The great question was the practicability of the new idea and how much further it could safely be carried in a loyal Dominion which was just getting on its industrial legs.  It was debated with anxiety at Ottawa, and made the subject of special instruction to South Fox, where the by-election would have all the importance of an early test.  “It’s a clear issue,” wrote an influential person at Ottawa to the local party leaders at Elgin, “we don’t want any tendency to hedge or double.  It’s straight business with us, the thing we want, and it will be till Wallingham either gets it through over there, or finds he can’t deal with us.  Meanwhile it might be as well to ascertain just how much there is in it for platform purposes in a safe spot like South Fox, and how much the fresh opposition will cost us where we can afford it.  We can’t lose the seat, and the returns will be worth anything in their bearing on the General Election next year.  The objection to Carter is that he’s only half-convinced; he couldn’t talk straight if he wanted to, and that lecture tour of his in the United States ten years ago pushing reciprocity with the Americans would make awkward literature.”

The rejection of Carter practically exhausted the list of men available whose standing in the town and experience of its suffrages brought them naturally into the field of selection; and at this point Cruickshank wrote to Farquharson suggesting the dramatic departure involved in the name of Lorne Murchison.  Cruickshank wrote judiciously, leaving the main arguments in Lorne’s favour to form themselves in Farquharson’s mind, but countering the objections that would rise there by the suggestion that after a long period of confidence and steady going, in fact of the orthodox and expected, the party should profit by the swing of the pendulum toward novelty and tentative, rather than bring forward a candidate who would represent, possibly misrepresent, the same beliefs and intentions on a lower personal level.  As there was no first-rate man of the same sort to succeed Farquharson, Cruickshank suggested the undesirability of a second-rate man; and he did it so adroitly that the old fellow found himself in a good deal of sympathy with the idea.  He had small opinion of the lot that was left for selection, and smaller relish for the prospect of turning his honourable activity over to any one of them.  Force of habit and training made him smile at Cruickshank’s proposition as impracticable, but he felt its attraction, even while he dismissed it to an inside pocket.  Young Murchison’s name would be so unlooked-for that if he, Farquharson, could succeed in imposing it upon the party it would be almost like making a personal choice of his successor, a grateful idea in abdication.  Farquharson wished regretfully that Lorne had another five years to his credit in the Liberal record of South Fox.  By the time the young fellow had earned them he, the retiring member, would be quite on the shelf, if in no completer oblivion; he could not expect much of a voice in any nomination five years hence.  He sighed to think of it.