The Imperialist

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

In Elgin and Clayfield, where factory chimneys had also begun to point the way to enterprise, Winter had a clear field. Official reports gave him figures to prove the great and increasing prosperity of the country, astonishing figures of capital coming in, of emigrants landing, of new lands broken, new mineral regions exploited, new railways projected, of stocks and shares normal safe, assured. He could ask the manufacturers of Elgin to look no further than themselves, which they were quite willing to do, for illustration of the plenty and the promise which reigned in the land from one end to the other. He could tell them that in their own Province more than one hundred new industries had been established in the last year. He could ask them, and he did ask them, whether this was a state of things to disturb with an inrush from British looms and rolling mills, and they told him with applause that it was not.

Country audiences were not open to arguments like these; they were slow in the country, as the Mercury complained, to understand that agricultural prospects were bound up with the prosperity of the towns and cities; they had been especially slow in the country in England, as the Express ironically pointed out, to understand it. So Winter and his supporters asked the farmers of South Fox if they were prepared to believe all they heard of the good will of England to the colonies, with the flattering assumption that they were by no means prepared to believe it. Was it a likely thing, Mr Winter inquired, that the people of Great Britain were going to pay more for their flour and their bacon, their butter and their cheese, than they had any need to do, simply out of a desire to benefit countries which most of them had never seen, and never would see? No, said Mr Winter, they might take it from him, that was not the idea. But Mr Winter thought there was an idea, and that they and he together would not have much trouble in deciphering it. He did not claim to be longer-sighted in politics than any other man, but he thought the present British idea was pretty plain. It was, in two words, to secure the Canadian market for British goods, and a handsome contribution from the Canadian taxpayer toward the expense of the British army and navy, in return for the offer of favours to food supplies from Canada. But this, as they all knew, was not the first time favours had been offered by the British Government to food supplies from Canada. Just sixty years ago the British Government had felt one of these spasms of benevolence to Canada, and there were men sitting before him who could remember the good will and the gratitude, the hope and the confidence, that greeted Stanley’s bill of that year, which admitted Canadian wheat and flour at a nominal duty. Some could remember, and those who could not remember could read; how the farmers and the millers of Ontario took heart and laid out capital, and how money was easy and enterprise was everywhere, and how agricultural towns such as Elgin was at that time sent up streets of shops to accommodate the trade that was to pour in under the new and generous “preference” granted to the Dominion by the mother country. And how long, Mr Winter demanded, swinging round in that pivotal manner which seems assisted by thumbs in the armholes of the waistcoat, how long did the golden illusion last? Precisely three years. In precisely three years the British nation compelled the British Government to adopt the Free Trade Act of ‘46. The wheat of the world flowed into every port in England, and the hopes of Canada, especially the hopes of Ontario, based then, as now, on “preferential” treatment, were blasted to the root. Enterprise was laid flat, mortgages were foreclosed, shops were left empty, the milling and forwarding interests were temporarily ruined, and the Governor-General actually wrote to the Secretary of State in England that things were so bad that not a shilling could be raised on the credit of the Province.

Now Mr Winter did not blame the people of England for insisting on free food. It was the policy that suited their interests, and they had just as good a right to look after their interests, he conceded handsomely, as anybody else. But he did blame the British Government for holding out hopes, for making definite pledges, to a young and struggling nation, which they must have known they would not be able to redeem. He blamed their action then, and he would blame it now, if the opportunity were given to them to repeat it, for the opportunity would pass and the pledge would pass into the happy hunting ground of unrealizable politics, but not—and Mr Winter asked his listeners to mark this very carefully—not until Canada was committed to such relations of trade and taxes with the Imperial Government as would require the most heroic efforts—it might run to a war—to extricate herself from. In plain words, Mr Winter assured his country audiences, Great Britain had sold them before, and she would sell them again. He stood there before them as loyal to British connection as any man. He addressed a public as loyal to British connection as any public. BUT—once bitten twice shy.

Horace Williams might riddle such arguments from end to end in the next day’s Express, but if there is a thing that we enjoy in the country, it is having the dodges of Government shown up with ignominy, and Mr Winter found his account in this historic parallel.

Nothing could have been more serious in public than his line of defence against the danger that menaced, but in friendly ears Mr Winter derided it as a practical possibility, like the Liberals, Young and Windle.

“It seems to me,” he said, talking to Octavius Milburn, “that the important thing at present is the party attitude to the disposition of Crown lands and to Government-made railways. As for this racket of Wallingham’s, it has about as much in it as an empty bun-bag. He’s running round taking a lot of satisfaction blowing it out just now, and the swells over there are clapping like anything, but the first knock will show that it’s just a bun-bag, with a hole in it.”

“Folks in the old country are solid on the buns, though,” said Milburn as they parted, and Alfred Hesketh, who was walking with his host, said—“It’s bound in the end to get down to that, isn’t it?”

Presently Hesketh came back to it.

“Quaint idea, that—describing Wallingham’s policy as a bun-bag,” he said, and laughed. “Winter is an amusing fellow.”

“Wallingham’s policy won’t even be a bun-bag much longer,” said Milburn. “It won’t be anything at all. Imperial union is very nice to talk about, but when you come down to hard fact it’s Australia for the Australians, Canada for the Canadians, Africa for the Africans, every time.”