Debating and Declaring Loyalty: The Evolution and Rhetorical Limits of Allegiance
“The truth is,” F.W. Frith wrote in the Week in 1893, “that ideas of loyalty are undergoing a change.” The change, he argued, was marked by the fact that “the old idea of loyalty, which consisted in keeping open old sores, and glorying over a defeated enemy, is getting to be recognized as one of the many heritages of barbarism.” Instead, he continued, a more rational sense of loyalty had emerged that made it possible for citizens to deliberate on politics without being committed to primordial allegiances. Nations, he argued, were “the transient accident of a less civilized age,” and in modern times, it was the economic and political interests of people living together that formed the bonds of loyalty.1
But if ideas of loyalty were changing as Frith suggested, it was not always apparent in the late Victorian British Empire, which witnessed a considerable resurgence of appeals to loyalty to queen and empire. Queen Victoria’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees in 1887 and 1897 were occasions for mass public celebrations of loyalty to the monarchy and the empire that it ruled.2 Throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century in particular, demonstrations and celebrations of loyalty became pervasive in the settler empire. The creation of loyalty leagues and the development of Empire Day – a holiday in May, first observed in Canada in 1898 and across the empire in 1905 – all had the purpose of emphasizing loyalty to the empire.3 These manifestations of imperial loyalty were not spontaneous expressions of pride in the empire and its monarch, but were, at a deeper level, reactions to anxieties about the changing understandings of political loyalty.
This chapter examines the concept of “loyalty” and the sense described by a number of writers that it was changing to a more “modern” and specifically political relationship between citizen and state. Like the concepts of constitution, nation, and citizenship examined in previous chapters, the creation of a new federal state in the British Empire in 1867 prompted deliberation of how loyalty had changed and how it figured in the new political entity. While the idea of British loyalty denoted an enduring historic allegiance to the crown, epitomized in the venerated legacy of the United Empire Loyalists who fled to Canada during the American Revolution, the idea of “Canadian loyalty” was less certain and certainly less equipped with cultural lore. The notion, however, that modern loyalty signified a political relationship between the citizen and the state provided clearer terms for thinking about Canada as a political community of citizens who shared a common loyalty.
The first part of this chapter examines key examples of the debate about the meaning of loyalty in English Canadian magazines. These exchanges highlight the unsettled meaning of the word, particularly the question of whether it signified a pre-political and inherent connection between British subjects and the crown or whether it was essentially a political and ultimately impermanent tie between citizen and state. In general terms, those like Frith who articulated a “modern” idea of loyalty regarded Canada as the location of loyalty, while those who stressed the inherited traditions of loyalty promoted closer imperial ties. This difference raised further questions about whether there were any substantive divisions between “Canadian” and “British” loyalties and whether being loyal to one implied a disloyalty to the other. This question became particularly impassioned in the last decade of the century, as the second section will detail through an examination of some of the political implications of ideas of loyalty. It focuses in particular on Goldwin Smith and J.W. Longley, two prominent contributors whose positions raised charged accusations of disloyalty. The politics of the loyalty debate in magazines became especially clear in the endorsement of two “loyalty resolutions” in the Canadian parliament, which sought to affirm Canada’s loyalty to Britain in response to the emerging ambiguity of the meaning of loyalty.
Loyalism in Canada and the British World
The concept of loyalty had a long lineage of fastening together settler colonies and the empire. As Frank O’Gorman and Allan Blackstock explain in the introduction to their volume on loyalism in the British world, across the empire loyalism “had the capacity to be locally responsive within a framework of common assumptions, practices and institutions thus connecting the colonies to the centre in a way which recognised and even safeguarded their uniqueness.”4 In the case of British North America, historians have illustrated how loyalism formed a particularly prominent role in political and cultural discourse throughout the nineteenth century. In The Idea of Loyalty in Upper Canada, David Mills illustrates the rhetorical importance of the term “loyalty” in public discourse in the colony before 1850. He considers loyalty “the central political idea in Upper Canada during the first half of the nineteenth century,” as it was “the basis not only of provincial legitimacy, but also of acceptance into the provincial society.”5 As a political weapon, loyalty proved to be a powerful means of assailing critics and compelling a political consensus. Paul Romney, by contrast, questions the degree to which loyalty rested on such consensus, noting that Reformers frequently had their loyalty interrogated.6 Nevertheless, both Romney and Mills provide clear evidence of the politicized nature of the term “loyalty” and its potent place in political rhetoric.
The idea of loyalty that Mills describes was defined chiefly by an attachment to the British Empire and the British Crown. This sense of loyalty inferred an enduring and intrinsic connection between subjects and sovereign, a fidelity that was central to the mythology of the United Empire Loyalists, which became especially popular in the late nineteenth century around the centennial of their arrival to Canada. The “invention” of the Loyalist myth in Ontario, Norman Knowles argues, effectively served “to further the imperialist cause and to discredit alternative visions of the nation’s political destiny.”7 Indeed, as Carl Berger makes clear in his study of imperialism in English Canada, “the loyalist tradition was to provide one of the most potent elixirs to Canadian imperial sentiment.”8 Throughout the nineteenth century, the British Crown served as a particularly magnetic basis of loyalty, epitomized in moments like the visit by the Prince of Wales to British North America in 1860, which elicited vibrant public displays of the loyalty of British North Americans to queen and empire.9
Recent work has drawn attention to the transnational and transatlantic nature of loyalty in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.10 This approach is largely because of what Jerry Bannister and Liam Riordan describe as a reaction against the “nationalistic orientation” of loyalist studies and a desire “to place loyalism more fully in its international context.”11 This assessment is certainly true for post-Confederation Canadian history, particularly in the study of ideas of imperial loyalty that were so critical to the imperialist cause in English Canada. It is also important, however, to examine how the creation of new political jurisdictions influenced ideas of loyalty, particularly the means by which the Canadian state became understood as a location of loyal commitment. As this chapter details, loyalty to Canada generally became understood as a distinctly “modern” type of loyalty, which was largely based on the civic rights and duties of individuals within the state. Confederation and the attempts to consolidate Canada and its people as a unique and natural unit brought forward in distinctive terms the evolving definition of “loyalty.” A number of writers proposed that loyalty be understood not as a filial relationship between subject and sovereign, but as a political relationship between citizen and state. To be clear, these writers did not suggest that loyalty was no longer owed to the crown – an indication of the hegemony of monarchical loyalty – but rather, they framed such pre-political loyalty as distinctly unmodern and outmoded. With the effort to describe a Canadian people and teach the duties of citizenship came the related project of instructing a unique loyalty to Canada and encouraging people to be patriotic citizens of the new dominion, a project that shifted the very definition of the term “loyalty.”
