BEING A COURSE OF LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW IN 1912 BY JOHN HEPBURN MILLAR, M.A. PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AND CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY IN THE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, 1911-12; AUTHOR OF "A LITERARY HISTORY OF SCOTLAND" "Mr. Hepburn Millar has written a cheerful and delightful book. All lecturers ought to thank him for the proof he has given here, that their trade is not essentially a dull one; while at the same time they may envy his skill, and do their best to find the secret of it. He has chosen his ingredients well, and his treatment of them is most dexterous."—Professor W. P. Ker, in the SCOTTISH HISTORICAL REVIEW. "Mr. Hepburn Millar has succeeded well. Here there is a guide to the memoir literature of Scotland, which may serve as Sainte-Beuve does for the French memoirs." -THE TIMES. To the reader who would gather a general impression of the course of Scottish intellectual life during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no better or pleasanter guide could be recommended. It is both entertaining and stimulating."-SCOTSMAN. "Professor Millar is a real leader and deserves faithful followers."-DAILY MAIL. GLASGOW: JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY "The book is not only a valuable addition to the history of Scotland, but is also very good reading.". THE OUTLOOK. "The result is excellent. The extracts are numerous and sometimes striking, while the comments are by turns witty (generally witty), discriminating, and suggestive, so that there is seldom a dull page." MANCHESTER GUARDIAN. "These lectures serve a useful purpose by introducing Scottish people to a number of more or less distinguished countrymen whom they have wholly neglected or pretty well forgotten."-GLASGOW HERALD. CONTENTS I. The Nightmare of the Covenant: Historians: Journal Writers: Devotional Authors. II. Drummond: Lithgow: Urquhart. III. Mackenzie: Fletcher: Walker: Wodrow. IV. The Change after the Revolution: The Three Great Figures-Hume, Robertson, Smith: The Endeavour to write English: Lord Kames. V. Lord Monboddo: Campbell: Hugh Blair: Millar. LIST OF PORTRAITS SIR THOMAS URQUHART SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE OF ROSEHAUGH ROBERT WODROW how the land lay-that French Canada was fundamentally conservative, and that discontent was mainly a consequence of sheer stupidity and error on the part of England. Who will venture to say,' he asked, 'that the last hand which waves the British flag on American ground may not be that of a French Canadian.'1 But his final settlement of the question came with 1849, and the introduction of that Rebellion Losses Bill which has been already mentioned. The measure was, in the main, an act of justice to French sufferers, for they had naturally shared but slightly in earlier and partial schemes of compensation; and the opposition was directed quite frankly against the French inhabitants of Canada as traitors, who deserved, not recompense, but punishment. Now there were many cases like that of the village of St. Benoit, the safety of which Sir John Colborne had guaranteed when he occupied it for military purposes, but which, in his absence, the loyalist volunteers had set on fire and destroyed. The inhabitants might be disloyal, but in the eyes of an equal justice a wrong had been done, and must be righted. The idea of the bill was not new-it was not Elgin's bill; and if his predecessors had been right, then the French politicians were justified in claiming that its system of compensation must be followed till all legitimate claims had been met. It would be disingenuous to deny that Elgin knew what an effect his support of the bill would have in Lower Canada. I was aware of two facts,' he told Grey in 1852 : Firstly, that M. La Fontaine would be unable to retain the support of his countrymen if he failed to introduce a measure of this description; and secondly, that my refusal would be taken by him and his friends as a proof that they had not my confidence.' But it seems to me that his chief concern was to hold the balance level, to redress an actual grievance, and to repress the fury of BritishCanadian Tories whose unrestrained action would have flung Canada into a new and complicated struggle of races and parties. 