manufacturers. At the time when the Liberal Government went out of office in 1911, the preference had been extended to Bermuda, the British West Indies, Jamaica, India, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, New Zealand and British South Africa. For some years New South Wales, as a low-tariff colony, enjoyed the advantage of the preference, but lost it when it was merged in the Commonwealth of Australia. Newfoundland has not been included in the preference; but the fish products of Newfoundland are admitted free under a special clause in the Dominion tariff. Following the example of Canada, moreover, three of the other oversea Dominions have conceded preferences of greater or less value to British manufactures. The Liberal Government of 1896-1911, accordingly, must be given the credit of originating or reviving this link of empire; for, while there were protective tariffs in Canada so early as 1858, and in Victoria from 1866, there was no preference for British imports before the Dominion tariff of 1897.

None the less, it is now a matter of history that the British preference in the first Fielding tariff was in the main a party expedient. Without it there might have been a serious crisis in the first session of Parliament under the Laurier Government. One member of the Cabinet, who had never concealed his free-trade convictions, and who was outspoken in regard to them in the last year of the Laurier régime, when the farmers and grain-growers were agitating for lower duties in all the schedules and for an immediate increase in the British preference, could have organised in the House of Commons a large group of Liberal members in opposition to the adoption of the national policy of the Conservatives. The preference obviated that crisis in the Liberal party. It served the turn of the Laurier Government in the Parliament of 1896-1900. To some extent it assuaged the disappointment of Liberals in the constituencies at the abandonment of the fiscal principles which the Liberal leaders had advocated from 1879 to 1896; and at the general election in 1900, as again in 1904 and 1908, there was no political party advocating the former fiscal principles of the Liberals.

The only dividing line between the Liberals and the Conservatives from 1897 to 1911, when reciprocity un

expectedly introduced a new issue, was the British preference; so that, from 1897 onwards, Liberals in the constituencies who still adhered to the principles of Sir W. Laurier, the late Sir R. Cartwright and Mr Fielding, when these leaders were in opposition, had no alternative but to vote for supporters of the Laurier Government. A vote for the Conservatives at any time between 1897 and 1911 was a vote against British preference, which, except in a few manufacturing centres, was everywhere the most popular and valued fiscal legislation of the Laurier Government. How well the preference had served the Government is evident from the statement of the Canadian representatives at the Colonial Conference of 1902, that the Dominion had gone as far as it intended to go in conceding preferences to British manufacturers that jeopardised the protection of Canadian manufacturers. By this time the Liberal Government had partly lived down the ill-will of its followers who were sore at the abandonment of Liberal principles at the revision of the tariff in 1897; and its relations with the protected interests by this time also were quite as close and as cordial as those which existed between the protected manufacturers and the Conservative Governments of 1878-96. The statement made at the Colonial Conference in 1902 was no mere threat made to induce the Balfour Government to give a preference to the Dominion in connexion with the war tax imposed on imported grain and flour. Proof that the Government had no intention to go further in exposing Canadian manufacturers to competition from England than the preference of 33, which had become fully operative in 1900, is to be found in the fact that the first serious curtailment of the preference came in 1904. Thereafter nearly every change in the preferential rates involved a curtailment of the concessions made in 1900.

The Liberal Government was steadfastly loyal to its policy of preference only from April 1897 to June 1904. Its loyalty obviously waned after the preference had served its turn at a crisis in the Liberal party and the relations of the Government with the protected interests became more close and intimate-a fact that must always be kept in mind when it is urged that the increase in trade with Canada under the preference has been some

what disappointing, and also when British manufacturers are charged with having failed to take full advantage of the preference. To the last the Liberal Government always pointed with pride to the preferential clauses in the Act of 1897 and the later enactments that raised the preference to the level at which it stood from 1900 to 1904. So long as the Liberal Government was in power, its members and its supporters in the Press sought to give the impression that during the whole of the period from 1897 to 1911 the preference remained substantially what it was before the first curtailment in 1904. These Liberal speakers and newspapers told of the preference of 12 per cent. of 1897, of 25 per cent. of 1899, and of 331 per cent. of 1900. It was only when pressed at close range by political opponents acquainted with the facts that supporters of the Liberal Government would admit that there had been a whittling away of the preference in 1904 and again in 1906; for with most Liberals in the constituencies the preference for Great Britain was the one redeeming feature of the fiscal legislation of the Laurier Government.

