he believed "that the interests of the people of these provinces
require the protection of prerogatives which have not hitherto been
exercised." But he recognized the fact as a constitutional statesman
that "the crown must, on the other hand, submit to the necessary
consequences of representative institutions; and if it has to carry on
the government in unison with a representative body, it must consent
to carry it on by means of those in whom that representative body has
confidence." He found it impossible "to understand how any English
statesman could have ever imagined that representative and
irresponsible government could be successfully combined." To suppose
that such a system would work well there "implied a belief that French
Canadians have enjoyed representative institutions for half a century
without acquiring any of the characteristics of a free people; that
Englishmen renounce every political opinion and feeling when they
enter a colony, or that the spirit of Anglo-Saxon freedom is utterly
changed and weakened among those who are transplanted across the
Atlantic."

No one who studies carefully the history of responsible government
from the appearance of Lord Durham's report and Lord John Russell's
despatches of 1839 until the coming of Lord Elgin to Canada in 1847,
can fail to see that there was always a doubt in the minds of the
imperial authorities--a doubt more than once actually expressed in the
instructions to the governors--whether it was possible to work the new
system on the basis of a governor directly responsible to the parent
state and at the same time acting under the advice of ministers
directly responsible to the colonial parliament. Lord John Russell had
been compelled to recognize the fact that it was not possible to
govern Canada by the old methods of administration--that it was
necessary to adopt a new colonial policy which would give a larger
measure of political freedom to the people and ensure greater harmony
between the executive government and the popular assemblies. Mr.
Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, was appointed
governor-general with the definite objects of completing the union of
the Canadas and inaugurating a more liberal system of colonial
administration. As he informed the legislature of Upper Canada
immediately after his arrival, in his anxiety to obtain its consent to
the union, he had received "Her Majesty's commands to administer the
government of these provinc