The Sun.
London, England, 1839-05-10 00:00:00

sibility.
" The powers for which the assembly contended
appear, in both instances, to be such as it was perfectly jus-
tified in demanding,. It is difficult to conceive what could
have been their theory of government who imagined that
in any colony of England a body invested with the name
and character of a Representative Assembly could be de-
prived of any of those powers which, in the opinion of
Englishmen, are inherent in a popular Legislature. It was
a vain delusion to imagine that by mere limitations in the
Constitutional Act, or an exclusive system of Government,
a body, strong in the consciousness of wielding the public
opinion of the majority, could regard certain portions of
the provincial revenues as sacred from its control, could
confine itself to the mere business of making laws, and look
on as a passive or indifferent spectator, while those laws
were carried into effect or evaded, and the whole business
of the country was conducted by men in whose intentions or
capacity it had not the slightest confidence. Yet such
was the limitation placed on the authority of the Assembly
of Lower Canada ; it might refuse or pass laws, vote or
withhold supplies, but it could exercise no influence on
the nomination of a single servant of the Crown. The Exe-
cutive Council, the law officers, and whatever heads of de-
partments are known to the Administrative system of the
province, were placed in power, without any regard to the
wishes of the people or their representatives ; nor indeed
are there wanting instances in which a mere hostility to
the majority of the Assembly elevated the most incompe-
tent persons to posts of honour and trust. However de-
cidedly the Assembly might condemn the policy of the
Government, the persons who had advised that poiicy, , re-
tained their offices and their power of giving bad advice. If
a law was passed after repeated conflicts, it had to be carried
into effect by those who had most strenuously opposed
it. The wisdom of adopting the true principle of representa-
tive Government, and facilitating the management of public
affairs, by intrusting it to the persons who have the confi-
dence of the representative body, has never been recog-
nised in the government of the North American Colonies.
I All the officers of Government were independent of the
Assembly ; and that body which had nothing to say to
their appointment, was left to get on as it best might, with
a set of public functionaries whose paramount feeling may
not unfairly be said to have been one of hostility to itself.
A body of holders of office thus constituted, without
reference to the people cr their representatives must, in
fact, from the very nature of colonial government, acquire
the entire direction of the affairs of the province. A Go-
vernor, arriving in a colony in which he almost invariably
his had no previous acquaintagc with the state of parties,
or the character of individuals, is compelled to throw him-
self about entirely upon those whom he finds placed in
the position of his official advisers. His first acts must
necessarily be performed, and his first appointments made,
at their suggestion. And as these first acts and ap-
pointments give a character to his policy, he is ge-
nerally brought thereby into immediate collision with
the other parties in the country, and thrown into more
complete dependence upon the official party and its friends.
Thus, a Governor of Lower Canada has almost always
been brought into collision with the Assembly, which his
advisers regard as their enemy. In the course of the con-
test in which he was thus involved, the provocations which
he received from the Assembly, and the light in which
their conduct was represented by those who alone had
any access to him, naturally imbued him with many of
their antipathies ; his position compelled bins to seek the
support of some party against the Assembly ; and his
feelings and his necessities thus combined to induce him to
bestow his patronage and to shape his measures to promote'
the interests of the party on which he was obliged to lean.
Thus, every successive year consolidated and enlarged the
strength of the ruling party. Fortified by family con.
nection, and the common interest felt by all who held and
all who desired subordinate offices, that party was thus
erected into a solid and permanent power, controlled by no
responsibility, subject to no serious change, exercising over
the whole government of the province an authority utterly
independent of the people and its representatives, and pos-
sessing the only means of influencing either the Govern-
ment at home or the colonial representative of the Crown.
