“It may surprise some members of this House to see that I am so much in earnest about the future of Canada in connection with the railway question…Well, it is not my habit to conceal my sentiments. I am as strongly opposed to American annexation as I am to British Imperialism. I am as strongly opposed to seeing the interests of this country merged in the interests of the American Republic, as I am opposed to seeing our interests merged in the Pan-Britannic scheme. Canada is big enough for me; Canada is good enough for me, and I want Canada for the Canadian people. Whatever may be our opinion otherwise, that is the policy that must predominate in this country if we do our duty to the Canadian people.

“The time has come when the whole people of Canada should give their attention to this problem. What is the solution? I do not know. Surely it is worth while studying the problem. Surely it is worth while finding if there be a solution. All the European countries have given their attention to this same problem…”

In what was viewed as a critical struggle to preserve Christianity and true liberty, the Ontarians saw Britain as standing alone -- in the period 1789-1815 -- in resisting domination by an anti-Christian revolutionary power and its successor a ruthless military dictator, while the established Church of England defended Christianity against the spread of democratic anarchy and infidelity.

More immediately in Ontario, the Tories feared that the British national character of their Loyalist asylum was under threat, as well as the very survival of Canada as a province of the British Empire. The nature of that threat - in both its ideological and military aspects - was evident in the Tory view of the revolutionary ideas being propagated abroad, recent events in Europe, and the growing influence and power of their immediate neighbour, the democratic republic of the United States of America.

For the Ontarians, who believed in a rational cosmic order, original sin, faith in Christ as the Redeemer, and God's moral law as revealed by reason and revelation, those who advocated that man could live a good life simply by 'following reason' (Locke), or his passions (Rousseau), or his 'emotions' (the evangelical sectarians), or majority opinion (the political democrats), or 'the general will' (Rousseau), were highly irrational men.

For the Ontarians, the so-called liberal 'Age of Reason' of the 17th and 18th centuries was an irreligious and irrational age in which moral philosophy and political philosophy had degenerated from the philosophical works of the Ancients, medieval Scholastics -- such as Thomas Aquinas, who synthesized the philosophy of Artistotle on natural law and rational man with Christian theology -- and from the theology and political philosophy of Richard Hooker, the Anglican theologian.