“I have endeavoured to meet success without elation and reverse without discouragement,” he said to his followers in Parliament in May, 1914, in acknowledging their testimonial to him on the completion of forty years of continuous membership in the House of Commons. The “father of Parliament,” in point of length of service as in point of ripe judgment, oratorical graces and public experience, he remained, in Opposition as in power, an optimist and an unflagging worker. During the fifteen years of his Premiership Sir Wilfrid Laurier, with the exception of his Imperial Conference trips and his western tour of 1910, and during election campaigns, was scarcely ever away from his post at the Capital. As leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition he was daily in his office attending to a large correspondence, looking after the details of party organization, receiving many callers who sought advice or assistance, and keeping abreast, through books and periodicals, of all national problems and world movements. For half a century Wilfrid Laurier fought the battles of Canadian democracy—for responsible government, for social justice, for equality of opportunity, for freedom for the common people—the ordinary, everyday folk—in the age-long fight between entrenched and aggressive self-interest and altruistic common interest. “The happiness of the masses of the people is the underlying consideration of government,” he said to the students of the University of Toronto, in an address in December, 1913. And in the policies which he advocated there was proof of his sincere belief in the ideal of government he thus stated. He led the fight for the revision of the tariff downward, so that greedy men might be prevented from taking undue tolls from their fellow-men, so that combines and corporations should be curbed when they attempted “to fix prices one way to the producer and another way to the consumer.” Addressing a great gathering of new foreign settlers in western Canada as Premier, in welcoming them and bidding them partake of the advantages of British citizenship, he feelingly and significantly alluded to this step in his career. “I live myself in this land,” said he, “as an example of the breadth and freedom of British institutions. It is an illustration of that thing upon which the British system is based. I am not of English blood. My ancestors were of the French race. Yet I am acknowledged as the leader of the Parliament of Canada, irrespective of the blood in my veins. Twenty-two years ago I took the leadership of the Liberal party. Friends came to me after Mr. Blake’s retirement and offered me the leadership. I hesitated. I told them that I thought it was not fitting that I, coming from the race of the minority, worshipping with the minority, should accept it. In reply they told me that the Liberal party knew neither race nor creed. They said: ‘Whoever is worthy of our land is worthy of our leadership.’ And I accepted.