Fifteen years of Liberal rule in Canada furnish a complete field for the study of the party system under our system. In 1896 a party stale in spirit, corrupt and inefficient, went out of office and was replaced by a government which had been bred to virtue by eighteen years of political penury. It entered upon its tasks with vigor, ability and enthusiasm. It had its policies well defined and it set briskly about carrying them out. A deft, shrewd modification of the tariff helped to loosen the stream of commerce which after years of constriction began again to flow freely. There was a courageous and considered increase in expenditures for productive objects. A constructive, vigorously executed immigration policy brought an ever expanding volume of suitable settlers to Western Canada which in turn fed the springs of national prosperity. This impulse lasted through the first parliamentary term and largely through the second, though by then disruptive tendencies were appearing. By its third term the government was mainly an office-holding administration on the defensive against an opposition of growing effectiveness. And then in the fourth term there was an attempt at a rally before the crash. The treatment of the tariff question, always a governing factor in Canadian politics even when apparently not in play, is an illustration of the government's progress towards stagnation. The 1897 tariff revision "could not," says Professor Skelton, "have been bettered as a first preliminary step toward free trade." "Unfortunately," he adds, "it proved to be the last step save for the 1911 attempt to secure reciprocity." After 1897 Laurier's policy was to discourage the revival of the tariff question. Tarte's offence was partly that he did not realize that sleeping dogs should be allowed to lie. "It is not good politics to try to force the hand of the government," wrote Laurier to Tarte. And he added: "The question of the tariff is in good shape if no one seeks to force the issue." With Tarte's ejection there followed nearly eight years during which real tariff discussion was taboo. Then under the pressure of the rising western resentment against the tariff burdens, the government turned to reciprocity as a means by which they could placate the farmers without disturbing or alarming the manufacturers. By what seemed extraordinary good luck the United States president, Republican in politics, was by reason of domestic political developments, in favor of a reciprocal trade agreement. It seemed as though the Laurier government as by a miracle would renew its youth and vigor; but the situation, temporarily favorable, was so fumbled that it ended not in triumph but in defeat.

The disasters of the Laurier railway policy—or rather lack of policy—must always weigh heavily against the undoubted achievements of the Laurier regime. A period of marked national expansion gave rise to all manner of railway ambitions and schemes, and Laurier lacked the practical capacity, foresight and determination to fit them into a general, well-thought-out, practicable scheme of development. Again it was a case of letting the pressure of events determine policy, in place of policy controlling events. He could not deny the Grand Trunk's ambitions, but he obliged it to submit to modifications demanded by political pressure which turned its project, perhaps practicable in its original form, into a huge, ill-thought-out transcontinental enterprise. Equally he could not hold the ambitions of Mann and McKenzie in check. The advisability of a merger of these rival railway groups was obvious at the time, but Laurier let them each have their head, dividing government assistance between them, with resulting ruin to both and bequeathing to his successors a problem for which no solution has yet been found.

PERSONAL GOVERNMENT

During the years of his premiership Laurier rose steadily in personal power and in prestige. It is in keeping with the genius of our party system that the leader who begins as the chosen chief of his associates proceeds by stages, if he has the necessary qualities, to a position of dominance; the republic is transformed into an absolute monarchy. In the government of 1896 Laurier was only primus inter pares; his associates were in the main contemporary with him in point of years and public service. Their places had been won by party recognition of their services and abilities. In the government of 1911 Laurier was the veteran commander of a company which he had himself recruited. Of his 1896 colleagues but few remained, and of these only Mr. Fielding had kept his relative rank in the party hierarchy. All his remaining colleagues had entered public life long subsequent to his accession the Liberal leadership. Not one had been in parliament prior to 1896. Their entrance into public life, their steps in promotion, their admittance to the government were all subject to his approval, where they were not actually due to his will. To Laurier's authority they yielded unquestioning obedience, and with it went a deep affection inspired and made sure by the personal consideration and kindliness that marked his relations with them. Under these conditions, men of strong, individual views and ambitions, with reforming temperaments and a desire to force issues, did not find the road to the Privy Council open to them; different qualities held the password.

