for adopting a new policy since the old questions which had once
evoked their opposition had been at last settled by the voice of the
people, and could no longer constitutionally or wisely be made matters
of continued agitation in or out of parliament. "The question that
arose in the minds of the old Liberals," as it was said many years
later by Thomas White, an able journalist and politician,[16]

"was this: shall we hand over the government of this country
to the men who, calling themselves Liberals, have broken up
the Liberal party by the declaration of extravagant views,
by the enunciation of principles far more radical and
reckless than any we are prepared to accept, and by a
restless ambition which we cannot approve? Or shall we not
rather unite with the Conservatives who have gone to the
country declaring, in reference to the great questions which
then agitated it, that if the decision at the polls was
against them, they would no longer offer resistance to their
settlement, but would, on the contrary, assist in such
solution of them as would forever remove them from the
sphere of public or political agitation."

With both Liberals and Conservatives holding such views, it was easy
enough for John A. Macdonald to convince even Sir Allan MacNab that
the time had come for forgetting the past as much as possible, and
constituting a strong government from the moderate elements of the old
parties which had served their turn and now required to be remodelled
on a wider basis of common interests. Sir Allan MacNab recognized the
necessity of bringing his own views into harmony with those of the
younger men of his party who were determined not to allow such an
opportunity for forming a powerful ministry to pass by. The political