ars later fifty thousand a year looked
small. To each generation the defects of its qualities; in one
prudence degenerates into parsimony, in another courage runs wild in
extravagance.

[1] After 1887 he rarely, and after 1892 never, appeared in court.

[2] _Plain Facts regarding the Disallowance of Manitoba Railway
Charters_, by the Winnipeg Board of Trade.

{101}

CHAPTER VI

LOOKING TO WASHINGTON

Canada and the States--The fisheries dispute--Political
union--Commercial union--Unrestricted reciprocity--Jesuits'
estates--Unrestricted reciprocity

For desperate ills, desperate remedies. It is little wonder that
policies looking to revolutionary change in political or commercial
relations now came to take strong hold on the public mind. To many it
appeared that the experiment in Canadian nationality had failed. Why
not, then, frankly admit the failure and seek full political
incorporation with either of the great centres of the English-speaking
people, of whose political prestige and commercial success there was no
question? Annexation to the United States, Imperial Federation, with a
central parliament in the United Kingdom, each found a small but
earnest company of supporters. Or, if the mass of the people shrank
from one and held the other an impracticable dream, why not seek the
closest possible commercial tie with either nation? Thus Commercial
Union, or a _zollverein_ between Canada and the United {102} States,
and Imperial Preferential Trade, or a _zollverein_ between Canada and
the United Kingdom and the other parts of the British Empire, came into
discussion. What British and American conditions and opinion met these
Canadian movements, and what changes were made in the programmes first
urged, may next be reviewed. Canadian relations with the United States
will be noted first.

In the decade from 1886 to 1896, when the Venezuela episode opened a
valve for the steam to blow off, the relations between Canada and the
United States were continuously at high tension. It was an era of
friction and pinpricks, of bluster and retaliation. The United States
was not in a conciliatory mood. It was growing in wealth and numbers
and power, in unprecedented ways. Its people were one and all
intensely proud of their country and satisfied with themselves. The
muckraker had not yet lifted his voice in the land. The millionaire
was still an object of pride and emulation, _Exhibit A_ in the di