Canada and the Canadian Question/Chapter 8

In dutiful imitation of that glorious Constitution of the mother country, with its division of power among kings, lords, and commons which, though it really died with William III, still exists in devout imaginations, the Constitution of the Canadian Dominion has a false front of monarchy. The king who reigns and does not govern is represented by a Governor-General who does the same, and the Governor-General solemnly delegates his impotence to a puppet Lieutenant-Governor in each province. Everything is done in the names of these images of Royalty, as everything was done in the names of the Venetian Doge and the Merovingian kings; but if they dared to do anything themselves, or to refuse to do anything that they were told to do, they would be instantly deposed. Religious Canada prays each Sunday that they may govern well, on the understanding that heaven will never be so unconstitutional as to grant her prayer. Like their British prototype, ​they deliver from their thrones speeches which have been made for them by their Prime Ministers, to whom they serve as a ventriloquial apparatus. Each of them, to keep up the constitutional illusion, is surrounded by a certain amount of state and etiquette, the Governor-General, of course, having more of it than his delegates. At the opening of the Dominion Parliament by the Governor-General there is a parade of his bodyguard, cannon are fired, everybody puts on all the finery to which he is entitled, the knights don their insignia, the Privy Councillors their Windsor uniform, and the ladies appear in low dresses. At the opening of a Provincial Parliament the ceremony is less impressive, and in some cases is reduced to a series of explosions mimicking cannon.

The last prerogative which remained to the Governor-General was that of Dissolution. We have seen that Sir Edmund Head exercised his own judgment in declining to dissolve Parliament at the bidding of Mr. George Brown. But this power of control seems since to have been abandoned like the rest. The Governor-General now appears to feel himself bound to dissolve Parliament at the bidding of his Minister, without any constitutional crisis requiring an appeal to the country, or cause of any kind except the convenience of a Minister who may think the moment good for snapping a verdict. We here see that a political cipher is not always a nullity, but may sometimes be mischievous. That the existence of a Parliament should be made dependent upon the will and pleasure of a party leader, and should be cut short as often as it suits his party purposes, is obviously subversive of the independence of the legislature. Such an arrangement would never be tolerated if it were openly proposed. But it is tolerated, and with perfect supineness, when, instead of the name of the Prime Minister, that of the Governor-General is ​used. The robe of the Queen's representative in this and other cases forms the decorous cover for the practices of the colonial politician. In the case before us the arbitrary power grasped by the party leader under constitutional forms in the Colony seems even to have exceeded that grasped by the party leader in the mother country. In the mother country some good authorities at least still maintain that the Crown has not entirely resigned the prerogative, and that the Sovereign may refuse a dissolution, except in case of a Parliamentary crisis, such as renders necessary an appeal to the people, or when the House of Commons has been deprived of authority by the close approach of its legal end. At all events, in England tradition has not wholly lost the restraining power which it had when government was in the hands of a class pervaded by a sense of corporate responsibility and careful not to impair its own heritage. An American or Canadian politician in playing his game uses without scruple every card in his hand; traditions or unwritten rules are nothing to him; the only safeguard against his excesses is written law. The Americans are surprisingly tolerant of what an Englishman would think the inordinate use of power by the holders of office; but then they know that there is a line drawn by the law beyond which the man cannot go, and that with the year his authority must end. The politician in Canada, not less than in the United States, requires the restraint of written law.

A Governor-General has been made to read a speech from the Throne commending to the nation a commercial policy which was not only opposed to his own opinions as a free trader, but laid protective duties on British goods. Nor is it possible to doubt that in appointments his personal conscience and honour are treated as entirely out of the question. A ​Governor-General, about whose own keen sense of right there could be no question, has thus been made to place upon the Bench of Justice, manifestly for a party purpose, a man upon whose appointment the whole profession, without distinction of party, cried shame. To the appointment of his own representatives, the Lieutenant-Governors or to those of Senators, the Governor-General, it is generally believed, has not a word to say.

We had a decisive proof of the Governor-General's impotence in the case of Mr. Letellier de St. Just, who was deposed from the Lieutenant-Governorship of Quebec. Mr. Letellier had been appointed by a Liberal Government. He quarrelled with a Provincial Ministry of the opposite party for breach of rules, turned it out, and called in other advisers, who, upon an appeal to the Province, were sustained, though by a bare majority. The Quebec Conservatives were infuriated at the loss of the Provincial patronage. In the Dominion Senate, where their party had a majority, they at once got a vote of censure passed on the Lieutenant-Governor. They had not at that time a majority in the House of Commons, but a general election having soon after given them a majority, they passed a vote of censure in the Lower House also. The party leader thereupon, as Prime Minister, "advised" the Governor-General to dismiss Mr. Letellier. It was simply an act of party vengeance, Mr. Letellier having done nothing which was not strictly within the letter of the Constitution, and having been sustained by the people of his province. The Act of Confederation required that for the dismissal of a Lieutenant-Governor a cause should be assigned. The only cause assigned was, that after the adverse vote of the Dominion Parliament "his usefulness had ceased." Evidently this was no cause at all, but a mere mockery. What the law required ​was the assignment of a specific breach of duty, of which it could not be pretended that the Lieutenant-Governor had been guilty. The votes of the Senate and the House of Commons were nothing but manifestations of party resentment. Their character was marked by the manner in which they had been passed; not in the same session, so as to represent the judgment of Parliament, but in different sessions, the vote of the House of Commons being delayed till the result of the election had given the party power in that House. It was evident that the conscience of the Governor-General recoiled from this treatment of his own representative, whose rights and character he was specially bound in honour to guard. He referred to the Colonial Office, but the Colonial Office bade him obey his constitutional advisers. He might have done the Colony a great service, though at some risk to himself, had he told the Minister that on questions of policy he was ready to be guided by others, but that on questions of justice, especially in a case where his own deputy was concerned, he had a conscience of his own, and that he would do what honour bade him or go home. The Minister would probably have given way, and at all events a most wholesome lesson would have been read. But grandees do not run risks. Noblesse oblige is the reverse of the truth. The nobleman is rather apt to feel that even if he does what would compromise another, his rank will carry him through.

The Governor-Generalship, it is said, saves Canada from presidential elections. Presidential elections are an evil, and as at present conducted by popular vote they are a morbid excrescence on the American Constitution, since the framers intended the electoral college really to elect, though it is strange that they should not have foreseen that election by a college chosen for the nonce would result in a mandate. ​But the Governor-Generalship is not the Presidency of Canada: the Prime Ministership is the Presidency, and the general election in which the Prime Ministership and Cabinet offices are the prize is little less of an evil than the presidential election. The same answer meets the allegation that the Governor-Generalship or the monarchical element which it represents is a pledge of political stability. The Government of Canada has of late years presented an appearance of stability, the account of which will be given hereafter. But in Australia ministers, notwithstanding the presence of a governor, are as fleeting as shadows chasing each other over a field, and the same was the case in Canada before Confederation. The real government is liable to constant change, which is no more tempered or countervailed by the permanency of the Governor than by the permanency of the Sergeant-at-Arms. An American government is comparatively stable, having a fixed tenure for four years.

The constitutional hierophants of Ottawa, such as Mr. Alpheus Todd, assure the uninitiated in solemn tones that in spite of appearances which may be deceptive to the vulgar, the Governor-Generalship is an institution of great practical value, as well as of most awful dignity. Highly deceptive to the vulgar, it must be owned, the appearances are.

