Change Or Decay

Before introducing Dr. Stanley, the President of The Empire Club, Major Baxter, on behalf of the Empire Club presented Dr. Albert Ham, a former President of the Club, with a silver salver.

DR. HAM, in a brief reply expressed his appreciation of the kindness of the Club:

"This is indeed a surprise to me. It is so sudden that I hardly know what to say. This I can easily say: I thank you all very, very kindly for the reception and the words that the President has so kindly said about me. I can assure you that I have received many, many, many kindnesses at the hands of our members and past Presidents of the Empire Club.

Reference has been made to "the happy warrior". That was my ideal, I must confess, but I am afraid I have never reached the happy warrior height of happiness.

It is so delightful that I can come back and be with you oftener than before. That is my great solace and it is a great pleasure to look forward to the happy time that I shall be able to spend with you in years to come."

DR. STANLEY was introduced by Major Baxter.

DR. STANLEY: Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: I am very grateful for this very friendly greeting today and the cordiality of this reception. If I may do so, I should like also on behalf of the Dalhousie University to thank you, Sir, for the courtesies you have extended recently to the graduates and the governors.

I think it was about 1927 that the late Lord Balfour said, in effect, that the game was up, and that we were in for a general disintegration unless men of all parties could meet and agree on certain fundamental things. He was not talking of Coalition government, nor about anything mechanical. Some of you doubtless will remember the occasion of his utterance which I have forgotten,, but I am sure I am right in saying that he had in mind a solidification of ideas among men in general about what elements in our society we wish to conserve.

I am going to talk on that text today, not with regard to British or European politics, except in so far as they may come in incidentally, but with regard to Canada. This country has escaped some of the worst convulsions which have occurred since Balfour's utterance. At least we stem, for the moment, to have escaped them. Ultimately, we cannot escape their influence. We certainly cannot escape their disastrous influences unless, following Balfour's advice and warning, we lay our heads together and take stock of the present situation, conjure up our history and ask what lines we wish our future development to follow. That may seem an impossibly large field to discuss in half an hour or so, but perhaps in that time I may raise certain questions with sufficient clearness to light the way to the ultimate questions which we must all ask of ourselves.

Are there any fundamental ideas or are there not, on which reasonable agreement can be found in all our provinces? To say that there are not would imply, of course, that we can not have any society at all. Then what are those fundamental ideas? Let us take some fundamental, very fundamental political conceptions which have grown up in Europe over a long period, and which we have inherited and established here-such ideas as religious toleration, parliamentary government, a judiciary independent of government, and so on. I suppose that not one person in a hundred would deny that religious toleration has been accepted for all time in this country. It is not, however, a question that many of us think about or reflect upon even once in a decade. And perhaps every one here in this room would say quite confidently that religious toleration can never again become a live issue in the life of this country. I am sure I hope that is so. Since 1760, religious toleration has been a part of the tradition of Canada, even more than it has been a part of the tradition of England or of France. We have had as between this Province of Ontario and the Province of Quebec, a long and happy experience of it. And yet, in some Canadian discussions of blasphemy, and in one or two other things, there are certain disquieting signs. Remember that as late -as the seventeenth century, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were done to death because of their religious faith, or lack of a certain religious faith; and remember, too, in a few months time, much of Europe has lapsed to a period far earlier than the seventeenth century. If we do believe in religious toleration, and it is my unmixed conviction that at present we do then it might be wise and desirable to reaffirm our belief.

Consider again parliamentary government. I have heard Canadians say, and not lightly, that they did not believe in it. You remember how Carlyle used to scoff Qt it, in London, most of a century ago. I confess that I see grave difficulties ire parliamentary government in this country as compared with Great Britain, and it may be that we have been a little too slavish in attempting to sail precisely, and point to point, on the same tack. But here again, I fancy there are few in this room who would say, either lightly or deliberately, that they are prepared to see the institution discarded. Our whole development, even from days earlier than Confederation, has been on that line. The Province of Quebec, to which at first parliament and all its implications was a novelty, has come to prize it and it has been a great means, a great instrument in the unification of our races. Those things, I think, should be remembered when we weigh the scandals in our parliamentary history, or when we say in an idle moment, it may be, that some other system of government is desirable. If another system, then what sort of system? Now, once more, as about religious toleration, some may think it altogether unnecessary and irrelevant to raise this question but in my judgment it is even more important to raise this question and to be articulate about it. Revolutions never come because the great mass of society wills them. Revolutions needs must come, but violent and shattering revolutions come because the great mass of men have been blind and deaf at times when the social or economic centre of gravity has shifted, or when for one reason or another the shape of things refuses to accommodate itself to man-made forms. It is a political commonplace, indeed, that men live by the myths which they themselves have fashioned, but there must be some sort of general agreement that the particular myth in question is at least as good as any other conceivable myth. As an interesting example, one might cite the life of the American Congress from 1789 to 1933. Sixty years ago, Walter Bagehot wrote as though it were a matter of common knowledge that the American form of government was tolerated only because the men of New England could work anything, no matter how unworkable it was. .It would be invidious, and certainly altogether beside our present purpose to trace the history of American government in the intervening six decades, but perhaps both its friends and its critics would agree that it has persisted only because of the extraordinary conservatism of the Americans and not through any adaptability of its own. A few months ago it was quietly shelved. I am not lamenting its passing. I am only wishing to point out that only as late as one year ago no one anticipated such a sudden and great change. It is a remarkable change and one bound to be fraught with great influences upon this country. I have heard it said and I have read recently, that after all the change in the United States is not very great and is only in line with certain things that have happen ed in Europe. Gentlemen' that is not true. The change in the United States is not in the least analogous to the dramatic announcement, for example, of Premier Dollfuss of Austria, made on September 13, last, that henceforth parliamentary government would no longer exist in Austria. Parliamentary government in Austria had been a brief experiment. It had not yet acquired any tradition in that little artificial state which the Treaty of Versailles had carved out of the Kingdom of the Hapsburgs. In Austria no one had been eloquent as Lincoln had about government by the people not perishing from the earth. Austria had merely been ordered to establish a parliament by one of Lincoln's successors.

