The first parliament of the United Canadas was opened on the 14th June, 1841, in the city of Kingston, by the governor-general, who had been created Baron Sydenham of Sydenham and of Toronto.  This session was the commencement of a series of parliaments which lasted until the confederation of all the provinces in 1867, and forcibly illustrated the capacity of the people of Canada to manage their internal affairs.  For the moment, I propose to refer exclusively to those political conditions which brought about responsible government, and the removal of grievances which had so long perplexed the imperial state and distracted the whole of British North America.

In Lord John Russell’s despatches of 1839,—­the sequence of Lord Durham’s report—­we can clearly see the doubt in the minds of the imperial authorities whether it was possible to work the system of responsible government on the basis of a governor directly responsible to the parent state, and at the same time acting under the advice of ministers who would be responsible to a colonial legislature.  But the colonial secretary had obviously come to the opinion that it was necessary to make a radical change which would insure greater harmony between the executive and the popular bodies of the provinces.  Her Majesty, he stated emphatically, “had no desire to maintain any system of policy among her North American subjects which opinion condemns”, and there was “no surer way of gaining the approbation of the Queen than by maintaining the harmony of the executive with the legislative authorities.”  The new governor-general was expressly appointed to carry out this new policy.  If he was extremely vain, at all events he was also astute, practical, and well able to gauge the public sentiment by which he should be guided at so critical a period of Canadian history.  The evidence is clear that he was not individually in favour of responsible government, as it was understood by men like Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Howe, when he arrived in Canada.  He believed that the council should be one “for the governor to consult and no more”; and voicing the doubts that existed in the minds of imperial statesmen, he added, the governor “cannot be responsible to the government at home” and also to the legislature of the province, if it were so, “then all colonial government becomes impossible.”  The governor, in his opinion, “must therefore be the minister [i.e. the colonial secretary], in which case he cannot be under control of men in the colony.”

When the assembly met it was soon evident that the Reformers in that body were determined to have a definite understanding on the all-important question of responsible government; and the result was that the governor-general, a keen politician, immediately recognised the fact that, unless he yielded to the feeling of the majority, he would lose all his influence.  There is every reason to believe that the resolutions which were eventually passed in favour of responsible government,