The Project Gutenberg EBook of British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, by
J. L. Morison

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Title: British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government
1839-1854

Author: J. L. Morison

Release Date: February 23, 2010 [EBook #31363]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIT. SUPREMACY & CANAD. SELF-GOVT ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: Lord Elgin]

British Supremacy

&

Canadian Self-Government

1839-1854

By

J. L. Morison, M.A., D.Litt.

Professor of Colonial History in Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

Late Lecturer on English Literature in the University of Glasgow

Toronto

S. B. Gundy

_Publisher in Canada for Humphrey Milford_

1919

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

To

M. T.

{vi}

PREFACE

The essay which follows had been printed, and was on the point of being
published, when the outbreak of war involved my venture in the general
devastation from which we are only now emerging. More than four years
of military service lie between me and the studies of which this book
is the summary. It was written under one dispensation; it is being
published under another. My first impulse, therefore, was to ask
whether the change which has rendered so much of the old world obsolete
had not invalidated also the conclusions here arrived at. But
reflection has simply confirmed me in the desire to complete the
arrangements for publication. Self-government is the keynote of the
essay, and it is unlikely that self-government will cease to be the
central principle of sane politics either in the British Empire or in
the world outside. I watched a Canadian division coming out of the
last great battle in France, battered and reduced in numbers, but with
all {viii} its splendid energy and confidence untouched. The presence
of the Canadians there, their incomparable spirit and resolution, the
sacrifices they had just been making, with unflinching generosity, for
the Empire, seemed only the last consequences of the political struggle
for autonomy described in the page