The Struggle for Imperial Unity: Recollections & Experiences

by George T. Denison

That no mistake was made in forming the League, because at that time, twelve years ago, the feeling was towards independence or annexation. The League did very much to divert public opinion in the direction in which it was now running. As to the treaties between Great Britain and other countries, he did not look upon them as an obstruction but as an impediment. For his part he was prepared to do anything to advance Canadian trade relations with England at once, without postponing it until those treaties were terminated by Great Britain.

This last sentence shows that at that time he was contemplating the adoption of the policy of a British Preference, which I believe in the following year, with Principal Grant’s assistance, he succeeded in inducing Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his Government to adopt.

The constitution, by-laws and rules for the governance of branches were then adopted, and the work of the old Imperial Federation League in Canada has since been carried on under the name of “The British Empire League in Canada.”

I have always felt that this success of our mission to England was most important in its result, or at least that its failure would have been very unfortunate. The collapse of the Imperial Federation League had disheartened the leading Imperialists very much, and the deputation to England was an effort to overcome what was a very serious set back. Had we been obliged to come home and report that we could get no one in Great Britain sufficiently interested to work with us, it would necessarily have broken up our organisation in Canada, and the movement in favour of the organisation of the Empire, and a commercial union of its parts, would have been abandoned by the men who had done so much to arouse an Imperial sentiment. The effect of this would have been widespread. Our opponents were still at work, and many of the Liberal party were still very lukewarm on the question of Imperial unity.

Our success, on the other hand, encouraged the loyalists, and led the politicians of both sides to believe that the sentiment in favour of the unity of the Empire was an element to be reckoned with. Sir John Macdonald had made his great appeal to the loyalty of Canada in 1891, and had carried the elections, the ground having been prepared by the work of the League for years before. The general election was coming on in 1896, and it was most important that the Imperial sentiment should not be considered dead.

After Sir John’s death the Conservative party suffered several severe losses in the deaths of Sir John Abbott and Sir John Thompson, and in the revolt of a number of ministers against Sir Mackenzie Bowell, who had been appointed Prime Minister. The party had been in power for about eighteen years, and was moribund, many barnacles were clinging to it. My brother, Lt.-Col. Fred Denison, M.P., was a staunch conservative, and a strong supporter of the Government, but for a year before his death, that is during the last year of the Conservative régime, he privately expressed his opinion to me that, although he could easily carry his own constituency, yet that throughout the country the Government would be defeated, and he also said he hoped they would. He was of the opinion that his party had been in long enough, and that it was time for a change; and he held that the success of the Liberals at that time with their accession to office, and the responsibilities thus created, would at once cause them to drop all their coquetting with the United States, and would naturally lead them to be thoroughly loyal to a country which they themselves were governing.

About the 1st January, 1896, President Cleveland issued his Venezuelan message in reference to a dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela. It was couched in hostile terms, and was almost insolent in its character. Among European nations it would have been accepted almost as a declaration of war. This was approved of by the United States as a whole. Nearly all the Governors of States (forty-two out of forty-five was, I believe, the proportion) telegraphed messages of approval to President Cleveland, and many of them offered the services of the militia of their States, to be used in an invasion of Canada. This aroused the feeling of our people in an extraordinary degree, and in all Canada the newspapers sounded a loyal and determined note. I was anxious about several papers which had opposed us, and had even advocated independence or annexation, but indignant at the absolute injustice of the proposed attack upon Canada they came out more vehemently than any. The Norfolk Reformer struck a loyal, patriotic, and manly note, while Mr. Daniel McGillicuddy of the Huron Signal, who used to attack me whenever he was short of a subject, was perhaps more decided than any. He said in his paper that he had always been friendly to the United States and always written on their behalf, but when they talked of invading the soil of Canada, they would find they would meet a loyal and determined people who would crowd to the frontier to the strains of “The Maple Leaf Forever” and would die in the last ditch, but would never surrender. Mr. McGillicuddy had served in the Fenian raid in the Militia, and all his fighting blood was aroused. This episode of the Venezuela message ended the annexation talk everywhere, and Mr. McGillicuddy has been for years a member of the Council of the British Empire League.

I had but little influence myself in political matters, but I had great confidence in Sir Oliver Mowat and the Hon. George W. Ross, and among my friends I urged that they should be induced to enter Dominion politics, as their presence among the Liberal leaders would give the people of Ontario a confidence which in 1891 had been much shaken in reference to the loyalty of the Liberal opposition. I was much pleased to find that before the election in 1896, arrangements were made that Sir Oliver Mowat was to leave the Ontario Premiership, and support Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the Senate.

In the early spring of 1896, while the Conservative Government were still in power, I wrote to Lord Salisbury and told him what I thought would happen, first that the Conservatives would be defeated, and secondly that the Liberals, when they came into power, would be loyal and true to the Empire, and that he need not be uneasy, from an Imperial point of view, on account of the change of Government. I knew that with Sir Oliver Mowat in the Cabinet everything would be right, and I felt that all the others would stand by the Empire.