The South Fox fight was almost over. Three days only remained before the
polling booths would be open, and the voters of the towns of Elgin and
Clayfield and the surrounding townships would once again be invited to
make their choice between a Liberal and a Conservative representative of
the district in the Dominion House of Commons. The ground had never been
more completely covered, every inch of advantage more stubbornly held,
by either side, in the political history of the riding. There was no
doubt of the hope that sat behind the deprecation in Walter Winter’s
eye, nor of the anxiety that showed through the confidence freely
expressed by the Liberal leaders. The issue would be no foregone
conclusion, as it had been practically any time within the last eleven
years; and as Horace Williams remarked to the select lot that met pretty
frequently at the Express office for consultation and rally, they had
“no use for any sort of carelessness.”
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. It will be thus, no doubt,
that the workingman will explain in the future his eminent usefulness
to the government of his country, and it will be in these terms that
the cost of educating him by means of the ballot will be demonstrated.
Meanwhile we may look on and cultivate philosophy; or we may make war
upon the gods with Mr Wallingham which is, perhaps, the better part.
That, to turn from recrimination, was what they saw in Canada looking
across--the queerest thing of all was the recalcitrance of the farm
labourer; they could only stare at that--and it may be that the
spectacle was depressing to hopeful initiative. At all events, it was
plain that the new policy was suffering from a certain flatness on the
further side. As a ballon d’essai it lacked buoyancy; and no doubt
Mr Farquharson was right in declaring that above all things it lacked
actuality, business--the proposition, in good set terms, for men to turn
over, to accept or reject. Nothing could be done with it, Mr Farquharson
averred, as a mere prospect; it was useful only to its enemies. We of
the young countries must be invited to deeds, not theories, of which we
have a restless impatience; and this particular theory, though of golden
promise, was beginning to recoil to some extent, upon the cause which
had been confident enough to adopt it before it could be translated into
action and its hard equivalent. The Elgin Mercury probably overstated
the matter when it said that the Grits were dead sick of the preference
they would never get; but Horace Williams was quite within the mark
when he advised Lorne to stick to old Reform principles--clean
administration, generous railway policy, sympathetic labour legislation,
and freeze himself a little on imperial love and attachment.
“They’re not so sweet on it in Ottawa as they were, by a long chalk,”
he said. “Look at the Premier’s speech to the Chambers of Commerce
in Montreal. Pretty plain statement that, of a few things the British
Government needn’t expect.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lorne. “He was talking to manufacturers, you
know, a pretty skittish lot anywhere. It sounded independent, but if you
look into it you won’t find it gave the cause away any.”
“The old man’s got to think of Quebec, where his fat little majority
lives,” remarked Bingham, chairman of the most difficult subdivision in
the town. “The Premier of this country drives a team, you know.”
“Yes,” said Lorne, “but he drives it tandem, and Johnny Francois is the
second horse.”
“Maybe so,” returned Mr Williams, “but the organ’s singing pretty small,
too. Look at this.” He picked up the Dominion from the office table and
read aloud: “‘If Great Britain wishes to do a deal with the colonies
she will find them willing to meet her in a spirit of fairness and
enthusiasm. But it is for her to decide, and Canada would be the last
to force her bread down the throat of the British labourer at a higher
price than he can afford to pay for it.’ What’s that, my boy? Is it
high-mindedness? No, sir, it’s lukewarmness.”
“The Dominion makes me sick,” said young Murchison. “It’s so scared of
the Tory source of the scheme in England that it’s handing the whole
boom of the biggest chance this country ever had over to the Tories
here. If anything will help us to lose it that will. No Conservative
Government in Canada can put through a cent of preference on English
goods when it comes to the touch, and they know it. They’re full of
loyalty just now--baying the moon--but if anybody opens a window they’ll
turn tail fast enough.”
“I guess the Dominion knows it, too,” said Mr Williams. “When Great
Britain is quite sure she’s ready to do business on preference lines
it’s the Liberal party on this side she’ll have to talk to. No use
showing ourselves too anxious, you know. Besides, it might do harm over
there. We’re all right; we’re on record. Wallingham knows as well as we
do the lines we’re open on--he’s heard them from Canadian Liberals more
than once. When they get good and ready they can let us know.”
“Jolly them up with it at your meetings by all means,” advised Bingham,
“but use it as a kind of superfluous taffy; don’t make it your main
lay-out.”
The Reform Association of South Fox had no more energetic officer than
Bingham, though as he sat on the edge of the editorial table chewing
portions of the margin of that afternoon’s Express, and drawling out
maxims to the Liberal candidate, you might not have thought so. He was
explaining that he had been in this business for years, and had never
had a job that gave him so much trouble.
