[AUTHORITIES.—The documents are in the Elgin-Grey Correspondence (Canadian Archives); Egerton and Grant, Canadian Constitutional Development (Toronto, 1907); Kennedy, Documents of the Canadian Constitution, 1759–1915 (Oxford, 1918); T. Walrond, Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin (London, 1872); State Papers, G., vols. 126-47, 281-5, 461-2 ; J. H. Chisholm, The Speeches and Public Letters of Joseph Howe (2 vols., Halifax, 1909). Of biographies, the most useful are J. W. Longley, Joseph Howe (Toronto, 1904); G. M. Grant, Joseph Howe (Toronto, 1904); J. Hannay, Wilmot and Tilley (Toronto, 1907); J. G. Bourinot, Lord Elgin (Toronto, 1903); G. M. Wrong, The Earl of Elgin (London, 1905). Joseph Pope, Sir John Macdonald (2 vols., Ottawa, 1894), and O. D. Skelton, The Life and Times of Sir A. T. Galt (Toronto, 1920), contain much valuable material. Lord Grey, The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration (2 vols., London, 1852), is important for imperial policy. F. Hincks, The Political History of Canada between 1840 and 1855 (Montreal, 1877), is essential. J. L. Morison, British Supremacy and Canadian Self-government, 1839–54 (Glasgow, 1919), contains the only adequate study of the Elgin-Grey correspondence (cf. the same author, 'Lord Elgin in Canada', Scottish Historical Review, October 1912, pp. 1 ff.). For the clergy reserves question, H. E. Egerton, Selected Speeches of Sir William Molesworth (London, 1903), and C. Lindsey, The History and Present Position of the Clergy Reserves (Toronto, 1851), should be consulted.]

CHAPTER XVII

THE FAILURE OF RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT IN THE CANADAS

RESPONSIBLE government settled some problems and inevitably created others. Political energy was diverted from constitutional discussions which had broken up the life of the province for generations, and almost every group recognized that for good or ill the principle of government had passed for ever out of the realms of debate. The great step had been taken, and there was no possibility of retracing it without irretrievable or tragic disaster. As a consequence the old tory party could not in future hope to rally the province to their support as the sole guardians of loyalty and the unique repositories for privilege and patronage. Nor could they hope that their influence would continue to resolve in their favour any doubts which might arise at the colonial office. With the close of Lord Elgin's administration the governor-general passes more and more into the position which Baldwin and Elgin saw must be his under the new system. The nearest approach to independence was in 1858, when Sir Edmund Head would not grant George Brown's request for a dissolution, and in 1862, when Lord Monck passed over the more influential M. H. Foley and sent for John Sandfield Macdonald to form a ministry. Head's action was interpreted as a party trick engineered by John A. Macdonald; but he acted in a strictly constitutional way, nor yet did he lower the dignity of his office. Monck's action was also constitutional, and was inspired by motives which are beyond dispute. In the actual administration the change was soon apparent. The executive council had become a cabinet and the conventions of cabinet government were early brought into play. The governor's presence at meetings became as anomalous as the king's in

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England. The royal instructions made his presence normally necessary and cast doubts on executive acts carried out in council when he was absent. In 1858 the law officers of the crown could offer no concessions other than that during the physical incapacity of the governor measures might be taken by the council with his subsequent concurrence '.1 Head outlined the custom which was growing up in Canada. He supported it by stating that the Canadian law officers did not think that his attendance was necessary to give legal effect to executive actions, and he added the expression of a personal belief that with the grant of responsible government it was most inexpedient as a general rule that the governor should be present during the discussion in council of particular measures. He is at liberty at all times to go into council and discuss any measures which he or the council thinks require it, but his presence as a regular and indispensable rule would check all freedom of debate and embarrass himself as well as his advisers 2.2 Responsible government meant that active leadership would pass from British to Canadian hands. The prime minister of Canada became the important figure, and the governor-general gradually assumed a place analogous to that of the monarch in Great Britain. The dispatches to the colonial office took on a formal and business-like monotony compared with those before 1854. The constitutional powers of the governor-general gradually declined and his real influence became moral and personal.

Indeed, during this period there is early evidence of what was recognized during the Great War as a new and distinct triumph for dominion autonomy. Canadian ministers went on frequent missions to London and discussed Canadian affairs directly, and not through the governor, with the imperial government. The equality of empire cabinets was already on the horizon of constitutional progress. Perhaps the most illuminative

1. Labouchere to Head, January 25, 1858.

2 Head to Labouchere, March 4, 1858.

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utterances on the dissolution of the older relationship between the crown and the province were uttered by George Brown during the crisis over the choice of a provincial capital, to which as many cities and towns laid claim as sought the honour of being considered Homer's birthplace. The weakness of party government resulted in the leaving of the decision to the queen. In reality this meant that Sir Edmund Head would be consulted. To oppose her supposed choice was branded as disloyalty. Brown repudiated the charge, and with a clear grasp of the position now fully conceded declared, Do you think her majesty cares a straw where the seat of government of Canada is fixed? People prate about our insulting the crown because we speak out what nine-tenths of the whole people think; but do you ever hear from such people anything about insulting the people? If ever an insult was given to a people, it was when the legislature and government of Canada declared that the Canadian people were unable to settle for themselves where their seat of government ought to be, and that they must go to a colonial minister three thousand miles off, who never had his foot on Canadian soil, to settle it for them under backstairs advice. I voted against that reference; I used every influence to prevent so ungracious a task being thrown on the imperial government; I urged that they should not act upon the reference. . . . The first thing in my consideration was the interests of the whole people of Canada and not servility to Mr. Labouchere or any other colonial minister. I yield to no man for a single moment in loyalty to the crown of England and in humble respect and admiration of her majesty. But what has this purely Canadian question to do with loyalty? It is a most dangerous and ungracious thing to couple the name of her majesty with an affair so entirely local and one as to which the sectional feelings of the people are so excited.'1

1 Alexander Mackenzie, The Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown, p. 272 (Toronto, 1882).

Responsible government created problems. No effort had been made to settle its contents. It was fortunate that this was so. An attempt to classify imperial and colonial concerns would only have proved a source of friction, and, worse still, would have tended to curtail elasticity, to narrow readjustments by rigidity, and to rule out the reasonableness of give and take through which advance and development come. In relation to tariff and defence it is possible to see two issues. Firstly, provincial self-consciousness began to claim a wider sphere for responsible government and the challenge shaded off into a further challenge to the formal ties of empire. For a considerable time Canada accepted the position that the imperial government should regulate the tariffs of the empire. A fine distinction had been attempted between seaborne commerce and inland commerce with the United States; but, broadly speaking, the imperial regulation of foreign trade was recognized, and Hincks in 1849 had laid it down that the imperial connexion would have no meaning if Great Britain were shut out of the colony's markets. Parallel with the growth in government there developed colonial business instincts and self-confidence. The business men looked for economic expansion through a protective tariff, and the Canadian government were not unwilling to help them as the province was badly in need of increased revenue. In 1859 Alexander Galt, the finance minister, increased the duties on manufactured articles, and thus incidentally affected certain British concerns. Those of Sheffield appealed to the Duke of Newcastle, the secretary of state for the colonies. Their language was hardly tactful: 'It cannot be regarded as less than indecent and a reproach, that while for fifteen years the government, the greatest statesmen, and the press of this country have been not only advocating but practising the principles of free trade, the government of one of her most important colonies should have been advocating monopoly and protection... We conceive that her majesty's

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