"How about Imperial Federation?" asked the Englishman. "Do you want
it?"

The Canadian statesman did not answer at once. He pointed across the
Ottawa, where the blue shimmering Laurentians seem to recede and melt
into a domain of infinitude. "Why _should_ we want Imperial
Federation?" he answered. "We have an empire the size of Europe, whose
problems we must work out. Why should Canadians go to Westminster to
legislate on a deceased wife's sister's bills and Welsh
disestablishment and silly socialistic panaceas for the unfit to
plunder the fit?"

It will be noticed that his answer had none of that flunkeyism to which
Goldwin Smith used to ascribe much of Canadian pro-loyalty. Rather was
there a grave recognition of the colossal burden of helping a nation
the area of Europe to work out her destiny in wisdom and in integrity
and in the certainty that is built up only from rock bottom basis of
fact.

Has flunkeyism any part in the pro-loyalty of Canada? Goldwin Smith
thought it had, and we all know Canadians whose swelling lip-loyalty is
a sort of Gargantuan thunder. It may be observed, parenthetically,
those Canadians are not the personages who receive recognition from
England.

"Sorry, Your Royal Highness, sorry; but Canada is becoming horribly
contaminated by Americanizing influences," apologized a pro-loyalist of
the lip-flunkey variety to the Duke of Connaught shortly after that
scion of royalty came to Canada as Governor.