Macdonald’s exit from power after the Pacific Scandal in 1873 coincided with the advent of a deep depression among the trading western nations. He spent his years in opposition watching and learning. He became more engaged with the plight of the “working man” in Canada and with devising a plan to help the economy.8 Charles Tupper advocated a “National Policy” in the 1860s. In the 1870s the Conservatives envisioned a program of promoting Canadian industries, protected by a high tariff wall that would prevent Canada from being flooded with cheaper American products.9 Such an idea of import substitution had been articulated by John Rae (1796–1872), a Scottish immigrant living in the 1820s in Upper Canada. He published in 1834 an influential critique of Adam Smith and economic liberalism, Statement of some new principles on the subject of political economy, exposing the fallacies of the system of free trade, and of some other doctrines maintained in the “Wealth of Nations.”10 The protectionism intended by the tariff wall also reflected Canada’s failed attempts to renew the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States. Macdonald and the Conservatives got back into Parliament in 1878 on the strength of the tariff and the National Policy, supported by “working-men.”11 Macdonald soon launched an attack on the election tactics of Alexander Mackenzie’s Liberal government.
The Debates of the House of Commons, 4th Parliament, 1st Session, record on May 7, 1879:
He [SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD] … They all remembered how, before that hon. gentleman [Mackenzie] was a Minister at all, before he was a member of this House, and while he was a member of the Legislature of Ontario, how he hoisted the “bloody shirt,” as it was called in the United States, and invoked the ghost of the slaughtered [Thomas] Scott; they all remembered that, and how he tried to rouse up the country on that question, and how, when he came to be a Minister here, he was willing to crouch behind his French-Canadian and Catholic supporters.
He [Mackenzie] forgot the “bloody shirt” then, he forgot the ghost of the murdered Scott; and he got the Governor General [Lord Dufferin]—they had a right to say so, as he had said the same of the present Government—he got the Governor General to intervene and take the responsibility off his shoulders, letting off Riel and Lepine.*
It did not rest in the hon. gentleman’s mouth to make such a charge now, especially when the charge was altogether unfounded, that this Government [Macdonald’s] in any respect, or on any occasion refused to assume the full responsibility of all their acts, of all their advice, and of all their conduct, he [Macdonald] supposed the hon. gentleman did that in consequence of his alliance—rather an entangling alliance he would find it—with the present Ontario Government. For the purpose of assisting that Government in their great straits, he, [Mackenzie] had tried to make political capital of such a dry subject as a tariff.
But now, instead of talking about tea, sugar, wheat and barley, he talked about independence, he talked about ministerial responsibility, he talked about Goldwin Smith, he talked about everything, especially about the hardships of the poor farmers who were going to be crushed by this tariff. Poor farmers.
“Alas! unconscious of their doom,
The little victims play;
Careless they are of ills to come,
The poor farmers were quite unconscious of all the ruin the tariff was going to inflict upon them, and if the hon, gentleman had the correspondence put into his hands that had been received by the hon. the Finance Minister, he would find that whether the letters came from the farmers, the manufacturers, or whatever class it was, the complaints were all, and especially those of the farmers, that the protection was not sufficient.
MR. MACKENZIE: They say, then, it is a failure.
SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD said those who wanted Protection, were like the squaw who said about whiskey that a little too much was just enough.
Those who wanted to get protected wanted all the protection they could get. When his hon. friend was making that exhaustive speech of his—if he were allowed to pay a compliment to his own colleague—whenever he mentioned an increase of duty on any article, he was cheered by the immense majority of this House, and whenever he spoke in hesitating tones, as to the smallness of the duty on any article,—the House sat in silence. The same feeling existed all through the country, and the hon. gentlemen opposite knew that, be the cause well or ill founded, this country had deliberately—not by surprise, not by false pretences, as the hon. gentleman for Centre Huron* had said, but of a full and lengthened discussion for years, of a strong pressure for Protection on the one side, and an able resistance by the hon. gentleman in favour of Free-trade on the other—the country had deliberately accepted a Protective policy.
Therefore the present Ministry [Macdonald’s] came into power on that policy, the vast majority of this House were elected on that policy [of the National Policy and the tariff], and, true to their promises, true to their pledges and their principles, they had presented this tariff to Parliament, and the country had gratefully accepted what it considered a boon.
If there were any dissatisfaction in the country at all in the matter, it was they did not go far enough in the right direction. The hon. gentleman from Lambton [Mackenzie] generally argued logically, but sometimes his logic did not follow in easy sequence, for in one breath he stated that there was going to be an increase in prices in consequence of the tariff, and in another breath he said there was no improvement in the country at all, and that he believed more people were employed before the tariff was introduced than since.
But it was well known, that if prices rose on any article, that business became profitable, and more people were employed in it; and yet, the hon. gentleman in one breath, stated the prices had increased—therefore the profits had increased—and in the next breath he stated that the number of employés had decreased in every branch.
