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Updated: June 15, 2025
Now, in the second session, the fateful session of 1849, he delivered one of his old-time reckless philippics denouncing the tyrannical British power, the Act of Union the very measure he was supposed to have battled for responsible government, and, above all, those of his own race who supported the new order. LaFontaine took up the gauntlet. His retort was as obvious as it was crushing.
We find politics occupying more and more attention in its columns, and finally on March 5th, 1844, the Globe is established as the avowed ally of Baldwin and Lafontaine, and the advocate of responsible government. It will be necessary to explain now the nature of the difference between Metcalfe and his ministers.
When Lord Metcalfe assumed the responsibilities of his post, he found in office a Liberal administration, led by Mr. Baldwin, the eminent Reform leader of Upper Canada, and Mr. Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine, afterwards chief justice of Lower Canada and a baronet, who had been at the outset, like all his countrymen, opposed to the union, as unjust to their province.
Lafontaine, the magnetizer, some thirty years ago held public exhibitions in Paris in which he reduced cats, dogs, squirrels and lions to such complete insensibility that they felt neither pricks nor blows. The Harvys or Psylles of Egypt impart to the ringed snake the appearance of a stick by pressure on the head, which induces a species of tetanus, says E. W. Lane.
His few years of leadership in parliament, though of great importance to the country, formed only an episode in a larger legal career. In the elections of 1841 LaFontaine was defeated; it is said, by illegal methods. Baldwin was returned for two constituencies, York and Hastings, and Hincks for Oxford, on the strength of his articles in the Examiner.
LaFontaine, whose name will frequently occur in the following chapters of this book, declared, when he presented himself at the first election under the Union Act, that "it was an act of injustice and despotism"; but, as we shall soon see, he became a prime minister under the very act he first condemned.
After the union he made it the object of his political life to thwart in every way possible the sagacious, patriotic plans of LaFontaine, Morin, and other broad-minded statesmen of his own nationality, and to destroy that system of responsible government under which French Canada had become a progressive and influential section of the province.
The late Ministers tendered their resignations in a body on Saturday 4th, immediately after the division on the address, which took place on Friday. I received and answered the address on Tuesday, and then sent for Messrs. Lafontaine and Baldwin.
At the drawbridge we met Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, who had come out, without their bonnets, to enjoy the exquisite moonlight. We heard their voices gabbling in animated dialogue as we approached. We joined them at the drawbridge, and turned about to admire with them the beautiful scene. The glade through which we had just walked lay before us.
Thus did Frédéric Lemaître in his prime, and thus, too, in later days, did the accomplished and brilliant Lafontaine. From these causes, or from others of a kindred nature, the French tragic stage has within our generation possessed no actor of commanding genius. One actress indeed adorned it for a few brief years the great Rachel.
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