those who merit public confidence. If it should ever
happen in Canada that public opinion has become so low that public men
feel that they can, whenever they choose, divert it to their own
selfish ends by the unscrupulous use of partisan agencies and corrupt
methods, and that the highest motives of public life are forgotten in
a mere scramble for office and power, then thoughtful Canadians might
well despair of the future of their country; but, whatever may be the
blots at times on the surface of the body politic, there is yet no
reason to believe that the public conscience of Canada is weak or
indifferent to character and integrity in active politics. The
instincts of an English people are always in the direction of the pure
administration of justice and the efficient and honest government of
the country, and though it may sometimes happen that unscrupulous
politicians and demagogues will for a while dominate in the party
arena, the time of retribution and purification must come sooner or
later. English methods must prevail in countries governed by an
English people and English institutions.

It is sometimes said that it is vain to expect a high ideal in public
life, that the same principles that apply to social and private life
cannot always be applied to the political arena if party government is
to succeed; but this is the doctrine of the mere party manager, who is
already too influential in Canada as in the United States, and not of
a true patriotic statesman. It is wiser to believe that the nobler the
object the greater the inspiration, and at all events, it is better to
aim high than to sink low. It is all important that the body politic
should be kept pure and that public life should be considered a public
trust. Canada is still young in her political development, and the
fact that her population has been as a rule a steady, fixed
population, free from those dangerous elements which have come into
the United States with such rapidity of late years, has kept her
relatively free from any serious social and political dangers which
have afflicted her neighbours, and to which I believe they themselves,
having inherited English institutions and being imbued with the spirit
of English law, will always in the end rise superior. Great
responsibility, therefore, rests in the first instance upon the people
of Canada, who must select the best and purest among them to serve the
country, and, secondly, upon the men whom the l