I can get nothing more
out of them, though they were all there, though they all
saw him, indeed a dramatic figure, standing for the youth
and energy of the old blood, and heard him, as he slipped
away into his great preoccupation, as he made what Bingham
called his "bad break." His very confidence may have
accounted for it; he was off guard against the enemy,
and the more completely off guard against himself. The
history of Liberalism in Fox County offered, no doubt,
some inlet to the rush of the Idea; for suddenly, Mr
Farquharson says, he was "off." Mr Farquharson was on
the platform, and "I can tell you," said he, "I pricked
up my ears." They all did; the Idea came in upon such a
personal note.
"I claim it my great good fortune," the young man was
suddenly telling them, in a note of curious gravity and
concentration, "and however the fight goes, I shall always
claim it my great good fortune to have been identified,
at a critical moment, with the political principles that
are ennobled in this country by the imperialistic aim.
An intention, a great purpose in the endless construction
and reconstruction of the world, will choose its own
agency; and the imperial design in Canada has chosen the
Liberal party, because the Liberal party in this country
is the party of the soil, the land, the nation as it
springs from that which makes it a nation; and imperialism
is intensely and supremely a national affair.
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