But the first great constitutional governor-general of Canada had to interpret constitutionalism as something more than mere obedience to public dictation with regard to his councillors. He had to educate these councillors, and the public, into the niceties of British constitutional manners; and he had to create a new vocation for the governor-general, and to exchange dictation for rational influence. He had to teach his ministers moderation in their measures, and, indirectly, to show the opposition how to avoid crude and extreme methods in their fight for office. When his high political courage, in consenting to a bill very obnoxious to the opposition, forced them into violence, he kept his temper and his head, and the opposition leaders learned, not from punishment, but from quiet contempt, to express dissent in modes other than those of arson and sticks and stones. For seven years, by methods so restrained as to be hardly perceptible even in his private letters to Grey, he guided the first experimental cabinets into smooth water, and when he resigned, he left behind him politicians {206} trained by his efforts to govern Canada according to British usage. At the same time his influence on the British Cabinet was as quiet and certain. He was still responsible to the British Crown and Cabinet, and a weaker man would have forgotten the problems which the new Canadian constitutionalism was bound to create at the centre of authority. Two instances will illustrate the point, and Elgin's clear perception of his duty. They are both taken from the episode of the Rebellion Losses Bill, and the Montreal riots of 1849. The Bill which caused the trouble had been introduced to complete a scheme of compensation for all those who had suffered loss in the late Rebellion, whether French or English, and had been passed by majorities in both houses; but while there seemed no valid reason for disallowing it, Elgin suspected trouble--indeed, at first, he viewed the measure with personal disapproval.[20] He might have refused permission to bring in the bill; but the practical consequences of such a refusal were too serious to {207} be accepted. "Only imagine," he wrote, "how difficult it would have been to discover a justification for my conduct, if at a moment when America was boiling over with bandits and desperadoes, and when the leaders of every faction in the Union, with the view of securing the Irish vote for the presidential election, were vying with each other in abuse of England, and subscribing funds for the Irish Republican Union, I had brought on such a crisis in Canada by refusing to allow my administration to bring in a bill to carry out the recommendation of Lord Metcalfe's commissioners."[21] He might have dissolved Parliament, but, as he rightly pointed out, "it would be rather a strong measure to have recourse to dissolution because a Parliament, elected one year ago under the auspices of the present