In his remarks at the venerable Scottish institution, Laurier decided to offer the young men in his audience some marital advice. Most importantly, he told the group they should marry young! In doing so, Laurier was repeating what an earlier speaker at the ceremony, Dr. Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafter, a leading Scottish professor of physiology, had told graduates.

“Might he be permitted to join his advice to Dr. Schaffer's to give them the views of one who unfortunately was no longer young and, as he hoped, was not altogether old?” Laurier asked as reported in press accounts of his convocation address. “His advice would be to them to do as they did in his country, not wait until they were rich and earned princely incomes in order to marry, but do as they do in Canada, marry young."

Laurier also compared the situation of women in Canada versus that of New Zealand. “While women could vote in that far-off country, he said, in Canada the nation he led, and in particular in his native province of Quebec, a different approach was taken. Instead of granting women the franchise, "They had something better to do for women than to give them the suffrage. And what was it they did for them? In his country, and especially in the Province from which he came and perhaps they would not be surprised as to the French Province of Quebec what they did for women was to marry them.”