“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.”

Before two decades of years had passed away, the foresight of these suggestions was clearly shown.  Canada had become a part of a British North American confederation, and with the development of its material resources, the growth of a national spirit of self-reliance, the new Dominion, thus formed, was able to relieve the parent state of the expenses of self-defence, and come to her aid many years later when her interests were threatened in South Africa.  If Canada has been able to do all this, it has been owing to the growth of that spirit of self-reliance—­of that principle of self-government—­which Lord Elgin did his utmost to encourage.  We can then well understand that Lord Elgin, in 1855, should have contemplated with some apprehension the prospect of largely increasing the Canadian garrisons at a time when Canadians were learning steadily and surely to cultivate the national habit of depending upon their own internal resources in their working out of the political institutions given them by England after years of agitation, and even suffering, as the history of the country until 1840 so clearly shows.  It is also easy to understand that Lord Elgin should have regarded the scheme in contemplation as likely to create a feeling of doubt and suspicion as to the motives of the imperial government in the minds of the people of the United States.  He recalled naturally his important visit to that country, where he had given eloquent expression, as the representative of the British Crown, to his sanguine hopes for the continuous amity of peoples allied to each other by so many ties of kindred and interest, and had also succeeded after infinite labour in negotiating a treaty so well calculated to create a common sympathy between Canada and the republic, and stimulate that friendly intercourse which would dispel many national prejudices and antagonisms which had unhappily arisen between these communities in the past.  The people of the United States might well, he felt, see some inconsistency between such friendly sentiments and the sending of large military reinforcements to Canada.