“We’ll win out,” he said, “but the canvass isn’t any Christmas joy--not
this time. There’s Jim Whelan,” he told them. “We all know what Jim
is--a Tory from way back, where they make ‘em so they last, and a soaker
from way back, too; one day on his job and two days sleepin’ off his
whiskey. Now we don’t need Jim Whelan’s vote, never did need it, but
the boys have generally been able to see that one of those two days was
election day. There’s no necessity for Jim’s putting in his paper--a
character like that--no necessity at all--he’d much better be
comfortable in bed. This time, I’m darned if the old boozer hasn’t sworn
off! Tells the boys he’s on to their game, and there’s no liquor in this
town that’s good enough to get him to lose his vote--wouldn’t get drunk
on champagne. He’s held out for ten days already, and it looks like
Winter’d take his cross all right on Thursday.”
“I guess I’d let him have it, Bingham,” said Lorne Murchison with a kind
of tolerant deprecation, void of offence, the only manner in which
he knew how to convey disapproval to the older man. “The boys in your
division are a pretty tough lot, anyhow. We don’t want the other side
getting hold of any monkey tricks.”
“It’s necessary to win this election, young man,” said Bingham,
“lawfully. You won’t have any trouble with my bunch.”
It was not, as will be imagined, the first discussion, so late in
the day, of the value of the preference trade argument to the Liberal
campaign. They had all realized, after the first few weeks, that their
young candidate was a trifle overbitten with it, though remonstrance
had been a good deal curbed by Murchison’s treatment of it. When he
had brought it forward at the late fall fairs and in the lonely country
schoolhouses, his talk had been so trenchant, so vivid and pictorial,
that the gathered farmers listened with open mouths, like children,
pathetically used with life, to a grown-up fairy tale. As Horace
Williams said, if a dead horse could be made to go this one would have
brought Murchison romping in. And Lorne had taken heed to the counsel of
his party leaders. At joint meetings, which offered the enemy his best
opportunity for travesty and derision, he had left it in the background
of debate, devoting himself to arguments of more immediate utility. In
the literature of the campaign it glowed with prospective benefit, but
vaguely, like a halo of Liberal conception and possible achievement,
waiting for the word from overseas. The Express still approved it, but
not in headlines, and wished the fact to be widely understood that while
the imperial idea was a very big idea, the Liberals of South Fox were
going to win this election without any assistance from it.
Lorne submitted. After all, victory was the thing. There could be no
conquest for the idea without the party triumph first. He submitted,
but his heart rebelled. He looked over the subdivisional reports with
Williams and Farquharson, and gave ear to their warning interpretations;
but his heart was an optimist, and turned always to the splendid
projection upon the future that was so incomparably the title to success
of those who would unite to further it. His mind accepted the old
working formulas for dealing with an average electorate, but to his
eager apprehending heart it seemed unbelievable that the great imperial
possibility, the dramatic chance for the race that hung even now, in
the history of the world, between the rising and the setting of the sun,
should fail to be perceived and acknowledged as the paramount issue, the
contingency which made the by-election of South Fox an extraordinary and
momentous affair. He believed in the Idea; he saw it, with Wallingham,
not only a glorious prospect, but an educative force; and never had he
a moment of such despondency that it confounded him upon his horizon in
the faded colours of some old Elizabethan mirage.
The opera house, the night of Mr Murchison’s final address to the
electors of South Fox, was packed from floor to ceiling, and a large
and patient overflow made the best of the hearing accommodation of the
corridors and the foyer. A Minister was to speak, Sir Matthew Tellier,
who held the portfolio of Public Works; and for drawing a crowd in Elgin
there was nothing to compare with a member of the Government. He was
the sum of all ambition and the centre of all importance; he was held
to have achieved in the loftiest sense, and probably because he deserved
to; a kind of afflatus sat upon him. They paid him real deference and
they flocked to hear him. Cruickshank was a second attraction; and
Lorne himself, even at this stage of the proceedings, “drew” without
abatement. They knew young Murchison well enough; he had gone in and out
among them all his life; yet since he had come before them in this new
capacity a curious interest had gathered about him. People looked at him
as if he had developed something they did not understand, and perhaps
he had; he was in touch with the Idea. They listened with an intense
personal interest in him which, no doubt, went to obscure what he
said: perhaps a less absorbing personality would have carried the Idea
further. However, they did look and listen--that was the main point, and
on their last opportunity they were in the opera house in great numbers.
