The argument forbids any mention of the less public episodes in Elgin's Canadian adventure; his whimsical capacity for getting on with men, French, British, and American; the sly humour of his correspondence with his official chief; the searching comments made by him on men and manners in America; the charm of such social and diplomatic incidents as Laurence Oliphant has related in his letters and his _Episodes in a Life of Adventure_. But it may be permitted to sum up his qualities as governor, and to connect his work with the general movement towards self-government which had been proceeding so rapidly since 1839. He was too human, easy, unclassical, and, on {226} the other hand, too little touched with Byronic or revolutionary feeling, even to suggest the age of Pitt, Napoleon, Canning; he was too sensible, too orthodox, too firmly based on fact and on the past, to have any affinity with our own transitionary politics. Like Peel, although in a less degree, he had at once a firm body of opinions, a keen eye for new facts, and a sure, slow capacity for bringing the new material to bear on old opinion. He was able, as few have been, to set the personal equation aside in his political plans, holding the balance between friends and foes with almost uncanny fairness, and astonishing his petty enemies by his moderation. His mind could regard not merely Canada but also Britain, as it reflected on future policy; and, in his letters, he sometimes seems the one man in the empire at the time who understood the true relation of colonial autonomy to British supremacy. Not even his most foolish eulogist will attribute anything romantic to his character. There was nothing of Disraeli's "glitter of dubious gems" about the honest phrases in which he bade Russell think imperially. Unlike Mazzini, it was his business to destroy false nationalism, not to exalt that which was true, and {227} for that cool business the glow and fervour of prophecy were not required. We like to see our leaders standing rampant, and with sulphurous, or at least thundery, backgrounds. But Elgin's ironic Scottish humour forbade any pose, and it was his business to keep the cannon quiet, and to draw the lightning harmless to the ground. The most heroic thing he did in Canada was to refrain from entering Montreal at a time when his entrance must have meant insult, resistance, and bloodshed, and he bore quietly the taunts of cowardice which his enemies flung at his head.