very foundation, of his suggestions), and Lord John Russell introduced a bill which, as he described its object, he hoped would “lay the foundation of a permanent settlement of the affairs of the entire colony.”  The main feature of the government policy was the formation of “a legislative union of the two provinces on the principles of a free and representative government,” and the establishment of such a system of local government as amounted to a practical recognition of the principle so earnestly repudiated, as we have seen, by Lord John Russell a year or two before.  It was not, perhaps, fully carried out at first.  Lord Sydenham, who had succeeded Lord Durham, reported to the home government, as the result of a tour which he had taken through a great part of the country, that in the whole of the Upper Province, and among the British settlers of the Lower Province, “an excellent spirit prevailed, and that he had found everywhere a determination to forget past differences, and to unite in an endeavor to obtain under the union those practical measures for the improvement of the country which had been too long neglected in the struggle for party and personal objects.”  But of the French Canadians he could not give so favorable a report.  Efforts were still made by some of the old Papineau party to mislead the people; but he was satisfied they would not again be able to induce the peasantry to support any attempt at disturbance.  It was natural that that party should still feel some soreness at the utter failure of their recent attempts and the disappointment of their hopes; and affairs took the longer time in being brought into perfect order and harmony through a strange mortality which took place among the first Governors-general.  Lord Sydenham died the next year of lockjaw, brought on by a fall from his horse; Sir Charles Bagot was forced to retire in a state of hopeless bad health after an administration equally brief; two years later, Sir Charles Metcalfe, who succeeded him, returned home only to die; and it was not till a fourth Governor, Lord Elgin, succeeded to the government that it could be said that the new system, though established five years before, had a fair trial.

Fortunately, he was a man admirably qualified by largeness of statesman-like views and a most conciliatory disposition for such a post at such a time; and he strictly carried out the scheme which was implied by the bill of Lord John Russell, and to a certain extent inaugurated by Lord Sydenham, selecting his advisers from the party which had the confidence of the Legislative Assembly, and generally directing his policy in harmony with their counsels; so that under his government the working of the colonial constitution was a nearly faithful reproduction of the parliamentary constitution at home.  Such a policy was in reality only a development of the principle laid down by Pitt half a century before, and warmly approved by his great rival, that “the only method of retaining distant colonies