Majesty's army,' treated the representative of the Crown with the most obvious lack of courtesy. Nevertheless, when opinion changed, and when a coalition attacked and unseated the great Progressive ministry of 1848-1854, Elgin, without a moment's hesitation, turned to the men who had insulted and miscalled him. To the great astonishment of the public, as well as to his own,' wrote Laurence Oliphant, who was then on Elgin's staff, 'Sir Allan M'Nab, who had been one of his bitterest opponents ever since the Montreal events, was sent for to form a ministryLord Elgin by this act satisfactorily disproving the charges of having either personal or political partialities in the selection of his ministers.' 2

But the first great constitutional Governor of Canada had to interpret constitutionalism as something more than mere obedience to public dictates with regard to his councillors. He had to educate these councillors, and the public, into the niceties of British constitutional manners, and he had to create a new vocation for the Governor-General-the exchange of dictation for rational influence. He had to teach his ministers moderation in their measures, and, indirectly, to show the opposition how to avoid crude and extreme methods in their fight for office. When his high political courage, in consenting to a bill very obnoxious to the opposition, forced them into violence, he kept his temper and his head, and the opposition leaders learned, not from punishment, but from quiet contempt, to express dissent in modes other than those of arson and sticks and stones. For seven years, in modes so restrained as to be hardly perceptible even in his private letters to Grey, he guided these first experimental cabinets into smooth water, and when he left, he left behind him politicians trained by his own efforts to govern Canada according to British usage.

At the same time his influence on the British Cabinet was as quiet and certain. He was still responsible to the British Crown and Cabinet, and a weaker man would have forgotten the problems which the new Canadian constitutionalism was bound to create there. Two instances will illustrate the point, and Elgin's clear perception of his duty. They are both taken from the Rebellion Losses Bill episode, and the Montreal riots, of 1849. The Bill which caused the trouble

1 He refers to military men; most of whom, I regret to say, consider my ministers and myself little better than rebels' (11 June, 1849). 2 Episodes in a Life of Adventure, p. 75.

had been introduced to complete a scheme of compensation for all those who had suffered loss in the late Rebellion, whether French or English, and had been passed by majorities. in both houses; but while there seemed no valid reason for disallowing it, Elgin suspected trouble-indeed, at first, he viewed the measure with personal disapproval. He might have refused permission to bring in the Bill; but 'only imagine,' he wrote, how difficult it would have been to discover a justification for my conduct, if at a moment when America was boiling over with bandits and desperadoes, and when the leaders of every faction in the Union, with the view of securing the Irish vote for the presidential election, were vying with each other in abuse of England, and subscribing funds for the Irish Republican Union, I had brought on such a crisis in Canada by refusing to allow my administration to bring in a bill to carry out the recommendation of Lord Metcalfe's commissioners.' He might have dissolved Parliament, but it would be rather a strong measure to have recourse to it (dissolution) because a Parliament elected one year ago under the auspices of the present opposition passed by a majority of more than two to one a measure introduced by the Government.'s He might have reserved the bill for rejection or approval at home; but I should only throw upon Her Majesty's Government, or (as it would appear to the popular eye here) on Her Majesty herself, a responsibility which rests, and ought I think to rest, on my own shoulders.' 4 He gave his assent to the Bill, suffered personal violence at the hands of the Montreal crowd and the opposition, but, since he stood firm, he triumphed, and saved both the dignity of the Crown and the friendship of the French for his government.

2

The other instance of his skill in dovetailing Canadian autonomy into British supremacy is less important, but, in a way, more extraordinary in its subtlety. As a servant of the Crown, he had to furnish despatches, which were liable to be published as Parliamentary papers, and so to be perused by Canadian

1 The obvious point, made by the Tories in Canada, and by Gladstone in England, was that the new scheme of compensation was certain to make recompense to many who had actually been in arms in the Rebellion, although their guilt might not be provable in a court of law. See Gladstone's speech, Hansard, 14 June, 1849.

2 Elgin to Grey, concerning Grey's Colonial Policy, 8 October, 1852. Metcalfe's policy on the rebellion losses had really forced Elgin's hand. • Ibid.

3 Elgin-Grey Corr., 14 March.

politicians. Elgin had therefore to reckon with two publicsthe British Parliament, which desired information, and the Canadian Parliament, which desired to maintain its dignity and freedom. Before the outrage, and when it was extremely desirable to leave matters as fluid as possible, Elgin simply refrained from giving details to the Colonial Office. I could not have made my official communication to you in reference to this Bill, which you could have laid before Parliament, without stating or implying an irrevocable decision on this point. To this circumstance you must ascribe the fact that you have not heard from me officially.'1 Even more shrewdly, at a later date, he made Grey cancel, in his book on Colonial Policy, details of the outrage which followed the passing of the Act; for, said he, 'I am strongly of opinion that nothing but evil can result from the publication, at this period, of a detailed and circumstantial statement of the disgraceful proceedings which took place after the Bill passed.... The surest way to arrest a process of conversion is to dwell on the errors of the past, and to place in a broad light the contrast between present sentiments and those of an earlier date.' In constitutional affairs manners make, not merely the man, but the possibility of government; and Elgin's highest quality as a constitutionalist was, not so much his understanding of the instrument of government, as his knowledge of the constitutional temper, and the need within it of humanity and common-sense.

