view to independence were to be
differently dealt with. Baldwin had Lord John's speech in his hand. He
is a man of singularly placid demeanour, but he has been seriously
ill, so possibly his nerves are shaken--at any rate I never saw him so
much moved. 'Have you read the latter part of Lord J. Russell's
speech?' he said to me. I nodded assent. 'For myself,' he added, 'if
the anticipations therein expressed prove to be well founded, my
interest in public affairs is gone for ever. But is it not hard upon
us while we are labouring, through good and evil report, to thwart the
designs of those who would dismember the Empire, that our adversaries
should be informed that the difference between them and the Prime
Minister of England is only one of time? If the British Government has
really come to the conclusion that we are a burden to be cast off
whenever a favourable opportunity offers, surely we ought to be
warned.'

I replied that while I regretted as much as he could do the paragraph
to which he referred, I thought he somewhat mistook its import: that I
believed no man living was more opposed to the dismemberment of the
Empire than Lord J. Russell: that I did not conceive that he had any
intention of deserting the Colonies, or of inviting them to separate
from England; but that he had in the sentence in question given
utterance to a purely speculative, and in my judgment most fallacious,
opinion, which, was shared, I feared, by very many persons both in
England and the Colonies: that I held it to be a perfectly unsound and
most dangerous theory, that British Colonies could not attain maturity
without separation, and that my interest in labouring with them to
bring into full play the principles of Constitutional Government in
Canada would entirely cease if I could be persuaded to adopt it. I
said all this I must confess, however, not without misgiving, for I
could not but be sensible that, in spite of all my allegations to the
contrary, my audience was disposed to regard a prediction of this
nature, proceeding from a Prime Minister, less as a speculative
abstraction than as one of that class of prophecies which work their
own fulfilment. I left the Council Chamber disheartened, with the
feeling that Lord J. Russell's reference to the manhood of Colonies
was more likely to be followed by