome to validate a statute of a British
parliament, and to flourish in the preamble a statement
"that the Pope allows the Government to retain the
proceeds of the Jesuits' Estates as a special deposit
to be disposed of hereafter with the sanction of the
Holy See"? After much balancing, the "Globe" joined
the hue and cry, and Ontario's demand for disallowance
rang as loud as Quebec's outcry against the hanging of
Kiel.
Mercier was accused of raising the issue for party
gain. The 'charge does not seem justified. The
question was pressing; it was in the interest of the
province to have it settled; the settlement was fair and
reasonable in itself. The action of the Pope was in-
voked, not to validate the statute, but to ensure that
all the claimants would be bound by the settlement and
the province given a complete discharge. In some of
the documents contained in the lengthy preamble the
ecclesiastical assumptions of authority were unfortunate,
but Mercier had not accepted them. Yet he was always
prepared to draw from any situation the last ounce
386
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
of political advantage it could be made to yield, and
if, by disallowing the measure, Macdonald would pre-
sent him with a valuable grievance and a solid Quebec,
then federal intervention would have a very decided
silver lining.
Macdonald was as well aware of the possibilities
as Mercier. His position was not made easier by the
fact that in the past he had insistently urged and used
the veto power upon provincial legislation. He faced
a divided party, or rather warring lieutenants. The
Jesuits' Estates controversy and its sequels became in
large measure duels between two aspirants for the Con-
servative leadership, Sir John Thompson and D' Alton
McCarthy. McCarthy, born in Dublin in 1836, had
come to Canada as a child; when he grew to manhood
he became one of the leaders of the Ontario bar and a
champion of ultra-Protestantism. A hard rider, a
lavish spender, delighting in hospitality, a bold fighter,
McCarthy had in him no little of the Irish squire of
Charles Lever's day. He had entered parliament in
1876, and had been Macdonald's chief support in the
attempts to limit provincial authority. It was not as a
constitutional lawyer that he made his place, but as a
popular tribune ; a powerful and incisive speaker, master
of contagious emotion, surpassed in Ontario only by
Macdonald himself in his note of distinction and per-
sonal appeal, D'Alton McCarthy was a force to reckon
with. Thompson, also of Irish parentage, was born in
Nova Scotia in 1844; quietly and inevitably he made his
way to the front, reporter, lawyer, leader of the bar, at-
387
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
torney-general of the province, premier for two months,
judge for three years, and then called to Ottawa in 1885
as Minister of Justice. The post had been offered to
McCarthy, who declined it, but none the less resented
the sudden rise of this newcomer in federal politics.
Thompson made his place at once in the larger field.
His habits of concentration and of unending labour, his
power of exhaustive analysis and crystal exposition, his
solid judgment and unbending integrity, brought all
men's respect. He lacked McCarthy's touch of fire ; he
was outwardly cold, though on occasions breaking into
passionate defence of his own conduct or violent and
unpardonable criticism of his opponents (as when dur-
ing Mercier's 1887 campaign he spoke of "the blas-
phemer Mr. Mercier and the traitor Mr. Laurier").
It was not merely in temperament the rivals differed,
but in creed. Thompson was not merely a Roman
Catholic; brought up a Methodist, he had joined the
Roman Catholic Church at the age of twenty-seven,
and had thereby doubly exposed himself to sectarian
suspicion. In a country where religious prejudices
were so easily aroused, a convert from Protestantism
was under a handicap which only outstanding ability
and unquestioned character could overcome.
With the reassembling of parliament in February,
1889, the controversy came to a head. After some
preliminary questionings, Colonel O'Brien moved an
address demanding disallowance of an act which violated
the principle of separation of Church and State, rec-
388
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
ognized the usurpation of a foreign authority, and
threatened the civil and religious liberties of the people
of Canada by the endowment of an alien secret society
proved guilty everywhere of intolerant and mis-
chievous intermeddling in state affairs. His un-
expectedly able survey of the case was reinforced by
the efforts of a militant group of Ontario members.
John E. Barren made an elaborate attack on the consti-
tutionality of the act. Clarke Wallace devoted himself
to justifying the original confiscation of the estates:
there was no wrong to be righted. Alexander McNeill
delved still deeper into history, portraying the Jesuits as
unscrupulous intriguers and fomenters of strife in the
past and unrepentant in the present. John Charlton
gave a detailed historical summary of the action of the
the British and Canadian authorities in the matter.
D' Alton McCarthy concluded with a slashing in-
dictment of scheming Jesuits, spineless Protestants,
and calculating governments. But for all their vigour
and the thunderings of their supporters outside the
walls, the advocates of disallowance could rally only
thirteen votes, all but one from Ontario, nine Con-
servatives and four Liberals. The weight of logic, of
expediency, and of votes was against them. The main
defence of the government fell to Thompson, who
queried the original confiscation, denied there was any
assumption now of papal authority, and defended the
competence of the provincial legislature to make any
settlement it pleased. David Mills, from the Op-
389
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LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
position benches, strongly reinforced Thompson's con-
vincing handling of the historical and constitutional
phases; C. C. Colby, speaking as a Quebec Protestant,
praised the tolerance of the Catholic majority and the
service of the Catholic Church as a bulwark of Con-
servatism, a barrier against anarchical assaults upon
all authority; Macdonald expressed his regret over an
agitation which would divide and imperil the country,
to no avail.
Laurier's position had never been in doubt. The dis-
allowance agitation ran counter to every principle of
his political faith. He announced his intention of
supporting the government, and congratulated Mac-
donald on coming at last to a sound position on the
question of provincial rights. The agitation in the
country was the result of the government's long dis-
regard of provincial rights, a retribution for the Con-
servative party's pandering to sectional prejudice. But
it was not merely on constitutional grounds that he
opposed disallowance. Mercier's measure was a just
and courageous settlement, accepted by Catholic and
Protestant alike. The Jesuits had been condemned
too recklessly; whatever their history in other lands,
and if they had often been expelled, they had never
been expelled from a free country, here their record
had been full of honour. They had been the pioneers
of the country; every inch of the soil of Ontario was
trodden by their weary feet at least a hundred and
fifty years before there was an English settler in that
province; nay, the very soil of the province had been
390
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
consecrated by their blood, shed in their attempts to
win souls to the God of Protestants and Catholics alike.
Mr. McCarthy had insisted that this was a British
country and that the people of Quebec too often forgot
the Conquest. What did he mean? Mr. Charlton had
added that there should be but one race here (Mc-
Carthy: "Hear, Hear!") . Well, what would that race
be? Is it the British lion that is to swallow the French
lamb, or the French lamb that is to swallow the British
lion? There can be more than one race, but there
shall be but one nation. Scotland has not forgotten
her origin, but Scotland is British. I do not intend
to forget my origin, but I am a Canadian before any-
thing. "Liberty," he concluded in an illuminating
phrase, "shines not only for the friends of liberty but
also for the enemies of liberty."
In the House of Commons, the attack on the Jesuits'
Estates Act was defeated by an overwhelming vote,
188 to 13. In the country, the agitation mounted
higher. An Equal Rights Association was organized
in Toronto in June, 1889, to guard against "the political
encroachments of ultramontanism." The "noble thir-
teen" were the heroes of an Ontario hour. Conservative
politicians, realizing too late the dangers of the move-
ment, sought to divert it against the Liberal admin-
istration in Ontario. Mowat was attacked for his
friendly relations with the Roman Catholic hierarchy,
and particularly for permitting the use of French in
the elementary schools of eastern Ontario, where the
early French-Canadian settlers were now being strongly
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LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
reinforced by migration from Quebec to fill the gap
left by the westward and cityward drift of the Scots
of Glengarry and the English-speaking folk of the ad-
joining counties. But it was in the federal arena that
the contest mainly waged, and here McCarthy, with
strong clerical and lay backing, pressed forward to
new goals in his onslaught on "French-Canadian
domination," by which he meant "French-Canadian
equality." It is> worth noting, as indicative of the
distinctly racial basis of the imperial-federation move-
ment, its emphasis on British ties of blood, that the
leaders of the noble thirteen were leaders in the im-
perialist movement; D'Alton McCarthy was the first
president of the Imperial Federation League in Can-
ada, Alexander McNeill its first vice-president, Colonel
O'Brien, Colonel Tyrwhitt, and Clarke Wallace mem-
bers of the first general committee and Colonel Denison
a little later its moving spirit.
Laurier watched the rising tide of racial strife with
keen disappointment. The reconciliation of the two
races, on a basis of full and fair and equal partnership
in the development of their common country, was the
object nearest his heart. The agitation was injuring
the Conservative party more than his own, but that
did not cool his anger against the fomenters of strife,
nor lessen his efforts to stay the tide. Alike in Que-
bec and in Ontario, he took every occasion to break
down old prejudices and emphasize their common
Canadianism.
In June, 1889, at the St. Jean-Baptiste celebration
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in the city of Quebec, where twenty-five thousand
people had gathered to witness the unveiling of mon-
uments to Jacques Cartier and Brebeuf, Laurier, after
a glowing tribute to the splendid and storied city, made
the burden of his speech an appeal for a wider pa-
triotism, a rivalry in tolerance and generous under-
standing:
We are French-Canadians, but our country is not confined
to the territory overshadowed by the citadel of Quebec; our
country is Canada, it is all that is covered by the British
flag on the American continent. . . . Our fellow-countrymen
are not only those in whose veins runs the blood of France.
They are all those, whatever their race or whatever their
language, whom the fortune of war, the chances of fate or
their own choice have brought among us and who acknowledge
the sovereignty of the British Crown. . . . The rights of my
fellow-countrymen of different origins are as dear to me, as
sacred to me, as the rights of my own race. . . . What I
claim for ourselves is an equal place in the sun, an equal
share of justice, of liberty; that share we have; we have it
amply and what we claim for ourselves we are anxious to
grant to others. . . .
I am not ignorant of the fact that there can be no nation
without a national pride, nor am I unaware that in almost all
cases national pride is inspired by those tragic events which
bring suffering and tears in their train, but which at the same
time call out all the forces of a nation or of a race. . . .
Our history under Confederation presents none of the dramatic
events which make us so attached to the past; it has been
calm and consequently happy. But peace has also its glories
and its heroes. Canada under Confederation has produced
men of whom any nation might justly feel proud. I will not
speak of the Canadians of French origin, as Mr. Langelier
referred to them a moment ago, but I will allude to the Cana-
dians of British origin and mention two as examples. The
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LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
first name I shall recall is that of a man from whom I differ
toto caelo, but I am too much a French-Canadian not to glory
at all times in doing justice to an adversary. I refer to Sir
John Macdonald. I will not astonish my friend, Mr. Chapais,
whom I see among us, if I state that I do not share Sir John
Macdonald's political opinions. I may even add that I con-
demn almost all of them, but it must be acknowledged that in
his long career Sir John Macdonald has displayed such eminent
qualities that he would have made his mark on any of the
world's stages, and that with the single exception perhaps of
Mr. Mercier, no one on this continent has excelled as he has
in the art of governing men. The other name is that of a man
who has been to me not only a friend, but more than a f riend,-
I mean Hon. Edward Blake. Some years ago, speaking here
of Mr. Blake, I declared that in my opinion America did not
possess his equal and Europe could not show his superior.
That opinion has been confirmed by all I have since seen of
Mr. Blake. I have enjoyed the advantage of very close rela-
tions with him, and have learned that his heart, soul and
character are in keeping with his splendid intellect. . . .
But it was not merely to Quebec he spoke. He was
eager to stem the tide of misrepresentation in Ontario.
To most party men that appeared dangerous and
quixotic tactics. Why intervene in a controversy
wherein the Conservative party was the chief sufferer?
Was it wise for a Liberal leader, newly in the saddle,
little known in Ontario, suspected in many quarters
because of his French and Catholic origin, to speak
unnecessarily on so delicate a question? The caution-
ings did not shake Laurier's purpose. His followers
were to learn that, once leader, he meant to lead, and
that popular hostility would rarely move him when
he had once taken a stand. He believed that it was
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MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
good for Canada to seek to explain away sectional
misunderstandings, and that what was good for Canada
could not be harmful for the Liberal party.
Through the Young Men's Liberal Club of Toronto,
arrangements were made for a meeting in that city
on September 30, 1889. Laurier faced a large and by
no means a wholly sympathetic crowd. He plunged
into the question of the hour. Canada was rent by
distrust and hostility, a distrust due in great part to
the constant appeal of the Conservative party to local
prejudice. The duty of Liberals was plain: to develop
mutual respect and confidence, to resist disintegration.
Certainly, Confederation was not the last word of Can-
ada's destiny; it was simply a transient state, but when-
ever the change came it must be a step forward, not
a step backward. He opposed fantastic dreams of an
independent French-Canadian state on the St. Law-
rence; equally he opposed attempts to destroy all that
French-Canadians held dear: "Men there are amongst
you to tell you that it is dangerous to Confederation
that the French language should be spoken in this
great country of ours. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am a
French-Canadian; I was brought up on the knees of
a French mother, and my first recollections are those
recollections which no man ever forgets; and shall it
be denied to me, the privilege of addressing the same
language to those that are dear to me?" As for the
Jesuits' Estates Act (here wild uproar), it effected
a needed settlement. The charge that the Pope's civil
supremacy was recognized was nonsense; any such at-
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LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
tempt would be treason and so dealt with. Should
liberty be refused the Jesuits because they might abuse
it? That was not the principle of British Liberalism;
that was the doctrine of French and of German
Liberals, who fought fire with fire. If Ultramontanes
in Canada conspired against our liberties, we would
fight them as we had done before. In any case, the
power of disallowance was alien to the spirit of a
federal union, a source of friction and discontent. The
advocacy of imperial federation in Conservative-
quarters was an evidence that even Conservatives were
not content with things as they were. He did not
believe in that device; what was wanted was an eco-
nomic, not a political reform, unrestricted free trade
with the United States, the forerunner of commercial
alliance among all the English-speaking peoples. But
above all, more than prosperity they needed trust, con-
fidence, a better opinion one of the other.
It cannot be said that Mr. Laurier wholly converted
his audience. Honest conviction and stubborn prej-
udice were too strong for a single speech, however
eloquent and sincere, to overcome. Many of the older
Liberals, including the very canny premier of Ontario*
were careful to avoid any endorsement of his utterances.
Yet the straightforward, courageous, friendly appeal
awoke response, and undoubtedly did much to keep the
agitation within bounds, if it did not for the moment
make the Liberal leader's own position any easier.
McCarthy returned to the fray the following session.
In February, 1890, he introduced a bill to abolish the
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use of the French language in. the legislature and courts
of the North- West territories. In 1875 the Mackenzie
government had provided a framework of government
for the wildernesses between Manitoba and the Rockies,
based on the gradual replacement of an appointive
council by an elective assembly as settlement grew.
The Act of 1875 permitted the use of either English or
French in the debates of Council or Assembly and in
the courts, and required the printing of all legislative
records, journals, and ordinances in both languages.
Into the Territories, as into Manitoba, there poured
twenty English-speaking for one French-speaking
settler, and the privileges of the handful of French-
Canadians became of little practical moment. Mc-
Carthy attacked them because they were within federal
jurisdiction, and provided a good starting point for a
wider campaign. The sting of the motion was found
not in the tail but in the preamble: "It is expedient
in the interest of the national unity of the Dominion
that there should be community of language among
the people of Canada." Such a preamble, backed by
a speech emphasizing the necessity of uniformity of
language for national unity, involved interests much
more momentous than the printing of the sessional
papers at Pile-of-Bones.
The week of the debate was tense and full of un-
settling rumours. McCarthy found little direct sup-
port: none outside of the original thirteen, but there
was much finessing as to the degree of opposition to be
offered. Save for a bitter and aggressive retort from
397.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Langevin, and an unusually vigorous and moving plea
for tolerance from Macdonald, and for McCarthy's
own addresses, his closing being much more moderate
than his opening speech, the outstanding contributions
came from the Liberal side, from Mills, Mulock, Davies,
from Blake, who had made his first speech in two years
a week before, and from Laurier.
Laurier declared that were it only the use of French
in the North-West that was in question, he would be
inclined to say, let the measure pass and let us back
to real work. But avowedly the present movement
was only a preliminary skirmish. In his public ad-
dresses before parliament opened McCarthy had made
clear his plan of campaign in words which he dared
not repeat in the House; he had denounced French-
Canadians as a "bastard nationality," had urged his
hearers to buckle on their armour: 'This is a British
country, and the sooner we take up our French-Cana-
dians and make them British, the less trouble will we
leave for posterity." The ban was to be extended
throughout Canada. Such a policy was folly, anti-
Canadian, un-British, a national crime. The existence
of the two races was a fact, a divergence that some-
times led to friction, but might be made a source of
strength. The difficulty could not be solved by the
Tory method, by following the fatal example of English
statesmen who for seven hundred years had attempted
to make Ireland British, not by justice and generosity
but by violence and oppression, and had failed. It
could be solved only by mutual respect. The humil-
398
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iation of a race or creed was a poor foundation for
national strength.
