h-tariff
party--both had repeatedly sent official and unofficial emissaries to
Washington seeking tariff concessions. Tariff concessions were a plank
in the Liberal platform from the days of Alexander MacKenzie. They
were not a plank in the platform of the Conservative party for the sole
reason that the high tariff on the American side forced a high tariff
in self-defense on the Canadian side. Close readers of Sir John
Macdonald's life must have been amazed to learn that one of his very
first visits to Washington--contemporaneous with the Civil War period,
when the United States were just launching out on a high-tariff
policy--was for the purpose of seeking tariff favors for Canada.
Failing to obtain even a favorable hearing, he observed the high-tariff
trend at Washington, took a leaf out of his rival's book and returned
to Canada to launch the high-tariff policy that dominated the Dominion
for thirty years. Alexander MacKenzie, Blake, Mowat, George Brown,
Laurier, Cartwright, Fielding--all the dyed-in-the-wool ultra Whigs of
the Liberal party--practically held their party together for the thirty
lean years out-of-office by promises and repeated promises of
reciprocity with the United States the instant they came into office.
They never seemed to doubt that the instant they did come into office
and proffered reciprocity to the United States the offer would be
accepted and reciprocated. It may be explained that all these old-line
Liberals from MacKenzie to Laurier were free-traders of the
Cobden-Bright school. They believed in free trade not only as an
economic policy but as a religion to prevent the plundering of the poor
by the rich, of the many by the few. One has only to turn to the back
files of the _Montreal Witness_ and _Toronto Globe_ from 1871 to
1895--the two Liberal organs that voiced the extreme free-trade
propaganda--to find this political note emphasized almost as a
fanatical religion. The high-tariff party were not only morally wrong;
they were predestinedly damned. I remember that in my own home both
organs were revered next to the Bible, and this free-trade doctrine was
accepted as unquestionably as the Shorter Catechism.

II

Well--Laurier came to power; and he gathered into his Cabinet all the
grand old guard free-traders still alive. As soon as the Manitoba
School Question was settled Laurier put his Manchester school of
politics into active practice by granting tariff concessions on Br