It is not necessary to follow Elgin through all the details of more than seven busy years. It will suffice to watch him at work on the three great allied problems which combined to form the constitutional question in Canada; the character of the government to be conceded to, and worked along with, the colonists; the recognition to be given to French nationalist feeling; and the nature of the connection between Britain and Canada which would exist after concessions had been made on these points. The significance of his policy is the greater, because the example of Canada was certain, _mutatis mutandis_, to be followed by the other greater colonies. Elgin's solution of the question of responsible government was so natural and easy that the reader of his despatches forgets how completely his task had baffled all his predecessors, and that several generations of colonial secretaries had refused to admit what in his hands seemed a self-evident truth. At the outset Elgin's own mind had not been free from serious doubt. He had come to Canada with a traditional suspicion of the French Canadians and the progressives of Upper Canada; yet within a year, since the country so willed it, he had accepted a cabinet, composed entirely of these two sections. On his {202} way to the formation of that cabinet he not only brushed aside old suspicions, but he refused to surrender to the seductions of the eclectic principle, which allowed his predecessors to evade the force of popular opinion by selecting representatives of all shades of that opinion. He saw the danger of allowing responsible government to remain a party cry, and he removed "that most delicate and debatable subject" from party politics by conceding the whole position. The defects of the Canadian party system never found a severer critic than Elgin, but he saw that by party Canada would be ruled, and he could not, as Metcalfe had done, deceive himself into thinking he had abolished it by governing in accordance with the least popular party in the state. With the candour and the discriminating judgment which so distinguished all his doings in Canada, he admitted that, notwithstanding the high ground Lord Metcalfe had taken against party patronage, the ministers favoured by that governor-general had "used patronage for party purposes with quite as little scruple as his first council."[16] Since the first general election had proved beyond a doubt that Canadians desired a {203} progressive ministry, he made the change with perfect success, and remained a consistent guide and friend to his new ministers.