conviction that one party alone cared for Britain--the former Family Compact men. When he bade Bagot disregard party divisions in his choice of ministers, he was unconsciously limiting Bagot's choice to a very little circle, all of them most unmistakably displeasing to the populace, whose wishes he professed to be willing to consult. He claimed to be a man of principle--mistaking the clearness of doctrinaire ignorance for the certainty of honest knowledge. Happily the governor-general of Canada was not in this sense a man of principle. He observed, took counsel, and began to shape his own policy. It is not easy to describe that policy in a sentence, or even to make it absolutely clear. He had come out to Canada, forewarned against Baldwin and the school of constitutionalists associated with him; and the warning made him reluctant to consent to their ideas. He had been advised to draw his councillors from all directions, and his naturally moderate spirit approved a policy of judicious selection. But the noteworthy feature in the line of action which he ultimately followed was that he allowed his diplomatic instincts to overbalance the advice imposed on him by the British ministry. {144} In selecting individuals for his councils, he almost unconsciously followed the wishes of Baldwin and his party, until, at the end, he found himself in the hands of resolute advocates of responsible government, and did nothing to withstand their doctrine. But this is to anticipate events, and to simplify what was actually a process involved in some confusion. He filled two vacant places--one with the most brilliant of reforming financiers, Francis Hincks, whose merits he saw at once; the other, after a gentlemanly refusal from Cartwright, with Sherwood, a sound but comparatively moderate Conservative from Upper Canada. In an admirable letter to Stanley at the beginning of the summer, he outlined his policy. Stanley, ever fearful of rash experiments, warned him that a combination of black and white does not necessarily produce grey. To this he answered: "My hope is that, circumstanced as I am, I possibly may be able to do this, that is, to take from all sides the best and fittest men for the public service.... The attempt to produce such a grey, whether it succeed or not, must, I think, after all that has passed, and at this particular crisis in which I find myself here, be the safest line."[16] Stanley, then, limited his {145} choice of men, and in the event of a crisis, was prepared that he should risk a defeat and the violent imposition of an alien ministry, on the chance that such a reverse might provoke a loyalist uprising to defend the British connection. Baldwin dreamed of a consistently Radical cabinet. MacNab, with his eyes shut to the consequences, seems to have considered a leap in the dark--a coalition between his men and the French Canadians. Bagot, as opportunist as the Tories, but opportunist