There have been exceptional times when the British Protestant population has had to put up with a SolicitorGeneral out of the Cabinet, and has done so with no very loud complaint. There has never been a time, I think, when there was not an Irish Catholic in the Cabinet. There have been times when the number of FrenchCanadians has been less than four, and there was then much complaint. Six members-four, one and one-are just about what you must give to please each section of Lower Canada. Well, sir, if there are to be six for Lower Canada, there must be six or seven for Upper Canada, and you cannot very well leave less than three each for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and, as I have said, one each for Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island and thus you have an Executive Council of twenty or twenty-one members, besides all we might have to add for other provinces; and this, I rather think, is a little too many. The thing could not be done; for so large a Cabinet could never work. Suppose then, on the other hand, that we start with the idea of limiting the number of our Executive Council to meet what I may call the exigencies of the country as a whole. Eleven, twelve or thirteen-the latter, as an honourable member observes, is an unlucky number-will be as many as we can possibly allow. Of this number one, as before, will be wanted for Newfoundland and one for Prince Edward Island. If one is wanted for each of the little provinces, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia will be sorely discontented unless they get, at least, two apiece; and neither Lower Canada nor Upper Canada will be contented with the three left for each of them. And for Lower Canada, in particular, how will anyone divide this intractable figure between her French, Irish and British? Shall we give them one apiece, and ask the French-Canadian element to be content with one voice in a cabinet of a dozen ? — or, give that element two, without satisfying it-so leaving out either the Irish or the British, to its intense disgust ?— or give the preponderating element the whole, to the intense disgust of both the others? It will be none too easy a task, sir, I think, to form an Executive Council with its three members for Lower Canada, and satisfy the somewhat pressing exigencies of her creeds and

races.

Let me take another feature of the scheme, or, I might

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say, one absence of a feature from the scheme-the non-provision of anything like provincial constitutions. We are not told about them; they are kept back completely in the dark; it is part of the scheme that we are not to know what it means them to be. It is part of the scheme, too, from all appearance, that they may not be at all alike. For anything I can see, Nova Scotia will have a right under this scheme to devise a system of responsible government, with a cabinet and two branches of the legislature. New Brunswick, if it pleases, may have only one legislative body, with or without responsible government. So may the Prince Edward Island people have anything they like; and the people of Newfoundland may do what they like, and so may we in Canada. Lower Canada may even have a constitution of one kind, and Upper Canada one of a totally different kind. There may be no two of our six or more local constitutions framed on the same model. It seems to be meant that these constitutions shall be as varied as the people of the different provinces may see fit to make them; nay, there are even left to the people of the different provinces the same large powers for amending them afterwards. To be sure there is the grand power of disallowance by the Federal Government, which we are told, in one and the same breath, is to be possessed by it, but never exercised.

Hon. Attorney-General Cartier: The presumption is, it will be exercised in case of unjust or unwise legislation.

Mr. Dunkin: The hon. gentleman's presumption reminds me of one, perhaps as conclusive, but which Dickens tells us failed to satisfy his Mr. Bumble. That henpecked beadle is said to have said, on hearing of the legal presumption that a man's wife acts under his control: "If the law presumes anything of the sort, the law's a fool-a natural fool!" If this permission of disallowance rests on a presumption that the legislation of our provinces is going to be unjust or unwise, it may be needed; but under that idea, one might have done better either not to allow, or else to restrict within narrower limits, such legislation. If the promised nonexercise of the power to disallow rests on a presumption that all will be done justly and wisely in the provincial legislatures, the legislative power is well given; but then there is no need, on the other hand, for the permission

to disallow. I repeat, this system, or no-system, aims at nothing like uniformity between the general and local constitutions, or between the local constitutions themselves; and in this respect, it is essentially at variance with the much wiser system adopted in the United States. It further allows of no real autonomy; in fact, the only trace of uniformity it can be said to have about it, consists in its disallowance of all autonomy to the provinces.

