cially by a simple instruction
issued to governors, that their ministries must henceforward be chosen,
in the British fashion, on the ground that they commanded the support
of a majority in the elected house; and that the governors themselves
must be guided by their advice. A crucial test of this new policy came
in 1849, when the ministers and the parliamentary majority proposed to
vote compensation for property destroyed in 1837. This to many seemed
compensation for rebels, and the indignant loyalists were urgent that
the governor, Lord Elgin, should veto it. He firmly declined to do so;
and thus gave an invaluable lesson to both parties. The Canadian
people, acting through their representatives, were now responsible for
their actions. If they chose to vote for irresponsible and dangerous
devices, they must henceforward realise that they must themselves
answer for the consequences.

Thus, within a few years of the outbreak of rebellion in two provinces,
full power had been entrusted to the rebels themselves. It was a daring
policy, only to be justified by a very confident belief in the virtues
of self-government. But it was completely and triumphantly successful.
Henceforward friction between the Canadian colonies and the
mother-country ceased: if there were grounds for complaint in the state
of Canadian affairs, the Canadians must now blame their own ministers,
and the remedy lay in their own hands. And what was the outcome? Twenty
years later the various colonies, once as full of mutual jealousies as
the American colonies had been before 1775, began to discuss the
possibility of federation. With the cordial approval and co-operation
of the home government, they drew up a scheme for the formation of a
united Dominion of Canada, including distant British Columbia and the
coastal colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island; and the adoption of this scheme, in 1867, turned Canada from a
bundle of separate settlements into a great state. To this state the
home government later made over the control of all the vast and rich
lands of the North-West, and so the destinies of half a continent
passed under its direction. It was a charge, the magnitude and
challenge of which could not but bring forth all that there was of
statesmanship among the Canadian people; and it has not failed to do so.

One feature of Canadian constitutional development remains to be noted.
It might have been expected that the Canad