DISSOLUTION OF THE IMPERIAL FEDERATION
LEAGUE IN ENGLAND
On the 30th January, 1891, Sir Leonard Tilley, of New Brunswick, was appointed President of the League in Canada in place of D’Alton McCarthy, mainly through the instrumentality of Principal Grant, who was of the opinion that the course taken by Mr. McCarthy in opposition to the Jesuit Estates Act and his movement in favour of Equal Rights were so unsatisfactory to the French Canadians that the prospect of the League obtaining their support would be hopeless while he remained President. Sir Leonard Tilley was one of the Fathers of Confederation, and at the time Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick.
A meeting of the Council of the League in Canada was held on the 18th September, 1891, Sir Leonard Tilley, President, in the chair, when after careful discussion they passed a resolution asking the League in England to help the Canadian Government to secure the denunciation of the German and Belgian treaties, and a second one urging once more the importance of a preferential trade arrangement between the Mother Country and the Colonies.
On the 30th of the same month, both Houses of the Canadian Parliament passed unanimously an address to the Imperial Government, asking them to denounce the German and Belgian treaties which prevented preferential trade arrangements between the various parts of the British Empire.
The Seventh Annual General Meeting of the League in Canada was held in the Tower Room, House of Commons, Ottawa, on the 1st March, 1892, Mr. Alexander McNeill in the chair. A still further advance in the policy of the Canadian League was made in a resolution moved by Lt.-Col. W. Hamilton Merritt and carried as follows:
That in the event of preferential inter Imperial trade relations being adopted in the British Empire, it is the opinion of this League that Canada will be found ready and willing to bear her share in a just and reasonable proportion of Imperial responsibilities.
On the 28th April, 1892, Mr. McNeill moved in the House of Commons:
That if and when the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland admits Canadian products to the markets of the United Kingdom upon more favourable terms than it accords to the products of foreign countries, the Parliament of Canada will be prepared to accord corresponding advantages by a substantial reduction in the duties it imposes upon British manufactured goods.
This was carried by ninety-eight votes to sixty-four.
All this was very gratifying to our League, and proved to us that the campaign we had been waging in Canada for nearly five years had convinced the majority of the people of the soundness of our policy. We had our Parliament with us both on the question of the German and Belgian treaties and preferential tariffs. In Great Britain, however, our progress had been slow; with the exception of Sir Howard Vincent no prominent British politician had accepted the principle of preferential tariffs. Lord Salisbury had spoken tentatively at the Guildhall on the 9th November, 1890, and at Hastings on the 18th May, 1892, but he was, while in a sense favourable, very cautious in his remarks, as he felt public opinion in Great Britain was quite averse to any such policy on account of their obstinate adherence to the principle of Free Trade.