This shift is not, however, a clear narrative of change from one understanding of loyalty to another; as this chapter shows, the sense of modern political loyalty to Canada was negotiated in a climate of suspicions of disloyalty and concerted political efforts to reinforce Canadian loyalty to crown and empire. Nevertheless, the articulations of state loyalty described here form an important aspect of understanding how the concept of loyalty is not only negotiated but also circumscribed by the limits of acceptable opinion. The mission of enforcing loyalty to Canada would have important and often severe consequences for those who proposed or held alternative views. As Jerry Bannister critically notes, “like liberalism, loyalism modified democracy by regulating the shifting boundaries of politically acceptable behaviour,” but unlike the individualist orientations of liberalism, “loyalism offered expedient means to restrict civil liberties in the interests of the state.”12 This more insidious side of loyalty rhetoric has been perhaps most obvious in wartime, when those who did not appropriately display their “loyalty” to the cause or those who were considered, by virtue of their identification, “disloyal” faced repercussions including internment and deportation, a reality also sometimes faced by political “radicals.”13 Loyalty, for all of its effusive displays and sentimental stories, has been a particularly restricting and coercive force throughout the past. Its rhetorical and political influence makes it an important concept to evaluate in understanding the developing meaning of political association in nineteenth-century political thought.
Debating the Meaning of Loyalty
The often variable and sometimes vague meanings of “loyalty” in modern scholarship are reflections of the concept’s similarly contested history.14 In late-nineteenth-century Canadian intellectual culture, the debate about the meaning of loyalty was especially evident in two magazine articles by prominent authors that directly engaged with the nature of loyalty. In the November 1881 edition of Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review, constitutional scholar Alpheus Todd penned an article titled with a question, “Is Canadian Loyalty a Sentiment or a Principle?” The seemingly pedantic question prompted a response from civil servant and writer William Dawson LeSueur titled “The True Idea of Canadian Loyalty.” Both authors shared the view that loyalty was an important aspect of Canadian life, but they espoused fundamentally different understandings of what loyalty meant as well as to what or to whom it was owed. The exchange between Todd and LeSueur revealed some of the assumptions that underlay discussions of loyalty and exposed how thinking of Canada as a new political nationality challenged and even threatened certain notions of loyalty. The most important divergence between Todd and LeSueur was the basis on which they defined loyalty. While Todd wrote of loyalty as the tie between the individual and the crown, LeSueur wrote of loyalty as the tie between the individual and Canada.
Todd was prompted to write his essay by his concern that a number of writers, particularly the advocates of continental union or Canadian independence, doubted the “depth and reality” of loyalty in Canada, thinking instead that it was a mere “sentiment” or ephemeral quality. The purpose of his essay was to reaffirm the permanence of loyalty in Canada by showing its historical constancy. His essay traced the vitality of loyalty to Britain from the American Revolution through the War of 1812, the Canadian rebellions, to the participation of Canadians in imperial conflicts. These were all instances of the “devotion to Crown and Empire” and the “unselfish loyalty of Canadians.”15 According to Todd, the phrase “Canadian loyalty” denoted “the loyalty of the Canadian people to the person of the Sovereign, and the sincerity of their attachment to British institutions.”16 In this sense, loyalty was the personal relationship of fidelity between the subject and the crown, which Todd described as a “natural allegiance.” In answer to the question posed in the title of the article, he concluded that “loyalty was no mere passing sentiment, but a genuine and enduring principle.”17
Beyond appeals to the historical lineage of loyalty in Canada, an important aspect of Todd’s argument rested on the belief that Canadian loyalty was rooted in religious faith. The last section of Todd’s essay criticized the political system of the United States, which he viewed as an unfortunate abandonment of a Christian basis of government. “Christianity,” Todd insisted, “is part and parcel of the British Constitution, and the entire framework of our polity is pervaded with the ennobling influences and restraints of religion.”18 Todd was worried about the loss of this foundation, evident to him in the United States through the growth of Mormonism in the west and the “reckless blasphemies of [Robert G.] Ingersoll,” the American orator known for his position as a freethinker and agnostic.19 For Todd, the loyalty that subjects held to the crown and the British constitution was not a secular political relationship but, rather, one endowed with religious significance. Loyalty, he insisted, was not a transient sentiment, but the foundational aspect of the British constitution and the basis of the relationship with those that it governed. This argument made sense coming from a constitutional scholar who had described royal supremacy as a foundational principle of the British constitution and who emphasized the role of monarchy in his influential analysis of government in Britain and its colonies.20
In contrast to Todd, LeSueur was a prominent defender of secularism and scientific positivism who embodied the “critical spirit” of late-nineteenth-century scepticism.21 He rejected Todd’s concept of loyalty by characterizing it as a thoroughly outmoded idea that needed to be replaced by something more “modern,” describing Todd’s concept of loyalty as “a virtue which the march of events has, for years past, been more and more rendering obsolete.”22 Unlike the “ancient allegiance” of subjects to the sovereign referenced by Todd, LeSueur asserted that the idea of loyalty was closely tied to “the general idea of good citizenship.” Explaining his position, he wrote: “To pay honest dues to the Government, to do honest work for it at an honest price, is a better proof of loyalty than to make loyal speeches or to drink loyal toasts.”23 Loyalty in this sense was a much more concrete demonstration of connection to one’s nation than the “vague sentiments” of Todd’s brand of loyalty. Loyalty, according to this understanding, was demonstrated through the individual’s commitment to the state, including the duties of political participation and the payment of taxes. Notably, LeSueur defined this demonstration of loyalty as “good citizenship,” echoing others, like William Norris, who described citizenship as a contractual arrangement between the individual and the state. Again in distinction to Todd, LeSueur emphasized the secular nature of loyalty. Referencing the secularization of the clergy land reserves and the ending of funding to denominational colleges in Ontario, he insisted that, at least in that province, the trend was firmly in the direction of entrenching a separation of church and state.24 Underscoring the trend toward secularization undermined Todd’s central contention that the religious foundations of the constitution entrenched a sense of loyalty that was natural, moral, and perpetual.
