It is sometimes said that it is vain to expect a high ideal in public life, that the same principles that apply to social and private life cannot always be applied to the political arena if party government is to succeed; but this is the doctrine of the mere party manager, who is already too influential in Canada as in the United States, and not of a true patriotic statesman.  It is wiser to believe that the nobler the object the greater the inspiration, and at all events, it is better to aim high than to sink low.  It is all important that the body politic should be kept pure and that public life should be considered a public trust.  Canada is still young in her political development, and the fact that her population has been as a rule a steady, fixed population, free from those dangerous elements which have come into the United States with such rapidity of late years, has kept her relatively free from any serious social and political dangers which have afflicted her neighbours, and to which I believe they themselves, having inherited English institutions and being imbued with the spirit of English law, will always in the end rise superior.  Great responsibility, therefore, rests in the first instance upon the people of Canada, who must select the best and purest among them to serve the country, and, secondly, upon the men whom the legislature chooses to discharge the trust of carrying on the government.  No system of government or of laws can of itself make a people virtuous and happy unless their rulers recognize in the fullest sense their obligations to the state and exercise their powers with prudence and unselfishness, and endeavour to elevate and not degrade public opinion by the insidious acts and methods of the lowest political ethics.  A constitution may be as perfect as human agencies can make it, and yet be relatively worthless while the large responsibilities and powers entrusted to the governing body—­responsibilities and powers not embodied in acts of parliament—­are forgotten in view of party triumph, personal ambition, or pecuniary gain.  “The laws,” says Burke, “reach but a very little way.  Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state.  Even all the use and potency of the laws depend upon them.  Without them your commonwealth is no better than a scheme upon paper, and not a living, active, effective organization.”

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

For accounts of the whole career of Lord Elgin see Letters and Journals of James, Eighth, Earl of Elgin, etc., edited by Theodore Walrond, C.B., with a preface by his brother-in-law, Dean Stanley (London 2nd. ed., 1873); for China mission, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan by Lawrence Oliphant, his private secretary (Edinburgh, 1869); for the brief Indian administration, The Friend of India for 1862-63.  Consult also article in vol. 8 of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed.; John Charles Dent’s Canadian Portrait Gallery (Toronto, 1880), vol. 2, which also contains a portrait; W.J.  Rattray’s The Scot in British North America (Toronto, 1880) vol. 2, pp. 608-641.