ier's chief claim to an enduring personal fame will rest
less upon his domestic performances than upon the contribution he
made towards the solution of the problem of imperial relations. The
examination of his record as a party leader in the prime minister's
chair can be postponed while consideration is given to the great
services he rendered the cause of imperial and international
Liberalism as Canada's spokesman in the series of imperial
conferences held during his premiership.

Laurier, up to the moment of his accession to the Liberal
leadership, had probably given little thought to the question of
Canada's relationship to the empire. Blake knew something about the
intricacies of the question. His Aurora speech showed that as early
as 1874 he was beginning to regard critically our status of
colonialism as something which could not last; and while he was
minister of justice in the Mackenzie ministration he won two notable
victories over the centralizing tendencies of the colonial office.
But Laurier had never been brought into touch with the issue; and
when, after assuming the Liberal leadership, he found it necessary
to deal with it, he spoke what was probably the belief latent in
most of the minds of his compatriots: acceptance of colonial status
with the theoretical belief that some time, so far distant as not to
be a matter of political concern, this status would give way to one
of independence. "The day is coming," he said in Montreal in 1890,
"when this country will have to take its place among the nations of
the earth. ... I want my country's independence to be reached
through the normal and regular progress of all the elements of its
populations toward the realization of a common aspiration." Looking
forward to the issues about which it would be necessary for him to
have policies, it is not probable that he put the question of
imperial relationships very high. Certainly he had no idea that it
would be in dealing with this matter that he would reveal his
qualities at their highest and lay the surest foundation for his
fame.

In 1890 Laurier, as we have seen, believed the Canadian future was
to be that of colonialism for an indefinite period and then
independence. In 1911, the year he left office, in a letter to a
friend he said: "We are making for a harbor which was not the harbor
I foresaw twenty-five years ago, but it is a good harbor. It will
not be the end. Exactly what the course will be I cannot tell,