CHAPTER VI

THE HINCKS-MORIN MINISTRY.

When LaFontaine resigned the premiership the ministry was dissolved and it was necessary for the governor-general to choose his successor.  After the retirement of Baldwin, Hincks and his colleagues from Upper Canada were induced to remain in the cabinet and the latter became the leader in that province.  He was endowed with great natural shrewdness, was deeply versed in financial and commercial matters, had a complete comprehension of the material conditions of the province, and recognized the necessity of rapid railway construction if the people were to hold their own against the competition of their very energetic neighbours to the south.  His ideas of trade, we can well believe, recommended themselves to Lord Elgin, who saw in him the very man he needed to help him in his favourite scheme of bringing about reciprocity with the United States.  At the same time he was now the most prominent man in the Liberal party so long led by Baldwin and LaFontaine, and the governor-general very properly called upon him to reconstruct the ministry.  He assumed the responsibility and formed the government known in the political history of Canada as the Hincks-Morin ministry; but before we consider its personnel and review its measures, it is necessary to recall the condition of political parties at the time it came into power.

During the years Baldwin and LaFontaine were in office, the politics of the province were in the process of changes which eventually led to important results in the state of parties.  The Parti Rouge was formed in Lower Canada out of the extreme democratic element of the people by Papineau, who, throughout his parliamentary career since his return from exile, showed the most determined opposition to LaFontaine, whose measures were always distinguished by a spirit of conservatism, decidedly congenial to the dominant classes in French Canada where the civil and religious institutions of the country had much to fear from the promulgation of republican principles.

The new party was composed chiefly of young Frenchmen, then in the first stage of their political growth—­notably A.A.  Dorion, J.B.E.  Dorion (l’enfant terrible), R. Doutre, Dessaules, Labreche, Viger, and Laflamme; L.H.  Holton, and a very few men of British descent were also associated with the party from its commencement.  Its organ was L’Avenir of Montreal, in which were constantly appearing violent diatribes and fervid appeals to national prejudice, always peculiar to French Canadian journalism.  It commenced with a programme in which it advocated universal suffrage, the abolition of property qualification for members of the legislature, the repeal of the union, the abolition of tithes, a republican form of government, and even, in a moment of extreme political aberration, annexation to the United States.  It was a feeble