If it is said that the service is not political but social, and that the little Court of Ottawa is needed to refine colonial manners, the answer is first, that the benefit must be limited to the Court circle; and secondly, that colonial manners do not stand in need of imported refinement. Nobody who lives long on the American Continent can fail to be struck with the fact that vulgarity is but the shadow of caste. The manners of men who have raised themselves from the ranks of industry are in all essential respects perfectly good, so long ​as the men are allowed to remain in their native element of equality and not infected with aristocratic notions or set striving to imitate an alien model. If there is anything in Canadian manners which is traceable to the Court at Ottawa, it is not that which is best in them. Indeed, if the stories which sometimes get abroad of Ottawa balls and suppers are true, Ottawa refinement itself occasionally stands in need of refining.

The example of an expensive household or of profuse entertainments is of questionable value. One Governor-General was specially noted for the profusion of the entertainments by which he courted popularity, as well as by the increase which he made in the cost of his office to the country; and it is said that officials with small salaries at Ottawa rue his fancy balls to this hour.

The same Governor-General also courted popularity by oratorical tours, or, to use the common phrase, by going on the stump. The orations necessarily consist largely of flattery, and the effect of flattery on a young nation is pretty much the same as on a young man.

When Royalty became a denizen of Government House an attempt was made by some zealous officials to introduce monarchical etiquette. An enthusiastic professor of deportment went over privately to consult the Lord Chamberlain, and published a manual for the instruction of ignorant Canadians. The keynote is struck by the exordium, "What on this earthly sphere is more enchantingly exclusive than Her Majesty's Court"—a doubtful assertion, perhaps, since the powers of wealth have triumphantly forced their way into those precincts. "The impression," proceeds the Professor, "made by the debutante is a lasting one in England, consequently art is brought to bear, and the ​curtseys, the walk, the extending the arm for the train, and each physical movement are practised repeatedly before some competent teacher of deportment, who charges well for the lessons." Imagine the ladies of a commercial colony fired with this ambition! The genius of the Continent rejected etiquette as it had rejected Pitt's proffered boon of a hereditary peerage. When an edict went forth that at Court balls ladies should appear in low dresses, unless they could obtain from their physicians a dispensation on the ground of health, a comic journal had a print of a bare-footed servant girl asking the master of the ceremonies whether nakedness at that extremity of the person would not do as well.

As an object of social worship the representative of Royalty keeps his place. Like Royalty itself, he is taken about to open institutions or exhibitions; words of approbation which he may be pleased to utter are recorded as oracles, and sacrificial banquets are offered to him. What is the social value of such a worship every one must determine for himself. In England it seems that the worship goes on while the smallest and most necessary payment for the support of the idol raises a storm of popular anger.

The practical aim of a Governor-General is social popularity combined with political peace. So long as he simply gives way in everything to the politicians, he will have a quiet course, and at the end of it he will go away amidst general plaudits with the reputation of having "governed" Canada well. Discerning eulogists will even point out to you the particular gifts of mind and temper which have enabled him to administer his province with so much success. He is then qualified in the eyes of the Home Government for a higher post, and India will be fortunate if she does not some day get from this manufactory of spurious reputations a less ​competent Viceroy than Lord Lansdowne. Connection and responsibility end together with the parting salute.

As an authoritative informant of the Home Government about Canadian affairs and sentiment the Governor-General, besides being a newcomer to the country, lies under the twofold disadvantage of being a personage to whom it is difficult to speak the truth, and of being always in an official capital where, on certain subjects, not much truth is spoken. If, like Haroun Alraschid, he could go about in disguise conversing with his lieges, he might learn and impart to the Colonial Office what would be worth knowing. As it is, when we read the disquisitions of an ex-Governor-General on the country which was the scene of his administration, we at once become sensible of the happy environment in which during his tenure of office he has lived.

There are those who think that figments, though worse than useless in any other department, are useful in politics, and that there is an occult virtue in the practice of fetichism and hypocrisy. Only let those theorists remember that the reverence which is bestowed on the false is withdrawn from the real ruler, and that servile worship of a fetich and manly respect for lawful authority are not always found dwelling in the same breast. Democracy has its perils, Heaven knows. Let us look them in the face and deal with them as best we may. To hide them from us by throwing over them the veil of a mock monarchy is not to help us in our endeavour.

The same people will also believe in the usefulness of baronetcies and knighthoods, which have survived the catastrophe of the abortive Canadian peerage, and of which the Governor-General is the supposed conduit, though it is surmised that of late the party leader has virtually got this prerogative also into his hands, and added it to his general ​fund of influence. Let us have titles of honour by all means, so long as they denote a public trust. Let the Councillor of State or the Judge be styled Honourable, and the Mayor His Worship. Let scientific and military eminence be marked by their appropriate decorations. There is no reason why Democracy should deny herself such emblems of civil dignity and incentives of generous ambition any more than there is a reason why she should deny herself rational and symbolic state. She too must have her æsthetics. But titles of chivalry do not denote a public trust. In the age of chivalry they had a meaning; now they are merely personal decorations, and if they serve any public object it is that of introducing into the Colonies, in the supposed interest of British aristocracy, sentiments at variance with those on which, in such communities, public effort and public virtue must be based. They can feed, to put it plainly, nothing but flunkeyism. Some of the worthiest men in Canada have refused them. They are given sometimes with little discernment; they have even served to gild dishonour. Baronetcies, the fashion of creating which has of late been revived, are open to the further objection which was urged with decisive force against the creation of an hereditary peerage in a country where there are no entailed estates. We may some day have a baronet blacking shoes. To make a Canadian politician a baronet is to tempt and almost to constrain him to use his political opportunities for the purpose of accumulating a fortune to bequeath to his son. This is no imaginary danger. Nor when honour has been forfeited can the title and its influence be annulled.

Aristocracy had its uses in its time. That it served as an organising force in a barbarous age, no one versed in history will deny. The feudal lord was not a sybarite with a ​title; sheathed in iron, he lived, as a leader, a magistrate, and a rural law-giver, laborious days. Possibly the services of the institution may not yet be exhausted in the lands to which it is native there it may at all events be destined to smooth a transition. But it has no business in the New World, and the attempt to import it never has done and never can do anything but mischief. To make a colony an outpost of aristocracy for the purpose of maintaining that institution at home is to sacrifice the political character of an American community to the interest of a European caste.

The Lieutenant-Governorships are bestowed by the party leader invariably on his partisans and usually on worn-out politicians. That they form a decent retirement for those who have spent their energies in public life but on whom the community would not consent to bestow pensions, forms the best defence for their existence. Political value they have none. The theory is that Government House in each province forms a centre of society but the men after their stormy lives are generally too weary for social effort and the salary is not sufficient for hospitality on a large scale. Men of wealth and high social position, who might fulfil the social ideal, are not likely to take the appointments. As one of them said bluntly, they do not want to keep a hotel for five years.

Passing through the false front into the real edifice we find that it is a federal republic after the American model, though with certain modifications derived partly from the British source. The Dominion Legislature answers to Congress, the Provincial Legislature answers to the State Legislature, the Dominion Prime Minister and Cabinet answer to the President and his Cabinet, the Provincial Prime Ministers and their Cabinets to the Governor and Officers of States. The relations of the Province and the Dominion to each other ​are in the main the same as those of the State and the Federation. Were a Canadian Province to be turned at once into a State of the Union the change would be felt by the people only in a certain increase of self-government. The political machinery would act as it does now.

