[CHAPTER XVII]
CONTEST WITH GOLDWIN SMITH
Professor Goldwin Smith was the foremost, and most active, dangerous, and persistent advocate and leader of the movement for annexation to the United States that we have ever had in Canada. After leaving Oxford in 1868 he went to the United States, where he lectured at Cornell University for two or three years. Having taken part in a controversy in the Press over the Alabama question, in which he took the side of Great Britain, he aroused a good deal of hostility and criticism in the United States. In 1871 he removed to Toronto where he has ever since resided.
He had some relatives living in Toronto in the suburb then known as Brockton. My father and I, two uncles, and a cousin then lived in that district, in which my house is situated, and we had a small social circle into which Mr. Goldwin Smith was warmly welcomed. He shortly after bought a house from my father near to his place, and we soon became close friends. In my father’s lifetime Mr. Smith belonged to a small whist club consisting of my father, my uncle Richard, Major Shaw, and himself. After my father’s death I took his place, and we played in each other’s houses for some years, until Mr. Smith married the widow of Wm. Henry Boulton and took up his home in “The Grange.” The distance at which he lived from us was then inconvenient, and in a few months we discontinued the club.
In 1872 Mr. Smith was the prime mover in starting the Canadian Monthly and asked me to contribute an article for the first number, and afterwards I contributed one or two more. At one time we contemplated writing a joint history of the American Civil War, in which I was to write the military part and he was to write the political. I even went to Gettysburg to examine the battlefield, and began to gather material, when we discovered that it would be a long and laborious work, and that under the copyright law at the time there would be no security as to our rights in the United States, as we were not citizens of the republic. So the project was abandoned.
For many years Goldwin Smith and I were close friends, and I formed a very high opinion of him in many ways, and admired him for many estimable qualities. When the Commercial Union movement began, however, I found that I had to take a very decided stand against him, and very soon a keen controversy arose between us and it ended in my becoming one of the leaders in the movement against him and his designs. When he assumed the Honorary Presidency of the Continental Union Association, formed both in Canada and in the United States, and working in unison to bring about the annexation of the two countries, I looked upon that as rank treason, and ceased all association with him, and since then we have never spoken. I regretted much the rupture of the old ties of friendship, but felt that treason could not be handled with kid gloves.
I shall now endeavour to give an account of the contest between us, because I am sure it had a distinct influence upon public opinion, and helped to arouse the latent loyalty of the Canadian people, and for the time at any rate helped to kill the annexation movement in Canada.
I have already mentioned the incident of the dinner at the National Club where I said I would only discuss seriously annexation or independence with my sword. I did not think at that time that Mr. Smith was discussing the question in any other than a purely academic spirit; subsequent developments have satisfied me that even then he cherished designs that from my point of view were treasonable.
In the early spring of 1887, Mr. Goldwin Smith was at Washington and went on to Old Point Comfort and became acquainted with Erastus Wiman, who was staying at the same hotel and who showed Mr. Smith some courtesy. Mr. Smith invited Wiman to pay him a visit in Toronto in the latter part of May, 1887, and shortly after it was found that the strongest supporter that Wiman had for his Commercial Union agitation was Mr. Goldwin Smith.