e site of St Anne's Market. In those days the residential
quarter was in the neighbourhood of Dalhousie Square, the old Donegana
Hotel on Notre Dame Street being the principal hostelry in the city.
There it was that the party chiefs were wont to forgather. That
Macdonald speedily attained a leading position in the councils of his
party is apparent from the fact that he had not been two years and a
half in parliament when the prime minister, the Hon. W. H. Draper,
wrote him (March 4, 1847) requesting his presence in Montreal. Two
months later Macdonald was offered and accepted a seat in the Cabinet.

Almost immediately after Macdonald's admission to the Cabinet, Draper
retired to the bench. He was succeeded by Henry Sherwood, a scion of
the 'Family Compact,' whose term of office was brief. The elections
came on during the latter part of December, and, as was very generally
expected,[3] the {20} Sherwood Administration went down to defeat. In
Lower Canada the Government did not carry a single French-Canadian
constituency, and in Upper Canada they failed of a majority, taking
only twenty seats out of forty-two. In accordance with the more
decorous practice of those days, the Ministry, instead of accepting
their defeat at the hands of the press, met parliament like men, and
awaited the vote of want of confidence from the people's
representatives. This was not long in coming; whereupon they resigned,
and the Reform leaders Baldwin and LaFontaine reigned in their stead.

The events of the next few years afford a striking example of the
mutability of political life. Though this second Baldwin-LaFontaine
Administration was elected to power by a large majority--though it
commanded more than five votes in the Assembly to every two of the
Opposition--yet within three years both leaders had withdrawn from
public life, and Baldwin himself had sustained a personal defeat at the
polls. The Liberal Government, reconstituted under Sir Francis Hincks,
managed to retain office for three years more; but it was crippled
throughout its whole term by the most bitter internecine feuds, and it
fell {21} at length before the assaults of those who had been elected
to support it. The measure responsible more than any other for the
excited and bitter feeling which prevailed was the Rebellion Losses
Bill. There is reason to believe that the members of the Government,
or at any rate the Upper-Canadian ministers, were not at any time
unit