The deviations in the Canadian copy from the American original are chiefly in the direction of an increase of the Federal power. The framers of the Canadian Constitution fancied that American secession was an awful warning against leaving the Federal Government too weak. In this they were mistaken, for slavery and slavery alone was the cause of secession, and had the Federal Government possessed authority to deal with the Southern institution and proceeded to exert it, that would only have precipitated the catastrophe. Perhaps, however, the Canadian legislators were also swayed by the centralising tendency and sentiment of the monarchy with which they were connected. Their bias at all events was in favour of central power. Some of them would have preferred a legislative union had they been able to overcome the centrifugal nationalism of Quebec. To the Federal Government and Legislature in Canada belong criminal law and procedure. To the Federal Government belongs the appointment of all the judges. To the Federal Legislature belong the regulation of trade and the law of marriage. The Federal Government has the direct command of the Militia, whereas in the United States the President can only call upon the State Government for military aid. It has by the Constitution a political veto on all State legislation, whereas in the American Republic State legislation can be cancelled only on legal grounds by the Supreme Court. And whereas by the American Constitution all powers not given to the Federation are left in the States, by the Canadian Constitution all ​powers not given to the provinces are left in the Federation. This last distinction is important. The origin of it was, that the sovereign power which gave birth to the Confederation had its seat not, as in the case of the Americans, in the several federating communities, but in the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain.

About the nature and importance of the national veto on provincial legislation doubts have recently been raised from a motive which will presently be explained, but there were no doubts at the time. Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Rose said in the debate: "The other point which commends itself so strongly to my mind is this, that there is a veto power on the part of the General Government over all the legislation of the Local Parliaments. . . . I believe this power of negative, this power of veto, this controlling power on the part of the Central Government, is the best protection and safeguard of the system; and if it had not been provided I would have felt it very difficult to reconcile it to my sense of duty to vote for the resolutions. But this power having been given to the Central Government it is to my mind, in conjunction with the power of naming the local governors, the appointment and payment of the judiciary, one of the best features of the scheme, without which it would certainly, in my opinion, have been open to very serious objection." This plainly refers to a power of political control to be exercised in the interest of the nation, not to a mere power of restraining illegal stretches of jurisdiction, a function which belongs not to a government but to a court of law. Again, Mr. Mackenzie, afterwards Premier, said: "The veto power is necessary in order that the General Government may have at control over the proceedings of the Local Legislature to a certain extent. The want of this power was the great source ​of weakness in the United States, and it is a want that will be remedied by an amendment in their Constitution very soon." This could not refer to a mere power of restraining excesses of jurisdiction on the part of State Legislatures, since such a power is already possessed and constantly exercised by the Supreme Court. In like manner Mr. Dorion, Mr. Joly, and other opponents of the scheme assume that the veto is general, and regard it accordingly with suspicion. The point of these remarks will hereafter appear.

Thus, constitutionally, the Canadian Dominion is less federal and more national than the American Republic. Practically the reverse is the fact, because in the case of the American Republic the unifying forces, economical and general, of which the power increases with the advance of commerce and civilisation, have free action, the barrier of slavery being now removed; whereas in the case of Canada their action is paralysed by geographical dispersion, commercial isolation, and the separatist nationality of French Quebec.

The American President is elected by the people at fixed periods, and for a term certain. He and his Cabinet have no seats in Congress, nor has he any part in legislation except his veto and such influence as his position in the party may enable him to exercise behind the scenes. The framers of the American Constitution were full of Montesquieu's false notion about the necessity of entirely separating the executive from the legislative, and probably also of that supersensitive dread of the presence of placemen in the popular assembly which in England gave birth to the Place Bills. The Canadian Premier, like the British Premier, is elected by the people at periods rendered uncertain by the power of dissolution, and for so long only as he can keep his majority in the ​House of Commons. On the other hand, he and his Cabinet have seats in Parliament, where, with their majority at their back, they initiate the most important part of legislation and control the whole of it. Assuming that government is to be by party, the Canadian and British system has clearly the advantage in respect to the conduct of legislation. The American House of Representatives is apt for want of leadership to become a legislative chaos. Order and the progress of business are secured only by allowing the speaker, who ought as chairman to be neutral, to act as the party leader of the majority, and control legislation by a partisan nomination of the committees. A speaker having thought it right to confine himself to his proper duties, anarchy prevailed and legislation was at a standstill till a masterful and unscrupulous partisan got into the chair, when legislation and expenditure marched with a vengeance. The advantage, we say, depends on the existence of government by party; for, were party out of the way, there seems to be no reason why a legislative assembly with a competent chairman should not get on with its business as well as an assembly of any other kind. Another plea which may be made for the Canadian system is that by a sure and constitutional process it brings the executive into agreement with the legislature and with the people by whom the legislature is elected, whereas when President Andrew Johnson entered upon a course of policy directly at variance with the policy of Congress no remedy could be found except the very rough remedy of impeachment. It is on this account that some Canadians boast that their system is more democratic than that of the Americans, and taunt the American Republic with being monarchical and even autocratic.

On the other hand, the American system gives the country ​a stable executive independent of the fluctuating majorities of the legislative chamber and of those shifting combinations, jealousies, and cabals which in France, and not in France alone, have been making it almost impossible to find a firm foundation for a government. The American Executive for the four years of the Presidential term is independent; it would be so at least were it not for the baleful influence of the power of re-election. As it is, the veto is sometimes exercised most uprightly and with the best effect, while the Presidential Government, raised in some measure above the party strife, enjoys a dignity and a measure of national respect which to the party Premiership are denied. A Canadian Premier always engaged in party fighting and manœuvring, perpetually on the stump, stoops to acts which, if done by an American President, would cause great scandal. The American system moreover has the advantage of sometimes admitting to the Cabinet and to the highest service of the State men of high administrative ability who are not party managers and rhetoricians. Such selections indeed have been not unfrequently made. Turgot would probably have been a bad Parliamentary leader and a failure on the stump: he could hardly have made his way into a Parliamentary Cabinet; but in an American Cabinet, supposing his name had become known as an administrator and a master of political science, he might have found a place. Of the Presidents themselves, several have been men who, though attached to the party by which they were nominated, had not spent their lives in the party war, and their patriotism and breadth of view have been greater on that account.

