Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics | Page 8

Sir John Macdonald was Premier of the
Dominion of Canada for over nineteen years, but this covered two
terms separated by five years of Liberal rule.
The theory of government by party is that the two parties are
complementary instruments of government; by periodic interchanges of
position they keep the administration of the country efficient and
progressive. The complete acceptance of this view would imply a
readiness upon the part of a party growing stale to facilitate the
incoming of the required alternative administration, but no such
phenomenon in politics has ever been observed. Parties, in reality, are
organized states within the state. They have their own dynasties and
hierarchies; and their reason for existence is to clothe themselves with
the powers, functions and glory of the state which they control. Their
desire is for absolute and continuing control to which they come to
think they have a prescriptive right; and they never leave office without
a sense of outrage. There never yet was a party ejected from office
which did not feel pretty much as the Stuarts did when they lost the
throne of England; the incoming administration is invariably regarded
by them in the light of usurpers. This was very much the case with the
Conservatives after 1896; and the Liberals had the same feeling after
1911, that they had been robbed, as they deemed, of their rightful
heritage. Parties are not, as their philosophers claim, servants of the
state co-operating in its service; their real desire is the mastery of the

state and the brooking of no opposition or rivalship. Nevertheless the
people by a sure instinct compel a change in administration every now
and then; but they move so slowly that a government well entrenched
in office can usually outstay its welcome by one term of office. The
Laurier administration covering a full period of fifteen years illustrates
the operation of this political tendency. The government came in with
the good wishes of the people and for nearly ten years went on from
strength to strength, carrying out an extensive and well-considered
domestic programme; then its strength began to wane and its vigor to
relax. Its last few years were given up to a struggle against the
inevitable fate that was visibly rising like a tide; and the great stroke of
reciprocity which was attempted in 1911 was not nearly so much a
belated attempt to give effect to a party principle as it was a desperate
expedient by an ageing administration to stave off dissolution. The
Laurier government died in 1911, not so much from the assaults of its
enemies as from hardening of its arteries and from old age. Its hour had
struck in keeping with the law of political change. Upon any reasonable
survey of the circumstances it would be held that Laurier was fortunate
beyond most party leaders in his premiership--in its length, in the
measure of public confidence which he held over so long a period, in
the affection which he inspired in his immediate following, and for the
opportunities it gave him for putting his policies into operation.
Viewed in retrospect most of the domestic occurrences of the Laurier
regime lose their importance as the years recede; it will owe its place in
Canadian political history to one or two achievements of note. Laurier's
chief claim to an enduring personal fame will rest less upon his
domestic performances than upon the contribution he made towards the
solution of the problem of imperial relations. The examination of his
record as a party leader in the prime minister's chair can be postponed
while consideration is given to the great services he rendered the cause
of imperial and international Liberalism as Canada's spokesman in the
series of imperial conferences held during his premiership.
Laurier, up to the moment of his accession to the Liberal leadership,
had probably given little thought to the question of Canada's
relationship to the empire. Blake knew something about the intricacies
of the question. His Aurora speech showed that as early as 1874 he was
beginning to regard critically our status of colonialism as something

which could not last; and while he was minister of justice in the
Mackenzie ministration he won two notable victories over the
centralizing tendencies of the colonial office. But Laurier had never
been brought into touch with the issue; and when, after assuming the
Liberal leadership, he found it necessary to deal with it, he spoke what
was probably the belief latent in most of the minds of his compatriots:
acceptance of colonial status with the theoretical belief that some time,
so far distant as not to be a matter of political concern, this status would
give way to one of independence. "The day is coming," he said in
Montreal in 1890, "when this country will