I did not ask for the position of police magistrate; it was offered to me by cable when I was in England. I accepted it at Mr. Mowat’s request. I feel under no obligation whatever to the country for the office. I feel I am giving good service for every dollar I receive. I did not want the office at the time I was appointed, and can live without it whenever I choose to do so, and all the traitors in the United States and Canada combined cannot make me cease to speak for my country when occasion requires . . . on questions affecting the national life, I shall always try to be in the front rank of those who stand up for Canada.
On the 7th May, 1888, the Toronto branch sent a deputation to Lord Lansdowne, Governor-General, to present a memorial praying his Excellency to invite the Australian Governments, and the Government of New Zealand to join the Canadian Government in a conference to devise means for the development of reciprocal trade and commerce.
The Imperial Federation Journal published this memorial and Lord Lansdowne’s reply, and spoke of the energy and élan which the Canadian branches were displaying, and then added prophetically, “They have, if we mistake not, set a ball a-rolling that will be found ere long too big to be described in the half dozen lines of print that is all the great English newspapers have so far seen fit to devote to the subject.”
The organisation of new branches of the League followed rapidly the successful meeting in Toronto. On the 2nd April, 1888, a strong branch was formed at Brantford, Ontario. On the 16th April another was formed at St. Thomas, another about the same time at Port Arthur, on the 4th May another at Orillia, while a very successful meeting of the Ottawa Branch was held on the 22nd April, to carry a resolution in favour of discriminating tariffs between the Colonies and the Mother Country.
On the 4th June there was a rousing meeting of the branch of the League at Halifax, Nova Scotia, at which a resolution was unanimously carried in favour of reciprocal trade between the colonies and Great Britain. At this meeting the late Archbishop O’Brien, one of the ablest and most patriotic men that Canada has produced, made a most eloquent and powerful speech against commercial union or annexation, and, speaking of the men advocating these ideas, he said:
There are, however, others of this section less worthy of respect. They are men who have not courage to face great national problems, but think it wisdom to become the Cassandra of every noble undertaking. These men have for leader and mouthpiece Goldwin Smith, the peripatetic prophet of pessimism. Because, forsooth, his own life has been a dismal failure, because his overweening vanity was badly injured in its collision with Canadian common sense, because we would not take phrases void of sense for apophthegms of wisdom, he, the fossilised enemy of local autonomy and the last defender of worn-out bigotry, has put his feeble curse on Canadian nationality and assumed the leadership of the gruesome crowd of Missis Gummidges, who see no future for Canada but vassalage to the United States. Let them, if it so pleases, wring their hands in cowardly despair; but are we, the descendants of mighty races, the inheritors of a vast patrimony, the heirs of noble traditions, so poor in resources or so degenerate as to know no form of action save the tears and hand-wringings of dismal forebodings? It is an insult, and should be resented as such, to be told that annexation is our destiny. The promoters of Imperial Federation are called dreamers. Well, their dream is at least an ennobling one, one that appeals to all the noble sentiments of manhood. But what are we to say to the dreary prophets of evil, the decriers of their country, the traitors of their magnificent inheritance? They are not dreamers: they are the dazed victims of a hideous nightmare, to be kindly reasoned with when sincere, to be remorselessly thrust aside when acting the demagogue. The principle of Canadian nationality has taken too firm a hold on our people to permit them to merge their distinct life in that of a nation whose institutions give no warrant of permanency, as they afford no guarantee of real individual and religious liberty.
This extract from the speech of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Halifax indicates clearly how the Canadian feeling was being aroused by the attempts upon the national life of Canada.
In the summer of this year the United States Senate refused to endorse the Fisheries Treaty which had been agreed upon by President Cleveland and the British authorities. This was followed by a Retaliation proclamation, or at least by a message to Congress, asking for powers to retaliate upon Canada, by cancelling the bonding privileges which we have been using for very many years. The Retaliation Act was passed after a most hostile discussion against Canada. This threat was received by our people in the most unflinching spirit, and the matter was soon dropped by the United States Government.
In October, 1888, the Toronto Globe, evidently with the object of accustoming the minds of the Canadian people to the idea that the question of Annexation or Independence was a live issue, and one to be discussed and considered with as much freedom and propriety as tariff reform or temperance legislation or manhood suffrage, called for letters discussing the advantages or disadvantages of annexation or independence. It was the same scheme that Goldwin Smith had endeavoured to work in the National Club.