Now, let me take up those few features that undoubtedly are given to us, as characterizing our provincial system. Wide as we have seen the latitude is which the provinces may take in framing their constitutions, there are a few matters as to which the system lays down an iron rule. There is the appointment of a lieutenant-governor which is to be vested in the General Government. It is not said in so many words that he is to be a colonist, but I think it may be taken for granted that he will be. It is not very likely that we shall get any right honourable gentleman or eminent statesman, from home, to come out here for an appointment of that kind; and I take for granted, therefore, that the General Government will always nominate Mr. Somebody or other, of local distinction, to this office of lieutenantgovernor. . . . Suppose any of our politicians, whether of this province or of any other in the Confederacy, say Canada, Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, to be assuming this role of lieutenant-governor in any of our provinces. He has this disadvantage to begin with; he has to that moment been passing through that ordeal of abuse under which every prominent public man in this country must have suffered before attaining any distinction whatever. No matter over what colony appointed, or from what colony coming, a lieutenant-governor will have hard cards to play, and will have very much to put up with from the people over whom he is set, on this mere score of his past political exploits. He has been known as a politician, and will be held to be favourable or unfavourable to this party or that in the province he governs.

But how do we stand here, Mr. Speaker, as to the attributes of our own provincial legislatures and governments, on the one hand, and those of the Federal power on the other? Do we follow American example, and give so much to the union and the rest to the provinces ;

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or so much to them, and the rest to it? Either rule would be plain; but this plan follows neither. It simply gives us a sort of special list for each; making much common to both, and as to much more, not showing what belongs to either. I cannot go now into detail on this head. I can give no more than some few specimens; and I take first the three subjects of the fisheries, agriculture, and immigration. These three subjects are equally assigned to the General Legislature on the one hand, and the Provincial Legislature on the other. It is provided by the 45th resolution, that in all such cases, wherever any statutes of the general and local parliaments clash, those of the General Parliament shall override those of the local. So that in these matters of the fisheries, agriculture and immigration, either the local legislatures must not legislate at all, or if they do the General Legislature may at any time undo anything they may have done. One can easily foresee any amount of clashing of authority in such cases. Fishery regulations of all sorts-bounties perhaps; the thousand questions affecting agriculture. Or to take just one that suggests itself as to immigration; one province wishes, perhaps, to encourage immigration of a certain kind, say, for instance, from the continent of Europe. It is a legitimate wish; but the Federal Legislature may, perhaps, in the varying shifts of public opinion, adopt a different policy, and reverse all that the province may have done. To what end give powers to the local parliaments which may thus be taken away at any moment by the Federal Legislature? But, Mr. Speaker, there are a hundred other cases as to which I could satisfy the House, had I time for doing so, that more or less of this confusion arises. Take the subject of marriage and divorce for one-a subject on which there is a great deal of local prejudice and feeling, and into which even religious convictions largely enter. That matter is given to the General Legislature. But on the other hand the larger matter, civil rights-of which this of marriage and divorce, from one point of view, forms a mere part-is given to the local legislatures. I turn to another matter. haphazard-the subjects of railway legislation, of railway incorporation, and of railway amalgamation. What Legislature has power in these matters under this scheme? I am not sure that there

are not here as nice a lot of pretty little questions as one would desire to see in a summer's day..

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We find it stated that "The seat of Government of the Federated Provinces shall be Ottawa, subject to the royal prerogative." It is distinctly laid down as a part of our system that the royal prerogative, the right to change the seat of the Federal Government at will, is to be maintained. But I venture to say that the maintaining of that right is simply inconsistent with the practical working out of a federal system. And this is a matter involving a good deal of anomaly, as honourable gentlemen will see when they begin to think of it. The Governor General or Viceroy, the all but king of this Confederacy, with his all but Imperial Government, and all but Imperial Legislature, constituted no matter how, resident within the territorial jurisdiction of a subordinate province! The police of the federal capital, not federal but provincial! That thing won't do..

We have a large class whose national feelings turn towards London, whose very heart is there; another large class whose sympathies centre here at Quebec, or in a sentimental way may have some reference to Paris; another large class whose memories are of the Emerald Isle; and yet another whose comparisons are rather with Washington; but have we any class of people who are attached, or whose feelings are going to be directed with any earnestness, to the city of Ottawa, the centre of the new nationality that is to be created? In the times to come, when men shall begin to feel strongly on those questions that appeal to national preferences, prejudices and passions, all talk of your new nationality will sound but strangely. Some other older nationality will then be found to hold the first place in most people's hearts. . . .

It is proposed to adopt here a plan which has a direct tendency to place on the floor of our House of Commons a number of provincial delegations, and not a number of independent members of parliament. The tendency is therefore towards a system antagonistic to, and inconsistent with, those principles on which the British Constitution reposes. With provincial delegations, rather than members of parliament, on the floor of the Federal Legislature, we are not likely to have that political longevity, whether of men or parties, without which the British system of government can hardly exist. . . .

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