On the Record | Boris and Manchester United

Please see my latest wire for The American Spectator, ‘Boris and Manchester United’:

It was a stroke of genius for Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, to begin his Brexit roadshow to talk up Britain’s “new golden age” in Manchester.

The city’s name serves as a metonym for free market economics: “Manchesterism.” It became so closely identified with laissez-faire that Pius XI referred to it in his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. “Manchesterian Liberals,” Pius tut-tutted, hold the inimical view that “whatever was produced, whatever returns accrued, capital claimed for itself, hardly leaving to the worker enough to restore and renew his strength.”

Economic historian W.D. Grammp, noting this pejorative continued into the 1960s, called the Manchester School “a policy that relies on the market as much as it can and (even to today’s classical liberals) somewhat more than it ought.”

Such was not the original intent of its founders, Richard Cobden and John Bright, who were focused in the mid-1840s on repealing the Corn Laws, legislation that protected British landowners from cheap foreign wheat, a competitive advantage that made bread unaffordable for the working poor. Instead, Grammp observed, Manchesterism “had much less to say about the principle of economic freedom than about the likely effects of its practice in foreign trade.”

Mr. Johnson steps into this breach, for he is intent on emphasizing how Brexit leads to greater freedom and prosperity for both individuals and the nation. Call it “leveling up.” Instead of the redistributionist policy whereby equality is achieved through less for everyone, free market innovation and entrepreneurship expand both opportunity and the economic sphere.

Read more . . .

Remarks are welcome on DMI’s Facebook page.

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My thanks to editor Wlady Pleszczynski of The American Spectator.

On the Record | May Takes a Step Forward to British Independence with an Eye Out for Trump

Please see my latest wire for The New York Sun, ‘May Takes a Step Forward to British Independence with an Eye Out for Trump’:

Prime Minister May’s Lancaster House speech outlining the British government’s Brexit agenda takes an impressive step forward in Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union — and keeps a weather eye out for the man who is about to become President Trump. Brexit was “a vote to restore . . . our parliamentary democracy, national self-determination, and to become even more global and internationalist in action and in spirit.”

The Prime Minister opened with an apologia, setting out the reasons for Britons’ June decision to leave the EU and set out once more on their historic path of international engagement. “The decision to leave the EU represents no desire to become more distant to you, our friends and neighbours,” Mrs. May assured. “It was no attempt to do harm to the EU itself or to any of its remaining member states.” The lovelorn will recognize the “it’s not you, it’s us.”

Mrs. May detailed a dozen markers that will guide her Brexit strategy, from negotiating a new free trade agreement with the Union (maintaining and revising those current provisions that work for both parties) to normalizing relations for EU citizens living and working in the UK (and vice-versa), while assuring member countries of Britain’s continuing commitment to mutually beneficial co-operation in matters of continental security, defence, and cultural engagement.

Europe was not Mrs. May’s only audience. While England is the dominant “kingdom” in the Union, the Prime Minister assured the administrations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland that their concerns and suggestions will be heard at Westminster. Strengthening “the precious union between the four nations of the United Kingdom” is also part of the Brexit framework, as the referendum vote demonstrated the urban-rural divide and the tensions between England and the periphery regions.

Read more . . .

One point raised in the wire, to counter both prime minister Theresa May’s ‘modern industrial strategy’ and President-elect Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ protectionist policy, I believe needs to be especially emphasised: ‘Far better to look to future prospects than past accomplishment and base economic policy on the pillars of property, competition, innovation, and entrepreneurship.’ It is the basis of classical liberal economics and, as the French say, la théorie des débouchés (‘law of markets’).

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.

On the Record | Britain Itches for Freedom and a Trade Accord with Trump’s America

Please see my latest wire for The New York Sun, ‘Britain Itches for Freedom and a Trade Accord with Trump’s America’:

President-elect Trump is in like Flynn with America’s most enduring “special relationship.” For though his electoral victory is the cause of protests at home and unease at European capitals, “Mr. Brexit” basks in favorable reviews from the British government. Small wonder. Both nascent administrations swept to office on a wave of anti-establishment populism.

