“In another letter written nine years later, dated March 1st, 1901, a little over a year before his final retirement from office, referring to a report of the speeches at the annual meeting of our League in Canada, which I had sent to him, he wrote:
“It is very interesting to read Mr. Ross’s address about the error into which free trade may run, for I am old enough to remember the rise of free trade, and the contempt with which the apprehensions of the protectionists of that day were received. But a generation must pass before the fallacies then proclaimed will be unlearnt. There are too many people whose minds were formed under their influence, and until those men have died out no change of policy can be expected.”
“These extracts show very clearly Lord Salisbury’s views, and prove that personally he would have favoured preferential tariffs in order to save and preserve a great Empire.”
Yours,
George T. Denison.
This was much commented on in the British Press.
The Times said:
The extraordinarily interesting letter which we publish from Colonel Denison, the president of the British Empire League in Canada, shows how deeply sensible was the late Lord Salisbury of the obstacles which prejudice and tradition offer to the adoption of a genuine policy of tariff reform, and how conscious he was of the difficulties to a practical statesman of overcoming them.
The London Globe said:
Few more remarkable contributions have been made recently to the controversy over fiscal reform than the letters of the late Marquis of Salisbury, which Colonel Denison, of Toronto, has communicated to The Times.