eral's
command for that of a Lieutenant-General in Canada; but that nothing should
be done hastily or _per saltum_, so as to alarm the Colonists with the
idea that some new and strange principle was going to be applied to them.'

You may if you please (he wrote) largely reduce the staff, and more
moderately the men, leaving the remainder in the best barracks. I
think you may do this without, in any material degree, increasing the
tendency towards annexation; provided always that you make no noise
about it.... But, I repeat it, you must not, unless you wish to drive
the Colony away from you, impose new burdens upon the Colonists at
this time.[7]

The course thus sketched out he himself steadily pursued; and his last
letters on the subject, written early in 1853 to the Duke of Newcastle, who
had recently become Secretary for the Colonies, were occupied in
recommending a continuance of the same quietly progressive policy:

When I came here we had a Commander-in-Chief and two Major-Generals.
We have now only one General on the Station, and the staff has
undergone proportional diminution. If further reductions are to be
made, let them be effected in the same quiet way without parade or the
ostentatious adoption of new principles as applicable to the defence
of colonies which are exposed, as Canada is by reason of their
connection with Great Britain, to the hazard of assaults from
organised powers.

Continue then, if you will pardon me for so freely tendering advice,
to apply in the administration of our local affairs the principles of
Constitutional Government frankly and fairly. Do not ask England to
make unreasonable sacrifices for the Colonists, but such sacrifices as
are reasonable, on the hypothesis that the Colony is an exposed part
of the empire. Induce her if you can to make them generously and
without appearing to grudge them. Let it be inferred from your
language that there is in your opinion nothing in the nature of things
to prevent the tie which connects the Mother-country and the Colony
from being as enduring as that which unites the different States of
the Union, and nothing in the nature of our very elastic institutions
to prevent them from expanding so as to permit the free and healthy
development of social, political, and national life in these young
communities. By administering colonial a