d a symbol; and ultimately the pressure
forced reluctant politicians to come together in the Union
government. There followed the general election and the Unionist
sweep. Laurier returned to parliament with a following of eighty-two
in a house of 235. Of these 62 came from Quebec; and nine from the
Maritime provinces. From the whole vast expanse from the Ottawa
river to the Pacific Ocean ten lone Liberals were elected; of these
only two represented the west, that part of Canada where Liberal
ideas grow most naturally and freely. The policy of shaping national
programmes to meet sectional predilections, relying upon party
discipline and the cultivation of personal loyalties to serve as
substitutes elsewhere had run its full course--and this was the
harvest!

THE LAST YEAR

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

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

For these conditions there were reasons in our history. Our parties
once expressed deep divergencies of view upon issues of vital
import; and each had experienced an individual leadership that had
called forth and had stereotyped feelings of unbounded personal
devotion. The chiefships of Laurier and Macdonald overlapped by only
four years, but they were of the same political generation and they
adhered to the same tradition. The resemblances in their careers,
often commented upon, arose from a common attitude towards the
business of political management. They conceived their parties as
states within the state. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say
they conceived them as co-ordinate with the state. Of these
principalities they were the chieftains, chosen in the first place
by election--as kings often were in the old times; but thereafter
holding their positions by virtue of personal right and having the
power in the last analysis by