In 1848 he had impaled himself on the horns of one of those dilemmas which present themselves so frequently to absentee governments and secretaries of state—either reciprocity and an Americanized colony, or a new rebellion as the consequence of a refusal in Britain to consent to a reciprocity treaty.[[35]] In 1849, "looking at these indications of the state of feeling in Canada, and at the equally significant indications as to the feeling of the House of Commons respecting the value of our colonies," he had begun to despair of their retention.[[36]] But there were greater sinners than those of the Colonial Office. While Elgin was painfully removing all the causes of trouble in Canada, and proving without argument, but in deeds, that the British connection represented normal conditions for both England and Canada, politicians insisted on making foolish speeches. At last, an offence by the Prime Minister himself drove Elgin into a passion unusual in so equable a mind, and which, happily, he expressed in the best of all his letters. "I have never been able to comprehend why, elastic as our constitutional system is, we should not be able, now more especially when we have ceased to control the trade of our colonies, to render the links which bind them to the British Crown at least as lasting as those which unite the component parts of the Union.... You must renounce the habit of telling the colonies that the colonial is a provisional existence.... Is the Queen of England to be the sovereign of an empire, growing, expanding, strengthening itself from age to age, striking its roots deep into fresh earth and drawing new supplies of vitality from virgin soils? Or is she to be for all essential purposes of might and power monarch of Great Britain and Ireland merely, her place and that of her land in the world's history determined by the productiveness of 12,000 square miles of a coal formation which is being rapidly exhausted, and the duration of the social and political organization over which she presides dependent on the annual expatriation, with a view to its eventual alienization, of the surplus swarm of her born subjects?"[[37]] That is the final question of imperialism; and Elgin had earned the right not only to put it to the home government with emphasis, but also to answer it in an affirmative and constructive sense.
The argument forbids any mention of the less public episodes in Elgin's Canadian adventure; his whimsical capacity for getting on with men, French, British, and American; the sly humour of his correspondence with his official chief; the searching comments made by him on men and manners in America; the charm of such social and diplomatic incidents as Laurence Oliphant has related in his letters and his Episodes in a Life of Adventure. But it may be permitted to sum up his qualities as governor, and to connect his work with the general movement towards self-government which had been proceeding so rapidly since 1839.
He was too human, easy, unclassical, and, on the other hand, too little touched with Byronic or revolutionary feeling, even to suggest the age of Pitt, Napoleon, Canning; he was too sensible, too orthodox, too firmly based on fact and on the past, to have any affinity with our own transitionary politics. Like Peel, although in a less degree, he had at once a firm body of opinions, a keen eye for new facts, and a sure, slow capacity for bringing the new material to bear on old opinion.
He was able, as few have been, to set the personal equation aside in his political plans, holding the balance between friends and foes with almost uncanny fairness, and astonishing his petty enemies by his moderation. His mind could regard not merely Canada but also Britain, as it reflected on future policy; and, in his letters, he sometimes seems the one man in the empire at the time who understood the true relation of colonial autonomy to British supremacy. Not even his most foolish eulogist will attribute anything romantic to his character. There was nothing of Disraeli's "glitter of dubious gems" about the honest phrases in which he bade Russell think imperially. Unlike Mazzini, it was his business to destroy false nationalism, not to exalt that which was true, and for that cool business the glow and fervour of prophecy were not required. We like to see our leaders standing rampant, and with sulphurous, or at least thundery, backgrounds. But Elgin's ironic Scottish humour forbade any pose, and it was his business to keep the cannon quiet, and to draw the lightning harmless to the ground. The most heroic thing he did in Canada was to refrain from entering Montreal at a time when his entrance must have meant insult, resistance, and bloodshed, and he bore quietly the taunts of cowardice which his enemies flung at his head.
He was far too clear-sighted to think that statesmanship consists in decisions between very definitely stated alternatives of right and wrong. "My choice," he wrote in characteristic words, "was not between a clearly right and clearly wrong course—how easy is it to deal with such cases, and how rare are they in life—but between several difficulties. I think I chose the least."[[38]] His kindly, shrewd, and honest countenance looks at us from his portraits with no appeal of sentiment or pathos. He asked of men that which they find it most difficult to give—moderation, common-sense, a willingness to look at both sides, and to subordinate their egoisms to a wider good; and he was content to do without their worship.
It is now possible to summarize the movement towards autonomy so far as it was affected by the governors-general of the transition period.
The characteristic note in the earlier stages had been the domination of the governor-general's mind by a clear-cut theory—that of Lord John Russell. That theory was in itself consistent, and of a piece with the rest of the constitution; and its merits stood out more clearly because Canadian progressives had an unfortunate faculty for setting themselves in the wrong—making party really appear as faction, investing self-government with something of the menace of independence, and treating the responsibility they sought in the most irresponsible way. The British theory, too, as guaranteeing a definitely British predominance in Canada, brought into rather lurid relief the mistaken fervour of French-Canadian nationalism.
Yet Sydenham, who never consciously, or at least openly, surrendered one detail of the system entrusted to him by Russell, found events too much for him; and that which conquered Sydenham's resolution made short work of any resistance Bagot may have dreamed of offering. Metcalfe was wrong in suspecting a conscious intention in Sydenham's later measures, but he was absolutely right when he wrote, "Lord Sydenham, whether intending it or not, did concede Responsible Government practically, by the arrangements which he adopted, although the full extent of the concession was not so glaringly manifested during his administration as in that of his successor."[[39]]
Canadian conditions were, in fact, evolving for themselves a new system—Home Rule with its limits and conditions left as vague as possible—and that new system contradicted the very postulates of Russell's doctrine. It was only when the system of Russell became incarnate in a governor, Lord Metcalfe, and when the opposing facts also took personal form in the La Fontaine-Baldwin ministry, that both in Canada and Britain men came to see that two contradictory policies faced each other, and that one or other alternative must be chosen. To Elgin fell the honour not merely of seeing the need to choose the Canadian alternative, but also of recognizing the conditions under which the new plan would bring a deeper loyalty, and a more lasting union with Britain, as well as political content to Canada.