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Updated: June 14, 2025
Apart from Laurier there was in it no representative of French Catholic Liberalism, unless the purely nominal honor of minister without portfolio given to C. A. Geoffrion is to be taken as giving this representation. C. A. did not put the honor very high. "I am," he said, "the mat before the door." Tarte, a Quebecker and a Bleu, became Montreal's representative at Ottawa.
Those were the days of heady Imperialism in the English provinces; and, vigorously stirred up by Laurier's party foes for political purposes, it struck out with a violence which threatened to bring serious political consequences in its train. Tarte was credited with having declared publicly in the Russell House rotunda: "Not a man nor a cent for South Africa," which did not help matters.
On the day in March, 1895, when the Dominion government issued its truculent and imperious remedial order, Tarte said to the present writer: "The government is in the den of lions; if only Greenway will now shut the door."
There had been much speculation in Montreal as to who should be the new high commissioner for Canada in London. Sir Donald A. Smith, who had been appointed in the last weeks of Conservative rule, would be, it was assumed, dismissed. Tarte scouted the idea that Smith would be disturbed. Laurier was not that kind of a man. He would not dismiss Smith; he would make friends with him.
"Unfortunately," he adds, "it proved to be the last step save for the 1911 attempt to secure reciprocity." After 1897 Laurier's policy was to discourage the revival of the tariff question. Tarte's offence was partly that he did not realize that sleeping dogs should be allowed to lie. "It is not good politics to try to force the hand of the government," wrote Laurier to Tarte.
Every one knows, to use the expression of the late Israel Tarte, that 'elections are not made with prayers. Every one knows, and it is mere hypocrisy to disclaim the knowledge, that there are election funds in both parties, to which wealthy friends of the respective parties are invited to contribute.
It is in the main a record of political events, with comments upon Laurier's relations to them. Laurier's letters, mostly to unnamed correspondents, are of slight interest, but to this there are a few notable exceptions. There are letters between Laurier, Tarte and Chapleau of the greatest political value.
They wanted a go-as-you please policy by which each section of the party could make its own appeal to local feeling. Laurier was never more indecisive than in the war councils in which these questions of party policy were fought over. And with good reason. His sympathy and his judgment were with Tarte but he feared to declare himself too pronouncedly.
The writer has a very clear recollection of a long conversation which he had at that time with Tarte. Much of it was given up to picturesque and forthright denunciation by Tarte of the means by which he had been defeated in Beauharnois. The mill-owners at Valleyfield, he said, had lined up their operatives and had given them the option of voting for Bergeron or getting out.
My Lady Pen did give us a tarte and other things, and so broke up late and I to bed. It proved the hottest night that ever I was in in my life, and thundered and lightened all night long and rained hard. But, Lord! to see in what fears I lay a good while, hearing of a little noise of somebody walking in the house: so rung the bell, and it was my mayds going to bed about one o'clock in the morning.
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