fence of the colonies was
only a by-product of that naval supremacy which was vital to England's
very existence as a nation, and cost not a penny extra, for which
reason the control of the fleet must always remain unconditionally in
the hands of the responsible government of the United Kingdom.[4] Sir
Charles, too, was wont to stress the strategic importance of the
Canadian Pacific Railway as Canada's contribution to the defence of the
Empire. His arguments had much force, but they were obviously the
product of a time of transition, {149} uneasy answers to the promptings
of the slow-rising spirit of nationhood.

Action, or inaction, corresponded to words. In 1885, when Britain was
waging war in the Soudan, New South Wales offered to raise and equip a
regiment. The secretary for war at once spread the news of this offer
through the other colonies. Sir John Macdonald's only reply was to
offer to sanction the raising of troops in Canada, the whole cost to
fall on Great Britain. The offer was declined with thanks. A company
of voyageurs, largely French-Canadian, however, was recruited in
Canada, at Britain's expense, and did good service in the rapids of the
Nile. Sir John Macdonald did not, of course, proclaim Canada's
neutrality in this war, any more than Hincks and MacNab had done in the
Crimean War, when hired German troops garrisoned Dover and Shorncliffe.
Canada simply took no part in either war.

But, if political federation and inter-imperial defence thus fell on
deaf ears in Canada, the question of trade relations received more
serious attention. In urging the Pacific cable and a service of fast
steamships on each ocean, Sandford Fleming had hit upon the line along
which progress eventually was to be made. {150} Tariff preferences,
inter-imperial reciprocity, began to be discussed. As early as 1879
Sir John Macdonald, on finding in England much dissatisfaction over his
high taxation of British imports, proposed to give British goods a
preference if the United Kingdom would give Canada a preference in
return. Thus, on the ruins of the old colonial system imposed by the
mother country's edict, would be built a new colonial system based on
free negotiation between equal states. In view of Britain's rooted
adherence to free trade, nothing, of course, came of the proposal. Ten
years later there was in England some discussion of protection or 'fair
trade,' and in Canada, during the elections of 1891, the i