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, were blasted to the root.

Enterprise was laid flat, mortgages were foreclosed, shops were left empty, the milling and forwarding interests were temporarily ruined, and the Governor-General actually wrote to the Secretary of State in England that things were so bad that not a shilling could be raised on the credit of the Province.
Now Mr Winter did not blame the people of England for insisting on free food.

It was the policy that suited their interests, and they had just as good a right to look after their interests, he conceded handsomely, as anybody else.

But he did blame the British Government for holding out hopes, for making definite pledges, to a young and struggling nation, which they must have known they would not be able to redeem.

He blamed their action then, and he would blame it now, if the opportunity were given to them to repeat it, for the opportunity would pass and the pledge would pass into the happy hunting ground of unrealizable politics, but not--and Mr Winter asked his listeners to mark this very carefully--not until Canada was committed to such relations of trade and taxes with the Imperial Government as would require the most heroic efforts--it might run to a war--to extricate herself from.