ion started, and Robert Baldwin of Toronto was the
leader of the revolt. In February, 1840, Sydenham had invited Robert
Baldwin to be his Solicitor-General in the Upper Province. Baldwin,
although his powers were not those of a politician of the first rank,
was perhaps the soundest constitutionalist in Western Canada. He had
been from the first a reformer, but he had never encouraged the wild
ideas of the rebels of 1837. Sir F. B. Head had called him to his
councils in 1836, as a man "highly respected for his moral character,
moderate in his politics and possessing the esteem and confidence of
all parties,"[44] and only Head's impracticability had driven him from
public service. There is not a letter or official note from his pen,
which does not bear the stamp of unusual conscientiousness, and a very
earnest desire to serve his country. So little was he a self-seeker,
that he earned the lasting ill-will of his eldest son by passing a bill
abolishing primogeniture, and thus {110} ending any hopes that existed
of founding a great colonial family. The Earl of Elgin, who saw much
of him after 1847, regarded him not merely as a great public servant,
but as one who was worth "two regiments to the British connection," and
perhaps the most truly conservative statesman in the province.[45] In
his quiet, determined way, he had made up his mind that responsible
government, in the sense condemned by both Sydenham and Russell, must
be secured for Canada, and Sydenham's benevolent plans did not disguise
from him the insidious attempt to limit what he counted the legitimate
constitutional liberty of the colony. It cannot justly be objected
that his acceptance of office misled the governor-general, either in
1840 or in 1841. "I distinctly avow," he wrote publicly in 1840,
"that, in accepting office, I consider myself to have given a public
pledge that I have a reasonably well-grounded confidence that the
government of my country is to be carried on in accordance with the
principles of Responsible Government which I have ever held.... I have
not come into office by means of any coalition with the
Attorney-General,[46] or with any others now in {111} the public
service, but have done so under the governor-general, and expressly
from my confidence in him."[47] In the same way, when Sydenham chose
him for the Solicitor-Generalship of Upper Canada in the Union
Ministry, Baldwin, who had no belief in Sydenham's cabinet of all the