As certainly as Stanley, with all the wisdom of Peel's cabinet behind him, was wrong, and fatally so, Bagot's conduct between September 10th and September 14th was precisely right. In a correspondence with Peel, just before the crisis, Stanley sought to get his great leader to take his view. Even Peel's genius proved incompetent to settle a problem of local politics, three thousand miles away from the scene of action. The wisdom of his answer lay, not in its suggestions, which were useless to Bagot, but in its hint "that much must be left to the judgment and discretion of those who have to act at a great distance from the supreme {148} authority."[18] Stanley himself, from first to last, was for allowing Bagot to face defeat, although he always thought it possible that stubborn resistance to what he counted treason would rally a secure majority to Bagot and the Crown. Time and again after assuring Bagot that he and the ministry acquiesced, which, to do them justice, they did like men, he harked back to the idea of allowing events to prove that the government was indeed powerless, before it made a definitive surrender. Long before Parliament met, the situation had been discussed in all its bearings; and the only doubt that remained was concerning which out of three or four foreshadowed catastrophes would end the existence of the government. The ministers themselves had their negative programme ready; for, having consented to the constitutional resolutions of September, 1841, they forewarned Bagot that if they were left in a minority, or in a very small majority, they should feel themselves compelled to resign, and they added that, if Bagot did not accept their recommendation to admit the French Canadians, they would insist upon his accepting their resignation.[19] {149}