ment in French-Canadian politics into headlong opposition to itself.
How dangerous the situation was, one may infer from {211} the
disquieting rumours of the ambitions of the American Union, and from
the passions and memories of injustice which floods of unkempt and
wretched Irish immigrants were bringing with them to their new homes in
America. In Elgin's second year of office, 1848, he had to face the
possibility of a rising under the old leaders of 1837. His solution of
the difficulty proceeded _pari passu_ with his constitutional work. In
the latter he had seen that he must remove the disquieting subject of
"responsible government" from the party programme of the progressives,
and the politic surrender of 1847 had gained his end. Towards French
nationalism he acted in the same spirit. As has already been seen, he
was conscious of the political shortcomings of the French. Yet there
was nothing penal in his attitude towards them, and he saw, with a
clearness to which Durham never attained, how idle all talk of
anglicizing French Canada must be. "I for one," he said, "am deeply
convinced of the impolicy of all such attempts to denationalize the
French. Generally speaking, they produce the opposite effect from that
intended, causing the flame of national prejudice and animosity to burn
more fiercely."[26]

{212}

But how could the pathological phase of nationalism be ended? His
first Tory advisers suggested the old trick of making converts, but the
practice had long since been found useless. His next speculation was
whether the French could be made to take sides as Liberals or Tories,
apart altogether from nationalist considerations. But the political
solidarity of the French had been a kind of trades-unionism, claiming
to guard French interests against an actual menace to their very
existence as a nation within the empire; and they were certain to act
only with Baldwin and his friends, the one party which had regarded
them as other than traitors or suspects, or at best tools.

No complete solution of the problem was possible; but when Elgin
surrendered to the progressives, he was making concessions also to the
French--by admitting them to a recognized place within the
constitution, and doing so without reservation. The joint ministry of
La Fontaine and Baldwin was, in a sense, the most satisfactory answer
that could be made to the difficulty. From the moment of its creation
Elgin and Canada were safe.