'I am firmly convinced,' he told Grey in June, speaking of American election movements at this time, that the only thing which prevented an invasion of Canada was the political contentment prevailing among the French Canadians and Irish Catholics'; and that political contentment was the result of Elgin's action in supporting his ministers. Judicial restraint raised to a heroic degree had enabled Elgin to do the French what they counted a great service; and the rage and disorder of the opposition only 1 Elgin-Grey Corr.: Elgin to Grey, 4 May, 1848. played the more surely into the Governor's hands, and established, beyond chance of alteration, French loyalty to Elgin.1 From that day to this, although there have been incidents, party moves, and imprudences, French and British in Canada have played the political game together. It was in the great BaldwinLa Fontaine ministry that the joint action, within the Canadian parties, of French and British, had its substantial beginning; and while the traditions and idiosyncrasies of Quebec were too ingrained and notable to suffer change beyond a certain point, the constitutional system was henceforth based on the mutual support, whether among Tories or Liberals, of French and English. It was from this point too that Elgin was able to discern the conservative genius of the French people, and to prophesy when once Baldwin's Whig influence had withdrawnthe union between the French and the moderate Conservatives, on which John A. Macdonald based his long and imperial control of power in Canada. The nationalist question is so intermingled with the constitutional, that it is not always easy to separate the two issues; but a careful study of the Elgin-Grey correspondence proves that the same qualities which settled the latter difficulty ended also French grievances-saving common-sense which did not refuse to do the obvious thing; bonhomie which understood that a well-mannered people may be wooed from its isolation by a little humouring; a mind resolute to administer to every British subject equal rights; and an austere refusal to let arrogant and self-appreciative Toryism claim to itself a kind of oligarchic glory at the expense of citizens less Anglo-Saxon than itself. There is a third aspect of Elgin's work in Canada, of wider scope than either of those already mentioned, and one in which his claims to distinction have been almost forgotten. That is, his services to the working theory of the British Empire. He was one of those earlier sane imperialists, whose claims some recent noisy demonstrators have found it easy to disregard. It is not too much to say that, when Elgin came to Canada, the future of the British colonial empire was a very open question. Politicians at home had placed in front of themselves an awkward dilemma. According to the stiffer Tories, the colonies must be held in with a firm hand-how firm, Stanley had illustrated in his administration of Canada. Yet Tory stiffness naturally produced colonial 1 See an interesting reference in a letter from India to Sir Charles Wood; Walrond, op. cit. pp. 419-20. discontent, and a very natural doubt at home as to the possibility of holding the colonies by such methods. On the other hand, there were those, like Cobden, who while they believed with the Tories that colonial home-rule was certain to result in colonial independence, were nevertheless too loyally laissez faire men to resist colonial claims. They looked to an immediate but peaceful dissolution of the empire. It is curious (the more so because of the great names connected. with this view) to find Grey writing in 1849 to Elgin: Unfortunately there begins to prevail in the House of Commons, and, I am sorry to say, in the highest quarters, an opinion (which I believe to be utterly erroneous) that we have no interest in preserving our colonies, and ought therefore to make no sacrifice for that purpose. Peel, Graham, and Gladstone, if they do not avow this opinion as openly as Cobden and his friends, yet betray very clearly that they entertain it, nor do I find some members of the Cabinet free from it.' It never seemed to strike anyone but a few Radicals like Durham and Buller, that Britons still retained British sentiments, even across the seas, and that they desired both to live under the flag,' and, at the same time, to retain those popular rights in government which they possessed at home. A Canadian Governor-General, then, had to deal with British Cabinets, which alternated between foolish rigour and foolish slackness, and with politicians who never reflected on the responsibilities of empire when they flung before careless British audiences irresponsible discussions on colonial independence—as if it were an academic subject and not a critical issue. Elgin had imperial difficulties, all his own, to make his task more complicated. Not only were there French and Irish nationalists ready for agitation; but the United States lay across the southern border; and annexation to that mighty and flourishing republic seemed to many the natural euthanasia of British North American rule. Peel's great reforms in the tariff had rekindled annexationist talk; for while Lord Stanley's bill of 1843 had ' attracted all the produce of the west to the St. Lawrence' by its colonial preference, 'Peel's bill of 1846 drives the whole of the produce down the New York channels of communication... ruining at once mill-owners, forwarders, and merchants.' And every petty and personal disappointment, every error in Colonial Office administration, sent a new group to cry down the British 1 Elgin-Grey Corr.: Grey to Elgin, 18 May, 1849. 2 Elgin-Grey Corr.: Elgin, 16 November, 1848. |