Mackenzie gave the country honest and efficient administration. Among his most important achievements were the reform of elections by the introduction of the secret ballot and the requirement that elections should be held on a single day instead of being spread over weeks, a measure of local option in controlling the liquor traffic, and the establishment of a Canadian Supreme Court and the Royal Military College--the Canadian West Point. But fate and his own limitations were against him. He was too absorbed in the details of administration to have time for the work of a party leader. In his policy of constructing the Canadian Pacific as a government road, after Allan had resigned his charter, he manifested a caution and a slowness that brought British Columbia to the verge of secession. But it was chiefly the world-wide depression that began in his first year of office, 1873, which proved his undoing. Trade was stagnant, bankruptcies multiplied, and acute suffering occurred among the poor in the larger cities. Mackenzie had no solution to offer except patience and economy; and the Opposition were freer to frame an enticing policy. The country was turning toward a high tariff as the solution of its ills. Protection had not hitherto been a party issue in Canada, and it was still uncertain which party would take it up. Finally Mackenzie, who was an ardent free trader, and the Nova Scotia wing of his party triumphed over the protectionists in their own ranks and made a low tariff the party platform. Macdonald, who had been prepared to take up free trade if Mackenzie adopted protection, now boldly urged the high tariff panacea. The promise of work and wages for all, the appeal to national spirit made by the arguments of self-sufficiency and fully rounded development, the desire to retaliate against the United States, which was still deaf to any plea for more liberal trade relations, swept the country. The Conservative minority of over sixty was converted into a still greater majority in the general election of 1878, and the leader whom all men five years before had considered doomed, returned to power, never to lose it while life lasted. The first task of the new Government, in which Tupper was Macdonald's chief supporter, was to carry out its high tariff pledges. "Tell us how much protection you want, gentlemen," said Macdonald to a group of Ontario manufacturers, "and we'll give you what you need." In the new tariff needs were rated almost as high as wants. Particularly on textiles, sugar, and iron and steel products, duties were raised far beyond the old levels and stimulated investment just as the world-wide depression which had lasted since 1873 passed away. Canada shared in the recovery and gave the credit to the well-advertised political patent medicine taken just before the turn for the better came. For years the National Policy or "N.P.," as its supporters termed it, had all the vogue of a popular tonic.