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Blowout in the Gulf
Blowout in the Gulf
The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of
Energy in America

William R. Freudenburg and Robert Gramling

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any

form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopy-
ing, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permis-
sion in writing from the publisher.

For information about special quantity discounts, please email spe-

[email protected]

This book was set in Sabon by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in
the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Freudenburg, William R.
Blowout in the Gulf : the BP oil spill disaster and the future of en-
ergy in America / William R. Freudenburg and Robert Gramling.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01583-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. BP Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Oil Spill, 2010. 2. Oil
spills—Mexico, Gulf of. 3. Drilling platforms—Accidents—Mexico,
Gulf of. 4. Offshore oil industry—Environmental aspects—Mexico,
Gulf of. I. Gramling, Robert, 1943– II. Title.
GC1221.F74 2011
2010937510
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Prologue: The Deep-Water Horror Zone ix

1 A Question for Our Time 1

2 The Macondo Mess 9
3 Stored Sunlight and Its Risks 21
4 Colonel of an Industry 63
5 Barons and Barrels 75
6 Off the Edge in All Directions 91
7 “Energy Independence” 113
8 To Know Us Is to Love Us? 129
9 Cleaning Up 153
10 Today and Tomorrow 171

Notes 191
References 203
Index 225
To Sarah, Max and Eileen
Prologue: The Deep-water Horror Zone

April 20, 2010, had been a pretty good day for the friends on
the 26-foot craft, Endorfin. Fishing for blackfin tuna, they had
caught their limit, and as night fell, they headed toward the
Deepwater Horizon—a gigantic drilling rig that had been en-
joying a pretty good day as well.
Just seven months earlier, the big rig had set an all-time re-
cord for deepwater drilling, completing a well nearly six miles
deep. The day before, one of the platform’s key contractors—
Halliburton—had finished cementing the current well’s final
casing, a key step in the process of getting the platform ready
to move to a new location. Topping things off, April 20 was
the day when important corporate bigwigs had come on board,
celebrating the fact that the Deepwater Horizon had just com-
pleted seven full years without a single lost-time accident—the
first such rig ever to do so.1
As would befit its record-setting status, the Deepwater Hori-
zon was a marvel of technology. In many ways, it was more of a
ship than a drilling platform—two submarine-like hulls, float-
ing below the surface, where waves had little effect, plus a deck
up above the waves that provided living and working space
for the crew. In other ways, though, it was more of a city than
a ship—a complex of steel and machinery, served around the
x   Prologue

clock by a crew of 130, and with a deck as big as two football

fields, floating side by side. Also like a city, the Deepwater Ho-
rizon was intended to stay in one spot, at least once it reached a
drilling location, using global positioning technology so precise
that the its drills could hit a specific spot on the ocean floor, just
inches in diameter, but located nearly a mile below.
The earliest exploratory offshore drilling rigs had a much
easier task of lining things up; they sat in one spot or stood
on tall steel “legs” firmly attached to the bottom of the sea. As
the drilling moved to ever-deeper locations, though, it became
impossibly expensive to build rigs that could support them-
selves from the sea bottoms, thousands of feet below. Instead,
oil companies shifted to new technologies—“semisubmersible”
rigs or drill ships, floating on the surface rather than standing
on the bottom. Early semisubmersibles were tethered in one
spot by using a set of cables and anchors. Those cables con-
tinued to work well, even as water got deep enough to crush a
Navy submarine, but in the spot where the Deepwater Hori-
zon was drilling—an area known as Mississippi Canyon block
252—the water was almost a mile deep. A tethered drilling rig
in that location would have required an almost prohibitively
heavy, expensive, and complicated set of anchors, connected
with cables that would have needed to be miles long. Instead,
the drilling rig used a set of eight massive thrusters—each one
capable of producing over 7,000 horsepower—in a complex
choreography that kept the rig precisely aligned.
On the Endorfin on April 20 were Albert Andry III, a stu-
dent in Marine Biology, and three of his high-school friends.
Fishing and oil drilling had a long history of coexistence in the
Gulf, and the friends intended to idle through the night at the
massive drilling operation. When they first got to the rig, things
looked particularly serene—the sea was as calm as the surface
of a mirror—and they started catching bait for the next day’s
 The Deep-water Horror Zone   xi

fishing. Just after 9:30 that night, though, things suddenly got
anything but peaceful. Water came gushing down so fast that
Andry thought the Deepwatwer Horizon crew was dumping
its bilge water to keep from capsizing, and the friends’ eyes
started to burn. One of them who had experience working on
rigs, Wes Bourg, knew that they needed to move fast, shouting
to his friend to “Go, go, go, go, GOOOOO!” Andry gunned the
throttle and headed for open water as fast as his boat could go.
The Endorfin was about 100 yards away when the platform
exploded into flames.2
By the narrowest of margins, the friends on board the En-
dorfin all survived. Above them, though, the crew members
of the Deepwater Horizon were not so fortunate—and neither
were the wildlife or the other human inhabitants of the Gulf
region. Seventeen of the crew members suffered serious inju-
ries, and eleven more were killed in the explosion. In just the
first few weeks after the spill, several hundred sea turtles, all
of them officially threatened or endangered, washed up dead.
They were joined by hundreds of porpoises and other sea mam-
mals, thousands of seabirds, and an unknowable number of
fish, which would die from the spilled oil, from the dispersants
that were used in an effort to break up that oil, or both. On
shore, meanwhile, the millions of human inhabitants of the
Gulf coast states, slowly starting to recover from the devas-
tation of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Ike, were about to be
confronted by a new disaster.3
For some of the workers who managed to survive the initial
explosion, the force was enough to knock them off their feet
or to bury them under debris. Struggling through smoke, heat
and darkness, most managed to reach the lifeboats that were
being lowered to the surface of the Gulf, some 80 feet below,
but some had to jump, hitting the surface of the water with a
force of 20 Gs.
xii   Prologue

The Coast Guard was contacted almost immediately; the

service ship Joe Griffin, equipped with water cannons that
could pump out 10,000 gallons of water a minute, managed
to fire up its engines and get underway in a quarter of the time
usually required. Unfortunately, although the Joe Griffin was
heading out toward the burning rig at full speed, that meant
was the trip out to the rig would take more than nine and a half
hours. The glow of the flames were visible from 35 miles away.
The effort to put out the flames was heroic, but futile.
Thirty-six hours later, during the late morning hours of April
22, in a strange but spectacular commemoration, the charred
remains of the Deepwater Horizon collapsed and sank to the
bottom of the sea.4
It was the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day.

The initial assessments of the spill ranged from the argument

by BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward—namely that “The overall en-
vironmental impact of this will be very, very modest”—to the
declaration by President Obama, and many others, that the
spill will ultimately be seen as “the worst environmental di-
saster America has ever faced.” At the moment, the long-term
outcomes of that debate are no more clear than are the waters
of the Gulf. Instead, based on our experience in dealing with
other disasters, we can already offer the confident prediction
that variations on these same arguments will continue to be
made for decades to come, providing a steady income to law-
yers yet unborn.
Even at this early stage, however, it is possible to start bring-
ing much greater clarity to our thinking. The key to doing so
is by focusing on some of the larger lessons that are available
to be learned from this and other disasters. That is particu-
larly true with the lesson that will be the major focus of this
book, which applies not just to BP, but also more broadly: Both
 The Deep-water Horror Zone   xiii

literally and figuratively, and both in the Gulf of Mexico and

elsewhere, we have been getting into increasingly dangerous
waters, doing so without being sufficiently vigilant about the
implications of our actions. Perhaps the logical place to start,
then, is by asking why the crew of the Deepwater Horizon
would have been working in such a dangerous spot in the first
place.
1 A Question for Our Time

When future historians look back on the first decade of the

twenty-first century, they are likely to focus much of their at-
tention on the dramatic images provided by the U.S. invasions
of Afghanistan and Iraq. Millions of Americans watched as the
tanks rolled into Baghdad, where a small crowd of happy Iraqis
cheered as the tanks pulled down the hollow statue of Sad-
dam Hussein. Soon after that, unfortunately, Americans also
learned about less-happy Iraqis who were exploding home-
made bombs and shooting rocket-propelled grenades at some
of those very same tanks.
Far less visible or dramatic is likely to be the fact that the
year of the invasion of Iraq, 2003, marked the fiftieth anniver-
sary of three other developments, all of which had a closer re-
lationship to the invasion than might at first be apparent. The
first two of those events involved beginnings—the passing of
two pieces of legislation in the early days of the Eisenhower ad-
ministration that established the legal framework for offshore
oil drilling. The third involved an ending—the end of nearly a
century when one dominant oil-producing nation single-hand-
edly provided more than half of the petroleum in the world.
That nation was the United States of America.
Half a world away from Iraq, just a few months before the
start of the invasion, a headline in the New York Times had
2   Chapter 1

referred to a different kind of battle, and a different kind of

risk from petroleum. This second and less dramatic “Gulf war”
took place in a different Gulf—the Gulf of Mexico—and it had
more to do with tankers than with tanks. In this second set of
Gulf battles, a much smaller army was working comparably
hard, pitting its wits and investment capital against the ele-
ments and the odds. The front lines for this army were located
hundreds of miles from the United States, off the southern edge
of the continent, searching for weapons of mass consumption,
in the form of oil. Despite the fact that this search was taking
place far from land, the oil deposits were technically “domes-
tic,” because the United States had claimed the sea bottoms as
part of its “Exclusive Economic Zone.” As the Times headline
noted, however, while this oil was domestic, it was also “Deep
and Risky.” It was more than a half-mile deep, to be more pre-
cise—and that was just the depth of the water. The drill bits
would need to drill through additional miles of muck and rock
before—if all went well—the effort would finally hit petroleum
paydirt. The BP blowout, to note the obvious, would later show
what could happen if things did not go so well.1
A continent away from the Gulf of Mexico, and another
world away from the battles going on in both Gulfs, still an-
other battle was taking place beyond the northern edge of the
most remote outpost of the United States—along the Arctic
Ocean, north of Alaska. On March 19, 2003, when the second
President Bush announced that American and coalition forces
were “in the early stages of military operations” in Iraq, few if
any television cameras were focused on this third battle. The
action taking place in this forbidding region would have been
difficult for television audiences to see, in any event—given that
it was taking place so close to the north pole, much of the
action was going on, literally, in the dark. When Secretary of
State Colin Powell made his case for the Iraq war at the United
 A Question for Our Time   3

Nations, on February 5, 2003, he did so only about two weeks

after the first sunrise to have squeezed its way above the hori-
zon in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska—the starting point for the Trans-
Alaska Pipeline—in the previous two months. Even more than
was the case in the sands of Middle Eastern Gulf or the swells
of the Gulf of Mexico, the troops that were at work above the
Arctic circle were engaged in a battle with the elements, braving
even “daytime” temperatures that were about as far below zero
as most Americans would have been able to imagine. Other
risks in this region included the fact that any television crews
actually present almost certainly would have been outnum-
bered by the polar bears. Save for the Inupiat who have con-
sidered this region their home for thousands of years, almost no
Americans would have had much desire to be anywhere close
to this particular battle, especially during the winter, unless they
were forced to be here.
But perhaps that is precisely the point.
In a very real sense we are “forced to be” in such forbidding
locales. To understand the reasons—and to think realistically
about what directions we might want to be considering for the
future—it is helpful to consider how we came to move off the
edge of the continent in both directions. It is also helpful to
recognize the connections to the decisions that led us to move
massive military force, once again, into a region of the world
where U.S. tanks—whether we are speaking of military tanks
or oil tanks—are not likely to be met with cheering throngs of
happy civilians.
Two reasons are particularly important, and both of them
will be spelled out in greater detail in the pages that follow.
One is that the United States simply uses too much oil, too
wastefully. The other is that, by the later days of the twenti-
eth century, we had already used up the vast majority of the
rich petroleum deposits we once had. Those are the key factors
4   Chapter 1

that have led so many brave soldiers of the oil industry to be

looking for oil in the realm of the polar bears, or in the deep-
est oceans ever to be probed by oil drills—to say nothing of
the factors leading so many of America’s more literal soldiers
to find their lives at risk in the sands of Kuwait, or Iraq. They
are in such forbidding spots because we are so desperate to find
more oil, and we have already used up most of the supplies that
are easier to find.
Despite our habit of referring to oil “production,” the real-
ity is that the twentieth century was an unprecedented exercise
in oil “destruction.” The oil was actually produced during the
time of the dinosaurs. What we have been doing over the last
century or more has been to find the fossil deposits left behind
during the era of the dinosaurs and to burn them up as fast as
we could. Over the course of the past century, we showed an
impressive increase in our ability to find those ancient remains,
but we didn’t manage to create as much as a single barrel of
truly “new” petroleum supplies to make up for the supplies we
were burning up.
Yet there is also a reason that is significantly less obvious.
Our expectations for the future continue to be shaped by the
exuberance of the past. That is part of the explanation behind
politicians’ continued calls for U.S. “energy independence”—
generally put forth with straight faces and apparent convic-
tion—when in fact the evidence clearly shows that no such
future will ever again be possible, at least not with petroleum.
Another part of the explanation for the politicians’ continued
calls, however, is that the rest of us allow them to get away with
it. Perhaps part of the explanation for that, in turn, is that all
of us may have some resemblance to the wildcatters who will
be discussed in the later pages of this book. We seem to have
become so caught up in the excitement of oil strikes that we’ve
started to share the wildcatters’ conviction—surely, there must
 A Question for Our Time   5

be even more spectacular oil finds out there, perhaps just be-
yond the next horizon. The problem, unfortunately, is that we
are not actually looking toward the next horizon. Instead, we
are driving with our eyes fixed firmly on our rear-view mirrors.
All of which means that we are entering a new era in more
ways than one. In an earlier century, the United States actually
did enjoy something like “energy independence”—or even “en-
ergy supremacy”—but as we move into the twenty-first cen-
tury, any hopes for a “return” to such presumably happy days
have less to do with realism than with self-delusion.
The two of us have been studying energy issues in general,
and offshore oil issues in particular, for more than thirty years.
Near the start of that time, in 1974, President Richard Nixon
said, “At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United
States will not be dependent on any other country for the en-
ergy we need.” Back then, the United States got 36.1 percent of
its oil from foreign sources, and Nixon proposed to end that
dependency by obtaining more oil from U.S. sources, particu-
larly offshore oil. The next year, with an emphasis on nearly
the same policies, President Gerald Ford said, “We must reduce
oil imports by one million barrels per day by the end of this
year and by two million barrels per day by the end of 1977.”
By 1979, President Carter was beginning to place at least some
emphasis on different policies, but he made a similar promise:
“Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more for-
eign oil than we did in 1977—never.” By that time, the United
States was obtaining 40.5% of oil from foreign sources.
President Reagan overturned many of Carter’s policy initia-
tives, particularly those that had to do with solar power and
energy efficiency, but he agreed that “the best answer is to try
to make us independent of outside sources to the greatest ex-
tent possible for our energy.” For President Reagan, apparently,
the “greatest extent possible” meant importing 43.6 percent
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 The destruction of the League would have been useless unless
steps were taken to prevent its revival, and to destroy, if possible,
the League in Canada. Hence the adoption of the name, address,
trade mark, etc., under which to flood Canada with publications
tending to arouse great hostility among our people. This was the
condition in which I found affairs only about ten months after I had
been elected President. The outlook was most discouraging, and
caused a great deal of anxious discussion among the stalwarts in
Toronto. We decided to summon a meeting of our most influential
men to consider the situation, and decide whether we also should
dissolve, or whether we would continue the struggle.
The meeting was held on the 3rd January, 1894, and after full
discussion it was decided to fight on, and with the assistance of Sir
John Lubbock, who had sent a communication to us asking us to co-
operate with him, to endeavour to resuscitate the League in
England.
The ninth annual meeting of the Imperial Federation League in
Canada was held in the Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, on the 29th
May, 1894, and in the notices of motion printed in the circular calling
the meeting was one by Lt.-Col. Wm. O’Brien, M.P., as follows:
Resolved, that the first step towards arriving at a system of
preferential trade within the Empire should be for the Government of
Canada to lower the customs duties now imposed upon goods
imported from the United Kingdom.
And another to the same effect by Rev. Principal George M.
Grant:
Resolved, that this League is of opinion that as a first step
towards arriving at a system of preferential trade within the Empire,
the Government of Canada should lower the Customs duties now
imposed on goods manufactured in and imported from Great Britain.
These notices exactly foreshadowed the policy adopted by Sir
Wilfrid Laurier’s Government in 1897.
 Another resolution was carried to the effect that a delegation
should be elected by the Executive Committee to confer personally
with the City of London Branch and similar organisations, and agree
upon a common course of future action. Accordingly on the 6th
June, 1894, the Executive Committee appointed “Colonel G. T.
Denison President, Larratt W. Smith, Esq., Q.C., LL.D., President
Toronto Branch, George E. Evans, Esq., Hon. Secretary of the League
in Canada, John T. Small, Esq., Hon. Treasurer, H. J. Wickham, Esq.,
Chairman of the Organising Committee, J. L. Hughes, Esq., J. M.
Clark, Esq., and Professor Weldon, M.P., to be the delegation, with
power to add to their number.” Messrs. Clark, Small, and Weldon
were unable to act, and Sir Charles Tupper, then High Commissioner,
Lord Strathcona, and Lt.-Col. Septimus Denison, Secretary and
Treasurer of the London Ontario Branch, were added to the
delegation.
This was the turning point of the movement, and led to the
organisation of the British Empire League and the continuance of the
struggle for Imperial consolidation. The account of this mission, its
work in England, and the subsequent proceedings of the new
League, and the progress of the movement for Imperial Unity during
the succeeding years, will be dealt with in the following chapters.
 CHAPTER XIX

