Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics by J. W. Dafoe
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J. W. Dafoe >> Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics
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7 LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
By J. W. DAFOE
THOMAS ALLEN
PUBLISHER, TORONTO
Copyright, Canada, 1922 by Thomas Allen
Printed in Canada
DEDICATION:
TO E. H. MACKLIN
IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF A CONSTANT FRIENDSHIP.
PREFACE
The four articles which make up this volume were originally published
in successive issues of the Monthly Book Review of the Manitoba Free
Press and are herewith assembled in book form in response to what
appears to be a somewhat general request that they be made available
in a more permanent form.
J. W. D.
October 13 1922.
CONTENTS
PART 1. LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
PART 2. LAURIER AND EMPIRE RELATIONSHIPS
Part 3. FIFTEEN YEARS OF PREMIERSHIP
LAURIER: A STUDY IN CANADIAN POLITICS
THE CLIMB TO POWER.
THE life story of Laurier by Oscar D. Skelton is the official
biography of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Official biographies of public men
have their uses; they supply material for the definitive biography
which in the case of a great man is not likely to be written by one
who knew him in the flesh. An English public man, who was also a
novelist and poet, wrote:
"Ne'er of the living can the living judge,
Too blind the affection or too fresh the grudge."
The limitation is equally true in the case of one like Sir Wilfrid
Laurier who, though dead, will be a factor of moment in our politics
for at least another generation. Professor Skelton's book is
interesting and valuable, but not conclusive. The first volume is a
political history of Canada from the sixties until 1896, with
Laurier in the setting at first inconspicuously but growing to
greatness and leadership. For the fifteen years of premiership the
biographer is concerned lest Sir Wilfrid should not get the fullest
credit for whatever was achieved; while in dealing with the period
after 1911, constituting the anti-climax of Laurier's career, Mr.
Skelton is avowedly the alert and eager partisan, bound to find his
hero right and all those who disagreed with him wrong. Sir Wilfrid
Laurier is described in the preface as "the finest and simplest
gentleman, the noblest and most unselfish man it has ever been my
good fortune to know;" and the work is faithfully devoted to the
elucidation of this theme. Men may fail to be heroes to their valets
but they are more successful with their biographers. The final
appraisement of Sir Wilfrid, to be written perhaps fifty years hence
by some tolerant and impartial historian, will probably not be an
echo of Prof. Skelton's judgment. It will perhaps put Sir Wilfrid
higher than Prof. Skelton does and yet not quite so high; an abler
man but one not quite so preternaturally good; a man who had
affinities with Macchiavelli as well as with Sir Galahad.
The Laurier of the first volume is an appealing, engaging and most
attractive personality. There was about his earlier career something
romantic and compelling. In almost one rush he passed from the
comparative obscurity of a new member in 1874 to the leadership of
the French Liberals in 1877; and then he suffered a decline which
seemed to mark him as one of those political shooting stars which
blaze in the firmament for a season and then go black; like Felix
Geoffrion who, though saluted by Laurier in 1874 as the coming
leader, never made any impress upon his times. A political accident,
fortunate for him, opened the gates again to a career; and he set
his foot upon a road which took him very far.
The writer made acquaintance with Laurier in the Dominion session of
1884. He was then in his forty-third year; but in the judgment of
many his career was over. His interest in politics was, apparently,
of the slightest. He was deskmate to Blake, who carried on a
tremendous campaign that session against the government's C. P. R.
proposals. Laurier's political activities consisted chiefly of being
an acting secretary of sorts to the Liberal leader. He kept his
references in order; handed him Hansards and blue-books in turn;
summoned the pages to clear away the impedimenta and to keep the
glass of water replenished--little services which it was clear he
was glad to do for one who engaged his ardent affection and
admiration. There were memories in the house of Laurier's eloquence;
but memories only. During this session he was almost silent. The
tall, courtly figure was a familiar sight in the chamber and in the
library--particularly in the library, where he could be found every
day ensconced in some congenial alcove; but the golden voice was
silent. It was known that his friends were concerned about his
health.
