And

ing" themselves to the United States. whoever, in his desire to look more closely into those matters, consulted the public press of the colony, found it (with a few and occasional exceptions) dealing in accusations of the blackest kind against opponents, imputations of the lowest and most corrupt motives, personalities, and other marks of bitter animosity, and very seldom rising to a tone of calm and searching discussion on the important questions of the day. It requires a nearer view and a better acquaintance than books or newspapers can give, to form a just estimate of the beneficial change that has latterly taken place, and of the point at which those provinces have arrived in the process of initiation into the working of constitutional govern

ment.

There is no need to revive in this place the facts relating to that great cause of difference a few years ago between the Executive and one of the parties in the province-the Rebellion Losses Bill. They are unhappily too familiar to every one in the colony. The result of the course of policy then pursued has, however, been this

it has shown most unequivocally to the whole people of Canada that they are bonâ fide and to the fullest extent in possession of the great privilege of Constitutional Government. This is unquestionably a great point for them to have established, and worth a great deal more than the temporary feelings of irritation which accompanied the passing of that celebrated Bill. I think I perceived that those feelings had been considerably softened down in the great majority of persons that I met with, although it still remains as a deep cause of offence in the minds of many. They cling to the idea that the GovernorGeneral (Lord Elgin) should have refused his assent to the Bill, and should have sent it to England either with or without a recommendation that it should have been disallowed by the Crown. To have done the former, as was argued at the time in this country, would have been to place the Crown in direct antagonism with the French and the Liberal party in the colony; to have done the latter would have been to shrink from a responsibility which on great occasions it is often the first duty of a servant of the Crown

to assume.

In either case the Crown would have been brought into direct collision with powerful and exasperated parties in the province, and, what would have been still worse, the representative of the Crown would have been lowered to the position of a partisan. I believe it is now, after two years of reflection, pretty generally admitted that, considering the failure of former attempts to carry on the government on the basis of the ascendancy of race and party, and considering the then embittered state of public feeling, the discontent engendered by commercial distress, and the hostility to British rule in Canada manifested by certain classes in the United States, even as late as the year 1848, it was a critical moment in the destinies of this colony, and that it is fortunate that it terminated as it did. Where the contrary opinion still lingers, it appeared to me to be the result of too low an appreciation of the constitutional position and duties of the Executive. This is far from being unnatural, considering the comparative novelty of constitutional government in the colony, and the long habit, contracted under the old mode of

administration, of looking at the Queen's representative as the supporter and almost the instrument of one party alone. It may be, as it is still argued, that the experiment of constitutional government was introduced too soon, that neither the state of intelligence of the mass of the people, nor the condition of the public press, was such as to justify so sudden a change. But it is admitted on all hands that there is no returning to the past that what has been done cannot be undone -and that all that remains from henceforward is to make the best of matters as they now exist. It is therefore natural to conclude that, the more constitutional questions come to be studied, as they arise in the course of public affairs, the more will the point, which in England is so familiar, become plain and obvious, that the true place of the representative of the Crown is one above and aloof from the personal considerations of party, and one which keeps in view only the just and impartial administration of public affairs with reference to the great general interests of the country.

A circumstance, exemplifying this principle,

was agitating the colony during my stay there, in consequence of the appointment to office, in conjunction with the party which had a majority in the Legislative Assembly, of two individuals personally very obnoxious to the party out of power. It was the simple constitutional course, and any other would have had the disadvantage, in addition to being unconstitutional, of making political martyrs, and therefore placing in such hands a great accession of popular power.

Two other circumstances are also worth adverting to, as indications of how entirely the government is now being carried on in accordance with the Parliamentary principles of this country. 1. This very change of the "personnel" of the administration, adverted to in the last paragraph, was in part the result of a measure of a distinguished member of the ministry having been voted against by some of his usual supporters, aided by members of the old Tory party and some of the Radical section of their own. The minister whose measure was by that vote condemned by an influential portion of his own party, took the dignified course of resigning office-the measure