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Updated: May 20, 2025
These questions will be reviewed at some length in later chapters, and all that it is necessary to say here is that, while the LaFontaine-Baldwin cabinet supported preliminary steps that were taken in the legislature for the purpose of bringing about a settlement of these vexatious subjects, it never showed any earnest desire to take them up as parts of its ministerial policy, and remove them from political controversy.
He had been a solicitor-general of Upper Canada in the LaFontaine-Baldwin government, and had never forgiven Hincks for not having promoted him to the attorney-generalship, instead of W.B. Richards, afterwards an eminent judge of the old province of Canada, and first chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Dominion.
All the members of the LaFontaine-Baldwin government, with the exception of Mr. Dominick Daly, resigned in consequence of the governor's action. Mr. Daly had no special party proclivities, and found it to his personal interests to remain his Excellency's sole adviser.
In 1850, when the Lafontaine-Baldwin government was in office, the results of the superintendent's studies of the systems of other countries were embodied in a bill based on the principle of local assessment, aided by legislative grants, for the carrying on of the public schools.
The LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry also proved itself fully equal to the demands of public opinion by its vigorous policy with respect to the colonization of the wild lands of the province, the improvement of the navigation of the St. Lawrence, and the construction of railways.
For three sessions the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry had made vain efforts to pass a law increasing the representation of the two provinces to one hundred and thirty or sixty-five members for each section. As already stated the Union Act required that such a measure should receive a majority of two-thirds in each branch of the legislature.
He charged that Brown, while acting as a member and secretary of a commission appointed by the Lafontaine-Baldwin government to inquire into the condition of the provincial penitentiary, had falsified testimony, suborned convicts to commit perjury, and obtained the pardon of murderers to induce them to give false evidence.
Still later, provision was made for the gradual establishment of an elective legislative council, so long and earnestly demanded by the old legislature of Lower Canada. The members of the Lafontaine-Baldwin government became the legislative executors of a troublesome legacy left to them by a Conservative ministry.
When the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry was formed, the movement for the secularization of the reserves among the Upper Canadian Liberals, or Reformers as many preferred to call their party, became so pronounced as to demand the serious consideration of the government; but there was no inclination shown by the French Canadians in the cabinet to disturb the settlement of 1840, and the serious phases of the Rebellion Losses Bill kept the whole question for some time in the background.
Under these circumstances it is easy to come to the conclusion that the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry was not willing at any time to make these two questions parts of its policy questions on which it was ready to stand or fall as a government.
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