In Lord Elgin’s letters of 1848 to Earl Grey, we can clearly see how many difficulties surrounded the discharge of his administrative functions at this time, and how fortunate it was for Canada, as well as for Great Britain, that he should have been able to form a government which possessed so fully the confidence of both sections of the province, irrespective of nationality.  The revolution of February in Paris, and the efforts of a large body of Irish in the United States to evoke sympathy in Canada on behalf of republicanism were matters of deep anxiety to the governor-general and other friends of the imperial state.  “It is just as well,” he wrote at this time to Lord Grey, “that I should have arranged my ministry, and committed the flag of Great Britain to the custody of those who are supported by the large majority of the representatives and constituencies of the province, before the arrival of the astounding news from Europe which reached us by the last mail.  There are not wanting here persons who might, under different circumstances, have attempted by seditious harangues, if not by overt acts, to turn the example of France, and the sympathies of the United States to account.”

Under the circumstances he pressed upon the imperial authorities the wisdom of repealing that clause of the Union Act which restricted the use of the French language.  “I am for one deeply convinced,” and here he showed he differed from Lord Durham, “of the impolicy of all such attempts to denationalize the French.  Generally speaking, they produce the opposite effect from that intended, causing the flame of national prejudice and animosity to burn more fiercely.”  But he went on to say, even were such attempts successful, what would be the inevitable result: 

“You may perhaps Americanize, but, depend upon it, by methods of this description you will never Anglicize the French inhabitants of the province.  Let them feel, on the other hand, that their religion, their habits, their prepossessions, their prejudices, if you will, are more considered and respected here than in other portions of this vast continent, who will venture to say that the last hand which waves the British flag on American ground may not be that of a French Canadian?"[8]

Lord Elgin had a strong antipathy to Papineau—­“Guy Fawkes Papineau,” as he called him in one of his letters—­who was, he considered, “actuated by the most malignant passions, irritated vanity, disappointed ambition and national hatred,” always ready to wave “a lighted torch among combustibles.”  Holding such opinions, he seized every practical opportunity of thwarting Papineau’s persistent efforts to create a dangerous agitation among his impulsive countrymen.  He shared fully the great desire of the bishops and clergy to stem the immigration of large numbers of French Canadians into the United States by the establishment of an association for colonization purposes.  Papineau endeavoured to attribute this exodus to the