CHAP. 1] ORIGIN AND HISTORY 19
State, requesting the issue of the usual warrants for the
appointments.! The act was a simple one, but it signified
for the first time the adoption of ministerial responsibility :
a Government which had worked harmoniously with the
Governor had for the first time been ejected from office by
a vote of the Legislature, and the Governor had made no
effort to reverse the popular decision. He was later to show
his determination to accept any measure proposed by
the Government unless he thought it was disapproved by the
Assembly or the people. The question of the losses caused
by the suppression of the rebellion of Lower Canada had
been the source of unending ill-feeling and trouble, and the
new Government in 1849 introduced a measure appro-
priating £90,000 for the payment of claims based on wanton
damage and destruction, excluding from the benefit of the
law persons convicted of treason. This modest measure,
which had been preceded by inquiries authorized by a Con-
servative Government in Lord Metcalfe’s time, roused the
Tories to fury; they sought to embarrass the Governor-
General by deluging him with petitions to dissolve Parlia-
ment, or at least to reserve the Bill for the royal pleasure.
Lord Elgin might easily have evaded responsibility by
adopting the second alternative, but he preferred the more
courageous and statesmanlike course of assenting to the
Bill. He pointed out that a dissolution might have led to
8 rebellion, but certainly would not have led to the reversal
of the established policy, and to reserve the Bill would have
involved the Government at home in difficulties which it
vas not fair to cast upon them.?
Lord Elgin was rewarded for his courage by an attack on
his person in Montreal and an attempt at home to secure
the disallowance of the Bill. But he had the consolation
of seeing the satisfactory termination of a vexed question,
and in the remaining years of his office he was instrumental
in securing one great boon for Canada, in the shape of the
reciprocity treaty with the United States in 1854. He wag
P,
arl. Payp., H. C. 621, 1848, p. 6. * Parl. Pap., May 25, 1849, p. 6,
92
