The summer months were crowded with banquets, the conferring of the freedom of cities, public receptions and country-house week-end parties. In his public addresses Sir Wilfrid emphasized the same notes. At the Constitutional Club, "The British Empire was founded and must be maintained by the arts of peace more than by the arts of war"; at the Guildhall, "The British Empire is a charter of freedom, united, prosperous; there is no need of organic changes; it would be a fatal mistake to force events"; in Edinburgh, "Cecil Rhodes's one serious mistake was his impatience"; at the National Liberal Club, "The devolution of legislative power has been the bond of union of the British Empire." The long and exhausting summer, following a wearing session, brought a breakdown in health, and the treatment followed in Paris, where Lady Laurier and Sir Wilfrid had gone from London, accentuated the trouble. It was a much shaken man who returned in October to find Israel Tarte in possession of the quarter-deck. On the subject of the Conference, Canadian opinion showed marked diversity. Conservative newspapers criticized Sir Wilfrid's negative attitude. Premier Roblin declared a golden opportunity had been thrown away; Principal Peterson reported that the impression in England was that the Canadian delegates had gone with the intent of putting a drag on the Conference and had succeeded. Yet there was no general disapproval. There was a considerable measure of support, and no little indifference. The country was more interested in Tarte than in Chamberlain, in

box-cars than in battle-ships. Right or wrong, Canada's mood was one of reaction from the heady imperialism of the Boer War and Laurier was guiding and interpreting its new mood.

When in Paris, Sir Wilfrid found opportunity for a quiet but momentous stroke of diplomacy. The Boer War had greatly embittered French feeling against Britain. In two long discussions with President Loubet, Laurier deplored this drift and urged the need of a close friendship as the basis of European peace. Three years later, at Raymond Préfontaine's funeral services, the President publicly acknowledged that in bringing him to feel this need, no influence had been so great as Wilfrid Laurier's. Laurier had thus no small share in effecting the entente cordiale between Canada's two mother countries.

The Conference of 1902 convinced Mr. Chamberlain that the political and the military paths to his goal would give slow progress. He therefore turned to the pathway of trade, along which there had been some greater willingness to walk together. The launching of his imperial preferential trade campaign in 1903 was a direct result of the check in the Colonial Conference of 1902. Let Britain adopt a customs tariff, useful incidentally to protect her own industries and to give bargaining leverage with other powers, and let her grant preferential rates on colonial products in return for concessions on her manufactures, and the British Empire would become self-contained, self-sufficient, bound indissolubly by the ties of common interest; political and military union would follow.

The sudden announcement of this revolutionary change of course, the dramatic campaign in which Mr. Chamberlain appealed to his countrymen, the imperial motive of the policy, and the glittering possibilities of a preference in the world's greatest market, won Mr. Chamberlain instant and warm support in Canada. The Liberal leaders were, however, careful to make it clear that while they would be ready to grant reciprocal concessions, they considered that it was for Britain herself to decide whether or not she wanted to set up a protective tariff, and that in any agreement each country must hold itself free to change or withdraw. From the Conservative leaders and press a warmer support was given and in 1903 Mr. Foster, for the time without a seat in the Commons, vigorously seconded Mr. Chamberlain in a platform campaign in England. Then as discussion made clear the difficulty of reconciling business and sentiment, reconciling protection for the local producer, reciprocity with foreign countries and preference for the colonies; as the free-trade forces rallied and the fight developed on party lines; as Canadian Liberals realized that a preference on Canadian wheat meant a dearer loaf for England's poor and Canadian Conservatives saw that English manufacturers expected a free field in Canada in return, the enthusiasm lessened. Few in Canada were prepared to accept the return to the old colonial system which was in Mr. Chamberlain's mind, a stereotyping of the existing undeveloped industrial organization, with Canada permanently a grower of wheat and hewer of pulpwood to exchange for British manufactures. Canadian

manufacturers expressed general sympathy but made it clear, first, that it was only in the goods that Canada could not manufacture that any real reduction in duty could be granted, and later, that they "were not prepared to admit that there was any article that could not at some point in Canada, and in time, be successfully manufactured."

As the Chamberlain tariff campaign was a sequel to the 1902 Conference, the Conference of 1907 was a sequel to the tariff campaign. British supporters of Mr. Chamberlain were anxious to have the collective and formal backing of the colonies as evidence of the imperial necessity of their policy. A second question which it was hoped would be discussed was the creation of an Imperial Council in place of the Conference; supporters of the Conservative government and the Liberal Imperialist Asquith-Haldane group both urged this change and co-operated in a semi-official inquiry made by Sir Frederick Pollock in Canada in 1905 as to its possibility. In April, Mr. Lyttleton, who had succeeded Mr. Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary, formally proposed the establishment of such a Council, with the same personnel as the Conference, and with a permanent commission for study of referred questions attached: it would not be well to define at first the constitution of the Council; British history showed the wisdom of allowing such institutions to develop in accord with need. The proposal was welcomed by Australia, New Zealand, Natal and the Cape, but decisively rejected