blood shall rest upon my name."'

As might have been expected, the Montreal press attributed this wise and
magnanimous self-restraint to fear for his own safety. But he was not to be
moved from his resolve by the paltry imputation; nor did he even care that
his friends should resent or refute it on his behalf.

So little was he affected by it that on finding, some years afterwards,
that Lord Grey proposed to introduce some expression of indignation on the
subject in his work on the colonies, he dissuaded him from doing so. 'I do
not believe,' he said, 'that these imputations were hazarded in any
respectable quarter, or that they are entitled to the dignity of a place in
your narrative.'

[Sidenote: or to yield to violence.]

But if neither the entreaties of 'irresponsible advisers,' nor the taunts
of foes, could move him to the use of force, he was equally firm in his
determination to concede nothing to the clamour and violence of the mob.
Writing officially to Lord Grey on the 30th of April, when the fury of the
populace was at its height, he said:--

It is my firm conviction that if this dictation be submitted to, the
government of this province by constitutional means will be
impossible, and that the struggle between overbearing minorities,
backed by force, and majorities resting on legality and established
forms, which has so long proved the bane of Canada, driving capital
from the province, and producing a state of chronic discontent, will
be perpetuated.

[Sidenote: Tenders resignation.]

At the same time, he thought it his duty to suggest, that 'if he should be
unable to recover that position of dignified neutrality between contending
parties which it had been his unremitting study to maintain,' it might be a
question whether it would not be for the interests of Her Majesty's service
that he should be removed, to make way for some one 'who should have the
advantage of being personally unobnoxious to any section of Her Majesty's
subjects within the province.'

[Sidenote: Approval of Home Government.]

The reply to this letter assured him, in emphatic terms, of the cordial
approval and support of the Home Government. 'I appreciate,' wrote Lord
Grey, 'the motives which have induced your Lordship to offer the suggestion
with which your despatch concludes, but I should most earnestly deprecate
the change it contemplates in the government of Canada. Your Lordship's
relinquishment