Certainly no one can respect or admire more than I do
the Anglo-Saxon race; I have never disguised my sentiments
on that point, but we of French origin are satisfied to be
what we are and we claim no more. I claim this for the race
in which I was born that though it is not perhaps endowed
with the same qualities as the Anglo-Saxon race, it is endowed
with qualities as great; I claim for it that it is endowed
with qualities unsurpassed in some respects ; I claim for it
that there is not to-day under the sun a more moral, more
honest or more intellectual race, and if the honourable gentle-
man came to Lower Canada, it would be my pride to take him
to one of those ancient parishes on the St. Lawrence or one
of its tributaries, and show him a people to whom, prejudiced
as he is, he could not but apply the words which the poet
applied to those who at one time inhabited the Basin of Minas
and the meadows of Grandpre:
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodland,
Darkened by shadows of earth but reflecting an image of Heaven."
Mr. McCarthy had appealed to Lord Durham's
authority to support his intolerance; a greater states-
man than Durham, Robert Baldwin, and the whole
trend of Canadian history, proved the folly of force.
The amendment offered by Mr. Beausoleil, con-
firming the existing arrangement, was supported by
every French-speaking member in the House except
Chapleau, but received only scattering votes outside
Quebec. After much jockeying, an amendment moved
by Thompson in which Blake had collaborated, denying
that uniformity of language was expedient, but permit-
ting the legislature of the North-West power to deter-
mine the language question for itself so far as concerned
399
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
its own proceedings and records, was adopted by 117 to
63, the minority consisting of the two extreme wings.
Once more the appeal to racial and sectarian
prejudice had been foiled, but the end was not yet.
Already a -tour of McCarthy through Manitoba had
led to the emergence of another sectarian issue, the
Manitoba school question. It did not come to a head
for several years, but it threatened the peace of the
country from the beginning.
These seemingly endless bickerings made Laurier's
position extremely difficult. When pressed to take
the leadership, he had stood out because of the prej-
udices against a French-speaking and Roman Catholic
chief which he knew to exist in Ontario. Since his
assumption of control, the country had been rent by
one bitter controversy after another. He had not
raised these issues, he had not aggravated them, he had
on the contrary striven in public and in private, among
his opponents and among his followers, to allay them.
Yet the fact remained that among the rank and file
in Ontario there were not a few who felt that at such
a time the leadership of the defender of Kiel and the
ally of Mercier was a handicap.
The position was rendered still more difficult by the
sudden reappearance of Edward Blake. For two ses-
sions his voice had not been heard in the House. Now
he returned and threw himself with his old vigour and
commanding presence into the debates and the framing
of policy. Soon rumours arose that he was about to
resume the leadership. Conservative journals, as in
400
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duty bound, fanned the report. Not without guile,
Macdonald, during the North- West dual-language
debate, addressed to Blake rather than to Laurier an
appeal to help in working out a joint solution, and
Blake without hesitation agreed. Here and there a
Liberal newspaper, particularly the Dundas "Banner,"
confessed that it would prefer the old leader. *
Blake's position was quite as embarrassing as
Laurier's. No matter what his good- will and disin-
terested desire for the party's success, it was not easy
for a man who had for years been the unquestioned
leader and who still was rightly conscious of great
powers, to take a second place. If Macgregor sat
down at all, there would be the head of the table.
It cannot be said that the relations between the old
leader and the new were cordial in these years. There
had been no question of the warm and loyal admiration
of Laurier for the older man, no question of Blake's
recognition of the younger man's powers. On virtu-
ally every issue they had stood together. That Blake
had been absolutely sincere in wishing to retire and
in urging Laurier as his permanent successor, Laurier
had no doubt. Yet as time went on he was convinced
that with returning health and reviving interest in
affairs Blake had repented of his too rash withdrawal.
No word passed, but Blake's acts spoke for themselves.
For three years he scarcely lifted a hand to help the
l At a banquet in honour of Honor6 Mercier, in Montreal, July 2, a
prominent Liberal, Mr. Greenshields, declared: "To-day the Liberal party
control all the provinces from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and if they
tvould only unite, victory would be theirs, under whatever leader was
chosen, Mr. Blake or Mr. Laurier.'*
401
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
new leader or his old party. Time after time Laurier
went to him for counsel, but went in vain. As Laurier
himself summed it up later; "In the session of 1888
Blake was not in parliament, having gone to Europe
for his health; in the session of 1889 he was present
but gave no aid; in the session of 1890 he gave a little
more but hindered as much as he helped." In some
measure Blake's aloofness was undoubtedly due to a
wish not to embarrass the new leader.
An instance of the difficulties created by the presence
in the House of two Liberal leaders may be cited.
When in the session of 1890 serious charges of cor-
ruption were brought against a Conservative member,
Rykert, it was agreed at a council in which Blake,
Cartwright, Mills, and M. C. Cameron, with Laurier,
took part, to move for Rykert's expulsion. Cart-
wright made the motion; Blake turned to Laurier:
"I can turn my speech either way, for expulsion or for
a committee of enquiry." "But you cannot do that,"
Laurier replied; "it was settled at committee." Just
then Blake had to rise; he ended a strong speech by
suggesting a committee. Sir John Thompson, the
government leader, saw his chance and moved for a
committee. Laurier had to think hard ; he saw it was
necessary to avert a split and to avoid humiliation
for either Blake or Cartwright; he declared that while
in his judgment Rykert's guilt was clear, as Cart-
wright had demonstrated, yet he had profound respect
for such constitutional authorities as Blake and Thomp-
son, and would accept a committee. Cartwright
402
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
looked daggers at both Blake and Laurier, and next
day wrote a very wrathy letter. Laurier told Blake
straightly that this was not the way to carry on a party.
"Well, it seemed the hest way." "No matter, it was
not the way agreed upon in your presence: that was
the time for question."
The situation clearly could not continue. Edward
Blake could not play a secondary part in the House he
long had dominated. No matter how loyal his feelings
to Laurier, it was impossible for a man of his massive
capacity, his habit of authority, his self-centredness, to
remember always that he was now lieutenant, not
captain. Nor was he at ease to see Cartwright leader
for Ontario. It became clear that he must either re-
sume the leadership or retire from parliament. Among
the rank and file in the country, and particularly in
Ontario, many would have welcomed his return to
leadership. They knew his strength, his integrity, his
moving power of speech, and he was an Ontario man
born and bred; they did not yet know Laurier. Yet
in the House of Commons there was little and rapidly
lessening support for such a proposal. Every Liberal
member still reverenced Blake, still recognized his in-
comparable powers of logic and of eloquence, but they
had found a leader more after their own heart. Time
only strengthened their devotion. Even had Blake
desired to return, the members of the Liberal party in
the Commons would have insisted upon the new leader
holding his place.
In a letter to the "Globe" of July 3, 1890, Blake
403
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
made a circumspect denial of current rumour: "I am
no more desirous to resume the leadership than I was
to assume or retain it. My only wish is that the con-
fidence and affection of Liberals of all shades may
induce Mr. Laurier to hold the place he so admirably
fills." Yet he was not prepared to give unqualified
support to the policy on which the new leaders of the
party had determined. When the next general election
came, the hardest fought since Confederation, the
Liberal party had no aid from its old chieftain.
The general election which was held early in March,
1891, came before it was expected. The parliament
elected in 1887 did not expire until 1892. When the
fourth session ended in May, 1890, it was understood
that another session would be held before dissolution.
There was, in fact, a definite pledge to this effect.
The election act of 1887 had provided for an annual
revision of the voters' lists, but during the session of
1890 the secretary of state had sought and secured
authority from parliament to omit the revision of that
year on the ground that the taking of the census in 1891
would involve redistribution and make an earlier re-
vision a useless expense, adding that no election would
be held before the lists were drawn up in June, 1891.
The internal condition of the Conservative party made
it seem in any case prudent to defer the day of reckon-
ing. The duel between McCarthy and Thompson>
the triangular vendetta between Langevin, Caron, and
Chapleau, warranted delay, that time might heal or
patch the breaches and fortune bring a rallying issue.
404
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
But later other arguments prevailed. The rising tide
of reciprocity sentiment, the threat of Tarte's revela-
tions of .corruption, the exigencies of the Canadian
Pacific, and his own failing health, made Sir John Mac-
donald decide to face the electors in the winter of
1890-91.
Reciprocity was once more a foremost issue. Trade
was still depressed in Canada and markets sluggish.
The victory of the Republicans in the United States
in 1888 had seemed to end hope of freer trade. The
measure in which they embodied their campaign pledges,
the McKinley Act of 1890, put in force the most
prohibitive tariff since the Civil War, the reductio
ad absurdum of protection. In order to convince the
doubting farmers that protection held favour for farm
as well as factory, the act imposed heavy duties on ag-
ricultural products. Whether so intended or not, the
high duties threatened to shut out altogether such Cana-
dian exports, butter, eggs, barley, hay, live stock, as
had hitherto succeeded in surmounting the tariff walls.
In many quarters the McKinley Act stirred deep
resentment and killed all desire for closer trade rela-
tions. That this did not become the general attitude
was due to signs that the Republicans had overshot
the mark. The Congressional elections of November,
1890, gave the Democrats control of the House, on
a platform of lower tariff, and within the Republican
party itself a progressive wing, under Elaine, sought
to temper protection by reciprocity, though as yet it
was -to Latin America, not to Canada, they turned.
405
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LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Confirmed by these indications in the belief that a
reciprocal lowering of tariffs was after all possible,
and with Jesuits and French sessional papers losing
some of their red-herring power, rural Ontario and
later rural Quebec swung distinctly against the govern-
ment. Macdonald's scouts along the St. Lawrence
reported that reciprocity sentiment was growing rapidly
among the farmers and advised an early appeal to the
country.
Israel Tarte's revelations of the rottenness in
Langevin's Department of Public Works reinforced
this view. Tarte, a Bleu of the Bleus, the government's
most vigorous and most audacious journalistic sup-
porter in Quebec, had long been aware of rumours
and suspicions against Langevin's administration.
Now the insensate jealousy and intriguing which
marked the relations of the three Quebec leaders in
the federal cabinet, and a quarrel among the members
of a favoured clique of contractors, put the proofs of
wrong-doing in his hands. He gave the proof to Mac-
donald, only to meet an airy rejection. Then he began
to unfold his dossier in his journal, "Le Canadien,"
artistically and efficiently, lifting only one corner of
the curtain at a time, keeping his victims in suspense,
giving the impression of endless documents to follow,
and turning the spear in the wound with a deft and
practised hand. In the closing months of 1890 enough
had been revealed to make it clear that Robert Mc-
Greevy, Conservative member for Quebec West, and
for many years controller of the party's Quebec cam-
406
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paign chest, had made vast sums for himself, his asso-
ciates, and his party funds, by utilizing his influence
and his sources of secret information to secure for
his partners luscious and lucrative contracts from the
Department of Public Works. Langevin himself was
not yet directly implicated, but rumour was busy with
his name. It was certain that at the next session the
Liberals would demand a searching investigation.
Again, prudence urged an appeal to the electors before
the curtain had been fully lifted.
Less known to the public, another factor was at
work. The Canadian Pacific Railway had not yet
managed to get out of politics. When construction
was completed, and the demand for loans and subsidies
ended, a new source of dispute and political agitation
had arisen. The company insisted on a monopoly of
through traffic in the West. The contract with the
syndicate bound the federal government for twenty
years not to charter any competing road between the
company's main line and the United States border and
to impose a similar policy upon any new province
organized out of the Western Territories. The govern-
ment went further and endeavoured to prevent Man-
itoba from chartering any competing company, though
any such intention had been explicitly disavowed in
1881. Charter after charter of the Manitoba legis-
lature was disallowed at Ottawa. The West rose in
anger, insisted that not its sparse numbers nor its
climate but soulless monopoly was responsible for the
crushing rates on through and local traffic. The provin-
407
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
cial government renewed its chapters, city boards of
trade, farmers' unions, the press, and Conservative
candidates denounced the policy of disallowance, and
the struggle between the two governments reached the
verge of armed conflict. Macdonald wag compelled
to give way. In 1888 the Canadian Pacific agreed to
surrender its privileges, receiving in partial return a
government guaranty of interest on bonds issued on
the security of the land grant. Soon afterward the
Northern Pacific crossed from Dakota into Manitoba,
and, though rates did not fall as far as had been hoped,
at least the settler knew henceforth that his ills were
due to nature and geography and not to Stephen or
Macdonald. It seemed that at last the company would
be neither an issue nor a participant in an election
campaign. Yet once more it was to be involved, and
from a curious angle.
The Canadian Pacific, though carrying through the
all-Canadian road north of Lake Superior, had not
overlooked the advantages of a line south of the lake
through American territory. During the construction
of the main road it had built a branch from Sudbury
to Sault Ste. Marie (Ontario), which faces the penin-
sula jutting northeast between Superior and Michigan.
Once the main enterprise was consolidated, the manage-
ment prepared to enter thisi new territory, with its
forest and mining wealth and with the fertile fields
of Minnesota, in which their old friend Hill reigned
supreme, beckoning them from beyond. In 1891 they
acquired a controlling interest in the stock of two
408
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United States roads, each a consolidation of many small
lines, extending westward from Sault Ste. Marie
'(Michigan). The Duluth South Shore and Atlantic,
as afterward completed, traversed the whole shore of
the lake from the Sault to Superior. The Minneapolis,
St. Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie connected the Sault
with Minneapolis and eventually, through extensions
and purchase of other roads or controlling interests,
was to give the Canadian Pacific entry into Chicago
and a connection between Minneapolis and the Cana-
dian border.
To complete the transaction it was necessary to
float nearly $47,000,000 of securities in London. While
the roads in question were not in Canada, and while
the relations between the Canadian Pacific and the
government had ended, the directors realized that an
election in which the government would be defeated
would be fatal to their plans, particularly with an un-
settled money market. Years of political conflict had
identified the railway and the Conservative party in
the public mind, so that although as a matter of fact
a Liberal victory would not have altered public policy
toward the road in the slightest, it might have jeop-
ardized the success of the new financing. Accordingly,
in November, 1890, Stephen and Van Home asked
Macdonald whether or not there was an election in
sight. He answered, no; not within ten or eleven
months ; he would go now, but no campaign funds were
in sight.
In February, 1891, Mr. Laurier and Attorney-
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LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
General Longley of Nova Scotia were travelling from
Montreal to New York, where they were to speak at
a dinner given by the Board of Trade. Learning that
Van Home was on the same train, Laurier went into
his car, where they chatted pleasantly till nearly mid-
night on matters far from railways or politics. Just
as he was about to leave, Laurier turned to Van Home ;
"I suppose, since you are in the secrets of the govern-
ment, you can tell when the elections will be held." "I
am not in the secrets of the government," Van Home
returned; "ask Sir John." "Well, then," Laurier
replied, "I may give you some news: parliament will
be dissolved before we return from New York."
Laurier went on to New York. He had planned
to speak of the need of closer trade relations between
Canada and the United States, but half-way through
the banquet was brought to an abrupt end by the sudden
death of one of the guests, Secretary of State Windom.
Van Home, though finding a melancholy satisfaction
in the reflection that Windom's stroke had fallen on him
immediately after a speech in which he had denounced
the Canadian Pacific, had meanwhile had other matters
to think of. He had been thunderstruck by Laurier's
news. That night -he could not sleep ; in the morning
he cabled Stephen in London. Stephen replied that
the news was incredible ; Laurier was not in the secrets
of the government, and Macdonald's word had been
given. Before the day was over they learned that the
report was correct, and that Canada was soon to be
in the throes of a general election. What was still
410
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
more to the point, they learned in due time that their
own necessities had been the argument that had turned
the scale for dissolution. Macdonald had spoken to
John Henry Pope of his promise to Stephen and Van
Home. Whereupon Pope replied: "That makes this
just the time to bring on the election." "How 's that?"
'The C. P. R. crowd simply can't let you lose, with
all they have at stake; they will have to shell out as
never before." The reasoning was irresistible.
On February 3 parliament was dissolved and the
elections set for March 5. The campaign was brief,
but it was the most bitterly contested since Confed-
eration. The Opposition fought with a keenness sharp-
ened by a dozen years' exclusion from power and with
a hope rooted in the growing appeal of their trade
policy. The government party fought with their backs
to the wall, knowing their leader was dying, his lieu-
tenants at odds, and their old party discredited.
Desperation and in some cases an honest belief that
the nation's or the Empire's safety was at stake, drove
them to a campaign of personal abuse and flag-waving
beyond Canadian precedent.
