executive and legislative departments of the State can be made to work together with a sufficient degree of harmony to give the maximum of strength and of mutual independence to secure freedom and the rights of minorities, except under the presidency of Monarchy, the moral influence of which, so long as a nation is monarchical in its sentiments, cannot, of course, be measured merely by its recognised power.

[Sidenote:  Influence of a Governor, under responsible Government.]

Those who are most ready to concur in these views of Colonial Government, and to admire the vigour with which they were defended, and the consistency with which they were carried out, may still be inclined to ask whether the maintenance of them did not involve a species of official suicide:  whether the theory of the responsibility of provincial Ministers to the provincial Parliament, and of the consequent duty of the Governor to remain absolutely neutral in the strife of political parties, had not a necessary tendency to degrade his office into that of a mere Roi faineant.  He had in 1849, as Sir C. Adderley expresses it, ’maintained the principle of responsible Government at the risk of his life.’  Was the result of his hard-won victory only to empty himself of all but the mere outward show of power and authority?

Such questions he was always ready to meet with an uncompromising negative.  ‘I have tried,’ he said, both systems.  In Jamaica there was no responsible Government:  but I had not half the power I have here with my constitutional and changing Cabinet.’  Even on the Vice-regal throne of India, he missed, at first, at least, something of the authority and influence which had been his, as Constitutional Governor, in Canada.[5] He was fully conscious, however, of the difficult nature of the position, and that it was only tenable on condition of being penetrated, or possessed, as he said, with the idea of its tenability.  In this strain he wrote to his intimate friend.  Mr. Cumming Bruce, in September 1852, with reference to a report that he was to be recalled by the Ministry which had recently come into power.

As respects the matter of the report, I am disposed to believe that, viewing the question with reference to personal interests exclusively, my removal from hence would not be any disadvantage to me.  But, as to my work here—­there is the rub.  Is it to be all undone?  On this point I must speak frankly.  I have been possessed (I use the word advisedly, for I fear that most persons in England still consider it a case of possession) with the idea that it is possible to maintain on this soil of North America, and in the face of Republican America, British connection and British institutions, if you give the latter freely and trustingly.  Faith, when it is sincere, is always catching; and I have imparted this faith, more or less thoroughly, to all Canadian statesmen with whom I have been