ORGANISATION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

LEAGUE

I left for England on the 27th June 1894, arrived in London on

the 9th July, and at once called upon Sir John Lubbock, M.P., now
Lord Avebury. I breakfasted with him on the 13th, when we
thoroughly discussed the whole question. I pressed upon him the
urgent need there was that we should have a head office in England,
and how important the movement was in order to spread and
maintain the Imperial sentiment in Canada. He was most
sympathetic and friendly, and said that if it would be convenient for
us he would gather a number of men favourable to the idea to meet
us at his house a week later, on the 20th July. I wrote to the
members of the delegation, and gathered them the day before at
Lord Strathcona’s rooms on Dover Street, and secured the
attendance of Sir Charles Tupper, who was then High Commissioner
for Canada, and also a member of our League, and we added him to
the committee. We discussed our policy at considerable length, and
arranged to meet at Sir John Lubbock’s in St. James’s Square the
following morning at eleven a.m.
I happened to be breakfasting at the United Service Club that
morning with Lord Roberts and General Nicholson, and Lord Roberts
hearing that I was going to Sir John Lubbock’s, said that he had
been asked to attend the meeting, but had not intended to go. I
prevailed upon him to accompany me.
Sir John Lubbock had a number of gentlemen to meet us, among
whom were Sir Westby Percival, Agent-General for New Zealand, the
Hon. T. A. Brassey, Messrs. C. Freeman Murray, W. Culver James, W.
H. Daw, W. Becket Hill, Ralph Young, H. W. Marcus, and others. Sir
John Lubbock was in the chair and Mr. Freeman Murray was
secretary. As chairman of our deputation, I put our case before the
meeting, following the lines agreed upon at the conference at Lord
Strathcona’s rooms the day before. I spoke for about forty minutes,
and naturally urged very strongly the importance of preferential
trading throughout the Empire, as a practical means of securing a
permanent unity, and I insisted that we should make the
denunciation of the German-Belgian Treaties one of the definite
objects of the League.
The City of London Branch had prepared a programme of a
suggested constitution, which contained nearly all the clauses
afterwards agreed upon as the constitution of the British Empire
League. Our Canadian delegation accepted all their suggestions, but
we insisted on a clause referring to the German and Belgian Treaties.
Our English friends were evidently afraid of the bogey of Free Trade,
and seemed to think that any expressed intention of doing away
with the German and Belgian Treaties would prevent many free
traders from joining the League. I urged our view strongly, and was
ably assisted by speeches from Sir Charles Tupper, Lord Strathcona,
and Sir Westby Percival. Our English friends still held out against us.
At last I said that we had agreed with all they had advocated, had
accepted all their suggestions, but that when we asked what we
considered the most important and necessary point of all, the
denunciation of the German and Belgian Treaties, we were met with
unyielding opposition, that there was no object in continuing the
discussion, and we would go home and report to our League that,
even among our best friends, we could not get any support towards
relieving us of restrictions that should never have been placed upon
us. Mr. Becket Hill seeing the possibility of the meeting proving
abortive, suggested an adjournment for a week. Mr. Herbert Daw
immediately rose, and in a few vigorous sentences changed the
tone. He said that the Canadians had agreed with them in
everything, and that when they urged a very reasonable request
they were not listened to. He said that was an unwise course to
take, and urged that an attempt should be made to meet our views.
Sir John Lubbock then said: “Perhaps I can draw up a clause
which will meet the wishes of our Canadian friends,” and he wrote
out the following clause:
To consider how far it may be possible to modify any laws or
treaties which impede freedom of action in the making of reciprocal
trade arrangements between the United Kingdom and the colonies,
or between any two or more British Colonies or possessions.
I said at once that we would accept that clause, provided it was
understood that we of the Canadian Branch should have the right to
agitate for that which we thought was the best, and the only way,
probably, of unifying the empire. We claimed we were to have the
right to work for the denunciation of the treaties with the view of
securing preferential tariffs around the Empire, and that in so doing
we were not to be considered as violating the constitution of the
League, although the central council was not to be responsible for
the views of the Canadian Branch. That settled the matter at once,
and the League was formed. Difficulty was found in deciding upon a
name. We wished to retain the old name, but the arguments in
favour of a change were so great that we yielded to the wishes of
our English brethren. A number of names were suggested, most of
them long and explanatory, when Mr. James L. Hughes suggested
that as the object was the maintenance of the British Empire why
not call the League simply “The British Empire League.” This
appealed to all, and it was at once adopted, so that Mr. Hughes was
the godfather of the League.
It was then arranged that a meeting of the old City of London
branch of the Imperial Federation League should be called at the
London Chamber of Commerce. It was held on the 26th July, when
several of us addressed the meeting, and an organising committee
was formed for undertaking the work of the reconstruction of the
League. It consisted of the Canadian deputation and the following
gentlemen: The Earl of Derby, Earl of Jersey, Earl of Onslow, Earl of
Dunraven, Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar, Lord Brassey,
Lord Tennyson, Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., Sir Algernon Borthwick,
Bart., M.P., Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., Sir Westby Percival, Sir Fred
Young, Major General Ralph Young, Lieut.-Colonel P. R. Innes, Dr. W.
Culver James, Messrs. F. Faithful Begg, M.P., W. Herbert Daw, E. M.
Headley, W. Becket Hill, Neville Lubbock, Herman W. Marcus, John F.
Taylor, and Freeman Murray.
Addressing this meeting at some length, I endeavoured to show
the importance of settling the North-West, as well as other portions
of Canada, with a population of British people if possible, who would
grow grain to supply the wants of the mother country. I stated that a
preferential tariff against the United States would keep our people in
Canada, and would cause settlers from Great Britain to make their
homes in that country; and that in a very little time the North-West
Territories would be occupied by a large population of loyal people,
who would be devoted to the Empire, and would be able to supply
all the bread-stuffs that England would require. In order to impress
that upon the audience, I drew their attention to the fact that if
England was engaged in a war with continental countries, say, for
instance, Russia and France, it would cut off the supply of wheat
from the former country; and that if hostilities were also to break out
between the United States and England, it would confine the mother
country’s wheat supply to India, Australia, and Canada; that the
distance was so great that it would take an enormous naval force to
keep the sea routes open, and that these would be constantly liable
to attack and interruption unless England had absolute command of
the sea.
I then went on to say that I was aware that there was a strong
feeling in England that there was no possibility of a war with the
United States, but warned the meeting that they must not rely upon
that belief, and I quoted several facts to prove my view.
 Within eighteen months the Venezuelan Message of President
Cleveland, followed as it was by the warlike approving messages to
Mr. Cleveland from 42 out of the 45 Governors of States, proved how
easily trouble might arise.
Mr. James L. Hughes also addressed this meeting, and we were
strongly supported by a member of the Fair Trade League, who used
some powerful arguments in favour of some steps being taken to
improve the position of the “Food Supply.” He was answered by Mr.
Harold Cox, Secretary of the Cobden Club, who said that my
proposition was one that would abolish Free Trade, and substitute
Protection for it. In spite of his appeal to the intense prejudice of the
British people, at that time in favour of Free Trade, the idea of an
Imperial Preferential tariff seemed to have considerable weight upon
those who heard it expounded.
Lord Tennyson was present at the meeting and spoke to me
afterwards, approving of much of my speech, but regretting I had
spoken so freely about the United States. I replied that the very fact
of his criticism was a strong proof of the necessity for my speaking
out, and told him I would send him some publications which would
enable him the better to appreciate our view. This I did. He has
been a strong supporter of the British Empire League and acted on
the Executive Committee from the first.
I addressed a large meeting at Hawick, Scotland, on the 17th
August, 1894, and for the first time in Scotland advocated our
Canadian policy. My friend Charles John Wilson organised the
meeting. I spoke in much the same strain as in London. Although my
remarks were well received it was evident that free trade opinion
was paramount, and that I did not have any direct support in the
meeting. One member of the Town Council told me at the close that,
while they were all free traders, yet I had given them food for
thought for some time. At the Congress of Chambers of Commerce
of the Empire held in London in July, 1906, my friend Mr. Charles
John Wilson, who spoke at my meeting in Hawick in 1894, was a
representative of the South of Scotland Chamber of Commerce, and
made a powerful speech in favour of the Canadian resolution which
endorsed Mr. Chamberlain’s policy of preferential tariff, and his
Chamber of Commerce voted for it.
The organising committee appointed at the London meeting took
a considerable time in arranging the details. Lord Avebury told me
that he had considerable difficulty in getting a prominent
outstanding man as President, and that the negotiations took up a
great deal of time. He wished to secure the Duke of Devonshire, and
he being very busy, could not give much time, and only agreed at
length to take the position on the understanding that Sir Robert
Herbert who, for many years had been the Permanent Under
Secretary for the Colonies, and was about to be superannuated,
should undertake to act as chairman of the Executive Committee and
attend to the management of the League.
When all was arranged, a large meeting was held at the Mansion
House on the 27th January, 1896, the Lord Mayor in the chair, and
then the British Empire League was formally inaugurated, the
constitution adopted, and a resolution, moved by Lord Avebury,
carried:
That the attention of our fellow-countrymen throughout the
Empire is invited to the recent establishment of the British Empire
League, and their support by membership and subscription is
strongly recommended.
It may be mentioned that when our deputation reported to the
League in Canada the arrangements we had agreed to, it was
suggested that an addition should be made to the constitution by
the insertion of what is now the second clause of it. “It shall be the
primary object of the League to secure the permanent unity of the
Empire.” This, of course, had been well understood, but the
Canadian League desired it to be placed in the constitution in formal
terms. The request was made to the committee in England, and it
was at once acceded to.
 A special general meeting of the Imperial Federation League in
Canada was held in the Tower Room, House of Commons, Ottawa,
on the 4th March, 1896, to consider the annual report of the
Executive Committee, and the recommendation therein contained,
that the League should change its name to that of the British Empire
League in Canada, and affiliate with the British Empire League.
As President of the League I occupied the chair. Among those
present were: Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., G.C.M.G.; Sir Donald Smith,
K.C.M.G.; the Hon. Arthur R. Dickey, M.P.; Senators W. J. Almon, C.
A. Boulton, John Dobson, Thomas McKay, Clarence Primrose, W. D.
Perley, and Josiah Wood. The following members of Parliament: W.
