The Project Gutenberg EBook of British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, by J. L. Morison
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Title: British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government 1839-1854
Author: J. L. Morison
Release Date: February 23, 2010 [EBook #31363]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIT. SUPREMACY & CANAD. SELF-GOVT ***
Produced by Al Haines
Lord Elgin
{vi} {viii}
British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government 1839-1854
By J. L. Morison, M.A., D.Litt.
Professor of Colonial History in Queen's University, Kingston, Canada Late Lecturer on English Literature in the University of Glasgow
Toronto S. B. Gundy Publisher in Canada for Humphrey Milford1919
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THEUNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSEAND CO. LTD.
To M. T.
PREFACE The essay which follows had been printed, and was on the point of being published, when the outbreak of war involved my venture in the general devastation from which we are only now emerging. More than four years of military service lie between me and the studies of which this book is the summary. It was written under one dispensation; it is being published under another. My first impulse, therefore, was to ask whether the change which has rendered so much of the old world obsolete had not invalidated also the conclusions here arrived at. But reflection has simply confirmed me in the desire to complete the arrangements for publication. Self-government is the keynote of the essay, and it is unlikely that self-government will cease to be the central principle of sane politics either in the British Empire or in the world outside. I watched a Canadian division coming out of the last great battle in France, battered and reduced in numbers, but with all its splendid energy and confidence untouched. The presence of the Canadians there, their incomparable spirit and resolution, the sacrifices they had just been making, with unflinching generosity, for the Empire, seemed only the last consequences of the political struggle for autonomy described in the pages which follow. They would have been impossible had the views of all the old imperialists from Wellington to Disraeli prevailed. The material on which this volume is based falls into three groups. First in importance are the state papers and general corres ondence of the eriod contained in the Canadian Archives at Ottawa. In addition to the corres ondence ordinar
CONTENTS CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTORY II.THE CANADIAN COMMUNITY III.THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: LORD SYDENHAM IV.THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: SIR CHARLES BAGOT V.THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: LORD METCALFE VI.THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: LORD ELGIN VII.BRITISH OPINION AND CANADIAN AUTONOMY VIII.THE CONSEQUENCES OF CANADIAN AUTONOMY INDEX