civic offices in Manchester and Glasgow, by the party upon whose virtue and ability the majority of the inhabitants relied. Adopt Lord Durham's principle, and above all, give to each colony a well-defined constitution based upon that principle and embodied in a bill, and "the office" will become a desert. The scores of worthy people with spirits weary of the anomalous and cruel absurdities of the system and sincerely laboring to remove them, now daily lingering in the ante-rooms, would be better employed elsewhere, in adorning and improving the noble countries which gave them birth, and whose freedom they are labouring to establish; while at least an equal number of cunning knaves, whose only errand is to seek a share of the plunder, had much better be transferred to the open arenas in which, under a system of responsibility, public honours and official emolument could only be won. But then the office of Colonial Secretary would be shorn of much power, which, however unwisely exercised, it is always delightful to possess; and the dim but majestic forms of authority which now overshadow half the world would be chastened into reasonable compass; with boundaries, if less imposing and picturesque, for all practical purposes more simple and more clearly defined. Nor would undersecretaries and clerks have so many anxious and often fawning visitors, soliciting their patronage, listening to their twaddle, wondering at their ignorance, and yet struggling with each other for their smiles. The mother country would, it is true, hear less of colonial grievances; Parliament would save much time now devoted to colonial questions; and the people of England would now and then save a few millions sterling, which are required to keep up the existing system by force of arms. But these are small matters compared with the dignity of a Secretary of State.

Here, then, my Lord, you have the reason why your reading of our constitutions is the favourite one in Downing Street. Let us see now whether it is more or less favourable to rational freedom and good government in the colonies, than that advocated by Sir Francis Head. Your authority and that of Lord Glenelg is with me in condemning his, which I have done, as deceptive and absurd; he will probably join me in denouncing yours, as the most impracticable that it ever entered into the mind of a statesman to conceive.

The city of Liverpool shall again serve us for the purposes of illustration. Turn back to the passages in which I have described a Mayor, ignorant of everything, surrounded by irresponsible but cunning advisers, who for their own advantage, embroil him with a majority of the citizens, while his countenance and the patronage created by the taxes levied upon the city are monopolized by a miserable minority of the whole; and insulted and injured thousands, swelling with indignation, surround him on every side. After your Lordship has dwelt upon this scene of heartburning and discontent-of general dissatisfaction among the citizens-of miserable intrigue and chuckling triumph, indulged by the few who squander the resources and decide upon the interests of the many, but laugh at their murmurs and never acknowledge their authority-let me beg of you to reflect whether matters would be made better or worse, if the Mayor of Liverpool was bound, in every important act of his administration, to ask the direction of, and throw the responsibility on another individual, who never saw the city, who knows less about it than even himself, and who resides, not in London, at a distance of a day's coaching from him, but across the Atlantic, in Halifax, Quebec, or Toronto, and with whom it is impossible to communicate about anything within a less period than a couple of months. Suppose that this gentleman in the distance possesses a veto upon every important ordinance by which the city is to be watched, lighted and improved-by which docks are to be formed, trade regulated, and one-third of the city revenues (drawn from sources beyond the control of the popular branch) dispensed. And suppose that nearly all, whose talents or ambition lead them to aspire to the higher offices of the place, are compelled to take, once or twice in their lives, a voyage across the Atlantic to pay their court to him-to solicit his patronage and intrigue for the preferment, which under a better system would naturally result

from manly competition and eminent services within the city itself. Your Lordship is too keen-sighted and I trust too frank, not to acknowledge that no form of government could well be devised more ridiculous than this; that under such no British city could be expected to prosper; and that with it no body of Her Majesty's subjects, within the British Islands themselves, would ever be content. Yet this, my Lord, is an illustration of your own theory; this is the system propounded by Lord Normanby as the best the present Cabinet can devise. And may I not respectfully demand why British subjects in Nova Scotia, any more than their brethren in Liverpool, should be expected to prosper or be contented under it; when experience has convinced them that it is miserably insufficient and deceptive, repugnant to the principles of the constitution they revere, and but a poor return for the steady loyalty which their forefathers and themselves have maintained on all occasions?