Leading the welcoming party are Brexiteers who spearheaded efforts to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union and regain the sovereign powers it had ceded to the continent. UKIP’s former leader, Nigel Farage, calls Mr. Trump “instinctively Anglophile;” Britain’s foreign secretary Boris Johnson is urging EU colleagues to cease their “collective whinge-o-rama” and accept the incoming American administration. Mr. Johnson, himself New-York born, betrayed affinities for across the pond when he christened the June 23 vote for Brexit Britain’s “Independence Day.”

Prime Minister May, in an address earlier this week at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, echoed an openness to Trump. Mrs. May, who became premier when her pro-EU predecessor David Cameron resigned following the vote for British independence, began by noting their joint brash rise to high office: she, to “forge a bold, new confident future for ourselves in the world;” Mr. Trump, “who defied the polls and the pundits all the way up to election day itself.”

So 2016 is the year of change politics and “when people demand change, it is the job of politicians to respond.” Mrs. May has reason to sympathize with Mr. Trump, as both will be contending with obstructionists.

Read more . . .

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.

On the Record | British Tribune of Trade Could Steal the March on Trump’s Protectionism

Please see my latest wire for The New York Sun, ‘British Tribune of Trade Could Steal the March on Trump’s Protectionism’:

Britain after Brexit is wasting no time announcing to the trading world it is open for business. Minister of International Trade Liam Fox speaks of free trade with an optimism that must inspire envy in America’s market conservatives. Who can imagine government praising the virtues of free trade?

Economic growth, Mr. Fox asserts, is supported by three pillars of market freedom. One is liberty of trade, unshackled from state interference, since “the idea that governments should restrict the right of individuals to exchange their hard work for goods and services at an agreed price in an open market is one of the gravest infringements of personal liberty.”

Two is entrepreneurship, where “competition leads to innovation” that in turn “powers progress.” Three is competitive advantage, whereby markets “specialise in the production of goods where they have the greatest efficiency.”

Read more . . .

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun whose encouragement acts as a necessary inducement to write.

On the Record | Trump Rallies Entrepreneurial Spirit to Restore the American Dream

A golden-haired hero arrived in Toledo, Ohio, Wednesday last to rescue the American Dream. Donald J. Trump is its paladin: “We’re going to have this economy work again for you.”

The spirit that shook thirteen colonies to independence and catapulted a nation to world-power status a mere century later will rise again. Anæmic growth and stagnant employment will come to an end, he promised, by unleashing the competitive initiative held in check by government red tape.

Please see my latest posting for the American Thinker, ‘Rallying the entrepreneurial spirit’:

The guardians of economic orthodoxy took issue with Trump from the beginning, whether it was his tariff threat against foreign imports or his promise to penalize manufacturers who moved industries out of country. Classical economists, from Smith to Ricardo to Mill and beyond, had demonstrated that Western civilization was built upon the foundations of division of labor and the law of comparative advantage. How did Trump imagine he could “make America great again” when he flouted the free trade principles responsible for said greatness?

Over the summer Trump redeemed himself. He focused on currency manipulation as a key component of unfair foreign competition -- hand-in-hand with incompetent American trade negotiators -- while taking aim at high taxes, regulatory burdens, and Federal Reserve chicanery among the factors contributing to President Obama and the Democrat Party’s “false economy.”

“The contrast between the presidential contenders could not be starker,” writes Trump economic advisor Lawrence Kudlow. “Mr. Trump has an economic-recovery-and-prosperity plan. Mrs. Clinton has an austerity-recession plan.”

Read more . . .

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My thanks to the editors at the American Thinker.

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With the arrival of the autumnal equinox, it’s that time of year again to recommend the quintessential fall film, The Trouble with Harry.

Starring John Forsythe and Shirley MacLaine, Edmund Gwenn and Mildred Natwick, with a young Jerry Mathers, director Alfred Hitchcock set this 1955 classic in a Vermont countryside bursting with a riot of colour.

Part mystery, part romantic comedy, this film is an excellent way to welcome the arrival of autumn — when the air is crisp, the leaves turn, and gilded sunlight throws long shadows, you’re sure to be humming Bernard Hermann’s wonderful score in anticipation.

(Trailer below to whet your interest; once hooked, enjoy this complete YouTube video of The Trouble with Harry.)

On the Record | British Prep for Deal on Trade with Yanks in the Wake of Brexit

Please see my latest wire for The New York Sun, ‘British Prep for Deal on Trade with Yanks in the Wake of Brexit’:

“The British are coming!” So history records Paul Revere’s warning, as the Redcoats marched toward Lexington and Concord out of Boston — with the shots heard round the world issuing forth the independent United States of America.

