rit
which forced taxation on the thirteen colonies, which complicated
difficulties in the Canadas before the rebellion of 1837, seemed for
the moment likely to prevail, as soon as the legislature of Jamaica
passed a tariff framed naturally with regard to conditions existing
when the receipts and expenditures could not be equalized, and the
financial situation could not be relieved from its extreme tension in
any other way than by the imposition of duties which happened to be in
antagonism with the principles then favoured by the imperial
government. At this critical juncture Lord Elgin successfully
interposed between the colonial office and the island legislature, and
obtained permission for the latter to manage this affair in its own
way. He recognized the fact, obvious enough to any one conversant with
the affairs of the island, that the tariff in question was absolutely
necessary to relieve it from financial ruin, and that any strenuous
interference with the right of the assembly to control its own taxes
and expenses would only tend to create complications in the government
and the relations with the parent state. He was convinced, as he wrote
to the colonial office, that an indispensable condition of his
usefulness as a governor was "a just appreciation of the difficulties
with which the legislature of the island had yet to contend, and of
the sacrifices and exertions already made under the pressure of no
ordinary embarrassments."

Here we see Lord Elgin, at the very commencement of his career as a
colonial governor, fully alive to the economic, social, and political
conditions of the country, and anxious to give its people every
legitimate opportunity to carry out those measures which they
believed, with a full knowledge and experience of their own affairs,
were best calculated to promote their own interests. We shall see
later that it was in exactly the same spirit that he administered
Canadian questions of much more serious import.

Though his government in Jamaica was in every sense a success, he
decided not to remain any longer than three years, and so wrote in
1845 to Lord Stanley. Despite his earnest efforts to identify himself
with the island's interests, he had led on the whole a retired and sad
life after the death of his wife. He naturally felt a desire to seek
the congenial and sympathetic society of friends across the sea, and
perhaps return to the active public life for which he was in so many
respe