ere heading southward through Lancashire, when the news reached us
of that extension of the British Constitution which first gave us a
really Imperial Parliament. The country received the news with a
deep-seated and sober satisfaction. Perhaps the majority hardly
appreciated at once the full significance of this first great
accomplishment of the Free Government. But the published details showed
the simplest among us that by this act the congeries of scattered
nations we had called the British Empire were now truly welded into an
Imperial State. It showed us that we English, and all those stalwart
kinsmen of ours across the Atlantic and on the far side of the
Pacific--north, south, east, and west, wherever the old flag flew--were
now actually as well as nominally subjects of one Government, and that
that Government would for the future be composed of men chosen as their
representatives by the people of every country in the Empire; men drawn
together under one historic roof by one firm purpose--the service and
administration of a great Imperial State.

As I say, the realization produced deep-seated satisfaction. Of late we
had learned to take things soberly in England; but there was no room for
doubt about the effect of this news upon the public. The events of the
past half-year, the pilgrimage of the Canadian preachers, the new
devotion to Duty (which seemed almost a new religion though it was
actually but an awakening to the religion of our fathers), the influx
among us of Colonial kinsmen, and the campaign of _The Citizens_; these
things combined to give us a far truer and more keen appreciation of the
news than had been possible before.

Indeed, looking back upon my experience in Fleet Street, I must suppose
the whole thing would have been impossible before. I could imagine how
my _Daily Gazette_ colleagues would have scoffed at the Imperial
Parliament's first executive act, which was the devising of an Imperial
Customs Tariff to give free trade within the Empire, and complete
protection so far as the rest of the world was concerned, with strictly
reciprocatory concessions to such nations as might choose to offer these
to us, and to no others.

Truly Crondall had said that the Canadian preachers accomplished more
than they knew. The sense of duty, individual and national, burned in
England for the first time since Nelson's day: a steady, white flame.
The acceptance by all classes of the community of the Imperial
Pa