more excusable tendency
to it threatened to defeat the object of responsible government in Canada.
Accustomed to look abroad for the source and centre of power, a beaten
minority in the Colonial Parliament, instead of loyally accepting its
position, was never without a hope of wresting the victory from its
opponents, either by an appeal to opinion in the mother-country, always
ill-informed, and therefore credulous, in matters of colonial politics, or
else by raising a cry of 'separation' or 'annexation.'

The evil effects of this state of things need hardly be pointed out. On the
one hand the constant reference to opinion in England, not in the shape of
constitutional appeal but by ex-parte statements, produced a state of
chronic irritation against the mother-country. 'There is nothing,' wrote
Lord Elgin, 'which makes the colonial statesman so jealous as rescripts
from the Colonial Office, suggested by the representations of provincial
cliques or interests, who ought, as he contends, to bow before the
authorities of Government House, Montreal, rather than those of Downing
Street.' On the other hand it was not easy to know how to deal with
politicians who did not profess to own more than a qualified and
provisional allegiance to the constitution of the Province and the Crown of
England. The one hope in both cases was to foster a 'national and manly
tone' of political morals; to lead all parties alike to look to their own
Parliament, and neither to the London press nor the American hustings, for
the solution of all problems of Provincial government.

But while thus zealously defending, the fortress of British connection
committed to his care, Lord Elgin was dismayed to find that its walls were
crumbling round him? undermined by the operations of his own Mends; that
there had arisen at home a school of philosophic statesmen, strong in their
own ability, and strengthened by the support of the Radical economists,
according to whom it was to be expected and desired that every colony
enjoying constitutional government should aim at emancipating itself
entirely from allegiance to the mother-country, and forming itself into an
independent Republic. With such views he had no sympathy. The 'Sparta'
which had fallen to his lot was the position of a colonial governor, and
that position he felt it his duty to 'adorn' and to maintain. Moreover,
believing firmly in the vitality of the monarchical principle, as well as
in its value, he