Canadian attraction to the United States and numerous rivers and vast inland seas supply the means of easy intercourse, and the structure of the country generally affords the utmost facility for every species of communication by land. Unbounded materials of agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing industry are there; it depends upon the present decision of the imperial legislature to determine for whose benefit they are to be rendered available. The country which has founded and maintained these colonies at a vast expense of blood and treasure may justly expect its compensation in turning their unappropriated resources to the account of its own redundant population; they are the rightful patrimony of the English people, the ample appanage which God and nature have set aside in the New World for those whose lot has assigned them but insufficient portions in the Old World. Under wise and free institutions these great advantages may yet be secured to your Majesty's subjects; and a connection secured by the link of kindred origin and mutual benefits may continue to bind to the British empire the ample territories of its North American provinces, and the large and flourishing population by which they will assuredly be filled. . . . ... As the general opinion of the American people became more apparent during the course of the last year, the English of Lower Canada were surprised to find how strong, in spite of the first burst of sympathy with a people supposed to be struggling for independence, was the real sympathy of their republican neighbors with the great objects of the minority. Without abandoning their attachment to their mother country, they have begun, as men in a state of uncertainty are apt to do, to calculate the probable consequences of a separation, if it should unfortunately occur, and be followed by an incorporation with the United States. In spite of the shock which it would occasion their feelings, they undoubtedly think that they should find some compensation in the promotion of their interests; they believe that the influx of American emigration would speedily place the English race in a majority; they talk frequently and loudly of what has occurred in Louisiana, where, by means which they utterly misrepresent, the end, nevertheless, of securing an English predominance over a French population has undoubtedly been attained; they assert very confidently that the Americans would make a very speedy and decisive settlement of the pretensions of the French; and they believe that, after the first shock of an entirely new political state has been got over, they and their posterity would share in that amazing progress and that great material prosperity which every day's experience shows them is the lot of the people of the United States. I do not believe that such a feeling has yet sapped their strong allegiance to the British empire, but their allegiance is founded on their deep-rooted attachment to British as distinguished from French institutions; and if they find that that authority which they have maintained against its recent assailants is to be exerted in such a manner as to subject them again to what they call a French dominion, I feel perfectly confident that they would attempt to avert the result by courting, on any terms, a union with an Anglo-Saxon people. ernment to It is not by weakening, but strengthening the influence of Proposal to the people on its government; by confining within much allow self-gov narrower bounds than those hitherto allotted to it, and not Canada by extending the interference of the imperial authorities in the details of colonial affairs, that I believe that harmony is to be restored where dissension has so long prevailed, and a regularity and vigor hitherto unknown introduced into the administration of these provinces. It needs no change in the principles of government, no invention of a new constitutional theory, to supply the remedy which would, in my opinion, completely remove the existing political disorders. It needs but to follow out consistently the principles of the British constitution, and introduce into the government of these great colonies those wise provisions by which alone the working of the representative system can in any country be rendered harmonious and efficient. We are not now to consider the policy of establishing representative government in the North American colonies. That has been irrevocably done; and the experiment of depriving the people of their present constitutional power is not to be thought of. To conduct their government harmoniously, in The practical working of parliamentary England accordance with its established principles, is now the business of its rulers; and I know not how it is possible to secure that harmony in any other way than by administering the government on those principles which have been found perfectly efficacious in Great Britain. I would not impair a single prerogative of the crown; on the contrary, I believe that the interests of the people in these colonies require the protection of prerogatives which have not hitherto been exercised. But the crown must, on the other hand, submit to the necessary consequences of representative institutions, and if it has to carry on the government in unison with a representative body, it must consent to carry it on by means of those in whom that representative body has confidence. In England this principle has been so long considered an indisputable and essential part of our constitution that it has government in really hardly ever been found necessary to inquire into the means by which its observance is enforced. When a ministry ceases to command a