CHAPTER 1. 
INTRODUCTION, 
ON the 1st day of July in the present year (1888) the 
Canadian federation attained its majority ; twenty-one years 
having elapsed since by an Order in Council the Provinces 
of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were 
formed into the Dominion. Twenty-one years is not a long 
period in the life of a State, and it is not to be expected 
that the Constitution of Canada will prove as instructive 
a subject of study as that of the United States with its 
hundred years of growth and development. But in many 
respects the Canadian Constitution offers a special field for 
the inquirer. It is a successful effort to solve the problem 
of uniting distinct states or provinces under a central govern- 
ment. A similar task had already presented itself to an 
English speaking people, but the conditions of the problem 
solved in Canada differed in many respects from the condi- 
tions that faced Washington and his associates. While the 
American States had to create not merely a central govern- 
ment but a government which, within the limits laid down, 
should be supreme, the Canadian Provinces had to organize 
& Union subject to a supreme Executive, Legislature and 
Judicature all of which already existed. The executive su- 
Premacy of the Queen, the legislative power of the Imperial 
Parliament, and the Judicial functions of the Privy Council 
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