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OTHER clouds were gathering above the scene of federal politics. They were older than those above the still non-existent navy. The name for them was “the tariff.”

Put by itself, “tariff” may well be one of the most opaque and lifeless words in the English language. But in its peculiar Canadian context it soars and breathes with a sensuousness worthy of Hindu poets. Sometimes it crashes forth like the curse of Baal.

Sir John A. Macdonald girded himself with the tariff like a warrior girding against lions. For him and the country he helped to create, the flaccid, bookkeeper’s word dripped with emotion and cried out loud with mighty promises and desperate warnings. It had its own associations, quite as vivid as “woman” and “man,” “salvation” and “doom,” “victory” and “defeat,” “love” and “hate.”

Considering the rages and paeans it had inspired throughout the country’s lifetime, the principle of the tariff was simple. Canada was a big and easy market for manufacturers from abroad, particularly from the United States. Canada was a big and easy source of raw materials. The essential and eternal Canadian dilemma was this:

Low tariff or no tariff: Canadian wheat, pulp, timber, and other natural products would pour across the border to the States. American cars, clothes, and canned food would pour back, because they could be made more cheaply in the United States than at home.

High tariff: Raw products would be harder to sell abroad. Manufactured products would rise in price, but more of them would be made at home and there would be more industry and employment at home.

But nothing so mundane as goods and prices could have planted the tariff so deep in the Canadian mystique. For nearly a century it had been a catchword for patriots, a rallying cry for radicals, and an object of hope, suspicion, and fear for thousands of ordinary people who barely understood its workings. In the still recent days of almost undiluted colonialism Britain had more than once used Canada’s trading position, carelessly and without any real regard for Canada’s interests, to obtain concessions of one kind or other for herself from the United States. Yet it was possible for a Canadian to be in a fury about this and still feel in his bones that Canada must use the tariff to shore up her ties with Britain and to avoid complete engulfment by the United States.

The tariff invited passion and national schizophrenia in other forms. High tariffs played into the hands of the rich eastern manufacturers and the financiers behind them. They made the average Canadian a captive consumer and made him pay artificially high prices to inefficient manufacturers. They hurt the farmer, who was, or until recently had been, the backbone of the nation.

But the coin had another side. To many Canadians the tariff wall was not an economic device, but an instrument of their very being. To eradicate the wall might be to eradicate Canada. Low tariffs encouraged domination by the United States—economic domination, political domination, and then perhaps outright annexation. It was no accident that the tariff was the real subject of Canada’s closest approximation to a Gettysburg Address. When John A. Macdonald cried the immortal words “A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die!” he was thinking in the immediate and specific sense not of Raleigh, Wolfe, or Nelson, but of the tax on ladies’ dresses from New York.

In point of fact, it would have been difficult in this later time of Laurier and Borden to find any hard evidence that the United States had the slightest desire to devour Canada under the cloak of free trade. Indeed, so far as the voting record showed, everything pointed in an opposite direction. Each of the countries had had a general election in each of the years 1896, 1900, 1904, and 1908. In each case the party that favored lower tariffs had been elected in Canada and the party that favored higher tariffs had been elected in the United States.

However, through an apparently modest temblor of U.S. history the Republican party was now beginning to have second thoughts about the benefits of economic isolationism. The Taft administration had made relatively liberal trade agreements with half a dozen countries in Western Europe and South America. When Canada proved somewhat more difficult to deal with, Taft became surprisingly conciliatory. Hitherto he had taken the position that so long as Canada granted preferences to British imports, Canadian exports to the United States must be charged penalty taxes. But now he changed his mind. In the friendly climate that ensued as the year turned into 1911 the two governments completed a new reciprocity agreement, which, although it was not free trade, offered lower and in some cases no duties on raw Canadian exports to the United States. In return there were to be lower duties on a number of American manufactured products coming into Canada.

The agreement, negotiated in a secrecy that added to the indignation of its opponents, still had to be ratified in both legislatures. Taft won approval of both the House of Representatives and the Senate by the middle of the summer. Laurier had not expected to take so long to gain ratification from Parliament, for he was sure the country was behind him. Borden was of a similar mind. The day after Laurier’s Finance Minister put the reciprocity proposals to the House of Commons, Borden called a party caucus. “The atmosphere that confronted me was not invigorating,” he wrote later. “There was the deepest dejection in our Party, and many of our members were confident that the government’s proposals would appeal to the country and would give it another term of office. Foster [George E. Foster, a leading Tory financier] was greatly impressed by the proposals and said that when they were presented his heart had gone down into his boots. The western members were emphatic in their statements that not one of them would be elected in opposition to reciprocity. One of them declared that he dare not vote against the government’s proposals. I stemmed the tide as best I could, although I was under great discouragement. ... I had the support of many of our members, although the difference of opinion which had developed seemed in itself to be a forerunner of disaster.”

