ssly
reserved the King's right to levy "such duties as it may be expedient to
impose for the regulation of commerce," the sum so raised to be retained
for the use of the Colony. No one made the more comprehensive deduction,
even in the case of wholly British Upper Canada, that Colonial affairs
should be controlled by Colonial opinion, constitutionally ascertained,
and that the British Governor should act primarily through advisers
chosen by the majority of the people under his rule. We must bear in
mind that, had Grattan's Parliament been reformed, and the warring races
in Ireland been brought into harmony, it would still have had to pass
through the crucial phase of establishing its right to choose Ministers
by whose advice the Lord-Lieutenant should be guided, that is, if it
were to become a true Home Rule Parliament of the kind we aim at to-day.

From the date of the Constitutional Act passed for Canada in 1791, it
took fifty-six troubled years and an armed rebellion in each Province to
establish the principle of what we call "responsible Government" for
Canada, and, through Canada, for the rest of the white Colonies of the
Empire. During these fifty-six years, which correspond in Irish history
to a period dating from the middle of Grattan's Parliament down to the
great Famine, ascendancies, with the symptoms of disease which always
attended ascendancies, grew up in Canada, as they had in Ireland, in
spite of conditions which were far more favourable in Canada to healthy
political growth. Canada started with this great advantage over Ireland,
that instead of a corrupt parody of a Parliament, each of her Provinces,
under the Constitutional Act of 1791, had a real popular Assembly,
elected without regard to race or religion. It was the Upper House or
Legislative Council, as it was called, that interposed the first
obstacle to the free working of popular institutions. In both Provinces
this Council was nominated by the Governor, and could be used, and was
naturally used, to represent minority interests and obstruct the popular
assembly. Fox had correctly prophesied that it would soon come "to
inspire hatred and contempt." But he did not mean that such a chamber
was in itself an insuperable bar to harmony. Nominated or hereditary
second chambers are not necessarily inconsistent with popular
government, provided that the Executive Government itself possesses the
confidence of the representative Assembly. Under that lever,