That it is neither desirable nor possible to carry on the government of a province in opposition to the opinion of its people.

That a governor-general can have no ministers who do not enjoy the full confidence of the popular House, or, in the last resort, of the people.

That the governor-general should not refuse his consent to any measure proposed by the ministry unless it is clear that it is of such an extreme party character that the assembly or people could not approve of it.

That the governor-general should not identify himself with any party but make himself “a mediator and moderator between all parties."

That colonial communities should be encouraged to cultivate "a national and manly tone of political morals," and should look to their own parliaments for the solution of all problems of provincial govvernment instead of making constant appeals to the colonial office or to opinion in the mother country, "always ill-informed, and therefore credulous, in matters of colonial politics."

That the governor-general should endeavour to impart to these rising communities the full advantages of British laws, British institutions, and British freedom, and maintain in this way the connection between them and the parent state.

We have seen in previous chapters how industriously, patiently, and discreetly Lord Elgin laboured to carry out these principles in the adminis

A LETTER TO LORD GREY

tration of his government. In 1849 he risked his own life that he might give full scope to the principles of responsible government with respect to the adjustment of a question which should be settled by the Canadian people themselves without the interference of the parent state, and on the same ground he impressed on the imperial government the necessity of giving to the Canadian legislature full control of the settlement of the clergy reserves. He had no patience with those who believed that, in allowing the colonists to exercise their right to self-government in matters exclusively affecting themselves, there was any risk whatever so far as imperial interests were concerned. One of his ablest letters was that which he wrote to Earl Grey as an answer to the unwise utterances of the prime minister, Lord John Russell, in the course of a speech on the colonies in which, "amid the plaudits of a full senate, he declared that he looked forward to the day when the ties which he was endeavouring to render so easy and mutually advantageous would be severed." Lord Elgin held it to be "a perfectly unsound and most dangerous theory, that British colonies could not attain maturity without separation," and in this connection he quoted the language of Mr. Baldwin to whom he had read that part of Lord John Russell's speech to which he took such strong exception. "For myself," said the eminent Canadian, "if the anticipations therein expressed prove to be well

founded, my interest in public affairs is gone forever. But is it not hard upon us while we are labouring, through good and evil report, to thwart the designs of those who would dismember the empire, that our adversaries should be informed that the difference between them and the prime minister of England is only one of time? If the British government has really come to the conclusion that we are a burden to be cast off, whenever a favourable opportunity offers, surely we ought to be warned." In Lord Elgin's opinion, based on a thorough study of colonial conditions, if the Canadian or any other system of government was to be successful, British statesmen must "renounce the habit of telling the colonies that the colonial is a provisional existence." They should be taught to believe that "without severing the bonds which unite them to England, they may attain the degree of perfection, and of social and political development to which organized communities of free men have a right to aspire." The true policy in his judgment was "to throw the whole weight of responsibility on those who exercise the real power, for after all, the sense of responsibility is the best security against the abuse of power; and as respects the connection, to act and speak on this hypothesis that there is nothing in it to check the development of healthy national life in these young communities." He was "possessed," he used the word advisedly, "with the idea that it was possible to maintain on the soil of North

POWER OF THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL America, and in the face of Republican America, British connection and British institutions, if you give the latter freely and trustingly." The history of Canada from the day those words were penned down to the beginning of the twentieth century proves their political wisdom. Under the inspiring influence of responsible government Canada has developed in 1902, not into an independent nation, as predicted by Lord John Russell and other British statesmen after him, but into a confederation of five millions and a half of people, in which a French Canadian prime minister gives expression to the dominant idea not only of his own race but of all nationalities within the Dominion, that the true interest lies not in the severance but in the continuance of the ties that have so long bound them to the imperial state.

Lord Elgin in his valuable letters to the imperial authorities, always impressed on them the fact that the office of a Canadian governor-general has not by any means been lowered to that of a mere subscriber of orders-in-council-of a mere official automaton, speaking and acting by the orders of the prime minister and the cabinet. On the contrary, he gave it as his experience that in Jamaica, where there was no responsible government, he had "not half the power" he had in Canada "with a constitutional and changing cabinet." With respect to the maintenance of the position and due influence of the governor, he used language which gives

a true solution of the problem involved in the adaptation of parliamentary government to the colonial system. "As the imperial government and parliament gradually withdraw from legislative interference, and from the exercise of patronage in colonial affairs, the office of governor tends to become, in the most emphatic sense of the term, the link which connects the mother country and the colony, and his influence the means by which harmony of action between the local and imperial authorities is to be preserved. It is not, however, in my humble judgment, by evincing an anxious desire to stretch to the utmost constitutional principles in his favour, but, on the contrary, by the frank acceptance of the conditions of the parliamentary system, that this influence can be most surely extended and confirmed. Placed by his position above the strife of parties-holding office by a tenure less precarious than the ministers who surround him having no political interests to serve but those of the community whose affairs he is appointed to administer his opinion cannot fail, when all cause for suspicion and jealousy is removed, to have great weight in colonial councils, while he is set at liberty to constitute himself in an especial manner the patron of those larger and higher interests—such interests, for example, as those of education, and of moral and material progress in all its branches-which, unlike the contests of party, unite instead of dividing the members of the body politic."