In parliament, for all the eloquence of Laurier and Blake, the Government had its way. In the country the controversy raged in more serious fashion. In Quebec Honoré Mercier, the brilliant, tempestuous leader of the Liberals, carried on a violent agitation, and in January 1887 rode the whirlwind into power. Wild and bitter words were many in the contest, and they found more than an answer in Ontario, where the leading ministerial organ, the Mail, declared it better to 'smash Confederation into its original fragments' rather than yield to French dictation.
HONORÉ MERCIER
From a photograph
The general elections, held in February 1887, proved that in Ontario the guilt of Riel was more to the fore than the misdeeds of the Government, and the Conservatives lost only two seats. On the other hand, the Liberals gained less in Quebec in the Dominion contest, where the Riel question was a legitimate issue, than in the provincial contest, where it properly had no place. The influence of the Church, though now transferred to Mercier in provincial politics, remained on the side of Sir John Macdonald in Dominion politics. Counting on the Liberal side the former Conservatives who had deserted the Government, the returns showed the province about equally divided; but after it was seen that Sir John was again in power, several of the wanderers returned to his fold, influenced by his personal ascendancy or by the loaves and fishes of patronage and office.
[[1]] See The Railway Builders, chap. viii.
[[2]] Indians in the eastern provinces, however, were given a vote. This gave rise to one of the most artful, yet amusingly simple, electioneering documents on record. In the Haldimand, Ontario, election of 1891 the Conservative candidate, Dr W. H. Montague, afterwards minister of Agriculture, had the following circular distributed on the Indian Reserve, with the royal coat of arms at the top:
FOR INDIANS ONLY