Commercial union was a half-way measure which found more favor.ANorth American customs union had been supported by such public men as Stephen A.Douglas, Horace Greeley, and William H.Seward, by official investigators such as Taylor, Derby, and Larned, and by committees of the House of Representatives in 1862, 1876, 1880, and 1884.In Canada it had been endorsed before Confederation by Isaac Buchanan, the father of the protection movement, and by Luther Holton and John Young.Now for the first time it became a practical question.Erastus Wiman, a Canadian who had found fortune in the United States, began in 1887 a vigorous campaign in its favor both in Congress and among the Canadian public.Goldwin Smith lent his dubious aid, leading Toronto and Montreal newspapers joined the movement, and Ontario farmers' organizations swung to its support.But the agitation proved abortive owing to the triumph of high protection in the presidential election of 1888; and in Canada the red herring of the Jesuits' Estates controversy was drawn across the trail.
Yet the question would not down.The political parties were compelled to define their attitude.The Liberals had been defeated once more in the election of 1887, where the continuance of the National Policy and of aid to the Canadian Pacific had been the issue.Their leader, Edward Blake, had retired disheartened.His place had been taken by a young Quebec lieutenant, Wilfrid Laurier, who had won fame by his courageous resistance to clerical aggression in his own province and by his indictment of the Macdonald Government in the Riel issue.Aveteran Ontario Liberal, Sir Richard Cartwright, urged the adoption of commercial union as the party policy.Laurier would not go so far, and the policy of unrestricted reciprocity was made the official programme in 1888.Commercial union had involved not only absolute free trade between Canada and the United States but common excise rates, a common tariff against the rest of the world, and the division of customs and excise revenues in some agreed proportion.Unrestricted reciprocity would mean free trade between the two countries, but with each left free to levy what rates it pleased on the products of other countries.
When in 1891 the time came round once more for a general election, it was apparent that reciprocity in some form would be the dominant issue.Though the Republicans were in power in the United States and though they had more than fulfilled their high tariff pledges in the McKinley Act, which hit Canadian farm products particularly hard, there was some chance of terms being made.Reciprocity, as a form of tariff bargaining, really fits in better with protection than with free trade, and Blaine, Harrison's Secretary of State, was committed to a policy of trade treaties and trade bargaining.In Canada the demand for the United States market had grown with increasing depression.The Liberals, with their policy of unrestricted reciprocity, seemed destined to reap the advantage of this rising tide of feeling.
Then suddenly, on the eve of the election, Sir John Macdonald sought to cut the ground from under the feet of his opponents by the announcement that in the course of a discussion of Newfoundland matters the United States had taken the initiative in suggesting to Canada a settlement of all outstanding difficulties, fisheries, coasting trade, and , on the basis of a renewal and extension of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854.This policy promised to meet all legitimate economic needs of the country and at the same time avoid the political dangers of the more sweeping policy.Its force was somewhat weakened by the denials of Secretary Blaine that he had taken the initiative or made any definite promises.As the election drew near and revelations of the annexationist aims of some supporters of the wider trade policy were made, the Government made the loyalty cry its strong card."The old man, the old flag, and the old policy,"saved the day.In Ontario and Quebec the two parties were evenly divided, but the West and the Maritime Provinces, the "shreds and patches of Confederation," as Sir Richard Cartwright, too ironic and vitriolic in his speech for political success, termed them, gave the Government a working majority, which was increased in by-elections.
Again in power, the Government made a formal attempt to carry out its pledges.Two pilgrimages were made to Washington, but the negotiators were too far apart to come to terms.With the triumph of the Democrats in 1899.and the lowering of the tariff on farm products which followed, there came a temporary improvement in trade relations.But the tariff reaction and the silver issue brought back the Republicans and led to that climax in agricultural protection, the Dingley Act of 1897, which killed among Canadians all reciprocity longings and compelled them to look to themselves for salvation.Although Canadians were anxious for trade relations, they were not willing to be bludgeoned into accepting one-sided terms.The settlement of the Bering Sea dispute in 1898 by a board of arbitration, which ruled against the claims of the United States but suggested a restriction of pelagic sealing by agreement, removed one source of friction.
Hardly was that out of the way when Cleveland's Venezuela message brought Great Britain and the United States once more to the verge of war.In such a war Canadians knew they would be the chief sufferers, but in 1895, as in 1862, they did not flinch and stood ready to support the mother country in any outcome.The Venezuela episode stirred Canadian feeling deeply, revived interest in imperialism, and ended the last lingering remnants of any sentiment for annexation.As King Edward I was termed "the hammer of the Scots," so McKinley and Cleveland became "the hammer of the Canadians," welding them into unity.
