50 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT [PARTI
a word as to the adoption of responsible government, and
in the royal instructions issued together with his commission
to Lord Sydenham, and to his successors, Sir C. Bagot,
Sir C. Metcalfe, Lord Cathcart, and Lord Elgin, and to their
successors, there is not a single word of responsible govern-
ment. The commissions provide for the existence of an
Executive Council, but they do not say that it is to be
composed of responsible ministers, and they expressly seem
to contemplate that the Executive Council is a body to
advise the Governor, whose advice he may or may not take,
ashe will. Indeed, in the case of New Zealand, the wording
of the instructions was considered by the Attorney-General
in 18541 to show that full responsible government was not
contemplated at all. The real authority for the adoption
of responsible government is not to be found in the law of
the land, not even in the formal royal instructions, which of
course were not law but usage, but in the dispatches from
Lord John Russell dated October 14 and 16, 1839,2in one of
which he adopted in a somewhat curious manner the principle
of responsible government for internal affairs only, whiledeny-
ing that afull measure of responsible government was possible;
the other laid down that officers were not, in the case of those
holding the chief positions, to be deemed to hold by a perma-
nent tenure, but to be liable to removal as often as sufficient
motives of public policy might suggest the expediency of
that step. He also intimated that the grant of pensions to
displaced officers would be suitable, but he expressed even
that view with a certain vagueness. And down to the termi-
nation of the independent existence of Canada as a province
the position was not varied: the principle of responsible
government rested on nothing more than practice, its binding
force on the action of the Governor, who was subject, of course,
to the possibility of his recall by the Imperial Government
on the one hand, and the rendering of his position untenable
by the Legislature refusing to work with him, on the other.
* Parl. Pap., H. C. 160, 1855, pp. 2 seq. For the Canadian instructions,
see Canada Sess. Pap., 1906, No. 18.
* Parl. Pap., H. C. 621, 1848, pp. 3 seq.
