CHAPTER II
THE INTRODUCTION OF RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT
Canada. RETURNING to the history of Canada, it has been already seen in what circumstances of gloom the period opened. In Lower Canada the long conflict between the Assembly and the Executive was hastening to a crisis. The ultimate aim of the Assembly was doubtless to assert a Canadian nationality against the progressive intrusion of the English race, but the unhappy condition of the Constitution enabled it to fight at an advantage. “ Having no responsible Ministers to deal with, it entered upon that system of long enquiries, by means of its Committees, which brought the whole action of the Executive immediately under its purview, and transgressed our notions of the proper limits of Parliamentary interference. Having no influence in the choice of any public functionary, no power to procure the removal of such as were obnoxious to it on merely political grounds, and seeing almost every office in the Colony filled by persons in whom it had no confidence, it entered on that vicious course of assailing its prominent opponents individually, and disqualifying them for the public service by making them the subjects of enquiries and consequent impeachments, not always conducted with even the appearance of a due regard to justice ; and when nothing else would attain its end of altering the policy or the composition of the Colonial Government, it had recourse to that ultima ratio of representative power, to which the more prudent forbearance of the Crown has never driven the House of Commons in England, and endeavoured to disable the whole machinery of government by a general refusal of the supplies.” 1 The practice of passing the most important laws in a temporary form was reduced to a general system, so that by “ tacking ” their own proposals to necessary measures, the majority might compel the Governor and
1 Lord Durham, Rep. on Can. y p. 57.
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