questions. It is the result of the same forces which produced the preference of 1897, 1898, and 1900, and it is the latest step upon the road upon which Canada has been irresistibly driven since the repeal of the Acts of Trade and Navigation.
When Canada lost her preferential position in British markets she turned, angrily and unwillingly, to the United States. Reciprocity became essential to her, and, to quote Mr. Foster again, 'reciprocity has no meaning in Canada except in relation to the United States.' From 1854 till 1865 it existed under the Elgin Treaty; after the Civil War it was denounced by the States, and for many years after Canada was a humble suppliant for its renewal—at one time contemptuously repulsed, at another deluded by negotiations which led to nothing. 'From 1867 till 1904 no election has taken place for the Federal Parliament in which reciprocity in some form was not a dominant factor. In 1891 it was the sole issue, in the form of unrestricted exchange of commodities between Canada and the United States, and involving discrimination against the Mother Country.' The positions are now reversed, and it is for the States to sue, and for Canada to refuse. At present 'as a live issue it does not exist'
Federation came in 1867. In the seventies two events happened: Canada took a step towards protection, and the Canadian Pacific Railway was begun. These two events sprang from the same causes, and were complementary of each other: Canada, denied access to the markets of the States, started to manufacture for herself; since her exports could no longer go south, they had to come east. The results of the building of the line have often been described, but can hardly be exaggerated; it converted the country from a series of separate communities, divided by wide distances and by wider spaces of time, closely bound to and dependent on the States lying immediately south of them, into a homogeneous country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Had reciprocity continued, and had the
