CHAP. 1] ORIGIN AND HISTORY 5 
under the royal prerogative to create a legislature in a settled 
Colony : before that date, from 1713 the Government had 
been administered and legislation carried by a Governor 
or Lieutenant-Governor, with the aid of a Council which 
was at once a legislative and an executive body, but the 
creation of an Assembly followed upon the realization of 
the fact by the Imperial Government, on the advice of the 
law officers, that the legislative power of the Crown in 
the Province could probably not legally be exercised unless 
an Assembly was summoned. The island of Prince Edward, 
once part of the Province of Nova Scotia, was given a 
Separate Lieutenant-Governor and a Council with executive 
and legislative functions in 1769, and for the same reasons 
as in the case of Nova Scotia itself an Assembly was called 
into being and met in 1773.1 In 1784 the Province of New 
Brunswick was created with a Council which, as usual, 
united legislative and executive functions and an Assembly. 
In both these cases the authority upon which the constitution 
was based was the power of the Crown to summon miniature 
Parliaments in the Colonies. Responsible government in 
all three followed the creation of it in Canada, and was 
fully established in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in 1848 
and in Prince Edward Island in 1850-1. 
In the case of the territories which now constitute the 
Province of British Columbia, and which were long in 
the hands of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Vancouver Island 
Was created as a Crown Colony with a nominee legislature 
in the year 1849, but in 1856 an Assembly was called, despite 
the insignificant population of the island. In 18583 the 
territory on the mainland known as New Caledonia was 
made into a Crown Colony, in consequence of the influx 
of inhabitants thither as a result of the discoveries of 
gold. In 18664 the mainland and the island were united 
under the single title of British Columbia, and a legislature 
of the usual non-representative type was created. But, 
* Houston, op. cit. p- 21; Canada Sess. Pap., 1883, No. 70, p. 47. 
* Houston, op. cit., Pp. 22; Canada Sess. Pap., 1883, No. 70, p. 2. 
' 21 & 22 Viet, ¢. 99. 4 299 & 30 Vict. c. 67.