I am a British subject, and British-born, and a British subject I hope to die. . ..Those who disliked the colonial connection spoke of it as a chain, but it was a golden chain, and he, for one, was proud to wear its fetters.”
Macdonald saw the British connection with Canada as critical to its political independence from the United States. Independence from the Americans, connection with Great Britain, a nation from sea to sea, a national railway, and protection for Canadian industry were the corner stones of Macdonald’s national policies, and the guideposts that would sustain the remainder of his political life.
The Liberal leadership was proposing to remove trade barriers. Dissension in Liberal ranks was increasing, and Macdonald sensed it would take but a bit of wooing to cause the dissenters to switch sides. But Macdonald did not want to woo them at any cost. He wanted the rancorous division over trade policy to fester within Liberal ranks. If members of the Liberal caucus did jump ship, he wanted it to be on his terms, not theirs. Following the introduction of Mackenzie’s budget in 1876, an entire delegation of Liberal members indicated they were ready to cross the floor of the House of Commons. In the House, Macdonald said: “I heard the threat—the dire threat—that the members from Montréal would go into opposition. . . . Well, Mr. Speaker, I have caught some queer fish in my time, but I’m afraid that my honorable friend—as during the previous session when he sat over in that corner—is too loose a fish for me ever to catch.”
Loyalty to party—even above constituent needs—was sacred to Macdonald. Once elected, Macdonald believed, a parliamentarian was duty bound to complete the term with the party that he ran with. “A man’s duty when he accepts a seat in Parliament is not to his constituents as a whole, but to the party that elected him . . . unless they ask him to retire, he should remain.”
To Macdonald the trade issue was neither ideological nor academic. The impact of a one-sided trade arrangement with the Americans, he thought, was causing real hardship to the Canadian economy. A depression had set in and Macdonald contended the Liberals were unwilling or unable to address the matter. “We are informed in the speech from the throne that there is a stagnation in trade.... and if it be true, I say that if there is ever a time when it is lawful, or allowable, or wise, or expedient for a government to interfere, now is the time.” The campaign Macdonald wanted to fight was not for the odd Liberal defector, but for the hearts and minds of the Canadian people. The nation was suffering an economic depression, and Macdonald blamed it on American trade policy and the timidity of the Liberal government.
In the summer of 1876, Macdonald initiated a series of political picnics across the land, each attended by thousands of enthusiastic supporters. On July 27, over 5,000 people came to hear him at a picnic near Belleville, Ontario. Later that summer, Macdonald led a torchlight parade through the streets of Montréal, where 50,000 people gathered at Dominion Square to hear him speak. He labelled Liberal “laissez-faire” trade policy as gross neglect, and said he dreamed of a “Canada for the Canadians.”
The Liberals sensed they were headed for defeat. Even the governor general, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary, remarked on their doomed prospects. “Blake is ill, thoroughly broken down with overwork and excitement and irritability of the brain ...As for Mackenzie he looks like a washed out rag and limp enough to hang up on a clothesline.”
With renewed purpose and conviction, Macdonald was by all accounts drinking little, if any, alcohol during this critical period. Within the ranks of his party, he implored unity: “Let us not, like the hunters in the fable, quarrel about the skin before we kill the bear. It will take our united efforts to kill a bear.”
On September 17, 1878, the voters punished the Liberals for the depression and for the free trade policies they saw as its cause. The indiscretion of the Pacific Scandal had, apparently, been forgiven. The business establishments in major eastern cities supported trade protection and went solidly for the Tories. The Liberals won only half the seats they had taken in 1872, leaving Conservatives with 134 MPs in the 206-seat legislature. Solid Tory majorities were secured in every province except New Brunswick.
A satisfied Macdonald reflected on his win: “I resolved to reverse the verdict of 1874 and have done so to my heart’s content.” The only blemish on election night was Macdonald’s loss in his home riding of Kingston to Alexander Gunn. While the defeat was attributed to lingering distaste over the Pacific Scandal, the loss was a mere inconvenience, and easily fixed in a by-election.
CHAPTER 3
CEMENTING THE BOND
Every American statesman covets Canada. The greed for its acquisition is still on the increase, and God knows where it will all end. . . . We must face the fight at our next election, and it is only the conviction that the battle will be better fought under my guidance than under another that makes me undertake the task, handicapped as I am, with the infirmities of old age.
Back in the prime minister’s office, Macdonald breathed life into his national vision. True to his campaign promise, he increased tariffs on imported American goods, which risked retaliation in the form of a prohibitive duty on the export of Canadian lumber. But it was the building of the transcontinental railroad that occupied most of his attention: “Until this great work is completed . . . we have as much interest in British Columbia as in Australia, and no more. The railway once finished, we become one great united country with a large interprovincial trade and a common interest.”
The railway was critical to increasing Canada’s population, strengthening its economy, and enhancing its ability to sustain itself against American incursions. Macdonald knew that Canada could not take on a project of such magnitude on its own and sought loan guarantees from the British government.
With the levers of power at his disposal, Macdonald put the might of patronage to work. He would not make appointments prior to an election, thus encouraging his campaign staff to “work harder for your return.” When Toronto Tories grumbled about the lack of jobs coming their way, Macdonald retorted, “As soon as Toronto returns Conservative members, it will get Conservative appointments.” Macdonald eagerly dished out patron age jobs, although he was frustrated that there were not enough to satisfy his party. “Five years’ opposition have made our friends rather hungry and they are worrying me about office, but the departments have all been crammed by the Grits so that it will be sometime before there will be any vacancies.” Macdonald dreamed of a more independent and assertive Canada, but he remained committed to Great Britain. Macdonald was prepared for the time being to have the British Empire represent Canada to the world, hoping “to stave off for a very long time to come any wish on the part of Canada for a separate set of representatives in foreign countries.” The prerequisite to an independent voice for Canada on the international stage was economic and military self-sufficiency. “The sooner the Dominion is treated as an auxiliary power rather than a dependency, the sooner will it assume all the responsibilities of the position including the settlement of its contribution to the defence of the Empire whenever and wherever assailed.”
And Canada was coming of age. In 1879, Macdonald’s former finance minister, Alexander Galt, persuasively argued the case for Canada to the Colonial office: “Canada has ceased to occupy the position of an ordinary possession of the Crown. She exists in the form of a powerful central government, having already no less than seven subordinate local executive and legislative systems, soon to be largely augmented by the development of vast regions lying between Lake Superior and the Rocky Mountains.”
Macdonald succeeded in establishing semi-diplomatic standing between Canada and Great Britain, which bypassed, to a degree, the representatives of the Colonial Office stationed in Ottawa. However, the rank of Canada’s emissary to Britain was to be a representative with limited authority. A British dispatch reported of the representative, “His position would necessarily be more analogous to that of an officer in the Home Service than to that of a minister at a foreign court.” In the end, the title for Canada’s representative to Great Britain was given the lofty and noble title “High Commissioner for Canada in London.” Alexander Galt was its first holder.
Great Britain did not see Canada as an independent nation with the right to have its views represented