The Canadian Dominion [54]
of the colony. He so far forsook the strait "Manchester School" of his upbringing as to support Macdonald's campaign for protection in 1878. But that was the limit of his adaptability. To the end he remained out of touch with Canadian feeling. His campaign for annexation, or for the reunion of the English-speaking peoples on this continent, as he preferred to call it, was able and persistent but moved only a narrow circle of readers. It was in vain that he offered the example of Scotland's prosperity after her union with her southern neighbor, or insisted that Canada was cut into four distinct and unrelated sections each of which could find its natural complement only in the territory to the south. Here and there an editor or a minor politician lent some support to his views, but the great mass of the people strongly condemned the movement. There was to be no going back to the parting of the ways: the continent north of Mexico was henceforth to witness two experiments in democracy, not one unwieldy venture.
Commercial union was a half-way measure which found more favor. A North American customs union had been supported by such public men as Stephen A. Douglas, Horace Greeley, and William H. Seward, by official investigators such as Taylor, Derby, and Larned, and by committees of the House of Representatives in 1862, 1876, 1880, and 1884. In Canada it had been endorsed before Confederation by Isaac Buchanan, the father of the protection movement, and by Luther Holton and John Young. Now for the first time it became a practical question. Erastus Wiman, a Canadian who had found fortune in the United States, began in 1887 a vigorous campaign in its favor both in Congress and among the Canadian public. Goldwin Smith lent his dubious aid, leading Toronto and Montreal newspapers joined the movement, and Ontario farmers' organizations swung to its support. But the agitation proved abortive owing to the triumph of high protection in the presidential election of 1888; and in Canada the red herring of the Jesuits' Estates controversy was drawn across the trail.
Yet the question would not down. The political parties were compelled to define their attitude. The Liberals had been defeated once more in the election of 1887, where the continuance of the National Policy and of aid to the Canadian Pacific had been the issue. Their leader, Edward Blake, had retired disheartened. His place had been taken by a young Quebec lieutenant, Wilfrid Laurier, who had won fame by his courageous resistance to clerical aggression in his own province and by his indictment of the Macdonald Government in the Riel issue. A veteran Ontario Liberal, Sir Richard Cartwright, urged the adoption of commercial union as the party policy. Laurier would not go so far, and the policy of unrestricted reciprocity was made the official programme in 1888. Commercial union had involved not only absolute free trade between Canada and the United States but common excise rates, a common tariff against the rest of the world, and the division of customs and excise revenues in some agreed proportion. Unrestricted reciprocity would mean free trade between the two countries, but with each left free to levy what rates it pleased on the products of other countries.
When in 1891 the time came round once more for a general election, it was apparent that reciprocity in some form would be the dominant issue. Though the Republicans were in power in the United States and though they had more than fulfilled their high tariff pledges in the McKinley Act, which hit Canadian farm products particularly hard, there was some chance of terms being made. Reciprocity, as a form of tariff bargaining, really fits in better with protection than with free trade, and Blaine, Harrison's Secretary of State, was committed to a policy of trade treaties and trade bargaining. In Canada the demand for the United States market had grown with increasing depression. The Liberals, with their policy of unrestricted reciprocity, seemed destined to reap the advantage of this rising tide of feeling. Then suddenly,
Commercial union was a half-way measure which found more favor. A North American customs union had been supported by such public men as Stephen A. Douglas, Horace Greeley, and William H. Seward, by official investigators such as Taylor, Derby, and Larned, and by committees of the House of Representatives in 1862, 1876, 1880, and 1884. In Canada it had been endorsed before Confederation by Isaac Buchanan, the father of the protection movement, and by Luther Holton and John Young. Now for the first time it became a practical question. Erastus Wiman, a Canadian who had found fortune in the United States, began in 1887 a vigorous campaign in its favor both in Congress and among the Canadian public. Goldwin Smith lent his dubious aid, leading Toronto and Montreal newspapers joined the movement, and Ontario farmers' organizations swung to its support. But the agitation proved abortive owing to the triumph of high protection in the presidential election of 1888; and in Canada the red herring of the Jesuits' Estates controversy was drawn across the trail.
Yet the question would not down. The political parties were compelled to define their attitude. The Liberals had been defeated once more in the election of 1887, where the continuance of the National Policy and of aid to the Canadian Pacific had been the issue. Their leader, Edward Blake, had retired disheartened. His place had been taken by a young Quebec lieutenant, Wilfrid Laurier, who had won fame by his courageous resistance to clerical aggression in his own province and by his indictment of the Macdonald Government in the Riel issue. A veteran Ontario Liberal, Sir Richard Cartwright, urged the adoption of commercial union as the party policy. Laurier would not go so far, and the policy of unrestricted reciprocity was made the official programme in 1888. Commercial union had involved not only absolute free trade between Canada and the United States but common excise rates, a common tariff against the rest of the world, and the division of customs and excise revenues in some agreed proportion. Unrestricted reciprocity would mean free trade between the two countries, but with each left free to levy what rates it pleased on the products of other countries.
When in 1891 the time came round once more for a general election, it was apparent that reciprocity in some form would be the dominant issue. Though the Republicans were in power in the United States and though they had more than fulfilled their high tariff pledges in the McKinley Act, which hit Canadian farm products particularly hard, there was some chance of terms being made. Reciprocity, as a form of tariff bargaining, really fits in better with protection than with free trade, and Blaine, Harrison's Secretary of State, was committed to a policy of trade treaties and trade bargaining. In Canada the demand for the United States market had grown with increasing depression. The Liberals, with their policy of unrestricted reciprocity, seemed destined to reap the advantage of this rising tide of feeling. Then suddenly,