da, and sent out as governor
Charles Poulett Thompson, who was made Baron Sydenham and Toronto In the
single parliament each province was equally represented. By this time
there was more than a million people in Canada, and the country was
becoming important. Lord Sydenham died in 1841 before his work was
completed, and he left Canada still in a troubled condition. The French
were suspicious of the Union, aimed avowedly at checking their
influence, and the complete self-government for which the "Reformers" in
English-speaking Canada had clamoured was not yet conceded by the
colonial office. But rapidly it became obvious that the provinces united
had become too important to be held in leading strings. The issue was
finally settled in 1849 when the earl of Elgin was governor and the
Canadian legislature, sitting at Montreal, passed by a large majority
the Rebellion Losses Bill, compensating citizens, some of them French,
in Lower Canada, for losses incurred at the hands of the loyal party
during the rebellion a decade earlier. The cry was easily raised by the
Conservative minority that this was to vote reward for rebellion. They
appealed to London for intervention. The mob in Montreal burned the
parliament buildings and stoned Lord Elgin himself because he gave the
royal assent to the bill. He did so in the face of this fierce
opposition, on the ground that, in Canadian domestic affairs, the
Canadian parliament must be supreme.

The union of the two provinces did not work well. Each was jealous of
the other and deadlocks frequently occurred. Commercially, after 1849,
Canada was prosperous. In 1854 Lord Elgin negotiated a reciprocity
treaty with the United States which gave Canadian natural products free
entrance to the American market. The outbreak of the Civil War in the
United States in 1861 increased the demand for such products, and Canada
enjoyed an extensive trade with her neighbour. But, owing largely to the
unfriendly attitude of Great Britain to the northern side during the
war, the United States cancelled the treaty, when its first term of ten
years ended in 1865, and it has never been renewed.

Under the party system in Canada cabinets changed as often as, until
recently, they did in France, and the union of the two provinces did not
give political stability. The French and English were sufficiently equal
in strength to make the task of government well nigh impossible. In 1864
came the opportunity for change,