LAURIER AND THE RIEL AGITATION
The "accident" which restored Laurier to public life and opened up
for him an extraordinary career was the Riel rebellion of 1885. In
the session of 1885, the rebellion being then in progress, he was
heard from to some purpose on the subject of the ill treatment of
the Saskatchewan half-breeds by the Dominion government. The
execution of Riel in the following November changed the whole course
of Canadian politics. It pulled the foundations from under the
Conservative party by destroying the position of supremacy which it
had held for a generation in the most Conservative of provinces and
condemned it to a slow decline to the ruin of to-day; and it
profoundly affected the Liberal party, giving it a new orientation
and producing the leader who was to make it the dominating force in
Canadian politics. These things were not realized at the time, but
they are clear enough in retrospect. Party policy, party discipline,
party philosophy are all determined by the way the constituent
elements of the party combine; and the shifting from the Conservative
to the Liberal party of the political weight of Quebec, not as the
result of any profound change of conviction but under the influence
of a powerful racial emotion, was bound to register itself in time
in the party outlook and morale. The current of the older tradition
ran strong for some time, but within the space of about twenty years
the party was pretty thoroughly transformed. The Liberal party of
to-day with its complete dependence upon the solid support it gets
in Quebec is the ultimate result of the forces which came into play
as the result of the hanging of Riel.
After the lapse of so many years there is no need for lack of candor
in discussing the events of 1885. To put it plainly Riel's fate
turned almost entirely upon political considerations. Which was the
less dangerous course,--to reprieve him or let him hang? The issue
was canvassed back and forth by the distracted ministry up to the
day before that fixed for the execution when a decision was reached
to let the law take its course. The feeling in Quebec in support of
the commutation was so intense and overwhelming that it was accepted
as a matter of course that Riel would be reprieved; and the news of
the contrary decision was to them, as Professor Skelton says,
"unbelievable." The actual announcement of the hanging was a match
to a powder magazine. That night there were mobs on the streets of
Montreal and Sir John Macdonald was burned in effigy in Dominion
square. On the following Sunday forty thousand people swarmed around
the hustings on Champ de Mars and heard the government denounced in
every conceivable term of verbal violence by speakers of every tinge
of political belief. This outpouring of a common indignation with
its obliteration of all the usual lines of demarcation was the
result of the "wounding of the national self-esteem" by the flouting
of the demand for leniency, as it was put by La Minerve. Mercier put
it still more strongly when he declared that "the murder of Riel
was a declaration of war upon French Canadian influence in
Confederation." A binding cement for this union of elements
ordinarily at war was sought for in the creation of the "parti
national" which a year later captured the provincial Conservative
citadel at Quebec and turned it over to Honore Mercier. This violent
racial movement raged unchecked in the provincial arena, but in the
federal field it was held in leash by Laurier. That he saw the
possibilities of the situation is not to be doubted. He took part in
the demonstration on Champ de Mars and in his speech 'made a
declaration--"Had I been born on the banks of the Saskatchewan I
myself would have shouldered a musket"--which riveted nation-wide
attention upon him. Laurier followed this by his impassioned apology
for the halfbreeds and their leader in the House of Commons, of
which deliverance Thomas White, of the assailed ministry, justly
said: "It was the finest parliamentary speech ever pronounced in the
parliament of Canada since Confederation." In the debate on the
execution of Riel all the orators of parliament took part. It was
the occasion for one of Blake's greatest efforts. Sir John Thompson,
in his reply to Blake, revealed himself to parliament and the
country as one worthy of crossing swords with the great Liberal
tribune. But they and all the other "big guns" of the Commons were
thrown into complete eclipse by Laurier's performance. It is easy to
recall after the lapse of thirty-six years the extraordinary
impression which that speech made upon the great audience which
heard it--a crowded House of Commons and the public galleries packed
to the roof.
In the early winter of 1886-7 Laurier went boldly into Ontario
where, addressing great audiences in Toronto, London and other
points, he defended his position and preferred his indictment
against the government. This was Laurier's first introduction to
Ontario, under circumstances which, while actually threatening, were
in reality auspicious. It was at once an exhibition of moral and
physical courage and a manifestation of Laurier's remarkable
qualities as a public speaker. Within a few months Laurier passed
from the comparative obscurity to which he had condemned himself by
his apparent indifference to politics to a position in public life
where he divided public attention and interest with Edward Blake and
Sir John Macdonald. When a few months later Blake, in a rare fit of
the sulks, retired to his tent, refusing to play any longer with
people who did not appreciate his abilities, Laurier succeeded to
the leadership--apparently upon the nomination of Blake, actually at
the imperious call of those inescapable forces and interests which
men call Destiny.
