Confederation appear to have been influenced mainly by two considerations-a belief that the ill success of Federal Government had arisen from the weakness of the central power, and a desire to imitate the British Constitution. As to the first consideration it may be remarked that to quarrel with a Federation for not having a strong central government is rather like quarrelling with a circle for not being a square. The object of Federation is to combine, for the purposes of security against external aggression and of internal peace, with freedom of intercourse and trade, communities which do not choose to part with their political independence in regard to their domestic affairs; and without the surrender of such political independence, a strong central power cannot exist. The alleged weakness of Federal Government is, so to speak, its strength; because communities of the character to which it is applicable will submit to a limited while they would rebel against a more extensive power; they will quietly bear the loose bond of connection which they would snap if it were tightened. If the framers of Confederation imagined that the catastrophe in the United States by which their minds were so 'powerfully affected was to be ascribed to the weakness of the central power, it must be said with all deference that they never were more mistaken. The cause of Secession was slavery, which had practically divided the Union into two nations. No authority with which the Central Government could have been invested, short of despotic power supported by a great standing army, could have averted that result. On the contrary, it was the impression prevalent at the South that the Federal Government possessed powers which might and would be employed by their opponents, victorious in the Presidential election, for the purpose of interfering with their State institutions that at last determined the Southern States to revolt. Had the Southerners felt assured that the Federal Government and Legislature possessed no power which could be used for that purpose, the election of an anti-slavery President need not have been the signal for revolt. As to the second consideration, it may be remarked that though the union of England and Scotland has something in it of a federal character, the separate Scottish law, church and peerage being retained, the British constitution is not federal, but thoroughly national, and is therefore inapplicable to a federation, though the great British principles of personal liberty and responsible government are universal in their application. Least of all, as has been said before, is the system of party government-engendered and maintained in England by the long and still existing struggle between the Crown and the people, the aristocracy and the unprivileged masses, the Established Church and religious liberty, reaction and progress-applicable to a country in which, happily for us, no such struggle exists. to The result is a sort of cross between a national government and a federation, in which the powers are divided between the central and local governments, sometimes upon no very obvious principle. The administration of justice and the constitution of the courts for example, are assigned the local governments, and the appointment of the judges to the central; the criminal law to the one, the civil law to the other : though the civil law, it would seem, must often create and define rights and responsibilities, an infringement of which would call for the interposition of criminal justice. The whole machine, with its double set of elections, Dominion and Provincial, is one of singular complexity, and it cannot be said that the questions raised by Mr. Dunkin, as to the mode in which a party government was to be carried on through such intricacies, have yet been practically solved, though they may be in process of solution. We shall see whether any effect will be produced in the relations between Dominion and Provincial Parliaments and parties by the abolition of dual representation. In the meantime, it must be observed that the tendency of all complexity is to increase the danger of wire-pulling, intrigue and corruption. It has clearly been found necessary to admit the sectional principle into the construction of the Dominion Cabinet, which, if the functions of the central government are not merely federal but national, must be regarded as a great evil. Had the functions of the central government been federal alone, it may be doubted whether any assembly could have discharged them so efficiently, or with so little risk of the evils upon the growth of which the most impartial and judicious Canadians look with serious alarm, as a simple Federal Council, elected by the Legislatures of the different Provinces, in proportion to their population -a counterpart in fact, except in the last mentioned respect, of the American Senate. As we were to have an imitation of the British Constitution, it was necessary, of course, that there should be an Upper House of Parliament, corresponding to the House of Lords. The House of Lords was in feudal times an estate of the realm, which came to Parliament to uphold its own interests against the other estates, as a feudalist would have admitted in the plainest terms. It is still a privileged order, strong in the possession of vast hereditary wealth, and social influence equally extensive. No shadow of the power of such a body could possibly be transferred to the mere nominees of a party leader, untitled, and without territorial influence; for the landed qualification for the Dominion Senate is so small as to be virtually unmeaning. The Senate of the United States, whose efficiency as an organ of Conservatism is rated, perhaps, at least as highly as it deserves, is elective, not nominative; and as a representation of the States, it acquired from the circumstances of the union special importance, which it has retained. Moreover, it possesses exclusively the treaty-making power, which of course invests it with substantial authority and corresponding distinction. In other countries, at least in Europe, Upper Chambers have not worked well. Of the Upper Chamber in France, the distinguished French publicist, M. de Laveleye, says: "It has been asserted that an Upper Chamber was a necessary protection of the throne and of society. We can no longer remain under this illusion. Did the Chamber of Peers or the Senate delay for a single moment the fall of Louis Philippe, or Napoleon III? The Chamber of Peers' said M. Duvergier de Hauranne, neither saved nor overthrew the Government of King Louis Philippe, for the single reason that it did not exist? In fact a line in the Moniteur sufficed to put an end to an institution without roots in our national character, without foundations in our social organization. As to