H. Bennett, G. F. Baird, T. D. Craig, G. R. R. Cockburn, Henry Cargill,
George E. Casey, F. M. Carpenter, G. E. Corbould, Dr. Hugh Cameron,
Emerson Coatsworth, D. W. Davis, Eugene A. Dyer, Thomas Earle,
Charles Fairburn, W. T. Hodgins, A. Haslam, Major S. Hughes, David
Henderson, Charles E. Kaulbach, J. B. Mills, A. C. Macdonald, J. H.
Marshall, James Masson, J. A. Mara, W. F. Maclean, D’Alton
McCarthy, G. V. McInerney, John McLean, H. F. McDougall, Major R.
R. Maclennan, Alex. McNeill, W. B. Northrup, Lt.-Col. O’Brien, H. A.
Powell, A. W. Ross, Dr. Thomas Sproule, J. Stevenson, William Smith,
Lt.-Col. Tisdale, Thomas Temple, Lt.-Col. Tyrwhitt, Dr. N. W. White,
R. C. Weldon, R. D. Wilmot, W. H. Hutchins, Major McGillivray,
William Stubbs, J. G. Chesley, A. B. Ingram; and Messrs. S. J.
Alexander, Sandford Fleming, C.M.G., N. F. Hagel, Q.C., James
Johnston, Thomas Macfarlane, Archibald McGoun, C. C. McCaul,
Q.C., Joseph Nelson, J. C. Pope, E. E. Sheppard, J. G. Alexander, J.
Coates, Joseph Nelson, McLeod Stewart, R. W. Shannon, Major
Sherwood, Major Clark, Dr. Kingsford, Dr. Beattie Nesbitt, Prof.
Robertson, Dr. Rholston, Lt.-Col. Scoble, Captain Smith, George E.
Evans (Hon. Secretary), and others.
I moved the adoption of the annual report, which contained a
copy of the constitution of the British Empire League, and
recommended that the Canadian League be affiliated with that body.
As to the question of changing the name of the League, I said:
 That the Canadian delegation had urged the retention of the
name Imperial Federation League, but the arguments in favour of
the change were so great that we felt we had to yield to the wishes
of our English brethren. The word Federation was objected to by
some, and there is no doubt that to attempt to prepare a fixed and
written constitution for a federated Empire, with all its divergent
interests, would be a very difficult thing to do. If a dozen of the very
ablest men in all the Empire were to devote any amount of time and
their greatest energies to prepare a scheme for such a federation,
and succeeded in making one practical and workable under existing
conditions, might not ten or twenty years so change the conditions
as to make a fixed written constitution very embarrassing and
unsuitable? Such a method is not in accord with the genius of the
British Constitution. The British Constitution is unwritten; it has
“broadened down from precedent to precedent,” always elastic,
always adapting itself to changing conditions. So should the idea of
British unity be carried out. Let us work along the lines of least
resistance. The memorial included in the report urges a conference
to consider the trade question. A conference might arrange some
plan to carry out that one idea; in a year or two another conference
could be called to consider some other point of agreement. Soon
these conferences would become periodical. Soon a committee
would be appointed to carry out the wishes of the conferences in the
periods between the meetings; and then you would have an Imperial
Council, and Imperial Federation would have become evolved in
accordance with the true genius of the Anglo-Saxon race. Let us take
one step at a time, and we shall slowly but surely realise our wishes.
These remarks outlined the policy that the Executive Committee
had agreed upon, and foreshadowed much that has since occurred.
Mr. Alexander McNeill seconded the adoption of the report, which
was carried unanimously.
Sir Charles Tupper then moved the first resolution:
Whereas the British Empire League has been formally
inaugurated in London with practically the same objects in view as
the Imperial Federation League, this meeting expresses its sympathy
and concurrence therewith, and resolves that hereafter the Imperial
Federation League in Canada shall be a branch of the British Empire
League, and shall be known and described as the British Empire
League in Canada.
In his speech he gave a short sketch of the progress of the old
League, and pointed out that it was an important fact that this
organisation had committed itself to the policy of removing the
obstruction to preferential trade with Great Britain which existed
through the treaties with Belgium and Germany.
Mr. D’Alton McCarthy seconded the resolution. He also spoke of
the work of the old League which he had founded in Canada, and of
which he was the first President. He said:
That no mistake was made in forming the League, because at
that time, twelve years ago, the feeling was towards independence
or annexation. The League did very much to divert public opinion in
the direction in which it was now running. As to the treaties between
Great Britain and other countries, he did not look upon them as an
obstruction but as an impediment. For his part he was prepared to
do anything to advance Canadian trade relations with England at
once, without postponing it until those treaties were terminated by
Great Britain.
This last sentence shows that at that time he was contemplating
the adoption of the policy of a British Preference, which I believe in
the following year, with Principal Grant’s assistance, he succeeded in
inducing Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his Government to adopt.
The constitution, by-laws and rules for the governance of
branches were then adopted, and the work of the old Imperial
Federation League in Canada has since been carried on under the
name of “The British Empire League in Canada.”
I have always felt that this success of our mission to England was
most important in its result, or at least that its failure would have
been very unfortunate. The collapse of the Imperial Federation
League had disheartened the leading Imperialists very much, and
the deputation to England was an effort to overcome what was a
very serious set back. Had we been obliged to come home and
report that we could get no one in Great Britain sufficiently
interested to work with us, it would necessarily have broken up our
organisation in Canada, and the movement in favour of the
organisation of the Empire, and a commercial union of its parts,
would have been abandoned by the men who had done so much to
arouse an Imperial sentiment. The effect of this would have been
widespread. Our opponents were still at work, and many of the
Liberal party were still very lukewarm on the question of Imperial
unity.
Our success, on the other hand, encouraged the loyalists, and led
the politicians of both sides to believe that the sentiment in favour of
the unity of the Empire was an element to be reckoned with. Sir
John Macdonald had made his great appeal to the loyalty of Canada
in 1891, and had carried the elections, the ground having been
prepared by the work of the League for years before. The general
election was coming on in 1896, and it was most important that the
Imperial sentiment should not be considered dead.
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.
I had but little influence myself in political matters, but I had
great confidence in Sir Oliver Mowat and the Hon. George W. Ross,
and among my friends I urged that they should be induced to enter
Dominion politics, as their presence among the Liberal leaders would
give the people of Ontario a confidence which in 1891 had been
much shaken in reference to the loyalty of the Liberal opposition. I
was much pleased to find that before the election in 1896,
arrangements were made that Sir Oliver Mowat was to leave the
Ontario Premiership, and support Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the Senate.
In the early spring of 1896, while the Conservative Government
were still in power, I wrote to Lord Salisbury and told him what I
thought would happen, first that the Conservatives would be
defeated, and secondly that the Liberals, when they came into
power, would be loyal and true to the Empire, and that he need not
be uneasy, from an Imperial point of view, on account of the change
of Government. I knew that with Sir Oliver Mowat in the Cabinet
everything would be right, and I felt that all the others would stand
by the Empire.
In 1897, during the Jubilee celebration in London, I saw Lord
Salisbury, and he was much gratified at the action of the Canadian
Government in establishing the British Preference, and said that they
had been anxious about the attitude of the Liberal party, until Sir
Wilfrid Laurier’s first speeches in the House after his accession to
office. I laughingly said, “You need not have been anxious, for I
wrote telling you it would be all right and not to be uneasy.” His
reply was, “Yes, I know you did, but we thought you were too
sanguine.”
As soon as the new Government were sworn in, we endeavoured
to press our views of preferential tariffs upon them, D’Alton
McCarthy and Principal George M. Grant exerting themselves on that
behalf, and during the autumn of 1896 a deputation of the Cabinet
consisting of the Hon. Wm. Fielding, Hon. Sir Richard Cartwright,
and the Hon. Wm. Patterson travelled through the country inquiring
of the Boards of Trade and business men as to their views on the
question of revision of the tariff.
Our League naturally took advantage of this opportunity to press
our views upon the Government, and urged Mr. Fielding and his
colleagues very earnestly to take steps to secure a system of
preferential tariffs. A curious incident occurred on this occasion that
is worth recording. While our deputation were sitting in the Board of
Trade room in Toronto waiting our turn to be heard, a manufacturer
was pressing the interests of his own business upon the Ministers. It
was amusing to hear him explain how he wanted one duty lowered
here, and another raised there, and apparently wanted the tariff
system arranged solely for his own benefit. There was such a
narrow, selfish spirit displayed that we listened in amazement that
any man should be so callously selfish. Mr. Fielding thought he had a
good subject to use against us, so he said to the man, “Suppose we
lower the duty say one-third on these articles you make, how would
that affect you?” “It would destroy my business and close my
factory.” “Then,” said Mr. Fielding, “here is a deputation from the
British Empire League waiting to give their views after you, and I am
sure they will want me to give Great Britain a preference.” The man
became excited at once, he closed up his papers and in vehement
tones said, “If that is what you are going to do, that is right. I am an
Imperial Federationist clear through. Do that, and I am satisfied.”
“But what will you do?” said Mr. Fielding. “It will ruin your business.”
“Never mind me,” he replied, “I can go into something else,
preferential tariffs will build up our Empire and strengthen it, and I
will be able to find something to do.” “I am an Imperialist,” he said
with great emphasis as he went out.
I turned to someone near me and said, “I must find out who that
man is, and I will guarantee he has United Empire Loyalist blood in
his veins.” He proved to be a Mr. Greey, a grandson of John William
Gamble, who was a member of a very distinguished United Empire
Loyalist family. I am sure this incident must have had some influence
upon Mr. Fielding, as an illustration of the deep-seated loyalty and
Imperialism of a large element of the Upper Canadian population.
The members of our League were delighted with the action of
the Government in the Session of 1897, in establishing a preference
in our markets in favour of British goods. It will be remembered that
we had been disappointed in our hope that Lord Salisbury would
have denounced the Treaties in 1892, when the thirty years for
which they were fixed would expire, but five years more had elapsed
and nothing had been done. I believe the plan adopted by our
Government had been suggested by Mr. D’Alton McCarthy, our
former President, and in order to get over the difficulty about the
German and Belgian Treaties, the preference was not nominally
given to Great Britain at all, but was a reduction of duty to all
countries which allowed Canadian exports access to their markets on
free trade terms. This of course applied at once to Great Britain and
one of the Australian Colonies (New South Wales). All other nations,
including Germany and Belgium, would not get the preference unless
they lowered their duties to a level with the duties levied by Great
Britain. The preference was first fixed at one-eighth of the duty just
to test the principle.
Shortly after this was announced in our Commons, Kipling, who
saw at once the force of it, published his striking poem “Our Lady of
the Snows,” which emphasised the fact that Canada intended to
manage her own affairs:

Daughter am I in my mother’s house,

But mistress in mine own.
The gates are mine to open
As the gates are mine to close,
And I set my house in order
Said Our Lady of the Snows.

. . . . . . .

Another strong point was illustrated in the lines:

Favour to those I favour

But a stumbling block to my foes,
Many there be that hate us,
Said Our Lady of the Snows.
 . . . . . . .

Carry the word to my sisters,

To the Queens of the East and the South,
I have proved faith in the heritage
By more than the word of the mouth.
They that are wise may follow
Ere the world’s war trumpet blows,
But I, I am first in the battle,
Said Our Lady of the Snows.

This poem pointed out to Great Britain that Canada had waited
long enough for the denunciation of treaties which never should
have been made, and which were an absolutely indefensible
restriction on the great colonies.
At a meeting of the council of the British Empire League in
Canada held in May a week or two after the Annual Meeting in
Ottawa, a resolution was passed:
That the President and those members of the Canadian Branch
who are members of the Council of the League in England be hereby
appointed a deputation (with power to add to their number) from
the League in Canada to the League in the United Kingdom; and
that they be instructed to lay before the members of the Parent
League the views of the Canadian Branch on matters of national
moment, such as the organisation of a Royal Naval Reserve in the
colonies, and also to express their opinion that, as a guarantee of
the general safety of the Empire, vigorous steps should at once be
taken to provide that the British food supply should be grown within
the Empire.
The deputation consisted of the following: The Hon. R. R. Dobell,
M.P., George R. Parkin, J. M. Clark, A. McNeill, M.P., Sir Charles
Tupper, Bart., John T. Small, Sir Sandford Fleming, K.C.M.G., Lieut.-
Colonel George T. Denison, D’Alton McCarthy, Q.C., M.P., Lord
Strathcona, H. H. Lyman and J. Herbert Mason.
 CHAPTER XX

