return to bring the new treaty to a conclusion, he found that the
commissioners who had gone to obtain their emperor's full consent to
its provisions, seemed disposed to call into question some of the
privileges which had been already conceded, and he was consequently
forced to assume that peremptory tone which experience of the Chinese
has shown can alone bring them to understand the full measure of their
responsibilities in negotiations with a European power. However, he
believed he had brought his mission to a successful close, and
returned to England in the spring of 1859.

How little interest was taken in those days in Canadian affairs by
British public men and people, is shown by some comments of Mr.
Waldron on the incidents which signalized Lord Elgin's return from
China. "When he returned in 1854 from the government of Canada," this
writer naively admits, "there were comparatively few persons in
England who knew anything of the great work he had done in the colony.
But his brilliant successes in the East attracted public interest and
gave currency to his reputation." He accepted the position of
postmaster-general in the administration just formed by Lord
Palmerston, and was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow; but he had hardly
commenced to study the details of his office, and enjoy the amenities
of the social life of Great Britain, when he was again called upon by
the government to proceed to the East, where the situation was once
more very critical. The duplicity of the Chinese in their dealings
with foreigners had soon shown itself after his departure from China,
and he was instructed to go back as Ambassador Extraordinary to that
country, where a serious rupture had occurred between the English and
Chinese while an expedition of the former was on its way to Pekin to
obtain the formal ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin. The French
government, which had been a party to that treaty, sent forces to