ptive cry of 'incidental protection' got a footing in the land;
and from that the step has been easy to the bold demand now set up by
a few favoured industries, that all the rest of the community ought to
be, and should rejoice to be, taxed seventeen and a half per cent, to
keep them in existence."

Brown joined issue squarely with the protectionists. "I contend that
there is not one article contained in the schedules that ought not to
be wholly free of duty, either in Canada or the United States, in the
interest of the public. I contend that the finance minister of Canada
who--treaty or no treaty with the United States--was able to announce
the repeal of all customs duties on the entire list of articles in
Schedules A, B, and C,--even though the lost revenue was but shifted
to articles of luxury, would carry with him the hearty gratitude of
the country. Nearly every article in the whole list of manufactures is
either of daily consumption and necessity among all classes of our
population, or an implement of trade, or enters largely into the
economical prosecution of the main industries of the Dominion." The
criticism of the sliding scale, of which so much was heard at the
time, was only another phase of the protectionist objection. The
charge that the treaty would discriminate in favour of American
against British imports was easily disposed of. Brown showed that
every article admitted free from the United States would be admitted
free from Great Britain. But as this meant British as well as American
competition, it made the case worse from the protectionist point of
view. The rejection of the treaty by the United States left a clear
field for the protectionists in Canada.

Four years after Mr. Brown's speech defending the treaty, he made his
last important speech in the senate, and almost the last public
utterance of his life, attacking Tilley's protectionist budget, and
nailing his free-trade colours to the mast.

CHAPTER XXIII

CANADIAN NATIONALISM

It will be remembered that after the victory won by the Reformers in
1848, there was an outbreak of radical sentiment, represented by the
Clear Grits in Upper Canada and by the Rouges in Lower Canada. It may
be more than a coincidence that there was a similar stirring of the
blood in Ontario and in Quebec after the Liberal victory of 1874. The
founding of the _Liberal_ and of the _Nation_, of the National Club
and of the Canada First Association, Mr. Blake's