[1] 'Is it not permissible,' Mr Dessaules asked, 'when Protestants and Catholics are placed side by side in a country, in a city, for them to join in the pursuit of knowledge? ... What is toleration? It is reciprocal indulgence, sympathy, Christian charity.... It is fraternity, the spirit, of religion well understood.... It is at bottom humility, the idea that others are not worthless, that others are as good as ourselves.... Intolerance is pride; it is the idea that we are better than others; it is egotism, the idea that we owe others nothing.'
In the Provincial Legislature—In federal politics—The Mackenzie government—The Riel question—Protection or free trade—The Catholic programme—Catholic liberalism—The clergy in politics—Political liberalism—In the administration
Less than five years had passed after Wilfrid Laurier came to Arthabaskaville, a boyish, unknown lawyer-editor, when he was chosen by an overwhelming majority as member for Drummond-Arthabaska in the provincial legislature. His firmly based Liberalism, his power as a speaker, his widespread popularity, had very early marked him out as the logical candidate of his party. On many grounds he was prepared to listen to the urging of his friends. His interest in politics was only second, if second it was, to his interest in his profession. The ambition to hold a place in parliament was one which appealed to practically every able young lawyer of his time in Quebec, and, thanks to the short sessions of the provincial assembly and the nearness of Arthabaska to Quebec, membership in the legislature would not greatly interfere with his work at home. Yet his health was stillprecarious, and it was with much hesitation and reluctance that he finally consented to stand for the county in 1871, at the second general election since Confederation. Though ill throughout the campaign, he was able to make a few speeches, and the loyal support of his friends did the rest. His opponent, Edward Hemming, a barrister of Drummondville, had been the previous member for the riding. At the close of the polls—those were still the days of open voting—it was found that, while the Liberal party in the province was once more badly defeated, Wilfrid Laurier had won his seat by over one thousand majority.
When the legislature met at Quebec in November, there was a lively interest on both sides of the chamber in the young man of thirty who had scored such a notable victory. At that time the legislature had an unusually large number of men of first rank in eloquence and parliamentary ability, including Cartier, Chapleau, Cauchon, Holton, and Irvine. All these except Chapleau were also members of the House of Commons, since at that time no law forbade dual representation, and the standards were relatively high. The Government under Chauveau, the prime minister,was too firmly entrenched to be shaken by any assaults from the Opposition leader, Henri Joly de Lotbinière, and his scanty following. In the criticism, however, the member for Arthabaska took a notable part. He did not speak often, but when he did his remarks were fresh and constructive. In the debate on the Address he scored the Government for its backward educational policy, urged active steps to check the exodus of French Canadians to the mills of New England, praised the ideals of British Liberalism, and called for a truce in racial and religious quarrels. In a later speech he presented the keenest constitutional criticism yet made of the system of dual representation, showing that it tended to bring the provinces too completely within the orbit of the central power and confuse local with federal issues. Three years later, it may be noted, the system was abolished.
The vigour and yet moderation of these first efforts, so aptly phrased and so admirably fitted to the peculiar requirements of parliamentary speaking, the grace and flair of the orator, gave the member for Arthabaska at a stroke high rank in the party. He was very soon urged to seek the wider opportunities of federal politics. Ottawa, it was clear, wouldmake much greater demands upon his time than Quebec, yet his health was now improving. Accordingly he determined to make the change, and in the general federal elections of 1874 he was returned for Drummond-Arthabaska by a majority of two hundred and thirty-eight.
In 1874 the Liberal Government at Ottawa, under Alexander Mackenzie, seemed assured of a long term of office. It had been given an overwhelming majority in the election just concluded; its leaders were able and aggressive; and the Opposition was still crushed by the indignation which followed on the exposure of the Pacific Scandal.
Yet there were many weaknesses in its situation, which time was to make clear. The Government's forces were not closely united: the only bond holding together several of the groups which made up the majority was that of common opposition to the late administration. Many stragglers on the flanks were waylaid and brought back into their old camp by that arch-strategist, Sir John Macdonald. The question of leadership was not fully determined. In Ontario Edward Blake divided allegiance withAlexander Mackenzie, and Blake's inability to make up his mind definitely to serve under Mackenzie greatly weakened the party. In Quebec the situation was even more serious. Dorion was the man whose constructive ability, admirable temper, and long years of fighting against heavy odds marked him out as chief, but family and health considerations determined him to retire to the quieter if not less heavy labours of the bench. Fournier soon followed. Laflamme, in whose office Laurier had studied, was hardly a man of sufficient weight. Holton, leader of the small group of English Liberals in Quebec, was also in very poor health. To fill the gap Mackenzie summoned Joseph Cauchon, a former Conservative who had left his party on the Pacific Scandal; a man of great ability, active in the campaign for Confederation, but weakened by an unfortunate record of corruption in earlier days, a record which his Liberal opponents of those days had painted in startling and unforgettable colours.