One of the greatest evils of the colonial constitution as interpreted by your Lordship is, that it removes from a province every description of responsibility, and leaves all the higher functionaries at liberty to lay every kind of blame at the door of the Secretary of State. The Governor, if the colonists complain, shrugs his shoulders and replies that he will explain the difficulty in his next despatch, but in the meantime his orders must be obeyed. The Executive Councillors, who under no circumstances are responsible for anything, often lead the way in concentrating the ire of the people upon the Colonial Secretary, who is the only person they admit their right to blame. It is no uncommon thing to hear them, in Nova Scotia, sneering at him in public debate; and in Canada they are accused of standing by while Lords Glenelg and Melbourne were hanged in effigy and burned in the capital, encouraging the populace to pay this mark of respect to men, who, if your Lordship's theory is to be enforced, these persons at all events should have the decency to pardon, if they cannot always defend.

I trust, my Lord, that in this letter I have shown you that in contemplating a well-defined and limited degree of responsibility to attach to Executive Councillors in North America, I have more strictly followed the analogies to be drawn from the constitution, than has your Lordship, in supposing that those officers would necessarily overstep all bounds; that in divesting the Governor of a vague and deceptive description of responsibility, which is never enforced, and of a portion of authority which it is impossible for him wisely to exercise, and yet holding him to account for what does fall within the scope of his character as Her Majesty's representative the constitutional analogy is still preserved, his dignity left unimpaired, and the difficulties of his position removed. I trust also that I have proved to your Lordship that the colonial constitutions, as they at present stand, are but a medley of uncertainty and confusion; that those by whom they are administered do not understand them; and lastly, that whether Sir Francis Head's interpretation, or your own be adopted, neither offers security for good government; the contest between them merely involving a difference of opinion as to who is to wield powers that neither governors nor secretaries can usefully assume, and which of these officers is nominally to bear the blame of blunders that both are certain to commit.

1 Russell's predecessor and Glenelg's successor in the Colonial Office.

CXXXIX

My Lord,

JOSEPH HOWE TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL

[Trans. J. H. Chisholm, op. cit.]

The next passage of the Speech of the 3rd of June, which I am bound to notice, is that in which you say:

"The Governor might ask the Executive Council to propose a certain measure They might say that they could not propose it unless the members of the House of Assembly would adopt it, but the Governor might reply that he had received instructions from home commanding him to propose that measure. How, in that case, is he to proceed? Either one power or the other must be set aside; either the Governor or the House of Assembly; or else the Governor must become a mere cipher in the hands of the Assembly, and not attempt to carry into effect the measures which he is commanded by the Home Government to do."

This objection is based upon the assumption, that the interests of the mother country and those of the colonies are not the same; that they must be continually in a state of conflict; and that there must be some course of policy necessary for the Imperial Government to enforce, the reasons for which cannot be understood in the colonies, nor its necessity recognized This may have been the case formerly in the West Indies, where the conflict was one between the ideas engendered by a state of slavery and a state of freedom; but it is not true of the North American Provinces, to the condition and claims of which my observations are chiefly confined. Of all the questions which have agitated or are likely to agitate Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or Prince Edward Island, how few, when rightly understood, can be said to involve any Imperial interests; or trench upon any principle dear to our brethren at home, or the concession of which could disturb the peace of the Empire? Have any of these colonies claimed the right to regulate the foreign trade or foreign policy of the Empire? Have they ever interfered, except to carry out the views of Her Majesty's Government, with any of the military or naval operations? Have they exposed a grievance, the continued existence of which is indispensable to the well-being of the British Islands; or demanded a right, the concession of which would not be serviceable to themselves, without doing the least injury to the people of Britain? For what have they asked? For the control of their own revenues and the means of influencing the appointment and acts of the men who are to dispense them; and who are, besides, to distribute hundreds of petty offices, and discharge functions manifold and various within the Colony itself? The people of England have no knowledge of these matters, nor any interest in them, to give them the right to interfere. Interference does much mischief to the Colonists, and can do no good to their brethren across the water. If British statesmen would let these things alone-and it is over these only that we claim to enforce responsibility-and confine themselves to those general arrangements affecting the whole Empire, of which we admit them to be the best judges, and in the conduct of which we never asked to take a part, it would be impossible to conceive how such a case could arise as that supposed by your Lordship, or how the Governor could be charged with "a measure which his Executive Council would not dare to propose." Admitting that there might be some subjects requiring discussion in the Provinces, but which the Colonists were not prepared to adopt, surely an Executive Councillor could be got, even if he were opposed to the views of the ministers, to submit the measure and explain those views to the popular branch; or might there not be "open questions" in the Colonies as at home?

