and unselfish positions in the world. He is an apostle of political wisdom and good government. He is placed above those local interests and dissensions which are apt to vex small or remote communities. And happily for the colonies, as well as for the general welfare of the empire, men have never been wanting who are content to quit the centre of human affairs, to renounce perhaps the prospect of splendid advancement at home, and to go forth to the ends of the earth, not for the sake of wealth, for that is not to be gained by it, nor for the love of power, for that is limited, but strong in the performance of a noble duty to those nations of the future which still form part of the Queen's dominions.

It may be said without exaggeration that the late Lord Elgin was the type of such a man; and if any proof were wanted of the spirit in which the office of a British colonial governor may be filled by a conscientious and intelligent statesman, this volume supplies that evidence, not so much by what is said of him by the judicious editor of these papers, Mr. Walrond, as by the record of Lord Elgin's own life and thoughts in his letters and journals, which death alone could unseal. For the chief merit of this publication is that it does not purport to be a biography, though the life it relates was not an uneventful one, but a record of what Lord Elgin himself said and thought, traced by his own hand, in the various offices which he filled.

James Bruce, who afterwards succeeded to the rank of eighth Earl of Elgin, was not born heir-apparent to the honours of his house. He was the second son of his father, the ambassador, and his education was completed before the deaths of his elder brother and of his father raised him to the peerage. In this inferior station therefore he went to Oxford, where he formed one of that remarkable set of men who have played so great a part in the political affairs of our timesWilliam Ewart Gladstone, the late Duke of Newcastle, Sidney Herbert, Lord Dalhousie, Lord Canning, Lord Elgin, Robert Lowe, Edward Cardwell, Roundell Palmer-to whom we cannot forbear adding the name of the late Duke of Hamilton, though he was not their rival in public life-men all born within a short time of the year 1810; George Cornewall Lewis and Sir Edmund W. Head were rather older, but were still connected with Christ Church and Merton in 1831. A generation of statesmen! Similar for the most part in education, pursuits, tastes, and opinions-for, with the exception of Mr. Lowe, all of them belonged to the Conservative school of politics; all of them were regarded with hope as the future leaders of the Conservative party; and all of them were brought

round by the force of circumstances or conviction to serve under Whig governments and rally at last to the Liberal cause. Of the whole of this brilliant list of men, even now not much past the meridian of life, but four remain to us; six of them may be said to have sunk under the burdens or the risks of official life, not however leaving the promise of their youth unfulfilled. In this remarkable group James Bruce is recorded to have outshone all his competitors in the brilliancy and originality of his speeches at the Union; and Mr. Gladstone himself has said of him, I well remember placing him as to the natural gift of eloquence at the head of all those 'I knew, either at Eton or at the University.' But he was not less distinguished by maturity of judgment, by a love of abstract thought, and by those philosophical studies which lay the foundation of true reasoning in the mind. In 1834 he published a pamphlet to protest against a monopoly of Liberal sentiments by the Whigs; and in 1841 he came into the House of Commons for Southampton on Conservative principles, which had however a strong flavour of Whiggism about them. He seconded the Address which turned out Lord Melbourne and brought in Sir Robert Peel, in a speech prophetically favourable to Free Trade, and he would doubtless have been a cordial supporter of Peel's liberal commercial policy. But his parliamentary career speedily came to an end. The death of his father raised him to the Scottish peerage. He had no seat in either House of Parliament, and in 1842 he accepted from Lord Stanley the office of Governor of Jamaica-an appointment which decided his vocation in life.

It fell to the lot of Lord Elgin, in each of the great offices he filled abroad, to assume the reins of government almost immediately after some crisis in colonial history-in Jamaica after Emancipation and the struggle of 1839, in Canada after the rebellion, in India after the mutiny. He was not indeed called upon to face and subdue the great perils of those conjunctures; but he arrived in time to lay the wind, to encourage the desponding, to reconcile the disaffected, and to restore tranquillity and confidence. For these tasks of pacification and peace he was eminently qualified. It is impossible to speak too highly of the sagacity of his observations or of his confidence in high principles of action. These he had the art of expressing, both in his speeches and despatches, with singular ease and perspicuity, insomuch that we hardly know a book in the language more instructive to a statesman than this volume.

Take, for example, the following passage, in which he

pointed out to the ruined planters and refractory peasantry of Jamaica that the true remedy for the evils that afflicted the island was a higher education and a higher system of cultivation :-

In urging the adoption of machinery in aid of manual labour, one main object I have had in view has ever been the creation of an aristocracy among the labourers themselves; the substitution of a given amount of skilled labour for a larger amount of unskilled. My hope is, that we may thus engender a healthy emulation among the labourers, a desire to obtain situations of eminence and mark among their fellows, and also to push their children forwards in the same career. Where labour is so scarce as it is here, it is undoubtedly a great object to be able to effect at a cheaper rate by machinery, what you now attempt to execute very unsatisfactorily by the hand of man. But it seems to me to be a still more important object to awaken this honourable ambition in the breast of the peasant, and I do not see how this can be effected by any other means. So long as labour means nothing more than digging cane holes, or carrying loads on the head, physical strength is the only thing required, no moral or intellectual quality comes into play. But, in dealing with mechanical appliances, the case is different; knowledge, acuteness, steadiness are at a premium. The Negro will soon appreciate the worth of these qualities, when they give him position among his own class. An indirect value will thus attach to education. Every successful effort made by enterprising and intelligent individuals to substitute skilled for unskilled labour; every premium awarded by societies in acknowledgment of superior honesty, carefulness, or ability, has a tendency to afford a remedy the most salutary and effectual which can be devised for the evil here set forth.'

