mate knowledge of foreign policy, but none
of his brother peers had been prepared for the magnificent speech
that he had made on this momentous night.

He had never given his allegiance to any of the political parties of
the day, but he was one of the foremost advocates of what was then
known as the Imperial policy, and which had grown up out of what is
known in the present day as Imperial Federation. To this he
subordinated everything else, and held as his highest, and indeed
almost his only political ideal, the consolidation of Britain and her
colonies into an empire commercially and politically intact and apart
from the rest of the world, self-governing in all its parts as
regards local affairs, but governed as a whole by a representative
Imperial Parliament, sitting in London, and composed of delegates
from all portions of the empire.

This ideal--which, it is scarcely necessary to say, was still
considered as "beyond the range of practical politics"--formed the
keynote of such a speech as had never before been heard in the
British House of Lords. He commenced by giving a rapid but minute
survey of foreign policy, which astounded the most experienced of his
hearers. Not only was it absolutely accurate as far as they could
follow it, but it displayed an intimate knowledge of involutions of
policy at which British diplomacy had only guessed.

More than this, members of the Government and the Privy Council saw,
to their amazement, that the speaker knew the inmost secrets of their
own policy even better than they did themselves. How he had become
possessed of them was a mystery, and all that they could do was to
sit and listen in silent wonder.

He drew a graphic word-picture of the nations of the earth standing
full-armed on the threshold of such a war as the world had never seen
before,--a veritable Armageddon, which would shake the fabric of
society to its foundations, even if it did not dissolve it finally in
the blood of countless battlefields.

He estimated with marvellous accuracy the exact amount of force which
each combatant would be able to put on to the field, and summed up
the appalling mass of potential destruction that was ready to burst
upon the world at a moment's notice. He showed the position of Italy,
and proved to demonstration that if the loan were not immediately
granted, it would be necessary either for Britain to seize her fleet,
as she did that of Denmark a century before--an act which the