dates and their friends. It became almost impossible to avoid paying these, but they really did not affect the elections, as has been proved by the result of elections where such expenditure has not been resorted to. I have written a great deal for which I ought to apologise, because the line of argument on many points would occur to yourself, perhaps on all. Still, I think there is a necessity for putting this matter in a proper light and for having a speech which no one can deliver better than yourself well reported and circulated in a separate form. Committing the whole matter to your own judgment, -Believe me,

Faithfully yours,

(Signed) F. HINCKS.

Throughout the days in Opposition we advocated a radical change in the fiscal system of the country. Things were going from bad to worse. The people saw the possibility of relief in the adoption of a higher tariff, but the Government refused to apply the remedy, and clung to office. In a five-hour speech delivered to the House on April 21st, 1877, in submitting a want of confidence resolution, I criticised Mackenzie's administration of his own department of Public Works. I showed that he had failed to grapple effectually with the question of building the transcontinental, and moreover, proved that he had violated the law and every constitutional principle, all resulting in a waste of public money. The Premier was unable to make any reply worthy of a name.

"That speech of yours will never be answered, because it is unanswerable," Sir Leonard Tilley (then

Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick) wrote me a few weeks later. Mackenzie meant well, but he devoted too much time in supervising the departments of his colleagues, and doing work which should have been performed by subordinates.

As chief financial critic I also had many lively exchanges with Sir Richard Cartwright, Minister of Finance. Cartwright was a gifted man and resourceful in debate. A Conservative at heart to the end of his days, he left our party because Sir John A. Macdonald had a few years previously passed him over in favour of Sir Francis Hincks in filling the same portfolio. In the session of 1877 our leader moved, and I seconded, a resolution proposing such a readjustment of the tariff as would benefit and foster the agricultural, mining, and manufacturing interests of the Dominion. In the Hansard of that year, page 471, in my speech on the Budget the following appears:

"The policy the Government (i.e. the policy of the then Mackenzie Government) has pursued has had the effect of depopulating the country.. It has sent away the most intelligent and skilled labour, the finest sons of Canada, to a foreign country to obtain the employment their own country denies them. This is a fatal policy, and one which must induce us to forgo all our aspirations for anything like a rapid increasing population for this country in the future, and to consent to become hewers of wood and drawers of water for our friends across the line in the great Republic of the United States. Canada has everything that can be desired to make it a great manufacturing country. We have iron, coal, and limestone. Ours

is, perhaps, the richest country for minerals to be found on the face of the globe. We have open harbours, rapid transit and communication through a great portion of the Dominion, and away in the Far West mines of gold and silver that, in my opinion, are going to excel any on the American continent. All we require is a policy calculated to open up and develop our great natural resources in order to make Canada all that the noblest aspirations of the most patriotic Canadian has ever supposed for a moment practical. . . I say Canada could adopt a revenue policy or such a policy with relation to goods coming from Great Britain or from British possessions as the necessities of Canada indicated, and another tariff for all the rest of the world. That would apply only to the United States practically, because our imports from other portions of the world are, almost uniformly, articles upon which there are specific and not ad valorem duties, and we could adjust that in the interest of Canada as we pleased.

"I have no doubt that this would meet the only serious difficulty represented by the hon. gentleman opposite, as standing in the way of a true Canadian policy, and one that those who wish to see Canadian enterprise and Canadian industries flourish, feel it is time that the country should grapple with earnestly, and deal with as I have mentioned."

Later on, secret information reached me that Sir Richard Cartwright, reading the signs of the times aright, was getting ready to make radical increases in the tariff. I lost no time in communicating the news to Sir John.

66

What shall we do?" asked our leader.

Why, congratulate him, of course," I advised. Unfortunately for the Liberals, they failed to realise their opportunity. When the Hon. A. G. Jones, a member of the Government, arrived from Halifax and learned of Cartwright's tariff proposals, he raised a storm of protest and threatened to bolt. That settled the matter. Shortly after the dissolution of Parliament I called on Lord Dufferin, and in answer to his questions told him that the Liberals did not have a leg to stand upon because their party had started to die the very day it had begun to live. The Government majority had at that time dwindled to about forty from over eighty in 1874, the year of their tidal wave. As I was leaving Lord Dufferin, who should enter but Mr. Mackenzie.

Tupper tells me that the Conservatives are going to win," observed Lord Dufferin, addressing the Premier.

"Oh, he's a little too sanguine," dryly commented Mackenzie.

But he misjudged public sentiment, for in the following public election we routed the Liberals, horse, foot, and artillery, returning to power with a majority of over eighty. Sir John was, of course, called upon to form an Administration, in which I accepted the portfolio of Public Works. I subsequently had the department divided, creating a new department-that of Railways and Canals, of which I took charge. To this day that arrangement still exists, other public improvements other than railways and canals being under the direction of the Minister of Public Works.

The next four years represented years of ceaseless activity and constructive statesmanship, inuring to the agricultural and industrial development of the Dominion. True to our promises, we adopted the National Policy at the earliest moment, got under way a vast programme for the deepening of the waterways and canals of the St. Lawrence system, and after the completion of surveys, entered into an agreement for the building of a national transcontinental railway from Eastern Canada to the Pacific coast.

The effect of the substitution of a protective tariff for the Mackenzie revenue law proved magical. It restricted the exodus, gave employment in the factories to our own idle working man, stimulated every branch of manufacturing, led to the establishment of many new industries, and preserved the home market for our own people. The farmer was also given substantial protection. During the Mackenzie Administration Canada became the dumping ground for the surplus manufactured products of the United States, which, enjoying the benefit of a high tariff, rigidly excluded Canadian products of every description.

The National Policy, in my judgment, is one of the bulwarks of Canadian national life. It made possible the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, stimulated inter-provincial trade, and developed a solidarity of sentiment that has been growing stronger since Confederation was brought about.

We are to-day a self-contained people, and recent years have witnessed the spectacle of millions of foreign capital being invested in Canadian manufacturing industries. The farmer, too, enjoys his