Between Lord Minto and Sir Wilfrid Laurier there was on all subjects an understanding. That is not the same thing as saying they never differed, which would be absurd. But they had before them the same high objects, and they pretty well agreed as to the means of attaining them. The relations between Government House and Parliament House, where the Prime Minister had his headquarters, were cordial, frank, unrestrained, and delightful. That there should be relations of that kind between the representative of the Crown and the representative of the Dominion is of equal advantage to the Crown and to the Dominion. They have not always existed, but there seems every reason to believe they will exist in the future, as they did in Lord Minto's time, and as they do now that Lord Grey speaks for the Sovereign and Sir Wilfrid Laurier is still the trusted Prime Minister of a Dominion which has grown too great to be called a Colony.
As I have mentioned Lady Aberdeen, I may say a word, though for a different reason, about Lady Minto, who for six years was the idol of Ottawa and of the whole Dominion. If ever there was an example of tact and felicity in the discharge of the duties that fall to the wife of a Governor-General, Lady Minto was that example. What need be added except that the statement is not a compliment but a testimony? The Canadian Press has paid its tribute and there are other tributes. One is that in Quebec and Toronto, the capital of the French Roman Catholic province and the capital of the British Protestant province, Lady Minto was equally popular and equally beloved. In a very literal but strictly correct and conventional sense it may be said that she was a power in the Dominion. The receptions at Government House were very interesting; perhaps sometimes curious as an example of democracy undergoing a social evolution. In all the Commonwealths beyond the seas the same process, I presume, may be studied. When Lady Carrington issued three thousand invitations to a reception at Government House in Sydney the limit had perhaps been reached for the time.
There can be no such throng at Government House in Ottawa because it is not large enough; perhaps is not quite large enough for the dignity of the Dominion in these days of its amazing growth and ever-increasing importance. But Ottawa, though a flourishing city, is not a great city. It is a compromise capital; the middle term in which the rivalries of Quebec on the one hand and Toronto on the other found a means of peace on neutral and central ground.
CHAPTER XXX
TWO GOVERNORS-GENERAL—LORD MINTO AND LORD GREY
Lord Minto has now passed from the great post of Governor-General of the Dominion to the still greater Viceroyalty of India. But I apprehend it will be long before his reign in Canada is forgotten. Possibly the Canadians might not use, and may not like, the word reign. They are a susceptible as well as a great people. They are jealous of their liberties, which are in no danger, and of the word American, to which they have some claim, over-shadowed though it be by their greater neighbour on the South. I have seen more instances than one of Canadian sensitiveness, of which I will take the simplest. Having to pay for a purchase in an Ottawa shop I asked the shopkeeper whether he would take an American banknote. He answered with a flushed face:
"We consider our money as much American as yours. We have the same right as you to the name American."
"By all means. But what do you call our money?"