Lord Elgin by Sir John George Bourinot (ebooks online reader .txt) 📖

feelings with which he left Canada, is such an admirable example of the oratory with which he so often charmed large assemblages, that I give it below in full for the perusal of Canadians of the present day who had not the advantage of hearing him in the prime of his life.

"I wish I could address you in such strains as I have sometimes employed on similar occasions--strains suited to a festive meeting; but I confess I have a weight on my heart and it is not in me to be merry. For the last time I stand before you in the official character which I have borne for nearly eight years. For the last time I am surrounded by a circle of friends with whom I have spent some of the most pleasant days of my life. For the last time I welcome you as my guests to this charming residence which I have been in the habit of calling my home.[23] I did not, I will frankly confess it, know what it would cost me to break this habit, until the period of my departure approached, and I began to feel that the great interests which have so long engrossed my attention and thoughts were passing out of my hands. I had a hint of what my feelings really were upon this point--a pretty broad hint too--one lovely morning in June last, when I returned to Quebec after my temporary absence in England, and landed in the coves below Spencerwood (because it was Sunday and I did not want to make a disturbance in the town), and when with the greetings of the old people in the coves who put their heads out of the windows as I passed along, and cried 'Welcome home again,' still ringing in my ears, I mounted the hill and drove through the avenue to the house door, I saw the drooping trees on the lawn, with every one of which I was so familiar, clothed in the tenderest green of spring, and the river beyond, calm and transparent as a mirror, and the ships fixed and motionless as statues on its surface, and the whole landscape bathed in that bright Canadian sun which so seldom pierces our murky atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic. I began to think that persons were to be envied who were not forced by the necessities of their position to quit these engrossing interests and lovely scenes, for the purpose of proceeding to distant lands, but who are able to remain among them until they pass to that quiet corner of the garden of Mount Hermon, which juts into the river and commands a view of the city, the shipping, Point Levi, the Island of Orleans, and the range of the Laurentine; so that through the dim watches of that tranquil night which precedes the dawning of the eternal day, the majestic citadel of Quebec, with its noble tram of satellite hills, may seem to rest forever on the sight, and the low murmur of the waters of St. Lawrence, with the hum of busy life on their surface, to fall ceaselessly on the ear. I cannot bring myself to believe that the future has in store for me any interests which will fill the place of those I am now abandoning. But although I must henceforward be to you as a stranger, although my official connection with you and your interests will have become hi a few days matter of history, yet I trust that through some one channel or other, the tidings of your prosperity and progress may occasionally reach me; that I may hear from time to time of the steady growth and development of those principles of liberty and order, of manly independence in combination with respect for authority and law, of national life in harmony with British connection, which it has been my earnest endeavour, to the extent of my humble means of influence, to implant and to establish. I trust, too, that I shall hear that this House continues to be what I have ever sought to render it, a neutral territory, on which persons of opposite opinions, political and religious, may meet together in harmony and forget their differences for a season. And I have good hope that this will be the case for several reasons, and, among others, for one which I can barely allude to, for it might be an impertinence in me to dwell upon it But I think that without any breach of delicacy or decorum I may venture to say that many years ago, when I was much younger than I am now, and when we stood towards each other in a relation somewhat different from that which has recently subsisted between us, I learned to look up to Sir Edmund Head with respect, as a gentleman of the highest character, the greatest ability, and the most varied accomplishments and attainments. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have only to add the sad word--Farewell. I drink this bumper to the health of you all, collectively and individually. I trust that I may hope to leave behind me some who will look back with feelings of kindly recollection to the period of our intercourse; some with whom I have been on terms of immediate official connection, whose worth and talents I have had the best means of appreciating, and who could bear witness at least, if they please to do so, to the spirit, intentions, and motives with which I have administered your affairs; some with whom I have been bound by the ties of personal regard. And if reciprocity be essential to enmity, then most assuredly I can leave behind me no enemies. I am aware that there must be persons in so large a society as this, who think that they have grievances to complain of, that due consideration has not in all cases been shown to them. Let them believe me, and they ought to believe me, for the testimony of a dying man is evidence, even in a court of justice, let them believe me, then, when I assure them, in this the last hour of my agony, that no such errors of omission or commission have been intentional on my part. Farewell, and God bless you." Before I proceed to review some features of his administration in Canada, to which it has not been possible to do adequate justice in previous chapters of this book, I must very briefly refer to the eminent services which he was able to perform for the empire before he closed his useful life amid the shadows of the Himalayas. On his return to England he took his seat in the House of Lords, but he gave very little attention to politics or legislation. On one occasion, however, he expressed a serious doubt as to the wisdom of sending to Canada large bodies of troops, which had come back from the Crimea, on the ground that such a proceeding might complicate the relations of the colony with the United States, and at the same time arrest its progress towards self-independence in all matters affecting its internal order and security.