2

Great as was Elgin's achievement in rectifying Canadian constitutional practice, his solution of the nationalist difficulty in Lower Canada was possibly a greater triumph of statesmanship; for the present modus vivendi, which still shows no signs of breaking down, dates from the years of Elgin's governorship. The earlier nineteenth century was pre-eminently the epoch of nationalism. Italy, Germany, and Hungary, with Mazzini as their prophet, were all struggling for the acknowledgment of their national claims, and within the British Islands themselves, the Irish nationalists furnished, in Davis and the writers to The Nation, disciples and apostles of the new gospel. It is always dangerous to trace European influences across the Atlantic; but there is little doubt that the French rebellion of 1837 owed something to Europe; and the arch-rebel Papineau's paper, L'Avenir, echoes, in an empty blustering fashion, the cries of the nationalistic revolution 1 Elgin-Grey Corr., 12 April, 1849.

2 Elgin to Grey concerning Grey's Colonial Policy, 8 October, 1852. The italics are my own.

of 1848.1 The defeats of 1837 and 1838, followed by the union of Quebec with Upper Canada, seemed to have settled matters by external force; but the French were far from being satisfied.

Durham, in his Report, had calculated on the problem being solved by the absorption of the stationary French nation in a rapidly increasing British population. But he had forgotten that from the Quebec Act of 1774 England had systematically fostered French and Catholic feeling as against American democracy; and a mere physical inconvenience, but one hard to remedythat the French birth-rate was in excess of that of the AngloSaxon colonists. Sydenham, the initiator of union, acted in accordance with Durham's speculations; and, finding no readiness among the French to meet his wishes, contrived to array against him the whole 'Canadian' nation. In the words of his successor, under whose short regime there were some signs of improvement, 'he treated those [Frenchmen] who approached him with slight and rudeness, and thus he converted a proud and courteous people-which even their detractors acknowledge them to beinto personal and irreconcilable enemies.' 2 More perhaps by accident than by real political affinity, the French under their great Parliamentary leader, La Fontaine, made a close alliance with the British reformers under Robert Baldwin, which not all the efforts of wily Tory managers could destroy. Hence, in the fierce struggle for responsible government under Sir Charles Metcalfe, the French fought side by side with their reforming allies, and the temporary check to constitutionalism was also a new reason for keener French nationalist feeling.

Elgin, then, found on his arrival that British administration (and it must be remembered that Stanley at home had been as blameworthy as Metcalfe in Canada) had flung every element in French-Canadian politics into headlong opposition to itself. How dangerous the situation was, one may gather from the disquieting rumours of United States ambitions, and from the Irish troubles and passions which floods of unkempt and wretched immigrants were bringing with them to their new homes in America. Elgin's second year of office, 1848, was the year of nationalism in Europe; and he had to face the possibility of a '48 rising under the old leaders of '37. His solution of the difficulty proceeded pari passu with his constitutional work. In the 1 Elgin kept very closely in touch with the sentiments of the Canadian press, French and English. See his letters, passim.

2 Bagot to Stanley [confidential], 26 September, 1842.

latter, he had seen that he must remove the disquieting subject of 'responsible government' from the party programme of the Progressives, and the politic surrender of 1847 had gained his end. Towards French nationalism he acted in the same spirit. Of the French politicians he wrote: They seem incapable of comprehending that the principles of constitutional government must be applied against them as well as for them; and whenever there appears to be a chance of things taking this turn, they revive the ancient cry of nationality, and insist on their right to have a share in the administration, not because the party with which they have chosen to connect themselves is in the ascendant, but because they represent a people of distinct origin.' 1

But how could this pathological phase of nationalism be ended? His first Tory advisers suggested the old trick of making converts-les Vendus their countrymen used to call thembut the practice had long since been found useless. His next speculation was whether the French could, as Liberals or Tories, be made to take sides, apart altogether from nationalist considerations. But, after all, the political solidarity of the French had only been a kind of trades-unionism to guard French interests against an actual menace to their very existence as a nation within the empire; and they were certain to act only with Baldwin and his friends, the one party which had regarded them as being other than traitors, or suspects, or at best tools.

No complete solution of the problem was possible, but when Elgin surrendered to the Progressives, he was conceding also to the French-by admitting them to a recognised place within the constitution, and doing so without reservation. From that moment he and Canada were safe. He remained doubtful during part of 1848, for the notorious Papineau had been elected by acclamation to the Parliament which held its first session that year; and he had searched in vain... through the French organs of public opinion for a frank and decided expression of hostility to the anti-British sentiments propounded in Papineau's address."2 He did not at first understand that La Fontaine, not Papineau, was the French leader, and that the latter represented only himself and a few Rouges of vague and unsubstantial revolutionary opinions. Nevertheless, he gave his French ministers his confidence, and he applied his singular powers of winning men to appeasing French discontent. As early as May, 1848, he saw 1 Elgin-Grey Corr.: Elgin to Grey, 28 June, 1847.

2 Elgin-Grey Corr.: Elgin to Grey, 7 January, 1848.