[[1]] After 1887 he rarely, and after 1892 never, appeared in court.
[[2]] Plain Facts regarding the Disallowance of Manitoba Railway Charters, by the Winnipeg Board of Trade.
CHAPTER VI
LOOKING TO WASHINGTON
Canada and the States—The fisheries dispute—Political union—Commercial union—Unrestricted reciprocity—Jesuits' estates—Unrestricted reciprocity
For desperate ills, desperate remedies. It is little wonder that policies looking to revolutionary change in political or commercial relations now came to take strong hold on the public mind. To many it appeared that the experiment in Canadian nationality had failed. Why not, then, frankly admit the failure and seek full political incorporation with either of the great centres of the English-speaking people, of whose political prestige and commercial success there was no question? Annexation to the United States, Imperial Federation, with a central parliament in the United Kingdom, each found a small but earnest company of supporters. Or, if the mass of the people shrank from one and held the other an impracticable dream, why not seek the closest possible commercial tie with either nation? Thus Commercial Union, or a zollverein between Canada and the United States, and Imperial Preferential Trade, or a zollverein between Canada and the United Kingdom and the other parts of the British Empire, came into discussion. What British and American conditions and opinion met these Canadian movements, and what changes were made in the programmes first urged, may next be reviewed. Canadian relations with the United States will be noted first.
In the decade from 1886 to 1896, when the Venezuela episode opened a valve for the steam to blow off, the relations between Canada and the United States were continuously at high tension. It was an era of friction and pinpricks, of bluster and retaliation. The United States was not in a conciliatory mood. It was growing in wealth and numbers and power, in unprecedented ways. Its people were one and all intensely proud of their country and satisfied with themselves. The muckraker had not yet lifted his voice in the land. The millionaire was still an object of pride and emulation, Exhibit A in the display of American superiority over all creation. No foreign danger threatened, no foreign responsibility restrained the provincial swagger. In short, the United States was 'feeling its oats.'