E-text prepared by Robert Connal, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
by
Edition De Luxe
Toronto, 1903
[Illustration: "Elgin a Kincardine."]
The late Sir John Bourinot had completed and revised the followingpages some months before his lamented death. The book represents moresatisfactorily, perhaps, than anything else that he has written theauthor's breadth of political vision and his concrete mastery ofhistorical fact. The life of Lord Elgin required to be written by onepossessed of more than ordinary insight into the interesting aspectsof constitutional law. That it has been singularly well presented mustbe the conclusion of all who may read this present narrative.
The Canadian people have had a varied experience in governorsappointed by the imperial state. At the very commencement of Britishrule they were so fortunate as to find at the head of affairs Sir GuyCarleton—afterwards Lord Dorchester—who saved the country during theAmerican revolution by his military genius, and also proved himself anable civil governor in his relations with the French Canadians, thencalled "the new subjects," whom he treated in a fair and generousspirit that did much to make them friendly to British institutions. Onthe other hand they have had military men like Sir James Craig,hospitable, generous, and kind, but at the same time incapable ofunderstanding colonial conditions and aspirations, ignorant of theprinciples and working of representative institutions, and too readyto apply arbitrary methods to the administration of civil affairs.Then they have had men who were suddenly drawn from some inconspicuousposition in the parent state, like Sir Francis Bond Head, and allowedby an apathetic or ignorant colonial office to prove their want ofdiscretion, tact, and even common sense at a very critical stage ofCanadian affairs. Again there have been governors of the highest rankin the peerage o