While most Canadians were ceasing to look to Washington for relief, an increasing number were looking once more to London.
The revival of imperial sentiment which began in the early eighties, seemed to promise new and greater possibilities for the colonies overseas.Political union in the form of imperial federation and commercial union through reciprocal tariff preferences were urged in turn as the cure for all Canada's ills.
Neither solution was adopted.The movement greatly influenced the actual trend of affairs, but there was to be no mere turning back to the days of the old empire.
The period of laissez faire in imperial matters, of Little Englandism, drew to a close in the early eighties.Once more men began to value empire, to seek to annex new territory overseas, and to bind closer the existing possessions.The world was passing through a reaction destined to lead to the earth-shaking catastrophe of 1914.The ideals of peace and free trade preached and to some degree practiced in the fifties and sixties were passing under an eclipse.In Europe the swing to free trade had halted, and nation after nation was becoming aggressively protectionist.The triumph of Prussia in the War of 1870 revived and intensified military rivalry and military preparations on the part of all the powers of Europe.A new scramble for colonies and possessions overseas began, with the late comers nervously eager to make up for time lost.In this reaction Britain shared.
Protection raised its head again in England; only by tariffs and tariff bargaining, the Fair Traders insisted, could the country hold its own.Odds and ends of territory overseas were annexed and a new value was attached to the existing colonies.The possibility of obtaining from them military support and trade privileges, the desirability of returning to the old ideal of a self-contained and centralized empire, appealed now to influential groups.This goal might be attained by different paths.From the United Kingdom came the policy of imperial federation and from the colonies the policy of preferential trade as means to this end.
In 1884 the Imperial Federation League was organized in London with important men of both parties in its ranks.It urged the setting up in London of a new Parliament, in which the United Kingdom and all the colonies where white men predominated would be represented according to population.This Parliament would have power to frame policies, to make laws, and to levy taxes for the whole Empire.To the colonist it offered an opportunity to share in the control of foreign affairs; to the Englishman it offered the support of colonies fast growing to power and the assurance of one harmonious policy for all the Empire.Both in Britain and overseas the movement received wide support and seemed for a time likely to sweep all before it.Then a halt came.
Imperial federation had been brought forward a generation too late to succeed.The Empire had been developing upon lines which could not be made to conform to the plans for centralized parliamentary control.It was not possible to go back to the parting of the ways.Slowly, unconsciously, unevenly, yet steadily, the colonies had been ceasing to be dependencies and had been becoming nations.With Canada in the vanguard they had been taking over one power after another which had formerly been wielded by the Government of the United Kingdom.It was not likely that they would relinquish these powers or that self-governing colonies would consent to be subordinated to a Parliament in London in which each would have only a fragmentary representation.
The policy of imperial cooperation which began to take shape during this period sought to reconcile the existing desire for continuing the connection with the mother country with the growing sense of national independence.This policy involved two different courses of action: first, the colonies must assert and secure complete self-government on terms of equality with the United Kingdom; second, they must unite as partners or allies in carrying out common tasks and policies and in building up machinery for mutual consultation and harmonious action.
It was chiefly in matters of trade and tariffs that progress was made in the direction of self-government.Galt had asserted in 1859 Canada's right to make her own tariffs, and Macdonald twenty years later had carried still further the policy of levying duties upon English as well as foreign goods.That economic point was therefore settled, but it was a slower matter to secure control of treaty-making powers.When Galt and Huntington urged this right in 1871 and when Blake and Mackenzie pressed it ten years later, Macdonald opposed such a demand as equivalent to an effort for independence.Yet he himself was compelled to change his conservative attitude.After 1877 Canada ceased to be bound by commercial treaties made by the United Kingdom, unless it expressly desired to be included.In 1879 Galt was sent to Europe to negotiate Canadian trade agreements with France and Spain; and in the next decade Tupper carried negotiations with France to a successful conclusion, though the treaty was formally concluded between France and Britain.By 1891 the Canadian Parliament could assert with truth that "the self-governing colonies are recognized as possessing the right to define their respective fiscal relations to all countries." But Canada as yet took no step toward assuming a share in her own naval defense, though the Australasian colonies made a beginning, along colonial rather than national lines, by making a money contribution to the British navy.
