[Illustration: Sir Étienne Pascal Taché. From a portrait in the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library] The Liberal-Conservatives came back to office, though not to power, under Sir Étienne Taché, who had received the honour of knighthood since last we heard of him. In less than three months his Government met defeat by a majority of two votes in the Assembly. Thus within three years four Ministries had been defeated, and two general elections had {71} failed to break the deadlock which threatened to make government impossible in Canada. The man responsible above all others for this deplorable state of things was he who for years past had not ceased in the columns of his paper and from his place in parliament to set one section of Canada against the other; who laboured to stir up racial and religious strife; who habitually gave to the people of Upper Canada a distorted view of the national characteristics and the religious belief of their fellow-countrymen in Lower Canada. The result was that the Union formed only twenty-three years before, the Union about which such high hopes had been entertained, was on the point of breaking up. The actual _impasse_ which had now been reached seems to have opened George Brown's eyes to the effects of his course, and to have convinced him that the time had arrived when a cessation of the old feuds was absolutely necessary to the carrying on of the queen's government in Canada. Impelled by a sense of patriotism and, we may well believe, at the expense of his personal feelings, he now joined hands with Macdonald and Cartier for the purpose of carrying the great scheme of Confederation. This, and this alone, promised deliverance {72} from the unhappy deadlock that impeded the progress of the country.