which we have next to speak. At the time when these Assemblies came into existence, the Executive was already in the enjoyment of certain revenues, revenues, indeed, which were generally almost or quite equal to its then wants. These were of two kinds, the hereditary revenues of the Crown, derived from a variety of sources, which we cannot here particularize, and the avails of certain taxes levied under acts of the Imperial Parliament. The Executive laid claim, in all cases to the unrestricted appropriation of all these funds; and for a time, in the early weakness of the Assemblies, the claim was tacitly acquiesced in. But when, as shortly happened, the government had to apply for additional votes of money and new taxes, the Assemblies began to claim the right of at least overseeing the accounts of the other branches of the revenue, to judge with what degree of economy and propriety they were administered, and what were the real merits of the application for further grants. From this claim, the transition was easy and inevitable to the claim of an indefeasible natural right, as the people's representatives, to control the appropriation of the whole revenue, however raised. It was hardly less inevitable, that the military governor should side with his council or councils of office-holders, in their death-struggle against all such claims from first to last, and that thus the singular spectacle should soon be presented in every colony, of an Executive striving to carry on the government, with a majority of the representatives of the people in permanent opposition to its whole policy. In this struggle, it will be remembered how nearly powerless, to all appearance, the Assemblies at first were. They could send up bills, but their official antagonists were then to sit in judgment on them, and say to what extent they might become law. And when, by their permission, sent up to the Governor, and by him ratified, it was further at their pleasure, and after their interpretation of them, that they were then to be put in force. The Assembly had no voice in the appointment of this official body, to whom the execution of its laws fell. "During the pleasure of the Crown," was their tenure of office; or, in other words, during the pleasure of those head officials, who, as Legislative and Executive Councillors, had the ear of the Governor, and wielded thereby all the patronage of the Crown, in behalf of themselves, their families, and adherents. These men were subject, as

we have remarked already, to no sort of responsibility for their advice and influence. So long as the Crown had revenue enough at its disposal (or rather at theirs) for the payment of their salaries, they could well afford to laugh at all the hostile efforts of the House.

Our limits do not allow us to go into the history of this finance controversy, and show the slow steps by which, at length, most of the demands of the Assemblies, in this respect, have been conceded. We cannot even trace out the results of the warfare between the Assemblies and the officials with any degree of minuteness. The portion of Lord Durham's Report, which relates to this subject, enters into a great variety of particulars, and is interesting and able in the highest degree. We must confine ourselves within such narrow limits, as will materially detract from the mass of evidence, by which our statements would otherwise be found supported. No one, however, at all familiar with the course of events in the colonies, can fail to see, that the slight sketch we are presenting, so far as it goes, is a faithful representation of what has been in constant progress in them. To give facts here, one by one, would be to fill volumes. It must be tolerably self-evident, that, in a controversy of this kind, neither of the parties to it could adhere to a line of conduct that should be unobjectionable. Office-holders, in their control of public expenditure, are inevitably lavish ; and this, the moment their craft is in danger, as inevitably renders their use of the public funds corrupt. The more violent the opposition of a popular body to their privileges, the more corrupt and lavish is the unpopular body obliged to become in its support of them. The assailed Councillors have their military chief in their hands to begin with; and there he is almost certain to remain. Their acts are, to all appearance, his; for all patronage, in name, emanates from the Crown, and he is its representative. The Assembly, of course, attack him, not merely for this patronage, but on all other grounds where they can find cover for attack. He retaliates by throwing himself more intimately than ever into alliance with their natural enemies; and, since he has the ear of the colonial office, just as the local officials possess his, he enlists the home government in his support, as they, in the first instance, enlisted him in theirs. That this should be the case, necessarily argues very little against the Colonial

Department, so far as intentions go. It is distant, and therefore of necessity at first ignorant; the Governor is its nominee and representative; his despatches are all it has to decide upon, and they are in effect the special pleadings of the knot of office-holders, for whom and by whom the war is really waged. Thus for years may things go on under such a system. But, in course of time, the pecuniary wants of the local governments become urgent. The House grows bolder, as its power of annoyance grows. Its remonstrances assume the form of threats to the local Executive, and of strong denunciation of the Governor's course to the home government. It has the power to make its complaints heard; and the obnoxious Governor is superseded. But the root of the evil is still untouched. The new Governor falls into the old hands. For a time, his instructions to conciliate the House may do something to check the course of things; but, in the end, and generally very soon, the old measures in the colony, and the old story in the despatches, are the sure result. And how, meanwhile, is the Assembly acting? Right at first, is it not sure to be carried into extravagances, which must give the officials great advantages over it, not merely in the view of the Downing Street officials by whom the controversy is to be judged, but even in the view of a considerable portion of that colonial community on which the House had to rely for support? The Governor's advisers it has no means of reaching. They are not, as in the States, directly or indirectly chosen by the people; so that the people, if they sustain the principles of the House, can bring them into harmony with it. Nor are they, as in England, directly responsible to the House, so that an adverse vote of that body can force them to resign and give place to men who can secure its confidence. The popular leaders of the House soon find themselves, therefore, cut off from all chance of obtaining the direction of affairs. They may have a Speaker of their party, and may command the votes of the majority of the people; they may force, by dint of long and hard fighting, some of their favorite measures into laws; but, for all this, their enemies, the enemies of all their measures, are irrecoverably the government of the colony. In England and here, the prospect of being some day in administration, always tempers down the violence of an opposition party. It may profess

