WORK IN CANADA IN 1901
I reported to the Executive Committee the details of my work in England, and in the Annual Report for 1901 the Executive Committee strongly supported the suggestion, which I had made at the banquet, that an Imperial Conference should be held during 1901, to consider many important matters affecting the safety and welfare of the Empire. The Report went on to say:
The time was never so opportune. The public mind is full of these Imperial questions. Australia is now in a position to act as a unit. Canada has long been ready. The people of England have at last awakened to the vastness, the importance, and future possibilities of their great outside Empire, and posterity would never forgive the statesmen of to-day if so favourable a chance to carry out a great work was lost. Your Committee consider that an Imperial Consultative Council should be established, and that immediate steps should be taken to thoroughly organise and combine the military and naval power of the Empire.
During the year 1901 I was consulting with the Executive Committee, and with individual members of it from time to time, and expressed the view that we had accomplished our work in Canada, that Commercial Union had been killed, the desire for reciprocity with the States had died out, that both political parties had become alive to the importance of mutual Imperial preferential trade, and that the Canadian Government had given a preference to Great Britain and the West Indies, that penny postage had been established, Canadian contingents had been sent to fight in an Imperial quarrel, that the Pacific cable was being constructed principally through the determined action of Canada, and that I felt the whole movement in favour of Imperial Unification in the future would have to be fought out in Great Britain.
My experience in Chelmsford had convinced me that there was a strong undercurrent of feeling in Great Britain in favour of tariff reform, but that nearly everyone seemed afraid to “bell the cat” or to face the tremendous influence of the bogey of Free Trade. I found many people quite willing to admit privately the necessity of some change, but no one ready to come out and boldly advocate tariff reform, or any kind of protection. I said that if a few Canadians, good platform speakers, would go over to England, and make a campaign through the cities and towns, pleading with the people to unite with the colonies to consolidate and strengthen the Empire, the support they would receive would be very great, and might lead to securing the assistance of some prominent political leaders.
I was, and always have been, convinced that so many influences of every kind were working in our direction that in time our policy would necessarily be successful.
This was discussed from time to time, and it was finally decided that a deputation should go to England before the Imperial Conference, which we knew would be held at the time of the coronation in 1902, and that the deputation should advocate a concise and definite policy, easily understood, which would contain the substance of the trade system that we felt to be so necessary for the stability of the Empire. This was crystallised into the following resolution:
That a special duty of five or ten per cent. should be imposed at every port in the British possessions on all foreign goods; the proceeds to be devoted to Imperial defence, by which each part would not only be doing its duty toward the common defence, but at the same time be receiving a preference over the foreigner in the markets of the Empire.
Having decided upon this point, it was considered advisable that before we went to England we should first test feeling in different centres in Canada, to make sure that the policy we were advocating was one that Canadians generally would approve. I decided to go to New Brunswick and lay the question before a public meeting in St. John and discuss the matter with prominent men, and in that way test public opinion. I had a very successful meeting in St. John on the 28th November, 1901, where one senator and four members of the Commons and of the local legislature spoke approvingly of the resolution, which was carried unanimously. The Press in New Brunswick was very favourable. The St. John Sun, in its leading article the next day, said:
We have no hesitation in endorsing the policy propounded by the President of the British Empire League, and supported at last night’s meeting by all the speakers on both sides of politics and the unanimous vote of the audience.