so formidable.... What do you think of this, you miserable
people in England, who spend two years upon a single measure?"[42]

But the chief significance of the session lies in the persistent
warfare waged between Sydenham and the advocates of a more extended
system of autonomy. The result, as will be shewn, was indecisive, but,
under the circumstances a drawn battle was equivalent to defeat for the
governor-general.

Sydenham had never before flung himself so completely into the fight.
"I actually breathe, eat, drink, and sleep nothing but government and
politics," was his own description of life in Kingston. He had
accomplished with little resistance from others all that his opening
speech had promised. His ministry owned him as their actively
directing head. His power of managing individuals in spite of
themselves passed into a jest. Playing with men's vanity, tampering
with their interests, their passions and their prejudices, placing
himself in a position of familiarity with those from whom {108} he
might at once obtain assistance and information--such, according to an
eccentric writer of the day, were the secrets of Sydenham's
success.[43] Few men ever played the part of benevolent despot more
admirably, and his achievements were the more creditable because he
could count on no allegiance except that which he induced by his
persuasive arts, and by the proofs he had given of a sincere desire to
promote Canadian prosperity.

Nevertheless, throughout the summer months, there occurred a series of
sharp encounters with a half-organized party of reform; and the end of
the session, while it saw Sydenham successful, saw also his adversaries
as eager as ever, and much more learned than they had been in the ways
of political opposition and agitation. The opposition leaders massed
their whole strength on one fundamental point--the claim to possess as
fully as their fellow-citizens in Great Britain did, the cabinet and
party system of government. In other words, if any group, or coalition
of groups, should succeed in establishing an ascendency in the popular
assembly, that ascendency must receive acknowledgment by the creation
of a cabinet, and the appointment of {109} a prime minister, approved
by the parliamentary majority and responsible to them; and Sydenham's
ingenious device of an eclectic ministry responsible to him alone was
denounced as unconstitutional. The first encounter came, two days
before the sess