The . ; Scottish Historical Review VOL. X., No. 37 OCTOBER 1912 1 Lord Elgin in Canada. 1847-1854. chapters in the history of the British Empire have EARLYas their heroes desperadoes, soldiers, men of exciting and external achievement for in an irrational world personality ; the drum and trumpet play a very real part. But when warfare has died down into administration, and administration has begun to assume its more democratic forms, the new leaders, who lack the bustle and circumstance of the earlier men, make less impres- sion on the popular mind, and the modern world enters into the fruit of their labours forgetful of men too civilized to be impressive. Of such too readily forgotten statesmen, the eighth earl of Elgin and Kincardine is one of the foremost. He dominated Canada during seven critical years in the most critical period of Canadian history 1841-1867; but since his work was not that of war but only of its prevention, and of the creation of Canadian self-government, he has been relegated to the background of history, to make room for more romantic figures. It is time to restore him to his rightful place of pre-eminence. The Canadian episode in Elgin's career furnishes the most perfect and permanently useful service rendered by him to the 1 1 desire to acknowledge the debt which this sketch owes to Dr. A. G. Doughty of the Dominion Archives, Ottawa, through whose courtesy I was permitted to read all the Elgin Papers deposited with him. The volumes of Elgin-Grey Correspondence, at present being prepared at Ottawa for publication by Dr. Doughty and Dr. Adam Shortt, will be one of the most important contributions to the history of the Empire made in recent years. S.H.R. VOL. X. A L. Morison 2 J. he laurels in China and India, and Empire. Although gathered the of Britain, earned a notable place among diplomatists nothing whole so useful that he did is so representative of the man, finished off as are the to others, and so completely rounded and hard work in Canada. Elsewhere he did work seven years of But in the which others had done, or might have done, as well. dominions of his name is history of the self-governing Britain, the almost the first of those who assisted in creating an Empire secret of whose strength was to be local autonomy. of nineteenth Elgin belonged to the greatest group century Victorians their critics now call politicians early self-appreciative them. With Gladstone, Canning, Dalhousie, Herbert, and Peel. All others, he served his apprenticeship under Sir Robert the love of hard of that younger generation reflected the sobriety, and the adminis- fact, the sound but progressive conservatism, high master. It an when trative faculty of their great was epoch had to come but the soundest minds in changes ; tended, spite ahead of a vehement English party tradition, to view the work Gladstone for of them in a non-partizan spirit. himself, long, record of Peel and seemed about to repeat the party-breaking ; and three great proconsuls of the group, Dalhousie, Canning, a task Elgin, found in imperial administration more congenial than Westminster could offer them. Elgin occupies a mediate Dalhousie and position between the administrative careers of Canning, and the Parliamentary and constitutional labours of Gladstone. He was that strange being, a constitutionalist pro- consul his chief in administration in so ; and work lay altering the relation of his office to Canadian popular government, as to take from it much of its initiative, and to make a great surrender to popular opinion. Between his arrival in Montreal at the end of January, 1 847, and the writing of his last official despatch on December 18, 1854, he had established on sure foundations the system of democratic government in Canada. Following on a succession of short-lived and troubled governor- ships, Elgin was faced, on his accession to power in 1847, with the three great allied problems with which Canada then confronted her English governors the character of the government to be conceded to the colonists, the question of the recognition to be or given to, withheld from, French nationalist feeling, and the nature of the connection with her colonies, which surrenders to local feeling on the first and second points, would leave to the mother All three difficulties country. took additional significance Lord Elgin in Canada 3 from the fact that the example of Canada was certain, mutatis mutandis, to be followed by the other greater colonies of the British race. On the first issue Elgin found opinion in a highly aggravated condition. The rebellion of 1837 had made it plain that the former grant of semi-representative government was useless, unless British statesmen were willing to let representative govern- ment be followed by its necessary consequence a ministry representing the majority in the popular assembly, accepted and consulted by the local representative of the Crown. But neither Whigs nor Tories were prepared to make so complete a surrender to local autonomy. A considerable section of the colonists had but lately made armed resistance to British government, and many, especially among the French leaders, had been at least suspects in 1837 and 1838. The Canadian community was still in its immature youth, and its leaders had had few opportunities of learning political methods except perhaps, which was worse than ignorance, some democratic crudities from the United States. The population was composed of Frenchmen who had already rebelled, Irishmen whose conduct at home and in America under the stimulus of famine and nationalist agitation could hardly have been more threatening, and if there were Scotch and English in Upper Canada, the majority had come from the unenfranchised classes in Britain, and were of the submerged three-fourths the helots of English politics. At best, government could be entrusted only to very carefully selected representatives of this sub-political mass. A popular assembly might state its views, but how could the Governor-General accept its dictation in the making of his Executive Council ? A constitutional subtlety complicated the general situation, arising from the difference between the relations of the ministers to the Crown in Britain, and of the ministers to the Governor- General in Canada. Lord John Russell defined the point in a famous despatch to Poulett Thomson, the first governor of the 1 * United Provinces. The power for which a minister is respon- sible in England is not his own power, but the power of the Crown, of which he is for the time the organ. It is obvious that the executive councillor of a colony is in a situation totally different. The Governor, under whom he serves, receives his orders from the of but can the colonial council Crown England ; be the advisers of the Crown of England ? Evidently not, for 1 Russell to Poulett Thomson (later, Lord Sydenham), 14. October, 1839. L. Morison 4 J. with the Crown has other advisers, for the same functions, and superior authority/ in with the This constitutional point, operating conjunction let colonists too much natural unwillingness of Britain to usurp after created a authority in what were, all, imperial concerns, curious dilemma for Russell, fresh from democratic innovations in Britain itself. Russell centred his hopes on mutual for- bearance 'The Governor must only oppose the wishes of the interest of the Assembly when the honour of the Crown, or the are concerned and the must be empire deeply ; Assembly ready to modify some of its measures for the sake of harmony, and l from a reverent attachment to the authority of Great Britain/ a is But opportunism is useless where direct political principle at stake, where the home government has avowedly gone half way towards concession, and where they refuse, on principle, to complete their surrender. The very reason which drives them to resist further concession, must force the colonial democrats to insist on their rights. From 1841 to 1846, a battle royal raged 2 over this ground. Sydenham, one of the ablest servants of the empire in his time, accepted Russell's principle, and, combining in his own person the offices of Governor-General and Prime Minister, attempted at once to maintain the dignity of the Governor, that is, the predominance of the mother country, and by management and occasionally by subtle corruption, to placate the local Progressive party. After a brilliant Parliamentary session that of 1841 he found his cabinet on the brink of defeat a death saved his ; only premature him from confessing failure. His successor, Bagot, surrendering in the face of orders to the contrary from the colonial office, was endured at home for a short on his ill year ; and, retirement through health, Sir Charles Metcalfe, who followed him, came to maintain, and more than Lord maintain, John Russell's status quo, backed by the entire of approval Stanley, who was then administering the Colonial Office with all his power of brilliant and doctrinaire short- sightedness. Unfortunately for Metcalfe and Stanley, a Progres- sive had party organized itself in the province of Upper and Lower with c ' Canada, the demand for responsible government as the main plank in their platform Robert Baldwin, a con- scientious, sure-footed Whig lawyer, leading Upper Canadian 1 Russell to Poulett Thomson, 14 October, 1839. * For the conflict, see Lord Scrope, Life of Sydenham ; : and Kaye, Life of Metcalfe Dent, Forty Tears of Canada. Lord Elgin in Canada 5 resistance to Government, and Lower Canada finding in La Fontaine a French leader who had learned, and could teach his followers, how to resist on constitutional lines.