in its effects because expected, will widely extend an awakened interest over regions sufficiently enlightened to appreciate his worth, and sufficiently grateful to deplore his loss." To his son, these words might with equal truth be applied. No public man in Canada, perhaps, in his day, commanded such general respect as the Honorable Robert Baldwin. His integrity was so far above suspicion that the breath of calumny itself never uttered a word against his fair fame. He commanded the respect of all parties; the affection of his own was willingly accorded. His name, even to the last hour of his life, was a tower of strength; it might easily have been made the nucleus of a party round which the scattered elements of the Reform ranks would have rallied, till union was once more restored.

In stature Mr. Baldwin must have been about five feet nine or ten inches. His frame was of stout build; but the work of disease appears to have begun to undermine his constitution eight or nine years before his death. In the spring of 1850 his health had visibly declined; and there being no hopes of a speedy improvement he was the more anxious to retire from public life, in the following year.

He was of a mild and affable disposition; but he lacked that peculiar style of address which characterizes the man easy of access and of familiar manners and habits. He had few of the characteristics which usually make a man popular with the crowd. He scorned to bend to those petty arts which inferior men find so useful, and indeed so indispensable, to their success in dealing with the public. He paid small court to even the most prominent of his constituents; and by this means lost something of that ephemeral and local popularity which are necessary to the statesman who wishes to retain undiminished the full strength of his position. His name is, however, inseparably interwoven with the brightest period of our history; the period in which constitutional principles triumphed over the oligarchical system on which the province had previously been ruled. His was a career that will be the more valued according to the increasing distance at which it is seen; his a lustre that will shine the brighter as time continues to roll on.

Following the profession adopted by his father, he entered on the practice of the law, in 1825, and the firm was long carried on under the name of Baldwin & Son, till he retired on the 28th July, 1848, when the business was continued by Mr. Adam Wilson. His father and he built up an extensive and lucrative practice; and he must have left behind him a fortune of something like a million of dollars. He owned an immense amount of property in Toronto. Of the large amount of wealth which he leaves behind, a part had been left to his father, by bequest, from the Honorable Peter Russell.

Mr. Baldwin inherited the liberal principles of his father. He was first elected to the Upper Canada Assembly in 1829, in opposition to Mr. Small; having in the previous year made an unsuccessful run against Mr. Mackenzie, for the county of York. This election took place on the resignation of Chief-Justice Robinson; Mr. Baldwin came forward as the liberal candidate in opposition to Sir John Colborne's administration. His opponent was then deputy-clerk of the Crown, and many of his friends were well provided for, in one way or another, out of the public. The whole influence of the placemen was cast against Mr. Baldwin. While the election was pending, Mr. Mackenzie wrote :-"Our earnest wish, is that the election of Mr. Baldwin may prove to the world that the capital of Upper Canada has burst her fetters, and followed the praiseworthy example of her sister city, Quebec, which sent to Parliament an independent citizen, a few months ago, in spite of all the military and civil influence of all the constituted authorities." Sir John Colborne, before his retirement from the government, recommended to the colonial secretary, the appointment of Mr. Baldwin to the Legislative Council, of which body, if we mistake not, an uncle of his was a member. The appointment was, however, not made; and a subsequent governor wrote to England to discourage the recommendation of Sir J. Colborne.

The Opposition to which Mr. Baldwin, the newly elected member for York-now Toronto-had allied himself, had a parliamentary existence as early as 1820. Even at that time it was respectable, if not formidable, both in talents and numbers; but as yet it could not count a majority of the representatives. But after the election of 1824, the scales were turned; and the Government found itself perpetually in a minority in the popular branch of the legislature. The election of 1828 brought no additional strength to the executive government; and the same anomalous spectacle of a government ruling in defiance of the constantly expressed wishes of the Legislative Assembly presented itself to the eyes of Mr. Baldwin, when in 1829 he entered Parliament for the first time. It was one well calculated to impress upon his mind the necessity which existed for changing the system of government. Subsequent events were not calculated to remove that impression; for although the executive did contrive to secure the return of a majority of supporters in the elections of 1830, events soon showed that this was but a passing accident; for the elections of 1834 again left them in a minority, in which condition the government continued to be carried on for two years. In the twelve years from 1824 to 1836, the executive was in a minority in the Legislative Assembly for eight years. During the whole of this time, the Legislative Assembly were consistently passing bills which were as constantly rejected by the Legislative Council. For these

evils Mr. Baldwin declared that he saw no remedy but that of placing the "Executive Council permanently upon the footing of a local provincial cabinet, holding the same relative position with reference to the representatives of the king and provincial Parliament as that on which the king's imperial cabinet stands with respect to the king and Parliament of the empire; and applying to such provincial cabinet, both in respect to their appointments and their continuance in office, the same principles as those which are acted upon by his Majesty with respect to the imperial cabinet." To an elective legis'ative council Mr Baldwin was opposed; believing that the demand for it would never have arisen, if the principle of responsible government had been conceded as soon as the executive found themselves permanently in a minority in the Legislative Assembly. This opinion he never changed. He never concurred in the propriety of constituting, on a new basis the Legislative Council; and for this reason he thought there would be an incongruity in his consenting to be elected to that chamber. From the time of Mr. Baldwin's entrance into Parliament, we find the principle of executive responsibility constantly asserted. It was embodied in the address in reply to the speech from the throne, 1829; and again in 1835, it was made the subject of a solemn appeal to the imperial government, in an address to the sovereign passed by a majority of twenty-one votes. On this occasion, the Assembly went so far as to intimate their intention to refuse the supplies if their reasonable demand was not complied with. After the resignation of the Executive Council, in 1836, of which Mr. Baldwin was a member, the Legislative Assembly adopted a resolution declaring it to be the opinion of that house that the appointment of a responsible Executive Council, "to advise the lieutenantgovernor on the affairs of the province, was one of the most happy and wise features in the constitution, and essential in our form of government." In a house of fifty-five members only two votes were recorded against this resolution. In 1836, Mr. Baldwin went to England, and while there endeavored to impress upon Lord Glenelg, then colonial minister-by writing, for he was never granted an interview at the colonial office-the necessity of applying the English principle of responsibility to the provincial executive. When in England, the intelligence of the success of the tories in the Upper Canada elections, which had just been held, reached London; and Mr. Baldwin took special care to impress upon the colonial secretary not to deceive himself by supposing that this event would supersede the necessity for an application of the principle for which he so strenuously contended. If it were withheld, he assured the imperial government, there was great danger that the affections of the majority of the people would become alienated from the mother country. In their quarrel with Sir Francis Head, the executive took the ground that the

