His name was J. Israel Tarte.  Tarte was in office an impossibility; power went to his head like strong wine and destroyed him.  But he was the man whose mind conceived, and whose will executed, the Napoleonic stroke of tactics which crumpled up the Conservative army in 1896 and put it in the hole which had been dug for the Liberals.  On the day in March, 1895, when the Dominion government issued its truculent and imperious remedial order, Tarte said to the present writer:  “The government is in the den of lions; if only Greenway will now shut the door.”  At that early day he saw with a clearness of vision that was never afterwards clouded, the tactics that meant victory:  “Make the party policy suit the campaign in the other provinces; leave Quebec to Laurier and me.”  He foresaw that the issue in Quebec would not be made by the government nor by the bishops; it would be whether the French-Canadians, whose imagination and affections had already been captured by Laurier, would or would not vote to put their great man in the chair of the prime minister of Canada.  All through the winter and spring of 1895 Tarte was sinking test wells in Quebec public opinion with one uniform result.  The issue was Laurier.  So the policy was formulated of marking time until the government was irretrievably committed to remedial legislation; then the Liberals as a solid body were to throw themselves against it.  So Laurier and the Liberal party retired within the lines of Torres Vedras and bided their time.

But Tarte had no end of trouble in keeping the party to the path marked out.  The fainthearts of the other provinces could not keep from their minds the haunting fear that the road they were marching along led to a morass.  They wanted a go-as-you please policy by which each section of the party could make its own appeal to local feeling.  Laurier was never more indecisive than in the war councils in which these questions of party policy were fought over.  And with good reason.  His sympathy and his judgment were with Tarte but he feared to declare himself too pronouncedly.  The foundation stone of Tarte’s policy was a belief in the overwhelming potency of Laurier’s name in Quebec; Laurier was naturally somewhat reluctant to put his own stock so high.  He had not yet come to believe implicitly in his star.  Within forty-eight hours of the time when Laurier made his speech moving the six months’ hoist to the Remedial bill, a group of Liberal sub-chiefs from the English provinces made a resolute attempt to vary the policy determined upon.  Their bright idea was that Clarke Wallace, the seceding cabinet minister and Orange leader, should move the six months’ hoist; this would enable the Liberals to divide, some voting for it and some against it.  But the bold idea won.  With Laurier’s speech of March 3, 1896, the death-blow was given to the Conservative administration and the door to office and power opened to the Liberals.