or his removal. He was accused of partisanship towards his
ministers. The federal prime minister, Sir John Macdonald, assented
reluctantly, it is said, to the dismissal. But some of the facts are
still obscure. The status of the office and the causes that would
warrant removal were thus given by Macdonald at Quebec, according to
the imperfect report which has come down to us:

The office must necessarily be during pleasure. The person may break
down, misbehave, etc.... The lieutenant-governor will be a very high
officer. He should be independent of the federal government, except as
to removal for cause, and it is necessary that he should not be
removable by any new political party. It would destroy his
independence. He should only be removable upon an address from the
legislature.

The power of disallowance, the third expedient for curbing the
provinces, was exercised with {71} some freedom down to 1888. In that
year a Quebec measure, the Jesuits' Estates Act, with a highly
controversial preamble calculated to provoke a war of creeds, was not
disallowed, although protests were carried past parliament to the
governor-general personally. The incident directed attention to the
previous practice at Ottawa under both parties and a new era of
non-intervention was inaugurated. Disallowance is now rare, except
where Imperial interests are affected, and never occurs on the ground
of the policy or impolicy of the measure. The provinces, as a matter
of practice, are free within their limits to legislate as they please.
But the Dominion as a self-governing state has long passed the stage
where the clashing of provincial and federal jurisdictions could shake
the constitution.

When the conference, however, considered provincial powers it went to
the root of a federal system. The maritime delegates as a whole
displayed magnanimity and statesmanship. Brown, as the champion of
Upper Canada, was concerned to see that the interests of his own
province were amply secured. He held radical views. When he spoke,
the calm surface of the conference, where a moderate and essentially
conservative {72} constitutionalism sat entrenched, may have been
ruffled. The following is from the summary which has been preserved of
one of his speeches:[2]

As to local governments, we desire in Upper Canada that they should not
be expensive, and should not take up political matters. We ought not
to have two electoral bodies. Only