ed how deeply the extended view of self-government
had affected the minds of all, so that only by a serious struggle could
Sydenham's position of 1839 be recovered. But Metcalfe was an
Anglo-Indian, trained in the school of politics most directly opposed
to the democratic ways of North America. He was entirely new to
Canadian conditions; and one may watch him studying them
conscientiously, but making just those mistakes, which a clever
examination candidate would perpetrate, were he to be asked of a sudden
to turn his studies to practical account. The very robustness of his
sense of duty led him naturally to the two most contentious questions
in the field--those which concerned the responsibility of the colonial
executive government, and the place of party in dictating to the
governor-general his policy and the use to be made of his patronage.

His study of Sydenham's despatches revealed to him the contradiction
between that statesman's resolute proclamation of Russell's doctrine,
and the course of practical surrender which his actions seemed to have
followed in 1841. "In adopting {165} the very form and practice of the
Home Government, by which the principal ministers of the Crown form a
Cabinet, acknowledged by the nation as the executive administration,
and themselves acknowledging responsibility to Parliament, he rendered
it inevitable that the council here should obtain and ascribe to
themselves, in at least some degree, the character of a cabinet of
ministers."[5] In a later despatch, Metcalfe attempted to demonstrate
the inapplicability of such a form of government to a colony: "a system
of government which, however suitable it may be in an independent
state, or in a country where it is qualified by the presence of a
Sovereign and a powerful aristocracy, and by many circumstances in
correspondence with which it has grown up and been gradually formed,
does not appear to be well adapted for a colony, or for a country in
which those qualifying circumstances do not exist, and in which there
has not been that gradual progress, which tends to smooth away the
difficulties, otherwise sure to follow the confounding of the
legislative and executive powers, and the inconsistency of the practice
with the theory of the Constitution."[6]

{166}

To his mind, what Durham had advocated was infinitely sounder--"that
all officers of the government except the governor and his secretary
should be responsible to the united Le