Not only did LeSueur insist that modern loyalty ought to be defined by the civic behaviour and rights and responsibilities of the individual citizen in the state, he also pointedly specified that it was the Canadian state that should serve as the logical referent of such loyalty. His response criticized Todd heavily for speaking only of Canadian loyalty to Britain instead of addressing the loyalty that Canadians owed to Canada. The purpose of his loyalty essay was to “show that Canadian loyalty, if understood in the sense of loyalty to Canada, is ... the one thing which it is of the greatest importance to the future of this country to strengthen and promote.”25 In defining what “loyalty of Canadians to Canada” meant, LeSueur wrote:
It means that we desire the separate national existence of our country. It means that we value our institutions, and would grieve to see them replaced by others of a different order and growth. It means that the distinctive life of Canada and the distinctive character of her people are dear to us. It means that this is our home and that as such we cherish it. It means that we see in our country the elements of future greatness, and that we have confidence in the ability of Canadians to deal wisely with the splendid trust committed to their hands. It means, in a word, that we feel there is a place in the family of nations for Canada, and that our ambition is that she should fulfil it.26
Unlike Todd, LeSueur was clear that for him Canadians were a distinct “people,” and, in turn, Canada was a distinct and separate nation. The ideas of Canadian nationality and loyalty were inseparable; to develop a strong nationality required the strong loyalty of people in Canada to Canada.
As these essays suggest, the meaning of loyalty was not obvious or consistent, but it was nevertheless an important and powerful aspect of intellectual debate. Todd’s description of loyalty generally accorded with the imperialist vision of an empire that united an organic community of people. For many, this sense of enduring loyalty was best represented by the legacy of the United Empire Loyalists, which became an important and permeating feature of discussion. Detailed histories and heroic adventure stories featuring Loyalists became a common preoccupation of English Canadian literary output in the late nineteenth century.27 Tellingly, Alpheus Todd’s essay on loyalty was influenced by the recent publication of Egerton Ryerson’s massive two-volume history of the United Empire Loyalists in North America.28 For Todd, like many others, it was impossible to think of the term “loyalty” without reference to the Loyalists. As Norman Knowles and others have illustrated, the Loyalist legacy was dominant in cultural and social life in English Canada in multiple and typically localized forms.29
The idea of loyalty as a contractual relationship between the citizen and the state seemed to represent a concept that was antithetical to a historical and unwavering devotion to the Loyalist legacy. As Todd articulated in his essay, the idea of “British loyalty” was often understood to be a distinct and deep-rooted quality, closely tied to notions of racial belonging and monarchical government. Martin Joseph Griffin of Halifax, who was to succeed Todd as the parliamentary librarian of Canada, was particularly critical of attempts to frame loyalty as a modern political relationship. “A prominent feature in the national life of the older period was the LOYALTY of the people,” he wrote, but “Modern Liberalism has told the people that Loyalty was a matter of self-interest, and that if an extra dollar can be earned in a foreign land they had better go and earn it.”30 The effect of this outlook, he continued, was to greatly weaken the integrity and strength of the nation. Loyalty guided by economic self-interest meant “emigration to other lands, filling the ranks in war and the industries in peace.”31 As Griffin suggested, the suspicion that economic interests were perverting the meaning of loyalty was driven in part by the anxiety caused by annexationist agitation and out-migration to the United States, which reflected the more general sense of materialism that was characteristic of “modern liberalism.”
In contrast to the fugacious bonds of modern loyalty, allegiance to the crown represented a seemingly stable bond between people and their political community. Loyalty to the monarch represented not only a personal fidelity, but also an allegiance to the system of government and law that it represented. The British Crown therefore provided a significant foundation for eliciting imperial loyalty across the empire.32 A number of studies have illustrated how the monarchy served as a basis of loyalty among some Indigenous, Irish Catholic, and French Canadian communities, primarily as a strategic way of securing protections of rights.33 On the other hand, the question of whether these groups could be truly loyal to Britain was doubtful to some English-speaking writers. Roswell Fisher, a Canadian at the University of Cambridge, wrote an article on “Canadian loyalty” in Macmillan’s in 1885, which specifically doubted the willingness of French Canadians to be loyal to Britain or to the rest of Canada.34
For other English Canadians, loyalty to the British Crown was inseparable from a sense of racial kinship. F. Clement Brown, an insurance agent from Berlin, Ontario, argued that Americans had altogether abandoned their natural loyalty by revolting against the crown. The significance of the word “loyalty,” he averred, “to all citizens of the Empire lies in the fact that it carried with it the idea of devotion not alone to English political ideals, but likewise to all the cherished traditions of the English race, and to all its treasured legacies of mind and heart.”35 Loyalty, according to this definition, was not exclusively tied to political or legal forms, but was more substantially related to the imperceptible affinities of the “English race.” The connection of “race” and loyalty implied that loyalty was a racially intrinsic quality, but the claim that it held significance to “all citizens of the Empire” also suggested that it was not limited by racial identity.
