issue of October 27th, 1874, brought its heaviest
artillery to bear on the members of the Canada First party. It accused
them of lack of courage and frankness. When brought to book as to
their principles, it said, they repudiated everything. They repudiated
nativism; they repudiated independence; they abhorred the very idea of
annexation. The movement was without meaning when judged by these
repudiations, but was very significant and involved grave practical
issues when judged by the practices of its members. They had talked
loudly and foolishly of emancipation from political thraldom, as if
the present connection of Canada with Great Britain were a yoke and a
burden too heavy and too galling to be borne. They had adopted the
plank of British connection by a majority of only four. They had
chosen as their standard-bearer, their prophet and their president,
one whose chief claim to prominence lay in the persistency with which
he had advocated the breaking up of the British empire. Mr. Goldwin
Smith had come into a peaceful community to do his best for the
furtherance of a cause which meant simply revolution. The advocacy of
independence, said the _Globe_, could not be treated as an academic
question. It touched every Canadian in his dearest and most important
relations. It jeopardized his material, social and religious
interests. Canada was not a mere dead limb of the British tree, ready
to fall of its own weight. The union was real, and the branch was a
living one. Great Britain, it was true, would not fight to hold Canada
against her will, but if the great mass of Canadians believed in
British connection, those who wished to break the bond must be ready
to take their lives in their hands. The very proposal to cut loose
from Britain would be only the beginning of trouble. In any case what
was sought was revolution, and those who preached it ought to
contemplate all the possibilities of such a course. They might be the
fathers and founders of a new nationality, but they might also be
simply mischief-makers, whose insignificance and powerlessness were
their sole protection, who were not important enough for "either a
traitor's trial or a traitor's doom."

Mr. Goldwin Smith's reply to this attack was that he was an advocate,
not of revolution but of evolution. "Gradual emancipation," he said,
"means nothing more than the gradual concession by the mother country
to the colonies of powers of self-government; this process ha