The present is not a favourable moment for experiments.  British statesmen, even Secretaries of State, have got into the habit lately of talking of the maintenance of the connection between Great Britain and Canada with so much indifference, that a change of system in respect of military defence incautiously carried out, might be presumed by many to argue, on the part of the mother-country, a disposition to prepare the way for separation.  Add to this, that you effected, only a few years ago, a union between the Upper and Lower Provinces by arbitrary means, and for objects the avowal of which has profoundly irritated the French population; that still more recently you have deprived Canada of her principal advantages in the British markets; that France and Ireland are in flames, and that nearly half of the population of this Colony are French, nearly half of the remainder Irish.

That Canada felt no need of bulwarks except against England’s foes was a point on which he constantly insisted.  On one occasion he wrote:—­

Only one absurdity can be greater, pardon me for saying so, than the absurdity of supposing that the British Parliament will pay L200,000 for Canadian fortifications; it is the absurdity of supposing that Canadians will pay it themselves.

L200,000 for defences! and against whom? against the Americans.  And who are the Americans?  Your own kindred, a flourishing swaggering people, who are ready to make room for you at their own table, to give you a share of all they possess, of all their prosperity, and to guarantee you in all time to come against the risk of invasion, or the need of defences, if you will but speak the word!

[Sidenote:  Recommends gradual reduction of forces.]

On the whole he was of opinion that the Government should quietly, and sans phrase, remove their troops altogether from some points, reduce them in others, and ’aim at the eventual substitution of a Major-General’s command for that of a Lieutenant-General in Canada; but that nothing should be done hastily or per saltum, so as to alarm the Colonists with the idea that some new and strange principle was going to be applied to them.’

You may if you please (he wrote) largely reduce the staff, and more moderately the men, leaving the remainder in the best barracks.  I think you may do this without, in any material degree, increasing the tendency towards annexation; provided always that you make no noise about it....  But, I repeat it, you must not, unless you wish to drive the Colony away from you, impose new burdens upon the Colonists at this time.[7]

The course thus sketched out he himself steadily pursued; and his last letters on the subject, written early in 1853 to the Duke of Newcastle, who had recently become Secretary for the Colonies, were occupied in recommending a continuance of the same quietly progressive policy: