Such questions he was always ready to meet with an uncompromising negative. 'I have tried,' he said, both systems. In Jamaica there was no responsible Government: but I had not half the power I have here with my constitutional and changing Cabinet.' Even on the Vice-regal throne of India, he missed, at first, at least, something of the authority and influence which had been his, as Constitutional Governor, in Canada.[5] He was fully conscious, however, of the difficult nature of the position, and that it was only tenable on condition of being penetrated, or _possessed_, as he said, with the idea of its tenability. In this strain he wrote to his intimate friend. Mr. Cumming Bruce, in September 1852, with reference to a report that he was to be recalled by the Ministry which had recently come into power. As respects the _matter_ of the report, I am disposed to believe that, viewing the question with reference to personal interests exclusively, my removal from hence would not be any disadvantage to me. But, as to my work here--there is the rub. Is it to be all undone? On this point I must speak frankly. I have been possessed (I use the word advisedly, for I fear that most persons in England still consider it a case of _possession_) with the idea that it is possible to maintain on this soil of North America, and in the face of Republican America, British connection and British institutions, if you give the latter freely and trustingly. Faith, when it is sincere, is always catching; and I have imparted this faith, more or less thoroughly, to all Canadian statesmen with whom I have been in official relationship since 1848, and to all intelligent Englishmen with whom I have come in contact since 1850--as witness Lord Wharncliffe, Waldegrave, Tremenheere, &c. &c. Now if the Governor ceases to possess this faith, or to have the faculty of imparting it, I confess I fear that, ere long, it will become extinct in other breasts likewise. I believe that it is equally an error to imagine with one old-fashioned party, that you can govern such dependencies as this on the antiquated bureaucratic principle, by means of rescripts from Downing Street, in defiance of the popular legislatures, and on the hypothesis that one local faction monopolises all the loyalty of the Colony; and to suppose with the Radicals that all is done when you have simply told the colonists 'to go to the devil their own way.' I believe, on the contrary, that there is more room for the exercise of influence on the part of the Governor under my system than under any that ever was before devised; an influence, however, wholly moral--an influence of suasion, sympathy, and moderation, which softens the temper while it elevates the aims of local polities. It is true that on certain questions of public policy, especially with regard to Church matters,