nothing.  I have adopted frankly and unequivocally Lord Durham’s view of government, and I think that I have done all that could be done to prevent its being perverted to vile purposes of faction.

Various circumstances combined to smooth, for the time, the waters on which Lord Elgin had embarked.  The state of political parties was favourable; for the old Tories of the British ‘Family Compact’ party were in good humour, being in enjoyment of the powers to which they claimed a prescriptive right, while the ‘Liberals’ of the Opposition were full of hope that the removal of Lord Metcalfe’s disturbing influence would restore their proper preponderance.  Something also was due to his own personal qualities.  Whereas most of his immediate predecessors had been men advanced in years and enfeebled by ill-health, he was in the full enjoyment of vigorous youth—­able, if need were, to work whole days at a stretch; to force his way through a Canadian snow-storm, if his presence was required at a public meeting; to make long and rapid journeys through the province, ever ready to receive an address, and give an impromptu reply.  The papers soon began to remark on the ’geniality and affability of ‘his demeanour.’  ‘He is daily,’ they said, ’making new ’friends.  He walks to church, attends public meetings, ’leads the cheering, and is, in fact, a man of the people.’  Before long it was added, ’Our new governor is ’the most effective speaker in the province;’ and, thanks to his foreign education, he was able to speak as readily and fluently to the French Canadians in French as to the English in English.  Added to this, his recent marriage was a passport to the hearts of many in Canada, who looked back to the late Lord Durham as the apostle of their liberties, if not as a martyr in their cause.

[Sidenote:  Provincial politics.]

But though the surface was smooth, there was much beneath to disquiet an observant governor.  It was not only that the Ministry was so weak, and so conscious of its weakness, as to be incapable even of proposing any measures of importance.  This evil might be remedied by a change of administration.  But there was no real political life; only that pale and distorted reflection of it which is apt to exist in a colony before it has learned ‘to look within itself for the centre of power.’  Parties formed themselves, not on broad issues of principle, but with reference to petty local and personal interests; and when they sought the support of a more widespread sentiment, they fell back on those antipathies of race, which it was the main object of every wise Governor to extinguish.

The following extracts from private letters to Lord Grey, written within a few months of his arrival, reflect this state of things.  Though the circumstances to which they refer are past and gone, they may not be without interest, as affording an insight into a common phase of colonial government.