If the departure to imperial preference had any damage in it for Canadian interests, it would be for those which the Post made its special care; but the spirit of party draws the breath of expediency, and the Post flaunting the Union Jack every other day, put secondary manufactures aside for future discussion, and tickled the wheat-growers with the two-shilling advantage they were coming into at the hands of the English Conservatives, until Liberal leaders began to be a little anxious about a possible loss of wheat-growing votes.

It was, as John Murchison said, a queer position for everybody concerned; queer enough, no doubt, to admit a Tory journal into the house on sufferance and as a special matter; but he had a disapproving look for it as it lay on the hall floor, and seldom was the first to open it.
Nevertheless Lorne found more satisfaction in talking imperialism with his father than with anyone else.

While the practical half of John Murchison was characteristically alive to the difficulties involved, the sentimental half of him was ready at any time to give out cautious sparks of sympathy with the splendour of Wallingham's scheme; and he liked the feeling that a son of his should hark back in his allegiance to the old land.

There was a kind of chivalry in the placing of certain forms of beauty--political honour and public devotion, which blossomed best, it seemed, over there--above the material ease and margin of the new country, and even above the grand chance it offered for a man to make his mark.

Mr Murchison was susceptible to this in anyone, and responsive to it in his son.
As to the local party leaders, they had little more than a shrug for the subject.