e in Canada, and it was still uncertain which party would take
it up. Finally Mackenzie, who was an ardent free trader, and the Nova
Scotia wing of his party triumphed over the protectionists in their own
ranks and made a low tariff the party platform. Macdonald, who had been
prepared to take up free trade if Mackenzie adopted protection, now
boldly urged the high tariff panacea. The promise of work and wages
for all, the appeal to national spirit made by the arguments of
self-sufficiency and fully rounded development, the desire to retaliate
against the United States, which was still deaf to any plea for more
liberal trade relations, swept the country. The Conservative minority
of over sixty was converted into a still greater majority in the general
election of 1878, and the leader whom all men five years before had
considered doomed, returned to power, never to lose it while life
lasted.

The first task of the new Government, in which Tupper was Macdonald's
chief supporter, was to carry out its high tariff pledges. "Tell us
how much protection you want, gentlemen," said Macdonald to a group of
Ontario manufacturers, "and we'll give you what you need." In the
new tariff needs were rated almost as high as wants. Particularly on
textiles, sugar, and iron and steel products, duties were raised far
beyond the old levels and stimulated investment just as the world-wide
depression which had lasted since 1873 passed away. Canada shared in
the recovery and gave the credit to the well-advertised political patent
medicine taken just before the turn for the better came. For years the
National Policy or "N.P.," as its supporters termed it, had all the
vogue of a popular tonic.

The next task of the Government was to carry through in earnest the
building of the railway to the Pacific. For over a year Macdonald
persisted in Mackenzie's policy of government construction but with the
same slow and unsatisfactory results. Then an opportunity came to enlist
the services of a private syndicate. Four Canadians, Donald A. Smith, a
former Hudson's Bay Company factor, George Stephen, a leading merchant
and banker of Montreal, James J. Hill and Norman W. Kittson, owners of
a small line of boats on the Red River, had joined forces to revive a
bankrupt Minnesota railway.* They had succeeded beyond all parallel, and
the reconstructed road, which later developed into the Great Northern,
made them all rich overnight. This success whetted their ap