The government's first tactics were to cut the ground
from under the Liberals by advocating a moderate
measure of reciprocity. On January 16, there ap-
peared in the Toronto "Empire" an inspired despatch
from Ottawa stating that the Canadian government
had been approached by the United States government
with a view to the development of trade relations, and
that the advice of the British government was being
411
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
sought. Thompson, in a public address on February
6, also implied that the overtures had come from the
United States. Macdonald himself, recalling that
"every measure of reciprocal trade we have got from
our neighbours has been got by the Conservatives,"
declared that it would be possible to extend trade rela-
tions without infringing the national policy. These
statements made it apparent not only that the Con-
servative party was prepared to negotiate a reciprocity
treaty, but that the United States government, by tak-
ing the initiative, had made clear its readiness for a
restricted measure of the Conservative type.
The announcements took the wind out of the Liberal
sails. It was an audacious move, and as disreputable
as it was audacious. Secretary Elaine at once denied
that any negotiations were on foot, or that his govern-
ment would entertain any scheme for reciprocity con-
fined to natural products. The plain truth was that
the United States had not taken the initiative, but that
Canada, intervening in trade negotiations between the
United States and Newfoundland, had formally pro-
posed that all the issues between Canada and the United
States, fisheries, coasting, and salvage laws, the Alaska
boundary, and the renewal of the reciprocity treaty
of 1854 with modifications and extensions, should be
considered by a joint commission. Elaine's denial
forced a change in tactics. As much as possible was
made of the desirability of having any negotiations for
reciprocity carried on by safe and moderate and loyal
statesmen rather than by reckless politicians, annex-
412
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
ationists in disguise. But for the most part the em-
phasis shifted to the defence and glorification of the
National Policy, and to attacks upon the disloyalty of
the Opposition. "The old man, the old flag, and the
old policy," the "Empire's" slogan, became the party's
campaign cry.
The government was not content to seek to show
that absorption in the United States would be the in-
evitable result of commercial union or, what they insisted
was the same thing, unrestricted reciprocity. They
tried to prove that Liberal leaders were hoping and
working directly for annexation. The charge had no
basis other than the heated imagination of self-righteous
partisans, but repeated and reckless assertion had some
effect. A tinge of colour was given the charge by the
revelation of dubious intrigues by Edward Farrer. In
the preceding summer Farrer had been engaged by
the "Globe" as its chief editorial writer, Mr. John S.
Willison becoming editor at about the same time.
Proofs of a pamphlet which Farrer had written while
on the "Mail" and which was being set up in a Toronto
printing-shop, were stolen by a printer and put in the
hands of Macdonald. It was not a patriotic production.
Farrer "outlined a policy whereby the United States
might bring Canada to sue for annexation, tonnage
taxes on Nova Scotia fishing-vessels, suspension of the
railway-bonding privilege, and so on. Macdonald
revealed the pamphlet at a great meeting in Toronto,
and charged the Liberal leaders with collusion. It was
in vain that in signed statements in the columns of
413
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
the "Globe" next day Farrer assumed the sole respon-
sibility for the pamphlet, which he declared had not
been sent to Washington, and Mr. Willison reasserted
the "Globe's" position of self-reliant Canadianism, or
that the political leaders denied all knowledge. The
fact that Farrer had been brought to the "Globe," after
his tendencies had been publicly made known, l and
that he was the close confidant of Sir Richard Cart-
wright, made the disclosures, and the publication later
of correspondence between Wiman and Congressman
Hitt, wherein Farrer was quoted as considering "not
making two bites of a cherry but going for annex-
ation at once," immensely damaging to the Liberal
party.
Macdonald's manifesto to the electors was adroitly
phrased to make the most of these tactics. He con-
trasted the steadfast adherence of the Conservatives to
the National Policy with the vacillation of the Liberals
on tariff issues, and the prosperity the country had
enjoyed since 1878 with the soup-kitchens of the pre-
ceding regime. He brandished the awful bogey of
direct taxation, necessary to meet the gap in revenue
if unrestricted reciprocity were adopted, the elector
"being called on by a Dominion tax-gatherer with a
yearly demand for $15.00 a family." Still worse, the
Liberal policy would mean the surrender of Canadian
l The situation was made more embarrassing by the fact that only a year
before, when Farrer was still the chief writer on the rival "Mail," the
"Globe" had charged him with having secretly urged a committee of the
United States Senate to block reciprocity or any settlement of the Fish-
eries dispute in order to coerce Canada into annexation, and had plumed
itself upon having had "the good fortune to discover and expose the knavish
acts of this past master of duplicity."
414
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
freedom, British traditions, imperial prestige. For
himself, he concluded, "A British subject I was born,
a British subject I will die. With my utmost strength,
with my last breath, will I oppose the Veiled treason'
which attempts, by sordid means and mercenary prof-
fers, to lure our people from their allegiance."
Laurier's answering manifesto marked the restraint
and dignity of the man. He attacked the sudden dis-
solution in face of the definite pledge of the last session,
noted that in his statement Macdonald had not a word
to say of his own alleged reciprocity negotiations, and
arraigned the N. P. which had now brought to the work-
man half-time and lowered wages and to the farmer
steadily falling prices of land. The charge that unre-
stricted reciprocity would mean discrimination against
England meant little in the mouths of men who had built
tariff walls high against English goods; he would not
admit that discrimination was involved, since assimilation
of tariffs was not essential; but if the interests of Canada
and of the mother country clashed, he would stand by
his native land. Should the concessions demanded
from the people of Canada exceed what their honour
or their duty, either to themselves or their motherland,
could sanction, they would not have reciprocity at such
a price, but it was preposterous to reject the proposal
in advance. Talk of veiled treason was an unworthy
appeal to passion and prejudice. Retrenchment would
bridge any gaps in taxation. Economic reform must
come first; for the rest, the Liberal party stood for
adherence to the spirit of the constitution, provincial
415
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
autonomy, and good-will between all races, all creeds,
and all classes in the land.
From these long-range exchanges, the party leaders
came to closer grips. Macdonald did not spare his
failing strength in the depths of a Canadian February.
His lieutenants composed their quarrels; Tupper,
brought back from England, Thompson and McCarthy,
Langevin and Chapleau, Foster and Colby and Hag-
gart, sunk their rivalries against a common danger.
The Liberals, disconcerted at first by the govern-
ment's reciprocity tactics and handicapped by the
reiterated charges of disloyalty, fought hard against
their defamers. Laurier gave his nights and days to
Quebec. In Ontario, Cartwright was a host, and Mills,
Charlton, Mulock, Edgar, Landerkin, Sutherland,
gave and sought no quarter. Mowat spoke scornfully
of the loyalty that trade would endanger, and Mac-
kenzie, now only a wraith of the past, came forward
to support his party's cause. In the Maritime prov-
inces, there was no federal Liberal leader to meet Tup-
per's sledge-hammer or Foster's rapier thrusts. But
it was not the activity of the Conservative speakers
that gave the Liberals most concern. They faced an
organized and aggressive campaign by the business
interests which considered themselves in peril. Manu-
facturers fearful of an open market, wholesalers pictur-
ing New York and Chicago capturing their trade,
bankers linked with both, worked quietly and effec-
tively in town and city. Most effective of all the anti-
reciprocity forces was the Canadian Pacific. Van
416
SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD
Prime Minister of Canada, 1867-73, 1878-91
(1890)
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
Home, in letters to the Montreal "Witness," put the
case against unrestricted reciprocity more forcefully
than any other critic had done. But the company's
action was not confined to argument in the public press.
Whether or not the "C. P. R. crowd" did "shell out"
as liberally or rather as "Conservatively" as Pope had
prophesied, certainly all the influence of a great organ-
ization which ramified into every corner of the Domin-
ion, the prestige of its directors, the votes of its em-
ployees, passes for absentee voters, were exerted with-
out stint. The Grand Trunk threw its influence into
the opposite scale, but it lacked the weight and force
of its younger rival.
When at last the contest ended, the government was
found to have been sustained. But it had lost heavily.
In Ontario and in Quebec the Liberals had made large
gains, particularly in the rural districts, and in the
two central provinces they had a majority of one. The
Maritime provinces and the West saved the day for
the government. Only, as the "Globe" declared, "in
the new territories where the voters look to the govern-
ment for daily bread, in Manitoba where the C. P. R.
crushed and strangled public sentiment, and in Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick where a hungry people
succumbed to the coarse and blatant prodigality of
Tupper," or, as Cartwright put it more pithily in one
of the biting phases he coined with fatal facility, only
in "the shreds and patches" of the Dominion, had the
government's desperate appeal won any success.
What was particularly significant, it was a majority
417
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
secured for the most part from the domains of the Cana-
dian Pacific. In every constituency but one that of
Marquette, where Robert Watson won a six-vote vic-
tory, wholly through oversight, Van Home declared,
through which the main line of the Canadian Pacific
ran, a Conservative was elected. The relation between
business and politics had never been displayed more
clearly. The flag had been waved. Thousands of
simple Canadians had imagined that the country's
national existence and national honour were at stake,
and had voted to avert the dangers of too intimate
trade connection with the United States and the risk
of diverting Canadian traffic to American railways.
Now the country was safe, Macdonald once more had
his majority, and those who had directed the puppets
from behind the scenes were free to resume their task
of pouring millions of British sovereigns into projects
for the extension of Canadian roads into the United
States.
In a momentous postscript to the campaign, Edward
Blake took his farewell of Canadian politics, and turned
the defeat of the party he once had led into a rout.
He was not in harmony with the new fiscal policy of
the party, not the least so because it had been adopted
in his absence and at Cartwright's instance. He had
planned to speak against it in public, when the sudden
announcement of a general election faced him with a
difficult choice. Little as he trusted the new policy
of the Liberals, he was still less enamoured, after a
dozen years of observation, with the old policy of the
418
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
Conservatives. The announcement of plans for a con-
vention of Ontario Liberals, made in Laurier's name
and at Cartwright's suggestion, without any consul-
tation with Blake, irritated the old leader further. He,
too, prepared his manifesto, and sent it to the Liberal
convention in his old riding of West Durham, with a
covering letter announcing his decision not to be again
a candidate. The convention officers succeeded in
preventing the memorial reaching the meeting, and
the editor of the "Globe," to which a copy was sent,
induced Blake to withhold publication until Laurier
could be consulted. Finally, in an interview with
Laurier immediately after his return from New York,
Blake agreed to stay his hand until after the election.
The day after the polling, the memorial, in an amended
version, appeared in the "Globe." It was an extraor-
dinary document. It began with a scathing indictment
of the Conservative policy:
It has left us with a small population, a scanty immigration,
and a North- West empty still ; with enormous additions to
our public debt and yearly charge, an extravagant system
of expenditure, and an unjust and oppressive tariff . . . and
with unfriendly relations and frowning tariff walls ever more
and more estranging us from the mighty English-speaking
nation to the south, our neighbours and relations, with whom
we ought to be, as it was promised that we should be, living
in generous amity and liberal intercourse. Worse, far worse!
It has left us with lowered standards of public virtue and a
death-like apathy in public opinion ; with racial, religious and
provincial animosities rather inflamed than soothed; with
a subservient parliament, an autocratic executive, debauched
constituencies, and corrupted and corrupting classes 1 ; with
419
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
lessened self-reliance and increased dependence on the public
chest and on legislative aids, and possessed withal by a boast-
ful jingo spirit far enough removed from true manlines's,
loudly proclaiming unreal conditions and exaggerated senti-
ments, while actual facts and genuine opinions are suppressed.
It has left us with our hands tied, our future compromised, and
in such a plight that, whether we stand or move, we must run
some risks which else we might either have declined or encoun-
tered with greater promise of success.
What policy was now possible? The fiscal plan he
would have preferred, a moderate tariff with restricted
reciprocity with the United States, was no longer
feasible. An imperial Zollverein was beyond the realm
of practical politics. Unrestricted reciprocity was not
feasible, as distinguished from commercial union; true,
a permanent and unrestricted free trade with the United
States would bring immense material prosperity, but
revenue necessities for direct taxes were out of the
question and the necessity of a definite adjustment
of policy would make inevitable the assimilation of
tariffs and pooling of receipts. Commercial union
then, was feasible, but it would inevitably make for
political union; the community of interest, the inter-
mingling of population, the coming of prosperity, and
the fear of its loss, the isolation from Britain, would
all drive Canada in that direction. He concluded:
Whatever you or I think on that head, whether we like or
dislike, believe or disbelieve in political union, must we not
agree that the subject is one of great moment, toward the
practical settlement of which we should take no serious step
without reflection, or in ignorance of what we are doing?
Assuming that absolute free trade, best described as com-
420
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
mercial union, may and ought I to come, I believe that it can
and should come only as an incident or at any rate as a well
understood precursor of political union, for which indeed
we should be able to make better terms before than after the
surrender of our commercial independence. Then so believ-
ing believing that the decision of the trade question involves
that of the constitutional issue for which you are unprepared
and with which you do not even conceive yourselves to be
dealing how can I properly recommend you now to decide
on commercial union?
A weighty, an oracular utterance, but what did the
oracle mean? As to the past., it condemned Tory
policy root and branch, but the past was past. As to
the present, it condemned Liberal policy as vague, un-
digested, leading inevitably through commercial to
political union with the United States. Elections being
fought in the present, the manifesto proved infinitely
more damaging to the Liberal than to the Conservative
cause. Iix the series of by-elections which followed
the unseating of members as a result of election trials,
the Liberals lost heavily, and nothing so hurt their
chances as this condemnation by their old leader.
As to the future, the letter was not without ambiguity,
but it seemed to advocate political union as Canada's
eventual destiny. When the letter was so interpreted
by the "Globe," and criticized for that reason, Blake
added a note much briefer than his original letter, but
equally mysterious: "I crave space to say that I think
political union with the States, though becoming our
probable, is by no means our ideal, or as yet our inev-
itable future."
421
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
The West Durham letter ended Blake's connection
with the Liberal party. Cartwright never spoke to
him again. Laurier, taking the break less personally,
and understanding more nearly the subtleties and
hidden workings of Blake's mind, yet could not for-
give the blow. A quarter-century later he still spoke
feelingly of the letter as "a stab in the back." Blake's
objections to the Liberal policy were strained and
hypothetical: actual experience would have proved, as
a robust practical sense might have anticipated, their
futility. / The letter H his mind demonstrated Blake's
chief weaknesses as a party leader his inability to work
with and through men of many and varying minds,
and his lack of political courage/
Henceforth the paths of the two men diverged.
Blake entered a fresh field, accepting an invitation from
Ireland to enter the British House of Commons in the
interest of Home Rule. Here his efforts were vain:
British pride, party manoeuvres, Irish factions, blocked
the path of the solution he urged with irrefutable but
unavailing logic, and prepared the way for the trag-
edies of later years. He had a place of much dis-
tinction at the bar, but in the general work of the
House he made no special mark; an Irish Nationalist
member was in parliament, not of it, and in any case
disappointment had sapped his energy. He opposed
the aggressive policy which led to the South African
War, but here again he spoke in vain: the tide of im-
perialist reaction which marked the nineties had not
yet turned. In these later years his friendship with
422
MARKET, FLAG, AND CREED
Laurier revived; it never became intimate as of old,
but time brought healing to the hurts of pride and the
older man took cordial pleasure in the growth and
achievement of the successor whose full powers he had
been first to discern. In his old seat, Laurier faced
calumny and defeat with courage and confidence, biding
his time.
423
CHAPTER IX
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
The Death of Sir John Macdonald Rival Heirs and a Compro-
mise A Scandal Year Thompson in Power The Manitoba School
Question Courts and Cabinets A Government in Difficulties
Laurier in Torres Vedras The Nest of Traitors The Remedial
Bill and an Episcopal Mandate The Six Months Hoist The Tup-
per Ministry The Elections of 1896 Quebec Stands by Laurier.
THE rejoicings of the Conservative party over
the victory of "the old man, the old flag, and
. the old policy" had scarcely ceased when they
turned to apprehensions that the days of "the grand
old man" were numbered. Sir John Macdonald had
taxed his waning strength in the hard-fought winter
struggle. When the first session of the new parliament
opened at the end of April, 1891, both leaders were
stricken with illness. Mr. Laurier soon recovered, but
Sir John could not rally. He suffered a paralytic
stroke on May 29, and a week later the end came.
Party struggles were halted in the shadow of this
calamity. Canada had lost her greatest son, the Con-
servatives an invincible leader, the Liberals a foeman
they could not but respect and a compatriot of whom
they could not but be proud. Mr. Laurier, who never
concealed his belief that Sir John Macdonald had been
more responsible than any other man for lowering the
level of political contest in Canada and for making
424
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
his countrymen accept success as covering a multitude
of political sins, yet had a deep admiration for the loyal
Canadian spirit that guided all his policy, and an
appreciation, such as only a man of something the same
qualities could attain, of the magic mastery Macdonald
wielded over men. 1 In joining Sir Hector Langevin
and Mr. Nicholas Flood Davin in paying the tribute
of the House of Commons to Sir John, Mr. Laurier's
eloquence rose to heights of simple directness and deep
sincerity:
The place of Sir John A. Macdonald in this country was
so large and so absorbing that it is almost impossible to
conceive that the politics of this country the fate of this
country will continue without him. His loss overwhelms us.
