[60] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 26 April, 1847. {126} CHAPTER IV. THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: SIR CHARLES BAGOT. Sir Charles Bagot, the second governor-general of United Canada, contrasted strangely with his predecessor in character and political methods. He was a man of the Regency, and of Canning's set. Since 1814 he had occupied positions of considerable importance in the diplomatic world, not because of transcendent parts, but because of his connections. He had been ambassador at Washington, St. Petersburg, and the Hague; and in the United States, where, to the end, his friends remembered him with real affection, he had rendered service permanently beneficial both to Britain and to America by negotiating the Rush-Bagot treaty, which established the neutralization of the great lakes. In Europe, he had been known to fame mainly as the recipient of George Canning's rhyming despatch; and for the rest, he allowed the great minister to make him, as he had made all {127} his other agents, a pawn in the game where he alone was player. In his correspondence he stands out as an old-fashioned, worldly, cultured, and unbusiness-like diplomatist, worthy perhaps of a satiric but kindly portraiture by Thackeray--a genuine citizen of Vanity Fair. Apart from his correspondence, his friendships, and his American achievements, he might have passed through life, deserving nothing more than some few references in memoirs of the earlier nineteenth century. But by one freak of fortune he found himself transported to Canada in 1842, and, by another, he became one of the foremost figures in the history of Canadian constitutional development. There have been few better examples of the curious good-fortune which has attended on the growth of British greatness than the story of Bagot's short career in Canada. When a very eminent personage demanded from the existing government some explanation of their selection of Bagot, Stanley, who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies, pointed, not to administrative qualifications, but to his diplomatic services in the United States. Relations with the American Republic do not here concern us, but it may be remembered that the situation in 1841 and 1842, just before the {128} Ashburton Treaty, was full of peril; and Bagot was sent to Canada as a person not displeasing to the Americans, and a diplomatist of conciliatory temper. But his work was to be concerned with domestic, not international, diplomacy. Three factors must be carefully studied in the year of political turmoil which followed: the Imperial government, the Canadian political community, and the new governor-general.