14 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT [PART I
Act which permitted the Governor-General to legislate with
the advice of a Council summoned by himself.
It is no doubt easy to show that the conception enter-
tained by Lord Durham differed very considerably from
responsible government as understood in 1911, and that he
overestimated the advantages of the measure as a perfect
and final settlement of all colonial difficulties. Lord
Durham’s vision was imperfect, but he said enough to estab-
lish his claim to have seen more clearly, and to have expressed
more articulately than any of his contemporaries the solution
for the difficulties then confronting government in Canada.
The substantial correctness of his views is shown by the fact
that in its essence his exposition of the character of respon-
sible government might be accepted even at the present
day : in rejecting the proposed solution of the constitutional
question by the expedient of an elected Executive Council,
an idea which has analogies in the early history of English
constitutional government, he wrote :—
Every purpose of popular control might be combined
with every advantage of vesting the immediate choice of
advisers in the Crown were the colonial Governor to be
instructed to secure the co-operation of the Assembly in
his policy by entrusting its administration to such men as
could command a majority, and if he were given to under-
stand that he need count on no aid from home in any
difference with the Assembly that should not directly involve
the relations between the Mother Country and the Colony.
No alteration in the conditions laid down in this passage
has been made since : the only point in which changes have
taken place is with regard to the further and more complete
carrying out of the principles which were there enunciated.
Lord Durham gave a list of matters in which he considered
Imperial interference justified : this list contains only the
constitution of the form of government, the regulation of
foreign relations, and of trade with the Mother Country, the
other British Colonies and foreign nations, and the disposal
of the public lands’. In all other matters the colonists
should have a free hand, as they were the most interested
in their own administration and legislation, and were those