Thus far I have been content to point no moral, nor shall I begin to do so now. What I have said about American conservatism leads me back to my main theme and also tempts me to point out that in Canada we are even more conservative and not in Lord Balfour's sense. Balfour had in mind a political demarche, an innovation in political thinking, in order that certain essential things, the things precious and dear to all Englishmen, might be conserved. We all know the things that Balfour would have wished to see continue-government by law instead of violence, government by free debate instead of edict. Other things, too, doubtless, he wished to have continued but these things I have mentioned, he would have said were of far greater importance than, for example, methods of taxation.

Now, Americans and Canadians, too often, have been, conservative in another sense, refusing to change anything until it is too late--a method which ends in conserving nothing. Reflect for a moment how often and with what urgency certain Americans have called upon their compatriots to purge and purify Congress and above all, to bring it into line with the needs and the task of the day. The almost universal reply, when any reply was given, was that the Constitution was sacrosanct. But for the most part no reply has been given those proposals and for the most part they have been received with complete apathy. Our own case is so familiar to all of you that T need not enlarge on that.

What I have been trying to do is to hit on one or two things which I believe all Canadians would wish to conserve. And yet I have been at pains not to conceal the facts that those things I have instanced have a certain precariousness of tenure. Human institutions are always like that. When such catastrophes are loosed upon the world as our generation has seen, then the solidest foundations are threatened, not by conspirators, not by plotters, et home or abroad. No, but by disintegration in themselves. Human institutions, as the very phrase suggests, are cemented together by human wills, desires, hopes, fears, and above all, by a general human understanding and intelligence. But when men are content, decade after decade, merely to idolize a frame of things erected by their ancestors and which they, themselves care nothing about, but even deride, saying, such things as: "Politics is a dirty game'", then it is only a question of how long that structure of things, half-idolized and half-despised can continue. So many convulsions have happened in the last few years and so listlessly and carelessly have we Canadians watched them or neglected them, so complacently, too, have we accepted the empty futility of so much in our party system that-who can say? It may well seem strange a few years hence that anyone should have thought as late as 1933 that parliamentary government in Canada could continue.

But I am not anxious to make prophecies, one way or another. I do go so far as to say that Balfour's prognostication, whether gloomy or not, was shrewed and penetrating and had ample historical warrant. And if it applies to Britain it is not without application to ourselves.

Let us take another step in our argument. Let us suppose our leading men, of all parties and faiths, could agree on such things as have been the warp and woof of our life for the last two or three hundred years. Could it not be supposed that on the foundation of that agreement they could build a little more widely, a little more broadly and a little higher, by agreeing on progress made in the last century or so; such things as the equality of the sexes, state supervision of mines and factories, the abolition of slavery, and a dozen other things? Let none of these questions be shirked or flinched at. Let them be thoroughly ventilated and when agreed upon, let them be reaffirmed and clearly and articulately stated, not only as a new political charter, very much needed-not a written constitution--Heavens, No--but a new political charter, an affirmation of political belief, if you will, but the phrasing of its clauses would spell out in capital letters certain clauses which remain to be written.

One of the over-worked phrases one hears nowadays, ad nauseam, these days is "Men of vision", but really, men do not need to see visions or dream dreams to realize in these times much must be done and done without delay. We should all admit, should we not, that politics, governments, institutions' exist for man, and not man for institutions. That is one of the least of political truisms.

Very well. Consider the situation that exists in this country at the present moment. This country is literally a vacant empire. One can say that without any of the exaggeration that has saturated so much of the immigration literature in the past. Just what, then, prevents the easy subsistence of the few millions of people we now muster? Just what? It will not do, in times like these, to deal in phrases, to speak of the scarcity of money, the dislocation of trade, or abstractions of that sort. It will not do to say that unemployment is caused by machinery-another abstraction-as though it were more important not to let machinery rust than to prevent fellow citizens from starvation.

Please observe I am not talking philanthropically when I say these things; I am talking in terms of politics; it has been a political axiom for the last 2500 years that revolutions begin with hunger. It is not sound politics for a society to allow itself to be overtaken by this sort of situation, in which two-thirds or three-quarters of the citizens find, or think they find, through improvements in production, that the full day's labour is not required of the remaining citizens and coolly say to them: "You are not working, therefore you cannot eat." So far indeed is it from being sound politics, that it is mere anarchy.

