Some years, however, passed before the governor-general saw his views fully carried out. The imperial authorities, with that extraordinary indifference to colonial conditions which too often distinguished them in those times, hesitated until well into 1849 to follow his advice with respect to the navigation laws, and the Reciprocity Treaty was not successfully negotiated until a much later time. He had the gratification, however, before he left Canada of seeing the beneficial effects of the measures which he so earnestly laboured to promote in the interests of the country. CHAPTER IV THE INDEMNIFICATION ACT The legislature opened on January 18th, 1849, when Lord Elgin had the gratification of informing French Canadians that the restrictions imposed by the Union Act on the use of their language in the public records had been removed by a statute of the imperial parliament. For the first time in Canadian history the governor-general read the speech in the two languages; for in the past it had been the practice of the president of the legislative council to give it in French after it had been read in English from the throne. The session was memorable in political annals for the number of useful measures that were adopted. In later pages of this book I shall give a short review of these and other measures which show the importance of the legislation passed by the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry. For the present I shall confine myself to the consideration of a question which created an extraordinary amount of public excitement, culminated in the destruction of valuable public property, and even threatened the life of the governor-general, who during one of the most trying crises in Canadian history, displayed a coolness and patience, an indifference to all personal considerations, a political sagacity and a strict adherence to sound methods of constitutional government, which entitle him to the gratitude of Canadians, who might have seen their country torn asunder by internecine strife, had there been then a weak and passionate man at the head of the executive. As it will be seen later, he, like the younger Pitt in England, was "the pilot who weathered the storm." In Canada, the storm, in which the elements of racial antagonism, of political rivalry and disappointment, of spoiled fortunes and commercial ruin raged tumultuously for a while, threatened not only to drive Canada back for years in its political and material development, but even to disturb the relations between the dependency and the imperial state.