But the hon. gentleman had brought in Mr. Goldwin Smith. Now, Mr. Smith was no ally of his (Sir John A. Macdonald’s), but he was a member of a celebrated club which, perhaps, the hon. member for Lambton had heard of—the Cobden Club—and he was a Free-trader, like the hon. gentleman. But there was a difference between them; one was a philosophical Cobdenite, and the other a fanatical Cobdenite.*
There was as great a distinction between the hon. member for Lambton and Mr. Goldwin Smith in that respect, as there was between John Stuart Mill [1806–1873] and the hon. member for Lambton. John Stuart Mill, the great exponent of political economy, pointed out that there might be disturbing causes which made Protection desirable. Goldwin Smith, in that letter, which the hon. gentleman had lugged in by the head and shoulders, said the same thing: that in this country, there were disturbing causes; that as it was a new country, and placed on the ragged edge of this continent—he did not know as that was the phrase—that they suffered a good deal by being excluded from the American market, while the Americans could come in and kill any particular industry whenever they liked; and in that letter he announced that the country was suffering from the causes which John Stuart Mill, in his celebrated work, said justified Protection.
SEVERAL HON. MEMBERS: No, no.
SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD said yes; if the hon. gentleman could show that he was wrong, let him do so in his answer. He [Macdonald] affirmed that John Stuart Mill said there were cases when Protection was allowable, and that meant, he [Macdonald] supposed, protecting struggling industries against heavier capital and established industries.
Goldwin Smith said, in that letter, the same thing—neither more nor less. He began to think that the reason the hon. gentleman brought in that letter, was because Mr. Goldwin Smith, in the same letter, intimated that he thought this country ought to walk alone, that they ought to be either an independent people or a portion of the United States.
He (Sir John A. Macdonald) did not agree with him in that opinion, nor did the hon. member for Lambton [Mackenzie] agree with him either. On that point they both agreed that Goldwin Smith was wrong, but though he might be wrong on that point, he might still be a very good political economist.
It did not lie in the hon. gentleman’s mouth [Mackenzie] to speak of Goldwin Smith as the ally of the present Government, when one of that hon gentleman’s own colleagues in his Government, had written an essay, and boasted of it, in which he declared that Canada could never be prosperous until she was free from Great Britain.
That was the hon. member for Shefford [Lucius Seth Huntington], and when he was charged with it in this House, he drew himself up and said he did not write that letter as a politician or as a member of the House of Commons, but he did it as a mere literary man.
And so Mr. Goldwin Smith would say the same thing; he was a literary man, and not a politician, he had no responsibilities, he was not a member of Parliament. He had not constituency as the hon. member for Shefford [Huntington] had, when he made that independence speech, and yet the hon. gentleman tried to lug him in, in order to hit us over the shoulders. As long as that hon. gentleman was an opponent of the Government, prior to 1873, he was hail fellow well met with the hon. member for Lambton, they would sleep in the same political crib together, and the hon. gentleman did not then feel he could dispense with his assistance.
We could all remember how his variable letters—some, perhaps not very agreeable to himself personally,—were heralded and quoted with such unction by the hon. gentleman in attempting to hurt us. However, we could leave Mr. Goldwin Smith to take care of himself, as he was quite able to reply to the attacks made upon him by the hon. member for Lambton.
MR. MACKENZIE: I made no attack upon him.
Macdonald continued his attack upon Mr. Mackenzie.
* Ambroise-Dydime Lépine (1840–1923) was the adjutant general, responsible for administering justice in Louis Riel’s provisional government, and implicated in the death of Thomas Scott. In 1874 he was tried in Manitoba, and found guilty but recommended for mercy. Canadians, particularly in Quebec, reacted vehemently to the sentencing. Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie asked the governor general, Lord Dufferin, to intervene, and he commuted the sentence to two years in prison and forfeiture of Lépine’s civil rights. Shortly afterwards, Riel and Lépine were offered amnesty in return for a five-year banishment. Lépine served out his term, and Riel left for the United States. (Ens, “Lépine, Ambroise-Dydime,” DCB)
* Alexander Mackenzie sat in the Ontario legislature between 1871 and 1872; but in 1873 he became leader of the Liberals. The party, favouring free competition and antimonopoly, found a platform during the Pacific Scandal. It also tried to pursue free-trade policies and courted Canada’s farmers whose markets they saw restricted by the tariffs; but financial shortfalls kept the tariffs in place creating party divisions. Goldwin Smith, despite limited support for the National Policy, advocated continental trade links for Canada. (Forster, “Mackenzie, Alexander,” DCB; Berger, Sense of Power, 42, 189)
† Here Macdonald is quoting from “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” by the poet Thomas Gray (1716–1771). Although a few words have been altered from the original, the lines retain the same meaning. (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 230)
* Sir Richard John Cartwright had regained his seat in November 1878 as MP for Huron Centre. He was knighted in March 1879.
* Richard Cobden (1804–1865) promoted the idea of free trade in Britain in the 1840s as a route to social progress and regeneration, as well as to peace among nations. After his death, like-minded economic liberals founded a club in his name. (Hilton, Mad, Bad People, 240, 245, 636)