In the columns of the Canadian Monthly and the Nation (a weekly paper devoted to “Canada First” ideas), Prof. Goldwin Smith had written eloquently against the system of party government, more especially in the Provincial Houses. He advocated a fusion of the parties on the ground that there were no questions of principle to divide them. Mr. Brown, in the Globe, strongly opposed the theory, as a matter of course. Mr. William H. Howland was the originator of the Canada First Party, and a warm friend of Prof. Goldwin Smith.
Grip, October 10th, 1874.
THE PROFESSOR’S “BRIDAL” FOR PARTYISM; OR, THE DREAM OF “CURRENT EVENTS.”
See The Canadian Monthly for October.
SIGNOR BLAKE IN HIS CELEBRATED ACT OF KEEPING THE GLOBE IN SUSPENSE
Mr. Blake had made what the Globe called a “disturbing speech” at Aurora, in which he expressed some advanced ideas, and referred rather vaguely to the existence of a Reform Party that could find nothing to reform. As Mr. Blake was regarded as a man whose whole-hearted support was all but essential to the success of the Reform Ministry then in office, the attitude he occupied was most unsatisfactory to the chief Government organ. Mr. Goldwin Smith and Mr. Howland, as representatives of the Canada First Party, fancied they could detect some gleams of hope for that propagander in Mr. Blake’s speech.