postpone their meeting till
September. Of the probable tone of that Assembly the estimates varied,
but Murdoch, who knew the situation as well as any man, calculated that
while {141} the government party would number thirty, the French, with
their British Radical friends, would be thirty-six strong, the old
Conservatives eight, and some ten or so would "wait on providence or
rather on patronage."[14] In Sydenham's last days, the government
majority, which he had so subtly, and by means so machiavellian, got
together, had vanished. Reformers, not all of them so scrupulous as
Baldwin, were ready to ruin a government which kept them from a
complete triumph. Sir Allan MacNab with his old die-hards, fulminating
against all enemies of the British tradition, was still willing to make
an unholy alliance with the French, if only he could checkmate a
governor-general who did not seem to appreciate his past services to
Britain. And the French themselves, alienated and insulted by
Sydenham, sat gloomily alone, restless over the Union, seemingly on the
threshold of some fresh racial conflict. Everything was uncertain,
save the coming government defeat.[15]

At the very outset, Bagot had this question of French Canada thrust
upon him. From the moment of his arrival his council advised the {142}
admission of the French Canadians to a share in power. He refused, for
Stanley had very carefully instructed him on that subject. The
Colonial Secretary had spoken of the wisdom of forgetting old
divisions, but he never permitted himself to forget that the French
leaders--La Fontaine, Viger, Girouard--had all been, in some fashion or
other, involved in the troubles of 1837. He believed that there still
existed in Lower Canada a gloomy, rebellious, French Canadian party,
which no responsible British statesman could afford to recognize.
Sober-minded Canadian statesmen told him that it was useless to attempt
to detach from the party individuals--_les Vendus_ their compatriots
called them. He answered that he would like to multiply such _Vendus_;
and he hoped for a day when the anglicising of the Lower Province
should have been completed. It was his intention to break down all
forces tending in the opposite direction. He was conscious of a
repulsion, equally strong, in his feelings towards Baldwin, and the
Reform party. Whether it came by French racial hate, or Upper Canadian
republicanism, which was the name he gave to all views of