The British Ministers had seen with growing uneasiness Bagot's concessions. His successor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, a man of honest and kindly ways but accustomed to governing oriental peoples, determined to make a stand against the pretensions of the Reformers. In this attitude he was strongly backed both by Stanley and by his successor, that brilliant young Tory, William Ewart Gladstone. Metcalfe insisted once more that the Governor must govern. While the members of the Council, as individuals, might give him advice, it was for him to decide whether or not to take it. The inevitable clash with his Ministers came in the autumn of 1843 over a question of patronage. They resigned, and after months of effort Metcalfe patched up a Ministry with W. H. Draper as the leading member. In an election in which Metcalfe himself took the platform and in which once more British connection was said to be at stake, the Ministry obtained a narrow majority. But opinion soon turned, and when Metcalfe, the third Governor in four years to whom Canada had proved fatal, went home to die, he knew that his stand had been in vain. The Ministry, after a precarious life of three years, went to the country only to be beaten by an overwhelming majority in both East and West. When, in 1848, Baldwin and La Fontaine were called to office under the new Governor General, Lord Elgin, the fight was won. Many years were to pass before the full implications of responsible government were worked out, but henceforth even the straitest Tory conceded the principle. Responsible government had ceased to be a party cry and had become the common heritage of all Canadians. Lord Elgin, who was Durham's son-in-law, was a man well able to bear the mantle of his predecessors. Yet he realized that the day had passed when Governors could govern and was content rather to advise his advisers, to wield the personal influence that his experience and sagacity warranted. Hitherto the stages in Canadian history had been recorded by the term of office of the Governors; henceforth it was to be the tenure of Cabinets which counted. Elgin ceased even to attend the Council, and after his time the Governor became more and more the constitutional monarch, busied in laying corner stones and listening to tiresome official addresses. In emergencies, and especially in the gap or interregnum between Ministries, the personality of the Governor might count, but as a rule this power remained latent. Yet in two turning points in Canadian history, both of which had to do with the relations of Canada to the United States, Elgin was to play an important part: the Annexation Movement of 1849 and the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854.