In the Times of Wednesday, under the title of "An
Imperialist Campaign," Mr. J. Casten. Hopkins, editor of the Canadian Annual Review, contributes an instructive article on Mr. T. P. O'Connor's visit to Canada in October. He shows first how the way was smoothed by despatches from London to the Canadian papers indi- cating that a policy of settlement of Irish Home-rule on Federal lines was in the air and being considered by both parties. But the Irish missionaries on their arrival adopted different lines,—Mr. Redmond in the States standing firmly on the platform of Butt and Parnell, while Mr. O'Connor "preached a new dispensation of Empire unity, a gospel of Federalism for the United Kingdom, and a distant possibility of Imperial Federation." Mr. Hopkins then traces Mr. O'Connor's progress from East to West, showing by repeated extracts from his speeches that he was in favour of "Home-rule all round" in the British Isles, and, to quote from one typical speech at Vancouver, that he was asking nothing for Ireland that he did not ask for England, Scotland, and
Wales. Simultaneously cabled despatches emphasised the growth of the Federalist movement in Great Britain, and stated that it was the central theme of the Conference. In short, the issue which Mr. O'Connor presented "was emphatically an issue of Imperial loyalty and unity based on an application of the Federal principle to the United Kingdom," and his tour "had nothing to do with the real political issue in England or with the fighting controversies of parties in the present General Election."
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