The government established a department of agriculture to which were given control of the taking of a decennial census, the encouragement of immigration, the collection of agricultural and other statistics, the establishment of model farms and agricultural schools, the holding of annual exhibitions and fairs, and other matters calculated to encourage the cultivation of the soil in both sections of the province. Malcolm Cameron became its first minister in connection with his nominal duties as president of the executive council--a position which he had accepted only on condition that it was accompanied by some more active connection with the administration of public affairs. For three sessions the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry had made vain efforts to pass a law increasing the representation of the two provinces to one hundred and thirty or sixty-five members for each section. As already stated the Union Act required that such a measure should receive a majority of two-thirds in each branch of the legislature. It would have become law on two occasions had it not been for the factious opposition of Papineau, whose one vote would have given the majority constitutionally necessary. When it was again presented in 1853 by Mr. Morin, it received the bitter opposition of Mr. Brown, who was now formulating the doctrine of representation by population which afterwards became so important a factor in provincial politics that it divided west from east, and made government practically impossible until a federal union of the British North American provinces was brought about as the only feasible solution of the serious political and sectional difficulties under which Canada was suffering. A number of prominent Conservatives, including Mr. John A. Macdonald, were also unfavourable to the measure on the ground that the population of Upper Canada, which was steadily increasing over that of Lower Canada, should be equitably considered in any readjustment of the provincial representation. The French Canadians, who had been forced to come into the union hi 1841 with the same representation as Upper Canada with its much smaller population, were now unwilling to disturb the equality originally fixed while agreeing to an increase in the number of representatives from each section. The bill, which became law in 1853, was entirely in harmony with the views entertained by Lord Elgin when he first took office as governor-general of Canada. In 1847 he gave his opinion to the colonial secretary that "the comparatively small number of members of which the popular bodies who determine the fate of provincial administrations" consisted was "unfavourable to the existence of a high order of principle and feeling among official personages." When a defection of two or three individuals from a majority of ten or so put an administration in peril, "the perpetual patchwork and trafficking to secure this vote and that (not to mention other evils) so engrosses