LEADERSHIP AND THE ROAD TO IT.
Laurier, then in his 46th year, became leader of the Liberal party
in June, 1887. It was supposedly a tentative experimental choice;
but the leadership thus begun ended only with his death in February,
1919, nearly thirty-two years later. Laurier was a French Canadian
of the ninth generation. His first Canadian ancestor, Augustin
Hebert, was one of the little band of soldier colonists who, under
the leadership of Maisonneuve founded Montreal in 1641. Hebert's
granddaughter married a soldier of the regiment Carignan-Salieres,
Francois Cotineau dit Champlaurier. The Heberts were from Normandy,
Cotineau from Savoy. From this merging of northern and southern
French strains the Canadian family of Laurier resulted; this name
was first assumed by the grandson of the soldier ancestor. The
record of the first thirty years of Wilfrid Laurier's life was
indistinguishable from that of scores of other French-Canadian
professional men. Born in the country (St. Lin, Nov. 20, 1841) of
parents in moderate circumstances; educated at one of the numerous
little country colleges; a student at law in Montreal; a young and
struggling lawyer, interested in politics and addicted upon occasion
to political journalism.--French-Canadians by the hundreds have
travelled that road. A fortunate combination of circumstances took
him out of the struggle for a place at the Montreal bar and gave
him a practice in the country combined with the editorship of a
Liberal weekly, a position which made him at once a figure of some
local prominence. Laurier's personal charm and obvious capacity for
politics marked him at once for local leadership. At the age of 30
he was sent to the Quebec legislature as representative of the
constituency of Drummond and Arthabaska; and three years later he
went to Ottawa. The rapid retirement of the Rouge leaders, Dorion
and Fournier to the bench and Letellier to the lieutenant-governorship
of Quebec, opened the way for early promotion, and in 1877
he entered the cabinet of Alex. Mackenzie and assumed at the
same time the leadership of the French Liberals. Defeated in
Drummond-Arthabaska upon seeking re-election he was taken to its
heart by Quebec East and continued to represent that constituency
for an unbroken period of forty years. He went out of office with
Mackenzie in 1878, and thereafter his career which had begun so
promisingly dwindled almost to extinction until the events already
noted called him back to the lists and opened for him the doors of
opportunity.
When Wilfrid Laurier went to Montreal in 1861 he began the study of
law in the office of Rodolphe Laflamme, a leading figure in the
Rouge political group; and he joined L'Institut Canadien already far
advanced in the struggle with the church which was later to result
in open warfare. Those two acts revealed his political affiliations
and fixed the environment in which he was to move during the plastic
twenties. Ten years had passed since a group of ardent young men,
infected with the principles and enthusiasm of 1848, of which
Papineau returning from exile in Paris was the apostle, had stormed
the constituencies of Lower Canada and had appeared in the
parliament of Canada as a radical, free-thinking, ultra-Democratic
party, bearing proudly the badge of "Rouge"; and the passage of time
was beginning to temper their views with a tinge of sobriety. The
church, however, had them all in her black books and Bishop Bourget,
that incomparable zealot and bigot, was determined to destroy them
politically and spiritually, to whip them into submission. The
struggle raged chiefly in the sixties about L'Institut Canadien,
frowned upon by the church because it had books in its library which
were banned by the Index and because it afforded a free forum for
discussion. When Confederation cut the legislative connection
between Upper and Lower Canada the church felt itself free to
proceed to extremes in the Catholic province of Quebec and embarked
upon that campaign of political proscription which ultimately
reached a point where even the Rome of Pius IX. felt it necessary to
intervene.
