ity of giving to the Canadian legislature full
control of the settlement of the clergy reserves. He had no patience
with those who believed that, in allowing the colonists to exercise
their right to self-government in matters exclusively affecting
themselves, there was any risk whatever so far as imperial interests
were concerned. One of his ablest letters was that which he wrote to
Earl Grey as an answer to the unwise utterances of the prime minister,
Lord John Russell, in the course of a speech on the colonies in which,
"amid the plaudits of a full senate, he declared that he looked
forward to the day when the ties which he was endeavouring to render
so easy and mutually advantageous would be severed." Lord Elgin held
it to be "a perfectly unsound and most dangerous theory, that British
colonies could not attain maturity without separation," and in this
connection he quoted the language of Mr. Baldwin to whom he had read
that part of Lord John Russell's speech to which he took such strong
exception. "For myself," said the eminent Canadian, "if the
anticipations therein expressed prove to be well founded, my interest
in public affairs is gone forever. But is it not hard upon us while we
are labouring, through good and evil report, to thwart the designs of
those who would dismember the empire, that our adversaries should be
informed that the difference between them and the prime minister of
England is only one of time? If the British government has really come
to the conclusion that we are a burden to be cast off, whenever a
favourable opportunity offers, surely we ought to be warned." In Lord
Elgin's opinion, based on a thorough study of colonial conditions, if
the Canadian or any other system of government was to be successful,
British statesmen must "renounce the habit of telling the colonies
that the colonial is a provisional existence." They should be taught
to believe that "without severing the bonds which unite them to
England, they may attain the degree of perfection, and of social and
political development to which organized communities of free men have
a right to aspire." The true policy in his judgment was "to throw the
whole weight of responsibility on those who exercise the real power,
for after all, the sense of responsibility is the best security
against the abuse of power; and as respects the connection, to act and
speak on this hypothesis--that there is nothing in it to check the
development of healthy n