The conclusion at which my mind arrives, then, after the best attention that I can give to this branch of the subject, is, that if the duties and responsibilities of government are fairly and judiciously divided between the Imperial and Colonial authorities, no such case as that assumed by your Lordship can occur; and, if it should, surely the good sense of all

FF

parties concerned may safely be trusted, to avoid any violent or unpleasant collision. But did it never occur to your Lordship to inquire, whether the very evil anticipated, as an insuperable objection to the new system, does not disfigure and annually occur under the old? What else were the Executive Councillors in Upper and Lower Canada doing for a series of years but "proposing certain measures," to be as certainly rejected by the popular branch? What else are they about now in Newfoundland? What but this were they doing in New Brunswick, down to the close of Sir Archibald Campbell's Administration? In all these Provinces a state of constant collision between the Executive and the popular branch, which could by no possibility arise under the system I contemplate, would answer the objection, even if the difficulty suggested could be fairly taken into account. If it be said that the Councillors now do not refuse to propose measures, I answer, But if the Legislatures invariably reject them, does government gain anything, or is public business advanced by the system? What a figure did the Executive cut in Nova Scotia, in 1838, when the Councillor who brought down from the Governor a grave proposition, led the opposition against it? And how stand things in this Province now? Are not all the Councillors selections from a lean minority of the commons, in which body almost every debate terminates in a vote of implied want of confidence in them; and where the Governor they surround has, on several occasions, only been saved from an insulting_vote of censure by the good temper and moderation of the majority? This is a state of things too ridiculous to be long continued. To me it seems essential that Her Majesty, in every colony, should be represented by an Executive not only willing "to attempt" but "able to carry" any measures that it may be necessary to propose.

The next objection taken by your Lordship to the introduction of Provincial responsibility, one eminently calculated to have weight with the body you addressed, and to alarm the timid everywhere, was drawn from an application of the principle, to the management of foreign affairs. "If," says your Lordship, "the Assembly of New Brunswick had been disposed to carry the point in dispute with the North American States hostilely, and the Executive Council had been disposed to aid them, in my opinion the Governor must have said that his duty to the Crown of this country, and the general instructions which he had received from the minister of the Crown, did not permit him to take that course, and, therefore, he could not agree with the Executive Council to carry into effect the wish of the Assembly. That is allowed. Does not, then, its very exception destroy the analogy you wish to draw, when, upon so important a point as that of foreign affairs, it cannot be sustained?" Your Lordship, in delivering this passage, of course, was not aware that, without the alteration of a single syllable, you answered the very objection that yourself had raised. If the Executive Council of New Brunswick advised Sir John Harvey to declare war upon the State of Maine, "he must have said that his duty to the Crown and his instructions did not permit him to take that course.' Most certainly he would, if a measure so ridiculous had been attempted in New Brunswick, which nobody, who knows anything of that Province, could for a moment imagine. I do not believe that there are ten men in it, certainly there are not fifty in all the lower Provinces put together, who do not know that the Sovereign alone has the right to declare war upon foreign powers; and who are not willing that, upon all the relations of the Colonies with these, and with each other, the Imperial Government shall decide. A few of the New Brunswickers blamed Sir John Harvey for not acting upon Her Majesty's instructions to maintain exclusive jurisdiction over the disputed territory, notwithstanding the advice received from the Minister at Washington; but, if those instructions had not existed, and had not been positive, no one would have been idiot enough to suppose that Sir John Harvey would have been bound to make war, on a point of honour or policy newly discovered by his Executive Council, and upon which Her Majesty's government had had no opportunity to decide. Suppose, when Parliament was granting a charter to Hull, it was objected that the Mayor might be advised to make war upon Sweden (and, in the case of an elec

