Lord Elgin - Sir John George Bourinot (distant reading .txt) 📗

EDITORS' NOTE


The late Sir John Bourinot had completed and revised the following pages some months before his lamented death. The book represents more satisfactorily, perhaps, than anything else that he has written the author's breadth of political vision and his concrete mastery of historical fact. The life of Lord Elgin required to be written by one possessed of more than ordinary insight into the interesting aspects of constitutional law. That it has been singularly well presented must be the conclusion of all who may read this present narrative.


CONTENTS


I: EARLY CAREER

II: POLITICAL CONDITION IN CANADA

III: POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES

IV: THE INDEMNIFICATION ACT

V: THE END OF THE LAFONTAINE-BALDWIN MINISTRY, 1851

VI: THE HINCKS-MORIN MINISTRY

VII: THE HISTORY OF THE CLERGY RESERVES (1791-1854)

VIII: SEIGNIORIAL TENURE

IX: CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

X: FAREWELL TO CANADA

XI: POLITICAL PROGRESS

XII: A COMPARISON OF SYSTEMS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INDEX



CHAPTER I



EARLY CAREER

The Canadian people have had a varied experience in governors appointed by the imperial state. At the very commencement of British rule they were so fortunate as to find at the head of affairs Sir Guy Carleton--afterwards Lord Dorchester--who saved the country during the American revolution by his military genius, and also proved himself an able civil governor in his relations with the French Canadians, then called "the new subjects," whom he treated in a fair and generous spirit that did much to make them friendly to British institutions. On the other hand they have had military men like Sir James Craig, hospitable, generous, and kind, but at the same time incapable of understanding colonial conditions and aspirations, ignorant of the principles and working of representative institutions, and too ready to apply arbitrary methods to the administration of civil affairs. Then they have had men who were suddenly drawn from some inconspicuous position in the parent state, like Sir Francis Bond Head, and allowed by an apathetic or ignorant colonial office to prove their want of discretion, tact, and even common sense at a very critical stage of Canadian affairs. Again there have been governors of the highest rank in the peerage of England, like the Duke of Richmond, whose administration was chiefly remarkable for his success in aggravating national animosities in French Canada, and whose name would now be quite forgotten were it not for the unhappy circumstances of his death.[1] Then Canadians have had the good fortune of the presence of Lord Durham at a time when a most serious state of affairs imperatively demanded that ripe political knowledge, that cool judgment, and that capacity to comprehend political grievances which were confessedly the characteristics of this eminent British statesman. Happily for Canada he was followed by a keen politician and an astute economist who, despite his overweening vanity and his tendency to underrate the ability of "those fellows in the colonies"--his own words in a letter to England--was well able to gauge public sentiment accurately and to govern himself accordingly during his short term of office. Since the confederation of the provinces there has been a succession of distinguished governors, some bearing names famous in the history of Great Britain and Ireland, some bringing to the discharge of their duties a large knowledge of public business gained in the government of the parent state and her wide empire, some gifted with a happy faculty of expressing themselves with ease and elegance, and all equally influenced by an earnest desire to fill their important position with dignity, impartiality, and affability.

But eminent as have been the services of many of the governors whose memories are still cherished by the people of Canada, no one among them stands on a higher plane than James, eighth earl of Elgin and twelfth earl of Kincardine, whose public career in Canada I propose to recall in the following narrative. He possessed to a remarkable degree those qualities of mind and heart which enabled him to cope most successfully with the racial and political difficulties which met him at the outset of his administration, during a very critical period of Canadian history. Animated by the loftiest motives, imbued with a deep sense of the responsibilities of his office, gifted with a rare power of eloquent expression, possessed of sound judgment and infinite discretion, never yielding to dictates of passion but always determined to be patient and calm at moments of violent public excitement, conscious of the advantages of compromise and conciliation in a country peopled like Canada, entering fully into the aspirations of a young people for self-government, ready to concede to French Canadians their full share in the public councils, anxious to build up a Canadian nation without reference to creed or race--this distinguished nobleman must be always placed by a Canadian historian in the very front rank of the great administrators happily chosen from time to time by the imperial state for the government of her dominions beyond the sea. No governor-general, it is safe to say, has come nearer to that ideal, described by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, when secretary of state for the colonies, in a letter to Sir George Bowen, himself distinguished for the ability with which he presided over the affairs of several colonial dependencies. "Remember," said Lord Lytton, to give that eminent author and statesman his later title, "that the first care of a governor in a free colony is to shun the reproach of being a party man. Give all parties, and all the ministries formed, the fairest play.... After all, men are governed as much by the heart as by the head. Evident sympathy in the progress of the colony; traits of kindness, generosity, devoted energy, where required for the public weal; a pure exercise of patronage; an utter absence of vindictiveness or spite; the fairness that belongs to magnanimity: these are the qualities that make governors powerful, while men merely sharp and clever may be weak and detested."

