e been alike surprised at the course which events
have taken respecting the particular point then in question. For once the
stream that sets towards democracy has been seen to take a backward
direction; and the constitution of the Dominion of Canada has returned, as
regards the Legislative Council, to the Conservative principle of
nomination by the Crown.

* * * * *

It does not fall within the scope of this memoir to give an account of the
numerous administrative measures which made the period of Lord Elgin's
Government so marked an epoch in the history of Canadian prosperity. It may
be well, however, to notice a few points to which he himself thought it
worth while to advert in official despatches, written towards the close of
his sojourn in the country, and containing a statistical review of the
marvellously rapid progress which the Colony had made in all branches of
productive industry.

The first extracts bear upon questions which have lost none of their
interest or importance--the kindred questions of emigration, of the demand
for labour, and of the acquisition and tenure of land.

[Sidenote: Emigration.]

The sufferings of the Irish during that calamitous period [1847]
induced philanthropic persons to put forward schemes of systematic
colonisation, based in some instances on the assumption that it was
for the interest of the emigrants that they should be as much as
possible concentrated in particular portions of the territories to
which they might proceed, so as to form communities complete in
themselves, and to remain subject to the influences, religious and
social, under which they had lived previously to emigration. It was
proposed, if I rightly remember, according to one of those schemes,
that large numbers of Irish with their priests and home associations
should be established by Government in some unoccupied part of Canada.
I believe that such schemes, however benevolent their design, rest on
a complete misconception of what is for the interest both of the
Colony and of the emigrants. It is almost invariably found that
emigrants who thus isolate themselves, whatever their origin or
antecedents, lag behind their neighbours; and I am inclined to think
that, as a general rule, in the case of communities whose social and
political organisation is as far advanced as that of the North
American Colonies,