When we come to compare the Canadian Senate with its American counterpart, though the form and the nominal power are the same, the actual difference is great indeed. ​The American Senate, elected by the State Legislatures, is in the full sense of the term a co-ordinate branch of the Federal Congress with the House of Representatives, rejects the Bills passed by the House with perfect freedom, and with equal freedom initiates legislation on all subjects except finance. It has a veto on appointments, and can in this way put strong though irregular pressure on the Executive. It has a veto on all treaties, as Foreign Governments which have the misfortune to negotiate with that of the United States know to their cost. Of late, under a violent stress of party exigency, it has been bringing a stain upon its record. It has been consenting to a Tariff Bill, the folly of which no man of sense can fail to see, and doing in regard to the admission of new States and the decision of Senatorial elections what no party exigency can excuse. Faction corrupts all that it touches. There is also a growing belief that wealth exerts an undue influence both directly and indirectly in Senatorial elections. Still the power of the Senate remains the same; its authority is generally regarded by Americans as the sheet-anchor of the State, and a seat in it is, after the Presidency, the highest prize of American ambition. The Canadian Senate nominated by the Crown is, on the contrary, as nearly a cipher as it is possible for an assembly legally invested with large powers to be. The question as to the constitution of the Upper House when it came before the framers of the Dominion Constitution was not rooted in Canada for the first time. Under the old Constitution, first of the separate then of the United Provinces, the Legislative Council, as the Upper House was then called, had been nominated by the Crown. This system had been pronounced a failure and a change to the elective system was one of the reforms which followed the transfer of supreme power from the Crown to the people. ​Lord Elgin was in favour of the change, though he saw as he thought that among its advocates, with some whose aim was Conservative, there were others whose aims were "subversion and pillage." He expressed his belief "that a second legislative body returned by the same constituency as the House of Assembly under some differences with respect to time and mode of election would be a greater cheek on ill-considered legislation than the Council as it was then constituted;" and he predicted that Robert Baldwin, who opposed this with other organic changes, and having got what he imagined to be the nearest thing to the British Constitution wished to cast anchor, would, if he lived, find his ship of State among unexpected rocks and shoals. His own ideas, perhaps, were not very clear. He wished to introduce the elective principle, yet in such a way as not to exchange "Parliamentary Government," which was his idol, for "the American system," which he abjured; but in what essential respect a system with two elective Chambers and with supreme power vested in the representatives of the people would differ from the American system he might have found it difficult to explain. In 1856, however, as has been already said, the change was made and the system adopted was that of election by popular vote, the suffrage being the same as that for elections to the House of Commons, but the electoral divisions much larger, and the term eight years instead of four. The alternative of election. by Provincial legislatures of course could not present itself under the legislative union. The experiment of an Upper Chamber elected by the people appears not to have been successful, the labour of canvassing the extended electoral divisions being found so oppressive by candidates that the best men declined to come forward. It is curious that the Fathers of Confederation when they came to debate the con​stitution of their Upper House seemed to think that their only choice was between the retention of election by popular suffrage and a return to the system of nomination by the Crown. It did not occur to them apparently that as they were about to erect Provincial legislatures corresponding to the State legislatures of the Americans they might vest in these the election of the Senate. Their chief reason for rejecting the elective principle and going back to nomination appears to have been that if the Senate felt the sap of popular election in its veins, its spirit would become too high, it would claim equality as a legislative power with the House of Commons, perhaps even in regard to money bills, and collision between the Houses would ensue. But these are perils inseparable from the system of two Chambers. Wherever the power is divided between two assemblies, collision may at any time arise, and if the collision is prolonged deadlock may ensue. There has been legislative deadlock or something very like it at Washington when one of the political parties has had a majority in the House of Representatives and the other in the Senate. You cannot have the advantages of union and division of power at the same time. To construct a body which, without claiming co-ordinate authority, shall act as a Court of legislative revision, and as the sober second-thought of the community, is practically beyond the power of the political architect. He must try to ensure sobriety where he places power. To suppose that power will allow itself on important matters to be controlled by impotence is vain. Evidently the image of the House of Lords hovered before the minds of the builders of the Canadian Constitution. But the House of Lords has never acted as a court of legislative revision or as an organ of the nation's sober second-thought. It has acted as the House of a privileged order, resisting all ​change in the interest of privilege. It resisted Parliamentary reform till it was overborne by the threat of a swamping creation of peers. All the power which it retains is the power of hereditary rank and wealth. Nothing analogous to it exists or can exist in Canada, and in framing Canadian institutions it ought to have been put out of sight.

Nomination having been chosen it followed that the appointments should be for life: nothing else could give the nominees of the Crown even a semblance of independence. But the result is a nullity, or rather an addition to the number of vicious illusions, since the sense of responsibility in the Lower House may be somewhat weakened by the impression, however false, that its acts are subject to revision. The Senate is treated with ironical respect as the Upper House and surrounded with derisive state. The decorations of its Chamber surpass those of the Commons' Chamber as the decorations of the Lords' Chamber surpass those of the Commons' Chamber at Westminster. The members sit in gilded chairs, are styled Honourable, and on all ceremonial occasions take precedence of the holders of real power. But these, like the observance paid to the Governor-General and his Vicegerents, are merely the trappings of impotence. The Senate neither initiates nor controls important legislation. After meeting for the Session it adjourns to wait for the arrival of Bills from the Commons. About once in a Session it is allowed to reject or amend some measure of secondary importance by way of showing that it lives. It is supposed to be sometimes used by the Minister who controls it for the purpose of quashing a job to which he has been obliged to assent in the Lower House. Measures of importance may sometimes be brought in first in the Upper House, for the sake of saving time, but they never originate with it. At ​the end of the Session the measures passed in the Lower House are hurried through the Upper House with hardly time enough for deliberation to save the semblance of respect for its authority. Its debates are rarely reported unless piquancy happens to be lent to them by personal altercation. Nobody dreams of looking to it for the second-thought of the nation, or imagines that in any political emergency it could serve as the sheet-anchor of the State. Men of a certain class may seek seats in it for the sake of the title, the trappings, and whatever of social grade may be attached to membership. To some possibly the annual payment of a thousand dollars and mileage may be an attraction. But Senatorships are not sought from the promptings of a generous ambition or a desire to render active service to the country. Almost the only serious business of the Senate is sitting in judgment, as the House of Lords used to do, on divorce cases, an incongruous function, exercised because the French Catholics will not allow the Dominion to have a regular Divorce Court.^[2] The experience which led under the Union to the reform of the old nominee Legislative Council and the judgment of Lord Elgin on that subject are confirmed; and it is proved that under the elective system nothing which is not based on election can have power.

It is true that the work of those who instituted the nominee Senate has hardly had a fair chance. They may have reckoned on a broad, tolerably impartial, and patriotic exercise of the power of appointment. They may have had before their minds an assembly comprehending representatives of national eminence in all lines, not the agricultural and mercantile only, but the professional, the scientific, the educa​tional, and opening its doors to men capable of doing good service in special departments of legislation, as well as of lending by their character and attainments dignity to the Legislature, but without inclination or aptitude for the party platform or the turmoil of popular elections. Even the Bonapartes tried to make their Senate respectable by giving it a character of this kind. But of the seventy-six Senators of Canada, all but nine^[3] have now been nominated by a single party leader, who has excercised his power for a party purpose, if for no narrower object. "My dear P———, I want you before we take any steps about T. Y———'s appointment to see about the selection of our candidate for West Montreal. From all I can learn W. W——— will run the best. He will very likely object; but if he is the best man you can easily hint to him that if he runs for West Montreal and carries it, we will consider that he has a claim to an early seat in the Senate. This is the great object of his ambition." This letter, from a Prime Minister to a local party manager, illustrates at once the sort of work which a Canadian Prime Minister does and the principle upon which he uses his power of appointment to the Senate. Money spent for the party in election contests and faithful adherence to the person of its chief, especially when he most needs support against the moral sentiment of the public, are believed to be the surest titles to a seat in the Canadian House of Lords. If there is ever a show of an impartial appointment it is illusory. When the expenditure of money is a leading qualification, commerce is pretty sure to be well represented. But no one will pretend that the general eminence of Canada is represented by its Senate. No intel​lectual or scientific distinction finds a place, while illiteracy scarcely excludes those who have served a party leader well. The age of the members as a body would in itself preclude active work. It will be seen from the letter just quoted that the Prime Minister treats the Governor-General as a perfect cipher in regard to these appointments, and looks upon the patronage as entirely his own. Propose that a party leader shall in his own name nominate one branch of the Legislature and you will be met with a shout of indignation; but under the name of the Crown a Prime Minister is allowed to nominate a branch of the Legislature without protest of any kind. Such is the use of fictions!

