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-to give the latter the title he afterwards received from the Crown--assuredly set forth the correct constitutional practice under the peculiar circumstances in which both government and legislature were placed by the legislation increasing the representation of the people. The elections took place in July and August of 1854, for in those times there was no system of simultaneous polling on one day, but elections were held on such days and as long as the necessities of party demanded.[15] The result was, on the whole, adverse to the government. While it still retained a majority in French Canada, its opponents returned in greater strength, and Morin himself was defeated in Terrebonne, though happily for the interests of his party he was elected by acclamation at the same time in Chicoutimi. In Upper Canada the ministry did not obtain half the vote of the sixty-five representatives now elected to the legislature by that province. This vote was distributed as follows: Ministerial, 30; Conservatives, 22; Clear Grits, 7; and Independents, 6. Malcolm Cameron was beaten in Lambton, but Hincks was elected by two constituencies. One auspicious result of this election was the disappearance of Papineau from public life. He retired to his pretty chateau on the banks of the Ottawa, and the world soon forgot the man who had once been so prominent a figure in Canadian politics. His graces of manner and conversation continued for years to charm his friends in that placid evening of his life so very different from those stormy days when his eloquence was a menace to British institutions and British connection. Before his death, he saw Lower Canada elevated to an independent and influential position in the confederation of British North America which it could never have reached as that _Nation Canadienne_ which he had once vainly hoped to see established in the valley of the St. Lawrence. The Rouges, of whom Papineau had been leader, came back in good form and numbered nineteen members. Antoine A. Dorion, Holton, and other able men in the ranks of this once republican party, had become wise and adopted opinions which no longer offended the national and religious susceptibilities of their race, although they continued to show for years their radical tendencies which prevented them from ever obtaining a firm hold of public opinion in a practically Conservative province, and becoming dominant in the public councils for any length of ti
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