deed, made in the early years,
but the Act was on the verge of breaking down when Lord Elgin, Durham's
son-in-law, came to Canada as Governor-General in 1847. After many party
changes and combinations, French influence was temporarily in the
ascendant, and in 1849 a Bill was on the stocks for compensating French
as well as British subjects for losses in the rebellion of 1837. Elgin,
following the advice of his Ministers, of whom Baldwin was one,
Lafontaine another, gave the Royal Assent to the Bill. The British, with
the old cry of "loyalism," and with Orangemen in the van, rioted, mobbed
the Governor, and burnt down the Parliament House at Montreal. Elgin,
expostulating with Lord John Russell, who was as pessimistic as ever,
and threatened with recall, stuck to his guns under fierce obloquy, and
the principle of responsible government was definitely established. It
was applied at about the same period to the other British Provinces of
North America, with the ulterior results I have described, and in a few
years to Australia.

The great year, then, was 1847, the year of the Irish famine, and the
year before the pitiful rebellion of Smith O'Brien, surrendering in the
historic cabbage-garden. Our thoughts go back sixty-four years to 1783,
when the American War of Independence ended; when, as a result of that
war, British Canada and Australia were founded, and when, at the
crisis--premature, alas!--of Ireland's fortunes, the Volunteers in vain
demanded the Reform which might have saved their country. Look into
historical details, read contemporary debates, and watch the contrast.
Within five years of responsible government Canada solved all the great
questions which had been convulsing society for so long, and turned her
liberated energies towards economic development. In Ireland the abuses
of ages lingered to a point which seems incredible. The Church was not
disestablished, amid outcries of imminent ruin and threats of a
Protestant rebellion, till 1869, when Canada had already become a
Federated Dominion. The Irish land question, dating from the seventeenth
century, was not seriously tackled until 1881, not drastically and on
the right lines till 1903. Education languishes at the present day.
Canada started an excellent system of municipal and local government in
the forties. In Ireland, while the minority, in Greville's words, were
"bellowing spoliation and revolution," an Act was passed in 1840 with
the utmost difficul