One sweeping remedy, he had, within a few months of his arrival, laid aside as impossible. Lord John Russell and Grey had discussed with {197} him the possibility of raising Canadian politics out of their pettiness by a federal union of all the British North American colonies. But as early as May 1847, Elgin had come to doubt whether the free and independent legislatures of the colonies would be willing to delegate any of their authority to please a British ministry.[10] It was necessary then to fall back on the unromantic alternative of modifying the constitution of the ministry; and here French solidarity had made his task difficult. Yet the amazing thing in Elgin was the speed, the ease, and the accuracy, with which he saw what none of his predecessors had seen--the need to concede, and the harmlessness of conceding, responsible government in Baldwin's sense of the term. Within two months of his accession to power, he declared, "I am determined to do nothing which will put it out of my power to act with the opposite party, if it is forced upon me by the representatives of the people."[11] Two months later, sick of the struggles by which his ministers were trying to gain here and there some trivial vote to keep them in office, he recurred to the same idea as not merely harmless but sound. That ministers {198} and opposition should occasionally change places struck him not merely as constitutional, but as the most conservative convention in the constitution; and in answer to the older school to whom a change of ministers at the dictation of a majority in the Assembly meant the degradation of the governor-generalship, he hoped "to establish a moral influence in the province, which will go far to compensate for the loss of power consequent on the surrender of patronage to an executive responsible to the local parliament."[12] To give his ministers a last fair chance of holding on to office, he dissolved parliament at the end of 1847, recognizing that, in the event of a victory, their credit would be immensely increased. The struggle of December 1847, to January 1848, was decisive. While the French constituencies maintained their former position, even in Upper Canada the discredited ministry found few supporters. The only element in the situation which disturbed Elgin was the news that Papineau, the arch-rebel of 1837, had come back to public life with a flourish of agitating declarations; and that the French people had not condemned with sufficient decisiveness his seditious utterances. Yet he need have {199} had no qualms. _La Revue Canadienne_ in reviewing the situation certainly refused to condemn Papineau's extravagances, but its conclusion took the ground from under the agitator's feet, for it declared that "cette moderation de nos chefs politiques a puissamment contribue a placer notre parti dans la position avantageuse qu'il occupe maintenant."[13] Now Papineau was incapable of political moderation.