He succeeded unfortunately in identifying it with the unpopular and aristocratic party, opposed to the extension of popular government and the diffusion of cheap education among all classes of people.  With that indomitable courage which never failed him at a crisis he set to work to advance the denomination whose interests he had always at heart, and succeeded by appeals to English aid in establishing Trinity College, which has always occupied a high position among Canadian universities, although for a while it failed to arouse sympathy in the public mind, until the feelings which had been evoked in connection with the establishment of King’s had passed away.  An effort is now (1901) being made to affiliate it with the same university which the bishop had so obstinately and bitterly opposed, in the hope of giving it larger opportunities for usefulness.  Its complete success of late has been impeded by the want of adequate funds to maintain those departments of scientific instruction now imperatively demanded in modern education.  When this affiliation takes place, the friends of Trinity, conversant with its history from its beginning, believe that the portrait of the old bishop, now hanging on the walls of Convocation Hall, should be covered with a dark veil, emblematic of the sorrow which he would feel were he to return to earth and see what to him would be the desecration of an institution which he built as a great remonstrance against the spoliation of the church in 1849.

The LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry also proved itself fully equal to the demands of public opinion by its vigorous policy with respect to the colonization of the wild lands of the province, the improvement of the navigation of the St. Lawrence, and the construction of railways.  Measures were passed which had the effect of opening up and settling large districts by the offer of grants of public land at a nominal price and very easy terms of payment.  In this way the government succeeded in keeping in the country a large number of French Canadians who otherwise would have gone to the United States, where the varied industries of a very enterprising people have always attracted a large number of Canadians of all classes and races.

The canals were at last completed in accordance with the wise policy inaugurated after the union by Lord Sydenham, whose commercial instincts at once recognized the necessity of giving western trade easy access to the ocean by the improvement of the great waterways of Canada.  It had always been the ambition of the people of Upper Canada before the union to obtain a continuous and secure system of navigation from the lakes to Montreal.  The Welland Canal between Lakes Erie and Ontario was commenced as early as 1824 through the enterprise of Mr. William Hamilton Merritt—­afterwards a member of the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry—­and the first vessel passed its locks in 1829; but it was very badly managed, and the legislature, after having aided it from time to time, was eventually obliged to take control of it as a provincial work.  The Cornwall Canal was also undertaken at an early day, but work had to be stopped when it became certain that the legislature of Lower Canada, then controlled by Papineau, would not respond to the aspirations of the west and improve that portion of the St. Lawrence within its provincial jurisdiction.