of
Halifax, and to them were added the government officials, who were
usually appointed from England. Some of the latter were men of honour
and energy, but others were mere placemen in need of a job. When the
famous Countess of Blessington wished to aid one of her impecunious
Irish relations, she had only to give a smile and a few soft words to
the Duke of Wellington, and her scape-grace brother found himself
quartered for life upon the revenues of Nova Scotia. Charles Duller,
in his pamphlet _Mr Mother Country of the Colonial Office_, hardly
exaggerated when he said that 'the patronage of the Colonial Office is
the prey of every hungry department of our government. On it the Horse
Guards quarters its worn-out general officers as governors; the
Admiralty cribs its share; and jobs which even parliamentary rapacity
would blush to ask from the Treasury are perpetrated with impunity in
the silent realm of Mr Mother Country. O'Connell, we are told, after
very bluntly informing Mr Ruthven that he had committed a fraud which
would forever unfit him for the society of gentlemen {39} at home,
added, in perfect simplicity and kindness of heart, that if he would
comply with his wishes and cease to contest Kildare, he might probably
be able to get some appointment for him in the colonies.'

When the governor came out entirely ignorant of colonial conditions he
naturally fell under the influence of those with whom he dined, and as
all dealings with the British government were carried on through him,
the Council and the officials had by this means the ear of the Colonial
Office. An office-holding oligarchy thus grew up, with traditions and
prestige, and known, as in Upper Canada, by the name of the 'Family
Compact.' Nowhere did this system seem so strong as in Nova Scotia;
nowhere did its leaders show so much ability or a higher sense of
honour; nowhere did they endeavour to govern the province in so liberal
a spirit. Yet it was fundamentally un-British, and it was to be
completely overthrown by the attack of a printer's boy turned editor.

The leaders of the Family Compact in Nova Scotia were not only men of
ability and integrity, they had also a reasoned theory of government.
Their ablest exponent of this theory and the stoutest defender of the
old {40} system was Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Howe's lifelong
personal friend and political antagonist.

Haliburton was at once a scholar and a wit. In 1829 Howe published for