ting his vices out
of him, forms the character of the commonwealth, the foundation of the
State. So the imperial idea seeks its Canadian home in Liberal councils.
The imperial idea is far-sighted. England has outlived her own body.
Apart from her heart and her history, England is an area where certain
trades are carried on--still carried on. In the scrolls of the future it
is already written that the centre of the Empire must shift--and where,
if not to Canada?"

There was a half-comprehending burst of applause, Dr Drummond's the
first clap. It was a curious change from the simple colloquial manner
in which young Murchison had begun and to which the audience were
accustomed; and on this account probably they stamped the harder.
They applauded Lorne himself; something from him infected them; they
applauded being made to feel like that. They would clap first and
consider afterward. John Murchison smiled with pleasure, but shook his
head. Bingham, doubled up and clapping like a repeating rifle, groaned
aloud under cover of it to Horace Williams: "Oh, the darned kid!"

"A certain Liberal peer of blessed political memory," Lorne continued,
with a humorous twist of his mouth, "on one of those graceful, elegant,
academic occasions which offer political peers such happy opportunities
of getting in their work over there, had lately a vision which he
described to his university audience of what might have happened if the
American colonies had remained faithful to Great Britain--a vision of
monarch and Ministers, Government and Parliament, departing solemnly
for the other hemisphere. They did not so remain; so the noble peer may
conjure up his vision or dismiss his nightmare as he chooses; and it is
safe to prophesy that no port of the United States will see that entry.
But, remembering that the greater half of the continent did remain
faithful, the northern and strenuous half, destined to move with sure
steps and steady mind to greater growth and higher place among the
nations than any of us can now imagine--would it be as safe to
prophesy that such a momentous sailing-day will never be more than the
after-dinner fantasy of aristocratic rhetoric? Is it not at least as
easy to imagine that even now, while the people of England send their
viceroys to the ends of the earth, and vote careless millions for a
reconstructed army, and sit in the wrecks of Cabinets disputing whether
they will eat our bread or the stranger's, the sails ma