A life tenure, though it makes a nominee more independent than a tenure for a term of years, does not make him entirely independent of the power which created him, though it does make him entirely independent of the people and of public opinion. He is still eligible for political office as well as for a baronetcy or a knighthood. He has sons and nephews. The other day a controversy having arisen about the quality of cloth furnished to the Militia for uniforms, it transpired that the contractor was a member of the Senate. In the case of the British House of Lords general independence is secured, apart from any mode of political appointment, by hereditary rank and wealth, and there is usually nothing to be feared but the bias of the privileged order.

That of seventy-six members all but nine would ever be the nominees of a single party leader the framers of the Constitution can hardly have anticipated. But they did anticipate a preponderance of different parties in the two Houses which might bring on a collision and a deadlock. Against this they tried to provide by an expedient borrowed from the British method of constitutionally coercing ​the House of Lords. To swamp an adverse majority in the Senate a Minister is allowed to create three or six extra Senators. The device is both clumsy and invidious, besides being open to exception as a recognition of the party principle. But weighted down as the scale now is with the following of a single politician, an additional creation of six would have no perceptible effect upon the balance. If the other party should come into office, and the Senate under the influence of the Outs should be inclined to give trouble to the Ins, there is no way of bringing it to its senses short of a revolution. Instead of being a mere cipher, it may possibly become an active source of evil if it ever allows itself to be used as an engine by the man to whom the majority of its members owe their nominations, for the purpose of embarrassing the Government when he is out of power.

In imitation of the Constitution of the United States, which recognises the federal principle by giving two Senators to each State without regard to population, the Canadian Act of Federation assigned an equal number of senators (24) to each of the great divisions of the Dominion, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces. Provision was made for the extension of the principle to provinces thereafter to be admitted.

As the Senate was to be distinctively federal, representing the provinces, the House of Commons was to be national, representing the people of the whole Dominion. In the House of Commons and the Ministers whose tenure of office depends upon its vote supreme power centres. In this the Canadian Constitution is a faithful copy of that of Great Britain. But copying the Constitution of Great Britain not for Canada only, but for all communities like Canada, is perilous work unless they understand their model more ​distinctly than it is understood at home. The House of Commons was not originally intended to be the Government or even the Legislature. The Government resided in the Crown, and the House of Commons was merely the representation of the people summoned by the Crown to grant it money, and at the same time to inform it about the state and wants of the country. Through its hold over the purse it gradually drew to it supreme power and in effect became the State. But it at the same time ceased to be in reality a popular assembly, and became, though in irregular and illegitimate ways, a representation of the wealth and high political intelligence of the nation. In this phase of its existence it was oligarchical, no doubt, and legislated in the interest of a class, but it was a powerful and dignified assembly capable of governing the country. It was enabled to be what it was because England had a large leisure class at liberty to devote itself to public life and to serve the country without wages. It is now as a consequence of democratic change rapidly losing this character, and it is at the same time becoming an anarchy and a bear-garden incapable either of legislation or of government, incapable even of putting down the feeblest rebellion or preserving the integrity of the nation. A commercial colony has no such class as that which supplied the members of the House of Commons in the palmy days of that body. It has very few men of wealth and leisure, still fewer of those who, having inherited wealth, are at liberty from their youth, if they possess the sense of duty or the ambition, to devote themselves to politics. The chiefs of commerce, the leading manufacturers and the bankers, the lawyers and physicians who are in good practice, the most substantial and the wealthiest members of the community generally, cannot afford to leave their business ​and spend four months of every year in rather petty politics at Ottawa, to say nothing of the drafts made upon their time by canvassing, correspondence with constituents, and the fell demands of the stump. It is necessary therefore to have recourse for politicians to an inferior class of men, and too often to those who have failed in other industries or prefer living on the public to living by the sweat of their brows. Go to one of these assemblies, look behind the thin line of ability or of political experience presented by the front bench, and you will see the connection of effect with cause. Business interests and the necessity of looking after legislation which affects their trades will draw to Parliament a certain number of commercial men, and these probably will be about the best material that you will get, though they are not likely to be statesmen, while they are likely to have interests of their own. This is not a criticism upon the work of the framers of the Canadian Constitution alone; it applies to the whole system of governing through supposed imitations of the British House of Commons.

When you have in making up your legislature to call in the country lawyer, the country doctor, the storekeeper, the farmer, the payment of members plainly becomes a necessity. The salary of a thousand dollars and mileage is small, but it is enough to tempt a man hanging rather loose upon industry, or a country practitioner with little practice. Advocates of the system assume the case to be, that the electors having chosen a poor man for his worth it is requisite in order to secure to them his services to give him a salary, whereas the fact may be, that the salary induces the poor man to compass heaven and earth in order to press himself on the electors. To French members, whose habits are very frugal, the indemnity is said to be sometimes a livelihood, and there is ​reason to believe that their unwillingness to risk the loss of it forms something of a practical check upon the Minister's use of the power of dissolution, Public men of the higher stamp have been heard to condemn the system as apt to call into activity local intriguers who devote themselves to capturing beforehand the favour of the constituency, and close the avenue against worthier candidates whom the election day might otherwise bring forward. The revolutionary party in England appears to have taken up payment of members as a democratic measure. It is democratic with a vengeance, and is a pretty sure way of turning the highest of callings into a trade not so high. Still where there is no leisure class, or where the leisure class is excluded from public life, as a needy man cannot live on his sense of duty, you have to choose between paying him regularly and letting him pay himself in irregular ways. Of the two evils the first is clearly the less.

Among the American errors, of which even Liberals who took part in founding the Canadian Confederation promised themselves to steer clear, was universal suffrage. Canadian suffrage in those days was comparatively conservative, the qualification being practically ownership of a freehold, which was not beyond the reach of any industrious and frugal man. But the inevitable Dutch auction has been going on, alike in Dominion and in Provincial politics, and it is evident that to universal suffrage—to manhood suffrage at least—Dominion and Provinces will soon come. Already they have come to its very verge. Thus power will be transferred from the freehold farmers to people far less conservative, and at the same time from the country to the city. It has already been mentioned that the public school system does its work but imperfectly in educating the dangerous ​class. As in Great Britain so in Canada, the politicians who style themselves Conservatives vie in the competition with those who call themselves Liberals, and like their compeers at Westminster "dish the Whigs." It was a Conservative Minister that extended the franchise to Indians, who, it was anticipated, would have patriotism and intelligence enough, if proper inducements were held out to them, to vote for the Government candidate. The same Minister attempted, probably with the same strategical motive, to give the franchise to women, but the conservatism of his French supporters, in regard to the relations of the sexes, forced him to withdraw his proposal.