MISSION TO ENGLAND, 1897

I left for England via Montreal on the 31st May, 1897, and
expected to arrive in Liverpool a day or two before Sir Wilfrid Laurier,
who was to sail some days later from New York on a fast ship. We
were delayed for some days by fogs, and did not arrive in Liverpool
till after Sir Wilfrid Laurier had left that place. He had arrived in the
old world for the first time of his life, and at once fell into the hands
of the Liverpool merchants and business men, at that time generally
free traders. He had not a colleague with him and naturally was
affected by the atmosphere in which he found himself, and in his
speech at the great banquet given by the British Empire League with
the Duke of Devonshire in the chair, he made a few remarks in
reference to preferential tariffs for which he was severely criticised at
home. I joined the party at Glasgow two days later, and Sir Wilfrid,
who seemed pleased to see me, had a long talk with me between
Glasgow and Liverpool on the special train which took the party
down. On the following morning the Liverpool papers had cables
from Canada giving an account of the discussion in the Canadian
House of Commons over the cabled reports of Sir Wilfrid’s speech.
He was attacked vehemently by Alexander McNeill, our champion in
the House, on one point of his speech at Liverpool, and Sir Richard
Cartwright and his colleagues, in defending Sir Wilfrid, did so on the
ground that the reports of what he said could not be taken as
correct, and asking the House to withhold comment until the full
reports should be received. This was a desirable course to adopt, for
cable despatches have so often conveyed inaccurate impressions.
The real secret of the trouble was that in the busy rush of his
work as leader of the opposition, and then as Premier, Sir Wilfrid had
not been able really to master the question, but he soon grasped the
subject, and his later speeches were very effective. His reception by
the British people was wonderfully favourable, and the impression he
made upon them was remarkable. He stood out from all the other
Premiers—and there were eleven in all—and he was everywhere the
central and striking figure.
On the 5th July, 1897, a meeting of the British Empire League
was held in the Merchant Taylors Hall. The Duke of Devonshire was
in the chair and made an able speech welcoming the Premiers from
the colonies. He was followed by Rt. Hon. R. J. Seddon, Premier of
New Zealand, Sir William Whiteway, Premier of Newfoundland, Mr. G.
H. Reid, Premier of New South Wales, and Sir Edward Braddon,
Premier of Tasmania. Sir Wilfred Laurier had not been able to attend,
and as President of the League in Canada I was called upon to
speak. As to the treaties, I said:
I have come here from Canada to make one or two suggestions.
In the first place in reference to preferential tariffs, we have shown
you that we wish to give you a preference in our markets. (Cheers).
But treaties interfere with us in the management of our own tariff,
and I wish to emphasise the fact that some steps should be taken to
place us in absolute freedom to give every advantage we wish to our
fellow-countrymen all over the world. (Cheers.) We wish to give that
advantage to our own people, and we do not wish to be forced to
give it to the foreigner. (Hear, hear.) . . .
Now my last point is this. In Canada we have viewed with
considerable alarm the fact that the wealthiest and most powerful
nation in all history is at this moment dependent for her daily food
for three out of every four of her population upon two foreign
nations, who are, I am thankful to say, friendly to her, and who, I
hope, will always be friendly, but who, it cannot be denied, might by
some possibility be engaged in war with us at some future time.
These two nations might then stop your food supply, and that harm
to you would spread great distress among the people of our country.
I have been deputed by the League in Canada to ask you to look
carefully into this question. If there is no real danger, relieve our
fears; but if you find there is any danger let me urge upon you as
strongly as I can to take some steps to meet that danger. Let the
method be what it may, great national granaries, a duty on food, a
bounty or what not, but let something be done.
A special meeting of the Council of the League was held on the
7th July, 1897, to meet the deputation of our League. In my address
I once more dealt with the question of the German and Belgian
treaties. I said, “The Canadian people have now offered, in
connection with their desire regarding these treaties, to give what
they propose to all nations, but with the express intention of giving
an advantage to our own people. I am deputed to ask you to use
what influence you can on the Government and people of this
country to give us that full control of our own tariff to which we
contend we are entitled.”
Lord Salisbury in 1890, although favourable to the idea, was not
able to secure the denunciation of the German and Belgian treaties,
although I knew from his conversation with me that personally he
felt that they should be denounced. In 1892 Lord Knutsford
peremptorily refused a request by Canada to denounce the treaties.
Lord Ripon was not quite so peremptory in 1894-’95 after the
Ottawa Conference, but he refused permission to Mr. Rhodes to
arrange a discriminating tariff in Matabeleland. We had been held off
for six years, but the action of the Canadian Government brought
matters to a head.
During June and July, 1897, in London the most profuse and
large-hearted hospitality was shown on every hand to the colonial
visitors, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to all the large
functions. I felt the importance of taking every opportunity to press
upon the leading men in England the necessity for the denunciation
of the treaties, and I knew Sir Wilfrid Laurier could not urge it with
the freedom or force that I could. Consequently in private
conversations I talked very freely on the subject, whenever and
wherever I had an opportunity.
I found that in meeting friends, almost the first remark would be
an approving comment on the friendliness of the Canadian
Parliament in giving the British people a preference in the markets of
Canada. My reply always was that it was no more than was right,
considering all that Great Britain had done for us. This was usually
followed by the remark that the Government were afraid, from the
first impression of the law officers of the Crown, that Great Britain
would not be able to accept the favour. My reply was very
confidently, “Oh yes! you will accept it.” Then the remark would be
made that the German and Belgian treaties would prevent it. “Then
denounce the treaties,” I would say. “That would be a very serious
thing, and would be hardly possible.” My reply was, “You have not
fully considered the question, we have.” Then I would be asked what
I meant, and would reply somewhat in these terms:
Consider the situation of affairs as they stand. To-day at every
port of entry in Canada from Sydney, Cape Breton, to Victoria in the
Island of Vancouver, along 3,500 miles of Canadian frontier, German
goods are charged one-eighth more duty than goods from Great
Britain, and goods from Great Britain one-eighth less duty than on
German goods. This was being done yesterday, is being done to-day,
and will be done to-morrow, and it is done by the Government of
Canada, backed by a unanimous Parliament, and behind it a
determined and united people. We have made up our minds and
have thought it out, and have our teeth set, and what are you going
to do about it?
This did not usually bring out any indication that any clear
decision had been arrived at by them, and then I would go on:
Of course we know that you can send a large fleet to our Atlantic
ports, and another to our Pacific ports, and blockade them, paralyse
our trade, and stop our commerce, until we yield, or you may go
farther and bombard our defenceless cities, and kill our women and
children. Well, go on and do it, and we will still hold out, for we
know that any British Government that would dare to send her fleets
to jamb German goods down our throats when we want to buy
British, would be turned out of office before the ships could get
across the Atlantic. The thing is absurd, the treaties are an outrage,
and the only course out of the difficulty is to denounce them.
These arguments carried weight with all to whom I spoke, and I
spoke to Ministers, Privy Councillors on the Government side, M.P.’s,
and others. Once only the head of one of the great daily newspapers
seemed to be annoyed at my aggressive attitude, and said, “You had
better not be too sure. We might send the fleet and be very ugly
with you.” My reply was, “Well, go on and send it. You lost the
southern half of North America by trying to cram tea down their
throats, and you may lose the northern half if you try to cram
German goods down our throats. I should have hoped you had
learned something from history.”
It will be seen that the plan which was, I understand, originated
by D’Alton McCarthy, worked out very successfully. There could only
be one result, and within a month the treaties were denounced, and
I felt that the first great step of our programme had been made. The
amusing feature, however, was, that this object for which we fought
so hard three years before at the meeting at Lord Avebury’s, when
the British Empire League was founded, and which was opposed by
nearly all our English friends, was no sooner announced as
accomplished, than men of all parties and views seemed to unite in
praising the act, and the Cobden Club even went so far as to present
the Cobden Medal to Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier in all his speeches had upheld abstract theories
of free trade, and with considerable skill succeeded in allaying the
hostility of the free trade element. This, I think, helped to secure the
denunciation of the treaties, with the approval of all parties. On my
return to Canada I was interviewed in Montreal by the representative
of the Toronto Globe. Being asked by the reporter my opinion of the
probable effect of the denunciation of the German and Belgian
treaties, I said:
The denunciation of these treaties marks an epoch in the history
of the British Empire. The power of Canada has made itself felt not
only in British but in European diplomacy. It has affected Germany,
Belgium, and other countries, and every one of these countries
knows that it was Canada’s influence that produced the result.
Another point in connection with the denunciation of these treaties
is, that it is a tremendous step towards preferential trade within the
Empire. Great Britain was going along half asleep. Canada has
awakened her, and made her sit up and think. She has been jostled
out of the rut she has been following, and is now in a position to
proceed in the direction that may be in her own interest and in that
of the Empire.
Being then asked if I had any opinions to express in regard to the
Premier’s remarks in Great Britain on the question of free trade, I
said:
His remarks were general and theoretical. The great point of the
whole movement was to secure the denunciation of the treaties.
Nothing could be done while these treaties were in existence, and in
my opinion it would have been a most indiscreet thing for Sir Wilfrid
Laurier to have pursued any line of argument that would have
aroused the hostility of the great free trade party in Great Britain.
The great point was to secure the united influence of all parties in
favouring the denunciation of the treaties, which was an important
step in advance.
Being asked to account for the fact that Sir Howard Vincent, of
the United Empire Trade League, a strong protectionist, and the
Cobden Club both united in applauding the denunciation of the
treaties, I replied:
 Sir Howard Vincent and his League saw plainly that this action
made for a preferential tariff. The Cobden Club are whistling to keep
up their courage.
In the Conference of Premiers, held in 1897, it was not possible
to secure an arrangement for mutual preferential tariffs. The other
colonies were not ready for it, the Imperial Government was not
ready for it, nor were the people, but as the German and Belgian
Treaties were denounced to take effect the following year, in August,
1898, the path was cleared, and from that date the Canadian
Preference came into force, and has since been in operation.
It will be remembered that the deputation of our British Empire
League to England, in 1897, was instructed to express the great
desire of the Canadian Branch that, as a guarantee of the general
safety of the Empire, vigorous steps should at once be taken to
provide that the British Food supply should be grown within the
Empire. As chairman of the deputation I did all in my power to stir
up inquiry on the subject. Being introduced to Principal Ward of
Owens College, Manchester, when at that city, I talked freely with
him on the point, and he suggested I should discuss it with Mr.
Spencer Wilkinson, the well-known author and journalist. He gave
me a letter introducing me to Mr. Wilkinson, and we had several
interviews. Shortly after reaching London I called to see my friend
Lord Wolseley, then Commander-in-Chief. He took me with him to his
house to lunch, and as we walked over, I at once broached the
subject of the food supply, principally wheat and flour, and he told
me that the Government had been urged to look into the matter
some two or three years before, and that there had been a careful
inquiry by the best experts, and the report was that the command of
the sea was a sine quâ non, but if we maintained that, and paid the
cost which would be much increased by war prices, the country
could get all the grain they would want.
I said suppose a war with Russia and the United States, what
would be done if they combined and put an embargo on bread-
stuffs? How would it be got then even with full command of the sea?
He did not seem himself to have understood the difficulty, or studied
the figures, and said, “I cannot explain the matter. All I can say is