the last Senate, the case is still stronger; no one can tell how it ceased to exist. An aristocratic chamber in ordinary times is a great danger, because it will follow, and cause the Crown to follow, a retrograde policy; it will thus provoke revolutions; and in the day of peril, as a means of defence, it will be a nullity, as experience has shown." Of whom will you form your Upper Chamber? Of the rich? Then you institute a formal conflict between wealth and poverty, and expose wealth to the attack of the forces embodied. in the more popular chamber, which an assembly of aged millionaires is wholly unable to resist. Of your wisest and most experienced statesmen? Then you will deprive the popular house, which will always be the most powerful, of the only element by which it can be tempered and kept within the bounds of discretion. The fact is that forms, however hollow, however well known to be hollow, have their effect upon the mind. The framers of our constitution could not help fancying that the members of the Upper House would be really, as well as ostensibly, the nominees of the Crown, and that they would thus be invested with an independent dignity, which the nomination of a mere party leader can never confer. Col. Gray censures the framers of Confederation for having omitted to federalize the district of Ottawa; probably this might have been done, though it would have led to a somewhat anomalous ownership of a territory by a government which is not itself a sovereign power. What seems open to graver censure, however, is the omission to provide a rule for the admission into the Confederacy of new colonies, and a simple form of intermediate government suitable to their requirement while they are in a condition analogous to that of the territories of the United States. For want of a provision of this kind we have had difficulties respecting admission; and the condition of a newly-admitted colony, with its elaborate government and judiciary, and its sparse population, resembles that of the first minister of Otaheite, who, having been presented by a navigator with a laced cocked hat and thick boots, was found standing proudly at the right hand of royalty in those habiliments, and those alone. tribunal had existed in the United States, corruption could hardly have reached the height which it has. Colonel Gray, indeed, seems to think that, so far as corruption is concerned, we have no present cause for fear. "For five-andtwenty years it cannot be said of any one public man, who has been a member of a government in any one of the provinces, that he has made use of his position to advance his own pecuniary interests; nor, with the exception of one or two, has even political malice ventured to make the charge.” But the danger is not so much that the ambitious men who hold the high offices of government, and whose object is generally power rather than pelf, will themselves grow wealthy at the public expense, as that they will purchase support by corrupting others. The Duke of Newcastle, who, far more than Walpole, was the archpriest of political corruption in his day, who, in fact, corrupted English public life from top to bottom, and had half the House of Commons in his pocket, was so far from himself making money by politics that he greatly reduced his hereditary estate. Even Walpole, while bribing others, was himself comparatively disinterested. In fact, nothing can be more dangerous to national character than the influence of a political chief, himself pure, but a corrupter of all around him. As to the general system of maintaining must mournfully admit the truth of Colonel Gray's allegation that Canadian public men are entitled to appeal "to the practice of the Imperial Cabinet and statesmen." Official patronage has less influence in England since the introduction of the com There was yet another omission which, in order to perfect elective institutions, it will some day be found necessary in all countries alike to supply. We want a trust-government by the use of patronage, we worthy and efficient tribunal for the punishment of corruption and other political The old form of impeachment by the Lower House before the Upper is obsolete; and under our present system it would assume the character of a party struggle rather than a judicial process. A govern-petitive examination for civil service apment supported by a majority would be always able to shut the gate of justice. We need a tribunal, thoroughly judicial in its character and accessible to the public at large, with proper safeguards, of course, against levity and vexatiousness. If such a pointments, but the distribution of honours and of admissions to the Court circle is still a potent instrument of government in a plutocratic community. Under the party system, parliamentary government cannot be carried on without this support, and orators preaching purity from Opposition platforms will do well to remember the exigencies of power. Col. Gray may also with truth say that, in fixing the amount of their own official salaries, Canadian statesmen have by no means shewn themselves rapacious. The increase of their salaries to something like an adequate remuneration for the most eminent ability and the hardest possible work, is, in fact, a much needed reform. The difference between the stipend of a working First Minister and that of a Governor-General is not only an anomaly but an injustice. This is not the most attractive of political themes. But it would be absurd to assume that we in Canada are specially exempted from the political maladies which rage in neighbouring and kindred communities, and which, if left to spread unchecked, will at last bring society into a condition from which it will escape, if at all, only through revolutionary convulsions. Col. Gray generally preserves the calmness of style befitting a votary of the severe muse who presides over "Collections of Materials for History." But when he comes to the great historic case of Mr. Brown, his emotions get the better of him, and he introduces a passage which belongs to the platform, or even to some still narrower sphere. Having given an account of Mr. Brown's secession from the Confederation Ministry, and of the reason assigned by that gentleman himself for it, he proceeds: "No other explanations on the subject were made in Parliament, and the conclusion is irresistible that the reason assigned for the resignation was not the reason which existed. Mr. Brown's resignation at such a time, when Confederation was about to be put upon its trial, and when the measure, in which he had taken so prominent a part, required the aid of all the talents and patriotism, and, if necessary, self-abnegation of the leading men in the country, cannot, it is conceived, be justified. He himself had said that the appearance of disunion in