The completion of your water communications with the ocean must indeed be watched with a lively interest by all who have at heart the welfare of Canada and the continuance of the connection so happily subsisting between the Province and the Parent State. These great works have undoubtedly been costly, and the occasion of some financial embarrassment while in progress. But I firmly believe that the investment you have made in them has been judicious, and that you have secured thereby for your children, and your children's children, an inheritance that will not fail them so long as the law of nature endures which causes the waters of your vast inland seas to seek an outlet to the ocean.
I am truly obliged to you for the congratulations which you offer me on the birth of my son, and for the kind interest which you express in Lady Elgin's health: I am happy to be able to inform you, that she has already derived much benefit from her sojourn in Upper Canada.
As not a little fictitious history has been woven out of these events, I shall call in evidence here the _Globe_ newspaper of the 11th, the following day, in which I find this editorial paragraph:--
"It is seldom we have had an opportunity of speaking in terms of approbation of our civic authorities, but we cannot but express our high sense of the manly, independent manner in which all have done their duty on this occasion. The grand jury[19] is chiefly composed of Conservatives, the Mayor, Aldermen and the police are all Conservatives, but no men could have carried out more fearlessly their determination to maintain order in the community."
Of all the Governors-General who have been sent out to Canada, Lord Elgin was by far the best fitted, by personal suavity of manners, eloquence in speech, and readiness in catching the tone of his hearers, to tide over a stormy political crisis. He had not been long in Toronto before his praises rang from every tongue, even the most embittered. Americans who came in contact with him, went away charmed with his flattering attentions.
[Footnote 19: The grand jury, who happened to be in session, had presented some thirteen young men as parties to an attempt to create a riot. Some months afterwards, the persons accused were brought to trial, and three of them found guilty and sentenced to short terms of imprisonment.]