that the Government obtained the advice of the best men in England
on the subject, and that is their report.” My reply was, “I wish you
would look into it yourself,” and I dropped the subject.
I met Lord Roberts shortly after and I pressed the matter upon
him. He had not known of the Government report, and consequently
listened to my arguments attentively and seemed impressed, for I
may say that 1897 was the worst year in all our history as to the
manner in which the supply of food was distributed among the
nations.
Mr. Spencer Wilkinson seemed to be much interested in my talks
with him, and one day he said, “I wish you could have a
conversation with some great authority on the other side of the
question, who would understand the matter and be able to answer
you.” I replied, “That is what I should like very much. Tell me the
best man you have and I will tackle him. If he throws me over in the
gutter in our discussion it will be a good thing, for then I shall learn
something.” Mr. Wilkinson laughed at my way of putting it, and said,
“If that is what you want, Sir Robert Giffen is the man for you to
see.” I said I would try and get a letter of introduction to him. Mr.
Wilkinson said he would give me one, and did so.
I called to see Sir Robert Giffen. He received me very kindly, and
we had an interesting interview of about an hour. The moment I
broached the subject of the food supply he said at once, “That
question came up some two or three years ago, and I was called
upon to inquire into the whole matter and report upon it, and my
report in a few words was, that we must have the command of the
sea, and that once that was secured, then, by paying the somewhat
enhanced war prices, we could get all the grain required.” My reply
was, “Then, as you have fully inquired into the question, you can tell
me what you could do under certain conditions. In case of a war
between Great Britain and Russia combined with the United States,
followed by an embargo on food products, where and how would
you get your supplies?” Sir Robert said, “We do not expect to go to
war with the United States and Russia at the same time.” I said,
“You were within an ace of war with the United States only a year
ago over the Venezuelan difficulty, and Great Britain and Russia have
been snarling at each other over the Indian Frontier for years, and if
you go to war with either, you must count on having the other on
your hands.”
Sir Robert then said, “But I said we must have the command of
the sea.” I replied, “I will give you the complete, undoubted,
absolute command of the sea, everywhere all the time, although you
are not likely to have it; and then in case of an embargo on wheat
and foodstuffs where are you to get your supplies?” He said, “We
would get some from Canada and other countries.” I pointed out
that all they sent was only a fraction. Sir Robert then said, “They
could not put on an embargo, for it would ruin their trade.” I told
him that I was talking about war and not about peace and trade,
and said that no desire for trade induced the Germans to sell wheat
to Paris during the siege of 1870. His idea had been that, in case of
war with Russia or the United States, or both, holding the command
of the sea, Great Britain would allow foodstuffs to be exported to
neutral countries such as Belgium or Holland, and then England
would import from those countries. My answer to that was, that if
England had the command of the sea, the United States or Russia
would have only one weapon, an embargo, and they would certainly
use it. He seemed cornered in the argument, and said, “Well, if we
cannot get bread we can eat meat. I eat very little bread.” I said,
“The British people use about 360 lbs. per head of wheat per
annum, and about 90 lbs. of meat, and a great deal of meat would
be stopped too”; and I said on leaving, “I wish you would investigate
this thoroughly again, and let the Government know, for I know they
are depending upon your report at the War Office”; and then I left
him.
When at Liverpool shortly after on my way back to Canada, I
asked the manager of the Bank of Liverpool, to whom I had a letter
of introduction, if he would introduce me to the highest authority on
the corn trade in Liverpool. He introduced me to the late Mr. Paul,
ex-President of the Corn Exchange, and I had a long conversation
with him on the question of the food supply. As soon as I mentioned
the subject he told me that the corn trade people in Liverpool had
been asked from London to make a report on the possibility of
supplying grain in case of war. Mr. Paul told me that they had
considered the matter (I suppose he meant the leading corn
merchants), and that their report was practically that they must have
the command of the sea, that was essential; but that secured, and
the enhanced war prices paid, they could supply all the corn
required in any contingency. I questioned him as I had Sir Robert
Giffen and found the same underlying belief. The law of supply and
demand would settle the question. The corn would be allowed to go
in neutral ships to neutral ports, and then be transhipped to
England. An embargo had not been considered or treated seriously
as a possibility, and when I cornered him so that he could not
answer my arguments, he said, “Well, if we could not get wheat we
could live on potatoes.” I told him potatoes could not be kept over a
year, that a large quantity was imported which would be stopped. I
said he had better make another report. The whole thing was very
disheartening to me, for I saw how the Government were depending
upon peaceful traders for information how to guard against war
dangers.
In 1902 when Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, proposed a small tax on wheat and flour, I was pleased
to see that Sir Robert Giffen was the first prominent man to write to
the Press endorsing and approving of the bread tax, as it was called.
It showed me that Sir Robert had carefully considered the question,
and was manly enough to advocate what was not altogether a
popular idea.
After my return to Canada I prepared an article for the
Nineteenth Century on the “Situation in England,” and it appeared in
the December number, 1897. In this I pointed out the danger of the
condition of the food supply, and the article attracted a considerable
amount of attention in the British Press, in comments, notices,
letters, etc. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach in a speech at Bristol, in
January, 1898, referred to the question, and in a way contradicted
the points I had brought out in the Nineteenth Century article. My
conversations the summer before with Lord Wolseley, Sir Robert
Giffen, and Mr. Paul had so alarmed me at the false security in which
the Government were resting, that when I saw Sir Michael Hicks-
Beach relying on the same official reports, I determined, although I
had never met him, to write him direct, and on the 20th January,
1898, I wrote, drawing his attention to a remark which he was
reported to have made that “in any war England would have many
friends ready to supply corn,” and I said, “Our League sent a
deputation to England last summer to draw attention to the danger
of the food supply. I was chairman of it. Since my return I published
an article in the Nineteenth Century giving our views. I enclose a
reprint which I wish you could read. If you have not time please give
me one minute to examine the enclosed diagram (cut out of the
Chicago Tribune) showing the corn export of the world. This shows
that Russia and the United States control, not including the
Danubian ports, nearly 95 per cent. of the world’s needs, and if they
were to put an embargo on the export of food of all kinds, where
would be the ‘many friends ready to supply England with corn?’”
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, now Lord St. Aldwyn, with great
courtesy wrote me a personal letter, in which he thanked me for my
letter, and went on to say:
I do not think that the sentence you quote “that in any war
England would have many friends ready to supply corn” quite
accurately represents what I said on that subject. The report was
necessarily much condensed. But it would be true if (say) we were
at war with the United States alone: or if we were at war with one or
more of the European Powers and the United States were neutral. In
either of such cases the interests of the neutral Powers in access to
our market would be so strong, that our enemy would not venture to
close it to them, in the only possible way, viz.: by declaring corn
contraband of war. And I think that if the United States were the
neutral party, self-interest would weigh more with them than their ill
feeling towards us, whatever the amount of that feeling may be.
It is possible, though most improbable, that the two great corn-
producing countries might be allied against us. If they were, I
believe that our navy would still keep the seas open for our supply
from other sources, though no doubt there would be comparative
scarcity and suffering. I am no believer in the enclosed diagram, the
production of corn is constantly increasing in new countries such as
the Argentine, and better communication is also increasing the total
amount available for export. Bad harvests in the United States and
Russia, and good ones in India and the Argentine, would show quite
another result to that shown in the enclosed, though, as I have said,
I do not believe it is true, even of the year which it professes to
represent.
On receipt of this letter I wrote to Mr. Geo. J. S. Broomhall, of
Liverpool, editor of the Corn Trade News, and author of the Corn
Trade Year Book, and received from him a certificate of the correct
figures of corn exports. I forwarded it to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach,
showing that in 1897 India and the Argentine only exported 200,000
qrs. and 740,000 qrs. respectively, and that the diagram I sent could
not have been a very great way out. In 1902 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach
put a tax of one shilling a quarter on imported wheat, and as I have
already said, Sir Robert Giffen wrote to the Times approving of it. I
was very glad to see this action on the part of both of them.
On the 4th December, 1897, the Hon. George W. Ross gave an
address before the British Empire League in St George’s Hall,
Toronto, in which he strongly favoured preferential tariffs and came
out squarely against reciprocity with the United States. This action
was a great encouragement to our cause and attracted considerable
attention all over Canada.
On the 8th December, 1897, the National Club gave a
complimentary banquet to his Excellency the Earl of Aberdeen,
Governor-General. I attended the banquet and sat second to the left
of the president of the club, Mr. McNaught. I was under the
impression that Mr. Blake, who had been a few years away from
Canada, and who had joined the Irish Nationalist party, would be
sure to speak in a strain not acceptable to our club. I mentioned this
to Dr. Parkin who sat next to me. When Mr. Blake began to speak he
very soon uttered sentiments strongly opposed to all that the
Canadians had been working for in the Imperial interest. I said to
Parkin that as an ex-president of the club, and president of the
British Empire League, I would not allow his remarks to pass without
comment. I leaned over and told the chairman I intended to speak a
few minutes when Mr. Blake finished. He raised some objection, but
I told him I must speak. He mentioned it to the Governor-General,
who said he would wait for fifteen minutes. I told Dr. Parkin I would
divide the time with him.
After Mr. Blake sat down, I said:
I have been a member of this club almost from its foundation. I
was for many years on the Board of Directors, and for some years its
President, and I feel that I should state that the speech of my friend
Mr. Blake does not represent the views nor the national aspirations
which have always been characteristic of the National Club. . . .
I agree with what Mr. Blake has said as to the importance of
preserving friendly relations with the United States. We hope to live
at peace with them, but because we do not wish to beg for
reciprocity or make humiliating concessions for the sake of greater
trade, it is no reason why we should be charged with wanting war.
We want peace, and no one can point to any instance where the
Canadian people or Government have been responsible for the
irritation. Mr. G. W. Ross pointed this out clearly in his admirable
speech of Saturday night. The great causes of irritation have come
from the United States. The invasion of 1775, the war of 1812, the
Trent affair, and the Venezuelan business were all matters in which
we were absolutely free from blame. Nor were we to blame some
thirty years ago when I had to turn out with my corps to help defend
the frontier of this province from the attacks of bands of Fenians,
organised, armed, and equipped, in the United States, who invaded
our country, and shot down some of my comrades, who died
defending Canada. These raids were maintained by contributions
from our worst enemies in the United States, but we drove them
out, and now I am glad to say that, while the contributions still go
on, the proceeds are devoted to troubling the Empire elsewhere, and
I hope they will continue to be expended in that direction rather
than against us.
I approve of Mr. Blake’s remarks about the defence of Canada,
and the expenditure of money to make our country safer, but I
object strongly to the hopeless view he takes. We are 6,000,000 of
northern men, and, fighting on our own soil for our rights and
freedom, I believe we could hold our own in spite of the odds
against us, as our fathers did in days gone by, when the outlook was
much more gloomy.
Dr. George R. Parkin followed with an eloquent and powerful
speech pointing out the various arguments which showed the
growth of the movement for Imperial unity.
It was thought at that time that Mr. Blake had some idea of
returning to Canadian politics, but the result of this meeting and the
Press comments must have put an end to any such idea if it ever
existed.
 CHAPTER XXI

THE WEST INDIAN PREFERENCE

In the autumn of 1897 the report of a Royal Commission on the

condition of affairs in the West Indian Islands was published. Field-
Marshal Sir Henry Norman disagreed with the other two members of
the Commission, and put in a minority report, showing in effect that
the real way to relieve the distress in the sugar industry of the West
Indies, was for Great Britain to put countervailing duties on bounty
favoured sugar coming into her markets. I was much impressed with
Sir Henry Norman’s report as to the condition of the West Indies,
and came to the conclusion that we in Canada might do something
to aid on Imperial grounds.
I wrote, therefore, to Principal George M. Grant, one of our most
energetic and brilliant colleagues, asking him to let me know when
he would be in Toronto, as I wished to have a long conference with
him. On the 29th December, 1897, we met, and I discussed the
whole question with him and asked him to go to Ottawa, and urge
Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Mr. Fielding to increase the sugar duty in order
that Canada might be able to give a preference to West Indian
Sugar. I pointed out that such action would be popular, and that I
was satisfied both parties would support it. I had been pressing Sir
Wilfrid and the Government on many points, and thought that in this
matter they had better be approached from a different angle. Grant
took up the idea eagerly, and promised to go to Ottawa and do his
best. On the 3rd January, 1898, he wrote me “(Private and
confidential)”:
A Happy New Year to you! I have just returned from Ottawa. Had
an hour with Fielding discussing the West Indian question, which he
understands thoroughly. I think that something will be done, though
perhaps not all that we might wish at first.
Had an hour also with Laurier. First, the preference hereafter is to
be confined to Britain. That is settled, but this is of course strictly
confidential.
Secondly, he seemed at first to think that we had gone far
enough with our twenty-five per cent. reduction, till we could see its
workings, but when I argued for going steadily along that line he
said, “I do not say yea, but I do not say nay.” I intend to push the
matter.
He is in favour of the cable, but thinks that we cannot take it up
this session.
He impresses me favourably the more I study him. He has a truer
understanding of the forces in Britain than Tupper in my opinion.
Of course I told Fielding that the West Indian suggestion was
yours, and that I cordially endorsed it. He is anxious to do
something, but thinks that we must ask in dealing with them a quid
pro quo.
Shortly before it was announced Sir Wilfrid Laurier told me the
Government were likely to give West Indian sugar a preference. And
on the 5th April, 1898, Mr. Fielding introduced his Budget, and in a
most eloquent and statesmanlike speech declared that Canada had
her Imperial responsibilities, and that she would lend “a helping
hand to our sister colonies in the south.” This was received with
great applause from both sides of the House, and Grant and I were
not only much pleased at the success of our efforts, but still more
gratified to find the universal feeling in Canada in favour of Mr.
Fielding’s action. A few days after, on the 9th April, Grant wrote to
me:
 I am sure that my thorough discussion on the West India matter
with Mr. Fielding did good, but the suggestion came from you. We
may be well satisfied with the action of the Government, but it will
be bad if the public gets the idea that the British Empire League is
pressing them. It is our task rather to educate public opinion. Things
are moving steadily in the right direction.
P.S.—Mulock is evidently aiming at Imperial penny postage.
Good!
Some time after this the German Government put the maximum
tariff against all Canadian goods, and Mr. Fielding met this by a
surtax of ten per cent. on all German goods entering Canada. This
changed the whole supply of sugar for Canada from Germany to the
West Indies to their great advantage.
On the 10th March, 1898, the Annual Meeting of the British
Empire League was held in the Private Bills Committee Room in the
House of Commons. It was a most successful meeting. Four Cabinet
Ministers were present, Sir Louis Davies, Sir Wm. Mulock, Hon. J.
Israel Tarte, and Hon. Charles Fitzpatrick. Sir Charles Tupper and Sir
Mackenzie Bowell ex Prime Ministers, and many members of the
Senate and the House. Those named above addressed the meeting
as well as Principal Grant and Colonel Sam Hughes.
Sir Wm. Mulock succeeded this year in securing Imperial Penny
Postage, which was one of the objects for which the British Empire
League had been working. It was managed with great boldness and
skill by Mr. Mulock. His first step was to announce that on and after
a certain date some three or four months in advance, all letters
stamped with the ordinary three cent domestic rate would be carried
to Great Britain without further charge. He knew that objection
would be raised to his action, but that it would bring the question to
the forefront. The Imperial Government objected to deliver the
letters, and said the matter would have to be considered at a
conference. Mr. Mulock then answered that a conference should be
held, which was agreed to, but he insisted it should not be a
departmental affair, that he should only be asked to discuss it with
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