Even though Canadians widely extolled the virtues of the British monarchy and of Queen Victoria specifically, the nature of the relationship between the sovereign and subject was transformed in the late nineteenth century. This shift was most evident in changes to the laws of allegiance, or naturalization, in the 1870s and 1880s, which recognized the ability of subjects to legally renounce and change allegiances.36 Nevertheless, Queen Victoria continued to figure large as a source of loyalty to many writers, especially in the Golden and Diamond Jubilee years of 1887 and 1897.37 “We love our Queen,” Sara Jeannette Duncan wrote. “Thousands of her subjects in Canada were born in her kingdom; and nothing is more contagious than the loyalty they colonized with.”38 Noting parallels between loyalty to the British Crown and to God, one writer insisted that such appeals to loyalty “invigorate virtue, purify and elevate society, and bless and adorn our human kind.”39 The general reverence toward the monarchy, and to long-reigning Victoria in particular, was a foundation for imagining a population spread throughout the empire united by a common tie of loyalty.40 The connection that Canadians felt to the crown was further bolstered when the Marquess of Lorne was appointed governor general in 1878 and moved to Canada with his wife, Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Louise.41 The appointment prompted writer Charles Tuttle to boast: “We felt we were moving nearer to the throne of our Gracious Sovereign; that we were being rewarded, as a people, for our faithful allegiance to the Crown; that we were rising to the full dignity of British citizenship.”42
As a sign of the strength of the monarchy in late Victorian Canada, republicanism had become virtually absent in Canadian mainstream publications and political discourse.43 Instead, criticism of the role of the monarchy was more likely to be framed in terms of loyalty and the idea, echoing LeSueur’s position, that it was no longer principally rooted in monarchical fidelity. In an article titled “Canadian Loyalty,” William McGill called monarchical loyalty a “cheaply indulged sentiment,” adding that the “Jubilee Year has set free this spirit to an extent ad nauseam.” While he conceded that the crown did fill a function of being “the only connecting link between our mechanically jumbled together provinces,” he reminded readers of the “toiling millions” of the crown’s subjects and urged them to “refuse to be inoculated with the virus of this King’s evil of medieval loyalty.”44 This understanding of monarchical loyalty as “medieval” echoed the words of LeSueur’s essay on loyalty, though McGill was especially critical of the seemingly unthinking devotion of subjects to the crown.
The concept of a new political loyalty appeared to threaten the “ancient” or venerable tradition of historical loyalty and allegiance to the crown. The sense that a principle as foundational to political association as loyalty was changing seemed to some a complex and troubling issue. “In the olden times,” one writer instructed in attempting to clarify the matter, “when words were fewer and consequently less available and more correctly employed, men were accustomed to express themselves with that marvellous clearness, force, and simplicity which we cannot imitate now.” The article pointed to “loyalty” specifically as an example of the complicated and confusing nature of modern language and sought to clarify its meaning in the context of Canada. Loyalty, the writer clarified, simply meant the duty to law: “Loyalty is neither more nor less than fidelity to that public law, well tried and approved, which we have set up and accepted for our guidance and government.”45 The writer, known only by the initials “L.M.,” wrote in response to those who accused advocates of Canadian nationality of being “disloyal.” By clarifying between the “miscalled loyalty,” based on the admiration of history and romance, and true “loyalty,” based on obedience to the laws of the land, the writer argued that loyalty to Canadian laws was a continuation of the spirit of British liberty.
Indeed, it seemed nearly impossible to clearly delineate conflicting lines of loyalty. The concept of loyalty articulated by Todd and others was not an exclusively imperialist or monarchical position. Frank Oliver of Edmonton, who would later become minister of the interior in Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal government, criticized the tendency to distinguish between Canadian and British loyalty because he understood loyalty as a more general commitment of an individual to a wider community that did not necessarily align with political boundaries. Defining loyalty as “the spirit in which a people make a common cause for the common welfare,” he rejected the idea that loyalty was merely a political term, defined by the “outlay of money, the payment of taxes, the devising of schemes and the passing of bills.” Instead, Oliver insisted loyalty inferred a more selfless principle, based on more than an individual citizen’s civic duties. He pointed in particular to the willingness to risk property and life as ultimate examples of loyalty, which, he added, Canadians had demonstrated though examples, including resisting the Fenian invasions and quelling the “rebellions” in Red River and Saskatchewan. Oliver, therefore, saw no necessary correlation between loyalty and the political status of Canada, and he insisted that “loyalty to Britain and loyalty to Canada on the part of a resident of Canada were interchangeable terms.”46
Oliver wrote this article in response to an essay in the same magazine that questioned why Americans celebrated the Fourth of July with more enthusiasm than Canadians celebrated the First of July. Halifax author C.P. McLennan concluded that it was because Canadians lacked a strong and united loyalty to Canada. He argued that different elements in the country, particularly the French and English populations, were “pulling in two different boats,” a fact that was further complicated by the expansive geography of the Dominion. Instead, he argued that what was needed was a “common loyalty,” adding that “there can be no homogeneity without singleness in aim and unity of heart and hand.” Like much thinking about nationality and citizenship, loyalty, in his view, was based on common political purpose, which, he concluded, would be achieved only through independence. He stated: “Loyalty to Canada we consider as the paramount duty of every Canadian; loyalty to England should be secondary.”47 Arguing that Canadians were “subjects not citizens” because of the political status of Canada in the empire, he advocated independence as the best means of fostering a strong common loyalty in Canada. Here, the concept of loyalty represented the common connection of “citizens” in a politically independent community, whereas for Oliver, such a commitment was not relegated to the political boundaries of the Canadian state.