Taxes and trade were the powder of that conflagration; and in post-Brexit Britain, financial well-being once again comes to the fore: this time with London seeking terms with her sometime overseas possessions.

In June a majority of Britons voted to cut ties with the European Union’s régime of continental economic regulation and subsidies; and focus shifts to reviving commercial routes that thrived at the zenith of the British empire.

In the wake of the Brexit vote, interest is growing in respect of free trade relations with the “Canzuk” Commonwealth members, leading naturally to prospects of a larger liberty bloc among other Anglosphere nations adhering to rule of law, representative democracy, and free markets. Her Majesty’s Government has America in its sights.

Read more . . .

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun for his generous assistance.

On the Record | Why Not Add America’s Advantage to the Anglosphere Commonwealth?

Please see my latest article for the American Thinker, ‘Why Not Add America’s Advantage to the Anglosphere Commonwealth?’:

“England and America are two countries separated by the same language,” George Bernard Shaw once remarked. Post-Brexit, why allow any barriers to stand between the world’s two greatest allies?

During debate over the United Kingdom referendum to exit the European Union, Remain supporters argued that British trade would suffer; Leave campaigners countered that Britain had the world as its oyster, pointing to her proud history of overseas trade during which the “second” British Empire flourished. But why should Britain limit herself? Why not include her “first” imperial American offspring?

For even as the War of Independence created the worst relations imaginable between the two countries, with peace America wasted little time in renegotiating trade deals with her former mother country.

When the United States became tangled up in Britain’s conflict with revolutionary France upon the high seas, President Washington sent John Jay as his envoy to London, resulting in the eponymous treaty which resumed trans-Atlantic “amity, commerce, and navigation.”

Disagreement at the climax of the Napoleonic conflict brought the two nations to arms again during the short-lived, fairly inconsequential War of 1812. But tranquility and, more important, a dynamic alliance, has reigned ever since. Now another opportunity presents itself.

“Of all the many splendid opportunities provided by the British people’s heroic Brexit vote,” British historian Andrew Roberts writes, “perhaps the greatest is the resuscitation of the idea of a Canzuk Union.”

Read more . . .

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My thanks to the editors at the American Thinker.

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And allow me to wish my American friends a happy Constitution Day! — celebrating the adoption of the U.S. Constitution on this date in Philadelphia, 1787.

Will America follow Canada’s economic fight against impertinent obstructions?

Twenty-six years after the United States and Canada concluded their historic free trade agreement, it may startle some to see how their constituents size up the trading relationship.

In a report published last month, Nanos Research (in collaboration with the University of Buffalo) found that when Canadians were asked to ‘rank the top two countries that are closest with Canada in terms of business values’, the United States polled at 61 per cent, far beyond the next two challengers, with Britain at 20 per cent and Germany at 12 per cent.¹

Meanwhile, when Americans were asked the same question in relation to their own business values, Canada came in at a mere 24 per cent, followed close at the heels by Britain and Japan, both at 21 per cent.²

Were citizens asked to describe the socio-economic fabric of their countries, no doubt a plurality of Americans would respond through a mantra coloured by the heroics of their Founding, noting their adherence to limited government, free market values, and individual freedom, principles which FEE founding father Leonard Read described as ‘the essence of Americanism’.³

Canadians, still hewing to the country’s tory origins (which skew social democratic), would list their traditions of robust government, interventionist economic policies, and communal politics. Indeed, many Canadians reflexively identify themselves as the ‘un-Americans’ — our own Confederation moment, aspects of which continue to show up in the Nanos/UB survey on border security. And yet in many respects, Canadians — or at least their federal government — have come to exemplify those American values which its southern neighbours have allowed progressive ideals to supplant.

During the Great Recession of 2007-09, for instance, Canadian banking rules regulating adequate reserves and conservative lending practices meant that Bay Street experienced few of the credit disturbances or the financial meltdowns that became regular occurrences on Wall Street. And, under the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin and the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, Ottawa has pursued measures of deficit reduction and lower government expenditures as a percentage of GDP, policies virtually orphans on Capitol Hill with its $500 billion deficits and $18 trillion debt. Canada’s commitment to global competitiveness is clearly visible it its reduction of corporate taxes to 15 per cent, where in America corporate taxes are amongst the highest in the West at 35 per cent.