In this great battle for political and intellectual freedom the
young Laurier played his part manfully. He boldly joined L'Institut
Canadien, though it lay under the shadow of Bishop Bourget's
minatory pastoral; and became an active member and officer. He was
one of a committee which tried unavailingly to effect an
understanding with Bishop Bourget. When he left Montreal in 1866 he
was first vice-president of the Institute. His native caution and
prudence and his natural bent towards moderation and accommodation
enabled him to play a great and growing, though non-spectacular,
part in the struggle against the church's pretensions. As his
authority grew in the party he discouraged the excesses in theory
and speech which invited the Episcopal thunders; even in his
earliest days his radicalism was of a decidedly Whiggish type and
his political color was several shades milder than the fiery red of
Papineau, Dorion and Laflamme. Under his guidance the Rouge party
was to be transformed in outlook, mentality and convictions into
something very different indeed; but this was still far in the
future. But towards the church's pretensions to control the
political convictions of its adherents he presented an unyielding
front. On the eve of his assumption of the leadership of the French
Liberals he discussed at Quebec, June 1877, the question of the
political relations between church and state and the rights of the
individual in one of his most notable addresses. In this he
vindicated, with eloquence and courage, the right of the individual
to be both Catholic and Liberal, and challenged the policy of
clerical intimidation which had made the leaders of the church
nothing but the tools and chore-boys of Hector Langevin, the Tory
leader in the province. It may rightly be assumed that it was
something more than a coincidence that not long after the delivery
of this speech, Rome put a bit in the mouth of the champing Quebec
ecclesiastics. This remained Laurier's most solid achievement up to
the time when he was called to the leadership of the Dominion
Liberal party.
DOUBTS AND HESITATIONS
Laurier's accession to leadership caused doubt and heart-burnings
among the leaders of Ontario Liberalism. Still under the influence
of the Geo. Brown tradition of suspicion of Quebec they felt uneasy
at the transfer of the sceptre to Laurier, French by inheritance,
Catholic in religion, with a political experience derived from
dealing with the feelings, ambitions and prejudices of a province
which was to them an unknown world. Part of the doubt arose from
misconception of the qualities of Laurier. As a hard-bitten, time-worn
party fighter, with an experience going back to pre-confederation
days, said to the writer: "Laurier will never make a leader; he has
not enough of the devil in him." This meant, in the brisk terminology
of to-day, that he could not deliver the rough stuff. This doubter
and his fellows had yet to learn that the flashing rapier in the
hands of the swordsman makes a completer and far less messy job than
the bludgeon; and that there is in politics room for the delicate
art of jiu-jitsu. Further, the Ontario mind was under the sway of
that singular misconception, so common to Britishers, that a
Frenchman by temperament is gay, romantic, inconsequent, with few
reserves of will and perseverance. Whereas the good French mind is
about the coolest, clearest, least emotional instrument of the kind
that there is. The courtesy, grace, charm, literary and artistic
ability that go with it are merely accessories; they are the
feathers on the arrow that help it in its flight from the twanging
bow-cord to the bull's-eye. Laurier's mind was typically French with
something also Italianate about it, an inheritance perhaps from the
long-dead Savoyard ancestor who brought the name to this continent.
Later when Laurier had proved his quality and held firmly in his
hands the reins of power, the fatuous Ontario Liberal explained him
as that phenomenon, a man of pure French ancestry who was
spiritually an Englishman--this conclusion being drawn from the fact
that upon occasion the names of Charles James Fox and Gladstone came
trippingly from his tongue. The new relationship between the
Liberals and Laurier was entered upon with obvious hesitation on the
part of many of the former and by apparent diffidence by the latter.
