In fact, the combination of French and British representatives in a single cabinet, itself constitutes a coalition of the most objectionable kind; as the result can only be a perpetual system of compromises. For example, one of the effects of the Union, and of the coalition of 1854, was the passage of the bill secularizing the Clergy Reserves, and abolishing all connection between church and state in Upper Canada, while leaving untouched the privileges of the Romish Church in the Lower Province. That some day, there will arise a formidable Nemesis spawned of this one-sided act, when the agitation for disendowment shall have reached the Province of Quebec, who can doubt? In 1855 and subsequently, followed a series of struggles for office, without any great political object in view, each party or clique striving to bid higher than all the rest for popular votes, which went on amid alternate successes and reverses, until the denouement came in 1859, when neither political party could form a Ministry that should command a majority in parliament, and they were fain to coalesce _en masse_ in favour of confederation. At one time, Mr. George Brown was defeated by Wm. Lyon Mackenzie in Halton; at another, he voted with the Tories against the Hincks ministry; again, he was a party to a proposed coalition with Sir Allan MacNab. I was myself present at Sir Allan's house in Richey's Terrace, Adelaide Street, where I was astonished to meet Mr. Brown himself in confidential discussion with Sir Allan. I recollect a member of the Lower House--I think Mr. Hillyard Cameron--hurrying in with the information that at a meeting of Conservative members which he had just left, they had chosen Mr. John A. Macdonald as their leader in place of Sir Allan, which report broke up the conference, and defeated the plans of the coalitionists. This was, I think, in 1855. Then came on the "Rep. by Pop." agitation led by the _Globe_, in 1856.[25] In 1857, the great business panic superseded all other questions. In 1858, the turn of the Reform party came, with Mr. Brown again at their head, who held power for precisely four days. In 1858, also, the question of protection for native industry, which had been advocated by the British-American League, was taken up in parliament by the Hon. Wm. Cayley and Hon. Isaac Buchanan separately. In 1859, came Mr. Brown's and Mr. Galt's federal union resolutions, and Mr. Cayley's motion for protection once more. All these years--from 1853 to 1860--I was in confidential communication with the leaders of the Conservative party, and after 1857 with the Upper Canadian members of the administration personally; and I am bound to bear testimony to their entire patriotism and general disinterestedness whenever the public weal was involved. I was never asked to print a line which I could not conscientiously endorse; and had I been so requested, I should assuredly have refused.