PRIME MINISTERS OF CANADA, 1867-191PRIME MINISTERS OF CANADA, 1867-1915
PRIME MINISTERS OF CANADA, 1867-191PRIME MINISTERS OF CANADA, 1867-1915
1. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, 1873-782. SIR JOHN ABBOTT, 1891-923. SIR JOHN THOMPSON, 1892-944. SIR WILFRID LAURIER, 1896-19115. SIR JOHN MACDONALD, 1867-73, 1878-916. SIR MACKENZIE BOWELL, 1894-967. SIR CHARLES TUPPER, 18968. SIR ROBERT BORDEN, 1911-
These difficulties were, however, not insuperable; and doubtless the party would have drilled into working cohesion under definitely acknowledged leaders, had it not been for two more serious sources ofweakness. The first of these was the commercial depression which fell upon Canada, in common with the rest of the world, in 1873, and made it possible for an Opposition, itself most courageous in promises, to hold the Government responsible for all the country's ills. The other was Mr Mackenzie's high-minded but mistaken idea of his duty. Somewhat lacking in imagination though he was, Alexander Mackenzie had in him the stuff out of which party leaders are made. He was a man of vigour and ability, a hard-hitting debater, a thoroughgoing democrat, and he had a well-earned reputation for downright frankness and unswerving honesty which could easily have rallied the country's trust and affection. But while prime minister he gave to the details of departmental administration the care and thought and time which should have gone in part to his other duties as leader in constructive policy and chieftain of the party. He failed to keep in touch with public opinion, and so was caught unawares.
In spite of these drawbacks the Mackenzie administration left a notable record. It passed the law which introduced voting by ballot and required all elections, in a general contest, to be held on one day. It broughtforth the Scott Act, which proved a useful if not a final measure of temperance reform. It established the Royal Military College and the Supreme Court of Canada. It pushed the Pacific Railway forward steadily, if somewhat slowly, as a government work. Had the stars been favourable, the Government might well have thought itself secure on its record of legislative progress and administrative efficiency.
The questions which roused most debate both in parliament and in the country were the Riel Amnesty, the National Policy, and, in Quebec, the perennial issue of the relations of church and state. These may be noted in turn, particularly in so far as Mr Laurier took part in the discussions.
For nearly twenty years the Riel question in its various phases bedevilled Canadian politics and set race against race and province against province. Had it been only the resistance offered by the Red River settlers to Canadian authority which was in question in the seventies, time would soon have brought understanding and forgetfulness. That the half-breed settlers had just grievances, that the Canadian authorities bungled badly their first experiment in national expansion, allwould have admitted. But the shooting in cold blood of Thomas Scott, an Orangeman of Ontario, by the order of Louis Riel, lit fires of passion that would not easily die. And politicians fanned the flames for party ends. Neither party was guiltless. At the outset in Ontario the Liberals played to the Orange gallery, while in Quebec they appealed to French prejudices. Sir John Macdonald could attack Blake for frightening Riel out of the country and beyond the reach of justice, by offers of reward for his arrest, at the very time that Macdonald himself was paying Riel out of the secret service funds to keep away from Canada.
During the Mackenzie administration the question twice gave rise to full-dress debates. Early in 1874 Mackenzie Bowell moved that Riel, who had been elected a member for Provencher, should be expelled from the House; Holton moved an amendment that action be deferred until the committee, then inquiring into the whole matter, reported; while Mousseau demanded immediate and unconditional amnesty. In the debate that followed Mr Laurier made his first parliamentary speech in English. He supported Holton's amendment, while making it clearthat in his view of the evidence the country had been pledged to amnesty by the action of the former Government. It was a forceful and well-reasoned argument, in both its felicitous phrasing and its moderate tone an appropriate introduction to the parliamentary career which was just beginning. Again in 1875, when Mr Mackenzie moved that full amnesty be given to all concerned in the rebellion save Riel, Lepine, and O'Donoghue, and that the former two be pardoned, subject to five years' banishment, Mr Laurier defended this reasonable compromise against both the Quebec extremists who demanded immediate pardon and the Ontario opponents of any clemency whatever.
Protection was an even more fertile topic of debate in these and following years. It was only recently that it had become a party issue. Both parties had hitherto been content with the compromise of 'tariff for revenue, with incidental protection,' though in the ranks of both were advocates of out-and-out protection. In Ontario the Canada First movement, which looked to Blake as its leader, had strong protectionist leanings, and in Quebec theParti National, under which name theRougeshad been reorganized and madeultra-respectable, were of the same tendency. But Mackenzie was a staunch free-trader, while the Liberals from the maritime provinces were opposed to any increase in the tariff on the many things they consumed but did not produce. Accordingly, after much hesitation, the Liberals in 1876 declined to raise the tariff beyond the existing average of seventeen and a half per cent. At once the Conservatives, who, it was alleged, had been prepared to advocate freer trade, came out for protection. On this question Laurier was more in agreement with Blake than with Mackenzie. In early years he had been influenced by Papineau's crusade for protection, and believed that in the existing crisis an increase in the tariff to twenty per cent would aid the revenue and would avert a demand for more extreme duties. Time proved, however, that the appetites of protectionists could not so easily be appeased; and all wings of the party presently found themselves in harmony, in resisting the proposals to set up extremely high barriers.
