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

The South African war was most unpopular with the French-Canadians,
but the unpopularity did not extend to Laurier. They agreed in
theory with Bourassa but they recognized that Laurier had yielded to
force majeure. Indeed the very violence with which Laurier was
assailed in Ontario strengthened his hold in Quebec. It is not easy
for a proud people to stomach insults such as, for instance, the
remark in the Toronto News, that the English-Canadians would find
some way of "emancipating themselves from the dominance of an
inferior people whom peculiar circumstances had placed in authority
in the Dominion." The election of 1900 gave Laurier fifty-eight
supporters in the province of Quebec out of a total of sixty-five
seats. The Rouge-Bleu coalition had not come off officially,
Chapleau's death in 1898 having removed the necessity of formally
recognizing his services, but the coalition of Bleu and Rouge
elements had taken place; and it held so firmly that when some of
the architects of the fusion tried later to undo their work they
found this could not be done. Dansereau was the first to go. Mr.
Mulock, the postmaster-general, entirely oblivious of the fact that
Dansereau was one of the main wheels in the Quebec machine and
seeing in him only an entirely incapable postmaster, fired him in
1899 with as little hesitation as a section boss would show in
bouncing an incompetent navvy. Tarte and Laurier tried to patch up
the quarrel, but Dansereau preferred to return to journalism as
editor of an independent journal whose traditions were Cons