Mackenzie, who was summoned
to form a new Ministry, dissolved Parliament and was sustained by
a majority of two to one.
Mackenzie gave the country honest and efficient administration.
Among his most important achievements were the reform of
elections by the introduction of the secret ballot and the
requirement that elections should be held on a single day instead
of being spread over weeks, a measure of local option in
controlling the liquor traffic, and the establishment of a
Canadian Supreme Court and the Royal Military College--the
Canadian West Point. But fate and his own limitations were
against him. He was too absorbed in the details of administration
to have time for the work of a party leader. In his policy of
constructing the Canadian Pacific as a government road, after
Allan had resigned his charter, he manifested a caution and a
slowness that brought British Columbia to the verge of secession.
But it was chiefly the world-wide depression that began in his
first year of office, 1873, which proved his undoing. Trade was
stagnant, bankruptcies multiplied, and acute suffering occurred
among the poor in the larger cities. Mackenzie had no solution to
offer except patience and economy; and the Opposition were freer
to frame an enticing policy. The country was turning toward a
high tariff as the solution of its ills.
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