Lord Elgin

by John George Bourinot

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

For accounts of the whole career of Lord Elgin see Letters and Journals of James, Eighth, Earl of Elgin, etc., edited by Theodore Walrond, C.B., with a preface by his brother-in-law, Dean Stanley (London 2nd. ed., 1873); for China mission, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan by Lawrence Oliphant, his private secretary (Edinburgh, 1869); for the brief Indian administration, The Friend of India for 1862-63. Consult also article in vol. 8 of Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed.; John Charles Dent's Canadian Portrait Gallery (Toronto, 1880), vol. 2, which also contains a portrait; W.J. Rattray's The Scot in British North America (Toronto, 1880) vol. 2, pp. 608-641.

For an historical review of Lord Elgin's administration in Canada, see
J.C. Dent's The Last Forty Years, or Canada since the Union of 1841
(Toronto, 1881), chapters XXIII-XXXIV inclusive, with a portrait;
Louis P. Turcotte's Le Canada Sous l'Union (Quebec, 1871), chapters
I-IV, inclusive; Sir Francis Hincks's Reminiscences of His Public
Life (Montreal, 1884) with a portrait of the author; Joseph Pope's
Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald, G.C.B. (Ottawa and
London, 1894), with portraits of the great statesman, vol. 1, chapters
IV-VI inclusive; Lord Grey's Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's
Administration (London, 2nd ed., 1853), vol. 1; Sir C.B. Adderley's
Review of the Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration,
by Earl Grey, and Subsequent Colonial History (London, 1869).

For accounts of the evolution of responsible government in Canada
consult the works by Dent, Turcotte, Rattray, Hincks, Grey and
Adderley, just mentioned; Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of
British North America, submitted to parliament, 1839; Dr. Alpheus
Todd's Parliamentary Government in The British Colonies (2nd ed.
London, 1894); Bourinot's Manual of the Constitutional History of
Canada (Toronto, 1901); his Canada under British Rule (London and
Toronto, 1901), chapters VI-VIII inclusive; Memoir of the Life of the
Rt. Hon. Lord Sydenham, etc., by his brother G. Poulett Scrope, M.P.,
(London, 1843), with a portrait of that nobleman; Life and
Correspondence of Charles Lord Metcalfe, by J.W. Kaye (London, new
ed., 1858).

For comparisons between the parliamentary government of Great Britain or Canada, and the congressional system of the United States, see Walter Bagehot's English Constitution and other political essays (New York, 1889); Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government (Boston, 1885); Dr. James Bryce's American Commonwealth (London, 1888); Bourinot's Canadian Studies in Comparative Politics, in Trans. Roy. Soc. Can., vol. VIII, sec. 2 (old ser.), and in separate form (Montreal, 1891). Other books and essays on the same subject are noted in a bibliography given in Trans. Roy. Soc. Can., vol. XI, old ser., sec. 2, as an appendix to an article by Sir J.G. Bourinot on Parliamentary Government in Canada.

The reader may also profitably consult the interesting series of sketches (with excellent portraits) of the lives of Sir Francis Hincks, Sir A. MacNab, Sir L.H. LaFontaine, R. Baldwin, Bishop Strachan, L.J. Papineau, John Sandfield Macdonald, Antoine A. Dorion, Sir John A. Macdonald, George Brown, Sir E.P. Taché, P.J.O. Chauveau, and of other men notable from 1847-1854, in the Portraits of British Americans (Montreal 1865-67), by J. Fennings Taylor, who was deputy clerk of the old legislative council, and later of the senate of Canada, and a contemporary of the eminent men whose careers he briefly and graphically describes. Consult also Dent's Canadian Portrait Gallery, which has numerous portraits.