ving the executive council elected for three years--by
the assembly, we may assume, though the imperfect report before us does
not state so--and also of giving the lieutenant-governor the right of
dismissing any of its members when the house was not sitting. Mr. Brown
consequently appears to have been the advocate, so far as the provinces
were concerned, of principles that prevail in the federal republic
across the border. He opposed the introduction of responsible
government, as it now obtains, in all the provinces of the Dominion,
while conceding its necessity for the central government.

[4: Mr. Joseph Pope, for years the able confidential secretary of Sir
John Macdonald, has edited and published all the official documents
bearing on the origin and evolution of the British North America Act of
1867; but despite all the ability and fidelity he has devoted to the
task the result is most imperfect and unsatisfactory on account of the
absence of any full or exact original report of proceedings.]

We gather from the report of discussions that the Prince Edward Island
delegates hesitated from the beginning to enter a union where their
province would necessarily have so small a numerical representation--one
of the main objections which subsequently operated against the island
coming into the confederation. With respect to education we see that it
was Mr., afterwards Sir, Alexander Galt, who was responsible for the
provision in the constitution which gives the general government and
parliament a certain control over provincial legislation in case the
rights of a Protestant or a Roman Catholic minority are prejudicially
affected. The minutes on this point are defective, but we have the
original motion on the subject, and a note of Sir John Macdonald himself
that it was passed, with the assent of all the provinces, at the
subsequent London conference in 1867. The majority of the delegates
appear from the outset to have supported strenuously the principle which
lies at the basis of the confederation, that all powers not expressly
reserved to the provinces should appertain to the general government, as
against the opposite principle, which, as Sir John Macdonald pointed
out, had led to great difficulties in the working of the federal system
in the United States. Sir John Macdonald also, with his usual sagacity,
showed that, in all cases of conflict of jurisdiction, recourse would be
necessarily made to the courts, as was the p