d upon to arrange the details of a provisional government for the
great arctic region of the Yukon, where remarkable gold discoveries were
attracting a considerable population from all parts of the world. An
attempt to build a short railway to facilitate communication with that
wild and distant country was defeated in the senate by a large majority.
The department of the interior has had necessarily to encounter many
difficulties in the administration of the affairs of a country so many
thousand miles distant. These difficulties have formed the subject of
protracted debates in the house of commons and have led to involved
political controversies which it would not be possible to explain
satisfactorily within the limits of this chapter.

In accordance with the policy laid down in 1897 by Mr. Fielding, the
finance minister, when presenting the budget, the Laurier government has
not deemed it prudent to make such radical changes in the protective or
"National Policy" of the previous administration as might derange the
business conditions of the Dominion, which had come to depend so
intimately upon it in the course of seventeen years, but simply to amend
and simplify it in certain particulars which would remove causes of
friction between the importers and the customs authorities, and at the
same time make it, as they stated, less burdensome in its operation. The
question of reciprocal trade between Canada and the United States had
for some time been disappearing in the background and was no longer a
dominant feature of the commercial policy of the Liberal party as it had
been until 1891, when its leaders were prepared under existing
conditions to enter into the fullest trade arrangements possible with
the country to the south. The illiberality of the tariff of the United
States with respect to Canadian products had led the Canadian people to
look to new markets, and especially to those of Great Britain, with whom
they were desirous, under the influence of a steadily growing imperial
spirit, to have the closest commercial relations practicable.
Consequently the most important feature of the Laurier government's
policy, since 1897, has been the preference given to British products in
Canada--a preference which now allows a reduction in the tariff of
33-1/3 per cent. on British imports compared with foreign goods. In
their endeavour, however, to give a preference to British imports, the
government was met at the outset by diffi