Oliver’s attempt to diminish distinction between notions of Canadian and British loyalty was a difficult task, given the growing chasm between those who understood Canada as a distinct political entity with a distinct relationship of loyalty from its citizens and those who understood loyalty as intimately connected to a British imperial community. For example, William Norris, who vocally advocated an independent Canadian nationality and a Canadian citizenship based on a political and legal status, went even further in using the term “loyalty” to signify the duty that such citizens owed to Canada. Unlike others who tried to frame Canadian and British loyalty as compatible, he asserted that a citizen’s loyalty was singular and that, therefore, “loyalty to a foreign power is disloyalty to Canada.” Moreover, those who held British titles in Canada “must be traitors to their own country.”48 It was clear to Norris that the idea of shared loyalties or “colonial” loyalty in Canada was incompatible with the desire to establish Canadian independence. For him, being a Canadian citizen meant being loyal only to Canada.
The topic of loyalty again became a fixation in the summer of 1892 during the centennial of the first election of the legislature of Upper Canada. Reporting on Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat’s speech at the anniversary event in Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Week indicated that he expressed to Canadians the distinction “between loyalty to their own country as citizens, and loyalty to the Empire as colonists.”49 The distinction between “citizen” and “colonist” loyalties here signified the assumption that Canadian loyalty inferred a more robust civic affiliation between citizens and the Canadian state. This view contrasted with the idea of imperial loyalty, which the column described as too indistinct to be held passionately. Not surprisingly, for imperialists who grounded their belief in imperial unity in the intrinsic ties of British loyalty, the idea that loyalty to Canada might supersede British loyalty was cause for concern. The assumption that loyalty was a connection between the citizen and the Canadian state specifically threatened the idea of imperial loyalty based on inherent and indelible affiliation. In response to the Week’s coverage of Mowat’s speech, prominent imperialist John Castell Hopkins accused it of promoting “a loyalty to Canada nurtured upon disloyalty to flag and Constitution, Sovereign and Empire.” He was sure that this disloyalty was prompted by what he supposed to be the Week’s advocacy of independence. Instead, Hopkins insisted that “there really should be no distinction, and to the true loyalist there is none, between Canada and the Empire of which she forms part.”50 In the same issue, the editor responded to Hopkins’s criticism by reaffirming the existence of a unique Canadian loyalty. “What is Canadian loyalty?” the editorial asked. “A very simple and, as most persons would suppose, correct answer would be, ‘loyalty to Canada.’” It questioned whether, by Hopkins’s definition, those in Canada who were not imperialists or those who were of “foreign birth” could be considered “loyal Canadians.” It claimed that British and Canadian loyalties were indeed distinct, and the latter signified Canada’s existence as an independent nation rather than an imperial colony.51
Others were more deliberative in their consideration of Canadian loyalty, including federal politician James Edgar, whose earlier speech on loyalty to the Young Men’s Liberal Club of Toronto in 1885 had received notice in the Week for discussing the topic of loyalty “in a manly way.” This approach, it claimed, was distinct from the “whining loyalty” of those who merely used the term to gain favour in imperial circles.52 Echoing the theme of the speech, the Week emphasized that loyalty was no longer to be understood as a feudal compact, but as sincere attachment to political institutions. The article outlined Edgar’s understanding of loyalty as a political relationship. In his speech, Edgar told the audience: “I contend that loyalty is due to THE REAL POWER IN THE STATE which commands obedience, which both makes laws and executes them – the Parliament.”53 He specified that the parliament to which Canadians owed loyalty was the Canadian parliament; the crown, he added, was merely a symbol of this power. An important aspect of this loyalty to Canadian institutions lay in the fact that, despite its people coming from “different European traditions,” Canadian loyalty would create a “united nation” between French- and English-speaking people in Canada. “To what then,” asked Edgar, “can we ask our French-speaking fellow Canadians to pledge their allegiance and their loyalty, unless it be to the self-government we have achieved, and the fuller measure of freedom, which every patriotic Canadian is seeking to attain?”54 While Edgar reaffirmed his love and devotion to “our motherland,” his opposition to imperial federation pushed him to a definition of loyalty that emphasized political allegiance to a self-governing state. Asking that Canadians “give their first allegiance, their best and truest affection to their own country,” he employed a particular concept of loyalty as a means of uniting the various groups in Canada under common political cause.
The Politics of Proclaiming Loyalty and Disloyalty
Deliberation on the meaning of loyalty and its application to Canada was more than an academic discussion; in the final quarter of the nineteenth century it became especially politicized as a divisive aspect of political rhetoric. Driven in part by the movement for the commercial union of Canada and the United States and by political conflicts between French and English Canada, the debate about the meaning of loyalty acquired much more contentious dimensions, and exchanges about “true” loyalty became more fraught with controversy.55 A number of examples of charges of “disloyalty” in magazines in the 1890s indicate that, despite the sense that “modern” loyalty based on the political allegiance of the citizen to the state had become more distinctly Canadian, it continued to be used to police the boundaries of politically acceptable opinion. Even though normative discussions of liberal citizenship and loyalty rested on ideas of deliberative political debate, it was clear that this notion had definite limitations. When Goldwin Smith gave a speech titled “Loyalty” to the Young Men’s Liberal Club of Toronto in 1891, only six years after Edgar gave a speech with the same title to the same group, magazines printed harsh responses. Similar to Edgar, Smith defined loyalty as “respect for law and fidelity to obligation.”56 From this premise, Smith sought to illustrate that loyalty to the empire was an anachronistic form of loyalty at odds with the commercial and political development of Canada. He understood monarchical loyalty to be hollow devotion and a legacy of the old colonial elite. Smith told the audience:
I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of any feeling which is genuine however out of date, but there are not a few cases, in which loyalty to the Crown is a fine name for disloyalty to the country and loyalty to British connection is a fine name for disloyalty to Canada. The loyalty cry is now being raised, in default of any economical argument, to deter the country from accepting the benefits of Reciprocity [in trade with the United States] and to scare it into acquiescence in a policy of which commercial atrophy and the exodus are the visible and inevitable results.57
In this speech, Smith sought to identify how appeals to “hollow” loyalty to the crown interrupted or impeded deliberative debate. He indicated that the term “loyalty” could be effectively used as a political term to delegitimize his position on promoting greater economic union between Canada and the United States.