According to the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, published annually by the Heritage Foundation, Canada ranks sixth in the world, making it the ‘freest economy in the North American region.’ Its debt to GDP stands at 86 per cent — its path toward fiscal prudence slowed by the Great Recession. The United States, meanwhile, does not even place in the top ten, ranking twelfth among leading nations. Its debt to GDP now exceeds 100 per cent.

Canada’s economic successes are replicated within the Anglosphere, with Australia and New Zealand surpassing it on the Heritage Index (third and fifth, respectively), with Ireland at ninth and the United Kingdom placing fourteenth. (Britain’s former colony of Hong Kong, reunited politically to mainland China since 1997 under a ‘one country, two systems’ agreement, ranked first.)

All is not lost for the United States, though. Already the country has made strides in the right direction, largely through forced sequestrations and its indomitable entrepreneurial spirit to succeed. As Adam Smith observed in The Wealth of Nations:

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.⁴

America’s fundamentals remain strong; only its government agenda of Keynesian policies and interventionist programmes, including the Fed’s adherence to quantitative easing, need to be reformed. ‘Interventionist policies create uncertainty, raise the costs of financial intermediation and discourage investment. I might almost say that the problem is not that the government has done too little, but that it has done too much,’ writes Roger Koppl in From Crisis to Confidence: Macroeconomics after the Crash. ‘The problem is changing rules, uncertain regulations, shifting Fed policy. The problem is the variability and unpredictability of government economic policy.’⁵

These economic interventions are among the ‘impertinent obstructions’ with which the federal government burdens the states, business enterprises, and individual men and women. Canada’s own time of reckoning came in the mid-90s, when the choice was between reform or collapse. Forward-thinking leaders, putting national well-being before any ideological qualms, faced reality and restructured downward the Welfare State. Much the same scenario took place in Australia and New Zealand, with the United Kingdom making up for opportunities lost under its Labour governments.

To-day, with slight hiccups, the economic future of all these countries is promising. Now America is poised on a similar precipice. As Leonard Read observed, the key is leadership and a faith in ‘the spiritual antecedent of the American miracle’:

As this belief in the use of force as a means of creative accomplishment increases, the belief in free men—that is, men acting freely, competitively, cooperatively, voluntarily—correspondingly diminishes. Increase compulsion and freedom declines. Therefore, the solution to this problem, if there be one, must take a positive form, namely, the restoration of a faith in what free men can accomplish.⁶

Will the United States follow the Commonwealth example and, following the November mid-term repudiation of ‘Big Government’ and in preparation for the presidential contest in ’16, rally against coercive intervention and for economic prosperity?

ENDNOTES

^1. CAN-AM Relationship Drift Continues, The Nanos-UB North American Monitor — Year 10, 11.

^2. Nanos/UB Survey, 12.

^3. See Leonard E. Read, ‘The Essence of Americanism’, The Freeman, 48:9 (September 1998), 527-32.

^4. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Edwin Cannan, ed., Vol. 2 (London: Methuen & Co., 1904 [1776]), IV.v, 43.

^5. Roger Koppl, From Crisis to Confidence: Macroeconomics after the Crash (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2014), 14.

^6. Read, ‘The Essence of America’, 531.

The Mediaeval Rise of Free-Market Universities

Life in mediaeval universities has been an abiding interest, and so it was serendipity itself that a recent column by The Telegraph’s Simon Heffer extolled the virtues of a BBC Radio 4 programme ‘In Our Time’. Its host is the Labour peer Melvin Bragg who, along with a guest panel each week, discusses a variety of that would normally be categorised as ‘high culture’; in Heffer’s words, ‘it informs, educates and entertains.’

I scrolled through the comprehensive list of available episodes — which may prove material for future postings — and found one from a month ago, ‘The Medieval University’.

It was a fascinating account about the rise and consolidation of universities in what is considered the High Middle Ages, from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries: how they arose out of nowhere from the demands of churchmen and statesmen for educated assistants, becoming intellectual centres in the study of theology, law, and medicine.

