caused more difficulty to the government than any other measure of the session. Petitions had come up to the House from Terrebonne (where LaFontaine had been defeated) and elsewhere praying the assembly to cancel the elections. Technical flaws in the petitions prevented their reception. A bill brought into the House to overcome the difficulty and permit the reception of the petitions was passed by a large majority, receiving the support, not only of the entire Reform party, but of Sir Allan MacNab and the Upper Canadian Tories. The influence of the government caused the bill to be rejected in the legislative council. This was only one of eighteen measures rejected during the session by the Upper House, a circumstance which served to show that on its present nominated basis it might prove an obstructive influence.

But the measure of the greatest importance adopted during the session was the law in reference to municipal government. As this was a subject with which, in the sequel, the LaFontaine- Baldwin administration was intimately associated, a brief account of the legislation under Lord Sydenham is here necessary. The institution of democratic selfgovernment is nowhere complete until it is accompanied by the establishment of self-governing bodies for local affairs. Parliamentary reform, therefore, naturally goes hand in hand with municipal reform. This had already been seen in England, where the great reform of parliament in 1832 had been follow

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

ed in 1835 by the introduction of municipal selfgovernment. It was now proposed to take an initial step in this same direction in regard to the local government of Upper Canada. Until this time there existed in the districts into which Upper Canada was divided, no elective municipal bodies. The justices of the peace, nominated by the Crown, had exercised in their quarter sessions a supervision over local affairs and had levied local taxation. In the Lower Province local taxation had not been raised previous to Lord Sydenham's administration. The latter had sought to insert into the Act of Union provisions for district government but, finding the imperial parliament averse to such detailed legislation, he had, by means of the special council, created in Lower Canada municipal bodies consisting of nominees of the Crown. It was not proposed to alter the system thus established in Lower Canada, where the government still felt apprehensive of giving full play to the principle of election. The bill presented to the united parliament referred, therefore, only to Upper Canada. This occasioned a peculiar difficulty. If the local bodies established were to be entirely elective, the French might with justice complain of the special privileges thus accorded to the British part of the province. If, on the other hand, the municipal institutions of Upper Canada were framed after the model of those already created by the special council in Lower Canada, the

British section of the province would cry out against the denial of representative government.

In this delicate situation the government attempted a middle course. The provisions of the bill permitted the inhabitants of the districts of Upper Canada to form themselves into municipal bodies. Councillors were to be elected in each district, but the warden, the treasurer and the clerk, were to be nominated by the Crown. The bill as thus drawn had the disadvantage which attends all measures of compromise; it met with opponents on both sides. Mr. Viger, on behalf of the French-Canadians, entered an energetic protest' on the ground that Upper Canada was unduly favoured. "I will express myself," he said, "as sufficiently selfish to oppose such great advantages being accorded to the Upper Canadians alone." Robert Baldwin and the generality of his following objected, on the ground that the advantages conferred were not sufficiently great and that all the municipal offices ought to be made elective.

Here again Hincks found himself compelled to differ from his leader and, in a speech of considerable power, undertook to defend this course in regard to the bill, and to free himself from the charges of desertion now brought against him by his fellow Reformers. To him it seemed that half a loaf was better than no bread. He would have preferred that local elective government might also have been con1 Turcotte, Le Canada sous l'Union, pp. 98, 99.

STRAINED RELATIONS

ceded to Lower Canada, but if this could not be obtained he saw no reason to deny it to Upper Canada on that account. He would have preferred that all the offices should have been elective, but he was willing, in default of this, to accept the modified selfgovernment granted by the bill. "I acknowledge myself," he said, "to be a party man, and that I have ever been most anxious to act in concert with that political party to which I have been long and zealously attached. . . . I have been held up in public prints as having sold myself to the government. From political opponents I can expect nothing else but such attacks, but, sir, I confess I have been pained at the insinuations which have proceeded from other quarters. . . . I can assert that my vote in favour of this bill is as conscientious and independent as that of any honourable member on the floor of this House."

Baldwin, in rising to reply, denied that he had had any share in originating, repeating, or sanctioning any insinuations against Mr. Hincks's behaviour towards the party. The means of demonstrating the groundlessness of such insinuations rested with Mr. Hincks himself. He assured the honourable member for Oxford that if a time should come when the political tie which bound them to each other was to be severed forever, it would be to him by far the most painful event which had occurred in the course of his political life. Nevertheless, in spite of these words of conciliation, the tem

porary breach occasioned by the divergent policy of the leaders of the Upper Canadian Reformers tended to widen. Hincks, with the best of motives, was drawn towards the practical programme of the government. He not only voted with them on the question of public works and municipal institutions, but took issue with his leader also in the votes on the usury laws, the Upper Canadian roads and other matters. His services on the special committee in regard to currency and banking still further commended him to the government as a political expert, of whose services the country ought not to be deprived.

To meet the charges now freely brought against him in the liberal press, Hincks published in his Examiner a letter (September 15th, 1841) in which he fully explains the motives of his conduct. "The formation of a new ministry on the declared principle of acting in concert having failed, all parties were compelled to look to the measures of the administration, and we can now declare that, previous to the session of parliament, our opinion was given repeatedly and decidedly, that in the event of failure to obtain such an administration as would be entirely satisfactory, the policy of the Reform party was to give to the administration such a support as would enable it to carry out liberal measures which we had no doubt would be brought forward." In the face of so consistent an explanation the charges brought against Hincks of having "sold himself to