Lorne faced them with an enviable security; the friendliness of the
meeting was in the air. The gathering was almost entirely of one
political complexion: the Conservatives of the town would have been glad
enough to turn out to hear Minister Tellier; but the Liberals were of no
mind to gratify them at the cost of having to stand themselves, and were
on hand early to assert a prior moral claim to chairs. In the seated
throng Lorne could pick out the fine head of his father, and his
mother’s face, bright with anticipation, beside. Advena was there,
too, and Stella; and the boys would have a perch, not too conspicuous,
somewhere in the gallery. Dr Drummond was in the second row, and a
couple of strange ladies with him: he was chuckling with uncommon
humour at some remark of the younger one when Lorne noted him. Old Sandy
MacQuhot was in a good place; had been since six o’clock, and Peter
Macfarlane, too, for that matter, though Peter sat away back as beseemed
a modest functionary whose business was with the book and the bell.
Altogether, as Horace Williams leaned over to tell him, it was like a
Knox Church sociable--he could feel completely at home; and though the
audience was by no means confined to Knox Church, Lorne did feel at
home. Dora Milburn’s countenance he might perhaps have missed, but Dora
was absent by arrangement. Mr Milburn, as the fight went on, had shown
himself so increasingly bitter, to the point of writing letters in the
Mercury attacking Wallingham and the Liberal leaders of South Fox, that
his daughter felt an insurmountable delicacy in attending even Lorne’s
“big meeting.” Alfred Hesketh meant to have gone, but it was ten by the
Milburns’ drawing-room clock before he remembered. Miss Filkin actually
did go, and brought home a great report of it. Miss Filkin would no more
have missed a Minister than she would a bishop; but she was the only
one.
Lorne had prepared for this occasion for a long time. It was certain
to come, the day of the supreme effort, when he should make his final
appeal under the most favourable circumstances that could be devised,
when the harassing work of the campaign would be behind him, and nothing
would remain but the luxury of one last strenuous call to arms. The
glory of that anticipation had been with him from the beginning; and in
the beginning he saw his great moment only in one character. For weeks,
while he plodded through the details of the benefits South Fox had
received and might expect to receive at the hands of the Liberal party,
he privately stored argument on argument, piled phrase on phrase, still
further to advance and defend the imperial unity of his vision on this
certain and special opportunity. His jihad it would be, for the faith
and purpose of his race; so he scanned it and heard it, with conviction
hot in him, and impulse strong, and intention noble. Then uneasiness had
arisen, as we know; and under steady pressure he had daily drawn himself
from these high intentions, persuaded by Bingham and the rest that
they were not yet “in shape” to talk about. So that his address on this
memorable evening would have a different stamp from the one he designed
in the early burning hours of his candidature. He had postponed
those matters, under advice, to the hour of practical dealing, when a
Government which it would be his privilege to support would consider and
carry them. He put the notes of his original speech away in his office
desk with solicitude--it was indeed very thorough, a grand marshalling
of the facts and review of the principles involved--and pigeonholed
it in the chambers of his mind, with the good hope to bring it forth
another day. Then he devoted his attention to the history of Liberalism
in Fox County--both ridings were solid--and it was upon the history of
Liberalism in Fox County, its triumphs and its fruits, that he embarked
so easily and so assuredly, when he opened his address in the opera
house that Tuesday night.
Who knows at what suggestion, or even precisely at what moment,
the fabric of his sincere intention fell away? Bingham does not; Mr
Farquharson has the vaguest idea; Dr Drummond declares that he expected
it from the beginning, but is totally unable to say why. 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. Ours is the policy of the fields. We stand for the wheat-belt
and the stockyard, the forest and the mine, as the basic interests of
the country. We stand for the principles that make for nation-building
by the slow sweet processes of the earth, cultivating the individual
rooted man who draws his essence and his 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--
“If that transport ever left the shores of England we would go far, some
of us, to meet it; but for all the purposes that matter most it sailed
long ago. British statesmen could bring us nothing better than the
ideals of British government; and those we have had since we levied our
first tax and made our first law. That precious cargo was our heritage,
and we never threw it overboard, but chose rather to render what impost
it brought; and there are those who say that the impost has been heavy,
though never a dollar was paid.”
He paused for an instant and seemed to review and take account of what
he had said. He was hopelessly adrift from the subject he had proposed
to himself, launched for better or for worse upon the theme that was
subliminal in him and had flowed up, on which he was launched, and
almost rudderless, without construction and without control. The speech
of his first intention, orderly, developed, was as far from him as the
history of Liberalism in Fox County. For an instant he hesitated; and
then, under the suggestion, no doubt, of that ancient misbehaviour in
Boston Harbour at which he had hinted, he took up another argument. I
will quote him a little.