tive officer, the danger would be greater than if he were appointed by the Crown,) would not the same House of Commons that thought it unsafe to let a Colony manage its internal affairs for fear it would engage in foreign wars, laugh at the possibility of such an absurdity being committed by any body of Englishmen out of Bedlam? Why then should it be taken for granted that we are not English in our habits and opinions, our education and training, our capacity to discern the boundaries of authority; and that therefore it would be unsafe to depend upon our wisely exercising powers, which, in the British Islands, millions exercise for their own security and without danger to the state? In the case of Hull, if the objection were gravely urged, the ready answer would be, "No greater powers can be exercised than are granted in the bill; and if there is the least danger of the the city authorities doing anything so ridiculous, put in a clause that shall restrain them." And I say-after soberly protesting that the very suspicion of such an attempt is an insult to the understanding, and an imputation upon the character of our population, which they do not deserve -that if you wish "to make assurance doubly sure," put a clause into the bill which concedes the principle of responsibility so far as relates to domestic affairs, and by which all such belligerent Councillors shall be expressly restrained.

Whether this point were or were not thus defined, that any Executive Council, merely because they were responsible to the people, would, after receiving such an answer as your Lordship admits a British Governor must give, proceed in defiance of his authority, to levy war upon a friendly state, I cannot for a moment believe. If they did, they would certainly so completely fail, and render themselves so supremely ridiculous, that the attempt would not be likely to be repeated, at least for a century to come. Let us suppose the case to have occurred in New Brunswick: that the Executive Council being responsible, had advised Sir John Harvey to proceed hostilely; and that, on his declining, they had levied war. In the first place, as all the regular troops were at Sir John's disposal, as Commanderin-Chief within the Province, and not merely as civil Governor, they not only could not have moved a soldier, but would have had the whole military force of that and the adjoining Provinces against them. As the Governor's order to the colonels and officers commanding the militia is indispensable before a single step can be taken, under the laws by which that force is embodied, of course no hostile order would have been given, nor could those laws have been modified or changed without Sir John's assent. And if it be urged, that volunteers would have flocked to the aid of the Executive Council, may I not inquire where they would have obtained arms and ammunition, when all the military munitions and stores were deposited in military warehouses, under the care of commissaries and officers of ordnance responsible only the Crown? Oh! no, my Lord, whatever effect such imaginary cases as these may have on men at a distance, unacquainted with the state of society in British America and the general intelligence which prevails; here they are laughed at, as the creations of a fertile imagination taxed to combat political improvements that were feared without being understood. If, even under the federative government of the United States, in which each state is much more independent of the central authority than any Colony would be under the system I contemplate, this right of private war has only been once asserted, by a single State, in more than half a century, and then was scouted all over the Continent, is it to be supposed that British subjects will pay less respect to the authority of thei Queen than do republican Americans to that of their President?

There is one bare possibility, which your Lordship has not suggested, in opposition to the new system, and yet it is scarcely more ridiculous than some that have been urged; that the Colonial Councillors might claim the control of the squadron upon the North American coast, as well as of the land forces, in their anxiety to engage in foreign wars. The danger in this case would be nearly as great as in the other; for, in modern warfare, a fleet is nearly as necessary as an army; and yet, it is certain that the admiral upon the station would know how to treat such a claim, should it