The system has assuredly its drawbacks like all systems of government that have been devised and worked out by the brain of man.  In all frankness I confess that this review would be incomplete were I not to refer to certain features of the Canadian system of government which seem to me on the surface fraught with inherent danger at some time or other to independent legislative judgment.  Any one who has closely watched the evolution of this system for years past must admit that there is a dangerous tendency in the Dominion to give the executive—­I mean the ministry as a body—­too superior a control over the legislative authority.  When a ministry has in its gift the appointment not only of the heads of the executive government in the provinces, that is to say, of the lieutenant-governors, who can be dismissed by the same power at any moment, but also of the members of the Upper House of Parliament itself, besides the judiciary and numerous collectorships and other valuable offices, it is quite obvious that the element of human ambition and selfishness has abundant room for operation on the floor of the legislature, and a bold and skilful cabinet is also able to wield a machinery very potent under a system of party government.  In this respect the House of Representatives may be less liable to insidious influences than a House of Commons at critical junctures when individual conscience or independent judgment appears on the point of asserting itself.  The House of Commons may be made by skilful party management a mere recording or registering body of an able and determined cabinet.  I see less liability to such silent though potent influences in a system which makes the president and a house of representatives to a large degree independent of each other, and leaves his important nominations to office under the control of the senate, a body which has no analogy whatever with the relatively weak branch of the Canadian parliament, essentially weak while its membership depends on the government itself.  I admit at once that in the financial dependence of the provinces on the central federal authority, in the tenure of the office of the chief magistrates of the provinces, in the control exercised by the ministry over the highest legislative body of Canada, that is, highest in point of dignity and precedence, there are elements of weakness; but at the same time it must be remembered that, while the influence and power of the Canadian government may be largely increased by the exercise of its great patronage in the hypothetical cases I have suggested, its action is always open to the approval or disapproval of parliament and it has to meet an opposition face to face.  Its acts are open to legislative criticism, and it may at any moment be forced to retire by public opinion operating upon the House of Commons.