more than it means to practise, and commonly does. But this inconsistency has its limits. The leaders of the party feel, that success may at any time expose the insincerity of their professions; and they keep them, therefore, within some bounds.

*

But, with a state of things like that we are describing, there is none of this. The agitator cannot go too far or too fast for the object immediately before him. He may profess, promise, assert, deny, assail, or defend, at pleasure. He is a chartered fault-finder, fearless of ever being subject to the same fault-finding ordeal in his turn. His antagonists use the public purse against him; he too must use it against them. Nor are the means wanting to his hand. His constituents want money from the treasury to make roads and build bridges, to pay for schools, hospitals, &c. ; perhaps, even to buy seed-wheat and potatoes. What can he do better than gratify such longings in the way most conducive to his own popularity and interest? It will never do to rest content with appropriating moneys to these objects, for his enemies in office to expend against him; and, therefore, as a thing of course, his bills have his own and his friend's names on their face, as commissioners to expend them the right way. If the officials refuse to pass such a bill, well; theirs is the odium; and it is apt to be so intense in these matters that affect the pockets of so many, that he knows they will shrink from incurring it, and indeed would be glad probably if he could make them. If they pass it, well; he fights them with their own weapons. But the struggle does not end here. He soon finds, that the less he does to make

The Legislature of Lower Canada, for a great number of years, distributed large sums yearly among the inhabitants of several counties, for this last purpose, nominally in the shape of loans. In one year (1817), $140,000 were voted away in this manner; and of the whole, some 30 or 40 dollars only are known to have been repaid, being one repayment by an extraordinarily cautious purchaser of a mortgaged farm! By a number of these alms-giving acts, seed-wheat could be had almost for the asking, without reference to the size of a man's farm, to the amount of 60 Winchester bushels; other grain, to 45; and potatoes, to 30; and this, too, in counties lying north of Quebec, till the 25th of June or 1st of July! The later acts were not a great deal better in their provisions, than these early ones. On all the other subjects named in the text, the popular legislation was often almost as bad as on this; and, though Lower Canada, in this respect as in many others of the same kind, had won the palm of preeminence, it must not be supposed by any means, that its legislature is the only one which has resorted to measures of this kind. "Mutato nomine," and with some qualifications as to frequency and extent, the charge lies against all.

the community independent of these grants of which he is the distributor, the better it is for his purposes; and he is thus led to make it the policy of his body to centre all patronage of this kind in itself, as the one great popular corporation of the lands, instead of struggling for that invaluable boon to any country, the multiplication of corporate or municipal bodies, vested with powers of local taxation and administration for local objects. The officials cannot, from the nature of the case, be the advocates of popular local institutions, to supersede the clumsy, centralized system whereby they live. And thus, between the two parties, no honest attempt is ever made to secure this end. The popular leader may, for appearance' sake, pretend to aim at it; but his acts will too often belie his words. Sometimes, of course, in practice, the rule we have laid down in this case, will be infringed upon, and a popular leader will be acting on more enlarged views than his proposition would naturally tend to give him. The rule is not the less a rule, for such exceptions. We are speaking of general tendencies, not of isolated acts; and, for every exception that could be cited to our rule, could easily cite a dozen facts in evidence of its

correctness.

The ball is still rolling. "When we want a bridge, we take a judge to build it," said a popular member of a provincial legislature, whose pithy saying is well quoted in Lord Durham's Report. The popular leader has not before his eyes the fear of being soon himself a judge on a low salary. It is not in his line. He is at war with the judges (for unluckily the judges in general have been in front rank in this party warfare) and with all the rest of the salary-receiving fraternity; and his zeal to cut off their resources and increase his own, by diverting all the public money he can from their expectant pockets to his commissioners' hands, is checked by no visions of an approaching exhaustion of his own purse, by a like process. Can he stop short, under such temptation, at the precise point at which each salary becomes just what it ought to be, for the advantage of the public service? He is more than politician, more than what most men call patriot, if he can.

But we must go further yet, if we would see the whole length to which this controversy has been carried, and the means eventually resorted to by the Assemblies, to decide it VOL. XLIX. No. 105.

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