Canadian politics are also exemplifying a weakness of democracy which though little noticed by political writers is very serious—its tendency to narrow localism in elections. In the United States the localism is complete, and the ablest and most popular of public men, if he happens to live in a district where the other party has the majority, is excluded from public life. In England, before the recent democratic changes, places were found on the list of candidates for all the men of mark, wherever they might happen to live, and a good many non-residents are still elected, though localism has evidently been gaining ground. In Canada there is a chance still for a non-resident if he holds the public purse, perhaps if he holds a very well-filled purse of his own, but as a rule localism prevails. Even the Prime Minister of Ontario, after wielding power and dispensing patronage for eighteen years, encounters grumbling in his constituency because he is a non-resident. A resident in one electoral division of Toronto would be rather at a disadvantage as a candidate in another division, though the unity of the city, commercial and social, is complete. The mass of the people ​into whose hands power has now passed naturally think much less of great questions, political or economical, than of their own local and personal interests; of these they deem a local man the best champion, and they feel that they can correspond more freely about them with him than with a stranger. Besides they like to keep the prize among themselves. Such, in the exercise of supreme power, are the real tendencies of those whom collectively we worship as the people. That the calibre of the representation must be lowered by localism is evident; it will be more lowered than ever when the rush of population, especially of the wealthy part of it, to the cities shall have concentrated intelligence there and denuded of it the rural districts. The Hare plan, of a national instead of a district ticket, would immensely raise the character of the representation if it could be worked; but it assumes a level of intelligence in the mass of the people far above what is likely for many a generation to be attained. In the meantime as, on the one hand, the local man represents the choice of nobody outside his own district, and on the other hand men are excluded by localism whom the nation at large would elect, the net outcome can hardly be with truth described as an assembly representing the nation.

But the most important point of all in the case of Canada, as in that of every other Parliamentary country, is one to which scarcely an allusion was made in the debate on Confederation, and of which the only formal recognition is the division of the seats in the Halls of Parliament. Regulate the details of your Constitution as you will, the real government now is Party; politics are a continual struggle between the parties for power; no measure of importance can be carried except through a party; the public issues of ​the day are those which the party managers for the purposes of the party war make up; no one who does not profess allegiance to a party has any chance of admission to public life. Let a candidate come forward with the highest reputation for ability and worth, but avowing himself independent of party and determined to vote only at the bidding of his reason and conscience for the good of the whole people, he would run but a poor race in any Canadian constituency. If independence ever presumes to show its face in the political field the managers and organisers of both parties take their hands for a moment from each other's throats and combine to crush the intruder, as two gamblers might spring up from the table and draw their revolvers on any one who threatened to touch the stakes. They do this usually by tacit consent, but they have been known to do it by actual agreement. What then is Party? We all know Burke's definition, though it should be remembered that Burke on this, as on other occasions not a few, fits his philosophy to the circumstances, which were those of a member of a political connection struggling for power against a set of men who called themselves the King's friends and wished to put all connections under the feet of the King. But Burke's definition implies the existence of some organic question or question of principle, with regard to which the members of the party agree among themselves and differ from their opponents. Such agreement and difference alone can reconcile party allegiance with patriotism, or submission to party discipline with loyalty to reason and conscience. Organic questions or questions of principle are not of everyday occurrence. When they are exhausted, as in a country with a written constitution they are likely soon to be, what bond is there, of a moral and rational kind, to hold a party together ​and save it from becoming a mere faction? The theory that every community is divided by nature, or as the language of some would almost seem to imply, by divine ordinance, into two parties, and that every man belongs from his birth to one party or the other, if it were not a ludicrously patent example of philosophy manufactured for the occasion, would be belied by the history of Canadian parties with their kaleidoscopic shiftings and of Canadian politicians who have been found by turns in every camp. Lord Elgin, coming to the governorship when the struggle for responsible government was over, and a lull in organic controversy had ensued, found, as his biographer tells us, that parties formed themselves not on broad issues of principle, but with reference to petty local and personal interests. On what could they form themselves if there was no broad issue before the country? Elgin himself complained, as we have seen, that his ministers were impressed with the belief that the object of the Opposition was to defeat their measures, right or wrong, that the malcontents of their own side would combine against them, and that they must appeal to personal and sordid motives if they wished to hold their own. That is the game which is played in Canada, as it is in the United States, as it is in every country under party government, by the two organised factions—machines, as they are aptly called; the prize being the Government with its patronage, and the motive powers being those common more or less to all factions—personal ambition, bribery of various kinds, open or disguised, and as regards the mass of the people, a pugnacious and sporting spirit, like that which animated the Blues and Greens of the Byzantine Circus. This last influence is not by any means the least powerful. It is astonishing with what tenacity a Canadian farmer adheres to his party Shibboleth when to him, ​as well as to the community at large, it is a Shibboleth and nothing more. Questions of principle, about which public feeling has been greatly excited, questions even of interest which appeal most directly to the pocket, pass out of sight when once the word to start is given, and the race between Blue and Green begins. Questions as to the character of candidates are unhappily also set aside. It is commonly said that Canada produces more politics to the acre than any other country. The more of politics there is the less unfortunately there is of genuine public spirit and manly readiness to stand up for public right, the more men fear to be in a minority, even in what they know to be a good cause. People flock to any standard which they believe is attracting votes; if they find that it is not, they are scattered like sheep. Political aspirants learn from their youth the arts of the vote-hunter; they learn to treat all questions as political capital, and to play false with their own understanding and conscience at the bidding of the wirepullers of their party. The entrance to public life is not through the gate of truth or honour. These are not peculiarities of Canada; they are things common to all countries where the party system prevails, and peculiar only in their intensity to those countries in which party is inordinately strong.

It is a necessity of the party system that the Cabinet is made up not of eminent administrators, but of men who are masters of votes or skilful in collecting them. One minister represents the French vote, another the Irish Catholic vote, a third the Orange vote, a fourth the Temperance vote. The Ministry of Finance in a commercial country is consigned to a star of the philanthropic platform. Next to gathering votes by management the chief attribute of statesmanship is effectiveness on the stump. Hardly a public man in Canada ​has a high reputation as an administrator. The Prime Minister notoriously pays little attention to his department. He speaks on great public questions, such as the fiscal system, only to show that he has not much given his mind to them. His title to his place is that of unique experience and unrivalled dexterity in the collection and combination of votes. In all this Canada only resembles other Parliamentary countries, but in analysing a particular set of institutions it is necessary to recall the general facts.

The absence in the debate on Confederation of any attempt to forecast the composition and action of Federal parties fatally detracts from the value of the discussion. If Australia or any other group of Colonies thinks of following the example of Canada, a forecast, as definite as the nature of the case will permit, of Federal parties will be at least as essential to the formation of a right judgment as the knowledge of anything relating to the machinery of the Constitution.

Party government necessarily brings with it a party Press, with its well-known characteristics, in which the party Press of Canada has certainly not been behind its compeers. Of late an independent journalism has been struggling into existence and giving some expression to opinions unsanctioned by the party machines. Questions, such as that of the Jesuits' Estates Act, on which the politicians were tongue-tied, have in this way been freely treated, and men who would never receive a party nomination have been enabled on such questions to take a share of public life.

The best apology for Party is one which at the same time, in the case of Canada as in every other case, discloses an almost fatal weakness in the whole elective system of government. The system theoretically assumes that the electors ​will lay their heads together to choose the best men. Practically, it is impossible for the electors to do anything of the kind. They are a multitude of people unknown for the most part to each other, without anything to bring them together, and without any power of setting a candidature on foot. The best qualified are not likely, perhaps they are of all the least likely, to come forward of themselves. An organisation of some sort there must be to bring a candidate forward and collect votes for him, and it is difficult to devise any other sort of organisation than Party. The inevitable results of this, however, are the domination of faction, with all its malignity, its violence, its corruption, its calumny, its recklessness of the common weal; the ascendency of the Caucus and of Mr. Schnadhorst; government of the people by the people, and for the people, in name, government of the Boss, by the Boss, and for the Boss, in reality. The consequence in England is nearly half the House of Commons trooping out behind a party leader, and under the lash of the party whip, to vote against their recorded convictions for the dismemberment of their country. The fruits of the system in Canada, and everywhere else, are of the same kind. In Canada, as elsewhere, though there are honourable men in public life, the standard of morality which ought to be the highest in politics is in politics the lowest. The community is saved by its general character, by its schools, its churches, its judiciary; by the authority which chiefs, generally worthy, and always more or less able, exercise over industrial and commercial life. By its elective polity it would scarcely be saved.