" This entire separation of the legislative and exe-
cutive powers of a Stale, i 3 the natural error of
governments desirous of being free from the check
of representative institutions. Since the Revolution of
1688, the stability of the English Constitution has
been secured by that wise principle of our Govern-
ment which has vested the direction of the national policy,
and the distribution of patronage in the leaders of the Par-
liamentary majority. However partial the Monarch
might be to particular Ministers, or however he might have
personally committed himself to their policy, he has inva•
riably been constrained to abandon both as soon as the
opinion of the people has been irrevocably pronounced
against them through the medium of the House of Com-
mons. The practice of carrying on a representative go-
vernment on a different principle, seems to be the rock on
which Continental imitations of the British Constitution
have invariably split ; and the French Revolution of 1830
was the necessary result of an attempt to uphold a Ministry
with which no Parliament could be got to act in concert.
It is difficult to understand how any English statesmen could
hive imagined thatrPpresentative and irresponsible Govern-
ment could be successfully combined. There seems, indeed,
to be an idea that the character of representative
institu-
tions ought to be thus modified in colonies; that
incident of colonial dependence that the officers of Go-
vernment should be nominated by Crown,
the without n
reference to the wishes of the community interestsay
arc intrusted to their keeping. It
very clearly explained what are
tia
the
as
imperial never beenin
in-
terests which require this complete nullification of
representative government. But, if there be such a
necessity, it is quite clear that a representative go-
vernment in a colony must be a mockery, and a source' of
confusion. For those who support this ; stem have never
yet been able to devise, or to exhibit in they practical work..
ing of colonial government, any means for making so
complete an abrogation of political influence palatable to
the representative body. It is not difficult to apply the
case to our own country. Let it be imagined that at a
general election the Opposition were to return 500 out of
658 Members of the House of Commons, and that the
whole policy of the Ministry should be condemned, and
every Bill introduced by it rejected by this immense ma-
jority; let it be supposed that the Crown should consider
it a point of honour and duty to retain a Ministry so con-
demned and so thwarted ; that repeated dissolutions
should in no way increase, but should even diminish, the
Ministerial minority; and that the only result which could
be obtained by puch a development of the force of the
Opposition, were not the slightest change in the policy
of the Ministry, not the removal of a single Minister,
but simply the election of a Speaker, of the politics of
the majority; and, I think, it will not be difficult to
imigine the fate of such a system of Government. Yet
such was the system, such literally was the course of events
in Lower Canada ; and such in character, though not quite
in degree, was the spectacle exhibited in Upper Canada, and
at one time or another, in every one of the North American
Colonies. To suppose that such a system would work well
there, implies a belief that the French Canadians have en-
joyed representative institutions for half a century without
acquiring any of the characteristics of a free people ; that
Englishmen renounce every political opinion and feeling
when they enter a colony, or that the spirit of Anglo.
Saxon freedom is utterly changed and weakened among
those who are transplanted across the Atlantic.
appears, there
sembly to the Government was the unavoidable result "-
Affs,
system which stinted the popular branch of the Legislature
of the necessary privileges of a representative body, and
Produced thereby a long series of attempts on the part of
that body to acquire control over the administration of the
Province. I say all this without reference to the ultimate
aim of the Assembly, which I have before described as
be
progressiveingth
emaitenance of a Canadian nationality against
the
intrusion of the English race. Having no
responsible ministers to deal with, it entered upon that sys-
tem of long inquiries by means of its Committees, which
brought the whole action of the Executive immediately,
under its purview, and transgressed our notions of the pro-
per limits of Parliamentary interference. Having no in-
fluence in the choice of any public functionary,
no power
to procure the removal of such as were obnoxious to it
merely on political grounds, and seeing almost every
office of the colony filled by persons in whom it had no
confidence, it entered on that vicious course of assailing
its prominent opponents individually, and disqualifying*
jectsthem of
for the public service, by making them the sub
inquiries and consequent impeachments, not
always conducted with even the appearance of a due
regard to justice ; and when nothing else could attain
its end of altering the policy or the composition of the
Colonial Government, it had recourse to that nitima
ratio of representative power to which the more prudent
forbearance of the Crown has never driven the House
of Commons in England, and endeavoured to disable the
whole machine of government by a general refusal of
the supplies."
The defects and remedies of the existing Colonial
system are thus described :—" The preceding pages
have sufficiently pointed out the nature of those evils, to the
extensive operation of which I attribute the various prac-
tical grievances and the present unsatisfactory condition of