"
It was undeniably felt that the new idea, the great idea
whose putative fatherhood in Canada certainly lay at the
door of the Liberal party, had drawn in fewer supporters
than might have been expected. In England Wallingham,
wearing it like a medal, seemed to be courting political
excommunication with it, except that Wallingham was so
hard to effectively curse. The ex-Minister deserved,
clearly, any ban that could be put upon him. No sort of
remonstrance could hold him from going about openly and
persistently exhorting people to "think imperially," a
liberty which, as is well known, the Holy Cobdenite
Church, supreme in those islands, expressly forbids.
Wallingham appeared to think that by teaching and explaining
he could help his fellow-islanders to see further than
the length of their fists, and exorcise from them the
spirit, only a century and a quarter older and a trifle
more sophisticated, that lost them the American colonies.
But so far little had transpired to show that Wallingham
was stronger than nature and destiny. There had been
Wallingham meetings of remarkable enthusiasm; his supporters
called them epoch-making, as if epochs were made of cheers.
But the workingman of Great Britain was declaring stolidly
in the by-elections against any favour to colonial produce
at his expense, thereby showing himself one of those humble
instruments that Providence uses for the downfall of
arrogant empires.
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