played a larger part than the material. Comte is reproved by him for making production the end of society.31

The united forces of society never were, never can be, directed to one single end, nor is there any reason for desiring that they should. Men do not come into the world to fulfil one single end, and there is no single end which if fulfilled even in the most complete manner would make them happy. If M. Comte were a native of England where this idol production has been set up and worshiped with incessant devotion for a century back, and if he had seen how the disproportionate importance attached to it lies at the root of all our worst national vices, corrupts the measures of our statesmen, the doctrines of our philosophers, and hardens the minds of our people so as to make it almost hopeless to inspire them with any devotion either of intellect or soul, he would have seen that a philosophy which makes production expressly the one end of the social union would render the great social evils of which there is great danger in the present state of civilization irremediable.

Twenty-five years later he writes in the diary given in the Appendix to the Letters:32

There is no doctrine really worth laboring at, either to construct or to inculcate, except the philosophy of life. . . . . Let it be generally known what life is and might be and how to make it what it might be, and there will be as much enthusiasm and as much energy as there has ever been.

There is the same sentiment at work here as in the letter to D'Eichthal, with more hopefulness; and the hopefulness remained, in alternation with the depression,33 as happens with most mortals.

There has been no time in our history when mental progress has depended so little on governments and so much on the general disposition of the people, none in which the spirit of improvement has extended to so many branches of human affairs at once, nor in which all kinds of suggestions tending to the public good in every department, from the humblest physical to the highest moral or intellectual were heard with so little prejudice and had so good a chance of becoming known and being fairly considered.

This was his dictum in 1865.34 Whether it is obsolete now will be a matter of controversy, into which (to use one of his favorite expressions) more considerations will enter than those of political economy.

OTTAWA, CANADA

" Letters to D'Eichthal, 1829, Cosmopolis (April, 1897), p. 30.

"Op. cit., ii, 362, 1854.

"E.g., Ashley, 340, 751, 746.

"Ibid., 384; cf. 699.

JAMES BONAR

CANADA'S REJECTION OF RECIPROCITY

At last Canada and the United States are quits. For fifty years the republic repeatedly and emphatically declined all Canadian requests for freer trade; brought by changed economic conditions and party exigencies to see new light, it has made a generous and neighborly offer, only to see Canada in turn decline closer relations. In the general election fought on the reciprocity issue the Laurier government has been overwhelmed, eight cabinet ministers defeated, and a liberal majority of forty-four in a house of two hundred and twenty-one members turned into a Conservative majority of forty-nine. The government secured a majority of the seats in New Brunswick, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, split even in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, but won only fifteen out of the one hundred and three seats in Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia. The result has surprised all the prophets. It was generally conceded, especially in the last fortnight of the campaign, that the tide was running against the government; but not even the most optimistic official forecast by the opposition predicted the landslide of September 21. In view of the fact that the proposed agreement followed exactly the lines long accepted by both political parties as eminently desirable, if only they could be obtained, some explanation of the sudden volte face is in order.

The verdict of the people, it may first be noted, was given in a general election, not in a referendum. The fate of the government was involved, its general record was brought up for review, party ambitions and passions were stirred to the utmost. Fifteen years of office-holding had meant the accumulation of the regulation number of scandals, a slackening in administrative efficiency, and the cooling by official compromise of the ardent faith of Liberalism in its days of opposition. Yet the record of the government was not a main issue in the campaign, and the loss suffered on this ground was probably offset by the powerful pressure the Canadian party in power always exerts over constituencies, corporations, and individuals eager for favors. The opposition had gathered energy in

fifteen years of fasting. Their newspapers were, on the whole, more aggressive and more effective than the government organs. It is significant also of the rôle played by party, that in the provinces where reciprocity was decisively rejected, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia, strong Conservative governments are intrenched, which placed at the support of the Dominion party all their resources of electioneering skill and the prestige, in two of the three provinces, earned by progressive and honest administration.

