The Struggle for Imperial Unity: Recollections & ExperiencesDenison, George T. (George Taylor)
History
The Struggle for Imperial Unity: Recollections & Experiences
Denison, George T. (George Taylor)
Canada -- History -- 1867-1914
An agitation was started for a national policy--a protective
agitation. Canadians decided that they must protect their own
manufactures, and they had done so since 1878, with the result that
there were now no starving people in the streets, no want in the
country, no submerged tenth, and no thirteen million people on the
verge of starvation. The exodus had ceased from Canada to the States,
and Canadians were now coming back in their tens and twenties of
thousands. Canada was now prosperous. A great deal had been done in
the last twenty years. For instance, Canada had to come to England
to get an English company to build the Grand Trunk Railway. They
did not do it wonderfully well, but still they did it, and it was
now a fine railroad. But what had Canadians done? They had built
the Canadian Pacific Railway to the other side; two gentlemen in
Toronto were building another trans-continental railroad right across
the continent, and the Government were assisting a third project,
the Grand Trunk Pacific. The Canadian Pacific Railroad, a Canadian
institution, managed in Canada, had its vessels on the western coast
at Vancouver, carrying goods and passengers through to Japan, to the
Far East, and Australia and New Zealand. All that had been done since
Canada took up the policy which enabled it to prevent the enemy from
bleeding it to death.
He hoped he had made the point clear. Surely England would desire to
follow the example of Canada in that respect. "The exodus" was now
taking place. The Right Hon. John Morley, in reply to a speech that
he (Col. Denison) made, referred to the wonderful prosperity of Great
Britain, which depended on free trade. Now he would tell the delegates
the other side. The Right Hon. James Bryce went to Aberdeen just at
the time the Government put the tax of a shilling a quarter on wheat.
The Right Hon. James Bryce, who was a very able and clever man, made
a powerful and eloquent speech, but he had not lived long enough in
Canada. He said that the tax of a shilling a quarter on wheat would
make a difference of 7½_d._ per annum to each person in the United
Kingdom, and that it would be a great burden upon the ordinary working
man of the country: but when they thought of the lowest class of the
people, about 30 per cent. of the population, or 13 millions, as Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman had said, who were living upon the very verge
of want, then he said it would mean reduced subsistence, frequent
hunger, weakness of body, and susceptibility to disease. Was that
not an awful fact for a prosperous country? Was it not an awful fact
to think that 8_d_ in a whole year would mean reduced subsistence,
frequent hunger, weakness of body and susceptibility to disease to
13 million of English people? That was the condition of England. The
exodus was taking place; the people were going to Canada, where they
enjoyed sane conditions under which people could live. They were going
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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