The Imperialist

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

“It is ours,” he told them, “in this greater half of the continent, to evolve a nobler ideal. The Americans from the beginning went in a spirit of revolt; the seed of disaffection was in every Puritan bosom. We from the beginning went in a spirit of amity, forgetting nothing, disavowing nothing, to plant the flag with our fortunes. We took our very Constitution, our very chart of national life, from England—her laws, her liberty, her equity were good enough for us. We have lived by them, some of us have died by them...and, thank God, we were long poor...

“And this Republic,” he went on hotly, “this Republic that menaces our national life with commercial extinction, what past has she that is comparable? The daughter who left the old stock to be the light woman among nations, welcoming all comers, mingling her pure blood, polluting her lofty ideals until it is hard indeed to recognize the features and the aims of her honourable youth...”

Allowance will be made for the intemperance of his figure. He believed himself, you see, at the bar for the life of a nation.

“...Let us not hesitate to announce ourselves for the Empire, to throw all we are and all we have into the balance for that great decision. The seers of political economy tell us that if the stars continue to be propitious, it is certain that a day will come which will usher in a union of the Anglo-Saxon nations of the world. As between England and the United States the predominant partner in that firm will be the one that brings Canada. So that the imperial movement of the hour may mean even more than the future of the motherland, may reach even farther than the boundaries of Great Britain...”

Again he paused, and his eye ranged over their listening faces. He had them all with him, his words were vivid in their minds; the truth of them stood about him like an atmosphere. Even Bingham looked at him without reproach. But he had done.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his voice dropping, with a hint of tiredness, to another level, “I have the honour to stand for your suffrages as candidate in the Liberal interest for the riding of South Fox in the Dominion House of Commons the day after tomorrow. I solicit your support, and I hereby pledge myself to justify it by every means in my power. But it would be idle to disguise from you that while I attach all importance to the immediate interests in charge of the Liberal party, and if elected shall use my best efforts to further them, the great task before that party, in my opinion, the overshadowing task to which, I shall hope, in my place and degree to stand committed from the beginning, is the one which I have endeavoured to bring before your consideration this evening.”

They gave him a great appreciation, and Mr Cruickshank, following, spoke in complimentary terms of the eloquent appeal made by the “young and vigorous protagonist” of the imperial cause, but proceeded to a number of quite other and apparently more important grounds why he should be elected. The Hon. Mr Tellier’s speech—the Minister was always kept to the last—was a defence of the recent dramatic development of the Government’s railway policy, and a reminder of the generous treatment Elgin was receiving in the Estimates for the following year—thirty thousand dollars for a new Drill Hall, and fifteen thousand for improvements to the post-office. It was a telling speech, with the chink of hard cash in every sentence, a kind of audit by a chartered accountant of the Liberal books of South Fox, showing good sound reason why the Liberal candidate should be returned on Thursday, if only to keep the balance right. The audience listened with practical satisfaction. “That’s Tellier all over,” they said to one another...

The effect in committee of what, in spite of the Hon. Mr Tellier’s participation, I must continue to call the speech of the evening, may be gathered from a brief colloquy between Mr Bingham and Mr Williams, in the act of separating at the door of the opera house.

“I don’t know what it was worth to preference trade,” said Bingham, “but it wasn’t worth a hill o’ beans to his own election.”

“He had as soft a snap,” returned Horace Williams, on the brink of tears—“as soft a snap as anybody ever had in this town. And he’s monkeyed it all away. All away.”