mediate official
connection, whose worth and talents I have had the best means of
appreciating, and who could bear witness, at least, if they please to
do so, to the spirit, intentions, and motives with which I have
administered your affairs; some with whom I have been bound by the
ties of personal regard. And if reciprocity be essential to enmity,
then most assuredly I can leave behind me no enemies. I am aware that
there must be persons in so large a society as this, who think that
they have grievances to complain of, that due consideration has not in
all cases been shown to them. Let them believe me, and they ought to
believe me, for the testimony of a dying man is evidence, even in a
court of justice, let them believe me, then, even I assure them, in
this the last hour of my agony, that no such errors of omission or
commission have been intentional on my part. Farewell, and God bless
you.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: At home.]

The two years which followed Lord Elgin's return from Canada were a time of
complete rest from official labour. For though, on the breaking up of Lord
Aberdeen's Ministry in the spring of 1855, he was offered by Lord
Palmerston the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, with a seat in the
Cabinet, he declined the offer, not on any ground of difference from the
new Ministry, which he intended to support; but because, having only
recently taken his seat in the House of Lords, after a long term of foreign
service, during which he had necessarily held aloof from home politics, he
thought it advisable, for the present at least, to remain independent. He
found, however, ample and congenial occupation for his time in the peaceful
but industrious discharge of home duties at Broomhall. Still his thoughts
were constantly with the distant Provinces in which he had laboured so
long.

Whenever he appeared in public, whether at a dinner given in his honour at
Dunfermline, or on occasion of receiving the freedom of the city of
Glasgow, or in delivering a lecture at the annual opening of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Institute--it was with the same desire of turning to account
the knowledge gained abroad, for the advantage of the Colonies, or of the
mother-country, or for the mutual benefit of both; with the same hope of
drawing closer the bonds of union between them, and dispelling something of
that cloud of ignorance and