republican than this bill.”  As a matter of fact a very few years later than the utterance of these gloomy words, Canada and the other provinces of British North America entered into a confederation “with a constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom”—­to quote words in the preamble of the Act of Union—­and with a parliament of which the House of Commons is alone elective.  More than that, Lord Derby’s dream has been in a measure realized and Canada has seen at the head of her executive a governor-general—­the present Duke of Argyle—­“nearly and closely allied to the present royal family” of England, by his marriage to the Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, who accompanied her husband to Ottawa.

One remarkable feature of the Imperial Act dealing with this question of the council, was the introduction of a clause which gave authority to a mere majority of the members of the two Houses of the legislature to increase the representation, and consequently removed that safeguard to French Canada which required a two-thirds vote in each branch.  As the legislature had never passed an address or otherwise expressed itself in favour of such an amendment of the Union Act, there was always a mystery as to the way it was brought about.  Georges Etienne Cartier always declared that Papineau was indirectly responsible for this imperial legislation.  As already stated, the leader of the Rouges had voted against the bill increasing the representation, and had declaimed like others against the injustice which the clause in the Union Act had originally done to French Canada.  “This fact,” said Cartier, “was known in England, and when leave was given to elect legislative councillors, the amendment complained of was made at the same time.  It may be said then, that if Papineau had not systematically opposed the increase of representation, the change in question would have never been thought of in England.”  Hincks, however, was attacked by the French Canadian historian, Garneau, for having suggested the amendment while in England in 1854.  This, however, he denied most emphatically in a pamphlet which he wrote at a later time when he was no longer in public life.  He placed the responsibility on John Boulton, who called himself an independent Liberal and who was in England at the same time as Hincks, and probably got the ear of the colonial secretary or one of his subordinates in the colonial office, and induced him to introduce the amendment which passed without notice in a House where very little attention was given, as a rule, to purely colonial questions.

In 1853 Lord Elgin visited England, where he received unqualified praise for his able administration of Canadian affairs.  It was on this occasion that Mr. Buchanan, then minister of the United States in London, and afterwards a president of the Republic, paid this tribute to the governor-general at a public dinner given in his honour.