There was something dramatic in the contrast between the possibilities of trouble in the year when the concession was made, and the peace which actually ensued. It was the year of revolution, and the men whom he called to his assistance were "persons denounced very lately by the Secretary of State to the Governor-General as impracticable and disloyal";[17] but before the year was out he was able to boast that when so many thrones were tottering and the allegiance of so many people was waxing faint, there is less political disaffection in Canada than there ever had been before. From 1848 until the year of his recall, he remained in complete accord with his liberal administration, and never was constitutional monarch more intimately and usefully connected with his ministers than was Elgin, first with Baldwin and La Fontaine, and then with Hincks and Morin. Elgin gave a rarer example of what fidelity to colonial constitutionalism meant. In these years of liberal success, "Old Toryism" faced a new strain, and faced it badly. The party had {204} supported the empire, when that empire meant their supremacy. They had befriended the representative of the Crown, when they had all the places and profits. When the British connection took a liberal colour, when the governor-general acted constitutionally towards the undoubtedly progressive tone of popular opinion, some of the tories became annexationists. Many of them, as will be shown later, encouraged a dastardly assault on the person of their official head; and all of them, supported by gentlemen of Her Majesty's army, treated the representative of the Crown with the most obvious discourtesy.[18] Nevertheless, when opinion changed, and when a coalition attacked and unseated the Progressive ministry of 1848-1854, Elgin, without a moment's hesitation, turned to the men who had insulted him. "To the great astonishment of the public, as well as to his own," wrote Laurence Oliphant, who was then on Elgin's staff, "Sir Allan MacNab, who had been one of his bitterest opponents ever since the Montreal events, was sent for to form a ministry--Lord Elgin by this act satisfactorily disproving the charges of {205} having either personal or political partialities in the selection of his ministers."[19]