But it was on the vexed question of the relations of church and state, and particularly of the Catholic hierarchy and the Liberal party in Quebec, that Mr Laurier gave the most distinctive service. This question had becomemore acute than ever. In 1870 the ultramontane element in the Roman Catholic Church had won a sweeping victory by inducing a majority of the Vatican Council to promulgate the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. There followed a wave of ultramontane activity throughout the world, and not least in Quebec. Bishop Bourget's hands were strengthened by Bishop Laflèche of Three Rivers, and by other prelates and priests of perhaps less relentless temper; while a cohort of journalists, inLe Nouveau Monde, La Vérité, Le Journal de Trois Rivières, and other papers, devoted themselves whole-heartedly to the ultramontane cause. On the other hand, Archbishop Baillargeon of Quebec and his successor, Archbishop Taschereau, the priests of the Quebec Seminary and of Laval University, and the Sulpicians at Montreal, were disposed to live at peace. They would all have denied sympathy either with Gallicanism or with Catholic Liberalism, but they were men of tolerance and breadth of sympathy, very doubtful whether such militant activity would advance the permanent interests of their Church.
There broke out a violent struggle between the two political parties in 1871, with the issueof theCatholic Programme. This famous document was a manifesto prepared by a group of editors and lawyers, who, in their own words, 'belonged heart and soul to the ultramontane school'—Trudel, Desjardins, M'Leod, Renault, Beausoleil, and others—and was drawn up by A. B. Routhier, then a lawyer in Kamouraska. It sought to lay down a policy to govern all good Catholics in the coming elections. The doctrine of the separation of church and state, the document declared, was impious and absurd. On the contrary, the authorities of the state, and the electors who chose them, must act in perfect accord with the teachings of the Church, and endeavour to safeguard its interests by making such changes in the laws as the bishops might demand. To secure this end the Conservative party must be supported. When two Conservatives or two Liberals were running, the one who accepted theProgrammewas to be elected; where a Conservative and a Liberal were opposed, the former would be supported; if it happened that a Conservative who opposed theProgrammewas running against a Liberal who accepted it, 'the situation would be more delicate'—and Catholics should not vote at all.
This frank declaration of war on the Liberal party, this attempt to throw the solid Catholic vote to the Conservatives, at once aroused violent controversy. Bishops Bourget and Laflèche announced that they approved the manifesto in every point, while Archbishop Taschereau and the bishops of St Hyacinthe and Rimouski declared that it had not their authorization.
The Liberal party was sorely pressed. In the emergency some of its moderate members determined to throw off the incubus of their anti-clerical traditions by reorganizing and renaming the party. So in 1871 Louis Jetté and other leading Quebec Liberals undertook to secure a fresh start by organizing theParti National, and the result of the following elections gave some ground for hope. 'This evolution of the Liberal party,' declared Bishop Laflèche later in a memorial to the Cardinals of the Sacred Congregation, 'had the success expected from it; it made a number of dupes not only among our good Catholics but even in the ranks of the clergy, who had hitherto been united against the Liberal party.... It is from this development that there dates the division in the ranks of the clergy on the question of politics.'
But this prudent step did not avert the wrath of the now dominant ultramontane section. In 1873 a brief pastoral was issued by all the bishops condemning Catholic Liberalism in vague but sweeping terms. Two years later another joint pastoral, that of September 22, 1875, went into the whole question elaborately. Catholic Liberalism, that subtle serpent, was again denounced. The right of the clergy to intervene in politics was again upheld, whether in neutral matters in which they, like all other citizens, should have a voice, or in matters affecting faith or morals or the interests of the Church. In the latter case the clergy should declare with authority that to vote in this or that way is a sin, exposing the offender to the penalties of the Church. In a letter issued a year later Archbishop Taschereau modified these pretensions, but the assault went on. Regarding the identity of the Catholic Liberals in question both pastorals were silent, but not silent were many of the clergy who interpreted them to their flocks. The cap fitted the Liberal party and its chiefs, they averred, and good Catholics must govern themselves accordingly.
