In 1886, Lt.-Colonel Wm. Hamilton Merritt, one of the officers of my regiment, came to me and endeavoured to enlist my sympathies in the new movement. I discussed the whole subject fully with him. He had hoped to get me to accept the presidency of the branch to be formed in Toronto. I refused to take any part in the matter, feeling that Canada was getting along very well, but that she had only just expended nearly $150,000,000 in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and that she required some years of steady development before she could undertake any further expenditures on a large scale for Imperial defence, for I saw this was the main object of the League in England. I did not think the time had come, nor the necessity, for pressing this point, and that public opinion would not be in favour of any such movement.
It will be seen that Imperial Federation made very little progress for the first two or three years. In 1885, 1886, and 1887, only three branches, and, with the exception of Halifax, very small and uninfluential ones, had been established in all Canada.
There was no branch in Toronto, the most Imperialistic and most loyal of all the cities of Canada, and up to the fall of 1887 the movement had made but little headway.
In the year 1887, however, a movement arose which changed the whole features of the case, which altered all the conditions, and made it necessary for all loyal men in Canada to consider seriously the future of their country. This movement, known as Commercial Union will be dealt with in the next chapter.
[CHAPTER X]
COMMERCIAL UNION
The Canadian Pacific Railway was completed at the end of 1885, and it began to prove a competitor with the railways in the United States for the through traffic across the continent. This competition affected the great financial interests of New York, for the United States railroads were subject to regulations as to the long and the short haul, while the Canadian Pacific Railway was free from them, and thereby had a very great advantage in the struggle for business. This direct present pecuniary interest, added to the belief that Canada was likely to prove a much greater factor on this continent than had ever been anticipated by the people of the United States, was the cause of the inception of the Commercial Union Movement, which attracted so much attention at the time, and has had such far-reaching influence on the affairs of the British Empire ever since.
The originator of this movement, Erastus Wiman of New York, was born at Churchville, near Toronto, and was educated and lived in Toronto for a number of years in his early life. He was connected with the Press and for a time kept a small book shop on King Street. He served a year in the Toronto City Council. He became Toronto manager of R. G. Dun and Company’s Commercial Agency in 1860, and afterwards went to New York and became manager of it there, and a member of the firm. He was also president of the Great North Western Telegraph Company, which controlled almost all the telegraph lines in Canada. He had not taken the oath of allegiance to the United States, and he was suited in every way to lead the insidious scheme which was started under the name of Commercial Union, but was intended to bring about peacefully the annexation of Canada to the United States.