Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/346

 for his journalistic activity. Nor did he neglect the periodical press of England. Throughout his Canadian career he supplied comments on urgent political issues to 'The Times,' the 'Daily News,' the 'Manchester Guardian,' the ' Pall Mall Gazette,' the 'St. James's Gazette' among daily papers ; to the 'Spectator' among weekly papers ; and to 'Macmillan's Magazine,' the 'Contemporary Review,' the 'Fortnightly Review,' and the 'Nineteenth Century' among monthly magazines.

Smith's political propaganda in Canada aimed consistently at the emancipation of the colony from the British connection. The Dominion during his early settlement was passing through a period of depression which contrasted greatly with the growing prosperity of the United States, and Smith prophesied disaster unless the existing constitution underwent a thorough change. At first he urged complete independence, and he engaged in a movement started in 1871 by a Toronto barrister, named William Alexander Foster, which was known as 'Canada First,' and sought to create a self-sufficing sentiment of Canadian nationality. He joined the Canadian National Association and became president of the National Club ; both institutions were formed in 1874 to promote the new cause independently of the recognised political parties. In 1890 Smith wrote an appreciative introduction to 'Canada First,' a volume issued to commemorate the founder of the movement.

But the cry of 'Canada First' made little headway, and Smith next flung himself into the movement for a commercial union with the United States. He had come to the new conclusion that annexation with the United States was the destiny appointed to Canada by nature, and that the removal of the tariff barrier was the first step to that amalgamation of the two countries, which could alone be safely effected by peaceful means. In spite of his free trade principles, he condoned the tariff against the mother country and Europe, when it appeared to him to be of twofold use, as a unifying instrument within the continent, and as a valuable source of revenue. In 1888 he published an introduction to 'Commercial Union' — a collection of papers in favour of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. Over the policy of commercial union he came into conflict with almost all the political chieftains, including Sir John Macdonald and Edward Blake, the liberal leader, much of whose policy he had approved. But he was undaunted by opposition, and denounced every measure which seemed to imperil the prospects of continental union. He bitterly attacked the formation of the Canadian Pacific railway as a 'politico-military' project. As the imperialist spirit spread in the dominion, his persistence in his separatist argument exposed him to storms of abuse from the Canadian press and public. He was denounced as a 'champion of annexation, republicanism and treason.' A motion for his expulsion from the St. George's Society, a social organisation of Englishmen in Toronto, in March 1893, was narrowly defeated, and a proposal on the part of the University of Toronto to grant him the hon. LL.D. in 1896 was so stoutly opposed that he announced that he would not accept it, if it were offered him. For a time he was subjected to a social boycott. His political following in Canada steadily declined in numbers and influence. But to the end his position knew no change. Of the colonial conferences in London which aimed in his later years at solidifying the British empire he wrote and spoke with bitter scorn. Meanwhile in America his plea for a complete union ’of the English-speaking race on this continent' could always reckon on sympathetic hearing. Writing at the end of his life to the editor of the 'New York Sun ' (4 March 1909), Smith recapitulated his faith in the coming fulfilment of his hopes. Smith kept alive his interest in English affairs not only by correspondence with his friends there and by his controversies in the English press but by active intervention in public movements on his visits to the country. In 1874 he aided his friend G. C. Brodrick when standing for Woodstock against Lord Randolph Churchill. A speech on England's material prosperity which he delivered when opening an institute to promote intellectual recreation at his native town of Reading (June 1877) brought on him the censure of Ruskin ; in 'Fors Clavigera' Ruskin ridiculed him as 'a goose' who identified wealth with progress (Ruskin's Works, ed. and, xvii. 479; xxix. passim). Smith retorted in kind, and Ruskin was provoked into condemning Smith's 'bad English' and 'blunder in thought' (ibid. xxv. 429). In Oct. 1881 Smith presided over the economic section of the Social Science Congress at Dublin and delivered an address on 'Economy and Trade' (published independently as 'Economical Questions and Events in America'): there he attacked protection. In 1884 he was the chief speaker at the dinner of the Palmerston Club at Oxford.