Mr. Chamberlain's Policy and its Prospects

Mr. F.E. Smith, M.P.--Gentlemen: I assure you that I speak without any affectation at all when I say that I welcome, as do my friends, the opportunity which your Club has given to us on the occasion of our first visit to Canada, far more than I can possibly explain to you in any words that are at my disposal. It has been my dream, as long as I have taken any interest in politics, and that has been ever, since I was a very much younger man than I am now, to visit Canada and the rest of the British Empire. I remember well when I was a very small child indeed, my father giving me Dilke's book, Greater Britain, to read,, and I remember making up my mind that as soon as I was able to do so, I would follow in the same journey which he had travelled, and I would make observations for myself of the various parts of that Empire of which we in the Old Country are so fond of speaking in our political speeches.

I am not here today to address you either as a Conservative or as a Liberal in English politics, and I am not here to address you either as Conservatives or Liberals in Canadian politics. You have your internal differences inpolitics, and we have our internal differences, and I am not here today, and I know you would not wish it, to attempt to gain any party advantage in respect of differences which do not concern you when you are dealing with a subject so immensely important to all parties as the Empire, which has given its name to your Club. I would not have you think that I might attempt to gain a party advantage by implying that those who are opposed to us in the domestic policy of our own country are indifferent to the greatness of this Empire, or that their hearts do not pulsate with pride at the success and welfare of Canada. I do not come here as a Conservative politician to try and persuade you that it is with the Conservative party in England alone that you would find those aspirations respecting tariff reform. It is true, gentlemen, that my view is that the great historic party with, which I have the honour of acting in England is better prepared at the moment to carry out the policy which is your object and my object, and the object of everyone; I do not attempt to conceal from you that in my humble judgment the policy of Tariff Reform, which will always be associated with the name of the distinguished uncle of my young friend, Mr. Chamberlain, the name of the greatest English statesman since Chatham; I say, gentlemen, I do not conceal from you that in my judgment it is upon those lines that true Imperial consolidation will be found ultimately to rest.

I am a little apprehensive that some of you who are not as familiar as we are in England with the causes which explain the ebbs and flows of political success, may have been greatly discouraged in the results of the election which has recently taken place in England. I do not know, gentlemen, whether you have been told here (I know that you have had visitors who do not belong to my party who have been visiting your country)-I do not know whether you have been told, as we have been told in England, that the English people have pronounced once for all, quite decisively, upon the issue of Tariff Reform. I do not know whether the word "mandate" is as much abused in your politics as in mine. I have heard on the floor of the House of Commons a mandate claimed for one subject after another. If you ask a man whether he is a free-trader, whether he is in favour of Chinese slavery, whether he wants his children to have a secular education and whether he wants to marry his deceased wife's sister; I say, if you put all these questions to a single man and ask him to answer yes or no, you may get something which will place a political party in power, lout, believe me, you will never get an answer which will dispose once for all of a profound economic difficulty.

Those are some of the difficulties which we had to contend with, and I would ask you to remember that there was a greater one and that there is an explanation which goes deeper still into our failure of a few months ago. Gentlemen, we were attacking in England for the first time a dogma which we had sucked in with our mother's milk. There may be different schools of economy; I know that for years in Germany and other countries, great economists have advanced scientific arguments in favour of that economic creed which is ours today. Gentlemen, we never had that in England; there never were two sides to the question, or if there were two sides, they were never advanced. We never taught that. If you went to an English University, you heard from the professor the doctrines of free trade and the doctrines of Adam Smith explained without qualification, given to you as the dry bones and parchment of a subject quite divorced from human nature and from the vicissitudes of political affairs; and it is true to say that only the rank and file of our voters who, from the necessity of the case, must be less experienced than their leaders, that the men who by their origin and by their education would naturally have been the leaders of political thought; that not even they ever had the arguments of the economist, political and social, in favour of the reform of the tariff put before them until put before them by Mr. Chamberlain a year or two years ago.

