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What was Howe's explanation of his Lordship's tergiversation? It was the same as that which he had for Hincks's volte-face.
Hincks's idea was to aid private enterprise by government guarantees of the interest on half the cost of construction. Canada is now laced with iron roads from ocean to ocean. The man who laid the foundation of these immense systems in the day of small beginnings should never be forgotten.
Hincks's friends as well as political opponents, who recognized the many merits of this able politician and administrator. It was considered, according to the London Times, as "the inauguration of a totally different system of policy from that which has been hitherto pursued with regard to our colonies."
As soon as Brown entered the legislature he defined his political position by declaring that, while he saw much to condemn in the formation of the ministry and was dissatisfied with Hincks's explanations, he preferred giving it for the time being his support rather than seeing the government handed over to the Conservatives.
While the French Liberals continued to support Morin, all the Upper Canadian opponents of the government, Conservatives and Clear Grits, united with a number of Hincks's former supporters and Rouges in Lower Canada to bring about this ministerial defeat. The government accordingly was obliged either to resign or ask the governor-general for a dissolution.
Of the other roads completed in this period, the two which had been aided by Hincks's first Guarantee Act were most important. The Great Western had a promising outlook. It ran through a rich country and had assured prospects of through western traffic. The road was completed from Suspension Bridge to Windsor in January 1854.
Local traffic was sedulously cultivated, and a fair degree of prosperity followed. Most of the lesser roads constructed looked to the municipalities rather than to the provinces for aid. The Municipal Loan Fund of 1854 was the third and last phase of Hincks's railway policy.
The practical result of Hincks's policy was the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, not by public aid as originally proposed, but by British capitalists.
George Brown, Hincks's inveterate opponent, continued for years after the formation of the first Liberal-Conservative administration, to keep the old province of Canada in a state of political ferment by his attacks on French Canada and her institutions until at last he succeeded in making government practically unworkable, and then suddenly he rose superior to the spirit of passionate partisanship and racial bitterness which had so long dominated him, and decided to aid his former opponents in consummating that federal union which relieved old Canada of her political embarrassment and sectional strife.
A cry arose, 'To the Parliament House! and the mob streamed westward, wrecking in its passage the office of Hincks's paper the Pilot. The House was in session, and though warned by Sir Allan MacNab that a riot was in progress, it hesitated to take the extreme step of calling out the military to protect its dignity.
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