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It is certainly established by the Peel correspondence that the British government strongly disapproved of Sir Charles Bagot's policy, and selected Sir Charles Metcalfe as a man who would govern on radically different lines. It is perhaps putting it rather strongly to say that he was intended to overthrow responsible government.
Lord Metcalfe had been a sufferer from cancer, and when it appeared again in its most aggravated form he returned to England, where he died a few months later . The abuse that followed him almost to the grave was a discreditable exhibition of party rancour, but it indicated the condition to which the public mind had been brought by his unwise and unconstitutional conduct of public affairs conduct for which his only apology must be the half-hearted, doubtful policy of the imperial authorities with regard to the province, and his own inability to understand the fundamental principles of responsible government.
Gifted with a judicial mind and no ordinary amount of political sagacity, able to originate as well as carry out a statesmanlike policy, animated, like Lord Durham whose daughter he had married by a sincere desire to give full scope to the aspirations of the people for self-government, so far as compatible with the supremacy of the crown, possessed of eloquence which at once charmed and convinced, Lord Elgin was able to establish on sure foundations the principles of responsible government, and eventually to leave Canada with the conviction that no subsequent representative of the crown could again impair its efficient operation, and convulse the public mind, as Lord Metcalfe had done.
Metcalfe; rather rough in his dress; wrote a funny book about Iceland; told some hard things on the priests; they didn't like it at all; didn't know what to make of Mr. Metcalfe, etc. Here was Mr. Chambers's camp a Scotch gentleman; very nice man, plain and sensible; wrote a pamphlet, etc.
Metcalfe and his chiefs at home can hardly be blamed for holding the prevailing views of the time, which were that the changes contemplated by Durham, by Bagot, and by Baldwin were dangerous and revolutionary.
One detachment, headed by Nicholas Assheton, with whom are Potts and Nowell, is about to make the ascent from the spot where they now stand; another, commanded by Sir Ralph Assheton, is moving towards the but-end of the hill; and the third, headed by Sir Thomas Metcalfe, is proceeding to the right. These are goodly preparations ha! ha! But, what do I behold?
In one of his memorandum-books I find, 'Sunday, went to church at Streatham. Templo valedixi cum osculo . He met Mr. Philip Metcalfe often at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and other places, and was a good deal with him at Brighthelmston this autumn, being pleased at once with his excellent table and animated conversation. Mr.
Metcalfe could not but be highly pleased that his company was thus valued by Johnson, and he frequently attended him in airings. They also went together to Chichester , and they visited Petworth, and Cowdry, the venerable seat of the Lords Montacute. We see here how our ancestors lived. That his curiosity was still unabated, appears from two letters to Mr.
His conduct towards Bagot exhibited a consistent distrust of Canadian self-government; and the fundamental defects of his advice to Bagot's successor cannot be better exhibited than in the letter warning Metcalfe of "the extreme risk which would attend any disruption of the present Conservative party of Canada.
Andrew's Society, Toronto, the president, Judge MacLean, proposed the health of Lord Metcalfe, eulogized his Canadian policy, and insisted that he had not been recalled, "as certain persons have most impertinently and untruly assumed and set forth." Brown refused to drink the toast, and asked to be heard, asserting that he had been publicly insulted from the chair.
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