Commentary
“A British subject I was born. A British subject I will die,” was Sir John A. Macdonald’s last rallying cry in 1891. The Liberals, running under rookie Wilfrid Laurier, campaigned for free trade with the United States. Free Trade was well within the British Empire’s Radical and Liberal traditions, including Macdonald’s Liberal-Conservatives before the National Policy. But in 1891, the Grits walked into a trap as the Tories trounced them in a patriotic anti-annexation campaign for independence from the United States. It wasn’t the last.
