It fell to the Tory Government of Peel to choose Sydenham's successor. They named Sir Charles Bagot, already distinguished for his career in diplomacy and known for his hand in matters which were to interest the greater Canada, the Rush-Bagot Convention with the United States and the treaty with Russia which fixed, only too vaguely, the boundaries of Alaska. He was under strict injunctions from the Colonial Secretary, Lord Stanley, to continue Sydenham's policy and to make no further concession to the demands for responsible government or party control. Yet this Tory nominee of a Tory Cabinet, in his brief term of office, insured a great advance along this very path toward freedom. His easy-going temper predisposed him to play the part of constitutional monarch rather than of Prime Minister, and in any case he faced a majority in the Assembly resolute in its determination. The policy of swamping French influence had already proved a failure. Sydenham had given it a full trial. He had done his best, or his worst, by unscrupulous manipulation, to keep the French Canadians from gaining their fair quota of the members in the Union Assembly. Those who were elected he ignored. "They have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing by the Rebellion," he declared, "and are more unfit for representative government than they were in 1791." This was far from a true reading of the situation. The French stood aloof, it is true, a compact and sullen group, angered by the undisguised policy of Anglicization that faced them and by Sydenham's unscrupulous tactics. But they had learned restraint and had found leaders and allies of the kind most needed. Papineau's place--for the great tribune was now in exile in Paris, consorting with the republicans and socialists who were to bring about the Revolution of 1848--had been taken by one of his former lieutenants. Louis Hippolyte La Fontaine still stands out as one of the two or three greatest Canadians of French descent, a man of massive intellect, of unquestioned integrity, and of firm but moderate temper. With Baldwin he came to form a close and lifelong friendship. The Reformers of Canada West, as Upper Canada was now called, formed a working alliance with La Fontaine which gave them a sweeping majority in the Assembly. Bagot bowed to the inevitable and called La Fontaine and Baldwin to his Council. Ill health made it impossible for him to take much part in the government, and the Council was far on the way to obtaining the unity and the independence of a true Cabinet when Bagot's death in 1843 brought a new turn in affairs.