Canada in 1888–90 was a cauldron about to boil over. The problem was basically one of national identity. Some saw the nation as closely linked to the British empire, while others saw it as attached to the North American continent. For the latter, the solution to Britain’s sacrifice of Canadian interests was for Canada to cut the imperial knot and enter into a continental partnership with the United States. They favoured unrestricted reciprocity extending across both North and South America.
As the Liberal party’s financial critic, Richard John Cartwright was a tenacious foe of the Macdonald government’s National Policy; he decried the decline of property values, excessive government expenditures, and the increase in Canadian emigration to the United States, all, he argued, were direct results of the National Policy. Cartwright’s cure for the troubled Canadian economy was unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. Geography and demographics made increased trade with the United States the most logical choice for Canada, and free trade would benefit the transport and manufacturing interests and provide jobs for Canadian workers. In the election of 1891 the Conservatives successfully tied the National Policy to loyalty to the empire and depicted the Liberals as the party which would bring annexation to the United States in through the back door of commercial union. Cartwright vigorously championed the virtues of unrestricted reciprocity, especially among Ontario farmers. The election of 21 Sept. 1911 was a total disaster for Sir Wilfrid Laurier. The two central issues – both major – were reciprocity and the navy, and they underpinned two concepts of the nation, one more continentalist and the other more closely linked to the British empire.
Beyond geography and economics, there were other arguments for continentalism. For polemicist Goldwin Smith the great failure, even tragedy, of Anglo-Saxon history was the American revolution. “Before their unhappy schism they were one people,” and the healing of that schism through the “moral, diplomatic and commercial union of the whole English-speaking race throughout the world” became the goal to which all else was secondary. Confederation had failed to meld the competing “races” and regions into a single community, and only political corruption, bribes to the regions, and the vested interests which benefited from the protective tariff kept this artificial country from collapsing. In Smith’s mind the natural geographical and economic forces of North America worked against the unnatural political and sentimental opinions of Canadians. Like the United States, Canada was a North American nation and once this fact was recognized, the two communities would achieve their destiny in unity. Smith’s belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority and the importance that he attached to the reunification of the “race” provided him with both his questions and his answers when he analysed “Canada and the Canadian question.” His ideal of cultural homogeneity left no room for a political nationality based on cultural diversity, the cornerstone of confederation. For him the call of race was irresistible: “In blood and character, language, religion, institutions, laws and interests, the two portions of the Anglo-Saxon race on this continent are one people.”
