more plainly than his portrait. 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_. Bitterly disappointed as LaFontaine was at his defeat and
the means by which it was accomplished, he could see no hope of redress
except by constitutional means. For the present he could do no more
than protest angrily at the injustice. He was, however, not long
excluded from the House. Through the good offices of Baldwin he was
elected for the fourth riding of York, an act of courtesy and common
sense which was not to lose its reward.

Such was the posture of affairs when Sydenham died.

[Illustration: Sir Charles Bagot. From an engraving in the Dominion
Archives.]

The next governor-general of Canada was Sir Charles Bagot, the Tory
nominee of the now Tory government of Great Britain. Bagot's familiar
portrait in the full insignia of the Order of the Bath shows us the
{75} handsome, thoroughbred face of a typical English gentleman.
Although Queen Victoria doubted his ability for the post, her distrust
was unfounded. Bagot was a man of broad experience and calm wisdom.
He possessed poise and real kindness of heart, as well as real
courtesy; but he seems also to have been too sensitive to criticism and
to opposition. He reached Kingston, the seat of his government, in
January 1842. Visits to the various centres of Canada, according to
the practice of his predecessors, soon gave him an understanding of
popular opinion and feeling; and, although he was expected by the
extreme Conservatives to bring back the old, halcyon, _ante bellum_
days, he was most careful to follow the lines of Sydenham's policy.
Towards the French he was amiable and conciliatory and made several
appointments of French Canadians to positions of trust and emolument.
Ever ready to meet courtesy half-way, the French gave their new
governor their entire confidence.

During the eight months before parliament should reassemble Bagot
wisely set about learning for himself the actual conditions of his new
government. Like Sydenham, he was to act as his own prime minister,
and {76} his initial difficulty was in forming a suitable Cabinet to
act with him. He offe