and intimate trade north and south would be to
make many. Where the treasure was, there would the heart be also. The
movement for imperial preferential trade, then strong in the United
Kingdom, would be for ever defeated if the American offer should be
accepted. Canada must not sell her birthright for a mess of Yankee
pottage.

The advocates of reciprocity denounced these arguments as the sheerest
buncombe. Annexation sentiment in the United States {266} they
declared to be rapidly disappearing, and in any case it was Canada's
views, not those of the United States, that mattered. Reciprocity from
1854 to 1866 had killed, not fostered, annexation sentiment in Canada.
And, if the doubling and trebling of imports from the United States in
recent years had not kept national and imperial sentiment from rising
to flood-tide, why now should an increase of exports breed disloyalty?
Canadian financiers and railway operators were entering into ever
closer relations with the United States; why should the farmer be
denied the same right? The reciprocity proposed in 1911, unlike the
programme of twenty years earlier, did not involve discrimination
against Great Britain, but in fact went along with a still greater
preference to the mother country. The claim that reciprocity would
kill imperial preference was meaningless in face of this actual fact.
Moreover, the British tariff reformers proclaimed their intention, if
Mr Chamberlain's policy prevailed, of making reciprocity treaties with
foreign countries as well as preferential arrangements with the
Dominions, so why should not Canada exercise the same freedom?

But elections are not won merely by such {267} debate. The energy with
which they are fought, or the weight of the interests vitally
concerned, may prove more decisive than argument. And in this contest
the Opposition had the far more effective fighting force and made the
far stronger appeal. Mr Borden's followers fought with the eager
enthusiasm which is bred of long exclusion from office, while the
ministerialists--save only the veteran prime minister himself and a
small band of his supporters--fought feebly, as if dulled by the
satiety which comes of long possession of the loaves and fishes.
Outside the party bounds the situation was the same. The western
farmers were the only organized and articulate body on the side of
reciprocity, while opposed to it were the powerful and well-equipped
forces of the manufac