tissues from the soil and so, by unhurried, natural, healthy growth, labour sweating 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 may be filling, in the far harbour of time which will bear their descendants to a representative share of the duties and responsibilities of Empire in the capital of the Dominion of Canada?”

It was the boldest proposition, and the Liberal voters of the town of Elgin blinked a little, looking at it.  Still they applauded, hurriedly, to get it over and hear what more might be coming.  Bingham, on the platform, laughed heartily and conspicuously, as if anybody could see that it was all an excellent joke.  Lorne half-turned to him with a gesture of protest.  Then he went on—­