s which follow. They would have been
impossible had the views of all the old imperialists from Wellington to
Disraeli prevailed.

The material on which this volume is based falls into three groups.
First in importance are the state papers and general correspondence of
the period, contained in the Canadian Archives at Ottawa. In addition
to the correspondence, ordinary and confidential, between the
Secretaries of State for the Colonies, and the Governors-General, from
1839 to 1867, I read two very notable collections, designated in the
foot-notes the Bagot Correspondence and the Elgin-Grey Correspondence.
In the former are contained not only Bagot's private correspondence
with Lord Stanley, but also letters from Bagot's British friends and
Canadian political advisers. These constitute the most important
evidence which exists for Bagot's year of office. In the same way, the
private correspondence, carried on between Earl Grey and the Earl of
Elgin from {ix} 1847 to 1852, takes precedence of all other Canadian
material of that period; and is, indeed, the most enlightening series
of documents in existence on mid-Victorian Colonial policy.

The second group is composed of pamphlets and early newspapers, more
especially the admirable collection of pre-confederation pamphlets in
the Archives at Ottawa, and the Bell and Morris collections at Queen's
University. Kingston. I cannot pretend to have mastered all the
material supplied by the newspapers of the period; but I have attempted
to work through such representative journals as the _Toronto Globe_,
the _Montreal Witness_, and the Kingston papers published while
Kingston was capital of the united Provinces. I consulted certain
others, French and English, on definite points of political interest,
such as the reappearance of Papineau in politics in 1847.

The _Canadiana_ of Queen's University Library gave me my third group of
documents: and the facts from books were confirmed or modified by
information gathered, chiefly in Kingston, from persons whose memories
of the period under discussion were still fresh and interesting.

As the work proceeded, certain impressions were {x} very definitely
created in my mind. It seemed clear, in the first place, that no
statesman, whose experience was limited by unbroken residence in
Europe, quite understood the elements which, between 1839 and 1867,
constituted the Home Rule problem in Canada. More especially on
fundamental point