But again Borden’s pessimism, nourished as it had been for so long by his rejection by the electorate and his only partial acceptance by his own party, proved deeper than it need have been. Almost overnight a group of Laurier’s wealthiest and most influential followers sprang into open rebellion against the Prime Minister. The Toronto Board of Trade called a protest meeting against his proposed hospitality to Yankee textiles and threshing machines. Sir Edmund Walker, president of the Bank of Commerce, declared to a cheering assemblage: “Although I am a Liberal, I am a Canadian first of all, and I can see that this is much more than a trade question. Our alliance with the Mother Country must not be threatened. We must assimilate our immigrants and make out of them good Canadians, and this reciprocity agreement is the most deadly danger tending to make this problem more difficult. The question is between British connection and what has been well called ‘continentalism.’ ” Sir William Van Horne, of the Canadian Pacific Railway, roared at reciprocity that “he was out to bust the damn thing.” And finally the western newspaper baron Clifford Sifton—still, next to Laurier himself, perhaps the best-known Liberal in Canada—led seventeen other prominent members of the party in signing a manifesto against reciprocity.

How much of this quick and stunning antagonism was due to the tug of special interest and how much to genuine uneasiness about the independence of the nation will never, of course, be established in mathematical terms. Without doubt the heartstring that Macdonald had struck so resonantly in the earlier tariff disputes had been truly struck again, and in the echoing notes there was much that was strong and genuine. And also without doubt the plain suspicion and perversity of a small country growing up in the shadow of a larger one began working among people who had no personal stake in the tariff or the lack of one. Having denied Canada reciprocity for so long, why was the United States so eager now to grant it? What did President Taft have up his sleeve anyway?

Soon Sifton, the disaffected Liberal, was conferring with Borden in secret. But Borden’s elation over a break in his rival’s inner guard was short-lived. His old enemies within the Tory party professed horror at the impending alliance with the dissident Grits. If they submitted to it, they contended, the embrace of the Sifton group would suffocate them all in the end.

Again the much bruised Borden was plunged in despondency. He tried to rally the Tory party at a caucus but soon concluded that his opponents could not be won over. Again he tendered his resignation and consented to reconsider only after a delegation came to him late at night “almost with tears” and fifty-nine of the Conservative M.P.s signed a round robin pledging him their loyal and undivided support.

Thus heartened, Borden fought the reciprocity bill with mounting resolution and hope. In the House of Commons his party carried the debate deep into the spring and forced an adjournment while Laurier attended the coronation of King George V and another Imperial Conference. When Parliament reassembled in July, the Tories were still half fighting and half waffling. A Tory backbencher proposed adjournment of the reciprocity debate to discuss pensions for veterans of the Fenian raids, and it became obvious that Laurier had two choices: to push his bill through by force of numbers and remain in office or to call an election while he still had reasonable control of Parliament, of his party, and presumably of the electorate. He chose the latter course.

The election date was September 21, 1911. The campaign that preceded it may well have marked the end of an age in Canadian politics, the age of joyful innocence. Never again would the torch of truth burn so high and pure, in all its shades and degrees of heat. Never again would the nation’s heart swell to so many and such sure and eager hymns. Never again would so many noble readings of the gospel resound in so many splendid accents. It was a passionate campaign, drawing wellsprings from many sources. It was full of the round Victorian rhetoric that, as any well-cultivated flower should, had reached its finest bloom just before its time to die. And if it had an overlay of bitterness, it was not the savage, very nearly homicidal bitterness that was to becloud and besmirch another campaign six years ahead. Often, indeed, the bitterness had a leaven of something vaguely like good humor. As elections go today, when stump oratory is almost gone and a few careful dignitaries read antiseptic speeches before microphones and cameras, it would be considered a dirty election. By the standards of any time it was a robust and fascinating one.

Throughout the parliamentary debate over reciprocity Henri Bourassa, content with his victory over Laurier in the naval by-election in Arthabaska, had enjoyed a rest from the national scene. His early pronouncements on the tariff issue were perfunctory, almost bored. At first he expressed approval of reciprocity, then indifference, and finally—like a man doing a double take—he appeared to remember that he was at loggerheads with Laurier over the navy and began attacking him on reciprocity too.

