s 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:

"If these communities are only truly attached to the
connection and satisfied of its permanence (and as respects
the latter point, opinions here will be much influenced by
the tone of statesmen at home), elements of self-defence,
not moral elements only, but material elements likewise,
will spring up within them spontaneously as the product of
movements from within, not of pressure from without. Two
millions of people in a northern latitude can do a good deal
in the way of helping themselves, when their hearts are in
the right place."

Before two decades of years had passed away, the foresight of these
suggestions was clearly shown. Canada had become a part of a British
North American confederation, and with the development of its material
resources, the growth of a national spirit of self-reliance, the new
Dominion, thus formed, was able to relieve the parent state of the
expenses of self-defence, and come to her aid many years later when
her interests were threatened in South Africa. If Canada has been able
to do all this, it has been owing to the growth of that spirit of
self-reliance--of that principle of self-government--which Lord Elgin
did his utmost to encourage. We can then well understand that Lord
Elgin, in 1855, should have contemplated with some apprehension the
prospect of largely increasing the Canadian garrisons at a time when
Canadians were learning steadily and surely to cultivate the national
habit of depending upon their own internal resources in their working
out of the political institutions given them by England after years of
agitation, and even suffering, as the history