For my part, I say, with all truth, his loss overwhelms me,
and that it also overwhelms this parliament, as if indeed one
of the institutions of the land had given way. Sir John
i In private conversation many years afterwards Sir Wilfrid observed :
"Sir John Macdonald was the supreme student* of human nature. That
was the secret of his power. I doubt if any man of his century was
his equal in the art of managing men. He could play on the strength
and weakness of each and all his followers at his will. That was his
chief interest. He had imagination, he had a deep and responsible interest
in Canada's welfare, but he did not usually take long views. He was
always careful to bring his vision back to the next step. Of course,
he was a master of strategy, but not in the detached objective fashion
of the bloodless chess-player or the general twenty miles behind the
trenches; it was his instinctive, sympathetic reading of the men in the
mele about him that made him sense the way out and turned the game.
Perhaps his chief disservice was to make his countrymen feel that politics
was not only a game but a game without rules. He was our greatest
Canadian, but he did more than any other man to lower the level of
Canadian public life.
"Macdonald was never interested in the details of administration.
What is less realized, he was not a very good speaker. The matter
rarely rose above commonplace, he stammered and repeated himself. Yet
he usually drove his point home, he had a remarkable memory and an
unfailing fund of humour; he knew precisely how to embarrass his op-
ponents and delight the benches behind him. In writing it was another
matter. His state papers, such as you will find in Pope's 'Memoirs,' are
on a very high plane, admirable work, none better anywhere."
425
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
A. Macdonald now belongs to the ages, and it can be said
with certainty that the career which has just been closed
is one of the most remarkable careers of this century. It
would be premature at this time to attempt to divine or
anticipate what will be the final judgment of history upon
him, but there were in his career and in his life features so
prominent and so conspicuous that already they shine with
a glory which time cannot alter. These characteristics appear
before the House at the present time such as they will appear
to the end in history.
I think it can be asserted that for the supreme art of
governing men Sir John Macdonald was gifted as few men in
any land or in any age were gifted gifted with the most high
of all qualities qualities which would have shone in any the-
atre, and which would have shone all the more conspicuously
the larger the theatre. The fact that he could congregate
together elements the most heterogeneous and blend them in
one compact party, and to the end of his life kept them steadily
under his hand, is perhaps altogether unprecedented. The
fact that during all these years he maintained unimpaired,
not only the confidence, but the devotion the ardent devotion
the affection of his party, is evidence that, besides these
higher qualities of statesmanship to which we were the daily
witnesses, he was also endowed with this inner, subtle, un-
definable characteristic of -soul that wins and keeps the hearts
of men.
As to his statesmanship, it is written in the history of
Canada. It may be said without any exaggeration whatever,
that the life of Sir John Macdonald, from the date he entered
parliament, is the history of Canada, for he was connected
and associated with all the events, all the facts, all the develop-
ments, which brought Canada from the position Canada then
occupied the position of two small provinces, having nothing
in common but the common allegiance, and united by a bond
of paper, and united by nothing else to the present state
of development which Canada has reached. Although my
political views compel me to say that, in my judgment, his
426
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
actions were not always the best that could have been taken
in the interest of Canada, although my conscience compels
me to say that of late he has imputed to his opponents motives
which I must say in my heart he has misconceived, yet, I am
only too glad here to sink these differences, and to remember
only the great services he has performed for his country
to remember that his actions displayed unbounded fertility
of resource, a high level of intellectual conception, and, above
all, a far-reaching vision beyond the event of the day, and
still higher, permeating the whole, a broad patriotism, a
devotion to Canada's welfare, Canada's advancement, and
Canada's glory.
The life of a statesman is always an arduous one, and very
often it is an ungrateful one; more often than otherwise his
actions do not mature until he is in his grave. Not so, how-
ever, in the case of Sir John Macdonald; his has been a
singularly fortunate one. His reverses were few and of short
duration. He was fond of power, and in my judgment, if
I may say so, that was the turning point of his history.
He was fond of power and he never made any secret of it.
Many times we have heard him avow it on the floor of this
parliament, and his ambition in this respect was gratified,
as perhaps no other man's ambition ever was. In my judg-
ment even the career of William Pitt can hardly compare
with that of Sir John Macdonald in this respect, for although
William Pitt, moving in a higher sphere, had to deal with
problems greater than ours, yet I doubt if in the manage-
ment of a party William Pitt had to contend with difficulties
equal to those that Sir John Macdonald had to contend with.
In his death too, he seems to have been singularly happy.
Twenty years ago I was told by one who at that time was
a close personal and political friend of Sir John Macdonald,
that in the intimacy of his domestic circles he was fond of
repeating that his end would be as the end of Lord Chatham
that he would be carried away from the floor of parliament
to die. How true his vision into the future was we now know,
for we saw him at the last, with enfeebled health and declining
427
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
strength, struggling on the floor of Parliament until, the hand
of fate upon him, he was carried to his home to die.
With the death of Macdonald the Conservative ad-
ministration began to fall to pieces. It was only his
prestige and his power over men that had held so many
diverse elements so long together and had postponed the
decay that besets every party in power. There was no
clear certainty as to the Conservative leadership. Sir
Charles Tupper had been the strongest force in the
party, but he had been shelved as high commissioner in
London and many of his old colleagues hesitated to
bow again to his masterful ways. * Sir Hector
iAt a banquet in Halifax in February, 1896, Sir Charles made public
the following characteristic letter, written to his son, Charles Hibbert, in
1891, from Vienna, where he was attending a postal conference, as
"evidence that the position of Prime Minister of Canada was not the object
of my ambition."
"Vienna, June 4, 1891.
"MY DEAR SON:
"I, as you know, have always felt the deepest personal attachment
for our great leader, Sir John A. Macdonald, but I myself did not know
how much I loved him until on my arrival here last Saturday I learned
that he was struck down by illness. The news was then reassuring and I
attended the dinner at the Hofburg Palace with the Emperor and a King,
at four o'clock, but refused the invitation of the Minister for the theatre
that evening and all invitations since. It now seems there is no hope;
how mysterious are the ways of Providence ! Never in his long and useful
life have his invaluable services been so important to Canada and to the
Empire, and God alone knows what the consequences to both may be.
"I received your telegram stating that there was a disposition in
certain quarters that Sir John Thompson should succeed him, with great
satisfaction and a strong sense of personal relief. You know I told you
long ago, and repeated to you when last in Ottawa, that nothing could
induce me to accept the position in case the Premiership became vacant.
I told you that Sir John looked up wearily from his papers and said to
me: 4 I wish to God you were in my place,' and that I answered him,
'Thank God I am not.' He afterwards, well knowing my determination,
said he thought Thompson, as matters now stood, was the only available
man. Of course he had in mind the charges that were made against
Langevin, and still pending. Had it been otherwise, and I had been in
428
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
Langevin was the leader of the Quebec wing of the
party and the senior privy councillor, and had long
been considered by Sir John himself the logical suc-
cessor, but he was under the cloud of the Tarte charges
of corruption and was hampered by the jealousy of
Chapleau and Caron. Sir John Thompson stood
head and shoulders above his colleagues in ability,
solidity of character, and integrity of purpose, but the
prejudice which was felt among Ontario Conserva-
tives against a leader who was not only a Roman Cath-
olic but a convert from Protestantism made it appear
inexpedient for him to accept the tender which was
made to him. D'Alton McCarthy, long Sir John
Macdonald's right hand man in Ontario, his chief ad-
viser in constitutional issues, and unquestionably the
most effective and most popular speaker in the Con-
servative ranks, was championed by many friends. In
an interview with Thompson, McCarthy insisted upon
his own claims to the leadership. But the objection to
Parliament, I would have given Mm my support, as you well know.
"When this terrible blow came, I naturally dreaded that my old
colleagues and the party for whom I had done so much, might unite in
asking me to take the leadership, and I felt that in that case a serious
responsibility would rest upon me. Believing, as I do, that compliance
would have involved a material shortening of the few years at the most
remaining to me, you can imagine, my dear son, the relief with which I
learned that I was absolved from any such responsibility and able to
assure your dear mother that all danger was past. ... I need not tell you
how glad I will be if our mutual friend Thompson should be the man.
His great ability, high legal attainments, forensic powers, and above all
his personal character all render his choice one of which our party and
country should be proud. . . .
"Your loving father,
"CHABLES TUPPER."
429
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
a fiery anti-Catholic crusader was as strong as the ob-
jection to a convert from Protestantism, and Thomp-
son, when summoned by the governor-general, had at
least the satisfaction of recommending another name,
that of the government leader in the Senate, Hon.
John Abbott. In his own frank words before the
Senate, Mr. Abbott explained how he had come to be
chosen:
The position which I to-night have the honour to occupy,
and which is far beyond any hopes or aspirations I ever had,
and, I am free to confess, beyond any merits I have, has
come to me probably very much in the nature of compromise.
I am here very much because I am not particularly obnoxious
to anybody, something like the principle on which it is reported
some men are selected as candidates for the Presidency of
the United States . . . that they are harmless and have not
made any enemies.
Mr. Abbott had never taken any share in the public
work of the party. He had no liking for parliamen-
tary debate, and he loathed and avoided public cam-
paigning. But he was personally popular, a man of dig-
nity and imperturbable courtesy; in Ottawa and Mont-
real he was intimately known to the people who
counted, and behind the scenes his shrewd, cautious
counsel had long stood both the Conservative party and
the Canadian Pacific Railway in good stead. The
choice, if somewhat unexpected, and certainly unsought
on Mr. Abbott's part, was therefore a logical if ob+
viously only a temporary solution of the difficulty.
The new premier continued to lead in the Senate. In
the House of Commons Sir Hector Langevin at first
430
THE BREAK-UP OF THE .ADMINISTRATION
remained nominally the government spokesman, but
he soon faded into retirement, and Sir John Thomp-
son stood out as the leader of the House and the real
force in the administration.
Mr. Abbott succeeded to a troubled heritage. The
Conservative party was plainly losing its grip on the
country. The dissensions of its leaders and the threat
of further cleavage over race and religious issues
weakened its force in parliament. More serious for
the moment were the revelations of wide-spread corrup-
tion and inefficiency in the federal administration.
The parliamentary session of 1891 was "the scandal
year." Israel Tarte had sought and won a seat in
Quebec, pledged to probe to the bottom the graft in the
Public Works Department. He lost no time in mak-
ing his charges and demanding a committee of inquiry.
The Committee on Privileges and Elections began an
inquiry which lasted from May until September. It
was soon made clear beyond dispute that the depart-
ment was rotten through and through ; that confidential
data were divulged to contractors, tenders manipulated
at their will, and bogus claims allowed; that Thomas
McGreevy was mainly instrumental in procuring these
favours for firms with which he and his brother Robert
were secretly connected ; and that part of the graft went
to the party's funds. As to Sir Hector's complicity,
the committee differed. The majority report, signed
by Sir John Thompson, D. Girouard, and Michael
Adams, admitted the guilt of the contractor and of
McGreevy, but cleared the minister of any knowledge
431
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
or responsibility. David Mills and L. H. Davies, in
a minority report, contended that Langevin, with whom
McGreevy made his home in Ottawa, connived at and
furthered the frauds, and that his newspaper organ, "Le
Monde," was largely sustained from the proceeds.
The majority report was upheld on a party vote, D' Al-
ton McCarthy, Colonel O'Brien, and Nicholas Flood
Davin alone voting against their party. On the motion
of Sir John Thompson, Thomas McGreevy was ex-
pelled from the House.
Nor did the charges or the probing end here. In
department after department the Interior, the Public
Works, the Printing Bureau very easy-going stand-
ards of honesty were shown to prevail; accommodating
clerks found cheques, bronze dogs, dinner-tables, jewels
for their wives, come their way, and merchants delivered
one set of wares to clerks' homes and sent bills for
another set to the government treasury. The Liberals
were not content with small game. Members of parlia-
ment who had sold offices for cash, ministers who were
alleged to keep damsels on the pay-roll who gave no
public service, were bitterly attacked. Not all the
charges were probed, not all were proved, but sufficient
stood to shock the Canadian public, and invite the
pitying scorn of other lands.
In answer, the Conservative leaders minimized the
revelations, waved the flag, and shouted, 'You're an-
other." In August, while the Tarte charges were still
under consideration, evidence of equally scandalous cor-
432
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
ruption in the Liberal administration of Quebec came
as a godsend. In hearings before the Railway Com-
mittee of the Senate, it was brought out that the con-
tractor for the Baie des Chaleurs Railway had been
paid large sums by the Quebec government for which no
service was rendered, that out of these sums he had
paid Ernest Pacaud, editor of "L'Electeur," $100,000,
and that Pacaud had used a large part of this sum to pay
political debts of the provincial Liberal party. The
Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, Hon. A. R. Angers,
at once appointed Judges Jette, Baby, and Davidson
a royal commission to investigate the charges. The ill-
ness of Judge Jette delayed his report, but his fellow-
commissioners made an interim report on December 15,
holding that Charles Langelier, provincial secretary,
and Premier Mercier, while not consulted, had benefited
by the payment by Pacaud of notes given for political
debts which they with others had endorsed. In Novem-
ber, a Quebec contractor, John P. Whelan, published
charges that he had been bled by Mr. Mercier and his
friends for heavy campaign contributions out of the
swollen profits of the building of the Quebec Court
House. On December 16, Governor Angers, who had
been a member of the De Boucherville ministry dis-
missed by Governor Letellier in 1878, now in his turn
dismissed Honore Mercier from office and called the
same Senator De Boucherville to form a ministry.
The legislature was at once dissolved and elections set
for March 8. Judge Jette's report exonerated Mercier
433
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
from any knowledge or responsibility in the Chaleurs
affair.
To Wilfrid Laurier the Quebec revelations were a
crushing blow. It was not merely that his party was
compromised and the force of the attack on the federal
government weakened, but the whole country was be-
smirched, politics made to appear a game in which
honesty was at a discount, and friendships shattered.
In a public meeting in Quebec in January he attacked
Governor Angers' action in dismissing the ministry as
arbitrary and unconstitutional. He added that he had
not come to defend Mr. Mercier's policy; he considered
the Baie des Chaleurs transaction in the highest degree
indefensible, yet he would point out that the charges
that Mr. Mercier knew of the fraudulent division of the
proceeds or benefited thereby had not been established ;
he was loath to believe them true, and trusted that Mr.
Mercier and his friends would succeed in clearing them-
selves.
In a letter to H. Beaugrand, the radical editor of the
chief Liberal journal in Montreal, "La Patrie," Mr.
Laurier comments on the affair :
Wilfrid Laurier to H. Beaugrand. (Translation)
Ottawa, August 17, 1891.
MY DEAR BEAUGRAND:
I have just seen our friend Brodeur and am writing you at
once. This unfortunate affair in Quebec is making us lose the
fruit of our work here. We cannot expect now to make any
serious breaches in the ranks of the majority. We shall con-
434
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
tinue to expose the scandals we have begun to throw light on as
far as we can, and that done, we shall have nothing to do but
close the session.
The most urgent matter now is to know what attitude to
take. My opinion would be this: It must be admitted that
very serious accusations have been established before the Com-
mittee of the Senate up to a certain point, but the accusers,
though they touch individuals, do not implicate Mr. Mercier's
government. Moreover, not only is the method of investiga-
tion unconstitutional, but the investigation itself has no
foundation. It is the result of sentiment so obviously par-
tisan that those who are accused cannot expect to secure jus-
tice from such a tribunal. In fact, the Senate has not even
authority any longer to make this investigation ; the bill which
would have given it jurisdiction has been withdrawn, and it is
only by artifice that the Senate continues to sit.
This position would be very strong, but unfortunately the
facts revealed before the Senate have such an appearance that
the public, at least in certain quarters, would hardly be dis-
posed to accept any constitutional argument. It would be
necessary to go on to say that, while taking account of the
revelations which have been made before the Committee of the
Senate, in consideration of the evidently partisan character
of the inquiry, the public should wait before forming a definite
judgment until an inquiry can be made before a more impar-
tial tribunal.
That, my dear Beaugrand, is the attitude that I would take
in your paper. Naturally, after that we must await events.
I would be glad to have your own opinion on all this, if you
would be good enough to write me a line.
Tell me whether there is not some fatality pursuing our
party; it is just at the moment that we are showing up the
full extent of the corruption of the Conservative party that a
similar revelation comes upon ourselves.
Believe me as always,
Yours very sincerely,
WILFRID LAITBIEB.
435
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
By some of Mercier's friends, Laurier's attitude was
considered unduly cool and aloof. Were not both men
Liberals ; had not Mercier contributed materially to the
growing strength of the federal Liberal party in Quebec ;
were not the party's fortunes linked with his? Granted,
but in the Liberal party there were many shades.
