Towards Great Britain it was specially prone to take an aggressive attitude. Still fresh was the memory of 1776 and 1812, fed by text-book rhetoric and thrown into relief by the absence of other foes. Still rankled the hostility of the official classes of Great Britain during the Civil War and Tory attacks upon American manners and American democracy. Irish-Americans in millions cherished a natural if sometimes foolishly directed hatred against the country that had misgoverned Erin and made it lose half its people. The rejection of Home Rule by the House of Commons in 1886, confirmed by the results of the general elections which followed, intensified this feeling. Canada, the nearest British territory, had to bear much of this ill-will, though she had no share of responsibility for its creation, just as she had borne the brunt of invasion in wars which were none of her making.
There were, however, other sources of trouble for which Canada was more directly responsible. She had followed the example of the United States in setting up a high tariff wall. Inevitably the adoption of protection by both countries led to friction. The spirit of which it was born and which in turn it nourished, the belief that one country found its gain in another's loss, made for jealousy, and the rankling sense on Canada's part that her policy had not succeeded made the feeling the sorer.
But the immediate occasion of the most serious difficulty was the revival of the northeastern fisheries dispute. The century-long conflict as to the privileges of American fishermen in Canadian and Newfoundland waters, under the Treaty of 1783 and the Convention of 1818, had been set at rest during the era of Reciprocity (1854-66) by opening Canadian fishing-grounds to Americans, practically in return for free admission of Canadian natural products to the United States. Then once more, by the Treaty of Washington in 1871, access to the inshore fisheries was bartered for free admission of fish and fish-oil plus a money compensation to be determined by a commission. The commission met at Halifax in 1877, Sir A. T. Galt representing Canada, and the award was set at $5,500,000 for the twelve years during which the treaty was to last. The United States condemned the award with much heat, and took occasion to abrogate the clause of the treaty on the earliest date for which notice could be given, July 1, 1885. For that season the fishing privileges were extended, but with the next year the whole dispute revived. The Canadian authorities insisted on restricting American fishermen rigidly to the letter of treaty privileges as Canada interpreted them. American fishing vessels were not only barred from fishing within the three-mile limit but were forbidden to enter a Canadian port to ship cargoes or for any other purpose, save for shelter, wood, water, or repairs. Several American boats were seized and condemned; and Canadian fishery cruisers patrolled the coasts, incessantly active. A storm of genuine if not informed indignation broke out in the United States. The action of the Canadian authorities was denounced as unneighbourly and their insistence on the letter of ancient treaties as pettifogging; and, with more justice, it was declared that the Canadian Government used the fishing privileges as a lever, or rather a club, to force the opening of the United States markets to all Canadian products.
President Cleveland sought a friendly solution by the appointment of a joint commission. Congress, more bellicose, passed unanimously (1887) a Retaliatory Act, empowering the president, if satisfied that American vessels were illegally or vexatiously harassed or restricted, to close the ports and waters of the United States against the vessels and products of any part of British North America. The president declined to fire this blunderbuss, and arranged for the commission on which Joseph Chamberlain, Sir Lionel Sackville-West, and Sir Charles Tupper were the British representatives. The draft treaty which the commission framed failed to pass the United States Senate, but a modus vivendi was arranged permitting American vessels port privileges upon payment of a licence fee. This, together with more considerate conduct on both sides, eased the tension.
Once Congress had taken the drastic step of threatening complete non-intercourse With Canada, a reaction set in, and many Americans began to consider whether some more pacific and thoroughgoing solution could not be found. Two were suggested, political union and commercial union.
