themselves (y); and, in fact, Lord Durham in his report had mentioned trade with the Mother Country, with the regulation of foreign relations, as among the few matters which should be retained in the control of Great Britain. That no attempt was made to place such limitations upon the measure of political liberty conceded to the colonies, was due to the strength of the free trade movement. "The granting of the new constitutions to Canada and the Australian colonies," says a recent writer (z), "came at the moment of the flush of the free trade victory. In the freshness of that triumph, hopes were strong that the victory won for free trade in England was won for the world; only faint-hearted or interested people doubted that the generation before them would see all nations coming into the fold of natural trade. We might as well have chosen a moment when a Roman Consul was descending from the car of his triumphal procession to the Capitol to ask him to acknowledge that the empire was growing too fast, as have asked free trade victors between 1846 and 1848 to think of removing the control of trade. from the self government then being granted to the colonies," while as to military defence, such considerations would have marred what the late Mr. C. H. Pearson, in his National Life and Character (a), describes as "the vision of inspired Manchester men that the angel of peace was to descend on the world in a drapery of untaxed calico." No doubt as to the world at large Mr. Pearson is justified in adding that that vision is still as far from accomplishment as the vision seen at Patmos; nevertheless it may be fairly claimed that the English free trade policy has been of the greatest service to the Empire in modifying foreign jealousy and hatred, and it is a fact that since the American war of 1812, no colony of Great Britain has felt the brunt of foreign war, but the strength of the United Kingdom

(y) Speeches, (T. E. Kebbel) Vol. 2, p. 530; quoted Egerton's Short History of British Colonial Policy, p. 362.

(z) Caldecott's English Colonization and Empire (University Extension Series), pp. 177-9.

(a) P. 138.

has sufficed up to the present to secure to British colonies their safety even during great European wars.

Thus then, with a Legislative Assembly and a Legislative Council, the members of which were appointed by the GovernorGeneral, in accordance with the royal instructions, from among "persons who might be pointed out to him as entitled to be so by their possessing the confidence of the Assembly" (b), and free from the trammels of Imperial trade regulations, Canada might claim, in a truer sense than ever, to have a constitution similar to that of the Motherland. And what Lord John Russell called in the House of Commons in 1850, the maxim of policy by which our ancestors were guided, was adhered to so far as she was concerned, namely, that "wherever Englishmen went they should enjoy English freedom and have English institutions' (c). The position of affairs, however, was regarded with anything but agreable feelings by many.

Mr. Spencer Walpole justly observes that "men who had grown up in the faith that foreign possessions were advantageous because of their trade could not be expected to admit that the dependencies were still useful when the exclusive trade was destroyed (d). Mr. Cobden in 1851, declared in the House of Commons: "We have now no monopoly in the market of the colonies; they have none in ours. Therefore we have got rid of a plea formerly used for keeping up expenses in the colonies" (e). "Colonies," wrote the Quarterly Review in 1847, "are, we say boldly, of no intrinsic value whatsoever. It is only as they are nurseries for native seamen and markets for native industry that they are of any worth. Ships, colonies, and commerce, used to be a favorite toast, involving a wise and protective principle; but without ships and commerce, colonies are a burthen, and the sooner we get rid of them the better" (f). More

(b) Grey's Colonial Policy, Vol. 1, p. 213.

(c) Greswell's British Colonies, p. 195.

(d) History of England from 1815, Vol. 6, p. 334.

(e) Hans., Vol. 95, p. 1441.

(f) Vol. 81, p. 571.

over a feeling of despondency prevailed as to the possibility of retaining the colonies if they were allowed to control their own affairs under a system of responsible government. The Quarterly Review for March, 1849, referring to Lord Durham's report declared that if that "frank and infectious report did not receive the high, marked, and energetic discountenance and indignation of the Imperial Crown and Parliament, British America was lost" (g); while in Bowyer's Constitutional Law published in 1846, we find the author saying that under a system of responsible government "the colonies would be, in fact, perfectly independent of the Mother Country," and that their continued nominal allegiance would in a short time become almost ridiculous (h). Lord Elgin, however, here again displayed the political foresight for which he was so conspicuous. "When you concede to the colonists constitutional government, in its integrity," we find him writing in a letter to Lord Grey, of December 17, 1850, "you are reproached with leading them to Republicanism and the American Union. I believe, on the con

trary, that it may be demonstrated that the concession of constitutional government has a tendency to draw the colonists the other way; firstly, because it slakes the thirst for self government which seizes on all British communities when they approach maturity; and secondly, because it habituates the colonists to the working of a political mechanism which is both intrinsically superior to that of the Americans, and more unlike it than our old colonial system"(i).