Gentlemen, has no progress been made since then? I said you have challenged a fetish which has been accepted without question and without qualification by England for forty years. You have challenged it, and with what result? At an election, which would have been, without free trade, the most disastrous to the Conservative party which has been fought since the Reform Bill, with everything against us, we polled for the first time that we challenged the abstract dogma of free trade, forty percent of the total electors of the country in favour of Tariff Reform. Is it nothing, gentlemen, is it not a circumstance which may encourage you on this side of the water in your efforts, that a great party has, for the first time since the days of Disraeli, openly professed and now constantly attempts to practise the creed which it is your wish and our wish to see cemented between the different parts of the Empire? I wonder whether, divorced as you must be from the more domestic side of our politics, you appreciate the significance of the letter which Mr. Balfour wrote recently to Mr. Chamberlain. Let me explain to you what the significance of that letter was. Mr. Balfour said that if he became convinced, when the practical difficulties were faced in detail, that it was not possible to establish Tariff Reform and Imperial preference with the Empire except on the basis of food tariff, he would assent to the taxation of food, because he was satisfied that the immense importance of the object justified the waiving of the objections which he entertained. It means that we in England, as far as Tariff Reform is concerned, mean business; it means that we in England within the four walls of the Conservative party, since that letter was written, are able to go to a recalcitrant or timid member who will not fall into line with the policy which has been deliberately adopted by the party and say, "You are no longer a loyal member of the Conservative party, because you refuse to follow the line of concentration which Mr. Balfour, the Leader of our party, has cemented with Mr. Chamberlain." That means progress. It means that when the vicissitudes of our parties introduce, and they will introduce, a change in the Government, as surely as the night will follow the day; I say that when vicissitudes come you have a powerful and united and constructive party who have once for all, embraced the creed which is yours and which is mine.

There is one circumstance which to me at least is infinitely more encouraging. Those who are strongest in favour of the policy of Tariff Reform in England are not the rich, who, we are told by our opponents, are going to profit most by it. My experience, and I think no man has spoken in more constituencies in England, my invariable experience has been this, that the men who most warmly appreciate and who most intelligently follow the details of the question are those very working men who are told they are going to be deprived of their daily bread. Gentlemen, if any, of you should have the opportunity, attend the meetings which are held by organizers of the Conservative party all over the country, I mean the National Association of Conservative Districts, and you will find dealing with the agents men whose fingers are on the pulse of the items which constitute the political party. You will find in these men that there is no halfway house, and that there is no doubt as to the road along which they are travelling, and there is no doubt that they will carry that policy to ultimate success. I have heard Canadians, whose conversation it has been an honour and a privilege to listen to, who are not altogether in agreement with the views which most of us hold upon Tariff Reform, and they have advanced arguments with which I am very familiar in England. They say, "You have a bond of union between Canada and the home country, which is based four-square upon those ties, which are infinitely more valuable than any commercial ties, because they spring from a common history in lineage and in memories. Should you attempt to break those ties, so sacred and intangible, you attempt to materialize and degrade them by ties of commerce. I yield to no man in the devotion and appreciation which I entertain for that sentiment of loyalty and affection which Canada feels for the home country, which I assure you the home country feels for Canada. While I yield to no one in my appreciation of the warmth and of the loyalty of that sentiment, I tell you, gentlemen, candidly, as a business man, I reject in to--to the suggestion that because men are well disposed toward one another, because they are even members of the same family, because they feel strong ties of affection, a wise and prudent statesman will neglect to cement those bonds already in existence by the ties, constantly growing closer, of interest which is material interest and which may stand side by side with those higher considerations of which I have spoken. That is the view which many of us have taken in England, when we are told that there is a sentimental side, and I cannot help feeling that this will appeal to you who know this country so much better than I do. While the volume of immigration into Canada grows year by year, it is not stating the proposition too strongly when I say that a very considerable proportion of that immigration comes from sources other than British sources. It is inevitable in that event that you will get into Canada, and you will mould into Canadian citizens, men who have no historical predilection for the British Empire. If I come from under the Stars and Stripes, if I have been a Scandinavian, I should not come to Canada, and find springing up in my heart a sentiment of affection for the Empire; but if you are able to say to a man who says, "They talk to me of England; England is nothing to me, it is not my country"; if you are able to say to a man like that, "Put sentiment to one side and see what England has done in tariff preferences besides affording us in the last resort the resources of her Army and Navy."

