to call a conference to discuss matters of
trade and defense. Every self-governing colony sent representatives to
this first Colonial Conference; but little immediate fruit came of its
sessions. In 1894 a second Conference was held at Ottawa, mainly to
discuss intercolonial preferential trade. Only a beginning had been
made, but already the Conferences were coming to be regarded as meetings
of independent governments and not, as the federationists had hoped,
the germ of a single dominating new government. The Imperial Federation
League began to realize that it was making little progress and dissolved
in 1893.

Preferential trade was the alternative path to imperial federation.
Macdonald had urged it in 1879 when he found British resentment strong
against his new tariff. Again, ten years later, when reciprocity with
the United States was finding favor in Canada, imperialists urged the
counterclaims of a policy of imperial reciprocity, of special tariff
privileges to other parts of the Empire. The stumbling-block in the
way of such a policy was England's adherence to free trade. For the
protectionist colonies preference would mean only a reduction of an
existing tariff. For the United Kingdom, however, it would mean a
complete reversal of fiscal policy and the abandonment of free trade
for protection in order to make discrimination possible. Few Englishmen
believed such a reversal possible, though every trade depression revived
talk of "fair trade" or tariffs for bargaining purposes. A further
obstacle to preferential trade lay in the existence of treaties with
Belgium and Germany, concluded in the sixties, assuring them all tariff
privileges granted by any British colony to Great Britain or to sister
colonies. In 1892 the Liberal Opposition in Canada indicated the line
upon which action was eventually to be taken by urging a resolution in
favor of granting an immediate and unconditional preference on British
goods as a step toward freer trade and in the interest of the Canadian
consumer.

Little came of looking either to London or to Washington. Until the
middle nineties Canada remained commercially stagnant and politically
distracted. Then came a change of heart and a change of policy. The
Dominion realized at last that it must work out its own salvation.

In March, 1891, Sir John Macdonald was returned to office for the sixth
time since Confederation, but he was not destined to enjoy power long.
The winter campaign