HINCKS'S CLOSING YEARS Hincks. His reconstruction of the Reform party, his joint premiership with Morin, and the "sleepless vigilance" of his policy of railroad development and public improvement, form an important chapter in the history of Canada to which Sir John Bourinot and other authors of the present series have done ample justice. Hincks's career as a colonial governor in Barbadoes and Guiana, his subsequent return to Canada as Sir Francis Hincks, and the story of his services as minister of finance (1869-73) under Sir John A. Mac donald, lie altogether apart from the subjectmatter of this book. Sir Francis Hincks died August 18th, 1885, after a long, active and useful life. His Reminiscences of his Public Life, published in 1884, is precisely one of those books which it is greatly to be desired that men who have taken a large part in public affairs would more frequently give to the world. For Canadian political history from 1840 to 1854, it will always remain an authority of the first importance. It may, at first sight, appear strange that the two great Reformers, whose joint career has been chronicled in the foregoing pages, should have abandoned political life at an age when most statesmen are but on the threshold of their achievements. But the resignation of Baldwin and La Fontaine meant that their work was done. To find a real basis of political union between French and British Canada, to substitute for the strife of unreconciled races the fellow-citizenship of two great peoples, and set up in the foremost of British colonies an ensample of self-government that should prove the lasting basis of empire,-this was the completed work by which they had amply earned the rest of eventide after the day of toil. A INDEX ACT OF UNION, see Union, Act of 284 Amnesty Act, 292 B BAGOT, LADY MARY, 148 Baldwin Act, 105 Baldwin, Dr. William, 23, 24, Baldwin, Robert, birth and parent- struction of ministry, 79; resigns |