From 1867, Canada had been intermittently seeking reciprocity with the United States. Now, at last, the offer of it came to her unsolicited. Why did she reject it by a vote that would have been unanimous but for the prairie provinces? Though the desire for reciprocity with the United States was exploited politically more by the Liberals--or low-tariff party--than by the Conservatives--the high-tariff party--both had repeatedly sent official and unofficial emissaries to Washington seeking tariff concessions. Tariff concessions were a plank in the Liberal platform from the days of Alexander MacKenzie. They were not a plank in the platform of the Conservative party for the sole reason that the high tariff on the American side forced a high tariff in self-defense on the Canadian side. Close readers of Sir John Macdonald's life must have been amazed to learn that one of his very first visits to Washington--contemporaneous with the Civil War period, when the United States were just launching out on a high-tariff policy--was for the purpose of seeking tariff favors for Canada. Failing to obtain even a favorable hearing, he observed the high-tariff trend at Washington, took a leaf out of his rival's book and returned to Canada to launch the high-tariff policy that dominated the Dominion for thirty years. Alexander MacKenzie, Blake, Mowat, George Brown, Laurier, Cartwright, Fielding--all the dyed-in-the-wool ultra Whigs of the Liberal party--practically held their party together for the thirty lean years out-of-office by promises and repeated promises of reciprocity with the United States the instant they came into office. They never seemed to doubt that the instant they did come into office and proffered reciprocity to the United States the offer would be accepted and reciprocated. It may be explained that all these old-line Liberals from MacKenzie to Laurier were free-traders of the Cobden-Bright school. They believed in free trade not only as an economic policy but as a religion to prevent the plundering of the poor by the rich, of the many by the few. One has only to turn to the back files of the _Montreal Witness_ and _Toronto Globe_ from 1871 to 1895--the two Liberal organs that voiced the extreme free-trade propaganda--to find this political note emphasized almost as a fanatical religion. The high-tariff party were not only morally wrong; they were predestinedly damned. I remember that in my own home both organs were revered next to the Bible, and this free-trade doctrine was accepted as unquestionably as the Shorter Catechism. II