Of the side issues introduced into the campaign by the party character of the struggle, the most important were the naval policy in Quebec and the race and religious issue in the English-speaking provinces. The government had to face what Sir Wilfred termed "the unholy alliance" of ultra-Nationalists in Quebec under Henri Bourassa, and ultra-Protestants in Ontario. In the French-speaking districts the premier was attacked for truckling to the Imperialists, for establishing a Canadian navy which might involve sharing in Britain's wars, and for sacrificing the interests of the French-speaking Catholics in the West. In English-speaking districts a quieter but not less effective campaign was carried on against the continued dominance of Canadian politics by the French Catholic province and a French Catholic premier. It was in vain that the Liberals appealed to national unity or themselves started back-fires in Ontario by painting Bourassa black and declaring that a vote for Borden was a vote for Bourassa. The Conservative-Nationalist alliance lost the government fifteen seats in Quebec, and apparently did not frighten Ontario. Incidentally, the Nationalists overshot themselves; instead of holding the balance of power, they are faced by a Conservative majority sufficiently large at a pinch to do without their votes; for the first time since confederation the party in power might rule without Quebec.

Yet with all these cross-currents it was undoubtedly the reciprocity issue that decided the election. It is further beyond doubt that it was the political rather than the economic aspect of the case that carried most weight.

From the economic point of view there was little question that reciprocity would have meant gain for farmer, fisherman, and

miner. Both on broad considerations of the mutual advantages of free intercourse between neighboring peoples not unevenly matched in these fields, and on detailed study of market conditions in the two countries, the advocates of reciprocity had the better of the argument. Every agricultural paper in Canada and the most important farm organizations were heartily in its favor. There has, of course, been a leveling up of prices on the two sides of the border which makes the advantage less marked than in former years. There are agricultural products, especially fruit, in which it was plausibly claimed the Canadian producer could not compete with the United States. The free admission to Canada's markets of the products of Argentina, Denmark, Russia, the British colonies, and other countries under existing favored-nation agreements or the fixed policy of giving no foreign country advantages over the other partners in the empire, threatened more severe competition; the government admitted the danger by taking steps at the Imperial Conference toward securing if possible exemption from the old favored-nation treaties negotiated by Great Britain and binding the whole empire. Yet had the economic issue alone been involved there is little question where the farmer's interest lay and how his vote would have been cast. In the prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan the economic issue was most powerful, and here reciprocity swept the boards; had it been possible to pass a Redistribution Bill before the dissolution of Parliament, the additional seats due those provinces on the basis of the 1911 census would have cut down the anti-reciprocity majority-though redistribution would also have involved strengthening the cities of Ontario and Quebec as against the country. Elsewhere the rooted party prejudice of the farmer and the political arguments advanced prevented any government gain sufficient to counterbalance the loss in the industrial districts.

So far as the manufacturer was concerned, no serious inroad was made by the treaty on the protection he enjoys, though the milling, packing, canning, and brewing interests probably stood to lose by having to pay higher prices for their raw material. In spite of their comparative immunity, and of the private assurances that no further reductions were contemplated, the manufacturers

and the allied banking and railway interests, afraid of the thin edge of the wedge, fought the pact in almost unbroken ranks. Prominent Liberal financiers broke from the party; manufacturers brought all possible pressure to bear on their employees and fellowtownsmen, especially when it became evident that there was a chance of beating the government and no further necessity for observing the neutrality declared since official Liberalism turned protectionist in 1896; the majority of the railway men attacked it, some openly, like the ex-American chairman of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Pacific, Sir William Van Horne, who made his first public entry into politics in order, in his own engagingly frank phrase, "to bust the damned thing," and some, more prudent because more actively in business, which in a railwaysubsidizing country means in relations with the government, silently but not less effectively. The Liberal fifteen-year compromise with protection made it impossible to revive freer trade sentiment in a seven-weeks campaign. The endeavor made to catch the city consumer's vote by arguing that reciprocity meant both higher prices for the producer of the raw material and lower prices to the consumer of the finished and now protected product, while undoubtedly sound in some cases, was apparently too subtle for the wayfaring man to grasp. The prosperity of the country— heightened by big headline contrasts with the existing depression in the United States-lent force to the cry of "Let well enough. alone." The fact that the United States had accepted the agreement was enough to convince many primitive reasoners that Canada must be getting the worst of the bargain. The city voter and the voter in the industrial towns scattered through the country flocked to the Conservative banners and turned the scale. Tacticians gifted with hindsight are declaring that the Liberal party would have gained if instead of attempting to placate the manufacturer it had boldly come to the relief of the consumer by increasing the preference on imports from Great Britain to 50 per cent; the opposition of the big interests could not have been greater, and the appeal to the British-born would have been effectively spiked.

From the outset the opponents of reciprocity concentrated on