Smith had identified the political implications of the term “loyalty” on numerous occasions during his career as a commentator in Canadian periodicals. Writing under his pseudonym “Bystander,” Smith emphasized the need to distinguish political loyalty from “clan” loyalty.58 He insisted that public deliberation of alternative arrangements between Canada and the United States was in fact an expression of loyalty:
We are all bound to render loyal obedience to constituted authorities and existing laws, but we are all at liberty, and even, to the extent of our knowledge and capacity, called upon to discuss established systems and suggest needful change ... Modern institutions rest on the assent of public reason, and the test of that assent is free discussion.59
According to Smith, older “clan loyalty” inhibited public debate because it was based on reflexive attachment to inherited entities, while more modern understandings of the term recognized the importance of engaging in public deliberation through magazines and other venues about questions such as commercial union. He was, therefore, especially critical of attempts to brand such deliberation as “disloyal,” arguing that “all but pure, straightforward and honourable conduct in the management of public affairs is disloyalty.”60 Yet, the reaction to Smith’s loyalty lecture was heavily critical. The Critic labelled Smith the “assassin of Canadian nationality.”61 The Dominion Illustrated was sharper, describing Smith as a radical Englishman and assuring readers that “Mr. Smith’s remarks on ‘loyalty’ have been the expression of sentiments which meet condemnation from all classes of the British-Canadian people.”62 It was clear that Smith’s discussions of a particular conception of loyalty, premised on deliberations about what was best for Canada, would be inevitably linked to his substantive positions on continental union and therefore castigated as “annexationist” agitation.
Smith’s speech on loyalty was no doubt prompted in part by the events of the 1891 federal election, which was in full swing at the time of his address. The election, sometimes dubbed the “loyalty” election, was a moment at which debate over the meaning of loyalty crystalized in a distinctly political form. The idea of loyalty was no longer an item of intellectual debate, but was now an especially potent tool of partisan rhetoric. The election campaign, which would be Macdonald’s last, was fought primarily on the issue of the Liberals’ proposal for unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. Even though the policy received fairly widespread endorsement, and despite Liberal gains in the election, Macdonald’s Conservatives were returned with a majority government.63 This outcome was in large part the result of Macdonald’s use of the term “loyalty” as a political brand to rally supporters. His famous speech made at the outset of the election, in which he declared “a British subject I was born, a British subject I will die,” set the tone for the campaign. The “loyalty cry” was successful enough for the Conservatives that numerous Liberal organizers attributed their loss to it.64
The politicization of loyalty, especially as a rhetorical tool for delegitimizing advocates of reciprocity and continentalism, intensified after the 1891 campaign. This partiality was noticeably true for Goldwin Smith, who by the 1890s had become especially criticized for his perceived “disloyalty” to Canada. By 1896, the Week magazine, to which Smith had been a frequent contributor, had found Smith to be an unwelcome presence. It issued an editorial aimed at the “elderly” Goldwin Smith, warning that, if he continued his “disloyal” statements, “he must not express them here.”65 This stand prompted numerous letters critical of Smith, including one that insisted he was guilty of the capital offence of treason.66 Expressions of loyalty that did not accord with loyalty to the British Crown had become dangerous positions to promote by the close of the nineteenth century in Canada.
Even prominent writer and Nova Scotian politician James Longley, who had been an advocate of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States, found himself suspected of “disloyalty,” a suspicion that followed him throughout the 1890s.67 His “loyalty” had been a matter of debate among some readers of Dominion Illustrated when a writer implied that Longley supported continental union, later adding that, on meeting Longley, he felt he was “not ‘Canadian’ enough.”68 Though Longley refuted these claims and the original writer apologized, the exchange elicited further accusations of Longley’s disloyalty. Imperial enthusiast John Castell Hopkins insisted that Longley’s views were “not sufficiently ‘Canadian,’” pointing out that “he has yet to prove his sentiments, aspirations and sympathies to be in accordance with the true principles of Canadian patriotism.”69 It was clear that, for Hopkins, such “true” principles were wedded to the celebration of British identity in Canada. Criticism of Longley’s loyalty also stemmed from his involvement in the 1891 federal election and his perceived close affinity with continentalists in the United States.70 In response to these accusations of disloyalty, Longley complained: “The advocate of Imperialism has mounted himself on the platform of a lofty abstract loyalty and any one who dared to suggest any destiny for Canada that did not find its centre in Downing Street was a traitor and a scoundrel.”71 Evidently, Longley understood the considerable public purchase of this “abstract loyalty” and rejected the idea of continental union in the same article.
