olution and election on the definite issue of the Union;
but the need for haste, and his natural inclination to take risks, and
to trust to his powers of management, decided him to face the existing
local parliament. By the end of November he had arrived at Toronto,
and the Assembly met on December 3rd. Two plain but difficult tasks
lay before him: to persuade both houses of Parliament to accept his
scheme of Union, and to arrange, on some moderate basis, the whole
Clergy Reserve question. To complicate these practical duties, the
speculative problem of responsible government, long keenly canvassed in
Toronto, and the peculiar conditions and methods of local politics, lay
as dangerous obstacles in his path. The manners and methods of the
politicians of Upper Canada drew him even in his despatches into vivid
criticism. After a month's observation, he sent Russell a long and
very able description of the prevailing disorders. In spite of a
general loyalty the people {85} had been fretted into vexations and
petty divisions, and for the most part felt deep-rooted animosity
towards the executive authorities. Indeed, apart from the party bias
of the government, its inefficiency and uncertainty had destroyed all
public confidence in it. Under the executive government, the authority
of the legislative council had been exercised by a very few
individuals, representing a mere clique in the capital, frequently
opposed both to the government and to the Assembly, and considered by
the people hostile to their interests. In the lower chamber, the loss
of public influence by the ministry had introduced absolute legislative
chaos, and even the control over expenditure, and the examination of
accounts, were of the loosest and most irregular character.[14] In a
private letter he allowed himself a freedom of expression which renders
his description the _locus classicus_ for political conditions before
the Union:--"The state of things here is far worse than I had expected.
The country is split into factions animated with the most deadly hatred
to each other. The people have got into the way of talking so much of
_separation_, {86} that they begin to believe in it. The
Constitutional party is as bad or worse than the other, in spite of all
their professions of loyalty. The finances are more deranged than we
believed even in England. The deficit, L75,000 a year, more than equal
to the income. All public works suspended. Emigratio