You may think that I am looking too narrowly at the Canadian scene and that I am forgetting that Canada depends so largely on foreign trade that she has been caught in the general maelstrom. I am not forgetting anything of the kind. Indeed, the more intimate one's knowledge of economics, the more intimate one's experience of the ups arid downs of Canadian and foreign trade, with exchanges in violent fluctuation, and even more violent attempts made to catch up with fluctuating tariffs and other regulations, the more clearly one sees that some of us are content to arrogate privileges, while the devil flails the unfortunate. But, whether in relation to our foreign trade or in relation to one another, does not the fact remain that we Canadians, per capita are an extraordinary wealthy people? I don't mean wealthy in the accumulation of possessions; I mean wealthy in the power and capacity to feed and clothe and house and employ our total number. Can anyone contradict that? Can anyone point to ten millions of people in the whole period of history who have been masters of such resources as we?

It would have sounded, I know, a little like a jarring note on many ears in Canada just four years ago, td say that the decent subsistence of all citizens living in this country was the first charge on the resources of this country. It would startle few today, but r think it would be a great step forward and have a most healing influence, if leaders of all parties were willing to acknowledge their acceptance of that tenet. (Applause.)

After all, we are a generation behind modern Europe in taking such a step. Among the Mediterranean states of ancient times it was a universal political axiom. Ways and means of putting the axiom into effect are the details, merely, and I can not go into them here. That would require a talk by itself. The important thing is to deal with these fundamentals in advance and before the time of crisis arrives. Again, as a mere matter of bookkeeping, Gentlemen, must we rot balance such accounts as these before we being to be big again about immigration?--to say nothing of all the political, social and even biological disturbances inherent in immigration.

Such, I believe, are the things we should find ourselves agreed upon if we sat down to discover how far an agreement was possible. I haven't gone through the whole list and, of course, some would lay emphasis on some things and some on other things and some of you here are maybe disappointed that I have made no mention of things dear to yourselves. I have, of course, carefully avoided any contentious things. We may luxuriate in contentions after we have settled and solidified our agreement. (Applause.) Not that I should be in any great haste to seek out gounds of contention when the world is as it is at this moment. Having agreed on broad foundations--I haven't described to you all the details of that foundation--I am obliged, naturally, just to sketch the thing in outline-having agreed on broad foundations, I half believe we should find ourselves in a conciliatory mood, not only about the political and social issues I have envisaged, but about the major economic issues as well. Economics, of course, very largely is a matter for (experts but economics has a political side in this way, that it is very doubtful whether any economic theory is good enough to push itself relentlessly to extremes.

You may remember what Sir Robert Giffen used to ask when he heard that anything was good economically, or bad economically. "How good?" he would say, "As good as the situation existing at present?" or "How bad?" "As bad as the alternative with all its implications?" But our method, as you know, has been quite different. Being impressed with the advantages of a transcontinental railway, we have said, "Let us have three of them." Hearing that colleges and universities were a good thing, we have supplied or attempted to supply, ten or a dozen of them for a million people. That is no exaggeration of the state of affairs existing in some of our provinces at this moment. Once committed to tariffs, we have steadily increased rates and all governmental parties have had a hand in it. In the same way we have increased our wheat acreage and we are all involved in that, Gentlemen, not merely the West. We have slaughtered our forests; we have encouraged monopolists. Nothing has been too big for us; nothing has been too sudden for us. But neither trees nor nations grow like that and even if we had looked at the merely economic things in an economic way, we surely should have whispered to ourselves occasionally, something about the law of diminishing returns not that anything is ever merely economic except in the textbooks. Every economic action, despite the doctrinaires and the Machiavellis, has its political and its moral side.

Neither am I doctrinaire or dreamer enough to imagine if we follow Balfour's advice, we should find ourselves in one bound in the millenium. Even when a people is moving forward or upward on some great surge of joyous enthusiasm, such as happened England in the spacious days of Elizabeth, even then it has within itself knaves who would betray it, and selfish scoundrels who would grind the bones of their fellow citizens to manure in their own enterprises. These we shall always have with us. But these days are not spacious days. The lights have been going out all over the world, as Grey foresaw they would. But is it the end for those who speak the English tongue? Is it the end of parliaments, the end of law, the end of freedom? It was in days not less dark than these that Milton sounded his trumpet. The Miltonic note is perhaps too much to hope for at present but is there possible what Balfour conceived of as the barest minimum for our survival? Is there possible a common effort of citizenship?

And with the word "citizenship", I am going to come to a close. The task today is not merely one for experts and leaders. Experts and leaders we need and shall need, Heaven knows. But there is a task for everyone. Any society, any order of civilization, has indeed reached its term and is threatened with extinction when within it, any large number of men believe that they can go on living utterly selfish, unneighbourly, unsocial lives themselves and that the rest of the world will somehow go on satisfactorily, providing they go once in four years or so to elect or defeat a government. (Hearty Applause.)