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

from that which has been hitherto pursued with regard to our colonies." "It gave some evidence," continued the same paper, "that the more distinguished among our fellow-subjects in the colonies may feel that the path of imperial ambition is henceforth open to them." It was a direct answer to the appeal which had been so eloquently made on more than one occasion by the Honourable Joseph Howe[27] of Nova Scotia, to extend imperial honours and offices to distinguished colonists, and not reserve them, as was too often the case, for Englishmen of inferior merit. "This elevation of Mr. Hincks to a governorship," said the Montreal _Pilot_ at the time, "is the most practicable comment which can possibly be offered upon the solemn and sorrowful complaints of Mr. Howe, anent the neglect with which the colonists are treated by the imperial government. So sudden, complete and noble a disclaimer on the part of Her Majesty's minister for the colonies must have startled the delegate from Nova Scotia, and we trust that his turn may not be far distant." Fifteen years later, Mr. Howe himself became a lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, and an inmate of the very government house to which he was not admitted in the stormy days when he was fighting the battle of responsible government against Lord Falkland.

Mr. Hincks was subsequently appointed governor of British Guiana, and at the same time received a Commandership of the Bath as a mark of "Her Majesty's approval honourably won by very valuable and continued service in several colonies of the empire." He retired from the imperial service with a pension in 1869, when his name was included in the first list of knights which was submitted to the Queen on the extension of the Order of St. Michael and St. George for the express purpose of giving adequate recognition to those persons in the colonies who had rendered distinguished service to the Crown and empire. During his Canadian administration Lord Elgin had impressed upon the colonial secretary that it was "very desirable that the prerogative of the Crown, as the fountain of honour, should be employed, in so far as this can properly be done, as a means of attaching the outlying parts of the empire to the throne." Two principles ought, he thought, "as a general rule to be attended to in the distribution of imperial honours among colonists." Firstly they should appear "to emanate directly from the Crown, on the advice, if you will, of the governors and imperial ministers, but not on the recommendation of the local executive." Secondly, they "should be conferred, as much as possible, on the eminent persons who are no longer engaged actively in political life." The first principle has, generally speaking, guided the action of the Crown in the distribution of honours to colonists, though the governors may receive suggestions from and also consult their prime ministers when the necessity arises. These honours, too, are no longer conferred only on men actively engaged in public life, but on others eminent in science, education, literature, and other vocations of life.[28]

In 1870 Sir Francis Hincks returned to Canadian public life as finance minister in Sir John Macdonald's government, and held the office until 1873, when he retired altogether from politics. Until the last hours of his life he continued to show that acuteness of intellect, that aptitude for public business, that knowledge of finance and commerce, which made him so influential in public affairs. During his public career in Canada previous to 1855, he was the subject of bitter attacks for his political acts, but nowadays impartial history can admit that, despite his tendency to commit the province to heavy expenditures, his energy, enterprise and financial ability did good service to the country at large. He was also attacked as having used his public position to promote his own pecuniary interests, but he courted and obtained inquiry into the most serious of such accusations, and although there appears to have been some carelessness in his connection with various speculations, and at times an absence of an adequate sense of his responsibility as a public man, there is no evidence that he was ever personally corrupt or dishonest. He devoted the close of his life to the writing of his "Reminiscences," and of several essays on questions which were great public issues when he was so prominent in Canadian politics, and although none of his most ardent admirers can praise them as literary efforts of a high order, yet they have an interest so far as they give us some insight into disputed points of Canada's political history. He died in 1885 of the dreadful disease small-pox in the city of Montreal, and the veteran statesman was carried to the grave without those funeral honours which were due to one who had filled with distinction so many important positions in the service of Canada and the Crown. All his contemporaries when he was prime minister also lie in the grave and have found at last that rest which was not theirs in the busy, passionate years of their public life. Sir Allan MacNab, who was a spendthrift to the very last, lies in a quiet spot beneath the shades of the oaks and elms which adorn the lovely park of Dundurn in Hamilton, whose people have long since forgotten his weaknesses as a man, and now only recall his love for the beautiful city with whose interests he was so long identified, and his eminent services to Crown and state. George Brown, Hincks's inveterate opponent, continued for years after the formation of the first Liberal-Conservative administration, to keep the old province of Canada in a state of political ferment by his attacks on French Canada and her institutions until at last he succeeded in making government practically unworkable, and then suddenly he rose superior to the spirit of passionate partisanship and racial bitterness which had so long dominated him, and decided to aid his former opponents in consummating that federal union which relieved old Canada of her political embarrassment and sectional strife. His action at that time is his chief claim to the monument which has been raised in his honour in the great western city where he was for so many years a political force, and where the newspaper he established still remains at the head of Canadian journalism.

