to be one of the warmest supporters and most zealous champions of British institutions, a strong advocate of the maintenance of British connection and a passionate lover of the British flag. Cartier was the destined successor of LaFontaine in the great work of reconstruction, pacification, and conciliation, and when LaFontaine retired in 1851, and was followed a few years later by that other eminent French-Canadian statesman, Auguste Norbert Morin, Cartier's path to the leadership of his native province was clear. For years he was the undisputed leader: his voice, as has been well said, was the voice of Quebec. The struggle for responsible government having been won, an era of marked industrial expansion and development followed under the Union. It was an era of railway building, of canal construction, of the establishment of great public works. Cartier, owing to his practical qualities, his great business abilities, his mastery of details, and his administrative capacities, was eminently qualified to obtain a leading position during such a period. He achieved distinction as a reformer, as an able administrator, as a legislator, and as a constructive statesman. His name is attached to some of the most important Acts of a period prolific of important legislation. It is sufficient to mention in this connection such measures as the construction of the Montreal and Portland Railway, the decentralization of the judiciary, the codification of the civil laws and of civil procedure, the modification of the criminal law, the Municipal Act of Lower Canada, the Act relating to registration offices, the abolition of the seigniorial tenure, the choice of Ottawa as the Capital of Canada, the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway and the Victoria Bridge, the organization of the educational system of Lower Canada, the improvement and deepening of the St. Lawrence, the building of canals, the union of the provinces of British North America, the acquisition of the North-West Territories, the construction of the Intercolonial Railway, the establishment of the Province of Manitoba, the admission of British Columbia into Confederation, the establishment of the militia system and the initiation of the Canadian Pacific Railway.