ssembly. The people receive no training in those
habits of self-government which are indispensable to enable them
rightly to exercise the power of choosing representatives in
parliament. No field is open for the gratification of ambition in a
narrow circle, and no opportunity given for testing the talents or
integrity of those who are candidates for popular favour. The people
acquire no habits of self-dependence for the attainment of their own
local objects. Whatever uneasiness they may feel--whatever little
improvement in their respective neighbourhoods may appear to be
neglected, afford grounds for complaint against the executive. All
{95} is charged upon the Government, and a host of discontented spirits
are ever ready to excite these feelings. On the other hand, whilst the
Government is thus brought directly in contact with the people, it has
neither any officer in its own confidence, in the different parts of
these extended provinces, from whom it can seek information, nor is
there any recognized body, enjoying the public confidence, with whom it
can communicate, either to determine what are the real wants and wishes
of the locality, or through whom it may afford explanation."[24]

Nothing could be done to remedy the evil in Upper Canada, until the new
parliament had met, but the temporary dictatorship still remained in
French Canada, and at once Sydenham set to work to create all that he
wanted there, recognizing shrewdly that what had been granted in the
Lower Province to the French must prove a powerful argument for a
similar grant to Upper Canada, when the time should come for action.
About the same time, he established by ordinance a popular system of
registry offices, to simplify the difficulties introduced into land
transfers by the French law--"all {96} the old French law of before the
Revolution, _Hypotheques tacites et occultes_, Dowers' and Minors'
rights, _Actes par devant notaires_, and all the horrible processes by
which the unsuspecting are sure to be deluded, and the most wary are
often taken in."[25]

Curiously enough, although his love of good government drove him to
amend conditions among the French, Sydenham's relations with that
people seem to have grown steadily worse. He had made advances to the
foremost French politician, La Fontaine, offering him the
solicitor-generalship of Lower Canada; but La Fontaine, who never had
any enthusiasm for British Whig statesmanship,[26] regarded the