majority in parliament on great questions of policy, its doom is immediately sealed; and it would appear to us as strange to attempt, for any time, to carry on a government by means of ministers perpetually in a minority, as it would be to pass laws with a majority of votes against them. The ancient constitutional remedies, by impeachment and a stoppage of the supplies, have never, since the reign of William III, been brought into operation for the purpose of removing a ministry. They have never been called for, because, in fact, it has been the habit of ministers rather to anticipate the occurrence of an absolutely hostile vote, and to retire, when supported only by a bare and uncertain majority. If colonial legislatures have frequently stopped the supplies, if they have harassed public servants by unjust or harsh impeachments, it was because the removal of an unpopular administration could not be effected in the colonies by those milder indications of a want of confidence, which have always sufficed to attain the end in the mother country. Every purpose of popular control might be combined with every advantage of vesting the immediate choice of advisers in the crown, were the colonial governor to be instructed to government colonies secure the coöperation of the assembly in his policy, by intrust- The means ing its administration to such men as could command a ma- by which selfjority; and if he were given to understand that he need count may be aton no aid from home in any difference with the assembly that tained in the should not directly involve the relations between the mother country and the colony. This change might be effected by a single dispatch containing such instructions; or, if any legal enactment were requisite, it would only be one that would render it necessary that the official acts of the governor should be countersigned by some public functionary. This would induce responsibility for every act of the government, and, as a natural consequence, it would necessitate the substitution of a system of administration by means of competent heads of departments for the present rude machinery of an executive council. The governor, if he wished to retain advisers not possessing the confidence of the existing assembly, might rely on the effect of an appeal to the people, and, if unsuccessful, he might be coerced by a refusal of supplies, or his advisers might be terrified by the prospect of impeachment. But there can be no reason for apprehending that either party would enter on a contest when each would find its interest in the maintenance of harmony; and the abuse of the powers which each would constitutionally possess would cease when the struggle for larger powers became unnecessary. Nor can I conceive that it would be found impossible or difficult to conduct a colonial government with precisely that limitation of the respective powers which has been so long and so easily maintained in Great Britain. . . . I admit that the system which I propose would, in fact, place the internal government of the colony in the hands of the colonists themselves; and that we should thus leave to them the execution of the laws, of which we have long intrusted the making solely to them. Perfectly aware of the value of our colonial possessions, and strongly impressed with the necessity of maintaining our connection with them, I know not in what respect it can be desirable that we should interfere with their internal legislation in matters which do not affect their relations with the mother country. But few The matters which so concern us are very few. The constipowers should tution of the form of government, the regulation of foreign be retained by the mother relations, and of trade with the mother country, the other country British colonies, and foreign nations, and the disposal of the public lands are the only points on which the mother country requires a control. This control is now sufficiently secured by the authority of the imperial legislature, by the protection which the colony derives from us against foreign enemies, by the beneficial terms which our laws secure to its trade, and by its share of the reciprocal benefits which would be conferred by a wise system of colonization. A perfect subordination, on the part of the colony, on these points is secured by the advantages which it finds in the continuance of its connection with the empire. It certainly is not strengthened, but greatly weakened, by a vexatious interference on the part of the home government with the enactment of laws for regulating the internal concerns of the colony, or in the selection of the persons intrusted with their execution. The colonists may not always know what laws are best for them, or which of their countrymen are the fittest for conducting their affairs; but, at least, they have a greater interest in coming to a right judgment on these points, and will take greater pains to do so, than those whose welfare is very remotely and slightly affected by the good or bad legislation of these portions of the empire. 453. An address favoring retention of the colonies (1875) Gradually during the latter part of the nineteenth century English public opinion concerning the colonies underwent a change. Of this there are many evidences. The following extracts from an address by William E. Forster, a leading Liberal statesman, furnish an example. Ideas are the rulers of the world. First or last they realize themselves, and become the facts of history. If, then, it is to be the prevalent idea in the minds of English-speaking men at home and abroad, that each colony must become an independent nation when it has become powerful enough to protect |