The partition of power giving the civil law to the Provinces and the criminal law to the Dominion, whereas by the American Constitution both are given to the States, does not seem very reasonable in itself. The same legislative ​intellect is required in both cases, nor is the boundary between the two lines clearly defined. But this was a necessary concession to Quebec, who clings to her French law as a pledge of her national existence. It has been already mentioned that the absence of divorce courts is a concession to the same influence.

The structure of the provincial governments and legislatures generally, with their constitutional Lieutenant-Governors, their Parliamentary Premiers and Cabinet, is the same as that of the Dominion government and legislature, though on a small scale. Like the Governor-General, the Lieutenant-Governor is a figurehead, and constitutional writers who say that he has the assistance of an Executive Council to aid and advise him in administering public affairs, might say the same thing with equal truth of his flagstaff. Identical also is the procedure, and so is the ceremony, so far as any ceremony is retained. But Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia—democracy apparently becoming more intense as it goes west—have done away with the Upper House. In other provinces, as in Nova Scotia, efforts have been made to abolish the Upper House, as a waste of public money, but the House clings to its existence. Members nominated on the special condition that they shall vote for abolition, when they have taken their seats, find reasons for endless delay. No proprietor of a rotten borough ever clung to his political property with more tenacity than a democrat clings to any anomaly in which he has an interest. The change to a single house, if not material in itself, brings clearly to view the fact that a heavy responsibility is cast on these bodies of municipal legislators, which by a single vote can in one night enact the most momentous change in anything connected with civil right or property, totally ​alter the law of wills, or profoundly modify the relations between the sexes by the introduction of female suffrage. The Legislature of Ontario once broke a will at the solicitation of parties interested, though the Courts of Law found a reason for treating the Act as void. The Governor of a State in the American Union has a real veto, which he exercises freely. A governor put his veto not long ago on a Bill passed in a moment of heedlessness, which would have subverted the civil status of marriage. Moreover no amendment can be made in the Constitution of an American State, no extension of the State franchise can take place, without submission to the people. This is a great safeguard. The general disposition of the people is against change. In other respects the experience of Switzerland in regard to the Referendum is confirmed by that of the United States. At all events the people are not accessible to personal influence or cajolery as individual legislators are, while the issue being submitted to them separately, and not mixed up with other issues, as is the case at general elections, can be better grasped by their intelligence. Nominally the Lieutenant-Governor of a province has a veto, really he has none; and once more we see the pernicious effect of constitutional figments in veiling real necessities. Political architects in the United States, looking democracy in the face, attempted at all events to provide the necessary safeguards. At first, under the Canadian Constitution, the same man could sit both in the Dominion and the Provincial Legislatures. Provincial Legislatures were led by men who sat in that of the Dominion. But, by a self-denying ordinance (1872), the wisdom of which was perhaps as questionable as that of self-denying ordinances in general, it is now forbidden to any man to sit in more Legislatures than one. This change increases the demand on the not very ​abundant stock of legislative capacity in the country, lowers the quality of the Provincial Legislatures, and enhances the peril of committing vital questions to their hands. The farmer, the country practitioner, or the village lawyer, are good representatives, we are told, of the average mind; they may be, but to solve aright problems at once the most difficult and the most momentous something more than the average mind is required. Perhaps the advocate of the party system may find a specious argument in the subordination which it entails of the rank and file of a legislative assembly on each side to the party leader, who is likely to be a man of superior intellect and knowledge. The leaders are usually lawyers, and acquainted with the British statute book, which forms a lamp to guide their feet in the legislative path. Yet lawyers complain of the Ontario statute book, and the need of a government draftsman seems to be felt.

The function of interpreting the Constitution in the last resort, and keeping each of the Powers within its proper bounds, discharged in the United States by that august tribunal the Supreme Court, is discharged in the case of Canada, as of the other colonies, by that still more august tribunal, the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council, with its romantic range of jurisdiction, now deciding who shall take a Hindoo inheritance and offer the family sacrifice to a Hindoo deity, now pronouncing on the validity of an excommunication laid on by the Roman Catholic Church of Quebec. In the integrity and ability of the Judicial Committee absolute confidence is felt; but a doubt is sometimes raised whether judges ignorant of Canada can place themselves exactly at the right point of view, and complaints are heard of the distance and the expense. To spare suitors in these respects was partly the object in giving Canada a ​Supreme Court, which intercepts not a little of the litigation; and which, if the Canadian Confederation ever becomes independent, will be to it what the Supreme Court is to the United States. The Judicial Committee, though a legal, not a political tribunal, perhaps does not leave considerations of statesmanship entirely out of sight. In deciding questions between the Dominion and the Provinces it seems to have leant to the side of Provincial autonomy, as most conducive to the peace of the Confederation, much as in ecclesiastical cases it leans to comprehension in the interest of the stability of the Church.

The American Constitution is subject to amendment, as we know, though by a very guarded process. So much of the Canadian Constitution as is composed in the Act of Confederation can be amended only by the same authority by which the Act was passed, that of the Imperial Parliament. This amounts almost to practical immutability, for the Imperial Parliament, sinking beneath the burden of its own business, has no time or thought to bestow on the improvement of colonial institutions. That power of Constitutional amendment, without which there cannot be full liberty of self-development, Canada can hardly hope to acquire without the severance of the political connection.

More than one good thing in her polity Canada has derived from her specially English traditions. She has in the first place a permanent Civil Service which saves her from the Spoils System introduced in the United States by that incarnation of faction and mob-rule, General Jackson, whose victory at New Orleans, as it made him President and filled American politics with his spirit, though he lost not a score of men in the action, is the most dearly bought victory in history. Party in Canada does not, as in England, quite ​keep its hands off the Civil Service. It practically takes the appointments, for though there is an examination system, this is so managed as to be like the sugar-tongs which the Frenchman held, in compliment to the habit of his English hosts, while he slipped his fingers between them to take up the sugar. Vacancies are also made for partisans by superannuations, and a Collectorship of Customs has just been kept open for two years to suit the political convenience of the Government. Still Canada, compared with the United States, is free from the Spoils System. To the heads of her permanent Civil Service she owes it that while government, in the persons of the Parliamentary heads of departments, is on the stump, or dickering for votes, she enjoys the general benefits of a regular and intelligent administration. In the second place, election petitions are tried as in England by the judges, and with the same good results, while in the American House of Representatives contested elections are decided as they were in England in the days before the Grenville Act, by a party vote. In the third place, the judges themselves are appointed by the Executive for life, instead of being, as they are in most American States, though not in all or in the case of the Supreme Court, elected by the people for a term of years; a system of which the Americans themselves feel the evils, and which they are disposed to modify by lengthening the judge's term. England Party has now resigned to professional merit most of the appointments to the judiciary. This is not the case in Canada, though a few impartial appointments have been made.

