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 of the country until
1840 so clearly shows. It is also easy to understand that Lord Elgin
should have regarded the scheme in contemplation as likely to create a
feeling of doubt and suspicion as to the motives of the imperial
government in the minds of the people of the United States. He
recalled naturally his important visit to that country, where he had
given eloquent expression, as the representative of the British Crown,
to his sanguine hopes for the continuous amity of peoples allied to
each other by so many ties of kindred and interest, and had also
succeeded after infinite labour in negotiating a treaty so well