It may be that the conditional acceptance and the proffered
resignation at call were tactical movements really intended by
Laurier to buttress his position as leader, as most assuredly his
frequent suggestions of a readiness or intention to retire during
the last few years of his leadership were. But, whatever the
uncertainties of the moment, they soon passed. Laurier at once
showed capacities which the Liberals had never before known in a
leader. The long story of Liberal sterility and ineffectiveness from
the middle of the last century to almost its close is the story of
the political incapacity of its successive leaders, a demonstration
of the unfitness of men with the emotional equipment of the
pamphleteer, crusader and agitator for the difficult business of
party management. The party sensed almost immediately the difference
in the quality of the new leadership; and liked it. Laurier's powers
of personal charm completed the "consolidation of his position," and
by the early nineties the Presbyterian Grits of Ontario were
swearing by him. When Blake, after two or three years of nursing his
wounds in retirement, began to think it was time to resume the
business of leading the Liberals, he found everywhere invisible
barriers blocking his return. Laurier was, he found, a different
proposition from Mackenzie; and there was nothing for it but to
return to his tent and take farewell of his constituents in that
tale of lamentations, the West Durham letter. The new regime, the
new leadership, did not bring results at once. The party experienced
a succession of unexpected and unforeseen misfortunes that almost
made Laurier superstitious. "Tell me," he wrote to his friend Henri
Beaugrand, in August, 1891, "whether there is not some fatality
pursuing our party." In the election of 1891 not even the
theatricality of Sir John Macdonald's last appeal nor the untrue
claim by the government that it was about, itself, to secure a
reciprocal trade arrangement with Washington, could have robbed the
Liberals of a triumph which seemed certain; it was the opportune
revelation, through the stealing of proofs from a printing office,
that Edward Farrer, one of the Globe editors, favored political
union with the United States, that gave victory into the hands of
the Conservatives. But their relatively narrow majority would not
have kept them in office a year in view of the death of Sir John A.
Macdonald in June, 1891, and the stunning blows given the government
by the "scandal session" of 1891, had it not been for two disasters
which overtook the Liberals: The publication of Blake's letter and
the revelation of the rascalities of the Mercier regime. Perhaps of
the two blows, that delivered by Blake was the more disastrous. The
letter was the message of an oracle. It required an interpretation
which the oracle refused to supply; and in its absence the people
regarded it as implying a belief by Blake that annexation was the
logical sequel to the Liberal policy of unrestricted reciprocity.
The result was seen in the by-election campaign of 1892 when the
Liberals lost seat after seat in Ontario, and the government
majority mounted to figures which suggested that the party, despite
the loss of Sir John, was as strong as ever. The Tories were in the
seventh heaven of delight. With the Liberals broken, humiliated and
discouraged, and a young and vigorous pilot, in the person of Sir
John Thompson, at the helm, they saw a long and happy voyage before
them. Never were appearances more illusory, for the cloud was
already in the sky from which were to come storm, tempest and
ruinous over-throw.
THE TACTICS OF VICTORY
The story of the Manitoba school question and the political struggle
which centred around it, as told by Prof. Skelton, is bald and
colorless; it gives little sense of the atmosphere of one of the
most electrical periods in our history. The sequelae of the Riel
agitation, with its stirring up of race feeling, included the Jesuit
Estates controversy in parliament, the Equal Rights movement in
Ontario, the attack upon the use of the French language in the
legislature of the Northwest Territories and the establishment of a
system of National schools in Manitoba through the repeal of the
existing school law, which had been modelled upon the Quebec law and
was intended to perpetuate the double-barrelled system in vogue in
that province. The issue created by the Manitoba legislation
projected itself at once into the federal field to the evident
consternation of the Dominion government. It parried the demand for
disallowance of the provincial statute by an engagement to defray
the cost of litigation challenging the validity of the law. When the
Privy Council, reversing the judgment of the Supreme Court, found
that the law was valid because it did not prejudicially affect
rights held prior to or at the time of union, the government was
faced with a demand that it intervene by virtue of the provisions in
the British North America act, which gave the Dominion parliament
the power to enact remedial educational legislation overriding
provincial enactments in certain circumstances. Again it took refuge
in the courts. The Supreme Court of Canada held that under the
circumstances the power to intervene did not exist; and the
government breathed easier. Again the Privy Council reversed the
judgment of the Supreme Court and held that because the Manitoba law
prejudicially affected educational privileges enjoyed by the
minority after union there was a right of intervention. The last
defence of the Dominion government against being forced to make a
decision was broken down; in the language of to-day, it was up
against it. And the man who might have saved the party by inducing
the bishops of the Catholic church to moderate their demands was
gone, for Sir John Thompson died in Windsor Castle in December,
1894, one month before the Privy Council handed down its fateful
decision. Sir John was a faithful son of the church, with an immense
influence with the clerical authorities; he was succeeded in the
premiership by Sir Mackenzie Bowell, ex-grand master of the Orange
Order. The bishops moved on Ottawa and demanded action.
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