The history of the two measures which Lord Elgin so ardently desired, and
which in the foregoing and many similar letters he so urgently pressed, was
eminently characteristic of the two Legislatures, through which they had
respectively to be carried.

[Sidenote: Repeal of Navigation Laws.]

In England, the repeal of restrictive Navigation Laws was contended for by
thoughtful statesmen on grounds of public policy. The protective and
conservative instincts of the old country, fortified by the never-absent
spirit of party, resisted the change. When fairly beaten by force of
argument in the House of Commons, they entrenched themselves ha the House
of Lords; and it was only after a hot struggle that the Act was passed in
June 1849, of which one effect was, by lowering freights, to increase the
profits of the Canadian trade in wheat and timber, and thus to advance, in
a very important degree, the commercial prosperity of the colony.

[Sidenote: Reciprocity Treaty.]

The delays which retarded the settlement of the Reciprocity Treaty were due
to causes of another kind. The difficulty was to induce the American
Congress to pay any attention at all to the subject. In the vast
multiplicity of matters with which that Assembly has to deal, it is said
that no cause which does not appeal strongly to a national sentiment, or at
least to some party feeling, has a chance of obtaining a hearing, unless it
is taken up systematically by 'organizers' outside the House. The
Reciprocity Bill was not a measure about which any national or even party
feeling could be aroused. It was one which required much study to
understand its bearings, and which would affect different interests in the
country in different ways. It stood, therefore, especially in need of the
aid of professional organizers; a kind of aid of which it was of course
impossible that either the British or the Canadian Government should avail
itself. Session after session the Bill was proposed, scarcely debated, and
set aside. At last, in 1854, after the negotiations had dragged on wearily
for more than six years, Lord Elgin himself was sent to Washington in the
hope--'a forlorn hope,' as it seemed to those who sent him--of bringing the
matter to a successful issue. It was his first essay in diplomacy, but made
under circumstances unusually favourable. He was personally popular with
the Americans, towards whom he had always entertained and shown a most
friendly feeling. They apprec