lacing,
like Wakefield and Buller, many things beyond the scope of colonial
responsibility, for example, "the constitution of the form of
government, the regulation of foreign relations, and of trade with the
mother country, the other British colonies, and foreign nations, and
the disposal of the public lands."[20] There is too remarkable a
consensus of opinion on this point within the group to leave any doubt
as to the intention of Durham and his assistants; that an extensive
region should be left subject to strictly imperial supervision.
Durham's career ended before his actions could furnish a practical test
of his theories, but Buller, like Wakefield, gave a plain statement of
what he meant by supporting Metcalfe against his council, at a time
when the colonial Assembly seemed to be infringing on imperial rights.
"No man," said Buller, of the Metcalfe affair, "could seriously think
of saying that in the appointment of every subordinate officer in every
county in Canada, the opinion of the Executive Council was to be
taken."[21]

{246}

To pass from controversy to certainty, there was one aspect of the
Report which made it the most notable deliverance of its authors, and
which set that group apart from every other political section in
Britain, whether Radical, Whig, or Tory--I mean its robust and
unhesitating imperialism. How deeply pessimism concerning the Empire
had pervaded all minds at that time, it will be the duty of this
chapter to prove, but, in the Report at least, there is no doubt of its
authors' desire, "to perpetuate and strengthen the connexion between
this Empire and the North American Colonies, which would then form one
of the brightest ornaments in your Majesty's Imperial Crown." This
confident imperial note, then, was the most striking contribution of
the Durham Radicals to colonial development; and the originality and
unexpectedness of their confidence gains impressiveness when contrasted
with general contemporary opinion.

They contributed, too, in another and less simple fashion, to the
constitutional question. Nowhere so clearly as in their writings are
both sides of the theoretic contradiction--British supremacy and
Canadian autonomy--so boldly stated, and, in spite of the
contradiction, so confidently accepted. They would trust implicitly to
the sense and {247} feelings, however crude, of the colony: they would
surrender the entire control of domestic affairs: they would sanction,
as