o form a close and lifelong friendship. The Reformers of Canada
West, as Upper Canada was now called, formed a working alliance with
La Fontaine which gave them a sweeping majority in the Assembly. Bagot
bowed to the inevitable and called La Fontaine and Baldwin to his
Council. Ill health made it impossible for him to take much part in the
government, and the Council was far on the way to obtaining the unity
and the independence of a true Cabinet when Bagot's death in 1843
brought a new turn in affairs.

The British Ministers had seen with growing uneasiness Bagot's
concessions. His successor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, a man of honest and
kindly ways but accustomed to governing oriental peoples, determined to
make a stand against the pretensions of the Reformers. In this attitude
he was strongly backed both by Stanley and by his successor, that
brilliant young Tory, William Ewart Gladstone. Metcalfe insisted once
more that the Governor must govern. While the members of the Council, as
individuals, might give him advice, it was for him to decide whether
or not to take it. The inevitable clash with his Ministers came in the
autumn of 1843 over a question of patronage. They resigned, and after
months of effort Metcalfe patched up a Ministry with W. H. Draper as
the leading member. In an election in which Metcalfe himself took the
platform and in which once more British connection was said to be at
stake, the Ministry obtained a narrow majority. But opinion soon turned,
and when Metcalfe, the third Governor in four years to whom Canada had
proved fatal, went home to die, he knew that his stand had been in
vain. The Ministry, after a precarious life of three years, went to the
country only to be beaten by an overwhelming majority in both East and
West. When, in 1848, Baldwin and La Fontaine were called to office under
the new Governor General, Lord Elgin, the fight was won. Many years
were to pass before the full implications of responsible government
were worked out, but henceforth even the straitest Tory conceded the
principle. Responsible government had ceased to be a party cry and had
become the common heritage of all Canadians.

Lord Elgin, who was Durham's son-in-law, was a man well able to bear the
mantle of his predecessors. Yet he realized that the day had passed when
Governors could govern and was content rather to advise his advisers, to
wield the personal influence that his experience and sagacity warranted.
Hithert