[Sidenote:  Approval of Home Government.]

The reply to this letter assured him, in emphatic terms, of the cordial approval and support of the Home Government.  ‘I appreciate,’ wrote Lord Grey, ’the motives which have induced your Lordship to offer the suggestion with which your despatch concludes, but I should most earnestly deprecate the change it contemplates in the government of Canada.  Your Lordship’s relinquishment of that office, which, under any circumstances, would be a most serious loss to Her Majesty’s service, and to the province, could not fail, in the present state of affairs, to be most injurious to the public welfare, from the encouragement which it would give to those who have been concerned in the violent and illegal opposition which has been offered to your Government.  I also feel no doubt that when the present excitement shall have subsided, you will succeed in regaining that position of “dignified neutrality” becoming your office, which, as you justly observe, it has hitherto been your study to maintain, and from which, even those who are at present most opposed to you, will, on reflection, perceive that you have been driven, by no fault on your part, but by their own unreasoning violence.

Relying, therefore, upon your devotion to the interests of Canada, I feel assured that you will not be induced by the unfortunate occurrences which have taken place, to retire from the high office which the Queen has been pleased to entrust to you, and which, from the value she puts upon your past services, it is Her Majesty’s anxious wish that you should retain.’

[Sidenote:  Support in the colony.]

While awaiting, in his retreat at Monklands, the contrecoup from the mother-country of the storm which had burst over the colony, Lord Elgin found a great source of consolation in the numerous sympathetic addresses which poured in from every part of the province:  fortifying him in the conviction that the heart of the colony was with him, and that the bitter opposition at Montreal was chiefly due to local causes; especially ’to commercial distress, acting on religious bigotry and national hatred.’  One of these addresses, coming from the county of Glengarry, an ancient settlement of Scottish loyalists, appears to have touched the Scotsman’s heart within the statesman’s.  In reply to it he said:—­

    Men of Glengarry—­My heart warms within me when I listen to your manly
    and patriotic address.

I recognise in it evidence of that vigorous understanding which enables men of the stock to which you belong to prize, as they ought to be prized, the blessings of well-ordered freedom, and of that keen sense of principle which prompts them to recoil from no sacrifice which duty enjoins.

    The men of Glengarry need not recapitulate their services.  He must be
    ignorant indeed of the history of Canada who does not know how much
    they have done and suffered for their Sovereign and their country.