This determined attempt of a section of theclergy to use the influence they possessed as spiritual guides to crush one political party aroused the most moderate sections of the Liberals to counter-attacks. The election law of Canada, copied from that of England, forbade the use of undue influence in elections, and undue influence had been said to include use by ecclesiastics of their powers to excite superstitious fears or pious hopes. Baron Fitzgerald had declared in the Mayo case in Ireland, in 1857, that the priest must not use threats of punishment here or hereafter, must not threaten to withhold the sacraments or denounce voting for any particular candidate as a sin. The Liberals of Quebec had no desire to deny the priest the same rights as other citizens enjoyed, of taking part in the discussion of any political question whatever, and using all the powers of persuasion to secure this end. But, they insisted, for a priest to threaten eternal punishment was as much a case of undue influence as for an employer to threaten to dismiss a workman if he would not vote for a certain candidate, and as just a ground for voiding an election. The matter was pressed to a decision in appeals against candidates returned in two federal by-elections, in Chambly and Charlevoix, andin one provincial election, in Bonaventure. In these instances the proof of open partisanship and open use of ecclesiastical pressure was overwhelming. 'The candidate who spoke last Sunday,' declared one priest in Chambly, 'called himself a moderate Liberal. As Catholics you cannot vote for him; you cannot vote for a Liberal, nor for a moderate Liberal, for moderate is only another term for liar.' 'The Church has condemned Liberalism, and to vote against the direction of the bishops would be sin,' declared another. 'The sky of heaven isbleu, the fire of hell isrouge,' another more pointedly urged. 'I was afraid,' one witness testified, 'that if I voted for Tremblay I should be damned.' In defence it was urged that, in the first place, the civil courts had no authority over ecclesiastics, at least for acts done in their spiritual capacity, and, in the second place, that the Church had a right to defend its interests against attack, and that in using to this end all the powers at its disposal it was employing no undue influence. Judge Routhier, the author of theCatholic Programme, upheld these contentions in the first trial of the Charlevoix case, but the Supreme Court, in judgments delivered by Mr Justice Taschereau, brother ofthe Archbishop, and by Mr Justice Ritchie, denied the existence of any clerical immunity from civil jurisdiction, and found that the threats which had been made from the pulpit constituted undue influence of the clearest kind. Accordingly they voided the election. Their action met with violent protests from some of the bishops, who, when Judge Casault in the Bonaventure case followed this precedent, sought, but in vain, to have him removed by the Sacred Congregation from his chair in the law faculty of Laval. But in spite of protests the lesson had been learned, and the sturdy fight of the Liberals of Quebec for the most elementary rights of a free people had its effect.
GOVERNORS-GENERAL OF THE DOMINIOGOVERNORS-GENERAL OF THE DOMINION
GOVERNORS-GENERAL OF THE DOMINIOGOVERNORS-GENERAL OF THE DOMINION
1. VISCOUNT MONCK, 1867-682. LORD LISGAR, 1868-723. EARL OF DUFFERIN, 1872-784. MARQUIS OF LORNE, 1878-835. MARQUIS OF LANSDOWN, 1882-886. LORD STANLEY, 1888-937. EARL OF ABERDEEN, 1893-988. EARL OF MINTO, 1898-19049. EARL GREY, 1904-1110. DUKE OF CONNAUGHT, 1911-
It was when matters were at this acute stage that Wilfrid Laurier came forward to do for his province and his country a service which could be accomplished only by a man of rarely balanced judgment, of firm grasp of essential principles, of wide reading and familiarity with the political ideals of other lands, and, above all, of matchless courage. Rarely, if ever, has there been delivered in Canada a speech of such momentous importance, or one so firmly based on the first principles with which Canadian statesmen too rarely concernthemselves, as that which he addressed toLe Club Canadien, a group of young Liberals, in Quebec City in June 1877.
The subject of the address was Political Liberalism. The speaker cleared away many misunderstandings. Liberalism did not mean Catholic Liberalism; it had nothing to do with opinions on religion. Nor did it mean Liberalism of the type still prevalent on the continent of Europe, revolutionary, semi-socialist, openly anti-clerical; the type which had been given brief currency by the young men of twenty who thirty years before had lent the Liberal party an undeserved reputation for anti-clericalism. No, the Liberals of Canada found their models and their inspiration in the Liberalism of England, in the men who had fought the battles of orderly freedom and responsible self-government against privilege and selfish interest. As to the Church, no true Liberal wished to deny its officers the right which every citizen enjoyed of taking a part in his country's politics; they had opposed, and would continue to oppose, every attempt of politicians in clerical garb to crush freedom of speech by spiritual terrorism. The right of ecclesiastical interference in politics ceased where it encroached uponthe elector's independence. Any attempt to found a Catholic party was not only a crime against the country but was bound to injure the Church itself; it would lead inevitably to the formation of a Protestant party among the majority. On individual freedom alone could a sound national political system be built up, just as on colonial freedom alone had it been possible to build up a lasting imperial system.
The speech was received with enthusiasm throughout the country. Its renunciation at once of anti-clericalism and of ultramontanism, its moderation and its fearlessness, rallied Liberalism to its true standard and marked out clearly the lines within which party and priest alike should act in the interests of church and of country. It was a master-stroke both for freedom and for harmony.
