IN, 1872-78
4. MARQUIS OF LORNE, 1878-83
5. MARQUIS OF LANSDOWN, 1882-88
6. LORD STANLEY, 1888-93
7. EARL OF ABERDEEN, 1893-98
8. EARL OF MINTO, 1898-1904
9. EARL GREY, 1904-11
10. DUKE OF CONNAUGHT, 1911-]

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It was when matters were at this acute stage that Wilfrid Laurier came
forward to do for his province and his country a service which could be
accomplished only by a man of rarely balanced judgment, of firm grasp
of essential principles, of wide reading and familiarity with the
political ideals of other lands, and, above all, of matchless courage.
Rarely, if ever, has there been delivered in Canada a speech of such
momentous importance, or one so firmly based on the first principles
with which Canadian statesmen too rarely concern {49} themselves, as
that which he addressed to _Le Club Canadien_, a group of young
Liberals, in Quebec City in June 1877.

The subject of the address was Political Liberalism. The speaker
cleared away many misunderstandings. Liberalism did not mean Catholic
Liberalism; it had nothing to do with opinions on religion. Nor did it
mean Liberalism of the type still prevalent on the continent of Europe,
revolutionary, semi-socialist, openly anti-clerical; the type which had
been given brief currency by the young men of twenty who thirty years
before had lent the Liberal party an undeserved reputation for
anti-clericalism. No, the Liberals of Canada found their models and
their inspiration in the Liberalism of England, in the men who had
fought the battles of orderly freedom and responsible self-government
against privilege and selfish interest. As to the Church, no true
Liberal wished to deny its officers the right which every citizen
enjoyed of taking a part in his country's politics; they had opposed,
and would continue to oppose, every attempt of politicians in clerical
garb to crush freedom of speech by spiritual terrorism. The right of
ecclesiastical interference in politics ceased where it encroached upon
{50} the elector's independence. Any attempt to found a Catholic party
was not only a crime against the country but was bound to injure the
Church itself; it would lead inevitably to the formation of a
Protestant party among the majority. On individual freedom alone could
a sound national political system be built up, just as on colonial
freedom alone had it been possible to build up