The greatest and ablest man among all who were notable in Lord Elgin's days in Canada, Sir John Alexander Macdonald--the greatest not simply as a Canadian politician but as one of the builders of the British empire--lived to become one of Her Majesty's Privy Councillors of Great Britain, a Grand Cross of the Bath, and prime minister for twenty-one years of a Canadian confederation which stretches for 3,500 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. When death at last forced him from the great position he had so long occupied with distinction to himself and advantage to Canada, the esteem and affection in which he was held by the people, whom he had so long served during a continuous public career of half a century, were shown by the erection of stately monuments in five of the principal cities of the Dominion--an honour never before paid to a colonial statesman. The statues of Sir John Macdonald and Sir Georges Cartier--statues conceived and executed by the genius of a French Canadian artist--stand on either side of the noble parliament building where these statesmen were for years the most conspicuous figures; and as Canadians of the present generation survey their bronze effigies, let them not fail to recall those admirable qualities of statesmanship which distinguished them both--above all their assertion of those principles of compromise, conciliation and equal rights which have served to unite the two races in critical times when the tide of racial and sectional passion and political demagogism has rushed in a mad torrent against the walls of the national structure which Canadians have been so steadily and successfully building for so many years on the continent of North America.


CHAPTER XI



POLITICAL PROGRESS

In the foregoing pages I have endeavoured to review--very imperfectly, I am afraid--all those important events in the political history of Canada from 1847 to 1854, which have had the most potent influence on its material, social, and political development. Any one who carefully studies the conditions of the country during that critical period of Canadian affairs cannot fail to come to the conclusion that the gradual elevation of Canada from the depression which was so prevalent for years in political as well as commercial matters, to a position of political strength and industrial prosperity, was largely owing to the success of the principles of self-government which Lord Elgin initiated and carried out while at the head of the Canadian executive. These principles have been clearly set forth in his speeches and in his despatches to the secretary of state for the colonies as well as in instructive volumes on the colonial policy of Lord John Russell's administration by Lord Grey, the imperial minister who so wisely recommended Lord Elgin's appointment as governor-general Briefly stated these principles are as follows:--


That it is neither desirable nor possible to carry on the
government of a province in opposition to the opinion of its
people.

That a governor-general can have no ministers who do not
enjoy the full confidence of the popular House, or, in the
last resort, of the people.

That the governor-general should not refuse his consent to
any measure proposed by the ministry unless it is clear that
it is of such an extreme party character that the assembly
or people could not approve of it.

That the governor-general should not identify himself with
any party but make himself "a mediator and moderator between
all parties."


That colonial communities should be encouraged to cultivate "a national and manly tone of political morals," and should look to their own parliaments for the solution of all problems of provincial government instead of making constant appeals to the colonial office or to opinion in the mother country, "always ill-informed, and therefore credulous, in matters of colonial politics."

That the governor-general should endeavour to impart to these rising communities the full advantages of British laws, British institutions, and British freedom, and maintain in this way the connection between them and the parent state.

We have seen in previous chapters how industriously, patiently, and discreetly Lord Elgin laboured to carry out these principles in the administration of his government. In 1849 he risked his own life that he might give full scope to the principles of responsible government with respect to the adjustment of a question which should be settled by the Canadian people themselves without the interference of the parent state, and on the same ground he impressed on the imperial government the necessity of giving to the Canadian legislature full control of the settlement of the clergy reserves. He had no patience with those who believed that, in allowing the colonists to exercise their right to self-government in matters exclusively affecting themselves, there was any risk whatever so far as imperial interests were concerned. One of his ablest letters was that which he wrote to Earl Grey as an answer to the unwise utterances of the prime minister, Lord John Russell, in the course of a speech on the colonies in which, "amid the plaudits of a full senate, he declared that he looked forward to the day when the ties which he was endeavouring to render so easy and mutually advantageous would be severed." Lord Elgin held it to be "a perfectly unsound and most dangerous theory, that British colonies could not attain maturity without separation," and in this