Lord George Bentinck, who led the opposition to the measure, saw reason to think that, in the published despatches from Canada on the subject, a letter had been suppressed which would have furnished arguments against the Government; and, under this impression, he moved in the House of Commons for ‘copies of the omitted correspondence.’  The motion was negatived without a division, on Lord John Russell’s pointing out that it involved an imputation on the Governor’s good faith; but the Premier himself was probably not aware at the time, how completely the mover was at fault, as is shown in the following letter from Lord Elgin to Mr. C. Bruce, who, being a member of Parliament and a strong Protectionist, had a double interest in the matter:—­

You ask me about this mare’s nest of Bentinck.  The facts are these:  the Montreal Board of Trade drew up a memorial for the House of Commons against the Navigation Laws, containing inter alia a very distinct threat of separation in the event of their non-repeal.  My secretary (not my private secretary, mark, but my responsible Government Secretary) sent me a draft of a letter to the Board containing very loyal and proper sentiments on this head.  I approved of the letter, and sent a copy of it home with the memorial, instead of a report by myself, partly because it saved me trouble, and partly because I was glad to show how perfectly my liberal government had expressed themselves on the point.  Two or three weeks later, the Board of Trade, not liking Mr. Sullivan to have the last word, wrote an answer, simply justifying what they had already stated in their memorial, which had already gone with my comment upon it to be laid before the House of Commons.  To send such a letter home in a separate despatch would have seemed to me worse than absurd, because it would really have been giving to this unseemly menace a degree of importance which it did not deserve.  If I had sent it I must have accompanied it with a statement to the effect, that my sentiments on the point communicated in my former letter remained unchanged; so the matter would have rested pretty much where it did before.  Bentinck seems to suppose that, in keeping back a letter which stated that Canada would separate if the Navigation Laws were not repealed, I intended by some very ingenious dodge to hasten their repeal![11]

[Sidenote:  Speech on education.]

At the beginning of the winter season of 1848-9, Lord Elgin was present, as patron, at a meeting of the Montreal Mercantile Library Association, to open the winter’s course of lectures.  It was an association mainly founded by leading merchants, ’with a view of affording to the junior members of the mercantile body opportunities of self-improvement, and inducements sufficiently powerful to enable them to resist those temptations to idleness and dissipation which unhappily abound in all large communities.’  He took