Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics | Page 5

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