the Government would be injurious to the cause of Confederation.' Either he ought not to have joined the Government, or he ought not to have left it at that time. The people sustain ed him in the first, they condemned him in the latter. The reason he gave no one accepted as the real reason, and his opponents did not hesitate to say that he left the Government because he was not permitted to be its master, and that jealousy of its other leading men was the true cause. Whether it was so or not, unfortunately-because it is a misfortune when a political man of high standing affords even plausible grounds for the public to attribute his conduct, in the discharge of public duties, to other than public considerations, still more so when that conduct precludes even his friends from justifying the position he has taken-Mr. Brown's subsequent conduct gave too much reason for the charge. His endeavour that had existed previous to the coalition; to renew from that time to revive the old internecine quarrels the charge of corruption against his old opponents, which, if true, he at any rate had condoned, by going into the Government with them; his attacks upon his old colleagues of the Reform party, who had joined him in the effort for conciliation, because ing attempts to blacken the personal character of the they would not follow him in his flight; his unceas men who but just previously had been his colleagues and joint sworn advisers of the Crown; his efforts to sow disunion among the friends of Confederation, and divide its supporters into old party lines, at the very moment it needed the greatest consideration and the mosi united action: his jeopardizing a great national question, in which not only the interests of Canada but of all British America were involved, to gratify personal or political animosity, brought, as they usually, their own punishment. In one year the work of his suicide was accomplished. At the election fo he Dominion Parliament in 1867 throughout the vast Province of Ontario, in which he had been wont to be a moving power, no constituency returned him, though a candidate, to that first Par liament of the Confederation in which it had been expected he would play so conspicuous a part. The people pronounced him to be an impracticable man, who allowed his temper to override his judgment. A powerful debater, an experienced politician, of indomitable energy, in many respects, but for one weakness, great, he passed away from the sphere of a statesman, and destroyed a power which, wielded with moderation, might have been of incalculable service to his country A more painful episode never occurred in political life. Requiescat in pace." The concluding prayer has not been heard. The manifesto to the Roman Catholics published by Mr. Brown a short time since would be sufficient to show that his relations to his party remain, as they were sure to do, practically unchanged; and does it appear that Mr. Brown can be charged with any want of patriotism, or with failure to redeem any pledge upon that subject. Such probably will be the general verdict of impartial history on this much vexed transaction. if Col. Gray could rise to a national point of tion-Confederation-was achieved; nor view, he would see that it is better for the country that the real leaders of both the parties by whose antagonistic action government under our present system is carried on, should be in their proper place in the House of Commons, so that the Opposition may be in a condition to perform its constitutional functions as effectually as the government. As to " suicide," if there was any in the case, it took place when Mr. Brown consented to Confederation, by which the balance was struck in favour of Quebec, and Ontario was, for the time at least, sent under the yoke. The events which have followedthe combination of Quebec with the smaller provinces, the concessions to those provinces, the Manitoba affair, the compact with British Columbia, and the reinforcement of the government by Columbian votes, were all written in broad characters on an open page of the book of fate. But it is no more than justice to assume that Mr. Brown in the whole affair did what he thought best for the country, without any selfish regard for his own political position. He and the other members of the coalition cabinet who, with him, represented liberal traditions, may perhaps be more seriously arraigned hereafter, by liberal historians at least, upon another count. It is natural that a Tory, even when he finds himself com It might be conceded, without impeaching the integrity of Mr. Brown, or that of any statesman placed in a similar position, that the actual cause of secession from the cabinet, which it was alone necessary to state to parliament, was not the whole account of the incompatibility which led to the disruption. The coalition government of Lord Aberdeen was formed, in perfect good faith, to rescue the country from a political deadlock; and its chief was a man eminently fitted to hold a coalition together, singularly disinterested, unambitious almost to a fault, universally esteemed, of admirable temper, and, from his having been always. devoted to the department of Foreign Affairs, and little concerned in general party conflicts, singularly clear of acrimonious associations. Yet that government had hardly come into being when it began to show symptoms of dissolution from the per-pelled by the circumstances of his age and sonal incompatibilities of its members. Long party strife begets inveterate antagonisms, even where there is no radical difference of principle. There can have been no radical difference of principle between the Canadian statesmen of opposite parties who undertook to carry on in unison, not only the process of Confederation, but the general government of the country; but there may well have been an inveterate antagonism; and the disregard of his opinion with regard to the negotiations for the renewal of the Reciprocity Treaty may have been a sufficient proof to Mr. Brown that his position in the coalition cabinet was no longer tenable. The specific object of the coali country to admit the ascendancy of the elective principle, should strive to limit its application as much as possible, and to withdraw everything to the utmost of his power from the decision of the people. Any other course would be inconsistent with his traditions. But the soul of political Liberalism is a frank recognition of the elective principle, and a hearty deference to the national will as the basis of all government. Why, it will be asked, did the Liberal members of the coalition cabinet vote for a nominative, in place of an elective senate? Still more, Why did they fail to insist that Confederation should be submitted for ratification to the vote of the people? Statesmanship, in |