menace a degree of importance which it did not deserve. If I
_had_ sent it I must have accompanied it with a statement to the
effect, that my sentiments on the point communicated in my former
letter remained unchanged; so the matter would have rested pretty much
where it did before. Bentinck seems to suppose that, in keeping back a
letter which stated that Canada would separate if the Navigation Laws
were not repealed, I intended by some very ingenious dodge to hasten
their repeal![11]

[Sidenote: Speech on education.]

At the beginning of the winter season of 1848-9, Lord Elgin was present,
as patron, at a meeting of the Montreal Mercantile Library Association, to
open the winter's course of lectures. It was an association mainly founded
by leading merchants, 'with a view of affording to the junior members of
the mercantile body opportunities of self-improvement, and inducements
sufficiently powerful to enable them to resist those temptations to
idleness and dissipation which unhappily abound in all large communities.'
He took the opportunity of delivering his views on the subject of
education in a speech, parts of which may still be read with interest,
after all that has been spoken and written on this fertile topic. It has
at least the merit of being eminently characteristic of the speaker, whose
whole life was an illustration, in the eyes of those who knew him best, of
the truths which he sought to inculcate on the young merchants of
Montreal.[12]

After remarking that it was vain for him to attempt, in a cursory address,
to fan the fervour of his hearers' zeal, or throw light on subjects which
they were in the habit of hearing so effectively treated,