Aside from annoyance at the untimely revelations, there
was a more permanent divergence, rooted in differences
of tactics and of temperament. Both men were coura-
gous fighters, both enjoyed the game of politics, but
Laurier never threw himself into the hurly-burly of
political warfare with the zest and abandon of Mercier;
he was not as much at home in the detailed organization
of election campaigns and the manipulation of personal
alliances. The difference between Laurier and Mercier
was the difference between Dorion and Cartier, the dif-
ference between the studious, austere, moderate, par-
liamentary leader, interested in persons but thinking in
terms of principles and constitutions, and the burly,
slashing popular leader, careless of constitutional issues,
exuberant, convivial, delighting in the managing and
dominating of men.
When polling came, the electors of Quebec pro-
nounced against the Mercier administration by sweep-
ing majorities. Honore Mercier at once resigned his
leadership and his seat. The federal Liberal party not
only lost one of its provincial buttresses, but had to
suffer the double share of obloquy which falls upon the
righteous when they err; the charges made against Lan-
436
,THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
gevin and the government at Ottawa came back with
interest. In the by-elections which were held in 1892,
following the unseating of members for violations of the
Corrupt Practices Act, the electors, seemingly con-
vinced that one party was as bad as another, and still
under the influence of Blake's post-election attack upon
the Liberal trade policy, went strongly with the govern-
ment. Waverers in parliament returned to the fold.
A Conservative majority of twenty-odd mounted
steadily to sixty; it seemed that the party had once more
found itself.
The session of 1892 varied scandals with gerry-
manders. Mr. J. D. Edgar charged that Sir Adolphe
Caron, the postmaster-general, had been instrumental
in procuring large government subsidies for the Quebec
and Lake St. John Railway, and had milked the com-
pany to procure election funds. He demanded an in-
quiry by the same committee which had investigated
the Langevin charges. Sir John Thompson refused
an inquiry on the grounds that it would involve the im-
possible task of reviewing the conduct of elections in
twenty-two Quebec constituencies during several gen-
eral elections. Eventually certain charges other than
those concerning elections were referred to a judicial
commission. Mr. Edgar declared that the charges sub-
mitted to the commission were not his, and declined to
take part in the investigation; the findings were incon-
clusive.
The census of 1891 had revealed an astonishingly
437
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
slow growth in population the preceding ten years.
A bare half -million had been added. * The Liberal
contention that the government's fiscal polidy had failed
and that the country was being bled white by emigra-
tion to the United States, received startling confirma-
tion, and protection began to lose ground. A more
immediate result was the redistribution of seats in ac-
cordance with the new population returns and the old
party exigencies. Sir John Thompson introduced a
measure re-drawing the electoral map in every province.
The proposed changes were attacked as gross gerry-
mandering.* Mr. Laurier, going to the root of the mat-
ter, urged that redistribution should be taken up by a
committee of both parties, as the only means of avoid-
ing evil and the appearance of evil. Thompson de-
nounced the proposal as unprecedented and imprac-
ticable, and carried the proposals through. Eleven
years later, with power as well as reason on his side,
Laurier was to perform this unprecedented and impos-
sible task and to end for a time the loading of the
electoral dice.
Sir John Abbott (a Queen's Birthday honour), was
now finding it impossible to retain power longer. Ex-
perience had not lessened his distaste for ministerial life,
and the illness which was to carry him off within a year
was crippling his powers. In any case his premiership
had served its purpose in enabling the party to pull itself
together and in demonstrating beyond dispute which of
11871, 3,686,000
1881, 4,324,000
1891, 4,829,000
438
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
the many claimants had best right to Macdonald's
mantle. He resigned on November 25, 1892.
Sir John Thompson was at once summoned to form
a ministry. He announced the new government on
December 6, 1892. It contained few surprises. Sir
John remained Minister of Justice, Mr. Foster, Minis-
ter of Finance, and Sir Charles Tupper's brilliant son,
Charles Hibbert, Minister of Marine and Fisheries.
Hon. A. R. Angers exchanged his lieutenant-governor-
ship for Mr. Chapleau's place in the cabinet. Sir
Adolphe Car on and Alderic Ouimet, Mackenzie Bowell,
John Haggart, and John H. Costigan and others of
the old guard remained. Sir Frank Smith and Sir John
Carling held cabinet place without portfolio. An in-
teresting innovation came through the appointment of
two comptrollers of Customs and Inland Revenue and
a solicitor-general as members of the ministry but not
of the cabinet ; the choice for the former of these posts
of Clarke Wallace, the head of the Orange Order in
Canada, balanced the accession to power, in the "Mail's"
phrase, of "a political conf ederate.of the order of Father
Petre."
Sir John Thompson had rightly won his place. The
prejudices against his creed had been overborne in all
but a few extremist quarters. The whole country had
come to recognize his power of intellect, his unswerving
integrity, his sound Canadianism. True, his earlier
reputation for judicial impartiality had not survived
the strain of party battle; his calm exterior hid strong
ambitions and intense party feelings which sometimes
439
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
burned their way through in a revealing flash, but this
revelation only strengthened him in party circles. 1
He had little ease of manner or popular appeal, but he
gave an impression of dependable solidity which greatly
comforted his followers and won public confidence.
The most serious task which faced the new premier
was the settlement of the Manitoba school question.
Already this issue had been in federal politics for more
than two years. It was fated to bedevil public life for
all the remaining years of Conservative power.
The Manitoba school question was an echo of the
storms which had raged over Riel and the Jesuits' Es-
tates. The torch of racial and religious passion had
been carried from the banks of the Saskatchewan to the
banks of the St. Lawrence; now eager messengers
1 Sir Richard Cartwright was one of the men most successful in
drawing Thompson's fire. Sir Richard himself spared no man; to quote
a random instance, at a campaign meeting in Kingston, during a by-
election in January, 1892, he had greeted the local Conservative candidate
as a fitting choice "as straightforward as Sir John Thompson, no more
likely to eat his own words than Mr. Foster, as honest as Mr. Chapleau,
as little likely to use his position to forward his own interests as Mr.
Dewdney, as moral as Haggart, as modest as Tupper, Senior and Junior,
and as loyal as J. J. C. Abbott." A few months later, in the House of
Commons, he had denounced government boodling and patronage, judicial
partiality, and public apathy. Whereupon Thompson thanked Cartwright
for another of "those war, famine and pestilence speeches which have so
often carried the country for the government," proposed a subsidy to keep
him in parliament for the Conservative party's sake, replied to a taunt
as to defending criminals by declaring that he had never shrunk from
taking any man's case, no matter how desperate it might be, for the purpose
of saying for him what he might lawfully say for himself, but had some-
times spurned the fee of a blatant scoundrel who denounced everybody
else in the world and was himself the most truculent savage of them all,
and ended by thanking God nature had broken the mould when she cast
Sir Richard. This descent from "the language of Parliament to the in-
vective of Billingsgate," as Mr. Laurier termed it in reply, was the last
touch needed to establish Sir John's right to party leadership.
440
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
carried it once more westward to the Red River. As
might be surmised, it was not really an educational ques-
tion: rarely is the public roused to a lively interest in
the genuine problems of education. The school was
merely the arena where religious gladiators displayed
their powers, an occasion for stirring the religious con-
victions and religious prejudices of thousands and of
demonstrating how little either their education or their
religion had done to make them tolerant citizens.
In the modern state, where the school makes the
man, the control of the school system has been held vital
to all who wish to impress their stamp upon the rising
generation, and so education enters politics. In Can-
ada the question had a special interest and a special
difficulty. Confederation had been a compromise, an
endeavour to assure freedom to each section of the
people to follow their own bent, as well as unity in mat-
ters of common interest. No part of the Confedera-
tion compact was more characteristic or more indispen-
sable in ensuring its acceptance than the provisions
which safeguarded the educational privileges of reli-
gious minorities. In the case of New Brunswick, the
provisions had been found to be too narrowly drawn to
protect the Roman Catholic minority. They had been
the basis, secure and unquestioned, of the rights ac-
corded the Protestant minority in Quebec. They had
ensured continued acceptance of the compromise of the
sixties according separate school rights to the Roman
Catholic minority in Ontario. Now in the case of Mani-
441
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
toba, child alike of Ontario and Quebec, the clause and
the people were to be given their real testing.
In the days of the Hudson's Bay Company there
had been little provision for schooling in the Red River
district. Such schools as existed were provided by reli-
gious denominations, Anglican, Presbyterian, Roman
Catholic, with varying grants from the company.
When Manitoba entered the union and an organized
government took the place of the happy-go-lucky
paternalism of the company, it became necessary to con-
sider the basis of a future school system. The white
and half-breed population of the province was evenly
divided between Protestant and Catholic, and while it
was probable that new settlers would come from On-
tario rather than from Quebec, it was not yet certain.
It was to the interest of both parties to ensure protection
for the minority. The limitation of provincial powers
as to education in the interests of religious minorities
had been a fundamental feature of the Confederation
compact. In any case the fresh and bitter controversy
over the school question in New Brunswick had made
Ottawa aware of the need of clear and definite provi-
sion in the case of the new province. The settlers them-
selves had not been greatly concerned over the question,
but Father Ritchot, one of the three delegates from the
Red River, had the interests of his church very close
at heart throughout the negotiations. The result was
the inclusion in the Manitoba Act of a clause intended
to safeguard denominational schools. ]
i Clause 22, The Manitoba Act:
442
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
In its first session the provincial legislature had es-
tablished a school system modeled on that of Quebec.
The lieutenant-governor in council was empowered to
appoint a board of education, composed half of Protes-
tant and half of Catholic members, with a superinten-
dent of Protestant and a superintendent of Catholic
schools. The whole board had the power to organize
the schools and select the books to be used. The pro-
vincial grant was to be divided evenly between the Prot-
estant and Catholic schools. An amendment in 1875
increased the board to twenty-one members, twelve
Protestants and nine Roman Catholics, and provided
for the division of the provisional grant in proportion
to the number of children of school age. The de-
nominational character of the system was increased by a
provision in the same year to the effect that the establish-
ment of a school district of one denomination should
not prevent the establishment of a school district of the
other denomination in the same place.
In and for the Province the said Legislature may exclusively make laws
in relation to education, subject and according to the following provisions:
(1). Nothing in any such law shall prejudicially affect any right or priv-
ilege with respect to denominational schools which any class of persons
have by law or practice in the Province at the Union.
(2). An appeal shall lie to the Governor-General in Council from any Act
or decision of the Legislature of the Province, or of any provincial author-
ity, affecting any right or privilege of the Protestant or Roman Catholic
minority of the Queen's subjects in relation to education.
(3). In case any such provincial law as from time to time seems to flie
Governor-General in Council requisite for the due execution of the pro-
visions of this section is not made, or in case any decision of the Governor-
General in Council or any appeal under this section is not duly executed
by the proper Provincial authority in that behalf, then, and in every such
case, and as far only as the circumstances of each case may require, the
Parliament of Canada may make remedial laws for the due execution of
the provisions of this section, and of any decision of the Governor-General
in Council under this section.
443
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
It was soon apparent that Manitoba was to be over-
whelmingly Protestant and English-speaking. It was
not surprising that from time to time murmurs arose
against a system which gave the Roman Catholic Church
a special and powerful function. In 1874 Mr. W. F.
Luxton was elected to the legislature on a platform
calling for abolition of separate schools, and resolu-
tions were introduced to that effect in the legislature in
the two sessions following. When, however, in 1876
the government had proposed to abolish the upper
house or legislative council, the French-speaking mem-
bers, who looked upon it, with all its faults, as a possible
guardian of minority privileges against rash change,
were solemnly assured by representative English-speak-
ing leaders that they would not suffer if the council fell.
There the matter rested for a dozen years. In January
of 1888 a momentous election was fought in the Mani-
toba constituency of St. Francois Xavier. The Nor-
quay government, weakened by corruption, had been
patched up under Dr. Harrison's premiership, but it
was staggering under the criticisms and exposures of
the Liberal press and Opposition speakers. The Pro-
vincial Secretary, Joseph Burke in spite of his name
a French-Canadian was seeking re-election in his
home constituency; his Liberal opponent was an Eng-
lish-speaking Presbyterian; the constituency was over-
whelmingly French and Catholic. Wide-spread public
distrust of the administration was forcing many deser-
tions from the Conservative cause. As a last resort
the party organizers spread the rumour, based on Lib-
444
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
eral criticisms of the waste involved in printing public
documents in French, that the Liberals planned to
interfere with the schools and the language of French-
speaking Catholics. To these assertions the Liberals
gave the strongest and most solemn denial. Mr. Joseph
Martin, the moving spirit of the Liberal party, with
Mr. James Fisher, President of the Liberal Provincial
Association, on the platform beside him, gave positive
pledges not to interfere with these institutions. The
Liberals won. Four days later Dr. Harrison gave up
the fight and Mr. Greenway was called upon to form
a new government. Before selecting his cabinet, Mr.
Greenway called upon Archbishop Tache and gave
assurances that the Catholic schools and the French
language would remain inviolate and received the en-
dorsement of the archbishop for Mr. Prendergast as
an acceptable Catholic member of the cabinet. In the
election that followed Mr. Greenway received the sup-
port of five out of six French-Canadian constituencies.
Thus matters stood when D'Alton McCarthy, fresh
from the equal-rights agitation in the East, carried the
torch to the Western heather. He addressed a cheer-
ing audience at Portage la Prairie, urged them "to
make this a British country in fact and in name," told
them "that the poor sleepy Protestant minority of On-
tario and Quebec were at last awake,' ' and pointed to
the separate school question in Manitoba and the North-
West and the French-school question of Ontario as
local tasks which could and should be done first before
the more difficult problems where vested interests were
445
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
stronger could be settled. 1 Mr. Joseph Martin, speak-
ing from the same platform, intimated that changes in
both the language and the school question were under
consideration. The government, as afterward ap-
peared, had virtually decided to bring both systems of
schools under a responsible minister, and to establish
uniform provisions for the training and testing of
teachers. It was not their purpose to abolish separate
schools, but rather to lessen the excessive measure of
ecclesiastical control which marked both Protestant and
Catholic schools in other words, to change from the
Quebec system, under which the State merely gave its
blessing and its tax-gathering machinery to the two sets
of denominational authorities which controlled the
schools, to the Ontario system, wherein the State as-
sumed control, but with permission to Catholics or Prot-
estants to establish schools within the general frame-
work, in which special religious teaching could be pro-
vided. Mr. Martin, with the impetuousness which
marked all his actions, determined to go further than
either his colleagues or Mr. McCarthy had proposed,-
namely, to solve the religious difficulty by doing away
with all religious teaching, even of an undenominational
kind. Mr. Greenway did not conceal the fact that this
programme of Mr. Martin's was both unauthorized and
1 D' Alton McCarthy, in -a speech in Ottawa in 1889 after his return
/rom Manitoba declared: "Do you tell me that the Equal Rights Associa-
tion had nothing to do with that question? Of course the feeling was there;
the grievance existed. Her people's minds had only to be directed to it,
and the moment attention was drawn to it, the province of Manitoba rose
as one man and said, we want no dual language and away with separate
schools as well."
446
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
unwelcome, but he had not the strength of his impetu-
ous lieutenant, and could not stand against the fires of
passion which had been lighted.
Mr. Martin prepared his bill, but soon found that he
had promised more than he could perform. Manitoba
was not prepared to accept wholly secular schools.
The Protestant majority could be stirred to protest
against the unreasonable amount of an unreasonable
religion taught in the Roman Catholic schools, but not
so with regard to the reasonable amount of a reasonable
religion taught in their own schools. The protest of
a chorus of Protestant divines forced Mr. Martin to
drop his secular proposal, though they did not change
his convictions. The government programme, thanks
to Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Martin, was then diverted
into a proposal for abolishing the denominational
schools and setting up a single system with provision
for a mild amount of undenominational religious teach-
ing in all the schools.
The opponents of denominational schools did not at
first object to the manner in which they were conducted.
In all the years that had passed there had been no offi-
cial complaint of inefficiency, never a hint that any im-
provement of Catholic or Protestant schools was to be
desired. Mr. Martin, in introducing his bill, declared
that the government's action had not been determined
because they were dissatisfied with the manner in which
the affairs of the department had been conducted, but
because they were dissatisfied with the system itself.