Longley’s loyalty became subject to scrutiny again in 1896, after he and the Liberal government of Nova Scotia voted against allowing a day off school for students on the first of July to mark the anniversary of Confederation. A scathing editorial in Week warned that Longley “can ill afford to trifle with his political reputation” as “his loyalty has been seriously called in question on more than one occasion.”72 This claim against Longley prompted a reader from Pictou, Nova Scotia, to write to the magazine: “Upon the men, who persistently refuse to be loyal to Canada; who constantly preach national dispair [sic]; who with rough hands tear open well healed wounds; and who defeated a measure to anable [sic] Nova Scotia’s boys and girls to enjoy a free holiday on Canada’s national feast day must the blame for stirring up ‘bitterness and ill feeling’ be laid.”73 Another reader from Yarmouth chastised the “small-minded men in power in Nova Scotia, who wish the rising generation to regard Dominion Day and loyalty to the Constitution of Canada as of minor importance.”74 The sense that loyalty to Canada consisted of political allegiance to the Canadian state, which provided a sense of unity to Canadians, was evident in these readers’ letters. Even though these readers understood loyalty to represent fidelity to Canada, their criticisms were based on the fact that certain political positions, notably support for greater continental union, represented disloyalty. Longley’s perceived sympathies to continentalism, though much less obvious than Smith’s, were criticized in the language of loyalty, reflecting the disciplinary power of the term.
Parliamentary Loyalty Resolutions
The extent of discussions of loyalty in the broader Canadian press prompted political responses in the form of parliamentary resolutions that sought to clarify the nature of Canada’s loyalty. Against the backdrop of multiplying notions of “true” loyalty, these loyalty resolutions were motivated by the perceived need for Canadian politicians to reaffirm their loyalty to Britain. These resolutions indicated that, although political loyalty to the Canadian state had been articulated and defended by various writers in Canadian magazines, politicians in Ottawa maintained the importance of public declarations of Canadian loyalty to Britain and the empire. The loyalty resolutions, reported in Canadian magazines and newspapers, illustrate the extent to which “loyalty” had become a highly politicized term by the 1890s, enforcing a certain commitment to imperialism that invited little disagreement or deviation. Unlike the debate between LeSueur and Todd about the meaning of loyalty that had appeared a decade earlier, this political debate sought to minimize differences in the presentation of loyalty in Canada. Importantly, these resolutions reveal that, even while many began to express an idea of loyalty as a modern liberal democratic relationship between citizen and state, the place of the British Crown as a vital cultural symbol endured.
The first resolution was presented by William Mulock, Liberal MP for York North, Ontario, in January 1890. The resolution, addressed to Queen Victoria, communicated the House of Commons’ desire to “renew the expression of our unswerving loyalty and devotion to Your Majesty’s person and Government” and to assure that public statements that questioned such loyalty were “wholly incorrect representations of the sentiments and aspirations of the people of Canada.”75 Mulock informed the House that he was prompted to introduce the resolution because of injurious reports supposedly circulating in the American press, which described the breaking down of Canadian political institutions as a result of “racial” and political dissent. Though he provided no specific references, he was certain that this apparent misinformation would damage Canadian ties with Britain and dissuade prospective immigrants. As both Macdonald and Laurier noted in responding to the motion, there was no special occasion or pressing reason for the motion, but, nevertheless, they agreed that such an expression of loyalty was suitable.
Refuting any idea that French Canadians were not fully loyal subjects, Guillaume Amyot, MP for Bellechasse, Quebec, assured the House that he and his fellow French-speaking Canadians had a proud history of loyalty to Britain, which he traced back to the Quebec Act, 1774.76 Amyot, a Nationalist Conservative MP who had commanded a battalion of militia rifles in the North West uprising of 1885, was no doubt aware of allegations that had appeared periodically since Confederation that French Canadians were not truly loyal subjects. This rhetoric became particularly pronounced at moments of conflict such as the North West uprisings and the trial of Louis Riel. At the height of the Riel trial, for example, one writer in the Week insisted that French Canadians could never be loyal because of their allegiance to Rome, allegations often repeated by Goldwin Smith.77 Amyot countered, however, that loyal French Canadians participated in battalions that were sent to the North West and that clergy in Quebec helped to instantiate loyalty toward the British Crown. Laurier agreed with these assertions; however, he worried “that there is a mistake sometimes, that what is mistaken for disloyalty is nothing more or less than the natural anxiety which all Canadians naturally have as to their future.” He was specifically concerned that the resolution might be construed as a signal of support for the imperial federation movement, and he made clear his desire “to create a great nation on this side of the ocean.”78 After some brief speeches, the House passed Mulock’s loyalty resolution unanimously.
Perhaps feeling himself the implicit object of the resolution, Goldwin Smith blasted the “spirit miscalled loyalty to which they have appealed,” stating that the resolution would have no real effect on the minds of American politicians.79 Extending this criticism further, Smith reiterated his contentious position that there could be little hope in keeping united “a string of territories, geographically divided from each other, commercially unconnected, and devoid of any natural boundary, either physical or ethnographical.”80 The Week responded to Smith’s “mischievously misleading” rhetoric, maintaining that a more vigorous national spirit in Canada could assuage such a feeling of disconnection.81 The Week, however, was sceptical of the need for Mulock’s loyalty resolution, arguing that, as all MPs had sworn an oath of loyalty to assume their office, they could hardly have refused to endorse such a motion. The editorial piece further noted that loyalty to Britain, which the Commons endorsed, was distinct from loyalty to Canada. It stated: “We see no reason why loyalty to Great Britain may not be thoroughly consistent with loyalty to Canada, but the two terms do not and cannot mean the same thing,” adding that loyalty to Canada meant “the growing ambition of Canadians to have a nationality of their own, and to carve out a destiny for themselves.”82 In response to this editorial position, reader John Holgate of Toronto wrote to the magazine, stating:
I interpret loyalty to Britain and loyalty to Canada as being synonymous terms. The only other sense in which the expression “loyalty to Canada” can apply is in connection with the idea of Independence, and that is a contingency I cannot bring myself to believe in because it involves separation from Britain.83
Despite political consensus about the importance of demonstrating “loyalty” to Britain, the term could continue to signify divided claims about the status of Canada as a distinct nationality.
