Tories, was confessing the change when he wrote, in
1860, "While I have always been a member of what is called the
Conservative party, I could never have been called a Tory, although
there is no man who more respects what is called old-fogey Toryism than
I do, so long as it is based upon principle."[3] The fierce battles
over constitutional theories, {297} which a series of British governors
and governments had so long deprecated, had at last been eliminated by
the natural development of Canadian political life.

The same natural development provided a substitute for the older party
system. Elgin, as has been seen, belonged to the group of Peelites,
who, during the lifetime of their leader and long after it, endeavoured
to solve the new administrative problems of the nineteenth century
without too strict an adherence to party programmes and lines of
division. Curiously enough, he was the chief agent in stimulating a
similar political movement in Canada. There was, however, this
difference, that while in Peel's case, and still more in that of his
followers, the British party tradition proved overwhelmingly powerful,
in Canada, where tradition was weaker, and the need for sound
administration far more vital, the movement became dominant in the form
of Liberal-conservatism. In other words, in place of small violently
antagonistic parties, moderate men inclined to come together to carry
out a broad, non-controversial, national programme.

There are few more remarkable developments in Canada between 1840 and
1867 than this tendency {298} towards government by a single party. It
was Sydenham's shrewd insight into the Canadian political situation,
even more than his desire to rule, which led him to govern Canada by a
coalition of moderate men. His only mistake lay in trying to force on
the province what should have come by nature. The Baldwin-La Fontaine
compact, which really dominated Canadian politics from 1841, was a
partial experiment in government by an alliance of groups; and when the
great exciting questions, Responsible Government and Church
Establishment, had been settled, and the end in view seemed simply to
be the carrying on of the Queen's government, Liberal-conservatism
entered gradually into possession. When Baldwin and La Fontaine made
way for Hincks and Morin in 1851, the change was recognized as a step
towards the re-union of the moderates. For, in the face of George
Brown, and his advocacy of a mo