titute himself in
an especial manner the patron of those larger and higher interests--
such interests, for example, as those of education, and of moral and
material progress in all its branches--which, unlike the contests of
party, unite instead of dividing the members of the body politic. The
mention of such influences as an appreciable force in the
administration of public affairs may provoke a sneer on the part of
persons who have no faith in any appeal which is not addressed to the
lowest motives of human conduct; but those who have juster views of
our common nature, and who have seen influences that are purely moral
wielded with judgment, will not be disposed to deny to them a high
degree of efficacy.

[Sidenote: Defence of the colony,]

Closely akin to the question of the maintenance of the connection between
the Colony and Great Britain, especially when viewed as affected by the
commercial and financial condition of the former, was the question of
throwing upon it the expense of defending itself; a problem which was then
only beginning to attract the attention of liberal statesmen. For though it
may be true that the practice of defending the Colonies with the troops and
at the cost of the mother-country was an innovation upon the earlier
Colonial system, introduced at the time of the great war, it is not the
less certain that to the generation of colonists that had grown up since
that time the abandonment of it had all the effect of novelty. It was a
question on which, as affecting Canada, Lord Elgin was in a peculiar degree
'between two fires;' exposed to pressure at once from the Government at
home and from his own Ministers, and seeing much to agree with in the views
of both.

[Sidenote: against internal disorder;]

In the first place, as regards the preservation of order within the
province, he thought it clear that, as a general rule, the cost of this
should fall on the Colony itself wherever it enjoyed self-government; but
there were peculiar circumstances in Canada which made him hesitate to
apply the doctrine unreservedly there. Owing to the contiguity of the
United States, the abettors of any mischief in the Colony might count on
help constantly at hand, not indeed from the Government of the Union, which
never acted disloyally,[6] but from the Unruly spirits that were apt to
infest the borders; and it seemed to him at least doubtful, whether both
justice an