“Let us hold,” he said simply, “to the Empire. Let us keep this
patrimony that has been ours for three hundred years. Let us not
forget the flag. We believe ourselves, at this moment, in no danger of
forgetting it. The day after Paardeburg, that still winter day, did
not our hearts rise within us to see it shaken out with its message
everywhere, shaken out against the snow? How it spoke to us, and lifted
us, the silent flag in the new fallen snow! Theirs--and ours... That was
but a little while ago, and there is not a man here who will not bear me
out in saying that we were never more loyal, in word and deed, than we
are now. And that very state of things has created for us an undermining
alternative...
“So long as no force appeared to improve the trade relations between
England and this country Canada sought in vain to make commercial
bargains with the United States. They would have none of us or our
produce; they kept their wall just as high against us as against the
rest of the world: not a pine plank or a bushel of barley could we get
over under a reciprocal arrangement. But the imperial trade idea has
changed the attitude of our friends to the south. They have small
liking for any scheme which will improve trade between Great Britain and
Canada, because trade between Great Britain and Canada must be improved
at their expense. And now you cannot take up an American paper without
finding the report of some commercial association demanding closer trade
relations with Canada, or an American magazine in which some far-sighted
economist is not urging the same thing. They see us thinking about
keeping the business in the family; with that hard American common sense
that has made them what they are, they accept the situation; and at this
moment they are ready to offer us better terms to keep our trade.”
Bingham, Horace Williams, and Mr Farquharson applauded loudly. Their
young man frowned a little and squared his chin. He was past hints of
that kind.
“And that,” he went on to say, “is, on the surface, a very satisfactory
state of things. No doubt a bargain between the Americans and ourselves
could be devised which would be a very good bargain on both sides. In
the absence of certain pressing family affairs, it might be as well
worth our consideration as we used to think it before we were invited
to the family council. But if anyone imagines that any degree of
reciprocity with the United States could be entered upon without killing
the idea of British preference trade for all time, let him consider what
Canada’s attitude toward that idea would be today if the Americans had
consented to our proposals twenty-five years ago, and we were invited to
make an imperial sacrifice of the American trade that had prospered, as
it would have prospered, for a quarter of a century! I doubt whether the
proposition would even be made to us...
“But the alternative before Canada is not a mere choice of markets; we
are confronted with a much graver issue. In this matter of dealing
with our neighbour our very existence is involved. If we would preserve
ourselves as a nation, it has become our business, not only to reject
American overtures in favour of the overtures of our own great England,
but to keenly watch and actively resist American influence, as it
already threatens us through the common channels of life and energy. We
often say that we fear no invasion from the south, but the armies of
the south have already crossed the border. American enterprise, American
capital, is taking rapid possession of our mines and our water power,
our oil areas and our timber limits. In today’s Dominion, one paper
alone, you may read of charters granted to five industrial concerns
with headquarters in the United States. The trades unions of the two
countries are already international. American settlers are pouring into
the wheat-belt of the Northwest, and when the Dominion of Canada has
paid the hundred million dollars she has just voted for a railway to
open up the great lone northern lands between Quebec and the Pacific,
it will be the American farmer and the American capitalist who will
reap the benefit. They approach us today with all the arts of peace,
commercial missionaries to the ungathered harvests of neglected
territories; but the day may come when they will menace our coasts to
protect their markets--unless, by firm, resolved, whole-hearted action
now, we keep our opportunities for our own people.”
They cheered him promptly, and a gathered intensity came into his face
at the note of praise.
“Nothing on earth can hold him now,” said Bingham, as he crossed his
arms upon a breast seething with practical politics, and waited for the
worst.
“The question of the hour for us,” said Lorne Murchison to his
fellow-townsmen, curbing the strenuous note in his voice, “is deeper
than any balance of trade can indicate, wider than any department of
statistics can prove. We cannot calculate it in terms of pig-iron, or
reduce it to any formula of consumption. The question that underlies
this decision for Canada is that of the whole stamp and character of
her future existence. Is that stamp and character to be impressed by the
American Republic effacing”--he smiled a little--“the old Queen’s head
and the new King’s oath? Or is it to be our own stamp and character,
acquired in the rugged discipline of our colonial youth, and developed
in the national usage of the British Empire?”...
Dr Drummond clapped alone; everybody else was listening.
“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.”
Both the local papers published the speech in full the following day.
“If there’s anything in Manchester or Birmingham that Mr Lorne Murchison
would like,” commented the Mercury editorially, “we understand he has
only to call for it.”