which ever dominated him, he had passed from retirement in England to reconcile the warring elements in Jamaica to each other; and his success there had been as great as in India. In English politics, in which he had naturally played little part, he identified himself with the more liberal wing of the Whigs, although his long absence from the centre of affairs, and the inclination natural to {160} an administrator, to think of liberalism rather as a thing of deeds and acts than of opinion, gave whatever radicalism he may have professed a bureaucratic character. He described himself not inaptly to a friend thus: "A man who is for the abolition of the corn laws, Vote by Ballot, Extension of the Suffrage, Amelioration of the Poor-laws for the benefit of the poor, equal rights to all sects of Christians in matters of religion, and equal rights to all men in civil matters...; and (who) at the same time, is totally disqualified to be a demagogue--shrinks like a sensitive plant from public meetings; and cannot bear to be drawn from close retirement, except by what comes in the shape of real or fancied duty to his country."[1] Outside of the greater figures of the time, he was one of the first citizens of the Empire, and Bagot, as he thought of possible successors, only dismissed the suggestion of Metcalfe's appointment because it seemed too good news to be true. Nevertheless Sir Charles Metcalfe had one great initial disadvantage for work in Canada. Distinguished as were his virtues, a very little discernment in the home government might have discovered the obstacles which must meet an absolutely efficient, {161} liberal administrator in a country where democracy, the only possible principle of government for Canada, was still in its crude and repulsive stage. The delimitation of the frontier between Imperial control and Canadian self-government required a subtler and more flexible mind than Metcalfe's, and a longer practice than his in the ways of popular assemblies. Between March, 1843, when he assumed office, and the end of 1845, when he returned to die in England, Metcalfe's entire energy was spent in grappling with the problem of holding the balance level between local autonomy and British supremacy. His real contribution to the question was, in a sense, the confusion and failure with which his career ended; for his serious practical logic reduced to an absurdity, as nothing else could have done, the position stated so firmly by Russell in 1839.