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Updated: May 15, 2025
To use Lord Elgin's own language, "Papineau retired to solitude and reflection at his seigniory, 'La Petite Nation," and the governor-general was able at the same time to call the attention of the colonial secretary to a presentment of the grand jury of Montreal, "in which that body adverts to the singularly tranquil, contented state of the province."
On examining the specimens produced to him, and making himself acquainted with the whole collection, and particularly with what came from the Parthenon, by means of the persons who had been carrying on Lord Elgin's operations at Athens, and who had returned with him to Rome, Canova declared, "That however greatly it was to be lamented that these statues should have suffered so much from time and barbarism, yet it was undeniable that they never had been retouched; that they were the work of the ablest artists the world had ever seen; executed under the most enlightened patron of the arts, and at a period when genius enjoyed the most liberal encouragement, and had attained the highest degree of perfection; and that they had been found worthy of forming the decoration of the most admired edifice ever erected in Greece.
Great as was Elgin's achievement in rectifying Canadian constitutional practice, his solution of the nationalist difficulty in Lower Canada was possibly a greater triumph of statesmanship; for the present modus vivendi, which still shows no signs of breaking down, dates from the years of Elgin's governorship. The decade which included his rule in Canada was pre-eminently the epoch of nationalism.
A happy chance, utilized to the full by Elgin's cautious wisdom, had enabled him to do the French what they counted a considerable service; and the rage and disorder of the opposition only played the more surely into the hands of the governor-general, and established, beyond any risk of alteration, French loyalty to him personally.
Draper himself had seemingly grown tired of the dust and heat of the struggle, and, soon after Elgin's assumption of authority, resigned his premiership for a legal position as honourable and more peaceful. Elgin, then, found a distracted ministry, a doubtful Assembly, and an irritated country.
It was all the more so, because the innovations in Canada influenced British diplomacy in its relations with the United States; and between 1854, the date of Elgin's Reciprocity Treaty, and 1867, British statesmen learned some of the curious ramifications of their original gift of autonomy to Canada.
There is a third aspect of Elgin's work in Canada of wider scope than either of those already mentioned, and one in which his claims to distinction have been almost forgotten his contribution to the working theory of the British Empire. Elgin was one of those earlier sane imperialists whose achievements it is very easy to forget.
These principles have been clearly set forth in his speeches and in his despatches to the secretary of state for the colonies as well as in instructive volumes on the colonial policy of Lord John Russell's administration by Lord Grey, the imperial minister who so wisely recommended Lord Elgin's appointment as governor-general Briefly stated these principles are as follows:
They were thus chatting away before the fireplace, Sir Thorn stretched out in an easy-chair, and the count leaning against the mantlepiece, while Daniel had withdrawn into the embrasure of a window which looked upon the court-yard and the garden behind the house. There, his brow pressed against the cool window-panes, he was meditating. He could not understand this wound of M. Elgin's.
Before the end of 1852 Lord Derby was replaced by Lord Aberdeen, and Sir J. Pakington by Lord Elgin's old friend the Duke of Newcastle, who saw at once the necessity of conceding to the Canadian Parliament the power of settling the question after its own fashion. I was certainly not a little surprised by the success with which you carried the Clergy Reserves Bill through the House of Lords.
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