The system of university education was so successful that it remains a powerful force to this day in the arts and sciences. In this broad category we owe the notion of the artes liberales — the ‘liberal arts’ — disciplines pursued not as means to an ulterior goal (the ‘servile arts’ or artes serviles) but as ends in their own right.

In our day, the term ‘liberal’ has come to have many meanings, oftentimes diametrically opposed to each other. Contemporaneously it has become synonymous with activist government promoting social welfare policies, a far contrast with its popular usage originating in the Enlightenment to mean less State interference and more personal freedom.

Yet listening to Lord Bragg and his guests these same impulses can be attributed to the rise of mediaeval universities, which ought to come as no surprise to anyone aware of the Austrian School of Economics and its efforts — successful to my mind — to rehabilitate the liberal, market advances that were pioneered during the Middle Ages. ¹

The most noticeable free market characteristic of the rise of mediaeval universities is their ‘spontaneous order’ à la Friedrich von Hayek by ‘an invisible hand’ à la Adam Smith, without any originating central planning or oversight from either Church or State.

Universities in large urban centres, such as Paris, enjoyed an early advantage over smaller colleagues in less populated areas; as Adam Smith would describe in The Wealth of Nations:

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market. When the market is very small, no person can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment, for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men’s labour as he has occasion for (I.iii.1).²

Population size impacted the development and variety of business opportunities, with greater numbers influencing a greater selection of trades — one of which was education; at the university level, this meant that a greater number of students would seek a greater choice or ‘supply’ of subject-courses, necessitating the ‘demand’ for a greater diversity of teachers, and the die was cast in favour of innovation and specialisation.

Aspects of free trade were also in existence, as masters and students travelled from one university to another across the European continent and into the British Isles, searching for the ‘university product’ — whether it be salary, tuition costs, or programme of study, that met their needs — with Latin as the ‘gold standard’ of academic discourse. A standardised canon and licentiate also ensured that university graduates could offer their learning with credentials that were widely recognised and accepted.

Universities could not have arisen without the widespread use of money, as more primitive methods of exchange would have been unfeasible in this international enterprise. Private wealth itself was a contributing factor — although some Italian universities were financed by the towns in which they took root — as it was the bounty of the rich and their endowments that allowed the universities to take shape, and whose benevolence supported both their own offspring and the worthy poor. Voluntary charity and noblesse oblige, then, funded the great spread of universities in the high Middle Ages. This fact is borne out by the Oxbridge college system.

Competition, too, was the rule, not only within the university between masters and masters, students and students, and masters and students, but also between the universities themselves, in their rivalry to attract leading scholars and the best scholarship of the time so as to entice the best young students. Then, as now, a rising reputation translated into increased financial support and patronage.

Likewise, students were ‘sovereign consumers’ (in the terminology of Austrian economics), whose desire and demand for the teaching of specific subjects influenced the development of the curricula and the promotion or rejection of the teaching staff. What is taken to be a new marketing ploy of student-centred activities and outreach is rather very old indeed.

Throughout this free-market rise of universities, though, can be seen the ‘visible’ hand of ‘Tory’ interests; that is, the interventions of both Church and State in imposing order upon divergent, disparate action; the granting of charters and setting up the formal university structure, both in infrastructure and in the establishment of curricula and degrees: universitas is synonymous with the corporate guilds that help to define the Middle Ages.

‘Town-Gown’ conflicts and riots called forth the firm control the law. Unacceptable topics of scholastic debate, oftentimes in opposition to the powers that be, were suppressed by ecclesial and secular authorities.

In time, too, with the decline of organic Christendom and the development of the nation-state, universities grew less ‘free’ and more the instruments of national will, serving the interests of their local communities and of their royal patrons.

Factions also were to be found among the hallowed halls themselves; sometimes this was beneficial, as when a group of scholars decamped from the University of Oxford after such a dispute and took up residence in remote Cambridgeshire. Oftentimes the results were less inviting, as when academia became the instrument of stifling dissent. The trial of Joan of Arc, under partial supervision of faculty from the University of Paris, is one example. (In our own time, we can point to ‘political correctness’ and the pressures exerted against freedom of speech as trends against the animating spirit of the original universities.)

Here, too, is evidence of why universities slowly lost their predominance and influence in the later Middle Ages: an exhaustion with the curricula set in, aided in part by frustrations induced by the burgeoning internal bureaucracy and the demands of special ‘cloistered’ interests. Masters and students, unable to teach or to be taught as they pleased, escaped to cities where innovation was welcomed, authority less strict, and the new Humanism was taking hold of Renaissance minds.

