A forgotten forerunner of Social Credit: William Alexander Thomson

35. Memorandum by Manion, 5 March, 1935, Manion Papers. 36. Memorandum by Manion, 9 March, 1935, Manion Papers. 37. Geraid Picard to Senator Meighen, 31 May, 1935, Meighen Papers, (P.A.C.). 38. Frederick Lea to Meighen, 24 May, 1935, Meighen Papers. 39. Tom Moore, "Canada's Progress Towards Compliance with I.L.O. Conventions," in Canadian Congress Journal, Vol. 19, No. 8, August, 1935, p. 19. 40. See, for example, Mr. King's citation of Lord Hewart of Bury's The New Despotism, against the Natural Products Marketing Act, contending that the Bill exemplified the worst features of the delegation of parliamentary power to the executive, in Official Report of Debates, 5 June, 1934, p. 3705, and the A forgotten forerunner of Social Credit: William Alexander Thomson CRAUFURD D. W. GOODWIN In the February, 1968, issue of this journal, Professor Robin Neill examined the development of Social Credit doctrine in Canada.1 An important figure not mentioned in this interesting article is William Alexander Thomson, a man who more than any of his contemporaries in nineteenth century Canada such as John Rae or Isaac Buchanan anticipated the main Social Credit notions of the twentieth century.2 A brief focus in this note upon Thomson and his work will serve to strengthen and support Professor Neill's thesis that there is both continuity and quality in radical Canadian monetary thought going all the way back to the years before Confederation. Thomson came to Canada in 1834 from Scotland via the United States, and he settled near Queenston. He was a canal and railway promoter , public advocate of westward expansion, and a liberal member of Parliament for Welland from 1872 until 1878, the year of his death.3 Despite some bibliographical confusion on the subject, Thomson appears to have written only one significant work, a long pamphlet published in Journal of Canadian Studies Liberal emphasis throughout the New Deal debates on constitutional jurisdiction rather than social need. 41. The Toronto Daily Star, Wednesday, October 9, 1935. 42. Interview with Finlayson and, in this connection, see the remarks of J. L. Ilsley on the Act in Official Report of Debates, 11 June, 1935, p. 3525. 43. See, e.g. The Times Weekly Edition, (London), no. 3,067, October 24, 1935, p. 4, and The Canadian Forum, Vol. 15, No. 178, November, 1935, p. 351. 44. The Montreal Gazette, Saturday, 5 January, 1935. 45. Interview with Merriam. 46. The Montreal Gazette, Wednesday, October 16, 1935. 47. The Financial Post, Saturday, October 19, 1935, p. 5. 48. The Times Weekly Edition, (London), no. 3,067, October 24, 1935, p. 4. 49. A. R. M. Lower, Colony to Nation, Toronto, 1964, pp. 520-521. Buffalo in 1863 entitled An Essay on Production, Money and Government in Which the Principle of a Natural Law is Advanced and Explained.4 He repeated and elaborated the ideas contained in this work in speeches to the House of Commons during the 1870's. Thomson's fundamental assumptions, characteristics of style, and economic theory were all strikingly similar to those of Social Crediters writing more than fifty years later. He was an agrarian radical to the core, distrustful of eastern financial power, and resentful of the mercantile character of the growing Canadian cities. He stated openly to Parliament in 1876: "The cause of our troubles has been that our laws have been made to suit the merchants instead of the producing classes. This should be altered, and the moment it is done the industrial classes will rise from their present condition, and the country will be free from panics."5 Again in 1877 he said: "The agriculturalists made the country, and yet they received no assistance from the banking institutions .... Let Toronto,Montreal, Kingston and Hamilton go to Jericho, the farmers were going to rule this country."6 Thomson was also a fervent nationalist in the western Canadian tradition. Although he lived no farther west than southern Ontario, he was effectively on the western frontier of the 1860's, a region corresponding in significant ways to the prairies of the inter-war years. Like his western intellectual descendants in the twentieth century, he saw 41 the potential for Canadian national...