The political union of the two democracies of the continent has always found advocates. In the United States many believed it was 'manifest destiny' that some day the Stars and Stripes should float from Panama to the Pole. At times Canadians here and there had echoed this belief. It seemed to them better to be annexed at one stroke than to be annexed piecemeal by exodus, at the rate of fifty or a hundred thousand Canadians a year. In St John and Halifax, in Montreal and Toronto, and on the Detroit border, a few voices now called for this remedy, which promised to give commercial prosperity and political security instead of commercial depression and sectional, racial, and religious strife. Yet they remained voices crying in the wilderness. As in 1849, when men of high rank in the Conservative party—notably three,[[1]] who are known in history as colleagues of Sir John Macdonald and one of them as prime minister of Canada—had joined with Quebec Rouges in prescribing the same remedy for Canada's ills, so now, in the late eighties, the deep instinct of the overwhelming mass of the people revolted from a step which meant renouncing the memories of the past and the hopes of the future. Imperial and national sentiment both fought against it. It was in vain that Goldwin Smith gave his life to the cause, preaching the example of the union between Scotland and England. It was in vain that British statesmen had shown themselves not averse to the idea. In 1869, when Senator Sumner proposed the cession of Canada in settlement of the Alabama claims, and Hamilton Fish, the American secretary of state, declared to the British ambassador that 'our claims were too large to be settled pecuniarily and sounded him about Canada,' the ambassador had replied that 'England did not wish to keep Canada, but could not part with it without the consent of the population.'[[2]] Wanted or not, the people of Canada had determined to stay in the Empire; and did stay until different counsels reigned in London. Even in cold-blooded and objective logic, Canada's refusal to merge her destinies with the Republic could be justified as best for the world, in that it made possible in North America two experiments in democracy; possible, too, the transformation of the British Empire into the most remarkable and hopeful of political combinations. But it was not such reasoned logic that prompted Canadians. They were moved by deeper instincts, prejudices, passions, hopes, loyalties. And in face of their practically solid opposition the solution of the 'Canadian Question' had to be sought elsewhere than in political union with the United States.
Commercial union, or a zollverein between Canada and the United States, involved absolute free trade between the two countries, common excise rates, a common customs tariff on the seaboard, and the pooling and dividing according to population of the revenue. This was not a new proposal; it had been suggested time and again in both countries, from its advocacy by Ira Gould of Montreal in 1852 down to its advocacy by Wharton Barker of Philadelphia—a strong opponent of reciprocity—in 1886. But now, for the first time, the conjuncture of political and economic conditions on both sides of the line ensured it serious attention; and, for the first time, in Erastus Wiman, one of the many Canadians who had won fortune in the United States, the movement found an enthusiastic and unflagging leader. In 1887 Congressman Butterworth introduced a bill providing for free entrance of all Canadian products into the United States whenever Canada permitted the free entrance of all American products, and received a notable measure of support. In Ontario, under the leadership of Erastus Wiman and Goldwin Smith and Valencay Fuller, the latter a leading stock breeder, the movement won remarkably quick and widespread recognition: in a few months it had been endorsed by over forty Farmers' Institutes and rejected by only three. Much of this success was due to the powerful and persistent advocacy of leading Toronto and Montreal newspapers. Needless to say, the movement met with instant and vigorous opposition from the majority of the manufacturers and from the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The movement had begun entirely outside the ordinary party lines, but its strength soon compelled the party leaders to take a stand for or against it. Neither party endorsed it, though both went far towards it. The Conservatives had long been in favour of a measure of free trade with the United States. The National Policy had been adopted partly in the hope that 'reciprocity in tariffs' would compel the United States to assent to 'reciprocity in trade,' and many who, like Goldwin Smith, had voted for protection in 1878, now called upon the Government to follow its own logic. But commercial union, with its discrimination against Great Britain and its joint tariffs made at Washington, did not appeal to Sir John Macdonald and his following. They were, however, prepared to go far. More than half the time of the Fisheries Commission of 1887, which sat for three months, was spent on tariff matters; and Sir Charles Tupper made the most thoroughgoing offer of free trade with the United States ever made by any Canadian Government—'an unrestricted offer of reciprocity.' Congress, however, would not consent to discuss trade under pressure of fishery threats, and no terms were made.
The Liberal party was equally uncertain as to its policy. It was much more strongly in favour of freer trade than its opponents, and being in opposition, would be more likely to take up a policy opposed to the status quo. Sir Richard Cartwright in October 1887 came out clearly in favour of commercial union. What of the new leader of the party?