should hand over the decision of the question to the Canadian Legislature, with the view of the reserves being secularized. In the debate which followed the Ministry presented a sorry spectacle of divided counsels, and in the most important of the divisions on the resolutions La Fontaine and Baldwin were found voting in opposite lobbies. Meanwhile, in the Toronto Globe, Mr. George Brown, who had started that newspaper in 1844, was urging the necessity of a clear and decided policy, and launched threats against a Ministry which should continue to remain without one.

tenure.

On the question of the seigniorial tenure the Ministry Question of seigniorial spoke with the same uncertain voice. The rents under that system were upon the whole equitable enough, though undoubtedly under the English régime, when the system was no longer mitigated by the equitable interference of the government, it worked in a manner less favourable to the tenant; but the fines on alienation were found to be more and more troublesome, as land was more and more dealt with as a commercial commodity. La Fontaine, however, was too deeply attached to the old institutions of French Canada to be willing to introduce a measure for the total abolition of the seigniorial tenure. In this state of things the government became an extinct volcano. The dissatisfaction among the Upper Canada reformers found vent in a vote directed against the Upper Canadian Court of Chancery, which had been Baldwin's special creation. He treated the vote as one of want of confidence from his own portion of the province, though the motion had been lost in the house as a whole, and resigned; his resignation Resignation of La being quickly followed by his retirement from public life. Fontaine La Fontaine had doubtless been for some time tired of and office, and Baldwin's resignation was quickly followed by his own. The La Fontaine- Baldwin administration had done its work, and more material and commercial questions required ministers of a less fine and more practical fibre. The

Baldwin.

immediate work to be taken in hand was that of railway expansion, and for this purpose Mr. Francis Hincks was a more suitable man than the two great idealists who presided with such dignity and grace over the beginnings of responsible government. That Baldwin, though a strong Liberal, was deeply attached to the British connexion we know from the evidence of Lord Elgin. When Lord John Russell had expressed, at the close of his great speech in 1850 on the Australian Government Bill, the opinion that in time the colonies would set up as separate states, Baldwin was deeply indignant and hurt. 'For myself,' he told Elgin, 'if the anticipations therein expressed prove to be well founded, my interest in public affairs is gone for ever.' It was not by language such as that of Lord John that the links of Empire were to be strengthened and made secure.

AUTHORITIES

Letters and Journals of Lord Elgin. Edited by T. Walrond, 1872. There are also lives of him by Sir George Bourinot in the Makers of Canada' Series, and by Professor George M. Wrong of Toronto.

Egerton and Grant, op. cit., contains some of his more important letters and dispatches.

The Colonial Policy of Lord J. Russell's Administration, by Lord Grey, London, 1852, contains a good deal on Canada and the trade question.

Dent, op. cit. vol. ii, pp. 81-244.

Turcotte, op. cit.

Leacock, op. cit.

Life of Sir John Macdonald. By J. Pope. London, 1894. Vol. i, chap. iv, deals with the Rebellion Losses Bill and the annexation manifesto of 1849.

CHAPTER IV

THE ADVENT OF LIBERAL-CONSERVATISM

THE new Ministry, which took office in October, 1851, was presided over by Mr. Hincks and by Mr. Morin, who had been Speaker of the Assembly, and represented the French Canadians. An attempt was made to conciliate the 'clear grits' by including Dr. Rolph, who had returned to public life, in the ministry; but the radical distrust of Hincks was too great to be thus propitiated. In the elections which ensued the Government attained a majority; but of more importance than mere numbers were the individual statesmen who now took a prominent part. John A. Macdonald John A. Macdonald. had been a member of the Assembly since 1844; but at first he had contented himself with making good his ground, and took very little part in the public debates. He had, however, been a member of the Draper Conservative Ministry, and had begun to obtain that extraordinary influence over others which was his peculiar strength. At the time of the annexation manifesto he had kept his head, and had advocated in its stead the formation of a BritishAmerican league, the object of which should be the federation of the British North American provinces under the British flag. Most wary and cool as a politician, in his private life he was guilty of faults and breaches of decorum, for which only his singular charm and genuine kindness of nature could have won forgiveness. Such was the man who from this time forward became, till his death, identified with the history of Canada. At the same time there appeared upon the stage of Parliament a foeman worthy of his steel. Men

George

Brown.

Question of clergy

reserves.

tion has already been made of Mr. George Brown and of his newspaper the Toronto Globe, which soon became a great power in the country. A big, gaunt Scotchman, Brown had both the strong and the weak points of his forbears developed to an exaggerated degree. He presented that combination of fiery enthusiasm, under an icy exterior, which make the doings of the Scottish covenanters even now something of a puzzle. There was in him assuredly nothing of the opportunism of his great adversary; but perhaps all the more on this account he excited a passion of devotion among the Presbyterians and Methodists of Upper Canada, to which the amused admiration of the Conservatives for their brilliant leader was hardly a parallel. In some ways, and of course longo intervallo, these two statesmen may be compared to Disraeli and Gladstone. There was in both that difference on fundamentals which is the secret of political hatreds. To English observers the vigour with which Brown threw himself into an anti-Catholic crusade requires explanation. In this country we see the Roman Catholic Church at its best, and we are familiar with the evils of religious intolerance; but it must be remembered that in Lower Canada at least the Church of Rome has become something very different from that august and dethroned figure with which the writings of Newman have made us familiar. There she has seemed to wield mediaeval powers with mediaeval methods, and even in Presbyterian Kingston a Catholic archbishop has been known publicly to threaten denial of the rites of the Church to those who should vote for a particular candidate, though it is fair to add that such interference led to the candidate's triumphant

return.

The question of the clergy reserves still menaced the Ministry. In January, 1851, a dispatch from Lord Grey had been received by the late Government, in which, while deprecating a disturbance of the existing arrangements, which had secured a certain portion of the public lands of Canada for

the purpose of creating a fund for religious instruction, he yet recognized that the question was one so exclusively affecting the people of Canada that its decision ought not to be withdrawn from the Canadian legislature. Nothing, however, had been done in the matter by Parliament before the Whigs left office, and when in 1852 they were replaced by the Conservatives, the new Colonial Secretary, Sir John Pakington, had strong conscientious objections to the course sanctioned by his predecessor. But while the home Government were in this mood, the Canadian Ministry, while expressing pious opinions in favour of secularization, proved no more anxious to settle the question than had been La Fontaine and Baldwin; and even when Lord Aberdeen's government in 1853 announced their readiness to pass a bill authorizing the Canadian Parliament to deal with the clergy reserves in their own way, subject to the preservation of existing rights, no steps were taken to show that the Canadian Ministry was in earnest.

The indignation of the Radicals was great, and, in the circumstances, natural. When Parliament met in June, 1854, an amendment to the speech from the throne expressing regret that a measure had not been promised for the immediate settlement of the clergy reserves, was carried against the Government by a coalition of Conservatives and Radicals; and in the general election which followed the opposition was triumphant. In 1853 the number of members of the Assembly had been raised from eighty-four to one hundred and thirty, thus diminishing the importance of each individual vote, a change which was warmly welcomed by Lord Elgin. At this time a question came to the front which was henceforth till Confederation to be a continuous cause of trouble in Canada. It has been already mentioned that at the time of the Union, Upper Canada, though containing not more than about two-thirds of the population of the lower division, received equal representation. The effect of the steady immi