236 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART II 
the appointment of Lieutenant-Governors, may be safely 
entrusted with the responsibility of advising their removal. 
All which is respectfully submitted. 
The reply of the Secretary of State was dated July 3, 18791 
Her Majesty’s Government have given their attentive 
consideration to your request for their instructions with 
reference to the recommendation made by your ministers 
that Mr. Letellier, the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, 
should be removed from his office. 
It will not have escaped your observation, in making 
this request, that the constitutional question to which it 
relates is one affecting the internal affairs of the Dominion, 
and belongs to a class of subjects with which the Government 
and Parliament of Canada are fully competent to deal. 
I notice with satisfaction that, owing to the ability and 
patience with which the new Constitution has been made by 
the Canadian people to fulfil the objects with which it was 
framed, it has very rarely been found necessary to resort to 
the Imperial authority for assistance in any of those compli- 
cations which might have been expected to arise during the 
first years of the Dominion ; and I need not point out to you 
that such references should only be made in circumstances of 
a very exceptional nature. 
I readily admit, however, that the principles involved in 
the particular case now before me are of more than ordinary 
importance. The true effect and intent of those sections of 
the British North America Act, 1867, which apply to it, have 
been much discussed ; and as this is the first case which 
has occurred under those sections, there is no precedent for 
your guidance. For this reason, though regretting that any 
cause should have arisen for the reference now made to 
them, Her Majesty’s Government approve of the course 
which you have taken on the responsibility and with the 
consent of your ministers, and I will now proceed to convey 
to you the views which they have formed on the question 
submitted for their consideration. 
The several circumstances affecting the particular case of 
Mr. Letellier have been fully stated in Sir J. A. Macdonald’s 
memorandum of 14th April, in Lieutenant-Governor Letel- 
lier’s letter of 18th April, and in communications which 
I have since received from Mr. Langevin, who, accompanied 
by Mr. Abbott, has come to this country for the purpose of 
! Parl. Pap., C. 2445, pp. 127, 128: cf. Egerton. Federations and 
Unzons, p. 138, n. 1.