Macdonald Clashes with the Liberal View of the World

Macdonald's "court" economics and politics became courtlier after 1879 when he introduced a National Policy of tariff protection that affronted laissez-faire economics. Before the 1870s, some influential protectionists existed, but most public men in British North America shared the British view that indirect taxes were regressive in ways that must retard economic growth and discredit any state that defended them on grounds of protection rather than revenue. According to Martin Daunton's description of classic, mid-century economic liberalism, "free trade was a prophylactic against monopoly power and corruption. It was about transparency. In this Liberal view of the world, free trade meant liberty and prosperity, protectionism implied autocracy and poverty." As late as 1876, John A. Macdonald was heard to exclaim: "I'm not a protectionist." But whatever his private beliefs, in public he decisively reoriented Canadian trade policy towards a lasting protectionism.

--E.A. Heaman, Tax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017), 119.