view that the most entrancing future for Canada was one in
which she should be represented in the imperial parliament sitting
in Westminster. "It would be," he told the National Liberal club,
"the proudest moment of my life if I could see a Canadian of French
descent affirming the principles of freedom in the parliament of
Great Britain." This, of course, was nothing but the abandonment of
the orator to the rhetorical possibilities of the situation. Under
the impulse of these emotions he fell an easy victim to the
conspiracy of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Strathcona (of which he later
made complaint) by which the "democrat to the hilt" (as Laurier had
proclaimed himself but a short time earlier when he had been given
prematurely the knightly title at a public function) was transmuted
into Sir Wilfrid Laurier. It was, therefore, not without apparent
reason that the imperialists thought that they had captured for
their own this new romantic and appealing figure from the premier
British dominion. But when the imperial conference met, Mr.
Chamberlain, as colonial secretary, encountered not the orator
intent on captivating his audience, but the cool, cautious statesman
thinking of the folks at home. When the proposition for the
establishment of an imperial council was made by Mr. Chamberlain it
was deftly shelved by a declaration which stated that in the view of
the colonial prime ministers "the present political relations are
generally satisfactory under existing conditions." The wording is
suggestive of Laurier, though it is not known that he drafted the
statement. The skilful suspension of the issue without meeting it
was certainly the tactics with which he met and blocked, in
succeeding conferences, all attempts by the imperialists to give
practical effect to their doctrine.

FIFTEEN YEARS OF SAYING "NO"

The role which Laurier had to play in the successive conferences was
not one agreeable to his temperament. It gave no opening for his
talent. It supplied no opportunities for the making of the kind of
speeches at which he was a master. It kept him from the centre of
the stage, a position which Sir Wilfrid Laurier had no objection to
occupying. It obliged him to courses which, in the setting in which
he found himself, must at times have seemed ungracious, and this
must have been a trial to a nature so courtly and considerate. To
the successive proposals that came before the conference, togged out
in all the gorgeous garb o