debates. This may be said with equal truth of Brown and Cartier. They were firm in purpose, resourceful in appeal and argument, and thoroughly equal to any situation which the controversy developed. They were likewise uniformly courteous and conciliatory, manifestly conscious of the gravity of the issues under consideration, and profoundly concerned to carry the great business to a successful and honourable conclusion. No one risked more than Cartier. No one like Cartier was under suspicion among his own people and confronted by a hostile sentiment in his own province. No one, perhaps, was more influential in determining the character of the federal constitution. He put into that instrument the principles of constitutional government which he had learned in the school of Papineau, and fought for in the Rebellion of 1837; and he established against successful legal or political assault the ample constitutional powers of the provinces. No doubt Cartier's chief reliance against the rising tide of hostile sentiment in Quebec, was in the Catholic clergy. These were distinctly favourable to the scheme of union, and the fact has profound significance in the making of confederated Canada. Without Cartier and the Catholic ecclesiastics of Quebec, the union of 1867 could not have been accomplished.

The demand for a plebiscite on the scheme of Confederation was very strongly supported in Lower Canada. A score of French Canadian coun

ties passed resolutions to that effect, and petitions against final action in advance of a popular vote, signed by more than twenty thousand persons, were sent in to Parliament. Many public meetings were held throughout the province, at which addresses were made by A. A. Dorion, L. O. David, Médéric Lanctôt. J. B. E. Dorion, and other active opponents of the plan of Confederation. Mr. Laurier spoke at one of these meetings, held at Ste. Julie in Montcalm County, on February 22nd, 1865. Le Pays fails to give a summary of the speech, but says that he supported the arguments of other speakers, and that resolutions against Confederation, or at least declaratory of the policy of Dorion, were unanimously adopted.

During all but a few months of the two years that Mr. Laurier practised law at Montreal he was the junior partner of M. Lanctôt, one of the chief agitators against Confederation. Upon his admission to the bar in October, 1864, he formed a partnership with Oscar Archambault and Henri L. Desaulniers, under the firm name of Laurier, Archambault, and Desaulniers. All three had passed through McGill together, and Laurier and Desaulniers had ranked equal for the degree of B.C.L. This partnership was more agreeable than profitable. They found that clients came slowly, and that it was a considerable undertaking for even three brilliant young students to build up a law business in Montreal. The firm was therefore

dissolved, and in April, 1865, Mr. Laurier entered into partnership with Lanctôt. Of the members of his first firm only himself survives.

The association with Lanctôt was probably not wholly conducive to the natural development of Mr. Laurier's character. Lanctôt was a fiery and turbulent politician, of that class who come uppermost in seasons of great social and political unrest, urge extreme remedies for evils they unconsciously magnify, command the noisy adherence of an evanescent faction, and then pass into obscurity and neglect as conditions settle and the saner forces of the community regain control. His father was a notary of St. Remi, who was arrested in 1838 for the part he took in the Rebellion, and exiled for many years to Australia. The son was born a few weeks before his father's deportation, and inherited the father's spirit and the father's temperament. He studied law with Joseph Doutre, and at twenty years of age was selected to edit Le Pays. In 1860 he resigned his editorial office, and established himself as an advocate. Still later he founded La Presse, and in 1865, in order to retain his clients, took Mr. Laurier into partnership. Lanctôt plunged into the agitation against Confederation, and in association with L. A. Jetté, Desiré Girouard, L. O. David, and other young and aggressive spirits, established L'Union Nationale as the chief organ of the anti-union movement. Mr. Jetté, as was said elsewhere, is now Sir Louis Jetté,

Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec; Mr. Girouard, after many years of distinguished service in the House of Commons, is a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Mr. David, the life-long friend of Mr. Laurier, is City Clerk of Montreal. In 1867 Lanctôt ran for Parliament for Montreal East against Cartier, but was defeated, and subsequently was ruined by unwise and venturesome speculation. He then went to the United States, changed his religion, established a Protestant paper, and made strenuous war upon the Catholic Church. This, like so many other of his journalistic ventures, had a short life, and he was soon back in Montreal. He formed new political alliances, and supported Cartier against Jetté in 1872, when the Conservative leader was defeated by 1,300. In 1875 he assumed the editorship of the Courrier of Ottawa, and afterwards became a stenographer for the House of Commons. When he died in 1877 he was but thirty-nine years of age. He was an able advocate, a capable journalist, and a political orator of remarkable skill and power. But, as the brief record shows, he was unsteady, erratic, and violent, carried on from extreme to extreme by the passions and prejudices of the moment, and often at the mercy of his greed for power, fortune and popularity.1

During the brief term of Lanctôt's partnership 1 See a sketch of Médéric Lanctôt in "Mes Contemporains," by L. O. David.

with Mr. Laurier the firm's clients were received in the editorial offices of L'Union Nationale, and Mr. Laurier seems to have devoted himself chiefly to their interests and to the prosecution of his profession. He seldom contributed to the paper, and had no responsibility for its policy on public questions. The office of L'Union Nationale was on the first floor of an old house on Ste. Thérèse street, long since demolished and replaced by a more modern structure. Though it was a breeding place of faction and a nursery of extreme opinions, all the confusion and clamour, all the shouting and stamping, had no enduring, if indeed any temporary, effect upon Mr. Laurier's opinions, and still less upon his manner and character. He could not adopt the ways of even sincere demagogism, and his admirable balance of mind and temper kept him from intemperate courses and rash decisions.

Although surrounded by an atmosphere of political pessimism as well as of racial narrowness, he spoke even then the language of fervent Canadian patriotism that he speaks to-day. Since his earliest utterances he has never said a word that breathes the spirit of racial bigotry, or warms the idea of a separate national existence for the people of Quebec. He seems to have acquired at a very early age a singularly clear grasp of the main principles of free parliamentary government, and there is a remarkable maturity in his earliest appreciations of the spirit and efficiency of British institutions.