In the following chapters it will be seen that Lord Elgin fulfilled this ideal, and was able to leave the country in the full confidence that he had won the respect, admiration, and even affection of all classes of the Canadian people. He came to the country when there existed on all sides doubts as to the satisfactory working of the union of 1840, suspicions as to the sincerity of the imperial authorities with respect to the concession of responsible government, a growing antagonism between the two nationalities which then, as always, divided the province. A very serious economic disturbance was crippling the whole trade of the country, and made some persons--happily very few in number--believe for a short time that independence, or annexation to the neighbouring republic, was preferable to continued connection with a country which so grudgingly conceded political rights to the colony, and so ruthlessly overturned the commercial system on which the province had been so long dependent. When he left Canada, Lord Elgin knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the two nationalities were working harmoniously for the common advantage of the province, that the principles of responsible government were firmly established, and that the commercial and industrial progress of the country was fully on an equality with its political development.

The man who achieved these magnificent results could claim an ancestry to which a Scotsman would point with national pride. He could trace his lineage to the ancient Norman house of which "Robert the Bruce"--a name ever dear to the Scottish nation--was the most distinguished member. He was born in London on July 20th, 1811. His father was a general in the British army, a representative peer in the British parliament from 1790-1840, and an ambassador to several European courts; but he is best known to history by the fact that he seriously crippled his private fortunes by his purchase, while in the East, of that magnificent collection of Athenian art which was afterwards bought at half its value by the British government and placed in the British Museum, where it is still known as the "Elgin Marbles." From his father, we are told by his biographer,[2] he inherited "the genial and playful spirit which gave such a charm to his social and parental relations, and which helped him to elicit from others the knowledge of which he made so much use in the many diverse situations of his after life." The deep piety and the varied culture of his mother "made her admirably qualified to be the depository of the ardent thoughts and aspirations of his boyhood." At Oxford, where he completed his education after leaving Eton, he showed that unselfish spirit and consideration for the feelings of others which were the recognized traits of his character in after life. Conscious of the unsatisfactory state of the family's fortunes, he laboured strenuously even in college to relieve his father as much as possible of the expenses of his education. While living very much to himself, he never failed to win the confidence and respect even at this youthful age of all those who had an opportunity of knowing his independence of thought and judgment. Among his contemporaries were Mr. Gladstone, afterwards prime minister; the Duke of Newcastle, who became secretary of state for the colonies and was chief adviser of the Prince of Wales--now Edward VII--during his visit to Canada in 1860; and Lord Dalhousie and Lord Canning, both of whom preceded him in the governor-generalship of India. In the college debating club he won at once a very distinguished place. "I well remember," wrote Mr. Gladstone, many years later, "placing him as to the natural gift of eloquence at the head of all those I knew either at Eton or at the University." He took a deep interest in the study of philosophy. In him--to quote the opinion of his own brother, Sir Frederick Bruce, "the Reason and Understanding, to use the distinctions of Coleridge, were both largely developed, and both admirably balanced. ... He set himself to work to form in his own mind a clear idea of each of the constituent parts of the problem with which he had to deal. This he effected partly by reading, but still more by conversation with special men, and by that extraordinary logical power of mind and penetration which not only enabled him to get out of every man all he had in him, but which revealed to these men themselves a knowledge of their own imperfect and crude conceptions, and made them constantly unwilling witnesses or reluctant adherents to views which originally they were prepared to oppose...." The result was that, "in an incredibly short time he attained an accurate and clear conception of the essential facts before him, and was thus enabled to strike out a course which he could consistently pursue amid all difficulties, because it was in harmony with the actual facts and the permanent conditions of the problem he had to solve." Here we have the secret of his success in grappling with the serious and complicated questions which constantly engaged his attention in the administration of Canadian affairs.

After leaving the university with honour, he passed several years on the family estate, which he endeavoured to relieve as far as possible from the financial embarrassment into which it had fallen ever since his father's extravagant purchase in Greece. In 1840, by the death of his eldest brother, George, who died unmarried, James became heir to the earldom, and soon afterwards entered parliament as member for the borough of Southampton. He claimed then, as always, to be a Liberal Conservative, because he believed that "the institutions of our