ant of something better to say, I alluded to
"this great Empire on which the sun never sets," I was greeted with
volume of cheers sufficient, one might almost have thought, to have
secured the election of a Conservative candidate on the spot. Besides
myself, two other workers were active, who began their political life as
Richard Mallock's supporters at Torquay, and who subsequently rose to
eminence of a wider kind--George Lane Fox, as Chancellor of the Primrose
League, and J. Sandars as secretary and adviser to Mr. Arthur Balfour.
But they, so it seemed to me, found it no easier than I did to vitalize
the non-Radical or temperamentally Conservative classes with any
definite knowledge of the main conditions and forces on which their own
livelihood depended, and which Radicals and revolutionaries would
destroy. Of this state of mind I remember an amusing illustration.

Many Primrose League meetings, at the time of which I now speak and
later, were held at Cockington Court, which was now a political center
for the first time since the days of William and Mary. The proceedings
on one occasion were to begin with a few preliminary speeches, delivered
from some steps in a garden which adjoined the house. The chair was to
be taken by the Duchess (Annie) of Sutherland, who for many years spent
part of the summer at Torquay. Her opening speech consisted of five
words: "I declare this meeting open." Subsequently George Lane Fox moved
a vote of thanks to the duchess "for the very able way in which she had
taken the chair." Never did appropriate brevity receive a more deserved
tribute. These preliminaries having been accomplished, the business of
the day began. The slopes surrounding the house were dotted with various
platforms, from each of which addresses were delivered to all who cared
to listen. The audience which clustered round one of them was soon of
such exceptional size that I joined it in the hope of discovering to
what this fact was due. The platform was occupied by two county members,
both men of worth and weight, but not even the highest talents which
their warmest friends could attribute to them would account, so it
seemed to me, for the outbursts of uproarious applause which greeted
from time to time the one who was now speaking. In the applauded
passages I failed to detect anything more cogent or pungent than the
general substance of those which were passed by in silence. I could find
no explanation of this perplexin