ronically pointed out, to understand it. So Winter and
his supporters asked the farmers of South Fox if they were prepared to
believe all they heard of the good will of England to the colonies, with
the flattering assumption that they were by no means prepared to believe
it. Was it a likely thing, Mr Winter inquired, that the people of Great
Britain were going to pay more for their flour and their bacon, their
butter and their cheese, than they had any need to do, simply out of a
desire to benefit countries which most of them had never seen, and never
would see? No, said Mr Winter, they might take it from him, that was not
the idea. But Mr Winter thought there was an idea, and that they and he
together would not have much trouble in deciphering it. He did not claim
to be longer-sighted in politics than any other man, but he thought the
present British idea was pretty plain. It was, in two words, to secure
the Canadian market for British goods, and a handsome contribution from
the Canadian taxpayer toward the expense of the British army and navy,
in return for the offer of favours to food supplies from Canada. But
this, as they all knew, was not the first time favours had been offered
by the British Government to food supplies from Canada. Just sixty years
ago the British Government had felt one of these spasms of benevolence
to Canada, and there were men sitting before him who could remember the
good will and the gratitude, the hope and the confidence, that greeted
Stanley's bill of that year, which admitted Canadian wheat and flour at
a nominal duty. Some could remember, and those who could not remember
could read; how the farmers and the millers of Ontario took heart and
laid out capital, and how money was easy and enterprise was everywhere,
and how agricultural towns such as Elgin was at that time sent up
streets of shops to accommodate the trade that was to pour in under
the new and generous "preference" granted to the Dominion by the mother
country. And how long, Mr Winter demanded, swinging round in that
pivotal manner which seems assisted by thumbs in the armholes of the
waistcoat, how long did the golden illusion last? Precisely three
years. In precisely three years the British nation compelled the British
Government to adopt the Free Trade Act of '46. The wheat of the world
flowed into every port in England, and the hopes of Canada, especially
the hopes of Ontario, based then, as now, on "preferential" treatment,