Lord Elgin

Lord Elgin

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Lord Elgin, by John George Bourinot,
Edited by Duncan Campbell Scott and Pelham Edgar
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Lord Elgin
Author: John George Bourinot
Release Date: July 31, 2004 [eBook #13066]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LORD
ELGIN***
E-text prepared by Robert Connal, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

LORD ELGIN
by
SIR JOHN GEORGE BOURINOT
THE MAKERS OF CANADA
EDITED BY DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT, F.R.S.C., AND
PELHAM EDGAR, PH.D.
Edition De Luxe
Toronto, 1903

[Illustration: "Elgin a Kincardine."]

EDITORS' NOTE
The late Sir John Bourinot had completed and revised the following

pages some months before his lamented death. The book represents
more satisfactorily, perhaps, than anything else that he has written the
author's breadth of political vision and his concrete mastery of
historical fact. The life of Lord Elgin required to be written by one
possessed of more than ordinary insight into the interesting aspects of
constitutional law. That it has been singularly well presented must be
the conclusion of all who may read this present narrative.

CONTENTS

Chapter Page
I: EARLY CAREER 1
II: POLITICAL CONDITION IN CANADA 17
III: POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 41
IV: THE INDEMNIFICATION ACT 61
V: THE END OF THE LAFONTAINE-BALDWIN MINISTRY, 1851
85
VI: THE HINCKS-MORIN MINISTRY 107
VII: THE HISTORY OF THE CLERGY RESERVES (1791-1854) 143
VIII: SEIGNIORIAL TENURE 171
IX: CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES 189
X: FAREWELL TO CANADA 203
XI: POLITICAL PROGRESS 227
XII: A COMPARISON OF SYSTEMS 239
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 269

INDEX 271

CHAPTER I

EARLY CAREER
The Canadian people have had a varied experience in governors
appointed by the imperial state. At the very commencement of British
rule they were so fortunate as to find at the head of affairs Sir Guy
Carleton--afterwards Lord Dorchester--who saved the country during
the American revolution by his military genius, and also proved
himself an able civil governor in his relations with the French
Canadians, then called "the new subjects," whom he treated in a fair
and generous spirit that did much to make them friendly to British
institutions. On the other hand they have had military men like Sir
James Craig, hospitable, generous, and kind, but at the same time
incapable of understanding colonial conditions and aspirations,
ignorant of the principles and working of representative institutions,
and too ready to apply arbitrary methods to the administration of civil
affairs. Then they have had men who were suddenly drawn from some
inconspicuous position in the parent state, like Sir Francis Bond Head,
and allowed by an apathetic or ignorant colonial office to prove their
want of discretion, tact, and even common sense at a very critical stage
of Canadian affairs. Again there have been governors of the highest
rank in the peerage of England, like the Duke of Richmond, whose
administration was chiefly remarkable for his success in aggravating
national animosities in French Canada, and whose name would now be
quite forgotten were it not for the unhappy circumstances of his
death.[1] Then Canadians have had the good fortune of the presence of
Lord Durham at a time when a most serious state of affairs
imperatively demanded that ripe political knowledge, that cool
judgment, and that capacity to comprehend political grievances which
were confessedly the characteristics of this eminent British statesman.
Happily for Canada he was followed by a keen politician and an astute
economist who, despite his overweening vanity and his tendency to

underrate the ability of "those fellows in the colonies"--his own words
in a letter to England--was well able to gauge public sentiment
accurately and to govern himself accordingly during his short term of
office. Since the confederation of the provinces there has been a
succession of distinguished governors, some bearing names famous in
the history of Great Britain and Ireland, some bringing to the discharge
of their duties a large knowledge of public business gained in the
government of the parent state and her wide empire, some gifted with a
happy faculty of expressing themselves with ease and elegance, and all
equally influenced by an earnest desire to fill their important position
with dignity, impartiality, and affability.
But eminent as have been the services of many of the governors whose
memories are still cherished by the people of Canada, no one among
them stands on a higher plane than James, eighth earl of Elgin and
twelfth earl of Kincardine, whose public career in Canada I propose to
recall in the following narrative. He