Step by step, under Liberal and under Liberal Conservative
Governments, the programme of Canadian Liberalism was carried
into effect. Self-government, at least in domestic affairs, had
been attained. An effective system of municipal government and a
good beginning in popular education followed. The last link
between Church and State was severed in 1854 when the Clergy
Reserves were turned over to the municipalities for secular
purposes, with life annuities for clergymen who had been
receiving stipends from the Reserves. In Lower Canada the
remnants of the old feudal system, the rights of the seigneurs,
were abolished in the same year with full compensation from the
state. An elective upper Chamber took the place of the appointed
Legislative Council a year later. The Reformers, as the Clear
Grits preferred to call themselves officially, should perhaps
have been content with so much progress. They insisted, however,
that a new and more intolerable privilege had arisen--the
privilege which Canada East held of equal representation in the
Legislative Assembly long after its population had fallen behind
that of Canada West.
The political union of the two Canadas in fact had never been
complete. Throughout the Union period there were two leaders in
each Cabinet, two Attorney Generals, and two distinct judicial
systems.
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