This opinion was in unison with the sentiments which he had often expressed to the secretary of state during his term of office in America. While he always deprecated any hasty withdrawal of imperial troops from the dependency as likely at that time to imperil its connection with the mother country, he believed most thoroughly in educating Canadians gradually to understand the large measure of responsibility which attached to self-government. He was of opinion "that the system of relieving colonists altogether from the duty of self-defence must be attended with injurious effects upon themselves." "It checks," he continued, "the growth of national and manly morals. Men seldom think anything worth preserving for which they are never asked to make a sacrifice." His view was that, while it was desirable to remove imperial troops gradually and throw the responsibility of self-defence largely upon Canada, "the movement in that direction should be made with due caution." "The present"--he was writing to the secretary of state in 1848 when Canadian affairs were still in an unsatisfactory state--"is not a favourable moment for experiments. British statesmen, even secretaries of state, have got into the habit lately of talking of the maintenance of the connection between Great Britain and Canada with so much indifference, that a change of system in respect to military defence incautiously carried out, might be presumed by many to argue, on the part of the mother country, a disposition to prepare the way for separation." And he added three years later:


"If these communities are only truly attached to the
connection and satisfied of its permanence (and as respects
the latter point, opinions here will be much influenced by
the tone of statesmen at home), elements of self-defence,
not moral elements only, but material elements likewise,
will spring up within them spontaneously as the product of
movements from within, not of pressure from without. Two
millions of people in a northern latitude can do a good deal
in the way of helping themselves, when their hearts are in
the right place."


Before two decades of years had passed away, the foresight of these suggestions was clearly shown. Canada had become a part of a British North American confederation, and with the development of its material resources, the growth of a national spirit of self-reliance, the new Dominion, thus formed, was able to relieve the parent state of the expenses of self-defence, and come to her aid many years later when her interests were threatened in South Africa. If Canada has been able to do all this, it has been owing to the growth of that spirit of self-reliance--of that principle of self-government--which Lord Elgin did his utmost to encourage. We can then well understand that Lord Elgin, in 1855, should have contemplated with some apprehension the prospect of largely increasing the Canadian garrisons at a time when Canadians were learning steadily and surely to cultivate the national habit of depending upon their own internal resources in their working out of the political institutions given them by England after years of agitation, and even suffering, as the history of the country until 1840 so clearly shows. It is also easy to understand that Lord Elgin should have regarded the scheme in contemplation as likely to create a feeling of doubt and suspicion as to the motives of the imperial government in the minds of the people of the United States. He recalled naturally his important visit to that country, where he had given eloquent expression, as the representative of the British Crown, to his sanguine hopes for the continuous amity of peoples allied to each other by so many ties of kindred and interest, and had also succeeded after infinite labour in negotiating a treaty so well calculated to create a common sympathy between Canada and the republic, and stimulate that friendly intercourse which would dispel many national prejudices and antagonisms which had unhappily arisen between these communities in the past. The people of the United States might well, he felt, see some inconsistency between such friendly sentiments and the sending of large military reinforcements to Canada.

In the spring of 1857 Lord Elgin accepted from Lord Palmerston a delicate mission to China at a very critical time when the affair of the lorcha "Arrow" had led to a serious rupture between that country and Great Britain. According to the British statement of the case, in October, 1856, the Chinese authorities at Canton seized the lorcha although it was registered as a British vessel, tore down the British flag from its masthead, and carried away the crew as prisoners. On