I have said enough, perhaps, to show you, and I rejoice to say that there are many young men in the party who have once for all made up their minds as to the policy we desire to see adopted as our national policy in dealing with our Colonies. It is a young man's issue, because I do not conceal from myself or from you that there are many trenches to be stormed yet. There is many a hard contested yard to be fought. I can only tell you, speaking in a humble way, we have put on our armour for this fight. We are not going to take it off till the fight is won. We look forward to a victory which will be all the more deeply prized because every yard of the ground has been so hardly won. We look forward, gentlemen, with your help, and with your missionary enterprise here in Canada, to an age in which it will be hardly necessary for Empire Clubs to exist, because everyone will be an Imperialist, holding the views which are held try your Club and by similar institutions in England today; and looking back stage by stage on the history of that marvellous world of progress, which in spite of errors and accidents, has appeared to be guided, as it were, by some Providential purpose overruling the errors and shortcomings of men, that superb future which appears to await the Empire; looking at that broad historical panorama in due chronological perspective, we see that our difficulties are small indeed in comparison with those which the pioneers of this Empire have had to encounter. Shall we not then attach some belief to the marvellous destiny which has always seemed to direct things right in spite of the occasional errors of our statesmen?

The Hon. Henry Lygon: I confess that, after listening to the speech which you and I have heard from the lips of Mr. Smith, it seems to me almost a pity that any other member of our party should get up for the purpose of spoiling the effect. I do not relish the position of anticlimax, and I will, therefore, endeavour to occupy that position for as short a period as possible. There fell from the lips of Mr. Smith a remark concerning the relations of the two great parties in England to the Colonies, and concerning their attitude toward the Imperial issues, to which I will endeavour, if you will allow me, to add something. I heard reproach levelled against the party to which Mr. Smith and I belong in England, when we showed too great a tendency to try and identify ourselves and our party too exclusively with Imperial aspirations. I have been told that it is a sin on the part of the Conservative party that they try to arrogate to themselves all Imperial sentiments. I do not wish for a moment to arrogate to the Conservative party all the credit for Imperial sentiment in England, because I believe and I know that at the bottom of his heart practically every thinking Englishman wishes today to be a fellow-citizen with his Colonial fellow-citizens of this great Empire. At the same time England and the British Empire are governed on the party system. As long as that fact remains, it is chiefly through the medium of one party or the other that great issues can be brought to a conclusion. If a proposal is made, and it is wished to carry that proposal into effect, ninety-nine times out of a hundred the best possible chance for the carrying out of that proposal lies in its being taken up by one of the two great parties in the state. Therefore, although every thinking Englishman at the bottom of his heart is a true Imperialist, Liberal as well as Conservative, all the same I cannot regret that one party should more conspicuously than the other have devoted itself to thinking out a means for the commonly desired end. I cannot regret, I rejoice, that the party which should have undertaken this is the party in which I was born and in which I hope to die, and I can only say, again, I most certainly think it is a good thing for the prospects of our great cause that it should have been adopted by one party or the other, that it should have been made a party question. That is the justification of Englishmen in having allowed the question of Tariff Reform to be a party question. I cannot help thinking that it is by far the surest way of carrying out the cause which you and I have at heart.

