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.

While most Canadians were ceasing to look to Washington for relief,
an increasing number were looking once more to London. The revival of
imperial sentiment which began in the early eighties, seemed to promise
new and greater possibilities for the colonies overseas. Political
union in the form of imperial federation and commercial union through
reciprocal tariff preferences were urged in turn as the cure for all
Canada's ills. Neither solution was adopted. The movement greatly
influenced the actual trend of affairs, but there was to be no mere
turning back to the days of the old empire.

The period of laissez faire in imperial matters, of Little Englandism,
drew to a close in the early eighties. Once more men began to value
empire, to seek to annex new territory overseas, and to bind closer the
existing possessions. The world was passing through a reaction destined
to lead to the earth-shaking catastrophe of 1914. The ideals of peace
and free trade preached and to some degree practiced in the fifties and
sixties were passing under an eclipse. In Europe the swing to free
trade had halted, and nation after nation was becoming aggressively
protectionist. The triumph of Prussia in the War of 1870 revived and
intensified military rivalry and military preparations on the part of
all the powers of Europe. A new scramble for colonies and possessions
overseas began, with the late comers nervously eager to make up for time
lost. In this reaction Britain shared. Protection raised its head again
in England; only by tariffs and tariff bargaining, the Fair Traders
insisted, could the country hold its own. Odds and ends of territory
overseas were annexed and a new value was attached to the existing
colonies. The possibility of obtaining from them military support and
trade privileges, the desirability of returning to the old ideal of
a self-contained and centralized empire, appealed now to influential
groups. This goal might be attained by different paths. From the United
Kingdom came the policy of imperial federation and from the colonies the
policy of preferential trade as means to this end.

In 1884 the Imperial Federation League was organized in London with
important men of both parties in its ranks. It urged the s