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Updated: June 28, 2025
We followed as quickly as we could, but this time luck was against us Sydenham had disappeared. "To the safe-deposit company," said Indiman, and we jumped into a hansom. Mr. Sandford was there, and we waited impatiently for Sydenham's appearance; it was the only chance of again picking up the lost trail.
Harrison, who represented the moderate reforming party in Sydenham's ministry, held that responsible government, in some form or other, was essential, and that French nationalism must also receive concessions.
Not often does a constructive statesman live to see his labours so richly rewarded by success. Then the end came. A stumble of Sydenham's horse as he mounted a rise near 'Alwington' threw him to the ground and broke his right leg. His constitution, never strong, had been weakened by disease, unsparing work, and ceaseless anxieties.
Indeed an unwillingness to allow the governor-general his former unlimited initiative becomes henceforth a mark of the leaders of the Reformers, and La Fontaine, who had resented Sydenham's activity as much as his anti-nationalist policy, protested against the suggestion that Charles Buller should be sent to Canada, because he "apprehended that Buller would be disposed to take an active part himself in our politics."
Sydenham's honour was well deserved, but he was not destined to enjoy it long. His activity in no way relaxed. An essential part of the scheme of union, as he saw it, was local home rule. The country was to be divided into small self-governing units municipalities taxing themselves for their own necessary expenditures and controlling the revenues so raised.
It was this school of thought -to anticipate events by a year or two which received the sanction of Sydenham's statesmanship, and that energetic mind never accomplished anything more notable than when, in the face of a strong secularizing feeling, to the justification for which he was in no way blind, he repelled the party of monopoly, and yet retained the endowment for the Protestant churches of Canada.
There remained now the last and greatest of Sydenham's labours before his stewardship could be honourably accounted for and surrendered, the summoning, meeting, and managing, of a parliament representative of that Canada, English and French, which he had restored and irritated.
Playing with men's vanity, tampering with their interests, their passions and their prejudices, placing himself in a position of familiarity with those from whom he might at once obtain assistance and information such, according to an eccentric writer of the day, were the secrets of Sydenham's success.
The older terms, "Lower Canada" and "Upper Canada," lingered on in popular usage. In June, 1841, the first Parliament of united Canada met at Kingston, which as the most central point had been chosen as the new capital. Under Sydenham's shrewd and energetic leadership a business programme of long-delayed reforms was put through.
Lord Sydenham's well-meaning attempt to settle the question was thwarted at the very outset by the reference of the bill to English judges, who reported adversely on the ground that the power "to vary or repeal" given in the Constitutional Act of 1791 was only prospective, and did not authorize the provincial legislature to divert the proceeds of the lands already sold from the purpose originally contemplated in the imperial statute.
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