Now, gentlemen, I cannot, as with Mr. Smith here, claim to represent the Conservative party, because we look to Mr. Smith as the rising member of that party. If I can speak for anybody but myself, I think I may perhaps claim to speak for a very large section of opinion in the University of Oxford. I have been in Oxford four years. To my very great regret I have just ceased to be a student. For four years I have taken a part in our small politics in Oxford. Believe me, gentlemen, during those four years, under my own eyes, I have seen growing up with remarkable speed and intensity an increasing feeling of affection for the British Empire, and an increasing feeling of determination on the part of many of the young men at Oxford that when they leave Oxford, and when it falls to their lot to take a share in the government of the country they will first familiarize themselves with the British Empire, and they will then devote the best of their energies to those Imperial issue which, as I said, are at the bottom of the heart of every Englishman. There is a growing feeling at Oxford, if not at Cambridge (I cannot speak for Cambridge); even these last four years I have seen this feeling growing up. It has been stimulated by Mr. Chamberlain, who brought the latent feeling to a head. We look to Mr. Chamberlain as our leader, and many of us are determined to carry on the torch which one day he must hand down to his successors. Toronto has been the first town in Canada which I have visited. I shall never forget the kindness which I have received at the hands of every man whom I have met in this town. It is my first experience in this Colony of the British Empire. As far as I can arrange matters it certainly shall not be my last. I cannot believe that I could have greater kindness than I have received in Toronto. I am speaking from my heart, and I know now that wherever I go in Canada I may expect to receive kindness which has surpassed all our expectations, and as it comes in some measure as a surprise, I appreciate it all the more for that reason."

Mr. Norman Chamberlain: I feel at home here, and I may say I have always looked upon Canada with a longing to go there and know all about it. My grandfather was a member here many years ago, and I think I am almost prouder of being his grandson than of being Mr. Chamberlain's nephew. I have very little to say, but I do wish to say that before I came out here I saw my uncle, and he told me that the support that he valued more than any other was the support of the Canadian Dominion. No one believes in it more than he. You have all seen accounts in the papers, most disastrous accounts, of his health. Those reports appeared in many papers here and in the United States during the past summer. I can say, authoritatively, and I know perfectly well, that they are not true. We all know the strain and emotions that Mr. Chamberlain went through in Birmingham, which moved more than anything else could have moved him, and this strain was a little too much for him. He was very busy at the time, and he had also a bad attack of gout, not very romantic, I admit, but it was an unusually bad one, and therefore he has been kept to his room. He has not been allowed to do anything, and has been made to take an absolute rest, which I hope will continue for two or three months more.

Gentlemen, I think you know him well enough to know that he will work until his last breath in the cause he has taken up. He has not taken it up as a part of his policy, but as his policy alone, and it is hard to imagine in England a man more one-minded. I hope that you will always remember that, and I may end up with this, that when Mr. Chamberlain; dies, as I am afraid he must in time, Tariff Reform is not going to die with him. Too many of our friends in England and too many of our newspapers seem to hint that if he goes, Tariff Reform will go, too. But, as Mr. Smith has said, it will not go under. Absolutely nothing can stop it now. I hope you will give us your support, and let them in the Old Country know that you are giving your support, and never be tired of speaking of it, because the English politician must have things dinned into his ears for centuries before he will understand.

Mr. John Murray: Gentlemen, after what the able speakers have said I can only repeat, and that in a very inferior way, the noble sentiments and sound sense which they have expressed. I should like to say one or two words. Since I came out here I have learned to a much larger extent the definition of two words. The first of them is "proportion"--to come out to this Dominion and realize the magnificent size that, until one came here, it was impossible to realize, has made my mind and views increase in the same proportion as I see the City of Toronto increasing. There are far too many Imperialists at home who frequently speak of the Empire who have never truly realized it. If only they could come out here for a short time and experience the irresistible attraction of this (I cannot find words to express it) glorious Dominion, there would be a great deal more and truer Imperial feeling than there is at present, and that is saying a great deal. And, gentlemen, the other definition I learned is "kindness." Without any very special claim, excepting that we are fellow-members of this great Empire, we have come out here, and we have been treated with such kindness as I thought could not exist. Mr. Chamberlain told you about feeling at home. He is not alone in that; we have all been made to feel at home, and wherever in the Empire we may go, I trust we may always feel at home.