There have been prime ministers of Canada casually thrown up by the tide of events and as casually re-engulfed; but Wilfrid Laurier was not one of them. There may have been something accidental in his rise to leadership, but his capture of the premiership was a solid political achievement. The victory of June 23, 1896, crowned with triumph the daring strategy of the campaign. But popular opinion regarded the victory as a gift of the gods. The wheel of fortune spinning from the hands of fate had thrown into the high office of the premiership one about whose qualifications there was doubt even in the secret minds of many of his supporters. He was a man of charming manners and of gracious personality. His carriage on the platform and the grace and finish of his speaking had fascinated the public imagination. But what likelihood was there that these qualities would enable him to deal adequately with the harsh realities, the stubborn problems which he must face as premier? Most unlikely, it was generally agreed. The Conservatives, though profoundly chagrined at the trick fate had played upon them, looked forward with pleasurable expectation to the revenge that would be theirs when Laurier, political dilettante and amateur, took up the burden that had been too great for their own Ulysses. They foresaw a Laurier regime which for futility and brevity would take its place in history with the ill-starred prime ministership of Mackenzie. The average Liberal felt that the government, which would get its driving force and executive power from someone else--identity not yet revealed--would have in Laurier a most attractive and genial figurehead. These illusions long persisted, though there was little excuse for them on election night and still less a month later when the Laurier cabinet was in being. To be a Rouge and to be in Montreal during the three weeks following the glorious 23rd of June was the height of felicity. After nearly 50 years of proscription and impotence in their own province, they were triumphant and dominant. Moreover, since they had supplied the majority which made possible the taking of office by the Liberals, they would be triumphant and dominant as well in the Dominion field. Among the election occurrences which they regarded as specially providential was the defeat of Tarte in Beauharnois. If he had been elected it might have been necessary for Laurier to do something for him, but now that he had fallen upon the glacis of the impregnable fortress he had elected to assail, who were they to repine over the doings of fate? "The Moor has done his work; the Moor can go!" Moreover, had he not been for long an inveterate Bleu? Had he not actually been the organizer of Bleu victory when Laurier experienced his memorable defeat in Drummond-Arthabaska in 1877? His defeat made it possible to have a simon-pure Rouge contingent from Quebec.