The Americans, when their Confederation was framed, wisely closed all pecuniary accounts between the Federal Government and the States, and absolutely separated the Federal Treasury from those of the States. The Canadians ​not so wisely left the account open and permitted subventions to be granted by the Central Government to the Provinces. The consequences are, as might have been expected, continual demands for increased subventions, under the too-familiar mame of "Better Terms," the opening of a sluice of Federal corruption, and the weakening of Provincial independence. Each Province, especially Quebec and the poorer Provinees, instead of practising economy and helping itself, is always looking for Goverment doles. Mr. George Brown, one of the chief framers, foresaw this, and was for defraying the whole of the local expenditures of the local governments by means of direct taxation, but the Sons of Zeruiah were too strong for him. "Whether the constitution of the Provincial Executive savours at all of Responsible Government or not," said Mr. Dunkin in the Debates on Confederation, "be sure it will not be anxious to bring itself more under the control of the Legislature, or to make itself more odious than it can help, and the easiest way for it to get money will be from the General Government. I am not sure, either, but that most members of the Provincial Legislature will like it that way the best. It will not be at all unpopular, the getting of money so. Quite the contrary. Gentlemen will go to their constituents with an easy conscience, telling them, 'True, we had not much to do in the Provincial Legislature, and you need not ask us very closely what we did; but I tell you what, we got the Federal Government to increase the subvention to our Province by five cents a-head, and see what this gives you—$500 to that road—$1000 to that charity—so much here, so much there. That we have done; and have we not done well?' I am afraid in many constituencies the answer would be, 'Yes, you have done well; go and do it again.' I am afraid the provincial constituencies, legislatures, and ​executives, will all show a most calf-like appetite for the milking of this one magnificent government cow." Practically the cow has been Ontario, the wealthiest by far as well as the most populous of all the Provinces, but politically weaker, because more divided by faction, than Quebec.

The Imperial Government retains a veto on all Dominion legislation, though not on the legislation of the Provinces, which is liable to disallowance by the Dominion Government alone. But so far as the internal legislation of Canada is concerned, the Imperial veto is like that veto of the British Sovereign on British legislation, which since the time of William III has slept the sleep that knows no waking. Competent judges seem to think that, let Canada do what she will within herself, even if she chose to indulge in a civil war, the Colonial Office will interpose no more. She has legalised marriage with a dead wife's sister, while in the United Kingdom such marriages remain illegal. She has adopted a tariff adverse to the mother country. It is only when Canadian legislation comes into direct collision with British rights, as in the case of copyright, that restraint is attempted, and even in the case of copyright it is not patiently borne.

Foreign relations, of course, with the power of peace and war, remain in the hands of the Imperial Government. But Canada has gone a long way towards the attainment of diplomatic independence in regard to commercial policy. She is allowed to negotiate commercial treaties for herself under the auspices of the British Foreign Office, and subject to Imperial treaty obligations. In the everlasting imbroglio about the fisheries her Government has a voice which it naturally uses in the way dictated by its own interests, political as well as commercial. A motion was made two ​sessions ago for the appointment of a representative of Canada, who would practically have been an ambassador, at Washington, but was defeated by the Government majority.

England sends out a general to command the militia, but the last two generals have had troubled lives, and nativism is claiming the appointment as its own. The disposal of the forces belongs to the Canadian Government.

It seems almost incredible that either the relation of a Canadian province to the Dominion, or that of the Dominion to the Imperial country, should have been seriously cited as a precedent for the relation which Mr. Gladstone's Bill would have established between the Sovereign Parliament of Great Britain and his vassal Parliament of Ireland. Break the whole of the United Kingdom to pieces, give each piece the rights of a Canadian Province, put a federal government like that of the Dominion over them all, and you will have a counterpart of the Canadian polity. No Canadian Province would rest content with such a position as that of a vassal community paying tribute, but with only a local assembly and no share in the councils of the nation, although the Canadian Provinces were drawn together by a common desire for closer union, at least on the part of their political leaders, whereas Ireland would set out with revolt burning in her veins. The only analogy capable of being cited on the Irish question which Canada presents is the relation between the Roman Catholic majority and the Protestant minority in Quebec, and this is not in favour of leaving the Protestant minority in Ireland to the tender mercies of a Roman Catholic Parliament there.

In passing it may be remarked that before analogies are drawn for the guidance of statesmen in dealing with such problems as that of Ireland, either from Canadian or American ​institutions, and before it is assumed that federation is the universal cure, it would be well to consider how far such a thing as a genuine federation now exists. The Achæan League was a federation, inasmuch as it was a combination for mutual defence, the States still remaining separate; so originally was the Swiss Bund. But the Swiss Bund now is a nation with a federal structure. So is the American Republic. Railways, telegraphs, commerce between States, the action of federal parties, and other unifying influences, whatever the Constitution may say, have made the Americans a nation. There will presently be a national marriage law, and it will very likely be followed by a uniform commercial code, the want of which is greatly felt by commercial men or companies doing business over the whole Union or in several States. Against the course of nature the Jeffersonian Democrat protests in vain. Mr. Parnell has announced that his aim is to put Ireland on the footing of a State in the American Union. Let him first ascertain what practically as well as constitutionally that footing is. The Central Government of Canada, as we have seen, has national powers, such as that of criminal legislation, and by the Constitution it has a national veto. Germany is a nation in process of construction. Austria and Scandinavia are uneasy wedlocks without union.

The Canadian Constitution belongs mainly, not wholly, to the written class. Its framers declared that the Government under it was "to be administered according to the well-understood principles of the British Constitution," thereby recognising "understandings" as a virtual part of it. The most important understanding, of course, was that the Sovereign, in whom the Government was solemnly proclaimed to be vested, should not govern at all. We have had occasion in reference to the exercise of the prerogative of dissolution ​to notice how precarious is an understanding in a land where tradition has no force and every one goes to the full length of his tether. A written Constitution strictly limiting everyone's powers appears to be an exigency of democracy with which the British democracy itself will have some day to comply.

Ottawa, which was chosen as the capital of the United Canadas, and retained as that of the Confederation, is an official city, and can never be anything else. Its only commerce is lumber, which, as the forests are cut down, is a receding trade, and there is nothing to draw general residence to it. Its climate combines the extremes of heat and cold. When selected it was simply the nearest lumber village to the Pole. The motives for the selection appear to have been three—fear of the rivalry among the great cities, Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto, fear of mobs such as that which had burned the Parliament House at Montreal, and fear of American invasion if the capital were too near the frontier. For the fear of mobs there was little ground, and against American invasion the distance of a few days' march would scarcely be a sufficient barrier. The best reason was the beauty of the site, on a bluff over the Ottawa river, of which the buildings are not unworthy. Washington, till lately, was in like manner a merely official city without commerce or society; but it is now becoming the social centre of the continent, while the haggard ugliness of thirty years ago is being changed into remarkable beauty. Polities and politicians, especially politicians of the rural class, need the tempering criticism and the refining influence of general society, while the combination of interests and ideas—political, commercial, literary, professional, and social—in London or Paris, is a school of public character and thought. The ​Supreme Court which sits at Ottawa is said to suffer by the absence of a resident Bar. A mistake was made in not following the American example and federalising the district in which the capital stands. It is an anomaly that the federal capital should be in provincial jurisdiction, and that the Legislature should be dependent on provincial authorities for the maintenance of order at its doors. It is from Ottawa evidently that the journals and reviews in England mainly receive their accounts of men, affairs, and sentiment in Canada. With all respect for "our own correspondent" we may be permitted to observe that the official world of Ottawa is naturally loyal to itself, and that not all Canada is official.

If the North-West prospers and is peopled, the centre of political power will shift to the centre of the continent, and Ottawa as a capital will then be misplaced. But before this can happen other changes will most likely come.