f conservatism in their province. They
did not command many votes in the House, but every man of them was an
orator, and they remained through all vicissitudes a power to reckon
with.

Step by step, under Liberal and under Liberal Conservative Governments,
the programme of Canadian Liberalism was carried into effect.
Self-government, at least in domestic affairs, had been attained. An
effective system of municipal government and a good beginning in popular
education followed. The last link between Church and State was severed
in 1854 when the Clergy Reserves were turned over to the municipalities
for secular purposes, with life annuities for clergymen who had been
receiving stipends from the Reserves. In Lower Canada the remnants of
the old feudal system, the rights of the seigneurs, were abolished in
the same year with full compensation from the state. An elective upper
Chamber took the place of the appointed Legislative Council a year
later. The Reformers, as the Clear Grits preferred to call themselves
officially, should perhaps have been content with so much progress.
They insisted, however, that a new and more intolerable privilege had
arisen--the privilege which Canada East held of equal representation
in the Legislative Assembly long after its population had fallen behind
that of Canada West.

The political union of the two Canadas in fact had never been complete.
Throughout the Union period there were two leaders in each Cabinet, two
Attorney Generals, and two distinct judicial systems. Every session laws
were passed applying to one section alone. This continued separation had
its beginning in a clause of the Union Act itself, which provided that
each section should have equal representation in the Assembly, even
though Lower Canada then had a much larger population than Upper Canada.
When the tide of overseas immigration put Canada West well in the lead,
it in its turn was denied the full representation its greater population
warranted. First the Conservatives, and later the Clear Grits, took
up the cry of "Representation by Population." It was not difficult to
convince the average Canada West elector that it was an outrage
that three French-Canadian voters should count as much as four
English-speaking voters. Macdonald, relying for power on his alliance
with Cartier, could not accept the demand, and saw seat after seat in
Canada West fall to Brown and his "Rep. by Pop." crusaders. Brown's
success only solidi