addition
should be made to our debt for such an object at this time.
Nevertheless I must say I do not see how my present government could
have taken any other course.' He also calls it 'a strict logical
following out' of the Tory party's own acts; and he has 'no doubt
whatsoever {122} that a great deal of property was wantonly and cruelly
destroyed at that time in Lower Canada.' He was petitioned to dissolve
parliament if the bill should pass; his judgment on this alternative
runs: 'If I had dissolved parliament, I might have produced a
rebellion, but most assuredly I should not have produced a change of
ministry.' The other alternative of reserving the bill seemed, as he
balanced it in his mind, cowardly. He would create no precedent.
Bills had been reserved before, and had been refused the royal
sanction; to reserve this one would be no departure from established
custom; but, he writes to Lord Grey, 'by reserving the Bill, I should
only throw upon Her Majesty's Government ... a responsibility which
rests, and ought, I think, to rest, on my own shoulders.' The
sentences which follow evince an ideal of public service that can only
be called knightly. The executive head of the government was ready to
face failure and disgrace, to the ruin of his career, rather than shirk
the responsibility which was really his. 'If I pass the Bill, whatever
mischief ensues may possibly be repaired, if the worst comes to the
worst, by the sacrifice of me. Whereas {123} if the case be referred
to England, it is not impossible that Her Majesty may have before her
the alternative of provoking a rebellion in Lower Canada ... or of
wounding the susceptibilities of some of the best subjects she has in
the province.' From the first Elgin had firmly made up his mind to
fill the role of constitutional governor; he believed that the best
justification of Durham's memory, and of what he had done in Canada,
would be a governor-general working out fairly the Dictator's views of
government. Although he had definitely made up his mind what course of
action to follow, he was never betrayed into committing himself before
the proper time. Deputations waited on him with provocative addresses;
but none was cunning enough to snare him in his speech. The
'sacrifice' came soon enough.

In spite of all the furies of opposition within the House and out of
it, the Indemnity Bill passed by a majority of more than two to one.
The next question was what