Denominational schools meant a country divided
447
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
against itself, ecclesiastical privilege, the recognition
of a state church. To this the Roman Catholic reply,
and the reply of not a few Anglicans, was that religion
was not a matter that could be kept in one of the seven
compartments of the week, a matter foreign to the life
and thought of every day, but a vital and essential factor
in the training of every child and in the study of every
subject whereon men differed in opinion; denominational
schools did not mean recognition of a state church but
recognition of the rights of the parent. Many who dis-
liked separate schools, distrusted ecclesiastical control,
and feared national division, yet felt that they were in
honour bound to accept the system as part of the neces-
sary compromise of Confederation. The broad assur-
ance of protection to minorities given in the British
North America Act itself, the assurances of men like
Brown and Mackenzie that against their will they had
accepted separate schools as a necessary and permanent
part of the price paid for nationality and for peace, the
undoubted intention of the Manitoba Act of 1870, the
pledges of Conservative leaders in 1876, and the still
more solemn pledges of Liberal leaders in 1888,- -these
were not bonds to be lightly broken.
As the discussion developed, the critics of separate
schools attacked incidents in their working. In a
sparsely settled province like Manitoba, with vast
areas of reserved lands, it was difficult at the best to
build up a single school system; it would be impossible
to build up two efficient systems, to find support for
two schools, in the same scattered areas; nor could Ger-
448
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
man Mennonite, nor Icelandic Lutheran, nor Polish
Catholic logically be denied the right which French
Catholics claimed. A single system of non-sectarian
schools was the only alternative to chaos and Babel.
Nor were the Catholic schools adequate. They had
been catechism schools, their teachers poorly trained,
their pupils sent out into the world illiterate. To which
the defenders of the old system replied that the com-
plaint as to duplication of systems was purely hypo-
thetical. Out of some ninety Catholic school organi-
zations, only four were in mixed communities too small
to support both schools effectively; a great majority
lay in the solid French-Canadian parishes along the
Red River, or in the larger towns where each flock was
of large numbers. As to efficiency, granted all was
not as it should have been, but were all Protestant
schools efficient? Could any pioneer school be judged
by Eastern standards? Could not defects have been
remedied and standards raised by discussion, instead of
this sudden and arrogant suppression of the very right
to exist?
Unfortunately, no attempt was made to bring about
reform by consent, to ensure increased efficiency without
riding roughshod over the minority's convictions and the
majority's pledges. Between the Quebec or Mani-
toba system, with its complete surrender of school con-
trol to denominations, and the United States system of
uniform and exclusive state control, some compromise
might have been found, as had originally been contem-
plated, on the Ontario model, with its state control of
449
\ LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
administration and of standards and its grant of free-
dom to minorities to organize schools within this frame-
work in which a special religious point of view could be
given. But in the mood of the province, nothing but
root-and-branch revolution would suffice. The ta/ctS
which passed the Manitoba legislature in March, 1890,
abolished all denominational control. The dual board
of education was swept away and a system of public
non-sectarian schools established, supported by local
assessment upon all the taxable property within the dis-
trict and by legislative grants, and supervised by a
provincial department of education. Non-denomina-
tional religious exercises were to be prescribed by an
advisory board and held in schools, at the option of the
local trustees, before the closing-hour, any children
being privileged to withdraw at their parent's request.
The Roman Catholic minority in Manitoba had been
overwhelmed by the sudden assault upon privileges they
had held safe beyond dispute. They found themselves
forced to choose between accepting schools which were
virtually continuations of the old Protestant denomina-
tional schools or shouldering the double burden of pay-
ing their share of taxes to the public school and the cost
of maintaining parochial schools of their own, or seeking
to have the provincial legislation overthrown. They
were weak in numbers and weak in wealth, but their
ecclesiastical leaders were determined and persistent.
At once the long campaign against the school laws of
1890 was begun.
The Roman Catholic members in the legislature had
450
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
fought against the school laws, but their votes had been
overwhelmed. Archbishop Tache had appealed to the
lieutenant-governor to withhold his assent, but had ap-
pealed in vain. Three other means of redress were pos-
sible : the federal government might disallow the act, the
courts might declare it unconstitutional, or the federal
parliament might enact remedial legislation.
Disallowance of provincial statutes was a rusty
blunderbuss which the Ottawa administration was loath
to fire. It had already sought to use it against Mani-
toba in the dispute over railway charters and the recoil
had been shattering. It had lately refused to use it
against Mercier's Jesuits' Estates measure; it could not
use it against Martin's school measure. Within the
year allowed for the federal veto the general election of
1891 intervened. Either to grant or to refuse a petition
for disallowance would be awkward. Mr. Chapleau en-
tered into negotiations with Mgr. Tache, and convinced
him that the other remedies would be more efficacious
and would, if need be, be applied. The cabinet adopted
in April, 1891, the recommendation of the minister of
justice, Sir John Thompson, to let the acts take their
course ; if the courts declared them ultra vires, the minor-
ity would be satisfied; if not, their petition for redress
could then be considered.
Next, the courts. Had Manitoba the power to pass
these measures? Not if they affected prejudicially any
privilege regarding denominational schools which any
class of persons enjoyed by law or practice in 1870. In
November, 1890, in the name of a Catholic rate-payer,
451
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
of Winnipeg, D. Barrett, application was made to Mr.
Justice Killam to quash the by-laws based upon the
statutes. The application was dismissed. An appeal
was taken to the full Court of Queen's Bench, but again,
with Justice Dubuc dissenting, the statutes were up-
held. Appeal was next taken to the Supreme Court of
Canada. In October, 1891, that court unanimously
held the acts ultra vires, substantially on the ground
that while Roman Catholics were not forbidden by the
acts of 1890 to maintain denominational schools, yet the
obligation to pay taxes in support of public schools was
a very real handicap upon any such endeavour, and
therefore prejudicially affected the right. Still one
more appeal was possible. In July, 1892, the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council reversed the Supreme
Court's finding: the only rights which any class of per-
sons held in 1870 was the right to establish and pay
for schools in accordance with their religious tenets:
these rights the Roman Catholics still enjoyed: the
existence of denominational schools did not necessarily
imply immunity from taxation for the support of other
schools: if this was a hardship, not the law but the re-
ligious convictions which made it impossible for the
minority to accept the law, were responsible. Thus the
Privy Council, in a decision which appears strained to-
day: it was not the mere existence of denominational
schools that was guaranteed, but their existence free
from prejudicial impediments, such as the Supreme
Court reasonably held taxation to be; while as to the
quibble about Catholic convictions and not the Mani-
452
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
toba law being at fault, it was plainly these very con-
victions, whether right or wrong, that the constitution
aimed to protect.
Disallowance had been refused. The endeavour to
have the statutes declared unconstitutional had failed.
One resource remained, the appeal to the governor-
general in council. Granting that no rights which
existed at the time of union had been affected, had not
rights or privileges which had been established after the
union been taken away, and did not this warrant reme-
dial action by the federal authorities? This was the
question Sir John Thompson had promised in 1891 to
consider if the court decision went against the minority.
Now, late in 1892, the minority, in petition, demanded
this redress. Ontario and Western opinion urged the
government to accept the Privy Council's opinion as
final: the courts had held no grievance existed, so why
remedy it? Why open a healing wound? Thus beset,
the government decided to move, but to move warily
and with an air of judicial dignity and impartiality.
"If the contention of the petitioners be correct, that
such an appeal can be sustained, the inquiry will be
rather of a judicial than a political character," declared a
subcommittee of the cabinet in December, 1892. As the
event proved, it would have been more judicious to be
less judicial.
In January, 1893, the cabinet or rather Her Maj-
esty's Privy Council for Canada held a public hearing
to determine whether or not they had the right and duty
to intervene. Mr. J. S. Ewart presented the minority
453
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
case; Manitoba declined to be represented. After con-
sidering Mr. Ewart's arguments, the cabinet, instead of
deciding, determined to ask the courts to express an
opinion as to whether or not they had power to act. A
stated case was prepared and argued before the Supreme
Court in October. In February, 1894, the court gave
judgment. Every one of the five judges rendered a
separate decision; the diversity of point of view and
the hair-splitting refining of logic did not show the
court at its best. Two judges, Justice King and
Justice Fournier, held that both the Manitoba and the
British North America Act applied ; that the privileges
granted after the union were protected by these acts,
and that since these rights had undoubtedly been
affected, the federal authorities had the power and
the duty to intervene. The majority, Justices Ritchie,
Gwynne, and Taschereau, by diverse paths reached a
different conclusion: only the Manitoba Act applied;
in this act the rights safeguarded by the appeal to the
governor-general in council are not explicitly stated
to be those arising after the union and must therefore
be taken to be those existing at the union; the Privy
Council had held that the latter rights had not been
affected prejudicially; therefore no appeal could be.
From this majority judgment of the Supreme Court,
the question was carried to the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council in England, but before its verdict
could be received much had happened in Canada.
Many members of parliament would have been con-
tent to let the courts wrestle with the question for the
454
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
i
rest of their political lives. Not all. Tarte, demand-
ing immediate remedy of the minority's grievances,
and McCarthy, opposing any further consideration of
their plea, could both support the resolution which
Tarte moved in March, 1893, in vague terms con-
demning the government's policy, and more especially
attacking it for assuming to act in a judicial capacity
and thus evading ministerial responsibility. In sup-
porting the amendment Mr. Laurier declared that
Tarte and McCarthy, who had nothing in common
but courage and convictions, naturally found them-
selves opposed to a government which had neither.
He showed in an admirable historical review that the
original clauses protecting minority rights had been
inserted at the demand of the Quebec Protestants,
voiced through A. T. Gait. If the Catholic majority
in Quebec abolished the Protestant separate schools,
not a man in the House could deny that the federal
government should intervene. What of Manitoba?
It was contended that the Manitoba public schools
were non-sectarian; it was replied they were really
the old Protestant schools thinly disguised. What
were the facts?
If it is true . . . that under the guise of public schools,
Protestant schools are being continued, and that Roman
Catholics are forced, under the law, to attend what are in
reality Protestant schools, I say this, and let my words be
heard by friend and foe, let them be published in the press
throughout the length of the land, that the strongest case
has been made for interference by this government. If that
statement be true, though my life as a political man should
455
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
be ended forever, what I say now I shall be prepared to
repeat, and would repeat on every platform in Ontario, every
platform in Manitoba, nay, every Orange lodge throughout
the land, that the Catholic minority has been subjected to
a most infamous tyranny.
What were the facts? Why did not the govern-
ment investigate, and make up its mind, instead of
seeking the subterfuge of judicial appeals? The
prime minister had declared that the members of the
council could deal with the matter as judges, "regard-
less of the personal views which Your Excellency's
advisers may hold with regard to denominational
schools." "How convenient that doctrine," Mr.
Laurier continued, "which permits the advisers of His
Excellency to pocket at once their opinions and their
emoluments." The government's fumbling and delay
were permitting passions to rise to fever heat and mak-
ing settlement in any direction almost impossible to
carry through. The resolution was defeated on a party
vote, save for a bolt by McCarthy and his fellow-stal-
wart Colonel O'Brien. Further discussion awaited
the slow passing of the test case through the courts.
Other issues divided attention. The prolonged in-
dustrial depression of the early nineties and the per-
sistence of racial controversies led to wide-spread dis-
content with old parties and old policies, and with
Canada's political status. Party lines wavered: On-
tario farmers, suffering from low prices and organized
as Patrons of Industry, on United States granger
models, went into politics, chiefly to Mowat's hurt;
456
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
Tarte joined the Liberal forces, and McCarthy, at odds
with his party on the school question and on the tariff,
left the Conservative ranks, or was read out by the
"Empire," though he did not join his old foes. The
rooted faith in a protective-tariff policy faded. Stag-
nating trade, the steady drain of emigration, the growth
of combines, made it appear that protection had failed
to bring the promised prosperity. The Liberals shifted
the emphasis upon reciprocity to a straight attack on
high tariffs; farmers' organizations demanded radical
change; the McCarthy group insisted that protection
had been given its chance and had failed; Thompson
was compelled to promise at least to "lop the mouldering
branches away," and the budget of 1894 brought some
substantial reductions of duty. Discontent found
other channels. Annexationist sentiment was more
widely prevalent than ever before or since: Ontario
border towns, and not least Toronto, were honeycombed
with avowed or secret advocates of union with the
United States. The counter propaganda of imperial
federation lost something of its force when its sup-
porters faced concrete facts, but imperial sentiment
continued to flow in other channels, notably in the
demand for fiscal preference. The holding of a co-
lonial conference in Ottawa in the summer of 1894,
attended by representatives of the Australasian colonies,
the Cape, and Canada, as well as by an observer from
Britain, led to renewed emphasis upon tariff preference
and Pacific cables as the most practicable bonds of
imperial union.
457
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
In these shifting times Mr. Laurier strove without
ceasing to catch the tide of public favour for his party.
Every year after 1891 he made a speaking tour through
Ontario ; in Quebec he was never given rest ; more rarely
he visited the provinces by the sea. In 1894 for the
first time he went West, finding, himself, a new vision
of what Canada might be, and planting in many
Western communities where hitherto it had scarcely
been respectable to be a Liberal, an enthusiasm which
grew with the years. East and West, his hold on the
country strengthened. Men and women who had read
his speeches with detached interest, became devoted
admirers when they heard him face to face, and lifelong
friends with the warm hand-shake and the kindly quiz-
zical word and the frank and courtly smile that followed.
The culminating effort in the popular campaign of
these years was the National Liberal Convention held
at Ottawa in June, 1893. Based on a suggestion of
the Toronto "Globe," this first Dominion-wide gather-
ing of delegates of a great party proved an extraor-
dinary success. The convention revealed the per-
sonal assets the party possessed in Laurier, Mowat,
Fielding. It linked up the local organizations. It
gave an opportunity of framing a fighting platform,
in which the demand for lower tariffs and reciprocity
with the United States was emphasized. It impressed
the country and heartened the rank and file of the party.
While the Liberal party was gaining in unity and
confidence, the Conservatives were again rent with
doubt and dissension. They, and the country with
458
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
them, suffered a severe blow in the sudden death of
Sir John Thompson in December, 1894, while on a
visit to Windsor Castle. There was no man of his
force to follow. The premiership went by seniority
to Mackenzie Bowell, government leader in the Senate,
and particularly available as a successor to a Catholic
leader because of his own position as a past Grand
Master in the Orange Order. Mr. Bowell was a poli-
tician of long if somewhat humdrum experience; he
was widely 'liked and respected, but he had little distinc-
tion, and lacked the adroitness and the strength neces-
sary to make his cabinet, nervous and quarrelsome in the
shadow of the coming crisis, work together in loyal
endeavour.
Mackenzie Bowell was scarcely in office when in
January, 1895, the finding of the Privy Council on the
Manitoba minority's right of appeal compelled the
government at last to determine a policy on the school
issue. The Privy Council, in an opinion which revealed
more care and more power than its earlier judgment,
reversed the Supreme Court's finding. It was held
that only the Manitoba Act applied; that the sub-sec-
tion of the Manitoba Act providing for the appeal to
the federal government was a substantive enactment,
not merely a concurrent means of protecting the rights
which existed at the union ; that the rights or privileges
covered by the appeal were "any rights," including
therefore any conferred by legislation after the union;
that these latter rights had undoubtedly been affected
since the minority might now be compelled to pay a
459
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
double school levy; and that accordingly the governor-
general in council had jurisdiction. Their Lordships
concluded, in a dictum which perhaps was not strictly
called for:
The particular course to be followed must be determined
by the authorities to whom it has been committed by the
statute. ... It is certainly not essential that the statutes
repeated by the Act of 1890 should be re-enacted. . . .The
system of education embodied in the acts of 1890 no doubt
commends itself to, and adequately supplies the wants of the
great majority of the inhabitants of the province. All legit-
imate grounds, of complaint would be removed if that system
were supplemented by provisions which would remove the
grievance upon which the appeal is founded and were modified so
far as might be necessary to give effect to these provisions.
It was now beyond doubt that the minority had a
right to appeal to the government for redress. It was
for the government to decide whether it was possible
and expedient to afford a remecfry, and if so, what form
the remedy should take. The majority in the cabinet
had already made up their minds: a grievance existed
and a remedy must be found. But in order to make
this course more palatable to their Protestant followers,
they continued to seek to make it appear that they
were carrying out a legal duty, not a discretionary
policy. To this end they interpreted the Privy Coun-
cil's opinion as a mandate, a constitutional obligation
which could not be evaded. To this end they once
more, in March, formed themselves into a court and
heard Mr. Ewart and Mr. McCarthy once more debate.
On March 21, an order in council which revealed in its
460
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
imperious note the hand of its chief draughtsman, the
young Minister of Justice, was issued, couched in stiff
and legal language, reciting the Privy Council's judg-
ment, and declaring it essential that the province should
pass legislation supplementary to the existing system
of education and restoring to the minority the rights
of which it had been deprived, at peril, as an accompany-
ing minute declared, of divesting itself permanently
of control over education and bringing about the
establishment of an educational system in the province
which no legislative body in Canada could alter or
repeal. The minority must be given the right to main-
tain Roman Catholic schools as before 1890, the right
to share in public provincial grants, and the right of
exemption from payment for the support of any other
schools.