We are to-day sometimes prone to overlook the services of those who in England or in Canada fought for us the battles of political freedom. We tend to forget the services of the political leaders of the thirties and forties who won freedom from class and racial domination, the services of the leaders of the sixties and seventies who won freedom of thought and speech against heavy odds. It has taken a European war to make us realizehow precious are those liberties, how many great peoples are still without them, and the height of our debt of gratitude alike to those who won them for us in the past, and to those who preserve them for us in the present.
A few months after this historic address Wilfrid Laurier entered the Mackenzie Cabinet as minister of Inland Revenue. He had been thought eligible for ministerial rank ever since his first entry into the House, and might have had a portfolio in 1876 had it not been that he objected to serve along with Cauchon. The appointment of Cauchon as lieutenant-governor of Manitoba now having cleared the way, Mr Laurier accepted the office and appealed to his constituents for re-election. The tide of opinion had latterly been running strong against the Government, but the great personal popularity of the new minister was deemed an assurance of victory. The Conservatives, however, threw themselves strenuously into the fight, and, much to their own surprise, won the seat by a majority of twenty-nine. The result was due in part to the over-confidence and inactivity of the Liberals, but on the whole it was the handwriting on the wall—a token of the prevailingsentiment against the Government which was shortly to sweep all before it. Another seat was speedily found for the new minister, in Quebec East, and he entered upon a brief year's tenure of office. Though under no illusion as to the failing strength of the Government in the country, he loyally did his best both in the administration of his department and in the campaigning for the party until thedébâclecame in 1878.
The party leadership—Tariff and railway—Dominion and province—The second Riel rebellion
In the general election of September 1878 the Liberal party suffered not merely defeat but utter and overwhelming rout, as unexpected and disastrous as a tropical earthquake. Only five years before, Mackenzie had been swept into power on a wave of moral indignation. The Conservative leaders had appeared hopelessly discredited, and the rank and file dispirited. Now a wave of economic despair swept the Liberals out of power. Their majority of two to one in 1873 was reversed by a Conservative majority of over two to one in 1878. The defeat was not local: every province except New Brunswick went against Mackenzie. Edward Blake, Richard Cartwright, Alfred G. Jones, and other stalwarts lost their seats, and though Sir John Macdonald suffered the same fate in Kingston, and though seats were soon found for the fallen leaders, the blow greatly damaged the prestige of the Liberal party.
Mackenzie was stunned. To the last he had been confident of victory. In spite of the warnings of Charlton, Cartwright, Laurier, and others, he had underestimated the impression which the campaign for protection, with its lavish promises of work and prosperity for all, made even in old Liberal strongholds. He could not believe that the people of Canada would take up the heresies and fallacies which the people of Great Britain had discarded a generation earlier. He would not believe that they were prepared to send back to power men found guilty of corruption only five years before. For these illusions he paid the penalty, in bitter regrets, in loss of touch with the party, in broken health, and at last, in April 1880, in resignation of the leadership. Alexander Mackenzie had deserved well of Canada and of his party; but, apparently, both wanted more than the dauntless courage and the unyielding and stainless honour which were all he had to give them.
There was only one possible successor. Edward Blake had for many years been the choice of a large section of the party in Ontario, and he now became leader by unanimous vote. The new chief was a man of great intellectual capacity, of constructivevision, of untiring thoroughness and industry. He stood easily at the head of the bar in Canada. His short term of office as prime minister of Ontario had given proof of political sagacity and administrative power. He, if any one, it seemed, could retrieve the shattered fortunes of the Liberal party.
Mr Laurier's position as first lieutenant for Quebec was now unquestioned. It was not a wholly enviable post. The Liberal representation from Quebec had fallen to twenty. There were few able men in the ranks. The Dorions were gone. Soon to go too were Holton and Huntington, the English leaders who formed the connecting link between the Liberals of Ontario and the French-speaking Liberals of Quebec. In the Eastern Townships John Henry Pope, that shrewdest and most pugnacious of Conservative politicians, was perfecting the organization which later made him the uncrowned king of several counties. True, Sir George Cartier, who for nearly forty years had dominated Quebec politics, was gone, but Langevin, his successor in the Conservative party, though not a strong man himself, had the clergy behind him; and Chapleau, who entered federal politics in 1882, brought a fiery eloquence to his party's aid. It wasclear that the young Liberal leader would have no easy task in winning his province.
Yet he was not content with provincial aims. Each year saw him more widely recognized as a man not of Quebec merely but of all Canada. The issues which arose in these trying years were such as to test to the utmost men's power to rise above local and sectional prejudices and see Canada's interest steadily and see it whole. Mr Laurier did not speak often in these early years, but when he did speak it was with increasing power and recognition. And in the councils of his party the soundness of his judgment became more fully appreciated as each of the great issues of the eighties developed.
