this parliament is in the possession of the undisputed direction of its military forces; when we have the assurance from the British government that no question affecting our Dominions shall be settled without the consent of the Canadian parliament; when the time has come that our coasts are uncovered by the withdrawal of the British squadrons and we are confronted with the manifest duty of supplying the protection the mother country can no longer extend to us; at this time we are told we must ascend to a place in the temple where the destinies of Europe are decided. Canada is to embark upon the whirlpool of European politics. This movement, I claim, is a retrograde movement. The status of Canada is that of a sister nation and not that of a daughter nation.”

All that could be said was soon said, but the debate went on. Fresh fire was given it by two extraordinary communications from Winston Churchill written in January in response to requests from Mr. Borden for ammunition. Mr. Churchill demonstrated that Canadians could not build battle-ships, that they could not and Britain would not man their cruisers, and that they could not maintain a navy in efficiency. His naïvely frank argument for the perpetual use of British rather than Canadian shipyards and for permanent Admiralty control-"the most irritating document from authority in Britain since the days of Lord North," Mr. Emmerson termed it-was followed in March by an attempt to influence Canadian opinion and predetermine Dominion policy by announcing an Admiralty plan for

an imperial squadron of five Dominion dreadnought cruisers, based on Gibraltar. His action intensified national feeling in Canada and stiffened Liberal resistance to the Borden measure. Amendment after amendment was made, only to be voted down. Every naval commander from Noah to Nelson was quoted and quoted again. Conservatives ceased to speak and Liberals spoke double time. Tempers rose, interruption was frequent, the Speaker "named" members, and still little progress was made with the bill. Finally, the government decided to force the bill through under closure.

On April 9, Mr. Borden moved the adoption of rules of closure. By sharp strategy, debate on this proposal itself was limited. Sir Wilfrid, stirred for once into indignation and hot cries of "shame!" was prevented from moving an amendment, and the new rules of procedure were jammed through. There was much to be said for reform in procedure and for the right of the responsible majority to carry its measures through, as of late years parliament in many countries had concluded, but particularly in Sir Wilfrid Laurier's eyes the case for freedom of debate was still stronger:

We have heard it stated that these rules are antiquated. I do not admit that at all. These rules are not antiquated. They were not made for a day or for a period; they were made for the ages. It can be said of them, as has been said of the maxims of civil law which have come to us from the Roman jurists, and which are the basis of the civil law of most of the nations of Europe, that they are reason crystallized into writing. The maxims of the civil law have been applied to the

relations of the people in civil life, and the maxims of our parliamentary procedure have been accepted as the basis of the transaction of business in all deliberative assemblies.

Sir, these rules are to to be swept away, they are to be ridden over roughshod; they are to be put aside, and we are to have the gag substituted for them. And what is the pretence? The pretence is that there has been obstruction in the House. . . . My right honourable friend has quoted the opinions of some friends of myself in favour of closure. But, sir, I also have the honour to belong to the great Liberal party of Canada. I have occupied a position of some importance in it; nay, I may say that for twenty years and more I have been entrusted with its chief command. During the fifteen years I was in office it sometimes happened that friends came to me and told me that I was not doing justice to myself and to the party, but that I should impose closure, as had been done in many other parliaments. Sir, I am a Liberal of the old school; I have been brought up in the school of Fox and of the old leaders of the Liberal party; and I could not bring myself to the point of depriving a minority in parliament of such a valuable weapon as it would be deprived of by the introduction of closure. Perhaps I was wrong: perhaps I was too generous. Nay, I was not; I would rather stand here to-day, having refused, during the fifteen years of my administration, to impose closure, and having decided to abide by the old rules. . . . As I have said, there are some occasions on which there is a cleavage between the majority and the minority, and then there is an easy remedy, an easy solution. The remedy is not closure; it is not the application of brute force. The remedy is an appeal to the people. The people, after all, are the judge and the jury. The people, after all, are the parties to pass judgment as between the government and the Opposition, as between the majority and the minority; and, Sir, the least I would have expected on such an occasion as this was that the government of the day would have adopted that remedy, and not have resorted to closure.

My right honourable friend stated, not to-day but the last

If

time when he spoke upon that question, that the remedy which I suggested was absurd, because, he said, if upon every occasion upon which there was obstruction the government were obliged to go to the country we might every year have a general election. Let me tell my right honourable friend that there is no sense in such an objection, because obstruction cannot be of any avail unless it is backed up by a strong expression of public opinion, and unless it be on some most important question. there were at any time in this House a political party so oblivious to the respect it owes to itself and to the country as to obstruct upon a trivial question, that party would lose all the confidence it might have in the country and any chance of ever again creating an impression upon the people. But, sir, there is a better reason than that. When we come to discuss these constitutional questions, these questions of public policy, the best authority after all is the authority of history. Confederation will have been in existence forty-six years next July, and how many times has there been obstruction during these last forty-five years? Just four times before this year. Let me recall them. There was obstruction in 1885, in 1896, in 1908, and in 1911, and after I have mentioned the causes for the obstruction on these several occasions, I shall have furnished the most complete justification for the attitude we have taken upon the present occasion. . . . The other occasion on which there was obstruction was in 1911. . . . We introduced the reciprocity measure on the twenty-sixth of January, and on the twenty-ninth of July we had not yet been able to obtain even a preliminary vote upon it. We had been met at every step by obstruction from the Conservatives, then in opposition; dilatory motions of every kind were made, speech after speech was delivered day in and day out, even in the dog days of summer. I did not complain; I did not whine. Two courses were open to me. I could have done as is done to-day by the prime minister; I could have introduced the closure and said that we must carry on the business of the government and that consistently with our dignity, we could not allow obstruction. But there was another course open to me and that was an appeal to the

people; and I advised my colleagues to give the honourable gentlemen of the Opposition the opportunity of appealing to the people. We appealed to the people and we were defeated. Heaven is my witness that I would rather stand here to-day, defeated and in opposition by that appeal to the people, than stand over there in office by the power of the gag.

Let me repeat to my right honourable friend: As you sow, so shall you reap; as you are fair, so shall you meet with fairness; as you are unjust, so shall you meet with injustice. ... The poison that he offers to us to-day will come to his own lips at some future day. We are in the minority; we can be gagged; we can be prevented from expressing our opinions; they can trample upon our rights; Sir, the day of reckoning will come, and it will come as soon as we have a dissolution of the present parliament.

With the closure in force, the Naval Bill received its third reading, on a vote of 101 to 68, all the Nationalists but four and one Liberal, Colonel Maclean, voting with the government. Even yet it had not reached port; it had still to navigate the Senate. Government supporters could not believe that the Senate majority would be so unpatriotic, so reckless, so bent on suicide, as to reject the measure. And was not Sir George Ross, leader of the Senate since Sir Richard Cartwright's death the previous year, an Imperialist of Imperialists? Had he not opposed reciprocity and waved the British flag unceasingly? It was true that Sir George Ross in the eyes of many Liberals was more responsible than any other for the weakening of the old Ontario Liberal fibre, through his own practice and his persistent advocacy of the policy of catering to the prejudices of imperialist Toronto instead of fighting