In June, the Manitoba legislature adopted a me-
morial drawn up by the provincial government. The
old Roman Catholic schools had been inefficient; it was
difficult at best to ensure an efficient system in a sparsely
settled country: it would be hopeless with resources
scattered among Catholic and Anglican and Mennon-
ite schools. The federal government should make
a full and careful investigation of the facts before
coming to a conclusion. Meanwhile Manitoba could
not accept the responsibility of acting as Ottawa
directed.
The government hesitated on the brink of coercion.
A remedial bill now ? Next session ? Next parliament ?
Never? Now, insisted the three Quebec members,
461
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
Angers, Ouimet, and Caron, in July, and when their
colleagues would not agree, went on strike. Angers,
stiff, principled, and not set on office, definitely resigned ;
Caron and Ouimet, more pliable, after valiant inter-
views, and after announcements from Ouimet that he
would accept no assurances short of written pledges
from each of his colleagues, went weakly back on the
promise of legislation in a special session. No Quebec
Conservative was found to take Mr. Angers' place.
Next parliament, Hibbert Tupper had earlier insisted,
better fight on a general order than a specific bill,
easier face Manitoba with a fresh than an outworn
majority; but his colleagues from Quebec would not run
the chance. In dudgeon he resigned, but after a few
days' reflection returned to office. Never, insisted
thirty-nine Ontario Conservatives in a message through
the whips. Next session, the cabinet at last agreed.
In their rejoinder to Manitoba the^y declined to make
any inquiry, suggested that provincial legislation some-
what less stringent than outlined in the remedial order
might be accepted, and declared that if the Manitoba
government failed to make a reasonably satisfactory
settlement the Dominion parliament would be called
not later than January 2, 1896, to enact a remedial law.
During these passages Mr. Laurier said little. He
was taunted with equivocation, lack of conviction,
cowardice, but he could not be stung into committing
himself for or against a remedial measure before the
measure was introduced. The minority, he declared
in the House in July, undoubtedly had a right to
462
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
appeal, but it was for the government to decide whether
or how to grant a remedy. He sympathized with their
desires: "I wish that the minority in Manitoba may
be allowed the privilege of teaching in their schools,
to their children, their duties to God and man as they
understand those duties and as their duties are taught
to them by their church." But how was this end to be
attained? First, get the facts. From the outset the
need had been to find out the facts, not, as the govern-
ment had done, to make it a question of law. Then
use conciliation: "If that object is to be attained
it is not to be attained by imperious dictation nor by
administrative coercion. The hand must be firm and
the touch must be soft ; hitherto the touch has been rude
and the hand has been weak." Courage? "My courage
is not to make hasty promises and then ignominiously
to break them. My courage is to speak softly, but
once I have spoken to stand or fall by my words."
In an Ontario tour in the autumn of 1895 Mr.
Laurier reiterated this stand. In his opening speech
at Morrisburg, on October 8, he was in his happiest
vein:
I have expressed an opinion more than once upon this
question, but I have not yet expressed the opinion which the
ministerial press would like me to express. I am not respon-
sible for that question, but I do not want to shirk it ; I want
to give you my views, but remember that war has to be waged
in a certain way. When the Duke of Wellington was in
Portugal, as those of you will remember who have read that
part of the history of England, he withdrew at one time within
the lines of Torres Vedras, and there for months he remained,
463
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
watching the movements of the enemy. . . . Gentlemen, I
am within the lines of Torres Vedras. I will get out of them
when it suits me and not before.
Mr. Laurier went on to emphasize the need of investi-
gation before action.
The government, instead of investigating the subject, pro-
ceeded to render what shall I call it? an order in council
they called it, commanding Manitoba in most violent language
to do a certain thing, to restore the schools or they would
see the consequences'. Manitoba answered as I suppose every
man approached as the government of Manitoba was ap-
proached, would answer; Manitoba answered it by saying,
"We will not be coerced.'* I ask you now, would it not
have been more fair, more just, more equitable, more states-
manlike, at once to investigate the subject, and to bring
the parties together to hear them, to have the facts brought
out so as to see whether a case had been made out for in-
terference or not? That is the position I have taken in the
province of Quebec. That is the position I take in the province
of Ontario. I have never wavered from that position.
Recalling JEsop's fable of the failure of the bluster-
ing wind as constrasted with the success of the melting
sun in compelling the traveller to take off his coat, Mr.
Laurier continued:
Well, sir, the government are very windy. They have
blown and raged and threatened and the more they have
raged and blown, the more that man Greenway has stuck to
his coat. If it were in my power, I would try the sunny
way. I would approach this man Greenway with the sunny
way of patriotism, asking him to be just and to be fair, ask-
ing him to be generous to the minority, in order that we may
have peace among all the creeds and races which it has
pleased God to bring upon this corner of our common country.
464
Sir J. J. C. Abbott, 1891-2
Sir John Thompson, 1892-4
Sir Mackenzie Bowell, 1894-6 Sir Charles Tupper, 1896
FOUR CONSERVATIVE PRIME MINISTERS
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
Do you not believe that there is more to be gained by appeal-
ing to the heart and soul of men rather than by trying to
compel them to do a thing?
The government is not very anxious to have my opinion
as a rule. When they gerrymandered Canada in 1882 they
did not consult any of the Liberals 1 . When they passed the
franchise act they did not consult any of the Liberals. But
upon this question they want to consult me and to have my
views. Here they have them. Let them act upon them and
we will be in accord; but more than that I will not do. I
will not say that I will support the policy of Sir Mackenzie
Bowell until I know what that policy is, and then when we
have it in black and white it will be time for me to speak upon
it. Let the ministerial press abuse me all they can. I stand
within the lines of Torres Vedras and I will not come out
until I choose my time.
In December the crisis deepened. Not even Grover
Cleveland's blustering Venezuela message, deeply felt
and deeply resented though it was, could divert public
interest from the Ottawa scene. The Greenway gov-
ernment, fresh from a general election in which it had
been overwhelmingly sustained, definitely refused to
re-establish any form of separate schools and again
proposed a commission of inquiry. Clarke Wallace
resigned from the Bowell government when it became
clear that it intended to force a drastic measure through.
He resigned on December 14. On December 15, Sir
Charles Tupper cabled from London to the prime
minister an innocent suggestion that in view of impor-
tant developments in cable and steamship projects, it
might be well if the prime minister would invite him
to Ottawa for conference, and Mr. Bowell, too guile-
465
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
less or too proud to question, acquiesced. Then two
days after parliament met in its special and unprece-
dented sixth session, on January 2, and after the Speech
from the Throne sanctioned by the whole cabinet had
been delivered, the country and even hardened parlia-
mentarians were startled by the resignation of seven
members of the cabinet George E. Foster, A. R.
Dickey, W. H. Montague, J. G. Haggart, W. B. Ives,
J. F. Wood, and Sir C. H. Tupper. The bolters
declared, through Mr. Foster, that they did not resign
because of any difference of principle but because of
loss of confidence in their chief's capacity. In spite
of this denial, it was charged that the seven bolters all
Protestants were opposed to proceeding further with
the Remedial Bill. The fact seemed to be that the
bolters had realized how perilous a task they faced in at-
tempting to carry a measure of coercion, and were un-
willing to face it unless under a leader of dogged and
aggressive courage whose close association with Sir
John Macdonald and the past glories of the party
would make it possible to rekindle party loyalty and
revive party discipline, or else under a leader younger
than either Bowell or Tupper. Doubtless personal am-
bitions and jealousies played their accustomed part.
Bowell retorted that for months he had been living in a
"nest of traitors." He strove hard to patch up a new
cabinet, but the strikers picketed every train and every
hotel where a potential minister was to be found, and
blocked his efforts. The strikers suddenly became ap-
prehensive that the governor-general might send for the
466
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
leader of the Opposition. For various reasons,
"seven in all," declared Dr. Landerkin, "five loaves and
two small fishes" they agreed to return. A truce was
patched up, with the general understanding that Bowell
was to continue for the session, and that Sir Charles
Tupper should then succeed and go to the country. Sir
Charles resigned his high commissionership and became
secretary of state and a little later leader of the House
of Commons; Sir Hibbert did not re-enter the cabinet,
but took the post of solicitor-general, just outside the
gate. It was an extraordinary episode: whatever hid-
den provocation may have existed, the public were
shocked by IT ''ndecent publicity of the attacks on the
prime minister and* the party shaken by the display of
jealousy and bad judgment on the part of its leaders. A
particularly taste was left by a subsidiary row be-
tween Montague and Caron, in which charges of anony-
mous letter-writing and treacherous intrigue were
brought against the new recruit. Out of it all, only
Mackenzie Bo3vell himself perhaps no heaven-born
leader, but an honourable and straightforward gentle-
man emerged with any credit. 1
i Speaking in the '^nate, nine years later, in March, 1905, when another
ministerial crisiir*fg|iAJn full swing, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, in replying to
incorrect versions or* the episode, made it plain that time had not cooled
his indignation. References to "Baron Munchansen," "chicanery," "bra-
zen treachery," "poisonous reptiles warmed in my bosom," enlivened his
statement. He declared that Mr. Foster, supported by Mr. Haggart,
holding other views as to who should succeed, had opposed Sir Charles
Tupper's return, but had later fallen in with the plans of their fellow-
conspirators, regarding the arrangement as only temporary; that the
bolters planned to go to the country before passing a Remedial Bill, and
that he made no bargain with Sir Charles Tupper to retire at the end of
the session, though he had his mind made up as to his course of action.
467
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
The government was doing its best to commit suicide,
but it was hard to kill. With the Roman Catholic
hierarchy, the Orange Order and the manufacturers
behind it, and the memory of Macdonald still a power
to conjure with, thejy could have afforded to make many
a blunder, had they not had to face a- leader as able in
strategy as Macdonald himself, fast attaining Mac-
donald's height of confidence and affection, and stand-
ing out in clean, clear contrast with the cabinet's dis-
play of petty intrigues and panic-stricken indecision.
Much would depend upon Laurier's tactics when the
Remedial Bill was introduced. If he accepted it, the
government was safe in Ontario, except* for whatever
minor inroads the McCarthyites might make, and would
receive the reward of priority and courage in Quebec.
If he compromised, or urged delay qr &~ commission of
inquiry, the impatient certainty of partisans everywhere
and the weary prayer of the unconcerned to make an
end of the troubling question might be relied upon to
ensure for him and his party the fate of the over- judi-
cious.
The House had met on January 2. Not until five
weeks later did Mr. Dickey move the first reading of
the Remedial Bill, and outline its pro'Wons. The bill
provided for the establishment of a system of separate
schools in Manitoba, supervised by a Roman Catholic
board of education, supported by the local rates of such
Catholics as did not declare themselves public-school
supporters, with exemption from public-school local
rates, and entitled to receive whatever provincial grant
468
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
the legislature might allot; the bill, while declaring such
a grant a right and privilege of the minority, would
not, as the remedial order had done, specifically com-
mand the province to make it.
Laurier heard the formal announcement with deep
relief. The government had manoeuvred itself into an
impossible position. Its bill offered the maximum of
coercion against the province, with the minimum of
real aid for the minority. Without a provincial grant
the rural separate schools could not maintain their effi-
ciency or their existence. He was therefore free to
maintain the old Liberal position of provincial rights,
"Hands off Manitoba," and when his political and ec-
clesiastical foes attacked him in Quebec as a traitor to
his race and his religion, as attack they would, he could
reply that the sham relief the bill offered would not
serve the minority's interest half so well as the voluntary
concessions he would secure from the Manitoba gov-
ernment by his sunny ways.
The church authorities did not delay in making their
position clear. Archbishop Langevin telegraphed from
St. Boniface: "Lex applicabiUs, efficax et satisfactoria.
Probo illam. Omnes episcopi et veri Catholici appro-
bare debeunt. Vita in lege." In words more easily
understood by the elector, in a fiery address at Montreal
he declared: "When the hierarchy has spoken it is use-
less for any Catholic to say the contrary, for if he does
he is no longer a Catholic." In a letter to "L/Evene-
ment" the Abbe Paquet, speaking for Archbishop Be-
gin, declared that the Church would support and insist
469
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
upon the remedial law. 1 But much more striking
than any of these utterances was the pronouncement
issued in the name of the bishops by Father Lacombe, a
pioneer Western missionary whom all men honoured.
In an open letter to Wilfrid Laurier written January
20, and made public through ecclesiastical channels
a month later, he issued the episcopal ultimatum:
Hon. Wilfrid Laurier, M. P., Ottawa.
MY DEAR SIR :
In this critical time for the question of the Manitoba
schools, permit an aged missionary, to-day representing the
bishops of your country in this cause, which concerns us
all, permit me to appeal to your faith, to your patriotism
and to your spirit of justice, to entreat you to accede to our
request. It is in the name of our bishops, of the hierarchy
and the Catholics of Canada, that we ask the party of which
you are the very worthy chief, to assist us in settling this
famous question, and to do so by voting with the government
on the Remedial Bill. We do not ask you to vote for the
government, but for the bill, which will render us our rights,
the bill which will be presented to the House in a few days.
I consider, or rather we all consider, that such an act of
courage, good-will, and sincerity on your part and from those
who follow your policy will be greatly in the interests of your
party, especially in the general elections. I must tell you
that we cannot accept your commission of enquiry on any
account, and shall do our best to fight it.
i "The hierarchy alone can hope to produce this union by calling
upon our legislators, and especially upon those whose conscience it controls,
to rise for a moment above the temporal interests which animate them, to
forget their political divisions, and, taking the judgment of the Privy
Council of England as their starting point, to make it the solid basis of a
truly remedial law. To the ecclesiastical power, then, belongs the right to
judge whether the interference should -take place in the form of a com-
mand or council. . . . And when the interference takes an imperative form,
as in the case of the Manitoba schools, only one thing remains to be done
by the faithful, and that is to obey."
470
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
If, which may God not grant, you do not believe it to be
your duty to accede to our just demands, and if the govern-
ment, which is anxious to give us the promised law, is beaten
and overthrown while keeping firm to the end of the struggle,
I inform you, with regret, that the episcopacy, like one man,
united with the clergy, will rise to support those who may
have fallen in defending us.
Please pardon the frankness which leads me to speak thus.
Though I am not your intimate friend, still I may say that
we have been on good terms. Always I have deemed you a
gentleman, a respectable citizen, and a man well fitted to be
at the head of a political party. May Divine Providence
keep up your courage and your energy for the good of our
common country.
I remain, sincerely and respectfully, honoured Sir,
Your most humble and devoted servant,
A. LACOMBE, O.M.I.
It was with this message still .ringing in his ears that
Wilfrid Laurier announced the policy of his party
when the debate on the second reading of the bill began
on March 3. Sir Charles Tupper had moved the second
reading in a strong speech which emphasized the protec-
tion of minorities as the indispensable condition of
Confederation, the foundation, therefore, of all Can-
ada's later greatness: the legal duty laid upon parlia-
ment by the decision of the Privy Council, and the moral
obligation which honour imposed upon the majority.
Mr. Laurier rose to reply. Those who were expecting
a dexterous and evasive speech, or at least a call for
a commission of inquiry, soon had their hopes or their
doubts set at rest. In one remarkable sentence, which
makes thirty lines of Hansard, but runs limpidly and
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
swells with growing force to its smashing end, he made
his position clear:
Mr. Speaker, if in a debate of such moment it were not out
of place for me to make a personal reference to myself, a
reference, however, which may perhaps be justified, not so
much on account of the feelings which may not unnaturally
be attributed to me, being of the race and of the creed of
which I am, but still more in consideration of the great re-
sponsibility which has been placed on my shoulders by the
too kind regard of the friends by whom I am surrounded
here, I would say that, in the course of my parliamentary
career, during which it has been my duty on more than one
occasion to take part in the discussion of thos'e dangerous
questions which too often have come before the parliament
of Canada, never did I rise, sir, with a greater sensje of se-
curity; never did I feel so strong in the consciousness of
right, as I do now, at this anxious moment; when, in the
name of the constitution so outrageously misinterpreted by
the government, in the name of peace and harmony in this
land; when in the name of the minority which this bill seeks
or pretends to help, in the name of this young nation on
which so many hopes are centred, I rise to ask this parliament
not to proceed any further with this bill.
As the thundering cheers from his followers were
hushed, Laurier went on to give in detail the reasons
for his stand. Glancing at Tupper's rhetorical appeal
to the past triumphs of Confederation, he referred him
to one page not so glorious the page that described
how Nova Scotia had been dragooned into union:
There was at the head of the government of Nova Scotia
at that time a gentleman who to-day has been brought back
from England to force this measure upon the people of Canada.
Instead of applying himself to persuading his own fellow-
countrymen of the grandeur of this Act of Confederation, he
472
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
forced the project down the throats of the people of Nova
Scotia by the brute force of a mechanical majority in a mor-
ibund parliament.
