a Protestant or a Roman Catholic minority are prejudicially affected.  The minutes on this point are defective, but we have the original motion on the subject, and a note of Sir John Macdonald himself that it was passed, with the assent of all the provinces, at the subsequent London conference in 1867.  The majority of the delegates appear from the outset to have supported strenuously the principle which lies at the basis of the confederation, that all powers not expressly reserved to the provinces should appertain to the general government, as against the opposite principle, which, as Sir John Macdonald pointed out, had led to great difficulties in the working of the federal system in the United States.  Sir John Macdonald also, with his usual sagacity, showed that, in all cases of conflict of jurisdiction, recourse would be necessarily made to the courts, as was the practice even then whenever there was a conflict between imperial and Canadian statutes.

Addresses to the Queen embodying the Quebec resolutions were submitted to the legislature of Canada during the winter of 1865, and passed in both houses by large majorities after a very full discussion of the merits of the scheme.  The opposition in the assembly came chiefly from Mr. Antoine A. Dorion, Mr. Luther H. Holton, Mr. Dunkin, Mr. Lucius Seth Huntington, Mr. John Sandfield Macdonald, and other able Liberals who were not disposed to follow Mr. Brown and his two colleagues in their patriotic abandonment of “partyism.”

The vote on the address was, in the council—­Contents 45, Non-contents 15.  In the assembly it stood—­Yeas 91, Nays 33.  The minority in the assembly comprised 25 out of 65 representatives of French Canada, and only 8 out of the 65 from Upper Canada.  With the speaker in the chair there were only 5 members absent on the taking of the final vote.

Efforts were made both in the council and assembly to obtain an unequivocal expression of public opinion at the polls before the address was submitted to the imperial government for final action.  It was argued with much force that the legislature had had no special mandate from the people to carry out so vital a change in the political condition of the provinces, but this argument had relatively little weight in either house in view of the dominant public sentiment which, as it was obvious to the most superficial observer, existed in the valley of the St. Lawrence in favour of a scheme which seemed certain to settle the difficulties so long in the way of stable government, and offered so many auspicious auguries for the development of the provinces embraced in federation.