2110-19-5-9

Toronto Club.

1. A purely convivial occasion. Representatives of every profession, including commercial and financial life. Story of Lord Rosebery.

2. No such depression tonight. Deeply impressed by the variety of interests represented. The Emperor Gordian. Very pleasant to meet representataives of so many different human activities. I have recently been too restricted to members of my own calling. Story of Highland minister at General Assembly.

3. Dining habit deeply rooted in British character. Winston Churchill. There is a famous dining club in London, etc. A precedent followed by the London City Companies.

4. One word in a more serious vein. A labor story of a great experiement. Critical moment for Canada and the Empire.

2.

What Canada has done. Canning's phrase.

5. Samuel Pepys.

Toronto Club , Toronto.

I am deeply indebt ed to you for your hospitality tonight, and for your most generous welcome. I understand that I am not expected to make a speech on any serious subject, and that this occasion, by old custom, is purely a convivial one. I realise that tonight I am in the presence of distinguished representatives of every profession/ in one of Canada's greatest cities, including many men eminent in commercial and financial life. I remember once being present at a dinner in Edinburgh, the jubilee dinner of Scottish Chartered Accountants, at which the late Lord Rosebery was the chief guest. I remember that he said that to dine with these eminent financial authorities seemed to him more of "an arduous duty than a congenial festival." And the reason he gave was that accountants were a kind of "financial conscience", and that to sit down to dinner with a large number of consciences seemed to him rather appalling, since he had quite enough trouble with his own.

I do not, feel any such depression tonight. I look upon this dinner as simply a gathering of friends, who are welcoming, with Cenadian generosity, the re presentative of their King. But I am deeply impressed by the variety of interests which are represented here. There is a sentence somewhere in Gibbon's Decline and Fall where he is describing one of the Emperors, I think the Emperor Gordian, which runs, "Twenty-two acknowledged wives and a library of sixty thousand volumes attested the width of his interests and the variety of his inclinations." I think that the

2.

latter part of that sentence might be applied to this company tonight. There is no limit to the width of their interests and the variety of their inclinations.

It is very pleasant, gentlemen, for me to meet so many representatives of so many different human activities. In recent years in Eneland I have always tended to live too much with members of my own calling. I have had a good many different callings in my time, so perhaps I have not been so circumscribed as most people. But still, I have felt that I was in a groove, and saw perhaps a little too much of my colleagues in the same line of country, whether they were academic dignitaries, or writers, or politicians. The society of one's fellow-workers is always pleasant, but there are moments when it palls, and one longs for a wider world. When I was Lord High Commissioner at Holyrood I was told of a Committee of the General Assembly in which a Highland minister, who had never before attended an Assembly, sat solidly through debate after debate. In the end he rose and unburdened his soul. He said he had been having a little too much of his own profession. His fellow ministers, he said, seemed to him to be a little like manure, "which, when dispersed over a wide area, is wholesome and beneficial, but which, when collected into one place, is somewhat nauseous."

The habit of dining together, gentlemen, is deeply rooted in the British character, and I believe most firmly in its value. If I had Mr. Winston Churchill's gift of sonorous language I should talk about its "therapeutic and thaumaturgic value as an emollient of human corrugositis, or some such splendiferous phrase. There is a famous legal dining club in London at which I have sometimes been a

3.

guest, which had a remarkable origin. It originally began in a bitter dispute about a bridge. The disputants, instead of resorting to fisticuffs, or an action at law, very wisely decided that it would be better to dine together and talk it over, with the result that a most flourishing dining club was formed, whicb has continued for two hundred years. That has always seemed to me an excellent precedent. It is a precedent which has been followed by the famous livery companies in the City of London, whose supreme virtue is hospitality. In good times and in bad times they gather their friends about them, a happy custom which does much to sweeten public life. They show a true catholicity in their invitations. When Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector he was given a sumptuous dinner by the City Companies and presented with a service of plate. When Cromwell passed, and King Charles II came to his own, he, too, was royally entertained. In all that there was no inconsistency. The London City Companies held the sound view that whether a man, or a ruler, was bad or good, he would be a better man and a better ruler if he were given an excellent dinner.

May I add one word in a more serious vein? I have come to Canada with the most complete enthusiasm and interest for the work whicb lies before me. I have many ties of kinship with the Dominion. All my life I have had many Canadian friends. I already know something of the beauty and charm of the land, and for me to come to Canada is to feel something of the holiday spirit. But much more than that I feel that I have come to a land which, in a sense, is the laboratory of a great experiment. The world is pass-