Tapper's action had left a bitterness "which never will
entirely disappear until it is buried in the grave of the
last man of that generation/' And what of the agi-
tations which had marked the years since, the dis-
pute with Ontario over the Streams Bill, the dispute
with Manitoba over the railway charters, the dispute
with Quebec over the Jesuits' Estates law? Had not
one and all of these dangerous strains been caused by
attempts "to abridge the independence of the provincial
legislature"?
The powers of control over the provinces which the
constitution assigned to the Dominion were of doubtful
wisdom,- -probably never to be applied without friction
and discontent. But the remedy of federal inter-
ference is there; it must be applied, but so applied as
to avoid irritation. It is not to be applied mechanically,
it must be applied intelligently, "only after full and
ample inquiry into the facts of the case, after all means
of conciliation have been exhausted, and only as a last
resort." In this case, when the Roman Catholic min-
ority urged its grievances, the federal government
should have made inquiry, should have searched out
the facts, should have gone to Manitoba, not to the
courts. It is said inquiry, negotiation, would be of no
avail. Yet the government of Manitoba had expressed
its willingness, once the grievances were investigated,
the wrongs proved, itself to give the minority redress.
473
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
The province had never been approached in the proper
way. The federal government had bungled the case
from first to last. He continued:
There are men in this House who are against separate
schools, but who would have no objection to the re-establish-
ment of separate schools in Manitoba, provided they were
re-established by the province of Manitoba itself. There are
men in this House who are not in favour of separate schools,
but who think very strongly that it would not be advisable
to interfere with the legislation of Manitoba at all until all
means of conciliation had been exhausted. Sir, in face of
this perilous position, I maintain to-day, and I submit it to
the consideration of gentlemen on both sides, that the policy
of the Opposition, affirmed since many years, reiterated on
more than one occasion, is the only policy which can success-
fully deal with this question the only policy which can remedy
the grievance of the minority, while at the same time not
violently assaulting the right of the majority and thereby
perhaps creating a greater wrong. This was the policy
which, for my part, I adopted and developed the very first
time the question came before this House, and upon this policy
to-day I stand once more.
Then turning to the warning given him by Father
Lacombe, Mr. Laurier closed his address in a quiet,
firm statement of principle which went to the root of
things :
Sir, I cannot forget at this moment that the policy which
I have advocated and maintained all along has not been
favourably received in all quarters. Not many weeks ago I
was told from high quarters in the Church to which I belong
that unless I supported the school bill which was then being
prepared by the government and which we now have before
us, I would incur the hostility of a great and powerful body.
Sir, this is too grave a phase of this question for me to pass
474
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
over in silence. I have only this to say: even though I have
threats held over me, coming, as I am told, from high digni-
taries in the Church to which I belong, no word of bitterness
shall ever pass my lips as against that Church. I respect it
and I love it. Sir, I am not of that school which has long been
dominant in France and other countries of continental Europe,
which refuses ecclesiastics the right of a voice in public affairs.
No, I am a Liberal of the English school. I believe in that
school which has all along claimed that it is the privilege of
all subjects, whether high or low, whether rich or poor, whether
ecclesiastics or laymen, to participate in the administration
of public affairs, to discuss, to influence, to persuade, to con-
vince but which has always denied even to the highest the
right to dictate even to the lowest.
I am here representing not Roman Catholics alone but
Protestants as well, and I must give an account of my steward-
ship to all classes. Here am I, a Roman Catholic of French
extraction, entrusted by the confidence of the men who sit
around me with great and important duties under our constitu-
tional system of government. I am here the acknowledged
leader of a great party, composed of Roman Catholics and
Protestants as well, as Protestants must be in the majority
in every party in Canada. Am I to be told, I, occupying such
a position, that I am to be dictated the course I am to take
in this House, by reasons that can appeal to the consciences
of my fellow-Catholic members, but which do not appeal as
well to the consciences of my Protestant colleagues? No.
So long as I have a seat in this House, so long as I occupy
the position I do now, whenever it shall become my duty to
take a stand upon any question whatever, that stand I will
take not upon grounds of Roman Catholicism, not upon
grounds of Protestantism, but upon grounds which can appeal
to the conscience of all men, irrespective of their particular
faith, upon grounds which can be occupied by all men who
love justice, freedom and toleration.
So far as this bill is concerned, I have .given you my views.
I know, I acknowledge, that there is in this government the
475
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
power to interfere, there is in this parliament the power to
interfere; but that power should not be exercised until all
the facts bearing upon the case have been investigated and
all means of tonciliation exhausted. Holding these opinions,
I move that the bill be not now read the second time but that
it be read the second time this day six months.
Laurier's speech was not long; it was characteristi-
cally limited to driving home a few outstanding points,
but it was a speech that made history. Its breadth and
sureness, its courage and fervour, roused the admiration
and the enthusiasm of the Opposition to unusual
heights. The demand for the six-months' hoist, the
most direct negative parliamentary procedure pro-
vided, challenged the government's policy boldly and
unequivocally.
The debate continued for over a fortnight. All the
debating power of the House was brought into action.
For the government, A. R. Dickey insisted that the bill
was a constitutional necessity and that if it was not to
be passed, the clause protecting minorities was waste
paper; Sir Adolphe Caron, Sir Hector Langevin, and
Colonel Amyot urged Quebec's example of tolerance
and the countless pledges of public men; Ives spoke for
the Quebec Protestant minority; and, in particularly
effective speeches, Hibbert Tupper reviewed the legal
and the personal phases, George Foster the political
phases, and Sir Donald Smith the pledges given the
people of Red River in 1870. For the Liberals, C. A.
Geoffrion, Louis Lavergne, Francois Langelier at-
tacked the bill as ineffective in its aid to the minority;
Joseph Martin, John Charlton, J. D. Edgar, George
476
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
Casey, David Mills, the latter with some hesitancy on
constitutional points, attacked its assault on provincial
liberties and its impossibility as a permanent settlement.
There was no small measure of cross-firing, Wallace,
McCarthy, and their Ontario followers siding with the
Opposition, and such Liberals as Devlin and Beausoleil
declaring they would vote for the bill. When the vote
on Mr. Laurier's six-months' hoist was taken at six
o'clock of the morning of March 20, the government was
sustained by a majority of twenty- four, a little more
than half its normal margin. Eighteen Conservatives
voted against the government, Wallace, McCarthy,
Sproule, O'Brien, McNeill, Cockburn, Henderson, Tyr-
whitt, McLean, Calvin, Hodgins, Bennett, Wilson,
Stubbs, Rosamond, Carscallen and Craig from Ontario,
and Weldon from New Brunswick. Seven Liberals
voted with the government, Angers, Beausoleil, De-
lisle, Devlin, Fremont, Mclsaac, and Vaillincourt. On-
tario went five to three against the bill, Quebec broke
nearly even, the Maritime provinces three or four to one
for it, while from all the West only Joseph Martin's
vote went against the measure.
The second reading passed, and the committee stage
was entered. But it was already clear that the bill was
doomed. The legal term of parliament ran only one
month more ; it would be extraordinarily difficult for the
government to jam the bill through and pass its esti-
mates in that brief space, against a determined Opposi-
tion and with its own ranks weakened. The govern-
ment therefore made a belated attempt at a compro-
477
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
mise. Already Sir Donald Smith on his own initiative
had sounded out the Manitoba government. Now,
three days after the vote, a delegation, consisting of
Hon. A. R. Dickey, Minister of Justice, Hon. A.
Desjardins, Minister of Militia, and Sir Donald Smith,
was sent by the government to Winnipeg to seek a
settlement by negotiation. Mr. Laurier was consulted ;
he wished the mission well, and would interpose no ob-
stacles to its success. Clifford Sifton and J. D.
Cameron acted for the province. ; The atmosphere was
not favourable; the earlier hurling of legal thunder-
bolts, the government's action in pushing the bill
through committee, despite a contrary understanding;
the knowledge on both sides that the federal govern-
ment could accept no settlement which the hierarchy
would not endorse, made frank discussion difficult.
While an earnest attempt was made to find common
ground, and while each side made concessions, discus-
sion only made it clear that neither could go far enough
to meet the other.
The federal authorities would have been content to
forego a distinct system of separate schools provided
that within the framework of the public schools a wide
measure of autonomy could be granted, including pro-
vision for a separate school-house or school-room in
every district where there were twenty-five or more
Roman Catholic children, Catholic teachers, Catholic
representation on the advisory board, Catholic text-
books, and a Catholic normal school for training
teachers. The provincial representatives were willing
478
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
to make concessions, in practice, as to representation
and text-books, but they objected to the compulsory
character of the separation proposed, and the financial
burden and the lowering of efficiency it involved.
They made two counter offers : either clean-cut seculari-
zation or an agreement to limit religious exercises to the
last half-hour of the day, when any clergyman or
teacher of religion would be allowed to enter the school,
in determined order, to give religious training to the
children of his special flock. Neither offer was consid-
ered, and early in April the conference failed.
Sir Charles Tupper was not the man to give up with-
out further effort. A determined attempt was made to
jam the bill through. All other business was sus-
pended. The House sat day and night. Relays of
ministers and of back-benchers were organized to hold
the fort. The effort was in vain. Tupper met his
match. The North of Ireland insurgents in the Con-
servative ranks, aided by a few Ontario Liberals,
blocked progress. It was in vain that Tupper read this
man and that out of the party; that only gave a re-
spected New Brunswick stalwart, Richard Weldon, a
chance long awaited to tell what he thought of the whole
house of Tupper. It was in vain that for a hundred
hours the House was held in session; Dr. Sproule read
the Nova Scotia school law, John Charlton read the
Bible passages prescribed in Ontario schools, Colonel
Tyrwhitt went through Mark Twain and Bibaud's His-
tory of Canada, always promising to come to the point,
and barely a clause went through. And when the gov-
479
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
eminent charged obstruction, the impeachment was vig-
orously denied: had it not been the government which
had delayed the bill? "Whose fault was it," added Mr.
Laurier, who himself took no part in the obstruction,
"that we did not meet until January second, that we
found the cabinet divided into two factions, calling each
other imbeciles and traitors, and that six weeks of this
dying session elapsed before the bill was brought
down?"
On April 15 Sir Charles gave up the attempt to pass
the bill. The estimates were voted, and on April 23 the
sixth session of the seventh parliament of Canada came
to a close.
In the breathing space before elections, the govern-
ment went through the promised reorganization. On
May 1 Sir Charles Tupper became prime minister in
form as well as fact, and Bowell and Daly disappeared.
The Quebec section was varied, though not greatly
strengthened, by the dropping of Sir A. Caron and
J. A. Ouimet, the return of A. R. Angers, and the ad-
dition of L. O. Taillon, head of the provincial ministry,
and of J. J. Ross, whose Scotch name and French
tongue bore witness to the assimilating effect of genera-
tions of French mothers; on the whole, with Senator
Desjardins, one of the framers of the "Programme
Catholique," already in the cabinet, a distinctly ultra-
montane group, well favoured by the clergy. Chap-
leau, influenced by his old friend Tarte, resisted all pleas
to rejoin, much to the disappointment of Tupper, who
had counted on him as the only man who could make
480
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
head against Laurier in Quebec. Less success was met
in Ontario. It was in vain that portfolios were offered
to William Meredith, to B. B. Osier, to Sir A. Kirkpat-
rick; Sir Charles had to be content with a solid and
respectable rank-and-filer, David Tisdale. The one ap-
pointment which showed a touch of imagination was the
selection of Sir John Macdonald's son, Hugh John, as
Minister of the Interior ; it was fervently hoped that his
name and his share of his father's genial humour and of
his father's features would stand the cabinet in good
stead; "the Conservative party," it was prophesied, "will
win by a nose."
The campaign was intensely fought. It was in
large part a duel between Laurier and Tupper. Each
had his strength ; each was bitterly attacked in the party
strongholds. Sir Charles opened his campaign in
Winnipeg itself, and found the good hearing his
courage warranted, but in Tory Toronto he met jeers
and taunts against the perpetual "I," the "I" who had
made Canada, built the party, and now would unite it
again. Laurier spoke again and again in Ontario, but
the real brunt of the battle there was left to his vigorous
band of lieutenants and to the Tory insurgents. An
announcement that Sir Oliver Mowat would join the
Laurier cabinet gave the cause respectability, though
the effect was somewhat spoiled by Sir Oliver's canny
reluctance to resign and take his chances in contesting
an Ontario seat. m
It was in Quebec that Laurier's main fight was
waged. There he faced great odds. It was not merely
481
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
that the federal and provincial machinery were in op-
ponents' hands, nor that the party treasury was scant. x
Immensely more serious was the crusade waged by the
hierarchy. They more than carried out Father La-
combe's warning. The collective mandement read in
all the churches on May 17 was, it is true, comparatively
mild and moderate in tone. It declared that while
there was no intention to side with any political party,
the school question was chiefly a religious question. No
Catholic was permitted, let him be journalist, elector,
candidate, or member, to have two codes of conduct, one
for private and one for public life: "all Catholics should
vote only for candidates who will personally and
solemnly pledge themselves to vote in parliament in
favour of the legislation giving to the Catholics of Mani-
toba the school laws which were recognized as theirs
by the Privy Council of England."
But this mandement, which represented merely the
greatest common denominator of episcopacy, was sup-
plemented by much more vigorous utterances, partic-
ularly in the eastern part of the province. Mgr.
Marois, vicar-general, writing from the Archbishopric
of Quebec, dotted the i's by stating that it would be a
mortal sin not to obey the bishops, a grave and mortal
fault to vote for a Laurier candidate. Mr. Laurier's
doughty old opponent, Bishop Lafleche, was more
l This lack was sufficient to deter a famous newspaper politician
who offered his support if the Liberals would raise a campaign fund of
$20,000 for the Montreal district, to match an equal contribution from
himself, and being told that their whole federal fund was little greater,
went away sorrowing over such impracticable innocence. Unfortunately,
never until twenty years later was the Liberal party again so poor in purse.
482
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
direct. Referring to Laurier's stand in his speech of
March 3 he declared:
This is the most categorical affirmation of the Liberalism
condemned by the Church which has ever been made to my
knowledge in any legislative assembly of our country. The
man who speaks thus is a rationalist Liberal. He formulates
a doctrine entirely opposed to the Catholic doctrine; that is
to say, that a Catholic is not bound to be a Catholic in his
public life. . . . Under the circumstances, a Catholic cannot
under pain of sinning in a grave matter vote for the chief of
a party who has formulated so publicly such an error.
A number of Liberal candidates signed the mandement
pledge, but even this flexible conduct availed them little;
for double assurance, the weight of the clergy was
thrown to their Conservative opponents.
"Choose the bishops or Barrabas Laurier," a cure
told his parishioners. The Conservative press de-
nounced the Liberal leader as a traitor to his race and
religion. Here and there a priest was found who stood
out against the flood ; when a priest in Portneuf threat-
ened his flock with the fate of a neighbouring commun-
ity lately buried under a landslide, if they voted Liberal,
the Liberals were able to take them to two priests who
promised to administer the last rites of the Church if
they fell ill. In Ontario, the bishops made no pro-
nouncement, and so in the Maritime provinces, save for
John Cameron, Bishop of Antigonish, who declared
after a careful study of $ie Holy Gospel and the party
platforms; "I am officially in a position to declare, and
I hereby declare, that it is the plain conscientious duty
of every Catholic elector to vote for the Conservative
/
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER
candidate; and this declaration no Catholic in this dio-
cese, be he priest or layman, has a right to dispute."
Against these powerful forces, nowhere in the whole
world more powerful than in Quebec, Wilfrid Laurier
had two distinct assets. One was Israel Tarte's or-
ganizing capacity. With all the passion of conviction,
all the coolness of cynical experience, all the incon-
venient knowledge of a former insider in Conservative
ranks, Tarte directed the campaign without a tactical
error. But the much more important asset was the
pride Laurier's compatriots cherished in Quebec's
greatest son. They had come to know him well; in the
previous two years alone he had addressed between two
and three hundred meetings in Quebec. They were
impressed by his distinction, moved by his eloquence,
roused by his courage. They could not believe it a
mortal sin to make a French-Canadian prime minister.
They were loyal sons of the Church, but they were also
Canadiens, and free men.
The polling on June 23 gave the Liberals decisive vic-
tory. In Ontario they carried forty-four seats against
forty-one for the government, seven falling to the Mc-
Carthyites and Patrons; in the Maritime provinces
they came nearly even; in the Territories and British
Columbia they broke all precedent by winning six seats
out of nine. But it was Manitoba and Quebec which
afforded the chief surprise of the election. Manitoba,
much less excited .during the contest than Ontario, gave
four seats out of six to the government which was sup-
484
THE BREAK-UP OF THE ADMINISTRATION
posed to be coercing it. The province on which the
government had gambled, the province which was sup-
posed to vote as the bishops nodded, gave sixteen seats
to Charles Tupper and the bishops and forty-nine to
Wilfrid Laurier.
485
J
~*)
M / v
APR 2 1989
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