As to imperial federation, Sir Wilfrid remarked that he has ever been openly attracted by that aspiration toward permanent British union, on which advocacy of the vague project has ever been bottomed. He is, as he said to me, and as all his long series of political actions have manifested, British in heart and way of political thinking, as indeed substantially all his French-Canadian compatriots are. British liberality, not to say liberalism, has attached them to the British system as firmly as any community originating from the United Kingdom. It was a French-Canadian statesman who asserted, some fifty years ago, when many British-Canadians seemed tending toward union with the United States, "The last shot fired in Canada for British connection will be from a French-Canadian." That was before the civil war abolished slavery. But, even as the Britishism of Old Country liberals is strongly tinctured by devotion to ideals which Americans are wont to regard as theirs--ideals making for settled peace, industry, the uplift of the "common people," fair room and reward for those abilities which conspicuously serve the general welfare--so Sir Wilfrid and his compatriots acknowledge their Britishism to be acutely conscious of political kinship with the American people. The French-Canadian yearning, like that of many Canadians of British origin, is rather for English-speaking union--a union of at least thorough understanding and common designs with the American people--than for the narrower exclusive British union sought by Canadian imperial federationists. Sir Wilfrid said, in effect, (I do not profess to report his very words,) that federation of those British communities widely separated by geography, but alike in race, language, laws, principles, has always attracted him as a project of excellent intentions. It is at worst a noble dream. That dream has become less impracticable than it was formerly, he thinks, by reason of the essential diminution of the world, diminution of distances and of time by latter-day inventions. Against the idea of general representation in a central Parliament at London, Sir Wilfrid pointed out that Edmund Burke objected "opposuit natura"--nature forbade it. The wisest of political philosophers could not foresee the telegraph, wireless, steam, airships. These have made a useful central imperial Parliament at least conceivable. Could it be more useful than the advisory council, or Imperial Conference which has become quadrennial, and might possibly become annual? That is matter for discussion. Sir Wilfrid said that such is the political genius of the British race that he would be rash who alleged any design impracticable toward which the race may tend so generally as to put it under discussion for arrangement of details. Conservation of local self-government, prime essential to agreement for union on common purposes, might prove reconcilable with federated defense.