government a responsibility which rests, and I think, ought to rest, on me. . . . If I had dissolved parliament, I might have produced a rebellion, but assuredly I should not have procured a change of ministry." As the sight of flame and the sound of riot drifts into the past, a momentous achievement appears written large on the surface of our history by Lord Elgin's acceptance of the Act of Indemnification. It signified that, from now on, the government of Canada, whether conducted ill or well, was at least to be conducted by the people the majority of the people of Canada itself. The history of responsible government in our country reaches here its culmination.

CHAPTER XI

THE END OF THE MINISTRY

THE story of responsible government, with which the present volume is mainly concerned, practically ends, as has just been said, with the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill. The history of the concluding sessions of the LaFontaine- Baldwin administration, of the disintegration of the ministry and of the reconstruction of the Reform government under Hincks and Morin, belongs elsewhere. It has, moreover, already received ample treatment in other volumes of the present series. We are here approaching the days of the Clear Grits, of Radicals breaking from Reformers, of a Parti Rouge, of recrudescent Toryism and the political match-making of the coalition era. But some brief account of the decline and end of the LaFontaine- Baldwin administration may here be appended.

Union in opposition is notoriously easier than union in office. Opposition is a negative function, the work of government is positive. It was but natural, therefore, that with the accession of the Reform party to power and the definite acceptance of the great principle which had held them to

1 See Sir J. Bourinot, Lord Elgin, and John Lewis, George Brown.

gether, differences of opinion which had been held in abeyance during the struggle for power, now began to make themselves felt. The Reformers were by profession a party of progress, and it was natural that some among them should aim at a more rapid rate of advance than others. "It cannot be expected," wrote Hincks, reviewing in later days the period before us, "that there will be the same unanimity among the members of a party of progress as in one formed to resist organic changes in the former there will always be a section dissatisfied with what they think the inertness of their leaders."1

Moreover, the great upheaval of the Rebellion Losses agitation tended to throw into a strong light all existing differences of opinion and to intensify political feeling. The movement towards annexation with the United States in the summer of 1849, which led a number of the British residents of Montreal to sign a manifesto in its favour, was doubtless dictated as much by political spite as by serious conviction. But it is characteristic, none the less, of the precipitating influence exercised upon the formation of parties by the great agitation. In addition to this, the recent events in Europe-chartism and the repeal move1 Political History, p. 39.

2

2 Sir John Abbott speaking in the senate in 1889 said that the "annexation manifesto was the outburst of a movement of petulance." See also J. Pope, Life of Sir John A. Macdonald, Vol. I., p. 70.

A SUCCESSFUL ADMINISTRATION

ment in the British Isles, and the democratic revolutions on the continent-gave a strong impulse to the doctrines of Radicalism, and at the same time repelled many people from the party of progress and directed them towards the party of order and stability. The years of the midcentury were consequently an era in which the formation and movements of parties were modified under new and powerful impulses.

In despite of this, the LaFontaine- Baldwin administration throughout the years 1849 and 1850 remained in a position of exceptional power. It suffered indeed to some extent from the desertion of Malcolm Cameron who resigned his place in a ministry that moved too slowly for his liking (December, 1849), and from the elevation of so strong a combatant as Mr. Blake to the calmer atmosphere of the bench. But it gained something also from the propitious circumstances of the time. The cloud of commercial depression that had hung over Canada was passing away. The removal of the last of the British Navigation Acts in 1849-for which Baldwin, a convinced free trader, and his fellow-Reformers had long since petitioned the imperial government-brought to the ports of the St. Lawrence in the ensuing year an entry of nearly one hundred foreign vessels: the completion of the works on the Welland Canal, on which in all some $6,269,000 had been expended, seemed to inaugurate a new era for the shipping trade of the

Great Lakes, while the prospect of an early reciprocity with the United States and the Maritime Provinces, and the extension of the railroad system, were rapidly reviving the agriculture and commerce of the united provinces. The bountiful harvest of 1850 came presently to add the climax to the national prosperity.

The ministry, therefore, in despite of the progress of Radicalism, which was soon to threaten its existence, was able in the session of 1850 to carry out several reform measures of great importance. The seat of government had meantime, in accordance with an address from the legislature, been transferred to the city of Toronto, which was henceforth to alternate with Quebec, in four year periods, in the honour of being the provincial capital. The appearance of Lord Elgin at the old parliament buildings on Front Street was greeted with loud acclamations from a loyal population, and the Tory party, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to undo the Act of Indemnification by further legislation, found themselves compelled to accept the inevitable. The reorganization of the postal system, now transferred to the control of Canada, with the lowering of postal rates, was one of the leading reforms effected in the session. A new school law for Upper Canada carried out more completely the system inaugurated under Mr. Draper's Act,' and confirmed the principle of granting separate schools 1 See above p. 255.