Sydenham, Charles Edward Poulett Thomson, Baron [key], 1799–1841, British statesman. Entering Parliament (1826) as a Liberal with the aid of Jeremy Bentham, he became a proponent of free trade and financial reform. He was a leader of the colonial reformers, a group that promoted liberalized but permanent imperial ties. He supported the views of Edward Gibbon Wakefield on systematic colonization. He was made president of the Board of Trade in 1834, and in 1839 he was appointed governor-general of Canada. There, in accordance with the policy of his predecessor, the 1st earl of Durham, he successfully carried through the union of Upper and Lower Canada, accomplished by the Act of Union (1840). He was raised to the peerage in 1840.
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