The question of the clergy reserves continued for some years after the union to perplex politicians and harass governments.  At last in 1854 the Hincks government was defeated by a combination of factions, and the Liberal-Conservative party was formed out of the union of the Conservatives and the moderate Reformers.  Sir Allan MacNab was the leader of this coalition government, but the most influential member was Mr. John A. Macdonald, then attorney-general of Upper Canada, whose first important act was the settlement of the clergy reserves.  Reform ministers had for years evaded the question, and it was now left to a government, largely composed of men who had been Tories in the early part of their political career, to yield to the force of public opinion and take it out of the arena of political agitation by means of legislation which handed over this property to the municipal corporations of the province for secular purposes, and at the same time made a small endowment for the protection of the clergy who had legal claims on the fund.  The same government had also the honour of removing the old French seigniorial system, recognised to be incompatible with the modern condition of a country of free government, and injurious to the agricultural development of the province at large.  The question was practically settled in 1854, when Mr. Drummond, then attorney-general for Lower Canada, brought in a bill providing for the appointment of a commission to ascertain the amount of compensation that could be fairly asked by the seigniors for the cession of their seigniorial rights.  The seigniors, from first to last, received about a million of dollars, and it also became necessary to revise those old French laws which affected the land tenure of Lower Canada.  Accordingly in 1856 Mr. George Cartier, attorney-general for Lower Canada in the Tache-Macdonald ministry, introduced the legislation necessary for the codification of the civil law.  In 1857 Mr. Spence, post-master-general in the same ministry, brought in a measure to organise the civil service, on whose character and ability so much depends in the working of parliamentary institutions.  From that day to this the Canadian government has practically recognised the British principle of retaining public officers without reference to a change of political administration.

Soon after the union the legislating obtained full control of the civil list and the post-office.  The last tariff framed by the imperial parliament for British North America was mentioned in the speech at the opening of the Canadian legislature in 1842.  In 1846 the British colonies in America were authorised by an imperial statute to reduce or repeal by their own legislation duties imposed by imperial acts upon foreign goods imported from foreign countries into the colonies in question.  Canada soon availed herself of this privilege, which was granted to her as the logical sequence of the free-trade policy of Great Britain, and, from that time to the present,