Another very similar resolution was introduced to the House of Commons six years later, in 1896. Alexander McNeill, Liberal-Conservative MP for Bruce North, Ontario, brought forward a resolution that sought “to assure Her Majesty’s Government and the people of the United Kingdom of [the Canadian House of Commons’] unalterable loyalty and devotion to the British Throne and constitution.”84 Like the Mulock resolution, McNeill’s loyalty resolution was not prompted by any particular occasion or event, but by unspecified stories in the American press that reported rumours of Canadian desires to join the United States. This resolution, however, added that, should the occasion arise, Canadians were prepared to make “substantial sacrifices” for the Empire. The resolution was addressed with firm approbation by numerous members of the House and passed unanimously.85
Though similar in substance and spaced only six years apart, reaction to the McNeill resolution contrasted distinctly from reactions to the Mulock one. By the closing years of the nineteenth century, the atmosphere of debate had changed considerably. The Week, for example, which had questioned the need for the Mulock resolution and insisted on the persistence of unique Canadian loyalty, enthusiastically endorsed the McNeill resolution.86 The Canadian Magazine also endorsed the resolution: “These resolutions do not mean loyalty to a royal personage alone, but a deeper loyalty to those principles of law, of government, of liberty, which have made the British Flag the indicator of civilization, and the British people the most advanced and most cultivated among the nations of the earth.”87 While insisting that the loyalty avowed in the resolution was to the principles of law and government, the magazine did not argue against it being distinguished as “British” loyalty. Given his frequent advocacy of greater “Canadianism,” it was notable that the editor, John Cooper, did not use the McNeill resolution as an occasion to describe and promote a unique Canadian loyalty. It was apparent that the resolution’s call for loyalty to Britain was a point that secured considerable consensus.
The all-party consensus on the Mulock and McNeill loyalty resolutions was not surprising, given the frequently articulated desire to separate “loyalty” from party interests. While loyalty had been, according to David Mills, a matter of political division in the early half of the nineteenth century, by the second half of the century it was widely held to be transcendent of party.88 Party spirit, many claimed, was an impediment to strong loyalty and the development of national sentiment in Canada, making the accusation of “partyism” one of the most trenchant criticisms of writers. “Partyism,” they claimed, put the interests of political party before the nation, and it therefore represented a particularly insidious brand of loyalty.89 More significantly, however, the appearance of a loyalty consensus by the close of the century reflected the growing militarism in imperial affairs, ultimately culminating in the outbreak of the South African War in 1899. Despite the expressions of loyalty in the press and in parliament in the years leading up to the conflict, the outbreak of war severely tested political unity in Canada.90 The war starkly signified that imperial loyalty was not just vague, well-meaning appreciation of a doughty queen and her global empire. War in Africa at the turn of the century could hardly portend the extent that loyalty to empire would be called upon in the new century and the tragic transformation of “loyalty” into “sacrifice” that it entailed.
Conclusion
While some writers insisted that loyalty was ultimately the allegiance of individuals to the crown and the empire that it ruled, others articulated an understanding of loyalty as the political fidelity of citizens to the Canadian state. These writers articulated a vision of loyalty that has become central to the liberal state, where legitimacy is anchored in the assumption that citizens’ loyalty to the state and its rule of law serves as the foundation of democratic and political unity. Liberal theorist Anna Stilz, for example, emphasizes that “only a state can create the condition in which equal freedom between individuals is realized.”91 It is the constitutional framework of the state, Jürgen Habermas has argued, that should form the patriotic bonds between individuals in a given political society.92 These assumptions, which lie at the heart of liberal understandings of citizenship and the state today, gained greater prominence in Canada at the turn of the twentieth century in an effort to distinguish the meanings of Canadian and imperial loyalties.
The common thread in the ideas of “modern” loyalty examined here is their tight tethering to the Canadian state, which acted as the political locus of loyalty. Though some imperial thinkers believed that political loyalty could and should be connected to the imperial state, the place of the Canadian state as the primary referent of citizens’ loyalty grew increasingly dominant. Imperial and Canadian loyalty were not widely perceived to be incompatible because they were in effect based on different definitions of loyalty. Imperial loyalty signified close attachment to the crown and the empire, as well as British culture and traditions. Canadian loyalty, though less certain in its meaning, was largely seen as the relationship between the citizen and Canada, defined through political and legal rights and obligations.
Loyalty, more than any of the other political concepts examined in this book, was as much a rhetorical instrument as it was a foundational concept of political association. By the 1890s, discussion of loyalty became particularly politicized, as the accusations of the “disloyalty” of Goldwin Smith and J.W. Longley illustrate. Two separate loyalty resolutions passed by Parliament further reflected a heightened concern to publicly affirm Canadian loyalty to the British Crown. It is clear, however, that the emergence of a new Canadian state did prompt new considerations of loyalty that centred on the Canadian state, providing a rhetorical means for imagining the frontiers of Canada as a natural unit. As in the case of discussions of nationality and citizenship, this discourse prompted many of the authors included in this study to consider what loyalty to Canada meant and whether it was different from older notions of monarchical and imperial loyalty. In having to think about competing objects for loyalty, authors were also prompted to think about what loyalty itself was. Some, especially critics of imperialism like LeSueur, defined it as a contractual relationship between the citizen and the state, while others, typically imperialists like Todd, stressed that it was an emotional and spiritual basis of personal fidelity between a subject and the crown. As the next chapter illustrates, the unsettled meaning of loyalty and the status of Canada within the empire had distinct implications on evolving international law that often confronted and sometimes confounded lawmakers, lawyers, and public thinkers.