The chief of these issues were: the Tariff, the Pacific Railway, Provincial Rights, and the troubles which arose out of the second Riel Rebellion. These may now be summarily reviewed.
Victorious on the issue of protection, the Government more than lived up to its promises in the first tariffs framed. 'Tell us how much protection you want,' Sir John Macdonald had promised the manufacturers, 'and we shall give you what you need.' And whether itwas cotton or sugar or furniture, needs and wants were judged to lie not far apart. Purely revenue duties on goods that continued to come in freely, purely protective duties on goods which were practically shut out, and duties which served both ends in some degree, all were advanced.
The Liberals,ex officio, that is, being out of office, opposed these increases one and all. Neither Blake nor Laurier, however, was an out-and-out free-trader like Mackenzie. Mackenzie had received his point of view from his British upbringing; his colleagues had been brought up on a continent where protection ruled. Blake, after a session or two, seemed content to accept the country's verdict and criticized chiefly the details of the N.P., as the National Policy of Protection to Native Industries was affectionately called by its supporters. Laurier, while admitting that in theory it was possible to aid infant industries by tariff pap, criticized the indiscriminate and excessive rates of the new tariff, and the unfair burden it imposed upon the poorer citizens by its high specific rates on cheap goods. But in 1880, after a night of seven years, prosperity dawned in America. The revival of business in the United Statesproved as contagious in Canada as had been its slackening in the early seventies. The Canadian people gave the credit for the improvement in health to the well-advertised patent medicine they had taken just before the change set in; and for some years all criticisms of the N.P. were fated to fall on deaf ears.
Then came the contract for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the tariff question was shelved. Both parties were committed to build the road to the coast. Both had wavered between public and private construction. But the Macdonald Government had now decided upon pushing the road through with all speed, regardless as to whether current revenues sufficed to build it, while the Opposition advocated a policy of gradual construction within the country's means, concurrent with a close and steady settlement of the western plains. The Government's first plan of building the road out of the proceeds of the sale of a hundred million acres of prairie lands proved a flat failure. Then in 1880 a contract for its construction and operation was made with the famous Canadian Pacific Syndicate, in which the leading figures were a group of Canadians whohad just reaped a fortune out of the reconstruction of a bankrupt Minnesota railway—George Stephen, Richard B. Angus, James J. Hill, and in the background, Donald A. Smith.[1]
Under Blake's leadership instant and determined attack was made upon the bargain, in parliament, in the press, and on the platform. Blake himself moved against it a resolution of over a hundred clauses, which, as usual, exhausted the subject and left little for his lieutenants to say. Mr Laurier particularly criticized the large land-grant and the exemption from taxation. Had the policy of gradual construction been adopted, he contended, it would not have been necessary to take a leap in the dark and give the syndicate the power of a monopoly in the western country: 'there might have been fewer millionaires in this country, but there would have been many more happy and contented homes.'
The Government was, however, committed, and a party majority ratified the contract. After events justified both the policy of the Government and, to some extent, the criticism of the Opposition. Great national interests were at stake. Nothing short of anall-Canadian railway could bind together the far-flung Dominion. But the building of this railway, and still more its operation, would be a task to daunt all but the most fearless, and to those who undertook it generous terms were a necessity. In their clear understanding and courageous grasp of the facts, and in their persistent support of the company through all the dark days until the railway was completed, Macdonald and Tupper and Pope deserved well of their country. Yet it is equally clear now that in many points the criticism of the Opposition was well founded. The land-grant was of least value when most needed—in the early years. The freedom of the company to select land where they pleased gave them a mortgage on the West and power to deter possible rival roads. The exemption from taxation of the company's lands for twenty years after the issue of the patents, and of its capital stock and equipment for ever, threw unfair burdens upon the straggling settlers. Still more threatening to national unity was the monopoly clause, guaranteeing the company for twenty years against the chartering, either by the Dominion or by any province afterwards established, of any road enabling United States railways to tap western traffic.
The issue was decided, as to any immediate effects, by the success of the Conservatives in the general elections of 1882. The country wanted the road, and as usual was not disposed to read too closely the fine print in the contract. But the matter did not end there. Each party had been led by attack and counterattack to take a stronger stand of defence or opposition than was reasonable. For another ten years the Canadian Pacific Railway remained, if not an issue in politics, itself an active participant in politics. And its great weight thrown against the Liberal party turned the scales more than once.
In every federal state the adjustment of the powers of the central and of the local authorities gives occasion for much friction and difference of opinion. In Canada this adjustment, though never-ending, perhaps reached its climax in the eighties, when question after question as to the rights of the provinces came up for discussion.
We are apt to forget how recent a development the modern federal state is. Save for certain Latin-American countries, nominally federal, the Dominion of Canada is the third oldest of such states; the United States andSwitzerland alone are of longer standing. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the North German Federation were formed in the same fateful year, 1867. There were, therefore, few models before the framers of the constitution of Canada, and the marvel is that they planned so wisely and so enduringly.
