Reference has been made to an Imperial court official assassinated by an
angry Hindu conspirator in a Vancouver court room. The assassin was
sentenced to death nine days from the commission of the crime, and if any
newspaper had attempted to make a head-line affair out of it, or "to try
the jury" for trying the prisoner, the editors and owners of that paper
would have been sent to jail for contempt.
IV
The gradual rise of the two political parties dates from the adoption of
a high tariff by the Conservatives after confederation. Prior to 1837
Canadian parties consisted simply of the Outs and the Ins. The advanced
Radicals, who formed themselves into a party to oust the Family Compact,
called themselves Liberals. The entrenched oligarchy called themselves
Conservatives. After confederation, by force of circumstances, namely
the refusal of tariff concessions from the United States, the
Conservatives, who were in power, became the high tariff party. The
Liberals, when out of power, advocated tariff for revenue only. Also by
force of circumstances until the transfer of the balance of power from
Quebec to the New West, the party in office had a tendency to play for
the French Catholic vote of Quebec; the party out of office coquetted
with the ultra-Protestant vote of Ontario. This naturally worked toward
the provincial governments being Liberal, when the federal government was
Conservative; and vice versa. The Liberal in provincial politics was
Liberal in federal politics, and the Conservative in federal politics was
Conservative in provincial politics; but the policy has always been for
the Outs first to attack the Ins provincially--to win the outposts before
attacking the entrenched power of the federal government. Before Sir
John Macdonald's Conservative administration was defeated there was a
long series of victories by the Liberals in the provinces, and before Sir
Wilfred Laurier's Liberal government was defeated the Conservatives had
captured the most of the provincial governments. With the Conservatives
professing high tariff as economic salvation and the Liberals regarding
high tariff as economic damnation, it seems almost heresy to set down
that the line of demarkation between the two great parties in practice is
really one of Outs and Ins. The only tariff reductions made by the
Liberals were on British imports, and this did not lower the average on
British imports to the level of the average duty on American imports;
when the high tariff Conservatives came back to power, the duties were
not shoved to higher levels. This, too, has all been by force of
circumstances. When both parties would have grasped eagerly at tariff
reductions from the United States, those concessions could not be
obtained. When the tariff concessions were offered, Canada had already
built up such intrenched interests of her own in factory, mill and
transportation that she was not in a position to accept the offer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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