RECIPROCITY IN TRADE

the aid of an imperial guarantee. The history of the negotiations between the Canadian government and the maritime provinces with respect to the Intercolonial scheme is exceedingly complicated. An angry controversy arose between Hincks and Howe; the latter always accused the former of a breach of faith, and of having been influenced by a desire to promote the interests of the capitalists concerned in the Grand Trunk without reference to those of the maritime provinces. Be that as it may, we know that Hincks left the wordy politicians of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to quarrel over rival routes, and, as we shall see later, went ahead with the Grand Trunk, and had it successfully completed many years before the first sod on the Intercolonial route was turned.

In addition to these claims of the LaFontaineBaldwin government to be considered "a great ministry," there is the fact that, through the financial ability of Hincks, the credit of the province steadily advanced, and it was at last possible to borrow money in the London market on very favourable terms. The government entered heartily into the policy of Lord Elgin with respect to reciprocity with the United States, and the encouragement of trade between the different provinces of British North America. It was, however, unable to dispose of two great questions which had long agitated the province the abolition of the seigniorial tenure, which was antagonistic to settle

ment and colonization, and the secularization of the clergy reserves, granted to the Protestant clergy by the Constitutional Act of 1791. These questions will be reviewed at some length in later chapters, and all that it is necessary to say here is that, while the LaFontaine-Baldwin cabinet supported preliminary steps that were taken in the legislature for the purpose of bringing about a settlement of these vexatious subjects, it never showed any earnest desire to take them up as parts of its ministerial policy, and remove them from political controversy.

Indeed it is clear that LaFontaine's conservative instincts, which became stronger with age and experience of political conditions, forced him to proceed very slowly and cautiously with respect to a movement that would interfere with a tenure so deeply engrafted in the social and economic structure of his own province, while as a Roman Catholic he was at heart always doubtful of the justice of diverting to secular purposes those lands which had been granted by Great Britain for the support of a Protestant clergy. Baldwin was also slow to make up his mind as to the proper disposition of the reserves, and certainly weakened himself in his own province by his reluctance to express himself distinctly with respect to a land question which had been so long a grievance and a subject of earnest agitation among the men who supported him in and out of the legislature. Indeed when he presented himself for

BALDWIN'S RESIGNATION

the last time before his constituents in 1857, he was emphatically attacked on the hustings as an opponent of the secularization of the reserves for refusing to give a distinct pledge as to the course he would take on the question. This fact, taken in connection with his previous utterances in the legislature, certainly gives force to the opinion which has been more than once expressed by Canadian historians that he was not prepared, any more than LaFontaine himself, to divert funds given for an express purpose to one of an entirely different character. Under these circumstances it

is

easy to come to the conclusion that the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry was not willing at any time to make these two questions parts of its policy— questions on which it was ready to stand or fall as a government.

The first step towards the breaking up of the ministry was the resignation of Baldwin following upon the support given by a majority of the Reformers in Upper Canada to a motion presented by William Lyon Mackenzie for the abolition of the court of chancery and the transfer of its functions to the courts of common law. The motion was voted down in the House, but Baldwin was a believer in the doctrine that a minister from a particular province should receive the confidence and support of the majority of its representatives in cases where a measure affected its interests exclusively. He had taken some pride in the passage of

the act which reorganized the court, reformed old abuses in its practice, and made it, as he was convinced, useful in litigation; but when he found that his efforts in this direction were condemned by the votes of the very men who should have supported him in the province affected by the measure, he promptly offered his resignation, which was accepted with great reluctance not only by LaFontaine but by Lord Elgin, who had learned to admire and respect this upright, unselfish Canadian statesman. A few months later he was defeated at an election in one of the ridings of York by an unknown man, largely on account of his attitude on the question of the clergy reserves. He never again offered himself for parliament, but lived in complete retirement in Toronto, where he died in 1858. Then the people whom he had so long faithfully served, after years of neglect, became conscious that a true patriot had passed away.

LaFontaine placed his resignation in the hands of the governor-general, who accepted it with regret. No doubt the former had deeply felt the loss of his able colleague, and was alive to the growing belief among the Liberal politicians of Upper Canada that the government was not proceeding fast enough in carrying out the reforms which they considered necessary. LaFontaine had become a Conservative as is usual with men after some experience of the responsibilities of public administration, and probably felt that he had

AN HONOURABLE CAREER.

better retire before he lost his influence with his party, and before the elements of disintegration that were forming within it had fully developed. After his retirement he returned to the practice of law, and in 1853 he became chief justice of the court of appeal of Lower Canada on the death of Sir James Stuart. At the same time he received from the Crown the honour of a baronetcy, which was also conferred on the chief justice of Upper Canada, Sir John Beverley Robinson.

Political historians justly place LaFontaine in the first rank of Canadian statesmen on account of his extensive knowledge, his sound judgment, his breadth of view, his firmness in political crises, and above all his desire to promote the best interests of his countrymen on those principles of compromise and conciliation which alone can bind together the distinct nationalities and creeds of a country peopled like Canada. As a judge he was dignified, learned and impartial. His judicial decisions were distinguished by the same lucidity which was conspicuous in his parliamentary addresses. He died ten years later than the great Upper Canadian, whose honoured name must be always associated with his own in the annals of a memorable epoch, when the principles of responsible government were at last, after years of perplexity and trouble, carried out in their entirety, and when the French Canadians had come to recognize as a truth that under no other system would it have been possible for them