Universities, of course, didn’t pass away, and their continuing relevance is witnessed by the liberal arts colleges that thrive in the United States. But their dominance has waned and been superseded in many respects by the ‘think-tank’ phenomenon and by private research organisations.

Yet universities may be the only significant institutions serving as repositories of Western civilisation, charged with the preservation and transmission of culture. While they may no longer assume the leading role in its creation, the university ideal of universality, of the artes liberales, is unique in to-day’s world of partisan and applied research.

Many may recoil from a free-market interpretation of universities, yet their mediaeval origins owe much to the free interplay of individuals and ideas implied by the free economy. By continued emphasis upon innovation and competition — by ensuring that they can be the best that they can be — can universities ensure their success for another millennium.


ENDNOTES

1. See, for instance,‘The Major Contributions of the Scholastics to Economics (Mises Daily, 3 December 2010)’ by Gerard N. Casey, ‘The School of Salamanca Saw This Coming (Mises Daily, 26 August 2009)’ by Jerzy Strzelecki, ‘The World of Salamanca (Mises Daily, 27 October 2009)’ by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., and volume 1 of Murray N. Rothbard’s history of economic thought, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, especially chapters 2-5 inclusive.

2. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner, eds. Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. Vol. 2a. Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1981.

The Conflicting Legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald

To-day, 11th January, conservatives in Canada celebrate the birthday of Sir John Alexander Macdonald (1815): principal author of the British North America Act, first Dominion prime minister, and enduring role model of Anglo-Canadian Toryism.

Yet while the general outlines of Macdonald’s legacy is clear, specific beliefs are less certain in the popular mind, particularly when it comes to charting a contemporary course. Thus he has been made the exemplar for every ideological and mutually exclusive position. Poor Sir John A! If he could find his way to a bar—or a bottle—in his present capacity, surely no angelic observer (I refuse to countenance the alternative!) would begrudge him.

With the merger of the Reform-Alliance and the Progressive Conservative parties in 2003, the dominance of the former has resulted in a Macdonald who is portrayed as a proponent of ‘provincial rights’ on the American states’ rights model and of an elected Senate, just to name two offences of the right.

On the left, too, Macdonald has been claimed as the guiding spirit of active government and the social and economic interventions of the welfare state.

Macdonald, his advocates notwithstanding, was by no means a supporter of greater provincial autonomy; every school child knows (or should!) that a unitary government was his first choice for Canada—indeed, his hope was that the provinces would shrink to little more than municipal entities, with the Dominion government eventually assuming the preponderance of authority. Sir George-Étienne Cartier and French delegates at the Quebec conference were instrumental in convincing him that without local guarantees of French religious, language, and cultural rights, there would be no Confederation.

Likewise, while Macdonald may have harboured early favour for an elected upper chamber, the experiences of the united Province of Canada in the 1850s soon soured his sympathies. As his colleague and biographer Joseph Pope remarked in his Memoirs of Macdonald,

It is true that, at an early period of his career, he favoured an elective Upper House, but eight years’ experience of this system was sufficient to change his views, and to convert him into a firm upholder of the nominative principle. Every year since Confederation strengthened the conviction of his matured judgment, and showed him more and more clearly the advantages of the nominative over the elective system. To his mind the chief among the objections to a Senate chosen by the popular vote, was the ever-present danger of its members claiming the right to deal with money Bills, and the consequent possibility of disputes with the House of Commons. The proposal that the provincial legislatures, whose members are elected for purely local purposes, should choose the senators to legislate on matters of general concern, was also objectionable, being opposed to the spirit of the constitution, which confined the local assemblies to a strictly limited sphere of action. He held that the system unanimously agreed to at the Quebec Conference had worked well, and should be undisturbed. A senatorship, in his opinion, was an important and dignified office, and a worthy object of ambition to any Canadian. [1]

The left is guilty of a similar story of dissimulation. The Liberal-Conservative party which Macdonald led in its formative years of existence and in the House of Commons as premier was not the social democratic party that is often betrayed by the sobriquet Red Tory. It was a merger of moderate Liberals and moderate Conservatives who were not, respectively, either Grits or ultra Tories. And, although Macdonald did speak of himself as a progressive conservative, he spoke much as did Sir Robert Peel in his famous Tamworth Manifesto:

...if the spirit of the Reform Bill implies a careful review of institutions [...] undertaken in a friendly temper combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances,—in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions.

