of British North America.  It was, however, unable to dispose of two great questions which had long agitated the province—­the abolition of the seigniorial tenure, which was antagonistic to settlement and colonization, and the secularization of the clergy reserves, granted to the Protestant clergy by the Constitutional Act of 1791.  These questions will be reviewed at some length in later chapters, and all that it is necessary to say here is that, while the LaFontaine-Baldwin cabinet supported preliminary steps that were taken in the legislature for the purpose of bringing about a settlement of these vexatious subjects, it never showed any earnest desire to take them up as parts of its ministerial policy, and remove them from political controversy.

Indeed it is clear that LaFontaine’s conservative instincts, which became stronger with age and experience of political conditions, forced him to proceed very slowly and cautiously with respect to a movement that would interfere with a tenure so deeply engrafted in the social and economic structure of his own province, while as a Roman Catholic he was at heart always doubtful of the justice of diverting to secular purposes those lands which had been granted by Great Britain for the support of a Protestant clergy.  Baldwin was also slow to make up his mind as to the proper disposition of the reserves, and certainly weakened himself in his own province by his reluctance to express himself distinctly with respect to a land question which had been so long a grievance and a subject of earnest agitation among the men who supported him in and out of the legislature.  Indeed when he presented himself for the last time before his constituents in 1857, he was emphatically attacked on the hustings as an opponent of the secularization of the reserves for refusing to give a distinct pledge as to the course he would take on the question.  This fact, taken in connection with his previous utterances in the legislature, certainly gives force to the opinion which has been more than once expressed by Canadian historians that he was not prepared, any more than LaFontaine himself, to divert funds given for an express purpose to one of an entirely different character.  Under these circumstances it is easy to come to the conclusion that the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry was not willing at any time to make these two questions parts of its policy—­questions on which it was ready to stand or fall as a government.

The first step towards the breaking up of the ministry was the resignation of Baldwin following upon the support given by a majority of the Reformers in Upper Canada to a notion presented by William Lyon Mackenzie for the abolition of the court of chancery and the transfer of its functions to the courts of common law.  The motion was voted down in the House, but Baldwin was a believer in the doctrine that a minister from a particular province should receive the confidence and support of the majority of its