Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics

by John Wesley Dafoe

POLICIES THAT ENDURE

Sir Wilfrid fell; but his Imperial policies lived. During the campaign the old country Imperialists had been very busy from Rudyard Kipling down—or up—in lending aid to the forces fighting the Liberal government; and its defeat was the occasion for much rejoicing among them. Mr. A. Bonar Law, M. P., doubtless voiced their views when he predicted under the incoming regime, "a real advance towards the organic union of the Empire." All these hopes, like many which preceded them, were short-lived; for Sir Robert Borden, once he got his bearings, took over the Laurier policies and widened them. In that significant fact the clue to these policies is found. They were not personal to Laurier, owing their coolness towards perfervid Chamberlainism to his lack of English blood as his critics held; they were in fact national policies dictated by the necessities of the times. To the casual student of the development of Imperial relations for the decade following 1896, it might seem that the Liberal conception of an Empire evolving steadily into a league of free nations was only saved from destruction by the fortunate circumstance that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was during those years the representative of Canada at successive Imperial conferences; but this would be, perhaps, to put his services too high. Canada's public men have never failed her in the critical times in her history when attempts were made through ignorance or design to turn her aside from the high road to national sovereignty; as witness Gait in 1859, Blake in his long duel with Lord Carnarvon, Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885, when he resisted the premature demand for a Canadian contingent for service in the Soudan, Tupper in the early nineties when his vigorous resistance to the proposal that Canada should pay tribute for protection had something to do with the demise of the Imperial Federation League. Any man fit to be premier of Canada would have taken pretty much the position that Sir Wilfrid did. This does not in the least detract from the credit due Laurier. The task was his and he discharged it with tact, ability, patience and courage. For his services in holding their future open for them every British Dominion owes the memory of Laurier a statue in its parliament square.

PART THREE. FIFTEEN YEARS OF PREMIERSHIP

There have been prime ministers of Canada casually thrown up by the tide of events and as casually re-engulfed; but Wilfrid Laurier was not one of them. There may have been something accidental in his rise to leadership, but his capture of the premiership was a solid political achievement. The victory of June 23, 1896, crowned with triumph the daring strategy of the campaign. But popular opinion regarded the victory as a gift of the gods. The wheel of fortune spinning from the hands of fate had thrown into the high office of the premiership one about whose qualifications there was doubt even in the secret minds of many of his supporters. He was a man of charming manners and of gracious personality. His carriage on the platform and the grace and finish of his speaking had fascinated the public imagination. But what likelihood was there that these qualities would enable him to deal adequately with the harsh realities, the stubborn problems which he must face as premier? Most unlikely, it was generally agreed. The Conservatives, though profoundly chagrined at the trick fate had played upon them, looked forward with pleasurable expectation to the revenge that would be theirs when Laurier, political dilettante and amateur, took up the burden that had been too great for their own Ulysses. They foresaw a Laurier regime which for futility and brevity would take its place in history with the ill-starred prime ministership of Mackenzie. The average Liberal felt that the government, which would get its driving force and executive power from someone else—identity not yet revealed—would have in Laurier a most attractive and genial figurehead. These illusions long persisted, though there was little excuse for them on election night and still less a month later when the Laurier cabinet was in being.

To be a Rouge and to be in Montreal during the three weeks following the glorious 23rd of June was the height of felicity. After nearly 50 years of proscription and impotence in their own province, they were triumphant and dominant. Moreover, since they had supplied the majority which made possible the taking of office by the Liberals, they would be triumphant and dominant as well in the Dominion field. Among the election occurrences which they regarded as specially providential was the defeat of Tarte in Beauharnois. If he had been elected it might have been necessary for Laurier to do something for him, but now that he had fallen upon the glacis of the impregnable fortress he had elected to assail, who were they to repine over the doings of fate? "The Moor has done his work; the Moor can go!" Moreover, had he not been for long an inveterate Bleu? Had he not actually been the organizer of Bleu victory when Laurier experienced his memorable defeat in Drummond-Arthabaska in 1877? His defeat made it possible to have a simon-pure Rouge contingent from Quebec.