And again:

'Is education necessary to qualify the peasantry to carry on the rude field operations of slavery? May not some persons even entertain the apprehension, that it will indispose them to such pursuits? But let him, on the other hand, believe that, by the substitution of more artificial methods for those hitherto employed, he may materially abridge the expense of raising his produce, and he cannot fail to perceive that an intelligent, well-educated labourer, with something of a character to lose, and a reasonable ambition to stimulate him to exertion, is likely to prove an instrument more apt for his purposes than the ignorant drudge who differs from the slave only in being no longer amenable to personal restraint.' (Pp. 18-20.)

De te fabula narratur. Can anything be more wise or applicable at the present moment to the somewhat disturbed relations of agricultural labour in other countries than Jamaica?

Lord Elgin remained in that island four years. A severe domestic affliction, and perhaps his own love of retirement, caused him to lead a somewhat secluded life in the Blue Mountains. But these years were sedulously devoted to the im

provement of the colony, and they were not without a powerful effect on the formation of his own mind and character, for in him the contemplative were largely united to the active faculties. He had pre-eminently the rare quality of seeing both sides of a question. This faculty at times kept his judgment in suspense, and he would argue alternately in favour of two inconsistent courses of action down to the very last moment when it became necessary to take a final and decisive resolution. Then all uncertainty left him. He adhered with inflexible tenacity in action to the plan which previous deliberation had satisfied him to be the best. The more hesitating and open to objections he had been before, the more determined he was when these objections had in his mind been overruled. At this time, however, he was little known in England-not at all to the men who had succeeded Sir Robert Peel in power, yet such was the opinion entertained of his ability from his correspondence, that shortly after his return home Lord Grey-no mean judge-offered him the important post of Governor-General of British North America.

Nine years had elapsed since the Canadian Rebellion of 1837. Lord Durham, Lord Sydenham, Sir Charles Bagot, Lord Metcalfe, and Lord Cathcart had successively governed the North American provinces in that short interval, but with small results. The power of England and of the English party had been re-established by force more than by conviction. The French and Irish elements in the population were highly disaffected. The legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada was unreal. Even the loyal Canadians were inclined to think that their interests were drifting them towards incorporation with the United States. Such was the state of the country when Lord Elgin arrived there. He arrived there, having recently contracted a second marriage with a daughter of the late Lord Durham, to demonstrate that (to use his own words) the real and effectual vindication of Lord Durham's memory and proceedings will be the success of a GovernorGeneral of Canada who works out his views of government 'fairly.' Thus it happened that the young Conservative Peer, who had already shaken off his early Tory prepossessions, found himself called upon to build on the broad foundation laid by the most advanced member of the Liberal party of that day, and to inaugurate the new principle of government which Lord Durham and Charles Buller had conceived, not merely in Canada but throughout the colonial empire of Britain.

This great experiment had soon to be tried. The Con

servative Canadian Ministry with which Lord Metcalfe had attempted to govern, was beaten by a large majority at the next election, and Lord Elgin at once summoned to the councils of the Crown the leaders of the Opposition who had till then been most fiercely arrayed against the British connexion. The French Canadians, who had very lately been pronounced impracticable and disloyal, were for the first time placed in power and called upon to declare and act upon their policy. Lord Elgin gave them his frank and unqualified support, and although the events of the time were most critical, for the Irish famine had thrown on the shores of Canada a host of starving emigrants, and the revolutionary spirit which pervaded Europe in 1848 was not unfelt even in the other hemisphere, he had no reason to regret the confidence he placed in his new Ministers. He was convinced that nothing was wanting but a policy of conciliation and trust to secure their loyalty. As M. de Tocqueville had said at the time of his visit to the United States in 1832, Be persuaded that 'the Canadians are too French ever to become Americans unless you compel them to be so by turning them into Englishmen.' So Lord Elgin : :

You

'I must, moreover, confess, that I for one am deeply convinced of the impolicy of all such attempts to denationalise the French. Generally speaking they produce the opposite effect from that intended, causing the flame of national prejudice and animosity to burn more fiercely. But suppose them to be successful, what would be the result? may perhaps Americanise, but, depend upon it, by methods of this description you will never Anglicise the French inhabitants of the province. Let them feel, on the other hand, that their religion, their habits, their prepossessions, their prejudices if you will, are more considered and respected here than in other portions of this vast continent, who will venture to say that the last hand which waves the British flag on American ground may not be that of a French Canadian? (P. 54.)

The changes in the commercial policy of England had been extremely perplexing and injurious to Canada. The permission to import American flour at a nominal duty had set all their mills at work. A year or two afterwards the total abolition of the Corn Laws exposed them to the full competition of the great corn-growing districts of the West. To these dangers Lord Elgin applied two remedies. He ardently supported the Repeal of the Navigation Laws, and he laboured to establish complete reciprocity of trade between Canada and the United States, which was for a time secured by a treaty, since, unhappily, sacrificed to the protective policy of the Union. Things, however, did not always run smooth. The Rebellion