Indeed, the Liberal-Conservative label did not denote Progressive Conservatism per se, as contemporaneously understood, but simply the merger of like-minded Liberals and Conservatives. Think rather of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, or the Cunard-White Star line.

As such, the Liberal-Conservative party may best be considered a mix between Liberals of the ‘night-watchman state’ with the latter appropriating pis aller responsibilities—i.e., in addition to law and order oversight, welfare prerogatives as a last resort, when individual and voluntary associations are overwhelmed—and Tories who still have faith in the ability of the State to foster the Common Good: the ‘National Policy’ and the Canadian Pacific Railway were nation-building exercises undertaken in co-operation between government and the business community.

‘Free Trade’, then, was a fine principle in the abstract, and no doubt true, but the young Dominion—with fledgling business interests, her trade competing with powerful countries with varying degrees of protection and with strong robust industries of their own—was at a distinct disadvantage. Moreover, Macdonald had a nation to build on the North American continent, its very existence an irritant to the American behemoth to the south, whose siren call of wealth and opportunity was siphoning off Canada’s youth and future promise.

And so, in the economic depression of the mid-1870s that struck during the Reform ministry of Alexander Mackenzie, Macdonald raised a motion in the House of Commons:

...the welfare of Canada requires the adoption of a National Policy, which, by a judicious readjustment of the Tariff, will benefit and foster the Agricultural, the Mining, the Manufacturing and other interests of the Dominion; that such a policy will retain in Canada thousands of our fellow countrymen now obliged to expatriate themselves in search of the employment denied them at home, will restore prosperity to our struggling industries, now so sadly depressed, will prevent Canada from being made a sacrifice market, will encourage and develop an active interprovincial trade, and moving (as it ought to do) in the direction of a reciprocity of Tariffs with our neighbours, so far as the varied interests of Canada may demand, will greatly tend to procure for this country, eventually, a reciprocity of Trade (12 March 1878). [2]

If not exactly free trade, nor is it an unflinching nationalist programme: Macdonald would accept economic liberalisation, but only with reciprocal responsibilities. Free market adherents may deride Sir John’s protectionist programme, but its ‘open borders’ under-current can give no comfort to economic autarkists. [3]

Furthermore, if Macdonald wanted to campaign under the banner of social democracy, the works of Marx and Engels and their brethren were undoubtedly at his disposal, as were the theories of Rousseau’s collectivised general will. That he did not do so is an indication that he was first a believer in the free economy, if not necessarily a capitalism left to furrow the field unaided or unscrutinised.

Sir John’s legacy, then, provides challenges for his twenty-first century admirers. While a few of his ideas have fallen into disfavour and desuetude—such as the withering away of the provinces—many more remain resilient and key to Canada’s continuing prosperity. Strong central government with ‘holistic’ oversight over the country; the complementary, symbiotic roles of Ottawa’s upper and lower parliamentary chambers; accommodating and respecting the cultures of the founding peoples, while welcoming all immigrants who aspire to adopt the Canadian identity as their own; fealty to the monarchical principle and to the Commonwealth of shared history and traditions—all this, and more, we owe to Macdonald.

So long as the Dominion endures, Macdonald will live on. A supporter once cheered in a crowd, ‘Sir John A., you’ll never die!’ We echo those sentiments on his birthday.

For more on Macdonald and his legacy, see the Centre for Confederation Politics.

ENDNOTES

1. Joseph Pope, Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald, Volume II (Ottawa: J. Durie & Son, 1894), 235 (emphasis added). Nor is this view of upper chambers in the Westminster parliamentary system antiquated; see the Parliamentary Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber and the excellent essay by Lord Norton of Louth, ‘Complementing the Commons’.

2. Quoted in Pope, Memoirs, 200.

3. Any serious student of contemporary Toryism—with its economic roots firmly planted in the soil of protectionism—must reconcile his beliefs with the free market critique of state intervention and its consequences. See Ludwig von Mises’s Planning for Freedom (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008)—its eponymous first essay plus ‘Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism’.