best means of appreciating, and who could bear witness at least, if they please to do so, to the spirit, intentions, and motives with which I have administered your affairs; some with whom I have been bound by the ties of personal regard.  And if reciprocity be essential to enmity, then most assuredly I can leave behind me no enemies.  I am aware that there must be persons in so large a society as this, who think that they have grievances to complain of, that due consideration has not in all cases been shown to them.  Let them believe me, and they ought to believe me, for the testimony of a dying man is evidence, even in a court of justice, let them believe me, then, when I assure them, in this the last hour of my agony, that no such errors of omission or commission have been intentional on my part.  Farewell, and God bless you.”  Before I proceed to review some features of his administration in Canada, to which it has not been possible to do adequate justice in previous chapters of this book, I must very briefly refer to the eminent services which he was able to perform for the empire before he closed his useful life amid the shadows of the Himalayas.  On his return to England he took his seat in the House of Lords, but he gave very little attention to politics or legislation.  On one occasion, however, he expressed a serious doubt as to the wisdom of sending to Canada large bodies of troops, which had come back from the Crimea, on the ground that such a proceeding might complicate the relations of the colony with the United States, and at the same time arrest its progress towards self-independence in all matters affecting its internal order and security.

This opinion was in unison with the sentiments which he had often expressed to the secretary of state during his term of office in America.  While he always deprecated any hasty withdrawal of imperial troops from the dependency as likely at that time to imperil its connection with the mother country, he believed most thoroughly in educating Canadians gradually to understand the large measure of responsibility which attached to self-government.  He was of opinion “that the system of relieving colonists altogether from the duty of self-defence must be attended with injurious effects upon themselves.”  “It checks,” he continued, “the growth of national and manly morals.  Men seldom think anything worth preserving for which they are never asked to make a sacrifice.”  His view was that, while it was desirable to remove imperial troops gradually and throw the responsibility of self-defence largely upon Canada, “the movement in that direction should be made with due caution.”  “The present”—­he was writing to the secretary of state in 1848 when Canadian affairs were still in an unsatisfactory state—­“is not a favourable moment for experiments.  British statesmen, even secretaries of state, have got into the habit lately of talking of the maintenance of the connection between Great Britain and Canada with so much indifference, that a change of system in respect to military defence incautiously carried out, might be presumed by many to argue, on the part of the mother country, a disposition to prepare the way for separation.”  And he added three years later: