1895
My speech was printed in the Toronto papers at some length, and some of Mr. Smith’s friends censured me for having defended the Lundy’s Lane Society from his attacks. A week or two later I was amused at receiving a visit from the Rev. Canon Bull, the President of the Lundy’s Lane Society, who came across the Lake to see me, to lay before me a matter which had come before the Society, and of which after discussion they felt I should be made aware.
I have mentioned above Mr. Goldwin Smith’s offer made through Mr. Howland to subscribe for the monument provided he could write the inscription. This offer and its refusal the Society had kept strictly private, so that I was quite ignorant of it, and made my address in entire innocence of any knowledge in reference to it. Mr. Smith apparently jumped to the conclusion that I had been told of this offer, and that my comments had been caused by it. He wrote to Mr. Howland and asked him to put the matter right, and enclosed him a draft of a memo, which he wished Mr. Howland to send to the Society. Mr. Howland very innocently sent Mr. Smith’s letter, his draft memo., and his own comments to the President of the Society, Rev. Mr. Bull. As soon as the correspondence was read, my old friend Mr. Wm. Kirby, author of Le Chien d’Or, said, “Col. Denison knew nothing of that offer, but Mr. Smith did make an attack in his lecture on ‘Jingoism,’ and Col. Denison had answered him in his lecture on ‘National Spirit’ which was published in the Empire in 1891, and his remarks on that point at the unveiling were on the same lines.” The Society refused to act on Mr. Howland’s and Mr. Smith’s suggestion, but decided that Canon Bull should come over to Toronto and lay the whole matter before me. I thanked Canon Bull and asked him to thank the Society, and the next day wrote to him, and asked him if I might have a copy of the letters. He wrote to me promptly, saying I might as well have the originals and enclosed them. I have them now.
While Mr. Goldwin Smith was working so earnestly against the interests of the Empire, and while many were leaning towards Commercial Union, and some even ready to go farther and favour annexation, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Oliver Mowat, then Premier of Ontario, saw the danger of the way in which matters were drifting. I often discussed the subject with him, and knew that he was a thorough loyalist, and a true Canadian and Imperialist. He often spoke despondingly to me as to what the ultimate outcome might be, for, of course, the majority of the men who at the time favoured Commercial Union were among his supporters, and he would therefore hear more from that side than I would. In spite of his uneasiness, however, he was staunchly loyal. Mr. Biggar, his biographer, relates that just before the Inter-Provincial Conference in October, 1887, an active Liberal politician, referring to his opposition to Commercial Union, said to Mr. Mowat in the drawing-room of his house on St. George Street, “If you take that position, sir, you won’t have four per cent. of the party with you.” To which the reply came with unusual warmth and sharpness, “I cannot help it, if I haven’t one per cent. I won’t support a policy that will allow the Americans to have any—even the smallest—voice in the making of our laws.”
On the evening of the 18th February, 1891, in the election then coming on, Mr. Mowat spoke at a meeting in the Horticultural Pavilion, Toronto, and again his strong loyalty spoke out. He said among other things, “For myself I am a true Briton. I love the old land dearly. I am glad that I was born a British subject; a British subject I have lived for three score years and something more. I hope to live and die a British subject. I trust and hope that my children and my grand-children who have also been born British subjects will live their lives as British subjects, and as British subjects die.” Sir Oliver Mowat’s clear and outspoken loyalty prevented the Liberals from being defeated in Ontario by a very much greater majority than they were.
During the summer of 1891, however, the annexation movement assumed a still more active form. Mr. Goldwin Smith was doing his utmost to stir up the feeling. Solomon White, who had been a Conservative, and was a member of the Ontario Legislature, induced a public meeting in Windsor, where he lived, to pass a resolution in favour of annexation. Encouraged by this, Mr. White arranged for a meeting in Woodstock in Mr. Mowat’s own constituency of South Oxford, in the hope of carrying a resolution there to the same effect.
While there was a feeling to treat the meeting with contempt, Mr. Mowat with keener political insight saw that such a course would be dangerous, not only to the country but to the Liberal party as well, and he wrote a letter on the 23rd November, 1891, to Dr. McKay, M.P.P., who represented the other riding of the county of Oxford in the House of Assembly. He wrote:
With reference to our conversation this morning, I desire to reiterate my strong opinion that it would not be good policy for the friends of British connection and the old flag to stay away from Mr. Solomon White’s meeting at Woodstock to-morrow. By doing so and not voting at the meeting they would enable annexationists to carry a resolution in favour of their views, and to trumpet it throughout the Dominion and elsewhere as the sentiment of the community as a whole. If in the loyal town of Woodstock, thriving beyond most if not all the other towns of Ontario, the capital of the banner county of Canadian Liberalism, formerly represented by that great champion of both British connection and Liberal principles, the Hon. George Brown, and noted heretofore for its fidelity at once to the old flag and to the Liberal views, if in such a place a resolution were carried at a public meeting to which all had been invited, no subsequent explanation as to the thinness of the attendance or as to the contemptuous absence of opponents would, outside of Oxford, have any weight.
There are in most counties a few annexationists—in some counties more than in others; but the aggregate number in the Dominion I am sure is very small as compared with the aggregate population. The great majority of our people, I believe and trust, are not prepared to hand over this great Dominion to a foreign nation for any present commercial consideration which may be proposed. We love our Sovereign, and we are proud of our status as British subjects. The Imperial authorities have refused nothing in the way of self-government which our representatives have asked for. Our complaints are against parliaments and governments which acquired their power from our own people. To the United States and its people we are all most friendly. We recognise the advantages which would go to both them and us from extended trade relations, and we are willing to go as far in that direction as shall not involve, now or in the future, political union; but there Canadians of every party have hitherto drawn the line.