But I need not dwell upon the period of doubt and distrust as to the possibility on the one hand, or the advisability on the other, of the maintenance of a united empire; a phase of feeling which we may surely hope has now passed away never to return. There is not the slightest ground for thinking that the great heart of the English people was ever anything else but staunch and loyal to the Imperial union, notwithstanding the temporary

(g) Quoted Greswell's British Colonies, p. 163.

(h) (London, 1846), pp. 55-6.

(i) Walrond's Letters and Journals, pp. 122-3.

aberration of some men of supposed light and leading among them. I do not believe that there ever was a time when that great people would not have responded with enthusiasm to the sentiment expressed in the words of Mr. Watkin, member for Stockport, upon the debate on the British North America Bill in 1867, when he said that "he believed that the people of England felt a deep attachment to their Empire, and that not even a barren rock over which the flag of England had once waved, would be abandoned by them without a cogent and sufficient reason" (j).

We may pass on to the grand event of the accomplishment of Dominion confederation merely observing that the analogy between the Canadian Constitution and the British was temporarily broken in upon by the Canadian Act of 1856 (k), providing, in accordance with the power given by an Imperial Act of 1854(1), for an elective Upper House. The intention of the founders of confederation was to preserve as closely as possible that analogy under the Union. As the third Quebec Resolution expressly declares: "In framing a constitution for the general Government, the conference, with a view to the perpetuation of our connection with the Mother Country, and the promotion of the best interests of the people of these Provinces, desire to follow the model of the British Constitution, so far as our circumstances will permit." They desired that we should enjoy, in the words of Sir John Macdonald, premier of the Province of Canada, "the privileges of constitutional liberty according to the British system"(m); and declared expressly in the preamble to the British North America Act that the Canadian Provinces were to be federally united into one Dominion under the Crown with a Constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom. That declaration, however, in the preamble of the

(j) Hans., 3rd Ser., Vol. 185, p. 1188.

(k) 19-20 Vict. c. 140; Con. Stats. of Can. c. 1.

(1) 17-18 Vict. c. 118.

(m) Quoted Gray on Confederation, p. 114.

Act, Mr. Dicey has designated as "official mendacity"(n), or at all events "diplomatic inaccuracy"(o). He maintains that in its essential features the Constitution of Canada is modelled on that of the United States, and that if we look at its federal character "we must inevitably regard it as a copy, though by no means a servile copy of the Constitution of the United States(p), although he admits, of course, that in respect to our system of parliamentary Cabinet government we follow England, and in no wise imitate the presidential government of America. But, despite the authority of Professor Dicey as a constitutional writer, I nevertheless venture to think that, quite apart from Cabinet government, if we look into the matter with a little minuteness, it is impossible to concede that the Canadian polity can with fairness and accuracy be called in any sense a copy of the Constitution of the United States. Perhaps I may be allowed to repeat here more briefly what I have stated elsewhere more at large on this subject (q).

It is, of course, perfectly true that the British North America Act has like the Constitution of the United States, federally united several communities before the Union having separate governments and separate parliaments; but when we examine its scheme and methods for attaining this end, we see many and fundamental divergencies from American ideas and institutions, in which the founders of confederation faithfully followed by preference, and with much ingenuity, principles of the British Constitution. We can only deal very briefly with the matter here, but one of the points of contrast in which the Constitution of Canada follows English analogy and not American, is in the unfettered character of her legislatures. They have not been put into "straight jackets" as American legislatures are, to quote an expression of a recent writer. Even the legislative

(n) Law of the Constitution, 3rd ed., p. 155; also Article on Federal Government in Law Quarterly Rev., Vol. 1, p. 93.

(4) Legislative Power in Canada, Introductory Chapter.