principle of responsible government was intended to be conceded by the constitutional act of 1791.

Mr. Baldwin, having thus begun, never ceased to do battle for the principle of responsible government, till it was fully and unreservedly conceded. He has been called the father of responsible government; and in one sense he may be said to have been so Not that he was the only one to advocate the principle; but there was this difference between him and most of the other reformers, that while he relied entirely upon this principle as the basis of all real reform, they did not by any means confine themselves to this single demand. They were always discussing what ought to be done when the machinery for doing it should be obtained. Mr. Baldwin was for obtaining the machinery first, and then trusting to its successful operation when it should have been secured. This devotion to a single leading principle-which, however, contains all that is valuable in the British system of government-earned for Mr. Baldwin, in certain quarters, the designation of a man of one idea." And a glorious idea it was! Without it what would Canada be to-day? Of this principle the ablest opponents were to be found in the Legislative Council. An excellent summary of their objections-containing all that could be said against responsible government-is to be found in a report of a committee of the Legislative Council, which, in 1839, undertook to answer Lord Durham's able report on British North America. Although this document contained all the tory wisdom of the day, it is impossible to peruse it now without a smile.

Mr. Baldwin's principle-his one idea, if you will-had found a powerful advocate in Lord Durham; and from the moment of the publication of his famous report, the oligarchical system was doomed. It managed to totter on a little longer, by the aid of violence and fraud; but nothing could avert a doom which was inevitable. Even the reaction attempted by Lord Metcalfe was unavailing. He would consult his ministers on all "adequate occasions," so he said-and he was left without ministers for nine successive months, having only a provincial secretary, after the resignation of the Lafontaine-Baldwin cabinet in November, 1843. Mr. Baldwin was among those who resisted his reactionary movements; and he was one of those who came in after the fall of the ministry which, after the elections, Sir Charles Metcalfe had been able to form.

Mr. Baldwin was in several different governments. He was first sworn in as executive councillor on the 18th February, 1836; having for colleagues, Messrs. Rolph, Dunn, Bidwell and Markland. They held office for a very short time; and it was after their resignation, upon a difference with Sir Francis Bond Head, as to how the government should be conducted, that he made the visit to England previously referred to. In 1840, on Mr. Draper being

appointed attorney-general-on vacating the solicitor-generalship Mr. Baldwin was appointed solicitor-general. This step was publicly approved by his friends. At a meeting held in Toronto for that purpose, Dr. Widmer occupying the chair, Henry John Boulton, who had previously been allied to the "Family Compact," appeared as an advocate of responsible government. The meeting was, however, essen.ially reform in its complexion. Mr. Baldwin thus explained his views in accepting office: "I distinctly avow that in accepting office, I consider myself to have given a public pledge that I have a reasonably well grounded confidence that the government of my country is to be carried on in accordance with the principles of responsible government, which I have ever held. My position, politically, is certainly peculiar; but its peculiarity has arisen out of the position in which the present Parliament has placed the governor-general, (Sir George Arthur) themselves and the country, by the course they chose to adopt during the late session; and it is therefore right that it should be distinctly understood that I have not come into office by means of any coalition with the attorney-general. * * Whenever I find that the government is to be carried on upon principles adverse to those which I profess, I shall cease to afford them my support, and shall cease to be a servant of the Crown."

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This step was fully endorsed by the county; and Mr. Baldwin was elected for two constituencies, the south riding of York and the county of Hastings. In September of 1842, Mr. Baldwin became attorney-general for Upper Canada, M. Lafontaine occupying the corresponding office in Lower Canada, and dividing with him the somewhat anomalous dual premiership. He continued to occupy this position till the rupture with Sir Charles Metcalfe. Taking the same office again in February, 1848, he held it till July, 1851, when he quitted ministerial life for ever. At different times he represented the town of York, the fourth riding of York, Rimouski and Hastings, in Parliament. His death took place at his seat Spadina, near Toronto, on the 9th December, 1858. There also his body lies. His funeral was attended by an immense concourse of people of all political parties.

Mr. Baldwin married a sister of the late Honorable Robert Sullivan, who bore him several children. He survived her. One daughter is married to the Honorable John Ross; one son is at sea, and another in the church. A man of charitable dispositions, he has been known to subscribe as much as £100 at a time to a worthy object.

At a meeting of the members of the bar held two days after his death, in the convocation room at Osgoode Hall, for the purpose of paying such tribute to the memory of Mr. Baldwin, who had been treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada, as his high position