Protection there
vanished an awkward enemy of the connection between Canada and
Britain.[58] But Grey was unmistakably doctrinaire on the point.
Elgin warned him, again and again, of "the uneasy feeling which the
{286} free-trade policy of the mother country ... has tended to produce
in the colonial mind,"[59] and that uneasiness passed gradually over to
Britain. It would be to trespass unduly beyond the limits prescribed
in this essay to deal with the introduction of the Canadian tariff in
1858 and 1859; yet the statements of Galt who introduced the budget in
the latter year strike the reader now, as they must have struck the
British reader then, with a sense that the connection was practically
at an end: "The government of Canada cannot, through those feelings of
deference which they owe to the Imperial authorities, in any measure
waive or diminish the right of the people of Canada to decide for
themselves both as to the mode and extent to which taxation shall be
imposed.... The Imperial government are not responsible for the debts
and engagements of Canada. They do not maintain its judicial,
educational, or civil service. They contribute nothing to the internal
government of the country; and the Provincial Legislature, acting
through a ministry directly responsible to it, has to make provision
for all these wants. They must necessarily claim and exercise the
widest latitude, as to the nature, and {287} the extent of the burdens,
to be placed upon the industry of the people."[60] There was almost
everything to be said in favour of this enlightened selfishness; and
yet a growing coolness on the part of British legislators was, under
the circumstances, very comprehensible. It was all the more so,
because the innovations in Canada influenced British diplomacy in its
relations with the United States; and between 1854, the date of Elgin's
Reciprocity Treaty, and 1867, British statesmen learned some of the
curious ramifications of their original gift of autonomy to Canada. In
diplomacy as in economic relations, their appreciation of the value of
the connection did not increase.

Parallel with this disruptive tendency in the new economic policy,
another in military matters began to make itself felt. As Canada
received her successive grants of liberties, and ever new liberties,
the imperial authorities began to consider the advisability of
withdrawing imperial troops by degrees, and of leaving Canada to meet
the or