The aspects of mid-nineteenth-century Canadian history which have received the fullest examination are the Rebellions of 1837, the Union of Upper and Lower Canada in 1841, the winning of Responsible Government in 1847-48, and Confederation in 1864-67. To a large extent these have been studies in imperial relations and the character of internal politics has received less attention. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the political system which evolved in Upper Canada after 1848 from the vantage point of the six general elections between 1848 and 1863. (The Legislative Council was made elective in 1856, but there was little interest taken in it or its elections and this study is concerned only with elections to the Legislative Assembly.) The thesis attempts to discover the internal wordings of politics in Upper Canada: the issues which aroused the most interest in the elections, the parties and their organizations, the electorate and the system of representation, and the various forces, both legitimate and corrupt which were used to influence the voters. In some instances there has been an attempt to arrive at quantitative or definitive conclusions, but in most cases this was neither desirable or possible. Instead, specific examples hove been used to give e general picture of how the political and electoral systems operated.