nch-Canadian {307} character. Others again, chief among them the
problem of separate schools, in Lower Canada for Protestants, in Upper
Canada for Catholics, seemed to set the two sections in direct
opposition. Under the circumstances, a series of conventions was
created to meet a situation very involved and dangerous. The happy
accident of the dual leadership of La Fontaine and Baldwin furnished a
precedent for successive ministries, each of which took its name from a
similar partnership of French and English. Further, although the
principle never received official sanction, it became usual to expect
that, in questions affecting the French, a majority from Lower Canada
should be obtained, and in English matters, one from Upper Canada. It
was also the custom to expect a government to prove its stability by
maintaining a majority from both Upper and Lower Canada. Nothing, for
example, so strengthened Elgin's hands in the Rebellion Losses fight as
the fact that the majority which passed the bill was one in both
sections of the Assembly. Yet nearly all cabinet ministers, and all
the governors-general, strongly opposed the acknowledgment of "the
double majority" as an accepted constitutional principle. "I have told
Colonel Tache," wrote Head, in 1856, "that I {308} expect the
government formed by him to disavow the principle of a double
majority";[10] and both Baldwin, and, after him, John A. Macdonald
refused to countenance the practice. Unfortunately, while the idea was
a constitutional anomaly, threatening all manner of complications to
the government of Canada, there were occasions when it had to receive a
partial sanction from use. When the Tories were sustained by a
majority of 4 in 1856, government suffered reconstruction because there
had been a minority of votes from Upper Canada. As the new Tory leader
explained, "I did not, and I do not think that the double majority
system should be adopted as a rule. I feel that so long as we are one
province and one Parliament, the fact of a measure being carried by a
working majority is sufficient evidence that the Government of the day
is in power to conduct the affairs of the country. But I could not
disguise from myself that it (the recent vote) was not a vote on a
measure, but a distinct vote of confidence, or want of confidence; and
there having been a vote against us from Upper Canada, expressing a
want of confidence in the government, I felt that it was a su