the best speakers on the continent. That great gathering of the
railway and business men of the United States and Canada was assembled
for the purpose of taking measures to secure a shorter ocean route to
Europe than was afforded by steamships sailing from New York. It was
thought that a better plan would be to run steamships from some port on
the west coast of Ireland to a port on the east coast of Nova Scotia, a
distance of about two thousand miles, and to connect the latter with New
York by a line of railway. No one doubted at that time that this was a
plan that was likely to succeed, and probably it would have done so if
there had been no improvement in the construction of steamships. No one
dreamed in those days that boats with a speed of twenty-five knots an
hour and of twenty thousand tons displacement would be running to New
York before the century was ended, and that the voyage to Liverpool
would be reduced to less than six days.

The Portland Convention included many eminent men from the United States
and Canada and not a few that could justly be described as orators, but
it was universally admitted that in eloquence Attorney-General Wilmot,
of New Brunswick, exceeded them all. The reporter of the proceedings of
the convention stated, in the pamphlet afterwards published, that it was
due to the speaker and to himself to say that "he had been entirely
unable to give anything like a report of the remarks of Mr. Wilmot." The
reporter also quotes the statement of another that "Mr. Wilmot delivered
one of the most spicy, eloquent and enlivening speeches which he ever
heard, which, while it kept the audience in the best spirits, was
replete with noble sentiments commending themselves to the hearts of all
present. His remarks were generally upon the moral, social and
intellectual influences which would result from the contemplated work.
No sketch would do justice to its power and beauty, its flashes of wit
and humour."

{WILMOT'S GREAT SPEECH}

The following report of Wilmot's great convention speech, although
admittedly very imperfect, is given as almost the only example that
survives of his eloquence:--

"I find myself in a new position in addressing a convention in a city,
in a state, and under a government that is foreign to me, as far as
citizenship is concerned. But I feel myself at home, for I am among
those who derive their inheritance from the same common ancestry. I am,
Mr. President, not a son of New E