sability of a complete surrender {155} on that point. When he
wrote communicating to the minister the Assembly's acknowledgment of
the royal prerogative, in recognizing the right of the Crown to name
the capital, he pointed out that, prerogative or no prerogative, the
possessor of the purse had the final voice. He rebuked his new
minister, Baldwin, for tacking on question-begging constitutional
phrases to a legal opinion, but he told Stanley, quite frankly, that,
"whether the doctrine of responsible government is openly acknowledged,
or is only tacitly acquiesced in, _virtually it exists_."[26] During
the remainder of his tenure of office, partly because of his own
ill-health, but partly also, I think, from conviction, he gave his
ministers the most perfect freedom of action. And, although he did not
gain the point, he was willing to make sweeping concessions in answer
to the call for an amnesty for the rebels of 1837. He recognized the
force of trusting, in a self-governing community, even those who had
once striven against the British rule with arms--the final proof in any
man that he has come to understand the secrets, at once of Empire, and
of constitutional government.

There is little more to tell of Bagot's rule, for {156} the last months
of his life were spent in a struggle to overcome extreme bodily
sickness in the interest of public duty; and Stanley himself, in the
name of the Cabinet, expressed his admiration for the gallantry of his
stand.

To the end, he held himself justified in his political actions, and if
there were moments when he questioned whether Stanley would see things
in a reasonable light, he possessed the perfect confidence of his
Canadian ministers, who did not neglect his injunction to them to
defend his memory.[27]

Nevertheless the irritation of the Colonial Secretary was neither
unnatural nor unjustifiable. He confidently expected that separation
from England would be the immediate consequence of a surrender to the
reform party in Canada; and he believed that Bagot had made that
surrender. In the latter opinion he was correct. There are times when
the party of reaction sees more clearly than their opponents the scope
and consequences of innovation, however blind they may be to the
developments which by their parallel advance check the obvious dangers;
and Sir Charles Metcalfe, whom Stanley sent to Canada to stay the
flowing tide, has furnished the most accurate negative critici