da. He took a great Cobden party
from Edward Blake and made it almost protectionist, Imperial and his
own. He grafted a sort of Liberalism on to polyglot nationalities. In
about the same tenure of power he created a personal ascendancy the
equal of Macdonald's, in a nation almost twice as big and much more
complex. In ten years he changed the face of Canada as no Premier had
ever done before or ever can do again. He was looked at in Imperial
London as though he were the joint picturesque descendant of Wolfe and
Montcalm, with a mandate to make Canadian Liberalism an instrument of
Empire, a bi-racial Government a final proof of the eternal wisdom of
the British North America Act, and a measure of reciprocity a safeguard
of Anglo-American entente.

So the son of the village surveyor from the tin-spired parish of St.
Lin had made himself very nearly monarch of all he surveyed, with the
notion that his right there was none to dispute. Sprung from the most
backward province in Confederation, he pushed Canada forward with
hectic speed, not counting the cost, nor caring what the end might be,
so long as he died Premier of a prosperous nation and therefore happy.

At about the age of sixty a reaction came over Laurier; first
noticeable in less enthusiasm and more reticence at the Imperial
Conferences. The French-Canadian who had lost a segment of his
idolatrous following in Quebec because of clashes with the clergy and
the sending of a contingent to the South African War, began to resist
the cold machinations of the Chamberlain group. He began to see
Empire, not as a commonwealth of democracies, but as domination from
Downing Street. At home he was shrewd to observe that the Canada of
his own domination was a complex of many "nationals," only a few of
which were historically rooted in the Anglo-Saxon idea. He saw that
the bigger half of this Canada was arising in the West, which he
believed he had truly because politically created; and the West had but
a slender minority of people to whom the Maple Leaf meant anything.

If the party which he also had recreated into a Laurier Liberal party
was to continue dominating Canada until white-plumed Laurier had
finished his work, it must be by a stronger leverage than Imperialism.
He had managed to hold Quebec, which now thanks to himself and Lomer
Gouin, was almost solidly Liberal. The prairie farmers he must not
lose. And the grain growers were not keen about an England