274 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 



bee a complete government of its own, sub 

 ject to the supremacy of the government of the 

 Dominion. To counteract the well-nigh over 

 whelming economic pressure by which commerce 

 and industry were made subject to the United 

 States, every effort was put forth to develop 

 railways running east and west. The Inter 

 colonial Railway, uniting Quebec with Halifax, 

 a long-projected enterprise of both economic 

 and military importance, was completed with 

 imperial aid in 1876. The Canadian Pacific, 

 delayed by the scandal of 1873, was not in opera 

 tion until nearly ten years later than the Inter 

 colonial. Along with these great monuments 

 of national growth came the slow but sure de 

 velopment of that system which has been a 

 feature of every new birth of national spirit 

 in the nineteenth century the stimulation of 

 industry by a protective tariff. In 1878 Sir 

 John A. Macdonald, after five years of exclu 

 sion from power following his downfall on the 

 Canadian-Pacific affair, won a great popular 

 triumph on the clearly defined issue of pro 

 tection, and at once put the new policy into 

 operation. The United States was just at this 

 time emerging from the fiscal chaos of the Civil 

 War. Specie payments superseded the irre- 



