Like many other statesmen, Cartier experienced the vicissitudes, as well as the triumphs, of public life. His last appeal to the electors of Montreal, made when he was practically a dying man, resulted, owing to a combination of circumstances, in his crushing defeat. He was greeted not with bouquets but with stones, from people of a city for which he had worked so hard, and for the advancement of which he had done so much. Another seat was found for him in Provencher, Manitoba, but his public career was over. In an effort to secure the restoration of his health he went to England, but the hope was vain: the incessant labors of a long public career had broken down a naturally robust constitution, and the great statesman passed away in London, England, on May 23rd, 1873. His last thoughts were for his beloved country. "Say to his friends in Canada," wrote one of his daughters in a touching letter announcing his death to a friend in Montreal, "say to his friends in Canada that he loved his country to the last, that his only desire was to return. Two days before his death he had all the Canadian newspapers read to him. Even his enemies, I hope, will not refuse to admit that before all he loved his country." The national mourning that followed the announcement of his death, the enconiums pronounced by the newspapers of all shades of opinion, the eulogies delivered in Parliament, the scene of his labors for so many years, and the imposing public funeral that was given his remains in Montreal, all bore eloquent testimony to the fact that the Canadian people, regardless of party, recognized that in his death Canada had indeed lost one who before all had loved his country. His remains rest beneath the soil of Mount Royal, which overlooks the city that he loved so well, and for the interests of which he worked so hard. Lessons of Cartier's Life What were the lessons of Cartier's life? They may be summed up in the three words--patriotism, duty, and tolerance. He loved his country and sought to promote its interests, he wore himself out in the discharge of his public duties, he was a man of the broadest views and the utmost tolerance. As Sir Adolphe Routhier has well remarked, to most public men public life is a career, but for Cartier it was an apostolate, a patriotic mission, and to fulfill that mission he sacrificed everything, even the modest fortune of which his family had need.[5]