time he was deriding parties as mere factions,
crumbled away, and he was forced to accept resolutions insisting that
the Governor's advisers must be men "possessed of the confidence of
the representatives of the people." Fate ended his work at its height.
Riding home one September evening, he was thrown from his horse and died
from the injuries before the month was out.

It fell to the Tory Government of Peel to choose Sydenham's successor.
They named Sir Charles Bagot, already distinguished for his career in
diplomacy and known for his hand in matters which were to interest the
greater Canada, the Rush-Bagot Convention with the United States and
the treaty with Russia which fixed, only too vaguely, the boundaries
of Alaska. He was under strict injunctions from the Colonial Secretary,
Lord Stanley, to continue Sydenham's policy and to make no further
concession to the demands for responsible government or party control.
Yet this Tory nominee of a Tory Cabinet, in his brief term of office,
insured a great advance along this very path toward freedom. His
easy-going temper predisposed him to play the part of constitutional
monarch rather than of Prime Minister, and in any case he faced a
majority in the Assembly resolute in its determination.

The policy of swamping French influence had already proved a failure.
Sydenham had given it a full trial. He had done his best, or his worst,
by unscrupulous manipulation, to keep the French Canadians from gaining
their fair quota of the members in the Union Assembly. Those who were
elected he ignored. "They have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing
by the Rebellion," he declared, "and are more unfit for representative
government than they were in 1791." This was far from a true reading of
the situation. The French stood aloof, it is true, a compact and sullen
group, angered by the undisguised policy of Anglicization that faced
them and by Sydenham's unscrupulous tactics. But they had learned
restraint and had found leaders and allies of the kind most needed.
Papineau's place--for the great tribune was now in exile in Paris,
consorting with the republicans and socialists who were to bring about
the Revolution of 1848--had been taken by one of his former lieutenants.
Louis Hippolyte La Fontaine still stands out as one of the two or three
greatest Canadians of French descent, a man of massive intellect, of
unquestioned integrity, and of firm but moderate temper. With Baldwin
he came t