While they were thus indulging in roseate day-dreams the actual business of cabinetmaking was going forward, with Tarte at Laurier's right hand as chief adviser from Quebec. The writer has a very clear recollection of a long conversation which he had at that time with Tarte. Much of it was given up to picturesque and forthright denunciation by Tarte of the means by which he had been defeated in Beauharnois. The mill-owners at Valleyfield, he said, had lined up their operatives and had given them the option of voting for Bergeron or getting out. The worth to a country of an industrial system which makes political serfs of its workmen was vigorously challenged in language which had little resemblance to the harangues which led to Tarte's undoing six years later. From this he went on to speak of Laurier's qualities and the amazing ignorance of them shown even by his intimates of his own race. There had been much speculation in Montreal as to who should be the new high commissioner for Canada in London. Sir Donald A. Smith, who had been appointed in the last weeks of Conservative rule, would be, it was assumed, dismissed. Tarte scouted the idea that Smith would be disturbed. Laurier was not that kind of a man. He would not dismiss Smith; he would make friends with him. Sir Donald was a man of affairs, and so was Laurier; they would co-operate with one another. "These people do not understand Laurier; he has a governing mind; he wants to do things; he has plans; he will walk the great way of life with anyone of good intention who will join him." With much more to the same effect. To Tarte, who was his intimate, Laurier at this moment did not appear as one overcome with his destiny and drifting with the tide, but as the resolute captain of the ship, who knew where he wanted to go, had a fairly clear idea as to how to get there, and also knew whom he wanted with him on the voyage. Later on Tarte forgot about this.

THE MAKING OF THE GOVERNMENT

There was verification of Tarte's estimate in the job of cabinet-making turned out by Laurier in July. In building the government the lines of least resistance were not followed. A dozen men who deemed themselves sure of cabinet rank found themselves overlooked; five of fifteen portfolios went to men imported from provincial arenas without Dominion parliamentary experience. Laurier knew the kind of government he wanted and he provided himself with such a government by the direct method of getting the colleagues he desired wherever he could find them. No doubt he found plenty of employment for his sunny ways in placating his disappointed colleagues. In time there were consolation prizes for all, for this one a judgeship, for that one a lieutenant-governorship, for the next a life seat in the senate; the phalanx of fighting second-raters who had done valuable work in opposition, reinforcing and buttressing the work of the front benches disappeared gradually from parliament. And with those he chose he too had his way, as witness the side-tracking of Sir Richard Cartwright to the dignified but at the time relatively unimportant department of trade and commerce. Between Sir Richard and the Canadian manufacturers there was a blood feud. It was not Sir Wilfrid's intention to make the feud his own or even to agree to it being carried on by Sir Richard. He took for minister of finance, W. S. Fielding, who justified his choice by successfully steering the budget bark between Scylla and Charybdis for fourteen years in succession before the whirlpool finally sucked him down. Where Laurier went outside his following for colleagues he had equally definite ends to serve.

The care with which Laurier chose his colleagues, and his indifference to personal appeal, should have been proof sufficient to the public that he was a prime minister who looked forward and planned for the future. And the plan? Why to stay in power for the longest possible period of time. It is as natural for a government to want to stay in power as it is for a man to want to live; nor is there in this anything discreditable. A prime minister is sure that he desires to retain power in order that he may serve the country as no rival could conceivably serve it; and even if the desire fades and is replaced by a lively appreciation of the personal satisfactions which can be served by the office, no real prime minister notices the transformation. The ego and the country soon become interblended in his mind. A prime minister under the party system as we have had it in Canada is of necessity an egotist and autocrat. If he comes to office without these characteristics his environment equips him with them as surely as a diet of royal jelly transforms a worker into a queen bee.

Laurier saw that an efficient government, harmonious in its policies and ably led, would afford a contrast to the preceding administration that must forcibly impress the Canadian people. He, therefore created a government of all the talents. Anxious for discreet handling of the difficult fiscal problem he turned to Nova Scotia for W. S. Fielding. Foreseeing the possibility of grave constitutional problems arising he put the portfolio of justice into the hands of the wisest and most venerable of Liberals, Sir Oliver Mowat. Recognizing that a backward and stagnant west meant failure for his administration he placed the department of interior, which had become a veritable circumlocution office, under the direction of the ablest and most aggressive of western Liberal public men, Clifford Sifton. The time was to come when other values were to hold in relation to cabinet appointments; but in the beginning efficiency was the test, at least in intention. It was thus Laurier proposed in part to build foundations under his house that it might endure. And to insure that virtue should not lack its reward he proceeded to buttress the edifice by a second line of support.