s's bridge,'
as he calls it, had been impassable for twenty years. Now that it was
crossed, the exploit met 'the nearly universal assent of French and
English.' Some thirty other ukases, all tending to order and the
common weal, were issued in the last session of this extraordinary
legislative body. One fixed the place of the capital. After much
debate on the rival claims of Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Bytown, and
{57} Kingston, it was decided that the town with the martello towers
guarding the gateway to the Thousand Islands, with its memories of
Frontenac and the War of 1812, should be the capital of the new united
province. And it was so. About the quiet university town, where
Queen's is Grant's monument--_si monumentum requiris,
circumspice_--there lingers still the distinction of the old vice-regal
days.

Then came the first election for the new Assembly of the united
province, perhaps the most momentous in the history of Canada. Lower
Canada was vehemently opposed to the whole scheme. To elect a Union
member was, in the words of the Quebec Committee, 'stretching forth the
neck to the yoke which is attempted to be placed upon us.' The French
were organized into a solid phalanx of opposition. In the western
province the Tory and Orange opposition was equally violent towards a
measure which was deemed to favour the French. The elections of 1841
were held with the bad old-fashioned accompaniments of riot and
bloodshed, especially in the centres, Montreal and Toronto. Neither
side was free from the blame of irregular methods. Certainly the
government was not {58} scrupulous in the means it employed to secure
the return of Union candidates. The results were known early in April.
They were as follows: for the government, twenty-four members; French,
twenty; Moderate Reformers, twenty; ultra-Reformers, five; Compact
party, five; doubtful, seven. The curse of petty faction was not
lifted, nor the machinery of two-party government really installed, for
it was quite possible for several of these groups to combine in voting
down government measures without having sufficient cohesion among
themselves to form a ministry and assume control.

The session opened at Kingston on June 14, 1841. A hospital was turned
into a parliament house, a row of warehouses was appropriated for
government offices, and the fine old stone mansion by the waterside
known as 'Alwington' became the residence of the governor-general.
Th