While the attitude of the Liberal Government towards the preference from 1904 to 1911 was markedly different from its attitude from 1897 to 1904, the attitude of the Conservative party, of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, of the granges of Ontario and of the Graingrowers' Association of the prairie provinces, was in each case consistent and unvarying. The Conservatives under the leadership first of Sir C. Tupper, and later of Mr R. L. Borden, condemned the preference when it was first proposed, and continuously condemned it in Parliament and in the constituencies so long as they were in opposition. The Manufacturers' Association from the first, and more openly from their convention at Halifax in 1902, insisted by resolution and memorial to the Government that all Canadian industries must have adequate protection against British competition as well as against competition from the United States and Germany. On the other hand, the preference was universally popular with the farmers and grain-growers.

Cf. letter by Mr Fielding in reply to letter from Sir Charles Tupper, 'Witness,' Montreal, June 5, 1911.

These farmers are well organised; indeed, they are the only consumers who are organised. Through their organisations they strongly commended the preference at the public hearings of the Tariff Commission of 1905–6. They petitioned that it should be restored to the level at which it had stood from 1900 to 1904; and in Dec. 1910, they memorialised the Government to reduce by half the duties on manufactures imported from Great Britain.

In the discussions in Committee of Ways and Means on the resolutions on which the tariff of 1897 was based, Sir C. Tupper and other leaders of the Opposition took the ground that the preference was an inroad on the protection that Canadian manufacturers had enjoyed under the national policy tariffs of the Conservatives; and that its enactment destroyed the prospect of obtaining preferential trade with Great Britain—a policy to which the Conservatives had been committed since 1892. One of the most significant speeches made by any Conservative leader-significant in view of the change of Government in October 1911-was that by Mr Borden, now Premier.

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'I am most anxious' (he said) that the trade of this country, so far as the interests of the country will permit, should be in the direction of the mother-country, and in the direction of the other colonies of the Empire; and I agree with the view which my honourable friend from Bruce-Mr McNeill has so often advocated,* that it might be well in the interests of this country in the long run to make some sacrifices at first for that purpose. Possibly I would not go so far in that direction as my honourable friend. I would not like to see any of the great industries of this country cut down or shattered, or the bread taken out of the mouths of our working-men for that purpose. We might well make some amount of sacrifice for a purpose that would be in the interests of this country and of the Empire, and that would well repay the sacrifice in the end; but to take the step contemplated by the Government ... does not seem to be calculated to attain that result.' †

* On April 5, 1892, the following resolution, moved by Mr Alexander McNeill, was carried in the House of Commons: 'That if, and when, the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland admits Canadian products to the markets of the United Kingdom on more favourable terms than it accords to the products of foreign countries, the Parliament of Canada will be prepared to accord corresponding advantages by a substantial reduction in the duties it imposes on British manufactured goods.'

† H. of C. Debates, May 26, 1897.

As an example of the speeches in opposition to the preference from members of the rank and file of the Conservative party, that by Mr Ross Robertson, then member from the city of Toronto, may be quoted. Mr Robertson, long the foremost Conservative journalist in Canada, regarded the proposal of 1897 as a direct violation of the principle of protection.

'I would certainly not give, unless for a very material consideration' (he declared), ' any advantage to either the workmen or the manufacturers of Great Britain, or for that matter to the workmen or manufacturers of any country in the world. I am most unwilling that British manufacturers should have the money that Canadian manufacturers need.' *

A volume could be compiled of the speeches for and against the preference; for one aspect or another of it was discussed in every session of Parliament from 1897 to 1911. In these many discussions there was no change in the attitude of the Conservatives; and the speeches which have been quoted from the discussions of 1897 may be taken as typical of those of the fourteen years that followed. The attitude of the Conservative party was defined in Mr Borden's resolution of 1902, which was again proposed in the session of 1903 as follows:

'This House, regarding the operation of the present tariff as unsatisfactory, is of opinion that this country requires a declared policy of such adequate protection for its labour, agricultural products, manufactures and industries as will at all times secure the Canadian market for Canadians; and, while always firmly maintaining the necessity of such protection to Canadian interests, this House affirms its belief in a policy of reciprocal trade preferences within the Empire.'†

In the same session of Parliament, Mr F. D. Monk, late Minister of Public Works in the Borden Government, asserted that this unfortunate preference' had done no good to the British people; and certainly,' he added, it has done no good to us.' In another debate on the preference in 1903, Mr R. Blain, a Conservative member

* H. of C. Debates, May 26, 1897.

+ Ib. March 18, 1902, and April 17, 1903. In 1903, for the last three lines was substituted the following: 'that the financial policy of the Government should include a measure for the thorough and judicious readjusting of the tariff at the present session.'