1146 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART V
the result of establishing extended trade relations between
the Republic and Canada. Sir Charles Tupper, in private
correspondence in 1888 with Mr. Bayard, stated that the
one way to attain a just and permanent settlement was by
a straightforward treatment and a liberal and statesmanlike
plan of the entire commercial relations of the two countries,
Sir Charles Tupper therefore proposed to the United States
that the Fishery arrangements and the Treaty of Washington
should be continued in consideration of a mutual arrange-
ment providing for greater freedom of commercial intercourse
between the United States, Canada, and Newfoundland.
This unrestricted offer of reciprocity, as Sir Wilfrid Laurier
interpreted it, was rejected by the United States.
The Liberal party had naturally throughout maintained
its attitude in favour of reciprocity, and in 1889 Mr. Laurier
moved an amendment to supply on February 26, declaring
that steps should be taken by the Government to secure un.
restricted freedom in the trade relations of the two countries.
At the same time Mr. Goldwin Smith advocated very strongly
the fullest measure of reciprocity, and indeed a Customs Union
with the United States. This position was accepted in a
speech by Sir Richard Cartwright, who had been Minister of
Finance in the Mackenzie Government from 1873 to 1878,
and was Minister of Trade and Commerce in Sir Wilfrid
Laurier’s Government from 1896, on October 12, 1887, in
which he declared in favour of commercial union even in
view of the political risk of annexation. ° There is,” he said,
“a risk, and I cannot overlook it. But it is a choice of risks,
and our present position is anything but one of stable equi-
librium. Without Manitoba and the Maritime Provinces
we cannot maintain ourselves as a Dominion. And looking
to their present tempers and condition, and more especially
to the financial results of confederation in the Maritime
Provinces, I say deliberately that the refusal or failure to
secure free trade with the United States is much more likely
to bring about just such a political crisis as these parties
affect to dread than even the very closest commercial con-
nexion that can be conceived.’
