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.