of that office, which, under any circumstances, would be a
most serious loss to Her Majesty's service, and to the province, could not
fail, in the present state of affairs, to be most injurious to the public
welfare, from the encouragement which it would give to those who have been
concerned in the violent and illegal opposition which has been offered to
your Government. I also feel no doubt that when the present excitement
shall have subsided, you will succeed in regaining that position of
"dignified neutrality" becoming your office, which, as you justly observe,
it has hitherto been your study to maintain, and from which, even those who
are at present most opposed to you, will, on reflection, perceive that you
have been driven, by no fault on your part, but by their own unreasoning
violence.

Relying, therefore, upon your devotion to the interests of Canada, I feel
assured that you will not be induced by the unfortunate occurrences which
have taken place, to retire from the high office which the Queen has been
pleased to entrust to you, and which, from the value she puts upon your
past services, it is Her Majesty's anxious wish that you should retain.'

[Sidenote: Support in the colony.]

While awaiting, in his retreat at Monklands, the _contrecoup_ from the
mother-country of the storm which had burst over the colony, Lord Elgin
found a great source of consolation in the numerous sympathetic addresses
which poured in from every part of the province: fortifying him in the
conviction that the heart of the colony was with him, and that the bitter
opposition at Montreal was chiefly due to local causes; especially 'to
commercial distress, acting on religious bigotry and national hatred.' One
of these addresses, coming from the county of Glengarry, an ancient
settlement of Scottish loyalists, appears to have touched the Scotsman's
heart within the statesman's. In reply to it he said:--

Men of Glengarry--My heart warms within me when I listen to your manly
and patriotic address.

I recognise in it evidence of that vigorous understanding which
enables men of the stock to which you belong to prize, as they ought
to be prized, the blessings of well-ordered freedom, and of that keen
sense of principle which prompts them to recoil from no sacrifice
which duty enjoins.

The men of Glengarry need not recapitulate their services. He must be
ignorant indeed of the history of Canada who does n