ountry, common sense, and a
regard for their own welfare; and it seemed obvious that men so
disposed were infinitely better qualified than the Colonial Office to
manage their own affairs. Nothing but evil {243} could result "from
the attempt to conduct the internal affairs of the colonies in
accordance with the public opinion, not of those colonies themselves,
but of the mother country."[14] It may seem a work of supererogation
to complete the sketch of this group with an examination of the
opinions expressed in Lord Durham's Report; yet that Report is so
fundamental a document in the development of British imperial opinion
that time must be found to dispel one or two popular illusions.[15] It
is a mistake to hold that Durham advocated the fullest concession of
local autonomy to Canada. Sir Francis Hincks, a protagonist of
Responsible Government, once quoted from the Report sentences which
seemed to justify all his claims: "The crown must submit to the
necessary consequences of representative institutions, and if it has to
carry on the government in union with a representative body, it must
consent to carry it on by means of those in whom that representative
body has confidence"; and again, "I admit that the system which I
propose would in fact place the internal government of the colony in
the hands of the {244} colonists themselves, and that we should thus
leave to them the execution of the laws of which we have long entrusted
the making solely to them."[16] Public opinion in Canada also put this
extreme interpretation on the language of the Report.

Yet, as a first modification, it was Lord Metcalfe's confident opinion
that the responsibility of ministers to the Assembly for which Durham
pled, was not that of a united Cabinet, but rather of departmental
heads in individual isolation,[17] and certainly one sentence in the
Report can hardly be interpreted otherwise: "This (the change) would
induce responsibility for every act of the Government, and, as a
natural consequence, it would necessitate _the substitution of a system
of administration by means of competent heads of departments, for the
present rude machinery of an executive council_."[18]

In the second place, while Durham did indeed speak of making the
colonial executive responsible to a colonial Assembly, he discriminated
between the internal government of the colony and its {245} imperial
aspect.[19] In practice he modified his gift of home rule, by p