ks, the credit of the province steadily
advanced, and it was at last possible to borrow money in the London
market on very favourable terms. The government entered heartily into
the policy of Lord Elgin with respect to reciprocity with the United
States, and the encouragement of trade between the different provinces
of British North America. It was, however, unable to dispose of two
great questions which had long agitated the province--the abolition of
the seigniorial tenure, which was antagonistic to settlement and
colonization, and the secularization of the clergy reserves, granted
to the Protestant clergy by the Constitutional Act of 1791. These
questions will be reviewed at some length in later chapters, and all
that it is necessary to say here is that, while the LaFontaine-Baldwin
cabinet supported preliminary steps that were taken in the legislature
for the purpose of bringing about a settlement of these vexatious
subjects, it never showed any earnest desire to take them up as parts
of its ministerial policy, and remove them from political controversy.

Indeed it is clear that LaFontaine's conservative instincts, which
became stronger with age and experience of political conditions,
forced him to proceed very slowly and cautiously with respect to a
movement that would interfere with a tenure so deeply engrafted in the
social and economic structure of his own province, while as a Roman
Catholic he was at heart always doubtful of the justice of diverting
to secular purposes those lands which had been granted by Great
Britain for the support of a Protestant clergy. Baldwin was also slow
to make up his mind as to the proper disposition of the reserves, and
certainly weakened himself in his own province by his reluctance to
express himself distinctly with respect to a land question which had
been so long a grievance and a subject of earnest agitation among the
men who supported him in and out of the legislature. Indeed when he
presented himself for the last time before his constituents in 1857,
he was emphatically attacked on the hustings as an opponent of the
secularization of the reserves for refusing to give a distinct pledge
as to the course he would take on the question. This fact, taken in
connection with his previous utterances in the legislature, certainly
gives force to the opinion which has been more than once expressed by
Canadian historians that he was not prepared, any more than LaFontaine
himself, to dive