In 1908 Sir Wilfrid, when a discerning electorate had deprived him of a colleague whose political incapacity had been completely demonstrated, became a party to a deal by which he re-entered parliament. An old friend took the liberty of asking Sir Wilfrid why he wanted this associate back in the cabinet, only to be told that "So-and-So never made any trouble for me." At least twice in the last four years of his regime Sir Wilfrid, conscious of the waning energies of his party, took advice outside of his immediate circle as to what should be done; on both occasions he rejected advice tendered to him because this involved the inclusion in the cabinet of personalities that might have disturbed the charmed serenity of that circle. Sir Wilfrid preferred to have things as they were, perhaps because his sense of reality warned him that, so far as the duration of time during which he would hold office was concerned, there probably would not be any great difference between a government wholly agreeable to him and one reconstituted to meet the demand of the younger and more vigorous elements in the party. In 1909, in a letter to a supporter who had lost the party nomination for his constituency, he gave premonition of his own fate: "What has happened to you in your county will happen to me before long in Canada. Let us submit with good grace to the inevitable."

The inevitable end in the ordinary course of events would have been the going on of the party until it died of dry rot and decay, as the Liberals had already died in Ontario; but fortunately, both for the party and for Laurier's subsequent fame—though it may not have seemed so at the time—emergence of the reciprocity question gave it an opportunity to fall on an issue which seemed to link up the end of the regime with its heroic beginnings and to reinvest the party with some of its lost glamor.

LAURIER: DEFEAT AND ANTI-CLIMAX

THE defeat of the Liberals in September, 1911, raised sharply the question of the party's future and the leadership under which it would face that future. Speaking at St. Jerome toward the close of the campaign Sir Wilfrid had stated positively that if defeated he would retire. This declaration of intention—no doubt at the moment sincerely made—was designed to check the falling away from Laurier's leadership in Quebec, which was becoming more noticeable as election day drew near. But the appeal was ineffective.. The effective opposition to Laurier in Quebec came not from Borden or from Monk, the official leader of the French Conservatives, but from Bourassa. Laurier and his lieutenants fought desperately, but in vain, to break the strengthening hold of the younger man on the sympathies of the French electors. In Quebec the custom of the joint open air political meeting is still popular, and at such a concourse in St. Hyacinthe, an old Liberal stronghold, Sir Wilfrid's colleagues, Lemieux and Beland, met a notable defeat at the hands of Bourassa—an incident which clearly revealed how the winds were blowing. Bourassa, fanatically "nationalist" in his convictions and free from any political necessity to consider the reactions elsewhere of his doctrines, was outbidding Sir Wilfrid in the latter's own field. Laurier received the news of the electoral result in a hall in Quebec East, surrounded by the electors of the constituency which had been faithful to him for 40 years. He accepted the blow with the tranquil fortitude which was his most notable personal characteristic; but the feature in the disaster which must have made the greatest demand upon his stoicism was this indication that his old surbordinate and one time friend was—apparently—about to supplant him in the leadership of his own people. The election figures showed that whereas Laurier had carried 49 seats in Quebec in 1896, 58 in 1900, 54 in 1904 and again in 1908, he had been successful in only 38 constituencies against 27 for the Conservatives and Nationalists combined. Laurier, at the moment of his defeat, was within two months of entering upon his 70th year. He had been 40 years in public life; for 24 years leader of his party; for 15 years prime minister. He had had a long and distinguished career; and he had gone out of office upon an issue which, with confidence, he counted upon time to vindicate. He had long cherished a purpose to write a history of his times. The moment was, therefore, opportune for retirement; and it must be assumed that he gave some thought to the advisability or otherwise of living up to his St. Jerome pledge. But neither his own inclination nor the desire of his followers pointed to retirement; and the next session of parliament found him in the seat he had occupied twenty years before as leader of the opposition. The party demand for his continuance in the leadership was virtually unanimous. There was only one possible successor to Sir Wilfrid—Mr. Fielding. But he was not in parliament. Also he was in disfavour as the general whose defensive plan of campaign had ended in disaster. His name suggested "Reciprocity"—a word the Liberals were quite willing, for the time being, to forget. He was left to lie where he had fallen. For some years he lived in political obscurity, and it was only the emergence of the Unionist movement which made possible his re-entrance to public life and his later career.

THE REVIVAL OF LIBERAL HOPES

When Sir Wilfrid resumed the leadership after the formality of tendering his resignation to the party caucus it meant, in fact, that he intended to die in the saddle. Thereafter Sir Wilfrid talked much about the inexpediency of continuing in the leadership, and often used language foreshadowing his resignation—indeed the letters quoted by Professor Skelton in the latter chapters of his book abound in these intimations—but these came to be regarded by those in the know as portents: implying an intention to insist upon policies to which objections were likely to develop within the party.