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.
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