He remained doubtful during part of 1848,
for Papineau had been elected by acclamation to the Parliament which
held its first session that year; and he "had {213} searched in vain
... through the French organs of public opinion for a frank and decided
expression of hostility to the anti-British sentiments propounded in
Papineau's address."[27] He did not at first understand that La
Fontaine, not Papineau, was the French leader, and that the latter
represented only himself and a few _Rouges_ of violent but
unsubstantial revolutionary opinions. Nevertheless, he gave his French
ministers his confidence, and he applied his singular powers of winning
men to appeasing French discontent. As early as May, 1848, he saw how
the land lay--that French Canada was fundamentally conservative, and
that discontent was mainly a consequence of sheer stupidity and error
on the part of England. "Who will venture to say," he asked, "that the
last hand which waves the British flag on American ground may not be
that of a French Canadian?"[28]

His final settlement of the question came in 1849, and the introduction
of that Rebellion Losses Bill which has been already mentioned. The
measure was, in the main, an act of justice to French sufferers from
the disturbances created by the Rebellion; for they had naturally
shared but slightly {214} in earlier and partial schemes of
compensation; and the opposition to the bill was directed quite frankly
against the French inhabitants of Canada as traitors, who deserved, not
recompense, but punishment. Now there were many cases of real
hardship, like that of the inhabitants of St. Benoit, a village which
Sir John Colborne had pledged himself to protect when he occupied it
for military purposes, but which, in his absence, the loyalist
volunteers had set on fire and destroyed. The inhabitants might be
disloyal, but in the eyes of an equal justice a wrong had been done,
and must be righted. The idea of the bill was not new--it was not
Elgin's bill; and if his predecessors had been right, then the French
politicians were justified in claiming that the system of compensation
already initiated must be followed till all legitimate claims had been
met.

It would be disingenuous to deny that Elgin calculated on the pacific
influence which his support of the bill would exert in Lower Canada.
"I was aware of two facts," he told Grey in 1852: "Firstly, that M. La
Fontaine would be unable to retain the suppo