nobler the object the greater the inspiration, and at all events, it is better to aim high than to sink low. It is all important that the body politic should be kept pure and that public life should be considered a public trust. Canada is still young in her political development, and the fact that her population has been as a rule a steady, fixed population, free from those dangerous elements which have come into the United States with such rapidity of late years, has kept her relatively free from any serious social and political dangers which have afflicted her neighbours, and to which I believe they themselves, having inherited English institutions and being imbued with the spirit of English law, will always in the end rise superior. Great responsibility, therefore, rests in the first instance upon the people of Canada, who must select the best and purest among them to serve the country, and, secondly, upon the men whom the legislature chooses to discharge the trust of carrying on the on the government. No system of government or of laws can of itself make a people virtuous and happy unless their rulers recognize in the fullest sense their obligations to the state and exercise their powers with prudence and unselfishness, and endeavour to elevate and not degrade public opinion by the insidious acts and methods of the lowest political ethics. A constitution may be as perfect as human agencies can make it, and yet be relatively worthless while the large responsibilities and powers entrusted to the governing body

THE FORCE OF LAWS

responsibilities and powers not embodied in acts of parliament—are forgotten in view of party triumph, personal ambition, or pecuniary gain. "The laws," says Burke, "reach but a very little way. Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state. Even all the use and potency of the laws depend upon them. Without them your commonwealth is no better than a scheme upon paper, and not a living, active, effective organization."

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

For accounts of the whole career of Lord Elgin see Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin, etc., edited by Theodore Walrond, C.B., with a preface by his brother-in-law, Dean Stanley (London 2nd. ed., 1873); for China mission, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan, by Lawrence Oliphant, his private secretary (Edinburgh, 1869); for the brief Indian administration, The Friend of India for 1862-63. Consult also article in vol. 8 of Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed.; John Charles Dent's Canadian Portrait Gallery (Toronto, 1880), vol. 2, which also contains a portrait; W. J. Rattray's The Scot in British North America (Toronto, 1880) vol. 2, pp. 608-641.

For an historical review of Lord Elgin's administration in Canada, see J. C. Dent's The Last Forty Years, or Canada since the Union of 1841 (Toronto, 1881), chapters XXIII-XXXIV inclusive, with a portrait; Louis P. Turcotte's Le Canada Sous l'Union (Quebec, 1871), chapters I-IV, inclusive; Sir Francis Hincks's Reminiscences of His Public Life (Montreal, 1884) with a portrait of the author; Joseph Pope's Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald, G.C.B. (Ottawa and London, 1894), with portraits of the great statesman, vol. 1, chapters IV-VI inclusive; Lord Grey's Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration (London, 2nd ed., 1853), vol. 1; Sir C. B. Adderley's Review of the Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration, by Earl Grey, and Subsequent Colonial History (London, 1869).

For accounts of the evolution of responsible government in Canada consult the works by Dent, Turcotte, Rattray, Hincks, Grey and Adderley, just mentioned; Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America, submitted to parliament, 1839; Dr. Alpheus Todd's Parliamentary Government in The British Colonies (2nd ed. London, 1894); Bourinot's Manual of the Constitutional History of Canada (Toronto, 1901); his Canada under British Rule (London and Toronto, 1901), chapters VI-VIII inclusive; Memoir of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Lord Sydenham, etc., by his brother G. Poulett Scrope, M.P., (London, 1843), with a portrait of that nobleman; Life and Correspondence of Charles Lord Metcalfe, by J. W. Kaye (London, new ed., 1858). For comparisons between the parliamentary government of Great

Britain or Canada, and the congressional system of the United States, see Walter Bagehot's English Constitution and other political essays (New York, 1889); Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government (Boston, 1885); Dr. James Bryce's American Commonwealth (London, 1888); Bourinot's Canadian Studies in Comparative Politics, in Trans. Roy. Soc. Can., vol. VIII, sec. 2 (old ser.), and in separate form (Montreal, 1891). Other books and essays on the same subject are noted in a bibliography given in Trans. Roy. Soc. Can., vol. XI, old ser., sec. 2, as an appendix to an article by Sir J. G. Bourinot on Parliamentary Government in Canada.

The reader may also profitably consult the interesting series of sketches (with excellent portraits) of the lives of Sir Francis Hincks, Sir A. MacNab, Sir L. H. LaFontaine, R. Baldwin, Bishop Strachan, L. J. Papineau, John Sandfield Macdonald, Antoine A. Dorion, Sir John A. Macdonald, George Brown, Sir E. P. Taché, P. J. O. Chauveau, and of other men notable from 1847-1854, in the Portraits of British Americans (Montreal 1865-67), by J. Fennings Taylor, who was deputy clerk of the old legislative council, and later of the senate of Canada, and a contemporary of the eminent men whose careers he briefly and graphically describes. Consult also Dent's Canadian Portrait Gallery, which has numerous portraits.