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
respects well qualified. In offering his resignation to the colonial
secretary he was able to say that the period of his administration had
been "one of considerable social progress"; that "uninterrupted
harmony" had "prevailed between the colonists and the local
government"; that "the spirit of enterprise" which had proceeded from
Jamaica for two years had "enabled the British West Indian colonies to
endure with comparative fortitude, apprehensions and difficulties
which otherwise might have depressed them beyond measure."

It was not, however, until the spring of 1846 that Lord Elgin was able
to return on leave of absence to England, where the seals of office
were now held by a Liberal administration, in which Lord Grey was
colonial secretary. Although his political opinions differed from
those of the party in power, he was offered the governor-generalship