elective, body.  Provided that the Executive had the confidence of the representative Assembly or Lower House, the first point was perfectly sound, and the second was not vital; but there was no security for the condition precedent other than Russell’s vague outline of subsequent policy.  While the supreme power of the King, acting with or without the Governor, was reaffirmed in the most vigorous terms, there was not a word in the Act about the composition of the Executive Council or its relation to the Assembly.

In Canada much the same misconceptions prevailed, and promoted the acceptance of the Act by the supporters of the old ascendancies.  The question of the Union and the question of responsible government, both raised by Lord Durham’s Report, became inextricably confused, and the various petitions and resolutions of the time reflect this confusion.  The French opposed the Union and supported responsible government on the same grounds, and in almost identical terms, as the Irish opposed, and still oppose, their Union with Great Britain, and ask for responsible government in Ireland.  Moderate Britishers supported both proposals, but the extremists of the old ascendancy bitterly denounced the whole theory of responsible government, Union or no Union.  Their views are ably and incisively set forth by a Committee of the old Legislative Council of Upper Canada, that is, by the members of the “family compact,” in a protest signed and transmitted to London, where it was quoted with approval by Lord John Russell.  It may be found, together with other petitions of the time, in the “Canadian Constitutional Development” of Messrs. Grant and Egerton.  With a few unessential changes and modifications, the whole document might be signed to-day by a Committee of Ulster Unionists, and I heartily wish that every Ulsterman would read it in a spirit of reason and generosity, and observe how every line of it was falsified by history, before he declares that the situation of Ulster is peculiar, and sets his hand or gives his adhesion to a similar document.  The signatories, who, it must be remembered, were a small ruling minority of the colonists, whose power was artificially sustained by the British Governor, claim that they alone, in glorifying and in battling for “colonial dependence,” are the true Imperialists.  They hold dear the “unity of the Empire.”  Responsible government within their own Colony would lead to the “overthrowal” of that Empire, and the reduction of Britain to a “second-rate Power.”  A colonial Cabinet is absurd; the local and sectional interests are too strong; the British Government must remain as “umpire” to keep the parties from flying at one another’s throats.  The majority, who are themselves a prey to divisions (and one thinks of Nationalist splits), are seeking only for illegitimate power; the minority are for “justice and protection, and impartial government.”  Yet in the same breath we are told that all is happy and peaceable as it is.