nd
authoritative on these matters than a colonial ministry or people could
be. Having conceded all the rights essential to a free existence, he
mentioned duties, and called the sum of these duties Empire.

The concluding stage in the evolution of mid-Victorian opinion
concerning Canada, which must now be described, differs essentially
from the earlier stages, although, as it seems to me, the chief factor
in the development is still Durham and his group. It is the period of
separatism.

One thing has appeared very prominently in the {278} foregoing
argument--the prevalence of a fear, or even a fixed belief, that the
connection between Britain and Canada must soon cease. Excluding, for
the present, the entire group of extreme radicals, there was hardly a
statesman of the earlier years of Victoria, who had not confessed that
Canada must soon leave England, or be left. Many instances have been
already cited. Among the Tories, Stanley thought that Bagot had
already begun the process of separation, and that Metcalfe's failure
would involve the end of the connection. Peel, ever judicial, gave his
verdict in favour of separation, should Canadians persist in resenting
imperial action. As Lord John Russell's view of autonomy expanded, his
hopes for continued British supremacy contracted; and, on the evidence
of a letter from Grey quoted above, Russell was not alone among the
Whigs in his opinion, nor Peel among his immediate followers. The
reckless and partizan use of the term Little-Englander has largely
concealed the fact that apart from Durham, whose faith was not called
upon to bear the test of experience, and Buller, Grey, and Elgin, who
had special grounds for their confidence, all the responsible
politicians of the years between 1840 and 1860 moved steadily towards a
"Little England" position. {279} The reasons for that movement are
worthy of examination.

So far as the Tories were concerned, the change, already traced in
detail, was not unnatural. In the eighteenth century, the colonies,
possessed of just that responsible government for which Canadian
reformers were clamouring, had with one accord left the Empire. The
earlier nineteenth century had witnessed in the British American
colonies a steadily increasing demand for the liberties, formerly
possessed by the New England states. Representative assemblies had
been granted; then a modified form of responsibility of the executive
to these assemblies; then