a safety-valve for Tory feeling.[43] Unfortunately for his accuracy, the League was formed in the spring of 1849; it held its first convention in July; and the manifesto did not appear till late autumn. Still, it is true that the meetings of the League provided some occupation for minds which, in their irritable condition, might have done more foolish things, and Mr. Holland MacDonald described the feelings of the wiser of his fellow-leaguers when he said at Kingston: "I maintain that there is not an individual in this Assembly, at this moment, prepared to go for annexation, although some may be suspected of having leanings that way."[44] It was a violent but passing fit of petulance which for the moment obscured Tory loyalty. When it had ended, chiefly because Elgin acted not only with prudence, but with great insight, in pressing for a reciprocity treaty with the United States, the British American {337} League and the Annexation Manifesto vanished into the limbo of broken causes and political indiscretions. The truth was that every great respectable section of the Canadian people was almost wholly sound in its allegiance. Regarded even racially, it is hard to find any important group which was not substantially loyal. The Celtic and Gallic sections of the populace might have been expected to furnish recruits for annexation; and disaffection undoubtedly existed among the Canadian Irish. Yet Elgin was much more troubled over possible Irish disaffection in 1848 than he was in 1849; the Orange societies round Toronto seem to have refused to follow their fellow Tories into an alliance with annexationists; and, as has been already seen, D'Arcy M'Gee was able, in 1866, to speak of the Irish community as wholly loyal. The great mass of the French-Canadians stood by the governor and Britain. Whatever influence the French priesthood possessed was exerted on the side of the connection; from Durham to Monck there is unanimity concerning the consistent loyalty of the Catholic Church in Canada. Apart from the church, the French-Canadians, when once their just rights had been conceded, {338} furnished a stable, conservative, and loyal body of citizens. Doubtless they had their points of divergence from the ideals of the Anglo-Saxon west. It was they who ensured the defeat of the militia proposals of 1862, and there were always sufficient _Rouges_ to raise a cry of nationality or annexation. But the national leaders, La Fontaine and Cartier, were absolutely true to the empire, and journalists like Cauchon flung their influence on the same side, even if they hinted at "jours qui doivent necessairement venir, que nous le voulions ou que nous ne le voulions pas"--to wit, of independence.[45]