When I came here we had a Commander-in-Chief and two Major-Generals.  We have now only one General on the Station, and the staff has undergone proportional diminution.  If further reductions are to be made, let them be effected in the same quiet way without parade or the ostentatious adoption of new principles as applicable to the defence of colonies which are exposed, as Canada is by reason of their connection with Great Britain, to the hazard of assaults from organised powers.

Continue then, if you will pardon me for so freely tendering advice, to apply in the administration of our local affairs the principles of Constitutional Government frankly and fairly.  Do not ask England to make unreasonable sacrifices for the Colonists, but such sacrifices as are reasonable, on the hypothesis that the Colony is an exposed part of the empire.  Induce her if you can to make them generously and without appearing to grudge them.  Let it be inferred from your language that there is in your opinion nothing in the nature of things to prevent the tie which connects the Mother-country and the Colony from being as enduring as that which unites the different States of the Union, and nothing in the nature of our very elastic institutions to prevent them from expanding so as to permit the free and healthy development of social, political, and national life in these young communities.  By administering colonial affaire in this spirit you will find, I believe, even when you least profess to seek it, the true secret of the cheap defence of nations.  If these communities are only truly attached to the connection and satisfied of its permanence (and, as respects the latter point, opinions here will be much influenced by the tone of statesmen at home), elements of self-defence, not moral elements only but material elements likewise, will spring up within them spontaneously as the product of movements from within, not of pressure from without.  Two millions of people, in a northern latitude, can do a good deal in the way of helping themselves when their hearts are in the right place.

[1] Colonial Policy, i. 232.

[2] ‘United Empire Loyalists,’ i.e. descendants of the original Loyalists
    of the American War.

[3] Despatch of the Earl of Elgin, Dec. 18, 1854.

[4] Compare Junius:—­’Unfortunately for his country, Mr. Grenville
    was at any rate to be distressed, because he was Minister:  and Mr.
    Pitt and Lord Camden were to be the patrons of America, because they
    were in opposition.  Their declaration gave spirit and argument to the
    Colonies; and while, perhaps, they meant no more than the ruin of a
    Minister, they in effect divided one half of the empire from the
    other.’