Whether Bourassa’s switch to the high-tariff side was a cause or an effect, it coincided with the emergence of a remarkable alliance. The ultra-nationalist Le Devoir and its ultra-nationalist editor suddenly found a staunch friend in the ultra-Imperialist Montreal Star and its ultra-Imperialist proprietor, Sir Hugh Graham. Other strange companions flocked to Bourassa’s side. One of his own lieutenants was later to boast that an English Conservative who had once called the nationalists “rebels and disloyal traitors” bought forty subscriptions to Le Devoir. The Conservative Toronto World eulogized him as a man “of stainless reputation, of great moral energy, a sincere admirer of English institutions.” Some of the biggest manufacturers and financiers on St. James Street supplied him with money and encouragement.

Laurier contemplated all this with worldly amusement and summed up his own predicament thus: “I am branded in Quebec as a traitor to the French, and in Ontario as a traitor to the English. In Quebec I am branded as a Jingo, and in Ontario as a Separatist. In Quebec I am attacked as an Imperialist, and in Ontario as an anti-Imperialist.” Although he was now almost seventy, Sir Wilfrid entered the lists shaking his noble mane and shouting forth the rallying cry he had borrowed from Henry of Navarre: “Follow my white plume!”

During the last month of the campaign Laurier made more than fifty speeches. They were not all easy, for winds of adversity had begun to threaten from abroad as well as at home. President Taft, his co-sponsor of reciprocity, had publicly described Canada as being “at the parting of the ways.” Protectionists quickly and gleefully ushered the phrase into the demonology of the times along with the still more painful utterance of Champ Clark, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives: “I hope to see the day when the American flag will float over every square foot of the British North American possessions clear to the North Pole.... I have no doubt whatever that the day is not far distant when Great Britain will joyfully see all her North American possessions become part of this republic.”

A U.S. senator was heard to cry: “Canadian annexation is the logical conclusion of reciprocity with Canada.” And Champ Clark spoke again: “We are preparing to annex Canada.” Another congressman said candidly: “Be not deceived. When we go into a country and get control of it, we take it.”

The Hearst papers applauded reciprocity. One of them, the New York American, announced comfortably: “Eventually, of course, Canada will come in. That will be when we want her.” Each such utterance, intended to comfort and applaud Laurier, helped to ruin him.

Even in the West, where there had been no serious doubts about the benefits of reciprocity, a few people began to have second thoughts. J. J. Hill, the American railway magnate, suddenly loomed to some as the probable chief beneficiary. If there were no tariff on grain Hill would drain Canada’s export wheat into a labyrinth of U.S. rail lines to the eastern U.S. seaboard for shipment across the Atlantic. Canadian railwaymen would be thrown out of work, Canadian steel would rust, the great Canadian terminal elevators at Port Arthur and Fort William would empty and fall into decay. An alarmed legislator from Port Arthur cried: “Under the new agreement, if it is carried, all the wheat will be shipped to Minneapolis and St. Paul or to the United States markets by way of Duluth, which means that we might as well take our elevators and dump them in the lake.”

The Buffalo Courier predicted happily that there would be an increase in receipts of two hundred million bushels of grain “at this port if the reciprocity treaty is adopted and the Buffalo elevator interests act in concert.”

The American Association of Railways itself passed a resolution in support of reciprocity, and the Wall Street Journal published a chilling report in support of the fear that J. J. Hill had been developing his Great Northern Railway in the expectation of grabbing business from Canada. The Financial Review, of New York, said flatly: “It is evident ... that if it goes into effect practically all the wheat of Western Canada will be drained into the American mills in adjacent territory.”

Unwelcome applause for reciprocity came also from the president of the United States Holstein Association, who hurried to Toronto with “the greetings of one hundred million people who are overjoyed to know that an imaginary tariff line between people of the same blood, the same fathers, whose every interests are identical, is about to be obliterated and torn down.”

Those who opposed the new treaty were just as emphatic. Rudyard Kipling cabled from London as the polls opened: “It is her own soul that Canada risks today.” A speaker at a meeting of the Canadian Defence League cried: “I feel prepared to do almost anything, even to fighting in the streets, to prevent reciprocity going through.” Leading clubwomen of Montreal organized a Woman’s Branch of the Anti-Reciprocity League and sent a petition to the government saying that reciprocity meant: “Annexation, injury to home life and the marriage tie, a lessening of national religion, morals and patriotism.” The Tories circulated a new campaign song to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”:

President Taft he made a pact

With Laurier and Fielding

And in the trade that Tafty made

He found them very yielding.

Chorus: Yankee Doodle Laurier,

Crafty Taft’s a dandy,

Fielding bust the Farmers’ Bank,

Railroad Hill’s the candy.

We’ll take our stand throughout the land

And preach to you this story

That ancient rag, the British flag,

Must float below Old Glory.

An age of political polemic was dying to the last sound of drums, the wail of fifes, and the flicker of torches. Another example of the splendid, fading art of campaign poetry was introduced by one of Borden’s most powerful supporters, the Honorable Robert Rogers, of Manitoba:

Lord God of our Fathers be with us, rise up at Thy people’s cry

For blindness has stricken the nation and the doom of our land draws nigh.

Rise, rise up ere it falls, Lord, and save us, and blast with the fire of Thy mouth

The treason that barters our birthright for the gold of the Kings of the South.

Election day was the first day of fall, crisp and clear in nearly all parts of the country. Long before dusk closed in on the autumn evening, crowds began gathering before the newspaper bulletin boards, confident Grits before the Toronto Globe, the Winnipeg Free Press, and the other Liberal papers, hopeful Tories before the Mail and Empire and the Montreal Star. The suspense was not long-lived. A hundred thousand people poured through the streets of Toronto by ten o’clock, and those who held their torchlights highest and shouted loudest were those who had heard the returns at the Mail and Empire. Before the night was through someone threw a brick through the front window of the Liberal Globe. The Tories had won, won overwhelmingly. If the Quebec Nationalists were to be counted as Conservatives—as for all early and practical purposes they assuredly were—the standing in the Commons had been exactly reversed. At the closing of the polls it was: Laurier 133, Borden 88. When the returns were completed it was: Borden 133, Laurier 88.

In the debacle seven Liberal ministers lost their seats, including the promising young Labor Minister, Mackenzie King, as well as Finance Minister Fielding, who had negotiated the reciprocity agreement with Washington. Most of the Grit casualties were in Ontario. Here the Tories had won 72 seats to 14. Quebec still remained Liberal, but the uneasy alliance of Monk and Bourassa had cut Laurier’s majority there from 43 seats to 11.

If Canada was mildly stunned by the result, the effect on the United States was of stuttering and choleric incomprehension. The outraged speaker Clark blamed the whole thing on “corruption funds sent from this country and Great Britain to Canada,” threatened to run for President on a program of annexation, and boasted that if he did he’d “carry every state in the nation.” The abandoned and embarrassed President Taft muttered aggrievedly: “I think we know a little more on this side than they do on theirs, because we are an older country, and after some years of experience it is possible they will come to take the right view.” A Buffalo paper blamed the result on “every imaginable form of misrepresentation, intimidation of the work-people, appeals to passion, to prejudice, to cupidity.” The St. Louis Republic gave the credit to “Cockney and hooligan Jingoism” and warned Borden, whom it called “the chief Imperial hypocrite,” that unless his country came to its senses it might be necessary to accept “annexation in all its phases.” Hearst’s New York American harumphed acidly that Laurier had overestimated the intelligence of the Canadian people. The New York World stood aghast at such a display of “popular stupidity.” The Times, which was less noted for its temperance in those days, found in it an example of “prejudice, delusion, reaction and ignorance.” The Chicago Tribune, while also deploring the Canadian people’s decision, chivalrously confessed to seeing in it “a certain splendor.”

For the time being Borden’s American enemies remained far more valuable to him than his friends. In a few months Taft himself was to supply the finest testimonial he could have asked for. This he did when he made public a letter that he had written to Teddy Roosevelt before the reciprocity campaign. In this letter Taft, then hard pressed in his own country, had urged upon T.R. the argument that reciprocity would produce “a current of business between Western Canada and the United States that would make Canada only an adjunct of the United States.” It would transfer all their important business to Chicago and New York, “with their bank credits and everything else.” It would increase greatly the demand in Canada for American manufactures. “I see this is an argument against reciprocity made in Canada, and I think it is a good one,” Taft concluded.

Thus Borden, who had not in his wildest dreams hoped to do better than back into a narrow and insecure victory, rode to triumph to the sweetest music a politician can ever hear: the astonished voices of his routed foes.