effects of the policy of the imperial government, and to gain control of this association with the object of using it as a means of stimulating a feeling against England, and strengthening himself in French Canada by such insidious methods.  Lord Elgin, with that intuitive sagacity which he applied to practical politics, recognized the importance of identifying himself with the movement initiated by the bishops and their friends, of putting himself “in so far as he could at its head,” of imparting to it “as salutary a direction as possible, and thus wresting from Papineau’s hands a potent instrument of agitation.”  This policy of conciliating the French population, and anticipating the great agitator in his design, was quite successful.  To use Lord Elgin’s own language, “Papineau retired to solitude and reflection at his seigniory, ‘La Petite Nation,’” and the governor-general was able at the same time to call the attention of the colonial secretary to a presentment of the grand jury of Montreal, “in which that body adverts to the singularly tranquil, contented state of the province.”

It was at this time that Lord Elgin commenced to give utterance to the views that he had formed with respect to the best method of giving a stimulus to the commercial and industrial interests that were so seriously crippled by the free trade policy of the British government.  So serious had been its effects upon the economic conditions of the province that mill-owners, forwarders and merchants had been ruined “at one fell swoop,” that the revenue had been reduced by the loss of the canal dues paid previously by the shipping engaged in the trade promoted by the old colonial policy of England, that private property had become unsaleable, that not a shilling could be raised on the credit of the province, that public officers of all grades, including the governor-general, had to be paid in debentures which were not exchangeable at par.  Under such circumstances it was not strange, said the governor-general, that Canadians were too ready to make unfavourable comparisons between themselves and their republican neighbours.  “What makes it more serious,” he said, “is that all the prosperity of which Canada is thus robbed is transplanted to the other side of the line, as if to make Canadians feel more bitterly how much kinder England is to the children who desert her, than to those who remain faithful.  It is the inconsistency of imperial legislation, and not the adoption of one policy rather than another, which is the bane of the colonies.”

He believed that “the conviction that they would be better off if they were annexed,” was almost universal among the commercial classes at that time, and the peaceful condition of the province under all the circumstances was often a matter of great astonishment even to himself.  In his letters urging the imperial government to find an immediate remedy for this unfortunate condition of things, he acknowledged that there was