In determining what powers should be assigned to the Dominion and what to the provinces, the Fathers of Confederation were led, by the object-lesson which the Civil War in the United States afforded, to give the central government more authority. To the Dominion they assigned several fields of legislation which in the Republic fell to the respective states; and the Dominion was made residuary legatee of powers not specified. The central government, too, was given a right of veto over all provincial laws and empowered to appoint the lieutenant-governors of the provinces. Had Sir John Macdonald had his way, centralization would have gone much further, for he would have abolished the provincial governments entirely and set up a single parliament for the whole country. Fortunately Cartier and Brown prevented that unwieldy experiment from being tried.
Experience has shown that the centralgovernment should have full authority to deal with foreign affairs so far as they can be differentiated, and should have a wide measure of control over commerce and industry, which more and more are nation-wide in scope. But, this secured, it has been found equally essential that the provinces should be given wide power and responsibility. Fortunately Canada has only nine provinces, as against forty-eight states in the United States, so that authority is less divided here than in the Republic. In a country covering half a continent, with great diversity of climate and resources and industrial development, centralization of all power would mean the neglect of local needs and the disregard of local differences. Particularly where, as in Canada, thirty per cent of the people differ in race and language and creed from the majority, and are concentrated mainly in a single province, the need for local autonomy as the surest means of harmony is abundantly clear.
It was in Quebec that the first issue as to provincial rights arose. The Mackenzie Government in 1876 had appointed Luc Letellier de St Just, one of their most steadfast supporters, lieutenant-governor of that province. It was not long before political andpersonal antagonism strained to the breaking point the relations between the Liberal Letellier and his Conservative ministers at Quebec. The neglect of the premier, M. de Boucherville, to consult Letellier before introducing some railway legislation proved the last straw, and in March 1878 Boucherville was dismissed and Henri Joly de Lotbinière was called upon to form a Cabinet. This sudden rupture raised a storm of protest in Quebec, of which the echoes soon reached Ottawa. Sir John Macdonald, then leader of the Opposition, moved a vote of censure upon Letellier, which was defeated on a party vote. A year later, after the change of government at Ottawa, a Quebec ministerialist again moved in the House of Commons the resolution of censure.
VICE-REGAL CONSORTSVICE-REGAL CONSORTS
VICE-REGAL CONSORTSVICE-REGAL CONSORTS
1. LADY MONCK2. LADY LISGAR3. LADY DUFFERIN4. THE PRINCESS LOUISE5. LADY LANSDOWNE6. LADY STANLEY7. LADY ABERDEEN8. LADY MINTO9. LADY GREY10. THE DUCHESS OF CONNAUGHT
The Liberal leaders at Ottawa were inclined to agree that Letellier had been too sensitive about his dignity as governor, and Sir John Macdonald on his part would have preferred to let the matter rest, since the elections in the province had upheld Joly, had not his Quebec supporters demanded their pound of flesh. But the constitutional issue was clear, and on this the Liberals rested their case. It was for the people of Quebec, they contended, todecide whether or not the lieutenant-governor had violated their liberties. If the lieutenant-governor could find ministers with a legislative majority behind them to uphold his action, there was nothing more to be said: the doctrine of ministerial responsibility covered all his acts. And this support he had found; for the Joly Government, on appealing to the people, had turned a minority of twenty into a majority of one. 'The people of the province of Quebec,' declared Mr Laurier in the Commons, 'who alone are interested in this question, have decided that in their opinion, whether that be right or wrong, the act of Mr Letellier was just and constitutional.... You say No. What are you here for if you say No? If your policy had been supported by the people of Quebec, you would not now be seeking vengeance at the hands of this House.' But logic was in vain. The vote of censure carried, and Macdonald recommended to the governor-general, the Marquis of Lorne, that Letellier should be dismissed. Here again a nice question of responsibility arose. First the question had been whether the lieutenant-governor was to be guided by provincial ministers or by the federal government which appointed him. Now the problemwas whether the governor-general should be guided by his advisers in Canada, or by the British Government which had appointed him. With the assent of the Canadian Cabinet the question was referred to the Colonial Office. Mackenzie's protest against this colonial-minded appeal was in vain, but the upshot proved satisfactory to him. The colonial secretary replied that the lieutenant-governor was undoubtedly responsible to the governor-general for any act, and that equally undoubtedly the governor-general must act upon the advice, in this as in other matters, of his responsible ministers. The governor-general suggested reconsideration, but the Macdonald Cabinet was obdurate and Letellier was dismissed. Fortunately the precedent thus set has not been followed. The principle is now established that a lieutenant-governor may be dismissed only when he cannot find provincial ministers willing and able to support him.
The later constitutional issues were chiefly disputes between the Dominion and the province of Ontario. They were not merely differences of opinion on abstract constitutional points. They were in large part struggles for power and patronage between two very shrewd practical politicians, Sir JohnMacdonald and his one-time law-student at Kingston, Oliver Mowat, for many years premier of Ontario.
First came a struggle as to the western boundary of Ontario. The dividing line between the old province of Canada and the territories purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company had never been determined After ten years of negotiations a commission, consisting of one representative of the Dominion and one of Ontario together with the British ambassador at Washington, gave a unanimous award in 1878, an award which the Dominion refused to carry into effect. Other provinces were involved. The Dominion had presented Manitoba with much of the territory in dispute, and the conflict as to jurisdiction between that province and Ontario nearly led to bloodshed; while Quebec was stirred up to protest against the enlargement of Ontario, which would make Ontario, it was said, the preponderant power in the Dominion. Mr Laurier inveighed against what he termed the dishonourable course of the Dominion Government. When negotiating with the Hudson's Bay Company for its lands, it had contended that the old province of Canada extended far west and north, but now it tookprecisely the opposite stand. As for Quebec's interest, he continued: 'I do not fear the appeal that will be made against me in my own province. 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.' The Government, however, persisted in rejecting the award, and forced an appeal to the Privy Council, only to have Ontario's claim fully substantiated, and the total area of the province confirmed as more than double what Sir John Macdonald would have allowed it.
The next issue put to the test the power of the Dominion to veto provincial laws. It was, in form, merely a dispute between two lumbermen, M'Laren and Caldwell, as to whether the one higher up on the stream could use, upon paying tolls, timber-slides built by the other lower down. But, as Edward Blake declared in 1886, this was 'of all the controversies between the Dominion and the provinces, by far the most important from the constitutional point of view, for it involved the principle which must regulate the use by the Dominion Government of the power of disallowing provincial legislation.' When in 1881 a court ofjustice in Ontario held that the lumberman on the lower reaches could prevent the one higher up from floating down his logs, Mowat had an act passed providing that all persons possessed, and were thereby declared always to have possessed, the right denied by this judgment. This measure was at once disallowed by the Dominion Government. Then the Privy Council upheld the contention of the Ontario Government as to what the law had been even before the act was passed; and, when in 1884 the provincial legislature again passed the same act, the Dominion conceded the point. Thereafter the veto power has been used only when Dominion or Imperial interests were concerned, or when a statute was claimed to be beyond the power of the province to pass. The wisdom or justice of measures affecting only the local interests of the citizens of a province has been left to the judgment of its own people to determine.
The regulation of the liquor traffic provided the next battle-ground. In 1876 Ontario had passed the Crooks Act, which took the power of granting licences from the municipalities and gave it to provincial commissioners. Two years later the Dominion parliament passed the Scott Act, giving counties power toprohibit the sale of liquor within their limits. The constitutionality of this act was upheld in 1882 in the Russell case, and Sir John Macdonald concluded that if the Dominion had power to pass the Scott Act, the province had not the power to pass the Crooks Act. 'If I carry the country,' he declared at a public meeting in 1882, 'as I will do, I will tell Mr Mowat, that little tyrant who has attempted to control public opinion by getting hold of every office from that of a Division Court bailiff to a tavern-keeper, that I will get a bill passed at Ottawa returning to the municipalities the power taken from them by the Licence Act.' At the next session the M'Carthy Act was passed, providing, not for municipal control, but for control by federal commissioners. Here again the highest courts held in 1883 and 1884 that the Ontario measure was within the power of the province, but that the M'Carthy Act was beyond that of the Dominion. Once more 'the little tyrant' had scored!
The Dominion Franchise Act of 1885 was the last important measure which need be noted in this connection. By the British North America Act the Dominion was to adopt the provincial franchise lists for its electionsuntil parliament should order otherwise. Sir John Macdonald decided, after eighteen years' use of the provincial lists and six half-hearted attempts to change this situation, that the Dominion should set up its own standard, in order both to secure uniformity and to preserve the property qualifications which Ontario and the other provinces were throwing overboard. The Opposition contended that this was an attack upon provincial rights. The argument was weak; there could be no doubt of the constitutional power of the Dominion in this matter. Better founded were the attacks of the Opposition upon specific clauses of the measure, such as the proposal to enfranchise Indians living upon government reserves and under government control, and the proposal to put the revision of the lists in the hands of partisan revising barristers rather than of judges. The 'Conservatives' proposed, but did not press the point, to give single women the franchise, and the 'Liberals' opposed it. After months of obstruction the proposal to enfranchise the western Indians was dropped,[2] an appeal tojudges was provided for the revision of the lists, and the income and property standards were reduced. Inconsistently, in some provinces a variation from the general standards was permitted. The Franchise Act of 1885 remained in force until after the coming of the Liberals to power in 1896, when it was repealed without regret on either side.