_The Imperial Federation Journal_ published this memorial and Lord Lansdowne's reply, and spoke of the energy and _élan_ which the Canadian branches were displaying, and then added prophetically, "They have, if we mistake not, set a ball a-rolling that will be found ere long too big to be described in the half dozen lines of print that is all the great English newspapers have so far seen fit to devote to the subject." The organisation of new branches of the League followed rapidly the successful meeting in Toronto. On the 2nd April, 1888, a strong branch was formed at Brantford, Ontario. On the 16th April another was formed at St. Thomas, another about the same time at Port Arthur, on the 4th May another at Orillia, while a very successful meeting of the Ottawa Branch was held on the 22nd April, to carry a resolution in favour of discriminating tariffs between the Colonies and the Mother Country. On the 4th June there was a rousing meeting of the branch of the League at Halifax, Nova Scotia, at which a resolution was unanimously carried in favour of reciprocal trade between the colonies and Great Britain. At this meeting the late Archbishop O'Brien, one of the ablest and most patriotic men that Canada has produced, made a most eloquent and powerful speech against commercial union or annexation, and, speaking of the men advocating these ideas, he said: There are, however, others of this section less worthy of respect. They are men who have not courage to face great national problems, but think it wisdom to become the Cassandra of every noble undertaking. These men have for leader and mouthpiece Goldwin Smith, the peripatetic prophet of pessimism. Because, forsooth, his own life has been a dismal failure, because his overweening vanity was badly injured in its collision with Canadian common sense, because we would not take phrases void of sense for apophthegms of wisdom, he, the fossilised enemy of local autonomy and the last defender of worn-out bigotry, has put his feeble curse on Canadian nationality and assumed the leadership of the gruesome crowd of Missis Gummidges, who see no future for Canada but vassalage to the United States. Let them, if it so pleases, wring their hands in cowardly despair; but are we, the descendants of mighty races, the inheritors of a vast patrimony, the heirs of noble traditions, so poor in resources or so degenerate as to know no form of action save the tears and handwringings of dismal forebodings? It is an insult, and should be resented as such, to be told that annexation is our destiny. The promoters of Imperial Federation are called dreamers. Well, their dream is at least an ennobling one, one that appeals to all the noble sentiments of manhood. But what are we to say to the dreary prophets of evil, the decriers of their country, the traitors of their magnificent inheritance? They are not dreamers: they are the dazed victims of a