The inevitable end in the ordinary course of events would have been
the going on of the party until it died of dry rot and decay, as the
Liberals had already died in Ontario; but fortunately, both for the
party and for Laurier's subsequent fame--though it may not have
seemed so at the time--emergence of the reciprocity question gave
it an opportunity to fall on an issue which seemed to link up the
end of the regime with its heroic beginnings and to reinvest the
party with some of its lost glamor.

LAURIER: DEFEAT AND ANTI-CLIMAX

THE defeat of the Liberals in September, 1911, raised sharply the
question of the party's future and the leadership under which it
would face that future. Speaking at St. Jerome toward the close of
the campaign Sir Wilfrid had stated positively that if defeated he
would retire. This declaration of intention--no doubt at the moment
sincerely made--was designed to check the falling away from
Laurier's leadership in Quebec, which was becoming more noticeable
as election day drew near. But the appeal was ineffective.. The
effective opposition to Laurier in Quebec came not from Borden or
from Monk, the official leader of the French Conservatives, but from
Bourassa. Laurier and his lieutenants fought desperately, but in
vain, to break the strengthening hold of the younger man on the
sympathies of the French electors. In Quebec the custom of the joint
open air political meeting is still popular, and at such a concourse
in St. Hyacinthe, an old Liberal stronghold, Sir Wilfrid's
colleagues, Lemieux and Beland, met a notable defeat at the hands of
Bourassa--an incident which clearly revealed how the winds were
blowing. Bourassa, fanatically "nationalist" in his convictions and